“He won’t be dropping by the shop.”
“Oh, well, of course he will.”
“Margaret, I didn’t give him my name.”
Margaret stared at her in disbelief. “But…why not?”
“I just didn’t, all right? I just…that was the way I wanted it.”
“You spent a whole evening with him and you didn’t even tell him your name? Didn’t he ask you?”
“I don’t know if he asked me directly. I don’t remember.”
“You know what I mean. What did he call you, if not by your name? ‘Hey, lady?’ ‘Hey, you’?”
“No. I, well, I gave him another name.”
“What name?”
Mary balked. She knew what her friend’s reaction would be when she said the name.
“Well?” Margaret prompted.
Mary gave in and muttered, “Olivia Leigh.”
There was a silence. A long one, as Margaret just gaped at her. Finally, Margaret said, “Well, then. He does have a way to find you, now doesn’t he?”
Mary poked at the bridge of her glasses, which had slid down her nose the way they were always doing. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. He’ll never figure it out.”
“He could. You know he could. He just might put it together, if he’s determined enough. And perceptive enough—and that’s why you used that name, isn’t it? To test him, to see if he really is the kind of man that you could love?”
“Oh, Margaret, no. That’s not so. I didn’t test him. I wouldn’t do something like that to him. I just…that name came to me. And I gave it to him, without really thinking about it.”
Margaret was looking at her fondly—and shaking her gray head. “Well, whether you gave him that name purposely, or it just popped out of your mouth, it is a clue to your real identity.”
“Not enough of a clue for me to worry about. He’s not going to figure it out. It was a wonderful night and I’ll treasure the memory of it forever.”
“But?” Margaret’s mouth was a grim line.
“But now I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It happened and it’s over and I…I do thank you, Margaret, for making that incredible dress and fixing me up so I hardly knew myself. For making the whole thing possible.”
“I don’t want your thanks. I wanted to do what I did, and you know it. And I wasn’t the one who made it all possible. That was you, Mary. You did it yourself and—”
Mary refused to let her get going. “It was a magical moment in time, and it’s over. I don’t want to go crazy dwelling on it. I want to…think of it sometimes. But not obsessively, you know? I think it’s better if I get on with real life now.”
“But Mary, whatever happened last night, it was every bit as real as anything else in your life. You might have called yourself Olivia Leigh, but you were there. It was you. You were—”
“Margaret. Please. I mean it. It’s over and I want to let it go.” She picked up her fork. “Can’t we just enjoy this delicious meal?”
Margaret sighed—but she kept her mouth shut.
“Thank you,” said Mary softly.
Margaret forced a smile. “There you go, thanking me again. You’re the daughter I never had, and we both know it. No thanks are necessary between us—and you said you tore the dress?”
“It’s only a small tear, at the hem. I’ll mend it.”
“Oh, let me.”
“No, Margaret. You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to. I’ll take it with me today when I go.”
“I am so fortunate to have a friend like you.” The two women looked at each other across the table, misty-eyed on both sides.
Then Mary straightened her glasses and Margaret picked up her own fork.
“Let’s eat then, shall we?” said Margaret. “Before it gets cold.”
In the big house on the quiet, prosperous street where he’d been raised, James Campbell kept himself from checking the phone book until four in the afternoon that Sunday.
When he finally gave in and looked, he found no listings for anyone named Olivia Leigh. There was, however, an O. W. Leigh.
James decided he wasn’t going to dial that damn number. That resolution lasted exactly eighteen minutes.
The phone rang twice. And then O. W. Leigh actually answered: a man. “O.W.’s for Odell Walter,” the man told him.
James thanked him and said goodbye.
The next morning, James carried a brown bag containing a pair of evening sandals to his office with him. When he passed Mission Creek Creations on the way there, he almost stopped and went in, almost marched up to Margaret McKenzie and demanded to know if, just possibly, those sandals had come from her shop—and if so, did she have any way of telling him who might have bought them?
But he ended up walking on by.
It was too much of a stretch to imagine that Mrs. McKenzie might be able to tell him from a pair of shoes where the hell he could find their vanished owner. Wishful thinking to put it mildly. Borderline idiocy to get a little closer to the truth.
And besides, if Olivia had wanted him to find her, she wouldn’t have run out on him in the first place.
No.
Better to forget her.
To be truthful—something she wasn’t—he was more than a little angry with her. She’d made love with him, for pity’s sake. He’d been her first. Yet she’d refused, repeatedly, to let him have her number. And then she ran out on him, left him cold, after promising—with a definite nod and a yes in those gorgeous cat-slanted eyes—to stay put.
People were whispering about her, about the vision who appeared at the ball, danced only with James, and then vanished, never to be seen again. Even Jules had heard all about the mystery girl. And she’d quizzed him on the subject, too, then rolled her eyes and called him a grouch when he said he didn’t want to talk about it—because he didn’t want to talk about it.
As the days passed, he became more and more certain that he wanted to forget Olivia Leigh. He wanted her out of his mind. And out of his dreams, where, somehow, she seemed to have found a permanent place. Now, in those dreams he had told her about—the seeking dreams, where he looked for something he could never find—he realized what it was he sought: Olivia.
But the dreams remained the same as always in terms of their outcome. He never found her.
And it was all right, he kept telling himself. He didn’t want to find her. He wanted to forget her.
Too bad he couldn’t.
And too bad Mary couldn’t forget him.
Margaret mended the beautiful dress and returned it to her on Monday after the ball. Mary had it cleaned, then stored it in the back of her closet, knowing she would never wear it again. Out of sight, out of mind, she told herself.
But James was somehow a lot harder to put away.
In spite of all her firm promises to herself—to put James behind her, not to obsess over the memory of the too-brief hours they’d shared, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from watching for him, couldn’t keep her heart from beating too hard at the thought of just catching sight of him through the wide display windows of the shop. Too often—at nine-thirty, at noon, at one, or at five, the times when he passed by, going to and from his office—she would find herself standing right where she shouldn’t be, at the window.
And that was exactly how it happened.
On a Tuesday, seventeen days after the ball. At three minutes after noon.
Mary was waiting at the window, hoping to catch just a glimpse of him as he strolled by on his way to lunch. She saw him appear at the edge of the wide glass and her heart lightened with sheer gladness in her chest. And then, as he came even with her, by pure chance, he turned his head her way.
Their eyes met. Locked.
And even in her ugly glasses and her nondescript clothes, even without the magic of that perfect dress and clever makeup, James knew exactly who she was.
Chapter 10
It was the absolute worst moment of Mary’s life
.
She saw his shock, which turned to something that just might have been joy—and then, all too quickly, darkened to anger.
Oh, no! her heart cried. Please, no!
She didn’t want him to see her like this, didn’t want him to know that the marvelous and complex Olivia Leigh was only that strange, painfully introverted store clerk, Mary Clark.
She whirled from the window, headed for the stockroom. She flew past Margaret, who was straightening the hat display.
“Mary? What is it? What’s the—oh, my…”
Mary didn’t stay to hear more, though she knew the sound of that “Oh, my,” meant that Margaret must have spotted James, that the bell ringing over the door signaled his entry into the shop.
Mary kept moving, made it to the doorway that led to the back of the shop, ducked inside. But she wasn’t fast enough.
James saw her vanish through the stockroom door—and he followed right after her, striding past Margaret and a pair of customers at a skirt rack without so much as a glance in their direction.
“Olivia, wait!”
She didn’t wait. She kept going. But since he’d come right on into the back room with her, there was really nowhere to go. She dodged around boxes and rolling racks of hanging clothes—and he kept coming, right behind her. She’d almost made it to the exit that opened onto the alley when he caught up with her, grabbing her arm roughly and whirling her around to face him.
“Hold on.” He took both her arms in his big hands and he shook her. “Damn it, what’s up with you? Why the hell are you always running away?”
His questions came at her like hard, sharp-edged stones. And she couldn’t answer, couldn’t make a sound—except for one pitiful whimper of misery.
Her distress finally got through to James.
He stopped shaking her. And he stared. It hit him, at last, who she actually was.
Why, she was Margaret McKenzie’s assistant. Mary…? He had to think for a moment to come up with a last name. Then he had it: Clark. Mary Clark. A plain store clerk, a woman he’d hardly noticed—except to think once or twice that the poor creature seemed scared of her own shadow.
This was the girl he couldn’t make himself forget?
He let go of her arms. He felt confused, sick at heart—and he was also starting to realize that he had behaved cruelly, that she was painfully shy, could hardly cope with him at his best—let alone when he grabbed her and shook her and shouted questions at her.
He backed off a few steps, to show her she was safe from him, that he wouldn’t touch her again. “Look. I’m sorry.” Damn. She looked stricken. Her beautiful face behind those godawful glasses was way too pale. “Listen, I didn’t mean to upset you. Really. Are you…will you be all right?”
Mary still couldn’t make words come. But she did somehow manage one quick, desperate nod.
That nod was every bit as much a lie as the ones she had told the night of the ball. She was not, by any stretch of the imagination, all right.
But if he would just go, just leave her alone, she could begin to pull herself together, to recover from the bleak horribleness of this.
“You’re sure? You’re all right?” He kept backing away.
Go, she commanded in her mind, though the words still wouldn’t come. Just go! Just leave me alone!
He got the message. “Yeah. All right. I’m going. But I…I mean it. I’m sorry. I truly am.”
And she just stared at him, wordless, through those eyes that haunted his dreams.
What else could he do? He turned and got the hell out of there.
Mary felt relief—for a minute anyway—just to have him gone. And then misery claimed her.
There was a low wooden stool a few feet away. She moved over there and sank down onto it, yanking off her glasses, dropping them to the floor, then covering her face with her hands, wishing she could hide herself that easily, that she could just disappear. Vanish into thin air, never to be seen or heard from again.
“Oh, Mary, oh my dear…” Margaret was standing over her. Even without her glasses, Mary could make out that her friend was holding out her arms. Mary didn’t hesitate. She surged up off that stool and into Margaret’s loving embrace, the dam of silence breaking in a hot flood of unhappy tears.
“It’s all right.” Margaret held on good and tight and whispered soothingly in Mary’s ear. “You cry. You just cry. Sometimes, crying is the only thing a girl can do.”
While Mary cried, James was busy despising himself.
He walked out of Mission Creek Creations blindly, putting one foot in front of the other, hardly aware of where those feet were taking him. He just walked, and he kept walking, down one street and then the next, headed nowhere in particular, the scene at the shop reeling through his mind.
He had shouted at her. And grabbed her. And shaken her. And sworn at her.
And she was…
Only a shy, scared shop girl. Someone he’d never so much as looked at twice. Someone he never in a million years would have guessed might be Olivia—his Olivia—the most contradictory, incredible, intoxicating woman he had ever known….
But wait a minute. He had to start facing the truth here. There was no Olivia.
Only poor Mary Clark, whom he’d just pretty much terrorized.
Across the street, someone’s car alarm sounded. James blinked and glanced that way—and ended up bumping into an elderly lady and knocking her purse to the ground.
She snapped at him. “Watch where you’re going, young man.”
He got her purse and handed it to her, then backed away from her, apologizing. “Sorry. Really. Wasn’t looking…”
“Be more careful.”
“Yeah. I will. Sorry.”
He started to turn back the way he’d been headed—and discovered he was standing before a two-story brick building with a pair of stone lions guarding broad concrete steps that led up to wide glass doors. He knew the building, of course. It had been there all his life.
The Mission Creek Public Library.
“Olivia,” he whispered, not really even realizing he had said it aloud. “Olivia Leigh.”
And at that moment, he remembered where he’d heard the name originally.
Damn. Way back when he was a kid. Middle school, wasn’t it? Miss Lathrop, his language teacher, had made the class study the poems of a local poet, a woman, Miss Lathrop said, who lived right there, in Mission Creek. All the guys had griped and groaned. Poetry—and love poetry, especially—was for wimps and girls.
But Miss Lathrop had made them read and discuss those poems anyway. Secretly, James remembered, he had liked some of them, though he never went so far as to confess that fact out loud.
James was already mounting those wide concrete steps. Inside, he went to the circle of computers where they stored the card catalog. He took a chair at one of the monitors. At the prompt for “author,” he typed in Leigh, Olivia.
Three titles came up, all of them checked in: You and Me and Forever, Stay and Blue Telephone.
James got up from the computer and left the big brick building without even looking to see if the volumes were actually on the shelves. He had no intention of borrowing Olivia Leigh’s poetry from the library. He was headed for that big, rambling bookstore on Main Street. He wanted copies of his own.
When Mary had cried herself out, Margaret sent her home for the day. Mary washed her face and put on her nightgown and went to bed, even though it wasn’t even two in the afternoon by then.
Misery was a sort of pulse behind her eyelids, a sour, sad taste in her mouth. Maybe she’d stay in bed for a day or two, only get up when she had to.
What did she have to get out of bed for, anyway? To go to work at Margaret’s store? Well, Margaret knew what condition she was in. When Mary didn’t show up for work tomorrow, Margaret would understand.
Mary didn’t want to talk to anyone. She didn’t want to see anyone. She just wanted to lie there, with the shades drawn and the lights off, let
ting time tick by until this awful misery could pass.
She did just that until a little after six, when Margaret got home from the shop—and came knocking at the door.
Mary didn’t want to go the door. She wouldn’t go to the door. Margaret should be more understanding of Mary’s misery. Margaret should just go away.
But Margaret didn’t go away. She kept on, knocking and knocking, until finally, muttering swear words under her breath, Mary threw back the covers, grabbed her glasses from the nightstand and stomped to the door, putting on the glasses as she went.
She flung the door wide. “What?”
Margaret had that look—her stubborn look. She folded her plump arms over her ample breasts and planted her legs wide apart, someone who would not be budged. “You went to bed, didn’t you? You’ve just been lying there in bed, with all the shades drawn, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have. Now, go away.” Mary shut the door—or at least, she tried to. But Margaret put out her hand and caught it before it could close.
“We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t. I want to be alone.”
“Well, too bad.”
“Margaret—”
But Margaret wasn’t listening. She pushed back the door and she grabbed Mary’s hand. “Come with me. Now.”
“Margaret, I’m in my nightgown, I—”
“Oh, who’s looking? I mean it. Come with me.”
Margaret already had her out the door. And Margaret didn’t stop. She kept going, pulling Mary across the stretch of lawn between their houses, up onto Margaret’s porch and on into the house.
“What?” demanded Mary. “All right, I’m here. So what?”
“This way.” Margaret pulled her onward, down the hall, to her workroom at the back of the house. She flipped a switch on the little panel by the door. A spotlight popped on over the three-way mirror against one wall. “Come on.” She led Mary over there, and took her by the shoulders, positioning her so she could see herself in each of the three panes of reflecting glass. “Now. Look. Look in the mirror. What do you see?”
Lone Star Country Club: The Debutantes Page 17