The groom, who appeared to be somewhere between forty and fifty and certainly old enough to know better, was slowly turning green around the gills as friend after friend proposed toasts in his honor. As the evening progressed, the jokes became more ribald and, what had at first been snickers, soon turned into roaring laughter. It was not a party that could be enjoyed by anyone remotely sober. He leaned against the wall and thoughtfully rubbed his chin. What in the hell was Janet doing with a bunch like this?
Someone at the head table took off his shoe and banged it on the table. Instead of producing the desired silence, fifty other men removed their shoes and banged them on their tables. In response, the first man crawled up on the table and stood there waving his arms. By promising a spectacular surprise if they quieted down, the rotund organizer, his shoe still clenched in his hand, managed to dull the noise. He handed his shoe to the man next to him and motioned for a drum roll, then swung his arm in a grand gesture toward the entrance.
The big double doors swung open, and a giant cake was wheeled in. A wild cheer quickly followed by a host of catcalls, each more crude than the last, greeted the cake's entrance. Eric cringed. The mystery had been solved.
Absolutely convinced that she had made a mistake in ever agreeing to take the job in the first place, Janet desperately fought to capture the feeling of anonymity she had when she wore her clown costume. If she could just get through this night, she would know she could face anything. Abruptly the forward motion stopped. She tried to listen for the cue—"and now let's cut the cake"—but all she could hear were shouts, whistles and what sounded like stomping feet.
The ear-shattering noise outside, and the painfully cramped quarters inside, combined to make her feel as if the world were closing in on her. A trickle of perspiration slithered down her spine; she tried to catch her breath. Dull panic hung over her like an ominous black cloud, and "claustrophobia" became more than a word she had always had trouble spelling. She had to get out of there.
Through the noise, she heard a rapping on the plywood side of the cake. Convinced it had to be a signal for her to make her appearance, she reached up to throw the lid back. She forced herself to smile as she stood up, her arms thrown wide. She was almost to a full standing position before she realized there was something terribly wrong with her legs. They were like twin towers of gelatin. The time she had waited in the cake with her legs awkwardly cramped under her had put them to sleep. She made the connection too late. When she tried to sit down, she lost her balance and went tumbling over the side.
With amazing reflexes, considering his level of intoxication, the party's honoree made a grab for Janet as she fell. She landed half in, half out, of his arms. Obviously thinking it was all part of the act, he held on tight, pulling her close and nuzzling her neck.
"Put me down," Janet hissed.
He ignored her, his kisses wandering lower as he headed for the creamy mounds of flesh above the red lace trim.
"Either put me down or I'm going to—"
He cut her off with a resounding kiss on the mouth. The party goers cheered, which just egged him on.
Janet felt him begin to wobble. She tried to wriggle free. Suddenly his sloppy kisses were the least of her worries. If he didn't release her, they were both going to topple over and crash into something. Too late. They fell backward, hitting a wall that had been covered by a red velveteen drapery, then slid to the floor. For an instant they both just sat there in shock. Then the world went black as the rod was pulled from its mooring and the curtain fell, completely covering them.
Dust filled her nose and her mouth, making her cough and sneeze as she tried to untangle herself. Hands reached for her—none being any too careful what they grabbed. Unbridled laughter filled the air as if those around her had been told the world's funniest joke. Obviously they were under the impression this was all part of the act. Janet tried to stand, but her legs still wouldn't function. She looked up into a sea of grinning faces.
She was struggling to get up when confident hands touched her from behind, taking hold of her arms and raising her. When she caught her heel in the curtain and lurched sideways, she was quickly turned, lifted up and thrown over someone's shoulder. The impact jammed the corset stays into her ribs and knocked the breath out of her. She was too stunned to resist and didn't have the air to protest when she felt herself being carried out of the room. A chorus of howls, objecting to her departure, only made her rescuer move faster. Soon they were out into the fresh air of the lobby, and then, the still fresher air outside the building.
By the time they were at the end of the block, Janet had started to catch her breath and knew by the lessening of the tingling in her legs that she would be able to stand. "You can put me down now," she said, placing her hands in the small of his back and pushing, still not completely sure whether she had been rescued or kidnapped.
"Are you sure you're sober enough to stand up on your own?"
That voice! Oh, my, God. It couldn't be. "Put me down," she demanded indignantly. Eric bent over to drop her feet to the pavement, reached up and grabbed hold of her arms to steady her. She yanked herself free from his grasp and glared at him. "How dare you accuse me of being drunk?" she shouted, hiding her embarrassment with righteous indignation. "I'll have you know I haven't had anything to drink since last Christmas, when some idiot spiked the eggnog at a preschool party I attended." She turned and started to walk back toward the hotel. Thinking of something else she wanted to say, she whipped back around. When she saw a tolerant smile on his face, her anger multiplied. Prepared to take on the world, she stomped back to stand toe to toe with him, poking her index finger into his chest to emphasize her words. "You try jumping out of a cake with both of your legs asleep, and we'll just see—"
Eric calmly took off his jacket and started to put it around her shoulders.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" She jerked away from him.
"Stand still and let me put this on you. When you calm down a little, you'll realize it's freezing out here."
"I have a coat… I don't need yours."
"That's okay by me. Where is it?"
She looked past him at the hotel. "In there."
"I don't suggest we try to retrieve it right now. That bunch in there wasn't too crazy about losing you the first time. I'm not sure I could get you out again."
As if subconsciously verifying his statement about the cold, Janet abruptly started to shiver. "I suppose you're right," she reluctantly admitted. This time when Eric put his coat around her, she didn't resist. "Now what do we do?" she said, snaking her arms into the sleeves.
"Well… we could find a coffee shop somewhere and wait around until we thought it was safe enough to come back here for your things."
"There aren't many coffee shops that are going to let me in dressed like this."
"Or we could wait it out at my place." Her momentary hesitation was all the encouragement he needed. He motioned to a passing cab. "I make better coffee than you'll find in any restaurant, anyway."
After they were inside the cab and Eric had given the driver his address, a thought occurred to Janet. "How did you happen to be at that guy's party?"
"It's a long story."
"I have lots of time."
Eric stared at her. Although, as he had so recently learned by hefting her over his shoulder, she was not a small woman, she was dwarfed by his jacket. The sleeves covered all but the tips of her fingers; the length reached her knees. "I wasn't a guest. I called the Any-thing Goes Agency to find out where you were working tonight."
She frowned, puzzled. "Why did you do that?"
"I wanted to see you."
"And so you crashed the party?" She looked down at her lap. The whole miserable evening flashed before her in living color. She was mortified that he had seen her involved in yet another fiasco. "You certainly could have picked a better time to look me up."
"Actually, I thought my timing was pretty good. A man doesn't get many c
hances to come to the rescue of a lady in distress these days." He reached over and touched her chin, raising it until she was looking at him. "How'd I do?"
She met his gaze. "Not too bad—except for the sober crack." At least he had the courtesy to look chagrined.
"Please accept my most humble apologies."
A grin tugged at her mouth. "It seems to me you jumped to some pretty fast conclusions. Just because I fell out of a plywood cake into some strange man's arms and wound up on the floor covered with a moldy curtain is certainly no reason to think I was anything less than sober."
"I agree—my conclusions were inexcusable."
Janet shivered. In an impulsive gesture that surprised them both, she moved across the seat and snuggled into Eric's side, seeking his warmth. She was dumbfounded by her actions, but once she found herself there, she didn't know how to gracefully move back again, so she stayed.
Eric held his breath, afraid to touch her, afraid to move even enough to make their contact more comfortable for fear he would scare her away. That was the last thing he wanted to do. "Cold?"
"Freezing."
His hesitancy to touch her disappeared. He put his arm around her and gently brought her close. Faint lingering traces of her perfume drifted up to him. It was a fragrance he had never smelled before…floral, but not sweet. "I like your perfume," he said.
She brought her legs up to tuck them under her. "Thanks, I like it, too. A wonderful old lady made it for me last year when I delivered eighty-five balloons her grandchildren had ordered for her birthday. There were too many of them to take into her tiny shop, so we stood outside and had a wonderful time giving them away to the neighborhood children. She said it was the best birthday she'd ever had. Afterward, she took me inside her shop and made this delightful perfume blend for me. I still go by her place and have lunch with her whenever I happen to be in the neighborhood."
"It sounds like you enjoy your job."
"Most of the time I do. I like meeting and talking to people. I'm lucky, though. I almost always see them on happy occasions, so that makes them happy to see me." She stopped, trying to hold her head stiffly and not let it rest against his shoulder. "As you have probably figured out by now, jumping out of cakes isn't my forte. I make a much better clown." She had forgotten how special it could feel to have someone's arms around her. The dreams that had haunted her since meeting Eric hadn't come close to relaying how warm, how extraordinarily comforting, it would be to actually be in his arms.
"Still cold?"
"I'm better."
Eric put his other arm around her so that he was holding her as intimately as he would a lover. In response she cuddled closer still. Inside of him, Eric's emotions were having a Fourth of July celebration. Fireworks were going off in every direction without rhyme, but certainly not without reason. He still didn't understand what it was that Janet did to him. He only knew how good it made him feel to be around her. "How's school?"
"We're in the lull before midterms—that gray time when you tell yourself that if you don't know the answers by now, then cramming at the last minute won't help, but you go ahead and cram anyway."
"I remember. You try to convince yourself sleep is more important, but you stay up all night studying— just in case."
"Tell me something about you. What's it like to be a corporate lawyer?"
Eric gently rested his chin on the top of her head. "If you like maneuvering behind the scenes of large corporations, it's scintillating. Otherwise—we're the types who've been known to put people to sleep at dinner parties."
"My brother's like that."
"Boring?"
She playfully poked him in the ribs. "He'd much rather be the power behind the throne than sit there himself. In high school he always chose to be the stage director, never the star of the production, even though he was very good at that sort of thing."
"What does he do now?"
"He works for the CIA."
Eric laughed. "Somehow that doesn't surprise me."
"I'm kidding. Actually he's a hospital administrator in Bismark, North Dakota."
"Is that where you're from?"
"Uh-uh. I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. I didn't move to California until after Robert and I were married." As naturally as if they had held each other this way a hundred times before, her arm went across his waist when she shifted in the seat to try to get more comfortable. "Sad, huh? Here I am, twenty-seven years old, and I've never traveled farther than up and down the west coast. Too bad they don't make tramp steamers anymore. I'd sign up in a flash."
A private smile tugged at Eric's mouth. "Oh, but they do," he said softly. "As a matter of fact, I happen to know of one that's going to set sail in a couple of years."
Janet tilted her head back to look up at Eric, but was prevented from questioning him further because the taxi pulled up in front of his house. They sat there entwined even after the taxi had stopped, each reluctant to be the first to break contact. Finally the moment grew awkward, and Eric was forced to let go of Janet in order to reach into his back pocket to get his wallet.
"Damn," he softly swore as he counted out the bills.
"A little short of cash?" Janet struggled to keep from smiling.
He looked at her. "Before I left Detroit I made sure I had enough money to get home from the airport."
She reached into the top of her corset, where she had tucked her money earlier. She handed the driver a twenty-dollar bill. When he gave her the change, she handed it to Eric.
"I don't need this," he said, trying to return the money to her as they got out of the cab.
"How are you going to go someplace tomorrow to cash a check if you can't pay a cab to get you there?" she answered logically. "Besides, I feel particularly responsible for putting you into your predicament. If you had your own car, you wouldn't be taking taxis."
He grinned at her. "I like your reasoning." His arm slipped easily around her shoulders as he walked with her up to the front door. He not only liked her reasoning, he liked the way she felt beside him and the way she smelled, the way she looked—there were a lot of things he liked about Janet Franklin.
6
Eric unlocked the front door and stepped aside for Janet to enter. A soft light illuminated the entry hall. To her left was a small table, and above it an original oil painting she recognized from the art appreciation class she had taken last semester. She waited for Eric before venturing any farther. He came up behind her.
"Let's see if we can find you something to wear before I make you some of my world-famous coffee." He took her hand and led her toward the stairs at the end of the hall.
Janet had to remind herself not to gawk as they made their way up the stairs and passed yet more paintings she recognized. She had never been too good at judging such things, but she was relatively sure the art work she had already seen easily totaled more than a million dollars. The thought left her a little breathless.
Eric opened the first door on the left and motioned for Janet to enter. Decorated in mauve and burgundy, with touches of blue and white, it was a decidedly feminine room and far too elegant to belong to anyone but a grown woman. Janet mentally recoiled. Not once had it occurred to her that Eric might be married. Of course it hadn't—if he was married, why Miss Silver Lame?
The personal touches on the dresser and the book on the nightstand left no doubt that the room was currently being used, which eliminated it as a guest room.
As she stood in the middle of the room and looked around, an avalanche of emotions swept her along on a wild ride. Disappointment, anger, disillusionment, embarrassment—each tugged her in its own direction. She didn't bother taking any time to understand her disproportionate reactions or to try to hide them. "Whose room is this?" she demanded.
Eric stuck his head out of the walk-in closet with a pair of slacks in one hand, a folded sweater in the other and a puzzled look on his face. "It belongs to Susan." When she didn't respond, he added, "My sister."<
br />
"Your sister? You live here with your sister?"
"Only sometimes. Actually, I can't remember the last time we were both here at the same time." He walked over to her. "Here, try these on. You look like you're about the same size as Susan…" He gave her a teasing smile. "And she would never object to lending her wardrobe for such a good cause."
Automatically Janet reached for the clothes. Although her own basically functional and inexpensive wardrobe had been purchased at a dozen factory outlets in the San Francisco area, the two years she had spent working in an exclusive woman's apparel shop had taught her to recognize quality and had given her the ability to judge price. The sweater Eric had handed her was cashmere, and the slacks were raw silk. Together she was sure they represented close to a month's salary for her. Eric's sister would have to be an exceptional woman not to mind someone else wearing these clothes. "I'd be a lot more comfortable in jeans and a sweatshirt—if Susan has anything like that."
Eric laughed. "She does, but they're her staples. She never leaves them here when she's flying."
"Your sister's a stewardess?"
"It's a good thing she isn't here to hear you say that— it so happens she's a pilot."
Janet groaned. "I hate people who stereotype."
He headed for the door. "That's all right. Your secret's safe with me."
Now that comfort was only moments away, Janet was anxious to get out of the too-small corset and fishnet stockings. "Eric…thank you. For everything." She was rewarded with another smile.
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