“It probably wouldn’t help matters any,” Deke said.
Charles clapped him on the shoulder, and the two men shook hands at the door.
“No hard feelings?” Deke asked.
“No hard feelings,” Charles assured him.
Deke loped out to the Wagoneer, peering ahead into the darkness as he looked for Dorian. He drove slowly along the quiet street, braking behind her half a block away. She was walking swiftly, as if she meant business. She didn’t look around as he approached, and she didn’t break her stride when he eased the Wagoneer up beside her and rolled down the window.
“Hop in,” he said. “I’ll take you to your car.”
She didn’t reply.
“Come on, Dorian, get in. There’s no need for you to walk.”
Still no reply.
“Dorian, be reasonable,” he pleaded.
For the first time, she appeared to have noticed him. She turned her head slightly. Her eyes were ferocious.
“You will have a chance to learn firsthand what a good actress I am when I run screaming to the nearest house on this street and yell that you are irritating me,” she said. “Only I won’t say `irritating.’ I’ll call it something much, much worse.”
“There is no need to do that. I want to make sure you get to your car safely and that it starts,” he said, showing extreme patience.
“I don’t need your so-called help,” she said stubbornly, and then she said, “Ow!” as one of her heels slipped into a pothole. She righted herself with difficulty.
“If you sprain your ankle, you won’t be able to work for a while,” he pointed out.
She walked more slowly, and sure enough, she was limping slightly.
“You’re being foolish,” he told her.
She stopped, looked him in the eye, and with that expression of resignation that he was getting to know so well, she opened the door of the Wagoneer and climbed in beside him. A streetlight picked out the silvery gold highlights in her hair, and it made her eyelashes cast long curved shadows on her cheeks. Deke was overcome with the urge to protect her, to take care of her, to make everything right for her.
But for now, conveying her to her car was enough.
They rode in silence to the Fontana’s parking lot, and he pulled the Wagoneer up in the empty parking space beside her Mazda. He got out when she did and watched as she unlocked her car door.
When she got in and turned the key in the ignition, the engine turned over, clunked a few times, and then died.
“Damn,” she said.
“It’s not going anywhere tonight, Dorian.”
She looked at him. For once, she was pale and subdued.
“I’ll try again,” she said resolutely. She did, and the same thing happened.
“It’s the octofrinition circuit,” he said, hoping that she knew nothing about cars.
He was in luck, “Are you sure?” she said.
“Sounds like it. There’s no way you’ll get it started tonight. It needs to be torqued.”
“The problem must be serious, then,” she said dejectedly.
He nodded. “I’ll drive you home,” he said.
She seemed listless, lackluster. “I wish I could go back to this morning and start the day over again. Maybe this is a bad dream. Is it? Are you real?” She got out of the Mazda and slammed the door.
He held the door of the Wagoneer open for her.
“Very real,” he said with a smile meant to be comforting. Certainly he was real enough to want to hold her against his chest and soothe her, kissing away all her troubles and pain and making the bad day go away.
She told him how to get to her apartment and sat back, letting herself be driven there. Deke was silent during the fifteen-minute drive. The apartment complex where she lived was made up of several two-story brick structures, not terribly new, not terribly old. Her building could only be reached on foot by a little arched bridge reminiscent of an oriental garden.
“I’ll have your car towed in for repair tomorrow. It’s the least I can do to make all of this up to you,” he said.
“I guess it will have to be towed, won’t it?” she said.
“If it won’t crank by itself, there’s not much choice,” he confirmed. “Come on. I’ll walk you to your apartment.”
She didn’t object but let him take her elbow as he guided her across the bridge. He held on to her as they mounted the stairs and she opened the front door. He struggled to think of something to say that would not recapitulate ev-erything that had gone wrong between them.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said, standing in the open doorway. “You’ve done your duty. Now please—just go away.”
He would have said he was sorry again, but he didn’t get the chance. At that moment, a woman with dark hair bunched into hot rollers popped out of the kitchen right inside the front door and said, “Dorian! I’ve been so worried! What on earth happened tonight at the restaurant? Albert called and said you’re fired from the cast of the play!”
Chapter Three
“Fired,” Dorian repeated.
“Fired,” her roommate Jill confirmed.
“Fired!” said Deke. “That’s ridiculous. You didn’t do anything.”
Dorian was unable to resist the barb. “We all know who did, though, don’t we?” she said. As if she hadn’t had enough of Deke Washburn by this time!
“Who’s the beefcake?” Jill asked, jerking her thumb in Deke’s direction.
Deke cleared his throat. “I’m Deke Washburn. I gave Dorian a ride home when her car wouldn’t start. Look, Dorian, if it would help, I’ll call the—manager? supervisor?—and tell him it was all my fault.”
“Albert is the director of the play, and it wouldn’t do any good. He’s threatened to replace me before. His girlfriend is an unemployed actress, and she’s all too eager for my role. My former role.” She kicked off her shoes, which hurt terribly because shoes were an expensive wardrobe item, and as was her habit, she had bought them on sale and they weren’t even her size.
“Is it okay if this man comes in?” Jill asked, still holding the door open and eyeing Deke curiously.
“Oh, why not? There’s nothing more he can do to make my life miserable. He’s already done it all,” Dorian said. She crumpled onto the couch.
Deke had the good grace to look guilty. At least you could say that for him.
“I made you lose both your jobs in one day,” Deke said ruefully. “That must be some kind of record.”
“You might as well sit down instead of standing there looking like a stick,” Dorian said ungraciously.
He sat on the tiny chair she and Jill had found at a yard sale a couple of weeks before. She hoped it would not fall apart with his weight. It was none too stable.
“I’m going out in a little while,” said Jill, who had been standing there looking from Dorian to Deke and back to Dorian again. “I’d better do something about my hair.”
“Sure,” Dorian said dispiritedly.
Deke cleared his throat. “Look, Dorian, come down to the office tomorrow morning. We’ll find you something to do around there. Put you on the payroll,” he said.
“An honest-to-goodness handout from Dr. Feelgood’s Herbal Teas. Thanks a lot,” Dorian said.
Deke looked wounded. “I was trying to help,” he said.
True, he was. But it didn’t matter. After today, she wanted nothing to do with him. Wherever he followed her, trouble showed up, jumping off like fleas from a mangy old cur. No, he was nothing but bad luck.
“I wouldn’t take a job with your company for all the tea in Georgia,” she said.
“It’s a fine company,” he said. “I’ve turned over the management of it to my brother, who is a better businessman than I’ll ever be, and he’s running the show. That leaves me free to enjoy myself for the first time in years. To be creative,” he said.
“And you enjoy yourself by getting people fired from their jobs? That’s real creative, all right,” sh
e said.
“You are slightly sarcastic,” he said.
“I know. It protects me from people who want to do me in,” she said.
“Like me, I suppose.”
“Like you, definitely. Look, Jill is going to be leaving soon, and I’d like to crawl into bed. And bury my head under my pillow. And not come out for a million years. Would you please leave?” She glared at him, realizing that she never should have let him past the front door. She wouldn’t have, if she hadn’t been in a state of shock.
He stood up. “All right. I’ll go. And I meant it about coming down to the office and seeing my brother about a job. His name’s Bob. Which reminds me—I don’t know your last name.”
“Carr,” Dorian said disconsolately. “As in that clunker of mine that’s sitting as dead as a doornail in Fontana’s parking lot.”
“Here,” Deke said, flipping a business card out of his wallet and scribbling something on it, “this will get you past the receptionist in the lobby and right into my brother’s office. My office, too.”
“Heaven forbid,” Dorian said.
“Goodbye.”
“Goodbye. I hope,” she replied glumly.
As he went out, closing the door softly behind him, Jill came in, smoothing hair recently released from the rollers.
“All right, Dorian,” she said. “The last three guys you’ve brought home have included the director of the Woodhill Museum, the owner of a chain of dry cleaners, and the author of a blockbuster novel. And then there were all those down-and-out actors, none of whom were as good-looking as this guy. Who is he?” she wanted to know.
“He’s not a down-and-out anything, that’s for sure. He’s one of the richest men in Atlanta,” Dorian said.
“Richest?” Jill said, her eyes visibly perking. “Are you sure? He looks a little rough around the edges.”
“Oh, he’s rich, all right,” Dorian said.
“And you sent him packing? After you’ve been fired?”
“There’s more to it,” Dorian said, getting up and hobbling across the living room on her aching feet.
“Tell, tell!” Jill said.
“I simply haven’t the energy. You’ll have to wait,” Dorian replied as she reached the door to her bedroom.
“You’ve got me hooked. Shall we meet for lunch tomorrow?”
“Might as well. I don’t have anywhere to go now that I’m not working.”
Jill followed her into her room. “What about the Caribbee job?”
“That’s gone, too, gone with the wind that swept through Georgia and is named Deke Washburn. He’s part of the reason I quit Caribbee and can look forward to joining the unemployment line tomorrow.”
“He got you fired from both jobs?” Jill’s eyes, already slightly prominent, were now bugging out of her head.
“More or less. What a guy!” Dorian pulled off her suit jacket and tossed it in a corner.
“Still, since he’s rich, you could have been nicer to him,” Jill said.
“You be nice to him. I’d rather get friendly with Beelzebub myself,” Dorian said with heartfelt intensity.
“He has really great eyes. Long lashes. And long fingers. You know what they say about a man with long fingers and toes. Other parts of their bodies are said to follow suit.”
Dorian stared at her roommate and burst into laughter. “Tell you what, Jill. You check it out. And let me know if it’s true—that is, if you and your job survive the first half hour in his presence. He’s bad news, girl. Believe it.”
Jill left soon afterward, and Dorian treated herself and her sore feet to a hot bath. She wanted to go to sleep and not wake up for the next several months. All the same, she wondered if Jill’s information about curious correlations between portions of men’s anatomies had any real basis in fact.
* * *
DEKE LET HIMSELF into his brother’s big house in the exclusive Buckhead neighborhood through the French doors in the media room. He was hoping that Bob and Larissa would be out or perhaps asleep. He didn’t particularly want to explain everything to Larissa after ditching her in Fontana’s.
But he was out of luck. As he might have expected, Larissa was reading in the adjoining den, tiny gilt glasses perched on the bridge of her aristocratic nose and her feet curled up beneath her in the big wing chair.
“So there you are,” she said conversationally as he tried to sneak past.
“Here I am,” he agreed, wishing she hadn’t caught him.
“Not to be nosy, but what in the world happened in Fontana’s today?”
He knew better than to avoid the question. Larissa’s antennae were out; she always wanted to know everything.
He sat down on a low footstool, deciding to level with her.
“I met the woman of my dreams, my absolute fantasy,” he said.
“You did?” Larissa said. She let the magazine slide to the floor. “In Fontana’s?”
“In Fontana’s. That’s why I left in such a hurry. I’m sorry I ran out on you, Larissa, but I couldn’t let her get away,” he said.
“Well, I suppose not, if she’s the absolute fantasy woman of your dreams,” Larissa said dryly.
“She is. She’s beautiful, intelligent, talented, beautiful, charming and beautiful,” he said.
Larissa smiled. “I take it she’s beautiful,” she said.
He laughed. “Extremely. There’s just one problem. She hates me.”
“How could anyone hate you, Deke? You’re handsome, intelligent, talented, handsome, charming and handsome.”
“Maybe you’d better tell her that,” he said soberly.
“I will if you’ll tell me who she is. Is it anyone I know?”
“In a way. She’s the Caribbee girl. The one you playfully told that you wallow with pigs,” he said.
Larissa colored slightly. “Are you sure, Deke—I mean, really sure—that you want to chase after a Caribbee girl? I know she looks terrific in a sarong, but with your social position, and having just moved to the city, maybe you should look for someone, well, more soignée.”
“I don’t know what soignée means, but if it’s important, this lady’s got it. And plenty more,” he said.
“Last I heard, you were determined to remain a bachelor, being the only single man left in that club you belong to, the—the—”
“The STUDs,” Deke supplied.
“Yes, well, after all of you swore off marriage and then they got picked off one after another, you’re the only one who’s not married. So I can’t imagine why a sworn bachelor like you would want to give up the joys of being single for someone you met hawking bath beads in a department store,” finished Larissa, who seemed to have taken it upon herself to play devil’s advocate.
“Excuse me, Larissa, but aren’t you jumping to conclusions here? I never said anything about marrying this woman,” Deke said with more than a little impatience. Then thinking that he had perhaps been too harsh, he let his comic side take over. “Since my fellow STUDs have bit the dust, I’ve got to uphold the ideal of bachelorhood forever. They declared me The World’s Last Bachelor, you know.”
Larissa rolled her eyes.
“All I want to do is talk Dorian Carr into going out with me. You have to admit that this is no time to line up the church and minister for a wedding,” he said.
“We never will get to that stage if she hates you,” Larissa pointed out. “Why does she hate you, anyway?”
Deke heaved a giant sigh and decided to lay everything out on the table. “For good reason. This morning she had two jobs. She quit the Caribbee job partly because of me, and I managed to get her fired from her second job. I’ve got to help her, Larissa, but she won’t let me.”
“Any woman who isn’t crazy about you from the very beginning, Deke Washburn, must have liver mush for brains,” Larissa said.
He stood up. “Let’s just say that I didn’t impress her the way I would have liked,” he said unhappily.
“You’re a creative guy. You’l
l think of some way to make her like you.”
“I sure will try. You can count on it,” he said. “Good night, Larissa. Thanks for listening.”
“You’re welcome. And by the way, the decorator called. Your penthouse will be ready on schedule, and she wants to know if you’ve looked at the upholstery samples she dropped off yesterday. There was a plaid and a floral.”
“I think I looked at them,” he said, not remembering any upholstery samples.
“She needs to know which one you prefer,” Larissa said.
“Floral. No, plaid. I don’t care, Larissa. Tell her to use whatever she thinks would look best. I’ve never chosen upholstery fabric before. I feel about upholstery fabric kind of the way I feel about ties.”
Larissa slanted him a sideways look. “Looks like you’ve got pretty good taste in them,” she said, her gaze lingering on the knot below his collar. “That’s a great tie, for instance. Where did you get it?”
Deke had forgotten that he was wearing the tie from Goodwill. He smoothed it self-consciously.
“Oh, in a little boutique I found,” he said, being deliberately vague.
“You’d better tell me the name of the place,” Larissa said seriously. “Bob’s due for a couple of new ties, and I’d like to check it out.”
“It’s pretty far out of the neighborhood,” Deke said airily before fleeing toward the guest room, which he would occupy for a few more weeks before moving into the lavishly appointed penthouse apartment that Larissa had found for him.
He worried about how he was going to get close to Dorian, but his worry was somewhat lightened by the unsettling thought of Larissa’s shopping at Goodwill.
That was about as likely as pigs flying. Or, he admitted to himself, as Deke Washburn’s striking up a friendship with Dorian Carr.
* * *
DORIAN WOKE UP the next morning and wandered around the inelegant apartment that she and Jill had jokingly, in a vain attempt to give it some class, named La Roacherie. She picked up the inevitable mess that Jill left in her wake. This time, true to form, Jill had abandoned a bag of open potato chips beside the couch, strewn her laundry around on the balcony and had failed to vacuum up all the feathers from a throw pillow that had come apart at one seam.
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