Mr. Valentine

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  “I brought the proposal for my next book,” Krysta said, lengthening her stride to keep up with Stephanie.

  “Excellent. We need to start thinking about the book that will follow Uptown Girl. What’s your premise?”

  Feeling as if she were taking an oral exam, Krysta outlined Jack’s story in a few sentences. Thank heavens she’d taken the community college public speaking course and knew how to present an idea.

  Stephanie paused outside a doorway and faced her. “Good. Excellent. Do you have the outline with you?”

  Krysta pulled the manila envelope containing the proposal out of her bag and handed it to Stephanie.

  “I’ll read it as soon as I can.”

  “Do you think you’ll get to it before we—before I leave?” Krysta thought it would be best if she negotiated this next contract for Jack, too, and right now, she had the perfect opportunity to strike while the iron was hot.

  Stephanie’s eyes widened. “I can see you’re not going to need an agent with business initiative like that. Yes, I’ll try very hard to read it before you leave.” She winked. “I can always go over a few pages between acts of the musical tonight.”

  “That would be great.”

  Stephanie laughed and took her arm. “You and I are going to make quite a team, Candy. Now come and meet the rest of the editorial staff.”

  AS JACK CUT ACROSS to Fifth Avenue he realized he’d better have a terrific imagination if he intended to buy Krysta an apology present on his limited budget. Zipping his ski jacket against a sharp winter wind, he shoved his hands in his pockets and started window shopping to get inspired.

  Something to do with Valentine’s Day, he thought as he passed displays dominated by red, white and pink. Not candy, especially with the obvious play on his new pseudonym. He liked to think he was more subtle than that. Flowers were a cliché, and besides, anything he could buy would look pretty sorry next to the bouquet provided by Manchester.

  A trinket from Cartier, perhaps, or a tasteful leather item from Gucci. Sure. First he’d have to buy a few things for himself, like a ski mask and a water pistol. He’d never cared much about being rich, but walking down Fifth Avenue looking for a gift for Krysta, he would have loved to have unlimited funds.

  Figuring there wasn’t much point in going into Tiffany’s, he bypassed it and headed for FAO Schwartz. Maybe whimsical could take the place of expensive. He hoped so.

  Some time later he came out of the store with his purchase. The bag was small enough to stuff in his jacket pocket as he headed back down Fifth Avenue toward Brentano’s. In Jack’s opinion a walk through the streets of New York wasn’t complete without a visit to at least one bookstore.

  He planned to wander the aisles and dream of the day his book would be on sale. True, it wouldn’t have his name on the cover, but it would be his story people were buying, his words they were devouring on the subways, during lunch breaks, at home in the evenings after the kids went to bed. Just thinking about that put an extra spring in his step.

  Then, above the traffic noise, he heard a shout from somewhere ahead of him. A man dressed in dark clothes with a navy stocking cap pulled over his ears ran toward Jack, knocking pedestrians out of the way in his flight. A couple of people screamed and dodged out of the man’s way.

  Jack had no time to think, but his football training still ruled his instincts. Crouching down, he used his shoulders to throw the runner off balance. As the man spun around, Jack launched himself at his knees. They both went down with a thud on the cold cement, and Jack’s glasses, not particularly secure in the best of circumstances, skidded across the sidewalk.

  The man struggled, but working on the shipping dock had kept Jack in decent shape. He held the guy pinned to the sidewalk and called out for someone to get the police.

  A squad car arrived at the same time as a well-dressed, portly man in a suit and topcoat trotted up, puffing.

  As New York’s finest took over and returned the wallet to the man in the topcoat, Jack got up and looked around for his glasses. It wasn’t easy considering the view had become very fuzzy.

  The man in the topcoat finished giving his statement to the police and walked over to Jack. “That was heroic, son,” he said. “I’d just taken out my wallet to pay the cab driver when this fellow swooped in. I owe you a great deal for stopping him.”

  “Then maybe you could help me find my glasses,” Jack said. “They fell off when I tackled him.”

  “Here they are,” volunteered a woman, coming toward him with a mangled bit of plastic in her hand. “The lenses are smashed, I’m afraid.”

  The businessman stepped forward. “We’ll take care of that in no time.” He laid a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Come with me, my boy. My optometrist is excellent.”

  “Listen, I couldn’t accept—”

  “Nonsense. I had fifteen hundred dollars plus change in that wallet and the unlisted phone numbers of some very prominent people, not to mention credit cards and pictures of my grandchildren. I can’t begin to imagine the mess I would have been in if you hadn’t stopped that mugger.”

  “I’m glad I could help.”

  “You look like the type who would help out and then just disappear, like the Lone Ranger or something. I can’t have that. I insist on replacing your glasses, at the very least.” Without waiting for an answer, the businessman turned to hail a cab. “We’ll pop on over to my optometrist’s office right now.”

  “No, really. I’ll just—”

  As the cab pulled to the curb, the man glanced at Jack. “Listen, my wife will boil me in oil if she hears about this and discovers I didn’t reward you in some fashion. Allow me to buy you new glasses and you’ll save a forty-year marriage.”

  Jack decided further protest would make him seem ungrateful, so he followed the businessman into the cab.

  Once they were moving through traffic, the man turned to him. “Now, don’t take this amiss. I’m extremely grateful and I don’t want to insult you in the least, but have you considered getting yourself a haircut?”

  Jack leaned against the seat and grinned. “You sound like someone I know.”

  “Your mother, perhaps?”

  “No, another…woman.”

  The man nodded. “It’s up to you, of course, but my stylist is excellent, and it would be the least I could do. And as long as we’re replacing those glasses, have you ever worn contacts?”

  “Years ago.”

  “They’ve improved, believe me. I have the disposable kind, and they’re a damn sight better than fooling with glasses. My optometrist could have them ready for you in twenty-four hours.”

  KRYSTA HAD WRANGLED two keys to the hotel room by convincing the front desk clerk that she was hopelessly absentminded and needed a second key to avoid locking herself out. If the front desk clerk on duty was suspicious, he hadn’t indicated it.

  By the time she returned to the room that night, she was exhausted. A Broadway baby she wasn’t, if that meant arriving for work at nine and continuing to be bright and perky until after midnight. She didn’t understand how Stephanie and the two men from marketing who had accompanied them to the theater and dinner managed to keep such a schedule. If today was a typical example, New Yorkers definitely lived a faster-paced life than people on the West Coast.

  The living room was dimly lit with only one lamp burning, and Jack was already asleep on the couch. Krysta was just as glad. After the grueling day she’d had, she wasn’t up to matching wits with Jack. Her defenses were down, and that wasn’t a good position to be in with somebody who appealed to her the way Jack did. She deliberately avoided looking at him as she came in, so that she wouldn’t be tempted to snuggle down beside him and let nature take its course.

  Moving quietly around the suite, she opened the courtesy bar and took out several of the nonperishable items so that she could store part of what she’d been able to smuggle out of Sardi’s. Jack should appreciate the chunk of prime rib she’d managed to wrap in a napkin. R
ed meat was his kind of treat, and she’d ordered the prime rib with him in mind.

  She left the napkin-wrapped dinner rolls on the banquet table, along with a couple of pats of butter. She probably shouldn’t have indulged his high cholesterol habit with the beef and butter, but this trip didn’t seem like the time to take a dietary stand. She had more critical issues to hold the line on. Like staying out of Jack’s bed.

  The extra food put away, she took some melatonin from the bottle on the wet bar, snapped off the living room light and walked into her bedroom. Someone, probably Jack, had turned on the bedside lamp so she wouldn’t have to stumble around in the dark. Very thoughtful. She yawned and went into the bathroom to take off her makeup.

  There was a fair amount to take off. Before she started, she gazed at herself in the mirror. A high-priced hairdresser named Emilio had taken a good three inches off her hair and styled it differently. He’d told her he wanted to transform her from wholesome to seductive. According to Stephanie and the two guys from marketing, Emilio had succeeded.

  The makeup session with Rudolfo had left her with thinner eyebrows, more hollow-looking cheeks and a pouting red mouth. In one of the photos she’d been asked to bite into a ripe strawberry, not necessarily to use for the jacket picture, but to get her in the mood, the photographer had said.

  Krysta had spent the morning trying to imagine herself as an author. By the end of the afternoon, she felt like a Playboy centerfold. Jack’s book seemed to be nearly forgotten in the frenzy to make the supposed author glamorous and sexy. One day down and two to go, she thought wearily. But it was all for a good cause, and she still felt good about the contribution she was making to Jack’s career. With luck she wouldn’t make any major mistakes as she played out this role.

  With her face finally washed clean and her soft daisy nightgown on, Krysta returned to the bedroom, and for the first time saw that something was propped against her pillow. She slowly picked up a rounded plastic heart that fit easily in the palm of her hand.

  The casing was decorated with a laser design that sparkled when she held it to the light, and the white-tipped shaft of an arrow protruded from one side. A folded sheet of yellow lined paper lay on the bed where the heart had been resting.

  Putting down the heart, she unfolded the note. Jack’s bold script greeted her.

  Dear Krysta,

  I behaved in a heartless manner this morning. My heartfelt apologies.

  Jack

  She picked up the heart again and examined it. An opening indicated that the arrow was designed to go all the way through. She pushed on the shaft, and the tip of the arrow slid through the other side at the same time that a message emerged from the top of the heart.

  Be My Valentine.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Oh, Jack.

  She pressed the little heart to her chest as the age-old message ran round and round in her head. She’d seen it hundreds of times today in her travels around the city, but the meaning had been obscured by the commercialism of the season. Now the phrase brimmed with meaning. And it demanded an answer that she didn’t feel prepared to give.

  8

  JACK HAD BEEN AWAKE when Krysta had come home, but he’d deliberately played possum. He’d watched her through half-closed eyes as she’d puttered around the suite depositing the food she must have brought him from Sardi’s.

  The damned salon had cut her hair, which he would have vetoed if he’d had a vote. But there was something intriguing about the shorter style, too. It swung when she moved, drawing attention to the luster of her dark gold curls and giving her a sassy look he might even begin to like. Hell, who was he kidding? He’d probably find something to like if she’d shaved her head and put a ring through her nose.

  The draw for him wasn’t really her looks, although he enjoyed responding to that saucy smile and treasured gazing into her emerald eyes. It was her damned perseverance, her indomitable spirit, her optimism in the face of a challenge that squeezed his heart. He wanted to help shoulder her burdens, which was laughable considering he could barely shoulder his own at the moment. In point of fact, he’d had to ask her for help instead of giving it.

  When she went into the bedroom, he listened intently for some reaction to his gift. Maybe she’d laugh. Maybe she’d wonder why he’d bother buying her such a cheap toy. Maybe he should have gone for a single rose, but that was Hamilton’s sort of gesture, not his. Jack remembered seeing the rose on Krysta’s desk the day she’d made the first call to Manchester. Nope, he didn’t intend to follow in Hamilton’s footsteps. Win or lose, and this was fast turning into a contest, he’d do it his way.

  If he could write the end of this scene, Jack would have Krysta become so overwhelmed by the little plastic heart and its message that she’d walk back into the living room and softly call his name, just in case he wasn’t sound asleep. Then he could pretend to wake up, and then…

  He lay waiting, hearing nothing but Krysta’s preparations for bed. Then the light went out. Bitter disappointment seared through him as he realized that his attempt to connect with her had failed miserably. He sat up in frustration and shoved his fingers through his hair. There was a hell of a lot less of it to shove his fingers through than there had been that morning. Krysta wasn’t the only one who’d gotten shorn today.

  He might as well admit he’d accepted the businessman’s offer of a haircut because of Krysta. Not that she’d really care all that much, other than to be pleased that he’d decided to take more pride in his appearance. He ranked somewhere in the area of a project, a fixer-upper and nothing more. Her real focus was on somebody who didn’t need any fixing, except for the minor imperfection of his kissing technique.

  Which gave Jack an idea. It was an idea he had no right having, but his ego had become involved and was demanding he accept this challenge.

  Krysta would be gone all the next day, too, but she had to come home sometime so they could go over the tapes she was making for him. And it was, after all, February 14, a day devoted to lovers. He’d noticed that the subject of kissing flustered her more than a little because it threw Hamilton into a bad light and made her wonder if Jack might not be a better bet in that department. Tomorrow night he’d reintroduce that volatile subject and see where it took them.

  For a campaign like that, one he hadn’t engaged in for some time, he wanted to be well rested. He should probably try to alter his body clock to be more of a match with Krysta’s. He stood, walked over to the wet bar and picked up her bottle of melatonin pills. Tonight he would sleep.

  AS SHE SHOWERED and dressed the next morning Krysta decided she’d overreacted to the plastic heart. It was probably Jack’s idea of a cute little joke, asking her to be his valentine. She had come on this trip to be his “Candy Valentine,” so it probably was a play on that theme rather than a straightforward request for her affections. Sure, he’d wanted to make amends for snapping at her the way he had, but that was only because he still needed her to be his “Candy Valentine.”

  Still, Krysta wasn’t positive about her conclusions, and she would have liked to have a few words with Jack before she left the suite. Consequently she’d made no effort to be quiet while she got ready for an eight-thirty appointment. She even made coffee in the pot located on the wet bar, thinking the gurgling and the scent would awaken Jack.

  He didn’t stir.

  Finally, as she stood sipping her coffee, she walked over and stared down at him to make certain he was still breathing. That was when she noticed his hair. Her gasp of surprise had been enough to startle him awake the morning before, but today it had no effect. He slept on.

  She evaluated the haircut as best she could, considering he lay on his side with his back to her. Whoever had done the job had a practiced enough hand to contour his hair to make the most of its natural wave, and the back feathered nicely to his nape. Although she’d counseled him to cut his hair, she was glad he hadn’t asked the stylist to make it supershort. It wouldn’t have suited his mave
rick personality to have the clipped, almost military cut of someone like…Derek.

  Derek’s haircut reflected his kissing style, now that she thought about it. Well mannered, brief and efficient.

  Thinking of Derek’s efficiency reminded Krysta that she had a limo to catch in ten minutes, and it didn’t look as if she’d be having a conversation with Jack this morning. She returned to the bathroom to finish applying her makeup.

  She was curious as to why he’d suddenly had his hair cut, and a little annoyed that he’d chosen New York as the place to do it when he could have found a much cheaper salon in Evergreen. That was pretty typical of Jack’s impetuous behavior, though, and she probably shouldn’t complain, because at least he’d done it. Funny, but now that he had, she almost wished she had his long hair back. Fresh from the shower and clad in a towel, he’d looked quite impressive with hair reaching to his broad shoulders.

  There was also the question of why he’d had his hair cut yesterday. Maybe he’d done it out of boredom, from knocking around by himself all day, but that didn’t sound like Jack. She doubted that Jack, with his fertile brain, was ever bored, which meant that he might have cut his hair for her. He might have bought the valentine heart as a sincere gesture instead of a cute joke. He might, just might, be making a play for her. The thought made her heart beat faster, but it didn’t look as if she’d find out the truth about Jack’s feelings this morning.

  Three minutes before she had to walk out the door she checked her appearance in the full-length mirror at the far end of the bathroom. Before the photo shoot, Stephanie had taken her to a clothing rental shop to pick out the little red leather suit and white silk blouse she wore. Stephanie had said there would be some photo opportunities the next day along with the local talk show that afternoon, and Candy Valentine should definitely appear in red and white on February 14, of all days.