“I didn’t mean that,” he said quickly.
“Yes, you did,” she told him, “and it’s true. I think we both want to find her partly for selfish reasons.”
“How can you say that? She could be in danger.”
“I know,” Mariel said, flinching at the thought. “But she ran away, Noah. She wasn’t abducted. Hopefully, she’s taking care of herself, wherever she is, and she’ll find her way home on her own if she isn’t found first.”
“I can’t believe you’re talking this way.”
Mariel was suddenly bone-weary of the whole mess. “Maybe I’ll feel different later, or in the morning, or even after I get back home,” she said. “But for now, my instinct is to just let her be, Noah. We entrusted her to strangers fifteen years ago when she was born, believing they would take care of her. I think we need to follow through on that now, and believe that they still will. It’s their place. Not ours.”
He closed his mouth and exhaled heavily.
“Do you want me to go to a hotel?” she asked.
“A hotel?” He blinked. “No, come on, don’t do that. I still want to show you New York. You can stay here, and I’ll put you in a cab to La Guardia in the morning.”
“Okay.” She sighed shakily. “At least we’ve cleared the air.”
“Yeah.”
But they hadn’t. Storm clouds hung over them still, the air heavy with tension.
Well, she had only to get through a few more hours with him. Then she would have the rest of her life to get over him—again.
CHAPTER TEN
It wasn’t easy to show someone the view from the top of the Empire State Building for the first time and stay angry with them, Noah realized a few hours later.
Not that he was trying to stay angry with Mariel. But after the confrontation back at his apartment, he had felt distinctly unsettled, wondering why the hell he had put himself on the line that way, practically begging her to reject him.
“This is incredible,” Mariel said, her elbows propped on the railing as she gazed out over the city.
“It is pretty incredible,” he agreed.
The clouds had finally lifted, and the last traces of pinkish sun had vanished from the sky. Now the moon shone brightly amidst the stars that twinkled above them, seeming to reflect the lights of the city. The bridges glowed as though they were strung with Christmas lights across the dark ribbon of river, and the streets were strands of yellow headlights and red taillights draped in every direction.
“Queens is out that way,” Noah said, pointing to the far side of the river. “That’s where I grew up. Now there are office towers there, too, but it used to be mostly houses and schools—residential.”
“Your mom is out there someplace, then?” Mariel asked.
He nodded.
He wanted to say that he would love to introduce them, but he kept the words clamped firmly inside. Mariel would never meet his mother.
She was leaving tomorrow, and now he knew that she was never coming back. They had pretty much agreed not to continue searching for Amber, and Noah had promised her that he would call Henry Brando in the morning to tell him what Sherry had said about Amber running away.
“Come on, let me show you the Bronx,” he said, moving away from the railing and leading the way to the north end of the platform. “Let’s see if we can find Yankee Stadium. It’ll be all lit up if they’re playing at home.”
Apparently they weren’t, because he couldn’t find the familiar stadium lights, but he showed her the telltale dark rectangle that was Central Park—acres of wilderness in the middle of the city. He pointed out the unique spire of the Chrysler Building and the diagonal top of the Citicorp building.
Then they rode the elevator back down to the street, and he took her down the block to Macy’s, where she bought perfume for her sister and one of her friends, and shirts for her father and her future brother-in-law. At a tourist trap shop around the corner, she bought twenty postcards for her students, taking her time choosing them, making sure they all showed different views of the city.
He watched her, bemused, trying not to find her incredibly appealing, standing there in her sleeveless coral-colored blouse and khaki shorts with a beige sweater tied around her shoulders, looking as though she had stepped out of…
Well, out of the Midwest.
Which she had.
And she would be going back there as soon as the sun came up.
“I’m starved,” she told him as they walked down Fifth Avenue, Noah holding one of her Macy’s shopping bags. “Can we eat now?”
He nodded. “I thought we could go to Little Italy, if you like Italian.”
“I love Italian,” she said. “Pizza Hut, remember?”
Her eyes were twinkling at him.
Struggling to quell a surge of sadness, he smiled at her. “I’ll try to find a place that measures up.”
“Do you think your roommate will be here now?” Mariel asked Noah, lifting one of her aching feet to rest it against the opposite ankle as she once again watched him go through the series of keys and locks necessary to gain access to the apartment.
“Trust me, he’s always here,” Noah said. “Last time was a fluke.”
But when they stepped into the apartment, it was dark and silent.
Damn. She had been counting on the supposedly ever present Alan to diffuse any tension that might arise between them now that bedtime had arrived.
She couldn’t help thinking about last night—had it only been last night?—when they had gone together to her room at the Sweet Briar and made love.
“Looks like he’s out,” Mariel commented as Noah walked across the living room and switched on a lamp.
“Looks like he is,” Noah said, frowning. He walked over to the answering machine.
Mariel could see the red light blinking from where she stood and knew what it meant. There were messages. Before they had left earlier, he had played them back. The first five had been hang-up calls that Mariel realized were probably the calls she herself had placed to Noah on Saturday night.
Now Noah pressed a button, and the machine rewound noisily. “Maybe it’s Sherry or Nicole telling us something new about Amber,” he said.
“Maybe.” She walked over to a chair and sat, her attention focused on the machine.
“Noah, it’s Rick. Kelly has some additional concerns about the pension issue that need to be ironed out before we draw up the final papers. Call me as soon as you can.”
Two beeps after the message told them that was it. Nobody else had called.
“Rick is my divorce attorney,” Noah said flatly.
“And Kelly was your wife,” Mariel said.
“Exactly. Apparently she’s worried that it’s not clear enough that not only will I not be entitled to any of the millions she already has, but to any of the millions she’ll get when she’s seventy-five or eighty or whenever the hell she decides to retire. If she ever does,” he added, his voice laced with bitterness.
Mariel only nodded, uncertain how to react. His divorce was certainly none of her business, but she couldn’t help wondering, if his wife had millions, how it was that he had come to be living in this small apartment with no decent furniture. Then she recalled what he had told her—that by New York standards, this was a big apartment. And, over dinner, he had mentioned that he and Kelly had been saving to buy a co-op uptown, which Kelly had apparently done without him right after they split.
“I wonder where Alan is,” Noah said, striding across the room to a closed door. He knocked on it and called, “Alan?”
No reply.
“I thought maybe he was here, asleep or something,” Noah told Mariel. “But it looks like he really is out. Which is odd. I’m starting to wonder if I should worry.”
“Why?”
“What if something happened to him? From what I can see, he leads a fairly footloose life. I mean, I’m probably the only one who would notice if he suddenly disappeared.”
But what else could she do?
You could stay, she reminded herself. You could go on trying to find her.
But that could take weeks. Months. Years. If Amber had run away, she might have no intention of ever going home. And when she did go home, it wouldn’t be to Mariel. It would be to the Steadmans, the parents who had raised her. There was no way of knowing when or if Amber would ever want to get in touch with Mariel again, let alone make her a part of her life.
All Mariel needed to know, then, was that her daughter was safe.
The police were investigating, as was Henry Brando, and the Steadmans themselves. There seemed little Mariel could do that wasn’t already being done. It made no sense for her to stay on the East Coast any longer—and even less sense for her to fly back again anytime in the near future.
She should leave.
It made sense.
She had already made her decision that she was going to do just that…
So why was she going over and over it again in her mind? Why was she trying to convince herself that she wasn’t turning her back on her daughter?
The only person she was turning her back on was Noah.
That thought rose unbidden, and she tried to crush it back down again, but it refused to exit. It was, after all, the truth. She was leaving, in part, because of Noah. Because something that had started out to be so straightforward and logical had grown far too complicated.
It was one thing to investigate their daughter’s disappearance together.
It was quite another for them to rekindle their relationship after all these years.
“You can sleep in my bed,” Noah said, startling her.
Her jaw dropped. Hadn’t they already decided that this last night together was to be platonic? A part of her was stunned by his assumption, but another part of her welcomed it. She could feel her body’s betrayal as it stirred in anticipation of lying naked with him again.
She recovered her senses. “Noah, I thought we—”
“I’ll take the couch,” he went on, as though she hadn’t interrupted. “It’s really comfortable. At least, it must be, given the amount of time Alan spends sprawled there.”
She clamped her mouth shut, grateful he had cut her off.
She had misunderstood completely.
“I just want to grab one of the pillows from my bed and some pajamas from my drawer,” he said, opening the door beside the one that obviously led to his roommate’s room.
“I can take the couch,” Mariel offered, her voice sounding weak to her own ears. “I don’t want to put you out of your bed.”
“No, I don’t mind,” he said, and she could hear him opening and closing drawers. “That way, if Alan shows up in the middle of the night, you won’t have to deal with him.”
“He really sounds like a character,” Mariel said, trying to keep things light. “I think you should consider getting another roommate.”
Wrong thing to say, she realized.
He had already considered getting another roommate. Namely, Mariel. At least, that was what he had implied when he had talked about moving to Rockton.
The very idea of Noah moving into her house—of not having to spend the rest of her life there, alone—was enough to send shivers of anticipation through her. She imagined what it would be like to wake beside him every morning, to share coffee and the morning paper, to go off to teach school knowing that when she returned, he would be there, waiting to welcome her.
It was a tantalizing fantasy, but it could never be more than that.
Which was why it was a good thing that she would be leaving in the morning.
Noah emerged from his room with a pair of pajamas rolled up under one arm, clutching a pillow beneath the other. “The bedroom’s all yours,” he said. “You can. have the bathroom first if you want. I’m going to try to stay up a little while and catch a score on the Yankee game.”
He didn’t invite her to stay up with him, she noticed with a pang.
But as she walked toward the bathroom, she reminded herself that it was better that way. Safer. With him in one room and her in the other, there was no chance that they would accidentally land in each other’s arms.
In the bathroom, she washed and brushed her teeth. She decided to change into her nightgown in the bedroom, not wanting to walk past him in it. Not that she thought it would tempt him, but…
Well, maybe she did think it would tempt him.
And maybe she thought that if he made the slightest move toward her, she would cave in. Not just on her resolve not to let anything physical happen further between them, but on the rest of it, too. The part about him coming to live in Rockton, just to see how he liked it.
After all, it was a free country.
He could live wherever he liked.
Who was she to stop him?
“Did you find the toothpaste?” Noah asked, glancing up when she came out of the bathroom and crossed through the living room again. He was sitting on the couch holding the remote control, and a late newscast was on the television screen.
“I had brought my own,” she told him.
“That’s good.”
“Well…good night,” she said awkwardly.
“Good night” He shifted his gaze back to the TV. Then, as she stepped over the threshold into the bedroom, he called, “Oh, I set the alarm for tomorrow morning. I’ll put you in a cab to the airport before I leave for the office.”
“All right.”
It was so final, she thought as she closed the door behind her with a click.
This was it.
She was leaving.
For a moment, she fought the crazy impulse to open the door, to rush back into the living room and hurl herself into his arms.
Then it subsided, and she exhaled shakily, feeling as though she had survived a close call.
She changed into her nightgown and slid between the sheets. His scent wafted around her, and a wave of longing swept over her.
She lay awake for a long time, thinking about Amber, wherever she was. And about Noah. And about the life that lay waiting for her back in Rockton.
They could have been a family.
And maybe…
Maybe they should have been a family.
Maybe, if they had married and raised their daughter, it would have been okay. After all, not every teenaged shotgun marriage ended in divorce.
Maybe they would still be together, and their daughter would be safe and sound, secure in the love that her birth parents had for her—and for each other.
Maybe.
“Did you remember to get all your stuff from the bathroom?” Noah asked Mariel as they rushed out into the hallway. He stopped to swiftly lock the door.
“I think so. If I forgot anything, it isn’t important,” she told him, putting on an earring as they hurried toward the stairs.
“Or I can send it to you.” He shifted her bag to his other shoulder.
But he didn’t have her address. If she pointed it out, it would seem as if she should give it to him. She could hardly refuse to do that, yet giving him her address would imply that they would stay in touch. And of course they wouldn’t.
She needed to change the subject, and she seized the first thing that came to mind.
“I can carry that,” she offered, gesturing at her bag, though she had already asked and been refused twice since he picked up the bag back in his bedroom.
“It’s fine,” he said, as they reached the landing and continued down the next flight. “Do you have your plane ticket?”
“I have the old one. I had to change the flight, remember?”
“Oh, Lord. That means you have to go to the ticket counter when you get there, and the line is always long.” He checked his watch. “I can’
t believe the alarm didn’t go off. I could have sworn I set it.”
“It’s okay,” she said, trying not to notice how handsome he looked in his business suit and tie. She had never seen him dressed like this. It gave him a whole new aura of masculinity. An appealing aura of masculinity. Thank God she was leaving. All she had to do was get into a cab headed to the airport, and it would be over at last.
“I’ll call Henry Brando from the office,” Noah said, a bit breathless from the stairs.
She nodded, huffing herself. “We probably should have done it yesterday.”
Noah shrugged. “He’s probably already talked to both Sherry and Nicole. We probably don’t know anything he didn’t already know. Listen, when you get into the cab make sure the driver heads back uptown and takes the Queens Midtown tunnel or the Queensborough Bridge. We’re on Broadway, which runs downtown, so he should go around the block to head over to the FDR.”
“Won’t he know how to get to La Guardia?” she asked, alarmed.
“Sure, but sometimes, if they think you’re a tourist, they’ll try to take the long way. And whatever you do, don’t tell him to hurry.”
“Why not? I’m in a hurry.” Her flight was leaving in a little over an hour.
“Because New York cab drivers always hurry. If you give one permission to really take off, you’ll be in for a thrill ride. You might never get there in one piece.”
“Are you sure I’m going to make my flight?”
“If you don’t, you can always take the next one.”
She nodded, trying not to feel disappointed. She had thought he was going to say that if she didn’t, she could always come back here. But that was ridiculous, of course. Why would she?
She was on her way home.
They had reached the first floor. Noah threw open the door and held it for her, then followed her out to the street.
“Sometimes it takes a few minutes to get a cab,” he muttered, looking around.
She blinked in the bright sunlight after the dim vestibule. It was a glorious day, the sun burning brightly in a clear blue sky without a hint of a cloud.
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