Love, Louisa

by Barbara Metzger

  “That’s a tall order, Louie. I mean, the heated loins part is easy enough, and the flowers. The rest? The forever part, that… What did you call it? Real passion? That’s one rare bird.”

  “Then I can live on my own.” She stood on tiptoes to lift the feeder to the highest branch she could reach.

  “How are you going to fill it, goofy?”

  “A person can build a nice life for herself without a man,” Louisa insisted, straining to get the old feeder down, sorry she bought the wretched thing altogether. “But what about you?” she asked, shifting the ball—“No, Champ, I can’t play now”—into his court. “You’re no poster boy for wedded bliss yourself.”

  “I’m thinking about it. Marriage mightn’t be so bad, with the right person. If I could find that true passion of yours, then I might be tempted too. Bachelorhood gets tiresome after awhile. That’s what Mr. Bradford says, anyway,” he hurriedly added, the conversation coming too close to home.

  “I make his life easier, that’s all,” she said, looking for a different tree. “He’ll get tired of my nagging about his diet and his cigars soon enough, then he’ll be sorry he asked me to stay on. We work well together now, but what if we disagree about the next chapter of his book? He wants my honest opinion, but what if I tell him it stinks? Not that it would or could, but what if? Or would I have to lie to keep him happy? Agree with everything he says?”

  Louie, hiding her feelings? Dante could not see how. Every emotion was stamped across her face—when her back was not turned. When it was, like now, the hard set of her shoulders spoke volumes, all outraged at the idea. Her rear end, in those white shorts, bending to reassure the dog he was still her favorite, said something else, but that was a different conversation.

  “I won’t play the Howard game,” she was saying, “not anymore. So Mr. Bradford will get tired of me long before the book is finished, you’ll see. He’ll be relieved to go on to the city, then Hilton Head and the lectures, without an old fishwife. He’ll find a pretty new art history graduate student to answer his mail, and a chauffeur to drive him around.” She stuck the feeder on a new branch.

  “Too low. Cats will come stalk your birds. And maybe you underestimate Mr. Bradford’s affections?”

  “Champ will keep them away.” She did not answer his other comment.

  “How do you know he won’t chase the birds too?”

  She turned to face him. “Why do you keep asking me such hard questions? I never said I had all the answers. Everyone knows I screwed up. Maybe I can get it right, someday. Until then…”

  Dante tightened the screw at the top of the feeder, twisted the loop, and fixed it on a different tree, where the birds would have shelter if they needed, but with no nearby branches for the squirrels to climb down. “Until then, maybe you’d like to practice the heaving bosom part?”

  She fled inside, the chicken, but Dante didn’t care. He had time now, time for both of them to figure out what they wanted.

  Louisa wanted Mr. Perfect, not just Mr. Right, a hero who’d step out of one of her romance novels and sweep her off her feet. He’d make up for all the How-comes in the world, worshiping every freckle, wrinkle, and extra pound. No, he’d adore her so much he wouldn’t notice any blemish or defect or romantic tripe spewing from her rosy lips. He’d give her fireworks for forty years.

  Yeah, when pigs flew.

  Her would-be beloved had no balls, like her dog. The heroes on book covers never did. They just had padded crotches. So why was Dante jealous of a paperback paramour? Her Lord of Lust wouldn’t stick by her or stand up to her or love her the way Louie deserved to be loved, by a real man who just happened to have enough faults of his own to disqualify him from hero-hood.

  But now Dante had time to change her mind. He had over two months to let Louisa see that not all men were like that feckless fiancé, or make-believe. He could do it…if that was what he wanted to do.

  Oh, he wanted her, all right, with every fiber of his aching, unfulfilled body. But forever? Louisa Waldon was no one-summer stand. She was all or nothing, and Dante told himself he was drowning somewhere in between.

  He knew what he didn’t want: another dependent. Louisa could lean on him anytime—she fit against him in all the right places—but forever? What if he were just suffering a bad case of the hots that cooled off in September’s chill? He wasn’t about to jump into any kind of relationship based on lust. Without anything to build on but physical attraction, that house had one shaky foundation. No way was it going to last through the first storm.

  Why, he might eventually get tired of that smile that was like sunshine when she was happy, or those eyes that went from spring green to emerald, depending on the light. Who knew, he might get tired of her silly sweetness and her gutsy independence. Sure. He might get tired of breathing, too.

  Still, he needed time to be positive, to— Who was he kidding? He needed time to make her forget about both that bastard Blowhard and her blasted fantasy lover. He needed to make her want to stay.

  He needed to read a couple of those love stories.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Mr. Bradford was disgruntled. Here it was, halfway through August, and he had delayed finishing the book as long as he could. Once it was done he’d have no excuse to stay on in the country, no excuse not to move back to Manhattan, then on to Hilton Head, no excuse not to leave Louisa behind. That was not what he wanted, and Mr. Bradford was not used to not getting what he wanted. So he was grouchy, grumpy, and gloomy.

  She was good for him. She made him look forward to each day, something he hadn’t done in years. She made him value his memories, instead of viewing them as boring and trite. She made an old man look forward as well as back.

  He’d be good to her, too, the silly twit. Money, travel, fine art, jewelry, fancy clothes, and her name in his will. She’d be set and secure for life. What more could a woman want or need? A grand passion? If Louisa hadn’t found it with her priceless prick Howard, she could find it when he, Wesley Bradford, was gone, with a higher class of cad.

  That should have been the end of it, a done deal, and would have been with any other female. Not with Louisa, with her scruples and stubbornness. Then again, if she weren’t as obstinate as an ass and as starry-eyed as a sixteen-year-old, she wouldn’t be half as much fun, or half as good at getting him organized. He almost regretted that she wasn’t intimidated by his fame or influenced by his money. The little fool didn’t know what was good for her—or care what was good for him. She was, damn it.

  Mr. Bradford was a picky man who hated loose ends and messy threads. Louisa kept everything tidy for him, but she was unraveling right before his eyes. He knew why, too: Dante Rivera.

  Curse Dante, and curse him for being young and good-looking, physically fit and a decent man to boot. Mr. Bradford used to like him, until Dante decided to stop playing the field and settle on Bradford’s turf.

  If that’s what he was doing. The situation made no sense to Louisa’s boss and would-be benefactor. If this courtship were a painting, it should hang facing the wall. In a garage.

  Dante wasn’t wining and dining the young woman, Mr. Bradford knew, because he, himself, was keeping her as close as he could. He had her drive him to more vacuous cocktail parties than he could stomach. He saw a lot of bad movies, worse art, weak theatricals and wimpy poetry readings just to keep her out of Dante’s clutches. Mr. Bradford was exhausted, and Louisa was still not convinced to leave Paumonok Harbor with him.

  So what was Rivera doing to keep her all dewy-looking when he came into the room? Not much, that Mr. Bradford could see. Louisa laughed at his own jokes, listened attentively to his stories, but she did not change from a candle to a chandelier, the way she did for Dante. Damn him.

  No matter what he could offer materially, Mr. Bradford knew he couldn’t compete with that. Why, he could practically smell the physical attraction between those two idiots. Half the time he needed to ratchet up the air conditioning when they we
re in the same room. But Louisa did not have the contented look of a satisfied female, and Dante did not stop drooling over her. What in Sam Hill were they waiting for?

  Mr. Bradford figured that once they got it on, they’d get over it. Louisa would have her fling, then move on—with her employer. She’d stop building air castles on Dante’s real estate and she’d go back to being the best darned aide he’d ever had.

  So why not? Why didn’t she tell her boss she had plans for Wednesday night, or Tuesday afternoon? Why didn’t she show up late for work some morning, with a smile on her face and razor burn on her neck?

  Unless she was the one playing hard to get. Mr. Bradford hoped Louisa wasn’t fool enough to be holding out for a ring, because Dante just wasn’t the marrying kind. She’d only be hurt again, which was the last thing Mr. Bradford wanted. He was truly fond of her and would hate to see her heartbroken. On the other hand, the sooner it happened, the sooner she’d sign on to go south. He couldn’t figure it out, and hated being confused as much as he hated being thwarted…or having to get used to replacement assistants.

  Louisa and Dante spent Saturdays together, he knew, going to yard sales in the mornings, of all things—as if Dante Rivera couldn’t buy up entire estates. And they usually had young Teddy along, according to Marta. Louisa would come back and tell him where they’d been afterward, raving about the nature preserve where chickadees and tufted titmice ate sunflower seeds out of her hand, and the Whaling Museum in Sag Harbor with its intricate scrimshaw work. They went on a cemetery tour, taking rubbings from gravestones, the thought of which gave Mr. Bradford a splitting headache. He did not need reminding of his own mortality, or anyone else’s.

  They went to overpriced antique sales, church fairs, carnivals, and craft shows. It was all tourist stuff, and Louisa seemed to be loving every minute of it.

  Bah! Mr. Bradford could show her Paris and Italy, all the great museums of the world, including private collections no one else got to see—and she was happy looking at the Clothesline Art Show at Guild Hall.

  Maybe her tastes weren’t refined enough for his way of life, after all. Mr. Bradford tried to convince himself of that, anyway. Hadn’t she gone to a Tupperware party with Dante’s cousin, and maternity clothes shopping with his ex-wife? Next she’d be going to a demolition derby with that tattooed savage, the one who might have amounted to something if there’d been free art classes for him when he was young.

  Louisa would be wasting her life here the same way, Mr. Bradford thought. She ought to be flapping her wings, not building a birdhouse to spend the winter. He didn’t think she was infatuated enough, or fool enough, to think Dante Rivera was going to be sharing that love nest.

  In all the years Mr. Bradford had known Dante, except for a few months right after the divorce, he’d never seen the younger man with anything but elegant, sophisticated, successful-in-their-own-right women. And he’d never seen Dante with any of them more than three times. He’d take his pleasure—giving it too, by the disappointed sighs around the social set—and move on.

  So why the devil wasn’t Rivera strapping on his skates? What was he waiting for, Mr. Bradford’s blessings? They’d be taking rubbings off his headstone first! If Dante didn’t want the girl, by heaven, he should—No, Dante wanted her. A blind man could see that. And Dante Rivera was about as randy as any man in his prime, rumors about his ex-wife’s dissatisfaction notwithstanding. As for Louisa, she could turn on a lamp, much less a limpy. She was giving Mr. Bradford urges he hadn’t felt since his stroke—or before, to be absolutely accurate.

  So what was going on? If they had the hots for each other, which he’d swear they did, why weren’t they stealing private moments together, acting like the healthy young animals they were? Mr. Bradford was prepared to envy them, but they didn’t seem prepared to enter into an affair. If they didn’t start, they’d never finish, damn them. Not knowing why they were acting like polite but panting strangers was more annoying than having his assistant playing house, or houseboat, with his landlord. Too bad he couldn’t simply ask.

  Well, he had asked, but Marta had no answers. She just tapped her temple, muttered “loco” and went back to dicing tomatoes.

  Instead of working on the next scene of his life’s work, Mr. Bradford was staring at his appealing, attractive, down right adorable secretary, wondering why she was sitting at her desk instead of screwing around. Bah!

  Funny, Louisa was asking herself the same question, with almost the same aggravation. No, she was definitely more frustrated.

  Was something wrong with Dante? Gads, was something wrong with her? She changed her perfume, bought a pound of breath mints, let her hair grow longer. She stopped wearing long pants and wore shorts or skirts—the shorter the better. She stopped wearing a bra half the time! How could she be any more seductive? A tattoo? She settled for a henna band around her ankle at one of the fairs they attended.

  She invited him in for coffee. He’d had too much caffeine, he said. She asked him for lunch. He was going out of town. She stepped closer. He stepped back. She’d rub against his thigh, damn it, but Teddy was between them in the truck.

  Yet she’d caught him watching her a couple of times, as hungry-looking as a grizzly bear at salmon spawning. She could tell when a man wanted her, and Dante Rivera wanted her big time, almost as much as she wanted him.

  She’d changed her mind about sleeping with him. Nothing might come of it, she understood that, but no seedling was going to flower without a little encouragement. If it withered, well, at least she’d tried. And she was an adult, Louisa had decided, one who ought to be able to satisfy her own cravings without complications. She had chocolate whenever she wanted. Why not sex?

  The last month or so had been glorious—and the weather was not half bad, either. She loved her work, the intellectual stimulation of Mr. Bradford and his friends and the tranquility of the library. She adored Teddy and counted Francine as her friend now. She enjoyed the country fairs as much as the posh parties. She had her house and her garden, her dog, and now her backyard birds. Mostly, there was Dante.

  If he wasn’t in her bed, at least he was on her roof. He and Rico finished putting on the new shingles, with her help. They might have finished two days sooner without her assistance, but, hey, it was her house. Then they fixed the gutters she hadn’t known were broken, and started on the rotten windows.

  He took her with him and Teddy to look at new houses, and with Aunt Vinnie to look at the sunsets. He invited Louisa everywhere, but never alone.

  Of course she was glad, Louisa told herself. She did not want any roll in the hay—or in the bay—with anyone. She had principles. But she had hope, again.

  Warmth was growing between them, understanding, a real friendship. She appreciated that, but now the warmth wasn’t enough. She wanted the heat, too.

  Maybe he valued their friendship as much as she did, and did not want to take any chances of ruining it. The jerk.

  Maybe, when she’d said she wanted the ground to shake, he’d been intimidated. Some men worried about their performance, she knew, afraid, perhaps, of not meeting their partner’s standards. Dante Rivera N.G. in B.? No way. Shoot, the earth quivered when he merely smiled at her with that wanting look. If he ever—

  She dropped the box with her boss’s manuscript, all 410 completed pages so far.

  Mr. Bradford decided to make one last try arranging her life while she was rearranging his on paper. He didn’t like losing, but he didn’t like seeing Louisa so troubled even more. If she didn’t want to leave Paumonok Harbor, he’d accept that. He would not, however, accept leaving her dangling on Dante’s string. If he couldn’t convince her to accept his final offer, Mr. Bradford decided, he’d throw the two of them together like cats in a sack, and make them face up to the truth. They’d be good together, and even he, jealous old coot that he was, could see it. He had to laugh at himself, acting the irate father, planning a shotgun wedding. If he couldn’t have the girl, though, he’d
make sure the next best man did—if that’s what she wanted. If Dante Rivera would make Louisa happy, well, Mr. Bradford was not going to stand in her way. Neither was Dante Rivera, if an old matchmaker could help it.

  “What if I doubled your salary?” he asked, enjoying the view as she bent over, gathering up the book. “Would you come with me this winter then?”

  Louisa was putting the pages in numbered order. “You already pay me twice as much as I’m worth.”

  “What if I rented a house for you nearby, if it’s living with me that bothers you, or what people might say?”

  “I like my own house.” She shuffled the papers, searching for the chapter she’d been looking for, before she started thinking of Dante and bed in the same breath. “Here, this is the section I meant. You are just repeating yourself now. You said most of it before.”

  “I’ve said everything before. And done it. I’m tired of the whole thing. How about a swim in the ocean?”

  “The surf is too rough today, and there are jellyfish along the bay beach. I saw them this morning when I took the dog there. Besides, we need to finish this chapter. You’ve been fussing with it for weeks now, for no good reason.”

  He’d had a damned good reason, Mr. Bradford thought. Maybe he’d be glad to get rid of her after all, though, if she was turning into a shrew. He chewed on his unlit cigar. “There’s only a chapter or two after that, so stop trying to rush me. We’ll make the deadline. And if we don’t by a couple of weeks, what are they going to do? Not publish the book they’ve already paid half for? Everyone gets extensions.”

  “And everyone hates them. You know your agent told me they’re already working on the cover and they have a publishing date.”