She sighed and stared into the mound of suds in the sink. “That sounds like a threat.”
“You want me to run interference?” he asked, approaching her.
“How can anyone run interference? I’m not going to hide in my house. I can’t. I’ve got my job, I’ve got to finish planting my garden, and Dr. Gilman is arriving in town tomorrow. Poor Dr. Gilman. Derrick Messinger is going to pounce on him.”
“He’s a hotshot Harvard man. He can defend himself,” Jed predicted. Soapsuds skittered over Erica’s narrow wrists, leaving streaks of shine on her skin. He imagined she would look spectacular in a bubble bath. She’d probably look even better in a clear bath, without bubbles obscuring any part of her anatomy. He wondered how he could delete Messinger and Gilman from the discussion and get back to where he and Erica had been before the phone had rung.
As if she could read his mind, she said, “No.”
“No, what?”
She rubbed a sponge diligently over a plate. “No, I’m not going to sleep with you.”
He resisted the impulse to argue. Arguing wouldn’t get him where he wanted to go. “Okay,” he said, doing his best to sound agreeable. “We can just stick with kissing for now.” He slid his hand under her hair and caressed her nape.
She tossed down the sponge and turned to face him, backing up until his hand fell away. “Don’t, Jed. And don’t give me another line about how we’re two adults in the present. You may not like to think beyond the present, but I do.”
She reached for the sponge again, but he blocked her before she could lift it. “I don’t need you doing my dishes.”
“You helped with the dishes last night.”
“Yeah, well, that was the past. I’m thinking in the present.” Instead of returning to her neck, he cupped his hand under her chin, letting his fingers stretch along her cheek. Her skin was cool and smooth. “So maybe nothing more is going to happen between us. We’re still neighbors, right?”
“Temporarily,” she said in a taut voice.
“In the present. And I just protected you from I’m Just the Messinger, so you ought to be bursting with gratitude instead of acting like a fussy little virgin.”
“Bursting with gratitude?” She cracked a tepid smile. “What did he want, anyway?”
“He wanted to know everything about you—your blood type, your taste in music, whether you wear thong underwear.”
“Yeah, right.” Her smile grew fuller.
“He wants me to—what were his words? ‘Facilitate a meeting’ between his people and your people.”
“For heaven’s sake. If he wants to view the box, he can view it along with everyone else when Avery Gilman opens it. It’s not such a big thing.”
“He thinks it is.” He stroked his fingertips along her cheekbone, then traced a line down to her chin. “Just like you think our having a little fun together is such a big thing.”
“It is,” she said, her smile gone and a glint of anger flashing in her eyes. “One thing is about a box. The other is about…” She faltered.
“Sex?” he suggested helpfully.
“Intimacy. Emotions.”
“Fun.”
“That, too,” she conceded. “If I’m not going to help you clean the dishes, Jed, I should go home. I’ve got math quizzes to correct.”
“And I’ve got a bottle with some wine still in it.”
“Perhaps you can polish it off after I’m gone.”
“Drown my sorrows, you think?” He grinned. She was so flipping earnest, taking everything so seriously. “Should I go on a bender after you walk out the door?” He swooped down and dropped a light kiss on her mouth. She didn’t kiss him back, but she didn’t flinch and gasp and act like a fussy little virgin, either. “I think I’ll save the wine. We’ll share it the next time we’re together,” he said.
She looked as if she thought that might also be a threat. If it was, he hoped she preferred it to Derrick Messinger’s threat to “get her.” Jed wanted to get her, too, but in a way that would leave them both sweaty and smiling.
Her box wasn’t a phenomenon. But sex with her would probably be just that. She believed he was unable to think beyond the present, but as he released her, as he walked with her out of the kitchen and down the hall to the front door, he was thinking plenty about the future. Tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, if luck was with him, he and Erica were going to experience something pretty damn phenomenal.
“SO, YOU STRUCK OUT with Derrick Messinger?” Erica asked Fern.
Lunchtime, and the nurse’s office was quiet. No emergencies, bleeding or vomiting, no kids whining about headaches or stomach cramps minutes before their geography tests. Erica spooned cold, smooth yogurt into her mouth and acknowledged that it was tastier than the slop she and Jed had thrown together last night.
But of course the slop had only been a pretext for them to be with each other. It had only been a prelude to what had followed—and what could have followed if Erica had been a little more daring. Good God, Fern and every other woman of a certain age in Rockwell were allegedly willing to drop their panties for Jed Willetz, and he’d chosen her for that honor. Yet her panties had remained firmly in place.
Just barely.
“What makes you think I struck out with him?” Fern asked before taking a bite of her Muenster-tomato-and-lettuce sandwich. “In fact, what makes you think I was trying to hit a home run with him?”
Erica couldn’t reveal her source without revealing that she’d been with Jed. “It’s a small town,” she said vaguely. “Nothing remains a secret for long.” She wondered how long it would take before the whole town knew she and Jed had had dinner together last night.
Fern shrugged, apparently accepting this explanation as legitimate. She took another bite of her sandwich, then a sip from her box of apple juice, and shrugged. “I just thought it would be fun to mosey over to the Hope Street Inn and introduce myself. And I baked a banana bread as a kind of ‘Welcome to Rockwell’ present. On behalf of the town, you know? If we treat him and his crew nicely, he’ll be more likely to do a nice show about us. And banana bread is so easy to make.”
Not for Erica, it wasn’t. If she ever finished planting her garden, though, she’d be too busy learning how to bake tomato bread and zucchini bread to have time to bake banana bread.
“So I got to the inn,” Fern said, “and the man himself was sitting in that wingback chair by the bay window, you know which one? It’s got that awful chintz fabric covering it that looks like wallpaper from a little girl’s bathroom. Anyway, he had his cell phone in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other, and he kept making eyes at me, even as he was phoning just about every living person in town. Then this officious woman with short hair and a voice like a foghorn cornered me and started grilling me. She was his producer, apparently. Sonya, or Sofia, something like that. She wanted to know all the gossip in town.”
“Did you share it with her?”
“Of course not!” Fern pressed her hand to her chest, as if the mere idea made her apoplectic. “I only mentioned a few tidbits. The stash of girlie magazines in the basement of the library—for research purposes, they always say. And Elaine Hackett’s obsession with James Mason movies. That kind of thing. But I realized this Sofia person wasn’t going to let me get close to Derrick, so I finally just left the bread and took off.”
“But he was making eyes at you?” Erica pressed her.
“I think so.” Fern took another sip of juice, then sighed. “Up close he doesn’t look as good as he does on TV. His hair—I don’t know. It doesn’t look quite real. I think it is, but it doesn’t look it.”
Erica almost blurted out that Jed had wanted to bet her that Derrick Messinger was wearing a toupee, but she caught herself in time. She didn’t want Fern to think she was spending time discussing things like Derrick Messinger’s hair with Jed.
“He’s the first new guy to venture into town in a while, you know? Getting acquainted with
him might be more fun than trekking all the way to Manchester in search of a willing gentleman. If he offered to run away with me, I might be tempted. I’d finish out the school year first, of course.”
“Of course.” Erica scraped the bottom of her yogurt cup and swore to herself that if Jed offered to run away with her she wouldn’t be tempted. “So are you going to bring more home-baked goodies to the Hope Street Inn again today?”
“No.” Fern looked indignant. “One banana bread is all he gets for now. I don’t want him thinking I’m easy.” She munched on a bit of crust. “I’ll probably go back to the inn, though. This time I’ll offer only myself. He can get his bread elsewhere.”
“I’ll go with you,” Erica said.
Fern looked aghast. “No! If you come, he won’t even notice me!”
“He will so notice you,” Erica argued, surprised by Fern’s outburst. They had never been competitive that way. When they’d traveled together to Manchester in search of a nightlife, they’d never vied for the attention of men. They’d never compared themselves with each other, fretting over which one was prettier or more attractive. Their friendship was too important to them to jeopardize it with jealousy.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Fern reassured her. “It’s just that he wants to do his show about you. You walk into the inn and you’re the only person he’s going to see, the only person who’ll matter to him.”
True enough. “How about if you position yourself as my best friend—which you are—and the only person in Rockwell who might be able to get him access to me?” She recalled what Jed had said last night, about how Derrick wanted Jed to put his people in touch with Erica’s people, as if she had any people. If anyone was going to facilitate anything, it ought to be Fern. “He’ll be so indebted to you love won’t be far behind.”
“You think?” Fern toyed with the straw from her juice box as she considered the plan. “Maybe I could win a few points with him that way.” She stuffed the straw back into the box and drained the juice from it with a loud, gurgling slurp. “It might work even better if you don’t come with me. I can tell him I’m his only chance for access to you. Without my cooperation, he doesn’t see you.”
“That would work, except I’ve got to go there this afternoon. Avery Gilman is arriving today, and I reserved a room for him there.”
“The Hope Street Inn?”
“It’s the nicest bed-and-breakfast in town. I thought he’d like it. He’ll think it’s rustic and New Englandy. And the building is a hundred years old, which will push his buttons. You know all that antique stuff in the front parlor, the firedogs and the stereopticon? Dr. Gilman will be drooling.”
“You’re sure he’s able to defend himself? Him and Derrick Messinger under one roof…The Hope Street Inn isn’t that big.”
“Maybe Messinger will decide to do his show about Dr. Gilman instead of me,” Erica said hopefully.
“Then how am I going to win points playing go-between?” Fern pouted. “Well, whatever. I’ll figure something out. You can busy yourself getting your professor settled in while I ply my wiles with Derrick.”
They agreed to meet after school and travel to the Hope Street Inn together. School ended later than usual, thanks to a staff meeting that began ten minutes after the kids vacated the building. During the meeting, more than a few faculty members hovered near Erica, making her uncomfortable. She’d thought the excitement generated by her front-page appearance in the Rockwell Gazette would have died down by now, but apparently some of her colleagues had heard about the story’s being mentioned on a news show out of Boston, and the gawking and ribbing had resumed. Wendy Williams, the reading specialist, made a crack about Erica being the darling of the ancient-box world. Dorothy Hines, the music teacher, hummed a few bars of the Entertainment Tonight theme song. When the agenda reached “New Business,” Burt Johnson, the principal, noted that several people had observed Derrick Messinger skulking around the schoolyard and he reminded everyone how important it was for them all to maintain decorum so the school would look good on television. He also mentioned that he was establishing a committee, comprising Fern, Roger Basmegian, the gym teacher, and Hazel Nagy as a representative of the community, to discuss the current sex education curriculum.
Fern was fuming when they left the meeting. “We don’t need a committee. Especially one with Hazel Nagy on it. Her idea of sex education is, men can pee standing up and women can’t. The end. And Roger? His idea is probably, men can write in the snow with their pee. Women can’t.”
“Forget about it,” Erica murmured. She didn’t want Fern’s upcoming meeting with Derrick Messinger spoiled by her anger over sex education. Right now, Fern’s cheeks were splotchy with color; her eyes, burning; her hands, curled into fists. Erica was no seductress, but she knew enough to suspect that no man would want to get romantic with a woman that close to the boiling point.
“How can I forget about it? Basmegian is such a Neanderthal. You know what he calls his wife? The little lady.”
“She is little.”
“That’s not the point. The point is, he has no idea what the current pedagogy is when it comes to sex education. The last literature he read on the subject was probably Penthouse Forum.”
“Then he’ll balance Hazel Nagy and her prude brigade. Really, Fern, forget it. We’re on our way to see Derrick Messinger.”
Fern nodded, but the color didn’t fade from her cheeks. “Maybe I’ll suggest that he do a show on sex ed in the New Hampshire sticks.”
“Don’t. Burt’ll fire you for making the school look bad on TV.”
“Let him fire me,” Fern huffed. “I’ll run off with Derrick.”
They climbed into their respective cars. Erica followed Fern to Main Street and then down it to Hope Street. The first block of Hope Street east of Main featured a Laundromat, the Eat-zeria and a bar, but the second block was prettier, lined with modest but stalwart houses and stout oak trees, the branches of which bore tiny green buds, harbingers of spring. On the corner of the block stood the Hope Street Inn, a rambling Victorian with a broad porch, a smattering of gingerbread trim and a sign dangling from an overhang. Erica steered up the driveway to the small parking area behind the building. A car with Massachusetts plates occupied one of the spots. Dr. Gilman’s car, she concluded, then reminded herself that he wanted her to call him Avery.
The drive seemed to have given Fern a chance to control her temper. After getting out of her car, she hunkered down to inspect her reflection in the side mirror and stabbed her hair several times with her fingers to fluff it out. She quickly added a smear of plum-hued lipstick to her lips and straightened up. “How do I look?”
“Gorgeous,” Erica said, meaning it.
Fern scowled. “I feel empty-handed. Maybe I should’ve baked another banana bread.”
“If all he wants you for is your banana bread, he’s not worth your time,” Erica advised.
“Right.” Fern didn’t sound convinced. But she gave her snug-fitting sweater a tug, squared her shoulders and preceded Erica around the building to the porch steps and inside. A cute little bell tinkled above the door as they swung it shut.
The parlor was empty—and Fern was right, the fabric on that wingback chair did look like bathroom wallpaper—but lively chatter floated through the arched doorway of the dining room. Nellie Shoemaker hurried into the parlor, a short, stocky woman in her fifties who had taken over the inn from her parents when they’d retired to Florida a few years ago. Her hair was the same color as the granite poking out of the topsoil throughout the region, and her eyeglasses were so large they gave her a bug-eyed appearance.
Her smile zinged with energy. She must be feeling quite proud of herself, housing not just a TV celebrity but also a Harvard professor in her bed-and-breakfast.
“Hi. I’m wondering if Dr. Avery Gilman has checked in yet,” she said.
“Well, yes, he has. He just got here a short while ago, and he’s having some tea and banana bread
now. I’m not sure where the banana bread came from. I didn’t bake it. I always put pecans in mine. This one has walnuts in it.”
“Walnuts taste the same as pecans when you bake them,” Fern muttered, obviously not pleased that the bread she’d baked wasn’t being consumed by the person it had been intended for. “Derrick Messinger isn’t around by any chance, is he?”
“Well, yes, he’s having some tea, too. It’s amazing to have this many guests when it’s not even ski season.”
Erica couldn’t imagine Derrick Messinger indulging in an afternoon cup of tea. This was the intrepid journalist who’d set off in search of Jimmy Hoffa’s corpse, armed with nothing but a camera and great quantities of attitude. Hadn’t Fern said he’d been drinking scotch yesterday?
Then it dawned on her that Derrick might be using teatime to interrogate Dr. Gilman. Jed might think Avery was a hotshot professor, but he was much more the tweedy, absentminded type, with his scruffy beard, his scruffier hair, his gangly body clad in baggy khakis and old sweaters stretched out at the elbows. Avery Gilman could hold his own against any other Colonial-era historian-archaeologist, but against a shark like Messinger? Erica wasn’t so sure.
She strode toward the dining room, Fern right behind her. Her entrance into the room, bright with late-afternoon sunlight, brought the conversation at the long, linen-covered table to a halt. Derrick, with his too-perfect blond hair, leaped out of his chair. So did Dr. Gilman. Erica recognized the other two people at the table: one was Derrick’s beefy cameraman, and the other a woman she was pretty sure she’d seen at her house that morning, too. She must be Sofia or Sonya.
Erica saved her smile for Dr. Gilman, who looked exactly as she’d remembered him from her undergraduate days, all elbows and knees, steel-wool hair bushing out from his scalp and chin. He wore a ribbed V-neck sweater of indeterminate brown, baggy twill trousers and scuffed shoes. He extended his right hand. “Erica Leitner! So good to see you!”
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