The Marriage Merger

by Leiber, Vivian

  Nix to both at Dehlia’s.

  “Sam likes glamour,” she muttered. “If these women are any indication, Sam’s a regular sequins/ miniskirt/big hair junkie.”

  She looked down at her gray suit, a little wilted in the late-afternoon heat. Her shoes, black pumps that had seemed sensible yet sophisticated in the store, now looked downright orthopedic. She got out of her car, half expecting the valet to ask if she needed a walker. Then she remembered her briefcase before locking the door and scanned the curb for any sign of Sam.

  “Miss, I need your key!” the valet said.

  “Oh, sorry,” Patricia said. It took her several nail-splitting minutes to extract her car key from her key ring.

  “First time?” the valet asked gently.

  At everything, yes, Patricia thought.

  “Here, I got the key out,” she said. “I’m meeting my... fiancé.”

  Not a flicker of curiosity crossed his face as he handed her a ticket to retrieve her car. All right, Patricia thought, total strangers can be fooled into thinking that I’m engaged.

  “Go to the head of the line and give your name to the maitre d’,” the valet advised and, without a backward glance, he shoved his fingers into his mouth and whistled a stop warning to an approaching car.

  Adjusting the shoulder strap on her briefcase, she squeezed through a well-dressed, well-coifed see-and-be-seen line.

  Just inside the door, a small man with the face of a bulldog and a crisply sheered dark suit acknowledged her with a sharp nod.

  “Would señora care for me to take her briefcase?” he asked with a precise Castillian accent.

  “No, thanks,” Patricia said, staring over his shoulder into the spacious, airy dining room bathed in turquoise, Guatemalan red and Pueblo gold tones. “I’m meeting someone here. My fiancé. Sam Wainwright.”

  A barely there jowl wiggle was the only sign of the maitre d’s doubt.

  “Mr. Wainwright has a standing reservation for two but he has not yet arrived,” the maitre d’ said. “Would you care to have a seat at the... Oh, Mr. Wainwright, how very nice to see you.”

  “Dino, it’s a pleasure,” Sam said, coming up behind Patricia. He had changed into a European cut midnight blue suit with a white silk shirt. He smelled fresh and citrusy and his hair was shower-damp. “You have my usual table?”

  Dino bowed.

  “But of course. This young lady indicates that she is your...” He rubbed his fingers together as if the nuances of the English language were a mystery.

  “My fiancée,” Sam supplied. He kissed Patricia chastely on the cheek. The touch was startling—to Patricia and Dino!

  The maitre d’s lips puckered around an especially sour taste.

  “But what about...?” Dino reconsidered his question and solemnly said, “Bravo. I offer you my congratulations.”

  He briskly stacked two leather-bound menus and a wine list and led them to a button-tufted leather banquette overlooking the twinkling, glittering, neon-splattered downtown Phoenix. And beyond that, the mountains with the pale pink reminder of the sunset.

  “Enjoy your dinner,” Dino said, and before withdrawing he sniffed loudly.

  “He’s used to seeing Melissa,” Patricia guessed.

  “Melissa and I came here every week,” Sam confirmed, taking a sip from his water glass. “Her grandfather was the Stanhope that first discovered the silver and tin on the Chulla Canyon. When the seam was cleared out a generation later, Melissa’s father discovered real-estate development could make even more money than metals. Melissa is used to the finer things in life, including this restaurant.”

  “Bet she didn’t come here in a gray suit, carrying a briefcase.”

  “No, but that’s because she didn’t have a job. Although she did seem to make a career out of flying to New York to see her favorite designers. Hey, you’re not feeling out of place, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Patricia bristled. “But look at the women at the other tables.”

  Sam took a quick, discreet look around the crowded dining room. Then he looked at Patricia. Under his scrutiny, she shoved her bitten-to-the-quick nails under the heavy damask tablecloth.

  “The usual crowd.”

  “And me?”

  “You look like you always do.”

  “Boring.”

  “No, you’re just a more... dependable person than the regulars here.”

  A woman in a pale green leather miniskirt and white patent leather boots passed their table. Patricia caught herself watching Sam’s appraisal.

  Dependable, she thought. Yuck.

  “Don’t underestimate dependable,” he said, turning his attention to her. “In fact, in a room filled with teased and perfumed and sequined ladies, it’s nice to have someone looking so natural.”

  He reached across the table and flicked a stray lock of hair behind her ears.

  “Natural” sounded like the Miss Congeniality Award at a beauty pageant. At the end of the evening, nobody ever remembered who was the most dependable friend or even where she came from. They only remembered the girl with the crown and the roses, and Patricia was going to do everything in her power to win her own title—Mrs. Sam Wainwright!

  “If a new dress or a new hairdo will make you feel more comfortable, let’s do it,” Sam said. “Tomorrow, let’s take off a little early. I’ll take you shopping. My treat. All right?”

  “I don’t want you to buy me things,” Patricia insisted.

  “I know. Jeez, Patricia, you could learn from Melissa.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Mew a little. Pout. Toss your head just so. Insist that life’s not worth living unless you have that newest little number by Isaac Mizrahi. Tell me you’ll be sooooo happy if I get it for you.”

  “I don’t need you to buy me a dress. I just think I should get one—at least for the party. And maybe a haircut. I mean, style.”

  “You didn’t pay attention to that lesson.”

  “I don’t want to learn. Didn’t you hate that?”

  “I didn’t notice it too much. She really wasn’t that bad. It was how she was taught. You aren’t like that. Anything I can do to make this engagement easier on you, I want to do it. Besides, you’ll want me to approve of your new dress for the retirement party.”

  “I will?”

  “Yeah, because it’s black tie. You’re better at picking out...” He caught the end of his sentence and reconsidered.

  “Gray suits,” Patricia prompted.

  He put his head in his hands, confirming for Patricia everything she thought about her appearance.

  “It’s okay, Sam, I know my limits. Why don’t we buy a dress together?”

  He squeezed her hand and she smiled weakly.

  She had a little more than a week to change Sam’s mind, to make him give her a longer look. And she was going to use her time wisely.

  “Now let’s work out some more important items,” he announced.

  “Like what?”

  “Like what you’re having for dinner,” Sam said, opening her menu before her. “The menu is in Spanish and the street Spanish I know isn’t adequate. But whenever I say ‘porterhouse steak,’ the waiter understands me. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

  When the waiter came to the table, he announced that the maitre d’ had sent them a complimentary bottle of champagne to celebrate their engagement.

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” she said when Sam was done ordering.

  When the waiter murmured his approval of Patricia’s selections and withdrew from the table, Sam gently touched his fluted glass to hers.

  “Thank you so much,” he said. “To friends.”

  She put down her glass. Playtime was over. Recess was called on account of having to get down to business.

  “You have a lot to tell me,” she said.

  “Ladies first.”

  “Age before beauty.”

  “Ha! You’re more interesting.”

  “Har
dly. And besides, I’m not the one wanting to be engaged.”

  “All right, you win. I’m thirty-six years old.”

  “Knew that.”

  “I grew up in the rough side of Phoenix.”

  “Kind of knew that, too.”

  “My mother died when I was eleven.”

  “I’m sorry, but you told me about that.”

  “And my father is... I don’t even know where he is.”

  Patricia looked away. She knew it was a painful subject for Sam.

  “I went to the University of Arizona on a basketball scholarship,” Sam continued. “But spent most of the time on the bench because there were better players. I didn’t care because I wasn’t there to become a pro, I was there to get an education.”

  “I don’t know how good the other players were but I knew all that.”

  “Now you know so much about my life, let’s do yours. Twenty-nine.”

  “Got that from my personnel record.”

  “Your parents were career diplomats. Your father died in Bhutan. Your mother is now an attaché to the French ambassador in Paris.”

  “Got it in one guess.”

  “You went to a boarding school in London, then one in Sweden.”

  “Switzerland.”

  “I knew it began with an S. And you went to Northwestern University in Chicago.”

  “Ho-hum.”

  “And after eight years working at the University Club of Chicago, you came to Barrington.”

  They each drank from their glasses.

  “So that’s it,” Patricia concluded. “We know a lot of general stuff about each other. We’ve been friends. We tell each other things.”

  “If we were lovers, we’d tell each other more.”

  “How much more?” Patricia asked, draining her glass. She leaned back to give the waiter room to present her first course. The fragrant risotto reminded her she hadn’t eaten since noon. That must account for the light-headedness she felt.

  “Lovers. Past lovers.”

  He nodded at the waiter, who twisted the pepper shaker over his rice. Patricia declined just so that the waiter would get out of earshot.

  Lovers?

  Hadn’t had any, Patricia thought to herself.

  “I’ll go first,” Sam said.

  “I won’t have to talk for the rest of the evening if we get started with you.”

  He playfully snapped his napkin at her.

  “I’m not as much of a playboy as you think. I can’t figure out why I have this reputation.”

  “It’s because you’re so handsome,” Patricia blurted out. Oh, great, she thought, why don’t you just tell him that he’s the man you dream about at night?

  “So handsome?” he asked, looking genuinely baffled.

  “Everyone thinks so,” she said, covering up her own particular opinion on the subject. “And a handsome man is just assumed to be...busy.”

  He opened his mouth, looking at her intently—so intently that Patricia was sure that he would ask her what she assumed. What she thought. Whether she thought he was handsome.

  And then she’d just have to hope that the entire Sonoran Desert opened up and swallowed her.

  “Do you think I’m handsome?”

  “You’re okay,” she said with a nonchalant shrug.

  “Do you think I’m a playboy?”

  “A little.”

  “Then there’s the truth,” he said at last.

  “Why don’t you tell me the truth?”

  “I had a few—honestly, we’d call them one-night stands—when I was in college and for the couple of years after graduation. I’m not proud of that, but you should know. Or, actually, you would know if we were really...getting married. Then I had a two-year relationship with an actress who lived in Scottsdale. I went out with a model from New York, but I spent more time in airports than actually with her. And I met Melissa at a charity ball two years ago and... Aren’t you hungry?”

  Patricia looked down at her untouched plate.

  “I’m just trying to pay attention.”

  “It’s your turn.”

  How could she tell him? What would he think of her? When she had been twenty, being a virgin seemed okay. She had been bounced around too much as a teen to develop any relationships, and college had been hard work—or maybe it was just that it was more comfortable spending Friday nights in the library or out with girlfriends than at the singles bars that cluttered the neighborhood around campus. When she was twenty-five, she had several relationships behind her—but none that had blossomed into the all-consuming love she thought should be lovemaking’s prerequisite.

  But after twenty-five, when one young man had called her a prude and a freak because she wouldn’t sleep with him, she had started to wonder about herself.

  It wasn’t something she thought about frequently, but it was there. Somehow she knew that Sam would treat this “problem” of hers seriously, but she also sensed that Sam would think her more fragile than she figured herself to be. He might even think her too fragile to enter into this deception.

  “Should I send back your risotto?” he asked.

  “Oh, no,” Patricia said, rousing herself abruptly from her thoughts. “Let’s see, there was Belmondo. He was the ski instructor at the boarding school in Lausane, Switzerland. I was eighteen.”

  There actually was a Belmondo. He really was a ski instructor. And Patricia really had been eighteen. But the way her words lingered between her and Sam left a lot of room for speculation.

  “But the relationship didn’t last when I moved back to America for college.”

  Of course it didn’t last. There wasn’t anything to last. Belmondo was forty-eight years old, had a wife and three children and wouldn’t have remembered Patricia’s name—much less what she looked like—since he had over a hundred students each semester.

  “Then there was Steve—he was in the same business class at Northwestern,” Patricia continued. “We pretty much kept up our relationship until I moved to Barrington.”

  Steve had taken a job at the University Club’s personnel department just as she had. And his partner, a dapper wedding planner from the north side of the city, had often told Patricia that he’d find her a husband. Of course, he hadn’t—but he tried his best to set up blind dates with nearly every groom’s best man.

  “Okay, Belmondo and Steve,” Sam said. “I think I can keep that straight”

  Patricia relaxed. She even tried a bite of the lightly spiced risotto. She was starting to relax. This was going to work out just fine. She’d go to the party with Sam. Rex would ask them a few polite questions, there might have to be some deception, but Sam would keep his job. She would have done a favor for a friend, and she might, just might, get his attention.

  One week to turn his head around. She could do it. She could do it if she set her mind to it.

  She wasn’t nervous anymore. Her face, which had felt hot and red, was now cool and refreshed. The food, which before had made her stomach do flip-flops. was every bit as delicious as advertised.

  The champagne was wonderful, she was with the man of her dreams. Life was all right.

  She smiled as Sam refilled her glass.

  And then he asked the lethal question.

  “So when did we first know it was love?”

  Chapter Five

  Patricia’s fork clattered as it hit her plate. Although Dehlia’s was quickly filling up and the noise level was outpacing the delicate classical guitar music, several diners at nearby tables glanced over at the disturbance.

  Patricia gulped at her champagne, and the bubbles, so sweet, did not comfort her or give her confidence.

  It was a startling question—one she could answer honestly by saying, “I started thinking about you the first moment I met you, but firm denial kept me from realizing I was head over heels, hopelessly forever in love with you for at least another month. But from there on out, I’ve pretty much been doomed to love you.”

  Or
perhaps “I couldn’t stop thinking about you after you interviewed me for the position, and when I was offered a better job at the St. Louis Ritz-Carlton, and the University Club of Chicago even offered to meet and beat your offer so that I’d stay, I still had to take your job. And when I drove my rental truck down from Chicago, all I could do was pray you weren’t married.”

  Or perhaps “I work next to you every day and I really feel honored that you consider me a friend. But I’m a wimp who can’t ask you out even though I practice all the time—of course I wouldn’t when you were engaged—and I think asking you out for a date scares me more than bungee jumping, skydiving and the movie Psycho all rolled into one.”

  But honesty would only baffle Sam—and embarrass herself. She chose her words carefully, just like she always chose her words when they were discussing... business.

  “I think we should play up the fact that we haven’t made our relationship public because we wanted to maintain not merely the appearance but the reality of professionalism.”

  . “That doesn’t sound very romantic.”

  “It’s not meant to sound romantic. It’s meant to answer the question.”

  “I think if someone asks me, I’ll say that I’ve worked with you, gone on business trips with you, even considered you a good after-hours friend,” Sam said. “But nothing more. Until one day, I took a good look at you. A real good look. And I realized that underneath those sensible gray suits beat the heart of a sensuous and vibrant woman who drives me wild with desire. Or maybe you could be the one to have taken a good look at me.”

  They stared at each other. For an instant, Patricia wondered if maybe he was looking at her. Looking at her in that “real good look” way. Patricia took a deep breach, bit her lower lip, forced herself to meet—and keep—his gaze.

  “Maintain not merely the appearance but the... what did you say?” Sam asked.

  She let out her breath.

  “Reality of professionalism.”

  “Right. Your idea sounds better.”

  “More realistic, too,” she added.