The Marriage Merger

by Leiber, Vivian

  The driver’s-side window rolled down.

  He tucked his aviator sunglasses down for a good long look.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Mildred called to ask us to tea this afternoon. Four o’clock. That’s two hours from now. Should we go?”

  He kept staring. And then she noticed. In one horrifying moment she realized that she was standing on the sidewalk in nothing more than her panties, a bra and a blush.

  “Why, Miss Peel, we’re even,” he said, getting out of the car.

  “Even?”

  He tugged his shirt up over his head and handed it to her.

  “I’ve showed you mine. You’ve showed me yours. I got the better view.”

  She would have liked to run. She would have liked to give him, no! thrown him back his shirt. She would have liked to wipe that grin off his face. She would have liked to tell him to stop gawking. She would have liked to have the blacktop that was burning beneath her feet do a little more burning; maybe being swallowed up in molten liquid would be nicer than standing here watching his frank appraisal.

  And yet she didn’t run. Didn’t give him back his shirt—and in fact, did nothing with it except crumple it in her arms. Didn’t tell him to stop gawking because she was uncertain whether she wanted him to stop.

  Did he think she was pretty?

  Did he think she was sexy?

  Then she heard it.

  A wolf whistle from a passing car.

  That broke the spell.

  She put on his shirt, buttoned it as high as the buttons would allow and tugged it down, covering her hips with a good half inch to spare. Squared her shoulders to a vaguely military stance. Scowled at him.

  But still he grinned, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against his idling car as if he had all the time in the world. If she had been the kind of a woman who let her eyes travel, she would have noticed that his jeans strained against his groin in a most suggestive manner.

  And she was the kind of a woman who let her eyes travel.

  But when her gaze returned to his, she noticed the gotcha! expression of a man who knows a woman has admired him.

  “We have two hours,” he said. “We can do a lot with two hours.”

  “Tea at four o’clock,” she said primly. “I would suggest you change.”

  And she walked back into the apartment building with all the grace and majesty she could summon.

  She needed that cold shower.

  She needed it bad.

  But however badly she needed it, she was pleased to note he needed it worse.

  “Good morning, Mrs. McGillicuddy,” she said as she passed her landlady sweeping the stairs.

  “And I always thought you were such a nice, quiet girl,” Mrs. McGillicuddy muttered.

  Two hours later when she got into Sam’s car, he told her he was just as surprised as her landlady.

  “I never knew you were a lace underwear kind of woman,” he said when she got into the car.

  Patricia wore a whisper-weight floral sundress with pale ivory stockings and a pair of white sandals. There was no way he could see her underwear now.

  It was white. And cotton. The kind guaranteed to make her feel asexual.

  “I took a cold shower,” Patricia said. “The kind with icicles. I take it you didn’t do the same.”

  “No,” Sam said. “I drove around Phoenix and Scottsdale for an hour and a half wondering why we weren’t making love.”

  She looked him up and down. He wore khakis with a pale yellow oxford button-down shirt and a blue silk knit tie. His hair was neatly combed, his face smooth and tan.

  “I had just enough time for a quick shower and shave so I could pick you up,” he explained. “Patricia, I want to make love to you.”

  “I know,” she said, worrying the straw handle of her purse.

  “And I know you do, too. At least, I can feel you do.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “All right, maybe I’m wrong,” he said. “It’s just me that’s feeling this tension. But it’s there for me. I want you. I’ve never paid attention to you as anything other than a friend and a colleague. But right now, Patricia, I’d give anything to take you upstairs to your apartment and rip that sundress off you and make love to you for hours and hours.”

  “And miss Rex’s tea party?”

  “Hours and hours.” Sam nodded.

  Her heart soared. This was everything she had ever wanted. He noticed her. He saw her. He wanted her. And although the cold shower had done wonders, fire had started back up within her. She’d like to tell him yes. Take me upstairs. Make love to me within an inch of my life.

  But first I have to tell you this itsy-bitsy little secret about me....

  I don’t know what I’m doing, Sam, I need you to show me how.

  “I won’t do this again,” Sam said. “You’re full of surprises, but I know this much about you—you’re not the kind of woman who can have an affair with a man just for kicks. And I’m not the kind of man who can offer you anything more.”

  “Well, then, I guess that settles it, don’t you think?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I guess it does,” he said, looking not the least bit settled.

  She closed her eyes as he started the engine. It was as if a door had been slammed in her face. But she rallied her dignity, and by the time the butler at the Hacienda Barrington announced Mr. Sam Wainwright and his fiancée, Patricia Peel, she was all smiles—as any blushing bride-to-be should be.

  Chapter Twelve

  The first thing that dropped on Patricia’s desk was a pair of red silk boxer shorts. Followed by a house key. Then an electric razor. In more rapid succession, a black toothbrush, a mesh University of Arizona basketball jersey and a peach negligee with a matching maribou-trimmed robe.

  Patricia looked up from the spreadsheet on employee benefits that had baffled her all morning.

  This baffled her even more.

  “He bought me the night set,” Melissa explained haughtily. She tapped a pale pink manicured finger on Patricia’s desk. “Well, at least he did when I told him to. I’ve decided I don’t like the color. It’s spring and I’m a winter.”

  “Winter?”

  “My coloring is winter.”

  Patricia nodded, although she had scant idea of what Melissa was talking about.

  “I’m a winter and winters need dramatic colors,” Melissa continued. “Peach looks good on me, but not as good as other colors do. So I’m returning it.”

  . “Naturally.”

  “Along with all his other stuff.”

  Melissa then dropped a grass-stained baseball and a wooden bat on top of the pile and wiped her hands together briskly.

  “That’s it,” she said. “I’m all done with Sam Wainwright It’s as if he never existed.”

  “What about the emeralds?”

  Melissa gulped and touched her earlobes—twin emeralds twinkled guiltily in beds of tiny matching diamonds.

  “What emeralds?”

  “Sam got you emerald earrings for Valentine’s Day. Those emeralds, as a matter of fact.”

  “You’re such a detail-oriented person,” Melissa shot back. “No wonder you have a job here. Well, I’m keeping them. The best etiquette books say that a woman can keep any gifts that a man gave her during courtship. Especially when emeralds look this good on me.”

  “Don’t worry. Sam doesn’t care. He’d let you have them. He’d probably only be concerned about getting back his ball and bat. I don’t know about the peach negligee.”

  “All I’m really obligated to give him is the engagement ring, and I notice you have my ring on your hand.”

  Melissa leaned over the desk, bringing an overpowering draft of Chanel No. 5 with her. She grabbed Patricia’s hand and examined the ring.

  “It’s mine now,” Patricia said in a voice that came out a lot smaller than she would have liked.

  “Hope you have better luck than me.” Melissa sniffed.

/>   “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not capable of loving a woman,” Melissa said with certainty. She dropped Patricia’s hand. “He is always keeping part of himself back.”

  Patricia knew she shouldn’t ask, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  “Is that why you broke up?”

  “It’s certainly not because I did anything wrong.”

  Patricia leaned over the spreadsheet and offered Melissa a seat and a cup of coffee. Melissa accepted the former and declined the latter.

  “What do you think he wants in a woman?” Patricia asked. “What did he like?”

  Melissa sat down, smoothing her red silk shantung skirt over her gym-toned thighs. She put her chin in one hand, and Patricia would look back on that moment and swear that steam came out of Melissa’s ears as she used every neuron in thinking out her reply.

  “He liked me in silk. He liked me in pearls. He liked me in lace. He liked me in nothing at all. Hey, why are you asking me?”

  “I just want to know from your perspective.”

  Melissa stared hard.

  “Sister, you’ve got it bad. Sam’s a wonderful lover. The best. We both know that,” she said, little noticing the flicker of hurt that passed across Patricia’s face. “But when he’s made love to you—made every one of your senses explode with joy, there’s still something missing, isn’t there? And that’s the feeling that he’s opened himself up to you.”

  Melissa took a moment from reflecting upon her own troubles to glance at Patricia.

  “Darling, you’ve never made love to him, have you?”

  “I don’t have to answer that.”

  “You don’t need to,” she said. Then she added in a whisper, “Listen, he’s a lot of man. With a man’s appetites. A woman has to be mighty strong to stand up to him and to give him what he wants.”

  Patricia gulped.

  “He needs a real woman,” Melissa concluded.

  “And you weren’t...?”

  “That wasn’t the problem,” Melissa shot back, turning a shade of pink that neatly matched her suit. “I wouldn’t have married him anyway. He wasn’t civilized enough.”

  “Really?”

  “Has no family money. Self-made man. It’s a very attractive quality at the beginning of a courtship. And a tiring one at the end. My daddy’s sending me to Europe to forget him. Now you can do me an itsy-bitsy little favor before I go.”

  “I’m thrilled. What is it?”

  “I don’t want to meet up with Sam. Too hard in the dignity department. Could you check his office and see if there’s a picture of me on his desk? If there is, I want it back.”

  “Okay, but stay here. And don’t try to decipher these spreadsheets.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. I find math to be really yucky.”

  Patricia walked down the hallway to Sam’s office. If she had been thinking, she could have told Melissa that he was out at a conference on pension benefits programs and wouldn’t be back until lunchtime. She could get her own picture. A check of his desk and the file credenza revealed no picture of Melissa.

  In fact, the only picture was a sterling framed five-by-seven of Patricia taken when they were interviewing students at Fort Lauderdale last spring. It hadn’t been there before today. She looked happy—even if her nose and cheeks were the color of a cactus rose.

  It made her smile.

  He’s just putting it there until it’s time to get a divorce, a warning voice inside her purred.

  “Yeah, but at least it’s here,” she said aloud.

  “Sorry, no pictures,” Patricia said as she stepped back into her office. “Hey, have you been trying to understand those spreadsheets?”

  Melissa looked up from Patricia’s desk—and held her hand over the receiver of the phone.

  “It’s your mother,” she explained. “Why didn’t you tell her you were getting married?”

  Patricia smacked her forehead as Melissa picked up her purse, waved cheerily and left the office.

  “Mom...”

  “I’m coming for the wedding.”

  “No, Mom, it’s not that kind of wedding,” Patricia said, leaning backward to kick the door of her office closed. She didn’t want anyone overhearing this conversation. “It’s not that kind of marriage.”

  “What do you mean? My only daughter getting married. I have to come.”

  “Mom, do you remember when you and father were stationed in Russia when it was still the Soviet Union and there was that physicist they were going to send to Siberia?”

  “Yes, I seem to recall your father’s secretary married Sergei Rathmikolov so he could be given diplomatic immunity and smuggled to the United States.”

  “Right. It’s like that.”

  “The secretary divorced him,” Mrs. Peel continued. “As soon as he was safely in the States. He got a fellowship at Harvard—but that was an arranged marriage.”

  “Right, and Mother, this marriage is just—”

  “Although she, of course, could never return to the Soviet Union,” her mother interrupted. “So your father found her a job in Paraguay just before he died.”

  “Well, this is just like that.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Mom. Mom. Are you still there?”

  “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Peel said at last. “Patricia, I never knew Arizona had such political problems. What are you going to do—smuggle him to Texas?”

  “Rex gave us these for tonight,” Sam said, dropping two tickets on Patricia’s desk. “Opera—Madame Butterfly.”

  “At the Orpheum.” Patricia sighed blissfully, examining the tickets. “Isn’t that the recently restored theater?”

  “It’s very nice. Gilded staircase and all.”

  “I’d like to go,” Patricia said. “And it says here we have box seats. Unless, of course, it’s too much. We could say that with the wedding coming up, we have so much to do...”

  “These are Rex’s tickets. He was supposed to greet the governor this evening—the governor will be in the adjoining box. I’ve agreed to say hello on Rex’s behalf. It would look quite odd if you didn’t go with me.”

  “I don’t have a thing to wear.”

  “Don’t wear anything,” Sam teased. He dodged a playful slap. “What you’re wearing now looks pretty good.”

  She wore a coral silk shantung suit with a bitter-lemon-colored shell. Her hair was just that right balance between tousled and tamed—she had to wake up forty-five minutes earlier each morning to get the right effect, and her arms ached from pointing the blow-dryer with one hand while wielding the rounded brush in the other.

  But try as she might, she knew she’d have ink stains and wrinkles on her suit and her hair would have curled and kinked of its own accord by curtain time at the Orpheum.

  “These are work clothes,” Patricia said. “I’ll wear a gown.”

  Her checking account balance was dipping close to zero but, with Gascon as her adviser, she had a dress for every occasion.

  “Whatever happened to all your gray suits and white high-collared blouses?”

  “I’m trying not to look dowdy,” Patricia said.

  “You never looked dowdy. But you look hot now. I noticed last night at dinner that you got your share of male attention. Who was that man who stopped at the table and asked for your autograph?”

  “He was a fan of Elizabeth Shue,” Patricia said. “He seemed quite upset that I wrote Patricia Peel on his cocktail napkin.”

  “I should be jealous.”

  “Are you?”

  “Of course not,” Sam said, little noticing the way her shoulders dropped. “By the way, you smell nice, too.”

  “I do? I mean, thank you.”

  “Yeah, you smell like...”

  “An intoxicating blend of Oriental spices?” she asked hopefully. She had shelled out a little less than a hundred dollars for an ounce of the precious stuff. But the sales lady assured her that men were helpless with desire when they sniffed a
woman with this perfume on.

  She had not yet found a perfume that advertised that men’s voracious sexual interest would be turned into love. When she did, she planned to bring a gallon jug and say “Fill ’er up.”

  He had promised he would never compromise her again.

  And that was a promise he had delivered on, to her frustration and to her relief. He joked, he complimented, he admired, he whistled on occasion, he even lingered in his admiring glance.

  But he never stepped over the line to seduction.

  Patricia had no doubt that if she crooked her finger, he would take her. Take her and satisfy her.

  And the prospect scared her senseless.

  So the past two weeks had been perfectly chaste. She sensed he was interested in her, beyond the bounds of friendship. But Sam was, to quote Melissa, “a lot of man...with a man’s appetite.” He wanted to make love. It took every bit of her self control to say no when her body wanted so badly to say yes.

  But if she said yes, he’d know she was an innocent. And then she’d lose him.

  Sam leaned forward, nearly touching her cheek with his nose.

  “No, that’s not perfume. It’s the chocolate croissant. Are you going to eat that?”

  “Here,” she said, pushing the pastry across her desk. “I shouldn’t eat it anyway. Mildred says I can’t gain or lose an ounce before the wedding or my dress won’t fit.”

  “Shouldn’t be hard for you,” he said, biting into her croissant.

  “Especially if you’re eating my breakfast.”

  He stood up, flicking a last crumb of the croissant off his lapel.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind going to the opera? I’ve been keeping you out late nearly every night.”

  It had been a whirlwind week and a half since Rex’s retirement party. Everyone wanted to entertain the newly engaged couple. Late nights and early mornings to play catch-up at the office didn’t make for a lot of introspection about the deceit they were really engaged in.

  “I’ll be okay. If Rex wanted to say hi to the governor, he must have a reason.”

  “Great. Because there isn’t anybody else I’d be willing to go with. Melissa took me once—I fell asleep and she got really mad. Pick you up at eight.”