“Girlfriend?” She took a drink and walked to the overstuffed sofa. “Henry?”
“What?”
“Is she your girlfriend?”
“Who?”
“Constance, the artist.”
Lord, her red lips were a distraction. “Used to be.” He pointed his chin upward and unbuttoned the collar at his throat.
“Do you care if I take off my shoes?” she asked, but didn’t bother to wait for permission. He didn’t blame her. With her presence in his house, he couldn’t seem to keep his two thoughts together long enough to answer. Well, at least not two appropriate thoughts. He’d have to do something about that. Maybe remind himself that she was a selfish diva who complained about making her own coffee. Then she moaned and wiggled her toes, and he didn’t care if she demanded a Starbucks be built in her backyard.
She immediately lost five inches in height. “How long have you lived here?” She set her glass on the end table and raised her hands to the back of her head. The black hem of her dress rose an inch up her white thighs as she pulled the pins from her twisted bun. A deeper, sexier moan escaped her lips and wrapped around his chest as she shook her head. Her unbound hair fell down her back, and the warmth squeezing his chest got hot and shot straight to his groin.
“Henry?”
“What?”
“I asked you a question.”
“Pardon me. I didn’t hear you.”
“I like your place.” She reached for her wine and sunk into the couch. “How long have you lived here?”
“About two years.” He sat on the opposite end of the couch, as far away as possible. Unfortunately it was a small sofa to accommodate the space. “I bought it shortly after I moved back, but I did major renovation before I moved in.” She crossed her legs and he kept his gaze pinned on her face instead of her black dress sliding up her thighs. “I knocked down walls and pretty much gutted the place.” He pointed to the double patio doors made of low-e solar glass and hard maple. “The exterior doors are on pivots instead of hinges.”
Vivien listened to Henry as he talked about the doors and windows he’d replaced in his cozy little house. The size, as well as the modern construction, surprised her. She pictured him on a plantation somewhere. In riding breeches, shiny boots, and cut-away jacket. Lord of the manor.
“I made the doors of Burma teak and—”
“You made the doors?”
He paused and his lips compressed as if he was insulted. “Of course, Vivien. I made the doors in my shop. I laid the cork flooring in the kitchen and set the cork wall bricks, too. It’s what I do for a living.”
Shop. Henry Whitley-Shuler had a shop. That was almost too incredible to be believed. Like if he said he had a Harley and was a Hell’s Angel. She looked at the kitchen floor a few feet away. What had looked to her like penny shaped tiles were even slices of corks. “You had to drink a lot of wine to make that floor.”
“I didn’t drink all that wine.”
The couch was deep and her feet didn’t touch the floor. They kind of stuck out like a kid and she pulled her legs beneath her. Sitting there on Handsome Henry’s comfy couch, staring into his brown eyes, she felt comfy. “You didn’t slice all those corks in your Little Shop of Horrors?”
“No, Vivien.”
She noticed that when he was annoyed with her, he flattened her name. She tried not to laugh, but she didn’t try all that hard.
“What?”
“I just can’t imagine you in a ‘shop.’ Last I heard, you lived in New York. Momma told me you worked on Wall Street or something like that.”
“Yeah. Something like that,” he said and tried not to smile, but he didn’t try all that hard, either. And when Henry tried not to smile, his eyes smoldered and an irresistible little tug curved the corners of his mouth. “I traded in my big desk with a great view of the Hudson for a table saw.”
“I can’t imagine Nonnie was too happy about that.” She took a last sip of her wine. “Didn’t you go to Pepperdine?”
“Princeton.” He rose from the couch to grab the bottle off the kitchen island. He refilled her glass and set the bottle on the end table. “And no. Mother wasn’t happy at first but she’s come around. Sort of.” He returned to his seat on the couch and his eyes watched her over the top of his glass as he took a drink. “To her credit, she’d rather see me alive than dead.”
Vivien paused in the act of raising her wine. “She’d rather see you alive than dead? What does that mean?”
“It means I had to change my life.” He shrugged one shoulder. “A little over two years ago, I was sitting at my desk in my twenty-sixth-floor office, reviewing the basket of stocks I was following when I got a sudden sharp pain in my chest. I stood up, and that’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in St. Luke’s emergency room. I had what the doc called a Monday-morning heart attack due to stress.”
“Henry.” She raised a hand to her chest. “I didn’t know that.” He’d been thirty-three. Three years older than she was now. “Are you okay?”
“I’m good. I saw several cardiologists and they all told me the same thing. Get the stress out of my life, or risk a second heart attack. I didn’t have to be told twice.” He chuckled without humor.
“When I’m under stress, I break out really bad.” When she was under a lot of stress, she also missed a period or two and her hair fell out. “But I can’t die from zits.” She thought a moment. “Although last year someone took a picture of me leaving my dermatologist’s office with a belligerent pimple on my chin. It made the front page of Star magazine. I was embarrassed but not surprised.” The fuzzy glow of fine chardonnay warmed her stomach and spread across her skin. She was a lightweight when it came to alcohol and tended to get real chatty. Like now, so she should probably slow down before she fell face-first into the sofa and started snoring. It had been a long day, a long several days. “It’s been a stressful week. I’ll probably need microdermabrasion and a wig and a picture of my bald head will end up in a tabloid with some made-up story about a cancer scare.” Vivien turned until her back rested against the arm of the couch, and she stretched her legs on the cushions as far as possible without sticking her feet in Henry’s lap. “Did you see the blue bra photo?”
“What?”
“The blue bra photo.”
“Yes.” A nice shade of red crept up from behind his white collar and flushed the side of his neck.
Vivien cleared her throat to keep from laughing. “It’s going to be in Star magazine.” Usually it wasn’t funny, but Henry holding up that blue bra, after he’d called her paranoid, was hysterical. “It’s going to be in the ‘normal or not’ pages.” The red creeping up his neck reached his ear and she put her hand to her lips to keep her laughter inside.
“You were always a good actress.” He took a drink. “I almost believed you.”
“I’m not acting.” She cleared her throat. “Star always pays for the worst possible photos for that section. They love pictures with Jack Nicholson picking his nose, Lindsay Lohan stumbling out of a bar, or the trifecta of terrible, Kirstie Alley walking out of a grocery store, eating a doughnut, and pushing a shopping cart filled with Cheetos and toilet paper. So all things considered, it could have been a lot worse than you waving around my demi bra.”
“I wasn’t waving it around.” He frowned at her like when she used to break something and lie about it. “You dared me to hold up that bra.”
“Au contraire, Henry. I dared you to touch the underwear.” As a kid she’d loved to push and poke Henry. As an adult, she couldn’t recall if provoking him had ever been this much fun. “I never said to pull out my bra and fondle it.”
“Stop, Vivien.”
“The picture will probably end up on the front page of the Enquirer,” she said as if she hadn’t heard him. “They pay a lot of money for a photo of me eating something.” The laughter she’d struggled to keep inside erupted into a fit of giggles. “You’re famous.”
He dr
ained his wine. “God almighty.”
She noticed the empty glass in his hand. “No more wine for you?”
“I have to take you back to the carriage house.”
“Right now?” She didn’t want to leave now. She wanted to stay in Henry’s cozy house where she didn’t have to think of the world outside the walls. Maybe she shouldn’t have poked the beast.
“Not yet.” He stood, and for the second time that day, held out a hand for her. “I have something to show you.”
“Am I gonna want to see it?”
“Darlin’, you’re going to be amazed.”
If it was his penis, she didn’t want to be amazed. She didn’t want to know anything about Henry Whitley-Shuler’s penis. She didn’t even want to think about it, but the more she tried not to think about it, the more impossible it was not to think about it. Like not thinking of pink elephants or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
He helped her to her feet then dropped her hand. “You’ll need your shoes.”
Or Henry Whitley-Shuler’s amazing penis. Vivien tried to step into one pump, then the other. She wobbled and almost fell. The wine sloshed and she set it on the coffee table. Her feet were in full revolt and wouldn’t be crammed back into her five-inch peep toes. “My feet are mad and won’t go in my shoes.” There was nothing like a little pain to shove thoughts of Henry from her brain.
He dipped his head and looked into her eyes. “Are you okay?”
She was definitely tipsy. “Are you asking me if I’m drunk?”
“Of course not. I would never ask a lady if she’s drunk.” He moved toward the kitchen and asked over his shoulder, “But are you?”
“Maybe a tad tipsy.”
He chuckled. “I have some flip-flops by the back door that you can wear.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” He set his glass on the island as he passed and grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator.
She moved toward the back doors and slipped her feet into a pair of big leather flip-flops. “I can’t picture you as a flip-flop guy.”
He pushed one side of the doors and it opened on pivots several inches from the frame. “Why not? Spence and I spent our summers mostly barefoot at Hilton Head.”
The swampy night air settled on her skin as they stepped outside and moved across pavers to a building larger than his house. “Slow down. I can’t walk fast and keep these on my feet.” He adjusted his stride and her shoulder bumped into him.
He pushed her arm with his elbow. “Do you think any of your weird Raffle fans are going to pop out from behind the trees and salute you?”
“I never call them weird. I call them dedicated,” she said as they walked side by side. “Raffle fans pay my bills. Although I do get some very weird mail, and they do have a tendency to pop up in unexpected places.”
“Like the side of the road?” He glanced down at her. “Showing their respect and allegiance to Zahara West?”
“Yes.” She paused and looked up at him, the porch light lit him from behind and settled in his dark hair. “Don’t tell me you saw the movies?”
He grinned. “The books were better.”
She guessed she shouldn’t be surprised, but she was. She’d never figured him for a dystopia fan.
He continued across the driveway and she followed. “But you looked damn good in your metal-and-leather bikini.”
“I hated that bikini. It had to be taped on and my skin got raw. I broke out in a heat rash.” She scrunched her toes to get a tighter grip on the flip-flops. “The leather cat suit wasn’t much better. It took three hours to get stitched into it. And the sweat . . .” She must be drunk if she was talking about sweat. “I mean glow. We filmed the ‘Moons of Fontana’ scenes in Yuma, in a hundred-and-three-degree heat. The glow was disgusting.”
“You’re totally blowing my leather bikini fantasy.” He opened the door to a dark building and reached his hand inside to flip on the lights.
She glanced up at him out of the corners of her eyes and bit her lip. Henry had a leather bikini fantasy. She didn’t know how she felt about that. A little shocked that he’d admit it, and a little flattered, too. She walked into the open building filled with big saws and sanders and huge God-knew-what. He moved in front of her and her gaze slid from his dark hair brushing the collar of his white shirt to the crisp pleat centered between his broad shoulders. Her gaze slid to his behind and she wondered what he’d do if she slid her hands into his pants pockets.
“Watch your step.” He put his hand on the small of her back and steered her around a stack of molding.
The shop smelled of freshly cut wood, varnishes, and a slight tinge of oil. The warmth of his palm seeped through her dress and heated her spine.
“Macy Jane asked me to make her a dining-room table and chairs for the row house.” He handed her the bottle of water and pulled a tarp from a long table made of dark wood.
She unscrewed the cap and took a long drink. “You made this?”
He took the bottle from her and raised it to his lips. “Yes, Vivien.”
“Momma had you make a table for a house she never planned to live in?” For a short time, she’d relaxed enough to let her grief ebb like low tide. While she and Henry had talked about his life and stress and her bra, she’d almost forgotten the sadness of the day. The hole in her heart and the ache in her soul.
“She talked a lot about moving into the row house.” He sucked a drop of water from the corner of his mouth then handed the bottle back to her. “But I think she liked to talk about moving more than she really wanted to move.”
That was her momma, all right. Making empty plans.
“She found some tall pineapple candlesticks in an antique store and brought them to me for ‘inspiration.’ I don’t make ornate furniture and, if she hadn’t been your momma, I would have run in the other direction as fast as possible. I restore elaborate furniture for clients, but fabricating cumbersome, overly-elaborate tables isn’t something I do here. It’s not something I want to do.”
“Did you mention that to momma?” She raised the water and put her lips where his mouth had just been on the bottle.
He chuckled. “I tried, but each time I tried to talk her out of such a heavy dust collector, she added something even more ornate. Another inlay or lion’s paws, so I avoided talking to her about it.” He got down on one knee and pointed to the pedestals. “I found a guy in Virginia to carve the pineapples and put them on the lion’s-paw base. Hoyt’s been busy staining all those nooks and crannies.”
The pineapple represented warmth and hospitality and her momma loved the symbol of welcome. Vivien lowered the bottle. Or, she mentally corrected herself, had loved the symbol. The grief she’d felt since Saturday night rushed at her like a gust of wind, filled with shards of pain and sorrow. She’d managed to hold her emotions at bay through her momma’s viewing and church service. She’d locked down her panic at the graveside and the reception afterward, but it suddenly broke free and rushed up from within the pit of her soul. It stabbed her heart and pierced the backs of her eyes without warning.
“It’s made of African maple with Rhodesian teak veneer inlays.” He stood and brushed sawdust from the knee of his navy-blue pants. He looked over her head and pointed. “The chairs are an original prototype I constructed for her last year.”
Tears blurred Vivien’s vision and she pressed her lips together to keep a sob from escaping. It was the pineapple table her momma would never see. The long emotional day. The wine that made her relaxed and unable to hold back the pain was swamping her like a rowboat in a hurricane.
“The knuckle joints are—”
She raised her fingertips to her mouth to keep her pain inside. Her mother was gone and was never coming back. No more phone calls and her momma’s soft, “Hey baby girl,” on the other end. No more hugs or kisses on her cheek. No more seeing her happy face and smiling eyes when she was in a sparkling mood. No more wild fantasies she never i
ntended to live.
“Vivien?”
The last memory of her mother’s face was in a casket. With her lips painted a tinge too orange.
“Vivien? Are you okay?”
“No.” She looked up at Henry, a blur of dark eyes and hair. Anguish cut her insides to shreds and clawed at her stomach. She grasped the black dress over her abdomen with her free hand. “It’s not fair.” She sounded like a child but she didn’t care. It wasn’t fair. The world was full of people who deserved to die. Her momma didn’t deserve to die at fifty years old.
“I know.”
She shook her head and brushed her tears from her cheeks. “No you don’t. You still have your mo—mma. And—and Spence. I’m alone. Forever.”
“Please don’t cry, Vivien.”
“You ca-can call Nonnie.” She swallowed and her sob came out as a sort of croak. “I have no—no one.”
“Sure you do.”
“No, Henry. I don’t. Sh-he was all I had.” She brushed away her tears and groaned as he pulled her against the comfort of his solid chest. As if it was the most natural thing in the world, she wrapped her arms around his waist. She didn’t question it. Didn’t wonder how she had come to rest her cheek on his white broadcloth shirt. He smelled like his hunting coat, minus the swamp. Woodsy and fresh; warm skin and cotton heated her cheek and his heart pounded beneath her ear.
“It’ll be okay.” He rubbed his hand up and down her back. “I’m here. My mother will always welcome you, and Spence will . . .” His fingers brushed her hair from the side of her face. “I’m here for you.”
“It’s not the same.” Her life would never be the same. “She’ll never see her grand—nd.” Her chest caved in and she tried to breath past the pain. “She’ll never see her grandchildren,” she got out. “My children will nev—ver know her.”
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