The Marriage Arrangement

by Patricia Ryan

  “She’s not a prospective playmate,” Harry said testily. “She’s a prospective life partner.”

  To his credit, Clay choked on his beer. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he said, “Is this the direction your matchmaking is heading now—Mrs. Bimbo Granger? It might have some amusement value, but I’ve got to warn you, you’ll be wasting your effort. I don’t want to get married, period, and I sure as hell don’t intend to walk down the aisle with Barbie... whatever...”

  Harry leaned toward his friend, grinning as if pulling out his ace. “Lundquist.”

  Clay paused with the bottle halfway to his mouth. “Lundquist.”

  “And she’s got the Swedish accent to prove it... pal.”

  Clay let out a deep, carnal sigh, and turned once more toward the very tall and shiny woman in the corner—only to find her looking at him. Izzy watched in fascination as Barbie Lundquist’s eyes widened slightly, then closed halfway. She smiled silkily, then turned away.

  “So, Harry,” Clay said casually, “you still got that vintage waterbed upstairs?”

  “Don’t even think about it, stud muffin.”

  Clay snorted with laughter and caught Izzy’s eye. “‘stud muffin’?”

  She returned his grin, but halfheartedly, because a sick chill had begun crawling up her back—an all too familiar sensation, and one she had come to dread. No. No. Not tonight. I want to enjoy tonight. I need to enjoy tonight.

  “Not with her,” Harry told Clay. “Not on my water bed. It’s got about fifty coats on it, anyway.”

  Clay smiled slowly. “Hmm... Fifty coats on a water bed.”

  Harry’s scowl deepened. “No, dude.” Someone muscled up to the bar and held an empty glass toward him, but he ignored it. “It’s totally uncool. For one thing, I happen to be playing matchmaker here, not pimp.”

  Clay guffawed. “Are you seriously trying to take the moral high ground here, bucko? You shouldn’t try that with friends who knew you back when you were young and dumb and would fuck anything with opposable thumbs.”

  “And for another,” Harry continued implacably, “the lady in question happens to have three very large brothers who do not take kindly to attempts on their sister’s virtue.”

  “Virtue?” Clay asked, stealing another glance at the flirtatious and surgically enhanced model slash ski bunny.

  Harry leaned across the bar. “Guy I know met her at a pool party last August. Seems he got a little too thorough while helping her out with the old Coppertone. The gigantic brothers Lundquist decided to teach him a little lesson. You should have seen the guy’s face when they got through with him. It looked like...” He snapped his fingers. “You know that stuff they sold in the produce section for a while there? It was a cross between broccoli and cauliflower. Can’t remember what they called it. Izzy, do you know—”

  “No,” she said hoarsely as sweat sprang out on her upper lip. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. You can control this.

  “So, did your friend learn his lesson?” Clay asked.

  “I don’t know. I think he’s still in the coma. My point is, any proposal you make to the enticing Miss Lundquist had better be of the death-do-us-part variety, or you could end up looking like something kids run screaming from.”

  “Harry,” Izzy said, trying to keep her voice level as the blood drained from her head and the trembling started, “have you got any crackers?”

  “You hungry?” Harry motioned to the pretty young waitress. “Tanya? Can we have some of that sushi over here?”

  “Sushi?” Izzy’s stomach roiled slowly, like a lava lamp. “I don’t think—”

  “I just refilled it.” Tanya thrust the platter of raw fish right under Izzy’s nose. It smelled like low tide at Coney Island.

  “I’ll be right back,” Izzy rasped, then turned and fled.

  The downstairs bathroom was occupied. She covered her mouth with her hand—a cartoon gesture that served no purpose but which she was powerless to resist—and ran upstairs. She yanked on the door to the hall bathroom, but it didn’t budge. Two voices—a man’s and a woman’s—informed her breathlessly that they’d only be a minute.

  She didn’t have a minute.

  She raced through Harry’s bedroom to the pink marble master bath, sank to her knees in front of the toilet, and relieved herself of her two glasses of ginger ale and all of her supper.

  Afterward she found some mouthwash, then splashed cold water on her face, which made her mascara run. Grabbing a bar of soap, she washed and dried her face, then examined her image in the gilt-framed mirror. Stripped of makeup, her olive skin had a grayish pallor; charcoal smudges surrounded her eyes. The only remotely attractive thing about her was her out-of-control explosion of dark, wavy hair. Although she’d never been able to tame it into any kind of recognizable “style,” it had always been her one good feature—thick and glossy and healthy-looking.

  Still, she looked like a walking “before” picture. How could Clay have said she glowed? “Smooth-talking, lying son of a bitch,” she muttered at her reflection, but with little enthusiasm. Flattering women was second nature to him. After years of casual seduction, Clay Granger could no more turn off the charm than he could stop breathing. Although she’d come to despise his particular brand of predatory male—more in the past few weeks than ever before—she could never really hate Clay.

  He was... Clay. The Clay who’d always been there for her. The Clay who’d greeted her with a cheerful “Buona sera!” in the Phelps cafeteria that afternoon, then made his crowd of blue-blooded oddballs accept her. The Clay who’d gotten her the scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute, then drove her cross-country himself and found her a wonderful—and wonderfully cheap—apartment. The Clay who’d pulled long-distance strings to get her that “dream job” as art director of Dekker & Brown Magazines when free-lancing wouldn’t pay the bills; though, considering how things had turned out, she thought dispiritedly, she probably shouldn’t be too grateful for the job at D&B.

  But back to Clay. He was the one who’d never once, in the twenty years they’d known each other, acted like he expected any payoff, sexual or otherwise, for all these favors and more. Oh, he’d been flirtatious from time to time in that it-doesn’t-mean-anything way of his; he couldn’t help himself. But he’d always treated her as a friend, never a potential conquest. On the one hand, she was grateful, because she valued his friendship. She knew, if they’d ever gotten involved, it would have ended just as badly as the rest of her misbegotten relationships, leaving them bitter enemies. On the other hand, she sometimes felt ever so slightly insulted that Clay Granger had never seen fit to attempt to seduce her.

  She peered into the mirror, mentally superimposing the towering form of Barbie Lundquist over her short, dark image. Those implants would come up to about chin level on Izzy. The little exercise served to clarify in her mind just exactly why Clay Granger had always found it so easy to treat her like a kid sister. As long as she’d known him—even as a gangly adolescent—he’d always had his pick of the Barbies.

  Still a little wobbly, she made her way to the king-size four-poster, piled high with outerwear, and sat on the edge, steadying herself against the liquid rocking of the mattress. A black mink coat was draped on top, and she ran a hand over the silken fur, then held it up to her nose and inhaled its clean animal scent. Kicking off her shoes, she scooted back and lay down on it, luxuriating in the womblike rhythm of the water bed, the soft mound of coats.

  She closed her eyes, thinking, If only I could freeze this moment in time and stay here forever, just like this. No problems. No collapsing life. Just all this warmth and softness and gentle movement...

  Where’s the knight on the white horse when you need him?

  As if in answer, the doorknob turned.

  CHAPTER TWO

  FIFTY COATS ON A WATERBED, mused Clay Granger as he twisted the knob on Harry’s bedroom door. Fifty coats, a waterbed, and... “What did you say your name
was?”

  “Tanya,” replied the little waitress, blushing again.

  “Tanya.” He curled an arm around her waist. She wore one of those snug little black uniforms with the starched white collar and apron, calling to mind a certain French-upstairs-maid fantasy he’d entertained ever since puberty. Smiling in anticipation, he opened the door and ushered her in ahead of him.

  “Oh,” she said, stopping in her tracks.

  A pair of feet stuck out of the heap of coats on the mammoth bed. As Clay watched, their owner—Izzy Fabrioni—lifted her head and regarded them blearily, her hair even more deliciously deranged than usual.

  Izzy’s gaze shifted from Clay to Tanya, and then back to Clay. “Oh,” she said. She was pale—if someone with her coloring could ever be pale—and she wore a wan expression. “Don’t worry, I’m outta here,” she mumbled, sitting up unsteadily.

  “No,” Clay said. “Stay where you are.” She closed her eyes and collapsed back down into the coats. He turned to his pink-faced companion and gently guided her toward the door. “Later,” he murmured into her ear, and gave it a little nibble for good measure. As she left, he noticed the long row of little covered buttons that secured her uniform down the back, and thought longingly of slipping them one by one from their buttonholes.

  When he closed the door and looked back toward the bed, all he saw were Izzy’s dainty little feet, toes pointed inward. He sat cross-legged on the Oriental rug and began rubbing them. She had an arm over her face.

  Cradling one foot, he worked his knuckles along the sole until he felt her relax a little. “Hey, coffee bean.” He’d started calling her that at Phelps. Everyone had thought it was because of her hair, but it was her skin, too—skin as dark and creamy as coffee ice cream. And her eyes—they were pure espresso. When she looked at you, she looked at you, and you knew she saw everything there was to see, and then some. He could never get away with anything where Izzy was concerned, could never charm her the way he could other women. She saw through it all; it was a little unnerving, but kind of refreshing. Maybe that’s why she was the only woman he’d ever actually been friends with.

  “That feels good,” she mumbled languidly as he switched to the other foot. “Sorry I ruined your little... tryst.”

  He laughed. “‘Tryst’ makes it sound a lot more elegant than it would have been.”

  She sighed in a way he couldn’t interpret. “So, how’s it going, Clay? Really?”

  He massaged her toes one by one. “Harry’s still trying to marry me off.”

  She let out a little huff of laughter. “I noticed.”

  “And not just him.” He left off rubbing her feet and flopped down next to her on his belly. The pile of coats swayed beneath him in a way that sent his imagination into overdrive, and for a moment he deeply regretted sending what’s-her-name away. “Everyone’s trying to get in on the act. You’re the only friend I’ve got who doesn’t keep throwing candidates for wifehood at me, and that’s probably just because you live a zillion miles away.”

  “Lived a zillion miles away. I’m back in New York for good.”

  “Living with your parents, Harry told me. What gives?”

  She removed the arm from her face and idly glided her fingertips over her stomach. “It’s a long story. So, what have you really got against marriage, anyway?”

  He went for a dismissive tone. “Been there, done that.”

  She rolled to her side and rested a warm hand on his, and he instantly realized his mistake in trying to bullshit her. “Ten years is a long time to mourn, Clay. Too long.”

  “That’s not it.” She raised that eyebrow at him. “Stop that.” Smiling, he touched a fingertip to the insolent brow, which dutifully lowered. “I stopped mourning for Judith long ago.” He had; that was the truth... but what he said next was nothing more than the party line he’d cooked up to keep the matchmakers at bay. “Some people are only given one chance, and I had mine. Judith was incredible—one of a kind. I’m never gonna find someone like her again, so why should I try?”

  Izzy shook her head and lay back down. “If you don’t want to discuss it, we won’t discuss it, but don’t hand me the same sack of crap you hand everyone else. It’s insulting.”

  “You haven t changed,” he noted appreciatively.

  “Neither have you,” she muttered. “If I hadn’t been here, you’d be messing up these coats right now with a perfect stranger you met not twenty minutes ago.”

  “Don’t remind me,” he murmured, thinking about those little black-covered buttons and wondering if he’d blown any chance he might have had with the blushing girl in the tight black uniform. “But do give me some credit for picking Tanya over Barbie Lumpfish or whatever—”

  “Lundquist,” she corrected, giggling.

  “That’s it.” He leaned over her to savor her smile. Lord, what a transformation. Izzy Fabrioni had a smile that could light up all five boroughs in a blackout. She was lying on top of a black mink coat, which highlighted her face, making her look like a Renaissance femme fatale despite her pallor and the dark circles under her eyes.

  He bunched the black mink around her face. “Mmm. You should have a coat like this. You’d look sensational.”

  “I don’t believe in wearing fur.” She chuckled self-deprecatingly. “Which I guess implies that I can afford it.”

  “Sure you can. I’ve got a pretty good idea what you make.”

  “Made. Past tense.”

  “Yeah, I guess if you moved back to New York, you must have left D&B. What happened?”

  She took a deep breath and averted her gaze. “I don’t want to talk about it tonight. Why don’t we go back downstairs?” She sat up, but then her eyes lost their focus and she groaned and fell back down again.

  Clay’s always-too-vivid imagination took off on its own, considering the evidence—she wasn’t working anymore, she was clearly unwell—and jumped to alarming conclusions. Just how sick was she? Was it something serious, something... terminal? “What’s wrong with you, Izzy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, for one thing, you look like shit.”

  She made a face. “What happened to ‘Izzy! You look wonderful! You glow’?”

  “You glowed twenty minutes ago. Right now you look like shit.”

  She hesitated slightly. “I threw up, that’s all.”

  He twisted a lock of coffee-colored hair around his finger. “Are you sick?”

  “No.” She looked away, touching her stomach as she had before—absentmindedly, as if unaware that she was doing so. New and different possibilities began to coalesce in his mind.

  “Izz?”

  She looked at him, and he saw it all there in her eyes... the truth... and the fear.

  “Oh, Izz. No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh. Wow. Did you... like, was it—”

  “Planned? Like I’m sophisticated enough to actually plan to get pregnant out of wedlock?”

  “Uh, what are you gonna—”

  “I’m gonna have the baby,” she said with conviction. “Look, Clay, my biological clock is ticking a mile a minute. And the way my love life’s been for the past eighteen years or so, it doesn’t look like Mr. Right’s likely to show up anytime soon to make an honest woman of me. Also—” she laid a hand protectively across her belly “—I want this baby. I do. It’s... it’s my baby, and I want it.”

  “How, uh, how far...”

  “Four weeks. A little more.”

  He shook his head helplessly. “How did it hap— I mean, what were you...”

  She gave him a what-do-you-think look.

  “Mmm.” He lay on his back, pondering this unexpected development. Izzy pregnant. His little Izzy.

  Well... not entirely his little Izzy. Obviously. She hadn’t gotten pregnant all by herself. That unruly imagination of his conjured up images of Izzy naked on a bed like this—coats and all—her hair fanned out around her face, opening her arms for a lover.

/>   Izzy with a lover. He found the idea vaguely disturbing. Absurdly, he felt almost jealous of the man who had made Izzy pregnant. Not that Clay himself had ever wanted that kind of relationship with her. Sure, he’d toyed with the idea from time to time. Probably Izzy had, too. But both of them had always known, without even having to talk about it, that it would ruin what they had. So why did he feel so rotten at this evidence that Izzy was, indeed, a sexual being?

  He almost laughed when it came to him: deep down inside, he’d subconsciously assumed that if Izzy Fabrioni wasn’t sleeping with him, she wasn’t sleeping with anybody. As if his choosing to keep their relationship platonic meant that she was untouchable to the rest of the world. In his arrogance, he’d put her into a neat little box—his Izzy, his little coffee bean—and now he was shocked to discover that she’d managed to get out of it.

  And get pregnant.

  He sat up and looked down at her. “What happened? Tell me everything.”

  Izzy closed her eyes; he saw her bite her lip. After a minute, she sat up. He took her hands to help her, and continued holding them as she sat facing him in the mountain of coats. “Well,” she said, “you probably know that D&B was bought out by a big British publishing conglomerate.”

  He nodded. “About a year ago, right?”

  “Yeah. They brought in a new CEO from England. Presley Creighton. Forty-one. Good-looking in kind of a Leslie Howard way.”

  Clay saw where this was leading. “Presley? His name was Presley? Please tell me you didn’t call him The King in bed.”

  She smirked at him. “I called him Prez.”

  “Prez. Lucky guy. He got to be The Prez, The King, and the CEO. And he got to sleep with you.” Where had that come from?

  She looked at him a little oddly—what could he expect?—before continuing. “About six months ago, Prez asked me to move in with him. He’d bought this beautiful place on Russian Hill—”

  “And you were spending all your time there anyway, and what sense was there in your paying rent on your own apartment when—”

  “I thought he was going to marry me,” she said with quiet sobriety.