Twenty Hours in Boston

by Priscilla Darcy

  "I was trying to do what was best for you, Gray. I was the only person, it seemed, who was busy worrying and caring about what happened to you."

  "You didn't need to be doing any worrying. I was doing the worrying."

  "No, you weren't,” she shot back. “Not worrying about yourself. Worrying about everyone else. But not yourself."

  "And that is not your job,” he bit out, clearly furious. “Worrying about me is not your job."

  She was ready to fight this out with him. She wanted to fight it out with him. She was not going to be blamed for what happened to Doug. She was just a convenient scapegoat, and she was not going to stand by while he did that to her.

  Except that—and the thought came from nowhere—what was the point of fighting? They were not fighting over what she had done. They were fighting over how she felt.

  She had promised herself, so long ago, that she would not try to be the woman to tame Gray Delamonte. And here she was trying to do just that. He was right. It wasn't her job to be worrying about him. That was the job of a wife. It was not her job.

  She walked back to her painting of Sophie, tidying up a bit. “We're done, aren't we?"

  "Done arguing?” he asked after a second, sounding incredulous that she would believe that.

  She laughed humorlessly. “That, too.” She stopped attempting to tidy up because her hands were shaking too bad. Someone else could clean up after her. Gray would send the stuff on to her. She walked back over to stand in front of him. “The million dollars for your portrait...” she said.

  He was looking down at her as if he didn't quite know how to interpret what was going on. “What about it?"

  "You got me into bed,” she clarified dryly. “Are you still willing to pay the million dollars?"

  "That wasn't why I offered you a million dollars."

  "Sure it wasn't,” she allowed indulgently. “Are you still willing to pay the million dollars?"

  "Of course I am."

  "Then I'll send you the portrait when I'm done. Sophie's too. If you'll have someone pack that up for me.” She motioned toward the painting supplies then turned to leave his suite.

  "Aubrey,” he said, and she stopped walking and turned back to him, freshly furious.

  "What you want is for me to apologize. And I won't. I did what I had to do. And I'm glad I did it. I'm glad, do you hear me? I was right. And I'm not going to waste any more minutes of my life arguing with you over it. I'll be in touch with you about your portrait. Good-bye, Gray."

  Gray thought he should say something else, but he wasn't sure what. He had not intended to chase her away. He had intended to argue with her, and she would admit that he was right, that it hadn't been her place, and she should have left well enough alone, and she would promise never to do it again.

  And instead she was ... walking out.

  He almost couldn't wrap his mind around it. Walking out? On him?

  He should have been furious—indeed, he thought he was furious—but he was so stunned by this unexpected turn of events that the fury was being dulled around the edges. His adrenaline was, finally, failing him. And he had thought at that moment, which he had sensed coming for so long, that it would be Aubrey's arms he would crawl toward.

  Instead, left alone in his foyer, staring foolishly after the closed elevator doors, he finally collected himself and stumbled toward his bedroom and fell into his empty bed. And it took him hours of staring wide-eyed at the ceiling before he finally fell asleep.

  * * * *

  April 9, 2004

  There were certain things that kept cropping up that reminded him of Aubrey. Some of the things were obvious. The Harry Winston jewels, arriving disastrously the day she left, just as he had planned. The gorgeous portraits of Sophie and his mother arriving at the hotel.

  Other things were less obvious—little things, like how he couldn't play video games anymore, or eat ice cream late at night, or even think of going up to the roof.

  And then other things were damned inconvenient, like how every time he walked through the lobby he looked for her.

  Spring training had been tough, and the first few games of the year had been worse, but the opener at Fenway was just killing him. He sat at the bar at the sports book, ostensibly working on some papers spread out before him, but his mind wasn't on it. He settled his chin in his hand and watched the Red Sox play the Blue Jays.

  Boston looked cold and unforgiving. Gray felt sick with unhappiness.

  "Hey.” Mark slid into the seat next to him. “How's it going?"

  Gray shrugged.

  "I meant with them.” He nodded toward the screen. “You're not looking too happy."

  "There's no score."

  "At least they're not losing. This is your year."

  "So you keep saying. Forgive me if I've been through too many this-is-our-years to believe in them anymore."

  Mark absently pulled over a bowl of peanuts and began munching on them, watching the soothing, relaxing, give-and-take rhythm of the baseball game in front of him.

  "Everything's okay, right?” Gray asked after a moment.

  "Yeah. Why wouldn't you think so?"

  "I don't know. I suddenly thought that you'd come to see me to tell me about some security problem or something."

  "No. I was just doing a quick round and saw you and remembered it was Opening Day at Fenway and thought I'd come see how you were doing. And by you I meant the Red Sox, but now I'm more concerned about the actual you."

  "I'm fine,” Gray answered glumly.

  "You know, you could call her."

  "Call who?"

  "Aubrey. That's who you're sitting here sulking about."

  "I'm not sulking about anything."

  "You're sitting here sulking because you've got this Red Sox game on and you don't have any cute redhead to talk baseball with you."

  "I'm not sulking."

  "So I'm just saying you could call her."

  Gray watched a couple of pitches.

  "You forgave me,” suggested Mark.

  "I didn't confide in you. I didn't tell you the plan because I felt you had a right to know. You didn't go behind my back to betray me. She just happened to put the ability into your hands."

  "She did it, Gray, because she loved you."

  Gray looked at him in something like shocked surprise.

  "How can you look at me like that? How can you not have realized long before this? She was in love with you, Gray. She was crazy about you. She couldn't bear the thought of losing you. You were so concerned about everybody else on earth, it never even occurred to you that she thought she couldn't live without you. That's why she did what she did. Because she was in love with you. And the stupidest part of this whole debacle is that you were in love with her, too. You still are in love with her. And you're never going to wake up and figure that out on your own. I see that now. You don't behave like a normal human being. You're sitting here depressed and lonely so you might think the solution would be to go up and propose to Hannah. The solution would really be to find Aubrey, wherever she is, and tell her that you made a mistake."

  Gray kept staring at him. He tried to process what he was saying. Then he said, carefully forming the question, “But what mistake did I make?"

  "You didn't tell her how you felt. The most important part. Sure, you yelled and said you felt betrayed. But you didn't tell her that you loved her. And that's what you should have said. She would have forgiven you anything if you had told her that. And now here you are, lonely and depressed, and not even the beginning of baseball season can cheer you up.” Mark stood up, taking a last handful of peanuts. “Not that you're going to actually take my good advice. But I felt I should say something, because otherwise I would always wonder if I hadn't been fair to Aubrey in not trying to penetrate your absolute stupidity. I'm going to do a last round then take off,” he finished as he walked away.

  Gray blinked after him, then, sighing, turned back to his baseball game. But Mark
was right. Baseball season was not making him feel cheerful, and he did not really want to watch the game. He went up to his suite.

  Still feeling listless, he skirted the media room—another thing that reminded him of Aubrey—and kicked back on his bed and put the Red Sox game on and watched it without interest until his telephone rang, startling him out of a half-stupor. Gray picked up the receiver. “Yeah?"

  "There's a delivery for you, Mr. Delamonte,” said the voice on the other end.

  "A delivery?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Huh, thought Gray, hanging up the phone to go to the elevator. He was not expecting anything.

  The package was almost as tall as he was, and certainly much wider than he was, and he accepted it in surprise and ripped the parcel paper off it. And found himself staring at himself.

  For a moment he was stunned. He had forgotten all about the portrait of him that Aubrey was supposed to be painting. But there it was, larger than life. In the portrait, he was dressed in a dark gray suit, standing by an open door. He was half-turned, as if ready to go through that door, off on some errand, but he had paused, was looking straight out of the portrait, his expression both amused and, somehow, stubborn. As if he were daring someone to keep up.

  "It's nice,” said the bellhop who had delivered it. “Looks just like you."

  Gray just stood staring at it. Finally he cleared his throat. “Yes. It came out nice.” He forced himself to look at the bellhop. “Thanks for delivering it."

  "Yes, sir,” said the bellhop, and walked back onto the elevator.

  Gray moved the portrait, propped it against one of the foyer walls, then sat down against the opposite wall and studied every detail of it. The brushes of paint were strong, swift, sure—except for his eyes, where they devolved into impressionistic dabs of paint like the painting she had once shown him.

  She had painted him, he thought cynically, a little younger than he actually was, far less gray in his dark hair, far more full of energy and purpose. He hadn't felt that way in a long time. Years, he thought.

  Or maybe it just seemed like years had passed since she had walked out of his life.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Oh, yeah. One last reason why the Sox are going to win. Lord knows it's time.

  —Bill Reynolds, Providence Journal October 12, 2004

  Aubrey was freezing, but she ignored it because she was finally alone, and that was nice. She felt like she was so seldom alone anymore.

  Moving home had seemed like a good idea when the quasi-breakup with Gray had been raw and new and she had been in need of comforting. But now she remembered why she had left home in the first place—too many people, and all of them worried, worried, worried about her peace of mind, about what she had been through. Worried, worried, worried...

  Taking a deep breath of the frosty air, Aubrey closed her eyes, listening to the steady trickle of melting snow. The weather was thawing, venturing cautiously into the 40s—warmer than it had been but still too cold to spend any significant amount of time just leaning against a tree by the small brook that ran through her parents’ property.

  She shivered. She should go back inside, but she wanted just a little more isolation. Just a little while longer. Only in solitude could she think clearly.

  She had to figure out what her next move was going to be.

  While she had been painting for Sophie and Moira and Gray, she had been busy. She had not had time to think. Now she knew she had a generous paycheck on the way and she had to figure out what she wanted to do with it. She would share some of it with her family, of course. And then maybe she would go back to Paris. She had always regretted not spending more time in Paris.

  "Aubrey?"

  It was Gray's voice, saying her name, and the impossibility of this made her think she was losing her mind. But when she opened her eyes, he indeed was there, standing right in front of her, tucked into a dark overcoat. She felt a little strangled, unable to say anything.

  "I'm sorry. You looked deep in thought, and I didn't want to interrupt, but—"

  "What are you doing here?” she asked, sounding breathless.

  He looked about to say something, then stopped, then reached into the inside pocket of his coat with one leather-gloved hand, emerging with an envelope, which he handed across. “That's for you."

  "What is it?” she asked blankly, looking down at it.

  "Well, I believe I owe you a million dollars, don't I?” He tried a crooked smile.

  He looked good enough to eat. Certainly good enough to cuddle. It really wasn't fair for him to show up like this. “You brought it yourself?"

  "A million dollars is a lot of money. I thought hand delivery was appropriate. Called for. I love the portrait, Aubrey."

  "I'm glad. I painted it for you."

  "It was ... Well, I—"

  "How's Doug?"

  "Oh. Good. Good."

  "And Sophie?"

  "She's also good. Showing now. We're all terrified out of our minds except for Sophie herself. She's calm as can be. And Dirk's still hanging around, but Sophie's stopped talking about marrying him and also stopped asking me to find him a job, so I feel like we've made progress."

  "Good. I'm glad. And Madison and Justin are—"

  "Also good. Everyone's wonderful. Really everything turned out better than ... Well, it all turned out the way you expected, didn't it? Doug cut a very good deal, and life is now back to normal, and I suppose it would behoove me at this moment to admit that you were right."

  Aubrey stared at him. She was unable to think of a response to any of this: not the words coming out of his mouth, not the fact that he was here at all.

  "How have you been?” he asked her, thinking that she looked absolutely perfect, completely adorable, bundled for winter, flushed pink with cold. He stuck his hands deeper in his pockets to keep from reaching for her. He wasn't sure what she thought about his arrival. She had given no real indication.

  "Oh, good. Good. You flew all the way out here just to deliver this check?” she asked curiously. She could not believe it. There must be something more going on. She waited for him to show his hand.

  A small thrill started at the tip of her toes and then grew exponentially as it worked its way up. Maybe he was coming to say he couldn't live without her. That he had given it a try and he missed her too damn much and he would do anything—anything—if she would forgive him and take him back. Wouldn't that be—

  "Well, I'm going to the Red Sox game,” he answered, and her brilliant castle in the sky tumbled around her ears. “Not that I have tickets,” he continued. “I'm going to go to the Cask ‘n’ Flagon."

  And if anything could be meant to prove how completely over her he was, it was mentioning, in that off-hand manner, that he was going back to the Cask ‘n’ Flagon.

  "Oh,” she said and stood there staring at him for a second longer. He looked ... edgy, she thought, and wondered where it was coming from. She wondered if, in a different time and place, she could have done anything to calm him. She wondered if this was the last time she would see him, if this one moment of being near him would have to suffice for the rest of her life. Then she realized she looked like an idiot. “Well,” she said abruptly. “Thank you for bringing this to me."

  "Thank you for the portrait. As I said, I love it.” He took a step away, then turned back, and for a moment hope blossomed in her heart. “I'm going to catch a flight now. Go to the Cask ‘n’ Flagon."

  Damn it to hell, she thought in annoyance. Must he rub it in? “So you said,” she reminded him shortly.

  "I know, I'm just ... just saying it again. Good-bye,” he said and then he walked back out of her life as abruptly as he'd walked back in.

  Unbelievable, thought Aubrey, and looked down at the envelope in her hand. It was padded, she realized for the first time. Why would he put a check in a padded envelope? That didn't make any sense. And it was time for her to stop expecting Gray to always have tricks up his sleeves.<
br />
  Wearily, she headed indoors, meeting her mother in the kitchen where she was washing dishes.

  "Hello, darling,” she said cheerfully. “Did Mr. Delamonte find you?"

  "Oh, he told you who he was?” Aubrey, removing gloves, hat, and coat, tossed the envelope on the table.

  "I recognized him. You did a good job with that portrait."

  "Yeah, he liked it.” Aubrey sat at the table.

  "What did he come by for?"

  "Drop off the paycheck."

  "In person?"

  "It's a big paycheck.” Aubrey ripped open the envelope and pulled out another envelope, pretty thick. Clearly containing more than a check.

  "Well, he seems nice,” said her mother.

  Aubrey grunted in response and pulled Red Sox tickets out of the envelope, staring at them in disbelief.

  "What are those?” her mother asked, sitting down opposite her at the table.

  "Red Sox tickets,” Aubrey answered, surprised. “Lots of Red Sox tickets.” Two to each remaining game in the month of April, it looked like to her. She sifted through them, coming across a printed receipt that told her that future months’ worth of tickets would arrive by the first of every month. The last piece of paper was the check, made out in the full amount of one million dollars.

  So he had paid her more than he should have. Apparently bought her tickets to every Red Sox game for the season. And while it was a nice gesture, she didn't really understand it.

  "Are you sure you have all the tickets there?” her mother asked, pulling the padded envelope over to her. She tipped it upside down.

  The ring fell out with a clatter that startled both of them. A large square-cut diamond set in platinum. It laid there on the table and they stared at it, both of them in shock. Then her mother said, in disbelief, “Aubrey ... Is he proposing to you?"

  * * * *

  She bought the plane ticket to Boston without thinking twice. Amazing what a million dollars in one's pocket inspired one to do. She did not pause to pack a suitcase. She just got on the plane, and when she landed in Boston she found a cab and went straight to the Cask ‘n’ Flagon.

  Lansdowne was an impossible mess, as it always was when the Red Sox were playing. Aubrey fought her way through exuberant crowds, pushed into the Cask ‘n’ Flagon, searched the crowd until she found Gray sitting at the bar. Unfortunately, the seats next to him were also taken. Damn.