“Actually, I’m not on time. I’m a day early.” He paused, offering her a toothpaste commercial smile. “Do I get extra points?”
Dovie stared at him, trying to wrap her head around that smile. Was he actually . . . flirting with her? After his lecture on the steps the other day? If so, he was wasting his time.
“I’ll be sure to make a note in my planner,” she told him coolly, hoping to signal the end of their conversation.
“What if I want to redeem them now?”
“What?”
“I came to strike a truce, to make friends.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid I might have gotten you in some hot water the other day with your boss, and that wasn’t my intention. So”—he held out a hand—“friends?”
Dovie ignored his outstretched hand. “We don’t have to be friends to work together.”
“What if I want to be friends?”
Okay, he was definitely flirting. But why? When he could have his pick of any southern belle in Charleston? Flustered, she dropped back into her chair and opened the folder, scanning its contents. “I see you went with my recommendation on the Performing Arts Center. I’ll give them a call first thing in the morning and get the ball rolling.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question was that?”
“What if I want to be friends?”
“I have a standing rule never to mix business with pleasure, so please don’t take it personally if I decline.”
Austin stood staring at her, as if the idea of anyone declining his friendship was unthinkable. “Are you always so serious?”
“This is business, Austin. The fund-raiser, the new wing, it’s my business. If I don’t take it seriously I won’t have a job.”
“So I did get you in trouble.”
“No, I got myself in trouble, as you were quick to point out the other day.”
“Let me make it up to you. Have dinner with me tonight.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I just told you why.”
Austin folded his arms, a crooked grin turning up one corner of his mouth, an attempt at boyish charm that turned out to be alarmingly effective. “That wasn’t a reason, Dovie, it was an excuse.”
Dovie’s eyes widened. “Needing to keep my job is an excuse?”
“I meant the mixing-business-with-pleasure bit.”
“It wasn’t an excuse. And what’s wrong with taking things seriously?”
“Nothing. I just think you’re taking things seriously enough for the both of us, and that maybe if you took your nose out of that planner for one minute and came out with me, you might just remember how to have a little fun.”
“That’s funny coming from the guy who stood on the steps the other day and scolded me like I was a child. And it seems to me you’re having enough fun for the both of us.”
Dovie bit her lip, realizing she was about to burn her last bridge. Instead, she closed the folder and set it aside. “Why are you flirting with me?”
“Why do you think?”
“I have no idea, since you clearly dislike everything about me.”
He looked her up and down, a long, slow sweep that seemed to miss nothing. “Not everything.”
Dovie sighed as she pushed to her feet. She wasn’t sure what kind of game he was playing, but whatever it was, she’d had enough. “I can see you’re having a wonderful time, but I don’t find this amusing. You treat everything like it’s a joke—including me. Well, I’ve got a news flash for you. Life isn’t a joke. It’s serious, and it’s hard. And some of us are just trying to do our jobs, and hold the rest together.”
Her words seemed to hover a moment in the charged air, like angry birds looking for a place to land. She hadn’t meant to be so blunt, or to sound quite so desperate. She also hadn’t realized Jack was still in the building until he stuck his head in at the door.
“I thought I heard voices back here,” he boomed, leveling a warning glance at Dovie as he offered his hand to Austin. “Good to see you again, sir. What brings you by? Nothing wrong, I hope?”
“Not at all. Ms. Larkin was kind enough to drop off a folder for my mother to look over, and I was just running the information back to her.”
“No hitches, then? Everything to her liking so far?”
It was all Dovie could do not to roll her eyes. He looked as nervous as a girl on prom night, his smile too wide, his tone too eager. In another minute he’d be bending down to kiss the signet ring Austin wore on his right hand.
Austin flashed another toothpaste smile. “Not a hitch in sight. Ms. Larkin and my mother are in lockstep on the details. Apparently, they’ve become quite chummy.”
Chummy?
Dovie would have choked if she hadn’t been so busy holding her breath. Had he just used the word chummy to describe her relationship with his mother?
“Well, now,” Jack said, his laugh dangerously close to a snort of surprise. “That’s good to hear. Good to hear. Please pass my respects along to your mother, and be sure she knows I’m available for her anytime.”
Dovie was still trying to think of something to say when Jack’s head swiveled in her direction. “Lock up for me, would you? If I miss dinner one more night this week I’m going to be sleeping in my car. We’ll talk in the morning.”
She nodded, too numb to muster a smile. She watched as he stepped out into the hall, already fumbling for his pack of Marlboro Lights. When he was out of sight, she sank back into her desk chair. “Do you do it on purpose?”
“Do what on purpose?”
“Wait until you know my boss is going to be somewhere nearby, and then show up and pick a fight with me? Because I have to say, you’re awfully good at it.”
“I wasn’t the one picking the fight, remember? I was the one suggesting a truce. And I did try to fix it. I told him you and my mother were chummy. You’re welcome, by the way.”
Dovie closed her eyes, biting back the first response that had popped into her head. “I’d really like this day to be over. But I’ll settle for your leaving.”
“I don’t do it on purpose,” Austin said quietly. “I think you’ll see that if you think about it. And I really did come by to suggest a truce.”
“Please. Just go.”
“Fine. You’ve got your folder. Call me when you need something else.” He was almost out the door when he turned back around. “Not my mother—me.”
SIXTEEN
Austin kicked off his shoes at the door, grabbed a tall glass of sweet tea, and headed straight for the deck. A rush of salty air slapped his cheeks as he pulled back the sliders and stepped outside. He stood a moment at the railing, savoring the view he never grew tired of, the dunes with their soft sand and waving grasses, the stretch of blue-green sea blurring into the distance. Closing his eyes, he drank in the sea’s timeless song, rhythmic, earthy, calming.
After a few minutes, he moved to one of the deck chairs, propping his legs up on the railing. He took a long sip of tea, almost wishing he still drank. It had been that kind of day—the kind that started out shaky and got progressively worse, ending with the rather awkward scene in Dovie Larkin’s office.
He really had gone to the museum with good intentions, determined to smooth over his harsh remarks from earlier in the week. If they were going to be working together they might as well be friends. At least that was what he told himself when he got in his car. Instead, he’d acted like a snarky frat boy, trying to impress the homecoming queen. What was it about the woman that made him so crazy?
But he already knew the answer; she was everything he wasn’t. Serious, committed, and probably damn responsible when her head was on straight, which it clearly wasn’t just now. Her opinion of him hardly helped matters. He knew what she saw when she looked at him, an entitled play
boy who had skated through life on his inheritance and his name. And why would she think any different when that pretty much summed it up?
She was still in his head when he went inside to refill his glass. She was in trouble at work, she’d as much as admitted that, but there was something else going on, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on—as if she were walking some invisible tightrope. He knew that feeling all too well, had been staring it in the face every day for longer than he cared to admit. And now he saw it in Dovie, the kind of resignation that comes from knowing your life has come apart at the seams.
He was reaching for the tea pitcher when his cell went off, jolting him back to the stainless and granite reality of his kitchen. He frowned at the screen. Candice. Damn. He’d forgotten they were supposed to be meeting at McCrady’s tonight—an oversight that might have proven awkward had Dovie actually taken him up on his dinner invitation. Biting the bullet, he answered the call.
“Candice. I was just about to call you. I’m afraid I’m going to have to bail on dinner. I hate to do it on such short notice, but something important came up.” He wasn’t crazy about lying, but he wasn’t in the mood for company, not even the kind Candice offered.
“More important than me?”
It was all he could do not to laugh at the ridiculousness of the question. They’d met two weeks ago at a party, and been out exactly twice. “It’s work,” he said instead. “We’ve got a big bid due in two days, and I need to go over it tonight.”
“Aren’t you a little old for homework?”
“I run the largest real estate development firm in the Southeast, Candice. That means I have responsibilities.”
“Since when is a bunch of stuffy old paperwork more important than having fun?”
It wasn’t hard to understand her confusion. Until a few weeks ago, nothing had gotten in the way of fun and female companionship, but now, for reasons he couldn’t begin to explain, the idea of spending time with a woman he didn’t particularly like—even a gorgeous one—held little appeal.
“Look, I’ll call you when things smooth out,” he told her, knowing he’d do no such thing. It was a clumsy brush-off, and they both knew it. And yet he felt no guilt when Candice hung up in a huff. He was getting good at pissing off the women in his life.
Not that Dovie Larkin was in his life, although she was certainly in his thoughts an awful lot these days. And she wasn’t even his type. He was only pursuing her because he knew it annoyed her, and because flirting was his default position any time an attractive woman entered the picture. But Dovie was more than an attractive woman. She was a puzzle—one he was becoming more and more interested in solving. And when he had solved the puzzle—what then? Jesus, what was he even thinking?
Right now he was going to make a little dinner, then get to work on the bid he’d been putting off for over a week. It wasn’t how he’d hoped to spend the evening, but he’d consider it his penance for lying to Candice. On his way to the kitchen he flipped on the stereo. “Walking in My Shoes” filled the living room with its deep melancholy beat. The song always reminded him of Monica. His wife had hated Depeche Mode, probably because Martin Gore’s sometimes dark but always brilliant lyrics hit just a little too close for comfort, conjuring the demons she had ruthlessly tried to numb with a steady diet of pills and booze.
They had married young, sneaking off to Palm Beach one weekend to tie the knot without a prenup. It was the final straw for his father, who saw Monica as an opportunistic little gold digger, which was precisely what she’d turned out to be—one with a growing substance abuse problem. She’d done a good job of hiding it while they were dating, and after they married he had done an even better job of pretending not to notice, though near the end he was pretty sure they hadn’t been fooling anyone. It had lasted almost two years. Two years of screaming matches and icy silences, of pill-induced stupors and terrifying near misses. Two years of hell. And then one night, it was over.
It had begun the way most of their blowups did, with one of her booze-fueled rants about him refusing to give her money to get high. When she finally ran out of venom she had packed a bag, informing him on her way out the door that he’d be hearing from her attorney. He had never been so relieved in his life. He was still trying to figure out how to avoid his father’s I told you so when he got the call that she had wrapped her car around a telephone pole out on Highway 17.
It was the only time he was ever glad his father had friends in high places. He had used his influence to keep the drugs and booze out of the papers. As far as anyone knew, Monica Tate had died trying to avoid a deer. He never mentioned the argument to anyone, not even his mother. To this day, not a soul knew his wife was planning to leave him the night she died—had, in fact, already left him.
Her ashes had been flown back to Indiana, and a private memorial was held. He had played the grieving widower flawlessly, mostly for his mother’s sake. He had never really cared what anyone else thought. No one spoke of it. It wasn’t what the Tates did. But he’d always suspected—and still did—that his mother knew there was more to the story, and had chosen not to press him. It was a kind of unspoken pact they had—to honor one another’s secrets, and keep their wounds to themselves.
Now, a dozen years later, when he was alone and Monica’s ghost seemed to hover, the questions still haunted him. Could he have prevented her death? If he hadn’t been such a codependent ass? Hadn’t turned a blind eye to her growing addiction and the train wreck her life was becoming? Hadn’t been so goddamn relieved to see her pack her bags? He’d never know—and would never stop asking.
Was it any wonder he steered clear of anything that could be mistaken for interest in the blissful state of matrimony, and chose instead to entertain himself with a revolving door of recreational blondes—the Monicas and Trishes and Candices of his world? Yes, they were vapid and cloying and exhausting, cookie-cutter socialites with a passion for champagne and shiny things. But they were safe. And these days, he was all about safe. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—be responsible for another person. Not when he’d already failed so spectacularly.
Lord God, how had he wandered into such grim territory? Moments ago, he’d been thinking about dinner. And somehow from there he’d moved on to his dead wife. But before that he’d been thinking of Dovie.
Monica and Dovie. For a moment their faces merged in his mind’s eye, superimposing like a pair of ghosts. Could there be two more different women? One so out of control she’d managed to get herself killed before her twenty-first birthday, the other zipped up so tight he doubted she knew what losing control even meant.
The CD player startled him from his thoughts, whirring softly as it switched discs, and then the opening notes of “The Sweetest Condition” filled the room, languid and elastic. It had always been his favorite track from the Exciter album, and right now the slow, oozy lyrics suited his mood. He stood there, clutching his sweaty glass of tea as Dave Gahan let the lyrics bleed out, obsessive and raw with need, blotting out all thoughts of Monica, leaving only Dovie Larkin’s wide-set blue eyes floating in his head.
Subtle thunder, indeed.
SEVENTEEN
Make nice.
Those had been Jack’s words of advice this morning, delivered in a way that made it clear he wasn’t just offering a suggestion. Apparently, he’d heard enough coming down the hall last night to question Austin’s assertion that everything was fine, which was why she had been ordered to smooth things out ASAP, and why she had just dialed Austin’s office to invite him to meet for coffee tomorrow afternoon.
“Hi,” she blurted, caught off guard when the receptionist put her straight through.
“Hi, yourself. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon. What’s up?”
“I was wondering if you’d be interested in grabbing coffee tomorrow afternoon. We could . . . talk.”
“Talk?”
“You said you came by to offer a truce. I’m calling to take you up on it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the sensible thing to do. We’ll be working together on this wing for quite a while. It doesn’t make sense for us to be at war.”
“No, for real—why?”
Dovie sighed. “Because my boss said I needed to make nice. There. Does that make you feel better?”
He chuckled but offered no answer.
“Well, are you in?”
“Not for coffee, no. Make it dinner.”
“I already explained—”
“I thought Livingston said to be nice. What do you think he’d say if he knew you shot me down right out of the gate?”
Dovie was flabbergasted. “You’d blackmail me into dinner?”
“Technically, it would be extortion, not blackmail, and I was kidding. I’m not going to strong-arm you into dinner. I’m just going to ask—nicely, this time. And I’m free tonight, if you happen to have some time open in that little black book of yours.”
Dovie closed her eyes and counted to ten. “Lunch,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
“I can’t. I have plans. Dinner. McCrady’s. Eight o’clock. Should I pick you up?”
“No,” Dovie blurted, determined to regain control of the conversation. “I’ll meet you. And this is business.”
“Right. Business. But no suit. I’ve got a reputation to live up to, and women in business suits don’t quite fit my profile.”
Dovie fumed as she doodled a passable likeness of Satan on her desk blotter. “I could ask to borrow my sister’s cheerleading uniform. Would that work for you?”
“I don’t care, as long as you leave the suit at home. Think of it as therapy.”
“Therapy for what?”
“For whatever it is that keeps you all buttoned up. I promise, you’ll be quite safe. No need to don your armor. See you at eight.”
There was a click, and he was gone.
Love, Alice Page 12