McCrady’s was crowded for a weeknight, the bar overflowing with smiling, chatty patrons sipping wine or pastel-hued martinis while they waited to be called to their tables. Dovie was glad she had arrived early, and that there was no sign of Austin yet. She needed a minute to get her bearings.
Making a beeline for the bar, she slid onto the last empty stool, the one at the end, near the server’s station, and ordered a glass of Sonoma-Cutrer. She felt conspicuous as she scanned the crowd, painfully aware of her solitary state in a room where no one else seemed to be alone. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a crowded restaurant, surrounded by people who were laughing and sharing conversation, simply enjoying themselves.
It was a jarring realization. How had she become so isolated, so detached from the world that seemed to be carrying on without her? Was there a precise moment when she had severed the cord, some specific fraction of a second when she had decided to withdraw from the human race? If there was, she couldn’t recall it, though it was hard to deny that at some point she had begun a slow but steady separation from the living—including her own family. Her life was about work now, and her list of friends consisted of exactly three people: Theda, who was beginning to have serious doubts about her sanity, an eighty-year-old cemetery worker, and a dying woman seeking forgiveness from her dead daughter.
God, she was a mess.
The reflection in the bar mirror did little to bolster her spirits. After several aborted wardrobe changes, she had settled on a sleeveless black dress and jacket. Not a suit, she told herself as she fiddled with the collar. Not exactly. She’d never done casual flirty, nor was she interested in that kind of night—with Austin, or anyone else. Business, she reminded herself as she eyed the planner tucked into her tote. Tonight was about business, and nothing else.
Thankfully, the bartender was quick with her wine. Between sips she studied the bar’s soaring brick archways and tried not to look as though she was checking her watch. She was wondering when this had started to feel like a bad blind date when she spotted Austin, smiling and waving as he made his way toward the bar. She watched, fascinated, as the crowd gave way, like the waters parting for Moses. He wore gray slacks and a navy blazer over a crisp white oxford, and looked better than any man should for a business dinner. He smelled good, too, as he came to stand in front of her, a blend of spice and soap she hadn’t realized she associated with him until now.
“I’m sorry you had to wait,” he said over the din. “I believe our table is ready. Or I can have them hold it, and we can hang out here for a while. Your meeting. Your call.”
Dovie grabbed her glass and slid off the barstool. “The table, I think,” she said feeling vaguely disoriented as she looked up at him. Had he always been this tall, or was the wine doing things to her spatial abilities?
The blonde at the hostess stand greeted Austin by name. Her eyes lingered a moment on Dovie, a brief but unmistakable inventory, before grabbing a pair of heavy black menus and turning to take them to the dining room.
Fresh eyes followed them as they were led to a cozy brick alcove. The hostess removed the RESERVED sign from the table, giving Austin a polite nod. “Enjoy your dinner, Mr. Tate. Troy will be taking care of you, as usual. I’ll be sure to let him know you’ve been seated.”
Troy arrived momentarily, all nods and smiles and swarthy good looks, as he delivered a chilled bottle of Pellegrino to the table.
“More wine for the lady?” he asked with an accent that might have been Italian or Spanish, or merely put on.
“Yes,” Austin replied before Dovie could open her mouth.
“And the lady is drinking?”
Dovie blinked up at Troy a moment, then realized he was talking to her. “Sonoma-Cutrer chardonnay.”
“Very good.” Another bow, and he was gone.
Dovie had just located the dinner section of the menu when Troy reappeared with a bottle of Sonoma-Cutrer and a chilled silver bucket. When he had filled her glass, he returned the bottle to the bucket, whisked Austin’s empty glass away, and promised to return after they’d had some time to look over the menu.
“Aren’t you having any?” Dovie asked as Troy disappeared.
Austin shook his head. “I don’t drink.”
His answer took her by surprise. She just assumed he’d be the hard-drinking sort. “Did you think I was going to drink an entire bottle of wine by myself?”
“I didn’t think about it one way or the other, really. Troy just always brings a bottle.”
“I would never have pegged you as teetotaler.”
“I wasn’t always. Far from it, in fact.”
“Why did you stop?”
“Things change.”
Had she only imagined the shadow that seemed to pass over his face? She didn’t think so, but decided to let it go, returning to the menu instead.
“You seem surprised.”
“I guess I am, a little.”
“It’s not that I have anything against it. I’ve just chosen not to. I guess you could say I had a wake-up call. I figured I’d already given the papers enough to chew on. I didn’t need to give them that, too. So one day I just swore off.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Ten years or so.”
Dovie shifted her attention back to the menu, resisting the urge to ask about his wake-up call. They were here to forge a truce and improve their working relationship. They didn’t need to know the intimate details of each other’s lives for that—even if she was curious.
Troy reappeared to take their order. Dovie went with the scallops and lobster risotto, while Austin ordered the usual. Whatever it was, Troy knew precisely how he liked it, medium rare, without bleu cheese crumbles. He nodded crisply and, after topping off Dovie’s wineglass, backed away.
“So,” Austin said, startling her a little when he propped his elbows on the table and fixed her with a deep green stare. “Is this all for show, or did you mean what you said on the phone yesterday about calling a truce?”
Dovie sipped her wine, wondering if there was a trap in the question. “Did you?”
“Yes, I think so. Maybe not at first, but I do now.”
“Why now?”
“Because we got off on the wrong foot, and that was mostly my fault. And because I feel like a heel about your boss being pissed at you. You seem to love what you do, and to be pretty good at it, too, when you’re not distracted.”
Distracted.
Dovie felt herself flush. It was such a polite word for what she was these days. Still, she didn’t want him thinking she was a complete train wreck, or that she needed saving. “Jack’s fine. He’s just really invested in this new wing. I think he’s terrified that your mother will pull her two million dollars, and then the rest of our funding will disappear. And speaking of your mother, when did she and I get to be chums?”
“Apparently, the day you popped by her house. You made quite an impression. She liked that you recognized the paintings in her study. She also liked that you took the initiative to bring the paperwork by. I didn’t like it—and still don’t—but she did. In my book, that makes you chummy.”
“I see.”
“She also said you were lovely. Actually used the word lovely. And for the record, there’s something I’d like to get straight. It wasn’t my mother who shelled out that two million. It was me. Not that it matters. She’d been begging my father to do it for years, but he hated all her causes. Never very big on giving, my father. Anyhow, I just wanted that on the record.”
“I didn’t know. Thank you.” She tipped her glass in salute, peering at him over the rim. “You seem rather . . . protective of your mother.”
Austin traced a finger along the blade of his knife, his expression thoughtful. “I’ve had to be,” he said finally. “It’s been hard since my father died. He was a lousy husband, but people knew be
tter than to mess with my mother when he was alive. Now that he’s gone, she’s an easy target. Everyone wants the dirt on the old bastard, not that it would be hard to find. There are all sorts of rumors. I’m sure you’ve heard them. Everyone has.”
Dovie gave a halfhearted shrug, curious, but wise enough to remain silent.
“Not all of it’s true, of course. But some of it is, and the last thing my mother needs is to have her nose rubbed in it again. That’s why I jumped down your throat the other day. It’s a knee-jerk reaction I have to anyone pestering her. God knows after forty years with my father, she deserves a little peace.”
Dovie was relieved when dinner arrived. She sat back while Troy delivered their plates, then wielded an enormous pepper mill with the same flair he used to pour her wine.
“Is there anything else you require, Mr. Tate?”
“No, thank you, Troy. We’re fine.”
Austin looked at her expectantly as Troy stepped away, clearly waiting for her to take her first bite before cutting into his steak. Instead, she surprised him by asking the question she’d been pondering almost from the moment they sat down. “I’m getting the sense that you and your father had a pretty strained relationship.”
If Austin was offended, he hid it well. “We didn’t have any relationship.”
“I don’t understand. You were his son, the heir apparent. You were groomed to take over his company.”
Austin snorted. “I was groomed to do anything but. Oh, I did the architect thing, and the MBA thing, but that was for my mother, because she wanted it for me and I didn’t have anything better to do with my time. Besides, a young man with money’s got to do something with his life, or he starts to look a little spoiled, don’t you think?”
Dovie forked up a mouthful of risotto to avoid answering.
“Meanwhile, Mom kept sending the quarterly reports and the minutes from the board meetings. I went over them, watched the stock, kept up with industry news, but we both knew the old man was too much of a control freak to ever hand over the reins—least of all to me.”
“I thought you were an only child.”
“I am.”
“So, if he didn’t mean for you to take over when he died, he must have had some other plan for the company.”
“I’m pretty sure his plan was not to die, probably thought he’d pull it off, too. Which is why he died intestate.”
Dovie looked at him, eyes wide. “Your father didn’t have a will?”
“No need for a will if you’re going to live forever. I’ll bet no one was more surprised than my father when he keeled over in the sauna at his club.”
“So . . . ?”
Austin shrugged. “Everything ended up going to my mother, which I can assure you is the only reason I’m calling the shots now. If I’m sure of anything, it’s that the old man is spinning in his grave at the thought of me sitting behind his desk. Funny how things work out.”
“Yes, I suppose,” Dovie said, fiddling with the napkin in her lap. “Things don’t always work out the way we plan.”
“Well, that’s my tragic little story,” Austin announced as he speared a mushroom with his fork and popped it into his mouth. “Or at least one of them. My father never loved me. Now you.”
Dovie blinked at him across the table. “Me?”
“Isn’t this what friends do? Share their life stories? I just told you mine. Now it’s your turn. So, tell me, what makes Dovie Larkin tick?”
What made her . . . tick?
Did she even have an answer to that? These days, she seemed to be ticking like a defective watch, no sense of time, except to know that it was passing much too quickly—and without her.
“Oh, you don’t want to hear about me,” she said, hiding behind her wineglass. “There’s not much to tell, really. I go to work, and then I go home.”
“The day we met you told me your fiancé had died.”
The abruptness of the question startled her. She put down her glass, dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “A year ago, yes.”
“An accident?”
“No. On purpose.”
“Oh.”
“Yes . . . oh.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to—”
“He swallowed a handful of pills two weeks before we were supposed to get married.”
“Did you . . .”
“Have any idea he was thinking about killing himself? No. No one did. And there wasn’t a note, so we’ll never know why.”
“I’m sorry. Truly.”
Dovie eyed him across the table. She wasn’t sure what to make of this new Austin. Sensitive. Genuine. And wholly unexpected.
“It must have been rough.”
“It was,” she said. “It is.”
“That’s why you go to the cemetery every day. Because you need to understand what happened. And why.”
Dovie’s head came up. How could he know that?
“You think if you keep asking the same questions over and over again, one day you’ll get it.”
“Something like that.”
“What was his name?”
“William. He was an artist—a sculptor. But you know that.”
“And what else?”
She stared at him, confused by the question. “What else?”
“Sometimes it helps to talk. You don’t have to, but I’ve been told I’m a pretty good listener. What was he like?”
Dovie pushed a bite of scallop around on her plate, wondering where to begin, or if she wanted to begin at all. “He was funny,” she said finally. “And kind, and sweet, and talented. We met at a club social. He wasn’t much on that kind of thing, and neither was I, so we snuck away from the party and spent the rest of the afternoon talking. After that, we were never apart. Except when he traveled for work. He was always flying to New York for some show or gallery opening.”
“You didn’t go with him?”
“I couldn’t. I was finishing up my MBA. I’d been begging for a promotion for over a year, and rumor had it the curator position was going to be opening up. I wasn’t about to take time off and risk getting passed over.”
“Were you living together when it happened?”
“No. He had his own place, a little studio on Church Street where he worked. I used to call it his garret. I’ve only been there a handful of times.”
“Seriously?”
Dovie shrugged. “He became very reclusive when he was working on something big, almost protective. I respected that, so I just steered clear. That’s where his brother found him—on the floor in the bathroom.”
“Jesus. His family must have been stunned.”
“We all were.”
“Are you still in touch with them? Were you close?”
“I thought we were, but since William’s death things are different. It’s like they’re ashamed of what he did, and I remind them of it. I think maybe they blame me, or at least think I should have seen it coming.”
“Do you blame yourself?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a year. Should I have seen it coming? Maybe. There were times when I felt like he was holding something back, like there was this part of him he didn’t let anyone see—not even me—but I wrote it off as a moody artist thing. Maybe if I’d paid more attention, asked more questions . . .”
“You can’t do that to yourself, Dovie. Take it from me. You can drive yourself mad with those kinds of questions, and still never get the answers you’re looking for. There are no answers. And no do-overs.”
“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. I guess it’s what people do. They try to fix you. Because it’s uncomfortable being with someone else’s pain, thinking for even one minute that you might find yourself in those same shoes one day.”
; Austin set down his knife and fork and sat back in his chair. “I wasn’t trying to fix you. I just see that you’re not in a good place right now. William sounds like a great guy, but maybe you weren’t as close as you think. Maybe there were things you didn’t know—or chose not to know—and that’s why you keep beating yourself up.”
Dovie set down her fork with a clatter. “What is that supposed to mean? We weren’t as close as I thought we were? We were two weeks away from being married.”
“People keep secrets, Dovie. Some are very good at it. Especially when we help them by looking the other way.”
She was trembling all over now, her face flushed, her hands clammy against the white tablecloth. She didn’t want to talk to him about William. In fact, she didn’t want to talk to him at all. “I think I’d better be going.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said any of that. I was just—”
Dovie pushed back from the table and stood, ignoring the curious stares aimed in her direction. “I think it would be best if in the future we limited our contact as much as possible. I’ll designate a contact person to keep you up-to-date on the fund-raiser, and you can do the same.”
“Dovie, please sit down. We don’t have to—”
She didn’t wait for him to finish. Before he could get the rest out she had picked up her purse and was heading for the lobby. She’d be willing to bet it was the first time in Austin Tate’s life that a woman had left him sitting alone in a restaurant.
So much for their truce.
EIGHTEEN
“People keep secrets, Dovie.”
William’s headstone shimmered pearly gray in the afternoon sunlight, moving in and out of focus as Dovie replayed last night’s conversation with Austin. What kinds of secrets had he been talking about? Another woman? A dark past? Code-word clearance with the NSA?
And what did he know about it anyway? Her relationship with William was none of his business, though he seemed to think otherwise. It was nervy enough to suggest William had been harboring some deep dark secret, but he had crossed the line when he insinuated that she had somehow been complicit in that secret, that somewhere along the way she had made a conscious decision to not look too closely at the man she was preparing to marry—for fear of what, exactly? It was ridiculous.
Love, Alice Page 13