by Wendy Wax
“Gosh, no,” Brooke said. “I mean it’s Saturday. I figured she and her husband probably had plans.”
This, of course, was what single women always assumed about married ones, but that didn’t make it true. “They might,” Claire agreed. “But let’s at least invite her. I can call if you want while you get the video.”
They worked out the details and agreed to five thirty at Brooke’s. Claire jumped up from the computer with a new sense of purpose. Picking up the phone, she dialed Samantha Davis’s number and put a second bottle of wine in the refrigerator to chill.
* * *
SAMANTHA COULDN’T BELIEVE HOW GRATEFUL SHE was to get Claire Walker’s call. No, not grateful. Even thinking the word made her stomach knot up. Glad was better. She was glad and relieved to have something to do instead of sitting in her apartment worrying about why she hadn’t yet heard from Jonathan. Last time she’d had a weekend to herself she’d reveled in the experience. This time she felt abandoned and frightened. A good dose of Downton Abbey and lady friends might never appear on a prescription, but at the moment it felt like just what the doctor ordered.
She raided the wine supply for two nice bottles of red and pulled a bakery box of Giancarlo’s chocolate chip cannolis from the freezer. Ten minutes later she was standing in front of Brooke’s door, a bottle of wine tucked under each armpit and the bakery box in her hands. She had to poke her elbow into the doorbell to ring it.
“Hi. Can you take the box?” Samantha said when Brooke opened the door. “I think one of the bottles may be starting to slip.”
“Oh, my gosh!” Brooke took the box while Samantha clamped her arms more tightly against her sides.
“I’m not sure direct body heat does good things for a wine, but I never can seem to find those carriers I know we have somewhere,” Samantha said.
“It won’t bother me,” Brooke said. “Zachary spent long amounts of time reading and discussing wine with anyone who would hold still long enough. But I’m not a picky drinker. Or eater, for that matter.”
“Ditto,” Samantha said when they reached the kitchen.
“I’m glad to hear it because I ordered an extra-large pizza. I think it’s called everything but the kitchen sink.” Brooke smiled.
The doorbell rang and Brooke went to let Claire in. Samantha opened a bottle of the red and looked around the kitchen, which was all sharp angles and shiny surfaces. The appliances were top-of-the-line and custom fitted. The space was expertly done, but it wasn’t at all what Samantha would have expected from a woman who exuded such a sturdy earthiness.
“Hey.” Claire set two bottles of white wine next to the reds. “I see great minds think alike. At least we won’t have to make a liquor run.”
“Well, if we do it’s only a matter of floors,” Samantha said. “Jonathan has a wine closet outfitted with a backup generator.” The minute she brought up his name, she regretted it. Even thinking of Jonathan caused the strangest twinge in her chest. She turned as if considering the kitchen for the first time. “This is really state-of-the-art,” she said motioning to the Sub-Zero refrigerator and Wolf ovens. “Do you like to cook?” Samantha’s thoughts turned to all the meals she’d pretended to cook for Jonathan over the years and she felt a stab of regret that she’d never really learned.
Brooke’s nose wrinkled. “Not really. I mean I put food on the table on a regular basis, but this is not the kitchen I would have chosen to do it in. Zach hired an interior designer to do the whole apartment. He wanted the best of everything and he got it. But none of it is exactly kid – or user-friendly.” She hesitated briefly. “I was in Bruce Dalton’s kitchen yesterday—he’s asked me to help Marissa do over her bedroom. Now that’s a kitchen meant for a family to live in. And he cooks. He invited the girls and me over for dinner next Saturday.” She blushed with what looked like pleasure.
“Grab him,” Claire said. “I’d be all over a man who can cook.”
“I think the women in his neighborhood are already all over him. They keep bringing him food. And they don’t wear a lot of clothes when they deliver it.”
“Well, he invited you for dinner,” Samantha said.
“I think a man cooking is sexy,” Claire said. “Who needs Fifty Shades of Grey? Give me a guy in a chef’s toque any day. Add some vacuuming and dusting and it’s downright orgasmic.”
Samantha laughed while Claire began to open the wine. Brooke pulled wineglasses out of the cupboard.
“Did you know that Zach took the girls for the whole weekend?” Brooke asked Samantha.
“No.”
“And he wanted me to make sure you knew it.” Brooke was watching Samantha’s face.
“Really?” Samantha asked casually.
“Why is that?” Claire asked.
There was a silence while Samantha debated how much to divulge. The emotional mess she’d been yesterday morning was just one more aspect of the problems with Jonathan that she didn’t want to think about. But that didn’t mean she regretted setting the doctor straight. “Well, we did run into each other in the elevator yesterday,” Samantha said.
“And?” Brooke asked.
Samantha shrugged. “And I may have called him out on forgetting the girls Wednesday night.” She turned her attention to the wine. “Do you want red or white?”
Brooke laughed. “Fine. I guess I don’t need all the details. I’ll have red.” She steadied a glass while Samantha poured. All three of them held up their glasses. “To Samantha, who apparently shamed Zach into spending time with his daughters and who made this evening possible,” Brooke toasted.
“To Samantha!” They clinked and drank.
When the pizza arrived, they filled paper plates with slices and carried them into the family room, which was also a sophisticated contemporary showcase built around a massive big-screen television. They settled on the Roche Bobois cream leather sectional and chowed down.
“Wow,” Claire said. “Zach must have hated leaving that television set behind.”
Brooke smiled somewhat grimly. “If he hadn’t had it so completely built in, I’m sure it would have been the first thing he moved upstairs. It’s way too big. Even Winnie the Pooh looks scary at that size.” She looked around and sighed. “Everything about this place is too polished, too cold, and too uninviting.”
Samantha was very careful not to react. She saw Claire doing the same.
“I know,” Brooke said. “Just like Zach.” She held up her slice of pizza. “I have to confess sometimes I get this almost irresistible urge to mess everything up. You know, rub a greasy finger on the leather. Drop a pepperoni in the carpet. Is that childish?”
Samantha edged the glass of red wine she’d set on the cocktail table a little closer to the center. The carpet was a plush pile in a very pale cream.
“When Daniel and I got divorced, I maxed out my credit cards redecorating when I definitely couldn’t afford it. Just to feel like I was starting over,” Claire said. “Which was not only childish but stupid. It took me years to pay off that card.”
Once again Samantha’s thoughts turned to her absent husband. “When Jonathan and I got married I was only twenty-one and he was twenty-seven. And we had my brother and sister to raise. There wasn’t a lot of opportunity for childish behavior.”
“I guess I could have let Zach buy the condo for him and Sarah,” Brooke said. “But as much as this place isn’t me, I couldn’t bear to think of them in it. Plus I had no confidence that we’d be left with enough to buy something else.” Brooke wrinkled her nose again. “Sorry. That’s probably too much information.” She finished off her glass of wine. “I know you didn’t come here to hear all about my ex-husband.”
“Well, I’m happy to hear whatever anyone wants to share,” Claire said. “As long as I don’t have to stare at a blank computer screen while I do it.”
“What does that mean?” Samantha asked.
Claire shook her head. “It means now that I have my editor and agent’s full atte
ntion, I can’t seem to think straight enough to figure out the book I thought I was going to write.”
“You mean like writer’s block?” Brooke asked.
“I’d have to have started writing to be blocked,” Claire said. “I can’t even seem to get my idea solidified.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Brooke replied after chewing thoughtfully.
“It’s not. I was a lot more productive when I was working full-time and taking care of a child by myself,” Claire said. “It’s kind of like winning the lottery and then not being able to figure out what to buy with the money. I have all this time now and I can’t seem to stop squandering it.”
Their shoes off, they padded through the deep pile carpet and into the kitchen to refill their plates and glasses.
“How about you, Samantha?” Claire asked, flipping open the pizza box. “We’re both pissing and moaning over here and you haven’t said a word of complaint.”
“That’s because she’s married to a gorgeous and successful man who is willing to read Stellaluna multiple times to small children he’s never met before,” Brooke said topping off their glasses and reaching for a slice of pizza. “How many years have you and Jonathan been married?”
“Twenty-five,” Samantha said. “Almost twenty-six.” Once that might have been a boast. Now it sounded long and hollow.
“Wow!” Brooke said.
“You certainly seem to have hit the matrimonial jackpot,” Claire agreed.
“Like I said,” Brooke crowed. “Twenty-five years and no complaints. Maybe we should call Guinness World Records.”
“Or Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” Claire added, looking at Samantha sharply. “What do you say to that, Samantha?”
Samantha smiled and kept silent, which was what she’d always done when Sylvie and Lucy complained about their spouses or their marriages. Even when her mother-in-law had gotten in her swipes at her dearly departed husband. Of course Samantha had nothing negative to say. Because she was too damned grateful to Jonathan for marrying her in the first place.
Claire Walker and Brooke Mackenzie weren’t Sylvie and Lucy. Both of them watched her and waited for her to say something.
Samantha felt the oddest urge to tell the truth. To confess that she hadn’t heard from her gorgeous and successful husband in a whole week and that she was afraid that calling him would only make things worse. But a lifetime of holding her fears as close to the vest as she did her feelings smothered that urge. “Are you kidding?” she finally said. “I say it’s time to open another bottle of wine and let the Downton Abbey marathon begin.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
BROOKE WOKE ON SUNDAY MORNING AND PADDED into the kitchen to turn on the coffeemaker. Her head throbbed slightly from the wine they’d drunk the night before, her stomach felt unpleasantly full from the steady stream of junk food, and her mouth was as dry as a patch of the Sahara. But while her physical reactions to the late night Downton Abbey marathon were negative, they were accompanied by an unexpected and unfamiliar sense of well-being.
With a yawn she wandered into the family room and found Claire and Samantha still asleep on the massive sectional they’d nodded off on. Claire lay on her stomach, her face buried in a silk pillow. Samantha lay on her back on the opposite end of the “L,” her arms thrown out in abandonment, her dark hair hanging off the side. A steady and not exactly ladylike snore escaped her open mouth with each rise and fall of her chest.
Without comment Brooke dropped onto the nearby club chair, propped her bare feet on the ottoman, and drank her coffee while she contemplated the room. Empty wine bottles and glasses littered the cocktail and end tables. The pizza box sat open on the carpet, its lid propped up against a floor lamp. The bakery box, from which every delectable crumb had been scraped clean, lay on the floor near one of Samantha’s hands.
Morning light slatted in through the shutters. Brooke sipped her coffee and considered the mess; she couldn’t help smiling when she imagined leaving the room this way so that Zachary would be forced to see it when he brought the girls back.
They’d watched five of the seven episodes on the Downton Abbey DVD, pausing only for food and potty runs. Somewhere around three a.m. Samantha had fallen asleep. Shortly afterward Brooke had returned from the bathroom to discover Claire curled in a ball with her back to the television. Seeing no reason to wake them Brooke had turned off the TV and the lights and gone to bed.
Claire rolled onto her back but her eyes remained closed. “Where am I?” she asked.
“On my couch,” Brooke replied.
“What’s that awful noise?” Claire yawned.
“Samantha.”
“You’re kidding.” Claire’s eyes opened.
“Nope.”
Claire sat up and rubbed sleep from her eyes. “Is it wrong of me to be so tempted to get out my phone and shoot a little video?”
“It is since we promised that ‘what happens while watching Downton Abbey stays with Downton Abbey,’” Brooke said.
“We’re not actually watching Downton Abbey right now,” Claire pointed out with another yawn.
“True,” Brooke agreed as Samantha gave another less than ladylike snort. “But we were. And we still have two episodes to go.” She scrubbed at her own eyes and smiled. “I don’t have anywhere I have to be. Do you?”
“Well, I know where I should be. And what I should be doing there,” Claire said. Her smile dimmed. “But someone would have to drag me out of here first. I made it through the marathon so far. I’m not dropping out now.”
Samantha inhaled sharply, then emitted a final explosive snort. Her eyes blinked open.
Brooke and Claire laughed. “God, Jonathan really is a saint,” Claire said.
“What’s so funny?” Samantha didn’t move, but her eyes were blinking rapidly.
“I just uploaded video of you snoring to YouTube,” Claire deadpanned.
“You did not.” Samantha turned her head and looked at Brooke. “Did she?”
“No, she didn’t. But it’s a good thing you woke up when you did. She was lobbying hard for the opportunity. I’m not sure I could have held her off much longer.” Brooke laughed, almost embarrassed by how great it felt to have friends here in the home that had never felt really hers.
“I can’t believe we slept here,” Samantha said, stifling another yawn. For the first time Brooke noticed dark shadows beneath her eyes. “Did we even talk about going home?”
“No. You just sort of dropped out one at a time. I barely made it to my bedroom,” Brooke said.
“Yeah,” Claire said, hugging a pillow to her stomach. “I think I made it right to the point where Edith was writing the letter to the Turkish ambassador.”
“The last thing I remember is Maggie Smith letting Molesley’s father win the flower show.” Samantha hugged her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them. “God, I haven’t been to a slumber party since eleventh grade.” She sniffed. “Is that coffee?”
Brooke nodded. “Can I pour you a cup?”
“God, yes,” Claire said. “But I need sustenance. Do you want me to make a doughnut run?”
They looked at each other. All of them were rumpled. Hair stuck out every which way. No one seemed to care in the least. Brooke’s headache had already begun to recede and she felt the first stirrings of hunger. After last night’s feeding frenzy there seemed no point in counting breakfast calories. “I’m ready to watch Downton Abbey,” Brooke said. “If you all can live with toaster waffles, I think I have a box of Eggos in the freezer.”
* * *
AT THE END OF HUNTER JACKSON’S FIRST WEEK AT Private Butler, Edward felt a little like Rex Harrison’s Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady. Only instead of producing a lady from a flower girl he was trying to turn an overprivileged peacock into a self-effacing concierge.
Hunter Jackson had completed all the errands and tasks he’d been assigned. Though Jackson’s automatic response to Edward’s authority too often resembled t
hat of a teenager to an irritating parent, the clients Jackson had been assigned to assist had seemed satisfied. As the week wore on Jackson’s demeanor became quite proper bordering on formal. At times Edward suspected the young man might actually be doing a parody of Edward; that in this case imitation was not the sincerest form of flattery. But it was hard to know for certain. In the end Edward dismissed these thoughts as uncharitable and reminded himself that what Jackson thought was not his concern as long as his actions and behavior remained acceptable.
At the moment, Jackson sat across from Edward’s desk, his back straight, his attention focused on Edward.
“I heard from Mr. Culp,” Edward said. “He tells me that you’ve suggested a party and a private family cruise of the Greek Isles for his wife Alicia’s sixtieth that will include all of their children and grandchildren.”
Hunter nodded. He smiled quite modestly.
“How did you come up with the idea?” Edward asked, curious.
“Actually it was your questionnaire,” the young man said. “I felt kind of silly pulling it out when I met with Jim the first time. But once he started answering the questions it seemed clear that a trip was in order and since money was no object . . .” Jackson shrugged. “Well, I thought why not go all out?”
Edward winced at Jackson’s use of the client’s first name and the allusion to Culp’s wealth. But the younger man had made great strides. And he didn’t think all of his enthusiasm was feigned. “You’ve done well,” Edward said. “But we do need to be careful not to be overly familiar with the clients. And we certainly never call them by their first names.”
Jackson stared at him as if he were daft. But the look was brief. “All right.” Then as Edward reached inside his breast pocket for the week’s assignments, Jackson said, “I have a few ideas about marketing that I thought I’d run by you. And it occurred to me that Private Butler might be a perfect candidate for franchising. I know someone down in the Keys who’s a specialist in that field.” Jackson leaned forward eager to press his point.