Читать книгу Secrets Of A Good Girl - Jen Safrey, Jen Safrey - Страница 12

“Ambassador?”

Alan Cole looked up from his desk with a pleasant smile, a smile that came easily even though he’d been running around today longer than Cassidy herself had. “Yes?”

Cassidy handed him a few e-mail printouts. “You may want to take a look at these today. I’m leaving now, so…”

The ambassador pulled up the sleeve of his suit jacket, checked his gold watch and frowned. “I’m not sure about this…”

Cassidy hurriedly added, “Unless you need me to stay, of course. It’s not necessary for me to leave now. Never mind, I’ll just be in my office.”

“That’s right. According to my calculations, you’ve only put in a thirteen-hour day.”

The shock of earlier events slowed Cassidy’s ability to recognize the joke. She had turned all the way around to leave before she realized it, and then she turned back to the ambassador, who was fixing her with a shrewd look.

“Actually,” he said, “I very highly recommend you do leave. Your day started before dawn. Anyone else would be long gone.” He smiled again. “Anyone but the determined Ms. Maxwell.”

Cassidy relaxed a bit.

Ambassador Cole was an admirable figure, both politically and as one of London’s most eligible bachelors. His wife had died of breast cancer seven years prior, and Cassidy, who had been a junior staffer then, had sadly watched his heart breaking, along with the rest of the embassy. After that, the ambassador had dedicated his whole waking life to his work, and established himself as an influential voice for the United States in Great Britain. About a year ago, he had become fodder for tabloid speculation after he was seen with a stunning middle-aged blonde at an opera opening. The blonde turned out to be only a cousin, but society reporters persisted in their interest in the attractive politician, making it obvious they felt they’d kept their respectable distance long enough.

Alan Cole had short, graying-brown hair and deep laugh lines around his mouth and eyes. His smile was bright white and frequent. His racquetball habit—or, Cassidy often teased him, his racquetball obsession—kept his physical form trim, and his taste in suits was impeccable, assisted by the best tailors in the city. Despite being in his mid-fifties, he’d unwittingly made BBC News fans out of many young twentysomething women who might have instead been watching “Coupling” or “EastEnders.”

The well-spoken and persuasive ambassador continually made an impression on world leaders and pundits alike, and after marveling at his obvious charisma for years, Cassidy was amazed when he took notice of her abilities and eventually promoted her to the position of his closest assistant. She strongly felt that one of her greatest professional achievements was earning his respect, and one of her most rewarding personal achievements was that he treated her like a member of his family.

Which was why she was one of the very small handful privy to the existence of his new girlfriend, a lovely watercolor artist who lived in Brighton, near the ambassador’s summer cottage.

“And if I’m not mistaken,” the ambassador now added meaningfully, “I often encourage you to leave at a decent hour, but you never do. I’m quite surprised at your sudden reasonable behavior.”

Cassidy wasn’t sure what to say. It had been bad enough that Eric Barnes had showed up after ten years to kiss her at the entrance to the U.S. embassy. She didn’t want to call any more attention to herself. And she knew if she made something up, the man in front of her would not be fooled.

“I hope it’s because you’d like some extra time to get ready for the party tonight,” he said.

Cassidy was relieved at the out he’d accidentally given her. “Actually, yes. I was thinking of getting my hair done.”

“Brilliant. I worry about you sometimes, Cassidy. Don’t get me wrong. You’re one of my best assets here, and I certainly wouldn’t want you not to be, but you’re maybe a bit too much of a—workaholic?”

Cassidy had to laugh. “You’re telling me I’m a workaholic?”

“Okay, okay. I admit that is the pot calling the kettle…et cetera. But once in a while—” he paused to sigh significantly “—I see you flying around here, and I wonder if…you’re trying to prove something. I hope it’s not to me. You know I’m confident in your abilities.”

“I know, Ambassador, and I’m appreciative—”

He cut her off. “Don’t be. You earned it. But—” He paused, watching her for a sign to stop. Cassidy carefully kept her expression neutral, so he went on. “Maybe you’re trying to prove something to yourself.”

Cassidy blinked but didn’t answer.

“I know what it looks like, you know,” the ambassador said. “When Natalie died, I pushed myself and pushed myself, determined to prove to myself that I could go on, that I could handle life. You know what? It turned out I was right. I was capable of handling it, but I really didn’t need to make my own life so frenetic to learn that lesson. It only made things harder.”

Cassidy still didn’t say anything.

“I want you to know that you can talk to me. If you need anything, if you ever need a day or a week off, just say the word. We’d have a tough time without you, but we’d manage for your sake.”

“I don’t understand why this is coming up now,” Cassidy said slowly, realizing that her mind had been screaming the same thing earlier when Eric appeared out of nowhere. Why now? Why now? Can’t you leave me alone…

“Like I said, I have worried about you at times in the past. It’s the expression on your face sometimes, a clenched-jawed, gritty look. I saw it again a little earlier today. I’m glad you’re knocking off early. I want you to have fun.”

Cassidy nodded.

“I mean it. Don’t have little chats with the kitchen staff about the pâté, don’t make sure all the serving trays are full, don’t go into the bathroom to check the toilet paper supply.”

Cassidy raised a brow.

“You didn’t know I’m aware you do that, did you?” The ambassador laughed. “If you don’t have fun tonight, you’re fired. And that’s that.”

Cassidy smiled, the first genuine one she’d squeezed out in the last few hours. She knew Ambassador Cole’s mind was weighed down with very serious things these days, not the least of which was his recent Northern Ireland peace initiative. He had other things to occupy him other than the mental state of his assistant, but here he was, insisting on addressing it.

She wasn’t sure how she would oblige him, however. Considering the day’s events, fun was the last thing she’d be capable of. She felt her smile fade.

“Yes, sir,” she said, and turned to go.

“Cassidy?”

She stopped.

“Are you all right?”

Tears threatened and she tilted her head up to the ceiling to try to make them fall back into the corners of her eyes. “You just asked me that, Ambassador.”

“Not quite. I implied it, but that makes it easy for you to avoid answering, and I’d quite like it if you did.”

Cassidy kept her back to her boss, because she didn’t tell lies often and she was about to tell the biggest one ever. She squared her shoulders and brought her head down again. “I’m the same as yesterday. Just fine.”

He didn’t respond, so she added, with purposeful good cheer, “But I appreciate your concern. I’ll see you this evening.”

“Goodbye, Cassidy.”

His words were simple but Cassidy recognized the tone. It was the pensive, analytical one he used when asked on television about things such as his opinion on America’s foreign policies. He would answer clearly but his tone always implied hours of previous contemplation.

Cassidy left the room before the ambassador could contemplate her and her problems any longer.

Cassidy hoisted her weighty leather briefcase more securely onto her slight shoulder, pushed open the front doors and commenced a brisk pace. If fleeing the embassy at a run wouldn’t have aroused certain suspicion, Cassidy might have done so—just flung her bag and three-inch-heeled boots onto the grass and sprinted off as fast as her black cashmere socks would allow. But she knew that subtle was better. The conversation with the ambassador had slowed her down a little bit as it was. She didn’t want to take the chance of Eric showing up early and seeing her run from him—again.

No, she kept her pace quick but casual, glancing out the corners of her eyes, searching for any motion coming her way. Nothing. She let herself turn her head only once to look back, and Eric was not behind her. Her gaze traveled up the walls of the massive embassy, to where the immense golden eagle perched in a permanent moment of taking flight. Cassidy remembered the first time she had seen the bird, the symbol for the American idea of freedom. Every time since that first day, she’d walked into that building under the eagle’s protective gaze, safe in her own freedom from Saunders, from the worst mistakes she’d ever made. Now, today, with no warning, the eagle, as imposing as it was, had proved itself unable to protect Cassidy from her past.

She should have known. And perhaps, in the back of her mind, she always had. Which was why she’d trained herself to stop thinking, stop dwelling, and just work hard.

It was crumbling now, the fortress she’d constructed around her mind and around the warm core of soft feelings deep inside her chest. She faced front again and shivered under her burgundy trench coat. She looked across expansive Grosvenor Square and caught a glimpse of the statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt before turning and heading up to Oxford Street.

A picture of Eric filled her mind and, for the first time, it was not a picture of Eric as a college graduate, an enthusiastic teaching assistant lecturing to an entire class but sending a secret signal through his hypnotic eyes to Cassidy and Cassidy alone.

It was a picture of the Eric she’d never seen before today, and hadn’t wanted to ever see. Eric the man, the man with gray in his hair, the man experienced at having his heart torn in two by the woman he loved.

No. Cassidy gritted her teeth. Something else, something else. Franklin D. Roosevelt. She tried to fill her head with historical facts to shove out the sad picture. FDR. New Deal. Was that him? The New Deal. The New Deal was… She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t believe that she couldn’t remember. Her memory was not normally a flawed one. He shot bears. Didn’t he? And then—no. Crap. That was Teddy Roosevelt. Because of teddy bear. Right? Right? Was she remembering any of this right?

She turned a left, taking her past the famous Selfridges’ storefront. Oxford Street was the usual tourist zoo and as she weaved in and out between clueless people clutching Underground maps, she let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding. In this rush-hour crowd, no one would ever notice one woman in a dark coat carrying a briefcase. She whipped a wrinkled white diaphanous scarf from one pocket and tied it around her hair, binding up her one distinctive trait the best she could. For the first time ever, she wished it already was the middle of a bitter London winter, so she could conceal herself in a hat and muffler.

Why, Cassidy? Eric’s broken voice bounced off the walls of her skull, reverberating over and over again. Why, Cassidy?

Why, Cassidy, she heard again, and this voice was ugly, sneering, triumphantly lecherous. Randall Greene. I had no idea you would be as good as you looked. Virgins hardly ever are, you know?

Cassidy strangled a sob back down her throat and forced her feet to go faster, slamming her heels so hard into the concrete that her shins ached.

“Go away, Eric,” Cassidy said out loud, not caring if it elicited strange looks from the pedestrians hurrying beside her. The Bond Street Tube station was only one block off. She matched her chant to her steps. “Go away, go away, go away.”

London was her city. She belonged here. Eric would leave. He had to.

Right. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt was elected president in the year…

She glanced up at the street sign and froze. Someone slammed into her from behind, then roughly pushed around her, cursing her over his shoulder.

Cassidy stared wide-eyed at the sign. Gilbert Street.

Had she seen this before? Had her mind never made the connection to her old professor and friend?

She clenched her fists inside her pockets, angry at everything, angry at her city for failing to be her safe haven forever.

She knew, she just knew, that her no-thinking method couldn’t save her from herself anymore.

She broke into a run, blindly shoving at down parkas and shopping bags, and slipped underground.

When Cassidy broke into an unexpected sprint, Eric cursed and quickened his pace as fast as he could considering the foot traffic. The line at the Tube ticket window was dozens deep, and Cassidy slipped through the turnstile, likely with some sort of commuter pass. Luckily, Eric had anticipated Cassidy’s bolting from him and buying Tube tokens ahead of time was one of his preparations. The subway was sliding into the station just as Cassidy reached the platform, and with a bit of crowd-maneuvering, Eric managed to position himself behind her in the same car, where she’d have to turn her whole body around to see him. She didn’t, though she definitely appeared to have a case of nerves, judging by her white fingers gripping the metal pole and the way she brushed a stray invisible strand of hair from her eyes over and over.

Good, Eric thought with defiance. Good. He’d suffered grief for such a long time. Inciting an attack of nerves on the woman he’d loved was at least some kind of weak revenge.

He was so busy watching her, and watching the way she glided toward the door three stops later at Holborn, that he almost didn’t follow her. He leaped out at the last minute, just as a loud automated voice warned him and other passengers, “Mind the gap!” He straightened, afraid that his display of stupidity had alerted her to his presence, but she was already off and running.

They emerged, not quite together, into London’s early evening. The streets were quieter in this neighborhood, and Eric had to drop back about a block and a half to continue trailing her. The buildings had brownstone fronts with varying doors—some high-polished blond wood, some functional dark brown, some with chipping paint and tarnished knobs. They reminded Eric of Boston.

Boston. Where he should be right now, working, and not halfway around the world, chasing someone who didn’t want to be caught.

Cassidy abruptly turned and headed up the steps of a corner building. Eric quickly sidestepped into the doorway of a small Italian pastry shop. The scent of cannoli filled his nostrils as he watched her pull a pile of keys from her pocket and peer over her shoulder once before letting herself in.

Eric went into the shop and bought a cappuccino, staring out the large window at the building Cassidy had just entered. He stepped outside with his steaming cup, taking his eyes off the building’s door just every now and then to study the unfolded London street map he’d picked up at the airport. He determined he was in the Bloomsbury section of the city. He mentally drew the route he’d have to take back to his hotel. After about twenty minutes he strolled over to Cassidy’s building, sat on the top step and waited.

He wouldn’t ring for her, because it would be much too easy for Cassidy to refuse to let him in. Better for him to wait. She’d started to say she had something going on tonight. Provided it took her outside her home, he’d just surprise her on her stoop and have his little chat with her then.

She’d made it pretty clear she hadn’t intended to keep their date at seven. And it was pretty obvious that if she’d hung around late, Eric would wait at the embassy as long as necessary. He had to hand it to her. She did make the better call, leaving early. She did her best.

But Eric had been blindsided that day she’d left him forever. Today, he could keep up with her, because he had more of an idea what Cassidy was all about. And that was her misfortune.

Because he was going to talk to her.

And in the hours between when Cassidy had stalked away from him and when he followed her home, he’d tried to decide whether he was going to make her talk to him.

He’d come here for Gilbert.

And he’d come here for himself.

But Gilbert was the one in a dire situation. Eric merely wanted an explanation for a long-ago wrong. Was it right to cross-examine Cassidy about her running away if it resulted in her refusal to come back to help the embattled professor, who really needed her?

Could Eric be so selfish? Gilbert had always been a confidant and mentor, not just to him, but to so many at Saunders.

No. On that stoop, with the cold concrete chilling his butt through his suit pants, Eric made up his mind. He would talk to her about Gilbert, and only Gilbert.

She wouldn’t have to talk back. About anything. She could just pack a suitcase, and he could just escort her over the ocean back to Massachusetts. Then he’d walk away from her and go on with his life.

Yes.

He glanced at the sky and tried to discern whether the darkening was due to nightfall or rain clouds. He hoped it was the former. Europe had greeted him early this morning with a depressing, driving rain. Eric turned his head and his gaze landed on a vertical row of doorbells. He was about to idly check for Cassidy’s name when he snapped his head around to face the street again.

It hadn’t occurred to him at any point—when he’d notified his political contacts he was taking a few days off, while he packed his suitcase, during the long plane journey—that Cassidy might not live alone.

There might be a man in there, who’d been waiting for Cassidy to return home. A man she was cooking dinner with. A man she was telling about her day—leaving out the part about seeing an old not-quite-boyfriend?

Was she kissing this man, so soon after—?

Eric set his jaw. Who cared?

Ah, crap. He leaped to his feet and scanned the doorbells. It was the top one of three: C. Maxwell.

No name crammed in next to hers in the small space.

Of course, it didn’t mean she didn’t have a boyfriend who lived elsewhere. For the time being.

Okay. He sat again and the step was no warmer for his having just left it. He didn’t know about her love life, and he wouldn’t know. She certainly wouldn’t volunteer it, and he wouldn’t ask.

That kiss—why had he kissed her? With his careless spilling of emotion, he’d lost all leverage he’d had to be able to interrogate her, to finally learn the truth.

But that kiss—how could he have not kissed her? He’d tasted a memory of crayons and Play-Doh mixed with the exotic newness of her as an adult who craved a different sort of satisfaction. He couldn’t get her off his skin. Shaking her off had been a challenging, sorrowful, arduous process, and now he was back to square one.

He sat there, at square one, shaking his head, for an hour and a half.

He was still sitting when Cassidy finally emerged. She didn’t see him. She backed out of her front door, fumbling with her keys. A black trench coat was draped over her arm, implying she was in such a rush that it would be thrown on while walking quickly to wherever she was going.

She snapped open a little gold-beaded purse and dropped her keys inside. There couldn’t be room in there for much else. She turned just as Eric got to his feet on the top step. She froze, her expression a blend of nervousness and extreme pissed-off-ness. She put her hand back on the doorknob.

“No, please,” Eric said. “Please, Cassidy. I needed to talk to you. I knew you wouldn’t meet me.”

Cassidy blew out a hard breath, and her eyes narrowed. But Eric’s eyes traveled down from her face, and her warning signs became insignificant. Her body—the body he’d once hugged through a navy Saunders University sweatshirt and denim shorts—was poured into a dress that rendered him speechless. Her freckled shoulders and arms were bare except for two thin straps. Her breasts, only slightly more cream-colored than the satin gown, swelled out from a tight bodice. The dress fell from her waist in gauzy layers, cut on a diagonal so that he had an unobstructed view of one long, toned calf. Bright red toenails peeked out from complicated-looking gold sandals, the kind a Roman goddess might have worn.

He dragged his gaze back to her face, framed with sleek burnished waves. Surprise was all over that flawless face. How could that be? How could she not know that if he’d loved her girlish looks, her womanly beauty could very well strike him dead where he stood?

“Give me a break,” he said, but his words sounded, even to him, more of a desperate plea than a command. He added, “I came all the way here.”

Cassidy spoke. “So I see.”

“I mean, I came all the way to London, not all the way to your apartment. Though I did come here…I’m not stalking you.”

Cassidy hesitated, panic spreading across her features. She shivered and shrugged into her coat. Then she raised her arm and, at a volume Eric had never heard come from her throat, yelled, “Taxi!”

She started down the steps. Eric took light hold of her wrist.

“What are you doing? You can’t spare me a minute of time?”

Cassidy thought it over.

“Yeah, okay. I followed you. But I really have to talk to you and I didn’t know how else to get through to you.”

He squeezed his fingers around her skin a tiny bit, a physical entreaty.

“Hear me out. Just hear me out. You don’t have to—” He cut himself off. She was regarding him warily, but she didn’t yell for a taxi again. He let go of her wrist and dragged his hands through his hair, digging his short nails into his scalp. “You don’t have to say anything. All right? I was wrong. I was wrong to ask you anything about why you—about why you left. I was wrong to kiss you like that. I was wrong to demand anything. It doesn’t matter now. How could it matter now?”

Cassidy didn’t answer, but Eric hadn’t expected her to.

“It doesn’t. That’s not why I’m supposed to be here, it’s not why I’m supposed to talk to you. I’m here for Gilbert Harrison, and Gilbert Harrison only. Can we go somewhere? Twenty minutes, I promise. Then you can go—wherever you’re going. Unless—” shoot “—you have a date picking you up?”

Cassidy shook her head, a tiny motion that made Eric breathe a little bit easier.

“All right, then. Can we go somewhere for a drink, maybe?”

Cassidy pressed her lips together, thinking, then nodded vaguely to the other side of the street.

“After you,” Eric said.

Cassidy nodded like a queen, then took the first step, wobbling the slightest bit on what could have been four-inch heels. Eric took her arm gently, hoping her stubbornness wouldn’t make her shake it off so hard that she went sprawling onto the pavement.

She quietly allowed it.

They walked across the street and down about a half dozen doors to a pub called the Black Horse. He opened the heavy wooden door to a rowdy ruckus of football fans screaming at a TV above the bar. Eric couldn’t tell whether the noise was happiness or disappointment. It occurred to him for the first time that sports fans tended to sound the same no matter who was winning.

When Cassidy, in her open coat, swept through the door that Eric held open, a collective hush fell over the men gathered around the television. The silence was only long enough to be noted, then catcalls and whistles filled the air. Eric tried to glare at each man in turn, but ale and sports had watered down any deference they might have had to a protective escort. Cassidy clicked by them, all but oblivious, leading Eric to a table in the back corner, and as soon as she was out of their eyeballing range, the noise level shot back up.