Читать книгу Scandal - Julie Kistler, Julie Kistler - Страница 9

How to Be a Scandalous Woman, Rule 3:

There are times you have to draw a line in the sand. Any crab that crosses? Dead.

“H I THERE ,” Jordan managed, doing her best not to sound flustered or guilty in front of Daniel. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d already left for San Francisco.”

“San Diego.”

“Right. San Diego. I meant San Diego.” How lame was it not to know where your boyfriend was taking off to for a week? Okay, so she was too busy cheating on him in her dreams to notice where he was going. Not exactly a good excuse. “Sorry. But I thought you’d already left.”

He stood there on the other side of her desk, holding a briefcase in one hand, shifting from one foot to the other. “I canceled my trip.”

“The whole thing?”

That was surprising. Daniel never canceled anything, especially not a trip like this, where he was combining a conference with a job interview. Unlike her, with her never-ending dissertation, Daniel had already finished up his PhD in economics, and now he was scoping out the best job prospects at the best universities in his usual precise and methodical way.

Looking him over, Jordan asked, “Are you okay? You’re not sick or anything, are you?”

“No, no. I’m fine. I just had a change of plans.”

“That’s…not like you.”

“I don’t need to go.” He gave her a small smile. “I just heard from Princeton. I’m in.”

“In? You mean they offered you a position? At Princeton?”

He nodded, his smile still firmly in place.

“Daniel, that’s amazing. Wow. When did this happen?”

“I got the call this morning.”

She blinked. “And this is the first you’re telling me?”

He lifted his narrow shoulders in a half-shrug. “I needed to get my thoughts in order, come up with a plan.” Propping the briefcase on the edge of her desk, he flipped it open and rustled around inside. “This will mean a lot of changes for both of us.”

“So…that means you said yes?” she asked slowly.

“Of course I said yes. They were my first choice.”

“Well, of course, but…” But it involved her, too. In ways she didn’t even want to think about. She put that aside for the time being. “Maybe we should, you know, celebrate.” She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. Leap over her desk and hug him? Pick up the phone and get some champagne delivered? Daniel didn’t seem all that excited, though. More…determined. Which was odd.

“I’d rather get things squared away first.” He pulled a sheaf of papers out of his briefcase, reaching over the laptop to hand her the top sheet. “This is the schedule I came up with. I thought we could go over it together.”

Princeton, changes, schedules, all pondered, decided upon, and neatly typed up and printed out, without even consulting her. Jordan felt her hackles begin to rise as she glanced down at the paper.

“You’ll see,” he went on, “that item one is me moving out there, item two is finding a place for us to live, and item three is the wedding. Something small, just the two of us and maybe my parents, is probably best. We could do it after we get to New Jersey, since that’s so close to where my parents are. You wouldn’t need yours there, would you?”

She glanced up from his list. “What? I’m sorry. What are we talking about?”

“Your parents. Our wedding. I didn’t think you’d want them there. I mean, no offense, but they’re sort of problematic.” Daniel grimaced. “They haven’t laid eyes on each other in twenty years, have they? And your father’s new family with Stacey…What’s the total? Four kids under five?”

He was waiting for an answer, but she was still way behind in this conversation, back where he’d said, Item three is the wedding …. “I’m sorry, but I’m lost.”

“Your dad,” he prompted. “Stacey. Four kids under five.”

Jordan lifted a hand to her head, mumbling a response on automatic pilot. “Not Stacey. Michelle. Stacey was his second wife. Then Tracy. Michelle is the new one.”

“Right. The thing is, both your parents are, well, kind of nutty,” he told her. “Your mother would probably want to write us some erotic Ode to Fertility or something, and your dad would bring his new wife who’s younger than you are, not to mention their passel of toddlers, and my parents would go through the roof. They have very specific ideas about what my wedding should entail.”

She was well aware that Daniel didn’t like her parents. They didn’t like him, either. Or each other, for that matter. They hadn’t been married very long—actually, no one was sure if they’d bothered to get married at all—and they were crazy, unconventional and high maintenance in all the ways she wasn’t and Daniel certainly wasn’t. But still…Moving to New Jersey and dealing with his parents and—

A wedding? Was he insane?

“I don’t mind postponing a honeymoon till later, do you?” Daniel rolled on. “I put that down as item twelve, if you want to look ahead on the schedule.”

She frowned. “Daniel, I need you to stop. This is…impossible! I can’t do it.”

He didn’t look pleased, but he did pause at least. Finally, he asked, “Which parts?”

“All of it!”

“Why?”

“Because…” She leaned forward to push her stomach into her drawer, just to make sure it clicked shut with Nick’s pictures inside. “Because I’m not ready. I’m teaching a class this semester. And I’m not finished with my thesis. You know all of that. I’m not at a place where I can leave Chicago, let alone think about weddings.”

He sent a pointed glance at the jumble of notebooks and folders on her desk. “Maybe it’s past time you cut your losses and moved on.”

“Cut my losses?”

“Maybe you should find another dissertation topic,” he said coolly.

“Dump my dissertation? Are you kidding?” First he blindsided her with this marriage stuff, and then he went totally off the deep end. “I’ve worked my butt off to get this far. And what I have is really good material. I’m not going to abandon it.”

He shook his head. “You still don’t have an ending, do you?”

No, she didn’t have an ending, which he very well knew. But that didn’t mean she was going to give up.

After a long pause, Daniel added, “I’ve been as patient as I can. But we had a plan, an agreement. I’m on schedule. You’re not.”

Jordan already knew the rest of it. If you don’t finish your dissertation, we can’t move on to the next step of the life we’ve so carefully planned…. Remember, full professor by forty…

It was the mantra he lived by, not just for himself, but for the two of them. Daniel wanted them to be the perfect faculty couple, brilliant in their own fields, moving toward the top of the academic ladder faster than anybody else. She’d thought that was what she wanted, too.

At some point, however, the whole idea had become suffocating. She thought of the scandalous women she’d studied and taught about. They would’ve laughed at a “full professor by forty” decree.

“Maybe I’m sick to death of living my life by a schedule,” she began, thinking things through as she spoke. It was a radical idea for her, not to have a plan set down, but this whole freedom and spontaneity thing was starting to sound really good.

Daniel just regarded her balefully.

“Maybe it’s time to rip up the schedules and throw away the rulebook,” Jordan said with more conviction than she felt. “Maybe it’s time for me to do what I want to do.”

“When have you ever done anything else?” Daniel scoffed. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Jordan. Really, I don’t. I didn’t want to say anything, but, well, you’ve been acting strange for months. I’ve been trying to plan ahead for this new phase of my life, all the while wondering why my fiancée is dragging her heels.”

“I’m not dragging my heels. I’m just…” What? What could she possibly say to explain why she didn’t want to marry him now? And maybe not later. Because there was clearly something wrong with their relationship if the sex was way hotter with her dream lover than with her real one? “I have to point out that I’m not technically your fiancée. We agreed that we wouldn’t talk about marriage again until I was done.”

“But you may never be done.”

“I will finish, Daniel. You know I will.” She stopped, not sure what to say. “I love this project. Is it so wrong to hold out for the perfect ending?”

“I don’t think this has anything to do with the ending,” Daniel retorted. He turned away, muttering, “That’s a symptom, not a cause.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that yes, you’re a perfectionist. So am I. But…” He spun back to face her, pinning her with his gaze. “You know as well as I do that there are a million ways to finish the damn thing whether or not you know where the twit disappeared to. Hypothesize that she fell off a cliff or ran away to Mexico or her family got tired of her acting out and stuck her in a loony bin or sent her to a nunnery. Go with one, argue it and be done with it. See? Problem solved.”

“I can’t even believe you’re saying this!” She stood up, pacing back and forth in the small area behind her desk. Who did he think he was, ordering her around? And calling Isabella a twit? The two of them prided themselves on never arguing, but this seemed like a perfect time to start. “Actually, I do believe it. You never did respect anything except your own field. As if economics is next to godliness. Ha! Heaven forbid anybody else care about their own work.”

He looked shocked. He wasn’t used to being insulted. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

“Numbers aren’t everything, you know,” she said angrily. “I happen to think that Isabella and her arch say something very important about women and sexuality. I argue in my thesis that she was the first mainstream female artist to give women orgasms. Did you know that? Huh?”

His sneer was very unattractive. “And you really think that’s an appropriate topic for a real scholar?”

“Absolutely. Just because you’re not interested in whether Victorian women were completely repressed sexually and even denied the right to their own orgasms—”

“Oh, please!” he interrupted. “We both know the reason you’re not finished has nothing to do with Isabella or her pornographic arch or the repressed orgasms of Victorian women.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means…” His eyes narrowed. “It means that you’ll never find the right ending. Because you don’t want to.”

“Why? Why would I not want to?”

“Because that would mean being done with him .”

The word him hung there in the air between them for a long moment. Jordan started, stopped, and started again. Finally, she hedged with, “Him who?”

“You know who! The brother. You’re obsessed with the brother.”

She backed away from her desk, shaking her head. Did he know? About her dreams? No, he couldn’t. Keeping her dignity, she declared, “My only interest in him is because he’s important to the project and hopefully to finishing the project.”

“Why?” he snapped. “Do you think he had something to do with her disappearance? What’d he do, kill her?”

“Are you kidding? Of course he didn’t kill her. Nick would never have murdered his sister!” But she broke off when she saw Daniel’s triumphant expression.

“You are completely obsessed,” he declared. He came around her desk, grabbed her laptop and spun it toward both of them. “See? You can’t deny it. He’s your freaking screensaver!”

There it was, Nick’s face, photoshopped from the picture with the car. Smiling, full of life, absolutely gorgeous…She gazed down at him. Nick…

“Jordan!”

She jerked back to real life. “Okay, yes, of course that’s him, but—”

“Don’t bother,” he said flatly. “You’ve been distracted for months. Drooling over his damn picture for months. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were spending all your days writing ‘Mrs. Nicholas Tempest’ and ‘I Love Nick T’ over and over in your spiral notebooks.”

Her mouth dropped open. “I don’t have any spiral notebooks.”

“I’m not stupid, Jordan. Or blind.”

She sat down in her chair with a thump, edging her laptop back to face her, then rolling the trackball so the screensaver would disappear. Too little, too late.

“I thought we were on the same page,” Daniel argued. “I thought we were so much alike. Both mature, responsible adults, crossing our t’s, dotting our i’s, getting the job done, making each other proud. But ever since you started this whole scandalous women kick…” He shook his head in disgust. “I just don’t understand why you ever got into it in the first place. You could’ve studied Lincoln’s boyhood or George Washington’s teeth like everybody else. You just don’t fit this scandalous women thing. You are the least scandalous person I’ve ever met.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that. Somehow, it didn’t seem like a compliment. Stubbornly, she avoided the whole subject, insisting, “I’m not giving up now. I just can’t. I need to know what happened to Isabella before I write the end.”

“And if you never find out? What then?” Reaching once more into the briefcase, Daniel pulled out a glossy trifold brochure, slapping it down on her desk, next to her hand. “This was stuck to your door. It looks right up your alley. Maybe you can even take your class to it. Looks like a real magnet for ridiculous, sex-crazed women.” And then he smacked his case closed and made a move for the door.

“You’re leaving?” She couldn’t believe he was pushing some silly ad for a campus film fest or rock concert into the middle of their first argument and then just walking out.

“I have things to do. Plans to make.” Daniel sent her one last quick look. “Push has come to shove, Jordan. I’m moving to New Jersey. You’re going to have to decide what you want.”

“I know what I want. And it’s not moving to New Jersey!”

But he was already out the door and stomping down the hall. Damn him, anyway. Was it so wrong to want to finish up her beloved project before deciding what to do with the rest of her life?

“I am not dragging my heels!” she announced to the empty room. “I’m just linear, that’s all. I want to finish this before thinking about that .”

Liar, liar, pants on fire, mocked a little voice inside. She ignored it.

“I am furious with you, Daniel,” she shouted, even though he was long gone. “You’re trying to make me sound like some irresponsible, juvenile, swooning nutcase, and I totally reject that. And I reject you! ”

Jordan Albright, irresponsible or juvenile? Not likely. She’d been valedictorian of her high school class. Her undergraduate degree came summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Everybody knew she was someone who could be counted on, who came through, who sweated the details and produced great work on time every time. Well, she saw through Daniel’s transparent attempt to bulldoze her into planning a wedding and leaving Chicago. So unfair. It was all because he was jealous of the attention she paid to Isabella and the arch. And Nick.

Okay, so probably the fact that he was jealous of Nick wasn’t so unreasonable, considering the steam factor of those dreams and the level of her obsession. But still…

Fuming, she glanced down at the brochure he’d left behind, noting the words “Sex Through the Ages” and “Now in Chicago!” swirling over an illustration of two marble lovers tangled in an intimate embrace. Hmm…

Not the normal college promo piece, that was for sure. Sex Through the Ages? What did that mean? Some kind of art exhibit, apparently.

Maybe she should go. At least it would get her out of the office and she wouldn’t have to think about Daniel and his outrageous insults anymore. Besides, the picture on the cover was reminiscent of some of Isabella’s work.

Jordan always followed up on any exhibit, any museum show that had anything remotely like Isabella’s work. You never knew when you might stumble over a small statue or a sketch. In fact, she had a piece of sculpture, a man’s hand, sitting in her living room at home. She felt sure the object was Isabella’s handiwork, even if she hadn’t exactly proved it yet. There was just something about the power and the passion in those elegant fingers that cried “Isabella Tempest” to her.

Although “Sex Through the Ages” sounded like a theme Isabella’s sculptures would fit, a lot of late Victorian artists had worked with nudes, and the chances that this show had anything of Isabella’s weren’t good. “Highly unlikely,” she reminded herself as she peered at the pamphlet.

“‘Many periods and cultures,’” Jordan read aloud off the front. “‘Lingerie, lacing and leather. Fertility icons and totems. Erotic paintings, drawings, pottery and sculpture.’”

She scanned the rest of the flyer, looking for any details about the specific sculpture in the exhibit, about ninety percent sure there wouldn’t be anything of interest to her. Maybe more details on Victorian nudes, but she already had plenty of sources on that, so…

“Wait a minute,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”

But it was.

There, on the inside panel of the tri-fold brochure, was a small picture of an arch.

An arch just like Isabella’s.