Читать книгу Happily Never After - Kathleen O'Brien - Страница 7

TOM BECKHAM HAD A SIXTH SENSE about parties. He could predict to within about ten minutes when they were going to go bad or get ugly.

As a rule, that instinct was quite useful. He always slipped out the door just before the champagne or the conversation fell flat. He said his goodbyes five minutes before the fight broke out on the patio or the junior partner puked in the pool.

But fat lot of good that sixth sense could do him today, at this party, which was being held on a boat, about three hundred yards off the Georgia coast. Though his instincts were definitely telling him to get the hell out of here, he couldn’t really do anything about it.

He glanced over the side of the seventy-five-foot yacht, where the Atlantic was sparkling under the cold September sun like a million sequin-tipped knifepoints. Swimming was out of the question, he supposed.

But if things kept deteriorating—and the ratio of guests to alcohol indicated it would—he just might consider it.

“Tom!” A hand grabbed Tom’s forearm so hard he spilled his drink, which, now that the ice had melted, was filled to overflowing. Watered-down scotch mapped cool trails down his hand. “You’re not thinking of jumping overboard, are you? The Smythe case couldn’t have bothered you that much. Everybody loses now and then.”

Shaking scotch from his hand, Tom turned with a smile. Bailey Ormonde, senior partner and head estate-planning attorney in Tom’s law firm, always talked too loudly and shook hands too firmly as a way of compensating for being about five-three. But he wasn’t at heart a bad guy.

“If I jump, it won’t be because of Smythe,” Tom said. “I didn’t lose that case—justice won. The guy had a second set of financial records hidden in his underwear drawer, for God’s sake. It took them about five minutes to find it.”

“What a moron.” Bailey snorted. “Still, this is the second time you’ve mentioned Justice, capital J, in the past week. Not a good thing in our favorite civil litigator. I’m starting to worry about you, pal. What’s the matter?”

Trust Bailey to home in on the real issue. Lawyers in the elite firm of Ormonde, White and Murray weren’t supposed to value Justice over Victory. Justice was a malleable concept. It was whatever you wanted it to be. Victory, on the other hand, was absolute. In the lofty heavens of their penthouse world, the Client was God, and the Blind Lady was either supposed to join the choir or get out of the way.

Tom had understood that when he’d joined the firm ten years ago. He understood it still. So what was the matter with him? Midlife crisis? A little early for that, at only thirty-five. Professional burnout? Ditto on that.

Too soon to grow a conscience, as well—his portfolio wasn’t anywhere nearly big enough yet.

Nope, too early for any of that. So why, in some deep, unspoken place, did he sometimes have the feeling it might be a great deal too late?

But this wasn’t the time for soul-searching, and Bailey was no Freud anyhow. So instead of answering, Tom sipped at his drink and squinted at the cluster of guests near the starboard railing. Such beautiful people, bronzed by expensive machines, and then gilded by the sunlight until they looked like golden statues from the lobby of some fin de siècle opera house.

Bailey was too smart to push it. He knew that, in his way, he’d put Tom on notice, and he trusted Tom to read between the lines.

“So where is your gorgeous lady friend?” Bailey raised one eyebrow. “I hope you haven’t let Coach O’Toole get his hands on her.”

Tom scanned the crowd. Darlene was undoubtedly in there somewhere, though she had arrived on her own, as she’d been running late this morning.

Yep, there she was. Bailey wasn’t exaggerating. She was gorgeous. She stood in a nimbus of sunlight, one hand at her breast and the other lightly curved just at the apex of her thighs, looking for all the world like a Botticelli Venus—not a coincidence, Tom felt sure. Her dress was virginal white, but so filmy and formfitting she looked as if she’d been dipped in milk and set out to be licked clean.

Tom waited for the appreciative twitch to register in his groin, but it didn’t come. Poor Darlene. Not even a twitch, where once there had been earthquakes.

She had no idea, but their clock had just struck midnight. Her magic had run out.

Frankly, he hadn’t even wanted her to come today. She’d begun vigorously working the crowd at these events, smiling her heart out while she talked him up. It annoyed him. It looked like an audition for the role of trophy wife.

“You’re a lucky devil, Beckham,” Bailey said, shaking his head and making a noise that, if he hadn’t been the senior partner, would have been smacking his lips. “When does her lease expire? You always trade ’em in after a year, right? Any chance she thinks short guys are hot?”

Tom wondered if his thoughts about Darlene had registered on his face. He rearranged his features. “Women don’t care if you’re small as long as you’ve got a great big—” he grinned “—credit limit. In that department, you’ve got everyone on this boat whipped. Even Coach O’Toole, in spite of that ridiculous bonus the alums have just added to his paycheck.”

Bailey eyed Mick O’Toole, the head coach for the Midwest Georgia University football team, who stood talking to his host, the most arrogant MGU alum of them all, Trent Saroyan. Saroyan owned the boat, and it might be successfully argued that he owned O’Toole, too.

He’d thrown the party today to celebrate a strong 2–0 start for O’Toole’s second season as MGU head coach. The Spitfires had had a 15–2 season last year, almost making it to the National Championship game. The party, the yacht and the bonus were just the alum’s polite way of saying that this year it had better be the gold ring.

“You think he knows he’s going to get shitcanned if he loses even one game this season?” Bailey’s shrewd eyes held a hint of pity. But just a hint. Their firm represented Trent Saroyan, the yachtsman and check-writer, not the coach.

“Nope,” Tom said. “Look at him. He’s still naive enough to think he can get loud with the boosters.”

Oh, hell. That must be what had activated his sixth sense. Mick O’Toole and Trent Saroyan were standing too close together, and their voices were rising, developing sharp edges. They were arguing about O’Toole’s choice of starting quarterback.

“Crap,” Bailey said. “I’d better try to do something about that.” He dropped his cocktail glass on the mahogany bar and departed.

Not a moment too soon, either. Saroyan held a shot glass in his right hand, but his index finger was extended, and he’d begun to jab it toward O’Toole’s left shoulder, which was a very bad sign.

And here came another one. Apparently noticing that Tom was alone, Darlene began murmuring and air-kissing her way out of her crowd and gliding back over toward him. Her smile didn’t look right. Shit. What had he done now? Had he violated the twenty-minute rule? That was about how long she could take being ignored without getting snitty.

Tom glanced at the water again and wondered how many degrees it was. If only he weren’t wearing his most comfortable old cords, he might actually do it. Between Darlene and O’Toole, this party was going down.

“Hey,” Darlene said, making the word two warm syllables with honey on top. Darlene’s body might be Botticelli, but her voice was pure Gone with the Wind. Still, her smile didn’t look right.

“Hey, there,” he responded carefully. He wondered if it was possible she’d heard Bailey’s comment about her lease expiring. Like all good old boys, Bailey did tend to boom a bit.

But would that be so terrible? Tom was going to have to end it soon anyhow. He didn’t want a trophy wife. He didn’t want a wife period.

Ten years ago, after the…fiasco…he’d decided his life needed some strict ground rules. He had no intentions of living as a monk, all hair shirts and no sex, but he did try to keep all his relationships clean and sweet and mutually satisfying. He’d been pretty successful, so far. That sixth sense about parties applied to love affairs, too, ordinarily.

“I stopped by the apartment on my way over here,” she said.

He tried not to react to her word choice. The apartment, she said these days. Not your apartment. It was just one step short of our apartment, and it was a big mistake, though she obviously didn’t know it.

“I got Otis to let me in,” she added casually.

He wasn’t sure why that shocked him so much. Otis was the seventy-year-old doorman, and he was drooling in love with Darlene. Otis would probably agree to let her into any apartment in the building, even if she were carrying a metal detector and a large black sack.

Tom supposed he was shocked that Darlene would take advantage of the nice old guy like that. Whatever the reason, his smile felt tight.

“And why did you do that?”

“I’d left my driver’s license next to the sofa,” she said, and he had to admit she told the lie beautifully. “Anyhow, I also picked up the mail for you. I knew you’d been waiting for that transcript.”

“Really. Was it there?”

“No.” She lifted her gold clutch and opened it deftly. “But this was.”

She held out a small pink envelope. Immediately he caught the cloying scent of gardenias.

Damn it to hell. He had hoped he’d never see another one of these. But even if he had to, he wasn’t supposed to get it yet. Not for another week.

Could it possibly be a coincidence?

But he knew it wasn’t.

He knew it was Sophie.

As always, he felt his lungs tightening, as if they wanted to reject the sickeningly sweet smell. Or was he just trying to reject the idea that Sophie had sent him another “anniversary” card? Every year he told himself that surely this would be the last. She’d forget, she’d lose interest, her therapists would finally convince her that it did no good, especially since he never responded.

It had been ten years now. Ten years since he’d walked out of a church filled with these poisonously sweet white flowers. Ten years since he’d walked out on Sophie.

But she’d never forgotten. And she clearly intended to make sure that he didn’t, either. Which was fairly ironic, actually.

Darlene pushed the card forward a fraction of an inch, and he realized he needed to do something. He held out his hand calmly and took it. He flipped it over, glanced at the return address just to be sure the gardenia smell hadn’t tricked him, then flipped it back to see whether Sophie had addressed his name the usual way, with a small heart where the O in Tom should be.

She had.

No wonder Darlene’s smile looked so tight and thin.

“Well?” She snapped her little gold clutch shut sharply.

“Well, what?” He slipped the envelope into his wind-breaker pocket, patted it to be sure it was secure, then zipped up his jacket against the fresh, high wind that hinted at a squall before sunset.

Darlene paused, her mouth half-open. She obviously knew the next few moments were dangerous and was looking for the right words.

“It’s really too cold for a boat party, don’t you think?” He hunched his shoulders. “But I guess Saroyan couldn’t wait till spring to show off his new baby.”

In his head Tom begged Darlene to be very careful, to take the conversational fire exit he was offering. He didn’t like being cornered, and she’d gone too far when she’d pawed through his mail. And he damn sure didn’t want to talk to her about Sophie.

If she forced him to do this now, he might say things he’d regret.

She wasn’t great at reading his thoughts, though, and he knew his face revealed only a tilted smile and a slightly sarcastic arch to one brow. It was an expression he’d perfected over the last decade.

The arched brow probably tipped her over the edge. Darlene had odd moments of self-respect, and though she might let a man cheat on her, she wouldn’t stand for being mocked.

“Who exactly,” she demanded, “is this Sophie Mellon?”

What a stupid question. What did it matter? When a love affair was over, did it make any difference exactly what, or who, had killed it?

When he didn’t answer, Darlene’s jaw tightened. “So far I know this much. She writes your name like a lovesick adolescent, and she soaks her cards in cheap perfume. Things haven’t been right between us lately, Tom. Is this why? Is she someone I should worry about? Or is she just a—”

A what? Darlene seemed to understand she’d gone too far, but the echo of the unspoken thought seemed to hang in the air between them. What word had she been going to say?

And what was the right word, anyhow? What was Sophie? Slut? Stalker? Psycho? Maybe all those labels applied. And many more, as well.

Maybe the best word was cursed. Poor beautiful, tormented Sophie was cursed, and still she signed his name with a heart.

Suddenly Tom realized he was furious. If Darlene insisted on doing this right here, right now, he was ready. He felt his smile tilt another inch. It probably looked like a smirk by now. He didn’t give a damn about that, either.

“Sophie Mellon is the woman I almost married.”

“What?” Darlene’s eyebrows knitted hard. “Married? When?”

“Ten years ago.”

She shook her head, looking confused and slightly annoyed. She looked, he thought, like an infant rejecting an unappetizing spoonful of strained peas. “But surely…” She took a breath. “If that’s true, why—why didn’t you ever tell me about it?”

“It wasn’t important.”

Her chin went up. “Wasn’t important?”

He shrugged. “Not to you.”

That was rough. Two circles of hot pink broke out on her skin. But her chin didn’t waver. She was a strong woman, and a distant part of Tom admired her. Maybe she was strong enough that, someday soon, she’d thank him for setting her free.

“When you say you almost married her… What does almost mean? How close did you come?”

“Close enough to hear the wedding bells at my back as I drove out of town.”

“My God. You mean you left her waiting at the altar?”

“No,” he said, still smiling. “Technically, that’s what jilted grooms do. I believe the bride waits in an anteroom off to the side until her husband-to-be shows up and takes his place.”

She hesitated. “But you didn’t. Show up, I mean.”

“No.”

The pink cheeks had faded, leaving behind an ivory pall of shock. It was finally sinking in. Her gaze scoured his face, as if she wondered where her charming Tom had gone.

He wouldn’t be receiving cards from this one for the next decade, that was sure. Good. One tearstained ghost, annually rattling the rusty chains of his ruined conscience, was enough for any man.

She swallowed. “But why? Why didn’t you go through with it?”

For the first time, he hesitated, too.

“Let’s just say…I decided I’d make a rotten husband.”

Amazingly, she balked at that. She wasn’t ready to let go of all her illusions—or her plans.

“Oh, Tom,” she said, reaching out with gentling fingers. “Honey. Don’t say—”

He backed up a quarter of an inch and restored his tilted, insulting smile. “Why not? It’s true—I’m not good husband material. I think I knew that the night I almost screwed her bridesmaid.”

A gasp. And then, as if by instinct, she reared back and slapped him.

It would have caused quite a stir, except that, at the exact same moment, Trent Saroyan shoved Coach O’Toole over the yacht’s elegant teak railing and into the Atlantic Ocean and, as Tom had predicted, all hell broke loose at the party.

THOUGH IT WAS ONLY about eleven-thirty, the darkness out here in the rural Georgia woods was cool, deep and damp, the kind of night that predicted pea-soup fog in the morning.

Kelly stood at her worktable, so absorbed in cutting a very expensive sheet of purple drapery glass that she listened to the muffled twig-cracking sound several seconds before she realized it was the wrong sound at the wrong time. Most of the little animals that shared these woods with her went to bed early—and few of them were capable of producing such big noises anyhow.

Carefully she put down the glass cutter and listened. The sounds continued, quite close now.

It was probably nothing. Maybe something bigger than usual, like a deer, had wandered into her yard.

Still, a shiver of fear shimmied through her.

She stared at the studio window. She couldn’t see anything, of course. Nothing but her own reflection. The old, warped glass distorted a lot, but she still saw a skinny, scruffy redhead with a sad, wide-eyed face.

A sudden heavy, muffled thud came from just beyond the back door.

What was wrong with her? She couldn’t just stand here, frozen. When she’d bought this old place for her stained-glass studio three months ago, her ex-husband Brian had warned that she’d be a nervous wreck way out here with no neighbors. She hadn’t been, though. She’d done fine until two nights ago, when Lily had…

When Lily had died.

In the long, painful forty-eight hours since then, Kelly had been reduced to a mass of singing nerves and emotional confusion. Tears were never more than one thought away. And fear, too. Not active terror, but a shadowy sense that the world was not benign, or even neutral, but was instead somehow malignant, just waiting for you to make a mistake it could exploit.

Like Lily, who’d rushed through life and had never wanted to stop for boring maintenance chores, like putting brake fluid in an aging car.

Or like Kelly, working alone late at night in a falling-down studio with no locks on the doors.

The doctor who’d seen Kelly that night had assured her this reaction would be quite normal. He had prescribed sleeping pills, which she didn’t take, because they seemed to open the floodgate to dreams. She turned to her work instead. She had several commissions to complete in the next weeks, and besides, the precision and focus required calmed her. The careful piecing together of small, seemingly random shapes, which came together to create a coherent whole, comforted her. Stained glass, she realized, was a pretty good analogy for life.

It had only been two days, she reminded herself. The funeral wasn’t even scheduled until the day after tomorrow. Eventually, she’d find her equilibrium again. For now, she just had to force herself to pretend a courage she didn’t really possess.

Though she’d been cutting without her work gloves on—one of her habitual sins—she quietly reached over, opened her drawer and slid her right hand into the soft, protective leather.

Then she picked up the freshly bisected sheet of glass, which came to a lethal point at the tip, and walked to the back of the studio.

She adjusted her grip on the glass. Her heart was beating so hard she could feel her pulse in her fingertips. Slowly, she opened the door….

And found herself looking into the shining black-marble eyes of a raccoon, who had somehow managed to climb to the very top of her three-tiered plant stand and was trying to reach the bird feeder that hung from the soffit.

The poor thing looked mortified, just as frozen into his awkward position as she had been moments earlier. He was huge, with a fat, sprawling belly that suggested this wasn’t his first late-night raid. The long gray streamer of moss that dangled from his ear proved he had tried other approaches first.

One of the branches of the nearest oak came within six feet of the bird feeder. That must have been the thud she’d heard. The little scavenger had jumped and missed.

His stricken gaze seemed to be asking her to pretend she didn’t see him. Smiling a little, she turned her head away. She wasn’t even sure raccoons ate seeds, but if he wanted them that badly, he could have them. She could refill the feeder for the birds in the morning.

It was time to go to bed. She put her hand on the doorknob.

Someone touched her shoulder.

Electric currents of panic shot, primal and unwilled, through every vein. Her right arm came up.

“Kelly?”

“Jacob?” The sudden withdrawal of adrenaline left her limbs weak. With a loud exhale, she slumped against the door, just under the bare bulb that served as an entry light.

“God, Jacob,” she breathed.

Thankfully she’d recognized the voice before she’d had time to slash out with the glass. As it was, she had already raised it to breast level.

Jacob Griggs, Lillith’s husband, looked down at her makeshift weapon, but it didn’t seem to frighten him. He seemed beyond caring that he’d come within six inches of being impaled on a dagger of cut glass.

“I scared you,” he said heavily. He looked up at her. “I’m sorry.”

He looked horrible. His face was gray, but his eyes were small and red-rimmed inside puffy circles of grief. His hair, normally so thick and shiny Lillith had rarely been able to keep her fingers out of it, seemed to have dulled and thinned almost overnight.

“It’s okay,” Kelly said. She took his arm, and realized it was shaking. Two days ago, Jacob had been a thirty-five-year-old lawyer who jogged and played racquetball and danced and gave great parties, and generally made every woman in Cathedral Cove jealous of Lillith. In forty-eight hours, he had turned into an old man.

But what was he doing here at nearly midnight? She looked into those eyes again and wondered if he even knew where he was.

“Jacob, do you want to come in?”

He just stared at her.

She squeezed his hand. “Did you need to talk?”

To her horror, he began to cry. His face twisted with the agony of trying to hold it back. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“It’s okay,” she said. She put her arm around his waist, though he was a full five inches taller. She wasn’t sure he wouldn’t collapse.

He was still repeating the same broken words. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he moaned.

“What is it? What don’t you know, Jacob?”

He shook his head, back and forth, back and forth.

“I don’t know anything,” he said. His lips were dripping with tears. Finally he groaned and bent over double, his hands on his knees, like a runner pushed beyond endurance. “I don’t know how to live without her.”