Читать книгу The Single Life - Liz Wood - Страница 12

What was Clare going to do?

In fifteen minutes, Anton Muller was going to walk through that door with a file under his arm and questions in his eye. Questions? She would be lucky if there were just questions. More like accusations, recriminations, condemnations.

No matter. He could hardly have more than she did. For several days now, she had been reminding herself of everything she had done wrong. And when she was done, she had begun all over again. She had acted like an out-of-control twenty-year-old.

Clare closed her eyes tightly, hoping the waves of embarrassment and regret would wash away. They didn’t. This problem was much harder to fix than her Saturday-morning hangover.

Breathe deep. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Good. Now think, calmly, rationally, the way you do when preparing a brief. The way you do in court. Just think.

Think? How was she going to sit next to Anton, calmly discussing depositions, custody feuds and marital settlement agreements? Could she look him in the face and not remember that he had seen her drunk? Could she sit next to him and forget what it had been like to be held in his arms? Could she hand him the file and ignore that her whole body had ached for him? Was still aching for him.

Fool. Idiot. Behaving like a lovesick teenager.

No wonder there were rules! Thou shalt not get drunk with thy colleague. Thou shalt not covet thy colleague. Even when his face is a fraction of an inch away from yours and his aftershave fills your nose. Even when his arms are wrapped around you. Even when he covets you, too.

No. Forget that. Anton didn’t covet her. She was all the more the fool if she thought that the case. And even if he did, she was at fault here. She and she alone. Anton had just been kind and helpful and supportive, as always. The way he had been when he had put her in a cab and sent her home.

Drunk. Humiliated. Mortified.

Why had she ignored the rules? Why now? Why with Anton?

What if the office gossips got hold of this! Clare could already hear the whispers. She could see the smirking looks. She could feel the accusatory labels. She couldn’t let it happen. Ever.

There was an easy way to do it. What Bailey Senior had done with Jenny What’s-Her-Name. Pull Anton off all the cases they worked together. Ignore him. Stonewall him into leaving the firm if necessary. Make him pay for her hormones and her absent self-control. She could do that.

No. No. No. She couldn’t do that. She was responsible for what happened—for what almost happened. She would have to deal with it. She would have to talk to him. Then, they could bury it together. Forever.

Lauren lifted the spoon from the counter and plunged it into the sugar bowl. She then transferred the bowl to the far end of the shelf, placing it next to the other condiments. She fiddled with the other containers, alphabetizing and aligning them into neat and orderly rows.

Some might call her obsessive, but after thirty years of running her own house she knew exactly what it should look like because she knew exactly where everything should be. Her husband and her children had respected that. Why couldn’t Helen do the same?

Ever since the young woman had moved in a week ago, Lauren had done nothing but tidy up and set things straight. Helen didn’t have any eye for the order that Lauren had established in her house, the order she liked to keep. How had Chrissie managed to live with Helen? But then Chrissie hadn’t always been too keen about her mother’s rigid housekeeping. No wonder the two girls had roomed together for so long.

With a sigh, Lauren picked up the dishcloth Helen had left on the table and placed it on the rack. She didn’t think she would be able to continue with this living arrangement much longer. She wasn’t ready to do a remake of The Odd Couple.

It didn’t matter that Helen had said she would stick to Chrissie’s room. She had to cook and to eat and to bathe. To do that, she had to venture into other parts of the house. The parts Lauren thought of as “hers,” but which were rapidly becoming Helen’s.

Of course, Helen didn’t realize what she was doing when she forgot to return the spoon to the sugar bowl or left the kitchen tap running, or stomped mud on the porch instead of on the mat.

They were little things, irrelevant things. But they irritated Lauren all the more because she couldn’t complain about them. Who could she complain to, anyway? Helen would certainly apologize and then she would forget what she had done. Chrissie would snort and tell her mother to get on with it, just as she had done when Lauren had confronted her about Helen’s surprise arrival.

“It’s for your own good,” she had said.

“You seem to be forgetting who you are talking to, Chrissie. I’m the mother in this relationship. I watch out for your good. Not the other way round.”

“We already tried that. Now it’s my turn. Oh, and Mom, what’s this about a haircut?”

“Alice and I decided to try something new,” Lauren began only to realize what her daughter was up to. “But Chrissie—”

“Helen says it looks nice.”

“Chrissie—”

“Oh, come on, Mom. She needs a place to stay, you need some money.”

“I don’t need strangers in the house.”

“She’s not a stranger. She’s almost family.”

“Not family, Chrissie. She’s a friend.”

“A very dear friend. Practically a sister. Surely you can adopt her for a while? After Jeff and me, it shouldn’t be that big a deal.”

Actually, it was a big deal. It was hard enough for Lauren to take care of herself. How could she take on Helen as well? But Lauren let it go. At least it was for a good cause. The rent money would buy her a little more time with the house.

Anton knocked on the door and entered without waiting. Clare joined him at the table and pulled the file he had placed there toward her. She tapped her fingers against it, but didn’t open it. Instead she forced herself to look straight into his mesmerizing deep blue eyes.

“Anton,” she said, stretching as tall as she could, trying to be as imposing as her five feet seven inch height would allow. “About what happened the other night… I just… I just wanted to say thank-you. For getting me a cab, I mean.”