“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
There was a tall, older man waiting for them by the door with a clipboard.
“Good evening. May I get your name?”
“Natalie Greene. And one guest.”
He took a few seconds to scan the paper. “Welcome, Ms. Greene. Dr. Lambert encourages you to make yourself at home. If you have any questions or require assistance, please let one of the staff know. We’ll be more than happy to assist you.”
Natalie smiled as Brandon led her passed him. “Thank you.”
Her husband held her closer than he had in quite some time. “Dr. Lambert sure does go all out, doesn’t he? What sort of fundraiser is this, anyway?”
Natalie bounced her shoulders, stroking her thumb against the inside of his palm for comfort. “I’m not sure. Something dealing with children. I’m not sure if they’re sick or…”
“That’s specific.”
“All I know is that the man talks a lot. And when he talks you’re supposed to listen.”
“I still think it’s worth it to tell him about your medical experience. You were pretty intuitive. Are they serving food at this thing?”
“I don’t know. We got in for free. Intuition is only as fruitful as your degree is.”
“Hmph. Sounds like Helen Chandler talking.”
“I just made it up just now. Seemed to suit the purpose of the conversation. I am kind of hungry, though.”
“I smell food. Do you see anything?”
Natalie scanned the crowd. The falling sun was blinding. “I can’t see anything past the sea of white people who all look like your parents.”
“I’ll try not to take offense to that.”
She smiled up at him.
She wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as she thought she would be considering the circumstances. She certainly had to be honest with herself in admitting that she’d never been to a party that fancy, nor had she spent considerable time around the type of people who made that kind of money. She knew how she looked and knew how she carried herself. The rest was up to their imagination.
She was at the bar with Brandon when she heard someone calling her name. She realized by the French intonation that it was Dr. Lambert, who looked rather stunning in his tuxedo.
She couldn’t help but remark in her head that the good doctor was certainly very attractive for his age.
“Natalie Greene! So nice to see you! You look absolutely stunning.”
Lambert pulled her into him, and pecked both of her cheeks lightly.
“I was unaware that someone so young could look so stately, so regal, so beautiful. You can’t be a day over twenty-one.”
Natalie felt herself blush as Lambert continued to praise her. “I wish. I turned twenty-five last October. My husband here is holding onto his last days of being a ‘twentysomething’.”
“Your husband! Nice to meet you!”
Lambert gathered Brandon’s hand into a firm greeting before he even had a chance to mention what his name actually was.
“My name is Dr. Pierre Lambert.”
Brandon smirked, glancing at Natalie momentarily. “Brandon Greene. My wife has told me a lot about you.”
“All good things, I hope. Her supervisor, Dr. Meyer, speaks very highly of her at the hospital. She’s done great things.”
Brandon pressed her lips into his wife’s temple. “That’s always good to hear.”
Lambert reached for her hand. “Would you mind if I stole your wife for a moment, Mr. Greene? I would love to introduce her to a few of my friends.”
Brandon raised his bottle of beer to them, winking in his wife’s direction. “My pleasure. I’ll just be waiting here. Have fun, Tal.”
Before she had a chance to respond, Lambert had taken her halfway across the capacious back lawn, around the stone terrace, just passed the fountain. They stopped in front of a taller woman with a chic golden bob and skin that had just begun to wrinkle. She flicked her cigarette every so often, making the ghastly image of smoking seem desirable in some way.
Lambert placed his big hand on the small of Natalie’s back, pulling her forward. She subtly perused the lawn for her husband.
“Natalie Greene, I’d like for you to meet one of the nation’s leading cardiovascular surgeons, Dr. Kennedy Ross. Dr. Ross, this is Natalie Greene, the girl who saved my grandson’s life.”
Dr. Ross extended her delicate hand in her direction. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Natalie. Lamb speaks very highly of you.”
“I’m not sure why he does that. I only did what any other sensible woman with a heart would do.”
Lambert chuckled. It was warm, unpretentious and smooth. Natalie fell for it instantly.
“Natalie saw an opportunity and seized it. Screw the order of things and the know-how of it.”
A thought to spew an overwhelming truth took hold of Natalie. It gurgled to the tip of her tongue and almost came out. But she kept it at bay. She didn’t see the point.
She leered. “The incident only appealed to my natural compassion.”
Dr. Ross, cued to her heart’s burgeoning exposure, arched an eyebrow. “And were you always this aware of this compassion?”
Her initial reaction was to answer with a resounding “no”, but that wouldn’t have been the truth. She glanced past Dr. Ross’ face and saw Brandon’s eyes. He winked at her from afar. She still got butterflies. And the audacity of her lingering reaction made her smile. She quickly surveyed a number of instances of her past in her head, and realized that meeting Brandon was one of the highlights.
Her smile widened. “Yes. I think that I was.”
Lambert introduced her to three other doctors, with three different, very high-profile specialties. Natalie felt the itch that she thought she’d put to rest months before. It was easy to go numb of it all. But once more, she was surrounded by logic, sharpness, and vastly superior intelligence.
She’d missed it.
She was then introduced to Michael Stanton, a family friend, who’d just gotten off a plane. He was younger with hair barely greyed, and a ruffled gray suit.
“Sorry I look so disheveled.”
Lambert handed him a drink, from one of the passing waiters. “Here, good man. Drink up. It’s time to relax.”
“I was expecting a ride from a certain someone who I’d spoken to just moments before takeoff.”
Lambert’s expression then changed. Natalie watched the transition and felt her heart flutter.
She resisted the impulse to ask him if he was all right.
He then grabbed a drink for himself. “I sincerely apologize, Mike. That is totally unacceptable. I will talk to him as soon as he arrives. This can’t go on.”
“No, don’t worry about it, Lamb. You know how he is. He’s probably up under some girl as we speak.”
Lambert downed the entire contents in one swallow. Natalie pictured him in his younger days, taking alcohol like it was juice. “That’s no excuse. If his mother were here.” He then looked at Natalie. “I’m so sorry, my dear. You never really stop being a parent, I suppose.”
She clutched at her belly. Harper. I’m here. Always.
Then, she smiled with comfort. “No need to apologize. I completely understand.”
Even if she didn’t understand what was going on in its entirety. She was new to this – a silent witness, peering through an opaque partition. It was better to stand there idly, blink every once in awhile to prove her liveliness, and smile to adapt.
And quite frequently, Lambert would glance down at her and smile warmly. Comfort. Ease of being in her presence. Nascent admiration?
THE SUN WAS JUST BEGINNING TO HIDE ITSELF BEHIND A CROWNING OF FIRS ON THE EASTERN SIDE OF LAMBERT’S HOME, when she felt a tap on her shoulder.
It was her husband, who she’d artfully neglected for almost an hour in spite of every impulse not to.
He gently tugged on her, pulling her toward him. She evanesced to his nook, smelled his familiarity, drank in the muscles that flexed against her. “Hey, you.”
“I’m sorry.”
He arched an eyebrow in her direction. “For what?”
“For neglecting you.”
“Tallie, I’m a grown man. There’s no need to apologize. You’re in a rich man’s home. And when you’re in a rich man’s home, you pay attention to the rich man. Simple.”
“I love you.”
“Eh. Do I really need to say it back?”
“No. But you can show me how much later.”
“I had already planned on doing that the moment I saw you in that dress.”
Brandon was leaning down with the intention of kissing her, when they both heard tumult coming from the terrace door.
A crowd had gathered, and Natalie heard Lambert bellowing something in French.
Brandon stood in front of his wife, grasping at her hip to steady her. “What the hell?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“I don’t like taking those chances with my pregnant wife.”
“I’m fine, Brandy.”
“You want to go for a walk until shit settles down?”
Natalie narrowed her eyes at her husband. “You’re that rattled?”
“No, I really just want to get you alone.”
“Liar.”
He reached for her hand, lacing his fingers with hers effortlessly. “Maybe, but just indulge me.”
So, she did, and Brandon started walking toward Lambert’s well-manicured, sunset-sculpted garden beyond the trees. The stringent scent of the firs reminded her of Christmas, and the crisp breeze soothed her. Soon, the sound of the raised voices was just a distant thing.
She was alone with Brandon again. She had returned to Earth.
Then, she felt anxiety in Brandon’s clutch, and she gazed up at him.
He pursed his lips and she watched his Adam’s Apple bounced upward, then downward slowly. “We’re okay, right?”
She was taken aback. She’d almost forgotten. “Yea, I suppose we are.”
“That’s not a good enough answer.”
“That’s the only one I can give you right now.”
He stopped their slow pacing, and he turned and faced her. His steel blue gaze still made her shudder from time to time. “You’re still mad at me, aren’t you?”
She flushed, and dropped his hand instinctively. He slowly gazed down at the hasty disconnect between them.
She lowered her head as her heart began to pound. He pinched her chin between his fingers and lifted it once more. “Answer me.”
“Why the charade, Brandy? You already know what I’m going to say.”
“Goddamnit, Natalie, I was drunk.”
She backed away from his reach. “That’s no excuse.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?”
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“What the hell does that mean? You’re telling me that you’re never going to get over it?”
“I’m not saying anything, Brandon. As usual, you’re putting words and actions into this conversation that shouldn’t be there.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Do that ‘Natalie’ thing where you pretend like you’re over something, but bring it up when we’re arguing three years from now.”
“I won’t.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then you don’t know me.” She didn’t mean to raise her voice.
“Is this what we’re going to do right now, Tallie? We’re going to argue?”
“I’m not arguing with you. I refuse to. Stop pressuring me into a resolution. You know I don’t operate that way.”
“Then maybe you should change. It’s never too late.”
“How do you expect me to feel, Brandon? What do you want me to do? Pretend like it never happened? What if I decided to get drunk and call up Anthony? How would that make you feel?”
“I would feel fine, knowing that you never loved him with an ounce of the intensity that you love me.”
She paused. “Fair enough. But you loved her. I mean really—“
“I stopped the day I met you.”
A tear escaped her eye. And he saw it. He tried to catch it, but it fell anyway, scurrying down her cheek in a flash.
She blamed her emotions. She blamed her pregnancy, Harper.
He smiled. “That’s the Natalie I want.”
“Weak, submissive, resolved…?”
“Human.”
And she kissed him, got lost in him, drunk of him.
He murmured idle things against her lips, that sounded very much like a despairing chant of, “I need you…just like this…I need you”.
She barely heard the rustling of motion beyond the hybrid tea rose bushes. She didn’t stop. She loved the smell of her husband, the feel of his thick, black hair in her fingers, the depth of his groan.
She didn’t stop.
But the rustling persisted, and hushed voices followed, two or three of them, together.
There was laughter.
Brandon stopped their kissing and gazed toward the sound. “You hear that, baby.”
“Of course I do. But I didn’t want to stop.”
He smiled and pecked her forehead. “We could be in mortal danger.”
“All the more reason why we should be kissing in our last moments of living.”
He pulled her close as the noises continued, getting louder as the proximity increased.
Then, a man appeared, youngish with messy waves, bloodshot avocado eyes, a ripped, gray Brooks Brother’s suit, and two scantily dressed women on his arms.
The two women were beside themselves with drunken laughter, but he stopped the moment he saw Brandon and Natalie standing there.
Brandon squeezed her arm. “Interesting.”
She wasn’t sure where or why or how, but she’d seen those eyes before.
The man parted his lips to speak but paused to pull a flask out of his jacket pocket and take a swig.
One of the giggling girls only paused enough so that they could indolently lick the nape of the youngish man’s neck.
Disgusted, Natalie reached for Brandon’s arm and began to tug him away.
She heard the man begin to chuckle. “It’s funny. A girl who almost hits you head-on in the dark of night can't even be bothered to say ‘hello’…even after you give her a ride to a luxury hotel…the name's Bellamy by the way…”
BELLAMY
AS SHE KISSED BRANDON GOODBYE early the following morning, she made a silent vow to herself to never be so foolish again. She, once more, blamed it on the blind actions of her pregnancy hormones. That damn Harper, desperate for its mother’s attention, standing in the way of her marriage.