Research was the antidote to an ideas shortage, and the Periodicals Room, empty at nine o’clock on a Friday morning, was the repository of every kind of magazine and journal. At the service window, Rachel asked the librarian for copies of
Higher Education Monthly,
along with student reviews from various colleges. She set up her laptop computer on one of the long, polished tables and settled in to read and make notes.
She was so immersed in her reading, she wasn’t aware of Garrett’s arrival until she heard his voice right behind her. “Are you following me?”
She jumped, knocking a couple of sheets of paper to the floor. “How could I be following you, when I got here first?” She bent to retrieve her pages. “Go away.” It was bad enough having to deal with him in the office.
“You heard me mention in the meeting the other day that I planned to come here,” he said.
“I thought you meant the library at KBC.”
“Why would I waste my time with past campaigns that have already come and gone?” He loomed over her. “I’ve had enough, Rachel. This is my space. Give it up.”
“You can’t call dibs on the New York Public Library,” she said, outraged. “This is my favorite place in all of New York.” He jolted. What was that about? “Go on, ask that librarian—” She pointed to the woman pushing a cart piled with magazines. “She’s seen me here before.”
As Rachel spoke, the woman noticed them, and obviously realized they were talking about her. She smiled widely and left her cart to come say hello.
Which was way more recognition than Rachel had expected. “Uh, hi,” she said, flattered. “How are you?”
Only to discover the smile wasn’t for her.
“Garrett, my dear.” The librarian grabbed his hand—the same one Rachel had recently become acquainted with. “How nice to see you.”
“Hi, Mrs. G.” Garrett kissed her cheek. “I came in a couple of weeks ago, but you weren’t around.”
“Vacation,” she said with a grimace Rachel recognized. That of a person who feels cut adrift when forced to take a vacation.
“I think you know Rachel Frye,” Garrett said.
Mrs. G. lifted her spectacles and scrutinized her. “I do believe I’ve seen you in here.”
“Often,” Rachel said firmly.
Garrett gave her a pitying look.
“What can I bring you to look at, Garrett?” Mrs. G. asked.
Good grief, he was getting table service.
“The usual, thanks.” He propped himself against the table, facing Rachel, legs stretched in front of him. Rachel suspected anyone else would have been told to use a chair. “And do you have any Spiderman comics?”
She figured that was the same kind of question as,
What kind of fruit are you?
A joke.
“No Spiderman.” The librarian’s smile was indulgent. “I’ll be right back with your
MAD
magazines.”
“You come here to read
MAD?
” Rachel asked as the woman returned to her trolley.
“Pithy satire on all the essential issues. Much more useful than—” Garrett flipped the cover of Rachel’s periodical
“—Higher Education Monthly.”
Surely
MAD
magazine was a joke, too. But it couldn’t be, because the librarian had known what magazine he wanted. It would never have occurred to Rachel to read
MAD.
Was that the secret to Garrett’s creative genius?
Garrett unzipped his laptop bag. “I know why you’re here, Rachel. But you won’t achieve anything with this.”
He knew she was panicking about her creative?
“I’m the first to admit I’m not a great team player,” he said, “but you keep overstepping the boundary.”
What was he talking about?
He set a notepad and pencil on the table. “No matter what you’d like to believe, nothing at KBC matters to me as much as you think it should, so don’t drag me into your little attachment disorder.”
“Excuse me?” she said.
“You’re latching on,” he said, “and you need to stop.”
“Latching on to what?”
“To me,” he said, as if she was stupid. “You think that because I don’t feel the way you do about KBC, I’m the one with the problem. So you want to fix me…turn me into a codependent person like yourself.”
“Garrett,” she said, “you’ve been watching too much
Dr. Phil.
Drop the therapy-speak and try to interact like a normal human being.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” he said. “You think you get to define
normal.
I have a perfectly healthy interaction system—it just doesn’t happen to involve bonding with every person on the planet. So leave me out of your game of office Happy Families.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Let me get this straight. You think I came to the library to
bond
with you.” She couldn’t decide whether to be insulted or to laugh.
“You can’t help yourself,” he said. “I’ve seen you giving gum to the janitor. But you’re wasting your time with me.”
Once
she’d given gum to the janitor, for his kids. Probably everyone did things like that, except Garrett. Rachel glanced around the room. Still deserted—if she slapped him now no one would see.
Other than Mrs. G., returning with a small bundle of
MAD
magazines.
“I can’t find the latest issue.” The librarian set them on the table next to Garrett’s butt. Still no admonition to sit down. “I’ll keep looking.”
“Thanks, Mrs. G.” He picked up a magazine and flicked through it, ignoring Rachel.
The librarian regarded him with something like fondness. As if she’d like to go up on tiptoe and ruffle his hair. “Your mother would laugh to see you still reading
MAD
magazine in here,” she said.
His mother? Rachel stiffened.
“Yeah,” he muttered reluctantly to Mrs. G.
The librarian moved away. Rachel kept staring at Garrett.
He ignored her for a full ten seconds. Then, without looking up, he said belligerently, “I’m not going to talk about it, so don’t even try.”
“Every time I think you’re a jerk, I come back to this thing with your mother,” she said, “and it seems there must be more to you.”
“You are out of line on so many counts,” he said. “First up, you don’t know anything about me or my mother, and you have no right to even think about us. Second, there’s nothing more to me, and third, if there was, it would be none of your damned business.”
She ignored that rant. “And then there’s the interesting fact that you couldn’t bring yourself to be rude to a sweet old librarian, even when she mentioned your mom.”
“I could have been rude if I wanted,” he growled.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” She made a zipping motion across her mouth. “So, Mrs. G. knew your mom?”
He scowled. “Didn’t you just zip that up?”
“Broken zipper.” Rachel pushed
Higher Education Monthly
away. “Is she a friend of your family? Or did your mom work here? Or—”
“I told you, I’m not talking to you.”
“Or is she a relative? Godmother? Fourth cousin twice removed?”
“Let it go, Rachel.” His favorite line, this time spoken without his usual bored intonation. This time, he was angry.
Oddly, she enjoyed seeing him angry. She wondered what Dr. Phil would say about that.
“Is she your neighbor?” Rachel asked.
“She’s a librarian, dammit,” he snapped. “This library was my mom’s favorite place in all of New York,” he said. “And she loved this room the most.”
Rachel crumpled a piece of paper and threw it at him. For once, he wasn’t prepared and it bounced off his forehead.
“What was that for?” he demanded.
“That’s what I just told you about me. You think I don’t recognize my own story? Must try harder, Garrett.”
“I don’t have to try anything at all,” he retorted. “But for the record, it’s true. Mom did love this place. This room.”
She had believed him before and been fooled. But at that stage she’d had no reason to suspect a lie, and hadn’t looked for any signs of it. Now she studied his face. Didn’t help. Garrett Calder gave nothing away unless he chose to.
He picked up his pencil. “Now go,” he said. “I have work to do.”
“Was your mom really a missionary?” she asked.
He groaned. “No.”
Rachel didn’t bother asking if she’d had malaria. Or died in a plane crash or of cancer.
“Did she like Doris Day movies?”
His gaze wandered the room as if he was picturing his mom in this space. His face softened. “She loved them.”
Rachel swallowed over a lump in her throat. “Did she—”
“No more questions,” he said, snapping back into that irritating aloofness.
“Do you tell so many different stories about your mom just to make other people feel bad?” she asked.
“You heard me say, ‘No more questions,’ right?”
“Because that’s what it seems like,” she persisted.
“Do you think the reason your ad campaigns are so boring is because you read dull magazines?” he flashed back.
Ouch! Rachel put a protective hand on her stack of
Higher Education Monthly.
“Did your mom really die on your birthday?”
“Yes,” he said tightly. “Did I ever tell you that campaign you did for Finegold Butter totally sucked?”
She gasped. The Finegold campaign hadn’t
sucked,
but nor had it been her finest piece of work. “How old were you when your mom died?”
“Remind me how many CLIOs you’ve been nominated for?” he countered.
“I’m hopeful that Aunt Betty will swing it for me this year,” she said. And wished she’d just admitted “none.” She truly was hoping the Aunt Betty campaign would garner her first nomination, but now she’d left herself vulnerable. The announcement was only a week away. No way would Garrett forget this conversation before then. “I think your mom died recently,” she suggested.
They were playing chicken again, only this felt like far higher stakes than holding his hand. Right now, that hand was curled into a fist around his pencil.
“She didn’t,” Garrett said, clearly torn between reluctance to tell her anything more and a desire to prove her wrong. “Hey, I have an idea. Since you’re so uncreative, have you ever considered sleeping your way to the top? I’ve seen Tony watching your legs.”
She raised her eyebrows to acknowledge a good shot. “What would your mom think of the stories you fabricate about her death?” She felt a bizarre exhilaration that she was still standing, metaphorically speaking. Still in the battle.
Tension pulsed between them. When Garrett spoke, his calm was almost scary. “She doesn’t think about them. She’s dead.”
An evasion, if ever she’d heard one. “Do you even remember her?”
CHAPTER TEN
T
OO
FAR
.
In the silence, the pencil in Garrett’s hand snapped.
He leaned right into her, letting her see the fury he knew would be in his eyes.
“I remember her,” he snarled. “My father took all of five minutes to get over her death and find himself a new wife. And my brother is so cozy with his stepmother, I doubt he even remembers he had another mom. But I remember everything.”
Garrett was so livid, he was literally seeing red spots before his eyes. His long-simmering resentment of his father, Stephanie and his brother had erupted into fresh, hot anger fueled by Rachel.
Who was the most provoking woman he’d ever met. He couldn’t believe he’d let her goad him into saying this much.
He was about to tear a strip off her, library quiet be damned, when she started blinking, and her mouth went all soft and—and quivery.
He groaned, knowing exactly why she was reacting this way. Her thing about families. About holding on.
Garrett cursed. “Stop it, Rachel.”
“Stop what?” She blinked harder, faster.
He tossed the pieces of broken pencil onto the table. To his annoyance, the softness of her mouth was doing a number on his anger, taking the edge off. “Wipe that pitiful, pitying look off your face.” He
liked
that she’d shown a marked lack of sympathy for him until now.
“It’s not pity.” She sniffed. “I’m just…honored that you told me all that.”
“I didn’t tell you. You badgered it out of me.”
Her smile was watery. “It can’t have been easy for you.”
“Rachel,” he warned. “Back off. So I told you a few things about my mother. That doesn’t make us friends.”
“We’re not strangers,” she said, blinking again.
“We’re colleagues.” But they both knew that he hadn’t told any other colleague what he’d just told her. Garrett had only himself to blame if she got the wrong idea. He’d come to the library to get away from other people—Rachel in particular. He should have walked out the moment he saw her here.
At least her mouth was no longer quivering; he wasn’t sure how much more he could take of that. Unfortunately, in their natural state, her lips were full and nicely shaped and more tempting than he could believe.
“We’re more than colleagues,” she said. “Whether you like it or not. And that’s not me
latching on.
That’s the way it is.”
“Or,” he said, “you’re an attractive woman and I just spun you my best pickup sob story.”
She gave him a contemptuous look. “Not even you are that much of a jerk.”
“That’s what you think. I’m strongly considering kissing you,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “Don’t you dare.”
That was more like it. Now he had her on the back foot. Kissing Rachel might be a very bad idea, but if it put her off-balance and trivialized what he’d just told her, that was good.
“Makes a lot of sense to me,” he said. Her bristle of alarm made him feel a lot more cheerful. “You told me the other day you like my butt—”
“I didn’t mean that, I never even looked at your butt!”
“And I definitely like your legs.” It wasn’t her legs he was eyeing right now… He found the vee of her rose-pink wrap-style dress. “Maybe I’d like the whole—”
“Don’t you dare say
hog,
” she warned.
“Shebang,” he said, grinning.
“I apologize,” she said quickly. “I shouldn’t have pestered you about your mom.”
Now
she would concede she’d overstepped the mark. Now that she was worried he might do the same, and kiss her.
Why the hell shouldn’t he?
She pulled a fresh copy of
Higher Education Monthly
from her stack, flipped open the cover and bent over the magazine.
He gave her half a minute, to lull her fears. “I’ve always envied people who can read upside down,” he said.
Wordlessly, she turned the magazine right way up.
Her focus on the page meant he couldn’t see her eyes. Just the sweep of her lashes over cheeks that were pinker than normal. And those lips.
“The more I think about it,” he said, “the less I can think of one good reason why I shouldn’t kiss you.”
“We’re in a library,” she murmured without looking up. As if he’d commented on the weather. “A
public
library. A library is meant to be a safe place.”
“A
tame
place,” he agreed.
Her head came up, her blue eyes sparked…and a wave of fierce—and given the circumstance, insane—desire swept over him. She said, “If you think for one moment you can taunt me into—”
He shut her up with a kiss, swift and hard, on her mouth. Eyes stayed open, his and hers, throughout, and he smiled at the thought they were still playing chicken.
Rachel’s lips moved beneath his smile, parted just a little, and he realized that if he didn’t stop now, he’d be taking this to a whole new level. That he’d leaned right into her, and already his hand was molding possessively to the curve of her waist. Already he was thinking about how she would taste. How she would fit against him…
Hell. He pulled back, ending the kiss as abruptly as he’d begun it.
A copy of
MAD
magazine suddenly appeared two inches from his face, blocking his view of Rachel.
“I found the latest issue,” Mrs. G. said.
Garrett took it from her.
“I don’t need to remind you about rule number two, do I?” she asked.
“Ah, no,” he said. “Sorry, Mrs. G.”
The librarian left. She glanced over her shoulder after a few steps, just to make sure no one was locking lips.
“Rule number two?” Rachel’s words were muffled—Garrett wondered if she knew she had her fingers pressed to her lips. Pressed to the trace of his kiss.
“‘Engaging in sexual conduct or lewd behavior is not allowed.’” He quoted from the library’s rules.
Rachel’s eyes widened. “She’s had to call you on that before?”
“All the time,” he said, though in fact it was once, ten years ago. He eyed her broodingly.
“What now?” she said.
“I have to say, that kiss was better than I expected.”
“There was a certain chemistry thing happening,” she agreed. Then she frowned. “I’m not proud of it, Garrett, so there’s no need to look so pleased with yourself.”
He realized he was indeed smiling. Rather more widely than a mere kiss warranted.
“We won’t do that again,” she decided.
He’d been about to say the same thing. “Not in the library,” he agreed. “Next time, we’ll be somewhere it can last longer.”
He expected instant disagreement…but instead, she sat there, staring at his mouth.
“Rach?”
The contraction was enough to pull her out of her trance. “Not anywhere,” she said. Her gaze flickered back to his mouth before she resolutely dragged it north. “And it’s Rach
el.
”
He’d had women find him attractive before, plenty of them. But never with such reluctance. He thought of the way her eyes had stayed open during that kiss, her brain fighting it, her body yielding. Intriguing. Almost worth the aggravation of sharing an office building with Rachel.
But not quite.
* * *
D
WIGHT
C
ALDER
STARED
through the window of the shop that sold high-end TVs, at the colorful, flicker-free screens. Some incompetent store assistant had left one TV on a different channel from the others, so passersby saw six identical images of a daytime soap, with a cooking show in the middle. Stephanie loved those food shows that seemed to be on every second minute. Though he had no idea if she ever watched TV in the middle of the day.
Dwight pulled his coat around him. It was far too warm—he looked like a damn pervert—but an important meeting this morning had required him to wear service blues, and the jacket with its gold braiding on the sleeves was even more conspicuous. The decision to drive down to the West Village had been spur-of-the-moment; Dwight hadn’t had a change of clothes at the office.
It was usually a mistake to act on the spur of the moment, any military strategist knew that.
On that solitary cooking-show screen, the chef plated a serving of pork belly with crisp, golden crackle and gratin potatoes. Dwight’s stomach growled; he frowned downward, and it subsided. He hadn’t had a decent meal in days. With the exception of the admiralty dinner in Annapolis, where he’d been too stressed trying to explain Stephanie’s absence without actually lying to enjoy the food.
I shouldn’t have come.
He’d told Stephanie he wouldn’t give her another chance. She knew he meant it. Even so, he was slightly shocked that she hadn’t called. Not even to see how he was. Did she even think about him? He thought about her and the baby. Which was why he was here. Just to see if she was all right. He wouldn’t beg her to come back, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still his responsibility.
The simplest way to check on her was to phone, but she wasn’t taking his calls. He was damned if he was going to ask Garrett, and give his oldest son a chance to gloat.
The next simplest was to knock on the door of the apartment.
But he didn’t want Stephanie to think he was giving in. Or needy. Weak. He hadn’t got where he was today without commanding absolute respect.
So he’d parked the Hummer four blocks away. To the south, not the north, which seemed the more obvious choice if anyone was looking out for him. Then he’d walked up here with the idea of…what?
He wasn’t sure, even though he despised uncertainty. He just wanted to make sure the environment was safe for his wife and baby—some flaky people lived in this part of town. His own son was one of them, changing jobs like other people changed their underpants, and never having a steady girlfriend.
Dwight would make sure Stephanie was all right, then he would leave her alone. What the military called a strategic retreat, a decision not to squander further resources—in this case, his time and energy.
Where was she, anyway? When he’d visited the other day, he’d seen a Pilates schedule stuck to the fridge, which he assumed was hers. Assumed his son wasn’t doing some sissy yogalike exercise. She’d circled a Friday-afternoon class. If she’d attended, she should be returning about now.
Dwight turned away from the window and scanned the street for hazards. The cobbled surface was enough to give him hives. Stephanie had grown clumsier as the pregnancy progressed. She could slip or stumble on those cobbles and break her ankle, just like that. And what about that blind corner? In just the past fifteen minutes, Dwight had seen three cabs come around it at reckless speed. Anyone crossing the narrow street would have been bowled over.
Dwight had almost given up waiting when he saw her. Stephanie. About a hundred and fifty yards away, he estimated, but headed straight for him. He recognized the rolling gait she’d adopted in pregnancy, which reminded him a little of walking on board ship. He didn’t recognize the sweater, a bright red number that accentuated her swollen stomach. She didn’t usually wear such vivid colors. She didn’t look as if she’d been to a gym class—did she have other places to go, that he didn’t know about? If anything happened to her, would anyone know to contact him?
He stared back at the store window, the TV sets, his vision fogged with alarm. He should confront her, demand to know if she was taking care of herself. But he didn’t want her to see him. To think he missed her. Better to let her make the first move. Which would have to include an apology and an assurance that something like this wasn’t going to happen again. If she could offer that, then maybe, just maybe, he would consider taking her back.
He realized that if she looked this way now, she would see him. He needed to move fast if he wanted to remain undetected. Dwight rammed his hands in his coat pockets and headed into the TV store, aware his pulse was racing. The prospect of getting caught had adrenaline surging through his veins.
“Good afternoon, sir.” A clerk approached. “Can I help you?”
“Not just now.” Dwight moved as deep into the store as he could while still keeping a view of the street.
“We have a great deal on forty-inch TVs this week,” the clerk said. “They’re optimized for Facebook, for YouTube…” He trailed off, perhaps recognizing Dwight wasn’t a big user of what Garrett called social media and Dwight called time-wasters.
Outside, Stephanie walked past the window, chin high, scanning the street in front of her with a smile that seemed altogether too relaxed for a woman who was facing life as a single parent, without a husband to look after her. Dwight was pleased to see that at least her sandals had low heels that shouldn’t be too risky on those cobbles. She looked good in her slim-fitting pants; her long legs were the second thing that had attracted him to her when he’d met her at the memorial service at Woodlawn for servicemen lost in Vietnam. Dwight had been a new recruit in that war; Stephanie’s father had been a captain who’d died in battle and was buried at Woodlawn.