STOLEN MOMENTS

by Michelle Martin

  "Thanks," she said a little breathlessly. She tugged slightly at his hand, but he wouldn't let her go, couldn't let her go.

  She'd won. He felt her happiness stealthily invading his blood and he loved it, because it was life flooding into his parched veins and stirring up psychotropic fantasies of Harley in his arms, Harley's slender throat arched against his lips, Harley curled beside him in the dawn.

  He only released her hand when he had to sit down across an entire table from her. After their caloric feast at Torre di Pisa the night before, their early lunch at the Boathouse Cafe was salad and mineral water and Harley forgetting to eat every few minutes as she stared out over the water toward Bethesda Terrace or fed the already well-fed fish who came up beside their waterside table to beg for food.

  "I can't tell you what this means to me," she said, staring out at the sunlit water. "I feel like I've been locked up in hotel rooms and concert halls and recording studios for the last nine years and haven't even glimpsed the sky or trees or flowers actually growing in the ground. And when I think that all of this is in the heart of Gotham City—"

  "It's a very nice park," Duncan primly agreed.

  She threw a roll at him, hitting him square in the chest. "To hell with your world-weary-sophisticate routine, Duncan Lang."

  "But I am world-weary and I am sophisticated," he complained, picking the roll off his lap and putting it back on the table.

  "You're also human, or had you forgotten?"

  "No," Duncan said quietly, looking at the delectable woman seated across the table from him, "I haven't forgotten."

  Her eyes dropped first. "I suppose hundreds of love affairs would make anyone world-weary," she conceded.

  "Well, there weren't exactly hundreds," Duncan felt compelled to confess, "and love had very little to do with them."

  "Have you ever let anyone love you?" she asked, just as if she were asking him if he thought it was going to rain.

  "Nope," he replied. "Much too messy. I never wanted to be responsible for leaving a slew of broken hearts in my wake."

  "Noble of you," Harley said, nodding. "I gather the idea of love and marriage and a baby carriage has never entered your head."

  "Never," Duncan assured her. "I realized long ago that long-term relationship is just not part of my makeup. When I think about actual commitment, I practically break out in hives."

  "Skittish," Harley said, nodding wisely. "How come?"

  "Something in my DNA, I expect."

  Harley pursed her full lips. "Genetics, hmm? I suppose you've been conducting field tests for years."

  "Research is my life," Duncan calmly replied.

  Harley chuckled, an oddly evocative little sound halfway between the rumbling purr of a satiated kitten and a gangster's machine gun. "You're no fun. You don't react to even the most blatant provocation."

  "You have no idea how wrong you are," he murmured.

  She hurriedly focused her attention on the fish begging for scraps near their table.

  After lunch, Duncan was careful not to take her hand again as they walked back out into the park toward Central Park South. He thought he was safe. But he had made one serious miscalculation.

  "A merry-go-round!" Harley shrieked when she saw the brick housing of the carousel just off the Sixty-fifth Street Transverse. "Come on!"

  "Harley—"

  "Duncan, please?"

  Staring down into pleading turquoise blue eyes, it occurred to him that Harley bore a distinct resemblance to an irresistible force.

  "I will never live this down," he muttered and then lost his breath when she shrieked with happiness, threw her arms around him, and hugged him hard, before dashing up to the ticket booth, apparently oblivious to the havoc she had just inflicted on his central nervous system.

  She bought them four tickets each, and with each new ride, Duncan found it harder and harder to hide the fact that he'd fallen in love with the traditional carousel music, and the large wooden horses, and Harley's infectious grin. Duncan wryly shook his head at himself. La Comtesse Pichaud would not recognize him. He scarcely recognized himself.

  When they finally left the park—Harley insisting that they avoid Central Park South and the Ritz-Carlton because she was convinced Boyd Monroe would be watching—she announced that she intended to go to the top of the Empire State Building next.

  "You're kidding," he said. "That's old news. The view from the World Trade Center is much more spectacular."

  "I don't care," she retorted. "I like old buildings, and the Empire State Building has been famous for decades longer than those inhuman towers. I'll bet you haven't even been to the top of the Empire State Building."

  "Of course not. World-weary sophisticates don't go in for that sort of thing." Actually, he hadn't even been inside the Empire State Building, clearly something Harley would consider a character flaw.

  He found himself standing with her at the top of the Empire State Building just after four o'clock that afternoon gazing out at the vast Manhattan skyline bathed in summer sunshine and loving it. He was happier than he had been in two years. It was completely unexpected. He hadn't thought one person could make such a difference, but Harley had. She might have her life scheduled down to the nanosecond, but she knew how to enjoy that life. It was a gift, he realized, that he valued above all others.

  "I know it's crazy," she said, her shoulder bumping against his arm, "but I'm really beginning to feel like I've come home. Like I belong here. I keep thinking about what Moss Hart wrote in his autobiography: 'The only credential the city asked was the boldness to dream.' I used to have bold dreams. I think I'm beginning to have them again. I mean, this city is inspirational, isn't it?"

  No, he thought, gazing down at her, caught by effervescent turquoise, you are.

  "I want to come back tonight, after the Surrealistic Pillow, and see the city at night," she declared.

  "Okay," Duncan replied. "It's your day and your itinerary."

  "But you're still taking me back to Boyd tonight," she said, grim.

  "That's the deal."

  "You are as tenacious as a half-starved pit bull, you know that?"

  "Why thank you!" Duncan said in surprise. "That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about me."

  She stared up at him with an odd expression in her blue eyes. "You mean that, don't you?"

  "Sure. Everyone sees the fluff, no one sees the steel."

  "You're fluff?"

  "I have fluffy aspects," Duncan said with a gentle smile.

  "Man, you don't know yourself at all, do you?"

  Duncan was saved by the bell. His cellular phone rang. He gratefully pulled it from his coat pocket and answered on the second ring. "Yo, Emma, what's up?"

  "There were three changes," she replied, "to Jane Miller's original tour schedule: the flights into both Paris and Sydney were moved up. And here's the biggie: the Cairo concert wasn't on the original schedule."

  "What?" Duncan stared down at Harley, his hand covering the phone's mouthpiece. "Cairo wasn't on your original world tour schedule?"

  Her expressive face was masked, which worried him. "No," she said. "Boyd added it two days before we left L.A. Why?"

  Duncan turned back to the phone. "Anything else, Em?"

  "That's it for now. Ciao."

  Duncan slipped the phone back into his coat pocket and stared out across the sunlit city. Boyd had used Harley's tour schedule for his own purposes. But what were they? And were they potentially threatening to her? "Ready to go?" he asked, sill puzzling over the problem.

  "Sure," she said, glancing at her wristwatch. "We've got just enough time for the walking tour of Chinatown before dinner at the Rainbow Room and my set at the Surrealistic Pillow."

  "You don't want to go to the Rainbow Room," Duncan announced. "Not on your last night of freedom."

  "But I've heard that it's wonderful."

  "It is wonderful, but you can find wonderful upper-crust restaurants all over the world. If you wa
nt something truly unique, then you want Goodies."

  "Goodies?"

  "As in, oldies but."

  "Wait a minute," Harley said, frowning in concentration, "I've heard of that."

  "Of course you've heard of it. It's one of the most fun things you can do in New York and still be legal. A 1950s retro dance club with great milk shakes and better music. Vintage rock-and-roll music, Harley. You want to go?"

  A playful smile teased her lush mouth and did terrible things to his belief system. "You mean you're actually asking me, not commanding me?"

  "It's your itinerary."

  "Sure it is. Okay, I'll nix the Rainbow Room."

  "Great!" Duncan said. "If we're going to go to Goodies, then we'll have to drop your Chinatown plans."

  "Like hell," she retorted. "It's still the middle of the afternoon. There's plenty of time—"

  "Not if we go shopping, and we have to go shopping."

  * * *

  An hour later, Duncan—dressed in a circa-1955 leopard-pattern shirt and tan slacks—and Harley—wearing a 1950s Christian Dior in turquoise blue silk, which molded itself to her torso and then flared out into a full skirt—walked into Goodies. Red doors led them into a red-and-white-tiled foyer. The place was already three-quarters full, noisy, and beaming with good vibes, even though it wasn't quite six o'clock on a weeknight. Big red vinyl overstuffed booths lined three walls. A stage took up the fourth wall. In between were dozens of large tables and soda fountain chairs and a large oak dance floor. Eddie Cochran was lamenting "The Summertime Blues" over the hidden speakers.

  Harley turned to Duncan and impulsively clasped his shoulders. "Thank you for talking me into coming here."

  He stared down into her large, shining blue eyes and forgot everything he'd ever believed about himself. "Come on," he said gruffly, catching her hand in his. He pulled her out to the dance floor and into an exuberant jitterbug that matched everything he was feeling. He segued into an East Coast Swing for "Goody Goody" by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. Chubby Checker sent them into the hip-churning twist. The Penguins, Elvis, and the Everly Brothers followed.

  Then "I Only Have Eyes for You" by the flamingos filled the club, and he felt Harley stiffen slightly. She stood a little awkwardly on the dance floor, not quite meeting his gaze.

  "Come on," he said softly, his finger brushing under her chin and tilting her head up. "It's all right."

  Blue eyes searched his face for a moment, and then a miracle happened. She stepped into his arms for the slow dance, her head sinking onto his chest as if it were the most natural thing in the world, her body moving slowly, easily with his.

  He forgot to breathe. Touching Harley, feeling her grow fluid and lyrical in his arms, stirred happiness where it shouldn't exist. Perfect. She was perfect in his arms. And right. And achingly familiar.

  Oh sweet Jesus. What was she doing to him?

  With a barely suppressed gasp, he took a hurried step backward, throwing her off balance.

  "What are you doing?" she demanded, looking aggrieved. Duncan was looking everywhere but at her. "Sorry. My … um… My mind wandered. Let's sit down and get something to drink."

  His hasty retreat from idiocy got little support as they wended their way through the crowd of dancers to their booth. Her hand in his seemed to fill one of the more demanding holes in his soul and soothe something that had been rough and jagged for too long within him.

  He slid onto the red vinyl seat and forced himself to remember reality. She was a job; she was his ticket to a decent career; she was a package to be delivered at midnight tonight.

  But reality was a hard thing to hold on to when Harley was sitting across from him, face aglow as she examined a large menu that would make the American Heart Association blanche.

  Their bee-hived waitress came up to them, snapping gum, and took their predinner orders: a root beer float for Harley and a chocolate soda for Duncan.

  "You are the most fun I've had in years," Harley informed him once their waitress had decamped.

  Reality hit the road. "I was about to say the same thing of you," he said.

  A tinge of pink crept across her cheeks. "Oh, come on, now," she said hurriedly. "With all of those Mardi Gras parties and celebrity-packed jaunts to Cannes to compare me with?"

  "Well, the fact of the matter is, I haven't been out of New York in two years."

  "Why not?"

  "I've been trying to be good."

  Harley frowned. "Are you telling me that you can't have fun and be good at the same time?"

  "Not according to my parents."

  "But who's to say your parents know what makes one person good and the other … not?"

  "They are, of course."

  "Yeah, but you're a grown man. Why do you put up with that crap?"

  "Why do you?"

  That stopped her.

  "Chain Boyd up, Harley," he said in a low, urgent voice. "Muzzle him."

  "I don't know if I'm strong enough."

  "Yes," he said, "you are."

  Their waitress returned with their drinks. Harley slowly stirred her root beer float, considering. "Don't you think it's odd?" she said at last.

  "What?"

  "That we were both unsatisfied with our lives and we both did something about it: you took a job, I took a holiday. Only neither of them has worked out the way we'd planned."

  "Your point being?"

  "That we've got the same problem."

  "Oh. I thought the point was that we're very alike."

  "No, that's different," she said, frowning at him. "And we're not."

  "Aren't we?"

  "No! I mean, our backgrounds are completely different, our education is completely different, our life experience is completely different—"

  "Except for unsatisfying paths, finding the drawbacks to goodness, and being miserable."

  "Well, yes," Harley conceded. "But still, our dreams are different—"

  "How do you know?" Duncan demanded.

  "Well," she said with an uneasy little shrug, "they are. I have dreams of being an independent rock-and-roll singer and you have dreams of being … what?"

  "I don't know," Duncan said in surprise. "I never realized it before, but I've never really had a dream of being one kind of person or having a particular career."

  "But that's awful! Everyone needs a dream."

  "Do they?"

  "Yes. It's practically a requirement for being human."

  "Well, if you say so. I suppose… Wait a minute! I've got it: I've always dreamed of being happy. Haven't you?"

  "Well, yes. But—"

  "We also both love hard-ass rock and roll, black leather jackets—"

  "How do you know about my—"

  "Getting our own way," Duncan ruthlessly continued, "old-fashioned carousels, Italian food, cheeseburgers, chocolate milk shakes, and Goodies."

  "What," Harley demanded, "is your point?"

  He made his gaze meet hers and felt that wallop strike him hard once again. He couldn't believe he was going to say this. "We're kindred spirits."

  The world was a steady turquoise blue gaze. "Even though you're taking me back to Boyd tonight?"

  "Even though."

  "Oh." She looked away then.

  "Let's order dinner," he said.

  Harley glanced at her menu and then hurriedly put it down. "I can't eat."

  She was pale. White, actually. Her freckles were more prominent. Her fingers were nervously turning the menu into a keyboard. "You'll need something to help you get through the rest of the night," he said gently.

  "If I eat, I will throw up."

  "Are you that scared of performing at the Surrealistic Pillow?"

  "Oh yeah."

  "You're taking a pretty huge risk," Duncan agreed, "singing the music you love in front of a bunch of strangers and not even hiding behind that safe little mask you've built up all these years."

  "Yeah," Harley said, staring down at the Formica table-top.
<
br />   "But it's no bigger risk than walking away from Boyd and Jane Miller and venturing out into the biggest city in the world late one Sunday night," Duncan added as he settled back against the red vinyl seat.

  That brought her eyes up to stare at him. "It isn't?"

  "Nope. In fact, I'd say your set at the Surrealistic Pillow tonight will be a helluva lot easier. You know what you're doing when you walk on a stage. You know what you can expect. You had no idea what you were capable of doing or what to expect when you walked out of the Ritz and into your holiday."

  "No idea at all," Harley wryly agreed.

  "So, have some dinner."

  Her eyes widened, and then she smiled with a warmth and a sweetness that pierced his heart. "You're a good man, Duncan Lang."

  Duncan felt his ears burning and prayed he wasn't blushing elsewhere. He hid behind his menu. "I can personally recommend the burgers. And the banana splits are to die for."

  She didn't eat a lot—just half a cheeseburger and most of a chocolate milk shake—but it was enough to leave her looking steady and almost confident at the end of dinner.

  "Do you want to stay here," he asked, "or move on to other city attractions?"

  "Neither," she replied. "I'm going back to the Millenium to change and rehearse my set."

  "Want a practice audience?"

  "No!" she said and then blushed as several people turned to stare at them. "I mean, thanks for offering, but I really need to do this alone. I'll meet you at the Surrealistic Pillow after my set."

  Duncan didn't like that plan at all. "It is my professional opinion that you need some judicious hand-holding before you walk out on that stage tonight."

  "Thank you, Duncan. You're very sweet, but no. When I left the Ritz-Carlton, I thought I just wanted a holiday. I know now that what I really wanted was to find out if I can make it in the real world on my own. I'm going to get my answer tonight, which means doing it on my own with no outside help or support, even from such a gallant white knight."

  "You have the most cockeyed ideas about who I am," Duncan said, shaking his head. "Well, if you want to be a martyr to independence, it's no skin off my nose."