Hostile Makeover

by Wendy Wax

  And good-looking and annoying did?

  Applying herself to her work, Shelley managed to avoid both Ross and Trey until Wednesday afternoon, when she accidentally picked up the phone without first checking her caller ID.

  “You have become scarcer than . . . well, I’m not sure what you’re scarcer than, but I’m starting to think you’re a figment of my imagination.” Trey’s voice was both sexy and chiding.

  It took her a few moments to regroup. She used those moments to try to assess the feelings Trey’s voice pulled up in her, but the only feeling she could identify was regret. Trey was so perfect on paper and so unfailingly sweet in person. Why was she having so much trouble whipping up enthusiasm for being with him? “Oh, I’m real, all right,” she said. “Just busy getting ready for the Furniture Forum shoot in L.A.”

  As she listened to him talk about his day, she did feel a faint stirring. Encouraged, she focused on the feeling until it developed into an actual gurgle. Shelley smiled in relief, glad that her feelings for Trey were not, in fact, dead but just . . . resting somehow in the pit of her stomach.

  “Would you like to go out to lunch?” Trey’s question produced another gurgle, louder this time, and Shelley’s smile faded as she recognized the gurgle for what it was: a hunger pang.

  A glance at the clock on her computer screen confirmed that it was lunchtime. She was hungry, all right; she just wished she was hungry for Trey rather than a tuna melt.

  “I wish I could,” she lied. “I’ve just got too much to do.”

  “You know what they say about all work and no play, Shelley. Wouldn’t want to let life get too dull.”

  “No, we wouldn’t want that.” She looked down at her watch.

  “How about dinner tonight, then?” His tone made it clear he was offering more than a meal.

  “I’d, uh, love to, Trey, but I can’t. I’ve got a late meeting to go over the storyboards and then we’ve got a conference call with the production people out on the coast. The three-hour time difference really pushes things back.”

  There was a silence and Shelley felt a stab of guilt—which she figured was pretty much hard-wired into her DNA. If she was losing interest, she should speak up right now and say so. Wouldn’t she want him to do that if he had lost interest in her?

  No, she realized, she would not.

  “I’ll give you the week to get organized,” Trey said, “but Friday night’s mine. OK?”

  She hesitated longer than she meant to. “Sure. Friday night would be great.” Swallowing, she forced some of the missing enthusiasm into her voice. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  Hanging up, she dropped her head to her desk and groaned in disgust.

  She was such a wuss.

  Her head was still cradled in her arms when the knock sounded on her office door. Her entire body snapped to attention as Ross Morgan’s voice reached her from the now open doorway. Formerly dormant juices began to stir.

  “Sleeping on the job?”

  Lowering her brow, she told herself the stirring had been caused by the fight-or-flight instinct that Ross Morgan’s presence produced—a sort of Pavlovian reaction to him over which she had no control. Or maybe it was that hunger pain.

  Deep down, though, she was afraid it was something equally elemental, like plain old animal magnetism or . . . lust.

  “No, of course not. I was just thinking. With my eyes closed.” She sat very still. “Do you need something?”

  “Just an explanation.” He walked to her desk and shook a sheaf of paper at her. “I’d like to know why everyone’s flying first class.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Is there ANYONE on this bloody shoot who’s NOT flying first class to L.A.?”

  Oh, good, he’d moved right into capitalization. Shelley breathed a sigh of relief as she braced for a fight. What would she do if he ever stopped being annoying? “Only you, if you want to change your reservation.”

  The tic appeared in his cheek.

  “But I think there’s quite a large fee. For changing a reservation.”

  “And of course everyone has their own suite,” he growled.

  “That’s right.”

  “Because?”

  “Because we’re adults and this is not summer camp?” She looked up at him. “I can check with the counselor, though. Who were you hoping to bunk with?”

  He gritted his teeth. “It’s not the sleeping arrangements I’m concerned with. It’s the money we’re wasting.”

  His eyes were a turbulent blue, and there was that tic in his cheek, the set of his jaw. She scurried into the safety of the anger that crackled between them. And stoked it just a bit.

  “Just so you know,” she said sweetly, “I’m not going to be counting pennies while we’re out there. In this case, we’re spending money to make money. I’m thinking of it as a kind of investment strategy.”

  “Spoken like someone who’s always had too much of everything and never had to work for it.”

  The jab didn’t hurt any less just because it was true.

  “Well, then, this is the perfect account for me, isn’t it? The more I spend, the happier Brian Simms seems.”

  “Only you could think that made sense. This is a business, not a shopping spree.”

  “Obviously you know nothing about retail therapy,” she snapped back. “Believe it or not, there’s comfort to be found in shopping.” She glanced meaningfully at the doorway, willing him away before he saw beneath her anger and irritation to the raw attraction she couldn’t seem to get rid of. “Some of us just need more comfort than others.”

  By Friday afternoon there was nothing else to do. Every t had been crossed, every i dotted—except for her inability to reach Selena Moore to set up an appointment in L.A. The woman was proving surprisingly difficult to get ahold of.

  Shelley had just picked up the phone to see if she could get a last-minute manicure and pedicure, when Judy strode into her office and dropped into the chair across from Shelley’s desk. Her body was knotted as tightly as a pretzel.

  Shelley lowered the phone and considered her smoldering sister. “Do we have a tahr emergency?”

  “Tire World is not a problem.” Judy folded her arms across her chest and became even more pretzel-like. “My husband is a problem.”

  This was new territory; territory Shelley had no idea how to traverse. “Craig?”

  “That would be him.”

  “Was it something he said?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Something bad?”

  “Most definitely.”

  Shelley tried to picture Craig Blumfeld hurling obscenities and failed miserably. “What did he say?”

  “He said he couldn’t pick up Sammy from practice or Jason from his friend’s because he was tied up. Even though he promised he would. He also told me that that was my job.” Her eyes snapped with hurt and indignation. “And I still have work to do.”

  “I’m sure you can finish it later or at home if you want to.”

  “But I don’t want to.” Judy looked ready to cry or strike out; it wasn’t clear which. “I want to finish my work here, like I’d planned. And I want him to take what I’m doing seriously.” Her eyes glistened. “But he just talks to me as if I’m some child playing at having a job or gets mad that I’m not there to wait on him.”

  She jumped up and began to pace in front of Shelley’s desk. “I’m tired of waiting on everyone and doing everything for everybody else. I’m a person, too!”

  Shelley watched the emotions wash across her sister’s face. Perfectly buttoned-down Judy Schwartz Blumfeld had popped a few of those buttons. “Have you tried telling him what you’re telling me?”

  Judy looked her in the eye. “He doesn’t want to hear it. We barely talk to each other anymore anyway.” She flailed at the air dismissively. “He just wants things the way he wants them—which is exactly the way they’ve always been. He won’t even consider what I want. And this project? Pfft!” Judy mad
e the sound their mother made when she was upset, which Shelley was very careful not to point out. “You’d think I decided to take on this grand opening just to inconvenience him.”

  Shelley didn’t know how to respond. If this had been Nina or another friend of hers, she’d be advising her to dump the guy, let him know in no uncertain terms that she wouldn’t put up with this kind of bullshit. But this was Judy, happily married Judy—a ray of hope on the marital horizon that Shelley now realized she had somehow been clinging to.

  And then there was Craig, who might be a little stodgy and apparently averse to change, but whom Judy had always treated like the grand prize. Not to mention Jason and Sammy, who had always made Judy kvell—to use the Yiddish term—with pride.

  “Dump the guy” was not going to cut it.

  “OK.” She eyed Judy carefully. “Maybe the two of you need to take a weekend off somewhere to reconnect. Or if you can’t get all the way out of town, why not spend a night or two at the Ritz?” The Ritz was great as long as one wasn’t pressed for time or late for a meeting.

  “Pfft!” This time Judy noticed her word choice. A look of horror washed over her face. “Oh, my God, I’m starting to sound like Mom!”

  Shelley winced.

  “I do, don’t I? I sound just like her!” Judy clasped her hands together. “I am not our mother. I refuse to be. And he can’t make me.” She paced a few steps to the right, then turned and headed back in the other direction.

  “Judy, just calm down. I have to leave now for an appointment, but we could go out for a drink afterward.”

  OK, so she was supposed to be getting ready for her evening with Trey after she finished at Dr. Mellnick’s. But blood was thicker than . . . dating. “We’ll have a couple of glasses of wine and consume a large quantity of hors d’oeuvres. I promise you’ll feel much better.”

  “I can’t go for a drink,” Judy bit out, “because my husband is not available to pick up our children. If he won’t help me get my work done, you can bet your ass he’s not going to drop what he’s doing so I can go out and have a drink!”

  Once again, Shelley didn’t know what to say. She’d never heard the word “ass,” or anything remotely like it, come out of her sister’s mouth.

  “Jude . . .”

  “No, don’t worry about it!” Judy reached down to retrieve her purse. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Judy, just let me—”

  Her sister reached the doorway, then whirled back around. “It’s OK, Shelley. I’ll be fine. Really. I’m not completely sure I can say the same for Craig.”

  Shelley arrived at her appointment with her sister’s words reverberating in her head. When Dr. Mellnick motioned her to her usual chair, she sat slowly, trying to figure out how much to say. It wasn’t really her place to discuss Judy’s problems with her therapist. But then, it hadn’t been her place to discuss Nina’s, either, yet she’d given her friend part of her session.

  “What’s wrong?” Dr. Mellnick asked.

  “With me?” Shelley stalled. She’d already decided not to bring up her unwelcome attraction to Ross Morgan or her lack of one for Trey. If she put her feelings into words, she was afraid she’d have to act on them. And she was nowhere near ready for that. “Nothing.”

  “So why the face?”

  Howard Mellnick was nothing if not patient; she knew this from experience. If she didn’t respond in some way, he’d just wait until she couldn’t take the silence anymore and started spilling her guts. For a moment she considered denying she was making a face, except, of course, she’d been gnawing at her bottom lip all the way over here and it felt like she’d drawn blood.

  “Well, to tell you the truth,” she began, still stalling, still trying to decide whether to confess to her own conflicted feelings or offer up her sister’s as a distraction. “I, um . . .” She paused, unsure, but unable to push away the mental picture of Judy headed home for certain confrontation with Craig.

  She’d come to know Judy better in the weeks they’d been working together than she had in a lifetime. If Howard Mellnick could give her some insights that might help Judy, then surely that would be a good thing. Besides, the Mellnick was sworn to secrecy as surely as a priest in a confessional; whatever she said to him would never leave this room.

  She met Howard Mellnick’s gaze and gnawed once more on her already raw lip. This was not an attempt to avoid dealing with her own problems; for once her sister’s problems loomed much larger than her own.

  “The thing is,” she said quietly, “I’m a little bit worried about my sister, Judy.”

  chapter 21

  Judy picked Sammy up at practice and Jason from his friend Joey’s, and drove them home spoiling for a fight. The boys were smart enough to disappear into the basement the minute they reached the house. Craig wasn’t home yet, so Judy stomped around the kitchen preparing dinner and venting her fury on the cans she slammed onto the can opener, and on the roast she yanked out of the freezer, defrosted in the microwave, and slapped into the oven.

  Unfortunately, none of these things helped her chill out to any noticeable degree.

  By the time Craig got home an hour and a half later, she was too mad to make small talk or pretend that she was anything short of furious. She’d been nursing her hurt and anger since their phone conversation that afternoon and there was no way she could have acted as if things were normal. Even if she’d wanted to.

  She finished the dinner preparations in silence, too angry even to try to harangue one of the boys into setting the table.

  “What’s for dinner?” Craig asked.

  Judy looked at her husband, the one who had graduated with honors from Emory University Law School, but didn’t seem to realize how close to the precipice he was standing. “Food.”

  She picked up the glass of Merlot she’d just poured and rammed it toward him, taking real satisfaction from the sight of it sloshing down his coat sleeve and onto the cuff of his crisply starched white shirt. “Maybe you’d like some wine while you’re waiting.”

  Leaving him in the kitchen, Judy stalked to their bedroom suite and slammed the door behind her. There, she paced the perimeter of the room and tried to redirect her thoughts, but there was no room in her brain for anything other than anger and unhappiness. In the bathroom she splashed cold water on her flushed face and told herself to calm down. Unfortunately, her self didn’t seem to be listening.

  “Judy, the bell’s going off on the oven,” Craig shouted through the locked bedroom door. She was beginning to think the man had a death wish.

  Steaming, she threw the door open, brushed past Craig, and marched into the kitchen to pull the roast out of the oven. Craig followed a few steps behind her and stopped on the other side of the kitchen island, his silence indicating that he had finally noticed that something was amiss.

  She set the sizzling pan with its unintentionally blackened hunk of meat on a trivet and pulled the instant mashed potatoes out of the microwave. The peas were boiling madly on the stove. She shoved the cutting board and a meat fork and knife toward him then rummaged in the cupboard for a platter. “Please cut the meat” was all she could manage.

  The four of them sat at the table staring at what was supposed to be dinner. The roast looked like leather. The peas were shriveled beyond recognition, and the mashed potatoes had coalesced into one large lump.

  “I had a snack at Joey’s, and I’m not hungry.” Jason scraped his chair back. “May I be excused?”

  “I don’t feel so good.” Sammy stood, too. “I think I might have that stomach thing that’s going around.”

  The boys hotfooted it back down to the basement.

  Judy filled Craig’s plate with slabs of shoe-leather meat, a mound of ceramic-strength peas, and several golf balls of potato. With a direct challenge in her eyes, she sat back in her chair and waited for Craig to make an excuse and flee, but he surprised her by picking up his fork and beginning to eat.

  “So,” he said tentatively. “H
ow was your day?”

  He swallowed a piece of meat—a feat that took several minutes and half a glass of water—and eyed the mashed potatoes and peas, evidently trying to determine which to attempt first.

  She waited, eyes narrowed, while he opted for the peas. It crossed her mind that if he kept eating the garbage she’d placed before him, she might have to perform the Heimlich maneuver or call 911, but, frankly, she wanted him to suffer.

  He raised a golf ball of potato to his mouth, hesitated briefly, and then slipped it between his lips.

  “Are we talking before you called and reneged on your promise to pick up the boys, or after?”

  He choked on the mashed potatoes and reached for his glass of water. Convulsive swallowing followed.

  “I told you I was sorry, but I had to take care of something for a client.”

  “Well, I have news for you,” Judy replied. “I have a client now, too. And an apology doesn’t just make your . . . breach of promise go away.”

  “Breach of promise?” He stopped pretending to eat and pushed his plate away. “What about your breach of promise? You promised to love and honor. You promised to stay home and raise our sons and run our house. I don’t see any of those things happening anymore.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin and crumpled it onto his plate.

  “I signed on to a partnership, not a lifetime employment contract. My terms have changed. It’s time to renegotiate.”

  “You can’t just change the terms of an agreement, even an unwritten one, without discussion. You’ve turned all of our lives totally upside down without even asking how we feel about it. I don’t want to negotiate.”

  He scraped his chair back and stood so that he towered over her. His even features were sharpened by anger, while his clear brown eyes were clouded with—she didn’t know what.

  Judy stood to face him. She had to tilt her head back a bit and look up at him, but she met him glare for glare. She’d never seen Craig this angry or unsettled, and she was a bit surprised that she’d been able to rock his world so completely. She’d been raised to give in, concede the point, smooth things over, but deep down where she rarely delved, she knew that she couldn’t back down now. She was just starting to get a sense of what she was capable of. Who knew what she might accomplish now that she’d set out on this new path? If she gave it up now she’d never forgive herself. Or him.