by BETH KERY
Was all of this her mother’s way of reinforcing the idea that Eleanor was just dancing out to center stage in a desperate attempt to disguise the gaping hole of Caddy’s absence? “Mom, is this your way of trying to bring home your point from yesterday?” Eleanor asked quietly.
“What point from yesterday?” her dad asked.
“Of course not. If anything, the opposite,” her mother insisted, looking dramatically wounded by Eleanor’s accusation. “I thought if anything, the video was making your point. You’ve always had as much drive and passion as Caddy, maybe more so. After I thought about it a little last night, I started to think maybe your sister was right to tell you to dive in . . . take some chances, live your passion—”
“Would someone mind filling me on the first part of this conversation?” her dad asked. Eleanor stifled a groan. Here was proof positive her father had had nothing to do with sending her mom over to Eleanor’s to express “their” concerns. Well, it wasn’t like she hadn’t suspected it from the start. Her mom often mentioned her dad in her campaigns in order to gain credibility. She should call her mom out. But the last thing she wanted was a family confrontation at the moment. She felt too raw.
All day long, it’d been like they’d formed a silent pact to act like everything was okay with just the three of them going through the motions of a traditional Thanksgiving, everyone intent on avoiding Caddy’s glaring absence. Now, it was as if her mother was defying that pact—ripping away the bandage from the wound.
“It’s okay, Dad,” Eleanor mumbled to her father. “Mom came over to Caddy’s place yesterday—my place—and we had a little misunderstanding, that’s all.”
“One that I hope I’ve put to rest with this video and what I’ve just said,” her mother said, looking regally put out.
“Why am I always the last to hear about these things?” her dad asked.
“I told you I made Eleanor a beef pirog Monday night and took it there after work yesterday,” Catherine scolded her husband.
“That hardly equates to you two fighting.”
“It wasn’t a fight. Not really. Everything is fine,” Eleanor smoothed over, desperately pushing the invisible, askew bandage of their pact of silence back into place. “Thanks for showing the video, Mom. I’m sorry I don’t like watching how dorky I was as a kid as much as you,” she joked in an attempt to deemphasize her discomfort. At that moment, she just wanted out from under the microscope of her mom’s attention.
Damn you, Caddy. Why’d you have to go and die and leave me here alone to deal with her on the holidays? We used to have each other’s backs. Now I’m taking all the fire straight on.
She stood and grabbed her empty mug.
“Eleanor—”
“Anybody want anything? I’m going to get more hot chocolate,” she said briskly, cutting off her mom. She started toward the kitchen.
And it wouldn’t hurt to find the bottle of schnapps Mom keeps hidden behind the flour tin in the pantry.
Eleanor hid her smile, feeling comforted for some reason. It had been her thought, of course. But the voice had sure sounded like Caddy’s in her head.
NINE
Eleanor was due to go out with her friend Jimmy Garcia on Friday evening upon her return to the city. Jimmy had been away because of a family situation until the day of the press-employee trial run for the Mary Todd Lincoln exhibit. Because they’d been so busy with the exhibit, Jimmy and she hadn’t had much time to talk. She had an idea Stacy Moffitt had gossiped to Jimmy about Eleanor’s uncharacteristic sexy outfits at the reading event. Jimmy knew about her interest in Trey Riordan and her determination to attend the event because Trey would be there. He probably was straining at the bit to interrogate her about why she’d chosen to go pursue Riordan in such an atypically aggressive fashion.
Jimmy called that Friday afternoon as she was entering her condo, overburdened with her suitcase and two bags filled with leftovers her mom had insisted she take home.
“Do you still want to meet tonight for a drink?” Jimmy asked her as she wrestled open her refrigerator door.
“Yeah, but can we make it an early one? A couple nights in Evanston have got me wrung out.”
“Catherine the Great was in fine form, I take it?” Jimmy asked. Jimmy was very familiar with her mother and father. As a nonfamily member, he had the privilege of looking upon her mom’s antics with amused fondness.
“We put up the Christmas tree this morning,” Eleanor said. Jimmy’s heavy sigh told her that statement had said it all. It was yet another Briggs family tradition that she cherished, the four of them putting up the Christmas tree on the Friday after Thanksgiving before Eleanor and Caddy returned to the city. “‘The G’ just kept prattling on,” she said, calling her mom by the familiar derivative of her nickname created by Caddy long ago. “Acting like nothing was wrong and she was having the time of her life, putting up the decorations. I swear, Jimmy, she completely exhausted my dad. He just sat in his chair and stared at the Christmas tree. Not like he was seeing it, but like the Dementors had just sucked the soul out of him or something, and he was an empty shell. And all the while, my mom’s going on about whether or not we should do white lights or colored ones, and should we order the fresh garland from Shreff’s Florist or online this year?”
She slammed the refrigerator door shut, a shudder going through her.
“I’m sorry, Eleanor. Your poor dad. Poor Catherine too,” Jimmy murmured sympathetically. “She’s just dealing in the only way she knows how.”
“I know,” Eleanor agreed miserably.
“I know you do. Doesn’t make it much easier, though, does it?”
“Not even a little bit,” she agreed, rolling her eyes. “It’s a good thing I prepared myself for how hard the first holiday could be. Not that it helped, but at least I was a little less despondent than I would have been if I hadn’t prepared for complete and utter catastrophe.”
“You need a drink. We can talk about it tonight,” Jimmy consoled.
“No, we’re done talking about that. I’ve had enough of the gloom and doom,” she replied steadfastly. “But I do want to meet. I feel like we haven’t talked outside of work in forever. How does meeting at five sound to you?”
“Fine by me. But if we aren’t going to talk about Thanksgiving at the Briggs house, you will promise to spill all the details about Riordan?”
Eleanor seriously doubted she’d be describing any of the fine points of her outrageous seduction, but she did owe Jimmy some dirt.
“There’s a bar in the building next door, Gold Coast? Meet me there at five?” she asked. She’d hatched up a plan on the drive from her parents’ house to get Trey her phone number. She’d drop a brief, nonchalant message off for Trey with Ralph, his doorman. She’d do it after Jimmy and her had a drink.
“Isn’t that Riordan’s building? Are you expecting him to be there?”
“No, are you kidding? He’s out of town for the holiday weekend. I wouldn’t go over there if I thought I’d run into him. Not in a million years,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Why? What happened, Eleanor?”
“I’ll tell you about it tonight.”
She said good-bye to Jimmy. She turned in the kitchen, feeling that familiar, forbidden pull from the guest room in the distance. Leaving the lights in the condo off, she walked down the hallway. She entered the still, hushed guest room. Still wearing her coat, she crossed over to the window and peered out at Trey’s penthouse. It was dark, of course.
Dark and empty.
But unlike before when she’d looked inside his home, she now knew what it was to be in that room. She’d switched points of view. She’d lain in Trey’s bed, his arms surrounding her, and looked back here—into the known world of her condo, to a place where she’d lusted and longed so intently. Her lungs froze.
It all seemed so strange. So
forbidden and exciting . . .
So unlike her.
Something else had altered too, she realized as she stared out the window. Something elemental. Her perception of Trey himself had changed. He was no longer just the untouchable, beautiful, outrageously sexy playboy.
He was becoming three-dimensional.
Breathtakingly so.
Feeling exhausted by her thoughts, by Thanksgiving with her shrunken family—by everything—she made her way to the master bedroom. She stripped and climbed into bed.
When she awoke an hour and a half later, she felt rested and more content . . .
Until she noticed the time, that is.
“Shit,” she muttered, scrambling out of bed. She only had twenty minutes to shower and get ready to meet Jimmy next door at Gold Coast.
Maybe because she was aware that her hair and makeup would only get minimal attention with the time constraint, she chose to wear Caddy’s clothes to make up for the lack. She picked a pair of designer jeans that clung to her legs, hips and ass like a second skin, a white blouse, which she wore untucked, and a seemingly demure white button-down sweater that wasn’t at all innocent in the way it clung to her waist and breasts. Feeling restored from her nap and shower, she chose a pair of fun red heels with an ankle strap and fluffed her hair. It’d been unusually warm when she’d left her parents’ house earlier, and she was just going next door, so she left her coat in the closet. She grabbed her purse and hurried out of the condo.
She saw Jimmy immediately through the windows of Trey’s lobby. He was checking his phone—probably looking for a text from her, explaining her lateness. He stood just outside the entrance to Gold Coast.
“Sorry I’m late,” she called across the lobby breathlessly after she’d pushed through the revolving doors. Jimmy looked up from his phone.
“Eleanor.”
Eleanor halted in her tracks on the granite tile floor, her mouth falling open in confusion. A man had said her name, but Jimmy’s lips hadn’t moved. She looked in the direction of the voice.
Trey Riordan stood at the doorman’s station. He leaned against the counter, his tall body relaxed as though he’d been having a conversation with Ralph before she’d stormed into the lobby.
Shit.
For a stretched second, she just stared at him stupidly. He slowly straightened and faced her.
“I thought you were planning to be in Rockford over the weekend,” she said numbly when he began to walk toward her. He glanced down over her. A shiver ran through her when she saw how hard and serious he appeared, how intense his stare on her was. He looked incredible, all tawny and sinuous, his golden brown hair sexily mussed and the shadow of whiskers on his jaw and upper lip. He wore jeans and a long black winter coat. His blue eyes looked especially vivid in his whiskered, tanned face.
“I came back early.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but glanced to her right instead, distracted. She realized Jimmy had approached.
“Oh . . . this is Jimmy Garcia. Jimmy, Trey Riordan,” she managed. She saw Jimmy flash her a brief, stunned glance before he put out his hand to shake with Trey. Trey remained stony-faced as they shook. Eleanor knew he was physically imposing, of course, but she was quickly learning he could be intimidating, as well. As warm and easygoing as she knew he could be at times, he could be just as easily cool and daunting. She supposed it made sense. He hadn’t created a multimillion-dollar company from nothing by coming off as a pushover. At the moment, he peered at a clueless, amiable Jimmy with a narrowed stare.
There was an awkward pause when he and Jimmy dropped their hands. Eleanor shifted restlessly in her heels, made prickly by Trey’s stare on her.
“Well, I didn’t mean to interrupt your date,” Trey finally said gruffly. “You two are going to Gold Coast?”
“Oh, it’s not a date—”
“Trey? There you are. I thought I heard your voice.”
Eleanor blinked in surprise, her denial cut off by another woman’s crisp, British-accented voice. She looked between Trey’s and Jimmy’s tall bodies and saw a beautiful blond woman standing in the doorway of Gold Coast. The contrast of her patrician, cool features and the smoking-hot leather pants she wore created quite an impression. Eleanor’s heart shrunk two sizes when she saw the eager way she was staring at Trey. Her gaze bounced up to see Trey’s reaction to the unexpected British bombshell. She searched, but couldn’t find any clue on his handsome face. If she’d had to guess, she’d have said he’d forced a carefully blank expression.
“Alessandra,” he said.
This can’t be happening. He’d come back to town early for a date. Here, at Gold Coast. Or maybe he just lied to me about being away with family for the entire weekend. I should have known that his presentation of himself as a family-oriented farm boy was ridiculous.
The blond woman pointed into Gold Coast. “I just got us a table.”
“Right,” Trey said. Alessandra stepped toward them, looking politely confused when Trey didn’t immediately move to follow her. Or possibly, politely put out, Eleanor decided.
“Are these your friends?” Alessandra asked, glancing between Jimmy and Eleanor.
Trey made introductions, and they all shook hands as though everything were perfectly normal. Which maybe it was for everyone else. On Eleanor’s part, her heart had bulged from its previous shrunken state upon seeing the gorgeous Alessandra and was now swollen so large it was pressing uncomfortably against her sternum.
“It’s very crowded in there,” Alessandra told Trey, gesturing toward Gold Coast. “Maybe we could just go up to your place—”
“You said you had a table,” Trey cut her off.
Alessandra blinked. “But it’s the only one in the entire place. Maybe your friends would like it?”
“We can all sit together,” Trey replied, his tone terse and not inviting argument.
“Of course,” Alessandra replied, backing up in her heels toward Gold Coast. Eleanor started from her frozen state when Trey touched her back, urging her toward the restaurant. She gave him a startled look. He just peered down at her, his expression inscrutable, his eyes sharp. The only thing Eleanor felt in that moment was his customary focus, and it was drilling straight down into her.
That was how she found herself sitting at a cozy, candlelit table in the bar, for all intents and purposes on a double date with Trey Riordan.
Something this ridiculous could only happen to me.
There was a single saving grace. At least she’d never spied on him making love to Alessandra. If she had, she didn’t think she’d be able to sit there without getting physically sick.
Alessandra and Jimmy made up for Trey’s surliness and Eleanor’s shock by filling up the silence. Alessandra talked about her glamorous job as a BBC television presenter and Jimmy was describing his job at the museum. When the drinks came and Eleanor and Trey had only said twenty words between the two of them the entire time, Jimmy launched into an enthusiastic description of their newest exhibit. Jimmy was a good friend. He knew what a crush Eleanor had had on Trey for over a year now, and sensed how awkward the situation was. He responded by trying to talk Eleanor up, bragging about her coup in negotiating a trade from the Smithsonian for Mary Todd Lincoln’s wardrobe and jewels.
“You told me you were in charge of membership and donations at the museum,” Trey interrupted bluntly.
“Everything we do at the museum is ultimately geared toward expanding membership. It’s the cold, hard reality of life,” Eleanor managed with a brittle laugh. Jimmy opened his mouth—undoubtedly to ask her what the hell she was talking about. Eleanor kicked him under the table. It was the best she could do to shut him up. He wouldn’t understand why Eleanor hadn’t wanted Trey to know she was a basement-dwelling, mousy conservation librarian. I mean . . . look at the kind of woman he’s used to dating, she thought, staring at Alessandra and
repressing a frown.
“How long have you two been dating?” Alessandra asked, taking a sip of her martini and looking annoyingly glamorous.
“We’re not dating. Eleanor and I have been good friends for years, ever since we met doing summertime work during college, restoring paintings at the Art Institute. It’s not exactly thrilling work, so we had to keep each other entertained,” Jimmy said, smiling at Eleanor.
Jimmy had probably heard her try to deny it earlier when Trey assumed they were dating, and was trying to set the record straight. But at that point, Eleanor would rather have just assumed Trey did believe she was on a date, since he was on one. Jimmy’s friendly words seemed to hover in the air over their table. Alessandra frowned and glanced furtively at Trey.
“I’m sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you two were together,” Alessandra said. She reached beneath the table, and Eleanor’s stomach lurched. Alessandra had just put her hand on Trey’s thigh beneath the table. “Trey and I met in London. Six months ago, right, honey?” she asked, staring up at Trey’s stoic profile.
Suddenly, Eleanor couldn’t take it anymore. She pushed back her chair.
“Excuse me for a minute,” she murmured awkwardly.
—
Trey tracked her progress through the crowded bar, annoyance building in him. Why is it I’m always watching her while she makes an escape? The jeans she wore looked like they were painted on. Her long, wavy hair swayed sexily just inches from the top of her ass as she motored across the room. The red heels with the ankle straps that she wore were killing him. Despite the jaw-dropping rear view of her before she disappeared down a hallway, it was the anxiety in her large eyes and the blank immobility of her usually animated face that remained burned in his mind’s eye.
He’d been stunned when he’d woken up alone on Wednesday morning, and then increasingly pissed. Maybe that was cocky of him, to be put out because a woman snuck away from his bed. But the truth was, he couldn’t remember it ever happening before in his life. What made the experience even more annoying was that he felt particularly robbed, because it’d been her.
