I start reading out loud.
“We have documentation for Daisy, because she’s Bobby’s service animal, of course. Bobby had a brain injury during birth, and his muscles get stiff. He communicates with a computer board. Like I said, Daisy has papers, but we had to sneak this little fella in,” Lisa Shore, 48, tells The Daily News. “Ryan saw him on the sidewalk and let us know he wanted to keep him. I told my son that if the dog’s a stray, we’d bring him back to Omaha when we go back after New Year’s Eve. My boy’s got such a big heart. We bought that sweater at the little souvenir shop around the corner because Bobby thought the little fella looked cold.” Bob Shore, Senior, chimed in with a plea to find the now missing mutt. “We finished lunch, and in all the commotion of getting our coats on and making sure Daisy got a walk, the little guy disappeared. We hate to think of him alone in a big city like that.” The Shores ask readers to call The Daily News with any information.
“I’ve saved the best for last, Henry,” Landry says, ignoring me. “I talked to one of my friends who works for Rita O’Dowd. You know, the publicist.”
“Of course. Her firm handles New York City’s tourism campaign, The MOMA, and other high-fliers. She’s huge.”
“I know. Right? Well, my friend said they’re pulling out all the stops to push Michael Bublé at the Rainbow Room tonight. The blizzards earlier this month had a real impact on tourism, as you know, and they aren’t even close to being sold out like they thought they’d be. You aren’t going to believe this! They’re offering dinner for two, and cocktails with Michael to anyone who shows up with Hudson.”
“Excellent job, Landry. And the rest of you, as well,” Henry enthuses. “See Charlotte? I said we’d have Hudson back by the end of the day. All right, guys,” Henry continues, glancing at his phone. “Shanna is getting quite cross with me for not jettisoning you back to the office. Don’t worry about sorting this. I’ll deal with it. Leave me the tablet, but you can take your laptops. We already have one each.”
“All right, people, that’s a wrap,” Landry says, clapping her hands. “Henry, these guys can take off, then you and I can finish up here and cab it back together later, maybe after we grab some dinner.” She sticks out her lower lip, and finally deigns to turn her focus to me. “You look exhausted, Charlotte. You’ve got huge dark circles under your eyes.” My thumbs fly up to wipe away any errant mascara that might have smeared when I was crying with laughter earlier. “Why don’t you go lie down while Henry and I nail this down?”
“Oh, OK. Maybe I’ll call Craig at the station house.” As pleased as I am with all of the news of Hudson, I feel like the air has been let out of me. After Henry’s change in mood earlier, I had envisioned that he would continue playing hooky while we waited for things to develop. But finding Hudson trumped everything. If I needed to get out of the way, I would.
Henry types into his phone, answering a text. “Shanna’s asking for you, Landry,” he tells her, not bothering to look up. “Says she has a hot project, and you’re the only woman for the job. My loss. People,” Henry says to the interns, “hang back for a moment. You’ll be traveling back with Landry.” He slides his phone into his pocket. “Right, let me get you your coat,” he says, not wasting a minute before crossing to the closet.
There’s a knock, and Landry answers it as if she owns the place, pushing all of her co-workers aside. “Delivery for Miss Charlotte Bell,” the bellhop says. Landry takes the package, and closes the door without so much as a thank you.
“The photos from Macy’s,” Henry says. Without asking, Landry opens the envelope with my name written clearly on it, and slides out the contents. Inside are various sized images of me. It looks like a packet of school pictures, with the one large, farmable photo, then sheets of two, four, and eight smaller ones.
Henry takes them from Landry’s hands. “These are great, Charlotte, come look.”
I wince. I hate looking at photos of myself. He holds up the 8x10. “This is gorgeous. Look at your eyes.” I force myself to look over his shoulder. My pupils are enormous, giving me the look of a Japanese anime cutie. “You look so, I don’t know, alive?” he says. “Like you’ve got a secret.”
He hands the largest photo to Landry, and she quickly slides it into her leather folder. “See that this gets posted everywhere, Landry. Once New York gets a look at this girl, its citizens will start working overtime to see that she’s reunited with her little dog.”
Landry turns her back on me, and glosses her lips in the hall mirror. The others are still rushing around, straightening piles of paper, stacking lunch dishes on the room service cart, and pulling on their coats and hats. Henry lays the rest of the photographs on a side table. I watch him glance at Landry before folding the smaller page into quarters, tearing along the edges before putting one of the 4x5s into his pocket.
“Look,” says the redhead, hand-knit fingerless gloves in hand. I swivel to see what he’s talking about. He’s pointing to the corner windows. “It’s snowing.”
“Then you’d better hurry if you’re going to find a cab,” Henry says, pushing them out the door.
Just as Henry is about to push the door closed, Landry sticks her foot in to block it. Immaculate in her well-cut coat, and carefully selected winter hat, designed not to crush coifs, she makes one last-ditch effort. “What if I called my friend at Rita O’Dowd and had her reserve a table for us? We should probably have someone on the ground at The Rainbow Room, just in case the stunt pays off.”
“You’ve just said it yourself, it’s a stunt. Better to focus our energies where they’re effective. Thanks all,” he calls, as the door closes. “Bye, Landry,” he says. I catch one last glimpse of her flawless face, her full lips rounded in an ‘O’ of surprise, then she’s gone.
Henry marches over to the divan and flops backward as if he’s just gone twelve rounds in the boxing ring. He drapes his forearm over his eyes, and breathes. His shirt is pulled to the side, and I can see the slightest hint of the carved ab muscle rising up from his hipbone. I quickly focus on the window, as he sits up and sighs.
“I got pretty excited about the whole Rainbow Room thing. You think it’s a stunt, huh?” I pull back the drapes, and take in the sight of this part of the city filtered by a screen of fluffy snowflakes. “I was hoping that might be the tipping point to getting people to bring Hudson back.”
“On the contrary.” He hugs one of the couch cushions, eyes glinting. “I fully expect to find Hudson there tonight.”
“But you just told Landry it was a waste of time.”
“Having dinner at The Rainbow Room with Landry would be a waste of time. Can you imagine me having to spend my first, and possibly only, night at The Rainbow Room forcing conversation with someone so fresh out of college that her stories are still regularly peppered with what she and her friends did in high school? I had to take a van with her to scout a location for one of Hilary Clinton’s stump speeches, and I nearly opened the door and shoulder-rolled out after less than an hour. As you pointed out, up to now I haven’t really experienced New York despite the amount of time I’ve spent here. Soon, it’ll be back to London, and with any luck, I’ll be a big fish in a little pond there.”
A wave of wistfulness passes over me as I imagine him no longer being in the country. At this point, I can hardly imagine being separated from him. These last two days have been about as intense as I’ve ever experienced.
“So,” I say, feeling uplifted with hope, “you think there’s a chance Hudson could turn up tonight.”
He pulls out his phone. “More than a chance. I’m calling Rita now.”
“You know her?”
“My world is a small world. Everyone knows everyone in this business. Miranda taught me early, don’t make enemies because people hop around from firm to firm, and never, pardon my French, make merde where you eat. It also doesn’t hurt that Rita owes me a favor,” he says, dialing the number. “Fancy being my date for The Rainbow Room tonight? Oh, one sec,” He p
resses the phone to his ear, “Henry Wentworth for Rita, please.”
His date? My stomach does a forward flip. Apart from Kenny in the park, I haven’t even contemplated going on a date since James.
“I’d hate to wait for Hudson all by myself,” he says, covering the mouthpiece with his hand. “Hello, Rita! What impossibly good luck that you picked up, busy woman like yourself.” He holds up the one-finger sign, telling me to wait, and heads into his bedroom and shuts the door behind him.
I gaze out the window at the snow falling on the midtown street below. It’s coming down at a steady pace. Even with the holiday traffic on the streets, and the melee of shoppers on the sidewalk, a light coating is starting to form, making the city feel sparkly and fresh. Surely he didn’t mean a real date? Like he said, his world is small, and one shouldn’t make merde. I’m Miranda Nichols’s niece. It’s his job to get my dog back. And once Hudson’s back, we’ll go our separate ways.
I fix my gaze on a couple running across the street in the middle of the block, holding hands and dashing around the slow-moving cars and cabs. You can just tell they’re giddy from the snow, and that being in love is making them reckless. “Be careful,” I want to shout but I’m too far away. “You’ll get yourself crushed!” Before I’m too deep in my worry, they’re safe on the sidewalk, stopping for a kiss.
“Charlotte,” Henry says, “are you all right?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“This all must be very hard for you,” he says, approaching. “And I’ve been running you ragged all over town.”
I try a smile, but I find myself searching his face. His expression changes from interested to concern. “How insensitive of me. I got caught up in my own fun. I should have been thinking about your welfare. I apologize.”
“Really, I’m fine.”
“Maybe it’s better if we skip The Rainbow Room,” he says. I shrug noncommittally. If that’s what he wants, that’s fine with me. The last thing on earth I want to be is a girl like Landry. I’ve always been fine on my own.
His phone dings in his pocket. He pulls it out, checks it, then holds it out for me to see.
U R Confirmed. Bublé @ Rainbow 8 pm, second seating. Enjoy! Rita
“Just give me the word, and I’ll cancel the reservation. All the irons are in the fire. I can spend the evening catching up on work, and fielding any responses we get regarding Hudson. You can rest if you’d like.”
I feel like a sea anemone, reaching out my thousands of branches toward him, trying to get a feel for what he’s thinking. He seems tense. Did he sense that I might have sort of wanted it to be a date? Is he horrified, the way he looked when Landry was coming onto him with both barrels?
“What do you want to do?” I ask him.
“I asked you first.”
I wait. I learned a long time ago that if you sit still and stay quiet, people will usually tip their hands. He doesn’t fall for it. He stares at me, refusing to look away. The thought of sleeping in this big suite all by myself feels unbearable, and the thought of going home to my empty apartment feels even worse.
“OK, on three let’s both say what we want to do. It’s an old trick I learned at boarding school when the girls in my dorm went in together to order food. On three, we’d shout ‘pizza,’ ‘Chinese,’ or ‘falafel.’”
He narrows his eyes at me. “How do I know I can trust you? I recall more than one instance when my mates and I counted to three on the side of a freezing cold swimming pool, and I’d wind up the only idiot in the water. And that’s not the only time I’ve been left with egg on my face.” His eyes darken, and I wonder if he’s thinking about Patricia.
“How do I know I can trust you?” I ask, putting on a false bravado, pretending I’m only talking about the game. How do I know I can trust you, I think, when I don’t trust anyone?
“I guess we’ll just have to decide to trust each other,” he says. “There’s no way to find out but to do it.”
I feel my breathing speed up. “OK then,” I say, feeling like someone’s stolen the oxygen from the room. “On three.”
We count together, pumping our hands rock/paper/scissors-style, holding up the numbers. “One, two, three!”
“I want to go to the Rainbow Room!” I shout, unexpectedly loudly. All I could hear from him was “Blahbidy blah Rainbow Room!”
We both break into great, big grins. I feel like I’ve just gotten a pardon from death row. Henry looks like he’s about to giggle.
“Right, then. Good,” he says, blue eyes smiling.
“Good.” I say.
“Meet you back here in an hour, scrubbed and polished.”
Chapter 9
“Most girls I know wouldn’t agree to walk in the snow, let alone suggest it.”
The sun had set an hour ago, but there was no trace of winter gloom in the heart of Manhattan. The doorman of the Waldorf, in his lavish red-and-gold caped overcoat and velveteen hat whisks open the heavy glass door, and we pass under the awning’s heat lamp, and trot past the taxi stand onto the white-blanketed sidewalk.
“Taking a cab seems silly. The Waldorf is only a few blocks from The Rainbow Room, and this way we can swing by and look at the window at Saks on Fifth Avenue.”
“It’s very sensible of you to wear boots. I find it tiresome to wait patiently while women teeter along in shoes more suited for display in china cabinets than walking.”
“I have to admit, I do have a pair of those in my bag.” Penelope, the personal shopper, had thought of everything. Why she thought I’d need a gown, I’ll never know, but I have to applaud her foresight in sending the slim-cut, charcoal Hugo Boss tux for Henry. Worn with a simple but shimmering necktie, it doesn’t look stuffy at all. In fact, I’m shocked at how at-home he looks in it, given his what he told me about his upbringing. It’s as though he’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I suppose that’s what they call panache. He’s wearing that suit like a boss, in the manner of Daniel Craig or Colin Firth, or maybe David Beckham or Will Smith. When James used to dress up for events with a capital ‘E,’ he always looked like a wrapped package. Henry inhabits the tuxedo like a second skin.
I pat my oversized leather tote, brought to carry said shoes even though a teeny-tiny cocktail bag made to carry little more than a lipstick and a credit card would have been more appropriate. “Like all sane women in New York, I’ll shuck my comfortable shoes right before walking in the door, and put them back on when I turn back into Cinderella.”
“I think you look cute as you are,” he tells me, brushing snow off of his glasses. It’s very Annie Hall meets Cyndi Lauper, especially with that wooly cap.”
The crossing light changes from a big red hand, to the outline of a person walking, and he takes me by the arm as we cross from Park to Madison. “I’m grateful that your hair isn’t arranged in a great candyfloss beehive, and affixed with can after can of gummy hairspray. I wouldn’t want to breathe in all those chemicals when we’re dancing later.”
Dancing? I’d pictured eating dinner, listening to music, and a big reunion with Hudson, but dancing hadn’t factored into my plan for the evening. I blushed just thinking about being in the middle of a dance floor under the scrutiny of strangers. “Sorry, I’m not a dancer,” I tell him. Maybe he should have brought Landry after all.
“Nonsense, if you’re breathing, you’re a dancer.” He grabs me around the waist, and pulls me in tightly as a food delivery man whizzes by on a motorized scooter. “Hey buddy, it’s a sidewalk, not a side ride!” He chastises.
“Geez,” I say, catching my breath. “Listen to you! Who says you’re not a New Yorker?” I laugh as we walk along, hips bumping. “That was pretty brash for a buttoned-up Englishman.”
“He almost took off your arm,” he says. “There ought to be a law. Wait, there is a law,” he says, chuckling. “And who says I’m buttoned-up?” As we walk, our bodies find a rhythm and we begin gliding in a fluid, cohesive motion, like ice-skaters. “I wrestled a goat, remember?” I
crack up laughing at the memory.
“The positive ions in the air with the snow are making you goofy, you know that?” I ask. “I believe your kind are supposed to keep their voices at a reasonable decibel-level and stick to conversations about the weather and the roads, Sir England.”
“My kind? That’s rich, coming from you Miss Poshy-Posh Dainty-Lady. I’m making an effort at letting my hair down. You’re the prissy one who refuses to dance.”
“I just don’t dance, that’s all.”
“Everyone can dance. What are you afraid of?” he asks, playfully, looking me in the eye. “That someone might see you loosen up? That you might show some passion?” He says this with a cartoonish Argentine accent. Letting go of my waist, he puts one hand on his belly, and holds the other out in a dramatic tango pose. “That, when you move to the rhythm, you might reveal your dark desires?” He does a very competent box step, wiggling his hips as he goes, and bobs his eyebrows at me.
I feel myself contract. That’s exactly what I’m scared of. It’s like a red laser has just been aimed at me, and I close down in fear. It had been a long time since I learned the value of a poker face. After the crash, Bridget had been helping me pack what I would bring with me to the States. Over and over, she told me how nice my Aunt Miranda was going to be to live with, and how exciting it I would find it to live in America. Her voice had sounded funny, like she was talking to an interviewer on a radio program, and not to me.
I shook my head no. “It’s never going to be OK.”
“Everything always comes right in the end,” she said, gripping me by the shoulders, her eyes boring into mine. You have to believe that.” I wondered who she was trying to convince, herself or me. “Believe.”
A Miracle at Macy's Page 20
