Twin Piques

by Tracie Banister

  I frown. “What would big pharma want with a rosarian?”

  SNIP There goes a rogue stem.

  “R and D . . .”

  SNIP And another.

  “ . . . they’re always looking to create new drugs from plants . . .”

  SNIP He chops off two with that slice.

  “. . . and they need guys like me who have Master’s in plant biology to do studies and conduct experiments.”

  SNIP SNIP Now he’s going after some of the half-dead rose blooms.

  “The money’s good, but I can’t imagine anything more boring than sitting in a lab all day.”

  Dropping the cutter thingamajig, Brody picks up a small knife with a curved blade and starts hacking small growths off a green stem. “Justine thought I was wasting my education by being a ‘glorified gardener.’” He slashes at the stem with a bit more violence this time and tosses the removed bits over his shoulder. He’s making me nervous. Maybe we shouldn’t be discussing his ex when he’s got a tool with a sharp blade in his hand.

  “She has a background in science, too,” he continues, moving on to another stem, which he attacks just as ferociously. “She went the academic route and became a professor in the integrative biolo– Ow!” he yelps, dropping the knife and cradling his hand to his chest.

  “What happened?” I query, panicking. I am so not good with medical emergencies. I can’t even handle the fake ones on Grey’s Anatomy. “Did you cut your hand? Slice off a finger? I’ll go get some ice. If we pack it in ice, they can probably reattach the finger at the hospital.” I’m pretty sure I heard that somewhere.

  Brody smirks. “I didn’t dismember myself. I just got stuck by a thorn. See.” He extends his hand in my direction and sure enough there’s nothing more serious going on than some blood on his index finger.

  This wouldn’t have happened if he’d been wearing his gloves like he was before I showed up. I think he forgot to put them back on because he was in such a hurry to distance himself from me and my prodding. Shoot, now I feel like it’s my fault he got hurt. “We should put a Band-Aid on that. I think I have one in my purse.”

  I rush over to the spot in the grass where I left my handbag, the cute vinyl one with the red and pink kiss prints all over it. Hearing me unzip my purse awakens Cicero from his nap and he watches to see what I’m doing. I rummage around inside the bag for a minute before locating what I want. “Got it!” I say triumphantly. When Cicero sees that the “it” I’m referring to is not a treat, he yawns and returns to his siesta.

  I head back over to my patient. “Sit,” I tell him, pointing to the ground.

  “I’m fine. You don’t have to play Florence Nightingale,” he protests, but obeys my command and takes a seat anyway.

  Kneeling down in front of Brody, I take his upturned hand in mine. It occurs to me that this is the first time we’ve ever touched, and my heartbeat picks up speed. I think about him stroking my cheek with that hand, or what it would feel like if I nestled my hand in his and he wrapped his strong, manly fingers around–

  “Are you a palm reader now, too?”

  “Huh?” I lift my eyes to his.

  “You’ve been staring so intently at my palm. I thought you might be studying my life line. If it’s short, please don’t tell me. I’ve had enough bad news lately.”

  I smile sheepishly. “I wasn’t reading your palm, but now that you mention it . . .” I do know a little something about the art of palmistry as Tommy dabbled in that area for a few weeks after he decided hat design wasn’t his calling, before he got excited about batiking.

  I lightly trace the three lines that travel from the crook of Brody’s thumb down to his wrist. “You have multiple life lines, which means not only do you have a long life to look forward to, you’ll have extra vitality throughout it.” And while I’m looking at his palm, I can’t resist the urge to check out his heart line. Oh dear, there are several breaks in it. So, his divorce hasn’t been his only disappointment in love.

  “Good to know I won’t bleed to death from this puncture wound then,” he jokes about his injury.

  “We should still clean it up so that you don’t get an infection.” Pulling some tissues from my purse, I wipe away the droplets of blood oozing down his finger, then I squirt some of my antibacterial hand gel on the area. When he gives me a questioning look, I say, “It serves the same purpose as soap and water, right?”

  He shrugs and rubs his hands together. I complete his treatment by wrapping a Band-Aid around the finger with the boo-boo.

  “All set,” I declare. “Now promise me you won’t do any more work in the garden without your gloves.”

  “Yeah, that was dumb. I know better. It won’t happen again.” Before taking back his hand, he gives mine an appreciative squeeze, and I feel prickles of pleasure shoot up my arm.

  I expect Brody to get up and resume his work on the rose bushes, but he dallies, plucking blades of grass from the ground for no particular reason. “You said you went through a divorce . . .,” he prompts me casually.

  I’m shocked he wants to revisit this topic. He was so defensive and angry about it earlier, but maybe that was because I caught him off guard or he just needed to vent. I certainly don’t mind sharing the details of my seven-month stint as a wife if it will help him.

  “Yeah, I got married when I was really young. Too young to know what I was doing, according to my sister.”

  “How old were you?” He stares straight at me, clearly interested in my response.

  Those eyes of his are something else, seeing them up close like this, I notice little things like his grayish-blue irises are outlined with a dark cobalt color and there’s a circle of pale green around the pupil. I’ve never seen so many different shades in a pair of eyes before; they’re really beautiful. I could stare into them all day and probably keep discovering new and fascinating– Hold on, wasn’t I supposed to be answering a question? Right, my age when I took the matrimonial plunge.

  “I was nineteen. I met Alphonse during my year abroad.”

  “You studied in Europe?”

  “No, some friends and I decided to do some traveling after we graduated high school. I had some money from an inheritance my grandmother left me and I really wanted to see the world, explore different cultures, and just enjoy life. Sloane thought I was being frivolous with the money. She used hers to help pay for Stanford, her top-choice college, which was the practical thing to do. Sloane always does what’s practical.”

  “So, the two of you are identical in appearance, but not in your approaches to life?”

  “Bingo,” I confirm his deduction with a smile. “I’m the free-spirited twin. I don’t plan things like my sister does. I just follow my heart.”

  “And your heart led you to Alphonse?”

  “It did. I met him in Paris, the City of Love. It was all very romantic. Long walks hand-in-hand down the Champs-Élysées, sharing a bottle of wine and talking for hours in a sidewalk café, watching the sun set from the Pont des Arts . . .” I drift off, lost in the memory of what it was like to be swept off my feet by a handsome Frenchman.

  “What did this Alphonse do?” Brody queries, looking perplexed. “Doesn’t sound like he had much time for a job or school if he was entertaining you 24/7.”

  I shrug. “He was an artist, so he had a flexible work schedule.”

  “What kind of artist? Painter? Sculptor?”

  “No, he was a street performer.”

  “You mean, a mime?” Brody snorts with amusement. “No wonder you fell for him. I’ve been told that whiteface is a real turn-on for women. Did you swoon the first time you saw him do ‘man trapped in a glass box?’” He starts to do that classic mime routine in a comical and exaggerated fashion.

  “Stop,” I say, trying not to laugh when Brody pretends to smack his face up against the side of the box, contorting his mouth so that he looks like a suckerfish. “That’s not nice. Alphonse was very dedicated to his craft, and that was appealing
to teenaged me. Besides, he didn’t stay a mime. When he came back to San Francisco with me, he found another way to express himself artistically.”

  “I’m afraid to ask . . .”

  “He became a living statue. You know the ones down by the wharf that are painted in metallic colors?”

  “Yeah, they’re creepy.” Brody makes a face.

  “Alphonse wasn’t creepy. His statue was a joyful one, a man with an umbrella who was dancing in the rain, like Gene Kelly. That was my idea, by the way. Umbrella Man became very popular, so popular that Alphonse attracted the attention of the Disney people. They wanted him to come work at Epcot in one of the pavilions.”

  “So, you moved to Orlando with him?”

  “No, that’s when things fell apart for us. I wasn’t keen on the idea of being three thousand miles away from my sister and my friends, but it was such a great opportunity for Phonsey, he had to take it.”

  “Phonsey?” Brody has to purse his lips together tightly to keep from cracking up. It was a silly nickname, I know, but Alphonse liked it and since he hadn’t been exposed to the cultural phenomenon that was Arthur Fonzarelli when he lived in France, he never really understood why Sloane and Gav would give him the thumbs up sign and say, “Aaayyy,” every time they heard me call him that.

  “Didn’t you have a cute pet name for your wife?”

  “Mmmmm, not really. Justine was never the pet name type. So, you and Phonsey broke up over work, too. That’s an interesting parallel.”

  “The Orlando gig was part of it, but there were other issues. Alphonse seemed to change after we got married. He was short-tempered and secretive. He would disappear for several days, then come back home claiming that he’d needed time alone with his muse.”

  Brody winces with sympathy. “Was he cheating?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I always wondered about him and Lady Justice. They worked the same area at Pier 39, and I could swear I saw her eyes following Alphonse every time I was down there. He told me she had a condition that made it impossible for her to hold her eyes still for any length of time, which made her career choice seem a bit odd. Sloane had another theory about things not working out for Phonsey and me. She was suspicious of him from the beginning and was sure he only proposed to me so that he could get a green card. She was wrong, though. He really loved me . . . for a while anyway . . .,” I trail off wistfully.

  “How can something that starts out so well end so badly?”

  I’m not certain if Brody is referring to my relationship with Alphonse, or to his with Justine. I still don’t know all the details of what happened between him and his super smart professor wife. Surely there has to be more to the story than her being mad about him not following the career path she wanted him to. I don’t want to push, though. He’ll tell me everything when he’s ready.

  “Beats me. Love is a mystery I have yet to solve.”

  “We’re ‘Clueless – party of two’ then.”

  “I think we should turn this duo into a foursome and take the dogs up to the park for a nice walk.” Hearing the word “walk,” both dogs suddenly become very animated, springing up from the ground and rushing over to join us. “The exercise will do us all some good.” I give Cicero a quick nuzzle, then scratch Roxie under the chin. Her tail wags for the first time, albeit a bit tentatively. Nice to see her get excited about something. Rising to my feet, I offer Brody a hand.

  “Have you forgotten that I’m supposed to be working?” He glances back at Lovey’s roses.

  “Well, I’m your boss – sort of. Even though Sloane’s the one paying you, she did say that the restoration of these roses was my project to handle as I see fit. And I think it’s fitting that my rosarian takes a little break and stretches his legs.”

  “Okay,” Brody agrees, standing up, “but I think I might need a few more of those cookies to get me through the walk.”

  “Mrs. Langley must be psychic, too,” I say, reaching into my purse to extract a Ziploc bag full of cookies that my neighbor told me I would need while I was “on the go.”

  Brody chuckles and plucks the bag out of my hand.

  Chapter 14

  (Sloane)

  With highlighter pen in hand, I peruse yet another stack of legal documents in the Bainbridge vs. Bainbridge case, looking for anything relating to their assets. I hate wading through all these affidavits, injunctive orders, petitions, and interrogatories with their coma-inducing legalese. (And people say accounting reports are boring!) I really should have delegated this monotonous task to one of my Juniors, but I didn’t trust either of them to do as thorough a job as I would. So, here I am, up to my eyeballs in dead trees, stifling a yawn, because I came into the office at six o’clock this morning even though I only got three hours of sleep. I reach for my coffee, which is my third cup of the day, and no, I haven’t eaten any breakfast, not unless you count that disgusting gluten-free breakfast bar my office neighbor, Carly, forced on me. And I don’t since I was only able to gag down one bite of it before dumping that nasty faux-food in the trash.

  Seeing the word “fiduciary” makes me perk up and I start marking through lines of text with my fluorescent yellow marker. I’m so focused on what I’m doing that the shrill ring of the phone startles me and my writing hand jerks, sending the highlighter pen zigzagging off the page on to my desk blotter. I might need to lay off the caffeine for the rest of the morning.

  Hitting the speakerphone button, I answer, “Sloane Tobin.”

  “Renee Bainbridge and her attorney are here,” Josh informs me.

  “What? Why?” In a panic, I check the time on my desk clock. “The meeting’s not for another fifteen minutes!”

  “Guess Mrs. Bainbridge wanted to get here early. It’s probably a power play. She gets here first, she can stake out a good spot in the conference room, meet our team, and make herself comfortable before her husband arrives. This way she starts off the meeting with the upper hand.”

  “Christ,” I grumble. This is why I hate being involved with matrimonial disputes. All these petty games of one-upmanship are so tiresome. The Bainbridges don’t even need to be at this meeting. Their lawyers could have easily handled it, but they both insisted on being present anyway, then it took a week of their teams going back and forth before the contentious spouses could agree upon a date and time. I just hope this meeting doesn’t turn into a free-for-all. “Let me get my files together and I’ll be in the conference room in a minute.”

  “See you then.”

  I disconnect the call and quickly gather up what I need. Rising to my feet, I smooth down the skirt of my fitted shift dress, which is olive green with graduated black striping, and yes, the striping is a bit reminiscent of a tiger’s markings. Josh pointed that out to me the first time he saw me in the outfit, and he teased that I might be taking my nickname too literally. There must be something to the stripes as I always feel very powerful in this dress. I knew if I wore it today, I’d be confident and in control when I met the Bainbridges.

  I’m almost out to the corridor when it occurs to me that my face could probably use a touch-up since I applied my makeup at home almost four hours ago. I debate going back to dig my lipstick and blush out of my purse, but decide I don’t have time to primp. What does it matter anyway? The success of this meeting is dependent on my smarts, not my looks.

  Josh is chatting with Mrs. Bainbridge and her attorney when I get to the conference room. Renee Bainbridge is much thinner in person than in the photos I’ve seen of her from the society pages. Her white Chanel suit is hanging loosely on her statuesque frame, which means she lost the weight since buying it, probably due to the stress of this divorce. Despite her gauntness, she’s still a very attractive woman with high cheekbones, dark, thickly lashed eyes, and striking auburn hair that falls to her shoulders in soft waves. I’m impressed by the way she carries herself, almost regally, with her back straight and her head held high. She doesn’t hide behind her lawyer as female clients often do, she l
ooks me straight in the eye and gives me a firm handshake when we’re introduced, and her voice is clear and steady, betraying no feelings of insecurity or unease. I like this woman!

  Josh offers Mrs. Bainbridge and her lawyer, Leo Warner of Kessler, Warner and Associates, some of the freshly brewed coffee that’s set up in the center of the conference table, and they occupy themselves with that while I find myself a seat and start organizing my materials. Legal pads in the center, a pencil and two pens (in case one runs out of ink mid-meeting) next to them, file folders arranged in order of importance to the right, pink and blue post-its to the left. (Those are for special reminder notes – pink for things relating to the case that need to go to the top of my To Do list, blue for any issues that need to be discussed with Josh.)

  Hearing a new male voice in the room, I glance up to see a tall, middle-aged man in a charcoal-gray pinstripe suit entering with a few lackeys. They must be assistants, definitely not lawyers as they aren’t carrying briefcases or looking like they want to harass, accuse, or trick somebody. Yeah, I’m not a big fan of lawyers. My job is all about uncovering the truth while theirs is to obfuscate it the majority of the time. Before I can react to the arrival of Mr. Bainbridge, Josh moves forward, hand extended, to greet the CEO. I follow suit, soon finding my hand enveloped in our client’s large, clammy paw – ewwww. I have to resist the urge to wipe my now-sticky palm on my dress after he’s released it. Mr. Bainbridge gives me the once-over with eyes that are a weak shade of blue, like a pair of jeans washed so many times they’ve been leeched of most of their color. It’s not a lascivious look, more like an assessing one. I can see him thinking, “I wonder if this woman can get the job done?”