The rush of relief surprised Meghan. “I’m glad. I’m fond of him.”
“It would seem to be mutual. You found a lost man, Ms. Mattson, in more ways than one.”
Did she dare tell Wallace Leith to use her first name? Meghan discovered she wasn’t that brave.
Dan ran through their strategy to get ProCell dismissed. “We need Bert to explain it all to Greg. They need to make deals with the Feds, too. That could take a while.”
Wally rubbed his hands briskly. “Well done, you two. You’ve handled this most expeditiously. I’m impressed.”
They all stood. Meghan was ready to leave, but Dan clearly had something more to say.
“Thank you, Wally.” Dan folded his hands at his waist. “I have a favor to ask. I would like to bring Ms. Mattson to the Fergusson Formal.”
Wally looked a bit surprised, saying only, “Ah.”
Meghan looked sideways at Dan. “The Fergusson Formal?”
He turned toward her. “It’s a biannual event. The firm rents the Franklin Institute for a formal dinner-dance. This year, it’s being held in mid-September.”
Three weeks? But I don’t have a formal gown was Meghan’s first thought, not to be uttered in Wallace Leith’s presence. Her second thought—wasn’t I supposed to be breaking up with Dan?—got lost in the panic about not having a dress.
“Ms. Mattson would be welcome as your guest, Dan, of course.” With that, and a vague smile, the white-haired chairman of the firm turned back to his desk.
It hit her on the ride down to their floor. Dan had just informed the chairman of the number two law firm in the city that they were a couple.
Oh, shit.
As if he’d read her mind, Dan whisked himself off to some phantom meeting. Meghan was left by herself in the hallway to her office, her mouth slightly open.
She’d wanted to argue with Dan, explain to him how she wasn’t the formal dance type, she couldn’t possibly go, he’d embarrassed himself by getting permission without finding out if she was willing to go, which she wasn’t because… Well, because she just wasn’t. She was going to break up with him.
Instead, he’d virtually declared to the entire firm that they were dating. That couldn’t be good.
She retreated to the numbing repetition of data entry, a relief from thinking about their complicated relationship. She’d figure out a way to get out of going to a formal dance with Dan. Maybe she could eat some day-old seafood…
No sign of Dan when she finished up that evening, so Meghan walked home. She’d spent most of the weekend with him at his place, sleeping over, reading his Sunday New York Times while wearing one of his T-shirts and a clean pair of boxers. They’d made love in the afternoon, fallen asleep, woke up just enough to watch the Phillies win in San Diego, then got out of bed to eat delivery pizza and watch some black-and-white movie on cable. She’d teased him about how he had two TV sets while she had none. His defense had been that he was a guy, so he needed one in the bedroom and one in the living room.
Walking along Market Street over the Schuylkill, Meghan chuckled at the memory of calling him a philistine when he was clearly well-read. In fact, he must have been busy unpacking all his boxes. The apartment was much tidier and his bookshelves overflowed with books Meghan wanted to borrow.
Only she wouldn’t be borrowing them, would she? She couldn’t ask to read his books when she knew their relationship was nearing its end.
Damn. That was the problem with her plan. She didn’t want to break up with him. She liked the current status of their relationship. She liked being with him. He was smart, funny, affectionate, considerate, and he made her feel good. The key to that was staying in the present. She didn’t want to hear about his past—he’d tried a few times to explain about his relationship with Shana, but Meghan just cut him off. She didn’t want him thinking he could ask her about her childhood. She hadn’t even mentioned Bianca or Pops to him.
For the same reasons, Meghan didn’t bring up her legal problems or when she might ever be allowed back into school. Dan also avoided discussing the future. She suspected he knew as well as she did that theirs would be a short-lived relationship. What they had together worked. For right now, it worked. And she didn’t want to give that up.
After her healthy dinner—Meghan still grinned every time she calculated the cost-of-nutrition-per-serving using the guidelines Kassie had given her—she knocked on Kassie’s door.
“Oh, hi stranger.” Kassie was holding some knitting when she answered the door, the yarn dribbling from her hands back across the room to her daybed. “C’mon in.”
Meghan waited for her to gather up the excess yarn before she entered the apartment. “I have a problem.”
“Not that gorgeous man, I trust. His aura is pure violet.”
“Let me guess, my aura is a muddy shade of olive with streaks of brown.”
“Not at all,” Kassie said quickly. “It’s much improved since you’ve been eating better.”
Meghan laughed. “Good to know. Anyway, that’s not why I’m here. I mean, yes, it is but not because Dan’s been anything other than a nice, violet-aura’d guy. What does a violet aura mean, by the way?”
Kassie settled back against the cushions, picking up her knitting. “That he has a goal, a quest of some sort.”
“Fairness and justice,” Meghan blurted. “That’s what he says, anyway.”
“There you go.”
“Yeah, okay, so here’s my problem. I was kind of planning on ending it with Dan, but today he asked the chairman of the firm if he—Dan—could take me to some formal dinner-dance the firm throws every other year. It’s coming up in three weeks.”
“So what’s the problem?” Kassie looked up from her knitting and pinned Meghan in place with a stern look.
“I figure it could get awkward, my being on his team, after we break up. So to minimize that I want to wait until after this one case is over. Which should be really soon. But now he wants to take me to this event and I don’t think I should go.” Then, before Kassie could say anything, Meghan added, “And I don’t have a dress.”
Kassie’s body language changed its tone, even though she didn’t move. She looked looser, less tense, lighter. Maybe there was something to this aura nonsense?
“Ah, well, we can solve the dress problem quite easily.”
Meghan frowned. “You don’t get it—I won’t need a dress if I’m not going to the Formal. And I’m not going to the Formal if I break up with Dan.”
“But you just said that you can’t break up with Dan until after the case is over, right?”
“I said I wanted to minimize awkwardness. I’m pretty sure attending some swanky event as his date will crank up the awkwardness no end. So perhaps I should break up with him sooner—?”
Kassie went back to her knitting. “That’s not what you want to do.” She made it sound like a revealed truth. Unfortunately, she was right.
“Not really. He’s fun. I’m enjoying myself.” No way was Meghan saying that she thought she was in love with Dan.
“Plus, you’re in love with him.”
“That’s just wrong.”
“What, that you love him?” Kassie asked. “Or that it’s so easy to see that you’re in love with him?”
Meghan scowled. “Both.”
“Neither is wrong. I told you, he’s a good guy. You could do worse. A lot worse.”
“I know that. And if things were different, we could have a perfectly lovely relationship, hang out, make each other happy-ish for a few months. Even a year. But my life is too complicated, and I really need this job. If we have a nasty breakup, or a one-sided breakup, then it’s awkward for everyone. And he’s a partner, so no matter who says what or who does what, I’m the one who has to leave the firm.”
Kassie held her knitting out as if to check it still looked okay. She frowned at it, then pulled it back into her lap. “Why do you assume you’ll break up?”
“Come on. We’re not ge
tting married.” Meghan stared at the knitting. It looked fine to her but what did she know? “We’re not. You can wipe that happy-ever-after, big puffy dress wedding fantasy look off your face right now.”
The knitting got another long-arm inspection.
“What are you looking for when you do that?” Meghan held out her hand, an invisible needle at the end of it.
“I’m trying to find the flaws,” Kassie said.
“It looks fine.”
“But it has to have flaws.”
“Look, you’re the knitter, not me, but it looks fine. Quite pretty, actually. What is it, a baby sweater?”
Kassie flashed a huge smile. “It was the small arms that gave it away, hunh?”
Meghan rolled her hand in a “get on with it” motion. “Yeah, okay. Mock me. Seriously, though, why do you think it has to have flaws?” Then she got it. She held up her hand. “Very funny. I’m insisting my relationship with Dan has to have flaws in it even though I can’t see them.”
The knitting needles clicked back into life. “My point is that if you look for flaws, you’ll find flaws. If you predict that the end of a relationship will be miserable, it’s likely to be miserable. Plus, if you look only at the end of a relationship, you’ll both hasten the end and miss the nice place you’re in now.”
Meghan leaned back in her chair, a padded rocker that looked like a generous granny’s lap, complete with floral print. She tucked her feet up on the cushion and wrapped her arms around her knees.
“Whose baby?” she asked.
“The sweater? My cousin’s pregnant. Due in November. I thought the russet and brown would look nice no matter if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“It’s pretty.”
“Thanks.”
The clicking of the needles almost synchronized with the faint clatter of the rockers. Kassie had air conditioning, which hummed in the background. She didn’t overdo it, though. The apartment always felt perfectly warm to Meghan.
“I didn’t learn how to do any of that stuff,” she said, nodding at the knitting. “My mother isn’t the maternal type, and I didn’t have any aunts or cousins to teach me.”
“You want to learn?” Kassie asked.
Meghan shook her head. “I like the nutrition stuff you taught me. It’s like a math puzzle. How cheaply can I get all the elements for a proper meal.” She wrinkled her nose. “But I don’t think I could handle knitting.”
She rocked and Kassie knit and the air conditioner hummed and Meghan’s mood deepened. She wanted to tell Kassie why she was unhappy—it must show in her aura—but she wasn’t sure what the reason was. She rested her head on the back of the chair.
It felt like a long time later when Meghan said, “Will you help me find a dress? For the Formal? I can’t afford much.”
“I know just the place.”
More knitting and rocking and humming. Meghan’s mood lightened. Presumably her aura had, too.
Chapter Twenty
Dan asked again on Wednesday if she’d like to go to Maine with him. They were eating their lunch on a bench in the park around the Logan Circle fountain. They’d gotten there early enough to snag one of the few benches in the shade.
Meghan was all smiles. “I can’t.”
He arched his brows as he ate another bite of his sandwich. She could tell he was disappointed but also intrigued.
“What are you doing instead?”
“Kassie’s taking me shopping for a dress for the Formal. She swears she can find me the perfect dress for not a lot of money.”
Dan got this look when he wanted to solve Meghan’s money problems, she’d noticed. It was an odd expression of thoughtfulness but also regret that solidified into resolve. He never offered, which was smart because she’d have to fight with him, and she didn’t want to do that. Bad enough she had to watch him want to help her financially.
“You’re still going to Maine, though, right?” she asked.
“I can cancel. We could go to the fireworks at Penn’s Landing on Friday night?” Dan looked like he’d be willing to cancel everything if it would make her happy.
“You should go. I’ll be fine. Kassie’s going to teach me how to knit.”
“She’s what?” He covered his mouth when it seemed like he might choke on his sandwich. She handed him his bottle of iced tea.
“I know, it’s crazy, right? I hardly recognize myself. But I realize this won’t stick. I can’t see myself just sitting and knitting. She watches TV while she knits, which is out for me. Not to mention there’s nothing I particularly want to knit. Well, other than the pot holders Kassie’s going to teach me.”
He finished his sandwich, wiping his mouth and fingers on the napkin from the corner sandwich shop. He watched as Meghan finished the leftover she’d brought for her lunch, a brown rice salad with ham and peas.
“I’m going to miss you.”
She smiled. “I’m going to miss you too. But it’s just a long weekend.”
“I promised my parents I’d come, otherwise my preference would be to stay here with you. Normally I spend a week with them, but because of changing jobs, I can only go for the weekend.”
Meghan tipped her head, squinting a little at him. “Tell me about this island?”
“It’s nothing special. No electricity or running water.” He glanced at her. He could probably see the shock on her face. “Hey, that’s what an outhouse is for.”
“You’d think I’d be used to stuff like that, coming from Iowa, but apart from school camping trips as a kid, I’ve never roughed it.”
“Not sure this would qualify as roughing it. There’s a propane generator and a well for drinking water. Mostly it’s all about running around on an island. We’d make up games, stories about who we were—pirates or intrepid explorers—and then act them out. My parents’ one rule was that we had to be ourselves in the house.”
“So no tents?”
“Not unless we wanted to have tents. The house is actually pretty big. Five bedrooms? And a huge wraparound porch.”
“Nice.”
“Come with me? Go shopping with Kassie another time?”
Meghan shook her head. She grinned. “Nope. Absence will just have to make your heart grow fonder.”
Dan’s eyes never looked bluer. “Not possible,” he said quietly.
Meghan looked down at her salad and concentrated on getting the last grains of rice onto her fork. Ironic to work so hard for the last morsels when she knew she wouldn’t be able to swallow.
Meghan was up and dressed on Sunday at nine-thirty when Kassie knocked. She was a little surprised that Kassie got up that early.
“When it’s a shopping trip? I’ll get up at dawn, if that’s what it takes. C’mon, I’ve had friends put a couple of things aside for you.”
She literally tugged on Meghan’s hand, then stopped at the doorway. “We need some things. Do you have a strapless bra?”
Meghan did, but she had to dig through her underwear drawer to find it. While she did that, Kassie inspected all her shoes, taking two pairs—some low-heeled navy pumps and a strappy pair of sandals—with her.
“Okay, we’re ready. Let’s go.”
“I’m pretty sure Cinderella found her fairy godmother easier to work with.”
“Yeah, but Cinders ended up in some stupid pink thing,” Kassie retorted. “Shoot me if you end up in anything pastel.”
Oh, God, was Kassie going to make her buy some slinky black dress? Meghan wasn’t sure she could carry that off. Kassie’s awareness of fashion had to be better than Meghan’s, so it would probably be okay.
It was clear that Kassie was a frequent shopper at all the stores they went to—consignment shops on South Street and used clothing shops on Chestnut and even the Goodwill in South Philly. It wasn’t that anyone paid attention to them, but Kassie knew where everything was.
They had lunch at Silk City, a retro diner in Northern Liberties, then headed out to the Main Line.
Kassie foun
d the dress in a hospital charity shop in Bryn Mawr. Smoky gray tulle with a fitted bodice and unlined tulle across the shoulders and upper arms giving the merest suggestion of sleeves. She sent Meghan to the dressing rooms to try it on.
As Meghan stripped down to her undies, she heard the middle-aged saleswoman talk to Kassie. “It would have had a belt, probably diamanté or gray rhinestones, but that’s missing, of course.”
Good thing they were chatting. Meghan still couldn’t figure out how the dress unzipped.
“I was thinking that a length of black velvet ribbon would work perfectly,” Kassie said.
Okay, that got the dress open.
“Oh, that would be lovely,” the saleswoman gushed. “Your friend will look so pretty.”
“I can hear you two, you know,” Meghan mumbled.
Once she’d changed bras and stepped gingerly into the full-skirted dress, she brought it up over her hips. “I’m not sure it’s big enough,” she said.
“I’m sure you’re small enough,” Kassie said.
“Okay, well, you get to zip it up.” Meghan opened the dressing room door and turned around.
“Oh.” Something in the saleswoman’s voice made Meghan glance over her shoulder.
“You look like you stepped out of a 1950s issue of Vogue,” the woman explained. “Come see—there’s a full-length mirror here.”
When Meghan looked, she hardly recognized herself. The dress wasn’t fancy, but it did wonders for her figure. Small-waisted, the illusion of hips, and even a bit of décolletage. The bra wasn’t quite right, but she could probably get something better at Target.
Kassie tugged on the tag dangling from under Meghan’s right arm. “Can you do anything on the price?”
The saleswoman seemed uncertain. “I really shouldn’t, but it’s so perfect for your friend, I’ll take five dollars off.”
Kassie nodded.
When another customer needed help, Meghan leaned toward Kassie. “How much is it?”
“With the discount, under twenty.”
“You’re kidding. It’s gorgeous. I bet you couldn’t buy the fabric for that much.”
The Cost of Happiness: A Contemporary Romance Page 21
