“Jack, glad you’re here. Would you curl my hair?” It was something she and I had done for each other since we began experimenting with our own styles.
She came up the steps. “Let me put these down and change my shirt.”
I followed her into her bedroom where she dropped two small bags.
“Where’d you go?” I asked as she removed her suit jacket and found a T-shirt.
“One of the tourist traps in town. I bought some postcards and a couple of souvenirs.”
Jack had her back to me, but I could tell from the tone in her voice that there was more to it than a simple shopping trip.
“Did you meet anyone?” I asked as innocently as I could muster.
Jack turned and faced me. “I’m not Lila. As much as I wish I had her charisma, I don’t meet a man every time I leave the house.” Her words were harsh, but her delivery of them softened their impact.
“So you did meet someone?” I smiled, making the question more a statement than anything else.
Jack dropped her eyes. Then looked at me straight on. “Not exactly. Where’s your curling iron?”
“In the bathroom.” I left, got it, and returned in a moment. It was already hot since I thought I’d have to do the curling myself.
Jack had a chair turned around facing the windows, away from the mirror in the room.
“Sit down,” she said, tapping the back of the chair with a comb she held in her hand.
I sat in the chair. “How inexactly was it?”
Jack sighed as if resigned to tell me the details. She pulled the comb through my hair and sectioned off an area before lifting the hot curler from its base. “Outside the souvenir shop were tables where people could sit and write out their cards. I sat with a nice young man and wrote mine out.”
“Nice young man?” I asked. “Does that mean someone in his teens or someone in your age bracket?”
“He was a member of the band. Mike Adam’s band.”
“Band, huh,” I said, dismissively. Guys in the band rarely made enough money to sustain themselves and they were always out of town. You couldn’t trust them. Too many groupie females flaunting themselves and trying to get into bed with them. And of course, the guys fell for it every time.
“You don’t have to say it like that,” Jack said. “I shared his table. I didn’t make a date with him.”
“You didn’t?” I was sure she’d make a date with someone good looking, but well out of the range we’d established.
“No, I didn’t,” Jack said. Her words were distinct, spoken as if to a child. She also pulled my hair a little harder than I thought necessary, but I said nothing about it. “He did say he’d leave me tickets to the concert, but it’s not likely I’ll see him again.”
“No backstage pass?”
“Amberlina, I know the reason we’re here. I’m not taking up with a member of the band.”
I could tell I was irritating Jack. For several minutes I said nothing. Jack worked in silence. After all the years of practice, she was a wizard with a curling iron. I heard the metal-clicking rhythm as she twirled hair between the heated tongs. I knew when she finished, I’d be able to turn Don Randall’s head.
“Ugh.” I coughed. Why did I think of him? It was Casey Edwards’s head I needed to turn.
“Did I burn you?” Jack asked. I heard the concern in her voice.
“No, I swallowed wrong.” It wasn’t totally a lie. I had done it as a result of the thought that had gone through my head.
“Who did you meet today?” Jack asked.
“A widower with a small son. He’s from Atlanta and is an executive vice president for Coca-Cola.”
“I’m impressed,” she said. Jack didn’t ask if I wanted her to check him out. We researched everyone. So far they were who they said they were. Unlike us, I thought.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge the thought that we were pretending.
“Don’t do that,” Jack said sharply. “I nearly burned you.”
“Sorry.” There was nothing really wrong with what we were doing. Women had done this for ages. And these men were looking for women, too. Otherwise they wouldn’t approach us.
“Where you going tonight?” Jack asked.
Glad for anything to divert my thinking, I was happy to talk about Casey and his little boy. “Dinner.”
“Just dinner?”
“Just dinner,” I said, repeating her words. I knew she was thinking about my night with Don Randall. I supposed I would never live that down.
And why should I? He was a good lay. Better than good. He was fantastic. Nothing like him had ever happened to me before.
I felt my legs begin to stick together and my breasts begin to point against my Wonderbra. I started to shake my head again, but remembered Jack’s warning. Why couldn’t I get that man out of my head? I had to. I didn’t need any further thoughts of Don Randall. From now on, he was someone in the past. A door closed, never to be opened again. I had a mission, a job to do, and only one short summer to complete it.
If I could just keep Don Randall from encroaching on my thoughts.
The lights dimmed as someone offstage played a kettle drum. The audience settled, quiet descending over the room as the sound announced the beginning of the concert. My heart beat with the tempo of that drum. The first concert I’d ever attended was in Madison Square Garden. I was thirteen and screaming at every movement of the group on stage. At nearly thirty, the feeling was the same. I no longer screamed, but the excitement flowing through me was the same. I was at a Mike Adams concert. It didn’t matter that there were hundreds of other people there or that my date was Lila.
The opening act was a comedian-singer named James Windsor. I’d heard of him, but never seen him perform. He was funny and had a good voice. I’m sure he’d be a headliner someday. He prepared the audience and we were ready for the main performance.
During the intermission I’d hoped to see Shane setting up, but the thick curtain that closed after James Windsor left the stage obscured any view of what was happening behind it. When it opened to the rolling drumbeat again, Mike Adams was sitting on a bar stool in the center. And Shane Massey sat at a massive piano directly behind him. A voice offstage introduced Mike Adams, and the audience applauded and shouted their appreciation.
“Is that him?” Lila whispered as if the two of us had a conspiracy in progress.
I nodded. “That’s him.”
“I can see why you’d want to take him home.”
“Oh, I’m not taking him home,” I whispered back. “We only had a few minutes together.”
“But he gave you tickets to the concert. You must have made some impression.”
Mike Adams began to play. And Shane’s hands moved across the keys. I watched every movement he made, my eyes riveted to his hands. His fingers danced across the black and white keys. There were times his eyes closed, the music affecting him as if it had entered his soul and taken root there. On slower songs, he caressed the notes. I could feel them. I felt him touching the piano, making music with the combination of sounds, lightly pressing the black and whites. And then I felt his hands on my body. I had become part of the song, been transported from my seat to the bench next to him. His fingers played me.
I was a Mike Adams fan. I thought I’d be enthralled with him, but Shane had my full attention the entire time he was on the stage. The band continued to play as the audience filed out of the rows humming the last song. When Mike Adams finished his encore and left the stage, I remained in my seat. Lila didn’t prompt me to leave. I don’t know how long we sat there—at least as long as it took for Shane to play his last note and collect his music.
“Let’s go backstage,” Lila whispered when we stood and filed out of the row.
“We can’t go back there,” I told her.
“Why?”
“We don’t have passes.”
“Oh, Shane will get us in.”
Shane had left the stage. It was an empty
cavern, although the patrons were milling around, talking to each other as they moved up the aisles toward the exits.
“You don’t even know him,” I told Lila.
“But you do, and you want to see him.”
“I never said that.”
“You don’t have to. I saw you watching him.”
I turned to fully face Lila, my hand automatically going to my hip. “I met the man once, Lila.”
“But he gave you tickets, good seats.”
We were in the eighth row, center. Perfect seat, just where the floor in the theater crested upward. It gave an unobstructed view of the stage.
“He was just being nice.”
Lila gave me a look that said no man is ever just being nice. Grabbing my arm, she pulled me against the flow of traffic and toward the stage.
The night had been long. Very long. I didn’t get to bed until two, and it wasn’t because I was having a good time. Casey was a nice guy and he had a beautiful son, but the one person I wanted nothing to do with was an invisible stranger at the dinner table with Casey and me. I didn’t seem to be able to let go of the memory of Don Randall.
And it pissed me off.
Why was he invading my thoughts when I was with the kind of man I was looking for? And why was I here at the beach?
Casey had seen me back to the house and I’d gone straight to bed, where I’d spent the night turning over and over and listening to the distant surf.
I found my place on the sand earlier than usual and sat down to write and wait for Don to come and talk for a bit before he continued his morning run. Despite my telling him he had no place in my life, it had become routine for him to stop and talk to me for a few moments. I secretly looked forward to seeing him. He taunted me and disapproved of my intentions, yet I could be myself with him.
And the fact that he was only slightly dressed made it all the more appealing to watch him.
The first morning after our discussion on the beach had been awkward. Don was ridiculing and sarcastic. I knew he had a right to his feelings, so I let him vent them. I took the abuse—to a point. I ignored most of his comments and only answered the ones I felt like answering. By morning my anger had dissipated, until we now talked like civilized adults. He’d taken an interest in my book, but I hadn’t come to the point of sharing the story yet.
Settling in my chair, I pulled my book out and began to write. The pages were filling up and I found myself lost in the story I was creating, so much so that I didn’t even hear Don until he plopped down in the sand next to me.
“How was your date?” he asked, without even saying good morning.
“How did you know I had a date?”
“I didn’t really. Not until now, but I didn’t think you could resist after I heard Mr. Edwards talking about his son and his wife.”
“His wife is dead.”
“I heard that part, too. So how was it? Are you the one to help him get over his grief?”
“This is the kind of conversation I have with my girl friends.”
“You can think of me as a girlfriend if you like. After all, I know your secret. Isn’t that what girlfriends are for?”
“They are. And if you notice, I brought a couple with me for support such as this.”
“But I’m truly interested. So was it good or not?”
“It was good.” I nodded.
“I see,” he said.
His tone told me he was reading things into my answer and while he might be right, I objected to it.
“It was fine,” I said. “Casey is a very interesting man.” And did he know it, I thought. All through dinner he told me about his job, his research, his accomplishments, his awards. It was all I could do to get my food down. And then he suggested the lounge. Martha’s Vineyard was a dry island, so it surprised me to learn that Casey had brought his own beverage for our evening.
We sat and drank and he talked the night away. Occasionally we’d dance. Then he’d tell me about his son. I did enjoy listening to stories about Joel. Finally, my yawn caught on and he took me back to the house.
“Is there another date planned?”
Don’s voice snapped me back to the beach.
“We haven’t set one.”
“Oh.”
There was that tone again.
“Why don’t you have lunch with me?” Don delivered the invitation with the same amount of innuendo he would use if he’d said, “Have sex with me.”
“I’m busy,” I said automatically, not giving myself a moment to think about it. If I did, my answer might be different.
“I have a proposition for you.”
I raised my eyebrows and looked at him over the top of my sunglasses.
“It’s not that kind of proposition,” he said. “Although if you’re agreeable, I could make it that one. We were incredible together.”
“I am not agreeable,” I said, but I couldn’t stop the infusion of heat that flashed through me or the memory of the two of us entwined like tree limbs together on crumpled sheets. His smile said more than his words. Images winked through my mind at the speed of light, but not fast enough to keep my body from remembering how well the two of us fit together or how unbelievable we had been in each other’s arms.
“Just checking,” he said.
“What is the proposition?” Curiosity got the better of me.
“I thought I’d help you with your problem.”
“I have a problem?”
“Of a kind,” he answered.
I swiveled around in the chair, putting my feet in the sand and looking him straight in the eye. “Wanna tell me what it is?”
“You wanna find a rich husband.”
“And …” I said, wondering where he was going with this.
“I happen to be in a position to know the right men. With my help, you won’t have to spend time triaging the lot only to find out someone doesn’t meet your particular requirements.”
He made it sound cold and calculated, but I refused to allow his swagger to infiltrate a well-organized plan.
“You’re willing to give me the skinny on your guests?”
“Absolutely not,” he said. “That would be morally wrong, not to mention illegal.”
“Then what do you plan to do?”
“I’ll point you in the direction of the men with the most money. I won’t tell you how much they have, only that they’re in your bracket. Anything else is up to you.”
“And what do you get in return for this help?”
“You go to the End of the Summer Dance with me.”
I’d heard of the End of the Summer Dance. It was traditional for the Vineyard and signaled the return of the summer residents to the mainland. The island would close up for the coming winter. Tourists would return to their lives and relinquish the sand and surf to the permanent residents of the Vineyard.
“A dance?” I questioned, raising my eyebrows. “A single dance? You’re willing to send me off to look for another man for the price of a dance?”
He nodded. It sounded absurd. I wondered what ulterior motive he was hiding. This behavior was counter to that of any man I’d ever met.
“The end of the summer is a couple of months away. By then I could be engaged to one of the men you point out.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
I scrutinized his eyes for any sign of humor. I had the feeling he was making fun of me, but I saw nothing. I can’t say there was sincerity in his gaze. It was unreadable.
I really didn’t need his proposal. Jack could find out anything we needed to know. She’d done fine so far. But … I thought, if Don could give us direction, we wouldn’t have to weed through everyone.
“I tell you what,” Don said while I was still trying to make sense of his proposition.
“What?” I asked.
“Robert Yancey checked in today. He headed a pharmaceutical venture capital firm three years ago. They got FDA approval for a breakthrough drug and since then his com
pany is rolling in money. They had a buyout bid from of the major pharma houses, but turned it down. Last January the company went public and their stock has been the hottest thing on Wall Street.”
“Ummm,” was all I said.
“He loves tennis. I could arrange a game for you, but I suggest you let him win.”
“Oh,” I said. “He’s one of those.”
“Those?”
“Men who can’t stand it when a woman is better at something than they are, especially sports.” I looked him directly in the eye. Both of us knew we were thinking of our do-or-die tennis game. “As if they have the right to be bigger, stronger, and better. It’s a game of skill, not necessarily strength.”
“I know,” he said. “Do we have a deal?”
I thought about it, not answering immediately. Something about this struck me as bad. I felt as if I was intentionally putting myself in harm’s way.
“This is just a dance?” I questioned.
He nodded.
“Three hours of my time?”
“Four, actually. The dance is from nine to one.” He flashed a smile.
“Nothing strange about this dance? I mean, you’re not going to get me in the middle of the floor and announce that I’m looking for a husband or some other situation where you can embarrass me?”
He raised three fingers in the Boy Scout salute. “This is strictly on the up and up.”
I shook my head. “There’s something you’re not telling me.” But I found myself offering him a handshake to seal the deal and hoping I wasn’t sealing my fate.
Don took my hand, but he didn’t shake it. He used it against me, pulling me off balance. My chair tipped and I fell forward into his arms, which were waiting to catch me. Immediately he buried one hand in my hair and pressed his mouth to mine. For a moment I thought of resisting, but my brain lost contact with my body the millisecond his lips met mine, and the thought was gone.
His hands dug into my hair as he held my mouth to his. The position was awkward. The chair had pitched over with me, its arm digging into my side. As that was the side that also lay against Don, there was nothing I could do about it. Grains of sand scratched my belly, but the sensation of Don’s mouth working magic against mine blocked out any discomfort. I moved my free arm, running my hand up his jaw to his ear and hairline.
Some Like Them Rich Page 9
