Sapphire and Shadow (A Woman's Life)

by Marie Ferrarella

  “I like bringing a friend into the enemy camp,” she laughed nervously as they walked into the stylish co-op where Mary lived on Second Avenue.

  He nodded at the security guard as they walked to the elevator. “Jocelyn doesn’t think of you as the enemy.”

  Johanna punched the button, her only outward sign of tension. “She’s not too crazy about me right now.”

  He kissed her temple. “That’ll pass. I’m crazy enough about you for both of us.”

  She clutched the words to her breast as they entered the elevator. The way he said “us” to include Jocelyn made her heart swell. If Harry had never entered her life, she knew that there would be no measuring the joy she could be capable of feeling. She would blindly go into this relationship, thinking it absolutely perfect. But Harry had entered, had been the one whom she had fashioned dreams around, only to have them crushed by the very person she trusted so implicitly.

  Once burned, twice leery, she thought. And so weary.

  Mary answered the door on the first ring. “C’mon in, you two. Jocelyn’s waiting.” She stepped back, vaguely gesturing into her apartment.

  The gray clay-tiled foyer echoed her footsteps. “How is she?” Johanna asked, dropping her voice.

  Mary shut the door. “Scared.”

  Adrenaline jumped, pumping hard through her veins. “Did anything—?”

  Mary placed a gentling hand on her sister’s arm. “No, nothing like that. Nothing happened to her last night while she was wandering around.”

  Linking arms with Johanna, Mary stepped down into the sunken living room. The apartment had large windows that offered a breathtaking view of the city. The high ceiling, sparse furnishings and light-colored walls made the room look much larger than it was.

  “Then why—?”

  “I think you’d better hash this out yourselves.” Mary let her go and turned toward Joshua. “So, handsome, can I interest you in a glass of orange juice?”

  “With pulp?”

  Mary’s smile was brilliant. It reminded him of Johanna’s. “Is there any other kind?” She guided him toward the door on the extreme left side, leaving Johanna standing in the living room, looking down at Jocelyn.

  The girl sat on the sofa, her legs pulled up under her, her face averted. She looked small, lost, defiant.

  Johanna felt hurt. How could Jocelyn do this to her? How could she have put her through this? She wanted to yell, to shake her, to cry. She knew that none of this would work. Slowly, she approached Jocelyn and saw her stiffen and become even more aloof-looking than she already was. For a moment, Johanna hesitated, then sat down beside her daughter.

  Jocelyn’s pride and fear gave way to the need to be held, comforted. She raised her eyes to her mother’s face, waiting. Hoping.

  “You scared me to death, Jocey. I thought something had happened to you.”

  “Would it have mattered?” the small voice asked, thick with tears that were held back.

  Johanna took hold of Jocelyn’s shoulders and stared at her face. “Are you crazy? Of course it would have mattered. You are the only, only thing, the only person,” she corrected herself, “that matters in my life. I love you, Jocelyn.”

  Jocelyn pressed her lips together and nodded her head,

  her eyes shimmering with tears. It was what she needed to hear.

  With care, Johanna pulled her close. Jocelyn put her head on her mother’s shoulder, needing the contact. “Why did you run away from me?”

  “I wanted to go before you left me, too.”

  Johanna raised her head to look into Jocelyn’s face. “Too?”

  Jocelyn swallowed. The lump in her throat was enormous. “Like you left Dad.”

  “Oh, honey,” she cried, stroking Jocelyn’s hair that was wet with her tears. “I left Dad because he wasn’t the man I married and because I was afraid that if I stayed, he’d destroy us.”

  “And if I changed?” There was a challenge and a plea in her voice.

  Johanna hugged her daughter close and kissed the top of her head. “I’d fight like hell to make you unchanged.”

  “Promise?”

  She laughed, with tears falling freely down her cheeks. She didn’t bother brushing them aside, but let them fall. “Promise.”

  Mother and daughter hugged and cried, and washed away the residue of the battle with tears.

  “Well,” Joshua said, reentering the room, “is everything okay?”

  Jocelyn nodded. She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, quickly brushing aside tears. She didn’t want to be caught crying in front of Joshua.

  He crossed to them and ruffled Jocelyn’s hair, pretending not to see the tear-streaked cheeks or swollen eyes. “Good move, Jocelyn. You made her get a few gray hairs.”

  Johanna’s hand automatically moved to her head. “I did not.” She knew he was teasing, but couldn’t resist playing along.

  “Mothers always get gray hair when their kids run off.” He sat down next to Jocelyn. The look on his face was serious, though not stern. His meaning was clear. There would be no lectures from him and no repeat performances from her. “Your mother doesn’t look too hot in gray.” He took a sip of orange juice, finishing the glass. “Clear?”

  Jocelyn nodded.

  “Okay.” He braced his hands on his knees and rose. “Let’s all go out for breakfast. My treat.”

  Mary was already pulling her ermine jacket from the closet in the foyer. “Don’t let this one get away, Jo.” She and Joshua exchanged grins.

  Johanna felt a quavering in her stomach as she got up. She remembered Joshua’s words to her this morning and told herself that it was the only way to go. One day at a time. What she had rebuilt within her was frail, hanging on by a thread. She had gotten back her self-esteem and found that she could make it on her own. She didn’t want to jeopardize all that by pledging her heart in a relationship that would one day blow up in her face.

  Yet not pledging her heart would eventually cost her Joshua.

  Silently, she linked her hand with Jocelyn’s and followed the others out the door.

  Damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  October threaded its way quickly into November. The weather, for New York, was mild. There was no cold snap and snow seemed a long way off.

  It was hard, Johanna thought, watching the kite inch its way up into the brilliant blue sky, on a day like today to imagine that winter and Christmas were just around the corner, although the stores were certainly prepared for it. Bright decorations and holiday merchandise were highly visible. Garland and brilliant Christmas lights were everywhere, entangled between the street signs, greeting the citizenry and reminding people that for a few short weeks at the tail end of the calendar, everyone was supposed to love everyone else.

  Joshua, she noticed, pleased, had gotten caught up in the season and had given in to the race to celebrate Christmas earlier and longer. Two weeks shy of Thanksgiving and he had Kathy hang mistletoe in the gallery. Johanna knew there was an ulterior motive behind that. One she cherished.

  It gave her an excuse to kiss him.

  She loved being kissed by him, she thought. Power, passion, gentleness, they were all there whenever his lips touched hers. And standing beneath the mistletoe, she was safe. She could shrug off her willingness to be kissed, to be bathed in the sensations that were created, by saying that it was all in keeping with the Christmas season. And she could pretend that the feelings behind the kisses that were exchanged were nothing more serious or binding than her just getting caught up in the spirit of the holidays.

  A group of children moved past them, huddled together like a gaggle of geese, their teacher at the head and several harried mothers in attendance at the sides and the end. They were evidently headed for the zoo, Johanna thought. That would probably be Joshua’s next stop.

  She turned and grinned at him now. He was lying faceup a few feet away from her, propped up on his elbows, totally engrossed i
n what he was doing. The concentration he was displaying could have been the kind merited by a major undertaking. Joshua was flying a kite.

  He was dressed in a cream-colored fisherman’s sweater and his ever-present jeans. His dark hair tousled, he looked like a boy on a holiday. Leaning back on his elbows, his long legs stretched out before him on the grass, he held the kite string in a steady hand. Jocelyn was next to him, purely fascinated.

  “I can’t believe you never did this,” he said to Jocelyn. “How could you be twelve and never have flown a kite?”

  “I don’t think we have any in Beverly Hills,” she said with an absent shrug of her shoulders. Her eyes danced as they followed the kite’s path. It was climbing higher and higher, flirting with the wind.

  “Another reason not to live in southern California,” Joshua murmured.

  “Don’t you like southern California?” Jocelyn asked, curious.

  “I like seasons.” He spoke to her the way he would to an adult. It never occurred to him to talk down to her. “Leaves that turn color before they crunch under my shoes. I like snow.”

  “We have snow. It’s just in the mountains,” Jocelyn volunteered.

  “I know, but I’m lazy. I don’t like to have to drive to see a snowfall. I like looking outside my window.” He grinned at her as he looked her way. “They close schools here when it snows too hard.”

  “They do?” It was evident that she was very close to being completely won over.

  “Sometimes,” Johanna put in. “But only when it snows very hard and it’s several feet deep.” She saw that Jocelyn was barely listening. Her eyes were on Joshua and the bobbing kite. Johanna couldn’t help smiling. “Besides, we’re already playing hooky today.”

  Joshua leaned back to look at her. “We’re all playing hooky,” he reminded Johanna. His eyes skimmed over her body familiarly, touching it and seeing beneath the heavy lavender sweater and neatly creased slacks.

  Johanna wavered under his gaze and shifted slightly.

  “I didn’t know adults played hooky.” Jocelyn’s voice broke the spell.

  “Worst offenders,” he said seriously, playing out the line to the kite.

  “To fly kites?” Jocelyn wanted to know.

  He grinned. “Sometimes. Sometimes just to spend an afternoon with two gorgeous women.”

  Jocelyn liked the fact that he had said two women instead of two girls.

  Someone walked by with a portable radio. Rather than having music from a rock group blaring at them, the radio’s owner was playing a tape of Beethoven.

  “Oh, yuck,” Jocelyn muttered.

  “Don’t much care for classical music, eh?” Joshua laughed.

  “It’s the pits.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Joshua considered her statement. “If it wasn’t for Beethoven, the Beatles might have had a problem.”

  “The beetles?” Jocelyn looked at him. “Who’re the beetles?”

  Johanna and Joshua exchanged looks. “Ouch, I think I feel old,” Johanna said.

  “Never.” He patted her thigh with his free hand. The gesture was fleeting, but intimate. He turned his attention to Jocelyn. “They’re the guys who made it easy for The New Kids On The Block to do their thing on stage.”

  Jocelyn came to life. “Really?”

  “I have it on the best authority.”

  Jocelyn looked after the funny little man as he moved away, his music fading away with him. “Hey, how about that?”

  “You know,” Johanna said in a lowered voice, “you have her eating out of your hand.”

  “How about her mother?”

  She found his eyes difficult to resist. She found him difficult to resist. “As long as it’s not fattening,” she said.

  “I’m guaranteed low-calorie.” He winked at her. It was a decidedly wicked and sexy wink.

  When the wind picked up, Joshua took a vote and they decided to retire the kite for the day while it was still in one piece.

  They went to the zoo next, just as Johanna predicted. The wind helped clear away the smells and Jocelyn was in seventh heaven.

  “She loves animals,” Johanna confided as they walked behind the girl. Jocelyn tried to be everywhere at once, seeing everything.

  “I know.”

  She looked at Joshua. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

  “Yes,” he said meaningfully.

  Johanna turned away and pretended to look at the antics of a spider monkey as he climbed up to the top of his black iron-bar cage. “I’ve been thinking of getting her a pet for Christmas. Think your friend would mind if I had a puppy in his loft?”

  “It couldn’t do more harm than some of the friends he’s had over there on occasion.” Joshua laughed. “What kind of a puppy did you have in mind?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. Something small. I like tea cup poodles myself.” A woman with three children, all heading in different directions, rushed by Johanna, making a grab for the nearest one.

  Joshua side-stepped the woman and he shook his head. “Nope. Too hyper. Strictly a Beverly Hills-type dog.”

  She was amused at the way he seemed to divide the country between good—New York—and bad—Beverly Hills. “Oh? What would you suggest?”

  “I don’t know. Let me think on it.”

  “You have until a week before Christmas.”

  “I hope I have longer than that.”

  “Jocelyn, don’t wander too far ahead,” she called after her daughter, using it as an excuse to curtail the direction the conversation was going.

  They had slept together only that one time when Jocelyn had run away. Johanna made certain that there were no more times alone like that, no more solitary moments when temptations got the better of her. To her relief, and just possibly her regret, he had gone along without protest, even though she could tell that he wasn’t happy about it. She wanted no more thoughts of happiness, that kind of happiness, clouding her mind. She knew what she had to do, how she had to live. If it was shutting love out, so be it. It was also shutting out pain of a magnitude that she couldn’t endure twice.

  Yet when he had appeared on her doorstep that morning, kite in hand, she couldn’t find it in her heart to turn him away. Even if she had, Jocelyn would have begged until she agreed. Work and school were forgotten. Dangers lurking in the dark, in soft kisses and light touches, were forgotten. The day was made to be enjoyed.

  They spent another two hours at the zoo. Though it was by no means a large zoo, hardly meriting the title when compared to the zoos that Johanna had taken Jocelyn to, there was something very special about sharing the afternoon this way. He bought them hot dogs at a stand and Jocelyn swore she had never eaten anything tastier.

  “And for dessert,” he announced, producing a cracker-jack box from his jacket pocket.

  “Those’ll break your teeth,” Johanna warned.

  “Where’s your sense of adventure, Johanna?” he teased, opening the box and pouring some carmel covered kernels into Jocelyn’s outstretched, cupped hands. He took some himself and then eyed Johanna.

  “Well, I might as well go to the dentist with you two.” She reached into the box.

  “What a sport, eh, Jocey?”

  “It takes her a little time to get used to change,” Jocelyn told him matter-of-factly.

  “Out of the mouths of babes,” he murmured, tossing up a kernel and catching it in his mouth.

  “Hey, do that again,” Jocelyn urged.

  “Don’t encourage him, Jocey.”

  “I love an audience.” He winked at Jocelyn. “Hey, what’s this?” He looked into the box, moving some of the kernels around.

  “What?” Jocelyn asked eagerly. She stood on her toes, trying to look into the box.

  “Well, you know, if I remember correctly, these things used to have a prize in each box,” he told her.

  “Does this one?” Jocelyn wanted to know. She had more than her share of expensive toys, but somehow the promise of a mysterious trinket outweig
hed them.

  “Yes.” But rather than give it to Jocelyn, he handed the box to Johanna. “This one seems to have your mother’s name on it.”

  Johanna stared at the box, dumbfounded. “Mine?”

  “Open it, Mom. Let’s see,” Jocelyn urged, clapping her hands together.

  Johanna eyed Joshua for a moment, then looked into the box. There was a small box within it. Cautiously, she drew it out. It was a ring box. Her breath caught in her throat as she opened it. A single perfect diamond mounted on a silver wishbone setting caught the sunlight and formed a rainbow of colors that spilled out onto her hand.

  “Hey, wow! Do you think you can get another box like that for me?” Jocelyn asked Joshua, her eyes huge.

  “I don’t think so,” Joshua answered quietly, watching Johanna’s face. “This is a one-of-a-kind box.”

  Johanna raised her eyes to his. He saw wariness there again and he swore inwardly. He blamed himself, though. He should have never let her go all those years before. But all he had to work with was the present. And he intended to make the present work.

  “Well, Jo?” he asked softly.

  She closed the box, her face impassive as icy panic seized hold of her heart. She thrust the ring back to him, her hand trembling slightly, but he refused to take it. It was a major effort to keep the anger he felt from his face. She let the ring box fall back into the crackerjack box that he was still holding.

  “I think we’d better go home,” Johanna said quietly. Her throat felt as if it was closing up, as if she couldn’t breathe. “It’s getting cold,”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Chapter Forty

  “She said what?” Joshua’s voice echoed in the empty gallery. It was eight-thirty and more than an hour away from opening. It was further away than that as far as Joshua was concerned.

  Kathy blinked. She’d never seen Joshua more than mildly annoyed. She had thought that the message she passed on when he walked in would make him frown. She didn’t think it would make him shout. Her boss, she decided, had it very, very bad.

  “Johanna called in,” Kathy repeated patiently, “and said that she was taking the next three days off. She said that if you wanted to fire her, she’d understand.”