A LONG HOT CHRISTMAS

by Barbara Daly

  "Not much more than a minute," Benton said. He didn't sound enthusiastic, which made her think she was on the right track.

  "I'll be right there," Hope promised him, tossing the paper—her plan of action—into her bottom drawer and snatching up the ad for Number 12867 she planned to run in an engineering journal the following summer.

  It was her excuse for visiting Benton. Her real reason was to see if he seemed to be heading for a mysterious meeting in a mysterious place. To see if he'd noticed that someone had read an e-mail message of his. To make whatever was going to happen happen as quickly as possible. She was ready to get it over with and get on with her life. Which, she feared, would never be the same again.

  "So what do you think of this?" Hope said a few minutes later. "Too aggressive with just that one word, 'Invincible' monopolizing the page?"

  Benton had a worried look about him, seemed to be having difficulty concentrating. "No, no I don't think … I mean, I think it's fine, makes its point…"

  "It's for American Engineer," Hope said. "I didn't think we wanted to distract engineers with too many words. Just the one sound byte, 'Palmer Pipe is invincible.' Of course, on the other hand…"

  She was rattling on, hoping for signs of impatience on his part. And eventually they appeared.

  "Discuss the options with the ad agency tomorrow," he finally muttered. "Sorry. Hate to rush you, but I have a six o'clock meeting."

  She leaped up. "I'm sorry. I've been so thoughtless. It's just that you have such insight into these things I always like to run my ideas past you. I'll talk to the agency right away. So," she said, giving him a bright smile at the doorway, "have a nice evening."

  She flew down the hallway and shouldered her briefcase, which she'd repacked when she changed again at Saks, where she felt they were getting to know her. She had no time for a transformation now. With any luck she could get into the scarf and change coats.

  Because she was going to follow Benton to his assignation. She had exactly enough time to do that and still get home to meet Maybelle.

  Once you started misbehaving, it was hard to quit.

  She emerged from the building a mere ten steps behind Benton, who seemed so intent on his own thoughts he was unlikely to notice her. Her excitement grew when he set out walking instead of getting into the chauffeured car that was one of his perks at Palmer. While she trailed him, she put on her scarf. At a red light, she ducked into a shoe store doorway, got the old coat out of the briefcase and managed to get it on before the light changed.

  The briefcase still dangled open as she pursued him two more blocks south, gradually getting her other coat stuffed in and the zipper zipped.

  How did real spies do it, she wondered? Surely not this clumsily. She'd pick herself out as a person bent on mischief in a millisecond.

  Benton paused in front of the Donnell Library on Fifty-third Street, and to her amazement, went in. With some temerity, she followed. While she squinted at the large-print books, trying to look as if she needed one, he went up the stairs to the mezzanine. She waited a short interval, then followed.

  She found him at a table in the reference section. Alone. It was still five minutes before six. A minute or so later, a man she recognized, an executive with Stockwell Plumbing Contractors, sat down at a nearby table without acknowledging Benton's presence.

  Hope, who'd developed a sudden interest in Art and Architecture, hovered between the stacks, her heart pounding in her chest. She'd gotten through Georgian architecture and Gothic Revival, and had worked her way down to Frank Lloyd Wright when, at last, the scene reached the punchline.

  Cap Waldstrum came through the elevator doors and glanced around the room.

  Hope hunched her shoulders around a book entirely devoted to the Johnson and Johnson building, one of Mr. Wright's most famous structures. When she dared to look up again, Cap had selected a book and had seated himself opposite the executive from Stockwell.

  Fortunately, Frank Lloyd Wright had built a lot of famous buildings, some of them described in books that were lighter in weight than the Johnson and Johnson book. She selected one of them, and when she peered out over the top of it, Cap was sliding the book toward himself, taking something out from under it and putting that something—an envelope—into his briefcase.

  She held her breath. She knew what would happen next and she couldn't bear it. He replaced the book on the shelf, picked up another one and sat down opposite Benton.

  An unaccustomed emotion assailed Hope. It was fear. When was the last time she'd felt afraid?

  When she'd stood in the hallway of their real parents' house on the day of the funeral, clutching her sisters' hands, listening to her grandmother and aunts planning to split them up. Knowing their mother wanted them to run—run to the arms of her childhood friend, Maggie Sumner, who would love them all, would keep them together. Knowing it was up to her to get them there.

  She tugged herself back into the present just in time to see Benton hand yet another envelope to Cap. Sick at heart, Hope sneaked out from the stacks, took the stairs and sped toward the subway.

  * * *

  Maybelle was right on time and absolutely out of control about the Christmas tree. "I couldn't hardly believe it when I snuck in with that fountain and found a tree sittin' there all decorated up so purty! And you did it without me even saying, 'Get a Christmas tree, hon, it'll make you happy.'"

  "I didn't do it all by myself," Hope said. "Have some coffee." She was surprised to notice she'd also poured herself a cup of the real stuff, and furthermore, that she intended to drink it down to the last drop. Maybe have a second cup, she thought recklessly. She wouldn't sleep a wink. But she wouldn't have anyway. She was too worried.

  "My, this is good coffee," Maybelle enthused further. "What's wrong, hon?"

  The question came so abruptly that Hope felt like a basketball player who'd just felt the ball land in his hands and had no choice but to shoot.

  "Why didn't you and Hadley get along?" she asked. It wasn't what she'd intended to say. She'd intended to ask Maybelle deep questions about ethics and morals, about when to speak up and when to stay silent, and she'd chosen her sounding board wisely, because it was clear that Maybelle tended to speak up.

  Instead, all she could think about was Sam and what the probability was that they could ever have a long-lasting—like forever—relationship, because if they couldn't, it didn't much matter what she did about the Magnolia Heights case. If they could, she had an even worse short-term problem.

  Because what the scene at the library had looked like was Cap blackmailing Benton and the man from Stockwell, and there could only be one reason. There was something wrong with Number 12867. Benton and the Stockwell company knew something was wrong. Cap had found out something was wrong—and they were paying him to keep quiet. And if Sam defended Palmer without knowing the facts, it could ruin him, not make his reputation.

  "I feel like I kinda lost you somewhere," Maybelle said.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "We were talking about you and Hadley."

  "No, you were." But Maybelle smiled, briefly at least. And then she sighed. "Oh, sugar, me and Hadley came from another generation. When we met I was a rodeo rider—"

  "Really?" Hope breathed, distracted at last. "You mean bucking broncos and mad bulls and…"

  "No. I was one of the pretty girls in the pretty outfits ridin' pretty horses who decorated the place while the men rode the bucking broncos and the mad bulls."

  "I hear you," Hope said.

  "So we fell in love—or lust, you young folks call it—and got married. And all of a sudden he didn't want to be married to a rodeo rider."

  "He wanted to be married to…" Hope prompted

  "A lady his Mamma would approve of," Maybelle said, looking a bit regretful for once. "A housewife. A mother. A good Christian canner."

  "A what?"

  "A person who cans her own food."

  "Oh, my gosh," Hope said. She didn't even cook her ow
n food. She didn't heat soup or bake the TV dinners. What she couldn't manage with Zabars so close, a microwave oven at hand, and the phone number of Food in Motion, an excellent catering service, simply wouldn't happen. Ever.

  "I didn't do so hot at the housewife or the canning part," Maybelle said. Her voice softened. "I would've liked to be a mother. But I guess I just couldn't, and that was before all this fertility stuff came around."

  "I'm sorry," Hope said. The same people who'd told her about the horrors of teething had told her about their earlier fertility problems.

  "So things went wrong right up front and we just never got it together," Maybelle finished up.

  "And then Hadley tackled a bull and died?"

  "Not exactly, hon," Maybelle said. "The bull went for me, and Hadley threw himself between us. He never knew what hit him." She thought for a moment. "Well, he must know now it was the bull."

  "He loved you no matter what," Hope said faintly.

  "With just a little talkin', a little honesty, we might've been okay," Maybelle said. "The feng shui, that might have made the talkin' easier. So what's with your young man?"

  Again, her question caught Hope off guard and sent her rattling on without thinking. "I have to decide what honesty will do to him. Then I have to decide what I would do to him, his goals, that is. And unfortunately—" she turned a pleading face toward Maybelle "—what his goals would do to me."

  "You said that real nice," Maybelle complimented her. Then, to Hope's dismay, she stood up. "Thanks again, hon, for the coffee and the talk. And your Christmas tree's just gorgeous! What's that star made out of? Pipe? Whoo-ee, that's pure Martha Stewart."

  "Maybelle."

  The woman halted, turned.

  "Who should I be loyal to? To Palmer? To Sam? To those people at Magnolia Heights?"

  Maybelle looked puzzled. "Why, to yourself, hon. That's a no-brainer." She left, wearing a mammoth coat that looked suspiciously like coyote.

  Loyal to herself. What the heck did that mean?

  Now Hope was certain she wouldn't sleep tonight.

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  « ^ »

  "What are you so nervous about?" Sam said.

  "Nothing!"

  Something. Her voice was high-pitched, and she'd almost jumped out of her skin when he spoke. The entire trip to Upper Montclair, New Jersey, she'd been wound up like that.

  "Don't worry about Cap," he reassured her. "He won't come on to you. He appreciates pretty women, but he's got too much invested in his life with Muffy."

  "That's a funny way to put it. Invested."

  "You'll know what I mean when you see the house. Muffy's designer dress. The two kids in their little five hundred dollar party outfits just for saying hello in before the nanny takes them off to bed. If you can think of a reason to sneak out to the garage—" He slid his hand up her silky leg from the ankle to the sensitive spot he'd found just above her kneecap, indicating that he could think of a reason to sneak out to the garage. "You'll find a BMW and a Porsche, and a Jeep for slumming around in." She'd shivered at his touch, but the shiver felt more like a shudder.

  "It sounds like an expensive life," she said. "How can he afford it?" She'd lowered her voice enough that it didn't actually pierce the old eardrum, but it was still tight.

  "The firm pays us well," he told her. It was something he'd often wondered himself. "Muffy's family's well-to-do and so is Cap's. I doubt that he saves much, but I don't think he's paying off college loans, either." He could see by the shadow of curiosity that crossed her face that she'd like to know if he had loans to pay off, but her manners were too good to let her ask. At this point, there was no reason she shouldn't know. "It felt great the day I paid off the last of mine," he said.

  "You put yourself through school? That takes a lot of courage."

  "Desperation," Sam said, pulling her close to him "When my dad lost the farm he had to support us by working as a mechanic. Mom's a good manager, but things were always tight."

  "That's hard," Hope said. "I can see why you want to succeed so badly."

  "What about you? What's driving you?"

  "I don't really know." It sounded like a confession. "Some of us just have that sort of personality, I guess. But my sisters and I went through a scary time together before Mom and Dad adopted us, and it was up to me to take care of us. Charity was too young to take charge, and Faith was too unorganized. I had to be the leader." Her smile was fond. "I've always thought that had some kind of effect on me, made me think the whole world depended on me."

  He hugged her a little tighter. He wanted to ask about that "scary time," but the driver had pulled into a brightly lit circular driveway behind a line of limousines and they had arrived.

  * * *

  Hope dreaded seeing Cap Waldstrum more than she'd ever dreaded seeing anybody. She suspected he'd see the accusation in her eyes without her having to say a word. Of course she wouldn't say a word. Not here. Not now.

  Maybe not ever. She could keep her guilty secret and go on with her life. She was only guessing anyway. For all she knew, those envelopes Cap was packing away last night held—what could they have held besides money? You didn't call secret meetings at a library to sell raffle tickets in support of your favorite charity. Secret documents? Those three men were the good guys about to blow the whistle on the bad guys? Dream on. It was money. Cap's blackmailing Palmer and Stockwell.

  The sleepless night she'd predicted and a depressingly unproductive day hadn't yielded any answers. She still didn't know what to do.

  Sam had put Cap on his litigation team. What if Sam was keeping a guilty secret, too, just to get the partnership?

  He certainly wasn't acting like a man with a guilty secret. "Muffy, gorgeous as always," he said, giving Muffy a real kiss on her cheek. "Hey, you guys." He knelt down to shake the children's hands. "What's Santa Claus bringing you this year?"

  "Cap," he said next, clapping a hand on Cap's shoulder. "You remember Hope."

  "I told you I couldn't possibly—"

  Cap hesitated for a second, gazing at her, and Hope's heart rose to her throat and stuck there. Surely he hadn't seen her last night in the library.

  "—forget her," he finished, still gazing.

  Hope had played a minor role in the Senior Class play in high school. She now recalled that she'd been the worst actor in the play, maybe the worst actor in the history of the high school. The drama coach had said as much and had told Hope firmly that her future did not lie on the stage. Well, she would have to improve on that performance.

  "Hello again, Cap," she said brightly. "Muffy, I'm so glad to meet you. And your children—" she mouthed the words as though the children might become unbearably vain on the basis of one compliment "—are adorable."

  Muffy was small, blond and cute, and she didn't so much speak as bubble. Hope liked her instantly, which made her feel even worse about suspecting Cap of being a blackmailer. Muffy was, though, wearing the designer dress Sam had predicted she would, a confection of red chiffon and crystal beads, and her diamonds rivaled Ruthie Quayle's.

  "Ooh, I've been wanting to meet you ever since Cap told me about you," Muffy said, sparkling all over. "First I was really disappointed, because I had my eye on Sam for my sister Cheryl." She gestured toward a woman who stood at the edge of the crowd, a woman who, though pretty enough and dressed in a sexy, trendy outfit, didn't sparkle like Muffy. "But now that I've met you—" She delivered herself of a deep sigh, which she followed up with a big smile of forgiveness. "I'll give up on that idea."

  "Your sister's a very attractive—" Hope began, but Muffy bubbled right on.

  "Isn't it the most amazing thing that you're at Palmer and Sam's at Brinkley Meyers and Cap's been working on the settlement?" Her pretty scarlet mouth formed into a pout. "He worked so hard on it, too. We didn't see him for weeks. And they still couldn't pull it off."

  "Don't worry," Sam said blithely, "we'll win the case in court. Hope, I want
you to meet…"

  He steered her into the crowd. It was a large party, catered by a well-known Manhattan caterer. The Waldstrum Christmas tree stood twelve feet high in the marble-floored foyer of the impressive suburban house, and it showed a professional decorator's touch.

  Nostalgia, a longing to return to her innocent childhood, flooded over Hope as she looked at it. The ornaments went all the way to the top, far higher than either of the Waldstrum children could reach.

  Everywhere she looked she saw the stamp of money. Money well-spent—everything was in good taste. But it was also true that everything, including this party, had cost a fortune. In his early thirties, Cap was already living the high life.

  She realized that she had no idea how Sam lived. She was sure, though, that he didn't live like this. Neither did she. But Cap supported a wife and two children in style on an undoubtedly similar salary. Family money? Trust funds? Or was he leveraged to the hilt? Even in financial trouble?

  She thought and worried as she nodded and smiled at the approving gazes of Sam's friends. Just as any good piece of arm candy would do.

  * * *

  "That was a lovely party," she told Sam when they got back into the hired limousine.

  "Muffy goes all out," Sam said. He slid closer to her, put his arm around her, stroked her shoulder through her coat.

  She couldn't help leaning into his embrace, couldn't help sliding her hand across his chest. She could feel his heart beating, hear his breathing quicken. His mouth brushed her forehead. She closed her eyes.

  A couple going home after a party. When they got there, she'd set up the coffee for the next morning while he checked on the children, sweetly asleep because the nanny had put them to bed hours ago.

  Then they'd get into bed with their laptops and Palm Pilots, and several hours later when they'd tied up the loose ends of their day, if they weren't too tired, they'd make love and it would be so wonderful.

  The nanny would get the children up in the morning, too, and get them dressed and fed, because Mommy and Daddy, who'd gone straight to the party from work, would already have left for work again—