Amara, partially blocked by Mimi, was busily chomping on a huge side of French fries slathered with ketchup. She waved when the camera pointed in her direction. “But I’ll be coming in the fall as a freshman,” she said in a high, nervous voice. “So I get a head start on the tradition.”
Georgie was standing next to Larry, the cameraman, and he gave her a thumbs-up.
Which left Penelope. She couldn’t hide forever. Nick sidestepped the refrigerated case of soft drinks and honed in on her. “We have another Grantham alum here, too. Not only was she valedictorian of her class—” he’d had Georgie do some homework “—but now she’s curator of the university’s Rare Book Library. So what’s your take on Hoagie Palace, Penelope?” he asked, not sure what she’d say.
She blinked nervously for a moment, then with great deliberation, launched into her observations. “Hoagie Palace is a Grantham institution. That goes without saying. My favorite part is that it’s kept the same sign all these years. Other things might change in town—more stockbrokers, coffee shops and yogurt stores—but The Palace remains a comforting presence no matter what. It’s comfort on a roll.” She turned toward the cash register. “About the roll, Sal, I have to compliment you on how fresh it is, and just the right combination of crustiness and chewiness. Not a newfangled artisanal loaf by any stretch of the imagination. Just a pure, Italo-New Jersey roll. Now, that’s real local.” She held it up and punched the air.
Sal blushed—though never stopped making change.
Nick stood stunned. Not only had she spoken the copy that he would have written, she…she… Was it possible to say that someone could radiate? Practically levitate with serenity and sexiness at the same time? He wanted to tell everyone else to go home—tell the world to go home—so he could find out more, much more about this mysterious and totally mesmerizing woman.
Nicholas Rheinhardt, Mr. I’m So Jaded I Yawn At The Sight Of Presidents And Popes, felt giddy. Beyond giddy. Corny as it sounded, cupid’s arrow had struck suddenly, and defying all of his previously held beliefs, Nick found himself in love at second sight—their first library meeting having set the stage for simple infatuation—not that he was an expert on the difference. But Nick was sure there had to be one.
And like a dope, he just stood there with the camera rolling.
And Penelope? She appeared to be either fixated on him or the Hoagie Palace souvenirs hanging on the wall.
Should he take heart or feel slighted? And he would have asked her which reaction was appropriate—at least, he told himself he would have returned to earth and rekindled his ability to form words and place them one after the other—except that Georgie got in the way.
The producer, from his position off camera, shouted, “Rheinhardt, you fool! Let’s make like we’re working here.”
Which, of course, broke the whole starry-eyed phenomenon. “Georgie,” he whispered under his breath. When in doubt, Nick’s motto was always to blame it on the producer.
“Nick, Nick. Psst.” Georgie became more insistent. “Turn to the counter. Ten o’clock.” He immediately shifted in that direction as though someone had just lassoed him.
Nick narrowed his eyes at Penelope, who didn’t shy from his gaze, before he reluctantly noticed what all the fuss was about. “Oh, an honest-to-goodness celebrity mover and shaker.” Nick peered into the camera. “Viewer, I kid you not. This was totally unplanned.” He held out his hand for Larry, the cameraman, to follow, bringing into the viewfinder an extremely tall woman in a pearl-gray business suit and high heels. Her back was turned toward Nick and her head was bent over the end of a paper bag. “Vivian Pierpoint, former CEO of the largest online auction house and current candidate for governor of Connecticut. What brings you to our fair shores?”
Vivian turned, a gob of pink sauce dripping from a corner of her mouth. “Excuse me?” Then she saw the cameraman and plastered a smile on her face. “Hello. And you’re…you’re…you look very familiar, but I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Nicholas Rheinhardt from the Voyage Channel.”
“Of course. I loved the episode where you had this painful massage in some remote locale. I can’t remember the name, but it looked very cold.”
Nick cringed. “Thank you for reminding me of a moment I’d rather forget. But before you go on and remind the viewers of any more of my embarrassing moments, I should tell you that you have some sauce on your cheek.” He pointed to his own to indicate the location. “I don’t want to be accused of biasing the election by not telling you. That’s how nice a guy I am.” He looked over his shoulder to Angie for approval.
She frowned, indicating she wasn’t totally convinced.
“So you’re a Palace aficionado?” Nick inquired.
“Always when I return for Reunions to Grantham, it’s my first stop,” Vivian supplied. “I’m also on the Board of Trustees at the university, so I have an excuse to visit The Palace on multiple occasions during a year—much to my physician’s chagrin.” She smiled a politician’s smile and lifted her hoagie, still wrapped in the bag. “Now, you tell me, who can resist The Palace’s turkey-extreme hoagie with extra Russian dressing? Not that Grantham doesn’t offer many other fine dining experiences, which I presume you’re going to sample, as well.” She turned an inquiring eye to Nick.
Since Vivian was level with him in her heels, the glare was powerful. “Do you have any suggestions?” Nick asked dutifully. The woman scared him silly.
“You must eat at Bégart. It’s new, very elegant, Grantham’s answer to molecular gastronomy. We like to think it’s our own French Laundry,” she said, referring to Thomas Keller’s famous restaurant in the Napa Valley.
“The tasting menu is to die for,” Vivian continued with the politician’s eager delight in having the spotlight. “If you don’t have a reservation, perhaps I could use my influence?” She winked in a way that could never be confused as flirtatious.
Nick smiled awkwardly. Talk about losing control of the conversation. He was ready to bring the interlude to a finish when Vivian reached out with the darting motion of a giant squid. He would have seriously become concerned for his health, if her arm hadn’t stretched past him as she shouted out, “Lilah, of all people.”
Vivian pushed past Nick with a polite “If you’ll excuse me. It’s been very nice, but I see an old friend.” She immediately clasped Lilah to her chest.
Nick’s first thought was to wonder where her hoagie was in all this embracing.
Vivian released Lilah, and miraculously the hoagie appeared unscathed. She turned and grabbed Nick, dragging him close. “Now, if you want to interview someone, it should be Lilah here. She’s done more to address the plight of Congolese women and their children through her organization Sisters for Sisters than most NGOs and governments combined.”
Lilah smiled weakly. “Thanks, Vivian, but to tell you the truth, I’m not feeling totally well at the moment.”
It was true. Nick noticed she had a bilious green cast to her skin and perspiration dotted her forehead.
“Lilah?” Justin rushed to his wife’s side. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “I think it’s just the heat in here and probably the smells. They’ve suddenly gotten to me.” She lowered her head.
“First trimester sensitivities to smells,” Penelope suddenly announced, materializing from her perch by the wall. “Justin, take her outside into the fresh air.” She riffled through her purse, producing a small bottle and a snow-white handkerchief. “When she’s outside, put some of this on the cloth and let her breathe it. It’s rose water. It will diffuse the smells.”
“Make way, make way.” Angie parted the crowd. “We have a pregnant woman here who needs help.”
“Please, I just need a little air. No one has to fuss,” Lilah protested. “Once I get outside I’ll b
e fine.”
“If we want to make a fuss, we’ll make a fuss,” Justin said protectively.
Vivian rested a hand on Lilah’s shoulder. “My husband, Pierre, is just like Justin—always ready to defend me. It’s a primal need of males to protect their mate.”
Lilah turned to Justin and clutched his hand. “I’m not quite sure what Vivian is talking about. But I do know that I think I may throw up.”
Penelope slid her hoagie out of its long paper bag. “Here, take this. Think of it as an airsickness bag.” She thrust it at Lilah as Justin led her to the door.
Then Justin, his arms around Lilah, stormed the door with Press and Amara acting as blockers and Penelope bringing up the rear.
“You don’t think it’s my fault, do you, I mean, hugging her like that?” Vivian asked no one in particular. She glanced around the crowd, taking in the reactions. Then she seemed to perk up. “Mimi, I didn’t see you there,” she called. She made a wedge in the crowd to reach the journalist. “What do you think?”
Mimi chewed thoughtfully on her sausage hoagie. “I don’t think it will have a big negative impact on your campaign numbers, but if you want to do damage control, perhaps you could suggest she name the baby after you.” She trooped outside.
Vivian stood there in silence before pulling out her BlackBerry.
Nick turned to Georgie. “So you think she’s calling her campaign manager?”
Georgie shrugged. “Either way, it’s great television.”
“The cameras are still running?”
“When are they not?” Georgie chuckled.
Nick craned his neck this way and that, looking for Penelope. He leaned back to Clyde, the soundman, who was wielding his boom and barely managing to avoid contact with the crowd. “So have you seen the librarian?” he asked oh-so-casually.
“You mean the Botticelli Venus? The one who walks in beauty, like the night. Of cloudless climes and starry skies—”
Nick found himself more than mildly annoyed. “Quit with the Keats.”
“Byron, you illiterate Yank,” Clyde complained.
“Who pays you on a regular basis?”
“Like I said, Keats, Lord Byron? What’s the diff?”
“The lady?” Nick prompted again.
“Outside with the damsel in distress.”
“Then vamanos, my willing followers.” Nick pushed through the crowd, with Clyde and Larry in tow. Georgie skipped along behind, stopping only to give his card to Vivian, who was still talking on the phone.
Once out the door, Nick spotted Lilah sitting on the wooden bench, holding a handkerchief to her nostrils.
“I feel positively Victorian,” she complained.
“But it’s working, right?” Justin was on his knees in front of her.
She nodded and took another long and loud sniff from the handkerchief.
Press turned to Amara. “See, I told you Penelope knew everything. That’s why I like hanging out with her.”
“I think you like hanging out with her because she says things like, ‘You are a diamond in the rough.’” Amara knocked him down a peg or two.
Nick watched as she casually gathered up her long hair and flipped it over her shoulder. That kid Press is toast, he thought, not really sure if that was good or bad. Probably bad.
Press grinned at her sheepishly. “Ya think? So, maybe you’re just the person to polish my edges?”
Amara pursed her lips. “Maybe? You never know.”
Nick grimaced. Amara might think she knew her own mind, but she was still his daughter, and he didn’t want her looking for trouble on his watch. She was definitely moving out of Mimi’s family’s house ASAP.
But then his attention was drawn to a much more pleasant image. Penelope. Ah, the lovely Penelope. He moved to where she was sitting on the bench next to Lilah. “Could we talk?” he asked.
She looked skeptical. “You need to talk to me?”
“I do.” He took hold of her hand. He felt as if a spotlight was focusing on them alone. Well, maybe it was Larry, the cameraman. Never mind. “I have something to confess.”
Her one green eye and one blue eye gazed into his brown ones, inscrutable. “I’m waiting,” she prompted him.
“You asked me what I want? I want to taste your ’nduja.”
She blinked. “Is that all?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“I want to do it on camera.”
Penelope’s eyes widened. “Frankly I wasn’t expecting that.”
“And that’s a wrap!” Georgie called out.
CHAPTER NINE
“DAD, I DON’T LIKE PANCAKES,” Amara complained the next morning.
“I don’t care. We’re shooting at Pancake Heaven, and I want you where I can keep an eye on you, since you don’t have to babysit today.” Nick marched briskly along Main Street, not bothering to slow down so that she could match his long stride. He could have really done with a cigarette right now, which was a bummer since he’d given up smoking about nine months ago. If ever there was a time to relapse, this was it.
After magnanimously giving up his queen-size bed in his hotel room for Amara, he’d suffered through a night of misery on the pullout sleeper sofa. Every spring felt as if it had embedded itself into his spinal column. He was getting too old for this job.
He was certainly too old—or too something—to be a father.
“I still can’t believe you made me leave the pool house. I can’t stand sharing that room with you. I mean, I don’t have any privacy,” she complained. She started to pull at a strand of her long hair as she tried to keep up with him. The thick soles of her Doc Martens kerplunked on the sidewalk.
“Like I have any privacy?” Nick slanted her a glance. For someone who’d prided himself on disrespecting authority, he found it irritating that his daughter was decked out in full Goth attire on this bright and sunny day. “Look at it this way, at least Press has his privacy back, right?”
She snorted. “So that’s what this is all about? Jeez, Dad, he’s older than me.”
“Not that much older.” It was more like she wasn’t that much younger.
“You just don’t trust me,” she shot back.
“After getting kicked out of school, you think I should trust you?” he snapped. Even Nick recognized that he was sounding immature, but somehow he seemed incapable of raising the level of this conversation.
How typical, he was sure his ex-wife would say. When would he ever grow up?
“Do you even want to know why I was kicked out?” she asked, purposely looking away as she talked.
“Do you want to tell me?” he asked.
“Not really.”
They stopped along with everyone else for the light to change at the corner of Main Street and Whalen Avenue. A bank asserted its formal financial exterior on one side, and a jewelry store showcased expensive rings and watches on the other. On the other side of Main Street, wrought-iron gates separated the university campus from the real world, or as much as Grantham was the real world.
The light changed, and Nick stepped off the curb. “If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t ask, then.” Though he supposed the discussion would have to come sooner rather than later. Speaking of later, was he supposed to do something about it? he wondered. He would have to talk to his ex when she got back from her honeymoon. Whatever the outcome, he was sure it would cost him.
Didn’t it always?
The rest of the short walk passed in silence as they cut a determined path. Rather than look at his daughter, he took in the blur of stores—the ubiquitous Starbucks, a yogurt shop and another jewelry store. How upscale did a town have to be to afford two jewelry st
ores in one block? Nick wondered. He kept moving past the university bookstore, a stockbrokerage, a brewpub and a photocopy store. What more did a college student need?
Up ahead, he spotted Georgie, Larry and Clyde hanging out in front of Pancake Heaven. The exterior was imitation brick. Black shutters and striped awnings framed the windows—a decor that looked like fake Colonial meets Jersey Shore. The Grantham Historical Society next door must be having kittens, Nick figured.
But when they reached the middle of the block, Nick put out his arm to stop Amara. He glanced at the shop—a shoe store. Orange-and-black banners hailed alumni around a collection of men’s dress shoes and women’s high heels.
He turned to Amara. “Hold on.”
She halted and glanced disdainfully at the shoes. “Having a footwear moment?”
Nick bit his tongue and tried to channel Georgie’s words of wisdom about dealing with kids. He couldn’t remember a single one, which meant he’d just have to wing it.
He crossed his arms, but then uncrossed them. More approachable, he told himself. He smiled.
Amara winced.
Okay, so maybe no smile. “Listen, we might as well get this over with. Why were you kicked out? Just tell me. I’m your dad. No matter what, I’ll support you.”
“Are you just saying that, or do you mean it?”
“To be honest, probably a little bit of both.”
Amara shrugged her shoulders like a downtrodden old man. “Yeah, it’s not like I would have believed some sudden outburst of parental concern anyway.” She glanced up and down the street. “I was staying on campus when Mom left for her honeymoon—”
Nick nodded. “And?”
“And I used her car. To go to Planned Parenthood.” She gulped noticeably and gave him a belligerent stare.
Whatever he thought she was going to say, it wasn’t that. “You’re pregnant?” It was the first thing that came to him.
A Rare Find Page 7
