"Mom, hi, it's great you could come," he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek.
"Oh, honey, I'm very proud of you," Patty said. "The only problem is, where are we going to find room for all these new trophies where we can see them?" They all laughed.
"Did Dad tell you I'm sleeping over at Chuck's tonight?" Jimmy asked her.
"Oh," Patty said, "no. But that's fine, honey, have a good time."
Oh, great, Patty thought, Ted's already farming the kids out to other families.
The banquet went on. Patty, watching her husband, wondered if she could go home and make love with Ted and then drive back to the city. She really should see Elizabeth before going into ICA tomorrow. On the other hand, Monty had forced a hundred dollars on her, saying she shouldn't have to pay for any travel expenses on her own. When she refused to take the money, he swore she could owe it to him until her book was sold. So she had plenty of cash for a train and a cab in the morning.
It was almost ten when the awards dinner finally ended. By then the Kleczaks' euphoric mood had turned to exhaustion. As they walked out the school principal gave a low whistle and said, "Who was here tonight? Whose parents use a limousine?"
Patty, her arm looped through her husband's, felt Ted stiffen.
"It's actually a friend's company car," Patty said. "I've been doing some work in the city, and he offered to let me use it to get to the dinner on time."
The principal made a crack along the lines that you can't keep the girl on the farm after she's sampled city life and that the coach better keep tabs on his lovely wife. He left, laughing at his own wittiness.
"Who is paying for this?" Ted demanded as soon as they were out of earshot of everyone else.
"It doesn't cost anything. It's Montgomery Grant Smith's car. He gets it as part of his contract."
"Somebody's paying for it," Ted insisted, "and I want to know who so we can pay them back."
The driver was standing outside the car, waiting for instructions.
"It doesn't cost Monty anything," Patty said.
"And why is Monty chauffeuring you around? What does Monty expect in return?"
"Ted! Nothing!" Patty stepped back, genuinely shocked.
"Yeah, right. Guy chauffeurs you around in a limousine and expects nothing in return. She's alone with him in the city, away from her kids and her dumb jock husband—"
"Ted, stop it! Do you want me to stay tonight or not? Because you're certainly doing your best to wreck my mood."
"Wreck your mood," he said. "You're wrecking our family, Patty! How the hell do you think I feel having you run around with some celebrity jerk who's got his limo at your disposal? Are you telling me he isn't expecting you back tonight? It's his car, isn't it?"
"What is it, exactly, you wish me to do?" "That's your choice, Patty, isn't it?" Ted asked bitterly, walking away.
Patty dismissed the car and driver and rode home, in silence, in the station wagon with Ted. Mary Ellen and Kevin were already in bed, so she went in and kissed them and talked to each. Ted ignored her and got ready for bed, so Patty called Elizabeth to tell her she had sent the car back and would be taking the early train in the morning.
After she got off, Patty cleaned the downstairs of the house a little; went out to the all-night supermarket, and bought some groceries, put them away, and went up to bed. Ted was snoring. She climbed into bed, kissed his back, and lay there, unable to sleep right away. When the alarm went off at five o'clock, she found that Ted had already gone.
40
After Elizabeth and Monty got Patty off to New Jersey, they went into the kitchen to fix themselves some dinner. Sitting in the study later, balancing plates of chicken and vegetables and baked sweet potatoes, Elizabeth said she thought Monty had handled Patty with a great deal of sensitivity.
"Yeah, well, when she started crying and said she didn't belong, I knew exactly how she felt."
"And how is that?" Elizabeth asked, cutting her chicken.
He smiled. "Like a Cinderella zapped back to poverty right in the middle of the ball. You know—everything is going so wonderfully in a new phase of your life with new friends, and then reality hits and you feel like the failure you always thought you were, still stuck in the rut you should have known better than to try to climb out of." He was no longer smiling. "You wish you hadn't even tried—to do anything new, I mean. Because it only sets you up to feel all those old same feelings of failure again."
Elizabeth's fork was hanging in midair. She put it down. "When have you felt like that?"
He looked at her. "Who says I still don't?" And then he smiled. "Anyway, she's a great lady," he said, picking up his knife and fork and starting in on one of the two sweet potatoes on his plate.
"Monty?"
"Hmmm?" He had a mouth full of food.
"Why aren't you nice on the radio?"
He struggled to swallow. "But I am! I don't hang up on people. I don't swear. I let people have their say."
She was toying with her food. "But you're not really like the man on the radio show," she said. "I listened today."
"Oh, it was a lousy show. I'm sorry you did." He speared a slice of chicken.
"I didn't like what you said about mentally ill people," she said quietly.
"Yeah, well, people born to privilege rarely do, I find. Have you always been rich?"
Elizabeth looked at him. "I was never rich until the book royalties and the movie sale and everything. My father did very well, but he had two families to support. There were always things I wished I could do or wanted to buy and couldn't. I've always worked."
He continued to eat, but his eyes were on her.
"I tutored kids in reading when I was about ten."
"Ten?" he said.
She nodded. "I always did that—it was good money. And when I was sixteen, I got a job in a bookstore after school. That wasn't such a good job, because I spent everything I made on books, but I got a discount at least, and so for that reason I worked part-time in a bookstore all the way through graduate school."
"Did your parents pay for graduate school?"
"I received teaching fellowships," she said.
"But your parents were there if you needed them," Monty said.
"Yes," Elizabeth nodded, "that's quite true. But then The Duchess of Desire caught on and money hasn't been a problem since."
Monty scooped up a bite of sautéed spinach and looked at her. "Do you feel guilty about what you have?"
"No," she said, sipping her iced tea.
"Why not? You liberals are always screaming about how no one has anything, so I'm curious—why don't you feel obligated to give all your money to homeless people?"
"Why would you say something like that?" she said.
"I'm just asking you why you don't support your politics with your money," he said. "You and your kind never do."
"I wish you'd stop this, Monty," she said.
"Well, you are a Democrat, aren't you?"
"I am a former Republican, but I left the party, because people like you so hopelessly distorted its principles that I couldn't, in all good conscience, stay."
Monty threw his head back and roared.
"Every time I'm fool enough to think I genuinely like you, Montgomery Grant Smith," Elizabeth said, standing up, "you go out of your way to make sure I don't." She walked out of the room, dinner plate in hand.
Monty sat there, frowning.
After Elizabeth had finished her dinner at the kitchen table, she came back to the study to apologize. "I'm tired and on edge, and I hope you know that I do like you, despite your utterly abominable politics." She gave him a slight smile.
"I'm not sure I didn't deserve it," Monty admitted. "When I get as exhausted as I am now, I instinctively go into a show-time mode. It comes from—well, you know, the show must go on, and so I fall back into my shtick." He groaned, put his plate down on the coffee table, and buried his face in his hands.
"What's the matter?" Elizab
eth said, worried.
"It's happened, it's happened, it's finally happened," he moaned. "I'm hearing myself apologize for the way I am." He looked up. "Do you realize, Professor, that this could be the beginning of the worst demasculization of power since the Fall of the Roman Empire?"
"That's what I like most about you," Elizabeth said, picking up his empty plate and carrying it out, "your sense of humility."
"Suz, we need to talk," David said, watching her back as she washed the dinner dishes.
"What about, hon?" she asked.
She was wearing stretch pants and a tank top that made her look sensational, and as if that weren't enough, she had made him his favorite meal of all time—roast chicken with stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, and string beans (as good if not better than his mother's). It was becoming increasingly difficult for David to ignore how kind and loving and adoring Susie was. He'd have to be dead not to respond to this young woman with his heart as well as his body. She had turned out to be a complete surprise.
"Sit, baby, I need to talk to you," he said.
Looking concerned, Susie wiped her hands on the dish towel, slung it through the handle of the refrigerator door, and came over to the table to sit down. He was looking at his hands. She reached over and took one. "What is it, honey?"
"Um, listen," he said, looking at her. She was probably the most beautiful woman he had ever been with. "Baby, look, our relationship seems to be getting to the point where I need to tell you something?"
She continued to look at him, eyes large, listening.
"First of all, let me say that I'm in total remission, so—"
"Oh, my God, Davey, you have cancer?" Susie said, grabbing his hand, her eyes welling up.
"No," he said quickly.
"Leukemia?" she asked.
"No—"
"It's not AIDS, is it?" She looked frightened.
"No, no, nothing like that," he quickly reassured her. "I, uh, I have herpes, although I haven't had an outbreak in a couple of years. But I wanted to tell you about it, so that you knew."
She looked puzzled. "Is that it?"
He nodded. "I wanted you to know because—well, you should know. Things are getting pretty serious, and if it ever comes back—"
"But, Davey, everybody has herpes." He blinked. "Honey, I've got it, too."
"What?" he said. "I got it a couple of years ago from my boyfriend at Cal State. It's a real pain, but it's hardly anything to lose sleep over." She patted his hand. "And you were scared to tell me? That's so sweet."
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked her.
"What?" she said absently.
"When were you going to tell me that you had it?"
"Oh, I don't know," she said, "I guess if I had an outbreak or something, but it's been years."
"But what if I got it from you before you told me?" he asked.
"And what if I got it from you before you told me? These things happen, Davey. It's no big deal. Forget about it."
"I can't believe we can't contact Ben Rothstein," Monty grumbled, sitting on the couch with his stocking feet up, thumbing through the papers on his lap.
"He'd call if he knew what was going on," Elizabeth told him, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. "But you don't go to a place like Bora Bora unless you genuinely want to get away from it all. Only Henry knows how to reach him and he's not telling."
"His kids must know," Monty said.
"He had a son, but he died in a car accident years ago," Elizabeth said, turning another page. "Anyway, Josh says it's better that Ben isn't here." She glanced over at Monty. "The worst thing he could do right now is get involved and make it look as though ICA's right about Henry and Dorothy wanting to sell him the company."
"And that's exactly what Henry should do," Monty said.
"Back to your lists," she said. "We've got to figure out what it is Creighton Berns wants to get his hands on so badly." They were quiet a while, each examining the records in front of them.
"What the hell are we looking for?" Monty said a moment later, dropping his papers in his lap.
"I swear to God, Montgomery Grant Smith, I am going to lock you up to get you off sugar. These mood changes are making me crazy!"
"No mood changes," Monty said.
"I can't keep feeding you candy bars to keep you stable!" she continued. "You're going to blow up or have a heart attack from sugar shock, I don't know which."
"Sugar has nothing to do with anything."
"Right, and you've got the temperament and physique to prove it." She winced. "Sorry, that was out of line. It's just hard for me to see the way you live and pretend I don't know what it's doing to you."
"Thank you, Professor. Your concern is touching."
"I'm sure it is," she said, trying to ignore him as he unwrapped a chocolate-covered peppermint cream and popped it in his mouth.
The phone rang and Elizabeth snapped it up. From the way she immediately lowered her voice, murmuring, "We're just going through file records, trying to get better acquainted with what is in storage," Monty knew she was talking to David and he jumped up, waving frantically.
She covered the phone. "What?"
"Don't tell Aussenhoff about the files in storage," he whispered.
Elizabeth glared at him, but she complied, changing the subject. Monty knew Elizabeth wanted him to leave so she could talk in private, but he refused to budge. It bothered him that Elizabeth had volunteered the information about what they were doing at the Hillingses this evening. God only knew what else she might tell him.
Monty was convinced Aussenhoff was not to be trusted.
He pretended to examine the records, trying hard to stifle a yawn. He was exhausted, and he needed to go back to the hotel, but he could not leave.
Fifteen minutes later, Elizabeth was still on the phone, her back to him, murmuring in a voice so low he couldn't make out a word.
"I don't know, Bets," David was saying on his end of the phone in Los Angeles, "I feel so rotten about the press conference. I wish I could just tell Berns to go fuck himself and not care if he pulls the plug on my movie, but I can't. I do care and I don't want to lose everything. "
"Of course not, David," she said. "And you shouldn't torture yourself about it. There really isn't anything else you can do to help anyway."
"I could be there with you." His voice was sexy and low.
She couldn't say anything for a moment.
"You have your preproduction work to do," she finally managed.
"I don't care," he said, "I'm coming back as soon as I can. I want to see you."
"I want to see you, too," she sighed.
Elizabeth hung up the phone, paused a moment, and then turned around.
"So what was his excuse for going on TV? To secretly sabotage Creighton Berns by being his character witness?" Monty asked, instantly regretting his tone because he sounded exactly the way he felt—pissed, unsettled, and disgusted with Elizabeth for being susceptible to such a louse.
"No excuse," she said coldly. "It was a mistake. He's flying in later this week to help us.”
That was it, Monty couldn't take it. "It doesn't bother you at all that he's coming here after helping Creighton Berns? He'll know everything we're doing and what time of day we're doing it!"
"Oh, Monty, don't be an ass," Elizabeth said.
"And don't you be a fool."
She glared at him. "I think we're both tired."
"Yeah, and I know tired of who," Monty said, getting up from the couch, throwing his papers down, and grabbing his shoes and jacket.
"Of whom," Elizabeth said, not bothering to see him out.
41
The phone rang just after midnight. Georgiana had been sound asleep, and it took her a moment to get her bearings.
"I'm sorry for calling so late."
"Alexandra?" Georgiana said, sitting up, holding her bedclothes around her. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, really," Alexandra
said quietly, "I'm fine." Then she laughed, a long, low laugh. "No, I'm not fine."
The comment shot straight through Georgiana. "What's the matter?"
"You're coming back to New York and I don't know what to do about you."
"You don't have to do anything, but we could see each other."
"I was thinking the same thing," Alexandra said. "Look, Georgiana, I have a small farm in New Jersey."
"I know, you told me," Georgiana said.
How could she or anyone not know of Alexandra Waring's relationships with farms? The country's only solo nightly national news anchorwoman was born and raised on a farm in Kansas, and much of her ratings success, some Americans said, was because it had been so long since anyone had seen a "normal" person on TV.
A normal person, yes. Right.
Alexandra certainly had her work cut out for her if she ever wanted to live her own life, as opposed to acting out the one scripted for her. Like Georgiana's, hers had been a lonely, troubled childhood. For decades her father had been a powerful congressman, and he and Alexandra's mother had lived in Washington most of the time. They had insisted their daughter stay at the farm to be raised by her grandparents, which might have been okay if her grandfather had not been an alcoholic.
After college, Alexandra moved from San Francisco to New York to Washington, following increasingly important news jobs. Just as she was preparing to move back to New York to become the DBS anchor, she was shot and nearly killed on the steps of the Capitol by a deranged man. Later in the year, lightning struck twice and she was again the target of a gun-carrying lunatic. Alexandra landed in therapy, and that's when she finally began to examine the kind of life she led and why.
Georgiana knew there had been a longtime boyfriend and fiancé, but what had happened between them was a subject that was obviously still painful to Alexandra.
"The farm's not a big deal or anything," Alexandra was saying, "but it's mine and it means a great deal to me, and I wondered if you might want to come out next weekend. Didn't you tell me that you ride?"
"Yes," Georgiana said. "I love to ride."
"Then we can do that." She paused. "You'll have your own room and bathroom, of course, and everything will be pretty casual. What do you say?"
Any Given Moment (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 3) Page 25
