by Jane Heller
She explained about L and T not approving of employees dating authors and about Tony’s almost pathological need for privacy.
“No one knows about us. I’m only telling you because, as I said, we used to be so close.”
“I’m touched.” Mostly, I was dying to meet Tony Stiles.
“And discreet? You really can’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t, I won’t. You two will come for dinner, and Stuart and I won’t breathe a word to a soul.”
“Not even to him.”
“To Stuart?”
“No, to Tony.”
“I don’t understand, Amy.”
“You can’t let Tony find out I told you about our engagement. As I said, he’s extremely private and he’d be very upset if he thought I’d blabbed about us to you or anybody else. So we’ll come under one condition.”
“That I don’t act like I know.”
“Exactly.”
Well, it was weird. That’s all I can say. What she was proposing was downright strange. She was engaged to a fabulous guy, but I was supposed to pretend that the two of them were just friends? Business associates? Author and publicist? I mean, I was the queen of game playing, but this was outrageous even for me. Still, I was thrilled for her that she and Tony Stiles were getting married, and I was more than eager to meet him, so what the hell. Besides, I figured that once they got to the house and had a drink, they’d loosen up about the whole secrecy thing.
“You’re on,” I said. “Pull out your calendar and we’ll schedule this dinner.”
She told me they were free that Friday night, so we made a date. I would call Michelle and ask her to cook something sensational. I would fill the house with flowers and candles and music. I would wear a knockout dress with knockout accessories to match. All doable. The only challenge would be to make sure that Stuart behaved. Amy’s guy was rich, sexy, and smart. My guy was rich, oversexed, and dumb. But more problematic than Stuart being only one out of three was whether he’d keep his dick in his pants. God forbid that he should start hitting on Amy after a vodka or two and trash my image. I needed her to view me as half of a deliriously happy couple, both because of the book and because of our past relationship. I was the prom queen and she was supposed to envy me. That’s how it was and that’s how it would stay. Yes, it would have been preferable to throw out old patterns and stop reverting to type, but I couldn’t help myself. What I didn’t see was that in trying so hard to keep Amy suspended in a state of worship, I was keeping myself suspended in a state of bullshit—bullshit that could come back to haunt me if I wasn’t careful.
25
It was pouring the night Amy and Tony came for dinner, and my mood was just as foul as the weather. There I was, only an hour before they were supposed to arrive, absolutely at my wit’s end. I had made the house beautiful. I had made myself beautiful. I had made the food beautiful. (Okay, so Michelle had made the food beautiful.) And yet where was Stuart? Not home. Not at the office. Not answering his cellphone. How was I going to present us as the couple of the century when I didn’t even know where my goddamn husband was?
It was a mere fifteen minutes before the lovebirds were due to show up when Stuart finally breezed in, the cuffs of his suit pants wet from the rain.
“Where have you been?” I demanded. So much for our detente.
“Nice greeting, hon. Does this mean you missed me?” he said, straightening his tie.
“You promised me you’d be home in time to help me get everything ready.”
He surveyed the living room. “Everything looks ready to me. The house is like a museum, as usual. Not a blooming orchid out of place.”
“Are you going to tell me where you’ve been or not?” I had promised Jimmy I would keep an eye on Stuart, but the job had become increasingly more difficult recently. He was often out of the office and not picking up his cell. Short of having him tailed, it was impossible to stay on top of him twenty-four hours a day. I had a radio show to do and a forthcoming book to publicize, and I simply didn’t have the time or the energy to be his keeper.
He smiled. “I was out paying for that thirtieth birthday party I threw for you in Tuscany. That’s where I’ve been.”
“What are you talking about? The party was almost a year ago.”
“It was an expensive party. And if I know you, you’ll be expecting something even grander for your thirty-fifth. I’d better start saving, huh?”
“Stuart, I’ll try this again. Where have you been? You said you’d be home early.”
He leaned over and gave me a dry peck on the cheek. “Don’t worry your beautiful head about it or you’ll get wrinkles. I wasn’t with any women, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Why? Did all their fathers lock them in their rooms tonight?”
“Oh, so now you’re accusing me of fooling around with jailbait? That’s beneath even you.”
“Fine. So you weren’t with any women. Where were you? Tell me fast, because Amy and Tony will be here any minute.”
“I was with some businesspeople, okay?”
“Does Jimmy know these ‘businesspeople’?”
“No, he doesn’t, because I’m allowed to have my own contacts in the industry. Maybe you haven’t heard, but Jimmy is not my boss.”
“Actually, he is, Stuart. He’s in charge of Lasher’s and you work for him.”
“With him, Tara. I work with my brother.”
He said this in sort of a menacing tone, so I dropped the subject. I didn’t want us to take on that look of a couple who’d been fighting. Not when Amy and Tony were about to walk in the door.
“See if you can work with me now,” I said. “Be charming tonight. I’d like this dinner to go well.”
“I’ll be so charming, you’ll thank your lucky stars I married you instead of Amy.”
“Let’s not get carried away. Just try not to do anything awful. Oh, and you might want to run upstairs and change your suit. Your pant legs are wet.”
Before he could argue, I heard a car in the driveway. He went upstairs. I went to greet my guests.
Wow. Nice wheels, I thought as I caught a glimpse of the Ferrari. I also caught a glimpse of Tony opening an umbrella and helping Amy out of the car.
Yes, nice wheels and nice manners.
“Come in, come in, you two!” I called out to them. “You must be soaked.”
Huddled together, they hurried up to the door and came inside.
“Amy,” I said, giving her sort of an arm’s length hug. No reason to get as wet as the rest of them. “I’m so glad you braved the elements and made the trip.”
“I promised you we’d come, Tara. I don’t renege on my promises.”
God. That insufferable holier-than-thou bit again.
I turned to face Tony. He was even more striking looking than he was on television. His dark wavy hair was wavier, his hooded blue eyes bluer, his toned and sexy body sexier. I was momentarily flustered by his appeal, the way people often are around celebrities.
“And you must be Tony,” I said, shaking his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. My husband and I are big fans.”
“Well, shucks. Thanks for the kind words,” he said with a naughty grin. “Oh, and thanks for letting me tag along on your business dinner with Amy.”
“Business dinner?” I sneaked a peek at Amy and winked at her. Yeah, yeah. I was supposed to play along with her game, but she couldn’t have been serious about it. Not when Tony had such a mischievous quality about him. Only an uptight jerk wouldn’t want anybody to know he was in love, and my impression of Tony was that he was no uptight jerk. The truth was, he was the most attractive man I’d been around in ages. “We can talk business if you insist, but once I’ve served you and Amy a drink and a nibble, I’d rather move on to a much more entertaining subject.”
Amy shot me the evil eye, but I completely ignored her. Talk about uptight. She wasn’t dressed for a dinner party. She was dressed for jury duty.
W
e chatted for another minute or so, then Stuart made his appearance. He’d changed his suit, run a comb through his hair, and applied some cologne. I noticed that Amy stayed fairly calm in his presence, even though it was her first look at him in four years. He was positively beaming at the sight of her. He grabbed her and kissed her and said how great it was to see her, which was all well and good as long as he kept his fly zipped.
“This is wonderful,” he said to her. “I was thrilled when Tara told me your news.”
“My news?” asked Amy, glaring at me again.
“And you’re Tony,” he said, shaking Tony’s hand. “I hope you realize how lucky you are. You’ve got yourself a real gem.”
Amy jumped in and said something about her work on Tony’s books, and he made a remark about what an excellent publicist she was. Fine, so they were sticking to the “We’re just friends” subterfuge for the moment. I had every confidence that they’d let down their guard eventually.
I took Tony’s arm and led him into the library. “So tell me,” I said, “is it true what I’ve been reading about you?”
He laughed. “That depends on what you’ve been reading about me.”
“Oh, just that you’re a ferociously hard worker, that you research the crimes in your books by talking to actual criminals, and that you live and breathe Joe West.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Well, whatever you do, don’t stop, because the books are impossible to put down.”
“I knew there was a reason I came here tonight.” He held my gaze. “Flattery and dinner, too. An irresistible combination.”
“Plus, you get to spend time with Amy,” I added. “Outside of your usual environment, I mean.”
“Right. Normally, we see each other in the city.”
“Yes, but I meant that you don’t normally socialize with other couples.”
“Not unless she drags me to one of those L and T parties with the sales reps and their spouses. That’s not my idea of a good time, let me tell you.”
“Well, here’s hoping tonight will make up for all that. You and Amy can just relax and enjoy. Stuart and I have been sworn to secrecy.”
“Secrecy?”
I pressed my finger to my lips. “Shhhh. Mum’s the word.” I invited him to have a seat, then called out to Stuart. “Where are you, sweetheart? Tony and I are waiting for you to make everybody drinks.”
“Here I am, hon.” He entered the room with his arm around Amy. I considered myself fortunate that it was only her waist he was fondling.
“You take the drink orders while I rustle up the hors d’oeuvres,” I said. “The ice bucket’s in the kitchen, so come with me, sweetheart. I’m sure these two can occupy themselves while we’re gone.”
I winked at Amy again before disappearing with Stuart.
“She landed a prize all right,” I whispered to him while Michelle was in the butler’s pantry, putting the finishing touches on the canapés. “Tony Stiles is to die for.”
“Yeah, well try to keep those panties of yours dry. He belongs to her.”
“That’s what I love about you, Stuart. You have such a gentlemanly way of putting things. But speaking of panties, I’d leave Amy’s on if I were you. Tony probably has contacts in the underworld, so you don’t want to make him mad.”
He grabbed the ice bucket, then my ass, and went back into the library.
I followed a few minutes later with the tray of hors d’oeuvres. “Here are those nibbles,” I said, passing them around. “Which reminds me, Amy. Have you planned the menu for the big day?”
She reacted to my question by nearly spilling her white wine. What was her problem anyway?
“We haven’t planned the menu for Tony’s publication party,” she said, “because it’s so far off in the future.”
Okay, so she was still doing her number. It was becoming tiresome, in my opinion, and totally unnecessary. Tony seemed perfectly comfortable being with us. So why not discuss their engagement? She wouldn’t let me, that’s why. Every time I brought it up, she changed the subject and focused the attention on me, on my book. In other words, I kept having to do my own number, kept having to pretend that my marriage to Stuart was bliss, that we were the happiest couple ever, that ours was a life to be envied. There were moments when even I wanted to throw up from myself. But I’d worked hard on Simply Beautiful, and there was no way in hell that Amy Sanctimonious Sherman was going to blow my cover.
After an hour or so, I served dinner. Amy continued to ask Stuart and me questions about our house, our families, our travel plans. It was torture, because I was dying to shift the conversation back to her and Tony. At some point, when she finally shut up for a second, I said, “Can you imagine having a wedding on a night like this?”
She practically choked. No, now that I think about it, she did choke. She had taken a bite of Michelle’s game hen and started gagging and gasping and clutching her throat. Tony leapt to her side, wrapped his arms around her, and performed the Heimlich maneuver. Naturally, I felt terrible—I had my issues with Amy, but I didn’t want to be responsible for her death—and offered to call 911. But Tony must have known what he was doing, because she recovered in record time.
Unfortunately, the drama wasn’t over. The storm that was raging outside produced a loud clap of thunder, which produced an even louder crash. Stuart and I bolted up from the table to check the other rooms—it sounded as if something had fallen—but nothing was amiss. When we returned to the dining room, Amy and Tony were on their feet.
“I hope you don’t mind, Tara,” she said, “but I’m pretty exhausted from my choking episode. I think we’re going to head back to the city a little earlier than we’d planned.”
“The roads are bound to be slippery,” Tony added. “We’ll have to take it slowly.”
Stuart and I said we understood—frankly, I was relieved to be done with my charade, relieved that I wouldn’t have to make nice to my husband for a single second more—and we walked them outside with our umbrellas.
To our dismay, the loud crack we’d heard earlier hadn’t been a figment of our imagination. A tree had fallen across the driveway, blocking Tony’s car.
“Can you call someone to move the tree?” asked Amy, looking pained.
“Not at this time of night and not in this storm,” said Stuart.
“But surely we can get it out of their way so they can leave,” I said, feeling a little pained myself. It had just dawned on me that if Amy and Tony couldn’t go back to the city, they’d be forced to spend the night with us, and I wouldn’t be off the hook so fast after all.
“That tree isn’t going anywhere, and neither are we,” said Tony. “Not unless there’s a chainsaw handy.”
“Is there?” Amy and I asked simultaneously.
Stuart and Tony laughed at our duet.
“Is there a chainsaw handy? No,” said Stuart. “But we do have some fabulous old port, so I suggest we go back in the house, where it’s dry and warm, and have ourselves a nightcap. Then you two will sleep over in our guest house. Right, hon?” He nudged me. “Hon?”
“Yes. Right. The guest house,” I said.
“We can’t,” said Amy. “I mean, we don’t want to be any trouble.”
“No trouble at all,” I said. “You’ll get a good night’s rest and then we’ll feed you a lovely breakfast tomorrow and you can hit the road as soon as the driveway’s clear.”
Stuart put his arm around my shoulder. “My wife has that guest house decorated just like a honeymoon cottage. It’ll be our pleasure to have you stay in it.”
Our pleasure. Yeah, sure. I didn’t know what Amy was looking so peeved about—she was about to spend the night at what amounted to a first-class B and B, for God’s sake—but I had a valid reason to be disgusted. I had already expended more than enough energy performing for her benefit, and now, thanks to the stupid tree, I’d have to keep the act going. What’s more, while she was going off to snuggle up with a brilliant, sensiti
ve man, I’d be stuck with a guy who had the brains, not to mention the sensitivity, of a shoe. Like that was fair?
As everybody trudged back inside, I decided that I would buy a chainsaw the next time I was at Home Depot. Who knew they were such useful little gadgets?
26
The rain stopped during the night, thank God. So I went for an early-morning jog to clear my head before having to deal with Amy. And it was a good thing I did, because she and Tony were mighty hard to take all of a sudden. They must have decided to lift their veil of secrecy once they were alone together in my romantic little guest house. They came prancing into the kitchen like teenagers in heat, instead of pretending to be business colleagues, and it was revolting. He was calling her “buttercup” and she was fluttering her eyelashes at him, and they never stopped touching each other. Imagine how I felt. Yes, of course I was happy for her—especially since her happiness took the onus off of what Stuart and I had done to her—but my husband never called me “buttercup” or any other term of endearment except when we were putting on a show. And he never, ever looked at me with the kind of unadulterated affection that Tony obviously had for her.
But the absolute worst, in terms of my feeling envious of her and sorry for myself, was when Tony made his big speech about what a Wonder Woman she was.
“I’m dying to hear how you two became a couple,” I’d said innocently enough while the four of us hung around the kitchen, waiting for the tree people to come. Well, I was curious about them. Amy had her attributes, as I’ve admitted, but it was still a shocker that she’d hooked as big a fish as Tony Stiles.
“I was the one who pursued her,” he said. “And I had to get my courage up to do it.”
And then he went on and on about how intimidated he was by Amy. Yeah, Amy. The one who had always been intimidated by me. He said she was a legend in the book business. He said she was linked with lots of rich and powerful men. He said she was beautiful and suggested that it must have been difficult for me to grow up around the prettiest girl in town. What a nightmare, right? I mean, was I supposed to just sit there when he said that about her, knowing that it had been the other way around with us? Sit there and smile even though I’d been the prettiest girl in town?
