by Susan Crosby
If she didn’t call back before he left the office he’d try her home phone, then her cell. He needed to know what was going on with her, wanted to tell her a few things, too.
His private line rang. He let it ring twice, his hand on the receiver. “John Harlan.”
“Hi, it’s me.”
Scarlet. Message received. He dragged a hand down his face and relaxed into the chair.
“Thanks for calling.” He held back from bombarding her with questions because he wanted to see her in person, to know for himself how she felt. He needed to talk her into meeting him somewhere. “Did you and Summer settle things?”
“Yes.”
He waited, but she didn’t add anything. “Well…good.”
“John? We need to talk.”
“I agree. That’s why I called you.”
“You—” A pause, then, “When?”
“Just now. Isn’t that why you’re calling?” he asked.
“No. I wanted to let you know I’m sending you an envelope by messenger. You can read what’s inside and think it over and get back to me.”
“Why don’t we just meet?” he asked.
“Everything will be clear when you get the message.”
At this point in their relationship she’d decided to play a game? Why wouldn’t she just talk to him? “All right, Scarlet. I’ll get back to you.”
“One way or the other, please?”
He wasn’t sure what she meant but figured it would work itself out. “Okay.”
“See you later,” she said, almost turning it into a question, but not waiting for an answer before she hung up.
He called the doorman in his apartment building to say he was expecting a delivery and to call him as soon as it arrived. Someone rapped sharply on his office door, then opened it without waiting to be invited.
“Got a minute, son? We need to talk.”
John stood to greet his father, aware of how ominous those words sounded, echoing his own to Scarlet. It was not the best day in his life.
Scarlet shook out her hands to help calm her nerves then strode lightly across the sumptuous hotel suite to the door. She viewed the room from the entry. The small fortune she’d paid for one night in the two-room suite at the Ritz-Carlton was worth it. A table for two was already set by a window overlooking Central Park. She’d arranged for a memorable meal from the hotel’s award-winning restaurant, Atelier, everything from beluga caviar, to bluefin-tuna-and-artichoke salad, to herb-crusted rack of lamb with spinach-and-ricotta gnocchi, to the decadent final touch—warm molten chocolate cake with caramel ice cream.
It was a meal meant for a celebration. She’d even met with the master sommelier to choose wines for each course.
Now all she needed was John.
She paced the room, caught a glimpse of her reflection in a window in her fitted black sheath, black-satin-and-rhinestone high heels and her mother’s pearl-and-diamond necklace and matching earrings. She’d never worn them before, had saved them for a special occasion. She couldn’t imagine an occasion more special.
The mantel clock struck six. Any moment now, he would arrive.
She was scared and anxious and exhilarated.
She wandered around the room, moved dinner plates half an inch then back again, straightened perfectly aligned silverware, picked up a wineglass, held it to the light then set it down again in precisely the same spot.
She walked some more, stopped at a window. A siren blared, an everyday sound that pierced the quiet hotel room then stopped nearby.
In the sudden silence the clock chimed the quarter hour.
She went into the bedroom to find her watch, double-checking that the clock was right. It was.
Six-thirty came. Anxiety played hide-and-seek in her head.
Six forty-five. Worry joined the game.
The phone rang. She almost came out of her skin. He was delayed, that was all, and calling to say so.
“Hello?” She heard herself, breathless and hopeful.
“Miss Elliott?”
Not John. “Yes.”
“Were you ready for room service?”
“I need a little more time.” She’d arranged to call them when she was ready but had told them it would probably be about 6:15 p.m. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Of course, ma’am. Good evening.”
Scarlet blew out a breath. Where was John? She had left nothing to chance, had even called to alert him about the envelope. Yet now she was left staring at the hotel door, willing him to knock on it, but only silence echoed back.
Seven o’clock came. Eight. She dimmed the lights and curled up on the sofa.
He wasn’t coming. Apparently he’d thought about what she said in the note and made his decision. Except that he’d told her he would call, one way or the other, and he hadn’t, and he was usually a man of his word. Maybe she had been too pushy, her expectations too high.
But he’d called her, too, wanting to talk. He’d said so. What did it all mean?
At 9:35 p.m. she cancelled room service and turned a chair to the window. Headlights dotted the nightscape as a steady stream of traffic passed below her. They blurred into ribbons of light, red one direction, white the other. Horns honked. Life went on.
But not hers.
Why didn’t he want her? Was she too much trouble? Maybe she’d been too bold, undermining him as a man. Maybe he thought she was high maintenance, someone who brought too much drama into a life.
Okay, perhaps she’d stirred his life up a bit, but she wasn’t exactly a drama queen. She hadn’t changed him. He was still the cool, calm person he’d always been.
Maybe that was the crux of the problem. She was too intense. He was too calm.
Fire and ice. Good for a sexual relationship, but not for life.
She looked blindly around the room, aching disappointment drifting around her. How could he just blow her off like that? Okay, so she hadn’t exactly encouraged him since Summer had discovered them, had actually discouraged him. But he was big on courtesy. He should have at least let her know he wasn’t coming. He’d said he would. He was a promise keeper.
Unless he was hurt?
She laughed at the idea, the sound brittle, and wished she’d ordered the champagne to be delivered anyway, so she could toast her fertile imagination. She’d seen An Affair to Remember too many times, that was all. And she’d heard the siren earlier. It had stopped right in front of the hotel, hadn’t it? Had it been an ambulance?
“Right, Scarlet. He was looking up at the hotel and was hit by a car on his way to meet you.”
Frustrated, she walked to the window again and looked out, resting her forehead against the cold pane. She just wanted—needed—a reason for why he wasn’t there, that was all. Because her imagination put him in an ER somewhere, bleeding, barely conscious, calling her name, since in some way it was preferable to him ignoring her.
And that was her wake-up call. She grabbed her things, then left for home, wanting nothing more than to curl up in her own bed, and never see the Ritz-Carlton again.
In her car she rolled down her car window, felt the chilly air against her cheeks as she drove, trying to erase the memory of the night. The short drive seemed infinite yet instantaneous.
She reached the town house, hit the garage door opener and saw the spot where she usually parked her car, gaping and empty—a glaring reminder of the state of her life.
Some welcome home.
John clutched a Glenfiddich on the rocks in one hand, his first of the night, and a ring in the other, not missing the irony of the déjà vu moment and wishing he was as close to drunk as the other time.
A small scraping sound made him turn toward the front door. Something flat and white lay there. He slipped the ring into his pocket, walked over, picked up the envelope. Finally, Scarlet’s envelope had arrived. Instinct made him open the door, because the doorman would’ve called first.
A woman stood at the elevator, her
back to him. There was no mistaking her this time.
“Scarlet?”
She spun around. “I thought—” She hesitated, looking confused. “Your car is gone.”
“It’s in the shop.” He waited for her to approach, but she didn’t, which confused him.
The elevator door opened. She looked into the empty cavern then didn’t step inside. The doors closed quietly.
He opened the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper. “Obviously we don’t want the same things,” she’d written. “Goodbye.”
That was it? The big mystery in the envelope? She’d already said goodbye, when she’d returned his apartment key. So what did this goodbye mean? She’d changed her mind, but had changed it again now?
“Come in,” he said.
“I’m comfortable here.”
Leave it to Scarlet to make everything a challenge. She kept him on his toes, and fascinated.
John held up the paper. “I don’t understand. What do you want that I don’t?”
She pushed back her shoulders as if gearing for a fight. “I had wanted to continue our relationship.”
“Continue in what way?”
“As we had. Just spending time together.”
As they had? “In private?” he asked, bewildered. “Snatches of time during the week when we can find it? Maybe an overnight on Saturdays? An occasional weekend away?”
“Yes.”
He studied her. It wasn’t what he’d expected. He’d thought she would either cut him off altogether as a sacrifice to her relationship with Summer or demand more of him. At the least he’d figured she wanted the one last time in bed they’d missed out on when Summer had surprised them.
“Nooners?” he asked, stepping into the hall.
She flinched. “Everything the same as it was the past month,” she said. “Except this time with everyone’s blessings, which they gave.”
“Even Patrick?”
“I think he’s mellowing.”
John didn’t have time to consider the implications of that. “No,” he said.
Silence stretched out for days, it seemed.
Finally, she jabbed the down button.
A door across the hallway opened, and his neighbor looked out, eyeing the both of them.
“Sorry, Keith,” John said to the man, taking quick strides to get to Scarlet before the elevator arrived and she was swallowed up by it. His neighbor shut his door.
In a low voice he told Scarlet, “I’m not interested in that proposition, tempting as it sounds on a base level.”
“I figured that out already. No has no alternate meaning. This conversation is over.”
“Not even close. But unless you want my neighbors to hear the rest of it, I suggest you come inside.” He put his hand on her arm, urging her toward his apartment.
“There’s nothing more to say.”
“There’s a helluva lot more to say.”
After a moment she went along, although jerking free of his grasp. She walked directly to his couch then didn’t sit.
“May I take your coat?”
“I won’t be here long.” She crossed her arms.
“I’m missing a piece of the communication puzzle, Scarlet. You act as if I should’ve known what you wanted.”
“If you’d shown up at the hotel, you would know.”
“What hotel?”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “The Ritz-Carlton, of course.”
“Of course,” he repeated without any understanding. “I was supposed to be there, I gather.”
She narrowed her gaze. “It was in the envelope.”
He glanced at her note. Had she lost her mind?
“Not that envelope,” she said. “The other one.”
“This is the only one I’ve received.”
“But…it was delivered five minutes after we talked. The courier confirmed it.”
He stared at her, baffled. “At my office?”
“I told you it was coming.” Frustration coated her words and stiffened her body.
“My father dropped by. He needed to talk to me about some family business, so we went to the bar next door. I called my doorman and told him to contact me when—” He paused. “I assumed you would send it here.”
“I didn’t.”
He’d gone crazy sitting at the bar with his father, waiting for a call. “Sit down, please. Can I get you something to drink?”
She shook her head then perched on the sofa, her hands clenched on her knees. John sat in a chair opposite from her. He wasn’t alone in his loss for words. A comedy of errors, he thought, but not funny at all.
“You’re wearing one of your new suits,” she said after a moment. “It looks nice.”
Avoidance. She was trying to regroup. What was in that envelope, anyway? “You were right. I got compliments.”
“Why are you still dressed up?”
He ignored her question. “What was in the other envelope, Scarlet?”
“A key card for a room at the Ritz.”
“And when I didn’t show up, you thought I’d left you high and dry? Do you know me at all?”
She looked out the window. “I didn’t know what to think,” she said into the quiet.
“Why didn’t you call?”
“Because if you were intentionally ignoring me, I didn’t want the humiliation.”
“So you came in person instead?” He smiled at her, not quite following her logic but appreciating how much her emotions were involved.
She stood abruptly. “This isn’t going anywhere. Let’s just call it a day. A month. Goodbye, John.” She headed toward the door.
“When I said no earlier,” he said, following her, “I meant I wasn’t interested in keeping the status quo.”
She continued toward the door.
“What I am interested in,” he said, “is a full-time, publicly acknowledged relationship.”
Her steps slowed.
“I love you, Scarlet.”
She stopped and turned around, her gaze meeting his, her expression one of guarded surprise. He caught up with her and slipped his arms around her, but still she didn’t speak.
“This is the part where you say you love me, too.” His heart thudded. He was taking a leap of faith, based on everything he’d seen in her eyes this past month, heard in her voice, felt in her touch. Still, he wouldn’t know until she said—
“I fell in love with you a year ago,” she said, her voice just a whisper, as if she were afraid to admit it.
“A year ago? But—”
She put a hand over his mouth. “As it turns out, you’re not the man I thought I fell in love with.”
A year ago. She fell in love with me a year ago. The unbelievable words kept repeating in his head. Then it hit him that she was speaking in the past tense. “Meaning what?” he asked.
She toyed with his lapels. “You were an ideal, and I loved the ideal without really knowing the man. I hadn’t seen below the surface until this month. Now you’re real. And now my love is real, too.”
The world righted itself. He pulled her closer, needing to hold her, needing her arms around him, squeezing tight. She pressed her face against his neck.
“Do you want to know when I started falling in love with you?” he asked, loving the feel of her breath against his skin, warm and unsteady, hinting at intense emotions. “At the country club. In the conference room. When you stopped me from making love with you on the table. That hadn’t been my goal when I got you in there. All I wanted was a kiss, but things escalated. You do that to me.”
He stroked her hair, enjoying the soft sound of pleasure she made as she snuggled closer. “There is much more to you than I’d guessed, and I want to know it all. I want you.”
He kissed her, long and lingeringly, putting everything into the kiss that he felt, feeling everything back from her. Then he framed her face with his hands, keeping her close.
“I want you to marry me, Scarlet. Will you m
arry me?”
She smiled; her eyes welled. “Yes,” she said, then repeated it in a stronger voice. “Although one little problem does stand in the way. Summer wants to have a big, splashy wedding. Those take a while to arrange.”
“What do Summer’s plans have to do with us?”
“She’d like to have a double wedding.”
It didn’t surprise him. The twin bond was a powerful force. It did surprise him that they’d discussed it already. “And you? What would you like?”
“I want to marry you, period.”
“But you’d like to do the spectacle with your sister. The Cinderella thing.”
“I promise it won’t be a three-ring circus. It’ll be tasteful and classy and—”
He kissed her, this time without restraint and with the intent of getting her to think about something else—him. Them. Now.
He lifted her into his arms and carried her to his bedroom, as he’d done the first night she’d knocked on his door. In his pocket was the ring, nothing as simple as a diamond. She was a complex woman who needed a different kind of engagement ring, something untraditional, something with flair.
He’d chosen it yesterday, had tried not to think about what he would do if she said no. He would’ve fought for her, though. Fought hard.
He wouldn’t give her the ring tonight. Tonight he would give her himself, and let himself just enjoy her. Tomorrow, though, he would find a creative way to present the ring to her. His magna cum laude graduation from Woo U wouldn’t go to waste.
“I love you,” she said, reaching for him.
There was so much yet to say and do and discover. But it started and ended with one truth. “I love you, too,” he said. “Forever.”
