The Fixer Upper

by Judith Arnold

  “So you moved to New York?”

  “Yeah. A friend of mine from college had a renovation business—Greater Manhattan Design Associates—and he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” Ned washed down a few more peanuts with a swig of beer. “Deborah’s parents are good people. They just couldn’t accept that Eric and I were handling her death differently than they were.” He stretched in his seat and bumped her feet with his under the table. An apologetic smile brightened his face as he shifted his legs. “Actually, it was Eric who got us both back on track. He looked at me one day and said, ‘I’m tired of being sad all the time. Is it okay to stop being sad?’ And I realized I was tired of being sad, too. Deborah’s parents obviously weren’t tired of being sad. We decided we had to put some distance between them and us.”

  “New York is quite a distance from Woodstock, Vermont.”

  “It’s not that far,” he argued.

  “I wasn’t talking about miles.”

  He grinned. “Right. Eric and I have come a long way.”

  “And now you want to date.”

  His gaze met hers and his smile widened. “Now I want to be right where I am, having a drink with you.”

  Did that mean this was a date? He’d just told her more than any guy would tell a woman on a first date. They were two friends having a drink, that was all. If Libby allowed herself to think of this as a date, she’d start measuring each silence the way she had in the elevator, and paying too much attention to his dimple, which had disappeared when he’d talked about his wife and in-laws, but was once again punctuating the corner of his smile.

  “So, that’s my story. What’s yours? You don’t have a dead husband making you sad.”

  “No, I’ve got a live one making me crazy,” she joked, then laughed. “Not really. We get along most of the time. It’s one of those civil divorces.”

  “If you’re going to get a divorce, that’s probably the best kind to have.” Ned shifted again, leaning forward this time. “So why don’t you date much?”

  Two friends having a drink together, she reminded herself. As long as this was nothing more, he could ask a question like that. “It’s hard to find the time to meet anyone,” she acknowledged. “My sister-in-law tries to set me up with guys.”

  “Your brother’s wife?”

  She laughed. “No, my ex-husband’s sister. I won custody of his family in the divorce.”

  Ned digested that news with a philosophical shrug. “I hope that’s okay with you.”

  “They’re great,” she said. “Yentas, one and all, but I don’t mind. Vivienne—my sister-in-law—is always meeting single men in her synagogue. Now that she’s married, I guess she figures they shouldn’t go to waste, so she tries to foist them on me.”

  “And you turn them all down?”

  “It never gets that far. I don’t have the time or energy for the whole thing. If someone really clicked with me, then maybe…” She faltered, realizing that someone had clicked with her. He was sitting across the table from her right now. He wasn’t a nice Jewish guy from the synagogue, and he had a son applying to Hudson, and they were just friends having a drink. She settled herself with a sip of wine and said, “If I weren’t basically happy with my life the way it is, maybe I’d put more effort into changing it. At the moment, I’m trying to put my effort into keeping it the way it is.”

  “You like being single, huh?” Even if Ned was relatively new to New York, he’d probably met more than a few women desperate to get married. Libby might seem like an oddball for not sharing their desperation.

  “Being single is fine. It’s my apartment I’m trying to hold on to. If things remain civil enough between me and my ex-husband, I should be able to do that.” She explained to him about the last remaining rentals in the building going co-op, and about her determination to buy her apartment so she wouldn’t lose it. “One thing about New York—finding a great apartment that’s also affordable is a hell of a lot harder than finding a husband. Or a wife.”

  “So, if I salvage your fireplace, I’d be doing it for you, not for this management company that owns the apartment now.”

  “If I can buy it. I’m hoping my ex-husband will help with the financing.”

  “That would be generous of him.” Ned drained his mug of beer. “I’d rather rehab the fireplace for you than for some stranger in a suit. I’d do it anyway, for the fireplace’s sake—”

  “The fireplace’s sake?” Libby burst into laughter. “Do you think the fireplace cares?”

  Ned smiled, but he didn’t laugh. “Yes. I do think it cares. It wants to break free of that paint and be all that it can be.”

  He was serious. Libby stopped laughing. He obviously had a passion about his work. She admired that, even envied it a little. She loved her colleagues at the Hudson School, and the students—whom she was helping to be all that they could be by choosing them for admission to the school—but she couldn’t imagine doing what she did free, just for the love of it. No one listened to a five-year-old who wasn’t a blood relation sing an aria from Madama Butterfly for the love of it.

  She finished her wine, and Ned asked if she’d like another. She checked her watch and shook her head. They’d been gone nearly an hour. “We should get back,” she said. “I promised Reva we wouldn’t be out too long.”

  Ned conceded with a shrug. He summoned the waitress and paid for their drinks.

  The night had cooled considerably during the time they’d been indoors. It wasn’t yet cold, but autumn carried a preview of winter in the breezes that lifted off the Hudson River and gusted down the side streets. Broadway was still hopping; the crowd in front of the chi-chi bistro appeared to have doubled in size, and the sidewalks teemed with people walking in brisk, committed steps. Central Park on a sunny afternoon was full of amblers, but Broadway on a Friday evening attracted mostly marchers.

  Libby didn’t feel like marching. Reva expected her home, and she’d get there soon enough. But talking to a man about grown-up matters was a rare pleasure, and Libby saw no reason not to prolong the pleasure as much as she could. If she let Ned work on her fireplace, the talking could continue. She wished she could afford to pay him so she wouldn’t have to think of his labor as a bribe.

  She also wished she could afford to buy the colorful boots on display in the window of the shoe boutique two doors down from the tavern. She paused to study them: cowboy style, with multicolored patches of leather. “I’d love to get those for Reva,” she said, imagining her theatrical daughter waltzing around in such a flamboyant pair of boots while practicing her Tommy solo.

  Ned gravitated toward the window with her, then ushered her into the recessed doorway so they could study the boots from a different angle. “You should get them for yourself,” he said.

  “Oh, please!” She laughed. They were not the sort of boots a mother should wear.

  “They’d look great on you. Too bad the store is closed, or you could go in and try them on.”

  “I’m sure they’re uncomfortable. The toes are so pointed.” Reva never cared if shoes were uncomfortable, as long as they were cool. But Libby was a huge fan of pain-free feet.

  “They probably feel better than they look,” Ned said.

  “You think so?” She twisted to see him and found him much closer than she’d expected. In the shadowed alcove of the store’s entry, his face was barely an inch from hers.

  “Lots of things feel better than they look,” he said.

  “Like what?” If he weren’t so close, maybe her voice wouldn’t have sounded like a rusty hinge.

  He didn’t answer. He only gazed at her in the shadowed alcove. He’d been closer to her inside her fireplace, but then they’d been discussing fireplaces. Now she had no idea what they were discussing. Something about boots, maybe, or about things feeling good.

  God, he was close. All he had to do was tilt his head the slightest bit and his lips would be touching hers.

  He tilted his head the slightest bit.r />
  Okay, so they weren’t just friends having a drink. That was her last lucid thought before Ned lifted his hands to frame her face, wove his fingers into her hair and turned the kiss from lips touching lips to something wonderfully, unexpectedly wild.

  Had she ever been kissed like this before? She didn’t think so, and while she knew it wasn’t a wise idea—things would be a lot safer all around if she went back to the friends-having-a-drink premise of this outing—she wasn’t about to bring this kiss to a halt until she’d given the experience its due. Surely they could revert to being friends in a minute. Or five. Or ten.

  The only time she noticed the nerve endings in her lips was when they were chapped and split—until now. Now that flesh seemed unnervingly sensitive, picking up changes in pressure and heat and moisture like a high-tech weather station. When Ned angled his face, her entire mouth hastened to adjust. Being kissed at this angle instead of that made everything entirely new.

  Then there was her tongue. Or, more accurately, there was Ned’s tongue. Tongues were for tasting, right? For speaking and swallowing, vital functions like that. She hadn’t realized tongues were also for dancing, for teasing, for stroking. She hadn’t realized tongues were so downright phallic. But what Ned was doing with his tongue…

  A shudder began at the back of her throat and rippled the length of her body. In all the years she’d lived in Manhattan, she’d never before felt like having sex with a man while standing in the entry alcove of a shoe boutique on Broadway. To be sure, they already were having some kind of sex. In case there was any question in her mind of that, he twined his fingers deeper into her hair and shifted his legs just enough to align her pelvic area with his.

  His hips might have had no interest in her slightly spongy thirty-five-year-old tush when she and he had been tangled up inside her fireplace. But she had no question that his body was extremely interested in hers right now.

  At some point within the next minute or so, she was going to have to breathe. She didn’t particularly want to. In her mind, breathing seemed synonymous with ending the kiss. Both were good ideas. She just wanted to enjoy this bad idea for a few moments more.

  Evidently, Ned needed to breathe even more than she did. He leaned back and sucked in a deep, ragged lungful of air. Then his gaze met hers and he smiled. “Well,” he said.

  Well what? Well, we’re in a hell of a lot of trouble here, she thought. Well, that was the most mind-boggling kiss I’ve ever participated in. Well, we’ve got two kids waiting for us back at my apartment, and one of them is trying to get into the school where I’m the director of admissions, and maybe you’re betting there’s some rule about a father’s kissing skills contributing to a kid’s chances for acceptance. Well, this might be your first kiss since you escaped your in-laws in black crepe, so you’re probably just flexing the old muscles to see if they still work. Well, this kiss probably doesn’t mean a damn thing.

  He apparently wasn’t going to tell her well what. All he did was lower his hands from the sides of her head, leaving her cheeks chilled and her jaw suddenly aware of the absence of his thumbs. He caught one of her hands in his, interlaced their fingers and ushered her out of the alcove and onto the sidewalk, steering them near the buildings to avoid getting trampled by the high-speed traffic of their fellow pedestrians.

  She’d already established that the last time she’d been kissed so magnificently had been never, so she tried to recall the last time she’d held hands with a man. When she was eight, she recalled holding her father’s hand while they crossed a busy intersection together. She’d held hands with boys as a teenager. But with a man? Harry wasn’t a hand holder.

  Ned was both a hand holder and a kisser.

  And this, she acknowledged as they turned off Broadway in the direction of her apartment, was a date.

  Twelve

  “Look,” Vivienne said. “Someone’s going to snatch up all those available men if you don’t come to synagogue with me today.”

  Libby yawned, then filled a second mug of coffee without bothering to ask Vivienne if she wanted any. Dressed in dove-gray slacks and an orange tunic as bright as a traffic cone, her hair and makeup meticulously done, she appeared brisk and chipper, clearly not in need of caffeine. But Libby had never known her sister-in-law to turn down a cup of coffee.

  Libby herself was desperately in need of caffeine. She’d hardly slept last night, and she felt foolish about her restlessness. A grown woman shouldn’t be plagued by insomnia just because a gorgeous man had kissed her.

  Okay, so Ned Donovan was more than a gorgeous man. He was a gorgeous, unattached, age-appropriate man. In New York City, most gorgeous men in their thirties were either married, gay or chasing after babes barely out of high school. Libby hadn’t met the synagogue fellows Vivienne seemed so determined to introduce her to, but she’d bet that if they were unattached, they were either not age-appropriate or not gorgeous.

  Vivienne accepted the steaming mug from Libby with a grateful nod. Before she could ask for artificial sweetener, Libby pulled a few packets of Splenda from the cabinet and tossed them onto the table. Then she slumped into a chair and tried to stifle yet another yawn.

  “I really shouldn’t stay,” Vivienne said as she emptied the sweetener into her cup. “I’d hate to miss the service.” She took a sip, then gazed around the kitchen. “You didn’t happen to get to Bloom’s this week, did you?”

  “I bought bagels, if that’s what you’re asking. If you want one, they’re in the fridge,” Libby said, gesturing toward the refrigerator. “Help yourself.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll eat at the kiddush. You shouldn’t refrigerate bagels, Libby. It makes them dense.” She took another delicate sip of her coffee, managing not to smear her coral-hued lipstick. “You sure you don’t want to come to shul with me? One of the men, Harvey Golub, is in the fur business. You could do worse, Libby. Just think, he could have you in a nice little mink by New Year’s Eve. Maybe you could get a discount on something for me, too. A fun fur, nothing fancy. Leonard is never going to buy me a fur.”

  “How do you know that?” Libby asked.

  “He said, ‘I’m never going to buy you a fur.’”

  “I guess that’s an indication.”

  “He’s afraid someone’ll throw fake blood on it. He said, ‘I should spend all that money so someone can throw fake blood on you?’”

  “He has a point.”

  “Yeah, right between his ears.” Vivienne planted her mug on the table, shoved herself out of her chair and crossed to the refrigerator. “I’m thinking, just one bagel. I’ll skip the schmear. I need to lose a few pounds.”

  Vivienne didn’t need to lose any weight, but Libby lacked the energy to argue with her. “I’ve got low-fat cream cheese,” she said.

  “Low-fat? Well, okay, maybe just a little.” She pulled the bag of bagels and a tub of cream cheese from the refrigerator, then helped herself to a plate and a knife. “So, you’re not interested in meeting some nice Jewish men? What, you want to live the rest of your life like a nun?”

  “Are those my only choices?” Libby asked. “Nice Jewish men or marriage to Christ?”

  “What other choices do you want?”

  Libby closed her eyes and her mind filled with an image of Ned. Tall, dimpled Ned with strong, callused hands and a mouth a more gifted woman could write poetry about. Libby had never been particularly poetic. At best, she could probably scrape together a haiku about him: This man has a tongue/He knows how to use it/Ned Donovan is hot.

  “Libby Kimmelman,” Vivienne clucked. “You’re blushing.”

  Libby’s eyes jerked open. “I am not!”

  Vivienne slammed her plate down on the table and dropped into the empty chair. “Tell me everything,” she demanded in a firm voice.

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “She went out with a guy last night,” Reva announced from the kitchen doorway. “Hi, Aunt Vivienne.”

  “Sleeping Beauty
! Have I ever seen you up this early on a Saturday morning?” Vivienne asked, rising to give Reva a hug. Libby prayed for Vivienne to ask Reva about school, her friends, her solo in Tommy—anything to keep the discussion from focusing on what Libby had done last night.

  The reprieve didn’t last, however. Vivienne returned to her chair and glowered at Libby. “You went out with a guy? What guy?”

  “We didn’t go out,” Libby said. “I mean, technically we did, in the sense that we left the apartment and went outside. He’s going to fix the fireplace.”

  “What’s wrong with the fireplace?”

  Eager for something to distract Vivienne from this interrogation, Libby watched with hope as Reva entered the kitchen. She had on faded jeans that were tight on top and flared at the bottom, and a skimpy knit top that revealed a sliver of belly. Her hair was brushed to a high gloss. “Are you going someplace today, Reva?” she asked.

  “I told you. I’m meeting some people at the park.” Reva slid a bagel from the bag and bit into it without bothering to slice it or add cream cheese.

  Ned Donovan might be hot, but he hadn’t emptied her brainpan last night. “You never told me you were going to the park today.”

  “I did. You probably just weren’t paying attention. We’re meeting at the Imagine mosaic.”

  Libby didn’t comment on Reva’s accusation. Of course she’d been paying attention. She always paid attention to her daughter. If Reva had mentioned this Central Park outing, Libby would have remembered.