Today had gone well, though. She’d gotten some wonderful candids of Stockton’s staff. A terrific shot of two employees at the coffee machine, debating the possible impact of the Federal Reserve’s latest adjustment of the prime rate. A shot of a fund manager alone in her office, staring intently out the window as if trying to divine economic trends from the pattern of the traffic on Hauser Boulevard. And that final shot of Brett Stockton, when he’d let down his guard.
She couldn’t wait to see how that one came out.
The elevator carried her down to the basement garage, and as she entered the echoing expanse of cars and concrete, she tried to put Stockton out of her mind. But his image seemed imprinted on her memory as if it were a negative.
She knew next to nothing about him. His funds were highly rated, but when it came to investments, she was lucky to be able to set aside a few dollars a week for her local savings account. Mutual funds were beyond her budget right now.
High-performance cars were also beyond her budget. As she strolled along the row of cars in the garage, she wondered which, if any, of the expensive models belonged to him. The BMW over there? That Infiniti? The metallic silver Audi? The Porsche with the big spoiler swooping below the rear window?
Her Volvo was parked at the far end of the visitors’ row. It was eleven years old and showing its age, but it still ran. She treated it gently. She fed it the highest grade of gasoline, vacuumed its interior once a month and prayed a lot. Three years ago, she would not have imagined that she’d someday be pleading with God to keep her car alive and functioning, but life was full of surprises.
Fortunately, sometimes those surprises were good ones.
That she was still thinking about Brett Stockton’s beautiful blue eyes as she steered out of the garage and into the traffic was a surprise. Whether a good or a bad one she couldn’t say.
Chapter Two
He spotted her on the corner in front of the entrance to the YMCA. She stood gazing up at the door’s façade, camera in hand, her hair pale against her blazer.
The YMCA was housed in an old, bulky structure that occupied most of the block. Built of brownstone, it boasted towering front doors embellished by gothic ornamentation. Brett had always considered it rather ostentatious for a building that housed a sweat-smelling gym, a bunch of children’s arts-and-crafts and swimming programs, and a few classrooms where adult ed courses with titles like “Six Weeks to Working Italian” and “Basic Carpentry Techniques” were held. But despite the building’s delusions of architectural grandeur, he occasionally made use of that sweat-smelling gym when he and his friends got together to shoot hoops. The Italian and carpentry classes didn’t interest him, and as far as Brett was concerned, the children’s programs—full of paint-smeared, noisy tykes racing up and down the halls, their shrieks echoing off every hard surface—were the best reason to avoid the YMCA during daylight hours.
The late-afternoon sunlight washed the façade in pink and gold, highlighting the rococo trim. Brett stood in the doorway of his own office building half a block down from the Y, observing Sharon Bartell as she lifted her camera, aimed at the doorway and fired. Watching a building get shot didn’t bother him at all.
She seemed oblivious to the rush-hour cacophony around her. Pedestrians swarmed past her, most of them thoughtfully giving her a wide berth. Cars cruised through the intersection in four directions; the light at the corner switched from green to red to green again, causing engines to rumble as they slowed down and roar as they accelerated. Sharon stood isolated amid the traffic and noise, protected from it by an invisible shell of concentration.
He could never detach himself from his surroundings that way. When he was working, he needed to be free of distraction. He liked the dim lighting of his office because it helped him to focus on the one illuminated area of the room—his desk. He put up with Janet’s officiousness because she guarded his office door ferociously, saving him from unnecessary distractions. When he was playing, he didn’t care what was going on around him—and how loud it was. But at work, he required silence and stillness.
Sharon didn’t seem to have any problem creating her own silence and stillness in the midst of chaos. That had to be a talent at least as valuable as being able to take good photos—and being able to make an uptight subject of her photos laugh.
Watching her from the doorway of his own building, he admitted that she’d been on his mind most of the afternoon. Not because she was ravishingly gorgeous but because... well, he wasn’t quite sure why. Partly it was her grace, the way she moved so efficiently, so smoothly, with such confidence. Partly it was her sense of humor, teasing him with that silly dancing doll and the promise of a lollipop. Partly it was the intelligence in her eyes, the animation lighting them. But mostly it was that final shot she’d taken of him, when his defenses had been down. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that.
At the end of the day, he ordinarily would have gone from his office straight to the basement garage, but that evening he’d wanted to stop in at the Connecticut Bank and Trust branch at the opposite corner of the street to check on the deposits for that weekend’s fundraiser. He could have phoned the manager there and gotten the figures from her, but he’d been restless all afternoon, and the sky outside his window had been cloudless and shimmering as the sun spread late summer warmth down to the horizon. And after the torment of posing for pictures earlier that day, a stroll through the fresh air of early evening in downtown Arlington might help him burn off some tension.
The moment he spotted Sharon snapping photos of the YMCA building, his errand at the bank evaporated from his mind.
She lowered her camera, and he took that as his cue to approach her. The pedestrians still detoured around her the way they might steer clear of a panhandler, but she didn’t seem to notice.
She didn’t seem to notice him, either. Even when he was just a few feet from her, she remained transfixed by the building before her, examining it as if searching for flaws in the elaborate relief-work that framed the massive double door. “Hey,” he called, quietly enough that she could pretend she hadn’t heard him if she didn’t want to talk.
She spun around and her face broke into a smile. Had he thought she wasn’t ravishingly gorgeous?
She wasn’t, not by the usual standards. Her nose and chin were too long, her cheeks too hollow, her eyebrows too pale. Yet the way her face lit up, the way it became infused with energy and spirit took his breath away. She didn’t need to trot out her little belly-dancer doll to get past his defenses. Just a single smile did the trick.
“Hi! Give me a sec,” she said, then turned back to the building, moved a few steps to the left and lifted her camera to her face once more. He saw that shell of intense concentration close around her again as she took a few more photos. Then she let out a long breath, snapped the lens cap onto the camera and turned to face him. “I just wanted to capture the building while the light was good. It changes so fast at this time of day.” She glanced westward, and he turned to look, too. Even to his untrained eye, the sky appeared a little pinker than it had been just minutes ago.
“Does the YMCA publish an annual report, too?” he asked.
She chuckled. “If they do, they didn’t hire me to do the photos. This is spec work.” She packed her camera into her tote bag. “Buildings are easy. They don’t get nervous when they see me.” Satisfied that the camera was securely stored, she lifted the tote. “The light was just perfect. It really did amazing things to the building’s façade. It made the brownstone look like copper. When you get that kind of light, not quite twilight but a sort of amber radiance...” She drifted off and her smile grew hesitant.
“An amber radiance,” he repeated, curious to hear the rest of her thought.
She shrugged, obviously embarrassed. “I don’t mean to rhapsodize. It was just a very nice lighting effect, that’s all.”
“Rhapsodize away.” He realized that her description of the light was exactly what he wo
uld have expected from her. Anyone who’d passed her while she’d been photographing the building would have expected it. That was why they’d circled around her—out of respect for her work and her sensitivity to things like amber radiance and brownstone turning to copper.
He also realized that when she talked about the pictures she’d been taking, she seemed to radiate her own unusual light, a passion about what she was doing, what it meant, how much she enjoyed it.
Brett loved his work, too. He could relate to that kind of passion. “So, this was spec work?”
“I’ve been taking some pictures around town.” She glanced briefly at her watch, then returned her gaze to him.
“I’m sorry—I’m keeping you.” But he wasn’t ready to say good-bye to her yet. Even when he’d been suffering through the ordeal of having her photograph him, he hadn’t been eager for her to leave. Sharon Bartell intrigued him. Especially when she smiled.
He ought to get her phone number, at least. She wasn’t wearing a wedding band, and she’d said she thought he had sexy eyes, even if that had only been a professional tactic. There were possibilities here.
“It’s okay. I mean, I do need to get home, but...”
“Are you free Saturday night?” he asked.
Her smile faltered. Maybe he should have been subtler, approached her more cautiously. But she hadn’t been subtle and cautious when she’d told him his eyes were sexy, and he happened to be of the opinion that her eyes were sexy, too. Why play games? They were both adults.
She studied his face, the fading daylight playing through her hair and making the strands glitter. “Why do you ask?”
“I thought you might like to join me at a benefit dinner at Reynaud,” he said, naming the restaurant where the benefit was to be held. “It’s for the Leukemia Foundation.”
Her smile returned, but he read no in the way her eyes shifted, avoiding him. “That sounds lovely, Brett, but—a fundraiser at Reynaud?” She shook her head. “I could write a check if you’d like.”
“I meant that you’d come as my guest,” he clarified.
“As your guest.”
“I’m not asking for a donation. Just your company.”
She had a lot of different smiles, he realized, an entire repertory of them. The one she gave him now was surprised and hesitant, but the no had disappeared from her face. “Well, I—you’re sure you don’t want a donation? Because I could—”
“If you want to donate, that’s fine. But I’m asking you to accompany me. So we could spend some time together.”
“A date.”
“Something like that, yeah.” This time her smile demanded that he smile back. He didn’t need a belly-dancing doll to make him smile when Sharon was gazing at him with such a delightful combination of amazement and pleasure.
But she still hadn’t said yes. She didn’t say anything. She seemed stunned into silence.
“It’ll be fun,” he promised. “Great food and a lot of people parting with their money for a good cause. It starts at seven. I’ve got to be there from the start, since I’m hosting the thing, so I’d have to pick you up a little early. I need your address, of course.” The hell with subtlety.
“Well.” She fingered the handles of her tote for a moment as she collected her thoughts. “I’d like that, Brett. I’d like it a lot.”
“Great.”
“But first I have to make sure I can line up a baby-sitter.”
Baby-sitter? She needed to line up a baby-sitter?
She had a kid? Shit.
He didn’t like kids. In fact, he hated them. Even if they weren’t clamoring up and down the halls of the YMCA with paint on their noses and paste in their hair, he hated them. He didn’t think they were adorable. He didn’t get warm and mushy when he inhaled the fragrance of baby powder. He didn’t grin indulgently when some pudgy munchkin with dimples in her cheeks and crust around her nostrils mispronounced a multisyllabic word. He didn’t feel hopeful for the future when he passed a schoolyard and saw it filled with kids playing soccer or Little League, screaming one another’s names and cheering whenever someone on their team made a great play. His eyes didn’t mist over when he saw scrappy youngsters in TV commercials pleading with their elders to buy sugary cereals or quit smoking. UNICEF cards did nothing for him.
He acknowledged that the human race needed to keep producing new generations in order to survive, and he appreciated the willingness of most people on the planet to do their share for the preservation of the species. But Brett had had his fill of children a long time ago, and he wanted nothing to do with them now.
It was too late: he’d already asked Sharon to join him at the leukemia dinner Saturday night. Although he had a policy of not dating women who had children, he couldn’t retract his invitation just because Sharon turned out to be a mother. He’d get through the evening, make the best of it, and he’d cross her off his list of social companions as soon as he dropped her off at her front door.
“Okay,” he said slowly, forcing his smile to remain in place. Maybe he’d get lucky and she wouldn’t be able to find a sitter, and he’d go to the dinner alone, as he’d originally planned. Somehow, not having her accompany him didn’t seem all that lucky to him, though. “Give me your number, and I’ll call you in a couple of days and see if you’ve been able to find someone.”
If she sensed the downturn in his spirits, she didn’t comment on it. Groping through her tote, she located a small leather envelope, unfolded it and pulled out a business card. “Do you have a pen?”
He pulled one from an inner pocket of his jacket.
She jotted her home number on the back of the card and handed it to him. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “I’d really like to come. It sounds like fun.” She looked so pleased, he felt like a bastard for suffering second thoughts about having invited her. But it wasn’t his fault. He liked her fine—what little he knew of her. He liked her enough to want to get to know more.
He just wished she wasn’t the sort of woman who needed a baby-sitter if she wanted to spend Saturday night with him.
* * *
What a day, she thought as she steered the Volvo over the first speed bump on the drive that meandered through the Village Green condominium complex. What a day: she’d earned a nice paycheck that morning taking photos of the staff at Arlington Financial Services, she’d gotten some strong pictures of scenes around Arlington for her portfolio, and she’d been asked out on a date by Brett Stockton.
A date. Good God. The last time she’d gone on a date had been in high school. She tried to remember if she and Steve had ever actually dated in college. They’d met, hit it off, hung out together, gone with groups of friends to concerts, movies, and campus recitals, and sat up into the wee hours listening to Pearl Jam and Mary Chapin Carpenter, drinking bad Chablis and arguing about campaign finance reform. They’d become lovers, they’d become engaged and they’d become husband and wife. But she didn’t think they’d ever actually gone on a date.
That Sharon would be going on a date was only half the shock, though. The other half revolved around whom she was going on the date with.
Brett Stockton. A tall, polished, knock-your-socks-off good-looking executive, a man who earned a fortune by earning fortunes for others. And he was going to escort her to a benefit dinner at the most elegant, most expensive restaurant in Arlington.
The whole thing was actually pretty hilarious.
She eased the car gently over another speed bump and veered left onto the lane that led to the row of townhouses that contained her home. Someday she’d like to move into a detached house with a yard where Max could play, where she could erect a swing set for him and they could plant a garden. But for now, the condo was ideal. She didn’t have to worry about maintenance, and she was fortunate to live next door to Deborah Jackson, whose daughter Olivia was going to marry Max someday. Deborah and Sharon had already worked it out. Olivia and Max played well together, and the mothers got along magnifice
ntly. Why not merge the families?
She pulled into her assigned space, hauled her tote out of the back seat, and locked her car. Bypassing her own house, she headed directly to Deborah’s front door. Deborah had picked the kids up from their preschool that afternoon. Tomorrow it would be Sharon’s turn.
She heard squeals of laughter through the door before she even had a chance to ring the bell. That sound—children’s laughter—was the sweetest music in the world. It depressed her to think that in ten or twelve years, Max’s voice would change and she’d never hear his squeaky soprano giggle again.
She heard it now, in a raucous duet with Olivia. Heaven only knew what they were laughing about. Two-year-olds found the oddest things amusing.
Deborah swung the door open. Clad in shorts and a loose-fitting tank top, with her thick black hair gathered into a barrette to keep it off her neck, she made Sharon wish she’d stopped off at home to change out of her work clothes, too. At least she didn’t have to wear dresses and stockings to work. Pantyhose in August was her definition of hell.
Two shrieking, silly two-year-olds might also qualify as a definition of hell, but Sharon loved them—not just her own son but her future daughter-in-law—so she forgave them their rambunctiousness. “Are they making you crazy?” she asked, glancing past Deborah into the living room. The kids weren’t there. They must be downstairs. Their shrill voices resonated through the floor.
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