About Last Night

by Ruthie Knox

  Of course, he could always find work with one of the rival banks, but he wouldn’t, and Mother and Winston knew it. He lacked their vindictive streak, as well as their passion for the family business. If he wasn’t to work at Haverford Bank, he’d just as soon leave banking altogether, and both of them would have guessed that.

  “Does Dad know about this?”

  “I haven’t spoken with him.”

  That was most likely a no, then. His father wouldn’t approve. But he wouldn’t do anything about it, either. He always went along with Mother.

  Winston set his unfinished tea on the table and stood, straightening the creases in his slacks. “You have until the bank holiday. You’re to bring a fiancée home with you.”

  The next bank holiday was at the end of August. That gave him a month to comply with this ridiculous scheme. “You can’t be serious. Even if I were inclined to go along, you can hardly expect me to manage to find a wife in a few weeks’ time.”

  Winston simply shrugged. “You can be charming when you put your mind to it. I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

  Nev saw his brother out, resisting the urge to help him down the stairs with a foot in the arse, then closed the door with a weary sigh.

  He ought to have seen it coming.

  But it was bizarre, wasn’t it? By any objective standard? He found it difficult to be certain sometimes. His family was so far from normal, they had a way of scrambling his sense of how ordinary people behaved. Which was one of the reasons he’d insisted on moving out in the first place.

  He couldn’t imagine why Mother and Winston were so anxious to get him down the aisle. It was hardly a disgrace to be a bachelor at twenty-eight, and it wasn’t as though Mother required an heir or needed more grandchildren to cuddle. The notion of her cuddling anyone was frankly alarming. Perhaps she simply wanted a big social event to plan.

  More likely, his move to Greenwich had loosened the noose she kept around his neck, and she wanted to tighten it up, simply to demonstrate that she could.

  She could. But only if he allowed her to.

  What his mother failed to understand was that he’d made up his mind to stop allowing her to. He’d grown tired of living someone else’s life, of waking up in the family home and commuting to work at the family bank under his brother’s thumb. Moving to Greenwich had been his first step toward independence. He wasn’t about to turn around and find some polished society woman to wed because his mother and brother thought he should.

  He wouldn’t play along anymore. When they went to tighten the noose, they would find it was no longer around his neck.

  Chapter Seven

  She did what she could to avoid City. Skipping her Monday-morning run, she showed up at the station at six-thirty, more than half an hour before his usual train. Once seated, she plugged her iPod into her ears and delved into her bag for her journal and favorite pen. But when she looked up for inspiration, she found herself staring into a very familiar pair of green-brown eyes.

  “Good morning, Mary Catherine.”

  He was standing with one hip braced casually against the pole for support. Dressed for work in a dark blue suit and a silvery tie, City was every inch the banker again—except he was smiling his shark smile, and he no longer looked the least bit remote or cold.

  Nope, everything about the man was seriously hot.

  Cath tried to ignore the flush of pleasure that washed over her at the sight of him, but it was hard. Half a dozen different places on her body were reminding her of what he’d done to them on Saturday, and not one had a bad word to say about him. Stupid body.

  She closed her eyes and took a moment to roll the fortifications into place around her heart. He wasn’t playing fair—she hadn’t expected to see him again this morning. She hadn’t expected to see him again at all. And he’d switched tactics. Where was the impassive City face from Saturday morning, the one that had told her to git on home?

  “This isn’t your train,” she said. She could be chilly. She could totally be chilly.

  “No. You weren’t at the park this morning.”

  He’d been looking for her. With a near-audible thunk, a little spear of pleasure hit the ramparts she’d tossed up to protect herself, and she bit her lip. Silly to be delighted by his interest. She was finished with him. She was New Cath again.

  The train stopped at Cutty Sark, the doors opening with the usual high-pitched beeping, and she considered flight. Because she was delighted by his interest, and all New Cath had on hand to keep him at bay were temporary defenses, weak and termite-riddled. There were ten more stops between here and Bank. The walls would never hold.

  The train doors closed.

  Flight wouldn’t have worked anyway. City was standing directly in front of her, and even though his eyes were lit with amusement, there was resolve there, too. The odds he’d let her slip by him were slim.

  She opted for silence, hoping she could drive him away with her obvious lack of interest. A lack of interest she’d probably be more successful in conveying if she were able to look at her journal or out the window or anywhere, really, but directly at his handsome, clean-shaven face.

  She bet he shaved with a straight razor. His jaw practically gleamed.

  Silence had never been her strong suit. She only managed about ten seconds before blurting out, “So who was he?”

  “My brother.”

  As she’d thought. “He didn’t like me much.”

  “Winston is a wanker.”

  Cath had to smile at this, but she couldn’t forget Nev’s sudden change in temperament. “Is that why you didn’t introduce me?”

  “I’m sorry about that. It was terribly rude. I was momentarily … distracted, and by the time I recovered, you’d gone.”

  How inconvenient, to believe him. It would be so much easier if he were a jerk or a liar. So much easier if she could hold on to what was left of her anger. But she couldn’t. City was one of the good guys, after all. So she let it go, and the fortifications groaned, because anger had been the stoutest of the flimsy devices propping them up.

  “I’d like to make it up to you,” he said. “Will you let me take you to lunch?”

  Another spear, another thunk. Oh, man, this was hopeless.

  Men never asked Cath to lunch. They asked her if she wanted to hang out, to catch a movie, to come home with them, but they didn’t ask her to lunch. Not before she’d slept with them, and certainly not afterward.

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “The usual reasons, I suppose,” he said with a puzzled frown. “I’m interested in you. I like you. I want to get to know you better.”

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  She and City were over and done with, but he seemed to have missed the memo. Or he’d read it, then shredded it.

  So send him another copy.

  She didn’t want to. She knew she should, but she so didn’t want to. “You’re just trying to get me back into bed with you.”

  Nev’s mouth curled up at the corners, and he lowered his voice, leaning closer. “Of course I’m trying to get you back into bed with me. I loved having you in my bed. I’d like to chain you to my bed.” He trailed a finger down her bare arm, leaving a trail of sighing nerve endings. “But I’d also like to have lunch with you.”

  Thunk.

  Desperate to maintain her resolve, Cath gestured toward a woman at the other end of the car. “Isn’t Portia there more your type?” Tall, blond, and refined, the woman was dressed for the office in a pencil skirt and an expensive-looking white silk blouse. Cath, by contrast, wore a cheap black sleeveless top and pants from Zara. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick, her hair hopelessly wispy. He didn’t want her. She was a mess.

  Nev glanced over at the woman and then looked back at Cath, his smile widening as his eyes traveled the length of her body. “I know what I want, Mary Catherine.”

  Her nipples drew tight, and she felt a rush of moisture soak her panties. Stupid, traitoro
us body.

  “I can’t,” she insisted.

  “Dinner then.”

  “I mean, I can’t go out with you.”

  “Ah.” Concern furrowed his forehead, and Cath tried not to find it adorable. She failed. “Is there someone else?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” He smiled again, and she smiled back before she could catch herself. She needed to remember to watch out for sneak attacks. Nev tilted his head, considering her. “What then, you don’t fancy me?”

  Tell him you don’t. Tell him you don’t fancy him one bit.

  She gave him the same slow once-over he’d just given her. “What’s not to fancy?”

  New Cath threw up her hands, disgusted with the whole situation.

  “So you do fancy me, but you won’t see me.”

  “I won’t go to lunch with you.”

  “Or dinner.”

  “Right.”

  “Are there some other circumstances in which I might be permitted to see you?” He was teasing, but his eyes were serious.

  She shouldn’t do this. She couldn’t seem to help herself. “Tell me something, City. Did you just happen to be on this train, or did you show up at the station early hoping to find me?”

  “The latter.”

  And that was the spear that knocked the whole rickety structure of Fort Cath flat. She raised a white flag in surrender. “I take the 6:05 home from Bank.”

  Judith set a huge box on the conference table and frowned. Cath didn’t let it bother her; frowning was Judith’s default expression. She was a grumpy woman. Heavyset, with short hair and a permanent scowl, she had a brilliant mind and the dark, sharp eyes of a hawk.

  “Well, how’d they come out?” Cath asked. The box contained a number of World War II–era sweaters that Judith had allowed Cath to select from the museum’s collection for cleaning and restoration. Cath had been anticipating the arrival of the restored sweaters for several days, hoping they’d live up to their potential once the storage creases and the accumulated grime of decades had been carefully washed and pressed out by the specialists.

  “They’re okay.” Judith pulled on a pair of cotton gloves and began lifting the sweaters out of the box and laying them on the rice-paper-covered table. “See for yourself.”

  Okay? Okay wouldn’t do. The sweaters had to be stunning. Immaculate. Interesting and beautiful. They had to be perfect examples of mid-century hand knitting, or they wouldn’t work for the exhibit. Cath took a deep breath and leaned closer to look.

  Then she exhaled, relieved. “Jeez, you just about gave me a heart attack,” she said, giving Judith a playful shove. “These are gorgeous.”

  She ran her gloved finger over the beaded yoke of an ivory cardigan, amazed at how the restoration had brought out the luster of the pearls and the quiet beauty of the piece. Judith continued to lay the sweaters out on the table, patting them into shape with a tenderness that belied her expression. Soon there were half a dozen on display, including a V-neck argyle pullover that reminded Cath painfully of her mother.

  When Mom hadn’t been busy doing sample knitting or working up one of her own patterns, she’d spent evenings in front of the TV knitting argyle socks for Dad. Cath had often sat beside her, working on some small project of her own. She couldn’t even remember learning to knit—like breathing, she’d been born knowing how to do it. It was really the only thing she and Mom had ever had in common.

  Lifting up a child’s sweater in the Bohus style for a closer look, she muttered, “ ‘Okay,’ my ass.” The piece was a teeny-tiny work of art, humble but perfect.

  Judith smirked, clearly amused. “What did you expect me to say? ‘They’re gorgeous, darling? You’ve done a smashing job’?” She pitched her voice high and her accent posh, doing a creditable imitation of Christopher Morrow, the museum’s director.

  “You get off on withholding approval,” Cath said matter-of-factly.

  “And you get off on pretending not to want it.”

  “I picked up the straitjacket last night. Approve of me.”

  That caught Judith’s attention. “I thought you’d have to pry it out of Amanda’s cold, dead hands.”

  “Nope. I only had to go on a blind date with her boyfriend’s cousin.”

  “Smashing job, darling,” Judith said, the words still faux-English but the sentiment genuine this time. “That’s going to look fantastic in the exhibit. It’s such an unusual piece, no one will know what to think about it. A hand-knit straitjacket as protest object—the domestic meets the political. It’ll blow their minds.”

  “Just don’t let it go to Amanda’s head. It’s big enough already.”

  “You could learn a thing or two from her about showmanship,” Judith remarked. “I’d hate to have to spend time with the woman, but she knows how to get the attention of the press.”

  Cath inspected the repaired hem of the Bohus cardigan, thinking the exchange was typical of her relationship with her boss, which had been odd from the first. They’d met at a gallery opening, where they’d started talking about the recent craze for “tagging” urban objects by encasing them in knitted outfits. When Cath had found out that Judith, a Californian, was in London to act as guest curator for the V&A’s hand-knitting exhibit, she’d invited her out for a pint. By the end of the evening, she’d somehow wheedled her way into a job writing the contemporary portion of the exhibit catalog.

  It was only supposed to be a temp position, but when the funds ran out, Cath kept turning up at the V&A every day anyway, and eventually Judith took pity on her and hired her as her assistant. Now Cath did research, wrote catalog copy, organized Judith’s life, and helped select and acquire pieces for the show.

  It was the best job in the universe. Too bad it would end as soon as the exhibit went up.

  With the silent coordination of long practice, she and Judith began refolding the sweaters for storage. “Speaking of withholding approval,” Judith said, “you’re going to have to rewrite that interwar section again. Christopher wants it sexier.”

  “There’s nothing sexy about knitting in 1930s Britain. It was the Depression. All the books are full of advice about how to darn socks and rip out old sweaters to reuse the same yarn over and over again.”

  “You’ll find something. Think knitted underclothes. Fair Isle stockings.”

  “Cervical-cap cozies?”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  Cath sighed. “I thought curators would be above the pressure to sex everything up.”

  “Nope. If you want to be one, you’ll have to get creative.”

  “Creative is my middle name.”

  “Your middle name is Catherine,” Judith said, packing the sweaters back into the box.

  Cath smiled, surprised Judith knew even that much about her. They were friends, but only within the confines of the office. In the seven months since they’d met, Cath had practically lived at the museum, working for pennies and burning through the small inheritance her mother had left her. Her only goal was to transform her passion for art and history into employment as a curator. She had the knowledge, but she lacked the credentials to get hired by traditional means. She needed to get in through the back door. Judith, a prominent expert on early-modern and modern European textiles, was her back door.

  “I do deliver your paychecks,” Judith reminded her. “And anyway, I’ve been working to get that name of yours out there. When I meet with Christopher tomorrow, I’m going to ask him whether we can add you to the catalog as co-author. Consider it your reward for the straitjacket. You’ve done nearly half the writing anyway. You should get credit for it.”

  “Seriously?” Cath stopped packing, her palms suddenly clammy inside her thin cotton gloves. Getting her name on the catalog would be a dream come true. In combination with a recommendation from Judith, it might even be enough to get her a decent job. It was exactly the break she’d been waiting for. She tried to seem nonchalant, but it was hard, because she was so excited she thought
she might black out. “That would be great.”

  “Don’t count your chickens yet,” Judith warned. “I still have to get it by Christopher.”

  When it came to the exhibit, Christopher followed Judith’s lead. Cath was in.

  Judith put the lid on the box and escaped, purportedly to return the sweaters to storage, but more likely fleeing the possibility Cath would try to hug her or display more emotion than Judith could handle, which was to say any emotion not tinged with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

  Cath sat down in her wheelie office chair and tried to remember how to do the yoga breathing she’d learned on that retreat in New Mexico with John—or was it Jake?—years ago. Breathe with your belly, they’d said. Or, no, breathe into your belly with your diaphragm? Only she wasn’t sure where her diaphragm was or how to move it.

  Too restless and energized to think clearly, she gave up and gave in, pushing her feet hard against the floor to send the chair into a wild spin while a six-year-old girl with pigtails jumped up and down in her head and shouted, Co-author! My name on a catalog published by the V&A! Whee!

  She wished she could tell her mom. Would she have been proud? It was hard to envision pride on Mom’s face. In its place, there had always been worry. Judgment. Exasperation.

  And Cath had deserved that. She’d been a rotten daughter, at least from the time she was fourteen or so. After Daddy died, she’d gone bad, and she’d stayed that way right up to the end of Mom’s life.

  But it was nice to picture Mom proud of her, to pretend she’d have said, You’ve done well, love, in her clipped, working-class English accent.

  It was nice to think of anyone at all being proud of her, for that matter. To imagine having someone to tell her news to.

  You could tell Nev.

  Still spinning, she closed her eyes for a second and let herself fantasize about what it would be like to have him to tell. She could see the indulgent way he’d smile at her. He’d call her Mary Catherine and kiss her. They’d go out to dinner somewhere fancy with too many forks, somewhere they’d eat their salad after the entrée and follow dessert with cognac. He’d make love to her later like a precious thing, and she’d bask in his approval.