by Julie Cohen
‘I’m fine.’
He stopped her with more pressure on her arm. ‘Zoe, they shouldn’t have been speaking to you like that. They might be hurt by your great-aunt’s will, but that’s no excuse to criticise you.’
‘It’s nothing new, Nick. Look at them.’ She gestured to where the Drakes were talking among themselves, shaking their heads. ‘My family is good-looking, successful, married. I’m the one who’s a failure; I always have been. Don’t let it bother you; it doesn’t bother me.’
‘I think that’s a lie.’
For a moment her blue eyes met his and he could see the pain. Then she was shaking her head and putting on her wide grin.
‘Like I always say, the best revenge is not to care. And besides, we know they didn’t know Aunt Xenia as well as we do.’
She winked at him, her bravado back in place. ‘Anyway, this isn’t finding you your father, and the guests are starting to arrive now. If you sit in the back, there, you should be able to see everyone who comes in.’
And that was a dismissal if he’d ever heard one. ‘Zoe, this funeral is going to be difficult enough for you without you and your family winding each other up.’
‘Leave my family to me, Nick,’ she said firmly. ‘You concentrate on yours, okay? Besides, you’d better get your hand off me or everyone will really start thinking you’re after me for my money.’
This time he took the hint. He stopped touching her and went to stand near the entrance to the side chapel, where he would be able to see every person coming to the funeral. Guests entered in pairs, groups, singly, talking softly among themselves. They appeared to be from all walks of life. Several women wore elaborate designer outfits, but there were also plainer clothes, work uniforms underneath sombre overcoats, jeans and construction boots. Xenia apparently had made friends with everyone from her local fast-food workers to the cream of Manhattan society.
And yet as he searched faces, glanced at hands, he was thinking about Zoe and her family.
Even as an outsider, even from that short interaction, he could see the Drake family dynamic. Zoe didn’t fit in and probably never had. But her family was trying in their own way—maybe not all her sisters, but her parents. Her mother tried to give her compliments and to talk with her about clothes, as she probably did easily with her other, fashion-conscious daughters. Her father was being protective of her, especially where another man was concerned.
But Zoe didn’t hear their concern; she heard their implicit criticism of her appearance, her choices, her life. And her way of defending herself against them was to confirm their worst suspicions, turn her pain into a wisecrack.
Her family hurt because she seemed to rebuff their love; Zoe hurt because their love seemed a cover-up for their disappointment.
The crowd had assembled; John took the pulpit and began to speak. Nick drew in a deep lily-scented breath and chose a chair stationed at the back, turning it slightly towards the entrance so he could see any latecomers.
He supposed his own background made him particularly sensitive to how families could operate according to their own strange contradictions. He loved his mother and his sister with a fierce loyalty that sometimes hurt. Yet both he and Kitty had left home as soon as they could, to pursue their own careers. Kitty had gone to California to become an interior designer, and he’d gone off to college to study conservation and spent months at a time in the wilderness as part of his ranger training.
Scanning the crowd for a familiar figure, he wondered if his father had been caught in a similar contradiction as he had. As Zoe was.
His letter hadn’t explained anything. It had been three handwritten lines on plain white paper.
Dear Nick, I hope you’re doing all right. I heard you got a good job and I hope you are happy. I am fine.
Love, Dad.
The letter was just as mysterious as his disappearance, and both of them made a mockery of the word ‘love’ at the end.
He looked towards the front of the chapel, where Zoe was sitting at the end of a line of chairs, next to her family. From this angle he couldn’t see her face, only the back of her head and her shoulders. Next to her in a line, her mother and her sisters all had long blonde hair, falling down their backs in a golden sheen. Zoe’s was short, tousled, tucked behind her ears. It was just as golden, though.
Zoe leaned forward in her chair; even from the back he could tell she was listening intently as John talked about her great-aunt’s life. She nodded at his words. Nick knew she was smiling.
Among the complicated negotiations of love and pain, Zoe’s emotions for her great-aunt were straightforward. Nick smiled himself, and scanned the crowd again.
He wasn’t going to turn up.
Nick took a sip of whiskey in resignation. In fact, the whiskey itself was an acknowledgement that he’d given up the search for the day. He rarely drank more than a beer or two, and never hard liquor; he valued having sharp senses. But a waiter had walked by with glasses of amber liquid and he’d taken one, thinking maybe the alcohol would loosen his shoulders, soothe his nerves made ragged by too much adrenaline.
The funeral had gone on for ages, and then there was the burial and the reception, and in between them the car rides in the long black limousines, from the church to the graveyard, and the graveyard to the hotel. Both times Nick had slipped inside a limo with a group of strangers and listened to their conversation, hoping to catch a word about an Eric Giroux.
On the way to the graveyard he was with a group of poets and artists who had never heard of his father but were fascinated by the quality of the light in Maine, whatever that meant; on the way to the hotel he was with a group of French and Portuguese women who had cleaned Xenia’s house over the years. When he mentioned the name Giroux they launched into an animated discussion about a cultural critic and university lecturer who’d written a book on terrorism. Not his father, obviously.
Here at the reception, hosted in a grand room of a hotel whose name even country-boy Nick recognised as a synonym for elegance and sophistication, he hadn’t had much better luck. He’d developed a procedure whenever he spotted a man who could just possibly be his father: he hung back, watching, cataloguing physical attributes. A couple of times, even though he hadn’t been hit by any recognition, he approached the man and listened in to his conversation, trying to find something in the voice that struck a chord.
Nothing. Not yet, anyway.
Nick took another sip of whiskey and leaned against a gilt-trimmed wall. Of their own accord, his eyes sought out Zoe. He knew exactly where she was already; all day he’d known. He hadn’t even had to look for her. It was as if the sixth sense he’d expected would lead him to his father was making him aware of her instead.
She was talking with a group of people, laughing about something. Whenever he’d overheard her conversation today she’d been talking about her great-aunt Xenia, with her big smile on her face. The funeral might have been a sad event for some people; not for Zoe. She seemed determined to celebrate Xenia’s life rather than to mourn its passing.
Nick smiled himself, and that relaxed his nerves more than the whiskey had. He straightened and walked across the room, where there was a table for empty glasses. He was just putting his mostly full glass on the table when he heard a female voice, lowered to a near-whisper.
‘Yes, but why is she smiling so much?’
‘Wouldn’t you if you were worth fifty million dollars?’
Nick quietly laid down his drink and turned towards the voices. Two women were standing on the other side of one of the huge flower arrangements. He couldn’t see their faces, and he didn’t suppose they could see him, but from the glimpses of their clothes he recognised two of Zoe’s sisters.
‘Cindy, don’t be so horrible.’
‘I’m not being horrible; it’s the truth. Look at her, Di. She’s acting like it’s a party, not a funeral. She was less cheerful at your wedding.’
‘You have a point there.’
; ‘All I’m saying is, I think she knew beforehand that she was going to get all the money. Why else did she always hang around Aunt Xenia? Why did she make sure she was the one to arrange the funeral? I wish she’d just tell us and stop pretending it was all such a big surprise. It’s typical Zoe.’
Nick’s hand clenched into a fist. He strode around the flower arrangement to confront the two surprised women.
‘You’re being unfair to your sister,’ he told them, his voice sounding harsh to his own ears. ‘Your great-aunt asked Zoe to arrange the funeral. And she doesn’t care about the money; she’s not even going to give up driving a cab. I’m a stranger and even I could see within ten minutes of meeting Zoe that she loved her great-aunt. You’re her family. Give her a chance.’
Di’s eyes were wide and she opened her mouth to answer Nick. But before she could say anything Nick felt a strong hand close around his wrist and he was being hauled backwards away from the two women.
It was Zoe, and her smile had definitely disappeared. ‘Excuse us,’ she said grimly to her sisters, and pulled harder at Nick’s arm.
He let her drag him out of the big room through a door and into a corridor. Immediately they got there she let his arm go and whirled to face him, her face furious.
‘What the hell were you doing?’ she snarled.
His heart was pounding with anticipation, frustration, anger, and Zoe standing in front of him with her eyes sparking and her cheeks flushed.
‘What did it look like I was doing? I was standing up for you.’
‘I don’t need you to stand up for me.’
‘I don’t think you heard what your sisters were saying.’
‘It doesn’t matter what they were saying!’ She nearly shouted it, her voice hoarse. ‘I don’t need you to rescue me, I don’t want you to rescue me! I’m not some pathetic animal that needs you to help it! I can take care of myself.’
Her rage was so great that he took a breath, ran his hands through his hair, calmed his voice. ‘Zoe, I know you can take care of yourself, but I couldn’t keep quiet. They’re your family, they should be supportive of you, not—’
‘How many times do I need to tell you that I do not care?’
The last three words were a shout, and her face was so livid but her eyes were so full of pain, just at that moment telling the completely opposite story to her words, and Nick only saw one way out of this.
He stepped forward and took her face between his hands, swiftly tilted her head up, and kissed her.
Her mouth. Oh, Lord, her mouth. It was warm and lush and soft. He slid one hand up into her hair and put the other on her hip to pull her closer to him, and he kissed her harder.
Zoe made some sort of sound in her throat and he felt her lips move under his. He wasn’t sure if it was an invitation but he took it anyway, opening his own mouth and letting his tongue taste her. Her lips were slightly open and he touched the satin heat of the inside of her lip, the smooth ivory of her teeth. He could feel her breasts against his chest and her lean hip fitting into his palm. And her smell, clean and feminine and one hundred per cent Zoe…the hammering of her heart next to his…
He needed more. Nick angled his head, trying to coax her lips open for him, tightening his hands on her, wanting her wrapped around him, pressed as intimately as she could be.
He felt her hands come up to his chest and he nearly groaned, anticipating her fingers on the buttons of his shirt, opening it, stroking his skin.
She pushed at him. Hard.
Surprised, Nick raised his head from hers and looked into her face. Her mouth was red from his kiss, well formed and beautiful and set into a hard line. The pupils of her eyes were dilated, dark against the blue of her irises, but her eyes themselves were narrowed.
She pushed at him again, this time nearly hard enough to bruise him. ‘Let me go,’ she said, and her voice was strangled, rough and upset.
He loosed his hold on her and she stumbled backwards. Her normal ease in movement seemed to have deserted her; she teetered on her heels. Nick reached out to steady her, but she retreated even more.
‘Zoe—’
She breathed harsh and fast. So did he. She wiped the back of her hand against her mouth, as if she were trying to wipe away his kiss.
‘I don’t need your pity,’ she said, and ran past him out the door.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE HATED TO admit that Nick was right about anything. But he’d been right about New York. It was noisy.
Zoe sat on the edge of her bed to lace up her sneakers. Her eyes felt full of sand and her body ached and her throat was scratchy and she knew she was fooling herself.
The reason she hadn’t slept last night wasn’t because it was noisier here in her apartment in the Bronx than in her great-aunt’s apartment in Manhattan. She’d lived with the noise for years. The noise hadn’t kept her awake; Nick had.
For a couple of seconds she allowed herself to close her eyes and remember. She’d been in his arms. His hand had been in her hair. His body had been big and hot against her. And he’d kissed her, breathtaking and incredible, filling every single cell of her body with delight and longing.
She licked her lip, as if the taste of him could still be there seventeen hours later. It wasn’t, but she could taste him in her memory.
He’d been even better than she’d imagined.
Zoe opened her eyes and got to her feet, disgusted with herself.
No, he hadn’t been better than she’d imagined. Because in her imagination Nicholas Giroux would have kissed her because he wanted her, because he couldn’t resist her, and not because he thought he was some sort of knight in shining armour riding to her rescue. Not because he was a Boy Scout with special badges in lost causes and hopeless quests.
With the thought she pictured him as he’d been yesterday, standing alone, always alone, even in a crowd. Tall and alert, searching every face for his father.
Another wave of longing swept through her, even stronger because it wasn’t purely lust.
Right. It was a good thing that she had two back-to-back aerobics classes to teach this morning, because she could do with the endorphins. Plus maybe if she totally exhausted herself she’d be able to come back here and sleep for a couple of hours without being tormented by memories of the best kiss she’d ever had in her life.
Stupid girl. She didn’t need to be tormented by the thought of Nick—she had enough stuff to beat herself up about as it was. One thing Xenia’s funeral had shown her was how much her great-aunt had touched other people’s lives. There hadn’t been a single person in that church or at that reception who didn’t have fond memories of Xenia or a story about how she’d helped them out with money, time, or kindness.
Zoe was proud of her great-aunt. But she couldn’t help wondering whether anybody could say the same thing about her. How many lives she’d touched. If there were any.
And now she had Xenia’s fortune, and none of Xenia’s talent for spending it, or for helping people. All she had were her jobs, her apartment in the Bronx, and her independence.
Faced with that truth about herself, it was hardly surprising her choice of torture was to remember Nick’s kiss. Every melting, thrilling second of it.
As she walked from her bedroom to her living room, she pulled on a sweatshirt, noticing that her nipples were visible through her sports bra and her Lycra top. She could blame Nick for her imminent case of jogger’s nipple, as well as her lack of sleep.
Three things happened while her sweatshirt still covered her head. Somebody knocked on the door, she stepped on something that slipped sideways and made her ankle twist, and she yelled out in pain.
Except when she yelled nothing came out but a small-voiced squeak. She sounded like a mouse wearing a gag.
Zoe sat on the floor and pulled her sweatshirt down.
A quick glance at her foot showed her she’d stepped on one of her high-heeled shoes by mistake, and that her ankle was fine. The pain was already subsiding
.
Someone was still knocking at the door.
Just a second, she tried to say, but nothing came out again.
Dammit. She’d lost her voice. On a day when she had two classes to teach.
Zoe hauled herself to her feet. She’d have to cancel the classes, which sucked because she looked forward to them and she doubted the community centre would be able to find someone to fill in on such short notice. She tried coughing, but that didn’t seem to help. She’d had a tickly throat yesterday, and then she’d talked all day with people at the funeral, and then she hadn’t slept. Equalled no voice. It happened to her often when she caught a cold, as if her body was taking away her best defence when a virus took over.
She hoped Nick had caught her germs.
Someone was still knocking at the door. Zoe exhaled in annoyance and opened it.
It was Nick.
How did he get more gorgeous with every passing hour? His hair was wet and curling, he had dark stubble on his chin, and he smelled of rain. Zoe caught her breath, came to her senses, and tried to close the door.
He put his foot between the door and the jamb, and got his shoulder in there, too. ‘Zoe, please let me in,’ he said.
‘How did you find me?’ she whispered between gritted teeth. She hadn’t been able to face going back to Xenia’s apartment yesterday; instead she’d come straight back to the Bronx. She’d known Ralph would let Nick into the apartment after the reception. She’d figured with any luck he’d find his father, and then pack up himself and his pigeon and get the hell out of her life at last.
‘If I can track a deer through the woods, I can find you in the Bronx,’ he said. ‘Can I come in?’
She pushed at the door, but he was too solid. She rolled her eyes and let him in.
Xenia’s apartment was big. Zoe’s apartment was small. Nick seemed to fill it up with his broad shoulders and his strong body and his big hands, especially since he started talking right away.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I don’t pity you. I wouldn’t dare to pity you. And I didn’t mean to upset you, but I’m not sorry I kissed you, and I’m not sorry I defended you, either.’
