Chapter 8

I HAD NOT really slept since hearing about the accident, and had consumed little except a few quarts of strong coffee. I should have been stupid with exhaustion, but I wasn’t. The new story pairing Kira with Cody had given me a shot of adrenaline.

I went from the hospital straight to my office, and started tinkering with it.

Physically, Link Ramsey was the opposite of Sean O’Neil. Sean was our fair-haired young prince, bleached blond hair and California surfer good looks. Link was our dark knight, hair the color of India ink, and mesmerizing ebony eyes set deep under wildly independent brows. His lips were full and sensual; when they curled upward on one side in his patented half smile, those lips suggested he knew secrets no nice girl should know. Sean was the young man a girl brought home to her parents. Link was that walk-on-the-wild-side a girl ran away to.

I knew it was right to put angelic Cybelle Carter and dangerous Link Ramsey together when I watched Link perform the no-dialogue scene I had written for him. It was a simple scene: Cody learns via a government telegram that the older brother he idolized, who brought up and protected him when they were orphaned, has been killed in the crash of his Marine Corps helicopter. Cody goes berserk with grief and wrecks his office, smashing and breaking things until finally he collapses in exhaustion.

Standing in the shadows behind the camera, I felt tears sliding down my cheeks. I was crying for Cody’s pain. I was crying over a tragedy I had invented, for a character I had created.

And maybe some of those tears were for my own loss, too.

Watching, I realized I had put a lot of Ian into Cody.

Afterward, Link came over to where I was standing and hugged me. “That was a dynamite scene,” he said.

“You were wonderful.”

He released me from the hug and stepped back, but he took my hands in his, leaned in close and whispered, “You’re gonna make me a star, Miss Morgan. I owe you. So . . . you got anybody you want killed?”

I laughed. “Not right this minute,” I said as I took back my hands.

Link kissed me on the cheek and we said good night.

WHY HAD I said “yes” when Detective Phoenix invited me to dinner?

Because I couldn’t think of an excuse quickly enough?

Nope, that wasn’t it. I am good at saying no, have become an expert at it in the last five years. The only men I know anymore are the men I work with, and they’ve all stopped asking me out.

Except Damon, the pig, who asks me in. To his bed.

Well, maybe it was because I was tired. I was running on adrenaline.

Since I had edited all afternoon, I had just enough time for a quick shower. How does one dress for dinner with a homicide detective and his aunt? Or the real question, how do I dress to express my lack of interest in having a second dinner with them? With him.

I put on a pair of plain black slacks and a loose black cashmere sweater. Much to the disapproval of my friend Nancy, I deliberately order my sweaters two sizes too large. She is convinced I’m trying to hide my body because I’m “stuck in widowhood.” I argue with her, but to myself, I have to admit she is right.

I am afraid of being a single woman again.

I married so quickly I never learned how to date.

In my life, I’ve been intimate with only one man. It was wonderful beyond description, but everything I know about sex I learned from Ian. The thought of being with someone new scares me witless, so I don’t think about it.

Very adult, Morgan.

I topped what Nancy calls my “unisex cat burglar outfit” with a pink suede blazer. I might look frumpy, but at least the pink will keep me from looking as though I’m attending a funeral. Time to go.

A cab pulled up as soon as I stepped outside, and a couple who lives on the fourth floor got out. We exchanged neighborly greetings as I took their place and gave the driver an address that was across Central Park. I had been startled to learn that Detective Phoenix lived on East Sixty-Eighth Street, between Madison and Park, but I’d tried not to show it. I had assumed he would live in Queens, or on Staten Island. That was where the New York cops on TV shows always lived. He’s a New York City homicide detective: how can he afford an East Side address? As the cab accelerated, two possibilities occurred to me.

One: Phoenix is a cop on the take.

Two: He lives in the basement and moonlights as the super.

I hoped it was door number two. I prefer a man with dirty hands to one with sticky fingers. Why didn’t I think to ask Detective Phoenix his first name? Why didn’t he volunteer it? Maybe it’s something awful, like . . . Fabio.

Fabio Phoenix . . .

No, parents couldn’t be that cruel, could they?

I remembered reading about a Texas governor named Hogg who named his daughter Ima. She should have shot him in some nonfatal but very painful place.

The cab pulled up in front of a well-maintained private town house, red brick with white trim. It was narrow, but four stories high. I thought the driver had made a mistake, but no, the brass numbers on the black lacquered front door matched the numbers on the piece of paper Detective Phoenix had given me.

I was afraid the answer was going to be sticky fingers instead of dirty hands.

I’ll make an excuse to go home early and never see him again.

He opened the door almost as soon as I rang the bell. Instead of the jackets and ties he wore when he was being a detective, tonight he was wearing a soft yellow sweater and gray slacks. He was smiling at me.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I replied. Brilliant dialogue, Morgan.

He stepped aside for me to enter, then closed the door behind us and asked if I’d like him to take my jacket.

“No, thank you. I’m a little chilly.” At least I’m trying to be.

He escorted me into the living room. It was comfortably furnished, with two deep, inviting couches flanking a wood-burning fireplace with a real fire in it. The walls were paneled in a rich old mahogany that gleamed from wax. There were fresh flowers in a vase on an end table.

“Why are you looking at my hands?” he asked.

Caught. I said the first thing that came into my mind. “I was trying to guess your first name.”

“By looking at my hands?”

“You detect your way and I’ll detect mine.”

“My first name is Matt,” he said.

Matt . . . Suddenly my throat felt dry. Why couldn’t his name have been Fabio? Writers study names and their meanings. I knew that Matthew meant “gift of God.”

And Ian meant “God’s gracious gift.”

He looked at me quizzically. Probably my face had betrayed my surprise.

We were interrupted by the appearance of a very attractive woman with quick movements and a bright smile. She could not have been more than five years older than Matt Phoenix—I put her age at forty-two or forty-three, tops. Her hair was the color of dark Godiva chocolate, her skin was soft and unlined and her lush figure was the kind that real men in the real world like. She was carrying a hot platter of something that thrust my salivary glands into overdrive.

“That smells like Heaven,” I said.

“Stuffed mushrooms. Matthew said you’d probably be hungry.” She put the platter down onto the coffee table. “Hi, I’m Penny Cavanaugh. Gosh, Morgan—you’re as pretty as the girls in my stories.”

Women who are serious viewers of daytime drama usually refer to their favorite programs not as shows, or soaps, but as their “stories.”

Penny Cavanaugh—who didn’t look like any “aunt” I had ever seen—was rearranging two of the pillows on the couch. “Come sit down,” she said. I sat, and she sat next to me.

Detective Phoenix—Matt—asked what he could get us to drink. Penny opted for white wine.

“Something soft,” I said. “If I have wine, I might fall asleep before dinner.” I explained that I had not had more than two or three hours’ sleep during the past two nights.

“That’s awful. I’m a witch when I don’t get enough sleep,” Penny said. “Do you have insomnia?”

“No, I’m a good sleeper when given the chance. It’s just that I’ve been on a heavy work schedule.”

“I’m dying to know what’s going to happen on Love of My Life,” Penny said, “but I don’t suppose you’ll tell me, will you?”

I smiled at her as I replied, “Not even a hint.”

“Would you take a bribe?” she asked, then glanced mischievously at Phoenix. “I guess I shouldn’t ask that in front of the p-o-l-i-c-e.”

“You know you wouldn’t want her to tell you,” Matt said as he handed Penny a glass of white wine and brought me a glass of orange juice. There was a teasing quality between them, which they both seemed to enjoy. They acted much more like brother and sister than like aunt and nephew.

I sipped at the juice. It tasted freshly squeezed, and it had the natural sugar that I needed to stay awake. “This is delicious,” I said, nodding my appreciation. “At the studio, orange juice comes in boxes, from a machine.”

“Penny doesn’t allow anything that comes in a box in her kitchen,” Matt said, with affection. “I used to joke that I was a prisoner of Martha Stewart.”

“Poor you,” Penny said with a smile, “forced to eat fresh food.” She turned to me. “If he was alone, Matt would live on pizza.”

“Don’t knock pizza—it contains all the important food groups.”

In his own home, Detective Phoenix—Matt—was relaxed and comfortable.

When dinner was ready, Penny refused to let me help her bring things to the dining table. Matt carried the heavy platters for her, then he pulled our chairs out and seated us before he took his own place at the table. Apparently, he was a well-brought-up homicide detective.

Penny was a wonderful cook. When I complimented her on the homemade ravioli, she told me that she had gone to cooking school two years earlier, where she learned to make pasta.

“The cooking teacher said she learned how to make fresh pasta from that wonderful actor, Danny Kaye; it’s his own personal recipe. You’ll have to let me make you a soufflé next time. I earned a degree in soufflés,” she added proudly.

“The diploma’s hanging in the kitchen,” Matt said.

“I flunked Indian curry, but, fortunately, that was an elective class. I just couldn’t master clarified butter.”

During dinner I also learned that Penny loved classic English novels, and poetry, especially John Donne, one of my favorites.

“The only living poet I like is Judith Viorst,” she said. “She’s so funny. Have you ever read her How Did I Get to Be 40 and Other Atrocities?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You’ll love her. She’s so funny, and so smart about people. I think the book is out of print, but I’ll try to find you a copy. I love going to old book stores.”

Penny was delightful company, and was easy to be around. She had a great big laugh when she thought something was funny. I liked her, and not just because she thought I looked like an actress and was a devoted fan of my show. It wasn’t only Love of My Life that she watched faithfully; she was virtually a human encyclopedia about the plots of several other shows.

“I’m so grateful to you people in television,” she told me as she served dessert, which was homemade apple pie with a crust so light it fell apart when my fork touched it. “Your stories have got me through some rough times.”

“Aunt Penny’s a widow,” Matt said.

She frowned at him, then turned to me. “That’s not exactly true,” she said. “I am, but not really.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that.

“Patrick’s supposed to be dead,” she explained, “but I know he’s coming back to me.”

Uh-oh.

I glanced at Matt and discovered he was watching me. He gave no clue as to what he was thinking, but I sensed that he was protective of her.

I decided to treat Penny’s revelation as though it were sane.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Oh, I thought you would—you of all people.”

“Well, I’d like to. What happened? To . . . Patrick?”

“He was killed in a plane crash seven years ago,” Matt said. His voice was gentle.

“That’s what they told us.”

“But . . . you don’t believe . . . them?”

“Of course not,” she said. As evidence in support of her belief, Penny began to recount famous resurrections in popular daytime dramas. “Erica Kane’s father came back from the dead. Both of Robert Scorpio’s dead wives came back. Everybody thought Laura Spencer was dead, but she came back. Even Katherine Bell came back, and she died falling off a balcony right in front of everybody. That happened the night before she was going to marry hunky Stefan Cassadine, who was really still in love with Laura Spencer, but he thought Laura was dead. And Dimitri’s dead wife Angelique came back just as he was about to marry Natalie and make her a countess. Dimitri met Natalie when he found her trapped in an old well in the woods. Her rotten sister Janet threw Natalie down there so Janet could take over Natalie’s identity and marry Trevor, the man Natalie loved. It all worked out because eventually Natalie did marry Trevor and Dimitri married Erica Kane.” Penny took a breath. “So—that’s why I work out five mornings a week, and why I won’t get married again. I’d be a bigamist. I know that someday, when I least expect it—probably when I haven’t got a thing in the refrigerator—Patrick’s going to come back.”

She was so matter-of-fact, and so sincere, that I wanted to believe her, even though I had no idea what to say. Penny, perfect hostess that she was, spared me embarrassment by changing the subject. “Would you like some peach ice cream with your pie, Morgan? I make it myself,” she said, “with all fresh peaches.”