Leaving La Di Da, Greer was elated. Wait until she told Miss Thing and the girls that she had done something crazy while they were gone! She whirled to face Ford. “Can you believe Pierre decided to start an entire bridal department so he’d have an excuse for this gown contest, all so he could punish me for not finding him a soul mate?”
“He’s diabolical. Bright, too. He’ll make a great deal of money, eventually, from this revenge he seeks.” Ford put his hands in his pockets and jingled some coins. “I’d like to hire him as my villain-on-call if I ever need one.”
“Me, too.” Greer stopped. “Thank you so much for going to bat for me in there with Henny.”
“I was using a metaphorical cricket bat, I’ll have you know.” He smiled.
“Whatever it was, I appreciate it.”
“You’re very welcome. You’ll have to show me some of these wedding boards on Pinterest.”
“I’d love to. It’s nice of you to be interested.”
They started walking again. The moon was high in the sky.
“You interest me,” he said, and grabbed her hand.
A jolt of adrenaline surged through her. “You interest me, too.”
“Tell me about where you live.” His thumb stroked the back of her hand.
That sent shivers up her spine. “It’s called the Baker House. It’s on Colonial Lake.”
“I love Colonial Lake.”
“Isn’t it pretty? Anyway, the Baker House is the dignified, red-bricked building on the corner of Ashley and Beaufain.”
“Oh, yes. It’s very different looking.”
“It’s rare in Charleston to see such a mix of architectural styles. It’s eclectic, with mission and craftsman influences.”
“It’s apparent you’ve given tours.”
“I have. To all my friends and family when they come over. It used to be a hospital, mainly for women delivering their babies.”
“Interesting.”
“Every morning at seven A.M., I leave my apartment on the top floor, cross the street, and walk around the lake ten times. Then I eat breakfast and get ready for work.”
“Sounds like a nice routine.”
He was a good listener.
“I like knowing I live in a place that used to cater to women before women had a lot of clout in society,” she said. “And these mothers didn’t have the comforts of modern anesthesia or the authority to create their own destinies whatsoever.…”
“You sound quite inspired right now—”
She let go of his hand, saw an expanse of blank sidewalk coming up, and took advantage of it. She skipped ahead a few paces, faced him, and walked backward while she spoke: “Yet they showed up and persevered, and they literally created the next several generations … before the hospital expanded and moved somewhere else. After that, Baker House was turned into apartments.” She stopped, and he walked right up to her, mere inches away. He cradled her elbows with his hands, and she felt a kiss hovering between them.
“Sometimes,” she said, her nose almost touching his, “I feel the hope of those women in the floors and walls. And sometimes, late at night, their suffering. Their worry.”
“You do?”
“Yes. My living room used to be a recovery area. I have a large, arched window there, and the sun pours in. I like to think of exhausted mothers lying there with their babies and dreaming about their futures.…”
“You’re got quite the romantic soul,” he said.
“But I’m logical. And practical. Like my own mother.”
“Why can’t you be everything at once?”
She shrugged. “I suppose I could. It’s not very logical of me to want to kiss you, that’s for sure.”
“It’s absolutely disastrous for me to kiss you,” he said. “I’m supposed to be shattered by my abandonment at the altar, after all. I’m on the rebound, the gossips would say. You should beware.”
“You should beware, too.”
“Why is that?”
“For years, I thought I was happy with Wesley. Then I rejected the engagement ring he offered me, to mine and his utter shock.”
“Hmmm. Are you sure he was as shocked as you seem to think he was?”
She’d never considered that. “I think so. I mean, he acted like it at the time.”
“Have you never actually spoken to him about the break-up? After the fact, that is?”
She sighed. “No. And I want to. I want to tell him I’m sorry. I did when it happened, but you know how people always say they’re sorry when they’re afraid to get in trouble for being awful. And I looked very much like an awful person. I mean, I was one.”
“That’s not fair to say. Were you supposed to continue on and get married when you didn’t love him? That would have been far worse.”
“Yes, but I didn’t have a good reason. Nothing about him had changed. I’d changed.”
“You can’t always make sense of things. Your gut was following a logic your brain had no access to—or was ignoring. Trust your gut.”
“Mine is saying to trust you.”
He winced. “I’ve got issues,” he said. “Really big issues, beyond being abandoned by my bride-to-be and still having to pay for the wedding and the honeymoon.”
“She didn’t help?”
He shook his head. “And hell if I was going to ask her mother—who happens to be a well-known actress—to cover her daughter’s expenses.”
“Who is she?”
“Rosemary Dunhill.”
“Rosemary Dunhill?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That was nice of you. Rosemary Dunhill must have millions of British pounds.” Greer couldn’t help feeling curious. “She also has a chain of high-end women’s clothing stores in the U.K., I’ve heard, with trunk shows in New York and L.A. I have a friend who’s been to one in New York.”
“Yes, she does. In Vail and Dallas, too.”
“You run in elite circles, it sounds like.”
“That’s a kind way to say decadent, depressed, and fickle circles.”
“Yikes.”
“As an artist looking for exposure,” he said, “the price of admission to the show is a thick skin. One minute, you’re ‘in’ with the critics and the public. The next, you’re out. There’s no mercy.”
“That must be rough.”
“It’s not easy, but it’s also not the worst thing in the world. You tend to meet very interesting people. Risk-takers. And I paint what I want. I don’t look for ways to tap into the market. Chasing it can make you mad as a hatter. But when something I do makes waves, I ride it, like one of the surfers at your Folly Beach. Because you never know when the next good wave will come along.”
She didn’t answer. She felt like skipping ahead again, looking back at him. Neither one of them spoke. But they were having some kind of silent fun—just being together, she supposed.
They were approaching Colonial Lake, walking up Beaufain, when she got a text notification. It was quiet out, except for some laughter coming from the upper piazzas of one of the old houses. College kids. They tended to be up until the wee hours, and sometimes the neighbors would write letters to the editor about them. But she liked them. They kept the city young and vibrant. And once she was inside her apartment at the Baker House, a veritable fortress, she never heard them anyway.
Her apartment was her retreat, her cozy space, with its worn hardwood floors, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and secondhand furniture she’d picked up at antique stores in the North Carolina mountains and either painted or reupholstered herself. She liked to play Martha Stewart in Macy’s garden shed behind her house on the Battery, with Oscar, Macy’s orange tabby cat, watching her every move, and Macy bringing her cups of coffee and fat slices of her homemade pound cake.
“It’s pretty late for a text,” she said, and then remembered the girls were in L.A. and three whole hours behind. It was only nine o’clock Pacific time.
Sure enough, it was a photo from Macy. All three of them were lined up on barstools and holding massive drinks. Miss Thing was grinning from ear to ear. Macy was laughing hard about something. Ella was looking directly into the camera, her smile serene.
“I love them so much,” Greer said with a hitch in her voice. “I can’t believe I’m not there.” She held the phone out so he could see the picture up close.
He grinned. “They’re a good-looking group. The older one—”
“Miss Thing.”
He laughed. “Miss Thing reminds me of someone from the 1940s. It’s her hair.”
“She’d love hearing that. She’s obsessed with the Queen.”
The houses they passed were big, shadowy, and filled with stories. Greer wished she could go into each and every one of them.
“What really big issues do you have?” she asked.
“We’re getting deep tonight, aren’t we?”
“Something is bothering you a lot,” she said.
“You talk about Baker House and the mothers who had dreams for their children,” he said.
“Yes?”
He ran a hand through his hair, and then he looked at her a certain way.
And she knew.
“You have a child,” she said.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “My ex is pregnant with twins. I might or might not be the father. I’ll know after she has them. Something about paternity testing being too difficult before then.”
Greer gulped. “Wow.”
“I told you,” he said, and kicked at an invisible stone with his sneaker. When he looked back up, his eyes were stormy. “She was sleeping with one of my best friends. He could be the father. Either one of us. Or both of us, oddly enough. It’s been known to happen that twins can have different fathers.”
“I-I don’t know what to say,” she said. “I mean, you’re right. It’s really big news.”
“I only found out this afternoon. It was why I was at the wine and cigar place on East Bay. I didn’t want to stay in my flat and think about it. And I was in no mood to meet Wesley at the studio for a drink.” He gave a little laugh. “He and Serena found me anyway.”
“I’m sorry.” Greer exhaled a breath. “Not about your being a father. That’s for you to decide how you feel about it. I’m just sorry you couldn’t think about all this in peace.” She gave a little shudder. “And then I pulled you into my situation. Ugh. I feel bad getting you involved when you had far weightier matters on your mind.”
“I didn’t mind.” He pulled her by the hand and up the stairs of the Baker House. “I liked it.”
“You did?” She thought about him jingling coins in his pockets and telling Henny that he supported her one hundred percent in her quest to win that dress without a partner in tow. How nice of him, when he’d only just heard his whole world might be turned even more completely upside-down.
He nodded. “To tell you the truth, being with you has been the saving grace of the day.”
Her heart warmed. Saving grace. She’d never been called that before. “That’s very sweet of you to say.”
He looked over her shoulder. Colonial Lake in the moonlight was a sight to behold. “I’m not being sweet.” He hesitated, then looked back at her. “I’m taking advantage of you. I wasn’t lying when I said to beware. So many things have happened to me lately. I’m in no place to get involved with someone. And I’m afraid that’s exactly what I’ve done. Pulled you in.”
She felt the weight of his worry. She was worried, too. “I could just as easily say I pulled you in.”
He laughed. “Just this morning, you were a stranger in a coffee house.”
“And you were a man in a plaid jacket who was highly distracting at an auction.”
“What are we going to be to each other now?” he asked her softly.
And they both knew: lovers.