Miriam Magnus, or Mimi as she was affectionately called by her friends, rested a hand on Nayo’s back. “May I please see you alone for a moment?”
Nayo looked at the tall, slender woman with her peaches-and-cream complexion, light gray eyes and flaxen hair. “Yes. Of course.”
She followed Geoff’s mother to a small room off the living room where Mimi usually received and entertained friends. “Please sit down, Nayo.”
Perched on the edge of a near-perfect reproduction of a Queen Anne chair, Nayo decided to take the initiative, saying, “Why do want to see me?”
Mimi fingered the double strand of priceless pearls around her smooth neck. She studied Nayo Goddard, seeing why her son was so taken with her. She was petite, her rounded face doll-like, and she was talented—Mimi had seen the photographs Geoff had set up for her showing. Mimi smiled upon recognizing the designer shoes on Nayo’s feet. With her black wool pantsuit and white silk blouse, Nayo reminded her of herself when she was younger.
“I’d like to talk to you about your relationship with my son.”
Nayo’s expression did not change, despite the knot clenching and unclenching in the pit of her stomach. “Geoff and I don’t have a relationship.”
Mimi lifted her eyebrows. “What is it you do have?”
“We’re friends, Mrs. Magnus.”
“Friends?” the older woman repeated. “How long have you and Geoffrey been friends?”
“Ten years.”
Crossing her legs at the ankles, Mimi leaned forward. “Isn’t that long enough for you and Geoffrey to stop being friends, Nayo? How long are you going to continue to lead him on?”
Nayo wanted to scream at the presumptuous woman and slap the hell out of Geoff for putting her in this position. “I don’t know what your son told you, but there was nothing and never will be anything other than respect and friendship between Geoff and me.”
“Are you aware that my son is in love with you?”
“And I’m in love with another man.”
Nayo couldn’t believe the words that had come out of her mouth. She’d confessed to Miriam Magnus that she was in love, without disclosing Ivan’s name. The confession shocked her as much as it shocked Geoff’s mother, who sat with a stunned expression freezing her patrician features.
“Have you told Geoffrey?” Mimi asked when she recovered her voice.
“No,” Nayo said truthfully. “Geoff and I don’t discuss our private lives. Are you aware, Mrs. Magnus, that Geoff does date other women?”
Mimi nodded. “Women who are out to use him.”
“What makes you think I won’t use him?”
“I’m praying you won’t.”
“Did Geoff ask you to talk to me?”
Mimi shook her head. “No. He wouldn’t have the nerve.”
“I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but you have a lot of nerve to question me about your son, who happens to be a thirty-year-old man who, I can assure you, doesn’t have a problem getting a woman.”
“It is not about a woman, Nayo. This is about you.”
“I’m not going to allow it to be all about me. Geoff and I are friends and that’s all we’ll ever be. However, if you decide to interfere again, as you’re doing now, then I’ll have no other recourse but to end that friendship. You have a choice, Mrs. Magnus.”
Rising to her feet, Nayo walked away from the woman and her shocking attempt to play Cupid for a man who wasn’t shy about vocalizing what he liked or didn’t like. That was one of the reasons she appreciated Geoff.
He hadn’t wanted her to move out of his family’s Greenwich Village town house when she told him that she’d found and signed a lease for her East Harlem studio apartment.
He, in a moment of weakness when he’d had too much to drink, had professed to be in love with her. When Nayo confronted him once he was sober, Geoff hadn’t tried to deny his feelings. He said he was in love with her and wanted to marry her.
The intensity of his emotions had taken her aback. To cope with his new revelation, Nayo had stopped being as available to him. She reduced the number of times they had dinner together from several times a week to once or twice a month. It wasn’t easy for either, but their dependence on each other decelerated until when they did spend time together, it was quality time.
Mimi had underestimated Nayo Goddard. She’d asked to speak to the younger woman, hoping her plea would jolt Nayo into seeing what was right in front of her. Mimi knew better than anyone that her son could marry someone within the social circle that had been established for him, a privileged, rapidly shrinking circle where he could marry a young woman who complemented him in every way. However, he’d chosen to fall in love with someone outside the circle, a young woman from a little town in upstate New York that barely made the map.
She didn’t blame her son for his obsession with Nayo Goddard, but she did blame Nayo for permitting Geoffrey to believe they would eventually share a future. Nayo had admitted she was in love with another man, but had she verbalized that to her poor little lovesick son?
Mimi doubted it, or else Geoffrey wouldn’t have gone on and on about looking forward to seeing Nayo at dinner. When she’d asked Geoffrey the last time he and Nayo had gotten together, his response was “just before Halloween.” It’d been more than a month since her son had seen his best friend, and Mimi wasn’t going to permit him to mope around as if he’d lost his best friend. When she asked him about his feelings for Nayo, he hadn’t hesitated. He revealed he was in love with Nayo and wanted to marry her.
Mimi had believed if she were going to have one child, it should’ve been a girl. However, selecting the sex of her child was something beyond her control. She had to deal with a son who’d become physically and emotionally like her father.
Her thoughts returned to Nayo, who hadn’t challenged her but stood her ground. “I promise not to interfere.”
Nayo smiled. “Thank you.”
“What we’ve discussed will not go any further than this room.”
“You have my word on that, Mrs. Magnus.”
The two women stood up and Nayo walked out, Miriam Magnus following a minute later. She spied Geoff talking to a young woman who’d occasionally stopped by the gallery. His face was suffused with color and it was apparent he’d either had too much to drink or was excited by something the woman had said.
Nayo resented Mrs. Magnus’s trying to set her up with her son. If she knew what Nayo knew about her son, she would butt out of his personal life. Geoffrey Magnus was the complete package for some woman. That woman did not happen to be Nayo Goddard.
* * *
Geoff spied Nayo, excused himself and went over to where she stood looking totally bored as his aunt, gesturing wildly, talked. The half-dozen diamond bracelets on her chubby wrists sparkled under the brilliance of an overhead chandelier, but didn’t move. He’d cautioned his aunt that if she didn’t lose weight, they would be forced to cut her precious and priceless bracelets off her wrist.
Nayo smiled at his approach. He slipped an arm around her waist. “Excuse me, Aunt Jane, but I must see that Nayo gets something to drink.” Sotto voce, he said, “You looked as if you needed rescuing.”
“I did, thank you. I think this is the umpteenth time your aunt told me how she met your uncle while on holiday in Europe.”
Geoff signaled for the bartender to give him a glass of white wine. “She’s told that story so many times she’s beginning to believe it herself.”
Nayo stared at Geoff. He’d cut his hair, and the cropped locks made him appear older than he had with a mass of curls falling around his face. He would go another year without cutting it, then the cycle would begin again.
She’d always found him quite attractive, but there was something about Geoffrey Magnus that wouldn’t permit Nayo to see him as more than a friend. What had begun as a platonic relationship had continued through the years.
Their relationship was the complete opposite of the one she had with Ivan. A week after meeting Ivan Campbell, she’d shared his bed. She’d waited for the guilt that never came from sleeping with a man she barely knew.
Geoff handed her a glass of chilled merlot. “Thank you.”
“I saw you with my mother. Is everything all right between the two of you?”
Nayo swallowed the icy liquid, savoring the taste of the wine on her tongue. “Everything is wonderful, Geoff.” She gave him a too-bright smile over the rim of her glass. “I saw you with Bethany. Is everything okay between the two of you?”
“We’re good,” Geoff confirmed. “I invited her to join us because she didn’t want to go to Texas with her folks who went there to visit their grandchildren.”
“I like her, Geoff.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You do?”
“Yes,” she said truthfully. Bethany Lawry was a lawyer who’d become an avid collector of antique paperweights. She stopped by Dyana Ryker’s auction house on an average of twice a month to check out the inventory, and if she found anything that resembled a paperweight, the checkbook came out and the check was written and pushed across the counter before the ink dried from her antique Montblanc pen.
“I like her,” Geoff stated simply.
Nayo smiled. “She’s lovely.”
Bethany, Nayo thought, was a throwback to the girls who went to private women’s colleges. She wore her dirty-blond, modified pageboy parted off-center and tucked behind one pearl-studded ear. Cashmere twin set, single strand of pearls, pencil skirt and Gucci slip-ons completed her very conservative look.
“I asked her whether she wanted to go away with me to Hawaii for Christmas, and she said she would have to let me know.”
Nayo patted Geoff’s shoulder, feeling the intense heat of his flesh through the cotton shirt. “At least she didn’t say no.”
Geoff’s eyes darkened. “You’re right, Nayo. I suppose you’re going home this Christmas.”
“Yes, I am.” She wanted to tell Geoff that Harlem, not Beaver Run, was home.
“When are you coming back?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Aren’t you coming back for New Year’s?”
“That depends on a few of my friends. We still haven’t decided where we want to celebrate New Year’s Eve.”
Ava had told her that Kyle, Ivan and Duncan were talking about hosting a small gathering at home, but hadn’t decided at whose home. Nayo knew if Ivan volunteered to host, she would probably step in as hostess.
Nayo wasn’t certain when her relationship with Ivan had changed, but it had. And the change had taken place in bed. Their lovemaking had escalated from a relaxed, leisurely coming together to a frantic coupling that made her feel as if it would be their last time together. Instead of falling into the sated slumber reserved for lovers, she lay awake, her insides quivering from an intensity that frightened her. When she’d attempted to broach the subject with Ivan, he’d say that nothing had changed, which left her believing she was imagining something that wasn’t there.
She’d blurted out to Geoff’s mother that she was in love with another man, and she hadn’t realized what lay in her heart until saying it aloud. She’d said she was in love with another man, yet she was unwilling to admit it to Ivan.
The Magnuses’ butler walked into the living room to usher everyone into the formal dining room. It was time to sit down to a festive Thanksgiving dinner.
* * *
Ivan had just reached up to turn off the lamp when he heard the soft tapping on the door. “Come in.”
His sister, bundled in a velour robe and her hair covered with a silk scarf to preserve her hairdo, stuck her head through the opening in the door. “Can I come in for a few minutes?”
Pushing into a sitting position, Ivan patted the side of the mattress. “Sure. Come sit down.”
He’d given in to his older sister’s pleading that he spend the night when the pleading turned into a whining he’d never been able to abide. Roberta, who would celebrate her forty-first birthday next spring, had confided to him that she suspected she was pregnant, but wanted to wait another week before making an appointment to see her ob-gyn.
“How do you like your room?” she asked, sitting on the bed.
Ivan smiled. “It’s wonderful.”
“Does this mean you’ll come and visit more often because we now have room to put you up?”
He stared at the feminine version of his face. When the Campbell kids were growing up, people often remarked how much they looked alike. He and Jared were identical twins, but there were times when all three kids were asked if they were identical triplets. It was Roberta who always blasted people, saying identical babies had to be the same sex.
Ivan had become the twin known for fighting, because he was the one who stepped up to defend his sister after she’d mouthed off at someone invariably older and bigger than she was. But everything changed the summer Jared died. If the two remaining Campbell children weren’t in school, they could be found at home. Ivan would’ve been virtually a hermit if Kyle hadn’t come to visit him every day.
“Yes, Bertie,” he teased, using her childhood nickname.
“You seemed a little quiet tonight. What’s going on with you, Ivan?”
“Nothing, Bertie.”
“Hel-lo, Ivan. I’m your big sister, so I know when something’s bothering you. It’s a woman, isn’t it?” she asked perceptively when the seconds ticked off.
“What makes you think it’s a woman? It could be work-related.”
“One thing I know it’s not and that’s work-related. You’re on point when it comes to your career. But I can’t say the same thing for your personal life. It’s in the crapper, Ivan.”
“Damn, Bertie. Do you have to be so complimentary?”
“Stop trying to avoid the issue!” she snapped angrily. Roberta’s deep-set dark eyes narrowed. “Talk to me, Ivan Garner Campbell. And stop glaring at me,” she warned. “You know I’m not susceptible to intimidation. Your brother-in-law learned that early on, and that’s why we’re still married.”
“Why are you trying to get into my business, Bertie?”
“Because you are my business, Ivan. You’re the only brother I have and I worry about you.”
Ivan ran a hand over the stubble on his jaw. His sister knew exactly what to say to get him to open up. Even the most oblique reference to Jared always choked him up, leaving him aching and vulnerable. All the Campbells grieved with Jared’s senseless murder, but none more than Ivan. The fissure that tore his young life apart had closed, but the scar remained.
A sadness trembled over his lips before he compressed them tightly. “You’re right, Bertie. It is a woman.”
He told his sister about Nayo, how they’d met and his purchasing her photographs. His gaze softened when he described her. “I’m not certain where I stand with her because she lives and plays by her own rules and expects me to follow.”
Roberta’s waxed eyebrows shot up. “Do you?”
Ivan looked sheepish. “Most times I do.”
“What happens when you don’t?”
“I end up looking like the bad guy.”
“There is something called compromise.”
“I know,” he agreed, “but most times I find myself not following the advice I give my patients.”
“You can’t base your relationship on a patient-treatment plan. Short-and long-terms goals usually don’t work in affairs of the heart.”
“Tell me about it,” he mumbled.
“No, you tell me about it,” the high school guidance counselor countered. “And you can leave out the intimate details.”
Roberta listened intently, recognizing a passion in her brother’s voice that she found shocking and endearing. It was apparent that Ivan Campbell was in love with his photographer girlfriend.
“Are you certain you’re not identifying with Kyle and DG?”
A frown line appeared between Ivan’s eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“The three of you have been inseparable since second grade. Now that your best friends are engaged, have you thought that perhaps subconsciously you also want to be engaged?”
His frown deepened. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so, or you know? The only way you’re going to find out is to distance yourself from your friends. Make it a one-couple date, instead of three. The more alone time you spend with your girlfriend, the more you’ll know whether what you feel for her is real or a fantasy.”
Leaning forward, he pressed a kiss on Roberta’s forehead. “Thanks for the advice.”
Roberta patted his chest over the stark-white T-shirt. “Try to get some sleep before Ivana barges in and wakes you up.”
Ivan winked at his sister. “I’m going to have something for my niece.”
“What’s that?”
“Lock the door on your way out.”
“Do you really want me to lock it?”
“Your daughter, my niece and goddaughter, must adhere to boundaries. At nine years old, she shouldn’t be allowed to invade another person’s bedroom at will. She must learn to knock, then wait to be told to enter.”
“You’re right, Dr. Campbell.”
Ivan smiled. “Get outta here and let me get some sleep so I’ll have enough energy to hang out with my niece.”
Roberta kissed his cheek. “Good night.”
“Good night, Bertie.”
Ivan watched as Roberta turned the lock on the doorknob before closing the door behind her. Then he switched off the lamp, plunging the bedroom in darkness.
When he’d maneuvered into the driveway leading to his sister’s home, he’d been overwhelmed by the grandeur of the three-story, five-bedroom, forty-five-hundred-square-foot mini-mansion in the upscale Staten Island neighborhood. Ivana had taken him on a tour of her new home, proudly pointing out the features that hadn’t been in her old house. She was thrilled to have her own bathroom, and she loved it when her daddy started a fire in one of the many fireplaces.
His parents had moved into a retirement community a mile from their daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter.
The Campbells were doing well. Roberta had her growing family, his father and his mother had each other—and he was nearly forty and still had a fear of commitment.