“You guys rocked,” Kat praised as she high-fived the two dozen adolescent members of the Augusta House Choralists at the conclusion of their mini-concert that evening. Led by Pia, they had opened with a mellifluous “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” that had brought tears to Kat’s eyes—and, she noted with interest, to Kirsten Livermore’s, as well. “Jingle Bell Rock” came next, and it was a rousing change of pace, but the real showstopper came at the end—a delicately harmonized Renaissance piece in Latin, which segued into an exhilarating “Feliz Navidad” that had everyone, chorus and guests alike, dancing and singing along.
Except for Jack, who sat halfway up the stairs the whole time, nursing a drink—he’d switched to club soda and lime, she noticed—and watching the revelry with mystified detachment, as if it were the arcane ritual of some long-lost tribe. In fact, it wasn’t until the party started breaking up about forty-five minutes later that he came back downstairs, joining Kat, Chantal, and Pia as they emptied wrapped presents from a giant laundry basket onto the rosewood console table by the front door.
“Yo, Jack.” Chantal shook her head as he approached. “Kat wasn’t kidding when she called you a Grinch, was she?”
He smiled a little sheepishly. “Let’s just say my festivity threshold is a little on the low side.” Nodding toward the presents, he asked, “Who are those for?”
“The kids in the chorus,” Kat said as she sorted them into three distinct piles. “To thank them for coming out and doing this tonight. Each kid is getting a book, a portable CD player, and half a dozen Christmas cookies.”
“Those awesome ones with the almond extract?” Pia asked.
Kat nodded. “I baked them this afternoon.”
Chantal was stacking the books into an elaborate pyramid. “They’re gonna sing again on Tuesday, right?”
“Absolutely,” Pia said. “Eight songs. They’ve been practicing like demons.”
“What’s happening on Tuesday?” Jack asked.
“It’s this holiday celebrated by Christians around the world,” Pia explained as if addressing a toddler, “where people—not you, maybe, but normal people—exchange gifts and—”
“Oh, cut the poor guy some slack,” Kat chuckled. “There’s going to be a big party at Augusta House on Tuesday. It’s to celebrate all the winter holidays, not just Christmas, and it’s also to recognize our first full year of operation.”
Chantal said, “Kat’s cooking a turkey dinner for three hundred.”
“I’m supervising the cooking of a turkey dinner for three hundred,” Kat corrected.
“And we’re gonna have games with prizes,” Chantal continued, “and Kwanzaa and Hanukkah activities. Oh, and my brother Calvin’s gonna play Santa and hand out presents. It’ll be great.”
“Assuming we can get the communal room ready in time,” Pia said. “It’s a disaster. It used to be a sort of combination cafeteria and auditorium, and it’s never really been fixed up, ’cause our priority was turning classrooms into apartments. In fact, during the remodeling it got filled up with old desks, blackboards, gym equipment—if the workmen didn’t know what to do with something, it went there. But Tuesday’s just four days from now, so we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
Kat said, “It’s going to take the whole weekend to get that room ready. Tomorrow we’ll concentrate on getting all the furniture and debris cleared out, then Sunday we clean and decorate. Us and the Augusta House families.”
“Hey, Jack,” Chantal said a little too casually as she placed the last book atop her pyramid. “You doing anything tomorrow? There won’t be many guys there to help out, and there’s gonna be a ton of stuff to pick up and haul away.”
He grinned. “Is that all us men are good for?”
“You give me a minute, I’ll come up with one or two other things,” she answered with an impish grin.
“You’ve talked me into it,” he chuckled.
It didn’t take much, Kat thought, her stomach tightening with a sensation that she recognized, to her chagrin, as jealousy. Pia and Chantal had monopolized Jack almost the entire evening. On those rare occasions when the two women broke out of their cozy little huddle, it was to issue breathless reports to Kat about how sweet and funny Jack was, and how tall and buff and completely babe-alicious.
Kat wondered which one he’d gravitate to, Pia or Chantal. They were both young—well, youngish—and pretty and ultra-personable. And currently unattached.
Layered over Kat’s jealousy was a fair measure of guilt. She was attached. She had Preston. As far as he was concerned, they were as much an item as ever. Until she worked through her reservations about the relationship and either committed to him or ended it, she shouldn’t be thinking about Jack. Much less wondering, as she’d found herself doing this past week, what it would be like to make love to a man who looked at her the way he did.
And, oh God, last night she’d dreamed about him. She’d awakened gasping and sheened with sweat, his name a tremulous whisper in her ears. As she lay there in the dark, images from the dream began scrolling across her mental movie screen . . . their mouths meeting hungrily . . . his hands everywhere on her, shaping, stroking . . . him rearing over her, pressing into her . . .
She’d slapped a hand over her eyes, pulled a pillow over her head. Still, the images wouldn’t stop coming . . .
“Since you’re feeling so agreeable,” Pia told Jack, “maybe you’d like to help us hand out these gifts to the kids as they leave.”
“Um . . .” Jack looked from Pia to the gift-laden table to the kids bundling into their coats and gloves. “I guess . . .”
“Great. Just put on one of these.” Reaching into the laundry basket, Pia withdrew several red and white Santa hats like the one Kat had on earlier.
“Whoa.” Jack took a step back, hands up. “No way. Sorry, but . . .”
“Not your scene?” Chantal cocked an eyebrow at him.
“You worried about looking silly?” Pia pulled on one of the hats and handed one each to Kat and Chantal. “Or is it just the whole Christmas thing?”
“A little bit of both, I guess.”
Jack looked almost sad, or at least thoughtful, as he watched Kat and her friends hand out the gifts to the departing chorus members. It was as she was saying goodbye to the last few guests that he suggested that he linger for a while to look the apartment over with an eye toward giving her a quote on a security system; that had, of course, been why she’d invited him here in the first place.
While the caterer and his staff packed up and cleaned, Kat gave Jack the ten-cent tour, starting with the living room—the floor-to-ceiling windows being the reason she couldn’t make do with bars—and ending upstairs. Kat felt a little awkward as she guided him into her bedroom, with its cabbage-rose wallpaper and Victorian furnishings. He seemed a little self-conscious himself, if curious, although he did smile when he noticed the stuffed koala bear propped up on her high, four-poster bed.
Parting the ivory damask drapes, he checked out the windows. “Again,” he said, “these can be replaced and rigged up with security mechanisms without sacrificing the period look.”
“Great.”
Turning, he spied the framed photograph on her dresser. He crossed to it and picked it up, studying the enlarged snapshot of Preston in tennis whites, a fluorescent yellow ball in one hand and a racket in the other. It was a flattering picture; he looked tanned and vigorous and even handsomer than he was. And younger. Jack started to say something, then hesitated and looked up at her, a cryptic glint in his eye. “Who’s this? Your dad?”
Her cheeks stung. “No, that’s, uh . . . that’s Preston. My, uh . . .” She hated calling a man of Preston’s age her “boyfriend.”
“Oh.” He winced. “Sorry.” Obviously groping for some neutral comment, he said, “Nice frame.”
“It’s Tiffany. Preston gave it to me with the picture.” She regretted the statement as soon as it left her mouth, knowing that Jack would size Preston up as an egotist for having given her that picture.
“You’d never know he’s sixty-two,” Jack said as he set the photo back down.
“Sixty-two?” Kat exclaimed. “He’s fifty-two.”
“Oh. Uh . . .”
“I told you he was twenty years older than me. Do I really look like I’m in my forties?”
“No! God, you look . . .” He shook his head helplessly, his gaze lighting on her hair, her mouth, her legs. “Incredible. You’re . . . wow.”
The heat in her cheeks spread to consume her entire face.
“I mean, not that forty-something can’t look like wow, but . . .” He rubbed his neck. “I . . . don’t know what I was thinking when I said sixty-two. Slip of the tongue, I guess.”
“That’s all right. I guess I’m a little sensitive about his being so much older, or I wouldn’t have reacted like that.”
“No, it’s my fault. I’m . . . real good at saying the wrong things sometimes.”
“Miss Peale.” Kat turned to find Marco, the caterer, in the doorway, glancing uncomfortably between her and Jack, as if loath to interrupt what looked like a lovers’ tête-à-tête. “We’re about done, so . . .”
“Thanks, Marco. I’ll be right down.”
Jack produced a tape measure and proceeded to measure the first-floor windows while Kat was settling up with Marco. Once he and his staff were gone, Jack said, “I can do the last couple of windows and go over some security ideas right now, if you’d like. Unless you’re tired.”
“No, just a little stressed out. It was kind of a long night, what with all that pressure about the Livermores.” Not to mention the anxiety of watching Pia and Chantal flirting nonstop with Jack. Tension always went to her stomach; she hadn’t had the appetite for a single drink or hors d’oeuvre all night. “Tell you what. Why don’t I open that bottle of wine you brought while you finish your measuring, and then we can sit down and go over your ideas?”
The lamps in the den had been turned off during the cleanup, producing a deliciously tranquil semidarkness relieved only by the low flames in the fireplace and the dozen or so pillar candles scattered around the room. Kat had to hold every bottle of wine on the bar up to her face to find the Fox Run pinot noir that Jack had brought, but she left the lights off because, for the first time all evening, she felt her nerves starting to unknit.
As she was twisting the corkscrew, its handle bit into the ball of her hand, and she let out a little mew of pain.
“What’s the matter?” Jack asked as he came up behind her, retracting his tape measure into its case.
“Just my hand. It’s still a little tender.”
“From last week? The mugging?” He took the bottle and set it on the bar, then turned her hand palm up and rubbed his thumbs over it, generating a friction that sent a ticklish warmth up her arm and down into her chest. “It still hurts?”
“No, it’s . . .” She cleared her throat to dispel its sudden hoarseness. “It’s not pain, really, just . . . you know . . .”
Jack brought her hand close to his face to see it in the dark. He lowered his head, and then she felt his lips, hot and soft and shocking on her palm, and she closed her eyes and sighed.
Another kiss, a lingering one on her sensitive inner wrist. With her free hand she gripped the edge of the bar to keep from slumping to the ground, because her legs had gone liquid; her heart thrummed like a bird’s.
Kat opened her eyes, finding his face mere inches from hers, his gaze on her mouth. She’d never felt more ready, more desperate to be kissed than in that hushed and breathless moment, as his head bent to hers.
Nor had she ever felt more torn. It wasn’t like her, to let a man kiss her when she was involved with someone else. She wasn’t that kind of woman, couldn’t be that kind of woman.
“Jack.” She said it softly, gently, but it was enough. He shut his eyes for a moment, as if gathering himself. When he opened them and met her gaze, there was a resignation in his expression that told her he got the message. He didn’t like it, but he got it.
He released her, let out a long, unsteady breath.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I . . .”
He touched a fingertip to her mouth, lightly stroking her bottom lip before withdrawing his hand. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I should know better than to . . . muddy the waters.”
“What do you mean? What waters?”
He looked away, dragged a hand through his hair. “Just an expression. Look, why don’t you let me finish opening that bottle for you? Unless . . . I mean, do you want me to leave, or . . . ?”
“No, you can stay. As long as . . .”
“Yeah, I know. Don’t worry. I’ll keep it friendly.”
He was as good as his word. They sat together on the leather sofa in the candlelit den—albeit at opposite ends—drinking wine and hashing out her security needs for the better part of an hour. Jack filled up a legal pad with notes and diagrams. She slid out of her high heels and tucked her legs under her. He doffed his suit coat and loosened his tie.
“So, how do you want to work this?” he asked after she’d green-lighted his ideas. “Should I submit a bid?”
“I’m not taking bids. The job’s yours if you want it.”
“Ah.” He laid his pad and pencil on the coffee table and lifted his wine glass, which he’d hardly touched—whereas Kat had emptied almost half the bottle so far. She didn’t usually drink this much, this fast, but that was okay. Sometimes you needed a little help unwinding.
“So, do you want it?” she asked. “The job?”
He took a pensive sip of wine, and then another, almost as if he were stalling for some reason. “I couldn’t start right away.”
“No problem. When do you think you can schedule it in?”
He set his glass down without looking at her. “A few weeks from now, maybe?”
“Sure, that’d be—”
“Are you in love with him?” He looked at her. God, she wished he’d stop looking at her like that.
She swallowed. “Jack.”
Quietly he said, “It’s just a question. I’m not gonna . . .” His gaze swept over her, then he looked away, his jaw rigid. “I’m just curious. Are you?”
“I . . . haven’t known him that long.”
He sat back, nodded, returned his gaze to her. “How’d you two meet?”
She hesitated.
Jack smiled. “Hey, I’m just trying to prolong the pleasure of your company by making conversation about your boyfriend. Not an entirely innocent motive, maybe, but not exactly nefarious.”
She drank some more wine. “I met him at the end of October, when his firm agreed to do some pro bono legal work for Augusta House. He suggested we discuss it over lunch.” She shrugged. “He was . . . different from other men I’d known. I was intrigued.”
“So you’ve been seeing him for what, almost two months? I’m surprised he didn’t ask you to go to Aspen with him. Or did he?”
She looked at him over the rim of her glass. “How’d you know he’s in Aspen?”
Jack glanced away, picked up his glass, took a sip. “Chantal must have mentioned it, or Pia.”
God knew what else they’d “mentioned” to him. They both loathed Preston. “He couldn’t ask me to go with him, ’cause it’s this guy thing he does every year with some old pals. He was very apologetic.”
He wouldn’t have been if he’d known how secretly grateful Kat had been at the prospect of a respite from him. His three weeks in Aspen would give her, she’d reasoned, the breathing room she needed to think clearly and objectively about their budding relationship. More and more lately, she’d begun to wonder if Preston’s refreshing lack of interest in the size of her bank account hadn’t blinded her to his . . . “Faults” might be the wrong word, but he was different from her, and in some very significant respects. Not to mention two decades older. On the other hand, he was smart, successful, and classically handsome. She’d spent the past two months hoping for a genuine rapport to materialize between them, but it had proven slow in coming.
Three weeks. Three precious weeks in which to contemplate her future with Preston, or lack of it. That was all she’d wanted, yet no sooner had Preston flown off to Aspen than Jack O’Leary had stepped up to the plate. How could she possibly trust any conclusions she drew about Preston with a guy like Jack keeping her all weak in the knees? Her only recourse was to keep Jack at a distance unless and until she broke things off with Preston. Otherwise she’d always doubt that she’d done the right thing for the right reason.
“Do you miss him?” Jack asked.
“Of course,” she answered too quickly.
“Yeah,” he said soberly. “You probably spend an hour on the phone with him every night.”
“He’s called me a couple of times. He didn’t bother giving me the number, ’cause he said he’s hardly ever in his room.”
“Really? You’d think he’d want you to have the number so you could at least leave a message if you wanted to. Where’s he staying? You could always call information.”
She shrugged. “All I know is, it’s at the base of Buttermilk Mountain. Some hotel where you can ski in and ski out.”
“He didn’t even tell you the name of the place?”
“It just never came up.”
“You know . . . maybe I shouldn’t say anything, but . . .” Jack glanced uneasily at her. “Have you ever considered that he might be married?”
“What?” She sat upright, laughing incredulously. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Just ’cause he told you he was single?”
“I’d know if he was lying.” She grabbed the wine bottle off the table and refilled her glass.
Jack studied the wine in his glass as he swirled it. “Married men, when they’re pretending to be single, there’s a certain behavioral profile. They’ve got to compartmentalize their life, keep the wife in one world and the girlfriend in the other, ’cause God help him if they end up meeting, or talking to each other on the phone. That’s why these guys make it so hard for the girlfriend to get in touch with them.”
“And you’re an expert on cheating husbands because . . .?”
He looked suddenly weary. “Let’s just say I know whereof I speak. Has Preston ever even had you over to his place?”
“It’s a bit of a haul. He lives in Greenwich, Connecticut.”
“Are you sure? Where’s your Manhattan phone book?”
With a roll of the eyes, Kat pointed to the Edwardian banker’s desk in the corner. Jack crossed to it and flipped through the white pages with a determined expression. He believes this, she realized. He’d convinced himself that Preston was married, and now he was trying to convince her.
Jack made a sound of disgust and slammed the phone book onto the desk. “Unlisted. Of course.”
“Either that,” she said testily, “or he really does live in Greenwich. I’ve got his phone number, you know. It’s a two-oh-three area code. That’s Connecticut.”
“And you’ve spoken to him there?” Jack asked as he walked back across the room.
“Yes. Well . . . I’ve left messages on his machine. He’s out a lot. There’s that long commute, and he’s active at his club. But he’s always gotten back to me.”
“Just ’cause he’s got an answering machine in Greenwich doesn’t mean he lives there. Maybe he knows someone—”
“And maybe you’re clutching at straws.” More gently she said, “Jack, I’m flattered, I really am, but you’ve got to let it go.”
Jack sat on the corner of the coffee table, leaned forward, cupped her face in his warm hands; the air left her lungs. Earnestly, softly, he said, “He doesn’t deserve you. He’s just using you.”
She shook her head resolutely. “I’d know it if he was.”
He stood up, raked both hands through his hair. “Kat . . . no. You wouldn’t. Not you. You’re trusting—too trusting. You think everyone’s as good as you are, but—”
“You think I’m gullible.”
“No, I—”
“Maybe I used to be, but I’ve learned my lesson, especially when it comes to men. Why do you think I was so attracted to Preston in the first place? It’s because for once there’s a man in my life who’s actually interested in me as a person, not in how he can profit from me.”
“He’s not using you for money.” Jack picked up his wine glass and sat back down on the sofa. “He’s using you for sex.”
“Yeah, well, that just shows how little you know, because we’ve never even . . .” She bit her lip, wishing she hadn’t blurted that out. What business was it of Jack’s?
He was staring at her, his head cocked as if he weren’t sure he’d heard right. He looked surprised, but pleased. She could see it in his eyes, that little glimmer of gratification. “You and Preston. You don’t . . .”
Kat gulped down the rest of her wine. “We will, I’m sure. Sooner or later.”
“Let me guess. Preston’s lobbying for sooner. You’re holding out for later.”
“I’ve been burned too many times by letting things get too . . . intimate with a man, only to find out . . . well, we’ve covered that territory. The users.”
“But Preston’s different,” Jack said. “Or so you seem to think. So how come you won’t sleep with him?”
“He is different,” she said heatedly. “And I am going to sleep with him. I even went back on the . . .” Damn. It was the wine, making her spill her guts like this. She should have known better than to drink so much on an empty stomach.
“The pill?” he said. “You went back on the pill.”
“I can’t believe I’m telling you all this.”
“And I can’t believe this guy isn’t trying to coax you between the sheets every chance he gets.”
“He’s a gentleman.”
“Even gentlemen have certain expectations once a few weeks have gone by. Surely he’s made his move by now.”
Kat ran her finger around the rim of her empty wine glass, generating an airy trill. “About a month ago, when we were out to dinner, he gave me these gifts. Three of them—a tiny box, a medium box, and a big box, all tied together with gold ribbon. He said to open the smallest one first. It was a pair of diamond earrings from Harry Winston. He told me he wanted me to go away with him that weekend—he’s got a place in Bermuda. I said I’d go with him, but only if we had separate bedrooms, and that I couldn’t accept the earrings. They were too valuable a gift.”
“Not to mention that there appeared to be strings attached,” Jack pointed out.
Kat didn’t bother trying to deny that that had factored into the equation.
“If you gave the earrings back, then . . .” Jack reached out and brushed a fingertip over her left earlobe and the diamond stud that adorned it; she wished his touch didn’t speed her heart this way. “What are these?”
“My grandmother gave me these for my fifteenth birthday. They’re pear-cut. The ones Preston gave me were emerald-cut.”
“Oh.”
She smiled. “You don’t know the difference.”
He returned the smile, still stroking her ear. “No.”
She lowered her head, breaking the contact. “I opened the medium-sized box next. It held that picture of him in the Tiffany frame. He took the big box away without letting me open it. He said it was something else he’d wanted me to wear in Bermuda, but that it could wait till we were a little further along in our relationship.”
“Sexy lingerie,” Jack said.
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Let me guess. He never did take you to Bermuda.”
Kat hated that he was right. “Something came up. He had to work that weekend.”
“Uh-huh.” Jack lifted the almost-empty wine bottle and held it over her glass, but she covered it with her hand, saying she’d had more than enough. He emptied the last couple of ounces into his own glass.
“So, you don’t love him.” Jack sat back, propping an ankle on his knee. “Not yet, anyway. And so far it’s a platonic relationship. Yet you’re bending over backward to be faithful.”
She shrugged. “It’s the way I am. I don’t like complications, and I especially don’t like to be the cause of them. And I do believe in right and wrong. Preston and I have an unspoken understanding, and that understanding is that we’re exclusive and that eventually we’ll take things to the next level.” All of which was true enough on the surface, but nowhere near the whole story. Kat knew better than to confide her doubts about Preston to Jack, who would no doubt seize on them and make her decision even more difficult. “In the meantime, like I said, he’s being a gentleman.”
“Playing the gentleman. He’s wearing you down. Sex is what he’s after.”
She made a little Yeah, right face. “He’s middle-aged. Middle-aged men have other priorities.”
“Not this one.”
“What makes you think that?”
He turned toward her, his eyes all-seeing in the dark, his voice low and almost pained. “Because no man in his right mind could be with you, smelling the way you smell and watching you walk and listening to that laugh of yours, and not want to possess you. Entirely. Body and soul. You’re the kind of woman a man wants to lose himself inside, Kat, the kind he aches to hear moaning his name in the dark. You’re the one.”
Kat couldn’t tear her gaze from his. A log shifted in the fireplace, settling with a rustle of embers.
“You should leave,” she said, so quietly even she almost didn’t hear it.
“Yeah.”
She fetched his overcoat, walked him to the front door, held it open.
“What time should I be there in the morning?” he asked.
She frowned in bewilderment for a moment before remembering that Chantal had drafted him to help get ready for the holiday party at Augusta House. “You really don’t have to—”
“I want to.”
“Nine o’clock, then?”
“I’ll be there.” As he stepped out into the hallway, he turned and said, “What does he call you? Kat or Katherine?”
“Katherine.”
That seemed to please him, because he smiled as he turned to leave. “Good night, Kat.”
There was a message on Jack’s machine when he got home to Brooklyn that night.
Beep.
“Jack, it’s me, Celeste. Any developments as regards the service I’ve retained you to perform? You’ll notice I’m being discreet, in case you have company.”
There came a muted snick and the crackle of a cigarette being lit, followed by a brisk exhalation.
“As you know, I expect this situation to be resolved before I return to New York on January fourth, which means you’ve got thirteen more days to, shall we say, close the deal. I assume you’re in contact with the subject at this point—hopefully close contact. I wouldn’t mind a progress report, as I’m naturally very much preoccupied with this matter. I left my credit card behind at two different stores yesterday.”
Another drag on the cigarette. “Preston’s getting a massage tomorrow between two and three in the afternoon your time, so he’ll be out of the room for an hour—an hour and a half if he bangs the masseuse. You’ve got my number here. I’ll be waiting for your call.”
Click.