Since his purchases hadn’t run to such necessities as a clean shirt or a change of underwear, their first stop late Saturday morning was Paul’s Evanston apartment.
Bette immediately liked the four-story red-brick building with the general air of solidity. At this time of year, with the leaves gone from the neighborhood’s many trees, his top-floor apartment’s bay window gave a glimpse of the lake a few blocks away.
But the view was one of the few things that could be said for the near-barren living room. A door topped a pair of file cabinets and held a computer and accoutrements. Brick-and-board shelves for books, an old TV and mismatched stereo equipment. A rugged old couch and one side chair. That was it.
A leaden mass formed in her stomach. It was all too clearly a reflection of the resident. The landing place of someone who wanted to be prepared to take off again.
“Not quite as homey as your place, huh?”
He sounded almost defensive as he stood just inside the door and waved her in, and she didn’t have the heart to agree as wholeheartedly as she might have otherwise. “No.” Searching for something else to say, she added, “It’s a nice neighborhood, Paul.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, brightening a little. “It is. Here’s the kitchen.” His gesture took in a cubicle as Spartan as the living room, although its 1940s-style appliances looked considerably less used than the living room furniture. “I eat out a lot,” he explained.
“And the bath.” It was mostly screened from view by towels and shirts hanging from door corners, shower curtain rod and doorknobs, but it appeared to be the same vintage as the kitchen.
“And the bedroom.” A king-size mattress and box spring sat directly on the bare wooden floor with the pillows and comforter rumpled from the last time he’d used them. A canvas-covered director’s chair at one side held a clock radio and a stack of books on its seat. She suspected that under the pile of clothes on the opposite side of the bed resided the chair’s twin. A tiny dresser stood next to a closed closet door. “Not much storage space,” he muttered. “Closet barely holds the suits and stuff, so the other things . . .” He shrugged.
“That’s the tour, complete in thirty-four seconds, no need to tip the tour conductor.”
He smiled a little lopsidedly, and she couldn’t resist leaning in as they stood in the doorway of his bedroom and kissing the corner of his mouth. Immediately, she felt embarrassed by the gesture. They’d shared a night of passion, but affection was something else.
“I’ll...I’ll just wait out here while you get your things,” she said, trying to make her retreat to the living room seem less like scuttling than it felt.
“I kind of thought—” He broke off, but she saw him glance from his rumpled bed to her and back, and she had a pretty good idea what he’d thought. She didn’t mind the thought, but hadn’t a clue how to express that. But he obviously took her hesitation as a no. “Okay. This shouldn’t take long. I’ve just got to find some clean things.” He turned into the bedroom, then back. “I ought to stop by the cleaners and take some of this stuff in, too.”
She hid a smile. The cleaners were going to make a small fortune. “Okay.”
She wandered around the living room, looking at his eclectic mix of books and CDs, absently noting that the papers spread out by the computer dealt with his business, and looked professional and detailed.
The sounds from the bedroom finally drew her back. She’d pretended not to notice when he swept the bathroom clean by heaping clothes and towels into his arms. Now he’d formed a pile in the middle of the bedroom floor, and with his back to her, was busy searching out additions for it.
The search entailed digging through the layers on the chair with as much care as an archaeologist. He apparently hadn’t found a shirt to his liking yet, because he wore none. But he’d put on a pair of jeans. Snug jeans that curved tautly over his derriere.
Bette swallowed. Heat ran through her system with deliberate speed, melting away the awkward shyness and the quiet protests of sore muscles.
She could slip into the room, sneak up behind him, mold her palms to the shape of the seat of those jeans, then rub up to the bare skin of his back, across the muscled width of his shoulders, and down again. Her fingers would snag in the waistband of his jeans on the return trip, maybe delve inside a bit, enough to feel the smooth hard skin.
Just before she pushed him too hard with her teasing touch, the split second before he would have to turn and tumble her into the bed, she would pull her fingers away and send her hands once more on their downward path to where they had begun. Only this time they’d go farther, around to—Bette gasped and jerked at the shrill bleat just over her head, but Paul didn’t even turn around.
“Get the buzzer, will you? Michael said something about stopping by today.”
She held one steadying hand over her heart as she used the other to press the button that released the ground-floor door. She opened the apartment door. Quick footsteps echoed up the stairs, along with a grim mutter about people stupid enough to live on the fourth floor without an elevator, then a young woman’s head topped the stair railing. As soon as she made the turn and spotted Bette, she started talking.
“Who are you?” she asked with open curiosity.
Bette didn’t need to ask the return question. The crown of chestnut hair, the sparkle in gray-green eyes and the energetic grace of her casually clad body proclaimed the young woman to be Paul Monroe’s sister.
When she grinned, abruptly and blindingly, the likeness was startling. “Never mind,” she instructed, just as Bette opened her mouth for a neutral reply. “I know who you are. Mom told me all about you. And the pumpkins.”
She managed to make the latter sound wicked and depraved, or maybe that was just Bette’s conscience. Here she had been thinking lascivious thoughts about a man when his kid sister must have been just outside the building. It made her feel illogically guilty. Had her sister-in-law, Claire, ever had such thoughts about her brother, Ronald? Oh, she knew they had two kids and all, but did Claire really have those kinds of thoughts about Ronald?
A giggle tickled her throat, and that made her feel guiltier. Get hold of yourself, Bette.
“Hello, I’m Bette Wharton, a friend of Paul’s. You must be Judi.”
Judi shook her extended hand with enthusiasm and studied her. They stood just about eye to eye. Judi Monroe had a lithe athlete’s body encased in sweatpants and three layers of shirts, a free-fall tumble of hair and a mobile, restless face. She looked very, very young, and Bette experienced a renewed wash of guilt. What interpretation would this girl put on the situation, finding her here in her brother’s apartment?
“Geez, count on Paul to bring you here for a rendezvous!”
Bette gasped. “No—”
Judi went on, pitching her voice to reach the brother she obviously expected to be in the other room. “Paul, couldn’t you have taken her someplace better than this! You should have a little more class.” She shook her head in disgust as she swung a heavily loaded backpack off her shoulders and onto the desk, then called out again. “And some imagination!”
“No. You don’t understand. He didn’t—This isn’t—”
Bette caught herself in time from adding the “what it seems” cliché, but still couldn’t find much of an explanation. Perhaps because part of her cried out to defend Paul, to say just how classy and imaginative and romantic and downright passionate he could be. Only that was the very last thing she ought to be telling his younger sister.
“We stopped by to pick up some, uh, papers. That’s all. We weren’t—”
Judi glanced back with one eyebrow raised. “You weren’t?”
The wild thought occurred to Bette that the younger woman sounded disappointed. Through some sense beyond the normal five, she became aware of Paul. Turning, she found him lounging in the doorway to his bedroom not far behind her, and she had to fight the urge to go to him and put her head on his shoulder and let him deal with this whole awkward situation.
“Damn! Why not? What the hell’s the matter with you, Paul?”
“Judith Marie.” Paul’s voice held censure. “Stop swearing. You know how Mom feels about that.”
Bette looked from brother to sister in amazement. That’s what he was responding to?
“Sorry,” his sister apologized absently. “Dorm talk. But how about this other stuff? Why aren’t you—?”
“Shut up, Judi.” It was mild but effective. “It’s none of your business. Quit embarrassing Bette.”
Judi Monroe looked stricken for an instant, then contrite. She turned wide eyes on Bette. “Did I? Embarrass you? I didn’t mean to. Sometimes my mouth just gets away from me. I’m sorry.”
Bette met her look and started to formulate routine words of denial to smooth over the situation. Instead, she found herself telling the truth. “You did embarrass me a little. Maybe startled me is more accurate.”
Judi nodded. “I do that to people sometimes. I forget what I’m saying, and what I’m thinking just comes out. I really am sorry.”
Bette smiled. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Judi’s returning smile seemed to light the room. “Thanks!”
Paul cleared his throat in a way that made Bette flick a look at him. Did those changeable eyes of his hold an added emotion? “So, Judi, what brings you here today?”
“I came to use your computer. I’ve got a Russian history paper due Monday, and your keyboard’s better than my laptop. Especially the way I type.”
Her eyes slid past her brother. Bette wondered if she could see the bed and would draw incorrect conclusions from its state. With Judi’s next words, Bette knew she could and she had.
“But if I’m in the way …” Judi let it hang.
Paul was looking at Bette. All she had to do was make the smallest sign and he’d get rid of his sister. She knew that. An afternoon spent the way they’d spent the previous night had definite appeal, but someone who balked at checking into a hotel without luggage wasn’t about to make such a clear declaration in front of Paul’s younger sister.
“Of course not,” Bette supplied. It wasn’t exactly her place to issue the invitation, but apparently Paul wasn’t about to. “Your brother was going to show me some real estate in the area. We just stopped off here to get some clothes—” she ignored the choked sound of laughter from behind her “—that he has to take to the cleaners,” she added with emphasis.
Paul sighed gustily enough that Bette thought she could feel his breath stir her hair. She glared at him, but he ignored it, telling his sister with some disgust, “All right, you can stay here and use the computer. I guess we’re going to be leaving soon.”
Judi’s face lit with the smile that was so like Paul’s. “Thanks. That’s great. It’s a killer paper, so this will really help.” She widened her eyes in a soulful look. “In fact, I’ll probably be here well into the night, so—”
“Don’t you have a date tonight?” Paul interrupted sternly.
“Nope. This paper’s really important, so I decided to work all weekend on it. I won’t even go back to the dorm for dinner, so—”
“No. Absolutely not.” Paul was adamant.
“No, what?” Bette asked, confused.
“This human vacuum cleaner in the guise of my sister intends to sit around my apartment eating all day, and then she was going to try to wheedle us into bringing back some dinner tonight,” he explained, all the while frowning at Judi, who appeared not a bit abashed. Even if his comments to Michael and Grady hadn’t forewarned Bette, she would have known that this fencing between brother and sister was some sort of sibling routine. She and Ronald had had enough of their own verbal tugs-of-war for her to spot the similarity. “How many meals did you get out of Michael while he was in the area this week?”
“Two. But I just thought tonight maybe a pizza or some Chinese, if you had a chance—”
“No!”
“That doesn’t seem so unreasonable, Paul,” objected Bette. “Remember how it was when you were in school and you had to eat the horrible cafeteria stuff and there was never enough money to buy real food? It hasn’t been so long ago that you’ve forgotten, has it?”
The sound she heard might have been him grinding his teeth, but Judi’s look was radiant. Feeling like a successful conspirator, she flashed the young woman a grin before turning an innocent face to Paul. He wasn’t fooled.
“All right, you two. All right! You make it sound as if I’m a hundred-and-seventy-year-old miser,” he said with mock grouchiness. Bette had to admire his performance, though his eyes gave him away. “I know I can’t win when the two of you gang up on me. Women!”
He lounged back into the bedroom, grumbling about women and being eaten out of house and home.
“C’mon,” Judi invited Bette. “Let’s see what he’s got to eat.”
Bette wasn’t hungry after the elaborate room service breakfast Paul had ordered, but she couldn’t resist Judi’s grin. Soon Judi was perched on the counter eating graham crackers and Bette was leaning against the refrigerator with a soft drink, listening to the younger woman’s account of her recent dating travails.
Despite the somber note of the tale, Bette found herself wanting to smile. She’d missed this, the exchanging of confidences between women. She’d lost touch with so many of her friends because of the demands of school and then her business. Even with Darla, most of the conversation and confidences centered around business. It was refreshing to talk about something else. For a moment she even had the uncharacteristic urge to start exchanging opinions on clothes or hair.
“This is nice,” Judi said with a satisfied sigh, as if her mind had been running along the same lines. “It’s hard to talk to most of my friends because we all hang out in the same group and you never know when one of them is going to turn around and start dating some guy you’ve been talking about. I’ve always wished I had a sister.”
“Me, too,” Bette admitted with a smile. “Although I’ve got a pretty good brother.”
“Oh, I do, too,” said Judi, leaving no doubt she meant it. “He puts on a big front, but he’s a marshmallow underneath. He and his friends—Have you met Michael and Grady? Yes? They were great to me growing up. It was like having three older brothers. But sometimes you just don’t want to be ‘one of the guys.’ It might have been different if Tris had been around more, even though she’s seven years older. But her family moved away when I was about seven, and when she came back for college the three guys were always around, too, so that meant no girl talk. Sometimes I thought I’d go nuts if I heard one more word about sports.” She sighed gustily. “You’re lucky you met Paul in October.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah, the baseball season’s over—at least for the Cubs—otherwise he’d have you out at Wrigley Field every day. You do know that about him, don’t you? He’s a baseball fanatic.”
“He seems to come by it honestly, since your father loves the game so much.”
Judi looked at her a little strangely. “Yeah, Dad likes baseball, too, but . . .” Bette saw the moment Judi decided to trust her. “But I think Walter Mulholland hating it might have more to do with Paul’s feelings.”
“Walter Mulholland? Your grandfather?”
How strange, and how cold-sounding to refer to your grandfather that way. Paul had done the same thing that night at Mama Artemis’s.
“Yeah. Mom’s father. Hard to believe they were related. He didn’t pay much attention to me, since I was just a kid—I was only ten when he died—and a girl on top of it. But he and Paul . . .” She grimaced. “I can remember them going round and round. Walter Mulholland storming and laying down the law, and Paul standing there, not saying much except an occasional no.”
She shifted position as though the counter had grown harder. “I remember sitting on the steps, listening to Walter shouting at Paul that he would do what he was supposed to or he would no longer be a member of the family. I must have been about
six, and I thought he really could make it so Paul wasn’t my brother. I was sitting there crying when Paul found me. He took me up and tucked me into bed, and he told me that nothing could make him not be my brother anymore—unless I broke another of his clipper ship models.”
Judi’s chuckle sounded as if it had slipped past a lump in her throat. “He said Walter wanted to plot out his life, and he wasn’t going to let that happen. He said he’d be damned if he’d go to Walter Mulholland’s Ivy League alma mater. And if the old man wanted to disinherit him for that, fine.”
“But your parents . . .” The sentence trailed off because Bette didn’t know how to finish it. She ached for the young Paul, yet her relationship with her own grandfather had been so warm and loving, how could she understand this?
“They pretty much stayed out of it. They stood their ground sometimes—like refusing to send Paul to military school—but Dad especially never understood why Paul said no to all those things. Ivy League schools and law school, joining the firm, making lots of money and buying a big house. He still doesn’t understand. He was awfully poor growing up, and I guess that’s the life he’d dreamed of, so he thought for sure Paul would want it, too. Does that make sense?”
Bette wasn’t sure.
“Hey, are you ready?” Paul’s voice, a bit muffled, came from the living room.
When they came out of the kitchen, they saw the cause: a stack of clothing that loaded his arms down to below waist level and reached as high as his nose.
Bette met Judi’s sparkling eyes and they both broke up, perhaps partly as a release from the serious turn of their conversation. If they’d started to form a bond during the talk in the kitchen, the shared laughter now strengthened it.
“All right, you two, quit giggling and somebody open the door. Before I drop this stuff.” He raised his eyebrows over the top of the stack in a way that brought on renewed laughter from the two women. “You know, Judi, the sooner we leave, the sooner we can come back with some dinner.”
Judi promptly opened the door with exaggerated solicitude, declaring solemnly, “Never let it be said I was immune to bribery.”
All the way down the stairs, they could hear the echo of her chuckles. When a small sound escaped Bette, Paul muttered, “Traitor” and glared over the top of the pile. But she wasn’t fooled, and the clothing didn’t muffle all of his laughter.