It wasn’t, not by a long shot.
His kiss was gentle, yet hinted at strength, it was firm without being hard, it was passionate without being pushy. Mostly it was persuasive, a promise of potential, a tiny taste of what this volcano could offer to those who dared to slip over the side.
His kiss nudged awake the starlight that had dozed off in my veins, then hitched a ride to Venus.
I could have kissed him for a week, but he suddenly stepped back and looked away.
“Meet you there at seven,” he said quickly, more quickly than he usually spoke.
He pocketed my card and was out the door in a heartbeat. I had the sense that he was on the run from me, which would have been pretty funny if it had been the case. Without so much as a backward glance, he was gone into the night, swallowed so completely by the darkness that he might really have been a champagne fantasy.
But my lips burned.
Fantasies have never managed that. I locked the deadbolt and looked at that crack in the ceiling again, telling myself that this was no big deal. One kiss did not a future make.
Ha. My heart told me to check on those ruby slippers before I gave it up so easily.
But no, reason must prevail. I was just going to do a small favor for an old friend, and that would be that. Some favor, discovering a body that had been laying in the sun for a day or so. I wrinkled my nose at that prospect. But it was perfectly mundane, get in, get out, back at my desk by lunch and probably never see Nick again. My pounding heart missed a beat and I tasted him on my lips once more.
But maybe not. He had come to me, after all. He had confided in me, too, and I knew how reticent he was.
And he had kissed me. Fa la la.
I danced toward the bedroom, in no doubt that the world was my oyster. I knew I was going to dream about Nick Sullivan.
If I managed to sleep at all.
* * *
He walked.
He had no clear idea where to go, at least for the short term, but it didn’t matter. He had learned over the years to sleep when he could and get by without when he couldn’t—and there was no way he’d be sleeping tonight. He did his best thinking while walking and he had a lot of thinking to do.
He wasn’t ready to think about Phil Coxwell just yet.
He still couldn’t believe that Lucia was dead. Even though they hadn’t talked for years, he had known she was there. He had felt her presence, like a vigilant if temperamental guardian angel.
At least he had always thought that was what he felt. He still was aware of that force of will, which only proved how much he had kidded himself. Perhaps it was his own conscience. It certainly wasn’t Lucia.
Because she was dead.
He thought about change.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and lengthened his stride. Cars flew past him, headlights sweeping over him as the cars hurried from here to there. Everyone was in a hurry, everyone had somewhere to go and something to do, everyone was filled with purpose. Everyone embraced change and ‘progress’.
Everyone but him. He’d seen change, he’d witnessed the so-called progress that had spun from his influence and he didn’t like the view. He had thought he was doing something good but it was just an illusion. It had gone terribly wrong.
And it was his fault.
It seemed that no good deed of Nick’s ever went unpunished. For years, he had tried to protect Sean from the results of own misdeeds, from the potential consequences for both of them.
He had tried to protect Lucia from the truth about her favorite grandson. The price of his last lie had been his own relationship with her, a treasure which he had valued less than he should have.
And when he had finally returned to mend fences with his grandmother, it had cost Lucia her life. Sean had always been one to make the most of the barest sliver of opportunity.
While he had paved a personal road to hell with good intentions.
Not that he could do much about it now. He turned up his collar against the wind. The money from the sale of his company would always feel dirty in his hands, tainted by what had created its value. He spent it because he had no other options, but he didn’t enjoy these fruits of his success.
More than once, he had come close to giving it all to a charity, some organization that fed children in the third world or paid for vaccinations taken for granted in the first. But he had been to too many of those countries and seen too many of those charitable dollars end up in pockets they were never intended to line.
The money was his millstone and it might as well have hung around his neck.
He was a steady walker, used to covering a lot of ground with a minimum of effort. His feet were tired by the time he reached Cambridge, a gift from the relentless concrete. He headed for Mount Auburn Cemetery and the relief of greenery.
Even at night, there was a sense of spring in the buds on the trees and the bulbs bursting from the earth. The signs of rebirth invigorated him, and made him think of Phil. A garden designer. He could imagine her doing that, putting her mix of gentleness and severity to good use in a garden.
Her character would have been wasted on the law.
If she had been with him now, she could have told him what every plant was, how it would bloom, how big it would become. She would have infected each description with her enthusiasm and passion.
She would have made him smile. Even picturing her here, talking about plants in the dead of the night, did make him smile. He believed she would have done it.
By the time he had settled against a cold stone to watch the moon rise, he was inclined to be less hard on himself. There was one thing he had done that hadn’t gone wrong in the end. Phil blamed him for setting her on the course to making her own choices. He didn’t remember telling her to do so, but that was beside the point.
He liked the rare sense that he had been a catalyst for change that had proven positive. He watched the moon tear itself free of the horizon and cast its glow on the silhouette of Boston, enjoying the knowledge that he had been at the root of a good change.
He wasn’t an habitual smoker, but occasionally indulged when the moment was right. He wished he had a cigarette now, to turn in his fingers, to watch the red glow of the ember, to blow smoke rings at the stars.
Lucia had taught him to blow smoke rings. It would have been a fitting tribute to her. But he didn’t have a cigarette and he wasn’t likely to find one here.
He did without, as he so often did without so many things.
He had had his last butt in Chile, lost in the solitude of a state park that went on forever. He had been on a camping trip with half a dozen others, packed into an ancient blue minivan. The park was cut by a gravel road apparently untraveled by anyone other than themselves, because they drove for hours without seeing another vehicle or human.
Their truck had overheated at twilight and the local driver had opened the hood to study the engine. It seemed a peculiarity of South Americans, this conviction that just looking at the engine would make it spontaneously repair itself. And the more people who stared, the better. He had seen buses in the Andes broken down and drawn to the shoulder, their entire payload gathered around to eyeball the engine in silence.
He had joined the driver that evening, they had exchanged grim prognoses in Spanish, then the cook had climbed out to offer his pack of cigarettes. The three of them had stood there beneath a brilliant canopy of stars, smoking, collectively willing the engine back to life.
It hadn’t worked, but neither would have any expression of frustration. When the last cigarette was ground out under a heel, the three of them had pulled out the toolbox and set to work.
That moon had been bright enough that they hadn’t needed a flashlight. In contrast, this moon fought valiantly against the electrical glow of the city, but was still diminished to a distant glow. A nightlight in the celestial bathroom. Even the stars were so dim here.
But one star winked at him, as though it was telling him to buck
up. It made him think again of a certain auburn-haired woman, one who had no trouble sharing her thoughts.
Phil had always been off limits, both because she was his friend, and because she was sweet on his brother. Not that Sean had ever reciprocated in kind. Consoling Phil when Sean treated her badly had been just part of the big brother clean up and protection plan.
Hadn’t it?
And she had gone along with Nick’s own lie to protect Sean from his own mistake, keeping the secret for Sean’s sake.
Hadn’t she?
But if she had, why hadn’t anything ever come of it? He had half-expected Sean to have capitalized on Phil’s complicity, to have used her affection for him against her. He had more than expected her to be either with Sean and miserable about it, or abandoned and embittered.
But she seemed to have completely forgotten Sean.
Or was that just Phil’s tough talk?
He didn’t know and it irritated him more than he knew it should have. After all, even dreading a confrontation with his brother, even suspecting that his brother might be with Phil, he hadn’t been able to stay away from her.
Phil had always had that effect upon him. It was the way she listened, the way she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, the way she made him feel at ease.
He had thought that was because they were friends, a tentative balance at best between teenagers of different genders and one he had worked hard not to upset.
But if Phil was yearning for his brother, how could she kiss him as though she would eat him alive? She was the most honest person he had ever known, and her passion couldn’t be a lie.
But was she making do with one brother because the other hadn’t shown? There was an ugly possibility and one that had occurred to him when her lips clung so sweetly to his. He’d stood in for Sean more than enough times in his life. The sense that he was doing it again had sent him running from Phil like an idiot.
The brothers had always looked similar, close enough in appearance that some people confused them. In manner, they had been like night and day, but few got friendly enough with the Sullivans to detect that. Both had been useful situations once.
At least to Sean.
But not this time. If Nick kissed Phil again, he’d make sure she knew which brother he was.
Speaking of the devil, he supposed he had avoided the inevitable long enough. Eventually the dirty work has to be done. He abandoned his imaginary cigarette and went to work.
He was, admittedly, curious.
He found the address in the North End without a lot of trouble, although the building’s windows were all in darkness when he arrived there. The street was close enough to Hanover Street to be bit busy, which suited him.
Sean’s was #2, according to the white pages, and he managed to get a look a the array of buzzers by the door on a stroll-by. Three buzzers, three floors, “Sullivan” beside the middle one. No mysteries there. He found a niche between the buildings opposite and hunkered down between the shadowed trash cans to wait.
He was rewarded just after three. The arguing couple didn’t attract his eye initially, until the man raised his voice in anger. Nick’s head snapped up at the familiarity of that drunken slur. He straightened silently, his eyes narrowing as his brother gave the woman a push up the stairs that was just a bit too helpful.
He noted with some satisfaction that he and his brother didn’t look that similar any more.
The lights came on in the second floor windows a moment later, the small dark-haired woman rushing to pull the blinds. Sean peeled off his coat with a deliberation Nick knew to beware, his gaze fixed on the woman.
She didn’t get the last blind down quickly enough. Nick flinched as his brother struck her shoulder. Hard. She cried out and Sean shouted something. He hauled down the blind and turned on her again, a menacing silhouette.
A neighbor’s light flicked out, as though that person chose deliberately to not be involved.
Nick did not share the neighbor’s reservations. It was time his brother learned something about repercussions.
He strode to a pay phone and called 911. He reported a domestic squabble, described what he had seen and gave both the address and Sean’s name.
When the dispatcher asked for his own, he hung up.
He waited for the squad car to arrive, lurking in the shadows with his hands balled in his pockets. He wanted desperately to intervene, but Phil’s implication that he wasn’t thinking straight rang in his ears.
She was probably right.
The cops came fairly quickly. He waited until they took Sean away, his brother loudly protesting innocence all the way. He’d be out in no time, Nick knew it. The woman wept on the stairs, disregarding the earnest advice of a policewoman.
He’d done what he could, but he didn’t feel a lot better. He couldn’t solve this, though it was a step in the right direction. The squad car pulled away and he stepped into the thinning crowd on Hanover. He walked, more quickly now, with even less destination. The night was getting colder, but anger kept him warm.
By dawn, he’d dealt with the worst of his frustration. He fingered the card in his pocket, checked the address and turned toward Phil’s office, anticipation lightening his step.
Chapter Three
Morning came early and it was not a pretty sight.
The Widow Clicquot had proven to be a vengeful piece of work. My head was pounding when the alarm went off. I vaguely remembered saying to Elaine that the label didn’t make the woman look like a party girl. It was dark and cold, as though the weatherman had forgotten it was supposed to be spring. I groaned a lot, got out of bed and faced the bathroom mirror for the bad news.
And it was bad. My eyes were puffy in that oh-so-attractive-I’m-an-eighty-year-old-alcoholic kind of way. Luck was wounded in a gutter and would die a painful death the moment Nick got a look at how scary mornings could be.
So much for second chances.
Now, I am not a morning person, not by any stretch of the imagination, and a mere five hours sleep treads dangerously close to hell in my world view. Heaven, in case you’re interested, involves sleeping in until at least eleven, lounging around in silky pajamas, and perusing horticultural catalogues. I added Nick, naked and enthralled, to the image and felt somewhat perkier.
Elaine insists that my reluctance to face a new day is due to a “tragic” deficiency of caffeine in my bloodstream. Elaine runs on the high voltage stuff—she’s a double espresso before bed kind of girl, and probably sleeps like a baby.
Only fools under-estimate her.
I refuse to get on the coffee bandwagon, since I won’t come within spitting distance of any addictive substance, whether it’s legal or not. Last night had been an exception and even the bubbles were on the side of negative reinforcement this morning.
Now, chocolate is beyond the jurisdiction of this addictive substances injunction. A rare exception. Maybe a loophole. Or somewhere there had been a precedent. I know, the fundamental right of every mortal to eat chocolate is in the Geneva Convention.
If it isn’t, it should be. The precise legal rationale is unimportant—see? I told you I wasn’t cut out for that stuff—but the chocolate is not. It must be bittersweet, it must of European manufacture, and access to it must not be impeded.
Otherwise things can get ugly.
Many foods have been banished from my kitchen and diet because of their betrayal of me in those dark teenage years—auslander potato chips, expat donuts, juvenile-tried-in-adult-court home fries—but my relationship with chocolate is beyond such restrictions.
Our love affair borders on the divine. All transgressions can be forgiven for one’s soul mate—as long as it remembers its place. I handle chocolate as a controlled substance, since prolonged exposure results in extreme lateral growth. One chocolate bar every month and not one bite more is my allotment.
Fantasies fortunately don’t count.
I buy the chocolate on the first of the month, as regularly as
clockwork, and ogle it in the fridge for as long as I can stand it. Once it’s gone, I’m S.O.L. until the first rolls around again. Under this agreement, the chocolate I do eat is forbidden to land on my hips.
Thus far, treaty terms had been maintained by both sides.
On this bleary-eyed morning, I surveyed the healthy contents of my fridge and knew I couldn’t face yogurt. I was sleep-deprived, hung-over, and—remembering this part a bit too late to do anything about it—en route to discovering a slightly stale corpse.
And meeting Nick again, maybe without the sparkle of Fortune’s smile.
Nervous? You bet. Sustenance for the soul was due.
It lurked in the back of the fridge, a glorious truffle-filled Belgian confection that I had hidden from myself but knew damn well was there. This month’s chocolate orgasm. I pounced on it before it could get playful, inhaled half of it before I had realized what I had done.
Discipline returned and I savored the rest in the slow motion it deserved, to heck with the three weeks remaining in the month. It was chocolate bliss. I rolled each bite around my mouth in a near-swoon, and by this one deed, made myself ten minutes later than I already was.
It was worth it.
The crumpled gold foil brought the inevitable panic, but I reminded myself sternly that my luck had changed. Just to prove the point, I opted for my little black Chanel suit, because the skirt has a mercilessly sleek fit. One wrongful meal and I’ll pop the zipper.
And this morning, I didn’t even need control tops. Time for a victory dance. It looked good—but then, black is my best color. Besides its slimming effect, it makes my hair look more red. The sapphire blouse makes my eyes look more blue than they really are and yes, I had a bit of color in my cheeks this morning despite my aching head.
Because I was triumphant. My luck had turned. I could eat chocolate for breakfast! I could push the books into the black with a single contract! I could kiss Nick Sullivan!
I was Woman. I was Invincible. I roared in the bedroom and probably was responsible for the thump of my upstairs neighbor falling out of bed.