That stopped him. “How, exactly?”
I leaned to murmur into his ear. “I’ll make you breakfast.”
“Breakfast?” He brightened. This was even better than he’d expected.
“Oh, yes. Yummy eggs.” I kissed him on the corner of his jawbone, “and bacon,” nibbling down his neck, “and sausage,” into the hollow of his throat, “and toast, hot toast, dripping with butter.”
He closed his eyes. “Siren. But I can’t do it tomorrow. I’ve got to be in the city.”
“Again? You’ve already gone in twice this week.”
“I’m sorry, love.” He rolled on his side and brushed my hair over my ear. “You know how I hate to leave you. It’s just this SEC rubbish, God rot them all. The fund’s all cash, ready to dissolve. And I pity the poor buggers who aren’t, just now.”
“No, I understand. I don’t mean to be clingy.” I shuddered. “It’s just you’ve got me trapped up here. I’m getting antsy.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” he said again. “We should be wrapped up in a month with these filthy bureaucrats, and then I’ll take you away somewhere. God knows I’ve been anxious enough, with you here by yourself…”
“Only during the day. Totally safe.” I pulled his face down for a kiss. “So where are we going?”
“Anywhere you like. The farther the better. We could sail around the world, wallow in the Tahitian sands. I’ll buy you an island. A Spanish castle.”
“Sounds very fortresslike.” Julian’s protective streak had expanded into a six-lane freeway since we’d become engaged. He’d quietly hired a private security firm to keep an eye on the cottage when he was away in Manhattan, and he tended to get worried if I didn’t check in every few hours with what he called my saucy e-mails. It was starting to feel just the tiniest bit oppressive.
“Or an Italian palazzo,” he added quickly, “or a lake in Switzerland.”
“Flashing your money around again, are you?”
“Our money,” he said, “Mrs. Ashford.”
“Not yet. Not officially.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” he insisted. “And a few more of the legal bits are wrapping up as we speak. Daniel’s dropping off those papers at the office this afternoon.”
“Oh, not that again.”
“I want you taken care of, darling, should anything happen to me. And since you’re not legally my wife yet…”
“Nothing will happen to you,” I said fiercely. “Don’t even suggest it.”
“Darling, a man in my position…”
“I hope this obsession with your mortality is just a relic of the whole war experience thing,” I interrupted, “and not because of something you’re not telling me.”
“It’s not just mortality. What if this thing happens to me again? Takes me away from you?”
I lifted my hand to stroke along his cheekbone. “Then all the money in the world won’t help me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Well, honestly, Julian. If you’re going to bring up the subject of your last will and testament. It’s hard enough knowing you spent a year and a half on the Western Front, the Western Front, with artillery shells and machine guns pelting you day and night. Stand to at dawn, for God’s sake.”
“That’s all over, darling.”
“Yes, exactly. So no more worries. Or I call up Daniel and make sure you’re in line to inherit my priceless collection of official state tourist spoons, should I get plowed over by a bike messenger on my next trip to Manhattan. Whenever that might be.”
“Tourist spoons?” he asked, eyebrow raised.
“Yes. Those of us who weren’t brought up on English country estates took normal vacations every year. You know, spending two weeks in the stinking rear seat of the family station wagon with my kid brother and an Igloo cooler, visiting the world’s longest toothpick or whatever in Pete’s Armpit, Arizona. And buying the spoon in the visitor center afterward. What?”
He’d rolled onto the grass beside me, shaking with laughter.
“I take it you haven’t seen the movie Vacation?”
“No,” he gasped out.
“Yeah, well, that was me.”
“Well,” he said, recovering himself and turning on his side to beam me a sweetly idiotic smile, “all the more reason to sweep you away to some private resort in the Cook Islands, servants waiting on you hand and foot.”
“As long as you’re waiting on me hand and foot,” I said generously, “I really don’t need the servants.”
“My dear Lady Chesterton,” he said, in his best toffee-nosed accent, “I shall be happy to oblige you.”
“What about”—between kisses—“a sheep station in Australia?”
“Or a llama farm in Peru?” He pulled aside the thin straps of my sundress to nibble the flesh beneath.
“Or a… a…” My words began to stumble. “A salmon hatchery in Norway?”
“Mmm,” he said, working the dress down to my waist. “Perhaps a Malaysian rubber plantation?”
“One of those ice fishing huts… in Minnesota,” I said breathlessly, as my head fell back in the grass. “Thermal… sleeping bag… good for cuddling.”
“Ah, I like the way your mind works.” His hands slid behind my back, unhooking me deftly. “But why stop there? I can think of a weather station in Antarctica…” His head bent down again, just as his phone rang from somewhere in the grass nearby.
“Ignore it,” he growled into my skin.
I began to laugh, nearly dislodging him. “You know I can’t.”
“I can, and it’s my own bloody phone.”
“Julian, please. I can’t stand it!”
He sat up. “We’re going to have to cure you of this bizarre sensitivity to ringing phones. Perhaps I’ll set you up in a roomful.” He reached reluctantly for the BlackBerry and held it up to his ear. “Laurence,” he barked, not taking his eyes from me.
I stretched my arms luxuriously above my head and watched him back, just for the pure pleasure of taking in his beauty, now so dear and familiar and perfectly expressive of him, his essence. His tawny-gold hair glinted in the light, tousled by my own hands, and I marveled for the millionth time that this was mine, all mine: mine to love and worship. I inhaled deeply, letting the scent of sun-baked grass fill my head, hot and summerlike; the tips of my fingers began to tingle, and I sat up to ease them under his T-shirt.
His hand reached up to caress the top of my head, but I sensed his attention was shifting. The phone call had taken on intensity, something about bloody bastards and emergency meetings and insolvency. His face furrowed into annoyance. “Look, you know how things are. I’ll be down first thing tomorrow, can’t it… Christ, Warwick, they can’t do that… Bloody fucking hell.”
I started; I’d never heard that word from him before.
He felt my surprise, and his hand moved reassuringly in my hair. “All right, then,” he said angrily. “Yes, straightaway, damn it.”
He tossed the phone in the grass, but the face that turned to me was anything but tender. “Darling, something’s come up.”
“I gathered.”
“A bit of trouble with one of the banks,” he went on, “and bloody Treasury’s called an emergency meeting to see about solvency. The damned idiots.”
“Solvency? Someone’s blowing up? Who?”
“Darling, it’s privileged. You know I can’t put you in that position.”
There was no point in arguing with Julian’s sense of integrity. “And you have to go tonight?” I asked, in a small voice. He hadn’t spent a single night away from me, not since I’d driven up here in May.
“Yes,” he replied, scowling. “I’ve half a mind to take you with me…”
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “Please! I’d be very good, Julian. I’d seriously play along. I’d stay at your house, I wouldn’t put a foot outside without letting you know. I’d keep the alarm on and everything. Totally safe.”
“Kate, don’t tempt me. Ou
r address in New York is public; nobody knows us here. You’re much better off staying. I’ll call the security to keep watch.”
“Like a guard dog. Like I’m some kind of Mafia wife.”
“Darling, I’m sorry. It’s for your own protection.”
“But there’s nothing to worry about! Hollander turned up safe and sound from his research trip, just as you said he would. We haven’t heard anything else from the mystery man; he’s probably moved on to a new conspiracy theory by now. You’ve got me in hiding for no reason at all.”
“Just because we haven’t heard from the fellow doesn’t mean the threat’s disappeared. It’s real, Kate. I assure you.”
“Oh, come on. How can you be certain?”
Julian took my chin in his hand. His head bent toward mine, the brow set in a single rigid line above his eyes. “Can you not simply trust me on this, Kate?”
“Why?” I narrowed my eyes, trying to fathom the meaning in his expression. “Is there something you’re not telling me? Something to do with the SEC investigation? The lawsuits?”
“I’ve told you everything I can.” His thumb brushed along my lip. “Look, this isn’t some sort of whim, Kate. I’d like nothing more than to bring you along; I’m a mere soulless husk of a chap without you, as you know perfectly well. And besides,” he added, straightening, his voice taking on a teasing note, “it might encourage you to relax your unreasonable obstinacy over that damned bit of plastic.”
I pushed his hand away. “Excuse me, Ashford, but do I look like the kind of girl who would flash her rich boyfriend’s credit card up and down Madison Avenue?”
“It’s your card, darling. That’s the point.”
“On your account, so what’s the difference? Anyway, it’s just for emergencies, remember? That was the deal, the only reason I let it stay in my wallet to begin with.” I winced, thinking of my name, KATHERINE E WILSON, embossed confidently against the glossy black.
He groaned. “You’re impossible. You plunder every corner of my shabby soul, inhabit my every thought. And then you recoil at the sight of a credit card.”
“Julian, I don’t want to go into the city to shop,” I said dryly. “Just see a few of my friends. Figure out what I’m going to do with myself. Maybe try to fit in a ballet class. Go out to dinner with you and then drag you upstairs to your bedroom.”
“Our bedroom.”
“No, your bedroom. How can it be ours if I haven’t even seen it yet?” I slid my hands back under his shirt. “Don’t you want to break it in?”
The next instant, I lay on my back in the grass with his face bent over mine. “Oh, we’ll break it in,” he promised. “Just not tonight.”
“Julian, that’s not fair…” I began, but I never got a chance to finish.
HE LEFT AN HOUR LATER in the dark-green Maserati, with his overnight bag in the seat beside him. “Security’s going to be watching all night,” he said, “and making regular patrols during the day. E-mail me. No, better call: it should give me an excuse to duck out.” He met my eyes for a moment, and then reached out and pulled me close. “Have you any idea, darling girl, how difficult it is to drive away from you like this? Like having one’s heart pulled out from the roots.”
“I still don’t understand why they need you,” I said. His body still shimmered with exertion, glowed like the sun against my cheek and arms and belly.
“There are reasons. It’s the last thing I want to involve myself in, particularly now. You know that, darling. But I can’t very well refuse a direct request.”
“So you’re off to save the entire global banking system?” I tried to smile.
“Hardly.”
“You know what really annoys me?” I pulled back. “You’re going to be in the middle of things, and I’m stuck out here on the farm. And I was there, too, just a few months ago. Feeling important. Like I was doing something that mattered.”
“Kate, you’re bloody well important to me,” he said, drawing me back in. “This matters.”
“Yeah, well, Tuck started classes two weeks ago, so it looks like you’re the only one who gets to bask in the glory of my importance for now.”
He held me still. “Are you unhappy?”
“Oh my God! Julian, of course I’m happy. It’s been the most wonderful summer of my life. It’s just I’ve always been an independent person. I’ve never let myself take the easy road to anything. And now I suddenly have this perfect life, and I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t earn you.” I reached up my hands to cup the back of his head. “You came out of the blue, my missing half. In love with me.”
His hands shifted, solid weights along the sides of my waist. “And that isn’t enough for you?”
“Enough? It’s too much, Julian. Too easy, not to be earning my own living. Paying my own way.” I shot him a sarcastic look. “Except on my back, I guess.”
He grinned at that. “Not exclusively on your back, by any means.”
“Ha freaking ha.”
“I have urged honorable marriage as an alternative. Say the word, and I’ll whisk you down to City Hall and end all this rubbish about dependency.”
“But then it’s just the same thing under another name, isn’t it?”
He drew my head into his chest. “Kate, please.”
“Sorry.” I rubbed my forehead against his shirt, absorbing him. “I think this is called a culture clash.”
“There’s a difference between giving and sharing, darling. I’m not giving you anything. You’re a part of me. It’s all just yours.”
“Hmm. I guess I’ll ponder that for a while.” I leaned back and broke into a smile. “Look at you. That’s the same expression you wear when you’re studying a stock chart.”
“You’re far more bloody complex than a stock chart. It’s not as though you enjoyed working at Sterling Bates, after all.”
I shook my head and went up on my toes to kiss him. “Don’t worry, I’ll figure things out. My own fault, actually. I’ve been kicking back the past three months, enjoying myself, instead of getting serious about the whole career thing.”
“You’re allowed a respite, darling.”
“Not a permanent one.”
“Look,” he said, still looking worried, “if you’d like to invite Michelle or Samantha up, or your brother, your parents again…”
I ground my lip under my teeth. I loved my parents, of course, but I’d hardly yet recovered from the awkwardness of their first visit, nearly two months ago. Julian, the honorable nitwit, had called up my father before proposing last May, asking for his consent—consent, mind you, not blessing—to marry me. Dad, probably feeling a little like poor old Mr. Bennet, hadn’t dared to refuse him, but he and Mom had insisted on hopping a plane two weeks later to check out the situation firsthand.
Julian had been perfectly charming, of course: the complete host, attentive and conversational, treating them with filial respect and me with his usual open easy affection. We’d gone sailing and sightseeing and out to dinner at one of the famous local inns, and on the last evening Dad and Julian had worked the brand-new Weber grill, Heinies in hand, discussing steak and baseball. “What are you thinking, honey?” Mom had asked, noticing me staring at them through the French doors from the kitchen.
Oh, if only Churchill could see him now.
“Just that it’s great to see them getting along so well.”
“Oh, your father’s come completely around. Thinks the world of Julian now. I told him so,” she’d added, with a little sigh. “I didn’t think they made men like that anymore.”
It had been on the tip of my tongue to say Actually, they don’t, and then I’d realized I couldn’t tell her, couldn’t ever tell her that essential truth. It was Julian’s secret to reveal, if and when he chose. And though I’d never been deeply intimate with my mother—maybe once a week on the phone, visits every few months—that jagged epiphany had cut me with an unexpected sharpness, one that hadn’t dulled over the long dreamlike wee
ks since.
“I’m sure they’d be delighted to come back,” I said now, reluctantly. “Or Michelle and Samantha. But that’s not the real problem at the moment. I want to come to the city with you, and you won’t let me.”
“I’m not forbidding you.” He looked scandalized. “Just asking you.”
“Bringing extreme moral pressure to bear.”
“Beloved, if one hair on your head were hurt because of me, and my wretched past, I’d never forgive myself. It’s why I stayed away from you, until my willpower ran dry.” His voice took on an agonized edge. “It’s my weakness that’s put you in danger.”
I took his face in my hands. “Julian. Don’t be ridiculous. I chose this. I chose you. So whatever happens to me is my fault, not yours.” I pushed out a smile, linked my fingers behind his neck. “So get going. Save the world. Do what you have to do. Only think about what I said, okay? Please? Because you can’t just cover me in bubble wrap forever. I won’t let you.”
He kissed me tenderly, then hard; then he climbed into the car and drove off. I stood waving in the driveway until he went around the bend and disappeared from sight.
Time to give Charlie a call. Because enough was really enough.
19.
“So this is, like, a jailbreak? Is he going to be totally pissed?”
I rolled my eyes and took a drink of coffee, just to show how relaxed I was. “Don’t be stupid, Charlie. He’s not holding me prisoner up there.”
We were sitting in a sidewalk café on Broadway and 116th Street, near the Columbia campus, where Charlie was settling into his student digs before the start of his first quarter of business school. The smell of summertime Manhattan saturated the air, strange and familiar, exhaust and hot pavement and sour human: a world apart from the dense green living scent of the Connecticut backwoods.
“So why the secrecy? I’m kind of spooked, dude. He could blackball me if he finds out.”
“He’d never do that. Not his style at all.”
“You think not? Dude, have you no idea what’s been going on at Sterling Bates the last three months? Your man has balls of spun fucking steel.”