A Bride After All (3 page)

Claire picked up a slice of pizza, her appetite inexplicably back. “True. Unless this Chessie person is a method actor and is even now standing on the side of the thruway, feeling ridiculous. So, you teach English as a second language. How does that work? Do you speak several languages?”

“Two—three if you count my attempts at English. I learned Spanish in college, and picked up French at home as a kid. My mother’s French. Other than that, we all just sort of muddle through the best we can. Tonight we worked our way through t-o, t-o-o, and t-w-o. At the end of the class, the consensus was that English has been made difficult on purpose and that as a nation, we should be ashamed of ourselves.”

“Did you point out that English came to us from Great Britain?”

Nick spread his hands. “Immaterial. They’re not in England, they’re in America, land of the free and home of the dollar menu. Which was my first mistake.”

“How so?” Claire noticed she’d somehow downed both slices of pizza, but she still had soda left, so she could be excused for lingering.

“Well, tonight we role-played going to a fast-food restaurant to order a meal.”

“From the dollar menu.”

“Exactly. My students need practical English. They’re not going to be dining at top restaurants, not at first anyway, although I believe they all plan on that sort of success, and more power to them. Anyway, I had them role-play going
to
the restaurant and ordering
two
burgers, and then adding that they wanted a bag of fries,
too.

Claire tried not to giggle. “Okay, I think I see the problem. They really wanted only one bag of fries, so why should they say they wanted two?”

Nick ran his fingers through his hair, and some
of it fell back down over his forehead. Claire stopped breathing.

“I finally changed the last one to
also,
when I realized the problem. But I think they thought I was cheating. Plus, it only got worse, thanks to the student playing the guy behind the counter.”

Claire raised her hand, waving it like an eager student. “Wait, wait, let me figure out how it got worse. You be the student, and I’ll be the bored teenage clerk behind the counter.”

Nick scratched at his ear, as if considering her offer. “All right. Maybe then I can figure out how to do this without having my students tossed out of the restaurant. Which, as it stands now for a few of them, is a distinct possibility.”

“Good,” Claire said, sitting up straight and holding out a hand as if poised over a cash register. “Hello, and welcome to Claire’s. May I take your order?”

“Yes, thank you. I would like two hamburgers. I want an order of fries, too.”

Claire began punching imaginary buttons on her imaginary ordering machine. “Got it, that’s two burgers, two fries. Would you like something to drink with that? Our milkshakes are on a two-for-one special today until two o’clock. Would you like to have two?”

“Yes, thank you. Two.”

Claire kept punching imaginary buttons. “Okay. So that’s two hamburgers, two fries, four milkshakes. That’ll be seven dollars and twenty-two cents.”

“You know, looking at you, with that pretty honey-colored hair and those big brown eyes, I never would have taken you for a sadist,” Nick said, shaking his head. “The order is wrong, Miss. We need to fix it, please.”

She bit her bottom lip for a moment, feeling silly and just a little bit delighted with herself. “Sir, I’m only recording what you’re telling me. And there’s a line forming behind you and I go on break soon. If I could have your final selections? Two hamburgers, two fries—”

“No, no! Two hamburgers, and one fries
also
. And I will be happy to have two milkshakes, too, for the cost of a single one, thank you.”

“But you said you’d have two milkshakes too.”

Nick half rose from his chair. “Never mind, I’m not hungry.”

Claire gave up her pose and cupped her chin in her hands. “Your poor students. They’re all going to starve to death.”

“I wrote up notes for the students who were still having problems, to use until our next session, so they won’t starve. Although they might get pretty sick of hamburgers and fries between now and then. And now, since I’ve been dying to ask—what’s with the doll?”

Claire looked over at their table companion. “Bite your tongue. Susie is far from a doll. She’s a complex and highly sensitive CPR mannequin I borrowed from my brother’s office. And I think I did better than you did tonight. Only three people fractured her little
infant ribs. Poor Ivan, he has hands like hams, and alarms went off on his first compression. He was devastated. Next session, we investigate the wonderful world of devices for taking a child’s temperature.”

Nick made a comical face. “I think I can still remember how my mother took mine.”

Claire felt hot color run into her cheeks. “We have other ways.”

“That’s good to hear. With Sean, I mostly stick to the back of my hand pressed against his cheek while I’m touching my own at the same time. So far, I’d say the method has been at least ninety-five percent effective. He’s hot, I call the doctor. He’s coughing, I call the doctor. He throws up on my shoes, I call the doctor. All the gals at the desk know my voice. But, you know, being in charge of a kid, all by yourself, is a pretty heavy responsibility. I don’t take any chances.”

This was probably the perfect opportunity to ask Nick where his wife was, Claire knew, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Luckily, he seemed to sense her curiosity. Or was that unluckily? She didn’t want to seem eager. She didn’t want to be another Marylou. One Marylou was definitely enough.

“Sandy left us when Sean was three,” he said quietly. “You’re probably used to hearing this, but the marriage was a mistake. I loved her, she loved the idea of singing in a band, someday making it to the top. When Sean…happened, we married, thought
we could make it work. But we never could master juggling, keeping all the different balls in the air. Sandy’s totally out of Sean’s life, which was her choice. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know where she is, although I did get a postcard from Reno about six months ago with the photograph of a small nightclub on the front and her note on the back. ‘Here’s our latest gig—great, isn’t it?’ That was it. She didn’t even ask about Sean.”

“I’m sorry,” Claire said quietly. “It couldn’t have been easy for you. For any of you.”

“It was hell, for a long time,” Nick said, and then shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from. On the lighter side, Mommy and Me days at nursery school were interesting. But good or bad, we manage in our own way. Sean’s a good kid, very adaptable. And, speaking of Sean, I think it’s time the two of us hit the road.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Claire said, quickly piling napkin and soda bottle on her tray and standing up along with him. “It was very nice meeting you.”

Nick laid his hand on her forearm. “That’s not going to do it, you know.”

She looked down at his hand, a sudden flash of her ex-husband’s proprietary way of always keeping a hand on her making her uncomfortable, but the hand was already gone. “What…what’s not going to do it?”

“You and me, sharing coffee and chat in the community center cafeteria. Marylou will consider her mission a failure.”

“Her mission?”

“Oh, yeah. I have an aunt like Marylou. Aunt Beatrice. She won’t be happy until she thinks she’s set the table for a grand romance.”

The color was back in Claire’s cheeks. “I’m…I’m not interested in a grand romance. My career takes up a lot of my time.”

“Well, good, because I’m not either. Interested in a grand romance, that is. I’ve got Sean, my job, these night classes. My own plate is pretty full, too. Or is that also? I never got that far into grammar with my classes; in the beginning, it’s enough they learn what they need to know to get around town, use the phone, read street signs. Plus I’m lazy, which is why God created editors and proofreaders. I should brush up, huh?”

Claire smiled. “Now you have even more on your plate.”

“I do. And one other thing. For instance, my cousin is getting married three weeks from Saturday. That’s how I met Marylou, remember, at the bridal shop. Barb hadn’t thought she should wear a gown for a second wedding, but Skip and I finally talked her into it. Skip’s her fiancé. Last-minute decision—the gown, not the fiancé—but Chessie said she could help her and she really did. Would you…would you, um, consider being my date for the wedding? It would be a huge help.”

“Is Aunt Beatrice going to be at the wedding?” Claire asked, tongue-in-cheek. He really was charming, and he wasn’t even working at it.

“I’m that transparent? Yes, she is. But if you go with me, that will make Marylou happy, and when Aunt Beatrice sees us, it will make Aunt Beatrice happy. It’s a win-win situation, really. Because if Aunt Beatrice can be used as an example, Marylou is going to keep pushing us together and then rushing off to help a sick friend or something, and it could get embarrassing after a while.”

Claire closed her eyes, sighed, thinking it was already pretty embarrassing, and she wasn’t looking forward to Marylou’s Second Act. And then she nodded her head. “It makes sense. And I do like weddings. As long as they aren’t mine,” she added, smiling. “But now I have to go, really. I need to stop by the hospital and check on one of my brother’s patients. We started a new antibiotic this afternoon, and I want to see if there’s been any improvement.”

Nick took her tray for her, making it easier for her to load up her purse and briefcase and Susie.

“See you Thursday,” Nick said, and then he headed for the trash cans. She watched as he separated the paper and plastic. Conscientious. Law-abiding.

And such a wonderful smile.

T
hursday, a few minutes before six o’clock, Nick delivered Sean to his karate class and then returned to the front doors of the community center, telling himself he was only being polite, watching for Claire to arrive so that he could say hello to her.

Which was a bunch of hooey.

She’d really made an impression on him on Tuesday night. Why? He didn’t know. Maybe it was something about that hint of sadness in her eyes. Maybe it was the wistfulness in her smile. Like she was a woman who had lived, and not all of that life had been sunshine and roses.

Maybe it was the journalist in him, always looking for a story.

Nah. His attraction to her had nothing to do with anything even vaguely professional, or even altruistic.

She was a beautiful woman. She affected him on a gut level, pure and simple. She was the face you spotted across a crowded room and just had to figure out a way to meet. His response to her had been pretty much hormonal.

And what was the matter with that?

Nick began a mental list: You haven’t had a gut-level hormonal response to a woman in a long time. You don’t have time for a romance. You have a son to raise. You have an ex-wife who pretty much soured you on following through on gut-level hormonal responses.

“Hi, you’re looking intense. Still trying to figure out to, too, two?”

Nick turned around at the sound of Claire’s voice, to be immediately struck once more by her beauty, her cool, polished appearance, and those too-human eyes.

“Hi, yourself,” he said, smiling at her. She was tall, not as tall as him, but just a perfect height so that they’d fit together well on the dance floor, walking together, lying beside each other…“Um, no Susie tonight?”

“Nope, I’m on my own tonight. Just me and my selection of thermometers. Have you seen Marylou?”

“No, I’ve been lucky so far,” he said, falling into step with her as they turned to walk down the wide tiled corridor. “Look, maybe I was out of line the other night, asking you to come with me to my
cousin’s wedding. If you want to change your mind, I’d understand.”

“Are you sure? What about Aunt Beatrice?”

“Aunt Beatrice and every unattached female between the age of consent and Medicare eligibility she’ll be introducing me to, you mean? Never mind, I rescind my offer for you to change your mind. It’s the coward in me.”

“Well, good, because I already bought a dress.” Claire stopped in front of her classroom door. “Oh, now you should see your face. It’s priceless. No, I didn’t buy a dress. Nor did I pick out china patterns. But I did run into Marylou on my way in earlier, and she was all set to toss me at your head again—some idea about joining our two classes together since we’re both dealing with some language barriers—until I told her we were going to your cousin’s wedding together. She’s off somewhere now, probably purring as she licks cream from her whiskers. Not that Marylou has whiskers, but you know what I mean.”

Nick scratched at a spot behind his ear. “So we’re taking the easy way out? Joining up out of necessity, in order to protect ourselves?”

“Please, all this flattery will turn my head,” Claire said as she stepped aside, allowing a young woman to enter the classroom, bringing her closer to him, close enough that he could smell the slightly flowery fragrance of her hair. He liked the way she wore it, all pulled back from her perfect oval face. What was
the style called? Oh, right, a French twist. Yeah, he liked it. He’d like taking out the pins and seeing how long her hair was, too. That could be interesting.

Mind-wandering over, he shot back to attention. “Ouch, sorry. It’s hard to believe I make my living with words, isn’t it? Because that was really clumsy.”

“Yes, Marylou told me you’re a reporter for the
Morning Chronicle.
I was very impressed. I even looked up some of your articles on the Internet. You’re very good.”

“And now I’m totally at a loss for words,” Nick told her. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

And then they just stood there.

Looking at each other.

Now what? Had he really been out of the game so long that he’d forgotten the rules?

“Would, uh, would you like to meet in the cafeteria after class?” he asked her at last. “Sean likes to sit with his friends and see who can dribble the most chocolate ice cream down the front of their white
karategis
.”

“Sure, that would be fine. Well, it’s that time, I guess.”

Nick lifted his hand to give a small wave to her departing back, and then manfully fought down the impulse to find a way to kick himself all the way down the corridor to his own classroom. She had to think he was an idiot.
He
thought he was an idiot. And about as smooth as a centipede on roller-skates.

“Pretty lady, Signore Barrington.
Occhi molli di un Madonna.
Soft eyes of a Madonna. You should, how you say, snatch her up?”

“Thanks, Salvatore, I’ll think about it,” Nick told the squat, cheerful man who had come up beside him, still dressed in a white baker’s uniform, as if he’d come directly to class from his job. “Hey, I told you, no more cannoli. You don’t have to bring me presents.”

“But I want
to
bring it for you.
Two
of them. And some pignolata,
too.
Your boy, Sean, he likes? Yes?”

“Yes, he does,” Nick said, accepting the stringtied box because it was easier. And, well, because he liked pignolata,
too
. “How are your wife and the new baby coming along?”

Salvatore’s English suffered a bit as he enthusiastically described his happiness in both his wife and his wonderful son, clearly the most beautiful wife and the most handsome, perfect baby. “And he is all-American, my boy is, one hundred and fifty percent. Now my Evelina and me, we must be one hundred and fifty percent American,
too
. Like our boy. And you, Signore Barrington, you are helping us. You are a good man.”

Salvatore’s smile was so wide, his heart so large, his eagerness to make a better life for his small family so evident. And people wondered why he volunteered at the community center? Let them meet Salvatore and the others just like him, these wonderful people with their hopes and their dreams—then they’d understand.

“Thank you, Salvatore,” Nick said, genuinely humbled. “I’m only glad I can help. And you know, Miss Ayers teaches a class in child care, if you think your wife would be interested?”

Salvatore nodded his head furiously. “Signora Smith-Bitters, she already tell me. My Evelina, she will start with the classes next week.”

“And the baby? Where will he be, if you’re both here?”

Salvatore’s smile disappeared and he looked down at his flour-dusted work shoes. “She said not to say.”

“Who said not to say? Not to say what? Salvatore?”

“Signora Smith-Bitters,” the man said, sighing. “She say not to worry. She say to bring Stefano with us, and she will find a way.” He looked up at Nick. “What is this, this find a way?”

Nick turned to look down the corridor, to where Marylou Smith-Bitters was standing next to the registration desk, talking furiously while artfully arranging a neck scarf around the shoulders of a beaming young woman who had probably never before thought of a scarf as anything more than protection from the wind and rain.

One by one, and whether the person wanted it or not, clearly Marylou Smith-Bitters was out to fix—and even
fix up
—the whole world.

“There’s a saying here in America, Salvatore,” Nick said, draping an arm over the man’s shoulders as they walked into the classroom. “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Claire stood in front of the row of sinks in the women’s lavatory and contemplated her reflection in the mirror.

A few wisps of hair had escaped her classic French twist style, but all in all, she thought she still looked pretty well put together, hair-wise. It was simply easier to wear her hair up when she spent her days dealing with infants and small children who invariably had fists of steel when it came to grabbing on to and holding on to her hair as she examined them.

Her lipstick could use a touch-up, though.

She rummaged through her bag, not noticing Marylou’s approach until the woman was standing next to her, leaning forward to dab a tissue at the outside corner of one eye.

“There, that’s better,” Marylou said, blinking a few times and then smiling at her reflection. “Nonclumping mascara. What a huge fib. Oh, that’s a pretty shade,” she added, taking the open lipstick from Claire before she could apply it to her mouth. “But not the best with that blouse, I don’t think.”

Claire looked down at her mauve-pink blouse, and then at the lipstick rapidly disappearing back into its tube. “It’s not?”

“No, not really. There’s a touch of blue to that shade. Better to go with a touch of gold. First thing we need to do is get rid of what’s left on your lips, and then we’ll go from there. You really should wear eyeliner, Claire, you know. A deep burgundy and
chocolate sort of shade maybe, to accentuate your lovely brown eyes—make them pop—and then other colors if you want to be more daring. Not a lot, just a smudge, sort of smoky. Oh I know, you’re young, and you’re busy, but there’s no excuse to not take a few minutes each day to pamper yourself. We call it the five-minute face now, or at least that’s what the beauty experts call it. A little sheer foundation, a little light powder, some eyeliner and shadow, a touch of mascara, some color to the cheeks and lips.”

The entire time Marylou was talking she was also rummaging in a cosmetic bag she’d pulled from her designer purse, handing Claire a moist towelette of makeup remover, a small pack of cellophane-wrapped makeup applicators of different sizes and shapes, a tube of lipgloss, an entire mini-palette of powder eye shadows—even a tweezers, which she quickly took back.

“Would you mind?” she asked, clasping the tweezers to her chest with both hands. “Just a little thinning, that’s all. It will only take a moment.”

“I…um…do I really need…?”

“I couldn’t exist without my tweezers,” Marylou said with the seriousness of a person commenting on the necessity of air to breathe. “Here, put all of that down and just let me play for a few minutes, all right? Because I’ve been dying to. You’ll still have plenty of time to meet Nick in the cafeteria. Salvatore has his marching orders, and knows to keep him busy for a while.”

“I guess it’s good that one of us knows what you’re talking about,” Claire said, and then just gave in and went along…which was probably what most everyone did when faced with the velvet steamroller that was Marylou Smith-Bitters.

“There,” Marylou declared the promised five minutes later, “all done. See? I told you it wouldn’t take long. And what a difference. Take a look.”

Claire obediently turned back to the mirror, and couldn’t believe what she saw. Not that she didn’t used to look like this. But that was years ago. Before the divorce. Before she had buried herself in her work and hoped that nobody would notice her because she’d been noticed enough, thank you, and didn’t plan to be anyone’s possession again.

“Oh, this isn’t good, Marylou,” she said, even as she admired how her eyes seemed to have new life in them. “I didn’t look like this the last time he saw me. He’ll think I’ve been…that I’m…”

“A woman?” Marylou supplied evilly as she stuffed cosmetics back into their assigned pockets inside her sophisticated bag that was, when you got right down to it, a feat of brilliant engineering on someone’s part. “Now tell me why this is a bad thing.”

“You know, Marylou, in some other generation, you’d have been burned as a witch. But thank you.”

Marylou laughed, appreciating the joke. “You just go have fun, all right? Make Mama proud.”

Claire lingered in the bathroom another few
moments after Marylou left, considering wiping off the makeup, but then decided against it. Because she did look good. She looked almost like her old self. Her younger self.

And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought of Nick Barrington at least a dozen times between Tuesday night and tonight. It was strange, thinking about a man. Thinking about him
that way
, at least.

“And what way is that?” she asked her reflection, and then quickly gathered her purse and briefcase and left the bathroom, because the only other occupant, who’d left the stalls to hear Claire talking to herself, was looking at her strangely.

She made her way to the cafeteria and got in line behind a group of women dressed in various styles of workout gear. Part of the exercise class held in the gym, no doubt. They all looked fit, toned, and happy to be filling their trays with fresh fruit and low-fat yogurt and sports drinks. Perfect tushes, perfect hips, perfect perky breasts.

“Here you go, Ms. Ayers, your usual,” the server behind the counter said, producing an overloaded paper plate holding two slices of pizza.

“Thanks, Ruth,” she said, feeling at least five pairs of feminine eyes on her, or on her pizza. Probably the pizza. “And my soda?”

“One caffeine-free diet cola, coming up.”

The woman directly in front of Claire sniffed. “Whatever makes you feel better, I guess, huh? Five hundred calories a slice, but a no-cal soda. You’re
deluding yourself, you know. You’re a heart attack waiting to happen.”

“Is that so? My aunt weighs about what you do,” Claire heard herself saying. “Eats well, exercises like a fanatic, and her last fasting bloodwork showed her total cholesterol coming in at over six hundred. Mine’s one hundred and sixty-two. Do you know yours?”

The woman looked Claire up and down, sneered in her superiority, and turned back to her friends, leaving Claire feeling petty and ridiculous.

But really. Where was it written that everyone had the right to share their opinions with perfect strangers? What had happened to personal space, that invisible circle of privacy people were supposed to be allowed? When did everyone get so darned
interactive
?

She paid her bill, collected her change, and pretty much slammed her tray down on the table across from Nick before sliding into her chair.