Blessing in Disguise (47 page)

“Some of it
was
good.”

“I put on a tie in the morning, and I still walk away wondering if it’s the right one,” he went on. “You used to choose my ties, remember? And coffee. I never seem to get it right. A heaping tablespoon for every cup, but then it’s too strong. I buy it from this deli near my office, but I hate drinking it from a Styrofoam cup.”

“Coffee I can do,” Grace said. “You’re forgetting how I always used to burn the English muffins.”

“I never much liked English muffins anyway. And who said it was your job to feed me?”

“Win ... don’t.”

“Grace, please. I love you. I never stopped.”

This is getting too intense,
Grace thought, feeling a twinge of panic. But hadn’t Win been heading toward it for a while? And, in a way, hadn’t she been
letting
him?

“Win, we’re not married any—”

He stopped her with a kiss, his mouth gentle against hers, as if delicately seeking an answer to some question.
Wrong, all wrong,
she told herself. But at the same time, Win kissing her felt weirdly right, as comfortable and comforting as a wedding band worn smooth—as if Jack were the interloper, and Win the one she belonged with.

Drawing back, he murmured against her hair, “Let me stay the night.”

“What about Chris?” She spoke without thinking, realizing as soon as the words were out of her mouth that she hadn’t told him no.
Stop this!
she should have shouted.
Go home!

“He’s with your mother. He won’t think anything. Sometimes I stay over at the office when I’m really swamped.”

“Win, this is crazy.”

He kissed her again, harder this time, using his tongue. His slender hands cradling her head gently while his thumbs stroked her temples, crooning her name, over and over,
Grace, Grace, oh, Grace.
She felt herself beginning to respond, with a spreading warmth that was more than an echo of what they’d once shared.

If Win, at that moment, had again said, “I love you,” or if he’d pressured her in any way, she’d have had to step back and take an honest look at what she was getting into. She would have had to insist he go.

But he only stood there, waiting, his arms about her, his breath warm against her hair. She could feel his heart beating, hard and fast, like someone tapping insistently at a window.

Grace sighed, and as she drew away brought her finger to rest against his lower lip, full and chiseled, just like their son’s. She traced her finger down his chin and throat, stopping at the perfect square knot of his tie.

Feeling as if she were floating—as if this were happening to someone else, or in a dream she was having—she loosened the knot and drew one end of the tie through the loop, the heavy silk sliding like butter through her ringers.

God help me,
she thought.

Yet it seemed completely natural, after she had led Win to her bedroom, to slip out of her clothes in front of him. He’d known her naked body in other forms—the flat-tummied, small-chested bride she’d been, and pregnant with Chris, her belly huge, her breasts swollen. He’d seen her stretch marks fade from vivid purple to faint silvery lines. And, yes, he’d witnessed the inevitable pull of gravity as well—the drooping of her breasts, the slight sagging of her behind.

Only Win seemed unchanged. Still as fit as he’d been in college, with the long, muscular grace she associated with swimmers and dancers. When he was naked, she could see where the faded glow of his summer tan deepened slightly just above his collarbone, and below his elbows, where the sleeves of his tennis shirt must end. As he stepped forward to draw her into his arms, it was as if a piece of puzzle were falling into place. She could feel him, hard against her, growing harder. A soft moan escaped him.

“Grace, oh, baby, you feel good. So good.”

Grace squeezed her eyes shut, wishing he wouldn’t speak. Wishing somehow that this were all a dream she could wake from the next morning with no regrets.

Then Win was stroking her, touching her in all the ways he knew she liked to be touched. She sat on the edge of the bed, while Win knelt on the mattress behind her, massaging the lingering tenseness from her shoulders, his thumbs digging in with just the right amount of pressure. His hands so expert, so smooth, so knowing.

And now, while he reached around to caress her breasts, his mouth, too, was finding the most tender spots on the back of her neck, moving down her spine with tiny flicks of his tongue. He stopped at her waist, wrapping his arms about her and pulling her gently onto her back. Where his thumbs had played over her nipples, now his tongue was making them prickle with a sensation that made her think of when she used to nurse Chris, the delicious warm feeling of her milk letting down.

It seemed the easiest thing in the world, then, to open her legs and guide Win into her. Easier than anything she’d tried or accomplished in the weeks, months, years since the last time she and Win had lain together like this. She felt his breath quickening against the side of her neck, and her own body responding to his deep, sweet, perfectly timed thrusts.

The exquisite tension building in her was an old song, one she’d played many times. She knew exactly when to pause, when to quicken, how to stretch out each note to prolong her pleasure and his. When she came, moments before he did, it was more intense than she could ever remember its being with Win, seeming to rip up through her middle like the scream that was wrenched from her throat.

Not until her trembling had subsided, as she lay in his arms struggling to catch her breath, did it occur to Grace that part of what had made it so intense was that she’d held back from coming longer than she usually could. Not just to prolong her pleasure—she’d been afraid, too.

Afraid of what might happen if she gave herself over completely to Win.

Nola looked out her front window, and felt herself snap wide awake. Reporters! She counted at least half a dozen—many accompanied by technicians armed with minicams—gathered on the sidewalk outside, talking among themselves, sipping from steaming paper cups. One of them, a stubby man in a trench coat, looked up, squinting as he tried to make out the tall shadowy figure peering out from behind semisheer drapes.

Almighty God, seven in the morning, she hadn’t even brushed her teeth, and already they were circling in for the kill. Grace or Ben or someone at that publishing company must have spilled the beans about Mama and Gene.

Wasn’t this what she’d been hiding from? What Ben had warned her about? Sharks circling, ready to make mincemeat out of her before Grace’s book was even published.

The phone calls she’d gotten over the past few months, from newspeople after any dirt they could dig up on the accidental killing of Ned Emory—those had been nothing compared with what
this
was going to be like.

You asked for it,
a cool voice reminded her.

“Mama?” Tasha, still in her PJs, padded over to the window, yawning. “Who are all those people?”

“Nobody we know,” Nola told her, pulling her warm little body close, breathing in her just-out-of-bed smell.

“But what are they
waiting
for?” Tasha persisted.

My hide,
thought Nola.

“They want to talk to your old mama,” she said, trying to make it sound like it was no big deal. “Do you believe it? Now, if only I could get you and your sister to pay me that much attention.”

Tasha’s eyes widened, and her thumb hovered near her mouth, obviously dying to get plugged in. “Is it ’cause of Ben?”

Nola felt a plunging sensation inside her, as if she were in an elevator that had just shot up six stories.
From the mouths of babes.
Tasha, thinking anything this big and possibly scary had to come from the new complication in her mother’s life: Ben Gold.

“It certainly is not,” Nola told her.

“Mama?”

“Yes, sugar?”

“Is Ben gonna be our new daddy?” She said it in exactly the same tone with which she asked, when the pediatrician was about to give her a shot, “Is this gonna hurt?”

Nola felt her throat tighten. Poor Tasha, so pinched and worried, like a little old lady on the verge of losing her pension. She was only voicing what Nola knew in her heart—had known almost from the start. Was it only three weeks since their first date? Like a roller-coaster ride that lasts only a few minutes but seems an age, the fever pitch of her affair with Ben had distorted her sense of time. But no matter how much fun a roller coaster was, she recalled, you were always glad when it came to a stop.

“No, baby,” she said gently, “Ben is not going to be your daddy. And this”—she gestured toward the scene outside the window—“is nothing for you to worry about, either.” All Tasha and Dani knew about their grandfather was that he’d died a long time before they were born. She hadn’t told them
who
he was, not yet. She would
have
to now, sooner than she’d intended, sometime today. But not like this. “Hey, where’s Dani? She up yet?”

“I
told
her she’d be late for school, but she won’t get out of bed.” Tasha, doing her prissy-schoolmarm imitation, lips puckered, chin up, made Nola want to laugh out loud. But Tasha, who had no idea how she sometimes came across, would no doubt be offended.

“Well, guess what?” Nola put on a bright smile. “Dani can sleep in. And you can watch TV if you like. No school today.”

Tasha’s eyes narrowed, sensing something that might be too good to be true. “How come my teacher didn’t tell us?”

“Because your teacher isn’t the one who decides what’s best for you.” She lightly swatted Tasha’s behind. “Now, go on, get dressed, while I make breakfast.”

Forty-five minutes later, with the girls fed and dressed, and Florene ensconced with them in front of the TV, Nola prepared herself to enter the fray. She was dressed in a long black wool skirt and fitted, military-style red jacket at least five years out of date. Letting herself out the front door, she saw that the cluster of reporters had grown. Now there had to be at least a dozen. And all of them surging toward her, shoving cameras and mikes in her face, yammering and yipping at her.

“Ms. Emory ... are you claiming that Senator Truscott was your father?”

“Are you aware that the Senator’s widow denies your allegation?”

“Why did you wait so long to go public with this?”

“Is it true you’ve made a deal with Cadogan for a share of the book’s profits?”

Nola found herself whirling about, nearly knocking over a stocky, lantern-jawed woman clutching a mini-tape recorder. “I have nothing to say,” she spoke out, raising her voice to be heard about the clamoring. “Except, yes. Senator Truscott was my father. And, no, I have
not
made any sort of deal. Now, if you’ll excuse me ... I have to get to work.” She tried to push through, but the reporters wouldn’t give way.

“Does the Senator have any other illegitimate children that you know of?”

“Have you contacted his family?”

“Do you feel you’re entitled to a share of your father’s inheritance?”

Nola shook her head, no, no, no. Shouldering her way past a salt-and-pepper-haired man she recognized from Channel 4, the one who always looked like he was auditioning to be a member of the British royal family, she noticed that he was chewing gum as if it were a cud.

“Is it true your firm has been selected to design the Eugene Truscott Library?”

The question seemed to leap out at her, innocent-sounding, but sizzling through her like a bolt of lightning. Nola felt her limbs jerk and twitch, her face suffuse with sudden heat. Where had
that
come from? The results of the competition had not yet been announced. Was he merely goading her into saying something she shouldn’t?

“You’d have to ask my boss; that’s not a project I’m involved with,” she replied tersely, flinching as a flashbulb went off.

Lies. Why did she have to go on lying?

But Nola knew why. Because, if she didn’t hold on to this one last secret, then her library would never get built. Cordelia Truscott and the rest of the selection committee would rule out her design quicker than it would take to slam a door.

“Ms. Emory
...”

“Just one question
...”

“Do you have any idea
...”

She was keenly aware of them, their hungry voices, their smell of damp wool and warm coffee swirling around her, as she hurried away. But she didn’t dare stop and turn around, didn’t dare even let them see her face. Because they might see in her expression that she was not the paragon of truth she pretended to be.

“I saw you on the six o’clock news. You were wonderful. You didn’t let them beat you down—you were really on top.”

Ben, lying beside Nola on her big bed, smoothed a warm palm up the inside of her thigh, stopping to rub his thumb gently over the faint groove her panties had left when he’d impatiently pulled them off her a short while ago.

Nola shivered. They’d just finished making love, and he was still turning her on.
Girl, get a grip on yourself.

“You like it when I’m on top?” she teased.

Ben laughed. His hand pushed up even higher, toying with the springy hair between her legs, still damp from their lovemaking. But she found herself scooting away from him.

No more leaping in feet-first. She had to start using her
head.

This morning, the wary look on Tasha’s face when she’d asked about Ben had hardened Nola’s resolve. This couldn’t go on, Ben and her. No matter how delicious he was in bed.

But it was like making up your mind to go on a diet ... and suddenly feeling you had to eat every sinful thing in the world before then. Right now she wanted him more than ever.

Nola sighed. “Truth? I wasn’t as on top of it as you think,” she told him. “In fact, I was pretty rattled.”

“The main thing is, it’ll sell a shitload of books. It’s just too bad about the timing. Even if we rush publication, we lose some of the momentum.” He paused, wearing that brooding look he’d been getting a lot lately. Serious, gloomy almost. Was he having second thoughts about them, too?