First Sight (16 page)

The door closed softly behind him, and she heard him drive away in his battered ten-year-old Porsche, as she walked upstairs to her office. Two nights with him had been enough. She noticed as she thought about him that she felt more disconnected from him than she had before she left. Eventually, relationships like theirs died a natural death.

She was answering e-mails when Jade called her late that night.

“How was your weekend?” Jade asked easily. She wanted to make sure Timmie was feeling all right. She often called on Sunday nights.

“It was nice actually,” Timmie answered, “relaxed and easy. I went out to the beach, and Zack came out.”

“How was that? Was he still pissed off about Europe?”

“We didn’t talk about it. I think he got over it, although I think he went to San Francisco just so he could make a point of not being here when I got back. It worked out. He came out to the beach on Friday night.” Jade didn’t say it, although she had before when they discussed it, but she wished Timmie wanted more than that. She deserved so much more. They had had that conversation a hundred times. Timmie said, and sincerely believed, that women like her were “unsalable” in the current market. The right men wanted younger women. The good ones were married. And even the wrong ones were hard to find, at her age. And these days, even Jade was finding interesting men to date hard to come by. She was still threatening to check out Match.com when she had time, despite Timmie’s warnings to be careful. But for someone like Timmie, it was that much harder. She could hardly put her picture up on an online dating service. She’d have wound up in the tabloids in no time. So she contented herself with Zack.

“I had a blind date last night,” Jade confessed with a sigh, as Timmie smiled. In the year since she’d left her married boyfriend, she’d had dozens of blind dates that hadn’t worked out, but at least she tried. Timmie had to give her credit for that.

“How was it?” Timmie asked with interest. She was truly fond of her two assistants.

“It sucked. As always. He acted like he never got out of college. He took me to a sports bar, hit on the waitress, and got blind drunk, and I took a cab home without saying goodbye. David’s going to help me do the computer dating thing next week. It can’t be worse than this.”

“Oh yes, it could,” Timmie said, laughing. “One of these days the right guy will turn up, and you’ll wind up married, and living in Des Moines with six kids.”

“I’d settle for L.A. and two kids, or even one,” she said sadly, and then was sorry she’d said anything to Timmie. Sometimes she forgot about Mark. Timmie never talked about him, but Jade had come to work for her just after he died. It had been a terrible time in Timmie’s life, and Derek’s leaving six months later had intensified her grief and made it that much worse. Jade remembered those days only too well, and the agony in Timmie’s eyes. It was still there sometimes, which was what made Jade say very little about Zack. She knew as well as anyone that you did what you had to, to get by. She didn’t like him for Timmie, but she knew why Timmie kept the relationship going. In her twelve years in Timmie’s life, she had seen several Zacks.

“It’ll happen,” Timmie reassured her. She was always encouraging, and had been deeply sympathetic when Jade broke up with her married man. Jade had been heartbroken over it for the better part of a year, and unhappy long before.

It was hard to believe even now that Jade had stayed with him for ten years. He had continued to promise he would leave his wife, right up till the end. There was always some stumbling block or problem, some reason why he couldn’t move out. Sick kids, his chronically dying mother, his wife’s health and psychiatric problems, financial worries, a failing business, a child with juvenile diabetes who couldn’t take the shock of his leaving, his wife’s depression. It had gone on for years, until Jade finally gave up. Timmie knew from David that he still called her, but Jade wouldn’t take his calls. He had been like a drug to her, but she had finally managed to give him up. She had wasted ten years of her life, and was afraid now that she had lost her chance to have kids. It wasn’t too late yet, but she was getting there, and Timmie felt for her. Jade couldn’t afford to play with men like Zack, she needed someone real who wanted to get married and have kids. “When you least expect it, the right guy will walk in. You’ll see.”

“Yeah, right,” Jade said cynically, and then changed the subject to the appointments they had for the coming week. Timmie was moving back up to full speed, and after the weekend, she felt up to it. Her week of convalescence in Paris was history. She felt fine again, and had gotten some color over the weekend. The weather had felt like spring.

They wished each other good night and hung up, and Timmie thought of Zack when she went to bed that night. Her bed always seemed empty to her on Sunday nights, but by Monday she was used to it again. It was a familiar routine to her.

And on Monday morning, she was off and running, at her usual pace. She had a million phone calls, a thousand appointments, interviews, reps, people to see. She had meetings with her design assistants, solved endless problems with the spring line, averted a series of crises, managed to solve the factory problem without going to Taiwan, and by midweek it was hard to believe she’d ever had surgery or been sick. She looked better than ever, and was functioning, as always, on minimal sleep. Zack had called her on Tuesday and had wanted to come by that night, but she didn’t get home till midnight, and when she called him, he was sound asleep. She was thinking about calling him on Thursday, when Jade handed her her mail, and she noticed a letter with French stamps on it, and saw that it was from Jean-Charles Vernier. She had no idea why, but she waited until Jade left the room to open it. She always opened her personal mail herself. She sat staring at the envelope for a minute, tore it open, and was surprised by the stationery he’d used. She had expected to find a letter with his professional letterhead, and instead there was a postcard, with a sunset on it, over an expanse of ocean. When she turned the card over, she saw that the photograph had been taken in Normandy. It seemed uncharacteristic of him, and when she read the card, the message was brief. He had reverted to a formal greeting, which surprised her too. Everything about the letter was surprising, and she didn’t know what to think, if anything. It was courteous, and succinct, yet it had the quality of a message in a bottle that had been sent to her from Paris, or wherever he had been when he mailed it, and felt as though it had reached her by accident. She felt strange as she read it, thinking of him. He had written in his precise, careful hand.

Dear Madame O’Neill
,

I was quite startled by your extravagant present. It is a most handsome, although entirely undeserved, gift. I am very pleased that your surgery went well, and hope that your convalescence is proceeding without problem. I will think of you when I wear the watch, which I most certainly do not merit, but shall enjoy nonetheless. I hope that you are well
.

Very truly yours
,   

Jean-Charles Vernier
.

It seemed so formal, and she was pleased that he had liked the watch. She almost couldn’t tell if some of the formality was simply language or intended. The letter was so much stiffer than their many conversations as he sat in her room at the hospital, or when he dropped in on her after dinner parties. She remembered the things he had said about his marriage. His insistence that resigning oneself to “differences” and disappointments was always the right thing. She had wanted to argue with him about it, but couldn’t. She didn’t know him well enough. But she knew him better than this. She had told him her entire history, about Mark, and Derek, and her heartbreaking years in the orphanage as a child. She had told him all of it, and she didn’t expect him to refer to it in his letter. But this felt so different somehow. She almost wanted to read between the lines to guess what he’d been thinking when he wrote it. Was she just a rich American who’d gotten sick and had surgery in Paris, and had given him an expensive gift that meant little to him? Or had the confidences mattered? She felt foolish for even thinking it, and for being disappointed that the letter wasn’t warmer. What had she expected? She reminded herself that she had no right to expect anything from him. He was her doctor, and what’s more, he was married. She wondered suddenly if she had given him the watch to woo him, or to thank him. She no longer trusted herself, or her feelings for him. Perhaps her motives hadn’t been as pure as she intended. But if so, she knew she was barking up the wrong tree. Jean-Charles Vernier had no romantic interest in her. That much was clear. But had she expected him to, or wanted him to? She was no longer sure, as she questioned herself intently. Jean-Charles was handsome, proper, elegant, intelligent, and married with three children, in a country where people seldom got divorced, and he particularly did not believe in it. He may have held her hand before and during the surgery, and listened to her life story and sorrows, but in the end he was a married French doctor, who had sent her a formal thank-you note with a sunset on it. It meant nothing, and wasn’t supposed to.

In the end, she was a patient, nothing more. It was just that she had thought their exchanges were unusual and profound. But even if they were, Jean-Charles had not lost his head. She told herself that he had intended to thank her with his letter, and he had done that. She had no idea why, but she wanted to answer it. She set the card on her desk and stared at it, as though it were speaking to her, and saying something Jean-Charles had not dared write to her, and never would. What was she thinking, she asked herself. It was a thank-you note. That’s all it was. It was embarrassing to realize she had a crush on her French doctor, if she did. She hadn’t admitted that to herself when he was coming to visit her every day, and spent hours talking to her. But she was suddenly fully aware that for her, it had been more than that, and shouldn’t have been. It was absolutely nothing. A fantasy. A girlish crush. And he had acknowledged her gift correctly. The only thing that seemed odd to her was the card he had used. A sunset over the ocean, as though it were calling to her, which she knew was entirely her imagination. It had to be. Wishful thinking.

There was no way she could write to him, nor should she. It would have been inappropriate and embarrassing if she responded to him, and he would probably think she was crazy. She had given him the watch. He had thanked her. The card was pretty, but so what? It meant nothing. It was not a message in a bottle. It was a formal thank-you note from a French doctor who had taken care of her in Paris. She read the card one last time, saw nothing between the lines, and knew there shouldn’t be. Then with one last look at the sunset in the photograph, she told herself she was ridiculous, and threw it in the wastebasket. She had been thanked, properly and formally. Whatever she had felt for him, even without knowing it, was as healed as her incision. She nearly laughed at how stupid she had been, and hoped he hadn’t thought she was flirting with him. And what if she was? How stupid would that be? Very, she told herself, as Jade walked into the room and saw her confused expression.

“Is something wrong?” She knew her well.

“No, not at all,” Timmie insisted, as much to convince herself as her assistant.

“Your next appointment is here. The marketing people you asked David to set you up with. They’re five minutes early. Do you want me to hold them, or are you ready to see them?”

Timmie hesitated, resisting an overwhelming urge to fish the card with the sunset on it out of the garbage. She was being ridiculous and she knew it. She couldn’t allow herself to even think about him, and she wouldn’t. But for an insane moment, she felt a pang of missing him, and all the time they’d spent talking to each other. It was crazy. She left the card in the wastebasket and looked straight at Jade with a serious expression, trying to focus on what she was saying. “Send them in,” Timmie said, as Jade turned and left the room, and Timmie thought again about the note he’d written her. It was just a thank-you note from a French doctor. That was all it had ever been, or ever could be. And above all, she was absolutely certain it meant nothing, neither to him, nor to her.

Chapter 7

Timmie spent the next two weekends with Zack, and had a surprisingly good time with him. They went to an art fair, and to a movie preview she’d gotten tickets to, where he got his photograph taken with her, which always meant a lot to him. They went to the opening of a restaurant, spent time at the beach, and once in the course of each weekend, they made love, which was a lot for them. And they went back to their own lives, as always, on Sunday night. The rest of what happened in her life, she could handle herself. She had Jade and David to support her on business issues, department heads, managing consultants, advisers, and attorneys. All she needed from Zack was exactly what he was providing, a warm body in her bed on weekends, someone to share popcorn with at the movies, and a friend to make her laugh. She expected little of him. Too little, as far as Jade was concerned. She loved and admired Timmie profoundly and hated to see her settle for as little as Zack offered. She thought Zack was selfish, an opportunist, and a spoiled brat. Jade kept her mouth shut about it with Timmie, but was candid with David about it whenever the subject came up.

“He drives me nuts,” Jade said honestly one afternoon, when they were both eating deli takeout in David’s office at three o’clock. They hadn’t had five minutes to stop before that. Timmie had finally gotten out of the building to meet with lawyers and their CFO downtown, about making some changes in their pension fund. “I hate the fact that she’s willing to settle for a guy like Zack,” Jade said with a mouth full of her egg salad sandwich, while David devoured his pastrami on rye. He was starving, but hadn’t had a minute to stop to eat all day until Timmie left. She just kept fielding balls at him that never stopped, but it was what he loved best about his job. He knew he was learning things and getting opportunities he would never have had otherwise, even if he had to go at two hundred miles per hour most of the time to keep up with Timmie, who went twice as fast.