In Love Again (6 page)

Off to where
? Claire wondered to herself. She got up quickly and put her pen and pad back into her purse. She didn’t want to interrupt Boppy’s new train of thought, but felt compelled to thank her nonetheless. Claire compromised and whispered, “Thank you so much” as she turned and ducked out of the office. Before she shut the door behind her, she heard Boppy on the phone making plans to fly to Houston the next day to personally oversee the third repainting of a top client’s dining room ceiling.

Claire took a deep breath, smoothed her palms down her navy blue skirt, and almost burst into tears of joy. She had a job! Twenty-four-seven? She’d work thirty-six-seven if such a thing were possible. She walked down the flight of stairs and reintroduced herself to Henrietta, relaying the information about the corporate credit card and the client in Litchfield.

“Oh, thank God. None of us can deal with Alice anymore. You’ll be perfect to wrap that situation up once and for all.”

Henrietta showed Claire back to the main entrance level. Halfway between the formal waiting room and the back garden, there was one more room with four desks in it. One was vacant.

“It’s not very glamorous, I’m afraid.”

Hilary, the young woman who had carried out the tray of coffee to the garden, turned from one of the four desks. “Oh, hi!”

“Hi,” Claire said, reaching out to shake hands. “Looks like I work here…”

“Welcome! I’m so glad.”

Claire couldn’t quite reckon that she’d actually been hired, but she smiled at Hilary all the same, happy someone was happy to have her.

Henrietta said, “I’ll get the credit card set up and delivered to you in the next day or two. Hilary, I have to hop. Will you show Claire the rest?”

“Sure. No problem.”

“Bye, Claire. Good luck…you’re gonna need it!” Again with the backhanded well-wishing. Claire wanted to chalk it up to her own nervousness, but it was obvious that some of the people who worked here were bitter or just worn out. She had a hard time imagining ever being anything but insanely grateful for the chance to do what she basically did anyway, or had done for the past twenty years, but to have someone pay her instead of the other way round.

Hilary introduced her to Erin, who handled human resources and payroll, and then to a rather severe-looking woman with a strong Brooklyn accent. She was a beautiful brunette, with an appealing toughness about her.

“I’m Roberta, the resident bully.”

Claire wasn’t sure how to respond.

Then Roberta laughed and gave Claire a little shove on the upper arm. “I’m the one who yells at all the deliverymen and painters and manufacturers who try to tell us they’re running late or things have slipped through the cracks. I’m the buck…everything stops here.” She used her thumb to point at her chest.

Claire smiled. She liked Roberta already.

The room still had the beautiful period details of the building intact: the tall reception floor ceilings, at least twelve feet high, the pale blue walls and bright white moldings, the hardwood floors. Into each corner, a triangular desk, made of practical, no-nonsense white Formica, had been built.

Hilary pointed to the far corner. “Seniority, I’m afraid. You get one of the desks that faces away from the window.”

“Oh, I don’t mind at all. I’m so excited.”

The other three women looked at her like she was a little bit off.

“I mean,” she hesitated, wondering if she would be overstepping some unspoken rule by confiding too much. Three faces waited for her to finish. “You might as well know. This is my first job.”

“Your first job in New York or in the design business?” Hilary asked.

“No…”

Roberta had taken a sip of coffee and nearly snorted it through her nose. She sputtered, “You mean…this is your first job,
ever
?”

Claire blushed. “Yes.”

“That is awesome!” Erin finally chimed in from the far corner. She had just finished with a spreadsheet and had closed out the screen, swiveling to face Claire full on. “You must be so excited.”

“I really am. Thanks.” Claire turned to the corner desk and trailed her hand along the white surface, pulled the chair out, and sat. “Wow.”

The other three laughed, and Roberta and Erin turned back to their work. Hilary brought her chair over to sit next to Claire, then spent the next hour telling her passwords, how to enter orders into the system, how to access Boppy’s schedule. She was given a corporate email address, added to email distribution lists, and shown myriad other details.

“That’s probably enough for now. I could use some help with inputting all these orders. Why don’t we start there, okay?” Hilary asked.

“Sure.”

Hilary handed her a sheaf of yellow invoices. “Just be careful, because we have some bulk fabric orders that have to be billed to separate clients. I’m right here if you have any questions.”

Claire began carefully, terrified that she was going to make an error. After an hour or so, her stomach growled, and she looked at her wristwatch to see it was almost two o’clock.

“Hilary, may I step out for lunch?”

“Of course, anytime. You don’t need to ask permission. There’s a good soup and sandwich place right around the corner on Third Avenue.”

“Thanks. Do you want anything?”

“Sure. If you don’t mind, I’d love a large latte…if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Of course not.”

Claire walked out into the sunny, brisk air and had to repress the urge to jump up and down and squeal like a little girl. Instead, she reached into her purse and got her cell phone. She clicked on the preset for Bronte’s New York cell phone number.

“Well?” Bronte answered without preamble. “Why haven’t you called me until now? I was going nuts!”

“I got the job, Bron!”

“Oh my god! I think I might cry! I am so eff-ing happy for you! Did she just put you to work that very second?”

“Pretty much. I’ll tell you everything tonight. I just ran out to grab a sandwich and then I’m going back to finish inputting some invoices.”

“Listen to you! Already invoicing clients!”

“And I get to go out to Litchfield, Connecticut, next Saturday to meet with a client. It’s just all too exciting, Bron. I can’t even begin to thank you.”

“I didn’t do anything, silly. You did. I’ll talk to you later. Huge congratulations again! Yay!”

And then Claire heard the shuffle of Bronte babbling with Wolf, the eager toddler reclaiming her attention as the phone went dead.

The next ten days flew by in a whirl of learning as much as she could without her head exploding. She’d been especially looking forward to her day-trip out to Connecticut to meet with her first real client. Unfortunately, it was hard to concentrate when every time she opened the Pinckney file, her heart began to race frantically.
It was a silly coincidence, probably nothing
, she kept telling herself.
Probably nothing.

As she’d been working on the file, Claire had come across digital copies of some canceled checks from Alice Pinckney’s joint checking account with her husband from before they got divorced. Actually, the first time she saw the printed names at the top of the check, her heart didn’t race frantically at all. It simply stopped.

Alice Pinckney’s husband (
her ex-husband!
Claire’s—apparently teenaged—inner self shouted) was Benjamin Hayek.
The Ben Hayek!
her shrieking adolescent inner self added.

After it resumed beating, Claire’s heart didn’t really recover. She stared at his name right there on her computer screen with the cursor flashing—
just a name
, she reminded herself—but her heart pounded like one of those Japanese war drums. The scanned check looked innocuous enough, with its grainy bits here and there and a man’s firm signature slashed across the bottom right.
What were the chances
? she’d argued with herself. It couldn’t possibly be the
same
Ben from all those years ago. And even if it was, she was meeting with Alice and she needed to stay focused on doing well at her job rather than mooning over some long-lost blip on her romantic radar. Well, she’d been a blip to
him
, probably.

She’d held off for a couple of days, then finally gave in to her curiosity and Googled Alice Pinckney and Benjamin Hayek. Sure enough. The
New York Times
wedding section showed the happy couple. Well, at least they’d
appeared
happy ten years ago.

Just then, Hilary walked behind Claire’s chair and caught her gawking.

“Ah, Pinckney’s ex-husband. Quite something, isn’t he?”

Claire clicked on the red dot to close out the web page and swung her chair around. “Nice enough, I suppose.”

“Are you blushing?”

“What?” Claire’s hands flew to her cheeks. “No. Of course not.” She turned her chair back around. “Just preparing for my big client meeting this Saturday.”

“Mm-hmm,” Hilary agreed skeptically. “Preparation is very important, Claire.”

By the time Saturday morning rolled around, Claire had probably overprepared, making list after list of what needed to be done to wrap up the project. She was a little worried that Alice Pinckney would hate all of her nit-picking suggestions, and she didn’t even allow herself to entertain the possibility that Ben would show up at the site visit for some unexpected reason. Claire wasn’t sure she would be able to function properly if he was there, so she had to keep reminding herself he was
not
going to be there and—even in the very very
very
unlikely event he did come—she was
not
a teenager on a beach in France.

Despite all that, there was something about her first real on-the-job adventure that made Claire unaccountably fearless. She woke up at 6 a.m., showered, and changed into trim blue jeans and a crisp white shirt that she starched and ironed to perfection. She wanted to feel put-together; she wanted to come off as reliable.

Just before she left, she contemplated whether to borrow Bronte’s disgustingly expensive Brunello Cucinelli shearling jacket. Claire pawed it longingly, then muttered
what the hell
and pulled it out of the closet, taking a moment to savor the exquisite quality and texture.

She allowed plenty of time to navigate her way out of the city and on into the countryside, especially since she was driving into unfamiliar territory on the wrong side of the road. As she pulled into the circular driveway, she checked the time and saw she was a few minutes early, so she decided to wait in the car. Right at the top of the hour, as she looked out the steamed up windows, she saw someone jog past and gesture toward the front door.

Someone tall and wet and handsome and dark and someone definitely
not
Alice Pinckney.

Claire felt her insides turn to jelly.

It wasn’t Ben’s turn to deal with the site visit, but Alice had rightly assumed he didn’t have anything better to do. He was playing guitar in the Village Sunday night, but other than that, he wasn’t on call at the clinic and he didn’t have any plans. So Ben had agreed to meet with some designer from Matthews Interiors at the house out in Litchfield, while Alice went out of town on business.

He’d driven out late the night before, feeling his boredom and irritability slip away as the city receded farther and farther in his rearview mirror. The whole second-house idea had been Alice’s initially, but lately, Ben had really started to cotton to it. It felt good and right to be building something other than his retirement account. Though he couldn’t understand why Alice felt compelled to hire one of the most expensive interior designers in the world. The endless envelopes filled with fabric samples and paint chips had driven him mad. He told Alice she could do whatever she wanted. Until the divorce.

Then it turned into an investment protection situation, as far as Ben was concerned. He wasn’t going to approve a four-thousand-dollar antique French chandelier for the front hall if they were just going to sell the place as soon as it was done. For the past six months, it had been stalemate after stalemate. Pretty soon, one of them was going to torch the place just to be done with it.