Right Place, Wrong Time (15 page)

Or maybe that was just another excuse. Gina suspected she’d been putting off the thank-you dinner because she was still assimilating the week she’d spent at Palm Point, still trying to decide how grateful she was for Carole’s having crossed wires with some bozo named Paul, forcing Gina and Alicia to share the condo with—

“Hello?” a man’s voice broke through her cluttered thoughts.

Not just a man’s voice. Ethan’s voice.

She pulled the receiver away from her head and stared at it. Why was she hearing Ethan’s voice through this piece of molded plastic?

“Gina? Are you there?”

She pressed the receiver back to her ear, clamped her free hand over her other ear to shut out Bruno’s abrasive chatter about why some top-name designer wanted to have his runway models shod in Manolo Blahnik instead of Bruno Castiglio, and said, “Ethan?”

“I found you! I can’t believe it. I’ve been trying to track you down for weeks.”

“You have?”

“I got this number from your sister.”

When had he spoken to Ramona? Did they know each other? Why hadn’t Ramona told Gina that Ethan had contacted her? Why did Gina suddenly feel as if she were swimming underwater, lost in that alien universe, sensing no gravity and unsure which way was up?

“I had to twist her arm to give me your work number. She wouldn’t give me your home number, and you’re not listed in the directory.”

“I don’t have a land line,” she told him. “It’s a cell phone. It’s not in the directory.” Why were they talking about her phone number? She had spent the past two months trying not to think about whatever the hell had flared between them their final night on St. Thomas—whatever the hell had flared between them the entire week they’d been together. She’d berated herself for wasting her mental energy on him. He was a privileged, polished Connecticut fellow, sort-of not-quite engaged to a woman—or at the very least sleeping with her, whatever the hell
that
was all about. Gina and Ethan had become friends the way soldiers sharing a foxhole might; odd circumstances had thrown them together, and there had been a certain amount of chemistry, and that last night those kisses had been a complete and utter mistake. Gina had been sad about leaving St. Thomas, far sadder about her sister’s wrecked marriage and its impact on Alicia, and she’d let her emotions carry her away. She was usually not that stupid.

So why was Ethan on the phone? Why had he tracked her down at work? How had he managed to call her at a rare moment when Bruno wasn’t tying up all three lines?

“I’d like to see you,” he said.

She still felt as if she were underwater, blowing bubbles and kicking against the current. But now, at least she could make out some signposts—a bit of coral reef, the rippled sand below, the sun broken into glints of light across the surface of the water above.
He’d like to see you
, she thought.

Would she like to see him?

She sucked in a deep breath—and coughed, as if some water had come through the snorkel tube along with the air.

“We could meet somewhere, or I could come downtown, if you’ll give me the address of your office.”

She should have said no—because he was a privileged, polished Connecticut fellow, maybe engaged, and all that. Instead, she said, “When?”

“How about today?”

Today? Was he in New York now? Why did she still feel as though she were caught in a riptide? “What about Kim?” she asked.

“Kim and I ended our relationship in St. Thomas, Gina. Remember? You were there.”

“Well…maybe you were just telling me you weren’t going to marry her because you wanted to mess around with me.”

“I didn’t want to ‘mess around’ with you,” he said, pronouncing the phrase as if it disgusted him. “There was something going on between you and me. You know that as well as I do. It wasn’t ‘messing around.’ It was something else.”

“What was it?”

“Damned if I know. But I’d like to find out. Can we get together?”

She sighed. Closing her eyes, she tuned out Bruno’s hysterical blathering on the other two phone lines, the UPS guy in natty brown shorts who was dumping a carton of samples on the floor near the door, the off-key humming Geoffrey, the company’s chief engineer, indulged in when he was concentrating, the blinding fluorescent lights and the scents of leather and solvent and rubber that wafted around her desk. Damned if she knew what was going on between her and Ethan, either—as
suming something
was
going on between them. Perhaps they’d only been acting out a tropical fantasy during that week on St. Thomas. If she hadn’t been with Alicia and he hadn’t been with Kim, maybe they would have continued their act until the final curtain.

He wanted to see her. Today.

“I can’t,” she said, both disappointed and relieved. “I’ve got plans.”

He took a minute to digest this answer. “How about tomorrow?”

“Why are you so eager to see me, all of a sudden?”

“It’s not all of a sudden,” he told her. “I’ve wanted to see you since the moment you left Palm Point. But I had to get things properly squared away with Kim. And then it took me a while to track your sister down, after I tried unsuccessfully to track
you
down.” He paused, then asked, “Do you really not want to see me, Gina? Just say so, if that’s how you feel. Don’t make me come to New York only to make a fool of myself. I want to see you, but if you have no interest at all, no curiosity in seeing where this could take us—”

“No,” she blurted out. “I mean, yes. I mean, no, I don’t have no interest or curiosity.” Great. She was blathering worse than Bruno. She wondered if she sounded like a jackhammer. More important, she wondered if Ethan had any idea what she meant. She wondered if
she
had any idea.

He obviously chose to interpret her mangled words in a way that suited him. “Then we’ll get together tomorrow. Where do you live?”

She wasn’t about to tell him. She was a savvy New Yorker, and even though she knew Ethan, even though she’d kissed him—a hell of a lot more than that, actually—she knew better than to give him her home ad
dress, at least not until she’d seen him again and assured herself that he was safe.

He hadn’t been safe in St. Thomas. Oh, he’d been safe when it came to snorkeling…but even an innocent activity like sitting across the table from him at a fancy restaurant in Charlotte Amalie had proven risky. And talking to him, confiding in him, feeling so connected to him—

Not safe. “There’s a coffee shop on Ninth Avenue,” she informed him, not adding that it was a five-minute walk from her apartment. She often went there for brunch on Saturday mornings. She’d be there tomorrow, if he wanted to meet her. One look at the place, with its pleasantly gloomy ambiance and its multicultural clientele, might scare the Connecticut fellow away.

She provided the address and told him he’d find her there at 10:00 a.m. If he took one peek through the door and ran away—or if he decided between now and tomorrow morning that he really didn’t want to see her, after all—she would eat her omelette and get on with her life.

“Y
OU COULD HAVE
seen him tonight,” Carole said as she spread her napkin across her lap. She and Gina sat at a corner table at Gina’s favorite neighborhood Thai restaurant. Gina had ordered Pad Thai, Carole something with prawns and lemon grass and three little flames printed beside the menu listing, warning that the dish was extremely spicy. The waiter had already brought them bottles of Singha beer. Gina figured Carole would need a few bottles to put out the fire her dinner ignited on her tongue.

“I wanted to see you,” Gina said. “If I canceled tonight, it would be months before we could get together.
You’ve got all those sick kids interfering with your social life.”

Carole laughed. She loved her pediatrics work at St. Vincent’s Hospital. She’d been in her final year of residency when Gina had met her; they and three other women had shared a two-bedroom apartment when Gina had first moved to Manhattan. The other three women, one of whom had slept on a sofa bed in the living room, had been monumental slobs, leaving dirty clothing on the floor, food-caked dishes in the sink and open, oozing tubes of toothpaste on the bathroom counter. Carole and Gina had united in their horror, and from that a friendship had blossomed.

Amazing how friendships could flourish when strangers found themselves sharing living quarters.

She and Carole had already discussed Fashion Week, the stretch of days in September when all the major designers came to New York and held runway shows in a huge, glamorous tent in Bryant Park to display the following spring’s collections for the fashion columnists and buyers. It wasn’t as big a deal for shoe designers as for clothing designers, but Bruno always pushed to get his shoes onto the runway models’ feet. The city filled with European royals, American socialites, film stars and cover girls. Parties abounded. Gossip ran rampant. It was like Mardi Gras for the fashion world—exciting but exhausting, requiring an abundant intake of headache remedies.

Gina would much rather have talked about Carole’s patients, but Carole wanted to talk about Gina. Specifically, she wanted to talk about the phone call Gina had gotten at work earlier that day. “I’m really sorry about the screwup with the time-share,” Carole said. “I still
don’t know why Paul told those people they could stay in the unit after he told me he wasn’t going to use it.”

“You’ve apologized a zillion times,” Gina assured her. “It was obviously just a big misunderstanding.”

“It was more than that, if Paul’s friend wants to see you.”

“Why do you keep talking about Paul as if you know him?” Gina asked.

Carole’s usually pale cheeks turned pink. “Well, I do know him.”

“You do?”

“After you phoned me from St. Thomas, I called him up and tore him a new one. Called him seven different kinds of idiot. I was a little rough, I guess.”

“A little?” Gina recalled how Carole, a sweet, soft-spoken native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, used to light into their piggish roommates in that East Village walk-up four years ago. She could be pretty fierce herself, but she’d always been glad to be on Carole’s side in those fights. Carole was not a woman you’d want to have angry with you.

“The next day, he showed up at the hospital, looking for me. He works down on Wall Street as a fund manager downtown. He said he wanted to set the record straight….” She faltered, her cheeks growing rosier.

“So?” Gina goaded her. “Did he?”

“Well, once we stopped screaming at each other, we…we kind of felt an attraction. We’ve been seeing each other.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I didn’t want to tell you over the phone, Gina. I thought you might be angry. His mistake practically ruined your vacation, after all.”

“No, it didn’t.” It had altered her vacation, but ruined it? Not even close.

So now Carole was seeing Ethan’s friend Paul. “Do you like him?”

“We fight a lot. It’s fun.” She grinned. “He’s a little too suburban, but I’m hoping that’ll change.”

“Do you think it
can
change?” Ethan was too suburban, too. Gina’s last boyfriend, Kyle, had been too suburban, even though he’d lived in Queens. She’d hoped he would change, but he didn’t. He couldn’t.

Why had she agreed to meet Ethan tomorrow? Why did she allow herself a glimmer of excitement at the prospect of seeing him? He was way too suburban. Look at the woman he’d almost married—blond, gorgeous, a walking, breathing embodiment of suburban.

“I changed,” Carole said, spreading her hands in display. “I grew up in the Midwest, which is like one huge suburb. And here I am in New York.”

“Yeah, but you’re a woman. And brilliant. Ethan…”

“Is he brilliant?”

Gina ran a polished nail along the edge of the label on her beer bottle. “He’s smart. When it comes to environmental stuff, yeah, he’s probably brilliant. But he’s definitely not a woman.”

“That could be a plus,” Carole said, grinning mischievously. “Give him a chance, Gina. He might surprise you.”

“He already did, just by calling me up.”

“So go for it. What’s the worst that’ll happen? You’ll spoil your Saturday brunch?”

Gina sighed. A lot of things worse than that could happen. Ethan could turn out to be nothing like the man he’d been in St. Thomas, quiet and gentle but steel spined, tough yet sympathetic when sympathy had been
exactly what she’d needed. Or he could turn out to be exactly like the man he’d been in St. Thomas, and then she’d fall hard for him, and he’d hop on the train back to suburbia.

The waiter arrived carrying platters of aromatic shrimp soup. Gina managed a smile. Okay, so tomorrow’s brunch might be spoiled by the invasion of Ethan Parnell into her life. At least she could enjoy tonight, in the company of a friend who was resolutely not suburban.

O
NE THING
Ethan liked about Manhattan was that the streets were numbered, making it difficult for a visitor to get lost. He might have taken a cab downtown from Grand Central Station, but his train had gotten into the city a half hour before he was supposed to meet Gina, and the air was crisp, some midway point between summer and autumn, so he decided to walk.

The city was easier to take on a Saturday morning. Traffic was marginally lighter, the sidewalks fractionally less jammed with pedestrians. All right, then—that made two things he liked about Manhattan. Numbered streets and thinner crowds at the start of the weekend.

Still, he wondered how anyone could live in a city so big and overpopulated. A daily diet of New York would leave him too frazzled to think. Gina hadn’t seemed particularly frazzled, but she’d been under the influence of the lulling Caribbean atmosphere when he’d gotten to know her last July. Here on her home turf, he might find her as hard and headstrong as most of the New Yorkers he knew. After all, she was in the middle of Fashion Week, whatever that was.

He must have been crazy to force this meeting. He should have contented himself with his sweet memories
of Gina: Her intensely dark eyes. The undulations of her body as she’d snorkeled in the clear, warm Caribbean Sea—in one or another of her gloriously revealing swim suits. Her soft hair. The erotic pressure of her weight when she’d sat in his lap. He shouldn’t have placed those memories at risk by confronting the real, nonvacation Gina in her natural habitat.