Right Place, Wrong Time (18 page)

At last Gina reached her destination—a quiet pocket of space around a corner, where the light was marginally better and a bartender was busy filling orders. Ethan released a pent-up breath. The bartender had a row of beer
bottles lined up on his table like icy brown soldiers. Things were looking up.

When Gina asked for a beer for herself, things looked even more up. She might belong at a chichi downtown party like this, but in her heart she was a down-to-earth beer drinker like him.

“Do you know a lot of the people here?” he asked, gazing around the bend in the wall at the crowd, enough of whom were moving in some sort of rhythm to make him realize they’d trekked across a dance floor to reach this oasis.

“What’s a lot?” She shrugged, accepted an open bottle from the bartender, then waited while the bartender snapped open another bottle for Ethan. A wisp of vapor rose from the mouth of the bottle before he lifted it and took a bracing sip. “I recognize plenty of faces. Some of the players, yeah, I know them. And here’s a person I know very well,” she added, waving to someone behind Ethan. He turned in time to see a compact man with leonine brown hair and strong features. He was about Gina’s height—or about what her height would be if she weren’t wearing her multicolored shoes.

The man’s gaze zeroed in on them and he smiled. “Sweetheart! How do they feel?”

“You know me—I hate heels,” she said before air-kissing his cheeks, one and then the other. “Other than that, they’re fine.”

“Is the leather soft enough?”

“Like a second skin.”

“And don’t complain about the heels. Those are, what, inch and a half?”

“I’m spoiled. I’m used to flats.”

“We ought to drag you in front of the cameras, wrestle your tootsies into some three-inch stilettos.”

“You’d have to kill me first.” She gave Ethan’s arm a squeeze. “Ethan, this is my boss, Bruno Castiglio. Not everyone cares as much about shoes as he does.”

“They should care,” Bruno said indignantly. “Your job and mine depend on them caring. You gonna go out there and circulate? Anyone comment on them yet?”

“I just got here,” Gina told him. “And it’s kind of dark and crowded in there. I don’t know if anyone’s going to notice them.”

“You should dance. People’ll see your feet if you dance.”

“Don’t be a pain in the butt, Bruno. In fact, if you’d shut up a minute, I could introduce you to my friend Ethan Parnell.”

“Ethan. A pleasure,” Bruno said, pumping his hand. “You in the business?”

Ethan swallowed a laugh. Surely it was obvious, from his staid apparel and boring hairstyle, that he was not a card-carrying member of the Fashion Week Brigade. “No. I direct a foundation for environmental protection.”

“Uh-oh. An environmentalist? You’re not gonna give us a hard time over the use of leather in the shoes, are you?” Bruno touched the lapel of his leather jacket as he spoke.

“No,” Ethan assured him. “My shoes are leather, too.”

“So’s his belt,” Gina said, shooting him a sly grin. Evidently, his belt was a point of particular interest to her.

Bruno’s gaze shifted toward the dance floor for a moment, and then he smiled at Gina. “Isn’t that Delores de la Mancini?” he whispered, as if a woman standing in
the current of that loud music could hear them talking by the bar.

“The little princess?” Gina squinted, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s her.”

“I want her to see those shoes. Go make nice.”

“I’m not kissing her hand,” Gina warned, then patted Ethan’s shoulder. “I’ll be back,” she promised before abandoning him to cozy up to the petite woman in the silver lamé minidress hovering near the edge of the dance floor.

“The little princess?” Ethan echoed.

“She’s some kind of minor royalty,” Bruno told him. “A duchess, a countess, I can’t keep all those titles straight. But she’s a shoe fanatic. She’s the doyenne of European shoe fanatics. She’s gonna love our new line. And thank God Gina’s the one wearing the shoes. She can make any pair of shoes look special.”

That was only one of her assets, Ethan thought, watching from the safety of the bar as Gina embraced the smaller woman, began chattering, then kicked up a leg so the woman could view her shoes without bending over.

“So, you’re a friend of hers?” Bruno asked, drawing Ethan’s attention away from the sales job Gina was performing on the European shoe doyenne.

Gina had warned him that Fashion Week thrived on gossip. He didn’t believe anyone would care about his identity, but he was willing to protect Gina’s reputation if he could. “Yes, we’re friends,” he said noncommittally.

“She’s in love with you,” Bruno guessed.

Ethan felt his eyebrows rise. “I don’t think—”

“Last guy she fell in love with was a straight arrow,
too,” Bruno said. “Neat, quiet, wouldn’t know cashmere from mohair. He was a cop.”

“Her brother’s a cop, isn’t he?” Ethan said, eager to steer the discussion away from love.

“That’s the thing about her. She’s a city girl, funky, brilliantly talented—but on those rare occasions when she falls in love, it’s usually with a clean-cut guy in an oxford shirt.”

Ethan opened his mouth and then shut it. What could he say in his defense? He was a clean-cut guy in an oxford shirt. “I don’t think she’s in love with me,” he assured Bruno. “We just…we met in St. Thomas last summer and became friends.”

“Be that as it may…” Bruno smoothed the collar of his jacket and edged over to the bar. “A Campari on ice,” he requested, then turned back to Ethan. “Just do me a favor and don’t break her heart, okay? Last time she fell in love, with that cop, he broke her heart. I swear, I would have gone after him with both fists if he hadn’t been a law enforcement professional. You can’t avenge a friend’s heartbreak when the heartbreaker carries a service revolver, you know what I mean?”

“I can imagine.” Ethan decided he liked Bruno. Anyone who’d want to avenge Gina’s heartbreak was all right in his book. “I have no intention of breaking her heart,” he promised, hoping that was a promise he could keep.

“Because I’ll tell you—” Bruno leaned toward him “—if I were hetero, I swear, I’d marry her in an instant. She’s one hell of a woman.”

“She is,” Ethan agreed. Admitting that he considered her one hell of a woman was practically the same as admitting that they were more than friends. And after the day he’d spent with her, he’d be lying to call what
they had going for them mere friendship. Friends didn’t dive into passion like snorkelers, holding their breaths and submerging, letting the tide carry them into deep waters. Friends didn’t give themselves to each other the way he and Gina had.

He had come to New York to find out what existed between them. He knew now that it was something real, something scary, something he couldn’t label. Something that would likely cause problems for him and her both—because there he was, the clean-cut straight-arrow out-of-towner in her high-style world. He didn’t feel comfortable here. He wasn’t sure he belonged.

But they were more than friends. And damned if he was going to break her heart.

With a nod to Bruno, he ventured away from the safety of the bar to the edge of the dance floor, where Gina had attracted a cluster of people who were gushing over her shoes. He touched her shoulder, and she turned and gave him a dazzling smile. “Let’s dance,” he said, taking her free hand and leading her deep into the too-too fashionable crowd.

“S
O, IT’S GOING WELL
with this Ethan guy?” Ramona asked.

Gina leaned back in her chair and stretched her legs under the kitchen table in Ramona’s cheery country-style kitchen. Her definition of luxury was being able to take a weekday off to travel up to White Plains to see Ramona. Her reward for having worked eighty-hour weeks leading up to Fashion Week—and having generated great interest among buyers in their colorful line of shoes—was to be allowed to work only thirty-hour weeks once Fashion Week was nothing but a memory with a mild hangover.

Gina sipped her Diet Coke and smiled. “It’s going okay,” she said—an understatement, but she didn’t dare to say more. Claiming that a relationship was flying high would jinx it. Gina was superstitious enough not to take chances.

Ethan had been coming to New York City to see her every weekend in the month since Fashion Week ended. He and Gina spent those weekends talking, eating, roaming the streets, visiting museums and making love. And partying. In his crisp pleated trousers, crew-neck sweaters and tailored shirts, Ethan always looked grossly out of place at the parties and clubs she took him to, but he was a good sport, dancing with her and shooting the breeze with her pierced, tattooed friends and never
showing a hint of revulsion or impatience when someone like her sculptor pal Willie, who insisted on wearing spiked collars even though they were so yesterday, launched into a diatribe about how it was more important for the government to fund the arts than to support old-growth forests, because a lack of art destroyed society more effectively than a lack of sequoias in Northern California did.

After each party, their heads still ringing with music and conversation, they’d return to her apartment and make love again. She wasn’t the most experienced woman in the world—those sisters at Our Lady of Mercy had done a decent job of brainwashing her before they’d kicked her out of their school—but she understood that what happened between her and Ethan in bed was a rare thing. The honesty, the sharing, the trust—she’d never known anything like it before. She’d never known a man willing to talk during lovemaking, to suggest things, to accept her suggestions, and afterward to hold her, and stroke her, and make her feel precious to him. Neither she nor Ethan dared to use the
L
-word—talk about jinxing a relationship!—but with him, Gina felt deeply loved.

So yeah, it was going okay.

A major test loomed, however, and anxiety nibbled at the edges of her contentment whenever she thought about it. “I’ve got my doubts regarding this fund-raising party he wants to take me to,” she said, then took another sip of soda to keep from blurting out that she was scared to death about venturing onto Ethan’s upper-crust Connecticut turf. She prided herself on being scared of nothing. But this had her in a chronic state of low-grade anxiety.

“Once we get you the perfect dress, you’ll feel better
about it,” Ramona assured her. “I’m sure we’ll find just the thing today at the mall.”

Gina tried not to shudder. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d shopped at a mall. Malls were so suburban.

But Ramona had insisted she couldn’t attend Ethan’s swanky fund-raising gala in Connecticut wearing an outfit she’d picked up at one of her funky consignment shops, or an ensemble thrown together by some up-and-coming designer she’d met at a party. “I live in the suburbs, Gina,” Ramona had reminded her over the phone yesterday, “and I’m telling you, when you get out of New York City you’ve got to dress appropriately. The suburbs are very into appropriateness.”

“You mean I’m going to have to
act
appropriately at this shindig, too?”

“Look it, act it, live it. Ethan’s taking you with him because he wants to show you off. You don’t want to embarrass him, do you?”

Gina had never considered herself embarrassing. Anyone who might be embarrassed by her was not a person she’d want to spend time with. She wasn’t embarrassed by Ethan when he wore khakis while club hopping with her. He was who he was—a clean-cut kind of guy. And she was who she was—not the sort of woman who shopped at malls.

It was more than just going to the fund-raiser that had her spooked. The benefit, scheduled for two weeks from that Saturday, would be her first time visiting Ethan in Connecticut. Her first time viewing his house, her first time cruising through his town, her first time seeing him in his own element. She and not Ethan would be the outsider.

What if Connecticut proved to be too far away—not
in miles, but in manner? What if traveling there proved to her that the distance between her and Ethan was just too great to be overcome? Ramona could dress her in the most bland, conservative,
appropriate
outfit in the entire mall, and Gina might still feel as if she didn’t belong. No wonder she was scared.

Her panic must have shown on her face. Ramona carried her own soda to the table and patted Gina’s hand. “You don’t have to dress like a senator’s wife, Gina. We’ll find something appropriate
and
cool.”

“Really?” She forced a laugh. “Is it possible for a dress to be both?”

Ramona joined her laughter, but the sudden chime of the doorbell interrupted their giggles. Ramona reflexively glanced at the clock built into her wall oven and frowned—11:00 a.m. “I’m not expecting anyone,” she said as she left the kitchen to answer the door.

A mixture of curiosity and concern propelled Gina out of her chair and down the hall behind her sister. Maybe someone had sent Ramona flowers—someone named Nick Balducci. They’d gone out a few times. Why not? Flowers, or a guy in a gorilla suit who would sing a love song, or a parcel service delivering some sort of romantic gift, or—

“Jack? What are you doing here?”

Gina’s apprehension about her shopping mission and the party that necessitated it vanished, replaced by defensiveness and anger. She hadn’t seen Ramona’s estranged husband since July, just before she and Alicia had departed for St. Thomas. Once he’d moved out of Ramona’s house, he’d moved out of Gina’s life, as far as she was concerned.

But now he filled the doorway of Ramona’s tidy, tree-shaded split-level. He was as tall and devastatingly hand
some as Gina remembered, his hair as black, his eyes as chilly a blue. He still had broad shoulders, a dimpled chin and a cocky smile that women—at least the woman who happened to be Gina’s sister—had once found irresistible.

Ramona was apparently able to resist him now. She bristled with impatience as she stared at him looming on her front porch. She’d been dealing with him on a regular basis since his departure last summer; he came twice a week to visit Alicia, and Gina supposed they also spoke frequently on the phone, working out the logistics of their separation. They weren’t fighting anymore; they were simply relating to each other as dispassionately as possible. Or so Ramona had told Gina.

Dispassionate or not, she felt all her protective-sister urges boil to the surface. If Jack gave Ramona a hard time—even if he gave her a soft time—he’d have Gina to answer to.

“Ali isn’t here,” Ramona told him. “She’s at school.”

“I know that.” Jack’s voice was muted. He wore a traditional gray suit, his tie hanging loose at his throat. He must have come directly from the bank where he worked as a branch manager. “You’re the one I came to see.” His gaze strayed past Ramona and he glowered. Clearly, he hadn’t come to see Gina. But his frown ebbed and he offered her a polite nod. “Gina. How’re you doing?”

She could be polite, too. “I’m fine, Jack. And you?”

“Not complaining.”

Okay. They’d gotten through that exchange without bloodshed. If she could handle that, she could probably handle an evening of small talk with the fat cats and
tycoons she’d have to socialize with at the Gage Foundation benefit dinner.

“If it’s business you want to discuss,” Ramona said, folding her arms across her chest, “maybe we should have the lawyers—”

“It’s not business.” Jack shoved his hand through his hair and sighed. “Can I come in?”

Cool late-October air spilled into the entry hall. After a long minute, Ramona sighed, waved him in and closed the door behind him. “Gina and I are on our way out,” she warned, as if she had to justify her lack of cordiality.

“I won’t take long,” Jack promised, passing Gina as he followed Ramona through the hall to the kitchen.

Gina decided to make herself scarce. She trailed them as far as the kitchen doorway, then spotted her half-full glass of soda on the table. “Let me just get my glass, and I’ll give you two some privacy.”

“We don’t need any privacy,” Ramona declared, pointing to the chair Gina had been occupying. “Sit. Finish your Coke.”

Jack eyed Gina with mild resentment. She didn’t want to be there any more than he wanted her to be there. But if Ramona wanted her there, she wouldn’t leave. Shooting him a defiant look, she dropped into her seat and raised her drink to her lips.

He scrubbed his hand through his hair again and flexed his mouth as though rehearsing what he was going to say. “Look,” he began, then cleared his throat and shifted to face Ramona—a physical attempt to cut Gina out of the conversation. “It’s just—well, I ran into your brother the other day.”

“You ran into Bobby? You were in an accident?” Ramona asked, deliberately misunderstanding him.

Jack scowled. “He came into the bank, all right? He
was ordering new checks. I don’t know why he didn’t do it at his local branch instead of coming to mine. No, I
do
know why. He came because he wanted to tell me you were seeing someone.” Jack glanced toward Gina, apparently measuring her reaction.

She hoped her face gave nothing away. Jack had a hell of a nerve questioning Ramona about her love life after he himself had left her for another woman. On the other hand, Gina understood why he hadn’t wanted her to sit in on this conversation. It was between his wife and him. Gina didn’t belong in the room.

Ramona glanced toward her, too, her look saying she was grateful Gina was close by. She didn’t seem to need any backup, though. She leaned casually against the counter, her arms still crossed, her chin tilted at a pugnacious angle, her poise unshaken, and returned her husband’s steady stare.

When she didn’t speak, Jack did. “Your brother said it was a guy who works at your father’s store. Nick something.”

“Nick Balducci,” Ramona informed him.

Pain flickered across his face. “Yeah, that was it.” Once again, the two of them stared each other down in silence. Was Ramona supposed to apologize for dating Nick? Why should she?

“He’s a clerk in a hardware store,” Jack finally said.

“My father’s a clerk in a hardware store.”

“Your father owns the store.”

“And Nick’s been there a long time. It wouldn’t surprise me if my father makes him a partner in the place someday.”

“Yeah, especially if he’s seeing your father’s daughter.”

Anger flared in Ramona’s eyes. “You think he’s seeing me to get close to Dad?”

“The possibility crossed my mind, yeah.”

Gina
really
didn’t want to be here for this. Even shopping for a dress at the mall would be more fun than witnessing a blowup between Ramona and Jack. She started to push out of her chair, but when Ramona erupted, she decided the wisest course would be to stay put. “How dare you come in here and make snide remarks about who I’m dating? You’re the bastard who left me for another woman, remember? You’re the one who told me you wanted to move in with her. You’re the one who broke up our marriage, because you were so much in love with What’s-her-face. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you lost the right to criticize my social life when you walked out that door.”

“Mo. Come on. Just because we’re separated doesn’t mean I don’t worry about you.”

“Oh, so you’ve got my best interests at heart? Can you believe this, Gina? He’s worried about me. He’s afraid Nick’s taking advantage of me. What a guy!”

Gina held her hands up in surrender. She had no intention of contributing to the debate.

“I just don’t want you getting used,” Jack insisted. Despite Ramona’s rage, he kept his voice low. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“You’re a little late on that score, Jack. Nobody, including Nick Balducci, could hurt me as badly as you did.” Gina could tell that Ramona regretted the words as soon as they were out by the way she averted her eyes and took a long sip of her drink. Jack looked chastened and rueful, and Ramona stared at her soda as if it were tea and she hoped to divine the future from leaves swirling at the bottom of the glass.

Actually, Gina thought Ramona’s outburst was a good thing. Why not let Jack know he’d hurt her? Why not be human, and honest?

That was one of the best aspects of her relationship with Ethan. They were honest. When they made the rounds of the galleries and he didn’t like a painting, he’d say so, even if it was a piece she considered brilliant. If he didn’t like the cuisine at a restaurant she chose, he’d speak up. And when he’d told her he really wanted her to accompany him to the fund-raising dinner, she’d honestly told him she didn’t think she would fit in. And he’d honestly told her he wanted her there anyway.

And she was honestly petrified about how the evening would go. But at least she was honest.

“So what’s this really about?” Ramona asked, more calmly. “Things aren’t going so well between you and your sweetie?”

“I don’t know,” Jack mumbled.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Ramona asked. Gina pushed determinedly to her feet, but Ramona glared at her. “Sit down,” she commanded. Like an obedient child, Gina sat.

“Things are going fine with Vickie,” Jack insisted. “But I miss being home. I miss Ali. I miss…home.” He obviously wasn’t going to admit that he missed Ramona, but the unspoken sentiment hung in the air.

“You left home.”

“And I miss it. I’m not saying things are bad with Vickie. I’m just saying I miss what I gave up.”

“Well, here’s a news flash, Jack. You made a choice. Nobody forced you. It was your decision, and you made it. If you’re having second thoughts—”