Right Place, Wrong Time (20 page)

Or else she’d attended because she’d known Ethan would be there, and she’d wanted to see him again. Not that Gina felt jealous or in any way threatened by Kim’s presence. If Ethan had wanted to have Kim with him at
this dinner party, he wouldn’t have invited Gina to take the train up to Connecticut. He wouldn’t have made love to her on the floor of his den, and he wouldn’t have brought her here tonight.

Still, the situation was kind of strange.

Kim pursed her perfect little lips. “What a surprise,” she finally said.

“How’ve you been?” Gina inquired, relying on good manners to see her through.

“How have I been?” Kim clutched a sequined silver minaudière before her. “I’ve been absolutely fine. And you? Are you a benefactor?”

Good manners didn’t require lying. “No,” she said. “I’m here as a guest.”

“I didn’t know you had friends traveling in this circle,” Kim remarked, her impeccable eyebrows flexing energetically in contrast to her deliberately cool voice.

“Well, I do.” Professor Eldridge might count as a friend. That would allow Gina to claim friends, plural.

“What a small world.”

“New York…Connecticut—not a huge distance,” Gina noted.

Kim studied her for a long moment. “Your shoes look like fish.”

“That was the idea. What do you think?” She extended one leg, lifting her foot off the carpet so Kim could get a better look.

“What odd shoes!” a man standing near Kim remarked. “They change color, don’t they?”

“Not really.” Gina tried not to boast, but she couldn’t help swelling with pride as more people gathered around to scrutinize her feet. “They seem to because of the way the light hits them. It’s a material we’re still experimenting with. Luminescent, we call it. Silver is the most
obvious color, but we’re going to see what we can do with some other shades.”

“They’re certainly…unique,” a woman in the crowd murmured.

“I designed them,” Gina said. “I’m a shoe designer.”

“You designed those?”

She explained that she worked with Bruno Castiglio. Evidently, several of the women had heard of him. “He’s famous for very peculiar shoes,” one of them commented, and it dawned on Gina that maybe these people weren’t complimenting her. They were calling her shoes
peculiar
, which really couldn’t pass for a compliment. She tried to explain the way snorkeling among tropical fish in the Virgin Islands had inspired her, but the people around her simply smiled and murmured and drifted away, Kim along with the rest of them.

She felt a strong hand on her elbow, and Ethan’s hushed whisper. “It’s time for dinner.”

“I’d like another glass of champagne,” she whispered back, uneasiness overtaking her.

Ethan led her among the tables to one near a lectern at the side of the room across from the musicians. “I think we’re done with champagne for now.”

“What do you mean,
we’re
done?” That was the way Ramona chided Alicia when she wanted more cookies:
I think we’ve had enough cookies. Go brush your teeth
.

Gina was not going to brush her teeth. Nor was she going to let Ethan tell her what to drink. She was at his damn party, wasn’t she? She was socializing, wasn’t she? She’d talked about her shoes, and if the snobs and fat cats Ethan counted among his friends didn’t like it, tough.

“The champagne disappears after eight,” he explained. “They’ll be serving wine for a while.”

“Oh.” So he wasn’t chastising her. Just explaining the liquor schedule for the evening. She hadn’t realized champagne after 8:00 p.m. was a no-no.

Mere seconds after she’d taken her seat next to Ethan, a waiter asked her if she preferred red or white wine. The champagne had been white, so she stuck with that. Ethan introduced her to some of the other people at their table—a bank president and his wife, the head of cardiology at Arlington Memorial Hospital and her husband, a haze of names and fancy titles she was unable to memorize. She wished Ethan had thought to offer those stick-um labels that said, “Hello, my name is…” that people could have filled out and glued to their chests. At the parties she’d taken him to, downtown, names weren’t important. But here, when her tablemates addressed her, they called her Gina, and she felt guilty that she couldn’t reciprocate by using their names.

Remembering her name was easy for them, she realized. She was the only unfamiliar face at this party. The rest knew one another. They were a circle, as Kim had mentioned, all attending the same events, contributing to the same causes. They were the suburban elite. She was the outsider—just one new name to learn.

At least they included her in their conversation. They asked her how she and Ethan had become acquainted, and she regaled them with the story. “We both wound up in the same time-share at the same time,” she explained. “Ethan wasn’t supposed to be there, but—”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Ethan gently teased.

“Well, his friend messed up, but—”

“I believe it was your friend who messed up.”

She sent him a gritted-teeth smile. “
Someone
messed up.”

“I recall your talking about that trip last spring,” the
lady from the hospital said. “At the Leukemia Society dinner, remember? Weren’t you going with a group of people?”

“Not a group of people,” Gina clarified with a smile. “His almost-fiancée.”

“Gina,” Ethan said quietly, then smiled at the rest of the table. “I went with a friend, Gina went with her niece and we all wound up sharing a condo for the week.”

“Did you know Kim is here?” Gina asked him.

“Yes.” His jaw was tense, his eyes telegraphing some sort of message she couldn’t quite decipher.

“Did you get to say hello to her?”

“Not yet.”

Dinner was served, course after course. The clam chowder was so thick with starch she almost needed a fork and knife to eat it. The salad was pedestrian, mostly iceberg lettuce and out-of-season tomatoes that tasted mealy. The prime rib wasn’t bad, if you liked prime rib. Gina wasn’t crazy about it. She sipped her wine and picked at the food, wondering how much people had paid for their meals. A hundred dollars a plate? Five hundred? They ought to have gotten better food for their money. This food was…suburban. Appropriate. Safe for people who had no taste in shoes.

As soon as his plate was cleared, Ethan touched her shoulder, then stood. “I’m on,” he said to the rest of the diners at their table, then turned and strode to the lectern. He tapped on the microphone to make sure it was working and said, “Welcome, everyone. I hope you’ve enjoyed your dinner. Dessert is on its way, but I know you’re all dying to have me bore you to tears with my speech, so try not to scrape your plates too loudly while I’m up here.”

Friendly laughter greeted him.

Gina rotated her chair so she could see him without straining her neck. He launched into a speech about the work the Gage Foundation had funded in the past year, the projects it was hoping to support in the upcoming year, the importance of its work in protecting the nation’s resources and the necessity for people like all these benefactors to keep the fund financially healthy so it could continue its worthy work. He used no notes, not even scribbles on index cards, but simply spoke, in complete command of the room. She observed his posture, his easy smile, the way he moved his hands, the way glow of the fake candles in the chandeliers brought out the fiery highlights in his hair. She observed the way his strong shoulders filled the jacket of his tux, the way the narrow black bow made his chin look even more chiseled, the way the trousers emphasized the length of his legs.

He was at home here. This was his milieu, and these were his people. All the champagne and wine in the world couldn’t muddle her brain enough to lose track of that obvious truth. She was playing “let’s pretend” in her fancy dress and her gold-stud earrings, and Ethan was being Ethan.

She shouldn’t have come. She didn’t belong. Somewhere in the room, Kim Hamilton was sitting beside some other person instead of next to Ethan. Kim was at home here, too. She’d grown up in this rarefied world, a world of clean air and silence and houses surrounded by grassy yards. Her shoes were demure. She would know what to say about a nanny from the Hebrides. She would also know how much champagne was too much.

Gina’s head hurt. She should have stopped after that third glass—after the second. She’d made a fool of her
self at the table, talking indiscreetly about how she and Ethan had met. Surely she’d embarrassed him. She couldn’t help it. He was so poised up at the lectern, so articulate, so impassioned about the work the Gage Foundation did.

She loved him. How could she not, when he was so smart, so self-assured, so considerate? Even when they made love, when he wasn’t surrounded by his social caste, when he wasn’t buttoned up inside a tuxedo, he was smart and self-assured and considerate, letting her lead as much as follow, letting her take chances with him. Loving him was the biggest chance she’d ever taken—and tonight she felt like a fraud. She’d managed to fake her way through this evening, but in her heart she knew she didn’t belong here.

He finished his speech to thunderous applause. Gina clapped along with everyone else, but she felt tears gathering along her eyelids. She struggled to blink them away before he noticed.

He took his seat next to her, glanced at the melting ice-cream cake that had been left for him while he’d been speaking—and her untouched puddle of vanilla and crumbled cake beside it, and then studied her face. “That was wonderful,” she said, meaning it.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she lied.

He didn’t seem convinced. “I wish we could leave now, but we can’t.”

“I know.” Maybe there was some way she could leave without him, so she wouldn’t embarrass him further. “Ethan—”

She couldn’t finish her thought, not when so many guests were swooping down on him, praising his speech, promising more donations, commenting on some of the
projects he’d mentioned. Rising to his feet, he accepted their congratulations and thanked them for their generosity. “The Gage family gave us a great start,” he said, “but the growth of the fund has really enabled us to take our work to the next level.”

More handshakes, more congratulations. At one point, Ethan managed to grab her hand and give it a squeeze—a sweet acknowledgment of her, although his attention had to remain with the dinner guests. Then his fingers slipped from hers as someone edged between them, insistent on hyping some new research he was pursuing on prairie dogs.

In the crowd swarming around Ethan, Gina spotted that magnificent blond hair again, and the equally magnificent face framed by it. God, Kim looked glorious. As confident as Ethan, as appropriate. As right.

No wonder he’d considered marrying her. She and her simple black pumps belonged in his world in a way Gina never would. When she rose on tiptoe to kiss Ethan’s cheek, Gina felt the truth rush at her like a tidal wave, strong enough to knock her over. It wasn’t jealousy. It wasn’t resentment.

It was the understanding that she was all wrong for Ethan.

P
EOPLE WERE STILL
milling around the hotel’s lobby, schmoozing, networking and lingering over farewells, when Ethan tried to track Gina down. He’d been so busy networking and schmoozing and lingering himself that he couldn’t be sure exactly when she’d disappeared. After his speech, she’d been right next to him, and then he’d gotten mobbed, and the next time he tried to check for her, she’d vanished.

He was furious.

Anxious, too, of course. Worried about her safety. But for God’s sake, it was midnight, he was exhausted and he wanted to go home. With her. This was not a good time to pull a diva act—if that, indeed, was what she’d done.

He tugged his bow tie loose as he wandered through the lobby, his footsteps silent on the plush carpeting. The Neilsons called to him from the coat-check counter, and he detoured to thank them for coming. Playing the courteous host with them wasn’t easy when all he wanted to do was survey every chair and couch in the lobby, every table in the cocktail lounge, every possible nook or niche where Gina might be hiding.

A few polite words with the Neilsons, and he was able to break away and resume his search. She wasn’t in the cocktail lounge. Nor was she in the restaurant, although he would hardly have expected her to duck in there for
a snack after having been served a four-course dinner in the banquet room. He inched the ladies’ room door open and received an appalled glare from a woman edging past him to use the facilities. “I’m sorry,” he said, backing away. “I’m looking for someone. I thought she might be in there.”

Mollified, the woman entered the ladies’ room and then returned to the door to report that no one was inside. Ethan thanked her and continued his search.

Not down the hallway. Not hovering outside beneath the front door’s awning with the smokers who’d had to leave the building to light up.

Where the hell was she? Why had she pulled this stunt?

Swallowing his humiliation, he approached the night clerk behind the polished mahogany check-in desk. “Have you seen a tall woman in a dark blue evening dress, with black hair and—”

“Silvery shoes?” the clerk asked. “I couldn’t help noticing them—they were so weird. She went outside a while ago.”

“Outside?” He started toward the front door again.

“No—the other door,” said the clerk, gesturing toward a glass door on the opposite side of the lobby. “To the pool patio. The pool is closed, but the patio’s still open.”

“Thanks.” Ethan sprinted across the lobby to the glass door and shoved it open.

He spotted Gina perched on a carved marble bench, hugging her arms around herself in the chilly November night and staring at the large rectangular black tarp that covered the pool. She was all alone on the patio, a solitary figure surrounded by wrought-iron tables and chairs and folded sun umbrellas, a few leafless trees, dead
patches of grass and a tall white security fence. He was overcome with a rush of relief—followed by a fresh surge of anger.

“Gina. What are you doing out here?”

She turned to him. Her smile was the saddest thing he’d ever seen. “I was just…cooling off,” she said.

“Cooling off? It’s freezing!” Even in his jacket he felt the air’s chilly nip.

Her smile grew, if anything, more enigmatic. “Ethan…” As he approached, she sighed and turned back to the pool. “I just needed to clear my head a little.”

“Why? Did you have too much champagne?”

Her smile vanished, and she shot him a fierce look. “No, I did
not
have too much champagne,” she retorted, sounding grossly insulted.

He wasn’t sure what she’d do if he sat beside her. He didn’t really want to; the marble bench would be icy and uncomfortably hard. More important, he just wanted to go home, and settling himself in for a heart-to-heart with Gina by an abandoned hotel pool wasn’t the most efficient way to accomplish that goal. If they had to have a heart-to-heart, they could do it just as easily in the comfort of his den—if he could keep himself from staring at the carpet and remembering what they’d done the last time they’d been in the den.

God, he hated heart-to-hearts with women. They made him as uncomfortable as the word
relationship
. He was crazy about Gina; they had something amazing going, something spectacular—but he didn’t want to talk about it. And he had the feeling that if he sat on that bench next to her, talking about it was what they’d wind up doing.

Unsure what to say, he let his gaze drift to her shoes.
The night clerk was right; they were weird. Funny. Striking. Like Gina herself.

“I don’t belong here,” she said abruptly.

He took a deep breath and weighed his response. “Neither of us belongs here,” he finally said. “The pool is closed and the party’s over. Let’s go.”

“No, I meant—” She pursed her lips, then sighed again and rose from the bench. “All right. Let’s go.”

She’d meant something else, obviously. But he wasn’t going to ask her to clarify herself out here, in the cold. In the warmth of his car, he could demand an explanation.

She stood patiently in the lobby while he finalized some paperwork with the hotel’s banquet manager, and then they headed out the front door to the parking lot. He helped her into his car, took the wheel, blasted the heat and steered away from the hotel, all the while waiting for her to explain her cryptic comment. But she said nothing, just tapped her fingertips together in her lap and let her head loll back against the headrest.

The silence ate at him. “Did something happen to you?” he finally asked. “At the dinner—did someone say something to you?”

“Lots of people said lots of things,” she answered vaguely.

“Don’t play games, Gina. Something’s bugging you, and I can’t do a damn thing about it if you don’t tell me what it is.”

“You can’t do a damn thing about it anyway,” she said, straightening up. At a red light, he allowed himself a glimpse of her. Her mouth was set, her eyes luminous in the car’s shadows. “I didn’t belong at that party tonight, Ethan.”

He sat up straighter, too, concern running the length
of his spine like a buzz of electricity. This wasn’t a minor snit. Gina had a real grievance. Whether or not it was justified, he had to take it seriously.

“What makes you say that?” he asked.

“It was obvious. I was like an exchange student there. Everyone was talking a different language. Except that professor from Yale—Madelyn? She understood about buying clothes on sale. But then I asked her about her research, and I had no idea what she was talking about. I had no idea what most of those people were talking about. They might as well been speaking Greek.”

“You’re not in Greece, Gina. You’re in Connecticut. It’s not a foreign country.”

“It is to me.”

“Come on! It’s not even another part of America. Connecticut and New York are contiguous.”

“Contiguous?”
She snorted a laugh.
“Contiguous!
Now, there’s a great word.”

Oh, boy. This was worse than discussing their relationship—although Ethan had a creeping suspicion that that was exactly what they were doing. “Okay,” he said in the calmest voice he could muster. “What’s wrong with
contiguous?
”

“Normal people don’t use the word
contiguous
. At least, not normal people where I come from.”

“And that would be where? New York City? I bet there are people even in the Bronx who use the word
contiguous
.”

“Then you should have brought those people to your fancy party, instead.” She let out a long breath. When she spoke again, her tone held no sarcasm, no derision. She sounded wistful, as sad as her smile by the pool had been. “Ethan, I didn’t belong at that party tonight. I
went, and I tried my best. But I fit in about as well as a whoopee cushion at the ballet. They hated my shoes.”

“Nobody hated your shoes,” he assured her. The clerk had called them weird, but that wasn’t the same as hating them.

“They did. They were polite, but they made sure I understood that my shoes weren’t appropriate. My shoes were the most
me
thing at that party, and they didn’t fit in. And neither did I.”

“Gina—”

“I saw you there with your friends, Ethan. Your associates, your colleagues…I saw you with Kim. She belonged there. I didn’t.”

Damn. Was that what this was about? Jealousy over Kim? “There’s nothing between me and Kim. I told you—”

“And I believe you. Of course I do. What I’m saying…” She paused, clearly struggling with her thoughts. “All I’m saying is, you belonged there. A woman like Kim belonged there. I saw the two of you together and thought, What is he doing with me? I don’t belong in this world.”

“I wanted you in that world,” he argued. “I wanted you with me. I wouldn’t have asked you to be there with me if I hadn’t wanted you.”

“I know that, Ethan. Just like I want you with me when I go club hopping downtown. How do you feel when we do that? Do you feel like you belong?”

God, no. But he couldn’t admit as much. If he did, Gina would use his admission as proof that he was an exchange student in her world, or her friends hated his loafers, or some such thing.

“I mean, it’s so sweet of you, going to parties with me and trying so hard to make small talk with people
you have nothing in common with. I can imagine how hard it must be for you. I love it that you do that for me. But it’s hard. You know I’m right about that.”

“Gina—”

“I’m being honest here. And the honest truth is, you don’t feel any more comfortable with me in my world than I do with you in your world.”

All right. The honest truth: he didn’t feel comfortable in her world. But he could tolerate a few hours of small talk with punks with pierced noses and green hair if it meant spending the rest of the night in Gina’s bed. Given how spectacular life in her bed could be, he was willing to tolerate a hell of a lot to get there.

The honesty she was demanding of him forced him to follow that thought to its end. If he was tolerating the head-banging music, the cheap beer and the vapid conversations about which neighborhood sushi bar had the best aki-aki and which cover girl was overdoing it with Ecstasy, just so he could have sex with Gina, what did that say about him? Other than the fact that he really, really enjoyed sex with Gina.

She was talking about life beyond her bed and his, life beyond the magical sphere they entered when it was just the two of them. Even this awkward, painful conversation in his car, late at night, was part of the magic. He’d never before been involved with a woman who compelled such honesty from him, who wanted it. Kim would have happily married him without ever knowing how he felt about most things—let alone such personal issues as how comfortable he felt in societies that weren’t like his own. Kim would never have pressed him to consider such questions. She hadn’t cared.

Gina did. And she was right. When they were alone, they were great. But when they ventured out into each
other’s worlds, they needed a passport and a Berlitz book.

“Your friend Carole and my friend Paul get along okay,” he pointed out.

“Carole is a doctor. Paul is a businessman. And they both work so hard neither has the time nor energy to go to the other’s parties, anyway.”

“That’s true.” He turned onto his street and slowed as he neared his driveway. “Maybe they should schedule a week together in Palm Point so they can get to know each other.”

“Or two weeks,” Gina said. “His and hers. Of course, if they spend that time together, they might find out they don’t like each other. It’s been known to happen.”

It had happened with him and Kim, he acknowledged silently. But he hadn’t minded losing Kim. Gina…God, he didn’t want to lose her.

He yanked the parking brake and turned off the engine. “Let’s not talk about this anymore tonight,” he said, holding out the promise that they could resume the discussion tomorrow if she insisted. They could compare their worlds and bare their souls and figure out a way to build a bridge between downtown funk and suburban posh, something more substantial than the sand bridges Alicia had created on the beach outside their time-share condo. Right now it was late and they were both tired, and a guy could handle only so much honesty when all he wanted was to take his woman in his arms and make love to her, and then drift off to sleep with her body warm and soft next to his.

Within minutes they were in his bedroom, naked, and she was as warm and soft as he could have dreamed.
But when he kissed her he tasted tears on her cheeks, and he understood that even in bed, a person couldn’t hide from the truth.

“Y
OU BROKE UP
with him?” Ramona shrieked into Gina’s ear. “What are you—crazy?”

Gina was sitting across from Carole at a tiny table in a tapas bar, and she should have turned off her cell phone once the waiter had brought their wine and tapas. But she hadn’t, and when it had beeped, Carole had conveniently announced that she had to go to the bathroom, so Gina had taken the call. Now she was stuck listening to her sister scream at her.

“I get home, there’s this message on my machine saying, ‘This weekend didn’t work out, so I guess I won’t be seeing Ethan anymore,’” Ramona wailed. “How could the weekend not work out? You had the perfect dress!”

“The dress was perfect for the weekend,” Gina explained, sending an apologetic look to Carole as she returned from the ladies’ room. “It just wasn’t perfect for me.”

“You promised Ali she could see this guy. She’s half in love with him herself. And now you’ve gone and broken up with him? How is she going to see him?”

“Look, Mo, I can’t talk right now, okay? Carole is eating all the tapas and I’m not getting any.” Hearing her words, Carole snagged a salty sliver of fried anchovy from the platter between them.

“You looked gorgeous in that dress,” Ramona insisted. “I can’t believe he’d let you walk out on him. What happened? Did that bastard break your heart?”

“We’ll talk about it later, okay? I’ve got to go.” She hit the disconnect button before Ramona could say anything more.