Strangers When We Meet (3 page)

Well, maybe not quite the perfect stranger. She seemed to be laughing at him again.

“At least you only drank a magnum of champagne. I remember my father telling me about a series of dinners he attended on his first diplomatic mission to one of those tiny, fabulously wealthy enclaves that only career foreign service personnel and jet-setting billionaires ever heard about before the Travel Channel came along. The dinners were hosted by twin brothers, hereditary princes who were politically powerful and huge rivals in business and love—” She broke off. “I’m sorry. I tend to get carried away sometimes telling stories. You’re probably not in the mood....”

“No, go on,” he said, ignoring the voice inside his head that told him this was a perfect opportunity to break off the conversation and go slinking back to his room—the one with the big four-poster bed he should be sharing with Heather. “Your story sounds interesting, and I’m sure there’s a moral, or a temperance lecture, at the end of it somewhere.”

She laughed. “I don’t think there’s a moral, and there’s certainly not a lecture. It’s just a good story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

She waited with the eagerness of a born storyteller with a captive audience. He leaned back against the stone parapet and crossed his arms over his chest. “Fire away.”

“Okay. You asked for it.” Bracing her hands behind her, she levered herself onto the parapet. He watched, approving. The wall was a good four feet high. She was stronger than she looked. “The first night when it came time for the mandatory toasts, a magnum of champagne appeared at each place setting. One of the first things a rookie diplomat learns is not to insult his host. The princes were notorious sticklers for protocol, and my father and the others did their best to keep up with their host and his brother through round after round of flowery toasts. Sadly, the champagne was a very indifferent vintage, but needs must.”

“The sacrifices one makes for his country.”

“Exactly.” She smiled at him across the small distance that separated them. “The next night it was the second brother’s turn. And when it came time for the toasts, he produced jeroboams of the same indifferent vintage.”

“A jeroboam. For each guest? I’m impressed.”

“My father was horrified. His head was still pounding from the night before, but he did his best to make inroads on the stuff and couldn’t get out of bed until noon the next day. The third dinner was a nightmare. They were on the elder prince’s yacht, and you’ll never guess what he presented his guests.”

“Two jeroboams each of cheap champagne?” He hadn’t the foggiest notion what bottle of champagne could be bigger than a jeroboam.

“No. A Salmanazar each.”

He might have an MBA from Harvard but he had no idea what she was talking about. “What the hell is that?”

“Surely you know a Salmanazar is more than twice as large as a jeroboam?” She laughed again, and he found the note of self-deprecation endearing. “Oh, dear. My one year of finishing-school trivia is leaching out again, isn’t it. Or maybe, that’s what happens when you spend half your growing-up years in embassy compounds.”

“Twice the size? Drinking one of those would kill a man.”

“It nearly put my father in the hospital. He had nightmares of Balthazars and Nebuchadnezzars showing up at the table.”

“You’ve lost me,” Blake said truthfully. “Aren’t they the names of biblical kings or wise men or something?”

“They’re also gigantic bottles of wine. The Nebuchadnezzar holds fifteen liters of wine. Twenty regular bottles. I’ve never seen one, but I’m sure they’re impressive.”

“And give the waiter a hernia pouring them.”

“Exactly. Drinking more than two glasses of champagne gives me a headache,” she confessed.

“Tell me about it.” He turned and rested his elbows on the stone wall, staring into the water. “I doubt there’s a Nebuchadnezzar of champagne in the entire state of Indiana,” he said in all honesty.

“How did you find your way to Cooper’s Corner from Indiana?” she asked, obligingly changing the subject.

“I live in Manhattan now.” If he kept the answers short and sweet, maybe he wouldn’t make a bigger fool of himself than he already had.

“Manhattan for me, too, the last few years,” she said. “Before that, all over the world. Were...were you there when the towers fell?”

He nodded shortly. It was still hard for him to talk about that terrible day. He’d lost too many friends. More even than in war. Except, of course, it was a war, just a different kind from the ones he’d served in in Saudi Arabia and Somalia.

“Me, too.” She fell silent.

“How does your story end?” he asked, steering the conversation back into shallow water.

When she spoke, she sounded relieved. She, too, had memories she didn’t want to dredge up in the light of the late fall morning. “After that night, the embassy liaison officer took the prince’s major domo aside and explained that it was unnecessary to be quite so...generous. Most Americans, he explained, weren’t capable of...assimilating...so much culture at one sitting. Both princes laughed and congratulated themselves on one-upping the foreigners, and each other, and were perfectly satisfied to go back to serving a single bottle at each place setting. They’d made the Americans look slightly foolish and got rid of a lot of poor champagne that was cluttering up their cellars at the same time. It took my father a week to recover from the hangover.”

“All in the service of Uncle Sam.”

“Well, at least the State Department. And yes, you’re right. My dad’s boss said he was ready to give his all for his country, but he damned well wasn’t going to ruin his stomach with cheap champagne. Not without drawing hardship pay.”

Her laugh was carefree and bubbly, as heady as a good champagne should be. “I bet they didn’t teach you to laugh like that at your finishing school.”

“They didn’t teach me much of anything. Can you imagine—my parents paid thousands of dollars to send me to a school that taught such nonsense but didn’t even offer calculus or physics on the curriculum?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised at all.”

Her eyes narrowed, and her tone was challenging. “Are you suggesting my parents didn’t have my best interests at heart when they sent me to St. Catherine’s?”

He lifted one hand as though to ward off an attack. He found he was enjoying their verbal give-and-take despite his pounding head. “No. I’m sure they thought the school would benefit you greatly, just as I’m sure you made a stink about going.”

The sternness around her generous mouth relaxed, and she smiled again. “You’re right. I did make a stink. A big one. But St. Catherine’s wasn’t about to change their curriculum for a student whose math grades were mediocre at best, which made my objections somewhat suspicious in the administration’s eyes. They politely asked my parents to enroll me, posthaste, in a school where I could fulfill my ambition to major in math and enter MIT.”

“MIT?”

She cleared her throat. “I was trying to make a point. My paternal grandmother was mortified. St. Catherine’s was her alma mater. I was the fifth generation of her family to go there and the only one not to graduate and enter into an advantageous marriage.”

“You’re not married?” He’d already noticed the absence of a ring.

“No.” This time she cut him off. “I went to live with my mother’s parents. I graduated from high school in Connecticut. Then I went to India to be with my parents for a year before I came back to New York to go to college.”

“NYU? Columbia?” He didn’t usually spend this much time in small talk with a woman. Hell, he rarely had time for small talk, period, but he didn’t want her to go.

“Columbia. I’m a psych major.”

He groaned. “That explains it.”

“Explains what?” she asked, slipping off the parapet. “My storytelling prowess? I can assure you I didn’t learn that in college. It comes naturally from my grandfather.”

He shook his head, watching as she dusted off the seat of her jeans with both hands. His breath caught for a quick, hard second in his throat and he had to pull his eyes away before the hardness moved lower in his body. “No. Your knack of asking just the right questions to keep a guy talking whether he wants to or not.”

“I’m sorry. That’s wasn’t at all what I was trying to do.” She turned and took a step away from him in the direction of the village.

He reached out and grabbed her hand, circling her wrist with his fingers. “That’s not what I meant to say.” He’d boxed himself into a corner. If there was any way he was going to salvage the situation, it would have to involve telling her the truth. “I...it’s just... It’s this damned headache and the fact that the last day or so—” He broke off.

“You had your heart broken,” she said softly.

“Maybe not broken.” He gave a short laugh that came out more of a growl. “But it’s beat up pretty bad. I’ll get over it. I just don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

She looked at her hand, encircled by his larger, stronger fingers. He supposed he should let her go, back off and give her space, but he didn’t want to, so he held on to her. “I do tend to talk a lot. And to ask nosy questions. You’re not in the mood to talk about your broken heart. I can understand that. Although, if everyone felt that way, I’d be out of a job—” She caught herself up short.

“Look, I told you I don’t have a broken heart.”

She made a noncommittal sound. “I think a hangover cure’s in order, though.”

“A cure? I’ve already taken as much aspirin as the law allows.”

She laughed again, and the sound carried over the bridge and toward the village. “No, not aspirin. A real cure. Guaranteed hundred percent effective. Made of all kinds of strange and wonderful things.”

“No thanks, I’m not up to some quack cure.”

“It’s not a quack cure. It works. And you’ll be glad to hear it’s the invention of a real, authentic medical doctor.” She looked at him, and the sparkle was back in her rich brown eyes and a smile curved her generous mouth. His heart thudded in his chest. Lord, she had a kissable mouth. He wondered what she would say if he blurted out the fact that he’d be willing to bet every cent he had that kissing her would cure his hangover for sure—and maybe his broken heart. “I think it’s time you met my grandparents. You’ll like them.” She hesitated and squared her shoulders, her glance sliding past his to a point somewhere next to his left ear. “Visiting them is the reason I’m here in Cooper’s Corner this week.”

CHAPTER THREE

T
ELLING
B
LAKE
W
ESTON
she was in Cooper’s Corner to visit her grandparents wasn’t exactly a lie. She was there partly for that reason. It was the other part Emma didn’t want him to know. That she was supposed to be there to plan a party to announce her engagement to one of the town’s favorite sons. Or at least the favorite son of Lori and Burt Tubb, the owners of Tubb’s Café.

She didn’t want to talk about her heartache and indecision to a stranger. But she’d almost done just that. She was acting as desperate and needy as the people who called her show. The moment Blake Weston had touched her, any semblance of reasonable thought had left her brain, and she was functioning on pure emotion. She wanted to tell him she knew how he felt, how he hurt...and how angry she was for him—and for herself.

That’s what shocked her most. The realization that the terrible knot of coldness inside her wasn’t pain. It was anger, pure and simple. That’s why, even though she’d denied it to herself long before this moment, she’d begun to doubt whether she truly loved Daryl. If she did, shouldn’t she be sad and weepy and feeling as if her world had come to an end? Instead, she felt her hands curl into fists. She’d like to poke him in the nose. She wished she’d stuck around that awful night she’d seen him at the restaurant and done just that. Or maybe pulled the shimmery silver hair of the woman whose breasts had brushed his arm, whose eyes had stared so intimately into his—

“Hey, at least give me a chance to put on the gloves.” Blake raised his free hand in a defensive stance as though they were getting ready for a round of boxing. He sounded as if he was only half joking. “I know I’m not at my best at the moment, but—”

Emma blinked, bringing his rugged face into focus. “No. No. I’m sorry. I’m not angry with you. I...I was thinking of someone else.” Her hand was still wrapped in his much bigger one. She tugged it loose, feeling heat rise in her cheeks. She should have done that right away. She started walking. “C’mon, let’s get you something for that hangover. My grandparents’ home is just up this street.”

It only took him half a dozen long strides to gain a step on her. He turned slightly toward her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have grabbed you that way. I missed that session in sensitivity class, I guess.” He angled his head enough to catch her eye. He was trying to look chastened and humbled and not doing a very good job of it, unless he was trying to look like a chastened and humbled highwayman or pirate.

She couldn’t help herself. She smiled. “You never took sensitivity training.”

“I beg your pardon. Everyone at Braxton, Cartwright and Wheeler, from the mail room boy to the partners themselves, has been enlightened to the signs and symptoms of lingering patriarchal attitudes, as well as the dangers of potential lawsuits for sexual harassment,” he added dryly.

“It happens,” Emma replied. She’d had enough women call her show to complain, as well as some men. She told them all the same thing. Start a paper trail. Take it to the proper authorities. Follow through. She even had one or two callbacks to tell her the advice had worked.

“I know it does,” Blake replied. “I offended you again. It was a pretty lame joke. I’m really batting zero this morning.”

“That said,” Emma continued briskly, “I’m not one of those women who hollers rape or sexual harassment every time a man touches her. And I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt about being off your game until after you’ve recovered from your hangover.”

“Thanks.”

“Truce, then?”

“Truce. I’ll confine myself to comments about the weather and the scenery until your grandfather’s potion can turn me into a prince among men.” He held out his hand. Emma braced herself for some kind of shock of awareness. The electric zing she’d felt the first time she’d touched Daryl. The current she thought she’d detected a few moments before with this man. But Blake’s hand was hard and warm, his grip firm, and withdrawn in a moment—nothing more. She’d obviously overreacted to his touch back there at the bridge. She really did have to confront Daryl and put this all behind her. The stress was getting to her.

“Don’t you mean turn you back into a prince among men?” she teased, hoping she hit the right note. Her voice sounded slightly off pitch even to her own ears.

He angled his head a little further toward her. “You caught that, huh?”

“I did. I told you it could cure hangovers, not work miracles.” She had herself in hand as they walked along the edge of the village green with its big old oaks and maples and the stern-visaged statue of the ever vigilant Minuteman. “Oh, look. They’re advertising cider doughnuts at the diner,” she said, pointing to a small sign on a telephone. “I love cider doughnuts almost as much as Clint Cooper’s walnut griddle cakes.”

“Then let me buy you one or two.” He looked at her with a grin that was as wickedly sexy as—she was back to pirate or highwayman, although she guessed Wall Street shark was more accurate. Even she, who cared little about the stock market and whose small trust fund was invested in rock solid blue chips, had heard of Braxton, Cartwright and Wheeler. Blake Weston might not be a partner in the world famous international investment firm, but he definitely didn’t work in the mail room, either. She’d bet a week’s salary on it.

She opened her mouth, ready to take him up on the offer when a horrifying thought hit her. She couldn’t go into the diner with this man—with any man—and face Lori and Burt until she had come to terms with Daryl. “No, thanks,” she said hastily. “I couldn’t eat another bite.” She changed the direction of the conversation. “There’s my grandparents’ house. Just at the end of the block.”

“Good. I don’t think my stomach’s up to cider doughnuts at the moment.” They’d reached the outskirts of the picturesque village, and her grandparents’ yellow Cape Cod was just ahead, its small front yard nestled behind a picket fence freshly painted to match the equally dazzling white shutters at every window.

Her grandmother, still trim at eighty-three, was in the small front yard mulching her prize rose bushes. A stack of foam cones sat by the sidewalk, waiting to be placed over the plants to protect them from the heavy snow and icy winds of a long Berkshire winter.

“Hello, Nana,” Emma called, quickening her step. She stopped just outside the gate of the picket fence and waved as her grandmother turned toward her.

“Emma, sweetie. You weren’t supposed to be here until late this afternoon.” Martha Dorn propped her rake against the dark trunk of the huge redbud tree that dominated the yard and held out her arms. “It’s so good to see you. It’s been too long.”

Emma returned her grandmother’s hug. “I was here just three weeks ago.” It had been a beautiful fall weekend, the maples and oaks in all their glory, the bed and breakfast filled to the rafters with guests. It was the weekend she’d accepted Daryl’s proposal of marriage—just days before she’d seen him with the woman in the restaurant.

“I miss you,” Martha said, tightening her embrace. “It seems longer. Have you heard from your parents?”

“Last Wednesday. They’re fine and they send their love.”

Martha stepped back, her bright gaze zeroing in on Blake Weston. “I’m forgetting my manners. Introduce me to your friend, Emma.”

Emma stopped herself from saying Blake wasn’t a friend—that would only complicate the situation even more. “Blake Weston, this is my grandmother, Martha Dorn. Blake is a guest at Twin Oaks and he’s badly in need of Granddad’s restorative.”

Her grandmother removed her gardening glove and held out her hand. “A little under the weather, are we, Mr. Weston?” she inquired.

Emma held her breath, hoping Blake wouldn’t squeeze Martha’s fingers too tightly and cause her pain. She should have warned him about her grandmother’s arthritis, but there hadn’t been time.

“I’m afraid so, ma’am,” Blake said, equally polite as he folded Martha’s small, arthritis-ravaged hand gently within his own.

The slightly wary look in Martha’s gray eyes vanished as she withdrew her hand. “Then you came to the right place. My husband’s restorative works wonders. I can tell you so from my own experience—many years ago, of course. I don’t drink alcohol anymore these days. Too many medications to take. The bane of growing old, Mr. Weston,” she said, gesturing toward the house, her movements graceful despite her condition. “The body can no longer keep up with the desires of the mind or the heart. At least until Viagra came along.” She tilted her head to gauge Blake’s response to her slightly risqué comment, seemed satisfied with the momentarily stunned expression on his face and continued, “Does it surprise you I’d be familiar with the drug, Mr. Weston?”

“No, ma’am,” he replied, and wisely left it at that.

“A response worthy of my son-in-law,” she said with the same chiming laughter that had attracted Emma’s grandfather more than half a century earlier. “He’s in the diplomatic corps, you know. Please, come inside. I’ll tell my husband we have visitors. Or more precisely that he has a patient.”

“Granddad’s officially retired,” Emma informed Blake as they moved up the brick walkway to the recessed front door with its antique, leaded-glass fanlight. “But Cooper’s Corner is too small to have a doctor of its own, so he spends a lot of time looking in on friends and neighbors. And he’s a member of the town rescue squad, too.”

“Then he must value his leisure time,” Blake said, hanging back a step. “I’ll survive this hangover without the restorative.”

“Don’t be silly. Felix couldn’t be prouder if he’d invented penicillin. He loves to see that concoction work, right, Emma?”

“Yes, Nana.” Emma hurried to open the heavy oak door for her grandmother. Blake reached out a long arm and pulled it shut behind them as they entered the small, narrow foyer with its shining pine floor and pale green walls.

“Felix. Guess who’s here? It’s Emma Martha. And she’s brought a friend in need of your elixir.” Martha turned her smile on Blake once more as she motioned them to follow her through the doorway under the stairs into her husband’s study. The sound of a college football pregame show could be heard coming from the enormous entertainment center that dominated the far wall of the small, low-ceilinged room.

“What?” Felix Dorn unfolded his frame from the depths of an old wing chair, the TV remote in his hand. He hit the mute button and straightened slowly to his full height. Eighty-four, white-haired and bushy-browed, her grandfather was still an inch or two over six feet. Her father was only five feet eight, and Emma had shot past him her junior year in high school. She got her height from the Dorns.

“Grandfather, this is Blake Weston.” Emma made the introductions. The two men shook hands. “Mr. Weston had a run-in with a magnum of Dom Perignon,” Emma explained, raising her voice slightly to compensate for her grandfather’s failing hearing and his refusal to wear a hearing aid. “I brought him for a dose of your elixir.”

“I’m sorry for the intrusion,” Blake said. His color wasn’t good, and there were deep lines carved nose to chin on each side of his mouth. “I see you were getting ready to watch the game.”

“Kickoff isn’t for another twenty minutes, and in fifty years I haven’t seen an entire football game from beginning to end. Why should today be any different? Follow me, young man. My office, such as it is, is right through that door.”

Blake looked as though he might refuse, but he was standing next to a table with a bowl of her grandmother’s rose potpourri on it, and with each breath he took, he turned a shade paler, and a shade greener around the gills.

“Go with Granddad. He’ll fix you up in no time flat, I promise,” Emma said in her best advice-giver tone.

Blake’s eyes narrowed. He tilted his head, staring a little past her, as though trying to recall something he’d forgotten.

“Yes, go with Felix, Mr. Weston,” Martha urged. “You’ll feel much better soon, I promise.”

“Come on, man. Time waits for no one.”

“My husband has never been known for his bedside manner,” Martha said dryly.

“I haven’t got all day. This is just like Emma Martha,” Felix muttered under his breath, but loud enough for them all to hear. “Always bringing home strays and birds with broken wings. It’s no wonder she’s in the business she’s in. Talking to the Lord knows who on the radio about sex and what-all and more sex, just as if she’d known them all their lives.”

Blake stopped dead in his tracks. “Talking on the radio?” His green-gold eyes bored into her.

“Emma’s on the radio, Mr. Weston,” Martha explained. “In New York City. Didn’t you know that?” Her grandmother gave Emma a puzzled glance. Emma shrugged. This was going to take some explaining.

“I listen to your show in Manhattan,” Blake said, a dull red flush overlaying the pallor of his skin. “‘Night Talk with Emma Hart.’ That’s why your voice was so familiar.”

“I should have taken a pseudonym when I started out,” Emma murmured. It was an omission she was coming to regret more frequently as ‘Night Talk’s popularity grew. She hoped she wasn’t blushing, too.

Martha took a protective step toward Emma. “He didn’t know who you were? I thought you said he was your friend?”

“We met this morning, Nana. At Maureen’s. I—”

“Taking in strays,” Felix muttered louder than before. “Well, it makes no difference if you’re suffering. Took an oath fifty years ago. Not about to break it now. C’mon, young man. Before I forget what I came in here for.”

“I—” Blake said helplessly.

“Go on. You really will feel better in no time,” Emma said, the shocked expression on Blake’s face sending a bubble of laughter into her throat. He must be mentally reviewing each and every word he’d said to her in the last three hours. “I promise I’ll never mention this on my show. You have my word on it.”

* * *

B
LAKE
LOOKED
at the foaming brown liquid in the glass and swallowed hard. He’d be damned if he’d lose the contents of his abused stomach in front of Emma’s grandfather. And from the look of unholy glee on the old man’s face, that was exactly what he was expecting him to do.