The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue (13 page)

Much, much later, long after any reasonable-length business lunch would have been over, I was curled up in Henri’s arms, completely
oblivious to the unforgiving hardwood floor beneath me, and we were both breathing heavily. To my surprise, and relief, Henri
hadn’t tried to push me past the point of some very heady kisses.

“I think I’ve violated about a million professional standards,” I said, because once the kissing had stopped, I’d been flooded
with worry. I’d heard so many horror stories about mixing business with pleasure, and yet I’d been as vulnerable to it as
anyone.

“Hm,” Henri said, continuing to stroke my hair. I hadn’t felt cherished in such a long time that the simple brush of his fingers
against my scalp brought a sting of tears to my eyes.

“I’m hoping this isn’t your normal business lunch.” I decided humor might be the best way to ease out of the
situation. “Or is this just part of your new employee orientation?”

Henri stiffened. Oops. I should have kept my mouth closed. “What are you saying, Ellie?”

I sighed. “Sorry. I’m just thinking that I should have kept things on a more professional level.”

“You are sorry for what happened?” He looked as if the mere possibility wounded him to the core. Only I didn’t think it was
an act. He looked truly hurt at my regret.

“I’m not sure I can be your employee and…” My voice trailed off, because I wasn’t quite sure what to call what had just happened.
“Your whatever this is.”

“Then you’re fired.” Henri smiled, and my insides did another somersault. And another. And another.

And that’s when I knew I was in deep trouble.

CHAPTER NINE

“
T
ired?” My voice squeaked like a boy going through puberty. “You’re firing me?”

“If you insist that I choose, then yes, I would fire you immediately. I can always hire someone else to help me with the apartment,”
he moved his lips close to my ear again, “but who else could have made this meal so…enjoyable?” He drew out the syllables
of the last word as if pronouncing them in French—
en-joy-ah-bleh.
Emphasis on the “ah.”

“Oh.”

“So, should I fire you? Would that make your American sense of propriety feel better?” Henri smiled.

Okay, the bottom line was I didn’t want Henri to fire me. I couldn’t afford it. Literally. “No, I don’t think you should fire
me.”

“Good.” He playfully tapped the end of my nose with the tip of his finger. “Because I have never found it to be a problem
to mix business with pleasure.”

Maybe I was being too provincial. Too American. In which case, I could pretend to be just as sophisticated as any Frenchwoman
on the planet.
Pretend
being the operative word of course.

“Back to work, then,” I said, tapping the end of his nose in return. I shifted to my knees and stood up. “I’ll just get my
pen and notepad.” I turned to walk across the room to the kitchen where Henri had tossed those two items on the counter. As
I went, I was aware of his gaze firmly and appreciatively fixed on my derriere.

Take that, Jim,
I said to myself, and I put a bit of extra swing in my hips as I walked away.

S
hould I be ashamed to say that from that point, not a day went by that I didn’t see Henri? Sometimes it was business—meeting
him at an antique store to have him choose from several beautiful armoires or rendezvousing at a local carpet warehouse to
look at gorgeous Persian rugs for his living room.

Other times, we would rendezvous in the true sense of the word. He took me to dinner at Mario’s and The Wild Boar, and I worked
harder than ever pulling weeds in my backyard to counteract the pate and crème brulée. And even though new furniture was delivered
to his apartment each day, we continued to enjoy picnics in front of the fireplace whenever our schedules allowed. He worked
long hours, and I was beginning to add some other clients.
Small jobs, to be sure. A wealthy, elderly widow who needed someone to take her shopping. An absentminded Vanderbilt professor
with a genius IQ who couldn’t remember to pay his bills on time. They weren’t generating an overwhelming amount of income,
but it was a start.

As caught up as I was in the double satisfaction of doing good work and being thoroughly romanced, I still had time for self-doubt.
One evening, as Henri and I were leaving a performance of the Nashville Symphony hand in hand, we were crossing an open plaza
downtown when I couldn’t keep myself from asking the question that had been bothering me since that first picnic.

“Why me, Henri?” I asked quietly, half-hoping the whooshing of the fountain in the middle of the plaza would drown out my
words. I was a fool to rock a boat while I was so desperately clinging to the sides.

“Because Jane recommended you,
bien sur.
” But his eyes twinkled so that I knew he was teasing me.

“You know what I mean.”

And then he stopped, turned me toward him, and put his fingers beneath my chin, lifting my eyes to his. “You truly do not
know?”

I shook my head and would have looked away, embarrassed, but his fingers held my chin in place.

“To begin with, you are very beautiful.”

I tried to shake my head in denial, but he leaned forward and kissed me softly on the lips.

“I’m middle-aged,” I protested.

“And that means you cannot be beautiful?”

Well, he had me there. Because here in America, that
pretty much summed it up. Evidently the men in France hadn’t gotten the memo.

“You are also intelligent,” he added, kissing my forehead. “And compassionate.” He kissed my cheek. “And you have taken pity
on me, a stranger in a strange land.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “How could I do anything but adore you?”

And despite my misgivings, I believed him. His eyes, his voice, his touch all oozed sincerity. In a good way.

“Perhaps,” he said, “it would be better to ask why a woman like you would take pity on a pathetic specimen like myself.”

And then he kissed me in earnest. The fresh air of a cool spring night bathed my heated cheeks, and I allowed myself to feel
the happiness that poured over me like water from the fountain next to us.

Y
ou’ve been doing what?” Jane’s jaw dropped, practically brushing my hardwood floor, where the four of us sat around my dining
room table at our next chapter meeting, the ever-present red hats in place and lots of munchies on hand.

“We’re having a bit of a…well…fling, I guess.” I was blushing to the roots of my hair. I had managed to keep the level of
my involvement with Henri to myself for two whole weeks—fourteen days of amazing kisses and the ego-building attentions of
an incredibly sexy man. Whenever I felt a Twinkie twinge, I pictured Henri, and the urge to binge quickly receded.

The cocktail party the night before had been a smash
ing success. I’d found an amazing little black dress on the 75 percent off rack at Dillard’s, and the shrimp puffs and caviar
had been crowd pleasers. As I circled the room, directing the two waiters I’d hired for the evening and encouraging the bartender
to practice liberality, I’d taken great satisfaction in the evening’s success. Henri had lavished praise on me in front of
his colleagues with as much enthusiasm as he kissed me with when he followed me into the powder room. For a woman who’d been
a certified couch potato a few weeks before, I’d undergone a serious transformation. I’d charmed and satisfied every guest,
pulling off an elegant gathering of fifty of Nashville’s top business people.

And over the course of those two weeks, even Jim’s increasingly frequent phone calls couldn’t perturb me for more than an
hour or two.

At first, I had put the calls down to a need to rub my nose in his happiness with Tiffany, but over the last few days, I’d
begun to wonder if my assessment was correct. Especially when the last time he’d called, he’d wanted to know how to wash delicates.
In twenty-plus years of marriage, Jim had never expressed the slightest interest in washing anything, delicate or otherwise.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Linda asked, pulling me back to the here and now. “Dating Henri?” For the first time, the Queens
of Woodlawn Avenue were meeting at my house, and in honor of the occasion, I’d bought my first red hat. It was a 1920s-style
cloche, its turned-up brim anchored by a purple ribbon rosette. “You know what they say about mixing business with pleasure.”
Linda frowned and her green eyes looked troubled.

I’d waited until we were in the middle of a hand to drop my bombshell. Grace and I had lost the bidding to Linda and Jane,
but halfway through the hand, Grace had the lead. She slid an eight of hearts into the middle of the table. Jane reached over
and pulled a ten from Linda’s dummy. I looked at the cards in my hand, completely void in hearts, and pondered which of my
trump suit to play. Excited at the prospect of an extra winner, I pulled a five of spades from my hand and slid it on top
of the other cards.

Grace frowned. Not a good sign. Then Jane pulled a card from her hand and threw it on the pile. “Don’t send a boy to do a
man’s job,” she said as her king of spades trumped my little five.

Shoot.

Grace didn’t look too happy with me. “Don’t send a boy to do a man’s job,” she repeated. “That means, don’t underplay your
cards, thinking you can squeak out an extra winner. If you’re going to take the trick, do it with authority. Otherwise you
let your partner down. Next time play a higher card.”

Jane nodded in agreement. “Don’t be afraid to use your power.”

Don’t be afraid to use your power.
Her words coalesced in my brain and wouldn’t leave, even after the bridge game was over and the other Queens of Wood-lawn
Avenue had long departed.

I
was still wrestling with the implication of those words later that night. Curled up in bed in an old pair of flannel pajamas,
I’d taken a wooden box from its place of honor
on my nightstand, opened the lid, and lifted out its contents piece by piece.

I’d made the memory box at some Amway-style party where one of my former Belle Meade friends had been hawking the latest distraction/activity
for bored housewives and stay-at-home moms. Being me, I’d not been satisfied with a slapdash job. No, my memory box, with
Ellie & Jim
written in elegant calligraphy across the top, had been a flipping work of art. A monument to a marriage that was dying right
under my unknowing nose.

The box was full of mementos. Intimate things. Bits and pieces of my life that now lay strewn across my bedspread. A scrap
of lace from the negligee I’d worn on my honeymoon. Ticket stubs from plays and movies we’d enjoyed. Little notes Jim had
written me over the years.
To My Dearest Ellie. With all my love, Jim.
A remnant of love from happier times. The only use I’d found for these mementos over the past nine months had been as instruments
of self-torture. Over and over again, I’d sifted through the contents of the memory box just as I was doing now.

And then the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

My pulse shouldn’t still leap at the sound of his voice. I decided to attribute my reaction to the maudlin stroll down memory
lane.

“What do you want, Jim?” Too bad I couldn’t keep the asperity out of my voice. I wanted to sound cool and distant.

“Did you get the check I sent?”

“Yes, thanks.” I wasn’t going to praise him for alimony that was fourteen days overdue. I had deposited it in the bank with
a sigh of relief, grateful for the small cushion it provided.

“How’s your business going?”

“Fine, thanks.” I didn’t say anything else, because somehow the combination of his voice and the sight of all those mementoes
lying on the bed tied my tongue. Jim was silent for a long moment, too.

“Well, I guess that’s all I really wanted. To make sure you got the check.”

“Okay.” Two syllables I could barely force past the sudden constriction in my throat.

Another silence.

“Okay, well, good-night, Ellie.”

“Good-night, Jim.” I hung up the phone, and, darn it, tears sprang to my eyes. That old hurt welled up in my chest, and it
was like the last two weeks had never happened. I was the same, pitiful wreck that Jim had walked out on all those months
ago.

And then suddenly Grace’s words ran through my mind again.
Don’t give your power away.

I wiped away the tears with the back of my hand and took a deep breath. Then I picked up the phone and, stabbing at the buttons,
dialed my old number.

“Ellie?” Jim had apparently looked at his Caller ID because he didn’t bother to say “hello.” “Is anything wrong?”

“I want you to quit calling me.”

“What?”

“I don’t know why you’re doing it, but I want you to quit calling me. If you want to know if a check has ar
rived, send me an e-mail. If you need to know how to wash Tiffany’s lingerie, ask her. And for heaven’s sake, Jim, if you’re
lonely, don’t drink and dial. Go find your little floozie and bother her. But quit calling me.”