Chapter Twenty-Four
M eg heard the car creeping along behind her. Although it was barely ten o’clock at night, the chilly October rain had emptied the streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. She walked faster past the wet, black garbage bags that sagged at the curb. Rain dripped through the fire escapes above her head, and trash floated in the flooded gutters. Some of the former redbrick tenement buildings on Clay’s block had been spruced up, but most hadn’t, and the neighborhood was dodgy at best. Still, she hadn’t thought twice about clearing her head with a trip to her favorite cheap deli for a hamburger. But she hadn’t counted on the rain driving everyone inside on her way back.
The building that housed Clay’s cramped fifth-floor walkup was almost two blocks away. She’d subleased his dingy apartment while he was in L.A. shooting a meaty role in an indie film that might be the break he’d been waiting for. The place was small and depressing, with only two minuscule windows admitting trickles of thready light, but it was cheap, and once she’d gotten rid of Clay’s greasy old couch, along with the detritus left behind by various girlfriends, she had room to make her jewelry.
The car stayed with her. A quick glance over her shoulder showed a black stretch limo, not anything to get nervous about, but it had been a long week. A long six weeks. Her brain was fuzzy from exhaustion, and her fingers so sore from laboring over her jewelry collection that only willpower kept her going. But her hard work was paying off.
She didn’t try to convince herself she was happy, but she knew she’d made the best decisions she could about her future. Sunny Skipjack had been on target when she’d said Meg should reposition herself for the high-end market. The boutique managers she’d shown her sample pieces to liked the juxtaposition of modern design and ancient relics, and the orders had come in more quickly than she’d dreamed possible. If her life’s goal was to be a jewelry designer, she would have been ecstatic, but that wasn’t her goal. Not now. Finally, she knew what she wanted to do.
The car was still right behind her, its headlights yellow smears on the wet asphalt. Rain had soaked through her canvas sneakers, and she pulled the purple trench she’d found at a secondhand store more tightly around her. Security grilles barred the windows of the sari shop, the Korean discount home-goods store, even the dumpling place—all closed for the night.
She walked faster still, but the steady hum of the engine didn’t fade. It wasn’t her imagination. The car was definitely following her, and she had a block to go.
A police car sped by on the cross street, siren blaring, red light pulsing in the rain. Her breath came more quickly as the limousine pulled up next to her, its dark windows menacing in the night. She started to run, but the car stayed with her. Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw one of the back windows slide down.
“Want a lift?”
The last face she’d ever have expected to see peered out at her. She stumbled on the uneven pavement, so dizzy she nearly fell. After everything she’d done to cover her tracks, here he was, framed in that open window, his features shadowed.
For weeks, she’d labored deep into the night, focusing only on her work, not letting herself think, refusing to sleep until she was too exhausted to go on. She was ragged and empty, in no condition to talk to anyone, let alone him. “No thanks,” she managed. “I’m almost home.”
“You look a little wet.” A shaft of light from a streetlamp cut across one molded cheekbone.
He couldn’t do this to her. She wouldn’t let him. Not after all that had happened. She started to walk again, but the limo stayed even with her.
“You really shouldn’t be out here by yourself,” he said.
She understood him well enough to know exactly what lay behind his sudden appearance. A guilty conscience. He hated hurting people, and he needed to reassure himself that she wasn’t permanently damaged. “Don’t worry about it,” she said.
“Would you mind getting in the car?”
“No need. I’m almost home.” She told herself not to say any more, but curiosity got the best of her. “How did you find me?”
“Believe me, it wasn’t easy.”
She kept her eyes straight ahead and didn’t slacken her pace. “One of my brothers,” she said. “You got to them.”
She should have known they’d cave. Last week, Dylan had taken a detour from Boston to tell her Ted’s calls were driving them all nuts and she needed to talk to him. Clay sent her a stream of text messages. Dude sounds desperate, his last one said. Who knows what he might do?
Worst-case scenario? she’d replied. He’ll miss a 4-foot putt.
Ted waited until a taxi passed before he replied. “Your brothers gave me nothing but trouble. Clay even told me you’d left the country. I forgot he was an actor.”
“I told you he was good.”
“It took me a while, but I finally realized you wouldn’t accept money from your parents anymore. And I couldn’t see you leaving the country with what you took out of your checking account.”
“How do you know what I took out of my checking account?”
Even in the dusky light, she could see him raise his eyebrow. She moved on with a snort of disgust.
“I knew you’d ordered some of your jewelry materials on the Internet,” he said. “I made a list of possible suppliers and got Kayla to call them.”
She stepped around a broken whiskey bottle. “I’m sure she was more than willing to help you out.”
“She told everyone that she owned a boutique in Phoenix and she was trying to find the designer of some jewelry she’d spotted in Texas. She described a few of your pieces—said she wanted to carry them in her store. Yesterday she got your address.”
“And here you are. A wasted trip.”
He had the nerve to sound angry. “Do you think we could have this conversation inside the limo?”
“No.” He could deal with his guilt all by himself. Guilt didn’t add up to love, an emotion she was done with forever.
“I really need you to get in the car.” He grunted out the words.
“I really need you to go to hell.”
“I just got back, and trust me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Damn it.” The door swung open, and he jumped out while the limo was still moving. Before she could react, he was dragging her to the car.
“Stop it! What are you doing?”
The limo had finally braked. He pushed her inside, climbed in after her, and slammed the door. The locks clicked. “Consider yourself officially kidnapped.”
The car began to move again, its driver hidden behind the closed partition. She grabbed the door handle, but it didn’t budge. “Let me out! I don’t believe you’re doing this. What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy?”
“Pretty much.”
She’d delayed looking at him for as long as she could. Any longer, and he’d see weakness. Slowly she turned her head.
He was as dazzling as ever with those tiger eyes and bladed cheekbones, that straight nose and movie-star jaw. He wore a charcoal gray business suit with a white shirt and navy tie. She hadn’t seen him so formally dressed since his wedding day, and she struggled against a dark tide of emotion. “I mean it,” she said. “Let me out right now.”
“Not until we’ve talked.”
“I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to talk to anybody.”
“What do you mean? You love to talk.”
“Not anymore.” The interior of the stretch had long seats running up the sides and tiny blue lights edging the roof. An enormous bouquet of red roses lay on the seat in front of a built-in bar. She dug into her coat pocket for her cell. “I’m calling the police and telling them I’ve been kidnapped.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“This is Manhattan. You’re not God here. They’ll send you to Rikers for sure.”
“Doubtful, but no sense taking chances.” He snatched the phone away and shoved it in the pocket of his suit coat.
She was an actor’s daughter, and she produced a bored shrug. “Fine. Talk. And hurry up about it. My fiancé’s waiting for me at the apartment.” She pressed her hip against the door, as far away from him as she could get. “I told you it wouldn’t take me long to forget you.”
He blinked, then reached for his bouquet of guilt roses and set them in her lap. “I thought you might like these.”
“You thought wrong.” She flung them back at him.
As the bouquet hit him in the head, Ted accepted the fact that this reunion wasn’t going any better than he deserved. Kidnapping Meg had been one more miscalculation on his part. Not that he’d planned to kidnap her. He’d intended to show up at her door with the roses and a heartfelt declaration of everlasting love, then sweep her off into the limo. But as the car turned onto her street, he’d spotted her, and all his common sense had vanished.
Even from the rear, with her body enveloped in a long purple trench coat, her shoulders hunched against the rain, he’d recognized her. Other women had the same long-legged gait, the same determined swing of the arms, but none of them made him feel as if his chest had imploded.
The dim blue lights in the limo’s interior picked up the same shadows beneath her eyes that he knew had taken up residence under his own. Instead of the rustic beads and ancient coins he was used to seeing dangling from her ears, she wore no jewelry, and the tiny, empty holes in her lobes gave her a vulnerability that tore at him. Her jeans poked out beneath the hem of her wet purple trench coat, and her canvas sneakers were soaked. Her hair was longer than it was when he’d last seen her, spangled with raindrops, and bright red. He wanted her back the way she’d been. He wanted to kiss away the new hollows below her cheekbones and put the warmth back in her eyes. He wanted to make her smile. Laugh. Make her love him again as deeply as he loved her.
As she stared straight ahead at the partition that separated them from his mother’s longtime Manhattan driver, he refused to consider the possibility that he was too late. She had to be lying about the fiancé. Except how could any man resist falling in love with her? He needed to be sure. “Tell me about this fiancé of yours.”
“No way. I don’t want you to feel any worse about yourself than you already do.”
She was lying. At least he prayed she was. “So you think you know how I feel?”
“Definitely. You feel guilty.”
“True.”
“Frankly, I don’t have the energy right now to reassure you. As you can see, I’m doing just fine. Now get on with your life and leave me alone.”
She didn’t look as though she was doing just fine. She looked exhausted. Worse, there was an aloofness—a gravity—about her so at odds with the funny, irreverent woman he knew that he couldn’t make the pieces fit. “I’ve missed you,” he said.
“Glad to hear it,” she replied, in a voice as remote as those mountains he’d feared she might be climbing. “Could you please take me back to my apartment?”
“Later.”
“Ted, I mean it. We have nothing more to talk about.”
“Maybe you don’t, but I do.” Her determination to get away scared him. He’d witnessed firsthand how stubborn she could be, and he hated having that resolve turned against him. He needed a way to break through her ice. “I thought we . . . might take a boat ride.”
“A boat ride? I don’t think so.”
“I knew it was a stupid idea, but the rebuilding committee insisted that was the way to go with you. Forget I mentioned it.”
Her head shot up. “You talked this over with the rebuilding committee ?”
That flash of temper gave him hope. “I might have mentioned it. In passing. I needed the female perspective, and they convinced me that all women appreciate the grand romantic gesture. Even you.”
Sure enough, sparks flared in her eyes. “I cannot believe you talked over our personal business with those women.”
Our business, she’d said. Not just his. He pressed harder. “Torie’s really pissed with you.”
“I don’t care.”
“Lady E., too, but she’s more polite about it. You hurt all their feelings when you changed your phone number. You really shouldn’t have done that.”
“Send them my apologies,” she said with a sneer.
“The boat was Birdie’s idea. She’s kind of become your champion because of Haley. And you were right about not bringing in the police. Haley’s grown up a lot lately, and I’m not one of those men who can’t admit it when he’s wrong.”
His hopes rose higher as she clenched her fists against her wet coat. “How many other people did you talk to about our private business?”
“A few.” He stalled for time, frantically trying to figure out how to play this. “Kenny was worthless. Skeet’s still mad at me. Who knew he’d take to you the way he did? And Buddy Ray Baker said I should buy you a Harley.”
“I don’t even know Buddy Ray Baker!”
“Sure you do. He works nights at the Food and Fuel. He sends his best.”
Indignation had put some of the color back in those beautiful cheeks. “Is there anyone you didn’t talk to?” she said.
He reached for the napkin next to the champagne bucket, where, in a premature burst of optimism, he had a bottle chilling. “Let me dry you off.”
She grabbed the napkin from him and threw it down. He settled back in the seat and tried to sound as if he had it all under control. “San Francisco wasn’t much fun without you.”
“Sorry you had to waste your money like that, but I’m sure the rebuilding committee was grateful for your generous contribution.”
Admitting he wasn’t the one who’d made that expensive final bid hardly seemed like the best way to convince her of his love. “I sat in the hotel lobby all afternoon waiting for you,” he said.
“Guilt is your thing. It doesn’t work with me.”
“It wasn’t guilt.” The limo pulled to the curb, and the driver, following Ted’s earlier instructions, stopped on State Street across from the National Museum of the American Indian. It was still raining, and he should have chosen another destination, but he’d never have gotten her inside his parents’ Greenwich Village co-op, and he couldn’t imagine spilling his guts in a restaurant or bar. He sure as hell wasn’t saying any more in this limo with his mother’s driver eavesdropping on the other side of the partition. The hell with it. Rain or not, this was the place.
She peered out the window. “Why are we stopping here?”
“So we can take a walk in the park.” He hit the locks, grabbed the umbrella from the floor, and pushed the door open.
“I don’t want to take a walk. I’m wet, my feet are cold, and I want to go home.”
“Soon.” He caught her arm and somehow managed to get both her and the umbrella out onto the street.
“It’s raining!” she exclaimed.
“Not too much now. Besides, you’re already wet, that red hair should keep you plenty warm, and I have a big umbrella.” He popped it, dragged her around the back of the limo and up onto the sidewalk. “Lots of boat docks here.” He nudged her toward the entrance to Battery Park.
“I told you I wasn’t going on a boat ride.”
“Fine. No boat ride.” Not that he’d planned one anyway. That would have taken a degree of organized thought he wasn’t capable of pulling together. “I’m just saying there are docks here. And a great view of the Statue of Liberty.”
She completely missed the significance of that.
“Damn it, Ted.” She whirled on him, and the quirky humor that had once marched in lockstep with his own was nowhere to be seen. He hated seeing her this way, with all her laughter dimmed, and he knew he had only himself to blame.
“All right, let’s get this over with.” She scowled at a bike rider. “Say what you have to say, and then I’m going home. On the subway.”
Like hell she was. “Deal.” He steered her into Battery Park and down the closest path leading to the promenade.
Two people sharing one umbrella should have been romantic, but not when one of those people refused to get close to the other. By the time they hit the open promenade, rain had soaked his suit coat, and his shoes were nearly as wet as hers.
The vendors’ carts had disappeared for the day, and only a few hearty souls hurried along the wet pavement. The wind had picked up, and the cold drizzle blowing in off the water hit him in the face. In the distance, the Statue of Liberty stood guard over the harbor. She was lit up for the night, and he could just make out the tiny lights shining through the windows in her crown. On a long-ago summer day, he’d broken one of those windows, unfurled a no nukes banner, and finally found his father. Now, with the statue standing there to give him courage, he prayed he would find his future.
He summoned up his courage. “I love you, Meg.”
“Whatever. Can I go now?”
He tilted his head toward the statue. “The most important event of my childhood happened over there.”
“Yeah, I remember. Your youthful act of vandalism.”
“Right.” He swallowed. “And it seems fitting that the most important event of my manhood should happen there, too.”
“Wouldn’t that have been when you lost your virginity? What were you? Twelve?”
“Listen to me, Meg. I love you.”
She couldn’t have been less interested. “You should get therapy. Seriously. Your sense of responsibility has gotten way out of control.” She patted his arm. “It’s over, Ted. Throw away all that guilt. I’ve moved on and, frankly, you’re starting to seem a little pathetic.”
He wouldn’t let her get to him. “The truth is, I wanted to have this conversation out there on Liberty Island. Unfortunately, I was banned for life, so that’s not possible. Being banned didn’t seem like such a big deal when I was nine, but it sure as hell feels like one now.”
“Do you think you could wind this up? I have some paperwork I need to get done tonight.”
“What kind of paperwork?”
“My admission papers. I’m starting classes at NYU in January.”
His gut churned. This was definitely not something he wanted to hear. “You’re going back to school?”
She nodded. “I finally figured out what I want to do with my life.”
“I thought you were designing jewelry?”
“That’s paying the bills. Most of them, anyway. But it’s not what satisfies me.”
He wanted to be what satisfied her.
She finally started to talk without being prodded. Unfortunately, it wasn’t about the two of them. “I’ll be able to finish my bachelor’s degree in environmental science by summer and go right into a master’s program.”
“That’s . . . great.” Not great at all. “Then what?”
“Maybe work for the National Park Service or something like the Nature Conservancy. I might be able to manage a land protection program. There are a lot of options. Waste management, for example. Most people don’t see that as a glamorous field, but the landfill fascinated me from the beginning. My dream job is— ” Just like that, she broke off. “I’m getting cold. Let’s go back.”
“What about your dream job?” He prayed she’d say something along the line of being his wife and the mother of his children, but that didn’t seem too realistic.
She spoke briskly, stranger to stranger. “Turning environmental wastelands into recreational areas is what I’d really like to do, and you can consider yourself responsible. Now this has been loads of fun, but I’m out of here. And this time, don’t try to stop me.”
She turned her back and began to walk away, a grim, humorless, red-haired woman who was tough as nails and no longer wanted him in her life.
He panicked. “Meg! I love you! I want to marry you!”
“That’s weird,” she said without stopping. “Only six weeks ago, you were telling me all about how Lucy broke your heart.”
“I was wrong. Lucy broke my brain.”
That finally stopped her. “Your brain?” She looked back at him.
“That’s right,” he said more quietly. “When Lucy ran out on me, she broke my brain. But when you left . . .” To his dismay, his voice cracked. “When you left, you broke my heart.”
He finally had her full attention, not that she looked at all dreamy-eyed or even close to being ready to throw herself into his arms, but at least she was listening.
He collapsed the umbrella, took a step forward, then stopped himself. “Lucy and I fit together so perfectly in my head. We had everything in common, and what she did made no sense. I had the whole town lining up feeling sorry for me, and I was damned if I was going to let anybody know how miserable I was. I—I couldn’t get my bearings. And there you were in the middle of it, this beautiful thorn in my side, making me feel like myself again. Except . . .” He hunched his shoulders, and a trickle of rainwater ran down his collar. “Sometimes logic can be an enemy. If I was so wrong about Lucy, how could I trust the way I felt about you?”
She stood there, not saying a word, just listening.
“I wish I could say I realized how much I loved you as soon as you left town, but I was too busy being mad at you for bailing on me. I don’t have a lot of practice being mad, so it took me a while to understand that the person I was really mad at was myself. I was so pigheaded and stupid. And afraid. Everything has always come so easy for me, but nothing about you was easy. The things you made me feel. The way you forced me to look at myself.” He could barely breathe. “I love you, Meg. I want to marry you. I want to sleep with you every night, make love with you, have kids. I want to fight together and work together and—just be together. Now are you going to keep standing there, staring at me, or could you put me out of my misery and say you still love me, at least a little?”
She stared at him. Eyes steady. Unsmiling. “I’ll think about it and let you know.”
She walked away and left him standing alone in the rain.
He dropped the umbrella, stumbled over to the wet railing, and curled his fingers around the cold metal. His eyes stung. He’d never felt so empty or so alone. As he stared out into the harbor, he wondered what he could have said that would have convinced her. Nothing. He was too late. Meg had no patience for procrastinators. She’d cut her losses and moved on.
“Okay, I’ve thought it over,” she said from behind him. “What are you offering?”
He spun around, his heart in his throat, rain splashing his face. “Uh . . . My love?”
“Got that part. What else?”
She looked fierce and strong and absolutely enchanting. Wet spiky lashes framed her eyes, which didn’t seem either blue or green now, but a rain-soft gray. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair a flame, her mouth a promise waiting to be claimed. His heart raced. “What do you want?”
“The church.”
“Are you planning to live there again?”
“Maybe.”
“Then, no, you can’t have it.”
She appeared to think it over. He waited, the sound of his blood rushing in his ears.
“How about the rest of your worldly possessions?” she said.
“Yours.”
“I don’t want them.”
“I know.” Something bloomed inside his chest, something warm and full of hope.
She squinted up at him, rain dripping from the tip of her nose. “I only have to see your mother once a year. At Halloween.”
“You might want to rethink that. She’s the one who secretly put up the cash so you won the contest.”
He’d finally thrown her off balance. “Your mother?” she said. “Not you?”
He had to lock his elbows to keep from embracing her. “I was still in my mad phase. She thinks you’re— I’m going to quote her. She thinks you’re ‘magnificent.’ ”
“Interesting. Okay, how about this for a deal breaker?”
“There won’t be any deal breakers.”
“That’s what you think.” For the first time she looked unsure. “Are you . . . willing to live someplace other than Wynette?”
He should have seen this coming, but he hadn’t. Of course she wouldn’t want to move back to Wynette after everything that had happened to her there. But what about his family, his friends, his roots, which stretched so deep into that rocky soil he’d become part of it?
He gazed into the face of this woman who’d claimed his soul. “All right,” he said. “I’ll give up Wynette. We can move anywhere you want.”
She frowned. “What are you talking about? I didn’t mean forever. Jeez, are you crazy? Wynette’s home. But I’m serious about getting my degree, so we’re going to need a place in Austin, assuming I get into U.T.”
“Oh, God, you’ll get in.” His voice cracked again. “I’ll build you a palace. Wherever you want.”
She finally looked as dewy-eyed as he felt. “You’d really give up Wynette for me?”
“I’d give up my life for you.”
“Okay, you’re seriously starting to freak me out.” But she didn’t say it like she was freaked out. She said it like she was really happy.
He looked deep into her eyes, wanting her to know exactly how serious he was. “Nothing is more important to me than you.”
“I love you, Teddy Beaudine.” She finally spoke the words he’d been waiting to hear. And then, with a happy whoop, she threw herself at his chest, plastering her wet, cold body against his; burying her wet, cold face in his neck; touching her wet, warm lips to his ear. “We’ll work out our lovemaking problems later,” she whispered.
Oh, no. She wasn’t getting ahead of him that easily. “By damn, we’ll work them out now.”
“You’re on.”
This time she was the one dragging him. They raced back to the limo. He gave the driver a quick set of directions, then kissed Meg breathless as they rode the few short blocks to the Battery Park Ritz. They dashed into the lobby with no luggage and rainwater dripping from their clothes. Soon they were locked behind the door of a warm, dry room that looked out over the dark, rainy harbor.
“Will you marry me, Meg Koranda?” he said as he pulled her into the bathroom.
“Definitely. But I’m keeping my last name just to piss off your mother.”
“Excellent. Now take off your clothes.”
She did, and he did, hopping on one foot, holding on to each other, getting tangled in shirtsleeves and wet denim legs. He turned on the water in the roomy shower stall. She jumped in ahead of him, leaned against the marble tiles, and opened her legs. “Let me see if you can use your powers for evil instead of good.”
He laughed and joined her. He picked her up in his arms, kissing her, loving her, wanting her as he’d never wanted anyone. After what had happened that ugly day at the landfill, he promised himself he’d never again lose control with her, but the sight of her, the feel of her against him, made him forget everything he knew about the right way to make love to a woman. This wasn’t any woman. This was Meg. His funny, beautiful, irresistible love. And, oh God, he nearly drowned her.
His brain finally cleared. He was still inside her, and she was looking up at him from the floor of the shower, a grin like spangled sunshine spread over her mouth. “Go ahead and apologize,” she said. “I know you want to.”
It would take him a hundred years to understand this woman.
She pushed him over, reached up to slam off the water with the flat of her hand, and gave him a look that was full of sin. “Now it’s my turn.”
He didn’t have the strength to resist.
When they finally made it out of the shower, they bundled themselves in robes, dried each other’s hair, and rushed toward the bed. Just before they got there, he went to the window to close the drapes.
The rain had stopped, and in the distance the Lady of the Harbor gazed back at him. He could feel her smiling.