CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CURRY WENT TO the Bahamas for a few days afterward, and when he returned, he was as icy cold as death itself. He spoke to no one except on business. Ivory caught a glimpse of him in the hall one day, but he looked at her as though he didn’t even recognize her.
He did, of course. He regretted bitterly the way they’d parted, because he’d wanted her with him through the anguish of his mother’s funeral. But he hadn’t telephoned her, and she’d had the intuition to know that he wanted to be left alone. He respected her for that. It would have been easier if he could hate her. But he couldn’t. In spite of everything, he was still vulnerable, and he didn’t dare let her close enough to see it. If she was the amoral person his imagination had carved from Marlene Costello’s remarks, then she’d use his love as a weapon against him. Perhaps that was why he took Gaby to a cocktail party the week he returned from Nassau.
Not that it was a romantic date. Gaby looked lovely in one of the evening crepe suits that Ivory had concocted, this one with Ivory’s signature butterfly in onyx and crystal. It reminded him of the suit Ivory had worn the night he’d taken her to meet his mother. Although the outfit brought back painful memories he told himself that it was smart to show the new design off at such a gala event as this evening charity trunk show. Some of the most influential people in the city would be in attendance. Still all the while that he was doing the rounds with Gaby after the show, his mind was on Ivory. People, especially women, commented with delight on the suit Gaby was wearing, and that fanned the flames even more.
“I saw your designer on television when she went on that talk show,” one of the buyers from Saks remarked as she paused to speak to Curry. “She held her own quite well, I thought!”
“Yes,” he said noncommittally, smiling.
“Ivory Keene. She’s very young, isn’t she?” she added.
The manager of an exclusive boutique in Trump Tower overheard the remark and turned. “Ivory Keene? She may be well-preserved, but she isn’t young.” She laughed. “Her hair is colored, you can tell, and much too black to be natural.”
“Black?” The buyer was stunned. “Why, she’s blonde.”
The manager’s eyebrows went straight up. “She was in my store not more than a few weeks ago, and I could hardly forget her. She went on and on about her job and how successful she was. That’s why she bought those two Dior gowns, to wear to showings.”
“Why would she want to wear a Dior gown to a showing of her own collection?” the buyer demanded.
Curry held up a hand. He felt uneasy. “Describe the woman you sold the gowns to,” he asked politely.
The manager of the boutique described a middle-aged woman with a coarse, drawling voice, slender and with dyed dark hair. It was a perfect description of Marlene.
Curry muttered something under his breath. He’d been had. He’d been royally had!
He searched the room until he found the woman he’d brought with him.
He drew her to one side. “Gaby, get a cab home when this is over, will you?” he asked, pressing some bills into her hand. “I have to leave. An unexpected emergency.”
“Sure,” she said.
It took him an hour to get to Ivory’s apartment, with the traffic so heavy at that time of night. He left the limousine and its driver at the curb and took the steps two at a time. He buzzed Ivory’s apartment and waited impatiently for her to answer.
“Yes?” she said, expecting to hear Miriam’s voice, because it was just at the end of Miriam’s shift, and Ivory had Tim and the girls with her. Tim’s mother was always punctual, and she’d been lucky enough to get on second shift, from four in the afternoon until midnight. It was almost midnight now.
Ivory had slipped into the habit of keeping Tim and the little girls with her at night because their mother couldn’t afford a babysitter. Miriam was doing her very best to get off welfare, but childcare costs were too high for her small salary. Really, Ivory thought irritably, with so many single working mothers in the country, it was absurd that there was no government provision for that expensive and most necessary service! Not that Ivory minded having the children. They were a constant delight to her. She pulled the cover closer over the little girls, who were asleep on her bed. Tim was still half-awake on the couch.
But the voice that replied to her question wasn’t the one she expected. It was deep and terse. “I want to come up,” Curry said curtly.
There was a pause and then a breath. “I’m sorry,” she said in a wobbly tone. “It isn’t convenient.” She hesitated. “I have someone with me,” she added defiantly. Let him stew on that!
It was the truth, but Curry didn’t know about Tim. The insinuation hit him right in the gut and made him want to double over. He couldn’t have described in a million years the feelings that ran through him at her admission. Naturally, his first thought was that she had a man in her apartment. Perhaps he’d given her reason to find someone else, but the disloyalty of it made him furious.
“So you couldn’t wait,” he said in an icy tone. “Is he young?”
“Yes,” she said harshly. “He’s very young, in fact!”
That added to his doubts about Ivory finding him too old. “Why am I surprised?” he asked heavily. “It was what I should have expected, wasn’t it?”
“What did you want?” Ivory asked with wounded pride.
“Nothing at all. A business matter,” he prevaricated. “I’ll talk to you at work. Good night.”
He turned and went back out into the night, climbed into the limousine and went home.
Ivory traced the pattern on the intercom without feeling it. Odd, that he’d come over at midnight to talk about work. She hadn’t even said that she was sorry about his mother, because his cutting tone had made her lose her temper. She shook her head. Just when she thought she was getting over him, he bounced back into her life in the most disturbing way.
“Was that somebody to see you, Ivory?” Tim asked sleepily from the couch.
“No. It was a stranger asking directions,” she lied. She touched his curly hair. “Go back to sleep, little man,” she said gently and with a sad smile. “It was nothing at all.”
Work took on a nightmarish aspect from that day forward. She was sent to showings all over the East in the days that followed, and often she felt that it was only because Curry wanted to inconvenience her. Her presence wasn’t even necessary at the shows, but she had all the exposure she could have once asked for, and more. Her name had already been on the fashion pages of most major newspapers, on television fashion shows, on the news, in magazines. She was already well-known in the industry.
Of Curry, she saw nothing at all. And her mother hadn’t called or written. Ivory hoped desperately that Marlene had enough pretty things to last her for several years. In the interim, Ivory would have the chance to get a promotion, to make more money, to be able to protect herself if the time ever came when she needed to.
But that wasn’t to be the case. When she returned to New York the following week, from a trunk show at a Philadelphia department store that had gone very well indeed, there was a message for her that Curry wanted to see her.
She went to his office and sat in the waiting room—probably by his design, she thought—for a half hour before he asked for her to be shown in.
He’d kept her waiting, still smarting from their last meeting. But when he saw her, he was sorry about it. She was living on her nerves, and it showed. Her gray eyes were huge in her thin face, and her shoulders were drooping under her suit—that same damned gray suit she’d worn for two seasons. He remembered why he’d sent for her and his conscience stabbed at him.
“Sit down,” he said tersely.
She dropped into a chair and perched on its very edge. Her hair had grown to collar length. It fell onto her forehead when she leaned forward to straighten her skirt, and she pushed it back with an indifferent hand.
“You look worn,” he commented, leaning back in the chair. “Is your boyfriend exhausting you?” he asked with a mocking smile.
She crossed her legs. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“No? Then who was at your apartment the night I came around?” he asked, because the things he’d found out made him certain that Ivory wasn’t the kind of woman to two-time him.
She gave him a resentful look. “Tim.”
“Tim?”
“He’s eight,” she said irritably, looking away from the soft delight that curved his mouth. “He has AIDS,” she added with faint belligerence.
He didn’t bat an eyelash. “Is he the boy from the shelter?”
She was surprised. “Why, yes.”
“Dee told me about him. About Miriam, too, and how you’ve helped the family.” He shrugged. “I haven’t been much of a judge of character. I’ve learned, however, to dig deeper when I think I have all the facts.” He smiled tenderly. “So Tim has AIDS. And he doesn’t scare you, does he?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
He stretched lazily. “He doesn’t scare me, either. I like kids.” His eye smoothed over her body. “You’ve lost weight, querida. I’m sorry. I feel responsible.”
“You needn’t. You didn’t send for me to see how I looked,” she added firmly, ignoring his tender term of address. Since he’d come to her apartment that night and thought she was with another man, he’d scarcely spoken to her at all. It was nice to have the air cleared, but she was apprehensive about why he’d sent for her.
He hated the look on her face. She was a far cry from the happy, caring young woman who’d approached him so long ago on the steps of the cathedral to make sure he was all right.
“I sent for you because I found out where all those clothes went,” he said, hating himself for not having checked sooner, before those buyers at the gallery showing had piqued his curiosity. “It took a while to run it down, and I had to get over my grief for Mama, first. But after I talked to Dee and a couple of saleswomen, I got the picture. Those clothes were shipped to Harmony, Texas.”
“To my mother’s house,” she said without surprise.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” he demanded, letting out his frustration.
She didn’t remind him that she’d tried to. It made no difference. She was famous and becoming more so; she had a good salary. But she wasn’t obsessed with fame anymore. It wasn’t what she’d expected. After the first thrill of seeing her name in print, she slowly became self-conscious when it appeared in magazines and when she heard it on television. Even though she’d achieved status, some of the old-line fashion writers and designers had ridiculed her Crystal Butterfly Collection as a fad. Fame was a double-edged sword, but she hadn’t known that until she’d earned her small share.
Curry sighed heavily. “She said you wanted her to have some pretty things. She said you were ashamed of her and neglected her. What else did she lie about?” he asked gruffly, because he knew certainly that it had been all lies on Marlene’s part.
She traced around the unvarnished nail on her forefinger. She couldn’t quite find the right words to answer him.
His fist hit the desk and she jumped, gasping.
He looked murderous. She’d never seen such rage in a man’s face. His black eye glittered dangerously. “You’re afraid of her, aren’t you? Why?”
“You believed everything she said about me, the first time you saw her, in my office. You told me to my face that I was no better than a gold digger. You believed that I was greedy and shrewd enough to spend thousands of dollars on designer clothing for my mother and myself, and you dare to question me?” she replied quietly.
His broad shoulders seemed to relax as he sighed. He pushed back his hair, and for a minute, he looked even older than she knew he was. “Come on,” he said after a minute. “Tell me the truth.”
“Do you think your stomach is strong enough?” she asked in that assumed cultured voice. She smiled bitterly. “Very well, then. My father got my mother pregnant when she was in her early teens and they were forced to marry. He was a sharecropper, illiterate, with nothing to give her except hardship. She hated him because she couldn’t have pretty things, and she blamed it all on me. After he died, she let her rich lover put me to work on his farm with the blacks and Mexicans who slaved in the fields.”
The memories made her face draw in and he frowned. “That’s where you learned such fluent Spanish,” he said slowly.
“That isn’t all I learned,” she returned. “I learned prejudice. I was one of them, a ragged, dirty little girl who couldn’t speak proper English, who didn’t even have table manners. My mother drank and she had sticky fingers. She made sure everyone in town thought I was the thief, so she could do what she pleased. If you ask anyone in Harmony, Texas, they’ll tell you that I steal and lie and that I’m an ungrateful, heartless brat, because that’s the identity Marlene gave me.” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I tried to change those opinions, but Marlene was too convincing. At least, she was convincing when she was sober. More often than not, after my father died, she drank. One night, shortly before I left for Houston, she and her boyfriend held me down on the couch so that he could enjoy me. I managed to get away before he raped me, but it left me with scars. I guess Marlene realized that she’d crossed the line, because she never had him over to the house at night again,” she added, averting her eyes from the look on Curry’s lean, dark face. “That was when I was desperate enough to enter the design scholarship contest, and lucky enough to win it.” She closed her eyes. “I got away from her. I learned how to walk and talk and dress and act, and I left it all behind me. Or I thought I had.”
She looked at her hands. She’d left marks on one palm with the grip of her nails. “When I started making money, she wanted more and more. She insisted that I let her come up here and shop, and give her a good time. I was afraid...but I was more afraid that she’d do something, go to the newspapers maybe.” She lifted her sad gray eyes to his. “I never wanted you to meet her at all. But everything went wrong when she got to the airport. She came to the office and in no time, my coworkers were looking at me just as people back home used to when I was small.” She laughed dully. “And so were you.”
He lifted one hand and let it fall. There really was no excuse, he thought. None at all.
“Your mother was exceptional,” she continued. “A real paragon, and I don’t mean that sarcastically. I’m very sorry that you lost her. But my mother would have sold me to the highest bidder without a glimmer of conscience. She never felt anything for me except resentment. Even now, my only worth to her is monetary.”
He didn’t reply to the remark about his mother. His loss was too new, too raw, to be talked about just yet. “Had you no family at all?” he asked.
She shook her head. “She was an only child. My father had a brother, but he was killed in Vietnam. Both sets of grandparents died before I was grown. And I had no friends. Marlene didn’t like people coming to the house. It wouldn’t have done, to let anyone see what my home life was like.” She shook her head. “Not that I’d have wanted anyone to see it,” she added, wincing. “We lived in a shack. That’s a better description than it even deserves. Her rich boyfriend gave her nothing except cheap costume jewelry and gin. He knew exactly what she was, you see.” She met his eyes proudly. “I came from nothing. My people were all sharecroppers and all of them were illiterate. I was the first one to get a high school education, much less a specialty education.” She smiled coldly. “And if you’d known that at the outset, you’d have been sure that I played up to you to get a better job, or more recognition, or publicity.”
He studied his hand without really seeing it. “I’ve been used ever since I grew up and got rich, in one way or another.”
“And you would have expected it from a poor Texas sharecropper’s daughter.”
He looked up. “Yes,” he said bluntly.
“At least you’re honest.” She uncrossed her legs. “So what do we do now, Mr. Kells?” she asked politely. “Do you kick me out? Do you demote me? Do I start knocking on other doors?”
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” he asked quietly.
“Because you liked me when you thought I had all those advantages that you never had,” she replied cynically. “You have money but you don’t have a monied, social background. You liked my accent and what you thought was my status.”
He laughed without humor. “Did I? Perhaps so. But after a time, it was you, not your background, that held me in thrall.”
“Only physically,” she reminded him. “I discovered a part of myself that I’d never known when I was with you.” Her eyes grew sad. “I never dreamed that I could submit to a man, after what had happened to me. But you were everything I could have wanted in that way. You said you loved me.” She laughed a little self-consciously. “Even if you didn’t mean it, no one else ever said that he did,” she added curtly. “Even my father only tolerated me. I reminded him too much of Marlene.”
He hadn’t dreamed that she was so delicate emotionally, that there was this vulnerable side to her independent personality. He leaned forward. “But you have talent,” he said gently. “And grace and elegance. You charm buyers and even the most vicious fashion writers.”
“One of them saw right through me immediately,” she recalled. “She was kind enough not to give me away.”
“She saw it. And I didn’t.”
“You’re proud of your disadvantages. Even your mother was proud of them, because you came so far from sheer determination and faith in yourself.” She shook her head. “I hated my past. I wanted to conceal it, to hide it, to run away from it. But I didn’t run far enough or fast enough. Marlene caught me anyway. She always will. I’ll never be rid of her, or the voices taunting me, demeaning me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said shortly. He stood up, towering over her. “Your shortcomings are all right here,” he said, tapping her head, “in your own mind. You are what you think you are. If you believe in yourself, if you like yourself, so will other people. To hell with what people back home thought! If you know the truth, what does it matter?”
She gave him a hard glare. “It matters! You can’t imagine how much it matters to me!”
“You’re still in bondage,” he commented, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “You won’t let yourself be free of the old image.”
She crossed her legs again. “Marlene won’t let me.”
“Think so?” He sat on the edge of his desk. “She forged your name on credit card charges. She impersonated you to get expensive merchandise. That’s theft and it’s a felony, and you can prove it. Here’s the evidence.” He tossed her a packet of papers, which contained the forged charge slips and affidavits from two saleswomen who gave vivid descriptions of the purchaser—Marlene.
She lifted her eyes slowly to his. Her heart skipped a beat. “A felony?” she echoed.
“Yes. She may have rushed back to Texas in a blaze of glory, but the law has long arms.” He smiled at her. “You think she’s invincible. She’s not. You’ve got enough rope in your hands to hang her.”
“It’s your company,” she began.
“It’s your mother.” He folded his arms over his chest. “There’ll never be a better opportunity to pry her fingers loose from your life. Go get her.”
She saw possibilities that had never existed before. He was right. She had a weapon, and Marlene had put it in her hands. It was the first time she’d ever been in a position of power over her mother in her entire life. The elation was consuming. Her whole expression changed as she looked again at the documents and then began to smile.
She stood up. “I’m going to Texas!”
“I thought you might. When do you want to leave?”
“Tomorrow morning on the earliest flight out.”
He lifted the receiver and buzzed his secretary. “Get Miss Keene a round-trip, first-class ticket on the first morning plane to...?”
“...San Antonio, it’s closest to Harmony,” she answered his unvoiced query.
“...San Antonio. Arrange for a car to meet her coming and going. Get the biggest, newest stretch limo you can hire. Black. And make sure there’s a male driver. A big, ugly one. Yes, that’s right. I’ll tell her.” He hung up. “She’ll phone your office when it’s arranged and you can pick up your tickets at the airport.”
She straightened her jacket. “Thanks,” she said stiffly.
“When you get back, I want to know who you are.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“You’ve fed me a steady diet of glitzy lies,” he explained. “Now I want the truth. I want to know what you did as a child, where you went, whom you played with, what you felt about life and the world. I want to know how you started drawing and how you ended up in design school.”
“It’s all ugly,” she said uneasily. “Ugly!”
He slid off the edge of the desk and caught her by the waist, holding her gently in front of him. “There were good moments,” he said. “You’ve buried them under the bad things, but they’re there. The Mexican family...you loved them, yes?”
“Yes,” she agreed slowly. “How did you know?”
“You speak Spanish with such tenderness, querida. Didn’t you know?”
“You make love in Spanish,” she said, lowering her eyes shyly to his throat.
“Only to you.” He kissed her forehead tenderly and let her go. “I’ve been lonely without you. Gaby was just window dressing. There hasn’t been anyone else. You see, it was no lie when I said I loved you. I haven’t stopped. I’ll never stop. And when you come home, I’ll ask you to forgive me in the sweetest way I know.”
The world became full of color again as she looked up at him with her heart in her eyes. “You don’t need to ask me to forgive you. It’s the other way around.”
“We’re going to start over again, together,” he told her gently. “No lies, ever again, Ivory.”
She touched his tie, loving the silky feel of it. Pain washed over her face at the sound of her own name. “She named me for a brand of soap,” she said huskily.
He lifted her chin and searched her wounded eyes. “Did she?” He smiled tenderly. “But when I hear your name, I think of the way you look against white satin, and the purity of your character, and the light you bring into my life.”
Tears stung her eyes at the interpretation. She stared at him without speaking.
He chuckled. “You see? It’s all subjective.” He bent and bit her lower lip delicately and then kissed it tenderly. “Now, would you like to get out of here before my staff starts gossiping about us?”
“Would they dare?” she asked.
“Querida,” he drawled, “have you ever noticed some of the more innovative uses people have discovered for desks on late-night television?”
She glanced at the gleaming dark wood of his desk and she grinned. “I’m leaving,” she said.
“That might be a good idea. While there’s still time. I’m quite impressionable, you know. It’s my Latin nature.”
She peered up at him mischievously. “You rake.”
“You’ll have your work cut out for you after we become parents,” he said easily. “I expect our sons will all take after me.”
Her eyes adored him, and all her heartaches seemed to be fading. “I hope so,” she said softly.
And that easily, they became engaged.