CHAPTER FOUR
“HELLO, HARRY,” CURRY said with a polite smile as he clapped him on the back. “Having a good time?”
“Yes, sir,” the younger man replied. He was watching Ivory with acquisitive eyes. “I was just about to ask Miss Keene if she’d let me take her home...”
“Sorry, but that’s all been arranged,” the older man replied suavely. “If you’re ready to leave?” he added to Ivory.
“I’ll say good night, then,” Harry said stiffly, thwarted.
“I should have handled it better,” Ivory murmured uncomfortably as she watched him walk away. “I’m sure he’s very nice, but I didn’t want to go with him and I couldn’t find a polite way to say so.”
“No harm done. He bounces back fairly well. Get your coat. I’ll be right with you.”
He excused himself and had another man stand in as host until he returned; then he escorted Ivory out the door. Their departure was followed by several pairs of amused, interested eyes.
“That should provide them with enough juicy gossip for the rest of the month,” he remarked as they reached his car, a silky white convertible Jaguar to which the parking attendant was just handing him the keys.
“This is your car?” she asked, touching it with wonder. “I’ve never seen a Jaguar close up. It’s a sport model, too.”
He chuckled as he unlocked the passenger door and helped her ease inside. “Do you think I’m too old for it?” he teased. “Or does the thought of riding with a sight-impaired driver unsettle you?”
She waited until he got behind the wheel to answer him. “I expect you see almost as well with that eye as I do with both of mine. And I’m not afraid to go anywhere with you, Mr. Kells.”
“Curry.” He cranked the car and put it into gear.
“Curry,” she amended, smiling at him. It was still surprising that she felt so much at ease with him. Some men intimidated her. This one did, in an exciting way, but he didn’t frighten her.
“Is Virginia Raines giving you a hard time?” he asked unexpectedly as he pulled out into the road.
“Why, no sir,” she said hesitantly. “I don’t think she likes me, but she’s not hostile.”
“Just catty,” he ventured.
She grimaced. “Sometimes.”
He let out a sigh. “She’s one of the senior staff. She stayed with the company when she could have made twice the salary somewhere else. Loyalty these days is rare.”
“Yes, it is.”
“But I’m not stupid, either,” he added quietly. “If she gives you any problems, come straight to me. I won’t tolerate intimidation.”
“I will, but only if I have to. Thank you.”
“She won’t like having your dress in the line,” he continued. “If the pressure gets too hot, come and talk to me.”
“I don’t mind pressure, if I get a chance to design things,” she told him. “From the time I was a little girl, it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
“If that dress is any example of what you can do, I’m delighted to give you a start.” He stopped at a traffic light. “Where are we going?”
“Oh, where do I live, you mean? Queens.”
His expression was curious. “Queens?”
She didn’t know what to say.
“I told the people in charge of the competition that you were to have an apartment near the office, damn it!”
“Please don’t blame them,” she said quickly. “They did arrange for one, but I couldn’t afford it. I explained that I have to send some of my salary home. Queens is a fine place to live. I have a nice little apartment and good neighbors.”
He made a rough sound.
“Well, of course, it’s not a penthouse apartment,” she persisted. ‘‘But, then, I haven’t worked long enough or hard enough to deserve one yet.”
He glanced sideways at her without speaking.
“I’ll have a penthouse apartment, you wait and see,” she continued. “And a Rolls, and furs, and diamonds on every finger.”
He frowned. “Is that what you see at the end of the rainbow?”
“Of course!” She turned toward him in her seat. It was leather and even smelled expensive. She couldn’t bear to tell him why, to explain the terrible poverty that she’d survived. “I’ve never...been poor, of course,” she lied with a smile. “But I haven’t been able to afford diamonds, either. I want it all,” she added fervently. “I want fame and fortune and all the stars in the sky!” She hesitated, thinking why she really wanted to get rich. It was her only hope of being able to cope with her mother, ever. But she’d like to lavish some of those dreams on little Tim and his family, too, and on her friends in her apartment building. A new coat for Tim would be nice, too...
“A Rolls?” he mused.
“Figuratively speaking. I think I’d be very satisfied with a nice Jaguar,” she added with a grin. She touched the dash gently. “I guess you aren’t married.”
“Why? Because I drive a sports car?”
“Maybe.”
“I was married when I was twenty-four.” His face hardened. “And I don’t talk about it.” He glanced at her. ‘‘I’m not married now. That’s all you need to know. And you? No husband or lover or boyfriend?”
“I told you. I don’t want to get involved.”
He furrowed his brow. He could think of two reasons immediately that would explain such an attitude.
She saw his expression and looked down at her hands. “I’m not a lesbian and I haven’t been raped,” she said levelly. “But I just don’t want anything to hold me back. I’m not ready for marriage and a family.”
A lie. He recognized it without understanding how he knew, because there was nothing to go on except the faintest hesitation in her soft voice.
“There was a bad experience,” he said quietly.
She glanced at him, surprised. “Well...maybe one,” she confessed. Actually, there had been a few. Cheap remarks by her mother’s boyfriends, leers and suggestive remarks, and once or twice even an attempted assault. Instead of finding the incidents disturbing, Marlene had just laughed about them.
“Is sex something brutal and ugly to you now?” he asked gently.
“Not sex so much as men,” she corrected.
“Some men,” he agreed surprisingly. He traced the fingerholds on the steering wheel while he waited for a light to change. “I had a father who beat me,” he said unexpectedly. “I stayed around because of my sister and brother. I kept them out of the way. My mother wasn’t so lucky. She took a lot of heat for us.” His jaw tightened. “I won’t forget the sacrifices she made. She held down two jobs, just to make sure we had enough to eat and decent clothes to wear to school. We were poor, but we were never ragged or hungry.”
“She must be a good woman.”
He shrugged. “Good. Kind. A little possessive. My sister had to run away to get married because Mama didn’t approve of the man she wanted to marry. Mama didn’t speak to her for six months.” He smiled, remembering. “We’re all she has, so she clings pretty hard. She always comes around, though.”
Ivory felt a disturbing niggle in the back of her mind. A possessive mother could make things very difficult for a man if he became involved with a woman. She was glad that she wasn’t involved with Curry Kells. She’d had enough of mothers to last a lifetime. And her battles with Marlene weren’t over yet.
They both rode in silence for several minutes. She studied the beautifully lit storefronts along Fifty-Seventh Street at night, the trees with their garlands of gem-like white lights.
“You turn right at the next light,” she directed when they were across the bridge in Queens.
“What were you smiling about?”
“I was thinking that in New York, even the trees wear jewels,” she said with a grin.
“Only at Christmas,” he corrected.
“It isn’t, just yet.”
He glanced at her. “Will you go home for Christmas?”
She was still for a minute. “I...don’t expect so. My mother goes to Europe with friends. I’ll save the money,” she said, amazed at how easily the lies poured from her mouth. “Besides, I have a lot of work to do, getting ready for the January showings!” she added with inspiration.
“Your dress is already in a showing state,” he said, curious. “Your other duties aren’t that hectic, surely.”
“Well, since I’m also doing repairs...”
“Repairs!” He stared at her. “Who said?”
“Miss...”
“...Raines.” He ground his teeth together. “Never mind. When you’re promoted I’ll specify that you do design work and accessories only.”
“I don’t mind hard work.”
“I mind when my employees are overworked. I’ll handle it.”
She started to argue, but thought better of it at the moment. It would be a relief not to have to struggle through the endless repair jobs, especially with a new job to learn.
He pulled up at her apartment building in the once-elegant area that was now middle-class, with a few trees lining the sidewalk. He turned off the engine, got out, ignoring her protests, and walked her to the front door.
“Got your key?” he asked.
She produced it and held it up. “Thank you for bringing me home,” she said.
He was looking around. “It brings back memories. I grew up a few blocks from here. Of course, my apartment building wasn’t this nice,” he added with a grin.
He looked younger when he smiled. She looked up, a long way up, to catch his gaze. He had the look of a brigand in that eye patch, she thought, like a hero out of a storybook.
“The highwayman...” she murmured without thinking.
“And Bess with her long, night-black hair.” He touched her short wavy hair wistfully. “Yours isn’t black, it’s like spun gold. And I don’t suppose you’d let it grow to your waist if I asked you. Not on such short acquaintance, anyway.”
She was surprised that he knew the poem, and its heroine.
“It isn’t well-known, you understand, but I have a romantic streak,” he mocked softly. He tugged at her hair gently so that she moved closer to him to ease the pressure. He smelled of expensive cologne and soap; a clean, attractive—very attractive—man. Her eyes fell involuntarily to his firm mouth. It was thin, the lower lip almost square and very sensuous. There was a faint shadow where he’d shaved, and his chin had a suggestion of a dimple. It was a firm, thrusting chin, arrogant like its owner.
“I want to kiss you, Ivory Keene,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t try, and you shouldn’t let me. I’m too old for you and you don’t want to get sidetracked from your road to fame.”
“If you say so,” she replied. “But it will be a great loss to my education if you don’t. I haven’t been kissed very much. And I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed by anyone who knew how. You do, don’t you?” she added seriously, searching his face. “You know all there is to know.”
His chest rose and fell heavily. He traced her lower lip and bent his head. Some things were inevitable, he thought as his mouth parted and pushed down over hers.
She tasted of rose petals. Her mouth was faintly tremulous, hesitant, unsure of itself.
He checked his instinctive move to deepen the kiss and brushed the side of her mouth as he lifted his head just a fraction.
“Are you afraid I might force you?” he whispered.
Her hands pressed flat against his white shirtfront, feeling warm, hard muscle and chest hair under the thin fabric. “No. But you should be afraid that I might force you,” she whispered back outrageously.
He met her smile with one of his own. “I’m impressed. You’re a better judge of character than I gave you credit for.” He bent again and nibbled softly at her upper lip. “Open your mouth a little,” he whispered, inhaling sharply when she complied. “That’s it.”
His lips came down again, caressing lightly. She could feel him smile as she did what he asked, rippling from the sensuality in the movement of his mouth, in the deep rumble of his voice.
A lean hand at her waist moved her lightly so that her body brushed against his while he teased her lips. She shivered and the deep, soft laughter became husky.
“You’re...dangerous,” she accused.
“Yes. I am.” He pulled her close and cupped her head in his hand while his mouth stopped teasing and became intensely serious.
She shook inside with a heat she’d never known. Her legs trembled where they came into contact with his. She heard his breath sigh out against her cheek and felt the firm movements of his mouth with shocked wonder at its expertness.
Her hand crushed his lapel while she tried to control her own body and found that she was too weak. She let him part her lips and moaned when she felt the tip of his tongue tracing just inside her lower lip. The provocation was unbearable. Her mouth opened, hungry for something it had never known, never before wanted, intensely aware of the throbbing ache he’d aroused in her.
And at that moment, when she was ready to plead for more, he jerked his head up and looked into her half-closed, dazed eyes. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. She was an open book, and all the sexual pages were blank.
He forced himself to let her go very gently. He held her arms until she seemed steady on her feet.
“I’ll say good night,” he said softly.
She looked at him helplessly. It took precious seconds to pull her dreaming mind back into place. “It was a lovely party,” she said in an unfamiliar husky tone. “Thank you for inviting me, and for the ride home. And especially for the new job.”
“My pleasure.” He let her go, smiling with faint self-mockery at his own stupidity. He had no right to play games with her. His first impression, of stifled innocence, had been right on the money. She’d had a bad experience with men, but she didn’t need any sexual healing from him. He’d stepped out of line.
“Good night,” she said.
“Good night. I’ll be in touch, about the show.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
He shrugged and went back down the steps to his car, taking them two at a time. He didn’t look back as he drove off, but Ivory watched him all the way out of sight.
“He’s probably a millionaire,” she reminded herself on the way up. “He drives a Jaguar and owns several companies. He’s almost forty and he has lots of girlfriends. So don’t lose your head.”
“You’re talking to yourself again, Ivory,” Mr. Johnson called from his open doorway as she went past.
She poked her head in, smiling as she watched his hands work skillfully on a wooden bird. “Very nice, Mr. Johnson. What’s that one for?”
“My granddaughter. It’s for Christmas.”
“She’ll love it.”
He chuckled. “Yes, she will. Have a good time tonight?”
“It was very nice.”
“I love your dress, Ivory,” Mrs. Johnson called as she joined her husband with her knitting in her hand. “Did you make it?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“You’ll be famous one day, my dear,” the elderly lady said with a smile. “I hope you’ll still come and see us then.”
“You know I will.” She called them a cheerful good-night and went on to her apartment. She felt as if her feet didn’t even touch the floor, despite her own misgivings at letting a man who was practically a stranger kiss her. It hadn’t seemed that way, and she’d enjoyed kissing him very much. But apparently, judging from his reaction, he could take or leave her. It was probably a routine thing for him, kissing women. She had to stop thinking about that. She had a design to improve, and the first real chance of her career. She wasn’t going to waste it, or be sidetracked, even by a very attractive man like Curry Kells.
Miss Raines was venomous when she heard that Mr. Kells had added Ivory’s design to the collection. She was even more venomous about Ivory being taken off repairs. They’d never make the schedule now. She shouldn’t have mentioned the girl to Curry Kells. She’d inadvertently called attention to Ivory, which had been the very thing she’d tried to prevent.
Several people had remarked that Mr. Kells took Ivory home from the party and didn’t come back for a couple of hours. No wonder the girl had been given a chance, she thought viciously. Ivory had seduced the boss and turned his head. Now she was reaping the benefits. But that design wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Miss Raines knew good style when she saw it, and that dress would be the laughingstock of the company. Mr. Kells owned the company, but he was no fashion expert. His protégé was going to fall flat on her face, and Miss Raines could hardly wait to see it.
She wasn’t openly hostile, however. She’d even smiled when she congratulated Ivory on her promotion to junior designer.
“She smiles like a barracuda,” Dee remarked coldly. “You watch her. She isn’t happy about this. I’ll bet she’s boiling inside. You don’t know much about company politics, but I’ll tell you, people can be underhanded in this business. Some of them will do anything to keep their jobs or prevent other people from promotion.”
“Miss Raines isn’t spiteful,” Ivory protested.
“Her job isn’t on the line—yet. If you’re ever in the position of competing with her, look out. You’ve got fresh and original ideas, and most of hers came out of Chanel back in the sixties. Chanel moved easily into the contemporary market, but Virginia Raines wouldn’t know modern fashion if it bit her on the nose. You watch your back, so that she doesn’t put a knife in it.”
“I’ll watch,” Ivory promised, smiling. “But I think you’re wrong.”
“I hope I am,” Dee said fervently. “But be careful, just the same.”
“How was your late date last night?” Ivory asked, to change the subject.
Dee chuckled. “Well, it was a start. I like him, I really do. He’s a Midwestern farm boy who came to the big city for a chance and found one doing commercials. With that face and body, I’m not one bit surprised that he was discovered so quickly. I have contacts, too, so maybe I can help his career along.”
Just for an instant, Ivory wondered if Dee’s escort might have had that in mind. She decided that she was much too suspicious of people and went back to work.
* * *
TERESA KELLS HAD large black eyes, salt-and-pepper hair that she wore in a bun, and hands that were twisted with arthritis. In her simple black dress and her low-heeled black lace-up shoes, she sat clutching her designer purse in her lap tightly as they waited impatiently in the lab for the radiologist to come back and explain the radiation treatment she was to have.
Diverted by the movement of her son beside her, she turned her head and smiled at him uneasily. He was a good man. All his adult life he’d looked after her. She shouldn’t be so possessive of him, she knew, but he was all she had left. Her daughter, married now to that overbearing computer executive she didn’t like, and vice president of a major corporation, wouldn’t listen to her anymore. Her mentally challenged son had never recognized her. She had no husband, because the father of Curry and her other children had vanished twenty years ago. She had friends, but they were no substitute for this son of hers who cared so deeply for her welfare. She was keenly aware, as well, that her being Puerto Rican and Catholic had subjected her to discrimination far too often in the past.
Curry resembled her, with his black eye; but his wavy hair was more deep brown than black, and his olive complexion wasn’t overly dark. Besides that, he had a well-modulated voice with no trace of an accent, although he spoke Spanish as fluently as she did, along with several other languages.
She put her hand over his. “Don’t look so worried,” she said, her speech softly accented. “Lots of people get these things and live for years. I want to see my grandchildren...” His whole body froze and she stopped in midsentence. “I’m sorry.”
He turned away and looked pointedly around the room at all the machines. “Audrey will give you grandchildren one day.”
“Audrey!” She smiled, remembering that she’d named her little girl for her favorite actress, Audrey Hepburn, but the girl had grown up not to be sweet-natured and kind like her namesake. She made a motion with her hand. “She’s too busy running companies and making money with that terrible man she married. What does she want with babies? It breaks my heart, that it will end with the three of you. I would be such a good grandmother to them, you know.” She turned and stared at his rigid back. “Yes, I know, you won’t discuss it. It was years ago and she didn’t want to get pregnant, and you won’t forgive yourself!”
His hands clasped even more firmly at his back while he tried not to hear her. “Mama, please,” he said tightly.
“It wasn’t your fault!”
He turned. His face was like stone. “It was my fault. Hell, yes, it was. And I won’t discuss it.”
He was implacable. She threw up her hands and lapsed into angry Spanish. “That’s it, that’s it, let the horse throw you and never get back on, walk instead of ride because it might throw you again!”
She was ill, and frightened. He had to remember that, and not take offense.
“You could get married again,” she muttered, falling into English again as she calmed down. “Girls flock around you. Not that it can be just any girl,” she added firmly. “Someone with a good background, it must be, a girl with a fine family name and money. I won’t have you married for your fortune by some poor, flighty gold digger!”
“If I marry again, Mama, I’ll marry whom I please,” he informed her.
“Bosh! Look how you messed it up before,” she said shortly. “I won’t let you make a mistake like that twice.”
He raised an eyebrow, but she stared back unafraid. Then the radiologist returned, and her proud arrogance went into eclipse behind obvious fear and foreboding.
“Well, what are you going to do to me?” she demanded. “They’ve already cut me up and said they couldn’t get it all, so are you going to make a miracle?”
The young man smiled sympathetically. “Not a miracle, exactly, but we’re going to try a combination of chemotherapy and radiation to see if we can’t prevent any more spread of the carcinoma. Today, we start the radiation treatment.”
“The cancer, you mean,” she said, nodding.
He was reading over her file. “Dr. Hayes wants you to have a high dosage for two weeks, then we can reduce the intensity and length...”
“My hair will fall out?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m sorry. It’s something we can’t help.”
“Nausea? Headaches?” she persisted.
He grimaced. “Those, too. But we can prescribe medicine to help.” He grinned. “In fact, we can prescribe marijuana. It controls the nausea very nicely, and you won’t be arrested for using it.”
“I won’t use drugs,” she said haughtily. “None of my kids ever did, because I made sure they were raised right!”
“Uh, yes, ma’am,” the technician agreed.
“Mama, get off the soapbox,” Curry said.
She gave him a hard glare, but it bounced right off. She fixed the technician with cold eyes. “You’re going to burn me up with that stuff, I guess, and I’ll come out worse than I started.”
“It’s still better than dying,” he pointed out.
“Who knows if it is?” she shot right back. “Have you died yet?”
Curry laughed involuntarily. “Mama, Mama, hush and let the man explain things to you.”
She made a face at him. “Don’t tell me what to do, if you please.”
Curry stuck his hands in his pockets and exchanged a glance with the technician. “I wouldn’t dare.”
She turned her pocketbook over and smoothed it. “All right, young man, tell me what you’re going to do, step by step.”
He did, and while she listened to him, Curry watched his mother’s tired, heavily lined face and remembered his childhood. She’d worked at two jobs, in all sorts of weather, but there was always something nice for the kids to eat and a lady to stay with them when their mother wasn’t at home. They went to confession every Saturday, and to Mass every Sunday. There wasn’t much money, but there was so much love that it choked him up when he thought about it. No problem was belittled. No cry was ignored.
Before his father’s desertion, they had lived with some Hispanic relatives, two families sharing a big room in a small apartment house. Privacy was impossible. The wallpaper was peeling; there were chips in the linoleum floor. Water trickled from faucets, but it was only cold water. The steam heat never worked. Everybody slept on the floor under quilts in the winter and faded sheets from the Salvation Army in the summer. Roaches and rats infested the building, despite the health inspections, and the rent was exorbitant even so. Gangs of young boys roamed the streets. Rape and murder and theft were everyday occurrences. When his best friend was murdered, Curry swore vengeance and went after the boy who’d done it. He determined that one day he was going to escape the impossible living conditions and take his family out of there. So many other people hadn’t been able to escape the horrible cycle of poverty that killed self-esteem and ambition, but he had.
Mama took good care of her kids, but no battles were fought for them, at school or in the alleys. Only when Curry’s revenge on behalf of his dead friend landed him in trouble for almost killing the gang member responsible did his mother have to intervene. She was more eloquent than any lawyer as she pleaded for him before the judge. Ironically, it helped his defense that his eye was heavily bandaged and that a doctor testified that he’d never see with it again.
He was put on probation for aggravated assault, and turned loose. He kept his nose clean from then on because the money to pay the bail bondsman had cleaned out Mama’s hard-earned savings account. Vengeance was expensive in many ways, he thought. He was fortunate enough to have been given first-offender status, or he would have had a record for the felony assault, which he would have carried with him all his life. It was the one and only time he had broken the law.
“You are not listening!” Teresa Kells muttered. “¡Escucha! Pay attention.”
“Yes, Mama.” He settled back into his chair and listened to the radiologist.
The cancer, which had started in the lower lobe of her left lung, had been surgically removed. But the surgeon wasn’t sure that he’d excised every trace of it, so he’d recommended an intensive program of radiation treatment and chemotherapy, just to make sure.
She wasn’t optimistic about her recovery, and it had taken Curry and his sister days to persuade her of the need for the auxiliary treatments. She’d rewritten her will and given all her prized possessions to the relatives she wanted to have them. She’d also signed a living will to make sure that she would not be kept alive by artificial means “to be a burden” on her children. It was like her, Curry thought, to be unselfish even at the end. It made her condition so much harder to accept. He’d always thought his mother would live forever. But she had cancer, and he had learned far too much about the statistics of survival among cancer patients from a friend who was a doctor. That was why he’d insisted on the treatments.
“I still don’t think this is necessary,” Teresa Kells was telling the radiologist.
“And I think it is,” Curry replied with a smile. “Now be good and do what you’re told. You can’t leave us alone after all the years you’ve invested in us. You’ve a lot of spoiling still coming to you. How about that trip back to Puerto Rico to see our cousins, and the summer house in the Adirondacks that I promised to buy for you?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, and for a moment her black eyes were young again. “Yes, I remember once your daddy and I rode up there on the bus for a weekend, before you were born. I did love it so.”
He watched her smile with pleasure. She’d never said one harsh word against their father in all the years he’d been gone. She made excuses for him, apologized for him, but she was never censorious. He’d done the best he could, and it had been a hard life for him. He was uneducated, illiterate, a dockworker. They’d learned from one of his coworkers that he’d hopped a freighter one day after he knew that his youngest child was mentally challenged. Mama had always said that he felt responsible and that was why he ran away. She felt just as responsible, but she wasn’t the type to run from responsibility. Neither was her son.
“Your father was a good man,” she added, pointing a finger at him as if he’d contradicted her. ‘‘He couldn’t bear not being able to support us, and it was all so much worse when Andy was born so badly challenged. He felt guilty.”
“Yes, I know, Mama,” he agreed quietly.
“These treatments,” she said, turning back to the patient radiologist, “how long must I have them?”
“Six weeks,” he said.
She toyed with the handle on her purse. A long sigh passed her lips. “Very well, then.” She looked at her son. “If you think I should.”
“What a question!” he said with mild surprise. “You think I want to risk losing you?”
“My dear boy,” she whispered, fighting tears as she reached out and took his hand in hers.
“Mamacita, yo te quiero muy mucho,” he said in his elegant, perfect Spanish, and he smiled.