From This Moment (15 page)

By early afternoon, she had three sketches to present to Romulus. It had been a challenge to supply artistic beauty while
simultaneously delivering information about the value of the product, but she was optimistic these sketches would work.

She had just entered the managerial office at
Scientific World
when a woman came careening straight toward her. Stella tried to sidestep, but the weeping woman slammed into Stella’s shoulder as she barreled out the door, noisy gulps of tears poorly masked by the handkerchief clutched to her face.

Romulus stood in the opening of his office door, his face somber and hands thrust into his pockets. His cousin Evelyn had risen from behind her desk and was staring at the fleeing woman, as well.

“Am I arriving at a bad time?” Stella asked.

Romulus spotted the leather portfolio tucked under her arm and closed the space between them. “Not at all,” he said blandly. “Especially if those are fertilizer sketches you are ready to show me. Don’t worry about Daisy. She was just indulging in a tantrum for dramatic effect.” He turned to Evelyn. “How did she get in here, anyway?”

“She must have gotten in when I stepped outside to use the facilities,” Evelyn said. “I suspect she was lying in wait for just such an opportunity. I’ve asked her to stop pestering you, and she knew she wasn’t welcome. What did she want today?”

“An escort to a soiree at the Garden Club next week,” he said. “This is my punishment for paying too much attention to her when I took her for a ride on one of the swan boats. Now she is hearing wedding bells, which is ridiculous.” He extended both arms and spoke loudly enough for the entire fourth floor to hear. “Have I not sworn repeatedly that I would never marry before the age of forty?” He scanned the room, and the various office workers nodded, some even hiding laughter. “I’ve got eight more years of bachelorhood,” Romulus continued. “I’ve done nothing to encourage Daisy
beyond squiring her about town a few times and complimenting her appearance. I’ve been quite clear that she should never expect more.”

Stella shook her head, amused by Romulus’s naiveté. “Most women harbor fantasies that they are somehow unique,” she said. “They believe they shall be the one to tame the beast, to persuade Casanova to change his ways. Some women have the curious ability to set aside logic and believe the force of her love will bring the knight errant to his knees.” She should know; she’d been battling similar fantasies about Romulus ever since she’d met him.

Romulus swiveled a questioning look at Evelyn. “Is that true?”

“I’m afraid so,” Evelyn acknowledged with a pained expression.

“I’m not dropping to my knees before I’m forty. And even then, no knee-dropping will be involved. I have more respect for the tailoring of my trousers than that.” His eyes brightened. “Come. Have you drawings to show me?”

“I do.”

And like magic, a spark of energy brightened his face. His admiration of her work made it hard not to be flattered. They entered his office, and as soon as the door closed, he held out his hand for her drawings.

“Why won’t you marry before you are forty?” she asked.

He shrugged. “It’s just a number I picked out of the air a long time ago. It keeps women from pestering me too much.”

He took the folder from her hand and walked to the other side of his desk. She studied his face as he reviewed her sketches. The smile on his mouth cut deep grooves into the sides of his face. She’d known he would like her drawings, but she was still curious about his fear of marriage.

“Why does the prospect of marriage terrify you so much?”

He didn’t move, but his gaze flicked up to meet hers. “Did I say it terrified me?”

“You didn’t need to. Any man who makes such ardent declarations of his bachelorhood before his entire office is clearly building a barricade to hide behind. I was just wondering the reason.”

He leaned back in his desk chair, one of the newfangled kind that swiveled on its pedestal. A speculative gleam lit his dark eyes as he folded his hands across his waist. “I intend to marry someday. One cannot have children without that preliminary step, so there’s no avoiding it. But I will choose my wife carefully, and she will not fall into the
terrifying
category. She shall be intelligent, respectable, and attractive. I don’t care for histrionics, so Daisy Callahan is out.”

“While you were indulging in your monologue decrying marriage, I couldn’t help noticing the redheaded lady at the adding machine,” Stella said.

“Millicent O’Grady?”

Stella didn’t know the woman’s name, but the fetching redhead had seemed spellbound as she hung on every word Romulus spoke, staring at him with a combination of fervor and despair. “She seemed disconsolate over your comments. One of your many admirers?”

He snorted. “I adore women and everything they represent, but I am entirely immune to any woman who works for
Scientific World
, and Millicent knows that. I would no more tamper with a woman in my employ than drink a cup of poison. Both are recipes for disaster.”

He turned his attention back to her sketches on the desk, flicking through them quickly and pulling out her sketch showing the Mona Lisa as she smiled enigmatically at the viewer with a bountiful harvest in the background. A large caption read
What Is She Smiling About?
and smaller text explained the amazing benefits of proper soil preparation with Stallworth’s Fertilizer.

“This is brilliant,” Romulus said. “I confess I was skeptical you could produce an alluring advertisement featuring manure, but I’d like to present this one to Mr. Stallworth for his approval. It is both attractive and conveys all the necessary information. I suspect he will be pleased.”

“I suspect so, as well,” she said proudly.

He snorted. “What’s it like to be unburdened by an ounce of humility?”

“You tell me,” she replied, coaxing a huge smile from him. “Besides, you wouldn’t be interested in a woman burdened with humility.”

“Not one working for my magazine, I wouldn’t. I only hire the best.”

She held out her hand for the return of her sketch. “I’ll head downstairs to the artist’s room and get started immediately.”

Evelyn reviewed the ledger of operating expenses on the desk before her, running calculations in her mind. It looked as if Stella was indeed going to begin working for them, at least in the short run. That meant Evelyn needed to find a way to pay another salary.

It would be a challenge, but an enjoyable one. Each month, she choreographed a complicated dance to ensure outgoing expenses came in below their revenue. It required a combination of mathematics, business acumen, and the ability to forecast expenditures. Once upon a time, Evelyn had dreamed of becoming a famous engineer like her father, but that dream had died a long time ago. Never could she have imagined the satisfaction she’d find in managing this magazine and ensuring
they had the funds to keep it healthy. Although she’d fretted about the cost when Romulus initially proposed hiring Stella West, as usual, his instincts were probably correct. Evelyn was always far more cautious and resisted anything that might rock the boat, but it was Romulus’s insistence on investing in the best writers, artists, and production materials that made their magazine so impressive. It was her job to figure out how to pay for it all, and she loved every moment of it.

It was a far cry from when she’d managed the household budget when she and Clyde had shared a household. Despite his flamboyant ways, Romulus understood the real world, while Clyde had always been reckless and without a care about long-term consequences. The Christmas she and Clyde celebrated their fourth anniversary was a classic example.

They had gone to West Point to spend the holiday with Romulus’s parents. She had been furious because their anniversary had been on December 15th, and Clyde had completely forgotten it, as he had every single year of their marriage. She always reminded him before the day was over, but not this time. This year she maintained a steely silence, waiting to see how long it would take him to remember, but he never did. Christmas Day arrived and still he showed no sign of remembering their forgotten anniversary. As they withdrew to their small guest bedroom after Christmas dinner, all Clyde wanted to know was if she could find a few dollars in their budget so he and Romulus could go ice fishing for three days in Maine.

“Ice fishing,” she said coldly. “You need me to find money in the budget so you can go
ice fishing
.”

Clyde rummaged in the drawer for his nightshirt and had the good grace to look a little sheepish as he tugged it on. “I’ve put a few dollars aside each week all month, but I’m still a little short. You don’t mind, do you?”

And to think, she’d been hoping that perhaps the reason he’d been short of cash all month was because he’d been squirreling it away to buy her a nice anniversary present, or perhaps a nice Christmas gift. But no . . . their anniversary had come and gone, and now so had Christmas. He’d bought her a tea cozy for Christmas but still hadn’t realized he’d forgotten their anniversary.

She drew a steadying breath and turned down the blankets. “You’re heading to Mexico in two weeks, and now you want to go dashing off into the woods to go ice fishing with Romulus? That’s how you’re choosing to spend our final few days together?”

She still couldn’t say the word
Mexico
without her voice rising in volume. He’d only informed her of the job in Mexico last week. It had come completely out of the blue. He’d come home from work early, announcing he’d quit his safe job at the Boston Power & Light Company to take a job at a smelting plant in Mexico. Clyde assumed she would be delighted because she knew how much he disliked his employer, and the job in Mexico promised to pay well. Electrifying the plant in Mexico would take only three months, so it was a great opportunity, wasn’t it?

“Maybe your time would be better spent fixing the leaky window in our apartment before you go running off to go ice fishing with Romulus,” she said.

His mouth tightened. “I can fix the window in less than an hour as soon as we get back to town.”

“It’s been wet and freezing for weeks!”

“Which was why I couldn’t fix it before now,” Clyde said, his own voice getting louder.

She plumped the pillows with a little more force than necessary. “Wonderful! You’ll be warm and toasty in Mexico while I’ll be freezing in Boston. Whatever happened to your promise
to find work closer to home? If you hated the job at the power company, why didn’t you warn me you were about to quit? Why didn’t you at least
ask
how I felt about you dashing off to Mexico?”

A soft knock on the door interrupted Clyde’s retort. “Yes?” Evelyn asked.

The door cracked open, and Romulus tipped his head inside. “I can hear you from down the hall . . . is something wrong?”

“No!” she and Clyde both said in unison.

Romulus sagged a little, and his voice was heavy with exhaustion. “I hate to ask, but if you could keep it down, it would be best for my mother. She’s had a difficult night. My father is out, and it’s a sure thing he is with his mistress again. My mother knows, and it’s killing her.”

Clyde looked astonished. “I thought that ended last summer.”

Romulus shook his head. “It did, but he’s taken up with someone else. She won’t be his last, either. I know it, my mother knows it, and yet she puts herself through these grand histrionics each time he starts up with a new woman.”

Evelyn’s heart split wide open at the anguish in Romulus’s voice. “Oh, Rom! Is there anything we can do?”

“Not really. I’ve been with her for the past few hours, and she’s finally cried herself to sleep. It would be best if we can all keep our voices down so she doesn’t wake up.”

“We’ll be quiet,” Clyde rushed to assure him.

“Of course,” she added.

A hint of a smile brightened Romulus’s tired face. “Thanks. You two are the best.” The smile vanished, and he swallowed hard. “You can’t imagine what this is like.”

She felt hollow inside after Romulus closed the door with a gentle
snick
. The complaints in her marriage were nothing compared with the cataclysmic tantrums that had raged between
her aunt and uncle for years. It was petty to keep nurturing the grudge over her forgotten anniversary compared to what her aunt endured.

She found the money so Clyde could spend a few days in the woods with Romulus. Clyde’s move to Mexico would be a loss for Romulus, too, and she wanted them to have a good time together.

Two weeks later, Clyde left for Mexico. Everything proceeded smashingly well until the smelting company went bankrupt, and Clyde’s final month of wages went unpaid. He took the job in Wyoming later that year . . . and then the baby . . . and then her terrible period of melancholia. She and Clyde bickered incessantly after that.

Well, enough wallowing in the past. She’d made a successful life here at the magazine, and if Romulus wanted her to find money in the budget to hire Stella, she would do so. They had a world-class magazine because she trusted Romulus’s instinct for what would appeal to the public. Within ten minutes, she’d made arrangements for her and Romulus to delay their equity dividends for the next quarter, and she reduced their excess printing supplies from three months to two months. It would be enough to meet Stella’s salary in the short term.