“Sounds foolish,” Ray grumbled as she twitched the blinds back to peer down onto the street.
“Not foolish, dear, just ambitious,” Bert corrected her as I came to a halt. “Remaking yourself is never easy. I wish you all happiness with your new life.”
I pushed aside the thought of the tears I had been unable to hold back in the warm darkness of the previous three nights, and struck a fashionable pose. “So what do you think?”
She smiled. “I think you will dazzle the eye of every man you meet, and one man in particular.”
I let my smile slip just a little. “Well, that doesn’t matter, it’s not on the list for tonight. I’m going to have enough on my plate without tackling off-list items.”
“Alix, about this list of yours—”
“They’re gone. Wonder what happened to them.”
We both turned to where Ray was peering through the window at the street opposite.
“Who’s gone?” I asked, moving over to look out the window with her. I didn’t see anything out of place, just the usual people coming and going at the shops, generally acting just as they had every other of the three days I had been in residence. “What happened to who?”
“Whom,” Bert corrected softly as she followed me to the window.
“Tarts,” Ray said succinctly.
“What?” I nudged her aside so I could see better. “Where’s a tart?”
Ray shot me a disbelieving look. “They
were
right in front of your nose. Gone now.”
I glanced down at the people on the street. None of them
looked
like tarts. “You’re kidding! There were tarts on the street? How’d I miss them? I don’t see anyone now but two bobbies and some kids in the video arcade place.”
“Exactly.” Ray gave me an expectant look that I had no idea how to meet. I turned to Bert for help.
“Surely you noticed the unusual amount of activity on the street when you moved here?” Bert asked gently.
“Well, yeah, but I figured it was just the video arcade. Lots of people seemed to hang around there…” My mouth dropped open as it struck me that the people hanging around outside were mostly women, women dressed in a flashy manner that would have instantly screamed
hooker
to me if I had seen them back home. Somehow, though, the idea of prostitutes in London just seemed alien. “Oh. They were tarts?”
Both women nodded.
I frowned out the window. “But I only saw them the first day I was here. I remember thinking the next day how nice it was that the street had quieted down.” I gnawed on my lip a wee tad bit. “There’ve been lots of bobbies on the street, though…oh, good Lord! Genghis!”
“Genghis?” Bert asked, scooping up her bag and a silk scarf that complemented the soft green sleeveless silk sheath dress she wore.
“Yeah, Genghis. The guy next door with the snakes on his neck. One of the students told me yesterday he had disappeared, that no one had seen him since Tuesday night! That was three days ago, the day I moved in. You don’t suppose there’s some sort of Jack the Ripper type murderer running amok in King’s Cross, do you? I mean, the hookers are gone, the head pimp who extorts money from innocent students disappears, bobbies are crawling all over the place—good Lord, that’s probably it! There’s some vigilante madman running around cleaning up the streets! And I’m right in the middle of it!”
Ray gave a short bark of laughter and exchanged glances with Bert. “Simpler explanation than that. Black’s had his hand in this.”
Really, I was getting quite good at that goggling look. I practiced it now on Ray, staring at her as if she had completely lost her mind. “Black? Alex? You think he is the vigilante?”
“Could be,” she said with a wicked grin.
“Ray, don’t tease Alix, she’s had a difficult week. We really should be going now.” Bert slid her arm through mine and tugged me toward the door. I resisted. I wasn’t going to leave the room until Ray was straightened out.
“Alex is a lot of things, but he wouldn’t subscribe to vigilante justice,” I argued. “He’s very law-abiding. If it came right down to it, he’d get a bunch of his police buddies and have them crack down on—”
Ray’s smirk stopped me cold. A little thrill of excitement rippled through me—excitement and a warm glow of pleasure. “Oh. You think Alex is protecting me? But why? And how does he know where I’m living?”
Both women just looked at me. I nodded at their silent answer. “Isabella. Isabella would have told him that I had moved here.”
Ray shrugged. “Might not be him. Could be a coincidence.”
It could, but if it wasn’t…the warm glow of pleasure burned a little hotter. Despite everything, he was trying to protect me. No one had ever protected me before! It was a very heady feeling to know that Alex cared.
Heady, but not allowed on my list. I pushed down the warm glow and paid heed when Bert nodded at my alarm clock. “If we don’t wish to be late, we’d best be on our way.”
Half an hour later we piled out of a taxi and stood in front of the glass doors of The Ivy, one of London’s most popular restaurants, certainly the most popular in the area around Leicester Square, the heart of the theater district. Normally it took up to six weeks to book a table at The Ivy, but the prior week when I was explaining my plans for making Alex’s thirty-sixth birthday something he’d never forget, Isabella mentioned being a friend of one of the owners. Three phone calls later, a miracle had been granted us.
“Miracle or plague, I wonder,” I muttered as I stood outside the shaded glass doors and tugged unobtrusively
at the hem of my little black dress. It was a twin of the red one hanging in my wardrobe, both having been purchased at a consignment shop back in Seattle, the brand label and fit too good to pass up. Whereas I hadn’t felt anything but pleasantly sexy when I wore the red version to the dinner at Isabella’s to meet Karl, at the moment I felt sick to my stomach with apprehension.
I clutched at the tassels of the silk scarf Bert had thrown over her sheath dress. “Bert, I don’t feel very well. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get through this.”
“Alix, you’ll be fine. Just try to relax.”
I clutched the tassels even harder. “What if he’s not here? What if he’s so ticked off at me that he decided not to come? What if he wants to humiliate me in front of everyone?
What if he brought a date?”
She smiled and gave my arm a reassuring squeeze. “You’re being silly. Isabella said she and Karl would be sure to bring him with them, and he wouldn’t be so tactless as to bring a date. Now stop worrying and try to look like you’re not going to be sick all over the floor.”
I released my stranglehold on her tassels for a moment, then lunged after her as she started for the door.
“Wait! Maybe you should go in first, just to see if he’s there, and to see where he’s sitting and if Isabella is sitting next to him, and if he’s laughing and looking like he’s having a good time, or if he’s looking sulky or angry or hurt or something—”
Bert turned back to say something to me, but I’ll never know what, because Ray, previously engaged in paying off the taxi, grabbed my elbow and marched me toward the white and black door. “The new Alix wouldn’t
whinge,” she said firmly, and pushed me inside. I cursed her for her insight. She grinned in return.
The inside of the restaurant was everything it was rumored to be, all wood-paneled and stained glass and oldworld ambience, but I didn’t consciously notice any of it as we approached the large round table in the back.
Alex was there, sitting with his back to the room, leaning across the table to say something to Karl. Isabella sat between them, while next to Karl sat a cheerful-looking red-haired woman and Daniel. Three empty chairs loomed up to the right of Alex. I stared at the empty chair next to him and felt my stomach contract into a dense ball approximately the size of a neutron.
“Please,” I whimpered to Ray as she heartlessly dragged me forward. “Please, Ray, if you have any mercy in your soul, take the chair next to Alex.”
She made an inelegant snorting sound and hustled me forward.
“No, I’m serious,” I whispered as we approached, my hands sweaty and my stomach rolling over with every step. Alex started to turn around to see whom Karl and Isabella were smiling at. “I have money! I’ll pay you! Just take that chair and you can name your price! Any price!”
Twin shafts of emerald pierced through the armor the new Alix had erected. My knees buckled under that look, and only Ray’s grip on my elbow kept me from collapsing on the spot. Or turning tail and running. I wasn’t sure which I wanted more at that point, but Ray grunted an encouragement in my ear, and I managed to stiffen my knees and meet Alex’s gaze when he and Karl stood. I slapped a smile on my face and did the pleasantries. “Good evening, everyone. How nice you look, Isabella. Karl, it’s a pleasure to see you again. You must be Paula.
I’m delighted to meet you. Daniel, you look to be in a devilish mood.”
There, that took care of everyone but the man standing next to me waiting while Bert and Ray greeted everyone. I took my new sense of purpose in a firm grip, and turned to face him. The shock of standing so close to him, of having those green eyes glitter into mine so intimately, stunned me for a moment, but at last I dragged my brain from the contemplation of all the things I wanted to do to him and mustered a smile. “Happy birthday, Alex. How does it feel to be thirty-six?”
“You look lovely tonight, Alix.” I stopped breathing at his words, teetering on the brink of falling into the deep well of emerald of his eyes, but he saved me from going over the edge. With a wry twist of his lips, he added, “Thirty-six feels much the same as thirty-five—ancient.” Everyone laughed at his sally. Everyone but me. I was too busy trying to keep my heart from slamming its way out of my chest at the sight of those lips, so close, so tantalizingly, teasingly close that for the chance to give myself up to them, I was almost willing to sell my soul.
The new Alix shouldered her way forward and reminded me I had almost done just that, and it had ended in disaster. The plan, the new Alix reminded me; we had a plan, and we had to stick to it, and damn it all, kissing Alex wasn’t on the list. I tore my gaze from his lips and sank wordlessly into the chair he held out for me, praying for the strength needed to get through an evening spent sitting next to the man I loved with every atom of my being.
Champagne was brought while menus were distributed. I managed to maintain a flow of chat with everyone
, although I felt light-headed and dizzy even without the champagne. As the waiter collected the menus, Alex shifted in his chair, causing his leg to brush mine. I shot up out of my chair. Heads swiveled to stare at me, but I saw only the question in one pair of eyes.
“I…uh…have to use the little girls’ room,” I stammered, and edged backward. “I’ll be right back.”
“Would you like me to come with you?” Isabella asked.
“No, thanks, I’ve been going to the bathroom by myself for a long time now,” I assured her, and with one last glance at Alex, made my escape.
If I had hoped to find sanctuary in the loo, I was mistaken. The Ivy was one of those high-class places that had an attendant in the bathroom, a little white-haired Indian woman with a polite smile and lovely dark eyes. She nodded to me as I burst into the bathroom. I nodded back and claimed a stall, wondering what she would think if I spent the whole evening in there.
I was being ridiculous, and I knew it. Just because I wanted Alex and couldn’t have him didn’t mean I couldn’t be polite to him, sit next to him and converse in an adult, mature manner. To run away just because his leg had inadvertently touched mine, sending flames of desire skimming along the surface of my skin, was neither here nor there. I was a grown woman. I had a plan. Alex may have thought I lacked courage, but I was no coward. Chin held high, I emerged from the stall and washed my hands with the assistance of the loo lady, dropping a pound coin into her tip basket before striding back into the restaurant, self-assurance and poise dripping from every pore.
Alex rose and held out my chair. Karl did that little
half-rise-from-the-chair crouch that men make whose mothers have taught them to stand when a woman enters the room but who are now too enlightened to give in to such sexual stereotyping. I smiled at both and sat, determined not only to survive the evening, but to triumph over my traitorous heart and body. I inquired of Alex how work was going. He replied in the same polite, emotionally bare tone I used. I began to relax as everyone at the table laughed and joked over trivialities, confident that at last I had got myself under control.
I turned to say something to Alex and found him watching me with a look of longing on his face that almost undid me. The words dried up on my lips as he leaned close and stroked one finger down a path on the inside of my bare arm. Flames followed his touch, igniting the rest of me into a blaze of love and lust and desire and need. I jumped back, almost knocking the chair down as I leaped out of it.
“Bathroom,” I told the astonished look on Alex’s face. “I have to…uh…excuse me, please.”
Bert called out something after me, but I didn’t wait to hear it. I dashed into the ladies’ room, smiling wildly at the surprised attendant, and flung myself into an empty stall, rubbing my arm to extinguish the flames.
“This is intolerable,” I mumbled to myself as I stood in the marble stall, my arms gripped hard around myself to keep the trembling under control. “It was just a finger, just one finger, not even a whole hand, just one little finger on an unerogenous part of the body. Stop acting like a bowl of jelly and get back out there!”
I couldn’t just leave the bathroom without washing my hands—the attendant would think I had poor personal hygiene habits—so I washed, gave her another pound
for standing next to me and offering me a clean towel, straightened my shoulders, and returned to the table.
Seven pairs of eyes turned on me with concern as I tried to slip inconspicuously into my chair. Isabella leaned across Alex and whispered, “Is there any trouble?”
Heat flowed up my neck into my cheeks. “No, thank you, everything’s fine,” I whispered back and gave Alex a toothy smile. “Everything’s fine,” I repeated to him before turning my attention back to the table. Knowing I’d be sloshed out of my gourd if I drank the champagne, I asked for a glass of water to relieve the dry mouth my nerves had wrought. The waiter refilled my glass when he brought a second bottle of champagne with the appetizers. I meant to sip my water as everyone toasted Alex, but when I get nervous I get thirsty. I downed the second glass of water, and signaled the waiter for more.