Interior Designs (18 page)

"N-no, Amanda didn't come," Cathryn said.

"Since you have a guest, I'd better let you go. I just wanted to check in and tell you how well everything is going for Selby and me. And to tell you that I love you, my Cathryn."

"I love you, too," she said, meaning it as never before. For one wild moment she wanted to give in to her need and tell Drew about her accident. She longed to ask him to come to her as quickly as possible. She ached to feel the security of his arms around her, his soothing touch, his gentle kisses, but she wouldn't disturb his precious time alone with his daughter for anything in the world.

"Take care of yourself, sweetheart. I'll call you again."

"All right. Have a good time. I miss you, Drew."

"I miss you, too. A lot. Talk to you soon."

"Goodbye," she whispered. She cradled the phone against her cheek for a moment before replacing the receiver.

"So what did Drew have to say?" Judy asked conversationally when she arrived bearing a tray of fruit and sandwiches for Cathryn's late supper.

Cathryn picked at a pimento-cheese sandwich. "He and Selby are having a wonderful time. She was really glad to see him."

"Well, I suppose so! How long has it been?"

"Sixteen months," said Cathryn.

"I'm sure the separation hasn't been easy for either of them."

"No, it hasn't." Cathryn set the sandwich down on the plate. "I—I guess I'm not hungry. Judy," she said. "The sandwich is very good. I just can't eat it."

Judy's sharp look cut into her. "I don't think it's only the accident that has taken your appetite away. It's Drew. You miss him a lot, don't you?"

Cathryn didn't speak. She couldn't.

"Let me tell Drew about the accident, Cathryn. I'll call him at his hotel. Just knowing that he knows—that he sympathizes and cares about you at such a time—would make you feel better." Judy implored Cathryn with her eyes.

"No," said Cathryn firmly. "I don't want him told. Anyway, I already know that he cares about me."

Judy tried again. "Think how he'll feel when he arrives home and finds out what you've been through."

"No, Judy."

Judy fell silent for a moment. Her concerned gaze came to rest on Cathryn. They were filled with worry. "I just want you to be all right, you know."

"I
am
all right," she said gently and deliberately. "Physically I'll be well on the way to recovery tomorrow."

"But emotionally?"

Cathryn didn't speak, and after a few moments Judy patted Cathryn's cheek thoughtfully and silently switched off the bedside lamp before walking softly out of the room.

* * *

In his suite at the Plaza, Drew sat quietly by the telephone, picturing Cathryn in her apartment with Judy. Cathryn would laugh, would smile, would toss her pale blonde hair over her shoulders in the gesture he knew so well. In the gesture he
loved
so well.

He'd known he would miss her, but he hadn't counted on this hollow ache inside, as though something vital had been torn from him. In the long, lonely hours ahead, Selby would sleep and he would lie awake remembering the night before when he and Cathryn had made love with such passion and such abandon, knowing that it was the last time for a week.

He stood and walked slowly to Selby's room, where he watched her sleep. His daughter. His child. He slid the sheet up to cover her bare arm, and he smiled as she frowned in her sleep.

And then he walked back to his bed, his lonely bed, and lay staring into the dark, thinking of Cathryn.

***

Cathryn slept well that night and awoke the next morning feeling mentally refreshed. But her body was still stiff from being jolted in the accident, and every joint ached.

Judy insisted on staying the whole day and the next night, too, even though Cathryn, who was beginning to walk around the penthouse and itching to get back to work, was sure she didn't need Judy anymore.

"Don't be silly," Judy said briskly. "I'm enjoying this. It reminds me of when we were roommates in college. Just to make this more authentic, I'm going to order a pizza."

Drew called again that afternoon, and Cathryn regaled him with details of a make-believe day while Judy stood by helplessly, raising her eyes to the ceiling as Cathryn manufactured incidents that supposedly had happened to her while she was running on the beach and lunching with Judy.

"Honestly, Cathryn, I don't know how you can lie so easily," said Judy after Cathryn had hung up.

Cathryn stared at her unhappily, tears welling up in her eyes. With Drew, anything less than honesty cast a shadow on their love. The ugliness of her deception overwhelmed and saddened her.

Judy, immediately sympathetic, rushed to Cathryn's side and patted her caringly on the shoulder. "Sorry," she said awkwardly. "I shouldn't have said that, I guess."

Judy stayed through the next day, but that afternoon she packed her belongings and left after dinner. "I'll be back in the morning," Judy promised.

True to her word, Judy, concerned about Cathryn's being alone, stopped by to check on her the next morning and every morning after that.

"You can't tell me Drew Sedgwick has been nothing but a good influence on you," Judy chided. "This business of skipping breakfast is disastrous." And with that, Judy invaded Cathryn's kitchen, dredging up a griddle and frying pan and juicer, and prepared a breakfast so big that the two of them could hardly eat it all.

"It's pure selfishness on my part," Judy said whenever Cathryn protested against all the fuss. "I like my coffee, and you would be back there in that office of yours working on who knows what if I didn't brew a big pot for us to linger over."

"You're not only spoiling me, but you're also making me lazy," Cathryn said on Thursday morning as she and Judy loaded the dishes into the dishwasher. She was still wearing her most comfortable bathrobe, and her hair hung loosely down her back. She hadn't worn makeup for days.

"You deserve to be lazy," Judy insisted.

"I've had several impatient calls from my client—the architect—who wants to know why there's a heap of plaster on the floor of his office."

"Yes, but admit it, this is the first time off you've had in months."

"Except for weekends at the beach house with Drew," said Cathryn, running those weekends through her mind like a video. Looking back on them, they seemed like such a carefree time. She and Drew had enjoyed each other's company, but at the expense of her work. Now that her refurbishing of the architect's office was running so far behind schedule, and after a few anxious inquiring phone calls from Mrs. Smead on Barton Avenue, she was beginning to wish that she'd spent more time at her studio.

"Well," Judy said, looking around the neat kitchen, "I'll see you tomorrow. Amanda's out of school now, so I'll bring her along. She's been clamoring to see you ever since the accident."

"Good. It'll be fun having her here," Cathryn said as she walked Judy to the door.

After Judy left, Cathryn pulled up figures on her laptop, although it was hard to concentrate when she was waiting for the phone to ring. Drew's daily phone call had become the very pivot of her existence. She had not known, she reflected unhappily as she shuffled papers from one side of her desk to the other, putting off any real work, that she could miss anyone as much as she missed Drew.

The phone rang and she grabbed it. It wasn't Drew; it was her assistant, Rita.

"Another phone call from Mrs. Brattigan," she said. "She wants to know how soon you can get over there and do something about all that green. She says she can't live in the house without it making her sick, and she wants to choose the new colors right away so she can leave for Newport."

Cathryn pinched the skin above her nose with a thumb and forefinger. "Tell Zohra to drop whatever she's doing and to get over there tomorrow to smooth Mrs. B's ruffled feathers. And Rita, make sure everyone at the studio knows that I'll be working full time as soon as possible," she said, feeling guilty about the many days that she'd stayed out of the office. "I'll be another week or so at the most, I should think."

Rita sounded relieved, and after a few words of encouragement, she hung up. Cathryn sat brooding for a moment. She'd always been proud of finishing jobs close to the target date, despite problems with upholsterers and suppliers and furniture shipments that never arrived on time. She didn't want to develop a reputation for being undependable.

With a sigh, she went to her drawing board and, working quickly, mapped out a recreation room for the Barton Avenue house. Becoming absorbed in her task, she soon discovered there was space for a pool table in the room after all. She'd have one specially fitted with orange baize instead of the usual golf-course green. Orange was Mr. Smead's favorite color.

When Drew finally phoned, the conversation was kept short by Selby's constant calls for attention. It was just as well, Cathryn thought. She couldn't have maintained the deception that all was well with her any longer. By now she was always biting her lip to keep from blurting out the truth.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"Fine," she told him.

"Almost finished with the architect's office? Does he like those textured blinds you found for the big windows in his reception room?"

"Loves them," she said.

"Not as much as I love you," he shot back.

Cathryn didn't speak. She couldn't force words past the lump in her throat. She should have come up with some pert rejoinder, should have made some sound of agreement. She yearned to tell him that she loved him, but she wasn't able to. She seemed to be sinking into some sort of post-accident depression and growing more lethargic every day.

The silence lengthened, became obvious.
I've got to think of something to say,
she thought desperately.
Something funny, something silly, something that will make him think everything is all right.
Only she couldn't think of a thing.

Then Selby laughed in the background and spoke to Drew, and he covered the mouthpiece with his hand. Cathryn heard him say, "What is it, Button?" and heard a giggle from Selby.

Drew was laughing when he spoke again. "Well, Cathryn, I think I'd better hang up and find out what this little rascal here has done to my shoelaces. Looks like she's tied them together, or am I mistaken?"

Cathryn let out a sigh of relief. "I'll see you soon," she said quickly. Too quickly?

"Day after tomorrow," Drew said. "I can hardly wait."

"I can hardly wait myself," said Cathryn, much too pensively.

Another silence, and then they said goodbye, a bit awkwardly, she thought. When they hung up, there was an emptiness that cried out to be filled.

* * *

In New York, Drew sat thinking for a long moment after they'd finished their conversation. Something was wrong. He was sure of it. Those silences, Cathryn's lack of response at times when, before, he could almost have predicted what she was going to say. She was keeping something from him, he was certain.

He couldn't wait until the day after tomorrow to see her. It was too long. But he and Selby had planned a museum outing today, and Selby had been looking forward to it.

Worried, he consulted his phone contact list for the number of the airline on which he and Selby were scheduled to fly back to Palm Beach. Surely they would have an earlier flight he could take. If something were indeed wrong, he would at least know about it, he reasoned, and if not, wouldn't it be terrific to surprise her?

* * *

The next morning Judy and Amanda arrived with the good news that Cathryn's Jaguar had been repaired, and in record time, too.

"We stopped by the garage with Daddy before we came here," Amanda announced importantly, "and I could hardly even tell the car had been in an accident."

"Let's make a batch of blueberry pancakes to celebrate," suggested Judy. She produced a container of fresh blueberries from a shopping bag, and they assembled the mixing bowls and ingredients that they would need.

Cathryn was tediously picking over the freshly washed blueberries when the doorbell rang.

Judy, who was helping Amanda measure flour for the batter, looked up in surprise and said, "Are you expecting anyone?"

"No, and Turney hasn't called." Cathryn knew for a fact that the unreliable intercom was working this morning because the doorman had used it less than half an hour before to announce Judy and Amanda. There was only one person who had ever managed to get past her doorman, and that was Drew. But she knew better than to expect him today. He wasn't due back in town until tomorrow.

"I'll go," said Judy, leaving the flour to Amanda, who had somehow managed to smudge some on her nose.

Cathryn set the blueberries aside and wiped her damp hands on a towel. She glanced at the clock. It was only nine-thirty, early by Palm Beach standards.

She heard Judy unlatch the door, and she thought, too late, that she should have warned Judy to put the chain on.

Just as she reached the foyer, the door burst open and Cathryn was startled to see Drew, his hair disheveled, his clothes rumpled.