Authors: Pamela Browning
"Really, I'd better go." She swiveled her head toward the aisle, looking for the night watchman. She had seen him walking his rounds twice already tonight and he'd offered to walk her safely to her car when she was ready.
"Please don't leave yet," Drew said. His tone was persuasive. "I was going to ask you to have a nightcap with me." His eyes crinkled appealingly at the edges, and his smile was warm.
Even though Cathryn felt slightly hypnotized by his effect on her, she was tired and wanted to go home. "It's much too late," she said, caught off guard. She slipped her arms into her lightweight jacket.
"Well, you can't go until you've straightened out that jacket. You've got it on inside out or upside down, and unless you're Houdini, you're not going to get out of it without help."
She shot him a quick glance. He was clearly trying to suppress a smile. His eyes sparkled with devilment, and blue eyes weren't supposed to sparkle with devilment. They were supposed to remain serene, like the sky in summer, or, when angry, stab into you with cold fury like shards of ice. But these were indeed devilish eyes, fringed with black lashes intriguingly spiked together. Drew's smile was growing perceptibly wider.
The flush crept upward from her neck and spread across her cheeks. She hadn't blushed since she was a teenager. Thirty-three-year-old women weren't supposed to react this way to men. She turned away to hide her flaming cheeks and fumbled with the front of the jacket, only to find out that he was right—somehow she had tangled the arms and twisted the back in her hurry to get away, and short of contortions, she wasn't able to set it to rights.
"Let me help you," he said, edging around the table. His face was only slightly above hers, and he wasn't as tall as she'd thought. But then, at five feet eight inches, she was used to being almost the same height as many men.
"I can manage," she assured him, her backbone becoming rigid. Her body seemed captured by confusion, and the touch of his gentle fingers on her neck didn't help matters.
"The only thing to do," he said patiently, "is to take it off." He slipped the jacket off her shoulders, and unexpectedly his touch sent chills through her.
"There seems to be something wrong with the lining," he said, and she turned to find him tugging at the fabric in puzzlement. "One sleeve is inside out. Let's try it again." He held the jacket for her, shaking it out a little, and smiled. There wasn't anything wrong with his manner, she decided. It was her own reaction to him that bothered her. He was a sexy and charismatic man, but he was also polite and concerned about her. It was an intriguing combination.
She slid her arms through the jacket sleeves, catching her hair beneath the collar. Before she could do anything about it, his hand slid under the weighty flaxen mass and slowly pulled it up and out until it unfurled, gleaming, across her shoulders.
"You have the prettiest hair," he said, almost as if to himself. "I remember it from high school."
Cathryn pivoted slowly to face him. "We barely knew each other then," she pointed out.
"I remember you," he said, longing to tell her instead that he didn't mean to come on too strong, but he had to keep talking because he didn't want her to leave, not now, not when he was just getting things started. "You wore your hair braided, with bright yarn threaded through the braids."
"Oh," she said in a small voice. He
did
remember her if he remembered that. The yarn had been her trademark, the quaint difference, or so she'd thought, that set her apart from the other girls with long, bouncy hair and laughing eyes. It had been an affectation, a hey-look-at-me-I'm-different sort of thing.
"They used to call you Cat," he said, fascinated by her eyes, which were an unusual shade of green blended with gold. "Do they still?"
"No," she said. He remembered the yarn in her hair and her nickname. What else did he remember about her? What did she remember about him?
"Now, how about that nightcap?" he said hopefully. "I know an out-of-the-way place where we can hear a terrific jazz trio."
She gazed at him, uncertain, her interest piqued. Admittedly, she was attracted to him. Furthermore, he was handsome and charming and all the rest, and he was clearly making a play for her. But wasn't he married? Her eyes automatically focused on the third finger of his left hand. Immediately she detected a telltale white stripe below his knuckle, a ring line that hadn't yet tanned.
"Recently divorced," he said quickly, answering her unasked question. Cathryn flushed again, wishing she hadn't been so obvious. But his statement told her all she needed to know.
She deliberately assumed a look of indifference before taking a step away from him. "It's very late, and tomorrow is a working day. It was nice seeing you again, Drew," she said formally.
He knit his brow. What had gone wrong? He was divorced—didn't she believe him?
"I'd like to call you sometime," he said quickly. He'd thought he'd made some headway. But just as she was beginning to become real and warm and alive to him, she took on the quality of finely sculpted crystal—lovely, but very cold.
"Thank you, but I'm afraid that won't be possible," she said coolly.
His eyes penetrated her expression. She caught her breath as he trapped her gaze, but it was a long moment before her eyes escaped his. Without a word she turned and walked swiftly away into the darkness of the empty store, her heels clicking on the shiny terrazzo floor, her bright hair chasing the shadows.
He stood watching her as she ran away, for there was no doubt in his mind that Cathryn was running. She was turning away and he didn't know why. For a moment, they'd connected. He never mistook that flare of interest where none had existed before. It happened often, but the women weren't as interesting to him as Cathryn. She seemed sure of herself as few of them were, and she was more beautiful than anyone he'd met in a long time.
Cathryn, on her way out of the store, also knew she was fleeing. She hadn't run from a member of the opposite sex since she was in the third grade and a boy had tried to lift up her dress. Then, she hadn't known what she was running from because it was like a game. Now she knew what she was leaving behind and she also knew that with Drew Sedgwick it was no game.
Well,
he thought, rocking back on his heels,
there was still the class reunion. Surely she would be there... wouldn't she?
***
Judy Carruthers had been Cathryn's closest friend since they both refused to eat the canned spinach in the Northway Elementary School cafeteria. Their impertinence to authority had earned them an hour of after-school chores, and Cathryn and the auburn-haired, freckle-faced Judy had become fast friends as they refilled salt and pepper shakers in the lunch room. They remained friends, growing up in the same close-knit West Palm Beach neighborhood where they were encouraged by both sets of parents to think of each other's homes as their own.
Cathryn had been awed by the comparative luxury of Judy's house. Judy's father was a well-to-do attorney while Cathryn's dad was a poorly paid clerk in an automotive store. The house where Cathryn's family lived was a run-down white stucco, small and cramped. Cathryn vowed in those early years that she would live like Judy and her family when she grew up.
Susannah Fagan arrived on the scene later. She arrived in the middle of seventh grade and possessed an enviably curvy figure and long black hair. Susannah managed to wriggle her way into Cathryn and Judy's closed society by craftily offering lessons in how to flirt.
Serious-minded Cathryn and bouncy, bubbly Judy had found Susannah's offer impossible to resist, especially when they saw the results of Susannah's flirting with the eighth-grade boys. Somehow they had become friends, the three of them, despite the total failure of Susannah's lessons. Cathryn and Judy hadn't learned to flirt until much later. Susannah sadly admitted after her second divorce that it was just as well that the two of them had been late bloomers. In the long run, all flirting had done for her, she admitted, was get her into trouble.
Their three-way friendship had survived through high school and college, Judy's subsequent marriage and motherhood, Susannah's spate of marriages and divorces, and the demands of Cathryn's career. Ron, Judy's husband, was like a big brother to Cathryn, and their eight-year-old daughter, Amanda, was Cathryn's goddaughter. Susannah, a resident of New York City and an inveterate jet-setter, flew into town from time to time for whirlwind visits, the purpose of which was to bring the other two up-to-date on what was going on in her hectic personal life. Susannah, Judy, Ron, and Amanda were Cathryn's only true family other than a few distant cousins who lived so far away that their only connection was a yearly Christmas card.
Two weeks after Cathryn had declined to go out with Drew Sedgwick, Susannah breezed into town. Of course, the three friends wanted to get together, and Judy offered her home as a gathering place.
"Tonight's like old times again," Susannah declared happily in her breathy voice. "Just think, a slumber party! We haven't done this since high school." Susannah hugged a soft down pillow to her ample breasts.
"Since the night before graduation," agreed Cathryn. The three of them were lounging in pleasant dishabille around Judy's big living room, Judy's husband having conveniently taken their daughter camping. Whenever the three of them got together, it was always instant intimacy, no matter how long they'd been apart.
"Fifteen years," mused Judy, the most sentimental of the three. "Can you believe it's been fifteen years?"
"With three ex-husbands, yes," Susannah said dryly, tossing her dark hair back over her shoulders. Susannah was currently between marriages.
"What I want to know," said Cathryn, "is why we're having a class reunion after fifteen years. Shouldn't it be twenty?"
"Because we never got around to having a tenth," Judy reminded her. "We were all too busy having babies and things like that."
"
You
were busy having babies," pointed out Cathryn. "
I
was busy working."
"I was getting divorced from husband number two," said Susannah reminiscently.
"Good grief, Susannah. Are you assigning them numbers now?" asked Cathryn, looking askance at her friend. Of Susannah's three husbands, Cathryn could only remember the first, and that was because he'd been extremely handsome.
Susannah made a face. "Recalling numbers is easier than trying to remember their names." She paused dramatically. "Ah, yes, I'll never forget dear Whatsisname," she said, breaking into a wave of giggles.
Cathryn chucked a pillow at her. "At least you've had a Whatsisname. That's more than I can say for myself."
"Your own fault," Susannah shot back. "You could have married anyone you wanted, Cat."
Cathryn rolled her eyes. "If only you'd taught me to be a better flirt, maybe. And please give me back my pillow."
"Anyway," said Judy, making peace by passing the pretzels, "I can't wait until the reunion. They say Elbert Stuckey is extremely good-looking, can you imagine? Remember how he looked in tenth grade? Like a balloon with hands and feet." Judy puffed her cheeks out with air, pantomiming the hapless Elbert.
"Oh, but to balance
him
out, there's Molly Sherman. She was homecoming queen and now she weighs two hundred pounds."
"So will I if I don't stop eating that Parmesan-artichoke dip," said Cathryn, pushing the potato chips toward Judy. "How dare you serve it? You know my weakness."
"Your weakness isn't food, dear Cathryn. It's work. I haven't seen you in weeks. Neither has Amanda." She turned to Susannah. "Do you know that Cathryn almost never dates these days? She turns down everyone who calls and asks her out."
"Do tell," said Susannah, licking dip off one dainty finger. "Are there any I'd be interested in? If so, send them my way. I'll be here for a week or so after the reunion."
"It's an idea," admitted Cathryn. "I've been too busy setting up my boutique at the mall even to think about going out with anyone. Say, Susannah, would you be interested in Drew Sedgwick?"
Susannah wrinkled her forehead. "Sedgwick, Sedgwick. You mean the guy who built up that chain of stores?"
"He was in our high school class," reminded Judy. "He'll probably be at the reunion."
"He asked me out for a nightcap late one night when I was working at the store," Cathryn said. As soon as she mentioned this, she regretted it. Somehow, her encounter with Drew Sedgwick, she realized too late, wasn't the kind of meeting she wanted to hold up to the scrutiny of her friends, even friends she trusted as much as Susannah and Judy.
"Didn't you go?" chorused Judy and Susannah.
"No," she said, and quickly she related the twisted-jacket incident, emphasizing its humorous aspects. She didn't refer to her inward physical response to Drew's touch, which was another story altogether.
"If you'll recall," Judy said patiently, "I tried to arrange a meeting between the two of you a couple of months ago. Drew is one of the most eligible bachelors around. Ron knows him. They met at a chamber of commerce breakfast, and Ron thought he seemed lonely."
Cathryn wrinkled her brow. "I don't remember your mentioning him." A succession of totally unsuitable blind dates had long ago convinced her to ignore Judy's perennial attempts at matchmaking.