Learning to Trust (13 page)

That reminded Lina of something. “I’d rather not be beholden to anybody. I appreciate you letting me stay here, but I want to be independent, to get my own apartment and plan my life.” She wouldn’t tell her mother about resuming her studies yet. Anna would declare, as she had before, that she didn’t see the point. Or getting a job, which she’d have to do if she wanted her independence. She looked forward to it.

Instead of insisting in fulsome terms that she stay, Ritchie shrugged. “There’s plenty of room here. You can come and go as you please. Although we tend not to go in for wild parties.”

“These days, neither do I,” she said, although she didn’t expect anyone to believe her. Not yet, until she’d proved it. “I appreciate the offer. So what do we need to see the lawyer for?”

“To discuss your inheritance.”

Her mouth dropped open and she shut it with a snap. “Inheritance?” she managed.

Ritchie cast an annoyed glance at Anna. “She didn’t tell you before you went away. I can understand why, but at the same time she had no right to keep it from you. My dear, your father left you money in trust.”

She fought for breath, and managed to pull in some air with a noisy inhale. “I thought it was all gone.”

Ritchie shook his head. “It was in trust for you, locked away, until you were twenty-five. How old are you now?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“So it’s been gathering interest for the last two years. Considering the recent dip in the market I don’t know how much of it is left. Don’t get your hopes up—it might be no more than a college fund. But it should help.”

“Yes.” Exhilaration bloomed inside her. All she needed was the funding for the next three years. It would give her a fantastic start on the real part of her life. “Okay, I’d rather do that soon.”

“But the shopping!” Her mother pouted.

“Straight afterward.” She didn’t want to antagonize anyone on this, her first day in a place she already thought of as home.

Ritchie grinned, and so did his son. “I hope you know that whatever this inheritance turns out to be we want nothing from you except that you accept us as family.”

She wanted to trust these people, wanted a family at last. Wanted someone to care.

Jon
, her mind whispered. Then followed it with a vision of that pretty girl at the airport, clinging to him as if he belonged to her. Wearing an engagement ring. No, he didn’t belong to her. He’d never said he loved her, only that he cared about her. She’d helped him through a fraught time in his life, when he needed someone to care for.

They might have shared some intense sex, but that meant nothing. Not to him, anyway. Even if it had been the best sex of her life, the measuring stick for every other time she might sleep with a man.

Not that she wanted to right now. She only wanted him.
It would pass
, she assured herself, and turned her mind to what she needed to do now. How she wanted to live her life. Getting on with that would help her recover from her needy crush for Jonathan Brantley. It had better.

Anna smiled brightly at the people sitting around the circular table. “So we have our dinner after all.”

Lina winced. After the Brantleys had turned down the dinner invitation on the grounds that it was too close to Byron’s memorial, Anna had been fuming to staff and occupants of the Dakota alike. Day after day. Lina had no doubt that Anna had contrived to sit at the same table as the Brantley party on the one occasion they couldn’t get out of attending—a charity dinner for third world relief. Since the Brantleys had taken a firm stance against exploiting workers in the third world, and Mrs. Brantley headed the committee, they couldn’t not attend.

A dinner, some speeches and an auction, followed by dancing. She saw the look of horror on Mrs. Brantley’s face, followed by her mask of haughtiness when she realized who was to share their table. Lina didn’t know how her mother had contrived it, but she had.

On second thought, yes she did. When she glanced around and took in the other tables, one dame at another table positively gloated at Channing Brantley’s discomfiture.
Falling out among friends
, she guessed, and her mother had used it to get the table.

Sandwiched between two of the most attractive men attending tonight she should have been happy, but the atmosphere crackled with tension. “You look beautiful,” Jon told her, touching her hand.

She knew she did. She’d spent most of the day at her mother’s spa, being polished. Wondering how she could have ever enjoyed it. Oh it was nice having someone turn you into a princess, but it took so fucking
long
. The procedures were so passive that she was heartily bored by the end of the session. But now, with her hair swept up in a knot, her nails gleaming with a new French polish, and wearing a gown that cost a small fortune, she had to admit that she did feel good. And confident, which was the whole reason for the spa visit.

This formed her first public social engagement since her return, somewhere that she’d parade in front of the cameras and put herself into the public gaze. All her old skills returned—the best pose, the brightest smile, the coy answers for the dullest questions. But she went through it without pleasure.

Somehow she’d lost that need to be watched, for people to look at her. Once she’d wanted the whole world to notice, to make up for the way she was treated at home. She had a private theory that most of tonight’s attendees had the same need for attention. Except for Bitsy Freeman, one of the organizers of the event, one of the leaders of old money society in New York. Bitsy had stripped off her fine clothes in one assessing glance and, drawing close, murmured, “Brava! Keep it up, girl, and you’ll do well.” That had warmed her more than anything else and she treasured the quiet words. Because they were sincere, the only genuine words of the evening.

Until now. Because Jon’s quiet speech also had the ring of truth. He meant it. So his compliment touched her deeply, and to her horror she found herself blushing and smiling at him like a schoolgirl at the prom. “It took all day.”

“I’ve seen you look beautiful in five minutes. Although I like your hair that color.”

He’d made her promise that she’d keep the length. Despite the hairdresser showing her some hot new styles, she’d kept that promise. “Thanks.”

She wanted to tell him so much, but she couldn’t. The time had passed. Apart from anything else, Jon’s fiancée sat on his other side. Although, she noticed, glancing down at the girl’s hands, she didn’t wear a ring tonight. Perhaps it didn’t suit Alice’s pearl and sapphire choker and bracelet set, although in her opinion a good diamond went with almost anything. And if Jon had given it to her, Lina, she’d have never taken it off. So she compromised on a general question that she hoped might draw him out. “Have you been well?”

“Pretty good. Busy.”

“Yes. I read about Byron’s memorial service.”

A shadow passed across his features. “I hoped you would come.”

Startled, she glanced at Channing. The woman had sent her an invitation to the quiet memorial service, but included a private note asking her not to come. Now Channing leaned forward and spoke quietly to her. “I didn’t want to drag the media in, and your presence would have done that. I wanted to say goodbye to him with some dignity.”

A lump rose in her throat. So would she. She hadn’t even sent flowers, since Channing had asked people not to, but had sent a generous donation to the charity mentioned on the card. “It was good of you to ask me.”

“Not at all.” Channing drew back and turned her head to speak to her neighbor. The conversation was over, but thinking about it, Lina admired Channing’s truthfulness, if not her tact.

She probably would have brought the press. They’d tailed her for the last two weeks, shouting questions, constantly expecting her to make a slip, to go back to her old ways. At times she’d even considered it, but not for more than a few seconds and only when she felt low. And lonely. Although her new stepfather and Gary had helped there. They’d given her the sympathetic ear she needed and done their best to quiet things down.

“I’m sorry,” Jon murmured. “I didn’t know she’d done that. I’d have come to fetch you.”

She stopped herself gaping and leaned away from him when the waiter placed her starter on her plate. Something artistic with scallops. She smiled when she remembered how cheap scallops were in Naples. She’d bought them fresh, taken them home and cooked them on the stove. Nothing fancy like this effort. The whole plateful probably came to less than five dollars to make.

“I know why you’re smiling,” he said.

Now she blushed. One evening they’d ended up naked, feeding each other scallops in between kisses. She picked up her wineglass and took a sip to cover her confusion. “Eat up,” he said, unperturbed. “You don’t want it to get cold.”

How could he do that, especially with the woman the media claimed he’d marry soon sitting next to him? She wanted to feel indignant but she couldn’t, only felt the heat between her legs increase. Suddenly she grew aware of her nipples tightening beneath her red silk gown.

She choked down a couple of mouthfuls and turned to chat to Gary. “Do you mean to take the new fashion magazine on the stalls?” She didn’t care what he answered, and didn’t hear it either. Her only focus was the man sitting next to her, his presence heating her senses. Jon unwittingly threatened to turn this occasion into a disaster for her.

Gary, pleased with her attention, gave her the answer he no doubt thought she wanted. He ended it with, “Should you like to come to the offices? Perhaps you’d like to look around and see what you think.”

“Why?” she blurted out before she had time to censor her words.
Shit, fuck and damn.
She covered her faux pas with a sweet smile. “I mean, when?”

Gary smiled back, his green eyes warming, the pupils widening slightly. “Tomorrow, if you like. I’m due to go in for a meeting. You can sit in, see what it’s like to run an empire.”

“She knows.”

Jon’s interjection didn’t please Gary. He glanced over her head, glared at him, but Jon smiled back, unperturbed. “Her father ran one.”

“And that didn’t end well, did it?”

Jon tilted his head to one side. “I think it did. He sold it off when he first got ill, well before the market started to panic.” Her father had died when she was eleven. She was old enough to miss him badly for a few years, until she’d found compensations to fill the gap he’d left. No doubt Jon had assumed that Lina and her mother had pissed the money away. She’d assumed as much, until recently.

“He left most of it in trust for me. I had no idea.”

“Obviously.” Did he mean that he knew she’d have pissed it away? Probably. Now that she’d come home she was getting used to people thinking the worst of her. They’d even made up lurid stories about her absence. Not as lurid as the real thing, luckily.

Nobody had linked her with the explosion in Naples and she’d made it appear that she’d been in Rome the whole time. Jon’s mouth tilted in that one-sided, slightly edgy smile that she’d begun to love. “I meant that when I found you, you were living on your earnings.”

That was a nice way of putting it. She gave him a smile of thanks.

A light flashed and she looked up to see a cameraman. She had no way of knowing if he was paparazzi or official, since the organization was allowing the paps in until the end of the first course. She’d always hated that, but the charity wanted the publicity.

So she smiled at him. “No, don’t look at me. Look at Jonathan.” First names were de rigeur with the gutter press. She assumed it had to be one of those. But she’d play.

She glanced at Jon and caught him gazing at her in a way that brought back all they’d done.
Not fair
. So she gave him a smoldering look, tilting her mouth only slightly and gazing up at him from under her lashes.

But he wouldn’t let her. He lifted his hand and hooked it under her chin, pushing up her head so she couldn’t help but look at him dead-on. And the bastard took the photo then. “They’ll print that one,” she warned him.

“Let them. I don’t care. Do you?”

He was really asking her. He wanted an answer. Did she care? Trying for levity, she shook her head, and felt the contact of his finger with the soft underside of her chin. Who’d have thought that was an erogenous zone? But heat spread through her when she met his gaze and she had to answer honestly. “Not really.”

She heard a soft huff from Alice, who kept her composure remarkably well, considering her fiancé was flirting with a notorious member of the party set. Ex-member.

She pulled away and glanced down at her place. The entrées had arrived and the paparazzi were out. She could relax. Not that she felt much like relaxing now.

Jon seemed determined to remind her of their time together in Naples. Despite the tragic reason for his finding her and the way it had ended, she still thought of it as a magical time. She’d never forget it. She thought about it at night sometimes, lying alone in bed, waiting for sleep. Sometimes she lay still, imagining he was just out of reach, that she only had to turn over to find herself in his arms again.

Like that would ever happen. Jon had kept his distance, making it clear to her at least that he didn’t see their time as any more than circumstances. He wouldn’t tell her secrets, where she’d been, what she’d called herself, because to do so would be to court the attention of the Colleghi again. But she’d hoped for more than that.

Now, two weeks after their return, the experience seemed like a break in time, something that existed in another world, apart from the one she was living now. And that Jon didn’t bear much resemblance to the tuxedoed man sitting next to her. Not until he’d given her that smile and they’d found scallops on their plates. Perhaps he merely meant to flirt and tease. It wasn’t his fault that it meant so much more to her.

She ate some of the beef, finding the delicate sauce to her taste. It helped to ease her tension. She could converse easily with Gary, a relief from the intensity she felt when she looked at Jon. She could talk rationally with Gary and discuss his business. If she could get interested in the magazines, maybe she could advise Gary and his father about the ones they should take.

Tension arose again when Gary mentioned the Internet. “I think we should talk about taking the business online again. Would you be interested in looking at that side?”

A growl told her that Ritchie had overheard. She’d heard this argument before. Gary wanted to invest in an online site, but Ritchie couldn’t see the point. Who would pick up a paper from a newsstand, albeit a virtual one, when they could go get it free from the newspaper site? Privately she agreed with Ritchie, but she knew very little of the business and couldn’t understand why they didn’t concentrate on what they were best at.

She couldn’t remember what they had for dessert, which was unusual for her, but all too soon the plates were removed, and the speeches commenced. She tried to concentrate, but they were so boring, despite the worthy cause they supported. At one point she caught Channing’s eye and could have sworn she saw a tiny grimace, an exchange of fellow feeling. But she couldn’t be sure.

In the old days she might have made a scene, done something ridiculous, caught people’s attention. Now she sat quietly, knowing the worthy cause deserved better but knowing she couldn’t do anything about it. Boredom had driven her to make scenes, show herself up, because when she was bored, visions, thoughts and memories haunted her. At one time she’d have done anything to avoid them.

She’d changed. The memories still came, but sometime in the last week she’d decided to face up to them instead of avoiding them all the time.

The speeches didn’t last too long. Too aware of the men next to her, one her friend, the other her ex-lover, a man who should mean nothing to her. But he did, fuck, he did.

They all applauded. Lina couldn’t help wondering if charity balls helped anyone other than the people who attended. She guessed so, but she knew it helped the people here. Charity balls formed a large part of the New York social scene. She’d run the gamut of photographers outside, smiled and let them slaver over her, but didn’t answer any questions. Didn’t hear them. Getting back to the social round made her realize how much she’d changed.

Lina sighed in relief when Jon got to his feet, but he turned to her instead of his fiancée and her tension spiked anew. “Dance with me?”

“Shouldn’t you…?” She couldn’t tell him who to dance with, but his request and that slight smile put her in a bind. She shrugged and got to her feet. “Sure.” She didn’t look at Alice. She didn’t dare.

He took her hand, threading his fingers between hers in an achingly familiar gesture. He turned to face her on the dance floor and swung her into his arms. She nearly wept, but she kept her expression frozen and smiled up into his eyes. He tried to draw her closer but she resisted.

He smelled good, of cologne and him. Reminiscent and new as well. “Why didn’t you come see me?”

She might have known he’d waltz well. She didn’t have to concentrate on the steps, either. “Because you had things to sort out. The paps have hounded me so I’ve stayed in the apartment most of the time. I went shopping.”