Mr. Love: A Romantic Comedy (15 page)

“Pretty much.”

“Why would you want to do that to yourself?”

“I, like you, had my shopping list. Rise up in the ranks of academia. Write my novel. Grapple with the serious questions of life.”

“While you cut yourself off from it?”

“Sometimes detachment is necessary to gain a perspective, otherwise all is chaos.”

“There’s detachment and there’s denial.”

Gordon
smiles, nodding.

“And sometimes you can’t slip a cigarette paper between the two.”

“So no hot undergraduates coming to you for one-on-one counseling? No horny faculty wives plying you with eggnog while their husbands were out of town?”

“Don’t confuse my life with my sister’s book.”

“We both know whose book it really is.”

“You’ve lost me, Jane.”

The wine emboldens her.

“You wanted to come clean about
Ivy
back in New York, Gordon, didn’t you? And out of cowardice I shut you up.”

He stares at her and seem
s about to speak when Fran arrives with their main course.

“
Bon appétit
,” she says.

Jane watches as
Gordon slices into his steak and takes a bite.

“Delicious,” he says.

“Gordon, maybe we should get all this out in the open?”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Jane.”

“Are you sure Bitsy isn’t going to crack up on us?”

He shakes his head.

“She’ll be fine. She’s a woman with a mission.”

“What mission?”

“That charlatan I told you about? He heads up some dubious foundation. A scam, I’m certain. Anyway, Bitsy has committed her earnings from
Ivy
to this character in return for who knows what. Acceptance? Love?” He shakes his head. “She’ll play her part, don’t worry. Now let’s forget that.”

Jane allows him to shift the conversation away from the book and
(to distract her, no doubt) he admits to having had a relationship with fellow academic at a remote college somewhere in the West.

“Her name really was Ludmilla?”
Jane asks.

“Yes. Her father was a
professor obsessed with all things Russian although the closest he got to the USSR was a teaching post in Sitka, Alaska.”

“And if your contract had been renewed would there have been a future for the two of you?”

“Terrifyingly, I think there would have been. Out of sheer habit and boredom I fear we would have ended up as one of those awful couples in their forties who detest each other, waging an endless war at dinner parties, slinging insults disguised as witty repartee.” He shudders. “Even Bitsy’s couch seems like heaven by comparison.”

Jane, more than a little tipsy, sees Fran dozing behind the cash register.

“I think we should go, Gordon,” she says, softly.

He stands, nearly upsetting his chair and Jane has to smother a giggle.

“I’ll take your car home,” Gordon says. “Tell me what time to collect you in the morning.”

“I can’t let you drive, Gordon. You’re drunk.”

“I am not.”

“
Oh come on, you’re totally hammered.”

“Well, maybe just a little.”

“I’ll drive you home.”

“Out of the question. You’ve
also had too much to drink and you’d never find your way back here.”

“
Then why don’t you take a room for the night?” Jane asks.

“They only have one room. Yours.”

Jane looks at him.

“Well, you’re a man used to sleeping
on couches. Come on up,” she says leading him to the stairs.

“What if there is no couch?” he asks as they climb the creaking staircase.

Jane doesn’t answer, just opens the door to the room which is lit by a carriage lamp and sports a giant bed with an embroidered comforter.

The only other items of furniture are a small vanity
table and a shaker chair.

“Let me take your car,” Gordon says.

“No way. We’re adults. Colleagues, if you like. We can share the bed.”

Suddenly awkward, they stand looking at one another.

“I’m going to brush my teeth,” Jane says.

“Okay.”

She takes her bag and goes into the bathroom, flosses and brushes, washes her face and changes into sweatpants and a T-shirt.

When she returns to the room
the lamp has been extinguished and she has to feel her way to the bed.

She lifts the comforter and slides beneath and when her hand touches a very warm and very naked male body she
tries to escape the bed.

Gordon takes her wrist.

“Jane?”

“Gordon?”

“Get into bed.”

“But you’re naked.”

“Yes.”

She’ll never be sure whether he removes her clothes or she does but suddenly they’re gone and she’s in his arms and all thoughts of Tom Bennett and
Ivy
and Raynebeau Jones and Yul Egorov are erased.

But
Jonas Blunt—for a fraction of a second—manages to worm his way into her consciousness saying, “What are you doing, Jane?”

And she
replies, “I don’t know.”

And then she can speak no more because Gordon’s mouth is on hers and they’re kissing.

And kissing.

And kissing.

40

Bitsy wakes in a panic, her newly
-colored hair plastered to her skull by sweat.

Her dreams were filled with cameras and bright lights and people firing questions at her.

Questions that she could only answer with lies.

She gets up from her bed and opens the curtains, hoping the morning sun will wash away her anxiety.

But she finds herself staring at a group of rubberneckers, camera phones clicking, as yet another tour bus disgorges
Ivy
pilgrims outside her house, an amplified female voice braying on about Viola Usher.

Bitsy yanks the
drapes closed and hurries through to the living room.

“Gordon?” she says.

But the couch is empty and there’s no sign of her brother’s blanket and pillow.

“Gordy?”

The bathroom door stands open and her brother isn’t in the kitchen.

Bitsy rushes back into the bedroom and finds her cell phone.

With a shaking finger she speed-dials Gordon’s number.

She gets his surly voice mail.

When she calls Jane Cooper she is greeted by the agent’s pleasantly impersonal message.

Bitsy goes through to the bathroom and splashes her face with water.

She closes her eyes and tries to slow her breath, using one of the techniques Daniel Quant taught at his summer workshops.

Daniel.

Bitsy’s eyes open and she feels a little calmer.

She needs to see Daniel
Quant.

He will help her to center herself and find the strength to deal with the media ordeal scheduled for this afternoon.

She has plenty of time (it’s barely nine and she’s been told the Hollywood horrors rise only after noon) to bathe and dress and drive out to the farm and return for her meeting.

And didn’t Daniel tell her to consider herself part of the Quant Foundation’s inner circle?

As she runs water into the bathtub, Bitsy finds herself humming, feeling a delicious thrill at seeing Daniel Quant again.

41

Gordon stretches his long legs, expecting the coarse weave of Bitsy’s blanket on his bare toes.

Instead he feels a silken sheet and a
vivid memory jabs through the fog of stale booze that befuddles his head.

A memory of kissing Jane Cooper.

In a bed at The Sleepy Hollow Guest House.

And this memory blasts open a door and a whole lot more
even steamier recollections come tumbling out.

A succession of overheated images of hungry mouths and sweaty flesh.

Gordon keeps his eyes closed and feigns sleep, listening intently.

He hears birds outside the guest house.

He hears the distant rumble of a tractor.

He hears the clatter of crockery down in the kitchen.

But of Jane Cooper he hears nothing, so—still with his eyes closed—he sends out an exploratory hand, fingers probing the bed bedside him.

He sighs with relief when he finds it still warm to his touch, but empty.

She’s gone, he thinks.

Too embarrassed to face him.

So he opens his eyes and finds himself looking into those of Jane, who sits on the edge of the bed wrapped in a robe, staring down at him.

“Jane,” he says in a voice he barely recognizes as his own.

“Gordon.”

“How are you?”

“About last night . . .” she says.

“Yes?”

“It was a terrible mistake.”

“Of course it was.”

“We have a professional relationship.”

“Of course we do.”

“We can never let that happen again.”

“Of course we can’t.”

But as Jane speaks she leans in closer and closer and her robe gapes on her perfect breasts and Gordon’s hands have a life and a mind of their own as they reach for her.

And, of course, Gordon and Jane do
it
again.

And again.

42

As Bitsy’s Volvo rattles past the Quant Foundation sign at the farm gate her earlier resolve evaporates.

She has never come here unannounced.

Won’t Daniel see this as an intrusion?

She slows the car, pulls over and sits looking across a field to where a stand of trees hides the Foundation buildings.

Reaching for her purse, Bitsy fumbles inside for her cell phone.

Then she remembers that in her haste to flee her house (in the lull between tour groups) she left her phone lying on the counter in the kitchen.

So what is she to do?

She can’t face the idea of roaring up to Daniel Quant’s sanctum (a haven of stillness and contemplation) in her rusted old car on this quiet morning.

No.

She’ll walk.

She’ll cut through the field and make her way toward the house.

And when she gets nearer she’ll be able to observe what Daniel and his team are up to and whether it is appropriate for her to make an appearance.

Anyway, it’s a glorious day.

One of those freakish Fall days that come all too rarely, as warm as late July.

So Bitsy finds her old straw hat on the rear seat (she leaves it there to wear when browsing fairs and markets, no sunblock strong enough to protect her pale skin) and takes off across the field, the perfection of the morning filling her with joy.

As she follows a pathway through the trees she hears the chuckle of a stream feeding into a pond, the sunlight dappling the water.

What an idyllic scene
, she thinks.

Straight out of Thoreau.

Standing in the shade of a tree, drinking in the peaceful tableaux, Bitsy hears a splash and sees the head of a man rising from beneath the surface of the pond.

Drawing back into the shadows, Bitsy watches as Daniel Quant wipes water from his eyes and wades to the side.

She has never seen Daniel in anything other than the white shirts and baggy trousers he favors and she can’t but be amazed at his broad shoulders and muscular torso.

And when Daniel, his flesh beaded with water, steps
nude from the pond, Bitsy has to shut her eyes, so overwhelmed is she at the sight of his masculine glory.

She opens one eye and sees him standing on the bank, the sun flaring off his wet hair.

God
, she thinks,
he is gorgeous
.

Bitsy tries her best to replace these lustful thoughts with more spiritual ones, but she loses the battle.

She wants him.

She
aches
for him.

She
needs Daniel Quant to take her in those strong arms and crush her against that powerful body.

Bitsy
feels a sudden boldness and is about to step out of the shadows and reveal herself and let happen what must happen when she hears a giggle.

A very fem
inine giggle.

And Bitsy sees that Daniel Quant is not alone.

That the inhumanly tall and beautiful Una is rising from the pond, naked as Eve.

And it is Una not Bitsy—oh no, it is never to be poor, frumpy Bitsy—who is enveloped in Daniel’s powerful arms.

Bitsy has to bite on her fist to mute a wail of anguish as she turns and runs through the trees, not even noticing when her hat is whipped from her head by a low branch.

Runs for the old Volvo that will take her back to her small and miserable life.

Where she belongs.