“Of course, I love my daughter.”
Now why did that sound like an accusation? “So do I.”“Good. You shouldn’t marry someone unless you love them.” “That’s true.” He cleared his throat. “Uh, by the way, Elisabeth showed me the bracelet you sent her to wear on her wedding day—something old, she said, something you’d always treasured.”
Silvia laughed, but it sounded more sad than happy. “Is that what she told you?”
“It’s not true?”
The bracelet never belonged to me, Raymond. It’s Lisa’s.”
His stomach turned over. Why would Elisabeth have a bracelet with a pair of baby shoes on it? But he couldn’t ask Silvia. He couldn’t let on that he seemed to know less and less about Elisabeth each second that passed. She’d only been gone two days, but it felt like longer.
“I have to go.” He decided to save his questions for Elisabeth.
“Please have Elisabeth call me as soon as she can. Tell her she can reach me on the cell phone. She has the number.”
“I’ll tell her.”
Raymond hung up the phone, disturbed by their conversation. He told himself it was silly to worry about a bracelet. It was nothing. Lisa hadn’t been eager to wear it. In fact’ she’d looked at it like she hated it. Silvia was just trying to make trouble. But Raymond didn’t have time to worry about her right now. He had another troublemaker to deal with—Beverly.
Duke’s was crowded, both the restaurant and the bar area. After ascertaining that Beverly and Monty were not in the restaurant, Raymond walked into the bar. The basketball game was in full swing on the big screen, and the bar was crowded.
“Can I get you a drink?” a waitress asked him.
“I’ll take a Corona, thanks.”
“No problem.”
He scanned the crowded room, hoping that Monty was in fact there, as his source had led him to believe. The people in the bar suddenly went crazy as a basket was sunk from mid court and the Lakers went up by two points. Raymond jostled for position as high fives were exchanged.
Finally, he spotted Monty and Beverly seated on the far side. He was in luck—there was an empty chair behind them.
“Monty, hello.” Raymond tapped Monty on the shoulder.
Monty didn’t look any more surprised to see him than Beverly did.
“I figured you’d be along once you realized I was here with Beverly,” Monty said with a laugh as he shook Raymond’s hand.
“We saw Paul in the restaurant,” Beverly added, referring to the senior account executive who had called Raymond. “Small world, isn’t it?”
“It seems to be getting smaller every day. I hope you’ll give me as many chances to make my pitch,” Raymond said to Monty. “I don’t usually disturb my clients on the weekend, but if you have some time later, I’d be happy to sit down with you, and—”
“Sorry, Ray,” Monty said with an apologetic but amused smile. “Early bird gets the worm.”
“How about tomorrow morning, breakfast, as early as you like?”
“Now that would be fine.” Monty checked his watch. “I have to be going. I have a tennis match at four.” He extended his hand to Beverly. “Thank you for lunch. I’ll look forward to hearing more of those ideas. I certainly do appreciate the personal attention.”
“That’s what I specialize in,” Beverly said. “My firm is small so that we can meet every client’s needs, whatever those needs may be.”
Raymond rolled his eyes at her blatant sexual invitation. Is that how she was beating him? By sleeping with her clients? He wouldn’t put it past her.
“Raymond, I’ll meet you at seven-thirty at Alana’s restaurant on Wilshire,” Monty said. “Do you know it?”
“Yes. I’ll be there. “”Bring Elisabeth along. I’d like to meet her.”
“Uh—I can’t. Elisabeth is still in San Diego.”
Monty raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you should consider bringing in another account executive.”
“That won’t be necessary. She’s already working on the campaign. In fact, she faxed me some ideas earlier today,” he adlibbed “I’ll share them with you tomorrow.”
“Good enough.” Monty offered Beverly a casual salute, then left.
Raymond sat down in Monty’s chair and glared at Beverly. “Do you really think you have the capability to seduce the man out of a million dollars? Do you believe you’re that good?”
Beverly smiled, her bright red lipstick emphasizing her generous mouth.
“I am that good, Raymond.” She paused, letting her words sink in. “But contrary to what you might think, I don’t have to sleep with clients to get business. They come for a lot of other reasons, one of which is my brilliant mind.”
“You’re an egomaniac.”
“Thank you, I consider that high praise, coming from you, the man who invented the word.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on, Raymond. Look in the mirror. Actually, I probably don’t have to tell you to do that. You’re a man who takes great pride in his appearance. Your clothes cost a fortune. Your body is honed to perfection. Even your hair is the perfect shade of brown with not a hint of gray. And let’s examine the rest of your life. Take Elisabeth, for example, a beautiful, much younger woman, who strokes your ego by making people believe that you must be incredible in bed to attract a woman like her.”
“I am incredible,” Raymond retorted.
“See, I told you. We’re a perfect match. And frankly, if we were working together, Monty would have forked over money right now. He likes my fresh ideas, my personal attention, but he loves your reputation as the best, your showmanship He’d really like to have both of us. But of course, he can only have one.”
Raymond knew she was right. He’d had the same feeling himself during his initial pitch with Monty. Every question, every doubt Monty had directed toward his own company had been a strength of Beverly’s firm. But he could give Monty what Beverly could. He’d just have to make an effort to do so.
Beverly took a sip of her wine, and they sat for a few moments, watching the game, the revelers, the endless beer commercials. Finally Beverly turned to him. “Shit. I hate basketball. I can’t believe I’m still sitting here.”
Raymond couldn’t help but laugh. “Did you tell Monty that?”
“Of course not. I told him I was a huge fan of Shaq, whoever that is.”
“You have no scruples.”
“Not one,” Beverly agreed, as she threw back her head and laughed.
Raymond was once again caught by the light in her eyes, the energy in her being, the long, lovely profile of her slender neck, her generous breasts heaving softly against her lace blouse. He felt his body respond in a very familiar way. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about it.
Beverly stopped laughing, her expression turning more serious as she saw the look in his eyes. He knew that he was revealing more than just a little of his desire, so he looked away, focusing again on a game that meant nothing to him.
Beverly put her hand on his knee, and he almost jumped out of his pants. They were sitting in a crowded room of strangers, yet there was an intimacy between them, as if they were on an island in a sea of bodies, of voices, of shouts that couldn’t touch them.
Her hand moved up his thigh, and he turned hard. Jesus! What the hell was the matter with him? He was acting like an eighteen-year-old boy.
“Maybe we should go somewhere else, somewhere quieter, and have a
drink,” Beverly suggested. He looked into her beautiful eyes and felt like he was drowning. “I don’t think so.”
“We could call a truce, a cease-fire, just have a drink like a man and a woman with nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon.”
He smiled at her choice of words, at the deliberate play of innocence in her voice. “Looking for information, Beverly? Or something more personal?”
“Maybe I’m looking for you. The real you. The one you keep hidden.”
He knew he should toss out a joke, make a sarcastic comment, hurt her in some verbal punch-out sort of way. But tough-as-nails Beverly suddenly seemed vulnerable. In fact, she stood up and walked away from him before he could think of anything to say.
He got to his feet and followed her out to the street, knowing that if he had any sense he would have stayed put.
Beverly didn’t say a word to him as she handed her ticket to the valet and waited for her car.
“So, where are you going?” he asked finally.
“Home, I guess. How about you?”
“Home. Yeah, I might as well go home.” He looked around the crowded street. It was a beautiful day, and lots of people were taking advantage of the sunshine. Suddenly, the last place he wanted to be was home, where he’d be alone with his thoughts, with his desires. “I still owe you a dress,” he said suddenly.
She nodded. “That’s right, you do—a very expensive dress.”
“There are some stores around here. Maybe we should,” he shrugged, “go buy you one.”
“You mean you want to buy it for me, not just pay for it?”
“Same difference.”
“I don’t think so.”
She stared at him, and he stared back. She had such an interesting, complicated face. In fact, there always seemed to be two conflicting emotions running through her eyes, two meanings behind every word. He didn’t know what the hell she really wanted. For that matter, he didn’t know what he wanted.
“All right. Let’s go buy me a dress.” She hurried to the valet. “I won’t need my car after all.” She handed him a ten dollar bill. Take care of it for me, won’t you?”
The young man gave her a broad smile. “You bet I will.”
“God, do you have to flirt with every man you meet?” Raymond asked with annoyance.
“It’s a gift, and I feel we should use all of our God-given gifts.”
He was already regretting this idea. Still, maybe he could use the time to his advantage, find out what she and Monty had been talking about. That was it, he rationalized. He was simply taking advantage of an opportunity to get the upper hand, to cajole her into thinking he was her friend, not her enemy.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked.
“Let’s just start walking and see where we end up.”
Raymond looked down the street. “There’s not much more on this block except a few shops and a motel.”
“Like I said, let’s see where we end up.”
“It won’t be in that motel.”
“Goodness, Raymond, I wasn’t even thinking about the motel. Were you?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. “Imagine that, and you an engaged man and all.”
“That’s right, I’m engaged, and don’t you forget it.”
“Honey, I don’t think it’s me you have to worry about forgetting. ”
Chapter 13
Lisa stared at the address on the sign. She checked the number. It was the same as the one on the slip of paper her mother had given her.
On the other side of the chain link fence was a series of low buildings, each with a number. The sign over one building read storage.
Storage? Lisa suddenly had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Did she really want to know what was behind Number 134? Part of her wanted to run, another part of her wanted to know what was behind that door. When a car pulled up behind her and honked impatiently, she knew she had no choice but to pull inside. She drove down the rows until she found her number. Then she stopped the car and sat there for a long moment.
She’d told Nick to get rid of their things. She’d seen nothing at his house. Was it here? Was it all here? The furniture, the memories? Oh God! What if the crib was inside? Had he kept the crib? The stuffed animals?
Her heart began to race. Her palms turned sweaty against the steering wheel. She tried to breathe, to think rationally. Nick wouldn’t have kept all those things. Not for all these years. She had to see. She knew she couldn’t leave without opening up the door and looking inside.
It took her a few moments of awkward fumbling to get out of the car and insert the key into the padlock. Finally, the door swung open. At first everything was dark. She could only make out shapes and shadows that looked like monsters—big, scary monsters from her past that wanted to suck her into the darkness and slam the door behind her, shadowy monsters that would take her back to a place where she no longer wished to be and hold her prisoner there.
Frantically, Lisa searched for a switch on the wall. Upon finding it, she flooded the room with welcome light. Actually, the light wasn’t much, just a dim bulb hanging from a wire, but it was better than the darkness, and with the sunlight coming in from the street, she could see the furniture more clearly.
It took her only a moment to realize it was all there, the crib, the changing table, the high chair, the stroller, the pink and white lacy curtains that she’d painstakingly sewed, feeling she wouldn’t be the perfect new mother if she didn’t personally make the nest in which her baby would sleep.
Lisa picked up one of the matching pillows, running the lace through her trembling fingers. The white had faded to yellow, and the pillow was covered in dust. It was no good to anyone anymore, she thought with a deep sense of sadness. She traced the heart with her finger.
She could almost feel the needle pricking her skin as she stitched the seam in a clumsy, awkward fashion.
Nick had laughed at her. He’d found her bent over the sewing machine at one o’clock in the morning, tired, cranky and nine months pregnant.
She’d spent an hour trying to thread the ancient machine only to have the thread snap midway down the material.
When Nick had come into the room and smiled with amusement, she’d picked up the box of threads and thrown it at his head. That had made him laugh even more. A reluctant smile crossed her lips as she thought about that night, the way he’d teased her out of her bad mood with affection and love.
Tears pressed behind her eyes as the memories washed over her. She blinked them back, then set the pillow down in the crib. She walked over to the corner, where she found the jewelry box Nick had made for her their first Christmas together. She opened the lid and smiled at the photo that was taped inside. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen when she and Nick had cozied up in the photo booth on the San Diego Pier and paid five dollars to have a silly photograph taken.
She ran her finger over their faces, tracing his long hair, his goofy smile, his beautiful eyes. Life had been so simple then, so full of promises and hope for the future. They’d actually believed they could have it all—love, passion, great careers, a family, a home—everything.
Only it had ended in this, furniture and memories crammed into a square cement box. She glanced around the room one more time, her gaze catching on the musical mobile with Donald and Micky and all the gang. She picked it up and let the wires dangle in the shadowy sunlight.
The pain came sharply and swiftly. Suddenly all the furniture seemed to come to life. The mobile danced in the breeze. The pink lamp in the corner sparkled, refreshed by the burst of sunlight. Lisa could almost see the cradle rocking.
And out of the silence came the sound of a baby, a sweet, sweet baby, suckling at her breast, cooing at the music from her father’s guitar. Lisa could see Robin smiling, her eyes so big and blue and filled with wonder. She could feel the baby’s hand twisting around her finger, feel the warmth of baby’s breath against her cheek.
Then the shadows came back. The sighs of joy turned into crying, angry, relentless crying. The baby would not be comforted. Something was wrong. She didn’t like her own mother. She just kept crying and crying and crying until Lisa thought she would go crazy.
“Stop it,” Lisa yelled into the darkness. “Stop crying. Please. I love you,” she whispered, her heart breaking. “Don’t you understand that I love you, that I would do anything for you if only I could make you happy?”
There was nothing but silence, an infinity of silence. The empty cradle said it all. Nick ran a cloth along the side of the crib he had just finished making, polishing his signature carving with the special oil he used to protect the wood. He felt better in the back room of his store, working with the wood. Everything was simple here, uncomplicated by emotions, by Lisa. He sat back on his heels and stared at the crib. He couldn’t believe how much had changed in two short days. The woman he’d spent the last eight years hating had walked back into his life and changed everything, not that she’d wanted to.
No, Lisa hadn’t meant to distract him, to make him shift his focus from his growing business to her. She’d tried everything she could to get him to leave her, to make him remember all the bad times instead of all the good.
It would have been easy to do that if the old Lisa hadn’t unexpectedly shown up. The woman he’d seen five years ago had been dressed to the nines in a business suit so cold and sharp that she looked more like a bed of nails than a soft, loving woman. That brief glimpse had reinforced his opinion that the Lisa he’d loved, the woman he’d married and lived with and hoped to die with, had already died, or at least disappeared.
But she was back. Watching her with Maggie’s kids, with that scruffy mutt of a dog, with her crazy mother and today with him, at the beach, he’d been taken back in time. He could still see her at the beach, pulling the hair out of her eyes, looking down in horror at the seaweed winding around her ankles.
Nick smiled at the thought. She had been so angry with him, but so alive, the woman he remembered, the woman he’d loved. He’d wanted to kiss her earlier, to strip the wet clothes off her body and make love to her right there on the sand, in front of God and his witnesses.
She’d never have done it. She hated him. No, she didn’t, he realized.
Maybe she had at one time, but no more. Of course, just because she didn’t hate him didn’t mean she cared about him either.
“Nick,
goddammit
, where are you?” Lisa shouted. Nick jaw dropped as he glanced at the partly open door that separated the storeroom from the showroom. Lisa was here? He’d never told her where he worked, for good reason. Lisa had no idea what he did for a living, and as he glanced down at the robin, he knew she wasn’t going to like it. Maybe that’s why she was angry. Because she was definitely angry.
He listened as his store clerk tried to reason with her.
“Excuse me, ma’am, is there a problem?” the clerk asked.
“There sure as hell is. Where is he?”
“Uh, uh,” the clerk stumbled. “Can I tell him who you are?”
Nick smiled as his trustworthy employee tried to protect him from what she thought was an irate customer.
“Oh, he knows who I am all right,” Lisa said. “Is he in the back?”
“You can’t go in there—”
Lisa flung open the door to the back room and stalked inside. Her hair fell wildly about her shoulders, and she looked mad as hell, even more angry than she’d been after he’d tossed her in the water.
“How dare you!” she yelled at him.
“Mr. Maddux. Do you want me to call the police?” his clerk asked, hovering anxiously in the background.
“It’s okay. I can handle her,” he replied, slowly rising to his feet.
“Handle me?” she retorted, her blue eyes blazing. “Don’t even think of handling me. I am so angry with you, I could hit you.”
In fact, she did hit him, punching him in the arm, not once, but twice, then again, harder and harder, until Nick had to grab her hands and hold her away from him.
“What is wrong with you?” he demanded, as she tried desperately to free her hands. “Hey, that hurts.”
“You deserve pain, lots and lots of pain.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, trying to placate her. “You want to tell me why?”
“You kept everything. How could you do that to me? How could you let me walk in there without knowing what to expect?”
Nick let go of her hands, suddenly realizing what her anger was all about. The storage unit. Damn.
“It was all there. Everything. Her crib. Her bassinet. The mobile.” Lisa’s voice broke as an unwelcome sob slipped past her defenses. She blinked back angry tears. “I hate you, Nick. I hate you.” She brought her fist up to hit him again, but this time Nick stepped aside, and, before she could react, he kissed her.
He could have slapped her, but kissing her seemed a better choice, especially when all that anger and tension turned into passion, when she stopped trying to shove him away and instead wound her arms around his neck, when her mouth began to move beneath his, when her breasts pressed against his chest, when he smelled everything about her that was her—Lisa, his lover, his wife, his friend.
He buried his tongue in her mouth, wanting a piece of her, needing to get past her defenses, to find her, the real her, the woman who’d disappeared so many years ago.
“Lisa,” he murmured against her mouth when they finally came up for air.
“Nick.” She lifted her head and stared back at him with tearful, searching eyes. “Why? Why did you keep her things?”
“I thought you might want them some day.”
“You should have told me. That day, at the house, when her room was empty, you never said …”
“I couldn’t stand to look at them either. I couldn’t have stayed in the house with the room set up for Robin, waiting for her, for you. But I couldn’t throw her things away. It didn’t seem right.”
“She’s gone. She’s really gone.” Lisa took a deep breath. “I’ve known that for a long time, but when I saw that empty crib, I really felt it here, in my heart.” She put her hand to her chest. “And I missed her,” she said, swallowing back another sob as her eyes began to water yet again. “I didn’t want to miss her. I didn’t want to hear the sound of her little voice cooing, laughing, crying. When I touched her diaper bag in the storage shed, I felt like I was touching her. Remember, how her diaper used to feel beneath her sleeper, all crinkly and soft.” She sniffed. “I don’t want to do this. Why am I doing this?”
Nick’s gut clenched at the wistful longing in her voice, the hunger that he felt reflected in her voice. “I miss her, too, Lisa. You know what I remember, the way Robin used to squeal when we put her in that little bathtub. She loved the water. She didn’t care if it got in her eyes or anything. Did you see her rubber ducky in the shed? I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. She loved it so much.”
“Oh, Nick. Why can’t you just learn to throw things away?”
“I believe just about everything can be salvaged, if you try hard enough.” He paused, knowing his remark had hit home by the way Lisa looked down at her shoes. “How did you find out about the storage unit?”
“My mother. She gave me the key and the address.”
“Then how come you didn’t go home and hit her?”
Lisa reluctantly smiled. “I don’t know. Habit, I guess. You kept some of my things, too, the jewelry box you gave me, the rocker, the birdbath. You should have at least sent me a bill for the storage.”
“If I’d done that, you would have destroyed everything.”
“I could do that now.”
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know.” She took a step back, and he pushed his hands into his pockets. For the first time since storming into the room, she looked around. He saw her eyes widen again in surprise, and her hand began to tremble as she reached out to touch the crib he’d just finished.
“This—this is what you make?” she asked, her blue eyes reflecting more shock.
“Yes. I make handcrafted baby furniture, cribs, cradles, rockers, dressers.”
Her eyes darkened with horror just as he had expected. “Oh, my God. I
thought you were normal, that I was the crazy one. But you—you’re sick. You’re obsessed with her. You’re—”
“Stop it,” he yelled.
“Stop what? Someone has to say it out loud. Do your customers know that your own baby died in a crib just like that one? Do you think they’d buy this furniture if they knew?”
Nick felt a wave of deep, stunning anger. “How dare you imply there’s something wrong with these cribs? This is not a sick obsession; it’s a business, and a good one.”
“Based on our daughter.” She peered down at the robin in the corner, then put a hand to her mouth. “You even use the bird!”
“The name of the business is Robin Wood Designs,” he said ruthlessly.
“It’s all about Robin, our daughter, the one whose name you can’t even say out loud.”
“I have to sit,” Lisa said, weaving slightly.
Nick pushed her down on top of a crate. She rested her head in her hands as if that would stop the dizziness, the madness. After a long moment of silence, Nick knelt in front of her. He put his arms around her and pulled her against his chest. She didn’t resist, so he just held her for long, silent minutes, his chin resting on top of her head.
Finally he spoke. “I needed to make something that would last, Lisa, something that would be here when I’m gone. For a long time, after you left, a couple of years I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t even know what time it was, what day it was. I got so wasted I lost my job. Then I met an old guy who made furniture, and for the first time in a long time, I actually thought about something besides you, besides Robin.”