Prelude to a Wedding (4 page)

"No way. Mama Artemis had just been widowed
and didn't have much anyway, but she left everything behind except
the clothes on her back and her two children. She came to Chicago
because she had a cousin she could live with at first, though I
guess it got pretty crowded."

Bette's lips curved. She could hear her
grandfather's rich, deep tones and exotic accent, recounting with
pride each step his family had taken toward the American Dream. As
if it were a bedtime story, he would tell her again and again, each
movement forward in education or position or savings.

"So Mama Artemis started looking around for a
job . . ." Paul went on.

Like Mama Artemis, Bette's grandparents had
lived with relatives at first. How proudly he had recounted to her
how soon they had rented a whole apartment for themselves. Then
came moves to a better neighborhood, a bigger apartment. He would
say over and over how proud he was of his daughter—Bette's
mother—who had graduated from high school and married a man who
owned his own home. She remembered how her grandfather beamed the
day she'd graduated from college, and how two years later, sick as
he was, he had made her sit on his hospital bed and tell him every
detail of the ceremony that entitled her to the initials M.B.A.

"Are you with me?"

Paul Monroe's touch on her wrist was
fleeting, but left behind a tingle of warmth.

"What? Oh. Yes, I'm with you." She wasn't
surprised to discover that one level of her mind really had
absorbed what he said. Many times in business she'd blessed her
dual-track mind. "You were saying Mama Artemis went to work as a
housekeeper for this eccentric old man."

"Yeah, and it turned out he had this terrific
collection of toys and games and dolls he'd put together bit by bit
for decades. When he died, he left it all to Mama Artemis."

"And that's where you came in? How did you
get her as a client?"

"I didn't. At least not if you mean going out
and pursuing the account. I hadn't even set up in business at that
point. I'd been working for this insurance company—a rising young
executive, they said. I hated it."

He said it so cheerfully she could almost
doubt he meant it. "Then why'd you do it? Did you plan that as a
springboard to establishing your own appraising business?"

"I used it as a springboard to paying my
rent," he said dryly. "I drifted into insurance after college."

"You majored in business?"

"No. History. Probably the only history major
who never considered going on to law school." The sharp note was so
at odds with his usual tone that she wondered if she imagined it.
Especially when he continued easily, "But that might be because I
didn't intend to be a history major. I just liked history. A
quarter before graduation, I looked at my courses and figured I
lacked one class each to major in psych and history, and I liked
the history offering better that spring, so there I was—a history
major."

Bette shook her head, thinking of her own
carefully considered selections, each a plotted step along the road
to owning her own business, each a piece in the foundation on which
to build her future.

He took her gesture another way. "Go ahead
and shake your head. You probably already know what I
discovered—there aren't any want ads in the Sunday paper for
history grads." He shrugged. "That's where insurance came in."

"And then Mama Artemis?" she prompted.

He grinned. "I lucked into that. I'd fallen
into being sort of a troubleshooter for the insurance company,
getting appraisals for unusual stuff nobody else wanted to bother
with. Not the real antiques, but nostalgia items and some really
oddball collections. It was an excuse to get out of the
nine-to-five rut at the office, so I took courses, read a lot,
asked questions. A friend of a friend told Mama Artemis about me,
and she asked me to help. I was too stupid to know what I'd gotten
myself into until I stood waist-deep in one of the finest
collections in the country. It was worth a fortune." He gestured to
the surroundings. "More than enough to set up a successful
restaurant on the Near North Side."

"So you helped Mama Artemis sell off some of
the collection to finance the restaurant?"

"You mean as a dealer? No." His hands and
face had stiffened and his words were crisp. Bette contemplated
this new aspect of Paul Monroe with something more than surprise.
But just as suddenly he was his easy, amused self once more. "You
just ran smack-dab into my hobbyhorse. I don't think appraisers
should be dealers, and vice versa. If nothing else, somebody
telling you your Great-Aunt Gertie's vase is worth $22.50 when that
same person's in the market to buy it poses one hell of a conflict
of interest. Most folks who do both are honest, but why go dangling
temptation out there like a carrot?"

"And Mama Artemis's inheritance was worth
considerably more than $22.50?"

He grinned at her dryness. "Considerably
more. Even with a string of zeros. I tell you, I spent the first
few months scrambling around trying to figure out exactly how over
my head I was. By the end of it, Mama had her restaurant, I had
enough contacts to get out of insurance, a couple dozen collectors
and several museums had acquired rare finds and the people of
Chicago had the opportunity to enjoy some great cooking."

Bette looked at Paul and considered how
different his approach to business—to life itself—was from hers. He
talked of drifting, luck, happenstance and scrambling. She lived by
planning, forethought, diligence and persevering.

What bothered her was, despite all that, she
couldn't resist smiling back at him.

Ardith's arrival made Bette jump a little at
the realization that she and Paul had been smiling foolishly at
each other. It must have been contagious, because Ardith wore the
same kind of smile as she set platters of steaming, aromatic food
on the table, fussed with their arrangement, then exhorted Paul and
Bette to enjoy their meal.

They did. Both the food and the
conversation.

Bette surprised herself. She seldom dived
into food like this—and never during a business meal. She found
herself using a business trick of drawing out her companion by
asking questions. But she knew the difference between obligatory
questions and a true desire to know. She'd never laughed as much as
she did at Paul's accounts of his hair-raising childhood exploits.
And she'd never felt so disinclined to move away from the brush of
arms and legs that occurred in the tiny booth.

Replete, and with an additional sensation of
content, she sat back. "You've lived a charmed life, Paul
Monroe."

He considered that as he examined his
half-full water glass. Maybe he had lived a charmed life. He had
good friends, a good business. He'd benefited from a good mind and
good education. And family . . . Well, he couldn't deny the strains
and differences, but the bottom line was that he loved them and
they loved him—with one exception. And he'd fought his way clear of
that one exception's influence years ago, so he had freedom, too.
What else could anybody need?

Without conscious thought, his gaze went to
Bette's face.

Her smile pleased him at a level he couldn't
explain. More than the way her lips curved—although that was nice,
too—he liked the way her cheeks and eyebrows lifted, providing a
new showcase for her deep blue eyes. Even more, he liked knowing he
had lured the smile into the light. It was a shame to keep that
spark locked up behind the dusty seriousness she seemed to think
necessary. The challenge appealed to him.

He wanted to see her laugh again. Here, in
the soft shadows of their corner.

"You sound just like Michael," he said.

"Michael? Your brother?"

"No. Friend. Michael Dickinson, Grady Roberts
and I were college roommates." He told her about finding fungus
growing in the closet at the end of sophomore year and, though she
wrinkled her nose in distaste, she laughed. Laughter looked even
better on her than a smile.

"By the time Tris came we had quite a
reputation."

"Tris? Your sister?"

"Nope. Wrong again." He recognized the flick
of annoyance. Bette didn't like being wrong, and especially not
twice.

"But you do have a sister."

"How can you be so sure—oh, of course,
Ardith. Yeah, I have a sister, but Judi's in college now. She's
eleven years younger than me. Tris Donlin's my cousin. Her freshman
year the three of us—Grady, Michael and I—were seniors, and we all
hung around together."

"It sounds as if you had a wonderful
childhood."

"Had? You look like you think I'm still going
through it." He laughed, but he noted the startled look in her
eyes, as if he'd caught her at something not totally polite.

"I'm sorry, I—"

"It's all right, I was kidding." He had to
cut her off. He didn't want a repeat of the tone she'd used to
describe his work as child's play; he didn't want a repeat of the
feeling. Better, much better, to turn the conversation.

"Of course everything wasn't roses, you know.
At one time I thought the only answer was to get away. I wanted
nothing to do with my family." He kept words and tone light,
consciously pushing aside the jumble of those old feelings
threatening to rise again. Why had he brought this up?

"About sixteen or seventeen? I think every
kid goes through that stage, don't you?"

"I must have been an early developer, then,
because I was twelve and a half."

"Twelve?" She cocked her head and her hair
swung, exposing the side of her neck in a most distracting way. She
pursed her lips—an even greater distraction—and said in ponderous
tones, "A manifestation of sibling rivalry, perhaps, since you were
displaced by your younger sister?"

He shook his head, but more at his own
thoughts than at her words. "Nah, I'd gone through that the year
before. But I guess it was about being displaced in a way."

He shifted, and felt the rub of her elbow
against his jacket, the sensation translating directly to a
prickling along his skin.

"What happened, Paul?"

Her voice, quiet and soft, lured him.

"We'd just moved. Only across town but a
world away to a kid. My grandfather had retired. Not because he
wanted to kick back and relax or anything, but because the doctors
gave an order he couldn't refuse." He tried to fight stronger
feelings with ironic humor. He wasn't sure it worked. "Given the
choice of dying or going to Palm Springs, he took Palm Springs. But
that didn't mean he gave up the reins. Not Walter Wilson
Mulholland."

Not a man who'd spent his whole life
dictating. Not a man whose only communication with his grandson had
come in the form of orders.
Sit erect. Take your elbows off the
table. Straighten your shoulders. Wear a shirt and tie for dinner
at my table.

Not the man who bad talked in front of Paul
as if he didn't exist. The boy needs a haircut. The boy needs
discipline. James, if you and Nancy won't send him away to school,
at least stop babying the boy.

Paul propped his elbows on the table and
picked up his wine glass, concentrating on the feel of its smooth,
warm surface between his palms.

"He named Dad head of the firm in his place
and ordered us to move into the big house on the lake where Mom had
been brought up. She didn't want to go, either."

He remembered sitting on the stairs of the
little suburban house he'd been born in, out of sight, listening to
his parents.

Jim, we have a home here.

We'll make a home there, honey.

I don't want to go back to that house, Jim.
Don't you see what's happening?

Shh, there's nothing to cry about, honey.
This is a great move up for us.

"But Walter Mulholland said it was more
appropriate for our new standing in the community. And nobody
disobeyed him." Certainly not James Monroe. "Big, dark furniture
and drapes that looked petrified. The only noise was the hall
clock. God, I hated it."

His own vehemence discomfited him.

Without looking at Bette, he produced a
deprecating grin. "I guess I missed our old place. The
neighborhood, my friends."

He remembered the tidy little house not far
from the railroad tracks. His mother had baked cookies and helped
him grow a tomato patch each summer. His father had taken the train
into the city every day, and home every night.

"We used to play baseball together, Dad and
I. He'd been a pro. He had a tough time growing up. His folks were
really poor, and baseball was his only real fun. He got through
college on baseball scholarships and he started law school during
off-seasons from the minors. He loves the game."

In the drawn-out twilights of summer, his
father had coached the Little League team or they'd just thrown the
ball back and forth, an endless pendulum connecting father and son.
He could still feel the lung-bursting pride at his pals' awe that
James Monroe had been a pro baseball player, a gifted fielder who'd
reached the highest level of minor leagues and come this close to
being in the majors.

Until he married Nancy Mulholland and went to
work in Walter Mulholland's law firm.

"He still has his glove," he told Bette,
turning his wine glass around and around, "but when he took over
the firm, he didn't have time for that sort of thing anymore. And
Mom was busy with Judi and the move and the new house. I was a
little at loose ends. When Walter Mulholland returned for his
version of a state visit late that summer, it all came to a
head."

Paul consciously eased the muscles in his
shoulder.

"Walter Wilson Mulholland never bought the
theory about letting people 'find themselves,' " he continued. He
listened to himself critically. light irony, that was the
appropriate tone. "He knew what everyone should do with his life
and how to achieve it—and he didn't mince words saying so."