“Harper, this may be forward of me, but can I take you out again?” George asked. “Since our date was cut short and all? I was really enjoying your company.”
I stopped and stared at him for a moment. He wanted
another
date with me? Even though we seemingly had nothing in common? Even though he appeared to be a reasonably intelligent man who had no place dating an empty-headed bimbo?
“George, I...” My voice trailed off as I looked at him. He seemed cute and nice. It was just that he was deriving a bit too much enjoyment from being with the empty-headed version of me. “I can’t,” I concluded. “I’m sorry. I’m very busy. I can’t.”
I felt a swell of pride when I said the words. I had power in this situation, too, even if it didn’t stem from anything intelligent.
“I have to go,” I said. “But thanks again for a lovely evening.”
And as I had on my last blonde date, I walked away without looking back.
S
low down, Harper.” Meg’s voice was groggy through the phone, but I didn’t have time to wait while she slowly came to. “What’s wrong?”
I had called her the moment I walked through my door, disregarding the fact that she and Paul were usually in bed early on weeknights. This was an emergency.
“I saw Alec,” I repeated, unable to keep the urgency and rising panic out of my voice. “Jill’s Alec. At dinner with another woman.”
“Are you sure?” Meg asked, and I could tell that she had woken up instantly. “No, there must be an explanation.”
“No!” I insisted excitedly. “There’s not! I heard this woman in the bathroom talking about how she’d been sleeping with him for two weeks. And then I saw her, you know,
touching
him under the table!”
“Maybe you saw wrong,” Meg said calmly. I paused and pulled the receiver away from my face for a moment, looking at it warily as if it might be able to tell me where Meg’s common sense had disappeared to. Realizing that the phone wasn’t about to impart any such information, I held it back up to my ear.
“No, I didn’t,” I said into the mouthpiece, as firmly as I could with a voice that wouldn’t stop shaking. “I didn’t see wrong. I know what I saw and I know what I heard. Meg, Alec is cheating on Jill!”
“You’d had how many martinis?” Meg asked, apparently still stubbornly skeptical. “And I’ve been to Ralph’s. It’s dark in there. Maybe it was someone who
looked
like Alec.”
“No!” I exclaimed again, growing increasingly frustrated. “Meg, it
was
Alec! I am one hundred percent sure.” I quickly recounted everything I’d seen and heard at Ralph’s, then breathlessly waited for Meg’s agreement.
She was silent for a moment.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said finally, her voice flat. “They’ve only been married for six months. How could he be cheating on her?”
“I don’t know,” I said miserably. “But he is. I’m sure of it. What do we do?”
She sighed and was silent for another moment. I held my breath.
“Don’t say anything to her until we’re sure,” she said finally. I couldn’t believe that she still wasn’t convinced, but Meg always had been more optimistic than she should have been when it came to love. Perhaps that’s what happened when you married your high school sweetheart and lived happily ever after, I thought glumly. I tried, as always, not to resent her a tiny bit.
“But—” I started to protest.
Meg cut me off. “Look, Harper,” she said firmly. “I know it looks bad, especially if the girl was saying that stuff in the bathroom. But isn’t it possible that she was lying to her friend? And that you were mistaken about what you saw at the table? Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks. Maybe it wasn’t even Alec.”
Okay, this was downright delusional on Meg’s part. Clearly I had gone to the wrong friend about this. I needed to call Emmie instead.
“Maybe you’re right,” I mumbled, not really meaning it. I had no idea what else to say, and my frustration level was rising along with my anger at Alec. Obviously I needed proof. If I couldn’t convince Meg, how was I going to even broach the subject with Jill? I felt heartsick thinking of the conversation I’d have to have with my newlywed friend, who was so fixated on the image of perfection she thought she had created for herself.
I hung up with Meg and immediately called Emmie. I quickly recounted everything I’d seen at Ralph’s.
“I was right,” Emmie breathed softly when I had finished.
My breath caught in my throat. “What?”
“I thought I saw him,” she said slowly. “About a month before the wedding. With another woman. I wasn’t sure, so I never said anything to Jill or you guys. And I think I kind of talked myself into thinking I’d been mistaken. Who would cheat on his fiancée just a month before the wedding? But it must have really been him.”
“Oh my God,” I murmured, feeling sick to my stomach. “He’s been cheating on her all along?”
“That little bastard,” Emmie said, her voice soft and deadly. “I’ll kill him.”
From her tone of voice, I believed she might do it.
“What are we going to do?” I asked, since killing him was not actually an option, although it was certainly tempting. “Jill will never believe us if we just tell her. She wants to believe everything is perfect.”
Emmie was silent for a moment.
“Let’s follow him,” she finally suggested.
“Follow him?” I repeated dubiously.
“Yes,” Emmie said, sounding more sure of herself now. “The next time he tells Jill he’s going to a business meeting or has been called into the hospital. Let’s follow him with a camera. We’ll take pictures. Then she’ll will have to believe us. We’ll have proof.”
My stomach swam uncomfortably at the thought. “We’re not detectives, Em.”
“We can be if the situation calls for it,” she replied, sounding a bit insulted.
“But, Em, he’ll see us,” I insisted, feeling discouraged.
“Not if we use the wardrobe closet to disguise ourselves,” she said mysteriously. I felt a little glimmer of hope, even though my recent experience with the wardrobe closet had been less than ideal.
“You think?” I asked after a moment. Far-fetched as it sounded, it just might work.
“Definitely,” Emmie said firmly.
We agreed that Emmie would sit in the coffee shop across the street from Jill’s apartment the next evening and wait to see if Alec came out. I told her I would join her there after work; then I remembered I’d already made a commitment.
“Oh geez, I have a date,” I exclaimed. I was supposed to have dinner with yet another NYSoulmate.com match, a political consultant named Jack. “I’ll just call him and cancel.”
“No,” Emmie said. “We don’t even know that Alec will go out tomorrow night. And you have less than a week left on The Blonde Theory. Just keep your cell on. If I see him leave, I’ll call you and have you meet me wherever he winds up.”
I
DIDN’T SLEEP
much that night. Whether Meg believed me or not, I knew what I’d seen. Poor Jill.
She had been so sure that she had finally stumbled upon perfection when she found Alec. And she had it all planned out in her head. She was living her dream—perfect, wealthy husband; perfect, expensive home; perfect, upper-class life. But it was all a sham. And she didn’t know it yet.
It seemed her mother’s constant nuggets of wisdom about dating had backfired. Sure, Jill had gotten everything she’d always thought she wanted, everything her mother had ever told her she needed. But she had forgotten to look for one basic ingredient in her perfect man: decency. I’d always had the feeling that she looked down her nose, just a little bit, at Meg, who would probably never make more than eighty thousand dollars a year (not bad anywhere else in the country, but pocket change in Manhattan) and who was married to an electrician probably making about half that. They lived in Brooklyn; they clipped coupons; they wore clothes they’d had for years instead of buying new wardrobes every season as Jill did.
But they were
happy
. Really, truly, genuinely, lasts-forever happy. And that was one thing Jill had forgotten about in her rush to drag Alec down the aisle so that she could live out the dream her mother had always insisted upon.
I
SPENT THE
morning yawning thanks to my nearly sleepless night. Molly brought me four cups of coffee (which forced me to make six trips to the bathroom; yes, I have the world’s smallest bladder), but I still didn’t feel awake at noon, when Matt James arrived for our appointment.
The sight of him was enough to stir me into at least a semblance of alertness, though. As Molly let him into my office, I couldn’t help but notice how good he looked in a pale blue shirt, charcoal slacks, and a charcoal silk tie. He was downright gorgeous. Damn it.
“Wow, fancy,” I said, teasing him slightly.
He shrugged and grinned at me as Molly shut the door behind him. “Well, I had a big meeting with some big-shot lawyer today.”
“Anyone I know?” I asked with a smile.
“Nah, just a really gorgeous woman who was nice enough to give me a few minutes to ask her some stupid questions.”
I involuntarily flushed in response. I certainly hadn’t expected that. Then again, maybe he was sucking up because he was afraid I’d charge him for my time today.
“No need for compliments,” I said brusquely, trying to ignore the heat I felt creeping into my cheeks and the rapid acceleration of my heartbeat. “This hour is on the house.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Well thanks,” he said softly. “But I still mean what I said.”
His green eyes held mine for a moment longer than was necessary. Finally, I broke the stare and dropped my eyes to the legal pads on my desk, feeling nervous as I fumbled around for a pen.
“Uh, what I can do for you today?” I asked. I looked up at him again and noticed that he was still standing. So was I, for that matter. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head at my rudeness. “Have a seat.”
Matt sat down in one of the leather chairs facing my desk and leaned back, stretching his long legs out in front of him as he watched me for a moment. The attention was making me increasingly uncomfortable, so I sat down beside my desk and hurried to start the meeting.
“So what can I help you with, Matt?” I asked brusquely, trying to sound as professional and detached as possible. No point in letting him know that I wanted to leap into his lap and make out with him. That wasn’t very lawyerly. “I don’t know that I’ll be able to give you what you need since I don’t practice criminal law anymore,” I added tightly.
Matt grinned lazily at me. “Oh, I suspect you’ll be able to give me what I need,” he said with a wink. I struggled to ignore the potential double meaning. Clearly my mind was just in the gutter because he was so distractingly hot. And I, of course, was in the longest slump of my life. “Why don’t you start by telling me a little but about what you
do
do then,” he continued. “I mean, if you don’t mind.”
“No, that’s fine,” I said, relieved to be moving on to a topic I at least knew something about. It was better than sitting there wondering what kinds of girls Matt James liked to date, which was the thought currently tugging at the corners of my mind. Admittedly, this was a complete waste of time. I knew he was just flirting. It was probably how he talked to every member of the female gender.
“Patent law is a very specialized area of practice,” I began, trying to sound as formal and professorish as possible. I tried to recall the introduction to my first day of patent law class, but that had been an eternity ago. So I winged it. “Basically, it’s my job to protect the inventions of my clients in a legally binding manner,” I said stiffly. “I have a background in chemical engineering, so most of my clients have some sort of chemical aspect to their work, and I have to deal on a routine basis with people high up in management, marketing, and technical development in companies that my firm does business with. Booth, Fitzpatrick and McMahon is contracted to represent their legal interests in and out of the courtroom. I deal specifically with obtaining and protecting patents for new products they develop.”
I paused for a breath, and Matt nodded appreciatively at me.
“Wow,” he said. He gave a little laugh. “It sounds complicated.”
I shrugged, feeling a bit embarrassed.
“It is sometimes,” I admitted. “I have to do a lot of reading and keep up with everything from the newest developments in the industry to the emerging science behind biopharmaceuticals to the ins and outs of polymer chemistry. It’s really challenging. But that’s part of what I love about it.”
I paused again and thought about it. It had been years since anyone had asked me about what I did on a day-to-day basis. My friends had a basic grasp, and they didn’t need a reminder of my daily routine. Besides, I knew my job sounded very boring to almost everyone but other lawyers.
But hearing myself explain exactly what I did, to an incredibly handsome actor, of all people, sent an unfamiliar swell of pride shooting through me. I didn’t appreciate enough how much I loved my job, or how lucky I was to be doing it. I had been spending so much time lately focusing on the fact that the men in my life were scared of my profession that I had almost started to resent the very thing I loved so much.
I went on to explain to Matt about our in-house technical library and online search facilities, which allowed me to research the background, precedents, and other patent applications that related to the patents my clients were seeking. I told him about how I had to go to several technological and scientific conferences each quarter, just to keep up to date with progress in various fields, and how I had to spend a sizable chunk of my time outside the office skimming research journals. I told him about my occasional trips to Washington, DC, to search through the hard copies of patents at the US Patent and Trademark Office. And I told him about what I considered the most frustrating aspect of my job—the fact that I couldn’t discuss the specifics of my work with anyone, not even my partners in the firm.
Being a patent lawyer was a very isolated life, I explained, feeling a tinge of sadness. It was an area of law that called for the absolute utmost secrecy and discretion, which meant that I couldn’t talk about patent applications with anyone, not even Molly.
“Wow,” he said, shaking his head appreciatively. “Harper, I had no idea. I’m really impressed.”
“You are?” I asked dubiously.
“I came here prepared to ask you all sorts of questions,” he said, after a pause, still looking at me with an intensity that made me feel like squirming under his gaze. “But you’ve explained everything so well. Now I just have one thing I want to know.”
“Yes?” I asked warmly, relishing, for the first time, the opportunity to actually give some advice to someone who didn’t hate me or judge me because I happened to have done well in school or gotten a job I was good at.
“Why...,” he began softly, then paused, shifting his weight in the chair and looking me right in the eye. “Why are you pretending to be a ditzy bartender to get dates on NYSoulmate?”