Three Wishes (16 page)

Bree looked at Joey, who was all warm and cozy, with his thumb in his mouth and his eyes half closed, and felt an unexpected pang of envy. She raised her eyes to Liz. “It's innocent between Tom and me.”

“Then you haven't . . . is it . . .
can
you yet?”

“I can.” The doctor had checked her out earlier that week and had rattled off all the things she could do. Sex was on the list. “But we haven't.”

“Why not?” Jane asked quietly.

Liz's eyes went wide. “No chemistry?”

“There is. I think.” There was. She knew. She had felt it, looking at his hands, at his long, long legs, at the sprinkling of hair she saw when he rolled back the cuffs of his shirt.

Jane gave her a look.

“Okay,” Bree conceded, because Jane knew she was no nun. “That sounds odd coming from me, but what I'm trying to say is that with my being sick and all, chemistry has been low on my list.”

Liz grinned. “So now you're not sick. I repeat. If you had three wishes, would you wish for Tom?”

 

Bree didn't know. Tom was either the best thing that had ever happened to her or the worst. He was strong but sensitive, self-sufficient but attentive, everything she wanted in a man and had never had. He was also a man whose past might easily rise up to claim him again, in which case he would be gone.

Liz and Jane weren't the only ones to warn her. Most everyone she ran into had some little confidence to share about Tom. Eliot said he was slick, Emma said he was cocky, Dotty said he was rude. Flash bet he'd be going back to New York. LeeAnn bet he'd be going back to Hollywood. Martin Sprague went so far as to say that Bree's father would die a second time if he knew she was seeing a man like that.

“A man like what?” Bree had asked.

“Shrewd. He's too smart to be sitting here doing nothing. Mark my words, he's out for something. Know what I think? I think he's writing. Wouldn't surprise me at all to see Panama as his next book, and you'd be right in the center of it, Bree Miller. Could be he's using you. Could be he's using all of us.”

Bree didn't think so. She had seen Tom's house. His office had cobwebs. Okay, so there weren't any cobwebs on his computer. But he wasn't writing. At least she didn't think he was.

The thing was that the more she was warned off Tom, the more strongly she was drawn. Defending someone who had no one else was only part of it. She was good for him in other ways, ways that had nothing to do with making his bed or cooking his food, neither of which he had ever asked her to do. He was at peace when he was with her. She could see it in the comfortable slant of his shoulders, the restful ease of those wonderful hands of his, the pleasure that lit his face and made it younger and warmer—all of that a far cry from the man who used to sit with downcast eyes in his lonely diner booth.

So was it real or an act? Was he a godsend or a nightmare?

 

“What's wrong?” Tom asked from the bedroom door. His voice held the gentle huskiness of recent sleep. It was three in the morning. She had woken half an hour earlier, used the bathroom, and had been shifting in bed ever since. Her movements must have wakened him.

“Just restless,” she said.

“Nervous about waitressing tomorrow?”

“No. Just restless.”

“Want some warm milk?”

She didn't think warm milk would do it this time, and said as much with the shake of her head. Sighing, she switched on the lamp. Then she pushed herself up, piled the pillows against the wrought-iron swirls, and sat against them.

He grinned knowingly. “Want to talk?”

“Yes.”

His shirt was open, the top snap of his jeans undone, his feet bare. He looked warm from sleep, raw and appealing, as he settled cross-legged on the bed, facing her. Was she attracted to him? Was she ever!

“Why so restless?” he asked.

“Three wishes.”

“Aha. That'll do it. Are you thinking that they're real?”

“No. But they're interesting to think about. I keep asking myself what I'd wish for.”

“What would you?”

“I don't know. I always come up with dumb things, like a trip somewhere or a new watch or a big-screen TV.”

“Those aren't dumb things.”

“They're material things. I don't want to waste a wish on something material.” She had decided that much after talking with her friends. Not that she faulted them. To them, talk of three wishes was make-believe, and make-believe was just for fun. “What about you?” she asked Tom. “If you had three wishes, what would they be?”

He thought about it for a while. His frown deepened. Finally, looking resigned, he said, “I'd wish to turn back the clock and redo certain things.”

“What things?” she asked, but less surely. She sensed that if he answered, they would be treading new ground.

He studied the quilt for a minute. Then he raised his eyes to hers. “I've always been competitive. I was that way as a little kid. I was that way in college and law school. I was that way as a lawyer, right from the start, driven to do better and be better. I went for the best cases, even when that meant taking them from lawyers who may have been just as good but weren't as forceful. I strode my way to the top, and when I had to climb on other people to get there, I reasoned that my clients were the winners and that was all that mattered.

“When I wrote my first book, it was the same. I'd established my name as a lawyer, so I had access to the most powerful literary agent, no questions asked. We had a publicist working even before my manuscript was sent to editors. That book could have been a dud and it would have been published, we were so successful at creating hype. Some editors called in bids even before they finished reading the thing.”

“That book
was
good,” Bree said.

He smiled sadly. “Lots of books are good. Lots of books are
better.
So why did mine hit it big? Because I was clever. Once that book hit the top of the best-seller lists, anything I wrote that was marginally good was guaranteed to make it, too, because the hype continued to build. Success fueled success. There were reviews and interviews. There were profiles in magazines. There were publishing parties in New York and screening parties in L.A. I was,” he said with something of a sneer, “rich and arrogant and famous.”

Bree sat forward and took one of his hands. He studied the mesh of their fingers.

“I wasn't a nice man. Did you know I was married?”

“No.”

“Not many people did. Her name was Emily. We were college sweethearts. She worked to support us while I was in law school. So how did I thank her? Once I graduated, I buried myself in the law and ignored her. Two years of that, and she asked for a divorce, and would you believe I was startled? I had no idea she was unhappy, no idea at all. That's how attentive I was.”

Bree didn't know what to say.

“She remarried soon after, and no wonder. She was a great girl. She has four kids now. From what I hear, she's really happy. I'd turn back the clock with her, too.”

“You still love her?” Bree didn't see how that could be. She hadn't died, gone to heaven, and returned, only to fall in love with a man who still loved his ex-wife. Then again, what did she know?

“No. It's not about love. It's about the bastard I was even after the divorce. She came to a book signing of mine once. The line was around the block when I got to the store. I saw her standing there and should have pulled her out of line and brought her inside with me. But I was all caught up in myself. I waved and walked on, like it was my due and not hers.” He looked to the side. “I did things like that a lot—saw someone I knew and rather than acknowledging the relationship, treated the person like just another one of my fans. It happened in restaurants, in airports, at parties. I have a knack for condescension. I have a history of dropping people.”

“Had,” Bree whispered.

His eyes returned to their hands. “After Emily, I had two long-term relationships with women. The first was with a female associate who worked at my firm. We were together for three years. I dropped her when my first movie came out, because I didn't see her fitting in with a Hollywood crowd. The second was a production assistant on the second movie. She was Hollywood through and through—long legs, blond hair, blue-jeans glamour. I was with her for two years, when she started making noises about marriage.” He snapped his fingers. “That was it. I was outta there. But not before I told her that if she thought she had anything that a thousand other women didn't have, too, she was nuts.” He let out a disgusted burst of breath. “I was not nice at all. And
then
there's my family.” The eyes that met Bree's were filled with self-reproach. “I haven't talked much about them, have I? They are my one, single greatest source of shame.”

She might have denied it, might have tried to lighten his burden with empty words. But she wanted their relationship to be an honest one. This was Tom's moment of confession.

“I come from a small town in Ohio,” he said. “There were six of us kids, five boys and Alice. She was the youngest. I was right above her. My father worked for the highway department, and not in administration. He plowed snow and patched roads and pitched roadkill into the back of the truck. We were working class all the way. I was the first to make it out. I got a football scholarship. Boy, were they proud of me. They treated me like a king when I came to visit. It wasn't more than once or twice a year, and then only for a few days at the most. There was always something to keep me away—spring training, a trip with my friends, catch-up studying—and they accepted that. It didn't occur to them that I didn't want to be small-town anymore, that I was separating myself from everything they stood for. My two oldest brothers got on my case once, and I let them have it, told them how hard it was trying to make it in a cutthroat world and the fact that they didn't understand just went to show how little
they
knew.” He raked his teeth over his upper lip. “Only I didn't say it like that. The words I used were more crude.”

He stared at her, inviting her disdain.

She said nothing.

Still staring, still daring, he said, “After I hit it big, I sent money, mostly around holiday time, usually to make up for not going out there myself. At one point, I didn't see them for two years. In the middle of that time, I actually did a media thing in Cleveland. They could've driven up in two hours, or I could've driven down. But I didn't even tell them I was coming. They found out after the fact. My mother took it hard.”

Memory broke his stare, visibly taking him back. “She was a plucky lady—petite, like my sister Alice, but strong-willed. I used to think my dad wore the pants in the family. He came home from work, planted himself in that big old armchair of his, and let us wait on him. Only she was the one telling us what to bring him. She kept the house and paid the bills and made us do our homework. Long after he'd fallen asleep in that chair, she was folding laundry or mopping the floor or cutting hair.” He smiled. “It wasn't until I was eighteen that I ever went to a barber.” He grew quiet.

Still Bree said nothing. She would have given anything to have a mother who did those kinds of things. She would have given anything to have someone care that way.

Tom's quiet lingered, then yielded to sorrow. “I never could think of her as being sick. Being sick just wasn't part of who she was. Maybe that's why I didn't go back.”

“What was wrong with her?”

“Cancer. Maybe she couldn't think of herself as being sick, either, because she let it go for so long that by the time she finally went to the doctor, it had spread to her bones. I remember when they called to tell me. There were three messages on my answering machine before I finally called back, and then, even though I'd been totally independent and separate from them for nearly twenty years, it was like I'd been hit in the stomach.” He broke off. Self-loathing returned. “I recovered. She didn't. I kept myself busy. She got weaker.” He swallowed. “Oh, I said all the right things about getting a second opinion, a specialist from New York, an experimental protocol from Houston. I might have wanted those things if I'd been in her shoes. But she didn't. She wanted to stay where she was with the doctor she knew. So I went back to my own arrogant life, thinking that I'd done all I could. Only I never visited.”

“Never?” Bree asked in disbelief and, yes, disappointment. She couldn't conceive of having a mother—let alone a good one—and not treating her well.

“I did visit, just not enough. I went once in the beginning, another time about halfway through. It was painful. Easier to stay away.” He looked Bree in the eye, challenging again. “That's the kind of person I was. I did what suited me. They used to leave messages saying that she was weakening, or that the cancer had spread more, and I'd send a card or leave a phone message, because it was easier that way. I always had an excuse. Either I was working on a book or off doing publicity. The pathetic thing is that I wasn't writing. I didn't have time to write. I was too busy being a star.”

The line between his brows deepened. “I was vacationing with a group of equally famous and sybaritic friends when she died. We were on a boat on the Adriatic. My family had no idea where I was. They left message after message on my answering machine. When I didn't answer any of them, they had no choice but to go ahead with the funeral.” His voice broke. “I showed up a week later.”

“Oh, Tom.”

He held up a hand. “Don't feel sorry for
me.
I got off easy. Hell, I missed out on the pain of having to go through the whole drawn-out ordeal of a funeral.” His Adam's apple moved. “The thing is, there's a purpose to the ordeal. Funerals are outlets for grief. I was trying to deny the pain and my guilt, and I didn't have that outlet. And suddenly the pain and the guilt and the grief cleared all the other nonsense from my head, and I had a clear vision of what my life had become. That answering machine I mentioned? While I was sailing merrily through the Adriatic, while my mother was being embalmed and my family was trying to reach me, no one else was. Once I erased their messages, there was nothing. I was in pain, and no one came around. And it was my fault. Absolutely my own fault. I was a lousy friend, a lousy person.”