We kindly ask that you use bath salts when the whirlpool is in operation. For long, quiet soaks without the whirlpool, we recommend liberal use of our bubble bath.
Hmm.
Okay. This wasn’t so bad. We could frolic in the whirlpool tonight and indulge ourselves in a hot bubble bath tomorrow night. Something to look forward to.
Returning my attention to the jar beside the bubble bath, I dumped a small scoop of bath salts into the tub, then looked over my handiwork. Okay, the bathroom was ready except for lighting the candles. Now I had to get
me
ready. I closed the bathroom door, muting the sound of the whirlpool to a softer
hrrrrrmmmm.
I opened my suitcase, stashing clothes into drawers and hanging them up as I considered what to wear. Since I’d packed for warmth, I was short on sexy sleepwear, so I figured I needed to improvise. I stripped down to my undies and covered up with a teal satin wrap that hung to mid-thigh and tied at the waist. Now the question was, should I unpin my hair from its bun, or should I let Etienne have the pleasure of doing it while we were in the tub?
Knock knock knock.
I peered at the door. Wow. That was quick. Lucky me to fall in love with a man who boasted the competence of a German, the grace of a Frenchman, and the testosterone of an Italian. Jittery with excitement, I crossed the room and opened the door.
“Men can be such pigs!” cried Jackie as she burst into the room. “I sneak out of the entertainment to check on Tom, and guess what I find him doing?”
My first choice would have been “boinking the maid,” but since one maid was dead and the other had probably punched out for the day, I went with choice number two. “Trying on your underwear?”
“No! He was talking on his cell phone. Long distance. To his high school girlfriend!”
“I thought he had a migraine.”
“He gave himself one of those expensive injections and it went away.”
I peeked into the hall. No Etienne. Good thing. I closed the door on the music and foot-pounding and eyed the pocketbook Jackie had tossed onto the bed. Actually, it was a little bigger than a pocketbook. It looked more like—Uh-oh. “What’s that?” I said, nodding toward the bag.
“My overnight bag. I’m spending the night.”
“WHAT?”
“I can’t stay with Tom! He’s cheating on me! Where else am I going to go?”
“Well, you can’t stay here! I’m about to have sex!”
Jackie flung herself into one of the boudoir chairs by the fireplace and made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “Have at it. It won’t be anything I haven’t seen before.”
“I am not about to have sex in front of you!”
“There was a time when all you could
think
of was having sex in front of me.” She flopped her hand back and forth at the wrist as she elucidated. “In front of me, behind me, on top of me, beneath me.” She cocked her head toward the bathroom. “What’s that noise? It sounds like an outboard motor.”
“It’s the whirlpool. I’ve planned the perfect evening, and much as I adore you, Jack, YOU’RE NOT PART OF IT!”
She regarded me despairingly. “You’re kicking me out? After all we’ve meant to each other?”
“Yes! You need to go back into that room and talk to Tom. You’ll probably discover the call was really innocuous, like the woman is his best friend or something.”
“
I’m
supposed to be his best friend!” She folded her arms across her chest and set her mouth stubbornly. “I have nothing to say to Tom. The two-timer. You should have heard the conversation he was having. It was disgusting!” She paused. “At least…I’m pretty sure it was disgusting. I couldn’t hear all the words with that music blaring in the hall.”
I scratched a sudden itch at the back of my neck. “Talking on the phone to an old girlfriend is not what I’d call cheating.”
“It is when you’re on your honeymoon.”
“Well, you’re not exactly filling up his dance card!”
She gasped. Her eyes narrowed with reproach. “Are you implying that by postponing our wedding night, I’m driving him into the arms of other women?”
“Their arms, no. Their ears? Maybe.”
“I can’t believe you said that! He’s cheating and you’re blaming
me?
You know who you sound like? You sound like a guy!”
I startled at the accusation. Oh, my God. She was right. The threat of sexual deprivation was causing a major malfunction in my hormonal levels. I did sound like a guy. Next thing out of my mouth would probably be “He started it!”
I tried to make amends. “Look, Jack, some husbands have short attention spans, so if a wife doesn’t keep them occupied, they’ll find other ways to entertain themselves. Ask Nana. They’ve probably done studies!”
She slumped lower in her chair, her expression despairing. “Did we have problems like this when we were married?”
“Nah. You were easy to entertain. If you ever got bored, I’d take you shopping.”
“Tom doesn’t like to shop. Come to think of it, he doesn’t enjoy any of the things I like. Chick flicks. Pedicures. ESPN SportsCenter.”
“Why did you marry him?”
“Because he’s gorgeous! And he drives this great little red Porsche. I mean, those are the important things, right?”
“Right. IF YOU’RE IN HIGH SCHOOL! Geez, Jack, what happens when he gets old and wrinkled?”
“He could go on that diet the Kuppelmans are on. They’re not wrinkled. But I wonder if all those fruits and vegetables would give him gas.”
“What if he loses his hair?”
“Rogaine, hair plugs, hair transplants. Scientists have made great strides with male-pattern baldness.”
“What if his Porsche rusts out?”
She grew deathly still. “That could be a problem. You wouldn’t believe how much salt they use on the roads in Binghamton during the winter. I wonder how Tom would feel about Florida?” She nibbled the nail of her pinky with worry. “Do you think I made a mistake by marrying him?”
You bet I thought she made a mistake, but I couldn’t exactly tell her that. “I think you need to give it a chance,” I counseled. “It’s only been three days. Give yourself some time to work the kinks out.”
She hung her head and sighed with resignation. “Yeah, yeah. I suppose you’re right…but I’m still not going back in there tonight!” She popped out of her chair, snatched her overnight bag off the bed, and headed toward the door. “If you won’t let me stay with you, I’ll have to find someplace else to go. Mrs. S. is a sport. I bet she’d put me up.”
“No!” I chased after her. “Five minutes with Nana and you’d blab everything; then she’d be at my door wanting to know why my former husband has breasts. There aren’t enough days on this vacation for me to explain the process to her, and I’m not going to start tonight because, as I told you…I HAVE PLANS!”
She folded her arms across her chest and gave me a dour look. “I would not blab everything.”
“You would so. You almost gave it away at dinner!”
“A slip of the tongue. I got lost in the moment. So what’s it going to be? Your room or your grandmother’s? Frankly, I think Mrs. S. and her roommate would love to have me. Tilly asked me all kinds of inquiring questions on the way to the rope bridge today. We had what you would call a wonderful bonding event. In all my years as a man, I never experienced anything like it. It’s so emotionally fulfilling.” She gave her nails a quick buff on the sleeve of her sweater, then regarded them admiringly. “I think Tilly is rather taken with me.” She looked up suddenly. “She’s not gay, is she?”
“No, she’s not gay. She’s an anthropologist.”
Jackie’s face froze. “An anthropologist? Oh, Jeez. She probably noticed how big my feet and hands are in comparison to the rest of me. And you know what that means? It means she was only being nice to me so she could study me like a bug under a microscope!” She sucked in her breath. “She wasn’t trying to bond with me at all! She was being dishonest, and…and conniving. I hate that about women! A guy would never sink that low. The only time a guy is going to bond with you is when he wants to get you into bed, and that’s not really dishonest. It’s just shallow.” She seized my arm. “Are you going to send me in there to be scrutinized by that woman? What if I can’t handle it? What if I crack under the pressure? You
have
to let me stay here, Emily. If you don’t, I refuse to be held responsible for what might happen.”
She was right, of course. Sending her off to spend the night with Nana and Tilly would be like sending her into a minefield. If I was serious about wanting to keep our former relationship under wraps, there was only one safe place for her to sleep.
Disappointment weighted my limbs. Despair flooded through me.
Nuts!
Sometimes I hated my life. “All right,” I said glumly, disbelieving that I was agreeing to this. “You can stay here. But only for one night! Tomorrow night you’re back with Tom.”
She wrapped her arms around me and lifted me off the floor, covering my face with a flurry of kisses. “Oh, thank you! We can pretend it’s a sleepover! This is going to be so much fun. I’ve never been involved in a sleepover before, except in college at the frat house, and that was more like a drunken orgy, so it probably doesn’t count.” She set me back on my feet and made a beeline for the bathroom. “I’ll just go slip into my pj’s. It’s always been a mystery to me what girls
do
at a pajama party, but I’m really excited to find out.” She paused at the bathroom door. “You won’t kick me out if I don’t have standard-issue pajamas, will you? See you in a sec.”
I stared at the door, numbed. How had this happened? My perfect evening. Gone. Kaput. I walked to the telephone in a daze, convinced that in her own inimitable way my mother had something to do with this. I punched up Etienne’s room.
“Hi,” I said when he answered. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but something’s come up.”
“Something has been up since the moment I kissed you,” he confessed in his beautiful French/German/Italian accent. “I’m anxious to ease the strain.”
Unh!
Have I mentioned before that I hate my life? “What I’m trying to say is”—I choked out the words—“we have to postpone until tomorrow night.”
Silence, punctuated by intermittent bouts of heavy breathing.
“Etienne?”
“The missile is ready to fire.”
“Can you freeze the countdown?”
“It can be severely damaging to a missile when the launch sequence is interrupted.”
Especially when the missile was the size of Rhode Island. “I’m so sorry. I can’t
tell
you how sorry. But I have to spend the night with one of the female guests who’s having a problem with her husband. I tried to get out of it, but I can’t. I’m stuck.”
A pause. “Is there physical violence involved, Emily? Do you need my assistance?”
“No, no. It’s just a misunderstanding.”
Another pause. “What about my room? Can the woman stay here tonight?”
That’s just what I needed. An opportunity for Etienne and Jackie to meet each other. “Um…that won’t work. She’s pretty distraught. I’ll probably be up half the night listening to her vent.”
More silence, followed by, “I suppose that’s part of your job. One of the many hazards of being employed. I understand it, darling, but I don’t like it. Don’t let me keep you then. Have a good evening, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” CLICK.
I held the receiver at arm’s length and studied it for a long moment before hanging up and throwing myself onto the bed to replay the conversation in my head. The polite words. The supreme understanding. The solicitous tone. Boy, was he miffed! And here I thought the Swiss were too unemotional to display fits of temper. Hah! I guess it was best to find this out before the engagement…if there was an engagement…if Jack Potter hadn’t completely ruined my chances of marital bliss for the second time in as many centuries.
I stared mindlessly at the canopy above me, unable to think, unable to move, until I heard a tentative knock at the door. I was up like a shot. Maybe it was Etienne. Maybe he was here to apologize for losing his temper. I threw open the door.
“There was a note in my mailbox sayin’ y’all had my tour bag in here.”
Ashley.
Nuts.
I eyed the crutches under her arms and the plaster cast that constricted her right leg to mid-calf. “Wow. You really did a number on yourself. I guess the cast means you broke something.”
“My, my, aren’t you the clever one. I broke my medial malleolus.” She gave me a smug look. “You probably don’t know what that is.”
“A bone.” I lowered my gaze to her cast, catching a glimpse of the bare toes that were bundled inside the thick casing of white plaster. “In your foot.”
Her face fell. “How did you know that?”
Duh? “Lucky guess.”
She shifted her weight on her crutches, looking as if she wished she hadn’t stopped by.
“You probably want to get back to your room,” I encouraged. “I’ll get your bag.”
“I suppose the whole day fell apart after my untimely departure today,” she said as I charged across the room. “That was so unkind of me to land in the hospital and dump all my responsibilities in your lap. How did y’all ever manage?”