“I know the goat cheese is a little steep,” she said gently. “But it's excellent, and it keeps well. Shall I leave it behind for you to eat?”
“Do that. I'll have it for dinner tonight. Leave some crackers and a couple of bottles of the champagne, too.”
Desdemona frowned. “Look, I know this is none of my business, but are you going to be all right here on your own this evening?”
He glanced up swiftly, his gaze shuttered. “Don't worry, I'm not going to do something stupid like overdose on goat cheese and champagne.”
“You've been through an emotionally exhausting experience. It's not always a good idea to be alone after that kind of thing. Do you have someone who can stay with you? A family member, perhaps?”
“I don't have any family here in Seattle.”
Desdemona was startled. “None of them came out for the wedding?”
“I'm not close to my family, Miss Wainwright.”
“Oh.” She was unsure how to respond to that. The concept of being bereft of family sent a chill through her. Since she had become a member of the extended Wainwright clan at the age of five, family had been everything to Desdemona. The time before her mother had married Benedick Wainwright was a shadowed realm that Desdemona preferred not to revisit. “Well, is there a friend you could call?”
“I suppose I could send out for one of those inflatable, life-sized, anatomically correct dolls that are sold in adult entertainment stores,” Stark said. “But with my luck, she'd probably deflate before I figured out the operating instructions.”
Desdemona smiled faintly. “I'm glad your sense of humor is still intact. It's a good sign.”
“Do you think so?”
“Definitely.” Desdemona leaned forward and folded her arms on the desk. “Look, I'm serious here. I really don't think you ought to be alone tonight.”
He gazed at her with unreadable eyes. “What would you suggest I do? I'm not exactly in the mood to throw a party.”
Desdemona gave into impulse. “Tell you what. Let's finish going over this invoice. Then you can come back to the Right Touch kitchen with me and have dinner with my staff. Afterward you can go to the theater with us.”
“Theater?”
“The Limelight down in Pioneer Square. It's a little fringe playhouse located underneath the viaduct. Know it?”
“No. I rarely go to the theater.”
Desdemona had learned early in life that the world was divided into two groups, those who loved the theater and barbarians. She seldom socialized with the latter, but today for some reason she was inspired to make an exception.
“The Limelight is very small,” Desdemona said. “It does a lot of experimental contemporary stuff. My cousin Juliet has a part in the current production.”
Stark looked dubious. “Is it going to be one of those weird plays where there's no plot or scenery and the actors come on stage naked and throw things at the audience?”
Desdemona smiled blandly. “I see you're familiar with experimental theater.”
“I've heard about stuff like that. I don't think it's the kind of thing I'd enjoy.”
“Look at the positive side. To a man who is going to spend his wedding night alone, I would think that a live actress running around in the buff on stage would be a lot more interesting than an inflatable, anatomically correct doll.”
Stark gave her a thoughtful look. “Point taken.”
I
t stunk. The audience hated it.” Juliet Wainwright, clad in a skintight black leotard and a pair of jeans, collapsed into the booth next to Stark. “We're doomed.”
Stark wrapped one hand around his small espresso cup and moved it out of range of Juliet's flying hair. Warily, he surveyed the newest Wainwright arrival. She looked a lot like the other members of Desdemona's seemingly endless family whom Stark had met this evening.
There was a distinctly feline quality to most of the Wain-wrights. Tall, sleek, and graceful, they had sharp, striking faces, amber eyes, and tawny brown hair. As a group they were a handsome lot. Every move was poised, dramatic, or over-the-top.
Desdemona appeared to be the sole exception, so far as Stark could discern. Technically speaking, he had to admit that she was not as physically arresting as the rest of the family. She was a good deal shorter than the others, for starters. And she moved with energy and enthusiasm rather than languid, world-weary grace.
There was also something softer about her, he thought. Softer and infinitely more appealing. She had a full, gentle mouth, huge turquoise eyes, and a wild, frothy halo of unabashedly red curls. Surrounded by her more dramatic relatives, she stood out like a marmalade-colored tabby cat that had mistakenly been reared in a family of leopards.
It was late, and the cozy coffee house, aptly named Emote Espresso, was filled with Wainwrights and other theater people. Most of them were refugees from the shabby little Limelight, which was a block away. Members of the cast and crew mingled with the handful of stalwart theatergoers who had bravely endured the evening's performance all the way through the final act.
“They didn't hate it, Juliet,” Desdemona said soothingly. “They just didn't get it.”
“They despised it.” Juliet closed her eyes in evident anguish. “You'd have thought the audience was sitting in a morgue watching an autopsy. The reviews will be lousy, and the show is going to close in a week. I can feel it.”
Stark privately agreed with her, so he sipped his espresso and offered no comment. None was needed in any event. The Wainwrights were perfectly capable of carrying on a conversation without any help from him. In fact, it would have been hard to get a word in edgewise.
“Who cares about reviews?” Kirsten Wainwright demanded from the other side of the table. “This is fringe theater. Experimental stuff. Mainstream reviewers never get it. If they did get it, it wouldn't be fringe theater.”
At least he wasn't the only one who hadn't understood
Fly on a Wall
, Stark thought. He looked at Kirsten. She was not a Wainwright by blood, but with her striking features, golden brown hair, and brown eyes, she fit right in with the rest of the pack. She had been introduced as the wife of Desdemona's cousin, Henry, who was also at the table.
The booth was crowded, but no one seemed to mind. With the exception of Desdemona, the Wainwrights lolled about in various arty poses, vying for space and attention. Desdemona sat in the center opposite Stark, squashed between Henry and Kirsten, who towered over her.
“Bad reviews mean people don't buy tickets and the show closes,” Juliet wailed. “I'll be out of work again.” She cradled her head in her arms. Her mane of hair flowed over her shoulders and cascaded down onto the table.
“So the show had a few problems. It was opening night, what do you expect?” Desdemona reached across the table to pat her cousin's heaving shoulders. “It wasn't your fault that the audience didn't get the significance of the flyswatter in the background.”
“Hey, Juliet, cheer up.” Henry Wainwright, handsome and tawny-haired like the others, gave the despairing actress a sympathetic look. “You couldn't help it if the theater was filled with a bunch of plebeians from the Eastside tonight.”
“Henry's right,” Kirsten said. “Everyone knows those folks from the 'burbs only want dinner theater stuff. It was the wrong audience.”
Henry scowled. “It sure as hell was. What were they doing there, anyway? They should have been down at the Fifth Avenue Theater tapping their toes to the new road show production of
South Pacific
.”
“The Limelight's in trouble financially,” Juliet confided sadly.
“So what else is new?” Henry asked. “The Limelight has been in trouble since the day it opened. Most small theaters are.”
“So Ian came up with what he thought was an incredibly clever way to fill the seats tonight,” Juliet said. “He put together a package deal for Eastsiders. You know, dinner and a show in downtown Seattle. Transportation included.”
Desdemona raised her brows. “Transportation?”
Juliet made a face. “He chartered a van to bring 'em across the lake.”
Henry whistled softly. “Ian strikes again. A whole bus full of Eastsiders brought downtown to see fringe theater. It boggles the mind. He must have been desperate.”
“Who's Ian?” Stark asked, mildly curious.
“Ian Ivers owns the Limelight,” Desdemona explained. “Actually, he is the Limelight. Producer, manager, artistic director, you name it, he does it all.”
“The Limelight is his baby,” Henry said. “Ian's mission in life is to become known as the man on the cutting edge of Seattle's contemporary theater scene.”
“Why?” Stark asked.
Every Wainwright at the table looked at him as if he weren't very bright. It was a novel experience for Stark. He was not accustomed to that expression on the faces of those around him.
Desdemona took pity on him. “So that he can go to New York and become really important, of course.”
“I see,” Stark said politely.
Desdemona bestowed a benign smile on him and then promptly turned back to the task of consoling Juliet. “Forget those people from the 'burbs. Your performance was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Wasn't it brilliant, Stark?”
Stark, never at his best in social situations, realized that he was expected to say something intelligent about Juliet's role in a play that had, to him, been more indecipherable than scrambled computer code. He groped for words.
“You were the most unusual flyswatter I've ever seen,” he finally managed.
Juliet raised her head and looked at him with dawning hope in her golden eyes. “Do you really think so?”
“No question,” Stark said.
Desdemona gave him an approving glance. “Especially at the end when she finally swatted the fly on the wall. Wasn't that a terrific scene?”
Stark cautiously edged his espresso cup out of the way of Juliet's billowing hair. “I could almost feel the sense of utter flatness that the fly must have experienced at the moment of impact.”
Desdemona's look of approval changed to something resembling suspicion. Stark raised his shoulder a quarter of an inch. He was doing his best, but he could not deny that he was out of his league.
What surprised him was not that he hadn't understood a word of the crazy play, let alone the significance of the flyswatter, but that he had actually enjoyed himself, albeit in a perverse fashion.
It was because of Desdemona, and he knew it.
He was still not certain why he had allowed her to drag him back to the Right Touch Catering kitchens for dinner with her flamboyant staff, most of whom appeared to be unemployed actors. He was even more at a loss to explain why he had accompanied Desdemona and some of her relatives to the weird performance in a theater so small he could have fit the entire production, stage and audience, into his office.
On the other hand, it wasn't as though he'd had a lot of options this evening. If he were not sitting here in Emote Espresso in Pioneer Square with assorted members of the Wainwright clan, he would be sitting alone at home with a bottle of overpriced champagne, some goat cheese, and a too terse note from his bride. Which was exactly how he had spent his previous wedding night two years ago.
Stark was accustomed to being alone when things went wrong. For that matter, he was accustomed to being alone when things went right.
He had developed the habit of enduring defeat or celebrating triumph by himself long ago. It had become a way of life.
In that moment when he'd known with icy certainty that Pamela wasn't going to show, all he'd wanted was to be alone again. His immediate goal had been to get rid of the two hundred wedding guests, the catering staff, and all the trappings of the debacle as swiftly as possible.
Virtually everyone, including Dane McCallum, his friend, best man, and vice president of Stark Security Systems, had taken the hint and departed. The exception had been the caterer, one Desdemona Wainwright. Stark had been forced to pay attention to her for the first time when she had charged into the house, hard on his heels, waving her bill.
He had finally gotten a good look at her in his study. She had been dressed in a rakish little tuxedo not unlike his own, except that on her the style was a lot more interesting. Stark had been vaguely surprised to discover that even in the midst of his foul mood, he was capable of appreciating the sight.
Desdemona was not very tall, and her breasts were definitely on the discreetly pert side, but she was nicely rounded lower down. As far as Stark was concerned, that was where roundness mattered in a woman.
Her determination to get a check out of him had started him initially. He had assumed that Pamela had taken care of the caterer's bill along with all of the other wedding details. Pamela was well aware that he knew nothing about handling such matters and that he had no interest in learning. He had little patience with the social side of business or life.
Unfortunately, his rapidly growing financial success had catapulted him into a whole new realm where social demands were inextricably entangled with business demands. He had concluded that he needed a wife, and he had set out to find one.
Stark had learned the hard way that he did best with cool, unemotional, undemanding women such as Pamela Bedford. Of course, judging by the day's events, that wasn't saying much. His best had obviously been a disaster.
Tall, willowy, golden-haired, and blue-eyed, Pamela defined the phrase “cool blonde.” She had been endowed with the sort of aloof composure that was bred into the women of families whose money was old enough to have mold on it. She personified Stark's notion of a cultured, refined female.
She was just what he had been looking for in a wife, he had told himself three minutes after meeting her. With her background and family connections she was the perfect woman to deal efficiently with the increasing social obligations confronting him. She would know how to entertain his high-powered clients. She could handle the local politicos and the society ladies who were forever trying to get money out of him.
Making casual conversation at a cocktail party or a charity event was Stark's idea of a nightmare. Pamela, on the other hand, had grown up in a world where such skills were taught from birth. She knew the right thing to do and when to do it. Stark had looked forward to turning over to her all of the annoying details of his life outside of work.
Pamela had seemed so wonderfully predictable.
Abandoning her groom at the altar this afternoon was probably the first time in her life that she had ever done anything that would have offended Miss Manners or Emily Post.
Stark suspected that Desdemona Wainwright was, on the other hand, a perfect example of chaotic dynamics in action. Expressions flickered across her features with the speed and volatility of weather fronts moving across the Seattle skyline. Not a good sign. He had made it a lifelong practice to avoid volatile women. He knew that he was no good with the emotional type, and they found him equally frustrating.
The only sensible thing to do was steer clear of Desdemona, Stark told himself. He was intuitionally impaired, and he knew it. Sure, he could second-guess computer thieves with uncanny ease, but he had no talent at all for understanding the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. As far as he was concerned, human relationships, not the new frontiers of math and physics, deserved the popular label of chaos theory.
Desdemona's catering firm was housed in an old, remodeled brick warehouse in Pioneer Square. There, seated at a table with the Right Touch staff, Stark had eaten a surprising quantity of the tortellini and asparagus tarts that had cost him so dearly.
In the process he had discovered that Desdemona's entire family, for three generations, had been theater people.
He'd always thought of theater people as high-strung, financially unstable, and temperamental. Nothing he had observed thus far this evening had altered his opinion.
But for some reason that didn't seem to matter tonight. He supposed he needed something to take his mind off his problems, and Desdemona and her relations had done a fair job.
He was even willing to concede that the production of
Fly on a Wall
, an ambiguous, obscure, totally incomprehensible bit of modern theater, had had its moments.
“The utter flatness of the fly.” Henry nodded thoughtfully. “You know, that's a hell of an insight, Stark. I hadn't considered that element of Juliet's role. She really projected it, didn't she?”
Stark knew himself to be on dangerous ground. He hedged. “I was impressed by it.”
Kirsten's eyes widened. “Absolutely. The
flatness
. It was perfect, Juliet.”