AFTERGLOW (8 page)

Her voice was teasing, but David, so concerned that she was only eating a salad for dinner, didn't catch it. "No. Wouldn't you like a steak or something more substantial to go with the salad?"

"You, David, haven't yet seen the Alta Mira salads! It's the kind of serving you have to take home and eat for three days."

Oh, God, that was why she'd ordered the salad. He closed his eyes for a moment, aware that he had to tread very carefully.

"When will you get to see your kids?" Chelsea asked, wanting to take his hand, perhaps to comfort him. He didn't look particularly miserable, as George had said he was, but some people hid their feelings very well. Her heroes especially, at least the Mark Is.

"My kids? At Christmas. They'll be coming out from Boston for a couple of weeks. Then, with any luck at all, they'll come out here again during the spring. Would you like a slice of bread, Chelsea? With butter? Here's some delicious-looking strawberry jam."

She shook her head. "Why don't you have some? It's really wonderful. I bet you really miss them."

"Yeah, I do. Why don't I order us some soup?"

"David, I'm not all that hungry."

"All right," he said quickly, not wanting her to become suspicious. "You told me you were an only child. That must have been tough."

"Tough? Not really, I've got a couple of zany parents. Didn't I tell you about them?"

He tried to remember, but only Elliot's words were clear in his mind. "No, not much, at any rate. What makes you say they're zany?"

Chelsea laughed, a clear, sweet sound. "Actually, I think the word was invented for them." She saw that he wanted to hear more and set out to making it amusing. "My dad, if you don't recall, is a dentist. Imagine if you can a man in his early fifties, as tanned as any surfer, with a gold chain around his neck. He's a health food freak and jogs five miles a day. All this, you understand, while my mother is either packing or unpacking for or from a trip to the Lord knows where. How about your folks? Are they a bit zany
or …
ultraconservative? "

"The latter," he said. She was so brave, he thought, no bitterness at all in her voice when she spoke of her parents. He couldn't help it. He pictured a lonely little girl—who somehow managed in his mind to have a cute bottom—who escaped her miserable existence in fantasy. "Is that why you started writing?" he asked abruptly.

Chelsea blinked and took another drink of wine. "Writing? I started writing because, like many writers I know, I'm also a voracious reader, and one day I threw the novel I was reading across the room and said I could do better. That's how I started writing."

"Oh." So she'd read a lot to escape her loneliness. He pictured a lonely little girl curled up in a corner with books piled around her, thick glasses on her nose.

"Do you wear glasses for reading?"

His mental leaps were most odd, but Chelsea didn't mind. She thought again that for a very lonely, overworked man, he was extremely charming. She had a fleeting memory of him lying on top of her on the sofa and felt a bit of warmth at the thought. Oh, well, she thought, it wouldn't have continued even if he hadn't turned weird on her. She probably would have frozen up on him and kicked him out of her condo. She sighed.

"Chelsea, do you wear glasses for reading?" he repeated, wondering at the myriad expressions that had flitted across her expressive face. Oh, Lord, maybe she couldn't afford glasses. Just maybe
…

"No, I've got perfect vision, just like my dad. Old Eagle Eye, I call him."

Thank God, he thought.

"Do you wear reading glasses—or operating glasses, as the case may be?"

He shook his head. "You're very small," he said abruptly.

That brought forth a merry laugh, which was cut off with the arrival of their waiter, carrying two heaped plates.

"Do you think this will fill in all the cracks, doctor?"

"Most impressive," David said. Lots of shrimp, he thought. That was good.

He took a bite and nodded in approval. "How tall are you, Chelsea?"

"I'm afraid that, like the pink stuff on the plate, I'm also something of a shrimp. Five foot two and a half. My dad used to have me do stretching exercises, complained like mad that it was all my mother's fault, bad genes and all that."

Had Chelsea but known it, she was attaining near saintlike stature in David's eyes for her lighthearted treatment of what must have been an utterly miserable childhood. He saw that she wasn't eating and began talking, to give her time to attack her meal.

"And then there was this guy who came into the emergency room at Mass General with appendicitis. Now that's okay, but he also had a huge tattoo on his belly, in vivid color, of a lady on her back, her legs twined around his navel."

"You're putting me on!" Chelsea nearly choked on her wine. "Please tell me you took a picture?"

"Nope, but the intern who shaved him before the operation was very careful to leave lots of hair on the naked lady's feet. The surgical team nearly broke up."

Chelsea had a faraway look in her eyes, and the dimple was playing on her cheek.

"What are you thinking?"

"Oh, I was thinking about putting a scene in a book like that. The guy's name could be Jonathan, and he could be a minister, say, who'd suffered stomach pains for a long time because he was afraid that people would report his tattoo to the press and he'd be laughed at. You see, some friends talked him into the tattoo when he was very young and in the navy. Poor man. I suppose he'll survive and the surgeon, someone like you, David, would keep mum about it."

David stared at her for a long moment. "You're something else, you know that?"

"Not really," Chelsea said quickly, a bit embarrassed. "Did you like the salad? Would you like dessert? It's really quite obscene here, you know."

"Obscene? That sounds interesting. No, nothing for me. But you'd like something, wouldn't you, Chelsea?"

He'd handled it wrong, he thought when she shook her head. If he'd ordered something, maybe she would have, too. He could at least have talked her into taking bites of his. Well, next time he'd be brighter.

He had a sudden inspiration. "Let's stop and get some cookies, all right?"

"You're determined to add dignity to my derriere, aren't you?"

He gave her a beatific smile.

Chapter 5

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W
hy are you so nervous, you silly twit? Chelsea grinned at her silent castigation. She loved to talk historical to herself. But she was nervous, she supposed, perhaps because David might turn weird on her again. Well, she decided, this time I will act very serious.

To her surprise, when they reached her condo he gently touched his hands to her arms, leaned down and very lightly kissed her. He didn't even give her a chance to show him the temporary depths of her seriousness.

"I'll speak to you soon, Chelsea. Thanks for a great evening." He waved once and disappeared into his car, a black Lancia named Nancy. The car's license plate was NANCY W. When she'd kidded him about having a vanity plate on the way back to her condo, he'd said that even Easterners occasionally had bouts of whimsy.

"Most odd," Chelsea said, walking into her living room a few moments later. She really wouldn't have minded a bit more than that sterile kiss. She jumped at the sound of the doorbell.

"Yes?" she asked, opening the door without unfastening the chain.

"It's David. You forgot your doggie bag."

Chelsea blinked, utterly bewildered. Was that an odd come-on? No, it couldn't be. He was serious. It hadn't been her idea in the first place to trot the rest of her salad home. Wilted lettuce wasn't her idea of gourmet dining. Oh, well, since he had been nice enough to bring it back
…
She opened the door, and David, smiling down at her, thrust the doggie bag into her hand. "Sleep well," he said, and was gone again.

"Most extraordinarily odd," she said, and tossed the doggie bag into the trash compactor. "Well, I've never known a man from Boston before. Maybe they're all like he is. Odd and cute, and an occasional touch of whimsy."

By the time she eased into bed an hour later she'd convinced herself that he was very tired—after all those long hours at the hospital—and needed his rest.

Next time, she thought, burrowing her head into her pillow, she'd get him to kiss her a bit more. An experiment.

To her surprise, the next morning she was yanked from the 1850s by the ringing phone beside her desk. Usually her agent, editor and friends didn't call her until afternoon, the hours from eight o'clock in the morning until noon being sacred. "Yes?"

"Chelsea? David."

She immediately shifted from her standoffish voice. "Oh, hello. How are you? Just a second, let me turn off my computer."

David heard some shuffling about, then her voice again. "Okay."

"Are you busy tonight?"

"Well, I—"

"I apologize for calling you so late, but I just managed to arrange coverage."

"That's all right," she assured him. "No, I'm not busy. How about I buy you dinner this evening? I know this great place and—"

There was dead silence on the line.

"David?"

He was thinking furiously. The last thing he wanted was for her to spend her meager supply of money on his dinner! "Yes, I'm here. Actually, I wanted to invite you to my apartment—I'll cook you dinner."

"I didn't think you cooked."

"I'm a quick study, don't you remember? Don't worry, I won't poison you."

And so it was that Chelsea, dressed casually in jeans, a pullover and new dangly earrings, drove into the city that evening. He probably invited me to his apartment so he could make out, she thought, cynical and interested all at the same time. But what was wrong with my apartment? Unanswerable.

David lived on Telegraph Hill near Coit Tower, and it took Chelsea thirty minutes to find a parking place. His apartment was more or less a penthouse in a four-flat building. The view was an unbelievable panorama of the Bay and the city. He was cooking the most enormous steaks she'd ever seen out on the covered deck.

"Are you sure you don't need to borrow some money from me?" she asked in a teasing voice after a brief tour of the luxurious apartment. "This is quite a setup, doctor. I'm beginning to think that I'm in the wrong profession."

He nodded and smiled and showed her his study.

"Ah, just look at all those Westerns! And is that Proust tucked back in there? But your collection is lacking, David. Tell you what, I'll autograph some of my books for you. Add some taste and color to your shelves."

"I'd like that. But better, let me go buy some. You do get royalties, don't you?"

"About thirty-two cents a book. I foresee earning another dollar off you."

Better than nothing, he thought. He didn't notice the designer jeans she was wearing, which cost a good thirty dollars a leg.

When they sat down at David's kitchen table a little while later David had his fingers crossed. Elliot had told him how long to cook the steak, what vegetable to buy and how long to keep it in the microwave, and what dressing to use on the salad. He'd also bought a huge bottle of white wine, her favorite Chablis, despite the red meat dinner.

"This is decadent," Chelsea said, eyeing the huge piled plate in front of her.

"I hope you like everything," David said.

She looked him straight in the eye. "Yes, I do. Like everything, that is," she added, giving him an impish smile. He looked better than the dinner, she thought. His hair was tousled from his stint of cooking the steaks on the windy deck. He was wearing a white shirt, rolled up to his elbows, with jeans. A nice combination, she decided. She liked the hint of curling hair she saw on his chest.

"Chelsea, eat," David said.

She took a bite of steak and made approving noises.

"Are you dreadfully tired, David?" she asked after managing five bites of steak. She wasn't much of a red meat lover, but he looked so apprehensive she vowed to consume every bit.

"Tired?" He blinked at that. "No, why would you ask?"