Catch a Falling Star (20 page)

She pleated the blanket a little and said, “I have something to tell you. It’s a really dumb time to do it but sometimes you just … have to do things when you’re ready.”

“I agree,” he said.

She didn’t appear to hear him; she was intent on delivering the message she meant to deliver. “You’re a good friend, Matthias. And I have enjoyed this time I’ve spent with you. But I think I’ve been leading you on, and for the worst reason possible.”

He had a hard time believing Natalie would have a dishonest motive, so he said, “Like what?”

“Like I was thinking maybe I wouldn’t be such a burden on Brianna if I were a burden on you instead.”

Oh, he loved her. He really did. He loved who she was through and through. He just wasn’t in love with her.

“You were after my money?” he said and he started to laugh.

“It’s not funny,” she said crossly. “You have
no idea
how venal I can be.”

“Oh, Natalie,” he said. “If there’s anyone not a gold digger, it’s you. I don’t think there’s anyone on earth who wouldn’t understand your predicament.”

“You … don’t mind?”

“Nat, we all lie to ourselves from time to time. We tell ourselves that to get something we need all we have to do is be a little … dishonest. But you’re not really capable of sustaining that. Neither am I. So here we are.”

“You’re not mad about me breaking up with you?” Light dawned in her eyes. “You wanted to break up with
me
but you couldn’t because what kind of dick splits with leukemia girl just after she’s been diagnosed, right?”

“Pretty much.”

“Joe would never have done that. He would have been all earnest, ‘I will be your friend but I can’t lie to you about my feelings’ and he would have dumped me.”

“Are you kidding? Joe would never dump you. Joe thinks you hung the moon and put all the stars in the sky.”

And for some reason that made her start to cry.

Matthias looked around his office. He was supposed to be working, but he wasn’t. So he might as well just go with the distraction because he was never going to get any work done today. He got up and walked over to the Maltese Falcon, the one thing in this room that was truly him. Tacky and cheap. What did that say?

Okay, some of the books, too. The lower shelf of them. Those were him. And that was about it in here. Not even the patent law books were him anymore. He had achieved whatever the hell he thought he’d meant to achieve in patent law. He was tired of patent law.

He wandered out into the living room. Nothing there. The music room. He didn’t play any instruments. Couldn’t even name any instruments. The kitchen. The study, the solarium, the ballroom, the guest bedrooms.
His
bedroom. Nothing.

Burn it to the ground
, Brianna had said.

No wonder he had never been able to picture her here.
He
wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t supposed to be here at all. The thought should have shaken him but it didn’t. He started to smile.

• • •

“So,” Brianna said, brushing her crazy curls out of her face and not looking directly at him. They were in the coffee shop discussing what he had come to think of as The Event. Natalie was out of the hospital and back at home, and his party was in three days and Brianna was dunning him for payment, final number of attendees, and other sundries he pretty much didn’t care about. Because now he had a plan, and the plan exhilarated him —

“So, yes, she dumped me but only because I didn’t dare do it first,” Matthias said.

A corner of Brianna’s mouth quirked up. “So glad to see that the worst of the suffering has abated,” she said. “Still, if you need to talk, you know I’m always here for you.”

“Just wanted to get the elephant in the room out of the way,” he said.

“Which you did very ably, thank you,” she said. “So let’s just — ”

“I want you to come to the ball.”

“It’s a cocktail party,” she said. “And I sort of have to be there to make sure the bartenders show up and whatnot — ”

“I mean as my guest. Hand off the details to … Joe. He makes a great understudy.”

“Joe?” she sounded doubtful.

“Joe and Natalie then.”

“I guess. If it’s important to you.”

“It is.”

• • •

“You cannot wear that black dress again,” Natalie said. “It’s my turn to wear the black dress.”

“Uh huh.”

“Joe goes for the sexy librarian look.”

“I don’t want to know what Joe goes for, thank you.”

Natalie smiled and linked her arm with Brianna’s. “Come on. Something in green.”

“We can’t afford it,” Brianna said. She wanted a pretty dress to wear to Matthias’s party, but there was no way she could spend the money now. “See, if you had actually gone through with your gold-digging plans, it would be different. But you had to be all noble at the end — ”

Natalie gave her a cheeky grin and said, “Richard!” and Richard, who had been reading the newspaper, set it aside and looked up.

“That my cue?”

“Yep.”

Mystified, Brianna watched as Richard left the room and indeed the house, only to return a minute later with a garment bag in his arms.

“Had it in the car,” he said, handing it over.

Brianna took it, still mystified.

“It’s the dress we saw at Timeless,” Natalie said.

Brianna tightened her grip on the bag. “And you got it for me.”

“You can’t hardly go to the ball in those jeans you wear all the time,” Richard said.

She looked at him, her dad the recovering alcoholic, the unexpected fairy godfather of her life. She started to laugh and then she started to cry and Natalie rescued the dress before it hit the floor and then Brianna’s daddy was holding her tightly in his arms.

“I love you,” he said. “I never stopped loving you.”

“I know,” she said. “I kept wishing you would come back.”

“I finally did,” he said fiercely. “And I’m not going away again, Bree.”

“I don’t want you to go,” she said. “I want you to stay.”

Brianna smiled at the fairy lights strung in the trees. She was arriving as a guest, and that meant she was going to let Natalie deal with the fact that the string was about to fall out of the maple on the left. There were no valets tonight so she parked on the street and walked up to the door, where Joe was doing a nice impression of a butler, not even cracking a smile when she greeted him.

“This way, please,” he said, leading her into the living room.

Matthias was there, looking gorgeous in a dark suit, and she just stood there a moment, drinking him in. Thinking it was nice of him to have her be a guest for once.

Natalie was there, fussing over one of the buffet tables. Brianna didn’t tell her about the string of fairy lights. She wasn’t going to worry about that tonight.
Not my problem
, that was going to be her motto tonight.

She got a ginger ale from the bartender and wondered what guests at a party did now.

“Hello, there, Brianna,” Matthias said. “You look radiant tonight.”

The guilty pleasure of the sound of her name on his lips made her jump. “Hi, Mr. G.”

That made him smile. “You know, I was being sarcastic when I said you could go back to calling me Mr. G if Natalie and I broke up.”

“You’ll always be Mr. G to me,” she said, and his smile faltered a little and he said, “By all means call me ‘Mr. G’ if ‘Matthias’ is too many syllables for you.”

“You know, you’re never like this with Natalie.” She knew that was more revealing than she wanted it to be, so she took a gulp of ginger ale and tried to pretend she was making off-hand conversation.

“You bring out the sarcasm in me,” he said. Which, great. Even though he and Natalie were broken up, they still had a lot of affection for each other, and
you bring out the sarcasm in me
wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you said to someone just before you asked her to go see
Godzilla
tomorrow. Although it wasn’t
Godzilla
playing tomorrow, it was one of John Ford’s westerns.
The Quiet Man
, if she remembered correctly.

He took her hand and tucked it in his elbow, and said, “Here, I want you to meet some people. This is Donald Burke, my partner at the law firm. Donald, this is my friend Brianna Daniels.”

They had met before, but not as peers. So that was kinda cool. However, Donald did not look happy. “You really gotta stop him from doing this. He’s nuts.”

“Doing what?” Brianna asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” Matthias said. “Donald, Brianna is Natalie’s sister.”

“Don’t you work for the museum?” Donald said. “I know I’ve seen you around there.”

“Not anymore,” she said.

“You kids,” Donald said, as if he were a hundred years old and not maybe five years her senior. “Bouncing from job to job.”

“I started my own business,” Brianna said, glossing over the whole
the old dragon fired me
awkwardness
.

“That’s the way to go,” Donald said. “Sky’s the limit if you’re in charge. So what do you do?”

She spent a few minutes talking to him, and then Matthias steered her away.

“And this George Stavos, one of my former law professors. George, my friend Brianna Daniels.”

“Good to meet you,” Brianna said. Maybe she would tell Matthias he could start introducing her as
my event planner
, and then she could pass out cards and make something out of this night. Really, being a guest was not nearly as entertaining as running things. Or maybe she just needed to learn how to relax.

“Are you the one who taught Matthias all about patent law?” Brianna asked, in order to have something to say.

“Oh, no,” Mr. Stavos said. “No. I taught civil rights law.”

“He works for the Southern Poverty Law Center now,” Matthias said, which, Brianna didn’t realize Matthias knew anyone like that.

“Really?” Brianna said. “That’s good work.”

Mr. Stavos smiled and said, “Thank you. It sounds like you have an interest in the law. Are you in the field yourself?”

Brianna felt a little better that she hadn’t made a total fool of herself. “No,” she said, not doing her automatic apologetic
I barely graduated from high school
. “I own an events-planning company.”

“Ah. And is that interesting work?”

“It’s a lot of being detail-oriented,” she said. “And knowing people. And then, when you do it right, you make something magical.”

He looked intrigued. “I like that. Not enough magic in the world.”

“No, sir.”

Matthias jostled her and said, “It’s time,” and she said, “Time for what?” and he just gave a mysterious smile and signaled to Natalie, who came over promptly. She had a little bell in her hand, which she rang until she had everyone’s attention on her.

“Hello, everyone,” she said with one of her smiles that would launch a thousand ships. “My name is Natalie Johnson. I’m a friend of Matthias’s. He asked me to be here tonight to help him share some exciting news.”

Brianna didn’t understand what was going on. What news did Natalie and Matthias have to share? Had they somehow gotten back together again when she wasn’t looking? Joe, who had come in from the front door, looked a little worried. So he didn’t know what this was about either. Great. They could commiserate with each other in the aftermath.

“Thanks, Natalie,” Matthias said and turned to face the gathered attendees. “Some of you may know that Natalie has a disease called ALL, a type of leukemia that generally affects children but sometimes occurs, or recurs, in adults. Being Natalie’s friend has helped me see that we need to have a better understanding of this disease and better treatment options. So, today I finalized the papers that will create a foundation that will provide funding for research.”

He raised a hand to stop the polite smattering of applause. “Being Natalie’s friend has also helped me understand how much children with this disease need the support of their families.

“But sometimes it’s hard for their families to be with them. I’m told by a rising young architect — ” here a man with a shock of blond hair smiled and waved “ — that this house and grounds can be converted into a facility that can house as many as twenty families at a time. And that is what I intend to do with it. The foundation will endow the house — the Natalie Johnson House — so that it can be staffed and operated in perpetuity and families in need can stay here free of charge. The remainder of my estate will go to the Natalie Johnson Foundation for research into all the leukemias of childhood.”

There was a stunned moment of silence, while Natalie beamed up at Matthias, and Brianna felt like a brick had landed on her head. It was breathtaking in its generosity, and she would be glad about that sooner or later, but what she wanted to know right now was
why
.

• • •

“This is an incredible moment for me,” Natalie said. She knew she was talking fast, but she was excited. “I’m lucky to know this generous man, and luckier still that my story inspired him to do something bigger than I would ever have managed in my lifetime.”

Joe was standing there looking baffled and a little miffed, probably because she hadn’t told him. She hadn’t told Brianna, either. This was Matthias’s show. She was just here to help him put it on.

“So,” she said, “thank you all for being here to help us celebrate.”

Then the applause swelled as people realized the announcements were over. Natalie took a step away from Matthias, and held out her hand to Joe, and he came over and hugged her and said, “You had me worried for a minute.”

“You’re such a doofus,” she said.

“Takes one to know one,” he said, and kissed her thoroughly.

• • •

“Well,” Brianna said, arms crossed. She looked belligerent. Not that Matthias had expected her to swoon or anything. “Kinda
extreme
, don’t you think? I mean, would anyone have noticed if you’d kept back a couple million for yourself?”

“I would have noticed,” Matthias said. He had shaken a lot of hands, and then he’d told the musicians to start up again, and in no time, the cocktail party was back underway, with Natalie smiling at everyone and answering all the questions people had.