Lessons in Heartbreak (5 page)

‘I’d warrant a guess you never did anything like that in your life,’ he said, assessing her with his eyes. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with a huge appetite.’

A quicksilver flip in her stomach made Izzie think he wasn’t referring to appetites at mealtimes.

‘I like my food,’ she said flatly.

He’d get no games from her. She knew how they were played after years of dating in Manhattan. Games were games. This was for real, wasn’t it?

‘Favourite meal, then? Your last meal on earth?’

He was leaning back in Linda’s chair by now, totally oblivious to everyone round them. The charity auction had begun. Some hideous piece of sculpture was being sold and the other alpha males in the room were practically beating their chests like gorillas trying to buy it.

But Joe wasn’t interested. His total focus was on her. In turn, she couldn’t take her eyes off his face, off the steely grey eyes that were making her feel like the most important person in the room. That couldn’t be a trick, could it? Could a person fake absolute fascination?

Izzie sensed rather than saw the women at their table noticing the courtship going on between her and Joe, and she knew that it was time to put a stop to it all, and go back to the real world. Somebody would notice. She half-recognised his name and was sure that Mr Hansen was big fry, while she was
just a shrimp in the pond. But somehow, she couldn’t put a stop to this just yet. It had been so long since she’d flirted with a man or felt even a quarter of the attraction she felt right now. Just a few minutes more, that couldn’t hurt, right?

‘Cough medicine and painkillers, probably,’ she joked. She joked when she was nervous.

‘Not your last meal in Cedars-Sinai,’ he said, eyes glinting now and a smile turning up his mouth ever so slightly. He smiled with his eyes, Izzie realised. So few people did that.

‘Trout caught from the stream beside my home in Ireland, with salad – rocket from the garden my grandmother set. She says it’s a great cure for grumpiness, puts a bit of pep back into you, and gooseberry tart with cream.’

‘Real food,’ Joe said, and his eyes were smiling more, sending out even more warmth that hit her square in the heart. ‘I was afraid you might say something about rare Iranian caviar or champagne out of a small vineyard that they only stock in five-star hotels in Paris.’

‘Then you don’t know me very well,’ Izzie countered. There weren’t many things that surprised Mr Hansen very much, she felt sure. Shrewd wasn’t the word. Izzie had a feeling she’d managed a feat few people ever had, and all because she’d been herself. Normally, being herself got her nowhere with men. How lovely to meet one who liked the unvarnished, raw Izzie Silver. The on-the-verge-of-forty Izzie.

‘I’d like to,’ he said. ‘Know you well, I mean.’

‘Sold at seventy thousand dollars!’ yelled the auctioneer triumphantly. Izzie glanced up. The red-faced oil billionaire at the table next to theirs was now the proud owner of what looked to Izzie like a squashed car gearbox painted with acid yellow dribbles. Art, schmart.

‘I’m boring you,’ Joe said softly.

‘No.’ Izzie flushed. She
never
flushed. Flushing was man-hunting girlie behaviour, ranking alongside her pet hates like
hair-flicking and the tentative licking of lip thing that men always seemed to fall for, brain surgeons and cab drivers alike. Men could be so dumb.

‘You’re not boring me at all,’ she said quickly. He was unsettling her, though. Not that she could say that.
Hello, I haven’t been on a date in six months and have given up on men, so you’re not boring me, but you’re freaking the hell out of me because I like you
. No, definitely not something she could say.

He was talking again: he’d think she was a total nutter, the way she kept tuning in and out.

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I’d hate to be boring.’

As if, Izzie thought with a little sigh.

The voice of the MC boomed out of the sound system: ‘The next item in today’s auction is a portrait painted by art legend, Pasha Nilanhi. Who’ll start the bidding at twenty thousand dollars?’

Everyone made the correct noises of appreciation. Izzie had no idea who this Pasha person was, but everyone else must from the approving murmurs. Or else, they were pretending in case they looked like art philistines.

‘Do you collect art?’ he asked her as she craned her neck to see the picture that was now being carried round between the tables.

‘Only if it’s in the pages of magazines,’ she said with a mischievous smile. ‘To let you in on a secret, I didn’t pay for my ticket today,’ she added. ‘I’m not one of the art-collecting ladies who lunch.’

She waited for him to retreat. She was too old and not rich, either.

‘I’ve a secret too,’ he murmured, moving closer so that she instinctively bent her head to hear him. ‘I figured that out for myself. That’s why I’m talking to you.’

Izzie felt another swoop deep in her belly. ‘You’re saying I stand out like a sore thumb?’ she teased.

‘In a good way,’ he grinned. ‘The big giveaway was seeing you actually eat the entrée.’

Izzie couldn’t help herself: she let out a great roar of laughter.

‘Greed was the giveaway,’ she laughed. ‘How awful.’

‘Not greed,’ he insisted. ‘Hey, I ate mine too.’

‘You’re a guy,’ Izzie said, as if explaining experimental physics to a four-year-old. ‘Guys can eat and it looks macho. In our screwed-up universe, women can’t eat.’

‘Except for you,’ he urged.

‘Except for me,’ she agreed, feeling suddenly heifer-like.

‘Good. Because I was going to ask you out to lunch and there wouldn’t be any point if you wouldn’t eat. Or if lunch isn’t acceptable, we could have dinner?’

Izzie wanted to shriek ‘yes!’ at the top of her voice. This man, all elegance in a Brioni suit that cost more than a month’s rent on her apartment, had captured her as surely as if he’d caged her. He might dress like a civilised man, but he was a hunter all the same, a predator, the alpha male.

And playing with alpha males was madness. They knew what they wanted and went after it ruthlessly. Izzie didn’t want to be hurt.

To steady herself, she reached for the stem of her wineglass and twirled it. The table no longer looked pretty. It was sad now: the menus tossed aside, place names scrunched up, dirtied napkins left carelessly alongside coffee cups and untouched petits fours.

The whole shebang was nearly over and she had to go back to work afterwards, back to her normal life where millionaires didn’t flirt with her.

She lived in a tiny apartment with a dripping shower head, mould in the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen and still owed $1,200 on her credit card, for God’s sake, after splurging on those Louboutin platforms and the Stella
McCartney trousers. Had he mistaken her for someone else from his blue-chip world? She imagined people she knew hearing about her flirting with Joe Hansen and winced. She’d never wanted to be a rich man’s arm candy: arm candy was twenty-something and ninety pounds, most of it breast enhancement, veneers and ego.

‘Everything is possible,’ she said cheerily, the way she spoke to woebegone models on the phone when they hadn’t been booked for something they were
sure
they’d got. ‘Not probable, though.’

‘Why not?’

Izzie thought about her words. ‘Because although I don’t know you from Adam, Mr Hansen, I have a pretty good idea that you live in a different world to me and it’s not my world.’

‘What’s your world?’ he asked.

‘I’m a booker for a model agency,’ she told him and explained a little about her job.

‘Why is that different from my world?’ he asked.

Izzie threw up her hands. ‘OK, I’ve got three questions for you and if you answer yes to any of them, then we agree that you come from a different world. Deal?’

‘Deal,’ he agreed, his eyes amused.

‘Have you flown commercial in the past year?’ She smiled and so did he.

‘No,’ he admitted.

Izzie held up one finger. People needed more than the average production-line worker’s salary to fly on private aviation.

‘Were there three or more noughts on the cheque you gave for today’s charity?’

This time he laughed. ‘You’re clever.’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘That’s a yes.’

She held up two fingers. ‘Two yeses,’ she said. From the way one of the table-hopping organisers had gushed over him
earlier, Izzie had surmised that Joe had dropped a cheque for at least $100,000 on the charity.

‘Finally, do you own another home on the East Coast, say in the Hamptons or Westchester or fill-in-the-blanks Ralph-Lauren-style destination?’

He closed his eyes and ran a hand over a jaw that already had stubble shading it. Sexy, Izzie thought. Men who were smooth in every sense worried her: this guy was very real, very male. She liked that.

‘You got me,’ he said. ‘None of that explains why we can’t be friends.’

Izzie favoured him with her narrowed eyes look that said, without actual words:
And the cheque’s in the post, right?

‘I’m not very good at this,’ he added ruefully.

‘You’re probably marvellous at it,’ she said. ‘I’m the one who’s out of practice.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘Well, believe it, Mr Hansen,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had a depressing conversation about age with the woman whose seat you’re sitting in. New York older women age in proportion to dog years. Once we hit forty, we freewheel downhill to becoming senior citizens, wearing elasticated waists and going on cruises so we can put on another twelve pounds at the buffet. To sum up: I am all out of sexy chat with new men.’

She was sort of sorry by the time the words had left her mouth but still, she didn’t want to be toyed with. Joe was probably only amusing himself with her until a more likely prospect came along.

‘You don’t look forty,’ he said. ‘And, I’m really not good at this. I’m out of practice too. I was married for a long time and my wife and I have, well – separated.’ He said it all slowly, like he was just getting used to the phrase.

‘Sorry to hear that.’

‘Thanks but it’s been a long time coming.’ He shrugged. ‘We were married young. We’ve been trying to make it work for a long time but hey, it hasn’t.’

‘You’re on the lookout for a second wife, then?’ Izzie asked cheekily. ‘Because your neighbour’ – she meant the woman with the bank-vault jewellery – ‘seemed to be auditioning for the role.’

‘Muffy?’ he said. ‘She’s sweet but not really my type.’

Sweet? Muffy? She was as sweet as a rattlesnake, Izzie thought, but let it pass. She liked the fact that he wasn’t the sort of guy to make a snide remark about Muffy.

‘Listen,’ he went on, ‘I don’t do this normally. It’s been –’ he winced, ‘over twenty years since I did.’

He put one hand on her bare arm and Izzie had to hide her sharp intake of breath.

What was happening to her?

‘I take risks in business, calculated ones. I try to systematically beat the markets through math. Sometimes I bet on longshots, but not often. I’m known for being straight and saying what I think. I’ve never sat beside a strange woman at a charity luncheon and felt like this, or acted like this. For all I know, you might have a hotline number to page six of the
New York Post
to say Joe Hansen has lost it, but for once, I don’t care because I’ve got to say what I feel.’

There was silence. His fingers were still wrapped around her arm, warm skin on warm skin.

‘This is crazy,’ Izzie said, shaken.

Their eyes locked and he only looked away to curse lightly under his breath and take a tiny, vibrating cell phone from his breast pocket. He scanned it quickly, then put it back.

‘I’ve got to go,’ Joe said urgently. ‘Can I drop you someplace?’

‘I’ve got to go back to work too,’ she said. Work seemed like a million miles away. ‘But my office is off Houston, it may not be on your way…’ she added lamely.

‘I’ve got time,’ he said.

Suddenly, they were leaving, walking out without saying goodbye to anyone. The auction was still going on. Joe made a call on his cell phone and by the time they reached the street there was a discreet black car waiting for them. It was sleek and luxuriously anonymous, like something NASA might consider sending to Mars. Izzie climbed in.

‘I’ve lived in apartments smaller than the inside of this car,’ she joked, settling back into a seat of pale cream leather.

‘I know the owner. We could sort out a deal,’ he joked back.

She sat as far away from him as she could in the back seat, trying to appear as if she spent a lot of time being ferried round the city in luxury.

‘You know about me and I still don’t know anything about you, Ms Silver. What do you do?’ he asked.

Izzie gave him her spiel. Women were normally interested in the fashion world and made sympathetic noises about working with beautiful beings. Men were either bored or their faces lit up and they wanted to know – some subtly, some not so subtly – if her agency had any of the Victoria’s Secrets girls on their books.

Joe did none of these things.

He asked her about the agency and about the problems faced by a business where the main commodity was human beings. As the car cruised along, insulating Izzie and Joe from the rainy streets via darkened windows, she became passionate about the flaws in the industry.

Before she knew it, she’d forgotten everything except the need to explain to this man that she hated seeing so many girls messed up by fashion’s predilection for using the skinniest-limbed waifs they could find.

‘Officially, fashion people say it’s not our fault that the big look is “rexy” – a combination of sexy and anorexia,’ she
explained when he looked baffled, ‘but of course the whole fashion industry is a factor. C’mon, if you’re a fourteen-year-old and you see an air-brushed girl in every TV commercial or magazine spread, eventually, you’ll think that’s what you’re supposed to look like, even if it’s physically impossible for you. So hello anorexia or bulimia.’

‘I’m glad I’ve got sons,’ he remarked.

‘Sons? How old are they?’ Izzie recovered at lightning speed. Of course, he’d have children. He’d spoken about a long marriage: children would be part of that.