Right Place, Wrong Time (16 page)

Too late. He was on his way to a coffee shop on Ninth Avenue. He’d see the real her, and maybe his curiosity would be satisfied.

The distance between the avenues was longer than he’d realized. Hiking from Park Avenue west to Ninth took him longer than walking the fifteen blocks from Forty-Second Street to Twenty-Seventh. Somewhere in the vicinity of the Port Authority Building he shed his jacket; ten blocks farther south, he rolled up the sleeves of his tailored shirt. Had he dressed too formally? He’d skipped a tie, but his khakis were pleated and his loafers buffed. What if Gina met him wearing black leather?

He’d probably be very turned on, that was what.

At last he found the coffee shop. No one would mistake it for Starbucks. The sign above the door was faded to illegibility, and the glass windows were grimy, smudged with a thin layer of soot. From the exterior, the place could pass for one of those triple-X clubs that featured lap dancing by women whose chests were pumped full of silicone.

Would Gina have sent him to a strip joint as a joke? Were strip joints even open at ten on a Saturday morning?

Inhaling for courage, he slid his jacket back on as if it were protective armor and shoved open the door.

Beyond the door was a café, not a girlie club, thank God. A handful of women were inside, but he saw only
one. She sat at a small, scuffed table against one wall, a massive ceramic mug of coffee steaming near her elbow and that day’s edition of the
New York Times
spread open in front of her. He saw her thick black hair sliding forward to obscure her left cheek, and a gold stud and a gold hoop adorning her exposed right ear, and her long legs crossed one over the other, her magnificent feet enclosed in bright-red canvas sneakers. Her faded blue jeans and snug white T-shirt were a hell of a lot more innocent looking than black leather.

It didn’t matter. Gina Morante turned him on the way no one ever had.

“C
OME HERE OFTEN
?” he said.

Gina jerked her head up. Her vision of the
New York Times
, all those columns of tiny print enumerating the world’s countless disasters and dilemmas, was replaced by the magnificent sight of Ethan.

He had on a crisp white shirt, pleated trousers, loafers and a blazer—clothes that just about screamed Connecticut. He looked like someone scheduled for tea at the Plaza, cocktails at the Carlisle, dinner at the Harvard Club—anything other than brunch at a grungy Chelsea coffee shop.

Yet his hair was the same tawny shade she’d found so attractive, and thick with waves. His green eyes were as bright with intelligence and generosity as they’d been in St. Thomas. He still had dimples. He was tall, lean, poised and exactly as attractive as she’d remembered—although her memories of him were dominated by their final night at the resort, when he’d been wearing a lot less clothing.

Heat crept up the back of her neck as she recalled that night. She realized he was waiting for her to speak. She folded her newspaper and gestured toward the empty chair across from her. “Just about every week,” she answered his question. “The omelettes are great.”

He glanced around him before lowering himself into the chair. The wall beside their table was decorated with
a poster advertising a circus performing at Madison Square Garden—four years ago. Someone had carved the words “Domino rules” into the tabletop, the letters sharply angled because curves would have been difficult to cut into the varnished wood surface. A napkin dispenser and a cylindrical jar of sugar were as close as the table came to a centerpiece. No candlelight and fresh flowers here.

A waiter Gina had gotten to know over the course of many Saturday brunches materialized at their table. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and a tiny silver hoop pierced one nostril. “You guys ready?” he asked.

“I’ll have a mushroom omelette,” Gina ordered. “And a refill on the coffee, please.”

Ethan studied the menu, which was posted on a wall above the cash register. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything healthy here,” he muttered.

“We’ve got whole-wheat toast,” the waiter said helpfully. “I can tell ’em not to smear any butter on it.”

“Live it up,” Gina urged Ethan. “Omelettes are good for you. High in calcium.”

He relented with a smile. “Okay. I’ll have a mushroom omelette, too. And a cup of coffee.”

Apparently satisfied, the waiter abandoned their table. Gina grinned at Ethan. “Six mornings a week a person can eat a healthy breakfast. You’ve got to have an omelette every now and then.”

“I’ve got to, huh?” His smile seemed to melt her organs. She felt a luscious warmth, sweet and liquid, seeping through her. This wasn’t good. She didn’t want his smile to make her so happy. “So,” he asked, “what exactly is Fashion Week?”

She told him. While the waiter delivered coffee to Ethan and topped off Gina’s mug, while the tables
around them filled and emptied and filled again, while the waiter returned once more with their omelettes, bright yellow and glistening with butter, and garnished with whole-wheat toast also drenched in butter, Gina told him about the runway shows, the parties, the frenetic planning and preparation, the competition among designers for the press’s attention, the taunting and schmoozing, deal making and scene making. She told him about the celebrities who attended the shows, and the rich old men who squired teenage supermodels around town in their limos.

She described this season’s Bruno Castiglio line, which featured brightly colored patches of leather—purple vamps with lime-green bows and bright red heels, turquoise T-straps with orange toes. “They’re wild,” she said. “Everyone on the design team loves them.”

“But you’re not wearing shoes like that,” Ethan noted, peeking under the table.

“They aren’t in stores yet,” she said. “And once they are, well, they’ll be
big
, you know? Not big in size, but big in their ability to attract attention. A woman would wear them only if she wanted the world to notice her feet.”

“If you want the world to notice your feet, you should go barefoot,” Ethan suggested.

She laughed, even as she felt more of that syrupy warmth spreading through her, caused not just by his flattery—she was used to people complimenting her feet—but by the ease she felt talking to him. Whenever she reminisced about the week she’d spent getting to know him in St. Thomas, she thought mostly about the way he’d looked that last night, or in a swimsuit with his torso wet and sleek and his hair slicked back. She hadn’t remembered how much she’d enjoyed those
nights they’d shared out on the terrace, just talking. But talking with Ethan had definitely been one of her favorite activities that week. How had she forgotten that?

“Tell me how Alicia’s doing,” he prompted her before breaking off a chunk of omelette and forking it into his mouth.

She was touched that he wanted to know. “She’s doing well. So’s Ramona—my sister.”

He nodded.

“Once Jack moved out of the house, the tension level dropped way down. It made life much more pleasant for everyone. Mo was no longer cooking and cleaning up and doing the housewife thing for a guy she was totally pissed at, and she stopped being so resentful. And Jack’s been really good about seeing Ali and sending money. Don’t get me wrong—he’s still a schmuck. But he’s turned out to be a responsible schmuck. So things are going okay. I try to get up to White Plains at least once a week for dinner with Ali and Mo—although with all the Fashion Week hysteria, that’s been impossible lately.” She sipped some coffee, then continued. “Ali wants to take scuba lessons for her birthday. I looked into it, and the scuba schools said she’s too young. But in a few years, we’ll see. And Ramona plans to go back to work, which is something she probably should have done when Ali started kindergarten, instead of sitting around the house feeling useless and maybe taking it out on Jack a little. So yeah, they’re all right.”

“I’m glad.” He nodded again. “Alicia’s a terrific kid.”

“Terrific is an understatement. She’s a goddess.” Perhaps she didn’t seem so to others, but to Gina, her spunky little niece was as close to perfect as a seven-year-old could get. “Now—” she took another sip of
coffee, hot and deliciously bitter “—it’s your turn to tell me about you, Ethan. Tell me what’s going on in your life.”

He launched into a description of his current work. The Gage Foundation would be hosting an important fund-raising dinner in November, which was a major undertaking. He was also preparing position papers on logging in old-growth forests for a couple of senators to use in hearings in Washington. Gina listened, fascinated. But his work wasn’t the part of his life she’d most wanted to hear about.

“How is Kim?” she asked.

He lowered his fork and reached for his mug. His expression implied that the question didn’t surprise him. “I haven’t seen her since this summer,” he said. “I assume she’s fine. I think I would have heard if she wasn’t.”

“She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met,” Gina blurted out. She didn’t want to talk Kim up to him—she certainly didn’t
have
to. He wasn’t blind; he knew how beautiful Kim was. But the words seemed to erupt from her without any forethought, perhaps to test him, to make sure his relationship with Kim was truly dead and buried before Gina allowed herself to give in to that deep, thick attraction she felt for him. “I know lots of models, Ethan, but they’re all so, I don’t know,
thin
. And striking. They don’t look real. Kim looked real.”

“She was real. And beautiful.” He offered a crooked smile. “Why are we talking about her as if she were dead?”

“Well…she isn’t in my life anymore,” Gina rationalized.

“Nor in mine.”

“Don’t you miss her? When I broke up with my boyfriend last year, I missed him for a long time.”

“Maybe you really loved him.”

“You didn’t really love Kim?”

He drank some more coffee, then lowered his mug and let out a long breath. “ assumed I did—but I never really thought about it the way I should have. Mostly I thought about how beautiful she was. That’s not love.”

“So you don’t miss her at all?”

He shrugged. “I wish her well.”

“Jeez, you sound so civilized.” Gina wasn’t sure she believed him. In her world, when people broke up, they most certainly didn’t wish each other well, at least not for the first twelve months after the breakup. As peaceful as life had grown at Ramona’s house, Gina was sure that before her sister crawled beneath the covers and turned off the light at the end of each day, she prayed for God to rain curses down upon her estranged husband’s head.

And if Gina were Kim, she’d probably pray for Ethan to be drowned in a cloudburst of curses, too.

Well, she wasn’t Kim. She wasn’t a fancy-schmancy debutante suburbanite. She’d never be almost-engaged to someone like Ethan. No point even contemplating such an eventuality.

The waiter returned to their table with the coffeepot, but Ethan waved him away from his mug. “Do you want any more?” he asked Gina.

She’d already had three cups. “No, thanks.”

“Just the check, please,” Ethan requested. The waiter dug it out of a pocket in his apron and handed it to Ethan, who barely glanced at it before pulling out his wallet and handing over a twenty-dollar bill. “Let’s go,” he said.

Go where? Gina wanted to ask. She hadn’t planned
any activities for the day. She hadn’t known how this brunch would go, or even if Ethan would show up.

He’d shown up, and it had gone wonderfully. He was still smiling, his eyes still radiant. Maybe he’d made plans for them. Eyeing his preppy outfit, she wondered whether those plans included spiriting her off to Connecticut.

As she wove among the tables, he placed his hand on her shoulder. His palm was warm, lightly possessive, and it reminded her of the way he’d touched her that last night in St. Thomas. And suddenly a plan took shape in her mind, a plan she didn’t want to want, a plan that was probably the worst idea she’d ever had.

A plan that was undoubtedly nothing like whatever he had in mind. He’d touched her shoulder only as a courtesy, one of those chivalrous things men like him did when they escorted women out of restaurants.

Exiting into the bright sunshine, they blinked and squinted until their eyes adjusted. He tightened his grip slightly, and turned her to face him.

“Well,” Gina said.

“Gina,” Ethan said simultaneously. His hand lingered on her shoulder, his fingers gentle but firm, and he searched her face with his gaze.

She inclined her head, inviting him to continue talking, since she couldn’t come up with any profound comments.

“Gina,” he said again, then sighed. “There’s no simple way to say this.”

Oh, great. Hadn’t Kyle uttered words like that the night he’d told her he didn’t think things were working between them? That she’d agreed with his assessment hadn’t taken the sting out of his statement. Of course, there was nothing between her and Ethan to be working
or not working, no way he could break up a relationship that didn’t exist.

Except that his eyes were telling her he thought a relationship
did
exist, and that maybe his plans bore a dangerous resemblance to what she’d been thinking as they left the restaurant. “It’s still there,” he said. “That’s why I had to see you, why I’ve been trying to track you down for the past month. It was there in St. Thomas. We both felt it. We both knew it. But you were dealing with Alicia and I was dealing with Kim, and…” He paused, as if aware he was rambling. “I had to see you again once our lives were resolved and we were back on familiar territory, just to find out if it was still there. Now I’ve seen you and found out.”

He didn’t have to spell out what “it” was. She knew. It was there, just as it had been there during their shared vacation. They were in a different place now, at a different time, and she couldn’t deny what Ethan was saying. The pull between them, the heat, the connection, the fact that he didn’t have to define “it” for her to know exactly what he meant…

It was still there.

His hand remained on her shoulder, his other hand rose to her other shoulder, and she couldn’t keep from leaning toward him. His mouth brushed hers and he made a sound halfway between a gasp and a groan. Then his mouth came down on hers hard. This kiss felt as much like a homecoming as landing in LaGuardia Airport had, and riding in a cab through the familiar streets of New York, and wiggling her key into the lock of her apartment door, and stepping inside. Kissing Ethan was like crossing a threshold.

She reached under his jacket to grip his waist and he made that sound again. She made a sound, too, half grat
itude and half begging for more. This was probably a stupid move—she and Ethan knew each other hardly any better than they had in St. Thomas—but she lacked the willpower to fight her longing for him.

She wasn’t going to fall in love with him, at least. She’d keep her heart out of it, and accept whatever Ethan had to offer the way a tourist might, visiting this exciting place, experiencing it, temporarily immersing herself in it, but never forgetting that she belonged somewhere else. For now, she would just enjoy the trip.

Two teenage boys on skateboards whizzed past them down Ninth Avenue, shouting obscenities. Ethan eased back from her, glared at the boys as they skated off the edge of the curb and away, and then turned back to Gina. His smile was hesitant.

“I live around the corner,” she said before she could stop herself.

He took her hand and let her lead the way to her apartment.

She briefly contemplated what he’d think of the building, with its drab brownstone facade and its dingy glass front door. The vestibule was cramped and stark, two rows of mailboxes and an intercom panel occupying one wall. No doorman in her building, no polished marble floor, no potted plants—not even plastic ones. She wasn’t going to apologize for her modest residence, though. Given the exorbitant rent she paid, the landlord ought to be apologizing to her.