Spring Collection (42 page)

Where was the option that was going to present itself, clear, shining, obvious? She ripped the sheet of yellow paper in four pieces and threw them in her wastepaper basket. On the next sheet she wrote two words.

CALL AIDEN.

Well, Justine said to herself, mentally flinging her hands in the air, what else was there left to do? If she couldn’t run her agency, at least she could make a stab at running her life, particularly when she knew she couldn’t endure one more day without speaking to him. No reason, as the world fell apart around her, to deny herself the sound of his voice.

She dialed his beeper number and told Phyllis to
send in the waiting girls, one by one. She was in the middle of working out a booking conflict with the second girl when Phyllis announced Aiden Henderson returning her call.

“Oh, Josie, would you please excuse me for a minute, it’s my impossible contractor,” Justine said. “I’m going to have to be rather unpleasant to him.”

When Josie had taken herself out of the office, Justine picked up the phone.

“Hi, there,” she said, in a breezy voice.

“If you hadn’t called me today,” Aiden said, not bothering to hide his happy relief, “I was coming over there to get you and drag you out by the hair and how would that have looked?”

“I was worried about something like that happening, and I have a reputation to protect,” Justine replied casually as her tense shoulders relaxed.

“I’m still planning on doing it, unless you meet me after work.”

“Are you trying to intimidate me?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then I give up. In Zen that means that I win. That’s why I called you first, it’s part of telephone Zen.”

“I’m a good loser. Where would you like to eat?”

“Well … now that the furnace is working, we could eat at my place, in the kitchen.”

“It’s more convenient,” he agreed. “What should I bring?”

“I don’t have any food in the fridge. That’s the first rule of eating Zen. Bring whatever you’re in the mood for … there’s a saying, ‘When the student is hungry the food will arrive.’ Why don’t you pick up some lobster Cantonese and sweet-and-sour pork and vegetable fried rice, and maybe some egg rolls and those little spare ribs, hot mustard and tons of duck sauce, of course.”

“How did you know that authentic Americanized Chinese food is the latest foodie thing? You’re on. How about seven?”

“How about six-thirty?”

“I could make it at six.”

“Swell. See ya.”

“Bye.”

Justine sat at her desk, joyful tears, unnoticed, running down her cheek. She buzzed for Josie to come back in.

“Justine!” the girl said, astonished. “Did he give you that bad of a time?”

“No, I straightened him out,” she sniffed. “But you know contractors, living hell, every last one of them.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s what my mom says. You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.”

“Exactly.”

“You even remembered fortune cookies! It was when Chinese restaurants stopped serving fortune cookies that things went off the track. Aiden, you’re seriously gifted at take-out.”

“Hey, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.”

“So what do you
think
—I’ve been talking all through dinner and all you’ve done is nod from time to time. You’re worse than a shrink, at least they don’t chew.”

“Are you asking my opinion about the situation you’re in, or my advice, or what?”

“Naturally I expect some sort of minimal comment,” Justine said in an aggravated tone. She’d told him everything, every last one of her secrets, and except for a raised eyebrow and a noncommittal motion of his head she hadn’t received any feedback at all. “I mean obviously I have to go to Paris, but what happens with Necker when I’m there? What would you do?”

“You really want to know what I’d do, the unvarnished, you-won’t-like-this version? Remembering that I haven’t lived your life and I didn’t know your mother?”

“Absolutely.”

“I wouldn’t have gotten into this mess in the first place. I would have put my mother’s and father’s mistakes where they deserve to be,
in the past
, and I would
have responded to my father’s letters, met him and made up my mind about him without fighting my dead mother’s battles for her.”

“Twenty-twenty hindsight! Typical of a man!” Justine burst out with indignation.

“You asked,” he said mildly.

“What do you mean, ‘my mother’s mistakes’—are you blaming her for getting pregnant?”

“Don’t be dumb. And I don’t blame her for not letting him know about you at first. He’d abandoned her, what else could she do? But later on, when she knew his whereabouts, I think she should have tried to bring the two of you together.”

“For the
money?”
Justine asked incredulously.

“For the
relationship
, sweetheart. You would have had a father in your life while you were growing up. She should have swallowed her pride as soon as she could, and not hugged you all to herself, her own private treasure, keeping you out of Necker’s life as her revenge.”

“But my mother
needed
to have some kind of revenge, Aiden. You’re not making any allowance for human nature. She’d given up so much, she did a brave and difficult thing, bringing me up on her own.”

“Her revenge wasn’t fair to you, not to my way of thinking. If your mother hadn’t died, you
still
wouldn’t know you have a father.”

“Unfair! Oh, that’s such a perversion of the way she was! You never knew her, she
devoted
herself to me, don’t you see?” Justine cried, growing more and more irritated at the way he didn’t give her mother credit for anything.

“Who says a mother should devote her life to her kids? A lot of it, sure, but never all of it. Justine, look, I have a feeling that your mother did too well at her job not to have enjoyed it. I know how much you love your work. I bet she was a lot like you that way. She had an entire working life that didn’t revolve around you. I think your mother was stubborn, too stubborn for your own good.”

“But look how she sacrificed herself to give me everything!”

“Justine, I understand why she acted the way she did,” Aiden responded, clinging to his point. “But just think, if she’d been able to bring herself to try to share you with your father, she’d have freed herself too. Who knows, maybe she’d have married again, even had more kids? But she made a decision to avoid any chance for a normal, healthy situation. One thing I know for sure, it would have been better for you to have had a father, and in this series of unhappy events the only person whose happiness I care about is you.”

“You’re making a big assumption here—that Necker would have wanted me all those years ago, while his wife was alive. I could have been a real embarrassment to him.”

“And you’re assuming that he wouldn’t have wanted you, this man who doesn’t have a single child? But one way or the other, your mother should have given him the chance to know you were alive. Then, if he hadn’t responded, she would never had had to tell you about him.”

“Oh, you make me so mad!” Justine shouted.

“I’m just telling you what I think, the way you asked me to.”

“I hate the way you’re so logical and sensible and plod along putting things together, looking at both sides as if they’re
even
. That’s such a typically male reaction. You don’t have a touch for the human factor, you don’t have any imagination, any passion!” Justine raged at him. “If the world were left to people like you there wouldn’t be any drama, any tragedy, any conflict, you’d solve everything so sensibly, with one and one always making two.”

“But they do. Always. It’s just one of those crazy things.”

“Oh, I give up talking to you about this. You never knew my mother and there’s no way you can realize what a wonderful woman she was. You only see the downside. And not only that, you still haven’t given me
any advice about what to do in Paris, and I specifically asked for advice.”

“But you’re not getting it. You’re on your own there. Anybody who can return Madame de Pompadour’s writing desk can make up her own mind about a little thing like a long-lost father.”

“How do you know who it belonged to?” Justine’s startled eyes flew open.

“I researched the coat of arms. Couldn’t resist. The woman with the greatest taste in the history of France commissioned that particular piece of furniture.”

“I wonder … do you suppose she used it?”

“She possessed a number of châteaux, the Marquise de Pompadour had a passion for acquisition, she owned as many objects as three queens put together, but I have a strong feeling that she kept that particular desk in her bedroom.”

“Do you?”

“It gave off a definite bedroom vibration when I touched it. Uncanny.”

“Did it?”

“Yeah. And something even more weird. While I was working on the pipes in your bathroom, I walked through your bedroom and there was a space exactly the right size for that particular desk, a space that cried out for a little place where you could sit and write me love letters in the middle of the night.”

“And why on earth would I want to do that?” Justine demanded.

“Because you’re so considerate. See, this is the thing, you’d wake up in the middle of the night and see me lying there sleeping happily beside you and you’d get this terrible urge to tell me how much you love me, but you’d realize that I needed my sleep because I have to get up so early in the morning. So the only way you could do it would be to write it down and leave it for me next to my shaving stuff.”

“What a touching fantasy.”

“It’s not a fantasy, Justine,” Aiden said, shaking his head solemnly. “I can show you the exact place in your
bedroom and if you can swear to me that it isn’t crying out for a little desk, I’ll … I’ll …”

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll make you another Tequila Sunrise. Right now.”

“That’s pretty tempting,” Justine said, relenting as she looked at him sitting there so earnest and hopeful. So, for some reason … absolutely swell. Yes, swell, that was the exact word. And beautiful. Heart-meltingly beautiful, it was the broken nose that did it. And his eyes, how could they be bluer than her own? And masculine, flesh and bone-meltingly masculine, and edible … no! She wasn’t going to go that route again, not tonight. She’d picked up the phone first, she reminded herself, sternly. A woman has to have pride. Pride was important, essential, men respected a woman with pride.

“I’m not packed,” Justine said firmly, “and I leave for Paris tomorrow. I can’t drink and pack at the same time.”

“How long does it take you to pack?”

“Golly, who knows? Paris, with all the fashion people there—I can’t just throw things in a suitcase the way they do in movies. I have to be coordinated, organized, mostly black naturally,” Justine babbled, “and then I have to pack my shoes, my cosmetics … hair-spray … vitamins … antihistamines.…”

“Tell you what I’ll do, I’ll come up and help you. I’ll focus your mind. I’ll make a list while you decide what to take. I’ll quiz you on coordination. I’ll fold things so they don’t wrinkle. As you put each item in your suitcase, I’ll check it off the list. You’ll be done in half an hour.”

“Never, ever in my whole life have I packed in half an hour, even for a weekend.”

“Never, ever, have you had such a good reason to get it over with. Because as soon as that suitcase is closed, I’m going to make love to you.”

“Oh.” Justine’s whirling mind came to full stop. Pride, she thought, pride was some sort of a
sin
, wasn’t it?

“Don’t you want to?”

“Could we do that
first
?” she asked, giving him a laughing, unpremeditated kiss. Pride wasn’t what it used to be, whatever it had been. “And pack later?” Justine got up quickly from the kitchen table and started in the direction of the staircase, reaching out for Aiden’s hand.

“That makes sense,” he said as they took the stairs two at a time. “You’re right about me, I do tend to plod along. Maybe one and one doesn’t necessarily make two. Hey, it’s nice and warm in your bedroom. I think I’ll get undressed.”

“I really feel much better about everything now that we’ve talked, even if you won’t tell me what to do,” Justine told him from the bathroom where she was taking off all her clothes with hands that shook with eagerness. As gracefully as a mermaid she slipped into her bed and beckoned to him.

“Nope, I won’t give you advice,” Aiden agreed, joining her without ceremony, and looking into her eyes with such flaming, uncomplex, uncompromising tenderness that she shivered, and lowered her lids. “But, on another subject, do you think you might possibly consider marrying me?”

“I think … perhaps … maybe … I could,” Justine allowed, burying her nose in his neck so that he couldn’t read her astonished face. “Consider it, that is.”

“How long will it take to decide?”

“Oh, I’ve decided already.” She managed to keep her voice light and wonderfully careless, as decades of fearing to trust any man crumbled in seconds, and a conviction of absolute rightness took the place of all her well-cultivated defenses.

“Justine!”

“I’ll tell you later.” She smiled infuriatingly, savoring a last moment of maidenly hesitation. Aiden had built his fortress right in the middle of her unwilling heart.

“When?”

“There’s sure to be a right time eventually … 
maybe when we’ve gotten to know each other better, maybe when Rufus is ready to share you.”

“Justine!” He grabbed her threateningly. “Yes or no?”

“Okay, okay!
Yes
. Satisfied now?”

“ ‘Satisfied’?” he cried, incredulously. “Would it be too banal to say I’m the happiest man in the world? Would that begin to explain how I feel? Do you want me to try and find new words, because if you do, I’ll start thinking and—”

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind if you said it again. That first thing, about being happy, it sounded just right, just enough … would it be too banal to say ‘same here’? Or how about this—I love you as much as life itself?” Justine asked, suddenly intensely serious. “That’s pretty banal too.”

“I don’t need fancy,” Aiden told her, with sudden tears in his eyes, taken off guard by perfect joy.