A Fashionable Affair (6 page)

“The math problem? Yeah. At three this morn
ing.”

Patsy finished her toast and, putting her elbows
on the table, rested her chin on her hands and
regarded him gravely. Her gaze didn’t appear to
disturb him at all. He finished his coffee, wiped his mouth on a napkin, and said, “Come into my study
and we’ll take a look at those taxes.”

His study was off the kitchen in what would have
been the dining room in a more conventional household. It was furnished with a huge desk,
which was covered with a great number of tidily
arranged papers, and several walls of bookshelves.
Looking around, Michael realized there was no
chair for Patsy and went out to the kitchen to get
her one. He set it down in front of the desk and
then went around to the chair behind it. He picked
up a piece of paper and sat for a minute in silence,
frowning thoughtfully.

Patsy felt a twinge of alarm. “There isn’t anything
wrong, is there.”

He looked up. “On the face of things, no. The
cash receipts books and the bank statements seem
okay.”

“Seem? What is this ‘seem’?”

“Well, I haven’t done any checking yet.”

“What kind of checking?”

“Checking that the checks written down in the
cash books were really issued to the company indi
cated and in the amount stated, for one thing.”

Patsy frowned. “But why on earth wouldn’t they
be?”

“They wouldn’t be if Zimmerman was ripping
you off, sweetheart, and pocketing huge amounts
of the cash he said he was buying you things like
shopping-center shares with.”

“What a rotten thing to say! Poor Fred isn’t even in his grave yet.”

“I’m not saying he’s a crook, Patsy. For all I know,
the guy is pure as the driven snow. But I won’t
know for sure until I do some checking.”

Patsy glared. “You have a nasty, suspicious
mind.”

“Mmm.” He looked preoccupied. There was a faint line between his well-marked black brows.
“I’m an accountant. I’m always suspicious.”

Patsy remembered what had happened to his
father. “Well, go ahead and check,” she said in a
gentler voice. “But the IRS wants to see me next
week.”

“I talked to Maginnis Thursday afternoon. He’s
given you an extension.”

“You never told me that!”

The line between his brows smoothed out. “I just
did,” he said. “Now, you tell me this ...”

After ten minutes of relentlessly thorough ques
tioning, Patsy was feeling a bit limp.

“I hope the hell this Zimmerman is honest, sweet
heart,” Michael said grimly, “because you are a sit
ting duck.”

Patsy bit her lip. “But, Michael, I paid Fred just so that I wouldn’t have to bother about things like contracts and investments and taxes and so forth.”

“A sitting duck,” he repeated.

“You
know
how wretched I always was in math.”
She looked a little subdued and very beautiful as
she sat there in her pleated linen pants and
matching oatmeal linen jacket. Her skin was flawless in the merciless morning light.

He smiled crookedly. “I know.” He put the
papers he had been looking at back on their proper
pile. “Well, all right, I’ll do some checking and let
you know how things stand.”

Once again he was dismissing her. Patsy found that she did not want to be dismissed. She looked out the window. “The weather is beautiful,” she remarked. “You have a perfect day for whatever it
is you’re planning to do.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How do you know I’m
planning anything?”

“You were glued to the weather forecast,” she
pointed out.

“I guess I was.” He moved his shoulders a little as
if he felt a sudden cramp. “I just thought I’d go to
the beach for the afternoon if the weather was
good. Blow some of the cobwebs out of the brain.”

Patsy had a sudden vision of a stretch of empty
white sand, silent but for the sound of gulls and of
waves crashing against the jetties. “The beach,” she
repeated. “That sounds marvelous.” She looked at
him. “Do you mind if I come too?”

“In that outfit?”

She looked down at her very expensive silk
blouse and linen pants. “Why not?”

He grinned. “Why not, indeed?”

They were not quite the only ones on the beach
when they arrived nearly forty-five minutes later.
There was a group of teenagers playing Frisbee,
and a young family whose children were digging
industriously in the sand, Michael and Patsy walked
along the waterline. Michael wore sneakers and
Patsy was barefoot—she had left her fashionable
shoes in Michael’s car. She had left her jacket as
well and was wearing a sweatshirt of Michael’s over
her silk blouse. They strolled for a while in silence
and then Michael said, “How can anyone live out of
reach of the ocean?”

Patsy looked up at him in surprise. “I was just
thinking the same thing.”

He smiled a little. “Those kids back there
reminded me of us.”

“I know. We went from digging sandcastles, to playing Frisbee, to picnics after the prom. Really, when you think of it, half our childhood was spent
on the beach.”

“Mmm. One of these days I’m going to buy a
beach house. With a big porch so I can look out at
the water first thing in the morning and last thing before I go to bed at night.”

“That sounds lovely,” Patsy said dreamily. She
inhaled deeply. “The smell of the salt. There’s
nothing like it.”

“Remember the time your father took us all fish
ing out of Freeport?” he asked.

Patsy started to laugh. “Do I ever! Sally was the
only one who wasn’t sick.”

He chuckled. “First you’d heave over the side,
then me, then you ...”

“Poor Daddy.”

“And Sally, the stinker, kept on catching fish
after fish.”

They had come to one of the jetties, and Patsy
rested on a flat rock. It was warm from the sun. She
looked up at him as he stood over her. “I guess
we’re creatures of the land.”

“I guess so.” He sat down next to her, his shoul
der almost touching hers.

“It doesn’t seem so long ago, does it?” she asked softly. “And yet it’s vanished—that world of our childhood. Mother and Daddy are in Arizona, your
folks are dead, the houses are sold.” She looked up. He was very close to her.

“You sound awfully melancholy.” His eyes were
on the ocean; his profile looked set and stern.

On impulse she rested her face against his shoul
der. She could feel the hardness of muscle under
her cheek. She closed her eyes. “I feel melancholy,”
she murmured.

There was silence and after a minute she opened
her eyes. He was looking down at her, an inscruta
ble expression in his eyes. “You are a menace, do
you know that?” he said.

Patsy sat up. “A menace?”

“Unquestionably.”

She stared. “What do you mean?” She recognized
the expression in his eyes now—it was amusement.
“Stop looking so smug,” she said tartly. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about.”

“I know you don’t. You’ve always gotten off per
fectly unscathed, with no idea of the wreckage
you’ve left behind.”

“You sound like the Delphic Oracle. Are you naturally like this or do you like being enigmatic?” Her
voice was too obviously calm.

He grinned and stood up. “Come on. I came here
for a walk, not to sit around on rocks being
lazy.”
He started down the beach and Patsy had to break
into a jog to catch up with him. It didn’t occur to
her that this was probably the first time in her life
that she had ever chased after a man.

“What do you mean, ‘wreckage’?” she asked after
they had walked in silence for a while. She glanced
at him swiftly and saw the corners of his smile. “I don’t go for married men, I’ll have you know,” she added self-righteously.

“I never thought you did. It’s not something you can help, Red. It’s just the way you are. Wherever
you go and whatever you do, there’ll always be
some poor bastard breaking his heart over you.”

Patsy stared straight ahead. “I can’t help the way
I look.”

He chuckled. “No, I suppose you can’t.”

She put her hands into her pockets and scuffled
sand with her feet as she walked. “Well, at any rate I
never broke
your
heart,” she said a little defiantly.

“Of course you did.” Her head snapped up in surprise and she turned to stare at him. “Me and
every other boy at Central High,” he went on
imperturbably. “How we dreamed about you. How
bleak you made our futures seem. No other girl
seemed worth our attention when there was Patsy Clark, shimmering before us like a heavenly gar
den of forbidden fruit.” He shook his head in mock
sorrow. “We learned early what it was to know the
heartache of lost dreams. You made the rest of our
lives seem like second best.”

There was a long pause. “Are you
serious?”
Patsy
asked in astonishment.

“Perfectly serious.” He smiled reminiscently.
“God, how I lusted after you when I was fifteen.” His mouth wore a faint, nostalgic smile and there
was amusement in his eyes. It was as if an older and
wiser man were looking back on the follies of his
misguided youth.

Patsy was suddenly extremely annoyed. “You’re
being ridiculous,” she said crossly.

“Not ridiculous,” he corrected her. “I was being fifteen.”

“And now you’ve grown up and know better.”

“I do,” he said peacefully. “But what about poor
Don?”

“The hell with Don,” Patsy snapped, and length
ened her stride, moving ahead of him. Behind her,
she heard a distinct chuckle. It was not a sound that
improved her temper.

When he bestirred himself to catch up with her,
however, he didn’t pursue the subject that had
angered her so, but began to talk about something
quite different. By the time they returned to his
car, Patsy’s naturally sunny disposition had resur
faced. They sang with the radio all the way back to
Michael’s house.

Monday Patsy went to her first filming of a TV commercial for a camera company that had signed
her to endorse its products. Contracts with big
companies to represent them in advertising cam
paigns was the surest sign of success in modeling.
They did not come along too often, and this was
Patsy’s biggest contract since her sports-clothes endorsement.

She knew the makeup artist, the director, and the
cameraman from other sessions. They all got along
well and the filming went smoothly.

“It’s a pleasure to work with you, darling,” the
director told her as the session broke up at about
six. “You’re a professional.”

Patsy laughed. “I’ve been doing this long
enough, Doug. I feel like an old lady these days.
The last magazine I looked through was filled with
pictures of fifteen-year-olds.”

“I know. They burn out, though, darling. Five,
six months and they’re finished.”

She frowned slightly. “I know. Why is that?”

“They get spoiled, get that tough, bitchy look,” Mark the makeup man, answered. “The companies hire the kids because they want a fresh, dewy look
for their products, and once a girl loses that look
she’s finished. You can’t fix that hardness with
makeup.” He looked at Patsy.
“You’ve
still got the
freshness,” he said. “You can still look better than
kids twelve years younger than you.”

“Thanks,” Patsy said. “I think.”

Mark, who knew her well, smiled. “The biggest
difference between you and the kids is very simple,
darling. You’re
nice.”

Patsy wrinkled her nose. “I was older when I came into the job,” she said. “And I had parents
who kept my feet very firmly grounded. The rags-
to-riches bit is just too much for most of these kids.
They can’t handle it. You ought to have more
patience, Mark. They’re really rather pathetic.”