Blessing in Disguise (19 page)

Grace stared at Lila, then started to laugh. Soon she was laughing so hard she was crying. She felt like that kid throwing the tantrum—she couldn’t seem to help herself, even while she could see shoppers casting curious glances at her as they wandered past.

In the next moment, she found herself in Lila’s arms. Lila smelled a bit doggy, but it was a nice, comforting smell. Her friend gave her a quick, hard squeeze, and pushed her away.

“It’s no big deal, okay?” Lila’s voice was huskier than usual. “So I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

“Lila ...”

“Shut up, and get moving. I didn’t fuck Bruce, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I never ...” When she turned, she saw that Lila was grinning. Clearly, the subject was closed.

Grace carried the shopping bag as if it contained the Holy Grail. Hannah would flip when she saw the jacket. But it couldn’t fix everything, could it?

Because, even if she could somehow win over Hannah, what if Jack stayed on the fence forever? She’d heard all the horror stories from her unmarried girlfriends—guys who were quite content to date them for years on end, until the woman finally threw in the towel.

But Jack wasn’t like that, she told herself firmly. He loved her.

Oh, yeah?
a voice inside her scoffed.
That’s what you thought about Win.

Balducci’s, at ten past six, was a madhouse.

As Grace and Jack squeezed their way past rush-hour shoppers lined up at the deli counters, clutching their waiting-list numbers as if they were winning lottery tickets, Grace almost wished they’d opted for Campbell’s soup and saltines. But, at the same time, the aromas were intoxicating—imported cheeses, huge coils of sausage, crocks of glistening olives, exotic coffees being ground. There were platters heaped with pasta salads, grilled vegetables, risotto, veal scallopini. And at the front of the store, bins of such out-of-season delicacies as fresh figs from Turkey, bright-red Israeli tomatoes, peaches that looked as if they’d been plucked off a tree minutes before.

“Do you want to stand in line for cheese while I do the bread counter?” she asked Jack, who carried a shopping basket piled with produce and takeout containers as if it were a child’s lunchbox.

Jack didn’t look the least bit impatient or frazzled. He smiled at her, taking the package of fresh pasta she was holding and dropping it in the basket.

“At your service, madam,” he teased. “Though, if it gets any more crowded, I think they’re officially going to have to declare it a war zone.”

She stood up on tiptoes to kiss him lightly on the lips. “Just in case you get captured behind enemy lines and I never see you again.” Then she was off, sidling past a fat woman in a fur coat pushing a cart loaded to the brim.

Minutes later, carrying several loaves of bread and a bag of
pain au chocolat
for tomorrow morning, she caught up with Jack at the checkout counter, where she found him chatting animatedly with a white-haired man wearing a yarmulke.

Seeing Grace, Jack slipped an arm about her shoulders. “Grace, this is Lenny. Remember I told you about my cousin, Leonard? From Borough Park?”

“His
kosher
cousin.” Lenny laughed, showing a mouthful of teeth too even and white to be anything but dentures. “I only come here for the fish, but don’t tell my wife’s family. To them, it’s
trayf
just setting foot in a place that sells sausages.” He rabbit-punched Jack’s arm. “What about you—where you been keeping yourself? We didn’t see you around the holidays like we used to. ...”

“I’ve been kind of busy,” Jack put in, his warm tone not quite enough to cover for the quick, assessing glance Lenny darted in Grace’s direction.

“Yes, I can see.” And that’s not all Cousin Lenny was seeing, Grace thought.

From the look on his face, it was obvious he knew the whole story, chapter and verse. Older Jewish man becomes captivated by shiksa goddess. Jack wasn’t so old, and she was no goddess, but nevertheless Grace felt herself flush in the too-warm press of shoppers pushing past them.

“Purim,” Jack told him. “You get Devora to make some of that heavenly
hamantaschen
of hers and I’ll be over. You won’t even have to twist my arm.”

“Hey, bring Grace here.” Lenny cast her an indulgent smile. “You ever hear that expression ‘the whole megillah’? In Borough Park is where you really get it.”

Grace smiled, but she felt as if she were being subtly reminded of who she was—more to the point, who she was
not.
Jack, though, didn’t seem to be getting it.

“You’re on,” he told Lenny, clasping his cousin’s arm.

Then Lenny was saying, “But, hey, why wait till then? What are you two doing tomorrow night? We’re having a few people over for dinner, and you’d be more than welcome.”

Feeling all at once contrary, wanting to jolt this man out of his complacent view of her, Grace spoke up before Jack could say anything. “We’d love to, Lenny ... but I’ll be performing in the circus. A trapeze act,” she added impishly.

Lenny, to his credit, managed to contain the shock he had to be feeling.
Not only a shiksa
—
one on a trapeze.
But, as soon as he’d had a chance to take it in, he let loose a hearty laugh. “Now,
that
would be something to see.”

Lenny moved up in line to pay for his fish, and then he was waving to them as he shouldered his way outside. Watching him go, Grace felt strangely deflated. He’d made an effort to be nice, but she’d sensed this before, with Jack’s brothers. To them, she would always be an outsider—someone who never quite fit in.

Did Jack see her that way?

“You don’t have to say it,” Jack said to her when they were in a cab on their way to her place. “I know what you’re thinking.”

Even though his tone was light, Grace could feel herself tensing. “Oh?”

“You’re wondering how a guy as young as me could have a cousin as old as Lenny, right?”

She felt herself relax a bit even as the cab rattled its way up Sixth Avenue. “Oh, Jack.”

“Actually, he’s only six years older than I am.” His expression grew serious. “And half deaf. He wears a hearing aid; did you notice? That could be me in a few years.”

“Why even joke about a thing like that?” she scolded lightly. “Anyway, you could be as old as Methuselah and I wouldn’t care.”

“You don’t know,” he said softly. She could tell he was holding back, wanting to say more but clearly reluctant to do so.

“Jack, what is it?” she urged. “Is there something bothering you?”

He sighed heavily. “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I’m all worked up over this meeting I’m having tomorrow—with Roger Young and his agent.”

“Roger? I saw him at today’s dress rehearsal. He was practicing some sort of act.” She knew about Roger Young’s infamous temper tantrums and his outrageous demands. The one time they’d been introduced, at a party celebrating Cadogan’s fiftieth anniversary, she’d found him charming ... if a bit reptilian. But there was no getting away from the fact that he was Cadogan’s best-selling fiction author.

“Lion-taming, I hope,” Jack growled. “Preferably with a lion that’s missed dinner and isn’t in a very good mood.”

Concerned, Grace asked, “Jack, he’s not leaving you for another house, is he?”

“I almost wish he would.” Jack’s face, in the strobe glare of passing headlights, suddenly looked as old as he claimed to feel. “He got ... rough with one of our female reps. Tried to rape her, she says, and I believe her. He’s a real bastard. What I’d like to do is beat the living daylights out of him ... but it’s not that simple.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, feeling both alarmed and outraged in behalf of a woman she’d never even met.

“I don’t know yet. I’ll have to play it by ear. You can be sure of one thing, though,” he added grimly. “He won’t have a chance to pull something like this again, not while I can help it.”

“Oh, Jack, I’m sorry ...” She reached up and wove her fingers through the hair that curled down over the back of his collar, feeling, as she never failed to, a little uplift of surprise at its soft, youthful springiness. “I guess I’ve been so caught up in my own problems I never thought to ask how things are with you.”

A corner of his mouth twisted down in a half-smile.

“I’ve had worse days.” With his eyes on her, he added, “Anyway, from here on it can only get better.”

Grace shoved aside the shopping bag that was wedged on the floor between them, and wrapped her arms around Jack, bringing her mouth up to meet his. To her, that was one of the most wonderful things about Manhattan—that you could kiss a man in the back seat of a cab, you could probably take all your clothes off and make love, and the driver wouldn’t even blink ... not unless you stiffed him his tip.

Jack’s kiss was warm and soft, but not too soft. His lips parted slightly, their pressure teasingly light, and now his tongue was tracing her bottom lip with sweetly maddening gentleness, right where it was most tender. With his huge hand lightly cupping her chin, he pulled her closer, his kiss deepening. •

She shivered, gripped by a sudden feverish heat. No matter what Jack’s shortcomings might be—and right at this moment she couldn’t think of one—he was a world-class kisser. Back in high school, when she and her friends had been silly enough to keep score of such things, she’d be kissing a guy and think,
A four, maybe four and half definitely not a contender for the heavyweight title.
But with Jack there had never been any question. He was simply the best.

“You’ll never be too old for this,” she murmured into his ear.

Snuggled against him as their cab bounced from one pothole to the next, she found herself remembering their first date, nearly six months ago. It had started as a business meeting. He’d joined her and her editor, Jerry Schiller, for drinks to help them hash out some of the problems with the project she’d been slaving over for the past two years. Somehow drinks had stretched into dinner, at which point Jerry had rushed off to catch a train. Then afterwards Jack had insisted on riding home in the cab with her to make sure she’d get to her door in one piece. She, who didn’t think twice about jumping on the subway after midnight, had put her foot down.

“The last guy who tried to snatch my purse,” she’d told him, “I chased for four blocks and knocked down with my umbrella. Maybe I ought to see you to
your
door.”

“How do I know I’ll be safe?” he’d teased.

“I guarantee you won’t be.” She remembered wearing that silly grin of hers until the cab came to a stop.

They had settled on his apartment instead. She hadn’t really meant to go to bed with him that night. But, finding that he’d had no expectations of that kind—he hadn’t tidied up, and was so nervous he forgot to put a filter in the coffee maker and ended up with grounds and steaming brown water all over the countertop—she was charmed and ridiculously attracted to him, and felt herself seduced with breathtaking suddenness.

And, in the end, glad of it. Because with Jack she had recovered something she thought she’d lost forever, the wonderful feeling of waking up in the morning with a loving, lovable man curled beside you.

“What time is Chris getting home?” he asked her now, his lips grazing her ear, bringing a trickle of warm breath.

“Probably not until late—Win’s taking him to a movie after dinner. Why? Did you have something in mind?”

Jack grinned wickedly, and kissed her again, his mouth tasting of the still-warm rye loaf he’d torn the end off of while in line at Balducci’s. Making her hungrier than all the wonderful scents drifting up from the shopping bags at their feet.

In Jack’s arms, she felt the emotional roller coaster she’d been on all day roll to a stop. She could relax now; she was safe. Later, he would wrap her up, his whole body engulfing hers, and she would not feel even the tiniest bit afraid or worried, as she often did when they made love, that by this time next year, or even next month, she’d once again be spending her nights in an empty bed.

“Enough.” Jack was careful to keep his tone mild, but inside he was seething.

Roger Young, hunched forward on the very edge of the deep-buttoned armchair across from Jack, merely glowered at him. The author’s eyes, which appeared soulful in his publicity photo, were, in person, ringed with a liverish pigment that made them look sunken and shifty. Jack suddenly realized why photographers always shot Roger from above, leaving the lower half of his face half in shadow: the man had no chin.

“Numbers,”
said Terrence Rait, Young’s agent, a fidgety little man with a bow tie and pretentious goatee, his chair pulled aggressively a few feet ahead of his client’s like a stock car gunning at the starting line. “We’re talking
numbers,
the wholesalers going crazy with orders on this book, TV appearances lined up coast to coast, and you’re gonna pull the plug on it?” His thin face was flushed. “I don’t believe this. I fucking don’t
believe
this.”

Jack wasn’t sure he did, either. It felt almost surreal, having this conversation with the company’s biggest novelist, a guy who churned out page-turning thrillers, one a year like clockwork, and for whom it wasn’t uncommon to have books simultaneously on the hardcover and paperback best-seller lists. His last book,
Operation Crimson,
had sold more copies than the rest of their whole fall list combined. Seven hundred thousand in hardcover, and they’d do twice as many in paperback.

Kurt Reinhold, when he heard about this meeting, would have his balls bronzed and made into bookends, Jack thought. Now that
he
no longer had carte blanche. Hauptman, their new German parent, could yank the plug on him in a moment. And now there wasn’t much to stop them. Cadogan’s gross was down 10 percent from last year, and here he was risking their cash cow. Sure, Young was under contract for one more book ... but after this showdown, his ego would probably demand that he go with another house on his next project.

And Ben? Young was
his
author, the kid’s ticket to an executive office somewhere down the line. He’d be upset. No, more, he’d be pissed as hell.