Bombshell (14 page)

I explained that I had purchased the Chevalier, but that I needed an expert to review the certificate of authenticity before I could insure and ship the painting to my parents.

“We could meet at the gallery some night if you're free,” I said.

I heard him suck in a breath and felt myself hold one of my own. What was with this guy? He was all raring to go until he realized this little favor for my father would bring him into contact with me again.

As if I could not bear what his pregnant pause might mean, I suddenly heard myself babbling into the phone. “It's open until six during the week. Or all day Saturday, if you're free. Just let me know what works for you, as I'd need to make an appointment with the gallery manager.”

“Of course,” he said, sounding somewhat reluctant. I heard him rifling through some papers on his desk, probably looking for a calendar. He blew out a breath, as if suddenly weighted down by a task that, up until five minutes ago, had been a joyous homage to Dr. Noonan. I felt a sudden burning need to make up some excuse to get off the phone, then realized what a child I was being. What the heck did I expect? The guy clearly wasn't interested. And while normally I took that as a challenge, this afternoon it made me…depressed.

“Well, I could do something on Thursday…around five?”

“Fine,” I said, even knowing that meant I would have to leave work early. Now that this was feeling less and less like the romantic interlude I had imagined it might be, I just wanted to get it over with. Besides, it wasn't like anyone really needed me at the office these days. “I'll see you Thursday at five, then. Good night.”

I hung up the phone, wondering when I was going to rid myself of this foolish desire for things—and men—I clearly had no business wanting.

I quickly dialed up the gallery to make an appointment with Pamela. When I was done, I looked up to find Claudia
in my doorway. Or someone who resembled Claudia. She looked a bit…anxious. I had never before seen my boss in such a state.

Or such an outfit.

The pants were low slung, with a brightly colored embroidered design on the flare-cut legs and what looked like silver studs on the pockets. The shirt screamed hippie love child with a trust fund, with its wide sleeves and sleek cut high-tech fabric. I think I even saw Claudia's midriff peeking out at me, but I couldn't be sure from the way she kept smoothing her hands over the front of herself.

Wait—I had seen this look before. In the junior department at Bloomingdale's. It looked like a Mitzy Glam, a hot new designer catering to the fashion-forward teen.

Because I didn't know what else to say, I found myself asking, “Where've you been?”

“Bloomingdale's,” she replied with a shrug, as if leaving midday for a shopping spree was ordinary behavior for her.

Uh-oh. It
was
a Mitzy Glam.

“I certainly couldn't meet up with Irina tonight in last year's Bob Mackie,” she said.

Or this year's fashion for the fourteen-year-old set,
I thought but didn't say. “You're going out with Irina again?” I asked, with no small amount of surprise.

She actually blushed, then said, “Well, I really had a nice time last night.” She raised her chin, the gleam returning to her eyes. “In fact, Phillip seemed positively smitten with me.”

Oh, dear. Clearly Claudia had lost it. Not only on a fashion level, but on a reality level. “Uh, Claudia, I hate to break it to you, but it's common knowledge that Phillip Landau is gay.”

“I know
that.
” She glared at me. Then, raising her chin once more, she declared, “He wants to take my picture.
In fact, we're thinking about approaching
W
with it,” she said. Then, before I could accuse her of overreaching—after all, a supermodel Claudia was
not
—she added quickly, “For an article on Roxanne Dubrow's new face, of course.” She smiled like a Cheshire cat. “With a feature on me, as the reigning queen of Roxanne Dubrow's beauty revolution.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Does Dianne know about this?”

Claudia narrowed her eyes right back. “Of course!” Then she added, “I left a message with her assistant. I would have told her directly, if Dianne wasn't spending half her life at her mother's bedside.” She rolled her eyes, as if tending to one's ailing mother was a nuisance better borne by others.

“How is Mrs. Dubrow?” I asked, thinking of the kindly elderly woman I had seen only at the yearly Christmas gatherings. She had been long retired by the time I had joined Roxanne Dubrow, but I knew of her legacy—and her radiant beauty as a younger woman, immortalized in the photos featured in numerous biographies written about her.

“The woman is
dying,
Grace. How should she be?” Claudia sniffed. “Anyway, I'm sure Dianne will get back to me if she sees a problem. Besides, it's good publicity for the company.”

It wasn't the company I was thinking of when I rode home in a cab that night, but Dianne. Her mother was dying. Dying. How hard it must be to lose a parent….

My throat was clogged with tears, as if I were the one suffering this great loss. And even as my first tears fell, it occurred to me, with no small surprise, that I
had
suffered this loss. That I knew, at least on some level, how Dianne felt.

Oh, God, I thought, crumbling under the weight of the emotion that crashed over me like a wave.

Kristina Morova. She had never been my mother in any way that truly mattered, but I knew now that she had lived in my mind as some shadowy figure I could never quite grasp. Never would grasp now.

She was gone. Gone in a way that somehow seemed worse than I had ever imagined.

I had no plan anymore to make my way to see her. There were no more solitary cab rides to take me where I had believed her to be living all this time, hoping to confront her. Either to lash out in anger, or reach out to her in relief.

There was, I realized now, no more
hope
of her.

Nothing but a dream of her that up until this very moment, I had not allowed to die.

 

When I was a little girl, I used to run my finger over the arch in my grandmother's foot. “Your grandma's feet are shaped like stilettos!” she would say, chuckling over the arch that had deepened from the years she had spent in the high-heeled shoes she preferred.

I smiled at this memory now, running my finger over my own deep arch and realizing I had likely inherited my love of fancy footwear from my grandmother, judging by the way my feet were shaping up. I certainly hadn't gotten that taste from my adoptive mother, I thought, leaning into the phone as I listened to her inventory the comfortable flats and sneakers she was packing for her trip to Paris.

“You're going to be all right? Alone on Thanksgiving?” she said now, alerting me that beneath all her preparations, her excited chatter, lay the lingering fear that she was somehow causing emotional damage to her daughter by not sharing the holidays with me. It was my own fault really, for
calling her midweek, compelled to by some lingering sense of malaise I had felt ever since leaving Shelley's that evening.

After hurriedly telling Shelley about my visit to Brooklyn and my decision never to return, I had tried to spend the rest of the session talking about real estate. Specifically, whether or not I should buy a new apartment to go along with my baby plans. Though the weight of everything involved in my single parent scheme had kept me from moving beyond the idea stage, I wasn't going to let Shelley know that. She went along with my chatter for a bit, even revealing that she had her own sweet deal in the West Village. But she still wanted to know why I felt a need to deal with everything alone. In particular, why I refused to discuss Kristina Morova's death with my parents.

“I'll be fine,” I insisted to my mother for what felt like the umpteenth time. I realized once again that I had been right in not telling my parents about Kristina. Didn't Shelley understand that there were some things that you should just deal with alone, rather than drag the rest of the universe down with you? Needless to say, it was not a productive session. But I felt justified in holding fast to this point. I was certain if I told my mother about Kristina's death, she would cancel her trip out of some maternal desire to comfort me. It was enough for me to know that she would be there for me if I allowed her to. There was no way I would risk ruining this vacation for her.

I heard her sigh. “We should have flown you home for Thanksgiving.”

“Mom, if I wanted to come home for Thanksgiving, I could have bought a ticket myself. It's not a big deal,” I said, making light of it. “Besides, I could catch up on work, do a little winter cleaning.”

“It's the perfect time of year to take advantage of the city,”
my father chimed in. “Black Friday is the best day of the year to do a little shopping. And I bet the museums and galleries are open.”

I smiled, knowing he was likely wondering if I had succeeded in getting the certificate. “Dad's right,” I said now. “In fact, I have plans to go down to SoHo to see a show tomorrow night.”

“Good girl,” my father said, as if my art education were at stake.

“Oh, that's lovely, Grace,” my mother said. “A new artist?” she asked.

“Umm, no. Can't remember the name,” I hedged. “I think it's French…. From the romantic period,” I added at the last minute, as if to throw her off track.

“Oh, I love the romantics,” my mother replied with a sigh. “Have a lovely time.”

 

Lovely wasn't exactly how I felt when I stepped out of a cab in front of the Wingate Gallery the following night. Rather than the snow the recent cold bout had promised, a chilly rain had begun to fall, seemingly the moment I stepped out of my office, making it nearly impossible to find a cab. But find one I did when, after a full fifteen minutes of wielding my umbrella against the slanting rain, an off-duty cabbie took pity on my half-soaked self and pulled over.

After I had assessed the damage in my compact—rain-dampened hair and mascara shadows that I hastily rubbed away—I handed my knight-in-a-yellow-sedan a big, fat tip once we arrived in front of the gallery.

Pamela briskly unlocked the door and ushered me into the office, where Jonathan Somerfield already waited.

Liquid pooled inside of me at the sight of him, and even
tenderness at the sight of his brown loafers, the way the stripes on his oxford shirt clashed mercilessly with his tweed coat. Then he glanced at his watch impatiently, and I felt my armor go up, suspecting that my tardiness had not whetted his appetite, but only irritated him.

But it wasn't irritation in his eyes when he looked up, his gaze meeting mine and flickering with the kind of heat I had experienced myself moments earlier.

I almost smiled with pure feminine satisfaction. It seemed the good doctor was not immune to my charms after all.

“I have all the paperwork ready,” Pamela said, clearly unaware of the temperature spike in the room. I might even have thought Jonathan Somerfield wasn't aware of it, by the way he dug right in, studying carefully the documents Pamela laid out before him, but for the way his gaze traveled over me once more when he was done, as if he would have loved to have taken me right there. Meanwhile Pamela was going on and on about how Chevalier's works would only become more valuable in years to come.

“Yes, he certainly is an interesting man,” I said, my gaze still locked on Jonathan's.

“Oh, that's right. You met him the night of the opening, didn't you?” Pamela said, tucking all the necessary paperwork into a folder.

“Chevalier?” Jonathan said, frowning. “You met the artist?”

“Mm-hmm,” I said, leaning over to sign the insurance forms.
You might have met him, too,
I thought,
if you hadn't run off like you did.

I straightened, returning my gaze to Jonathan. “In fact, I asked him about the painting. You know, who the girl was waiting for.” I felt a smile tugging at my lips. “Apparently she wasn't waiting at all,” I continued, raking my eyes
over him the way he had done moments earlier. “I guess she was merely…checking out the view.” I smiled suggestively. “And why wouldn't she? It is, after all, a beautiful view.”

I saw his pupils widen and I knew I had him now. Fresh heat curled through me. And I knew just what I wanted to do with him, too….

 

Even the weather seemed to comply with the fantasies now swirling through me when Jonathan and I stepped out of the gallery a half hour later. The rain had been transformed into fat, wet flakes, and the sight was so stirring I turned my face up to greet them as they fell, closing my eyes against the feel of the cool dampness cascading against my skin. I breathed deeply, savoring the feeling. There was nothing quite so beautiful as the first snowfall….

When I opened my eyes, I found Jonathan staring at me in a way that pierced me. His eyes held desire, yes, but also something else. Something I could not put a name to.

“Going uptown?” he queried, dropping his gaze and focusing his attention on the damp, empty street, which seemed oddly lit up by the whiteness whirling around us.

“Yes, Upper West Side,” I replied, watching him carefully as he raised his hand to hail a cab.

He looked at me. “Me, too,” he replied, but not joyfully—rather, as if disturbed by the synchronicity of our destinations. “Perhaps we should share a cab.”

“Perhaps.”

As it turned out, Dr. Jonathan Somerfield lived no less than six blocks below me, on W. 80th Street. And maybe it was the pull of what was starting to feel like fate, or a longing to dally in the delicious chemistry that only built between us
once we were enclosed in the back of a cab together, that had me making a move on the somewhat elusive professor.

“You know there's a pretty little pub on W. 79th that makes a mean hot toddy,” I ventured, entertaining visions of sharing this first snowfall in front of the crackling fireplace that was bound to be lit on a night like tonight.