Heartwood (17 page)

H
is hair was black and it was curly; stray tendrils of it fell onto his face. That was the first thing Laura noticed about him. That, and his eyes, which were not brown, as she would have expected in a man with such dark hair, but a light color, somewhere between green and blue. They were fringed with lashes that were almost too long for a man. He wasn’t handsome in a conventional sense—his features were too craggy for that, and his mouth was too wide. But there was such intelligence in those green-blue eyes. He was dressed like a teenager, in blue jeans, a T-shirt and work boots, with a leather jacket slung over his shoulder.

He was shading his eyes from the sunlight. And he was staring at her. She wondered how long he’d been doing that. Without thinking, she pulled her skirt down to cover as much of her bare legs and feet as she could. He shook his head slightly as if to
clear it. “Lil didn’t tell you I was coming this morning?” he asked. His voice was deep, with a slight huskiness to it.

“No.”

“I should have known! She’s been rewriting an article she did, and when she’s working like that she shuts out everything else. I bet you couldn’t get her on the phone either.”

“No.”

“Lil’s talented, but she can be flaky.”

“I see.”

I’m a grown woman with a child and a husband and a business. It’s absurd for me to be tongue-tied
.

“I wish I had known you were coming,” she said, and looked down at herself. “I’m not exactly dressed … this isn’t the way I dress for a business meeting … when I’m meeting someone for the purposes of business.”

Idiot!

“Yes, I was hoping for the coverall,” he said. “The one Lil says you wear when you refinish the floors while baking bread and—I think she said you also parted the sea at one point?”

“No, no, I just walked on it.”

And now she was flirting with him like a schoolgirl. As if she weren’t pathetic enough sitting in the dirt in her old clothes with her windblown hair and her bare feet. But he was smiling, and his green-blue eyes were sparkling. He was enjoying this. Enjoying her. It had been such a long time since a man had … “Lil makes way too much of what I do,” she said.

He stopped smiling. “I think I’ll judge that for myself,” he said seriously. And when he was serious, those green-blue eyes could send a shock wave through to the inside of your bones.

She stood up. “I need to bring Molly inside,” she said. She
grabbed the dog’s collar, and she and Nick walked back up the hill, stopping briefly so she could retrieve her shabby shoes. When they reached the house, he opened the kitchen door for her, and she went in with Molly in tow, being careful not to let herself accidentally touch him. Which was ridiculous.

She served him tea, the quintessential old lady’s drink, as benign and boring as the color beige, and brought him into her office in the living room to drink it. The kitchen would have been too informal.

“How long will we be working together?” she asked, all business.

“That depends on you. According to Lil I’m to document every phase of your work on the wedding from beginning to end.”

“There’s always some last-minute job to do right up until the day of the wedding.”

“Then I’ll be in your life for the next three months.”

Three months. He’d be coming to her home, and he’d be “in her life,” as he’d put it, for the next three months.

–—

Laura didn’t see Nick for several days after that initial meeting. He had other assignments he was finishing, and she had other jobs she was working on, in addition to Steve and Christina’s wedding. When he finally came back, he was scheduled to shoot pictures of her empty ballroom and terrace. Since the wedding dinner would take place in the ballroom and the cocktails would be served on the terrace, he’d get shots later of Laura decorating these areas and setting up the chairs, tables, buffets and wet bars that would be needed. Lil, who had reemerged from
her seclusion and was now working with Laura again, had explained all of this.

Even though she wouldn’t be in any of the pictures Nick was taking on the first day, Laura had pulled her hair up high on her head, so it fell into a shiny mane down her back, and she’d worn her prettiest coverall in her favorite shade of pink.

Nick arrived in his car, and behind him two assistants—a boy and a girl—drove a van that was loaded with equipment. It hadn’t occurred to Laura that he probably wouldn’t come alone. She told herself that she should have known.

Nick and his helpers began unloading big boxes made of wood and metal from the back of the van. Inside the boxes were cameras, lights, cables, toolboxes, gels, light filters and a whole array of gauzy white screens and umbrellas that, Nick told her, were used for shadowing and depth. This somewhat cryptic statement was the only thing he said to her all morning; he went straight to work and soon he was totally absorbed in what he was doing.

He was all over the ballroom: climbing ladders, hanging lights, setting up his shots, working for some specific vision that he alone could see. His assistants—they had finally introduced themselves as Diana and Jeff—bantered with him as they followed his orders skillfully and quickly. Often they seemed to know what he was going to want of them before he asked for it. Diana particularly seemed to be able to read Nick’s mind. Laura watched her and wondered if she was more than an assistant to him. She wasn’t a pretty girl, exactly. But she had a quick smile that was delightful, and it was clear Nick relied on her more than Jeff. Telling herself that was none of her business, Laura left the ballroom and went to her desk. She had her own work to do.

Lil had asked her to describe how she was going to decorate the ballroom, so she did some preliminary sketches of the flower baskets she planned to hang around the room. As far as Laura was concerned, flowers were the jumping-off point for any wedding. Once you knew what the bride’s favorites were, it was easy to choose a color scheme, music and even the food. Christina loved daisies, and this had suggested hanging baskets with big yellow organdy bows, and a fresh, springtime menu.

Laura started sketching, but it was hard to concentrate with all the laughter coming from the ballroom. The morning passed and she hadn’t gotten more than a couple of ideas down on paper. A shadow fell over her desk. “Have lunch with me,” said a voice she realized she would have recognized anywhere. “And by the way, the coverall lives up to its reputation.” The admiration was soft in his green-blue eyes. Then he added briskly, “It’ll photograph beautifully when we take shots of you.”

–—

She suggested that instead of going out for lunch, she could make sandwiches for herself and Nick, and he said yes. Jeff and Diana had already driven off to eat at some chain restaurant, so they were alone in the house. She thought for a moment that maybe she shouldn’t have made the offer, but it was too late. Besides, there was nothing wrong with offering a man a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. And there was nothing significant about the fact that she was using her most expensive Gruyère cheese and Black Forest ham. And anyway, Diana and Jeff would be back in less than an hour. So there was no reason for her hands to be shaking as she slid the sandwich into the buttered pan. But they were. She hoped he hadn’t seen it.

“Diana and Jeff seem very competent,” she said. “Have they worked with you long?”

“Jeff is an intern, straight out of photography school, and he’ll be around for another six months. Nice kid, but I’m not sure how good his eye is. Diana’s been with me for ten years. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

She didn’t want to know more … shouldn’t need to know more. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “Ten years! My, that’s a long time!” she heard herself say in a horrid, perky voice.

“Yes. It’ll be rough for me when she goes.”

“Will that be happening any time soon?”

I’m just making polite conversation. Casual, polite conversation
.

“Probably when I finish the shoot for this book. She and her girlfriend want to move to San Francisco.”

“Oh.” Diana had a girlfriend. It was not what Laura had expected to hear and it surprised her. Suddenly she felt frumpy and old-fashioned. He lived in a young, sophisticated world where people were not surprised when girls had girlfriends. She wasn’t prejudiced about such things but they did surprise her. The people he knew would be up on all the current fads. The women would wear chic hairstyles and the latest fashions and they would go to trendy bars and restaurants. She wore pink coveralls and spent her days making yellow organdy bows for hanging baskets of daisies. She was hopeless. And yet, Diana was not his girlfriend. She told herself there was no reason for her little sigh of relief.

A smell filled the air. “Oh no!” she wailed as she looked down at the frying pan. Scorched cheese, bread and ham were sticking to the bottom. “I can’t believe I did this. Any idiot can
make a grilled cheese sandwich!” She dumped the pan in the sink and opened her freezer full of party food.

“What are you doing?” Nick asked.

“Finding something to defrost and cook. I don’t have any more Gruyère, so I can’t make sandwiches unless you’d like peanut butter and jelly.”

“Are we talking about some kind of exotic version of peanut butter you’ve ground yourself and a homemade jam?”

“No. Commercial peanut butter and plain old grape jelly in a jar. My daughter brings her friends home sometimes and they don’t like my fancy cooking.”

“Oh, I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” He laughed. “I bet I’m the only person you’ve ever made one for.”

She laughed too. “The only person over the age of twelve.”

The sandwiches tasted surprisingly good. They washed them down with milk and for dessert they had some brownies with raspberry icing that she had left over from a baby shower she’d catered.

After he’d finished his brownie, Nick leaned back in his chair. “This whole thing … writing this book with Lil … getting all this attention … it’s unsettling for you, isn’t it? I mean, you like it, but you don’t know quite how to handle it.”

“I … Does it show that much?”

He shook his head. “You’re very good at hiding it. I happen to be a very astute fellow.”

“It’s just that I’ve never really had a great talent for anything. I’m not musical, or artistic. I’m not even that smart—certainly I’m not as smart as my brothers and my parents.”

Or my husband
, she could have said. But she found she didn’t want to mention Robby.

“My mother has her doctorate, and my father is a brilliant
physician. My brother Steve—he’s the one who’s getting married—is a lawyer who goes around the country saving people. There’s Jimmy, who’s a doctor, and Phil, who’s a very successful financier. And then there’s me. I’m the …” She trailed off, not wanting to finish.

“The pretty one?”

“The happy one. That’s my job. To be happy. No matter what.”

What was she doing? It would sound like she was whining, and he wouldn’t understand.

But he did. “That’s a hard job.”

“It can be.” She never opened up like this. And it wasn’t because she felt relaxed being alone with him here in her kitchen. She wasn’t relaxed at all, her pulse would be racing if she were to check it. It was that she wanted—no, she
needed
him to know her. And it had to happen now. Because in less than twenty minutes his assistants would be back from lunch. And in three months he would be gone from her life for good.

“It’s because I’m like my grandmother,” she said. And she told him about being a throwback to Nana, who had made such a beautiful life for her husband and her children. While she talked, she went to the sink to clean the scorched pan, and without interrupting her, he took it from her to dry. They were both careful—at least she was, and she thought he was too—not to let their hands touch.

“And here I am, doing the same kinds of things Nana did … only she did it all for the family and I do it for my business,” she finished up her story.

“A very successful business,” he said, and once again, there was no mistaking the admiration in his eyes. It was so … exhilarating. Suddenly she was ashamed of herself. What was she
doing, getting carried away because a total stranger was impressed with her? What was it that Robby had said? That she catered parties for rich, spoiled people. “I’m not exactly coming up with a solution for world peace …”

“How trivial of you,” Nick said.

“That’s me, the flighty type.”

They both laughed at that. But then his face got serious. “In my family I’m the trivial one.” He was looking off into space, and she knew that now he was going to tell her about himself, and he was doing it because he needed her to know him as much as she’d needed him to know her. “My father is dead now, but when he was alive he was a professor of English literature. He taught at Harvard, among other places. My mother was an opera singer with a promising career before she married and had me and my younger brother, Sam. Sammy, by the way, does something esoteric with mathematics that I will never begin to understand. He has also taught at Harvard.”

We’re two of a kind
, she thought.
That’s what he wants me to know. In spite of the bright shining world he lives in, we’re two of a kind
.

“As I’m sure you can imagine, my parents weren’t very happy when their elder boy—the one who was named after his father—quit school to spend his time interning with commercial photographers. The important word in that sentence was ‘commercial.’ As far as my folks were concerned, it would have been all right if I’d gone the artistic route, running around the country taking gritty pictures that would never sell, and having little shows in small galleries that no one has ever heard of. Starving in a garret would have been noble. But when I finally got my first job, it was at an ad agency. I took pictures of coffee and canned soup.” He smiled a little sadly. “I always wanted to
make money, you see. And I did. Because I really enjoyed getting lighting right, so that a cup of coffee looked like it was steaming in the print ad. I love what I do.”

I know. I watched you today. I saw you working harder than either Jeff or Diana, and I knew you did it because you love what you do. I know that about you
.