Hostile Makeover (20 page)

“Right.” When had their schedule become too much for her to keep up with? What had happened to her organizational zeal?

His cell phone rang. As he pulled it out of his pocket he focused on some point just to the side of her. “Can you pick up my gray suit from the cleaners?” He was already bringing the phone to his ear as he added, “And don’t forget the red tie. I hope to hell they got the gravy stain out of it.”

She stood on the porch and watched him drive off, torn as she always was lately, by a vague sense of disappointment and a not-so-vague flash of anger at how easily he dismissed her.

After a few steadying breaths, she forced herself back into the kitchen, where her mother and Sarah were dissecting the morning’s happenings. Picking up an empty Tupperware container, Judy began to spoon chopped liver into it.

“I still can’t believe they both fainted,” her mother said.

“Amazing, wasn’t it?” Sarah said. “I thought that Trey business was made of sterner stuff. He looked too . . . buff . . . to pass out.”

Judy looked up from the chopped liver. Had Sarah Mendelsohn really used the word “buff”?

“Pfft.” Her mother dismissed him. “All of Shelley’s dates are tall and blond and . . . buff.” The word sounded just as strange on her mother’s lips. Her tone made it clear the word was not intended as a compliment. “What good is buff when the going gets tough?”

“She’s young yet. She’ll figure it out.” Sarah dipped a knife into the container Judy was filling and smeared a thin layer of chopped liver onto a piece of bagel.

“She’s not so young.” Miriam shook her head. “And if I left it to her she’d never go out with anyone remotely appropriate. Look at your Paul, all settled down and giving you grandbabies.” She smiled at Judy, then reached over to bracket her cheeks in one hand. “Thank God I raised one sensible daughter.”

Sensible
. Normally Judy would have taken pride in the word, would have accepted her mother’s approval as confirmation of the rightness of her life. Today the word rang hollow.

“I’ve got to get going.” Judy covered the container of chopped liver and shoved it into the refrigerator, then pulled off the apron she’d drawn on over her new suit. “Mazel tov, Aunt Sarah.” She bent and pressed a kiss to both women’s cheeks. “Mom.” She collected her purse and moved to the kitchen door. “I’ll call you later.”

And then she was sprinting out the door, trying to escape the horrible stifling fact that her whole life could be summed up in that one suddenly unappealing word.
“Sensible.”

That was her, the eminently sensible and completely dismissible Judy Schwartz Blumfeld.

Shelley arrived at Howard Mellnick’s office for her Friday afternoon appointment rushed and out of breath. Taking her seat, she contemplated the therapist with affection. Actually, she seemed to be contemplating the whole world through some strange rosy glow. She tried to stifle her smile as he contemplated her back, but the corners of her lips kept tugging upward.

“You look . . . happy,” he finally said in wonder. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I feel fabulous.”

He didn’t comment, just let one of his eyebrows go up, but she could see an answering smile playing on his lips.

“I hope that’s not going to be a problem,” she said.

“I’ll try to get over it.” He went ahead and smiled. “To what do we owe this startling situation?”

“Well . . .” She thought about it for a moment, but even trying to analyze it didn’t dim the internal glow. “For one thing, I blew everybody away this morning with my presentations. Uncle Abe signed on to everything I suggested. And he kept shaking his head and rubbing his chin and saying how he couldn’t wait to call my father and tell him what a great job I was doing. That was my nine o’clock meeting.”

Mellnick’s smile grew.

“At ten-thirty, Fadah Awadallah told me he loved the proposal for his Falafel Shacks. We’re going to concentrate on building his Atlanta presence and then look at introducing him around the southeast. Then Wiley Haynes came in for lunch. He was a little harder to sell, but he’s agreed to my plan to market Tire World to women. Judy’s doing an incredible job on his grand opening, and I know the coverage is going to be huge.”

Howard Mellnick made a few notes, but mostly he was smiling.

Shelley continued happily. “I’ve got a little over a week to prepare for the L.A. trip. Brian Simms and his nephew are ecstatic, and I’m doing research right now for my approach to Selena Moore, who owns a nationwide string of upper-end boutiques. I’m not leaving L.A. until I get her to agree to let us pitch the account.”

“Very impressive.” Howard Mellnick’s smile was almost as big as hers. He made a final note and looked up, letting her see his delight. “So you’ve managed to work things out with Ross Morgan. I’m glad to hear it.”

Her smile dimmed at the mention of Ross’s name. “Well, we haven’t exactly worked things out.”

“But you’re functioning together,” he pointed out reasonably. “You’re not using him as an excuse, and unless I’m missing something, I don’t see you getting ready to blow off any toes.” He made a show of examining her Ferragamo sandals.

This would definitely be the time to tell him about the fantasies she kept having, the ones in which she either slapped the arrogant smile off Morgan’s face or licked her way down his naked body. She had no middle ground where he was concerned; the switch between anger and lust happened quickly and without warning, generally at the most inopportune times. Like while she was pitching her Uncle Abe, or holding up flow charts to illustrate the potential market share for falafels.

To say that her reactions to him were conflicted would be like saying Mick Jagger had lips. It didn’t even begin to cover it. But Mellnick looked so happy she kind of hated to rain on his parade. And she didn’t need him to tell her how suicidal giving in to either of those fantasies would be.

“He’s hard to figure out,” she said. “I think he still believes it would be easier if I just folded up my tent and went home, but he doesn’t seem to be actively trying to trip me up anymore. And he seems genuinely pleased that these accounts are producing revenue.

“It’s so strange, one minute he’s giving me grief and making life miserable, and the next he’s agreeing to tennis with Great-aunt Sonya.”

“Excuse me?”

“Ross and I are playing a match against Aunt Sonya and her mixed-doubles partner tomorrow morning.”

“But isn’t your aunt in her eighties?”

“Yes, she is.” Shelley snorted at the ridiculousness of it. “It’s got disaster written all over it. And since Ross and I have trouble agreeing on what time it is, I don’t know how we’re going to play on the same court. But when I gave him a chance to back out, he said he wouldn’t miss it for anything, that Great-aunt Sonya reminded him of someone and he didn’t want to disappoint her.”

The rest of the session flew by with small forays into her sister’s strained marriage (they agreed Shelley should try to stay out of it), Nina’s determination to win permission to convert (they both smiled over the fainting, though Shelley kept Trey’s swoon to herself) and her parents’ plans to relive their honeymoon in Europe (maybe the distraction would keep Miriam out of Shelley’s life). They ended back on the next day’s tennis match, which Shelley realized was producing both a wave of irritation and a hard-to-squelch sense of anticipation.

“All you have to do is show up and play,” Dr. Mellnick advised her. “You’re not responsible for Ross Morgan’s motivation or his performance on the court.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Shelley said as they concluded the session. “I can’t figure out whether we should try to win or lose tomorrow. I mean, smearing a pair of octogenarians all over the court doesn’t sound particularly sporting. But losing to them would be pretty humiliating.”

She went to bed that night trying not to think about Ross Morgan in tennis shorts or how Great-aunt Sonya might react to losing the match. After tossing and turning until almost two
A.M.,
she started praying for rain.

Which pretty much accounted for the unrelenting sunshine that greeted her when she woke up the next morning.

“Great,” she groaned as she pried her head off the pillow to the sound of birds chirping outside her window. “Noah got forty days and forty nights and I don’t even get one measly Saturday morning rain shower?”

Clubbing her hair back into a ponytail, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. It took three cups of coffee to get her sufficiently revved up to paw through her tennis clothes for the plain white halter top and tennis skirt that gave her the best range of motion. Back in the bathroom she brushed through her hair and put it back in its ponytail, then applied the minimum of makeup before hunting down her racquet. She’d decided that they had to go ahead and win, since Aunt Sonya would call them on it if she felt they weren’t trying, but not by too much. She sincerely hoped Morgan wasn’t going to be the chest-thumping sort who had to annihilate all competitors regardless of their age or ability to walk unaided.

When she arrived at the Summitt Towers tennis courts, Aunt Sonya and her partner, whom Shelley recognized as the egretlike bingo caller, were already on the court warming up. Her great-aunt was wearing white shorts that showed off her still long, if slightly bowed, legs, and a V-necked white sleeveless T-shirt over a still full, if sagging, bust. Her visor read “Take No Prisoners” in bright red letters, and her eyes were hidden behind a pair of Gucci sunglasses. They were smacking the ball around pretty soundly with a minimum of chatter. In the bleachers, a small white-haired crowd—comprised mostly of women—watched Shelley walk onto the court. A last look at the sky confirmed that it was bright blue and dotted with cotton-ball clouds. There was not a thunderbolt in sight.

Aunt Sonya linked elbows with her partner and the two walked up to the net. “Horace Zinn, this is my great-niece Shelley.” Horace stepped forward to shake her hand. His was big and leathery, not the hand of an aging egret at all. “And that’s her partner,” she nodded at a point over Shelley’s shoulder, “Ross Morgan.”

The women in the stands began to whisper, and Shelley could see why as she turned to watch Ross Morgan approach. His blond hair glistened in the sun, and his white teeth flashed a smile of greeting. His shorts were a bright blue, and his white T-shirt, which had a matching blue abstract pattern, hung from a pair of impressive shoulders and skimmed down an equally broad chest. She couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but he didn’t appear the least bit worried about the weather, their audience, or the prospect of playing an opposing team who might require oxygen during the match.

There were handshakes all round and a kiss for Aunt Sonya.
A kiss for Aunt Sonya?

Shelley and Ross walked back toward the baseline. “Listen,” she said, trying to figure out his real motive for being there, “let’s not embarrass them in front of their fans. All we have to do is win by a respectable margin.”

He shot her a smile. “Agreed. What side do you want?”

She took the forehand court and left the backhand to Ross. He tossed her a ball and they began to warm up. He had beautiful strokes and moved with assurance—not out to prove anything, just returning the ball easily to Horace, keeping it in play. He looked like a poster boy for the physical benefits of the sport; all solid planes and angles, with a burnished glow to his skin.

They moved from the baseline to take some shots at the net then took a few overheads, both of them being careful not to hit too hard at their opponents. Aunt Sonya and Horace took a few serves—they were little dinky things that barely made it over the net—then it was time to begin.

Aunt Sonya positioned herself at the service line and Shelley, who was set to receive, moved up in the box, not wanting to be caught unprepared for one of those dinky serves.

“OK, these are good,” Aunt Sonya yelled, bouncing the yellow ball a few times in front of her.

Shelley was still taking in the sight of an unexpectedly bulging tricep beneath her aunt’s age-spotted skin, when Aunt Sonya tossed the ball, looped her racquet behind her head, and slammed the ball into the inside back corner of the service box.

Shelley blinked, shook her head. She hadn’t even gotten her racquet back before the ball kicked up over her shoulder and bounced off the court.

Horace and Sonya did a high-five in the middle of their court.

She and Ross eyed each other. “Did you see that?” Shelley yelped. “She aced me.”

“Yeah.” Ross’s bark of laughter was tinged with awe as he moved back to receive the next serve. “How old did you say they were?”

Before Shelley could answer, Aunt Sonya angled herself toward Ross and began her toss.

THWACK!

This time the ball sliced into the backhand corner of the service box and spiraled off the court.

“Shit!” Ross’s stunned whisper reverberated with disbelief.

“That’s thirty-love,” Aunt Sonya called with delight.

“I think we’ve been had,” Ross said as the next serve slammed down next to Shelley’s feet and died.

“Big-time,” Shelley agreed.

Sonya and Horace did what looked like a Native American war dance in the center of the court. The spectators started whooping it up in the stands. Two women in the front row began to do the tomahawk chop.

“If they start the wave, I’m going home,” Shelley said.

“Forty-love!” Horace Zinn’s voice rang with satisfaction.

“That’s it, Schwartz,” Ross said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not prepared to get slaughtered by someone on Geritol.”

“Right.” Shelley moved into position near the net. “But we can’t exactly cram it down their throats.” She got in the ready position. “What do you suggest?”

“I’ll return it, then if it comes back you just get a racquet on it. I’ll put it away. Then we’re going to check their Social Security cards.”

“Right.”

This time Ross returned the serve, and when the ball came back Shelley managed to get to it, but her racquet came up underneath it and sent the ball shooting up into the air. She watched in horror as the elderly duo changed sides with the grace of longtime ballet partners so that Horace could drop back and smash the overhead right at Ross’s . . .