Next To You (31 page)

‘Vonnie, she’s married, remember?’

‘So where’s
her
husband?’

‘I told you. He’s a little worm. He comes and goes.’

‘And she’s the shy and lonely, neglected, battered little wife next door and you’re the big white knight. Isn’t that convenient for you.’

‘It’s complicated for her Vonnie, but that’s beside the point. What I’m saying has nothing to do with Caroline. Nothing.’

‘Then what is it?’ She squinted, one eyebrow arched. ‘If you’re not screwing her why the hell are you saying you don’t want to sleep with me anymore?’

‘Because, Yvonne, this ex-husband no longer loves his ex-wife.’

Chapter 14

Things were hectic for a Wednesday. Caroline ran all over the store, collecting items for clients, finding stock and the right sizes. Clothes were separated, tagged with the client’s name, and placed in the large storage wardrobe that lined the back wall of Personal Shopping. She’d barely had time to pee, and rushed back from the ladies room to her desk before her eleven o’clock arrived.

Waiting for her, instead of Mr. Leung was Alex, his white chef’s shirt pristine, his checked pants recently pressed. He’d cut his hair even shorter. It suited him better, softened him.

He smiled when he saw her.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him smile, and she’d never noticed before that the dimple in his cheek was on the opposite side to Drew’s.

‘Hi,’ Alex said rather sheepishly. ‘I tried to call first, to see if it was okay, but I couldn’t reach you here. I kept getting some guy named Stuart.’

‘Yes. I got the message you called. You did the right thing, but I’m very busy today, Alex.’

‘I understand. I am too, but I need to see you. There are some things you need to know, some stuff I want to try to explain. I’ve been seeing a therapist. Can you give me five minutes?’

She peeked at her watch. ‘I’m sorry. I have an eleven-thirty.’

‘Please. You owe me that much. I just want you to listen. I want to say—to admit a few, things okay?’

She glanced past his shoulder, to the Asian man approaching the Personal Shopping Suite. ‘You’re right. We do need to finish this, but I don’t have time right now. I’m sorry. Mr. Leung is here.’

His arms went around her. ‘I just need five minutes, Caroline. Ask your client to wait.’

She pushed his hands away. ‘These are busy people. They’ve made appointments. I can’t ask them to wait.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ he said through his teeth. ‘Do I need to make an appointment to have some time alone with you, or do you only do that for clients and that sideshow freak?’

‘You can’t be nice, can you?’ Caroline turned her back on Alex and his muttered apology. She welcomed Mr. Leung, a businessman from Hong Kong. Smiling, she led the chubby man to the back where his clothes were prepared.

An hour an a half later, she received a call from the store’s personnel manager, and suffered what Julie would call a ‘setback.’

An hour after that, she was sitting at home, pouring over her bank account, trying to work out just how long she would last before her money ran out.

Julie had a well-rehearsed psychiatrist’s therapeutic line about work adding a sense of purpose to people’s lives. Therapists always looked at things in positive terms, but a corkscrew slippery slide of panic began twisting through that rationality.

A setback. Caroline took a deep breath, one of many to follow in the next three minutes. The setback of getting fired would not spiral her out of control. She was capable. She was intelligent. She would find another job. She wouldn’t have to sell this apartment like she had her three-bedroom bungalow. She wouldn’t have a mountain of legal fees to pay. She wouldn’t have to deal with Bethany.

Except what if she didn’t find a job?

What if she had to sell the apartment?

What if … what if … what if
…

The
what ifs
were all so vivid, all so possible, all Caroline could think positively because they were
positively
going to happen, and why the hell was it that fear was something she had no trouble identifying?

Caroline pulled herself together, but when all that deep breathing and positive self-talk wasn’t enough to hold off fear completely, she went running.

She ran until her throat burned.

She ran until her lungs were ready to burst.

She ran until she was numb with cold, and her brain was simply numb.

***

Four days had passed and neither one of them had mentioned their little trip to the amusement park. But Will had thought about it. He’d thought about it a lot.

Those few minutes they’d shared had been a bit like a rollercoaster. She’d been drunk, he’d been drunk, and they’d raced up that slope, to the crest, slid over the top, and hurtled toward temptation—until Yvonne interrupted—and the rollercoaster turned into a log ride with a sobering splashdown.

Patient, confident, Will did not press the matter because he knew the moment would come around on the carousel, and Caroline loved the carousel.

He let himself into her place and moved to the kitchen where coffee perfumed the air. Caroline stood on a step stool, pulling a container from a high cupboard. She was still in her pajamas, the green flannel ones with the daisies. Her hair was pinned up with a clip.

‘You running late, Squirt?’

She turned and held out the container. ‘No. I’m not late. I’ve got nowhere to go today, and I won’t be the one to bring you the tuxedos you asked to see this afternoon. Stuart, the Menswear associate will.’

He took the container. ‘How come?’

She climbed off the step stool. ‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘I sort of got fired.’

Will set the container on the breakfast bar and pulled off his glasses. ‘What? When?’

‘Yesterday afternoon.’

‘What happened?’

‘Someone had a grievance.’ She folded up the stool, put it aside, and opened the container. It was full of dog food.

‘About what?’

Batman trotted in and had a look in his bowl. Caroline filled it, doggie kibble tinkling against the metal of the bowl. ‘Apparently I’ve behaved inappropriately.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

She watched the dog gobble his breakfast. ‘No, actually it’s not. I’ve been accused of consorting with a client.’ She closed the lid on the container. ‘On more than one occasion.’

Frowning, Will shook his head, not quite believing. ‘What client?’

‘I was told I had acted unprofessional with a gentleman the personnel manager described as very fair-skinned.’

‘Me?’

‘Well, as you once told me, you are rather fair-skinned.’

‘So who described me to the personnel manager? The blonde who made the fuss that day you tried to convince me I’d look good in pink chiffon? Yvonne said she saw a bitchy blonde laying into you. My guess is it’s the same woman.’ Will pulled out a stool and had a seat.

‘I don’t know. It could have been her. It could have been the Asian client from this afternoon, it could have been …’ Her mouth drooped open.

‘What? What are you thinking?’

‘Alex,’ she said.

‘You think Alex had something to do with your getting canned?’

She shrugged, throwing up her hands. ‘Anything is possible with Alex. He came in and asked me to give him five minutes, to tell me he’d been seeing a therapist, but I didn’t have time to see him.’

Jaw clenched, Will poured her a cup of coffee and handed it to her. ‘Drink this.’

She took the cup. ‘I don’t exactly believe he’d have me fired, but then again I can’t believe a lot of things about him anymore. He’s a different person. I guess we both are, but maybe he … I don’t know. I can’t figure it out. We seemed to be reaching a point where we understood each other, where we could be … but he’s jealous.’ She made an absurd sound in her nose and sank onto the barstool beside his. ‘He’s jealous again. He’s jealous of you, William. He was jealous of Drew too. Don’t ask me why a man was envious of his own flesh and blood, but he was.’ She scrunched up her face for a second. ‘William, did you say anything to him the other day? Did you … did you … threaten him again?’

Will rubbed a hand over his mouth. ‘All right. I wouldn’t say I threatened as much as
intimidated
. I just stood up, and he … well, it’s possible he judged it as a threat, and I know it sounds pretty juvenile to say, but he started it.’

Caroline looked at him sideways. ‘What did he do, call you names? I thought stuff like that didn’t get under your skin.’

‘It doesn’t.’ Will shook his head. ‘You asked me to leave it to you, and I did. He tried to egg me on, but I did nothing. I’ve never laid a finger on him, although I’ll be honest and say I’d like to. I’d really like to. I’m surprised by how much I’d like to. Seems Batman and I have a lot in common when it comes to Alex and you.’

‘My dynamic duo,’ she laughed half-heartedly, and squeezed her eyes shut, raking fingers back through her hair. ‘I have to work. I can’t afford not to have a job. I have to be gainfully employed. I’m just getting back on my feet I can’t have this happen now. Yes, I have some clients outside the store, but not enough to keep me … it takes a while to build up a good client base and I have been …’ She made a face. ‘I’m going to run out of money. I’m going to go broke and have to sell this apartment, just like I did my house and my parents’ house. I’ll have to move again.’

‘Hey.’ Will put out his hands. ‘Come here.’

With a huff, she hopped off the stool and went into his open arms. She dropped her forehead against his shoulder. ‘The personnel manager wouldn’t tell me anything about who made the accusation. She only told me I was fired because I was unprofessional, which I have to say she seemed to enjoy doing. So here I am with this … setback. You know, I don’t know if I should laugh or cry or run away.’

‘Caroline, would you let me look into this for you? Let me take care of this?’

‘William, I know you fix things all the time—men think you’re all such great
fixers
, but how on earth can you take care of this? How can you fix this?’

He ruffled her hair, pulling bits from the clip. ‘I can be very persuasive.’

‘What are you going to do, threaten a lawsuit on my behalf? Yeah, that’ll look great. The client I’m supposedly screwing shows up to sue, and then they’ll really believe I’m screwing you. Yeah, that would really take care of things.’

William pulled back to look at her, head slanted to the left, hand slipping to the nape of her neck. ‘If you’ll let me I
can
take care of this. I’ll have a talk with Greg Brady. Yes, that’s his real name. He’s the store’s corporate attorney. I went to law school with him. It was his suggestion I try a personal shopper. He’d been using Norelle, the woman you replaced at the store, for a couple of years. So in a way he’s responsible for us meeting, and this mess is all his fault.’

Caroline was amazed how the world operated sometimes. It truly was not
what
you knew, but
who
you knew that mattered. She sat on her stool, eating peanut butter on toast, and watched William work.

He made a single telephone call to a man who shared a name with the oldest boy on
The Brady Bunch
. He spent a good twenty minutes schmoozing on the line. Caroline had watched him as he walked around the kitchen, talking about law school, personal shopping, and some woman named Rachel Bailey.

At one point he’d stopped walking and looked over at her, a frown creasing the space between his pale brows, but the frown disappeared almost as fast as it had come. He tucked the phone under his chin, gave her a double thumbs-up, and mouthed
Aaayyye
like Fonzie on
Happy Days
. When he ended the call, he grinned and ruffled her hair. ‘No sweat, Squirt,’ he said.

Relieved, grateful, and, rather implausibly, turned on, Caroline wanted to kiss him. She wanted to kiss him and shove her fingers into his hair and wrap her legs around him and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him. Corralling those eddies of conflicting feelings, she poured him coffee. ‘Thank you, William. Thank you,’ she said, left him in the kitchen, and went to get dressed.

By nine, she’d started work, before yesterday’s dismissal paperwork had even been processed.

The only information Stuart was able to divulge, the only thing he knew, was that someone had made the complaint against her. ‘I’m pleased the store reconsidered because you’re an asset to the company. They asked me what I thought of you. I told them you are professional at all times, even with the unpleasant, demanding clients, but that fact seemed to be overlooked.’

‘Thank you, Stuart.’

‘My pleasure,’ he said

Caroline gave the urbane gentleman a peck on the cheek.

‘Oh, now tongues are really going to wag.’ Stuart winked.

At eleven, her twelve-thirty client called to cancel, which meant the last two hours of the afternoon were free. She dialed William’s office and spoke to his secretary. Bea said her boss was in a meeting, but would make arrangements to change his two o’clock tuxedo fitting to one-thirty.

Caroline gathered together Hugo Boss, Armani, and Valentino tuxedos, placed them in a garment bag, and made her way to the Collins building. She moved through the lobby and waited for an elevator, watching the LED lights above the door change. There was a chime, an elevator opened, and she stood aside to allow people to exit.

‘Hey, Care-o-line!’ Quincy stepped out of the back of the elevator car. He dragged her into an embrace, the garment bag flapped against her back. ‘Good to see you again. Your uncle and I finally set up plans to golf. I have to call him to find out about our tee time this weekend. You’re coming to the SPI benefit next Saturday night, aren’t you?’ He looked back at the elevator. ‘If Will hasn’t invited you, yet
I’m
inviting you. If you don’t come, he’ll show up stag, and a bunch of guys will demand ballroom dance lessons. Then for the rest of the weekend I’ll have to listen to Erika talk about what a great dancer he is.
Again
.’

‘He is quite the twinkle-toes, isn’t he?’

Quincy jerked his chin at Will. He held the elevator open. ‘You wait,’ Quincy snorted. ‘When he comes back from his trip to Dallas he’ll be boot-scootin’ all over the place.’