Running from Love: A Story for Runners and Lovers (12 page)

But he knew some of them did, or at least had in their past. Fingering the slip of paper Ginny had handed him one hour earlier, he thought about the names she’d scribbled down—Bilbo Williams, Maya Auerbach, Anne Alexander—guests she had targeted as knowing something about how to marry money.

It was time to circulate.

At the next pause in Ginny’s anecdote, he excused himself, got up from the table and strolled outside. The deck of the Indian Harbor Yacht Club was chilly in the late September evening. An easterly breeze drifted in from Long Island Sound, causing the ladies to clutch their wraps and the men to drink more. He peered across the water. Another seven miles beyond Great Captain’s Island lay his hometown of Oyster Bay, New York. It was too far away to see, but it was there: a mirror reflection of Greenwich, Long Island–style.

“Looking for something?” a female voice asked. Turning, he gazed into the most wide-set pair of blue eyes he’d ever seen. They were practically planted on either side of the woman’s head, like a bird’s. The effect was not unattractive.

“Just trying to spot my hometown.”

“Glen Cove?” She knew her geography.

“No. Oyster Bay.”

“Ohh.” The needle on her interest meter went up. “You’re from Oyster Bay?”

“Yes. Once upon a time.” Whatever being from Oyster Bay was supposed to signify, it usually meant something completely different to the questioner than it did to him, the same way it did when he mentioned he was from Greenwich. He hadn’t really moved that far from his hometown. He’d crossed Long Island Sound, but remained in his previous socioeconomic bracket—the one no one believed he really came from—the son of a caretaker and a cook. Now, he was a ghostwriter of how-to-get-rich books. He hoped he’d learn something practical soon, so he could afford to write the books he really wanted to. They’d be about people who were in between two groups, belonging to neither. He knew a lot more about that topic than he did about how to make money.

Returning to the present, he looked at his questioner. Not a single strand of her blonde hair was out of place, although the deck was breezy. “What about you?”

“I grew up near here,” she said, her sky blue eyes shifting slightly.

“Darien, Bridgeport?” He’d have some fun. The two towns he’d mentioned were about as far apart in income strata as his father had been to his employer.

“Somewhere in between,” she replied coolly. She was a smart one. His radar told him she might be on the list Ginny had handed him.

“Jude Farnsworth. How do you do?” He held out his hand to shake hers.

“Anne Alexander.” She gave his hand a firm shake, withdrawing quickly. Turning to lean on the deck railing, she gazed in the same direction as Jude just had.

“What brings you here tonight?” he asked, thanking his lucky stars. She was on Ginny’s list.

“I’m co-chair of LLS for Fairfield County.”

“It’s a great cause,” Jude said, having just learned LLS stood for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society ten minutes earlier.

“It is.”

“Is this your biggest moneymaker of the year?”

“Actually, no.” She looked at him, inquisitively. “There’s a race we send a team to every summer. Our team members collect sponsors. We started it five years ago. Last year, for the first time, they raised more money than our New Year’s Eve benefit did.”

“How long is the race?” Jude asked, his interest piqued.

“It’s a half marathon,” she said, with a groan.

“Sounds like you ran it.”

“Ugh. It was horrendous.”

“Hills?”

“No. Humidity.” She patted her hair as if voicing the word might elicit frizz on her perfectly coiffed head.

Where’s the race and when?”

“Jennings Beach in Fairfield.” She was studying him now. As she flipped a sweep of hair from her face, he saw an ice-blue rock the size of a pigeon’s egg on her ring finger. “End of June.”

“Let me ask you something,” he said.

“Yes?”

“How did you meet your husband?”

“Not at a race, for sure,” she laughed.

“If you don’t mind my asking—where, then?”

She paused, leaning one arm on the railing, her face gazing at some interior place. After a minute, she looked up. “At a polo match.”

“Are you interested in polo?”

“No.”

“Did you watch the match?”

“Vaguely.”

“Who won?”

She shook her head. “No idea.”

“Who was playing?”

“Yale versus UVA.”

“Great recall.” Jude nodded encouragingly.

“The same teams play each other there every year.”

“Where’s there?”

“Do you know the Ox Ridge Hunt Club in Darien?”

“Sure.” He’d vaguely heard of it. He wondered what they hunted there. Most likely the foxes were doing the hunting. Like this one.

“Well, that’s where I met Matt.” She laughed richly, the melody hinting at secrets of a first encounter.

He laughed too, hoping she’d feel comfortable enough to open up further.

“Was he with friends?”

“He was hosting the tent party for Hedge Fund Managers of Connecticut.”

“Were you with friends?”

She giggled. “Yes. Two girlfriends.”

“Big hats?”

“How’d you know?”

“Teeny sun dresses?”

“Are you a metrosexual?”

Now, it was his turn to laugh. “Not really, but I try.”

“Don’t try too hard. Women might think you’re gay,” she advised, giving him a bold once-over.

“Do you?” He hoped he’d disguised his wince. He sure as hell didn’t want to be taken for anything but heterosexual.

“No,” she said flatly.

“Why not?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Did you ask your future husband these kinds of questions at the polo match?”

“No.” Her smile became sly.

“Good girl.” He hoped she wouldn’t find his term condescending. It had just popped out. “So what did you ask him, then?”

“He did the asking.” She looked pleased with the “good girl” appellation. She probably didn’t get called that too often.

“Huh. What did he ask?”

“The usual stuff.”

“Like what?”

“He said something like ‘What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?’”

“So, what did you say?”

“I said, “What’s a boy like you doing at a party like this? And he said, “Running it.”

“Encouraging,” he egged her on.

“Then, I asked if he needed help, and he said, ‘Sure.’ So I spent the next three hours helping him keep the bar stocked, registering guys interested in his club, and making small talk with the Junior League girls following the junior hedge fund guys around.”

“No junior hedge fund girls?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“So it was love at first sight?” Jude asked. He was being cheeky, but this was investigative journalism, after all. He wouldn’t find out what he needed to know for
How to Marry Money
unless he put himself on the line.

A long pause ensued, as a waiter freshened their drinks. On the Gold Coast, drinks were freshened, never refilled. Jude thought she had forgotten his question. Finally, after a sip, she gave him a level look.

“No.”

“Then what was it?” He was pushing the envelope, but he had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

“It was need at first sight.”

“His?”

“His and mine. It’s got to be both if it’s going to go somewhere.”

“What was his, what was yours?”

She looked startled.

“If you don’t mind my asking?” he softened his question.

“You’re pretty intense with party chit-chat. Don’t you think?” she asked, frowning for the first time.

“I’m studying to be a metrosexual. I need to learn how to ask girl stuff.” He looked deep into her eyes as sincerely as he could. “Would you help me out?”

Her frown turned upside down. “You just put your finger on it. He asked me to help him out. Women love that sort of thing. They like to be needed.”

“And why did you need him?”

“That’s for me to know and the rest of the world to find out.”

“Great. Here I am, one small representative from the world at large. Fill me in.”

She sighed, shaking her head, along with her index finger. The gem on her ring finger flashed from ice-blue to yellow-gold in the light of the tiki lamps. Jude thought of Farrah’s eyes.

“Is this off the record?” she asked.

“Strictly.”

She leaned toward him, her voice hushed. “Figure it out yourself, Clueless.”

It took Jude a moment before the words sunk in. By the time he got his sea legs under him, she was gone. Anne Alexander was no dummy. And Jude was going to have a hell of a time trying to research how to marry money. Those who did weren’t divulging.

H
E’D GOTTEN LEANER,
better looking than she’d remembered. Instead of walking toward him, she paused, willing him to come to her. She could afford to hold back. The man was married and another man, who wasn’t, had made the hair on the back of her neck stand up straight less than twenty-four hours earlier. She hadn’t felt passion like that in over three years. It was something.

“Farrah,” Will said quietly, kissing her on the cheek.

She tried not to inhale so as not to be reminded of his scent, which now belonged to another woman.
Beware
her brain warned as her heart quivered in her hand. The human psyche was a mass of illogical contradictions—hers especially.

“Hi.” She would be as tight-lipped as a New England clam.

“Want to sit outside?”

She nodded. The crisp, fall air would keep her cool, calm, collected. She tried not to notice the fine leather of his jacket. It was the sort of jacket she’d like the man she’d marry one day to wear: buttery, Italian, fine.

At a bistro table toward the end of the nearly empty bar area, he pulled out a chair for her.

She sat.

“You look great,” he remarked, his pale blue eyes sweeping her face.

A blush ran down the back of her neck, marking the path Jude’s fingers had taken the evening before. His ministrations had sent blood and oxygen rushing to her head. She didn’t doubt her complexion now sparkled.

“You look like you lost weight,” she said neutrally.

“Yeah. I’m eating better than in my bachelor days. More salmon, less take-out.”

“So what’s up?”

Will frowned. She’d let loose with yet another of those expressions he disliked. If she tried hard enough, she’d unleash as many as possible on him until they bade each other goodbye, mutually fed up. Yet the old feelings were there, an undercurrent between them.

“Well—as I said on the phone—there’s been some new developments.”

“First tell me about the old ones.”

“I thought you didn’t want to know.”

“I don’t but I do.”

“Right.” He smiled, looking at her fondly. “Well, I married in France about two years ago, and we now live in Darien.”

“I know all that. I read your wedding announcement in
The New York Times.
”

“Oh,” he looked startled. “Then you know about my wife’s family.”

“I remember it was an old one. That’s about it.”

“So, it was all fine for awhile then after awhile it wasn’t.”

“Why not?”

“It just began to get—well—you might say, mundane.”

“You mean the honeymoon period wore off.”

“You could say that.”

“So what’s wrong with the next phase?” Not ever having been married, Farrah was only vaguely aware of how the next phase went. But she knew Will well enough to know how he might take to the actual nuts and bolts of living day-in, day-out with another human being.

“Well—nothing terribly, except that it’s very—predictable.”

“Isn’t that one of the comforts of being married?”

“Well, it might be a comfort to some—but to others, it tends to a certain staleness after a time.”

“But don’t you have something to do with whether it becomes stale or stays fresh?”

He shrugged, the pale blue of his eyes looked tired, washed out. “I just hadn’t thought things would turn out this way.”

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with new developments. You’re describing marriage after the honeymoon is over. Everyone gets to that stage, and most people make their peace with it. Why not you?

He pursed his lips, the way she’d seen him do so many times. He was an aesthete, a snob. She’d worshipped at the altar of his good taste.
Not anymore,
she told herself.

“Well, when Alexandra went to get her name changed on her social security card, something came up.”

“What?”

“It turns out we’re not legally married.”

“You’re not??” Her heart stood still.

“We had our wedding in France, but we never took out a marriage license here. We didn’t think we had to. Turns out we did.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying under U.S. jurisdiction we’re not legally married.”

“So why not get the license and make it legal?”

“Well that’s just it. We discussed it, and both of us realized that this might be a good moment to think about whether this is what we really want to do.”

“You mean what you thought you already did? Get married?”

“Yes.” He looked strained. “You see that mix-up might have happened for a reason.”

“I’m sure it did.”
But what did the reason have to do with her? Nothing, unless she wanted it to.

“So—I wanted to ask your advice.”

“I’m still not getting this. You want my advice on whether to really marry the woman you thought you already married?”

“No. I want your advice on whether I should take this opportunity to end the relationship, since it isn’t really going anywhere.”

“How would I know, Will?” She felt her voice rise. “I have no idea what’s gone wrong between you and your wife. But what you’re telling me sounds like what happens in married life, period.”

“Well, I wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon.”

“Welcome to the real world.”

“What would you know about the real world when it comes to marriage?”

“Not much, since you didn’t give me the opportunity to find out,” she shot back sharply. Looking around, she saw the bartender glance their way. Fortunately, no one else was around.

“Well what if I did?”