Sapphire and Shadow (A Woman's Life) (28 page)

He grew more serious as his eyes washed over her. “Not even once.”

It was her turn to grin. Talking to Joshua was easy. It had always been easy. She didn’t know why she had been afraid to come. “I need a job, Joshua,” she said without preamble.

There were a hundred questions he wanted to ask, a thousand pieces of her life he wanted reconstructed for him.

But not now. She didn’t need probing now. She needed peace more than he needed to hear. He could sense it. He answered the only way he knew she needed to be answered. “Come work for me.”

It was too simple, too easy. And too wonderful. “Doing what?”

“I could use an assistant.” Johanna glanced toward the back office and saw Kathy moving around. He saw her line of vision. “That’s my secretary, Kathy. She’s a ball of fire, but she doesn’t know anything about art except that she likes the color blue.”

Blue was
her
favorite color, too. “It’s a start.”

“I need more than that around here. I’ve got a showing Thursday evening.”

“Yours?”

He shook his head. “The wild-eyed man who almost ran over you on the way out.”

“He did seem preoccupied.” She laughed.

“Scared out of his mind is more like it. He’s going to be a basket
-
case by Thursday night. He can’t make up his mind whether this means nothing to him or everything in the world.”

“I think I know the feeling,” she commiserated.

“I’ll need someone to hold his hand Thursday night. Figuratively and maybe literally.” He held up his hands. “As you can see, I’m not equipped for that.”

His hands were large and capable and reminded her of Tommy. Artistic hands didn’t have to be small and delicate to work miracles. She had seen wonderful things come from Joshua’s hands, she thought, paintings with such feeling that they made her want to cry. She wanted to argue with him that he should have his painting displayed in a point of prominence, not hers, but she decided that was an argument for another time, when she had entrenched herself here.

She had already decided to take the job.

“Is he any good?” she asked.

He took her hand and led her over to three paintings he had just hung up last night. “Here, why don’t you judge for yourself.”

He watched her as she studied them, watched her for the sheer joy of being able to look at her once again, to have her back in his life. This time, he had already decided, things were going to be different. He wasn’t that stumbling boy, tripping over his own feet any more.

“Mac,” Kathy called, “it’s Mrs. Regis again.”

Joshua put a restraining hand on Johanna’s shoulder. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll only be a minute and then we can grab a bite to eat next door and negotiate.”

Johanna nodded, but knew there was nothing to negotiate. Whatever he wanted to pay her, she’d take. She needed the feel of being around an old friend, at least until she got her bearings. She needed to feel productive. And Joshua had always been so encouraging. He had faith in her art even when she had wavered. It had been he who had warned her not to throw away her talent, her gift, when she told him that she was going to marry Harry.

She roamed around the gallery as she waited for him to return, acquainting herself with the works. Some made her smile, some stirred feelings, none left her untouched. He had a good eye for choosing, she thought. He didn’t need her. But he would, she vowed. She’d make herself indispensable to him and the gallery in time.

For the first time in years, Johanna savored hope.

Chapter Twenty-nine

“This probably isn’t what you’re used to,” Joshua said as he watched Johanna slide along the wide bench. He sat down on the chair opposite her. The tiny French restaurant was hectic and crammed, with two rows of tables set up to utilize long benches running along the wall on both sides of the room. The tables were meant for two, yet there was a feeling that everyone in the room was with everyone else. Yet since one could feel alone in a crowd, Johanna had a sense of being alone with Joshua. The constant din, the motion of patrons coming and going, of waitresses serving people around them isolated Johanna, made her feel alone. That was what she liked about New York. If you wanted, you could have it all. The absolute privacy of anonymity, provided by the masses, or the intimate company of a few good friends.

Surrounding them was the delicious aroma of an array of crepes baking in the oven at the back of the restaurant. If the word “homey” could possibly apply to a restaurant in the heart of the city, it applied to this one.

Johanna thought of the countless lunches she had endured in Beverly Hills, of the meaningless conversations she had listened to and taken part in at Spago. “No,” she smiled, absently tracing the lines of a square on the red check table cloth, “it’s not.” She looked up, her eyes touching his. “This is much nicer.”

He didn’t know if she was being polite, or truthful, but her answer pleased him. “Do you want to pick up where we left off in London and continue catching up on fifteen years worth of life, or do you want me to treat you as a stunning new employee who just waltzed into my life this afternoon?”

She laughed as she sipped the water with appreciation. She had sampled water all over the world and there was nothing to compare with the water in New York. She grinned, both at the thought and at his words. “The latter?” She raised her eyebrows hopefully.

He would have rather at least a middle ground, but he had patience. Probably more than his share, he realized. That was both his blessing and his curse. “As you wish, Mrs. Whitney.”

“Not that new.”

He covered her hand with his own. His blue eyes softened and she saw something there, something she didn’t want to see. She thought it was pity. “Johanna, it’s good to see you again.”

The waitress, dressed in a wide peasant skirt and blouse, approached to take their order and Johanna breathed a silent sigh of relief. She didn’t want pity or affection. She wasn’t entirely certain what it was she wanted. Probably just to pull her life together and make the best of the mess she found herself in. Time alone to reconstruct the phoenix and rise out of the ashes again, she thought wryly. And rise up she would, she promised herself. Stronger, this time, and never, ever allow herself to be in a position to be hurt again.

“What’ll you have?” he asked as she skimmed the menu.

“I didn’t know that there were so many different things they could do with crepes.”

“You’d be surprised,” he grinned broadly. His grin was wide and guileless, like a young boy’s. There were traces of mischief there.

She remembered how infectious his grin was. It was impossible to stay depressed around Joshua. He had always made her laugh, always made her feel good about everything. Maybe, she thought, that was what had ultimately brought her here to him. To get a little of the good feelings that he could create and use them as a salve against the blackness that still existed within her. Someday, she’d be able to do it on her own. Right now, she’d use what she could.

“I’ll have the ham and swiss crepes, please.” She folded her menu and surrender it to the petite waitress.

“Two. And a bottle of chablis, please.”

He would have eaten beef jerky right now and not noticed. He still couldn’t get over the fact that she was here, sitting a few feet away from him. What had made her uproot her life? Was it the scandal? No, the Johanna he knew wasn’t like that. She would have stuck with Harry through it all. It must have been Harry who had pushed her away. Yes, that would have gone along with what he had read about the man.

Unconsciously, Joshua clenched his hands into fists as they rested on the table. He had always disliked Harry, now more than ever.

Johanna saw his fingers curl into themselves and wondered what he was thinking. His expression remained unchanged.
You’ve gotten more secretive than when I knew you, Joshua,
she thought.
But then, haven’t we all
? The thought made her feel sad.

“Is this just a temporary move?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

She shook her head slowly, the low light that filtered through the smoky room caught fire in her hair, making it almost silver. He longed to run his hands through it. He kept them where they were and tried to relax. There would be a time for things, but it wasn’t now. Now was for listening.

“This is for good.” She hesitated, then reminded herself that this was Joshua she was talking to. Joshua who had never laughed at her even when others might have. “I wanted to paint again.”

He nodded, pleased that she had returned to it. “I always thought you had talent.”

She toyed with her glass instead of drinking. “You were always nice.”

“True, but I also have a good eye for talent. That’s how I came to Mrs. Regis’s attention.”

“Mrs. Regis?” How foolish to think that nothing had changed with Joshua. He was probably engaged, married, or on his umpteen relationship. He had always been so endearingly gregarious.

“The art gallery’s prime patron.”

He allowed himself a little sip of wine before he continued. Sitting here, opposite her, made his mouth dry. God, she was beautiful, even more beautiful than he had remembered. The ache he thought was long gone surfaced, demanding and urgent. It cost him a great deal to go on talking as if he wasn’t sitting here, wanting her.

“Actually, if it wasn’t for dear Mrs. Regis, I’d still be trying to hawk my own paintings somewhere around Washington Square. Remember, when we did that?” He did. He remembered every single detail with utmost clarity.

Her eyes lit up as the long-ago memory returned. “You told me to dress up like Alice Faye and sing I’m Rose of Washington Square,” she said, fondly remembering when they had seen the old movie together.

“Something had to pull them in and the paintings I had weren’t doing it.”

“They were very good paintings,” Johanna said in a voice that was reminiscent of the past. She sounded, he thought, less world-weary for a moment, as if she had dropped the burden of the emotional luggage she was carrying. He loved her loyalty. And damn it all, he still loved her, after all this time. “The people there just had no taste, that’s all.”

“You always were loyal.” Except when it mattered most, he thought. But then he couldn’t have blamed her. She hadn’t known. Would it have mattered to her if she had? Would she have stayed? It was something he intended to find out this time around.

He saw her face cloud slightly and knew somehow he had said the wrong thing.

“Yes, like a faithful puppy dog.” She raised the glass to her lips and took a long, healthy sip. “That was always my shortcoming.”

“Loyalty is never a shortcoming.”

“It is if you use it to bury yourself, to chain yourself to something that’s dead and gone.”

He had promised himself not to push only a few short minutes ago. His promise only lived long enough to wait while the entrees were served and the waitress left once again. “Did he hurt you that badly?”

She tensed. Sympathy would reopen wounds and she wanted them sealed. “Joshua, I didn’t come here to unload my problems—“

“Then we’re no longer friends?”

“Of course we are.”

“You always used to tell me what was bothering you,” he said patiently.

“The things that bothered a nineteen-year-old silly girl are light years away from the woman you see here.”

“You were never silly.”

His smile made her feel warm and that made her uncomfortable. She didn’t want warmth, she wanted only to work. Her romance with Tommy had been short, sweet and healing. But it also had its limitations. She had known the ground rules ahead of time, had known that there was no future and in knowing, couldn’t make plans, couldn’t make dreams that would ultimately crumble in her hand. Something in Joshua’s eyes told her that she didn’t have the grace of that kind of limitation here.

She switched directions. “Are you married, Joshua?”

It came out of the blue and he wondered why she was trying so hard to divert the conversation away from her. “To my work. To the gallery.”

“No girlfriend in the wings?”

He thought of the women he knew, the pleasant, temporarily satisfying merges of bodies that lasted the night or the week. “No.”

She kept her eyes on her plate, afraid to look into his eyes, afraid of what she would see there. “How is it that someone as wonderful as you isn’t spoken for?”

“The obvious joke about ‘just lucky, I guess’ doesn’t apply. I’ve always wanted a home and family.”

This time, she did look up. She heard a trace of loneliness in his voice. “Yes, I know.”

“But there was never anyone who qualified.”

“Flunked the test, did they?” she teased.

“Something like that.”

None of them were you, he added silently. It wasn’t that he was obsessed with her so much as she had provided him with a guideline, a ruler that no one else he had met afterwards could match up to. Yes, she was beautiful, but it wasn’t the kind of ice beauty that he had seen time and again. Hers was the kind that lingered on the mind and left a warm, pulsating appreciation. It brought sunshine into his life.

But more important than beauty, she had compassion. There wasn’t a person in need that she could turn her back on, even when they were going to college. She continued to have a soft heart. He had followed her life through the magazine articles. She was always heading some charitable fundraiser. It seemed to Joshua that she looked like she could use a little charity herself right now, of a comforting nature.

“Do you have a place to stay?”

“Jocelyn and I are staying at the Plaza Hotel. Jocelyn’s my—“

“Daughter, yes I know.” He saw the question enter her eyes.

“I didn’t introduce you in London, did I?” No, she had been with Tommy at the time. Mary had taken Jocelyn out for the day, she recalled.

“You forget, I can read.”

She nodded and pushed away her plate. Her appetite was gone. “The newspaper stories.”

All this was causing her pain, he thought, damning Harry to hell. “How serious is it, really? For Harry.”

She wondered why he had singled it out that way. She hadn’t told him about her pending divorce. He probably guessed, though. He could always read her like a book. “He could go to jail.”