The Last Groom on Earth (5 page)

She went on prattling about Judy and Bean and how much they had been pining away for Angela and how often they asked for her. Bryce took the pair to be her children, until Angela laughed and said, “You expect me to believe that? The last time I came over to visit, Judy took off like a streak at the sight of me and hung from inside the chimney swinging her tail.”

“Well, that’s because it had been so long since you’d visited her,” Eileen retorted smoothly.

Angela must have caught the astonished look on Bryce’s face because she smiled and said to him, “Judy and Bean are Eileen’s and Max’s cats.”

“Our babies.” Eileen corrected her, looking at Bryce for the first time. Her eyes widened and she shot Angela a look that Bryce couldn’t fathom. “The King of Pentacles!”

“Forget it,” Angela replied tersely and turned back toward their table.

“Now don’t be stubborn,” Eileen told her, following her over to the table and gazing with great interest at Bryce.

Bryce rose politely at her arrival, and Angela introduced them. Bryce noticed that Angela had a rather mulish set to her mouth. He wondered what on earth Eileen was talking about.

“Black hair,” Eileen said significantly to Angela.

“He has gray eyes,” Angela countered, leaving Bryce bewildered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Never mind,” Angela told him. “It’s
not
important.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course it is.” Eileen reached out to shake Bryce’s hand. “I’m so glad Angie brought you to see us.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll fix you two something special,” she said, her dark eyes twinkling. “You all just ignore the menu. It’s so nice when Angela brings a—new person over here.”

“You sound as if you’re my mother,” Angela said irritably.

“Well, why not? Someone’s got to take care of you. Otherwise you’d spend your entire life with your head in the clouds, dreaming up stories and never taking a look at what’s going on around you.” She turned back to Bryce, saying brightly, “And what’s your line of business, Bryce?”

“Give it up, Eileen,” Angela said cryptically. “Bryce is a friend of my parents, and he’s here to help me with a tax problem.”

“Oh.” Eileen’s face fell. “You think that’s what the cards meant? That the King of Pentacles was going to be someone you were working with?”

“Probably. If they meant anything—I don’t think Gloria’s the greatest with the tarot.”

Eileen shrugged and said in a confidential tone to Bryce, “Angela’s much more into palm reading. She doesn’t think the cards are reliable.”

“I’m right,” Angela said. “It depends on who’s doing the reading.”

Bryce watched them, feeling rather like Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Angela glanced at him and, seeing the wary look on his face, began to smile.

“We better stop,” she told Eileen. “Bryce is beginning to think we’re insane.”

He started to make a polite demurral, but Eileen just chuckled, obviously unoffended.

“That’s okay, so does Max. He’s all into alternative health and natural foods, but somehow he can’t see that there are other forces in the world beyond the rational and the tangible.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s something about men. Left brain thinking.”

“Probably,” Angela agreed, casting a teasing grin in Bryce’s direction.

When Eileen left them, Bryce turned to Angela. “Palmistry, huh? I guess I should have figured.”

“Hush. You make it sound like some Gypsy fortune-teller thing.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I regard it as more of a science, really. There’s quite a bit you can tell about a person by the lines and marks on their hands. You trust fingerprinting, don’t you?”

“For identification, yes. I don’t believe that you can look at a person’s fingerprints, though, and tell whether he’s a thief.”

“I didn’t say you could, but the lines on your fingers and in your hands are unique to you, and they tell a lot about you, too.”

“Indeed.” Bryce held out his hand, palm up. “Tell me about my hand, then.”

Angela was a little startled by his willingness to engage in something as “off the beaten path” as palm reading, but she reached over and took his hand in her left hand and bent over the table to peer at it. Bryce noticed how warm and soft her hand was against his skin, smaller than his own hand and gentle in a way that made him feel strangely protective. Bryce liked the touch of her palm, but he ignored it resolutely.

“Well, in general you have the long hand that indicates an air or mental type—a thinker. But your palms are a little more rounded and your lines are deeper, more what people call an action hand or a fire type. So I’d say the two are combined. A thinker, but one who’s also a doer. You see where your fingers are connected to your palm? That’s your finger cast-off. If you ran a line across there, yours would be straight. That’s a strong, even base, you see, so that indicates
you have drive and self-confidence, assurance—even aggressiveness. And your thumb, well, your thumb indicates that you are an independent sort. See how low it’s set on the hand. Also, it’s long, which supports the cast-off of the fingers—it says you’re tenacious and work hard to achieve your goals.” She looked up at him. “How am I doing so far?”

He smiled. “I sound great. But, after all, you know me. You’re aware that I own my own business, which would indicate drive and hard work, etc. You could probably tell me those things without even looking at my hand.”

Angela quirked one eyebrow disapprovingly. “Skeptics always have another answer for anything you show them.”

“Maybe that’s because there is one.”

She looked back down at his hand. “Here is your life line. Quite long and steady, although there are some little lines shooting off here at the beginning, and an island, too, indicating, I would think, problems when you were younger.” She looked up quizzically. “In your childhood, perhaps?”

Bryce shrugged, his face unreadable. “Go on.”

“Well, your head line is also strong and firm, going straight across your palm.” She drew a finger along the middle line of his hand, and the movement sent a shock of pleasure running through Bryce, startling in its intensity.

He looked up at Angela’s face, searching for some indication that she had felt the same electric sensation. But Angela was going calmly on. “This indicates clear, logical thought, but also a lack of imagination.” She held up her own hand, pointing to the middle line of the three major ones. “See how
mine curves downward…that indicates imagination.”

“That’s something even I knew about you,” he said pointedly.

“Well, here’s something that surprises me, at least,” she told him. “You have a well-developed mound of Venus.” She stroked her thumb across the fleshy pad at the base of his thumb. “That’s indicative of a passionate nature.”

She looked up at him, and their gazes clung for a moment. Unconsciously she rubbed her thumb across the mound, and fire shot through Bryce at her touch. His mind went to the other night in his hotel room and the way she had melted at his kiss, suddenly hot and pliable in his arms. His breath grew a trifle uneven at the memory. He could see in Angela’s eyes that she was remembering the moment, too. An impulse to kiss her seized him. He wondered what she would do. His hand turned, taking hers. He leaned forward across the table.

U
nconsciously Angela started to lean toward Bryce. Then she realized what she was doing, and she jerked her hand away, blushing. She could not imagine why she had acted the way she did. She was too honest to pretend to herself that there had been nothing sexually teasing in her touch. She didn’t know why heat had risen in her when she took Bryce’s hand or why she had felt impelled to stroke his palm. But she had seen the reaction in his eyes, had felt it in herself, and she knew that she was playing with fire. The other night should have taught her something, she knew; she was not naive or stupid. She had invited Bryce to dinner because of the upwelling of guilt and embarrassment in her for the way she had treated him when she was younger, not for any ulterior sexual motive.
Surely not.
Her motives had been perfectly innocent, even when she picked up his hand to read.
Hadn’t they?

She wondered what Bryce thought of her. She had sensed that he had been about to kiss her. She supposed she could not blame him if he had thought that she wanted him to. Perhaps he had even assumed that that had been the reason for her invitation. She sneaked a look at him.

He didn’t appear angry. He had drawn back and was watching her without expression. Perhaps she was wrong and he had not meant to kiss her at all.

“I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly. “I’m sure you must think it’s foolish. It’s just something fun to do at parties and things, anyway.”

“Of course.”

Angela felt terribly self-conscious. She looked down at her hands and searched her mind for something to talk about, something that had absolutely nothing to do with sex.

Finally Bryce spoke, and she sagged a little with relief. “Tell me something.”

“All right.”

“Precisely why did you see fit to play those jokes on me fifteen years ago?”

“Oh.” Angela could feel the heat of embarrassment rising in her face again. This was not a subject she relished talking about, either. “Well…” She drew a deep breath and let it out. “Frankly, I resented you.”

Bryce’s eyebrows shot up. “What? Are you joking?”

“No. Why would I?”

“But why would you have resented me? You had everything. A beautiful home, great parents, money, looks.”

“Looks!” Angela chuckled. “I wore braces and had wild red hair that stuck out in all directions and I was chubby.”

“The potential was there—the smile, the eyes.”

“Perhaps. But I definitely felt like a perfect mess.” She shrugged. “I resented you because my parents liked you. You were like them. You understood them, and they understood you. I was such a disappointment to them, and I knew it. I couldn’t be like them, and yet I felt so bad and guilty because I couldn’t. So I took my feelings out on you. That’s why I tormented you.”

Bryce stared at her blankly. “Why? I don’t understand. You weren’t a disappointment to your parents. How could you have thought they liked me better than you? You’re their daughter. They love you.”

“Oh, I know they love me,” Angela said with a grimace. “And we get along pretty well now, since I’ve made a success of my business and I can talk to them about things like profit margins and sales figures and all. But I was never like them. I think my mother looked at me the same way that mother duck must have looked at the ugly duckling—where did this kid come from? How can she be mine? What am I going to do with her?”

Bryce smiled fractionally. “I think all parents feel that way sometimes.”

“Not sometimes. Always. I was a changeling in that family. My sister was just like Mom and Dad. She learned numbers almost as soon as she learned words. I don’t mean just knew the names of the numbers… she understood the concept. She could do addition and subtraction before she started school.
I
was never even in the advanced math class. Jenny was the
model student. She listened in class, did her homework, finished her tests before anyone else. I was a straggler, a daydreamer, a talker. All I was really interested in was recess and summer.”

Bryce chuckled. “Your daydreaming paid off well for you.”

“I know. I can look back on it and see that, but it doesn’t change how I felt at the time. Stupid and weird, a cuckoo in the nest.”

“And you felt I was trying to take your place.”

Angela nodded. “It was childish. But there you were, talking their language, understanding them,
shining
for them. And there I was, the kid who never thought in clear, straight lines, who never came up with the practical solution to anything. I was the kind who’d make up these crazy, convoluted inventions that would take twice as long to do something than if you just did it normally.”

“I wasn’t really trying to take your place, you know,” Bryce said softly when she paused. “I was just trying to make one of my own.”

“It
is
childish to continue holding a grudge.” Angela smiled at him. Strangely enough, she felt something almost like friendship toward Bryce at the moment. Even though they had been on opposite sides of it, they had shared an experience. And he was being very understanding, even compassionate, about it, something she never would have dreamed of the man who had always seemed to her to have the emotions of a rock.

She stuck out her hand toward him. “Shall we forgive and forget?”

“Kiss and make up?” he agreed, smiling and reaching out to shake her hand.

The sexual connotation of his words struck them both, and the moment turned awkward again. Bryce’s eyes went involuntarily to Angela’s mouth. Their hands dropped to their sides without ever touching. Bryce cleared his throat and looked away.

Fortunately their food came soon, and they were able to bridge the uncomfortable moment by starting on their dishes. Eileen had outdone herself. She sent out first an appetizer of stuffed mushrooms, followed by a salad of all the latest trendy greens and, finally, the main course of pasta and vegetables tossed with a tangy, zesty sauce. It was accompanied by a loaf of hot whole wheat bread and a pot of sweet homemade butter.

After Bryce’s first tentative bite, his eyebrows rose in appreciative surprise. “Why, this is delicious!”

“What did you think?” Angela asked indignantly. “That I’d take you someplace with bad food?”

“No. I just—well, I never imagined a vegetarian dish could taste this good.”

Angela made a face at him. “Philistine.”

“Sorry. I suppose I am.” He smoothed the pale butter over the dark bread and took a bite. “Mmm. But you and Eileen have made a believer of me. I think the bread is even better than the pasta. What do you call this dish, anyway?”

“I don’t know. I imagine it’s one of Eileen’s spur-of-the-moment concoctions. Maybe she’ll name it Bryce’s Rotini after you.”

“Or perhaps the King of Pentacles’ Rotini.”

Angela chuckled. “Could be.”

It was strange, she thought, but she was actually enjoying Bryce Richards’s company. Perhaps he wasn’t so bad, after all Maybe all these years she had
let her own insecurity influence her against him. Maybe one could be a number-juggler and still be all right. After all, her sister, Jenny, was a fun person once you got her off mathematical equations.

“Tell me something,” she said, leaning forward. “What do you like to do? In your spare time, I mean.”

Bryce looked at her as if she had spoken in a foreign language. “What do you mean?”

“I mean your spare time. Your activities. Hobbies. Whatever.”

“Oh. Well, actually, the last few years I haven’t had a lot of spare time. I’ve been busy getting the business off the ground.”

“And now? I presume it’s flying now.”

“Yes. But I still work a lot.”

“So all you do is work?”

“No.” Bryce looked offended. “I, uh, I go to dinners, parties, things like that.”

“With clients?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t count. Something you do for fun.”

“I work out sometimes at the club. And I run.”

Angela rolled her eyes expressively.

“The opera.” Bryce looked pleased with himself. “I went to the opera two weeks ago.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Of course. It was very…” He paused for a long moment, then grinned. “Boring, actually. I would have fallen asleep if they hadn’t been singing so loud.”

Angela chuckled.

“But I’m not completely inert socially,” he protested. “I do date. I’ve been to movies and…that sort of thing.”

“What was the last movie you saw?”

“Uh, actually, I—”

“That’s what I thought. You need to loosen up. All work and no play and all that stuff.”

He smiled faintly. “I’m afraid I’m not the type.”

“To enjoy himself? Nonsense. Everyone should have something fun to do, an avocation that takes them away from work. Something light, with no redeeming value. That’s what keeps you young and healthy.”

“I thought it was food like this that did that.”

“That, too. But you have to nourish your spirit, as well. Did you know that laughter actually induces healthy responses in your body?” She brightened. “Hey! Why don’t we go to a club? There’s a nice jazz bar not too far from here.”

“I have work to do,” Bryce replied automatically.

Angela grimaced. “It’s Friday night. And it’s almost ten o’clock. Nobody stays in their office till ten on a Friday.”

“They do when they have a client who’s in severe trouble.”

“For Heaven’s sake.” Angela waved away his remark. “Your client releases you from your obligation tonight. Trust me, the problem will still be there tomorrow.”

“That kind of attitude is what’s gotten you into trouble.”

“Don’t be such an old poop. Come on, I insist.” Angela jumped up and reached over to take his hand and pull him out of his chair.

Bryce found he couldn’t keep from smiling back at Angela and standing up. He supposed he should insist on returning to the office and getting the work done, but he found himself reluctant to bring the evening
to a close. He didn’t really want to return to the office and work by himself. Besides, there was something very pleasantmore than pleasant, actually—about having her hand in his, pulling him along.

They walked through the empty restaurant to the front counter, where Eileen, through with her job, was sitting with Max, chatting. She turned and smiled expansively. “Did you enjoy your meal?”

“It was wonderful.” Angela rhapsodized about the food for a few minutes while Eileen and Max beamed. “You’re absolutely the best.”

There was a small argument over who would pay their bill as both Bryce and Angela pulled out their credit cards. Eventually Angela won, insisting that she had asked him to come and that she had the better business excuse to take it off her taxes.

“You should understand that,” she told him dryly.

“I do. I’m glad you remember to take the deductions.”

“Honestly, Bryce, I’m not an idiot.” Angela glared at him.

He grinned. “Just teasing.”

“Isn’t she sweet?” Eileen said to Bryce while Angela was busy paying the check.

Angela, listening to her, chuckled. “Don’t try to get that past Bryce. He knew me when I was twelve. I used to play mean tricks on him.”

“That doesn’t count. All teenage girls play mean tricks, especially on boys.”

“Especially Angela,” Bryce added.

Angela responded with a grimace.

Undeterred, Eileen went on, “We never would have made it without Angie, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

Eileen nodded emphatically. “It’s true. We started on a shoestring. I mean, ‘undercapitalized’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. Angela was just one of our customers, but when she heard that we were about to go under, she gave us the money we needed to set the restaurant up right. And not a word about income projections and security and all that stuff like the banks that turned us down.”

Angela laughed. “Don’t tell Bryce that. He’ll be on my case for such poor business practices.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m sure he understands the difference between a warm heart and stupidity.”

“Why, thank you.” Bryce nodded gravely at Eileen and shot Angela a so-there look.

“Anyway,” Angela went on, “it wasn’t just kindness. I’d eaten here, remember. I knew how well your business would do if it was given the chance to get off the ground.”

“Maybe so, but you were the only one willing to give us the chance.” Eileen beamed at Angela.

Angela gave her friend a hug, promising to call her soon, and they left. The night was balmy and they strolled in a leisurely manner to Angela’s car. It wasn’t until they reached the car and separated that Bryce realized that he had been holding Angela’s hand. A little unsettled, he slid into the low seat of the sports car and looked across at Angela. Somehow or other, around Angela he didn’t quite act like himself, and that bothered Bryce.

He didn’t like things that were unpredictable, and he knew that there was little predictability about Angela. He ought to avoid her like the plague. He should go back to the office right away, whether he actually did any work or not. Yet he found himself not saying
a word as Angela pulled out into the street and headed away from the office.

Angela zoomed up to the first traffic signal and stopped. As they sat waiting for the light to change, she casually picked up the credit card receipt from the restaurant, which was sitting on top of her purse and stuck it into a pocket in the car door.

Bryce’s brow went up. “That’s where you put your business entertainment receipts?”

She nodded, then turned to look at him. “Why?” A tiny smile began to play on her lips. “I suppose you keep yours in a more orderly manner?”

“Of course,” Bryce replied as the light changed and Angela started driving again. “You should jot it down, along with the reason for the dinner. A small notebook is good for that, and you can keep it in the glove compartment of your car, or in your purse or briefcase. Stick the receipt in the back of the notebook, and take it out the next day at the office and put it in its file.”

Angela burst out laughing. “Oh, Bryce. I bet you keep your socks neatly rolled and lined up by color in your dresser drawer.” She laughed even harder when she saw his expression. “God, I was right, wasn’t I?”