The Penny Pinchers Club (29 page)

“Where did you get that?”

“Keith stole it when he was fifteen.” Keith was Liam’s younger brother, the token reprobate of the family.

“That’s not all he stole.” He riffled through the drawer for more. “Ashtrays, towels, can openers, corkscrews, glasses. Entire furniture sets. And you know what gets me? My mother just took the stuff and never questioned why the new kitchen stool said ‘Windrift,’ or how come all our glasses bore the names of local bars and restaurants.”

The late Mrs. Novak would get along with Wade. “Did she raid Dumpsters, too?”

There was a
pop!
as he removed the cork. “Of course. She had eight kids. You don’t think she was dumb enough to buy new, do you?” He poured out two glasses and handed me one. “A toast.”

“To Springer’s and your mother.”

“To Springer’s and my mother and . . . to what we were and what we’ll always be to each other. How’s that?”

“The rude half of me wants to say corny, but the polite half says it was touching.”

“Always did prefer the rude half of you. To rudeness!”

“Hear, hear.”

We clinked glasses and Liam leaned against the wall, taking in my outfit—jeans, ribbed black turtleneck, modest silver hoop earrings. “You’re more gorgeous than ever, Kat.”

I zeroed in on my wine, unsure of how to respond. He was making an advance, had thrown the ball into my court, and how I returned it could very well determine what happened with us that night.

“Music to the ears of any middle-aged woman,” I quipped.

“You’re not middle aged. That kind of attitude is dangerous, you know. You have to think young, vibrant!”

He inclined his head toward the living room. “Come on. Let’s make a fire and then head to the beach. I’ll loan you one of my coats.”

I sat on the old red couch with its ugly crocheted throw as Liam messed with the woodstove. Underneath his navy cashmere sweater and white cotton T-shirt, I could make out a still strong back. The Novaks had always been an athletic bunch—football in the fall, skiing in the winter, sailing in the summer—and it was paying off with the reward of a fine physique later in life.

What had happened with his marriage? He was so handsome and easy to be with, so big on family. How could a man this noble, this loving, be alone?

“Have you ever read any Ayn Rand?” I asked.

He threw in a handful of kindling. “Geesh. What makes you ask a scary question like that?”

“I was just wondering.” I took a sip of wine. “I read something about her today and I’ve been thinking about her ‘superiority of the individual’ crap and it occurred to me that maybe men, when they get to a certain age, have to test if they can be out on their own. You know, one last adventure in the wilderness before they surrender to hearth and home.”

He got the fire going and closed the door halfway. “Are these the kinds of intellectual conversations you have with Griff?” He joined me on the couch, close. “Analyzing Ayn Rand.”

“Unfortunately, no. That’s the problem.”

He arched his eyebrows. “So, my hunch was right. All is not paradise between my former love and her current one.”

“Do you honestly think I’d be here if it was?”

“I suppose not.” He put his wine down on an old steamer chest that served as a coffee table. “I kind of had an inkling when you didn’t call Griff after your arrest. If I’d been your husband, I would have dropped what I’d been doing and come to your rescue in a heartbeat, even if I was in D.C.—or, hell, China.”

I know
.

Leaning his elbow on the back of the couch, preparing for a tear- jerker, he said, “What, exactly, is this dire problem?”

“Ayn Rand, like I said. I think he’s spent so many years teaching Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan and their Objectivist tripe that he might be starting to believe it.” I paused, debating how much to confide. “After this book is researched and Laura’s out of high school, he’s leaving me.”

Liam didn’t move a muscle. “He told you that?”

“No. I’ve found emails.”

“Shit.” The room warmed and he pushed up his sleeves before going to the fire and adding another log. “Sorry to hear that, Kat. All I can say is, marriage is tough. Having been through a nasty divorce, I’m here to tell you, avoid it if you can.”

“At least you and Paige never fought over money, I bet.”

“That was one issue we were spared, yes.”

“Did you know money is the leading cause of divorce in America? Not infidelity, like most people think. It’s okay if your spouse screws around on you, just watch out if they run up the credit cards.”

“Trust me, there are worse things than money that can ruin a marriage.” He gave the fire a couple of stiff pokes. “There’s coldness and cruelty and manipulation.”

“I assume we’re talking about Paige.”

He hung up the poker and thrust his hands in his pockets, his face red from the stove. “She was my wife and I feel guilty trashing her behind her back, but it was a nightmare, Kat. Her hair-trigger temper. Her need to control. It was as though every move I made was a mistake and she was there to record it and hold it to my face.” Turning to the fire, he added, “I hated coming home.”

Her need to control, I thought.
Well, there’s a switch
. Seemed Liam had finally met his match.

“All I ever wanted when I signed up for marriage,” he continued, “was love, companionship, family, and some regular sex. She didn’t have to be the perfect hostess or a champion equestrian. She just had to be . . . nice.”

We nodded, understanding. This was a vulnerable moment, a thin spot, in our lives. By either chance or the vagaries of middle age or divine intervention, we had reunited at our weakest states and I had better step carefully.

Reading my mind, Liam said, “I have to watch out that I don’t take advantage of you tonight.”

“As if you could.”

He grinned. “That’s what I’ve missed the most. You weren’t just lovely and sexy. You were my best friend. You could take it as easily as you could dish it out.”

Ditto,
I thought. Already, despite our stated reservations, we were getting way too complimentary with each other, especially since we seemed to be treading on that rosy path to nostalgia.

“You know what, Liam? I think we could do with a walk on the beach.”

Fresh air and a bracing breeze sounded good on paper, or maybe in a personal ad, but was nasty business in practice. Liam pulled a sweater over my head and zippered me into a windbreaker. But the wind whipped to my bones as my feet sank in the cold sand and he steered me to the breaker for shelter.

“Too bad we don’t have fireworks,” he yelled over the ocean’s roar. “I always loved setting off Roman candles at night over the ocean.”

“In this wind, they’d dive-bomb us,” I yelled back.

Once hunkered down amidst the craggy rocks, however, the wind, even the rain, seemed to disappear. I brushed back my hair, already thick with salt and sand, and said, “Okay. You brought me down to the Shore for a reason and I’m guessing it doesn’t have a thing to do with redoing your family beach house.”

“You’re right. And maybe I ought to lay it on the line.”

“You’d better, and fast. It’s freezing.”

He took my hand and covered it with both his hands. “Here’s the situation. When you started working for me, I resolved to put the past behind us.”

“Me too.”

“But, that’s been getting more and more difficult to do. I keep thinking about you, Kat. We get along so well together. It’s so easy and natural. I can’t stop asking what went wrong.”

I leaned into him, partly for warmth, mostly because I wanted to feel him close to me. “This is really dicey territory we’re entering.”

“I know. And you don’t have to answer me if you don’t want to.”

“I do. I must, especially if we’re going to be working together in the future.” I stopped to think. What I was about to say had to be said carefully and with consideration not only to Liam, but to Griff and our marriage. “The truth is, Liam, that when I was twenty-three, I knew what went wrong, and now, two decades later . . . ”

I tried putting myself back to when I was twenty-three and so madly in love with Griff that I couldn’t help relating every simple act to him. The coffee I drank was the coffee Griff preferred. The book I read, he’d suggested. My favorite shirt was his favorite shirt, the one he casually commented made me look hot. The music I listened to was the stuff he liked. The food . . . the newspapers . . . the politics . . .

Gradually, I remembered how great it was. The electricity and anticipation of seeing him again. His intelligence and sly wit. All of them used to make me swoon. And all of them I’d come to take for granted.

“Nothing went wrong,” I said. “It was simply that I met Griff and fell in love because Griff was . . . Griff.”

Liam laughed. “I see,” he said knowingly. “Then it really wasn’t me, it was him.”

“In a way, yes.”

“Then that’s good.” He patted my hand. “It makes me feel so much better. You were in love, Kat. Really, truly in love with him because true love can’t be described or quantified. You can’t say I love so-and-so because she’s got a mean serve or shares the same conservative values.”

I noticed he used the past tense; he said I
was
in love with Griff.

“And that’s what you used to say about Paige.”

“When I met her, she fit all my criteria. I didn’t even know I
had
criteria. But suddenly it was like I had a mental checklist. Physically fit? Check. Catholic? Check. Republican? Check. It made committing myself to someone after you so much easier. Just the facts, ma’am.”

I let go of his hand. “Hold on. You’re a
Republican
?”

“Used to be. In my tax bracket, it’s inevitable.” He took back my hand. “But you know what I used to say when people like my mother asked why I wanted to marry you?”

“You said I had the smokingest body
ev-er
.”

“I said, because she’s Kat. That was all I could come up with. She’s Kat.”

“And here I thought it was because I was the spitting image of the Madonna that hung over your grandmother’s bed.”

“Oh, yeah. There was that. That was creepy.” He ran his hand up my arm, slowly, sensuously.

The waves crashing nearby sounded far away, like when you hold a shell to your ear. “We’re stuck,” I said. “You know perfectly well neither of us is going to make a pass at the other.”

“Not when you’re still in love with your husband, no. I’m a cad, but I’m not dumb enough to let you break my heart again. He might be planning to leave you. And for that I’m sorry since it’s obvious you’re mad for the guy. Still.”

Liam said out loud what I’d been too frightened to admit. For all my planning and preparations, including the meeting with Toni Feinzig, despite our money woes and near bankruptcy, despite his emails to Bree, I loved my husband. I realized that the day the
Princeton Pen
story appeared, and I knew it the moment his plane took off for Alaska and I was alone in my house without him.

I loved him and didn’t want to be with Liam or anyone else.

“And if I didn’t love Griff?”

He pulled me to him, pressing my head to his chest. “Then I would make mad, passionate love to you for days on end until you forgot him entirely.”

“You think you could do that . . . at your age?”

“Wise guy.” He kissed the top of my head. “I think I could manage.”

He stroked my hair as I let myself sink into his warm chest, his heart beating steadily under my ear, the comforting smell of his cashmere sweater mixing with his aura of solid responsibility. Why is it that men who exert restraint are so much sexier than their opposites?

I sighed, safe and comfortable. Glad to know sex was off the table. Well, partly glad.

There was a strange peace, I’d learned from my months of penny pinching, that came from tying one’s self to the mast while negotiating the swirling seas of desire. Whether it was lust for a luxurious leather sofa or a charming ex, virtue had its own rewards. Or was that membership? Never could quite remember.

“So where does that leave us?” I said, fingering the hem of his sweater. His style was impeccable. “Besides stuck, I mean.”

“Friends? Allies? Admirers? I don’t know.”

“Or perhaps,” I said, everything coming together, “there’s a way for us to stay in each other’s lives, happily.”

“I’m listening.”

“It involves money.”

“Yeah? Show me anything worthwhile in life that doesn’t.”

So I did.

 

At first, Liam insisted on just giving me a blank check for $10,000 which he dismissed as “a minor fee.” But then, I was able to convince him he would benefit from our arrangement the most if he had creative input, too.

“You know you’re better at design than I am,” I said, tossing the salad in his mother’s antique wooden bowl. “If you hadn’t had a bunch of He-Man brothers and a father who’d order you to bench-press something if he heard you so much as comment on the drapes, you’d definitely have gone into interior decorating rather than business.”

He acted doubtful as he gently flipped flounder filets at the stove. “You know, it’s not like I work at Burger King, Kat. I’m responsible for thousands of employees in over one hundred countries. People depend on me to keep the company at its best. They depend on me for their livelihood.”

Which was why his iPhone had gone off fourteen times this evening until we both agreed to turn off our cells.

“I’m not asking you to get out there and meet with Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So about expanding their master bedroom. What I’m suggesting is that you be involved. Help me choose styles, set our direction. Make our online firm an outlet for your creativity.”

He turned off the stove and cut up a lemon.

“And you never know,” I added. “If this pharmaceutical CEO thing doesn’t work out, you’ll always have Interiors by Kat and Liam.”