Kitabı oku: «When The Lights Go Out...», sayfa 3

3

AT SOME POINT IN THE LONG, lovely night, Blythe made tuna fish sandwiches, which they fed to each other in bed. During another brief respite, Max limped to the kitchen in search of the cookie tin. When the fan ran out of battery power, they opened all the windows and took a cold shower together, Blythe’s puckered nipples warming to the heat of Max’s chest and his arousal undiminished by the icy spray.

There were forays for water, forays for fortifying fruit juices, but mainly there were forays into each other until, at last, too exhausted and sated to care about the stray bits of tuna fish and chocolate chunks, Blythe fell asleep in midkiss.

When she woke up, Max was propped up on one elbow, gazing down at her in a brightly lit room.

“Electricity?” she murmured sleepily, trying to burrow back into the hollow of his shoulder.

“Sun,” he said, his voice low and warm. “It’s after ten o’clock.” His fingertip trailed lazily over her bare stomach, and Blythe instinctively tried to make her navel touch her tailbone. “How do you feel?”

“Fantastic. How do you feel?”

He hesitated a moment, still tracing her skin. “Fantastic…and surprised.”

Blythe frowned into his shoulder. “What kind of surprise? Good surprise? Bad surprise?” He’d mentioned that in Candy’s phone call, Blythe had sounded like a person with a lot of nerve, and admittedly, she’d put all the nerve she had into last night, but what if he’d expected more assertiveness? More imaginative ideas? More leather? Some, anyway?

There was a raspy chuckle in his voice. “Good surprise. Definitely. I mean, I’d hoped this would happen. You have to admit I came prepared.”

“For an orgy,” she muttered, thinking of the endless supply of condoms he’d reached for during the night, “but of course, a person in your position would have taken extra precautions. Besides, they were probably tax-deductible. Or maybe you get them free from salesmen.”

He gave her an odd look. “Why would I get them free?”

“Because tonight, or last night, was business-related.”

He found a bit of chocolate on her ear and licked it off, making her shiver. “I suppose you could call it business-related.”

She grew very still. “Did it feel like more than business to you?” The words came timidly. “Because it did to me.”

He buried his face in her neck. “It had nothing to do with business. In fact, if we’re going to be working together, we have to keep this totally separate from business or I won’t get any work done.”

For the first time, Blythe felt that something might be a little bit wrong. She came fully awake.

“Yeah.” He was talking to himself now and sounding nostalgic. “When you called—”

But she hadn’t called him. Candy had.

“—and offered to welcome me personally to New York—”

Blythe stiffened. Ooh. A whole lot wrong.

“—I asked Bart about you and he said—”

How did he know Bart?

“‘Candy Jacobsen? It should be quite a welcome.’ So Bart’s already expecting hanky-panky in the office and it would be a shame to disappoint—”

Blythe spun into a sitting position before she interrupted him. She needed to feel more on top of things. “Candy? You came here to do this with Candy?”

He sat up even straighter than she had and stared at her. “No, I came here to take you out on a date. Things happened. Like a blown transformer. And why are you referring to yourself in the third person?” With one foot he began to fish for something on the floor. In a second or two he brought those little black briefs up with his toes and slid them under the covers. The violent thrashing of the sheets and blankets was a dead giveaway that he was putting them on.

Blythe fished with her toes, too, and brought up the peach silk boxers and camisole he’d tossed to the floor the night before, which was beginning to feel like a lifetime ago. She struggled into them, babbling. “Because I’m very much afraid there is a third person! You were coming at seven o’clock. To help me get over Sven.” She leaped out of bed, darted to her closet and pulled out a pair of flowered capris, tugging them clumsily up over the boxers, which felt as if she’d put them on backward.

When she turned back to face him, he was out of bed with one leg in his jeans and his arms folded across his chest. The black briefs had a ripped seam down the left side. She had a feeling they hadn’t been ripped until she had ripped them off him. “Candy,” he said slowly and grimly, “who’s Sven?”

“I’m not Candy,” she said desperately.

“Then who the hell are you?” He almost yelled the words.

“I’m Candy’s roommate. You’re supposed to be Candy’s old friend, the sensitive psychiatrist from Boston who was coming here to shrink my sexual insecurities.”

“I’ve never met Candy, and I am for sure not a psychiatrist.” His eyes widened. “You were planning to do this with some other guy?”

“No, I wasn’t, but then I met you and decided I would, and after last night, the other guy isn’t necessary anymore. After last night—” she lowered her voice to a whisper “—I don’t think I have sexual insecurities.” She cleared her throat. “Ah, what line of work are you in, because I’m sure a psychiatrist couldn’t have dealt with my problem any more sensitively than you did.”

Glaring at her, he stepped out of the pants leg he’d just gotten into instead of putting on the jeans completely. Blythe was sure he had no idea he wasn’t wearing anything but his ripped briefs while he gave her his full credentials, or that while his voice sounded cold, his erection persisted. “I’m Max Laughton, political columnist, formerly with the Chicago Observer, and starting Monday, with the New York Telegraph. And I should have guessed the Telegraph was a congenial place to work when Candy called and invited me out. I just couldn’t believe it would be—” his voice deepened to a growl “—quite this congenial!”

The growl had almost built to a roar when a sound came from the living room, a sound that chilled Blythe to her very bones. The whoosh of the door opening and closing, followed by Candy’s voice, which although it was a little out of breath, somehow projected across miles. “Come on in, Garth. I’ll make the introductions and then I’ll get cleaned up and skedaddle back down the frigging stairs so you two can go for it. Blythe?” It was a shout. “We’re here. You okay?”

No! Not anymore! She’d stolen Candy’s date, and there would be hell to pay.

She swallowed. “I’m fine,” Blythe called. “I’ve been so worried about you!” With Candy safe and sound, she was considerably more worried about herself.

“I spent the night in the frigging office,” Candy yelled. “Garth got caught on the wrong side of the Triborough Bridge and the frigging state patrol put him in a homeless shelter in Queens.” Her voice seemed more distant. “He asked for a hotel and they said, ‘Whadda ya think we are, a frigging travel agency?’” Blythe heard her laugh. “Hey! Good news! We bought coffee from a guy on the street cooking on frigging propane.”

“Candy, really, your language.” That must be whatshisname, Garth, speaking. He had a pleasant-sounding voice, but it didn’t stroke her the way Max’s voice did when he wasn’t yelling at her.

“Is she coming in here?” Max crossed his hands over the crotch of his ripped briefs.

“I’m sure she wouldn’t.” Blythe suddenly snapped out of her stupor. “I’ll be out in a minute,” she shouted, making wild gestures at Max to “keep quiet” and “get dressed” and “keep quiet” again for good measure. “I, ah, overslept,” she improvised. “Just throwing on some clothes.”

While Max scrambled through the small bag he’d gotten the condoms out of—oh, Lord, the condoms they’d used—emerging with a pair of wildly patterned boxer shorts and a different pair of pants, tan slacks this time, she tugged a peach tank top over her head, then snagged her fingers in her tangled hair.

“Don’t dress up for us.” Garth again. “We look like we’ve spent the night in jail.”

“Did you hear anything from my date?” Candy yelled. “I couldn’t reach him. Did he show up here?”

“I’m very much afraid he did,” Blythe said in her normal voice, sending a condemnatory glance in Max’s direction, which was lost on him because he was concentrating on the buttons of a tan-and-blue striped shirt. One flew off. He snarled and reached into his bag, coming out with another shirt, this one navy.

“What did you say?” Candy yelled.

“I said we’ll talk in a minute.”

Blythe took a peek at herself in the mirror and groaned. She looked like, and undoubtedly reeked with, the scent of sex. She should have worn a bra under the tank top. Her nipples were sticking out through the camisole, but there wasn’t time to do anything about her appearance. Directing another set of pushing and lip-slashing “stay back and keep quiet” gestures at Max, who was still ignoring her, she inched open the door and went out to face the music. Or rather, Candy and the psychiatrist, a pair she’d spent the night wronging.

“Hi,” she said, smiling brightly.

“Oh, there you are,” Candy called from the kitchen. “Garth, say hi to Blythe. Then would you light the frigging stove so we can keep the coffee warm? I’m doing something wrong. Blythe, what were you saying about my date?”

Blythe felt the blood draining from her face and realized Garth was staring at her, so she darted a glance at him. He was attractive, just as Candy had said, but his face didn’t have the character, the punch Max’s did. She scanned the rest of him while she tried to think of an answer to give Candy. His blondness was accentuated by a pale beige summer suit, badly creased, a light blue-striped shirt and a blue tie patterned in yellow—she squinted at it—ducks.

He didn’t seem to notice how distracted she was. A sensitive man would have taken one look at her and called 9-1-1. Instead, he said over his shoulder as he went to save Candy from blowing up the building, “Wow. Candy told me you were a great-looking girl, but that was an understatement.”

“Did he?” Candy said, stepping out of the kitchen as soon as Garth stepped in. “My date, Blythe. Did he show up?” She sounded impatient.

Candy also looked the worse for wear. The toes of her pointed shoes curled up and wrinkles made her linen skirt even shorter. There were deep circles under her eyes. She must have had a hard time getting back to the office and an uncomfortable night sleeping there, just to assure Blythe’s privacy with Garth. Blythe’s guilt grew and compounded.

Feeling the blood rush back to her face, Blythe said, “I…well, he…”

“All lit up,” Garth said, returning to the living room.

“It just wasn’t fair for that transformer to blow up yesterday,” Candy said, pouting. “I had a date with Max Laughton, a dreamboat who’s coming to the Telegraph from the Chicago Observer. Soon as I found out he’d been hired, I decided to get dibbies on him, because if he’s half as hunky as his picture—”

A loud crash from Blythe’s room caused both Candy and Garth to swivel their heads toward the closed door. “Who’s in there?” Candy asked in a hushed tone.

“Well,” Blythe said, “I think it might be somebody trying to fix the bed. See, the strangest thing happened…”

“You broke your bed?”

“My, oh my, oh my,” Garth murmured, gazing ceilingward.

“While I was trying to get Garth here to mend your psyche, you found somebody to break your frigging bed?” Candy’s expression wavered between shock and admiration.

“Not exactly,” Blythe mumbled.

“Then who—” Candy’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. It couldn’t be.”

She whizzed past Blythe toward the closed bedroom door. Just as she reached it, it opened and Max strode out, wearing a navy blazer over his shirt and slacks. The crisp-cut outfit was a little incongruous with his unshaved face. Through the doorway, Blythe could see that he’d made up the bed and somehow put the footboard back on—upside down.

“Good morning,” he said in a jarringly hearty tone. “Wow.” He looked at Blythe, who stood quivering beside the sofa. “Either you slept on the sofa in your clothes or you sure were quiet when you came in to get them. I didn’t wake up until I heard all the yelling.”

He was a terrible liar, embarrassingly bad at it, but Blythe felt that was a point in his favor. He held out his hand to Garth. “I’m Max Laughton.”

“Garth?” Garth said in a tentative sort of voice. “Garth Brandon? Dr. Garth Brandon.” The title seemed to make him feel more secure.

Max shook Garth’s hand briefly, then turned to Candy. “You must be Candy. We had a date last night, and you’re late.” He gave her a totally engaging, disarming smile. Blythe would have died to be on the receiving end of that smile.

And was dying anyway, she was so touched to realize he was lying so unconvincingly in an attempt to save her reputation. A not-too-bright ape—and that would be according to ape standards—could have seen through him.

“Too late, apparently.” Candy’s chin firmed and her baby blue eyes flashed. “You slept together. I can see it written all over your faces. How could you, Blythe? You’re my best friend.”

In fact, a person could die from the sheer weight of the guilt Blythe felt on her shoulders.

“Let’s have coffee!” Garth said. He smiled at all of them. He had a nice smile, but it didn’t sock Blythe in the tummy the way Max’s did. “We can sit down, have a cup and talk things over.”

“There always were times, Garth,” Candy snapped, “when your perfect manners made me want to frigging barf.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Candy,” Garth said. “I feel used by the thing that has obviously occurred, but it makes me feel more in control to act like a civilized human. Besides, as a psychiatrist I’m always open to understanding the deeper motivations of people in times of stress, so I think…”

“I’m warning you, Garth. Stop being so frigging nice or I’m going to upchuck,” Candy said.

“Thank you for sharing your feelings,” Garth said, escaping to the kitchen. “Cream, sugar, anyone?”

“I’ll help,” Blythe said. “Oh, look, you lit the oven, too. There’s a coffee cake in the freezer. If I wrap it in foil, it will thaw in no time. And we have orange juice. Lots of sugar to jump-start the…”

“Listen to them,” Candy said. “They’re made for each other. And you had to come along and mess it up.”

Max, who didn’t want Blythe—that was her name, and it suited her—alone in the kitchen with this Garth person, was on his way to chaperone, but Candy’s voice brought him to a halt with one foot in midair.

He settled it down to the floor, slowly turned back to her, and for the first time took a good long look at Candy Jacobsen, with whom he’d thought he was spending the night.

She had to be six feet tall in those witch’s shoes she was wearing, and her blond hair, long and straight except where it curved at the ends, was thick and shiny.

Maybe a little too shiny. She wouldn’t have been able to shower and wash it this morning at the Telegraph offices. The gunk on her eyes was half-on, half-off. Well, not off. It was still on her face, just not in the right places. Those dark circles under her eyes weren’t exhaustion, they were eye makeup.

Who was he kidding? Cleaned up she’d be a stunner, a dream of a woman, just the kind of woman he was accustomed to dating, but more so. Then why did he keep glancing toward that kitchen door, hoping for another peek at the little red-haired, green-eyed Orphan Annie-type he’d—he’d—

It usually took him a few weeks to turn romance into a tangle that had to be straightened out. This time he’d done it before the first date.

“We can grill some toast,” Blythe was saying. “It’ll be good with the eggs.”

“This is turning into a full breakfast,” Garth answered her. “Maybe we should sit at the table.”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll set the table while you finish up in here.”

“No, no, I’ll do it. You pour the juice.”

Their happy voices were driving him crazy. “What exactly did I mess up?” he asked Candy, folding his arms across his chest and glaring at her.

“A perfect relationship,” Candy snapped. “Blythe needed somebody to have sex with, sure, but I knew she and Garth would have more in common than sex. And—” she moved a step closer, smiling sexily at his angry expression “—I knew you and I would make sparks together.” The smile faded. “And still will,” she said with a determination that made Max nervous. He was trying desperately to put the set of unrelated facts together, read some sense into what was going on here.

“Sorry, it just didn’t turn out that way,” he said, trying to look sorry. “It was the blackout that messed it up, not me. I was here by invitation, your invitation,” he reminded her, “but due to the circumstances, Blythe was the Good Samaritan who got me out of the elevator with her comb.”

It must have been his mention of the comb that made her blink, because her anger only escalated. “A frigging nameless Good Samaritan, apparently?”

“I have to hand it to you, Candy,” Garth said as he passed by, his hands filled with silverware. “You have toned down your language some.”

“I can be ladylike when I want to,” Candy snapped at him.

“I see,” Garth said. He opened the drawer of a china cupboard and pulled out place mats. “Don’t mind me.” He tossed the words over his shoulder. “Keep talking. Communication is the key to successful relationships.” He whipped a napkin into the shape of one of those flowers—calla lilies—and stood it up on the table. Max watched him, fascinated.

“You couldn’t even take time for introductions?” Candy went on, her voice rising with her temper. “You just dragged her into the bedroom? And if you thought she was me, what led you to think you could drag me off to bed without the slightest…”

Blythe appeared with four glasses of juice on a tray. The juice sloshed as she jolted to a halt, her face going red again. Who dragged whom into the bedroom was not something Max intended to share with Candy. He wished he could reassure Blythe that he intended to take all the blame.

“No,” Blythe spoke up, “that’s not the way it happened at all. When he jumped off the elevator he said he had a blind date with somebody on the twenty-third floor. I had a blind date and I live on the twenty-third floor. So I thought he—” she jutted a thumb at Max from under the tray “—was you.” She jutted her other thumb at Garth, who was still setting the perfect table.

“She was expecting a man and there he was,” Garth said. “The man had been invited for a specific purpose, so when they got up here, she understandably assumed—”

“Garth, will you ever frigging learn to express your anger?” Candy said. “Stop sounding like marshmal-low cream. I thought psychiatrists had to get psychoanalyzed themselves. Didn’t you learn anything?”

“Blythe, hand me that juice,” Max said. “While there’s still some in the glasses.”

“What Garth said,” Blythe interrupted him, “was how it happened, but not why it happened.” She passed the tray of juice to Max. He could tell she was intent on self-immolation.

“My, doesn’t that coffee smell good,” he said quickly, before she could pour on any more gasoline. “Garth is right. A jolt of caffeine will make everything look different.”

“The juice glass goes directly above the point of the knife,” Garth said kindly, redoing Max’s arrangement of juice-glass-dead-center above the place mats, “and breakfast is ready! Yum!”

Was this guy for real?

“BLYTHE, YOU WERE about to say…” Candy helped herself to a square of coffee cake.

“Oh, yes.” Blythe put down the fork she’d just picked up. She desperately wanted to get it all out in the open—not the intimate details, of course, just a full accounting of her despicable behavior and innocent motivations. “I was saying you still didn’t understand exactly why it happened. It happened because I felt so guilty.”

“You mean now. You feel so guilty now,” Candy said, reaching for the butter.

“No,” Blythe said. “I mean, yes, I feel guilty about you now, but then I was feeling guilty about Garth. I thought your idea was terrible, as you know, and I had no intention of going along with it—”

“You didn’t?” Garth said. One small flicker of an eyebrow indicated the possibility of annoyance.

“What idea?” Max said.

“It will all become clear to you later,” Candy said. “Let her finish her frigging sentence.”

“I didn’t see how you could have managed to reach him to cancel the date,” Blythe said to Candy, “with the cell phone circuits all tied up and you maybe stuck on the subway in the dark where you couldn’t get a circuit anyway. So I felt as if I’d rejected him before I ever met him or got to know him.” With her clasped hands, Blythe implored Candy to understand. “I didn’t even know his name! And I was imagining him in a plane with no place to land and running out of gas and about to crash, and I felt so bad that I hadn’t even given him a chance, and here he’d died trying to reach me and save my psyche—the psyche of a total stranger who wasn’t even paying him by the hour—that when he wasn’t dead, as I could clearly see when he jumped out of the elevator on top of me, I wanted to make it up to him.” She sent anxious glances toward each of them. She couldn’t imagine what she’d said to make them look so stunned.

“Aw,” Garth said. “That’s sweet.”

“Could you run that past me again?” Candy’s eyes narrowed. “The part about Max jumping you?”

Blythe was grateful when Max spoke up. “It was dark and I was scared sh—to death. I just wanted out of that elevator. I didn’t think about where I was jumping. Or who. As I recall, I threw my duffel bag out first. It might have knocked Blythe senseless even before I jumped out with my briefcase. It was a totally accidental jumping, motivated by fear, not craven lust. You can probably understand that, Garth.”

“I don’t,” Candy spoke up.

“Garth will explain it to you,” Max said.

“Explain what?” Garth said.

Candy’s gaze zeroed in on Blythe. “It didn’t occur to you to tell him your name, like, ‘Hi, I’m Blythe,’ and then Max would have said, ‘Oh, sorry, my date is with Candy on the twenty-third floor’?”

“No,” Blythe said in a small voice. “I just assumed I was the person he came here to—”

“Meet,” Max said firmly.

Candy snorted inelegantly and served herself scrambled eggs.

“You can imagine how guilty I felt by then. I mean he wasn’t dead, but he was nearly dead, so I thought it was up to me to offer him hospitality.”

“She was very hospitable,” Max contributed. At once, his skin darkened. Blythe thought it was probably as close as he could come to blushing.

“What’s done is done,” Garth pontificated. “We can’t change the past.”

Blythe was thinking hard. She owed Candy so much, and instead she’d betrayed her. No wonder Candy was furious. Garth was right. They couldn’t change the past. Only the future. And Max must have realized how gorgeous Candy was. How could he help falling for her? How conflicted he must feel, knowing he could have spent the night with Candy. The ache of desire that had stayed with her through the nightmarish morning faded, replaced by an ache of pure sadness.

Blythe didn’t want to do what she had to do, but she did have to do it. “Garth said it just right,” she started, struggling to sound as if she meant it. “A mistake happened, and it happened at a time of crisis, when people don’t always behave like their usual selves. I’m terribly sorry, Candy. I hope you’ll forgive me, because…because…” Here came the hard part, and she didn’t know how she was going to get through it. A set of images ran through her head—images of the glorious night with Max versus images of losing a friend of many years, an apartment she couldn’t otherwise afford. Hard as she tried, the images of the night with Max kept pushing aside her friendship with Candy and the comforts of her current lifestyle, but she couldn’t let them win. They’d fade eventually, and everyday life would seem more important. Yes, it would. Definitely. Wouldn’t it?

She pulled herself together. “Because,” she said, “I’m not going to see Max again. He’s all yours.”