Kitabı oku: «She's Got Mail!»

1

ROSALIND “ROSIE” MYERS’S mother always swore Rosie would be late to her own funeral. Rosie tried not to think such morbid thoughts as she skidded her Dodge Neon around a corner, bounced the front wheel over a curb, and careened down an alley.

Alanis Morissette might be wailing a woeful tune over the car radio, but Rosie felt calm. Thanks to her newly rented parking space—located in a primo spot next to the back entrance of her Chicago office building—she’d be on time to work this morning. Worst case scenario, she’d have to speed-walk to her desk. But she’d be there, copyediting, mere minutes after eight this fine June morning. Which should please her manager, Teresa, who didn’t care about the funeral, but just wanted Rosie to be punctual.

Brushing crumbs from her breakfast, a nutri-quasi-Twinkie bar she’d chomped between Michigan Avenue and State Street, Rosie checked the plastic digital watch face she’d taped to the console.

It was already mere minutes after eight.

Okay, maybe she’d be running, not speed-walking, to her desk, but she’d be gripping her pencil and inserting commas by a quarter after, at the latest.

Whomp. The car lurched over a speed bump, the back fender scraping its adieu. Cringing, Rosie listened for any telltale clanging behind her. None. Good! Her budget didn’t allow for another muffler pipe replacement.

Ahead, to the right, she spied the familiar concrete steps that led up to the back entrance of the posh Loop office building. Directly behind those steps was her coveted parking space. Like a little home away from home.

Home. Her insides twinged as she flashed on the family farm in Colby, Kansas, where she’d lived all of her life before moving to Chicago seven months ago. Through the crack in her windshield, she peered at the gray Chicago air and wondered where along the way the blue skies of Kansas turned dirty. Or at what point the breezes that rustled through wheat fields became winds whistling down streets filled with cars and pedestrians.

She passed the steps and turned into her space….

Screech.

And slammed on the brakes.

Or at what point some jerk pinched her parking space!

Blinking, she gripped the wheel, amazed she’d managed to miss rear-ending a sleek, black BMW that had taken up residence in her space. Her space! Shaking from the near accident and the gall of the intruder, Rosie shoved the gear into reverse and backed up a few feet. After setting the brake, she jumped out of the car.

Splash!

Her loafer-clad foot landed solidly in a pothole filled with dirty water. She looked down at the splotches of dark water on her white leggings. Some of the mud had also splashed onto the bottom of her brown corduroy skirt. Her co-workers would think she’d slogged through trenches to make it into work. Although she doubted any of the editorial staff at Real Men magazine would believe that excuse for her tardiness, especially Teresa. Now she’d have to park blocks away. Rather than mere minutes late, she’d be mega minutes late.

She glared at the splotchless BMW. Sidestepping the pothole, she moved closer—her feet making squishing sounds as she walked—to the offensive automobile and scrutinized the license plate. ILITIG8.

I litigate. “I’ll just bet you do,” she muttered, eyeing the upscale car.

Her eyes narrowed as she peered up at the bank of square windows along the third floor of her brick office building. Real Men magazine, her company, took the bottom two floors of this building. On the third floor were some stockbrokers, accountants, and if memory served her correctly, one lawyer.

“Now I’ve got you,” she said, pleased with her impromptu sleuthing. She was going to be substantially late to work now because it would take forever and a day to find a parking space. If I’m going to be mega-late anyway, after walking back, I’ll take a few extra minutes and pay a visit to the third floor before heading to my desk.

Honk!

Rosie turned and glared at a square yellow truck stopped behind her Dodge. A burly arm, covered with hair and tattoos, waved at her in a very unceremonious fashion.

“You own this alley, lady?” The truck driver’s voice sounded hairier than his arm.

Men. Couldn’t deal with a little inconvenience. Rosie brushed back a curl that had toppled over her right eye. “As a matter of fact, I do!” she retorted, seizing the opportunity to vent. Falling back on the coping mechanism that started in her teenage years when she had to deal with her four strong-willed, overprotective older brothers, she adopted the personality type of one of the Greek goddesses to give her strength.

Although she was much better at running, she sashayed back to her Dodge with the grace of Artemis, a perfect choice for an alley goddess. After settling into the driver’s seat and easing the car down the lane, Rosie twiddled her fingers in a goodbye wave to the fuming trucker.

“GOOD MORNING!” A hand, wriggling bright orange-tipped fingernails, snaked around Benjamin Taylor’s office door.

Ben gripped his cup of coffee as his ex-wife’s head followed the hand. Meredith’s lips were the same color as her fingertips. He momentarily wondered if that was a real lipstick color…or if she’d been kissing those plastic pylons the city put on the streets. New lipstick. New nails. Maybe she’d just broken up with her latest boyfriend, Dexter-Something, and was turning to cones for attention and affection.

Or turning to her ex-husband, easygoing, always-there-for-you Ben.

“No good morning?” Meredith put on her best pout, which—to Ben’s still blurry precoffee vision—looked as though she’d condensed her cone-orange lips into a circle of glowing lava.

“Morning,” he barked, then quickly took a sip of hot coffee. Please, God, don’t let those lava lips feel the need to plant a kiss somewhere.

“That’s better,” she simpered. The rest of Meredith appeared in the doorway. He tried not to squint at the visual blast of bold orange, green and blue that comprised some satin kimono-robe-thing she was wearing. Typically when she dropped a boyfriend, or vice versa, Meredith also dropped her old look. The facts were stacking up that this new oriental theme was the result of a recent breakup with Hex…Lex…whatever his name was.

She eyed a lamp in the corner. “I saw the most to-die-for coatrack—black lacquer, faux mother-of-pearl inlay—that would look perfect there….”

Ben stiffened. Typically, when she took on a new theme, so did Ben’s office. That’s what happened when one’s ex-wife was an interior decorator who had enough money to indulge these whims. New themes weren’t a bad thing, except when the jobs were left incomplete. History had proven that she’d start redoing some wall or chair—or coatrack—in a to-die-for style, fall madly in love with some new man, and leave Ben’s office in mid-theme.

Ben had long ago decided that just as archeologists interpreted the lives of cavemen from the wall drawings, someone would someday track the love life of Meredith Taylor from the various decorating themes in Ben’s office.

“That lamp stays,” Ben warned.

It still irked him that she’d kept his last name. You’d think an ex-wife who’d been remarried and divorced since your divorce would keep husband number two’s last name. Or revert to her old, original name or use any name other than the name the two of you shared during a short, fitful marriage that, at best, was a millisecond of insanity in an eternal universe.

“All right, lamp stays.” She blinked her overmascaraed eyes at him. “You’ve never spoken to me in that tone of voice.”

His outburst had surprised even him. But one look at Meredith’s eyes told him to tread carefully—this was a brokenhearted woman on the redecorating rebound. “I plead not enough coffee.”

She arched one eyebrow. “Darling, sometimes you say the oddest things.”

“Lawyer talk.” Yep, she’d definitely broken up with Dexter-Whatever. She never called Ben darling when she was involved with someone.

“Like my hair?” she asked, gesturing toward it with those orange-tipped appendages.

He wondered when the hair question would raise its head. He tried not to frown as he checked out the hodgepodge of curls and what was sticking out… “What are those? Pick-Up Sticks?”

“Darling, they’re chopsticks!”

Chopsticks? “It’s so…Dharma.” The way bits of her hair stuck out, it also looked like a bird’s nest gone amok. But he had enough sense to keep that thought to himself.

Whether she was going through an oriental theme or a bird theme, he noted the slight stoop to her shoulders and the dark circles under her eyes. Despite their tumultuous divorce, and the fact she always returned to Ben like a swallow to Capistrano, he didn’t have the heart to hurt her feelings further. It was so obvious that Meredith was in mourning.

“No, really, your hair looks…nice,” he murmured, making a mental note not to have Chinese for lunch.

“Nice—?” Her green eyes took on an expectant gleam that said, “Only one word? Nice?”

“Nice…and brown,” he amended.

Too little, too late. The gleam took on a sinister edge. She opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off by a second high-pitched female voice.

“Mer-e-dith!” Heather, whose idea of year-around fashion, rain or shine, was a skimpy shift dress, wrapped her slim brown arms around his ex-wife’s shoulders. They gave each other air kisses. Heather pulled back and appraised Meredith’s new look. “You look cool! Dig your hair, too! That let-it-go look is so in these days.”

So much for the oriental versus bird themes. It was a let-it-go theme. Dread chilled Ben’s veins as he imagined Meredith redecorating his office—or part of it—in a let-it-go style. He gave his head a shake, trying to dislodge the images of chopsticks and bird’s nests adorning a corner wall.

Meredith smiled demurely, obviously mollified by the avalanche of Heather’s unsolicited compliments—a far better coup than Ben’s two-word response. She lightly fondled one of the chopsticks. “Thank you. Felt like trying something new.”

Heather’s blue eyes softened. “Broke up with Dexter, huh?”

Meredith’s cone lips quivered. She sniffled, loudly, before collapsing into Heather’s arms. Heather, her long blond hair spilling down the gaudy kimono, shot Ben a look. “Don’t you have anything to say?” she asked edgily.

“You’re late.”

Heather flashed him an impatient look. “Not to me, to Meredith.”

“Her hair looks nice and brown. But it’s almost nine and you’re late.”

Heather huffed something under her breath and continued cradling the distraught Meredith, who was blubbering about Dexter wanting ice cream back.

Ice cream?

Ben watched the two of them, his ex-wife and ex-fiancé, and realized he almost had enough exes to play tic-tac-toe. But at thirty-six, he was not in the market for another ex. Or even another current. If anything, he yearned for basic male companionship. Hell, a night of beer and bowling with the boys would suffice. Although, truth be told, he preferred wine, and chess—pastimes he once shared with his best buddy Matt before Matt fell in love and moved to California.

Since then, the closest Ben ever came to a man-to-man conversation, in a roundabout way, was when Heather would read out loud the “A Real Man Answers Real Questions” column from her favorite magazine, Real Men, where men would ask about everything from the best fishing lines to the best pickup lines. When clients weren’t around, and Heather was out to lunch, Ben sometimes read the questions and answers himself, but he’d rather be caught dead than be seen reading a magazine whose covers were plastered with buffed males grinning smugly over articles like “Australia’s Great Barrier Hunks” and “Chicago’s Hottest Firefighters.”

When clients were present, he insisted Heather hide the magazine. After all, Ben specialized in employment law—he didn’t need an adversary spying magazines plastered with naked, sweaty males and accusing Ben of gender bias or sexual harassment.

Heather also read those Venus and Mars books, but Ben didn’t care if she left those on her desk. The covers were sensible. No naked bodies. Gender-fair titles—Venus for women, Mars for men. Sometimes Ben stared at those books, with titles ranging from Mars and Venus on a date to Mars and Venus in the bedroom, and he wondered if there’d ever be a book for men who had somehow landed on Venus but wanted to move to Mars. Because that’s how Ben’s personal life felt. Trapped on Venus, a world filled with former lovers and wives.

Heather, still cradling the weeping mound of kimono and chopsticks, mouthed, “She’s hurting.”

Ben mouthed back, “So am I. I need another planet.”

Two years ago, he’d met Heather at a local bagel shop. The boy behind the counter, enthralled with her beach babe look, waited slavishly on her while a disgruntled Ben bided his time. But when Heather turned those baby blues on him, and gave that head of shimmering blond hair a shake, he had the irrational wish to be her bagel slave, too.

Within a month, they were engaged and she was the receptionist in his one-man legal firm. But the beach babe was really an ice princess at heart. Six months later, he felt as though he were living with a frozen bagel. When they broke up, he helped her find another apartment, but when she had difficulty landing another job, he told her she could stay. He reasoned that she knew his clients and understood his work style. Besides her penchant for shifts, she was fine at her job.

He just hadn’t anticipated that his two exes would meld into one giant Super-Ex.

“Say something to her,” mouthed Heather over Meredith’s heaving shoulder.

He was a lawyer, dammit, not a heartbreak counselor. But if he had an Achilles heel, it was his heart. He couldn’t stand to purposely hurt someone, especially a female someone. It was undoubtedly the direct result of growing up as the man of the house and being protective of his mom and sis, a habit that spilled over into his other relationships with women.

He blew out an expanse of air. Say something. “Sorry he wanted that ice cream back.”

Meredith spun around so fast, he thought he was watching a remake of The Exorcist. “Ring!” she squealed. Her voice rose so high, he swore he heard the distant barking of dogs. “He wanted the ring back, not the ice cream!”

Heather, swishing back her straight blond hair with a shake of her head, glared at him accusingly. “How could you be so insensitive?”

Meredith, obviously on a self-pitying roll, added, “You never cared for me when we were married, either!”

As he stared at those two furious faces, scrunched into seething looks he’d seen a zillion times before, a third face appeared behind them. A heart-shaped face topped with a wild mop of brown curls, one of which spiraled down her forehead, like the little girl who, when she was good, was very, very good but when she was bad…

“Are you Benjamin Taylor, P.C.?” the good-bad girl asked.

No, I’m the insensitive, uncaring ex-husband-fiancé lout who doesn’t know the difference between an ice cream and a ring. “Yes.”

“I litigate?” she asked.

He paused. “I don’t know. Do you?”

He swore her curls quivered as her brown eyes narrowed. “Your license plate,” she said tightly. “Is it I-L-I-T-I-G-8?”

“Did somebody hit my car?” He shot out of his seat.

“No, but you were almost rear-ended,” she said, her voice dropping to an ominous register. “By me.” She leaned forward, her small point of a chin leading the way. “You stole my parking spot, you…you…thieving BMW litigating lummox.”

Litigating lummox?

Meredith and Heather glanced at the angry woman, then, as though by osmosis, seemed to absorb her animosity. Turning back, they intensified their glares at Ben, which created a triad of furious females blocking his doorway. What was it with women? If one went to the bathroom, they all went. If one hated you, they all did. Ben hadn’t even finished his morning cup of coffee, and he’d already pissed off three women…and one of whom he’d never seen before in his life!

It was the beginning of another glorious day in the life of Benjamin Taylor.

But confrontation was a lawyer’s middle name. Twisting the corners of his mouth into a professional smile, he said courteously, “Won’t you come in so we can discuss this?”

“Why should I—?”

“Not you, Heather. Our guest.” He cast his ex-fiancée, who knew when to back off, a warning look. With a shake of her head, she pivoted neatly on those oversize platform shoes and clomped back to her desk.

Ben crossed to the door. In an aside to Meredith, he whispered, “I’m sorry I misunderstood about the ring…. Why don’t you check out the couch?” He darted his gaze to the piece of furniture against the far wall in the reception area. A moment of peace was worth the couch sacrifice.

With the merest hint of a sniffle, Meredith swiveled and made a beeline to the object.

He turned his full attention to the curly-haired good girl. Bad girl. Mad girl. She wore an ill-fitting white blouse semitucked into a knee-length brown skirt, both of which reminded him of those chocolate-and-vanilla ice-cream bars he relished as a kid. But he didn’t dare voice that, now that he knew the evil connotation of the word ice cream. Ben gestured her inside. “Please come in, Miss—?”

“Myers. Rosie Myers.”

So it was Miss, not Mrs. Not that he cared. Maybe it was that wayward curl that intrigued him. Or the flash of lightning in those hazel eyes—which were now checking out the room as though a pervert had just invited her into the back seat of his car. “It’s a law office,” he said, “not a torture chamber. Please, have a seat.”

She shifted her gaze to his, giving him a we-are-not-amused look, before crossing to one of two wooden guest chairs, silhouettes of harps cut into their backs.

As she walked by, Ben noticed a spatter of mud in her hairline. And a chunk of mud on the toe of one of her sensible brown loafers. So it wasn’t a surprise she also wore mud-splattered tights. Didn’t she say she’d almost rear-ended his car? How? By running into it with her body? “Care for coffee? Tea?”

Rosie picked the chair farthest from Ben’s rectangular pine desk. “I’d kill for a coffee.”

He gave her a double take, hoping he didn’t have a homicidal rear-ending caffeine freak on his hands. “Heather, would you mind bringing—”

“I’m still helping Meredith!” she answered curtly from the other room.

With what? A stuck chopstick? Looking back at Rosie, he asked wearily, “Sugar? Cream?”

“Three teaspoons sugar. Plenty of milk.”

“That’s a milkshake, not a coffee,” Ben murmured as he headed to the coffee station in the reception area.

Rosie sat stiffly in the harp chair and checked out the inner sanctum of ILITIG8. She was already so late for work, what was another ten minutes? She hated disappointing Teresa, though, who was pretty cool when it came to bending rules. Unfortunately, Rosie had bent the tardy rule so far, she’d broken it, so Teresa had had to lay down the law: get into work on time or go on probation.

Although probation was not high on Rosie’s wish list, after stomping in a puddle, exchanging greetings with a trucker, and hiking six blocks into work, she needed a few extra minutes. And needed a few more to negotiate a parking space with a lawyer.

Considering what faced her, she also needed that free cup of coffee.

She scanned the room. Looked as though an interior decorator had had a breakdown in here. On one wall were several paintings of landscapes. Rosie fought a surge of homesickness as she scanned the images of rolling earth and sky, the type of world in which she’d spent most of her twenty-six years. She quickly shifted her gaze to another wall, where an arrangement of round brass thing-amajigs, covered with beads and feathers, hung. One of the round thingamajigs, on closer inspection, was a clock whose face was embedded in an old chrome steering wheel.

“Here’s your coffee,” Ben said pleasantly, handing her a steaming mug. He headed around the pine desk and sat in a high-backed swivel chair.

He had an ease about him, which surprised Rosie. And he wasn’t dressed in a stuffy suit—the way lawyers in the movies dressed—but in slacks and a light pullover. The sweater’s blue-and-smoke diamond pattern complemented his brown hair, a café au lait color, and his blue eyes. Maybe his office hadn’t settled on a style, but he definitely had one. And although she’d tried to ignore it, his style had a sexy edge. A slow, feverish heat tickled her insides.

“Thank you,” she croaked, wishing her voice would behave. Forget the voice—she wished her body would behave! She quickly diverted her attention to the graphic on the cup and stared at James Dean, a cigarette dangling from his lips, slouched in front of the marquee Rebel Without a Cause. Did Ben Taylor think the image of some studly movie star would mollify her? At the very least, he should have picked her a cup that didn’t have cars drag racing in the background. If she looked closely enough, she’d probably find one of the cars sneaking up on a parking space, too.

“My, uh, interior decorator got me these,” he explained, catching her reaction. “It’s a set of mugs called the Golden Age of Hollywood…from my, uh, decorator’s Tinseltown theme era. I prefer to use my china for guests, but it appears my receptionist took them home for a party….” His voice trailed off as he cast a tired gaze around the room, stopping on a framed poster of Jimmy Stewart under the title Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

He seemed preoccupied with Jimmy Stewart, so Rosie took a sip of James Dean, nearly groaning as the sweet hot liquid warmed her mouth. That was one of the problems of being perpetually late. She never had the time to savor something as toe-tinglingly delightful as a great cup of java. She closed her eyes, inhaling the roasted scent, savoring the moment. “This is delicious,” she murmured.

When she opened her eyes, Ben was staring at her with a twinkle in his. “Appreciate your enjoyment,” he said, his voice dropping to a husky register.

Their gazes locked for a long moment. Rosie’s heart hammered so hard, she swore the sound must be echoing off the walls. She gripped the cup, not wanting it to slip out of her suddenly moist palms. Minutes ago, he’d simply been ILITIG8. Now he was a powerful, exciting presence that unnerved her body and ignited her libido.

She wanted to kick herself. She wasn’t here to enjoy herself, but to be angry. To demand her rights! “Is that what you lawyers do?” she began, breaking the charged silence. At least her voice was behaving better—it wasn’t croaking anymore. “Do you wear people down with coffee and movie stars so they forget what they’re fighting for?”

“Movie stars?” He looked perplexed. “What are they fighting for?”

She casually wiped one moistened palm against her skirt. “You stole my parking space.”

“Stole it?” he repeated. He motioned in the general direction of north. “The space behind the stairs, next to the back entrance?”

She leveled him her sternest look. “Right.”

“Wrong.” Cocking an eyebrow, he took a swig from his mug, decorated with a sloe-eyed Marlene Dietrich in a top hat. Lowering his drink, she swore he flinched when he looked at the movie title over Marlene’s head, Blonde Venus. He plunked down the mug, too hard, and opened his desk drawer. “Yesterday I paid the monthly rental fee for the space my car is currently occupying.”

She blinked, surprised. “Yesterday? So did I.”

“Perhaps you paid for another parking space,” he suggested, rummaging through the drawer.

“No, that’s my space.”

He held up a piece of paper. “Here’s my receipt. Do you have yours?”

“Somewhere. At home.” Probably in the pile of paper on the edge of her dresser. Or maybe in the pile of paper in the fruit basket that hung in her kitchen. “Yes,” she said. In some pile.

He handed her the piece of paper. “I believe this has all the pertinent information.”

Pertinent. Trust a lawyer to not simply say “information.” As though “pertinent information” gave it an extra distinction. She read the handwritten receipt, upon which was typed his name, yesterday’s date and the number C1001.

“C1001. Maybe that’s another pertinent space,” she said, handing back the paper.

He gave her an odd look before responding. “According to their chart, the Cs are the spaces behind the stairs.”

This was getting nowhere. She didn’t have her receipt. She didn’t know C spaces from Z ones. And she really didn’t want to do the six-block trek again tomorrow morning. She wanted back her space, free and clear, today. For that matter, she wanted back her common sense—to not let some Michael J. Fox look-alike with a killer Harrison Ford grin get the better of her. She cleared her throat. “The building office has copies of our receipts. I suggest we discuss this with them at lunchtime. Shall we meet there at…noon?”

He opened his appointment book. A few strands of his straight hair, parted neatly on the side, fell forward as he bent his head to scan a page. Looking up, he said pleasantly, “Noon’s fine.”

“Noon, then,” she said. He had a receipt, an appointment book, two secretaries it appeared, matching mugs, a BMW, and a sweater with the same cornsilk blue as his eyes. Rosie, the mud-sloshed misfit, felt as though she had nothing, not even the space she came in here to get. To make up for it she irrationally vowed to have the last word, before she left.

She downed another gulp of coffee, which she’d barely swallowed when she realized Ben was standing. She meant to set her cup on the carved coffee table next to her chair, but the bottom of the mug hit the table edge, causing the coffee to splatter onto her stockings and the carpet.