She was gorgeous. She stood in a nimbus of sunlight, one hand at her breast and the other lightly curved just at the apex of her thighs, looking for all the world like a Botticelli Venus—not a coincidence, Tom felt sure. Her dress was virginal white, but so filmy and formfitting she looked as if she’d been dipped in milk and set out to be licked clean.
Tom waited for the appreciative twitch to register in his groin, but it didn’t come. Poor Darlene. Not even a twitch, where once there had been earthquakes.
She had no idea, but their clock had just struck midnight. Her magic had run out.
Frankly, he hadn’t even wanted her to come today. She’d begun vigorously working the crowd at these events, smiling her heart out while she talked him up. It annoyed him. It looked like an audition for the role of trophy wife.
“You’re a lucky devil, Beckham,” Bailey said, shaking his head and making a noise that, if he hadn’t been the senior partner, would have been smacking his lips. “When does her lease expire? You always trade ’em in after a year, right? Any chance she thinks short guys are hot?”
Tom wondered if his thoughts about Darlene had registered on his face. He rearranged his features. “Women don’t care if you’re small as long as you’ve got a great big—” he grinned “—credit limit. In that department, you’ve got everyone on this boat whipped. Even Coach O’Toole, in spite of that ridiculous bonus the alums have just added to his paycheck.”
Bailey eyed Mick O’Toole, the head coach for the Midwest Georgia University football team, who stood talking to his host, the most arrogant MGU alum of them all, Trent Saroyan. Saroyan owned the boat, and it might be successfully argued that he owned O’Toole, too.
He’d thrown the party today to celebrate a strong 2–0 start for O’Toole’s second season as MGU head coach. The Spitfires had had a 15–2 season last year, almost making it to the National Championship game. The party, the yacht and the bonus were just the alum’s polite way of saying that this year it had better be the gold ring.
“You think he knows he’s going to get shitcanned if he loses even one game this season?” Bailey’s shrewd eyes held a hint of pity. But just a hint. Their firm represented Trent Saroyan, the yachtsman and check-writer, not the coach.
“Nope,” Tom said. “Look at him. He’s still naive enough to think he can get loud with the boosters.”
Oh, hell. That must be what had activated his sixth sense. Mick O’Toole and Trent Saroyan were standing too close together, and their voices were rising, developing sharp edges. They were arguing about O’Toole’s choice of starting quarterback.
“Crap,” Bailey said. “I’d better try to do something about that.” He dropped his cocktail glass on the mahogany bar and departed.
Not a moment too soon, either. Saroyan held a shot glass in his right hand, but his index finger was extended, and he’d begun to jab it toward O’Toole’s left shoulder, which was a very bad sign.
And here came another one. Apparently noticing that Tom was alone, Darlene began murmuring and air-kissing her way out of her crowd and gliding back over toward him. Her smile didn’t look right. Shit. What had he done now? Had he violated the twenty-minute rule? That was about how long she could take being ignored without getting snitty.
Tom glanced at the water again and wondered how many degrees it was. If only he weren’t wearing his most comfortable old cords, he might actually do it. Between Darlene and O’Toole, this party was going down.
“Hey,” Darlene said, making the word two warm syllables with honey on top. Darlene’s body might be Botticelli, but her voice was pure Gone with the Wind. Still, her smile didn’t look right.
“Hey, there,” he responded carefully. He wondered if it was possible she’d heard Bailey’s comment about her lease expiring. Like all good old boys, Bailey did tend to boom a bit.
But would that be so terrible? Tom was going to have to end it soon anyhow. He didn’t want a trophy wife. He didn’t want a wife period.
Ten years ago, after the…fiasco…he’d decided his life needed some strict ground rules. He had no intentions of living as a monk, all hair shirts and no sex, but he did try to keep all his relationships clean and sweet and mutually satisfying. He’d been pretty successful, so far. That sixth sense about parties applied to love affairs, too, ordinarily.
“I stopped by the apartment on my way over here,” she said.
He tried not to react to her word choice. The apartment, she said these days. Not your apartment. It was just one step short of our apartment, and it was a big mistake, though she obviously didn’t know it.
“I got Otis to let me in,” she added casually.
He wasn’t sure why that shocked him so much. Otis was the seventy-year-old doorman, and he was drooling in love with Darlene. Otis would probably agree to let her into any apartment in the building, even if she were carrying a metal detector and a large black sack.
Tom supposed he was shocked that Darlene would take advantage of the nice old guy like that. Whatever the reason, his smile felt tight.
“And why did you do that?”
“I’d left my driver’s license next to the sofa,” she said, and he had to admit she told the lie beautifully. “Anyhow, I also picked up the mail for you. I knew you’d been waiting for that transcript.”
“Really. Was it there?”
“No.” She lifted her gold clutch and opened it deftly. “But this was.”
She held out a small pink envelope. Immediately he caught the cloying scent of gardenias.
Damn it to hell. He had hoped he’d never see another one of these. But even if he had to, he wasn’t supposed to get it yet. Not for another week.
Could it possibly be a coincidence?
But he knew it wasn’t.
He knew it was Sophie.
As always, he felt his lungs tightening, as if they wanted to reject the sickeningly sweet smell. Or was he just trying to reject the idea that Sophie had sent him another “anniversary” card? Every year he told himself that surely this would be the last. She’d forget, she’d lose interest, her therapists would finally convince her that it did no good, especially since he never responded.
It had been ten years now. Ten years since he’d walked out of a church filled with these poisonously sweet white flowers. Ten years since he’d walked out on Sophie.
But she’d never forgotten. And she clearly intended to make sure that he didn’t, either. Which was fairly ironic, actually.
Darlene pushed the card forward a fraction of an inch, and he realized he needed to do something. He held out his hand calmly and took it. He flipped it over, glanced at the return address just to be sure the gardenia smell hadn’t tricked him, then flipped it back to see whether Sophie had addressed his name the usual way, with a small heart where the O in Tom should be.
She had.
No wonder Darlene’s smile looked so tight and thin.
“Well?”
