He smiled at that. “No. I meant where did you go to—”
“My favorite color is blue,” she told him. “And my favorite food is fruits de mer.” Her French, she was proud to say, sounded as good as his Italian had last night. Unfortunately, fruits de mer was about the only thing she could say in French, and only because she’d practiced it for her menu lesson.
“After opera,” she continued, “my greatest passion is—”
She halted abruptly. Now here was a problem. Because other than opera, Della really had no passions. She’d never really had an opportunity to find any. After landing the job at Whitworth and Stone when she was eighteen, she’d focused entirely on it in order to stay employed there. She’d worked overtime whenever she could for the money, and she’d spent the rest of her time trying to better herself in whatever ways she could. Reading classic novels from the library. Emulating the speech of actors in movies. Swiping magazines she found in the apartment’s recycling bin to educate herself about fashion and etiquette and how to act like a refined human being. Opera had been the only indulgence she’d allowed herself, both because she loved it and it contributed to the kind of person she wanted to be. Beyond that …
Beyond that, she’d never had much of anything else to love.
“After opera …” Marcus prodded her now.
She looked at him, biting back another surge of panic. Never had she felt like a greater impostor than she did in that moment. She really did have nothing. Not a thing in the world. For the first time since leaving her life—such as it was—in New York, she realized how utterly empty her life had been and how absolutely alone she was.
“After opera …” She felt the prickle of tears sting her eyes. No, please. Anything but that. Not here. Not now. Not in front of Marcus. She hadn’t cried since she was a child. Not once. Not when things had fallen apart in New York. Not when Geoffrey had told her she had to leave with him. Not during the eleven months since, when she’d had to turn her entire life over to someone else. Why now? Why here? Why in front of the last person on earth she wanted to see her cry?
She lifted a hand to shield her face and jumped up from the bed. “Excuse me,” she said hastily as she headed for the bathroom. “I think I have an eyelash in my eye.” As she was closing the door, she said over her shoulder, “If you don’t mind, I’ll take the first shower.” Without awaiting a reply, she pushed the door closed and locked it, then turned on the shower full blast. Then she grabbed a towel and dropped to the floor, shoving it hard against her mouth.
I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.
Her eyes grew damp, so she squeezed them shut.
I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.
And somehow, by some miracle, Della kept the tears at bay.
The moment Marcus heard the rattle of the shower curtain closing in the bathroom, he crossed to the dresser where Della had laid her purse the night before. Okay, so maybe this one couldn’t hold as much as a computer’s hard drive, since it was one of those tiny purses women carried to formal events that was roughly the size of a negative ion. But it was large enough to hold a driver’s license, cash and a cell phone, all of which he found inside, along with a tube of lipstick, a collapsible hairbrush, a plain metal keychain from which dangled a single key—house key, not car key—and, curiously, a computer USB drive. But no credit card, he noted, thinking it odd. Meaning she’d paid for her dinner and whatever else last night—a not inconsiderable sum—with cash. Interesting. He just wasn’t sure exactly how.
He looked at the driver’s license first and saw that it was from New York State. So she had been honest with him about being from the East Coast, but hadn’t dissuaded him of his assumption that she came from a hot climate. Also interesting. But again, he wasn’t sure how. Looking closer at the license, he saw that her full name was Della Louise Hannan and that she was thirty years old. In fact, she’d turned thirty yesterday. So last night was her celebration of reaching that milestone. The fact that she’d celebrated it alone heartened him—more than it really should have.
He glanced at her address, but it was on one of the higher numbered streets, outside the part of Manhattan with which he was familiar. He knew the better parts of New York like the back of his hand and had expected he would be able to pinpoint Della’s address with little effort—doubtless somewhere near or on Fifth Avenue or Central Park. But this was nowhere close to either of those. He memorized it for future investigation, stuck the license in her purse and withdrew her cell phone, flipping it open.
Unfortunately, it was one of those not-particularly-smart phones, a bare-bones model that didn’t contain an easy-access menu. So he had to poke around a bit to find what he was looking for, namely her calls received and sent. After a moment, he found both and discovered that every single one had been to and from one person. A person identified simply as Geoffrey.
Any optimism Marcus had begun to feel dissolved at that. Geoffrey could be a first or last name, but somehow he knew that it was definitely a man’s name. He fumbled through more screens until he found her contact list and began to scroll to G. It took a while to get there. She had dozens of contacts, most listed by last name, but a handful—mostly women—were identified by their first names and, when the names were duplicates, by a last initial. Finally, he came to Geoffrey and clicked on it. There were two numbers listed for him, one designated a work number, the other a cell. The work number was a three one two area code—the man worked in Chicago. The cell number, however, was eight four seven, that was in the suburbs. It was a revelation that revealed nothing to Marcus. A lot of people lived in the ‘burbs and worked in the city. And eight four seven covered a lot of ‘burbs.
He reminded himself that Geoffrey could be a brother or a cousin or some guy she knew from high school. There was no reason to think he was necessarily a love interest or the man who kept her. Except for the fact that he was clearly the only person she was in touch with, in spite of her knowing a lot more.
But that was what men like that did, didn’t they? They isolated the woman they wanted to own from her friends and family until she had no one but the guy to rely on. Whoever this Geoffrey was, Marcus was liking him less and less. That was saying something, because Marcus had begun to really loathe the faceless, nameless man in Della’s life without even knowing for sure one existed.
He scrolled through more screens until he found the one that contained her photographs and clicked on those. There weren’t a lot, but there were enough to tell him more about her. Several of the photos were pictures of Della with a trio of other women, all about her age. But it took him a few moments to realize one of the women in the pictures was Della, since she looked different than she did now—her hair was short and black, not the shoulder-length deep gold it was now. But why would she cover up a color like that? Or wear it so short?
Women.
Judging by the length of her hair now, the photos on her phone must be at least a year old. In a few of them, Della and the other women were dressed in business attire and seated at a table with girly-looking drinks sitting in front of them, appearing as if they were blowing off steam at the end of a workday. Okay, so Della had a job and wasn’t necessarily the idle socialite he’d thought her to be. It didn’t mean she hadn’t come from money. She might have even been a client of some kind of one or more of the other women.
Scrolling further down through the pictures, Marcus finally found what he was looking for. Photos of Della, still with short, dark hair, seated with a man on a beach somewhere.
