Thank God she had on her dark glasses so neither Drew nor the doctor could see her shock. “What do you mean? What do the gowns have to do with it?”
“Bridget told us she found you underneath the skirt of a dress you’d been examining for an hour. I suspect the gown itself is toxic.” Dr. Stemmer glanced down at his pager. “I’m sorry. I need to go. I’ll have the nurse take you off the IV drips. Rest now. I’ll be back to see you later.”
Some memory tried to fight its way out of her aching head, but she couldn’t quite grab it. She gave up to make sense of what Dr. Stemmer had just told her.
“I can’t believe Bertha’s gown had anything to do with this,” she said to Drew, who still hovered by her bed.
“I can,” Drew answered with the usual Clayworth confidence. “Lewis Stemmer is the best. He knows what he’s talking about.”
No doubt her face looked as hot as she felt consumed with another odd spurt of truthfulness. “Drew, I beg Dr. Stemmer’s pardon, but not yours. Neither one of you knows as much about Bertha’s gowns as I do. I’m an expert on vintage clothing and have had my head up dozens more skirts than either one of you.”
Now she couldn’t mistake his smile. It curled his beautiful mouth deep at the corners. “In that department I can’t speak for Dr. Stemmer. Only myself.”
The Clayworth confidence, and the Clayworth reputation with women, set her on fire. She thrust up her chin. “Probably I’ve had my head up more skirts than you. Vintage ones for sure!”
“That’s debatable,” he muttered, lowering his lids for an instant over those cornflower eyes.
I’m going to do it again.
She tried not to open her mouth. She ran her free hand around the neck of the hospital gown to let in some air to cool her hot, heaving bosom. Anything to stop herself.
“Of course, how could I possibly have forgotten,” she drawled, helpless not to. “I remember the item Rebecca ran about you and your cousins closing down a restaurant in Paris while cavorting with a troupe of topless can-can dancers.”
His lips twitched, and his eyes lightened to a silvery blue. “You can’t believe everything you read. Even in Rebecca’s column. It was Prague, and the ladies were wearing Bohemian costumes.”
“No doubt fine vintage,” she snapped.
He laughed. “Yeah. Costumes and women.”
Their eyes met, and her body tingled back to life.
No way. I will never ever again be sucked in by the Clayworth charm. He doesn’t mean it. It’s all show. I can see it in his eyes.
She thrust her chin so high, her neck ached. “Your global escapades with your cousins don’t make you an expert on vintage couture. I am one. And I’ve never been overcome before, or found any garment remotely toxic. Obviously, I was overcome by some toxic matter you Clayworths are hoarding in your store’s top-secret closet!”
“I’ll be able to confirm Dr. Stemmer’s diagnosis when he examines the gowns.”
“And just when will that be happening, so I can offer my expert opinion?”
He calmly glanced at his gold Rolex. “In approximately an hour the gowns will be delivered to his lab here. I’ll be back afterward. Rest now like the doctor ordered.”
Since she’d woken up in this hospital bed, her whole world felt out of rhythm, with her two beats behind. Only when Drew turned to leave the room did she think of more comebacks for his smug confidence about the dresses.
But could they be right?
Again, the memory hovered just out of reach.
She looked up to see her sisters peeking through the open door. “Swear to me you won’t e-mail or phone Dad about this,” Athena called out, suddenly afraid the Fates, Drew, truth serum, and her father were more than she could deal with at the moment.
“We swear, but we need to leave now. The doctor wants you to rest,” Diana called softly.
“We’ll be back in a few hours with your favorite Leonidas chocolate,” Venus promised and blew a kiss.
At the precise moment of blowing a kiss back to her sisters, the nagging memory she couldn’t quite grasp earlier leaped out and hit her over her head.
She’d stood in a hospital doorway blowing a kiss to T. A. Long, her favorite costume curator in the whole world, when he was in the hospital with a strange ailment after doing a thorough examination of a black Dior evening dress.
No, it can’t be the same illness. T. A. was so much sicker.
Groaning, she shut her eyes, trying to figure out if the two incidents could truly be related.
T. A.’s illness had been caused by fumes from degrading plastic that designers sprayed on the netting under dresses decades ago. Could the boning in the much older Bertha Palmer dresses be degrading and have a similar effect?
Tears burned in her eyes, and she quickly brushed them away. She didn’t want the Bertha Palmer gowns to be found guilty of poisoning her. She wanted them placed in the museum, where they belonged. They were tangible pieces of Chicago history for future generations to enjoy and learn from. They were the centerpiece of the exhibit that would generate enough money to cement the scholarship in her mother’s honor and start Makayla on the road to a great future. If only Athena’s dad hadn’t dropped the ball because of the Clayworth mess, it would all be in place and none of this would have happened.
But it had happened, and she had to fix it.
Despite Drew Clayworth, who had the distinction of being her first really big mistake.
On the way to Lewis Stemmer’s office, Drew couldn’t help laughing to himself. Prim and proper Athena Smith had challenged him about knowing his way up a woman’s skirt. And told him what she thought of him.
Why didn’t I do the same instead of kissing her?
Did she remember it? Had it brought back any old memories for her, like it had for him?
He needed to know what game she was playing this time. Her eyes had always given her away. That’s how he’d known what she’d done to him.
She didn’t need those damn glasses, the same large, pale-smoke-tinted lenses, the kind shaded at the top so they’re clear over the cheeks, she’d been wearing in all the newspaper pictures he’d seen of her in the last few months.
She was hiding behind them, just as Rebecca’s columns hinted. Hiding her feelings about the loss of her father’s spotless reputation.
The latter at the hands of his family.
Tension tightened like a vise around his neck and shoulders. He shrugged, trying to relax. He never second-guessed himself. He felt as sure of his decision about Alistair as he did Lewis Stemmer’s medical diagnosis of Athena’s illness.
Drew stopped in the glass walkway between the hospital and Lewis’s office. Below on Superior Street, Venus and Diana were getting into a cab.
If Drew believed in fate, Athena’s reappearance in his life would be some kind of omen. She’d been there on the cold, snowy night he first vowed to win the yacht race that ultimately killed his parents. And here she appeared again on the eve of his finally fulfilling his promise to himself to race in the Fastnet.
The memory of the first Christmas after his parents died rubbed painfully against his hard protective shell. He’d let her in that night, and the aftermath had changed him.
He strolled slowly, giving himself a few more minutes to stop thinking about their past. At the moment he couldn’t avoid Athena, and it had nothing to do with their fate being written in the stars like she had once told him, lying on the sand at the Clayworth beach, regaling him with the myths her father had woven for her. Then he’d been totally taken in, no doubt from teenage testosterone. He’d learned a long time ago the only thing in the heavens were the constellations that guided lost sailors at sea.