They got into the elevator, joining a City Hall clerk, her arms loaded down with a pile of gaudy flyers. "Take one!" she said in a cheery voice.
M. J. snatched one up and read it: Mayor Sampson's Bicentennial Ball. General tickets: $50. Contributor: $100. Inner Circle: $500.
"Do you think Ed will help us out?" asked Adam.
"I'll hound him to the grave if he doesn't."
Adam laughed. "I'd say that's a pretty potent threat, coming from you."
They stepped off the elevator. "Hardly," said M. J., still gazing down at the flyer.
Inner circle tickets were $500 each and Isabel had two of them.
"I'm not a threat to anyone," she muttered. Then she tossed the flyer into a trash can.
The cook had laid out a lovely supper for them: Cornish hens glazed with raspberry sauce, wild rice, a bottle of wine chilling in the bucket. And candlelight, naturally. Everything, thought Adam, was perfect. Or should have been perfect.
But it wasn't.
He watched M. J. silently chase a sprig of parsley around her plate, and he wondered how many days, how many hours, before this woman-this fascinating, maddening woman-would be strolling out of his life. That she would leave, he had no doubt. It was only a matter of time. She was right, of course; the gap between their worlds was immense, perhaps unbridgeable. His world was Groton and Harvard, ski slopes and Surry Heights. Adam Dillingham Quantrell IV had known both his parents, had even known the names of his grandparents and their grandparents, had grown up versed in the history of his bloodlines. Mariana Josefina Ortiz, raised on the mean streets of South Lexington, had known only her mother's name. Her father would forever remain a mystery. Lacking any pedigree, she was, quite simply, what she'd made of herself.
He liked the result.
And he was perplexed by it.
She was shoving a sliver of carrot around her plate now. Where was her appetite? With a sigh, she put down her fork and looked at him.
"Thinking about Esterhaus again?" he asked.
"And… everything, I guess."
"Including us?"
After a pause, she nodded.
He picked up his wineglass and took a sip. She watched him, waiting for him to say something. It was unlike her to hold back words. Are we so uncomfortable with each other? he wondered.
"It's not healthy for me," she said. "Staying here."
He glanced at her scarcely touched meal. "At least you'd eat properly."
"I mean, emotionally. I'm not used to counting on a man. It makes me feel like I'm up on stilts, tottering around. Waiting to fall. I mean, look at this." She waved at the elegant table setting, the flickering candles. "It's just not real to me."
"Am I?"
She looked directly at him. "I don't know."
The fearless M. J. Novak , he thought with sudden understanding. Terrified of being loved.
He pinched his own arm and said with a smile, "I seem real enough to myself."
She didn't appreciate his humor. In fact, he couldn't get even the glimmer of a smile out of her. He leaned forward. "M. J.," he said. "If you always expect to be hurt, then that's what will happen."
"No, it's the other way around. If you're ready for it, then you can't be hurt."
Resignedly he sat back. "Well, that pretty much wraps up the future."
She laughed-a sad, hollow sound. "See, Adam, I take one day at a time. Enjoy things while I can. I can enjoy this, being with you. But I'm going to ask you to promise something: When it's over, tell me. No BS, just the straight scoop. If I'm not what you want, if it's not working, tell me. I'm not crystal. I don't break."
"Don't you?"
"No." She picked up her wine and took a nonchalant sip. The truth was, he thought, that she had a heart as fragile as that wineglass, and she wouldn't let it show. It was beneath her dignity to be weak. To be human. She was convinced that one of these days he would hurt her.
And maybe she's right.
He pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. "Come on," he said.
"Where?"
"Upstairs. If this is a doomed affair, then we should make the most of it. While we can."
She gave him a careless laugh and stood up. "While the sun shines," she said.
"And if it doesn't work -"
"We'll both be fine," she finished for him.
They headed up the stairs, to his bedroom, and closed the door, shutting out the rest of the world. One day at a time, he thought as he watched her unbutton her clothes, watched the garments slide to the floor, one moment at a time.
And what comes after is for tomorrow to decide.
He took her in his arms, kissed her. He wanted to be gentle; she wanted to be fierce. As though, in making love, she was battling some inner demon, struggling against it and him, against even herself. Love and war, delight and despair, it was what he felt that night, making love to her.
When it was over, when she'd fallen asleep in pure exhaustion, he lay awake beside her. He gazed around his darkened bedroom, saw the gleam of antique furniture, the vaulted ceiling. It comes between us, he thought. My wealth. My name. It scares her.
And in a way, she scared him. There was too much fire, too many sparks in this Mariana Josefina. He thought of all the turmoil she'd brought into his life. In one short week she'd introduced him to dead bodies, street fights, and exploding houses. She'd forced him to confront his failure as a father and his guilt as a man of wealth. She intrigued him, infuriated him, delighted him. How would he ever fill the vacuum she'd leave behind?
She whimpered in her sleep and turned towards him, burrowing against his chest.
How could he keep this wild and crazy woman in his life? he wondered, holding her tightly.
Maybe I can't.
Ratchet was back from vacation, sporting a red sunburn and even redder mosquito bites. While the mosquitoes had found the pickings good, Ratchet, it seemed, had not.
"One lousy fish," he said. "The poorest excuse for a trout I ever saw. I didn't know whether to cook it or put it in a bag of water for my kid's goldfish bowl. A whole damn week, and that's what I had to show for it. Lost three of my best lures, too. I tell you, the rivers up there are fished out. Totally fished out."
"So how many did Beth catch?" asked M. J.
"Beth?"
"You know. Your wife."
Ratched coughed. "Six," he mumbled. "Maybe seven."
"Only seven?"
"Okay, maybe it was more like eight. A statistical fluke."
"Yeah, she's good at those flukes, isn't she?"
Ratchet yanked his lab coat off the door hook and thrust his arms into the sleeves. "So how's it been here? Anything exciting happen?"
"Not a thing."
"Why do I bother asking?" Ratchet muttered. He went over to the in-box and fished out a pile of papers. "Look at all this stuff."
"All yours," said M. J. "We left 'em for you."
"Gee, thanks."
"And you've got two dozen files on your desk, waiting for signatures."
"Okay, okay. It's enough to keep a guy from ever going on vacation." He sighed and headed down the hall to his office.
M. J. sat at her desk, listening to the familiar squeak of his tennis shoes moving down the hall. It was back to business as usual, she thought. The same old routine she had had for years. So why was she so depressed?
She rose and poured another cup of coffee-her third this morning. She was turning into a caffeine junkie, a sugar junkie. A love junkie. Hopeless relationships-that was her specialty. She dropped back into her chair. If she could just stop thinking about Adam for a day, an hour, maybe she'd regain some control over her life. But he had become an obsession for her. Even now, she wondered what he was doing, whether he was sitting at his desk, missing her. Or was he like most other men she knew, able to separate the various parts of his life into neat little boxes, to be opened at the appropriate times? Ineed to learn that trick , she thought. But every time she opened a file, signed her name, those images of the night before would float through her head.