Leigh Michaels – The Playboy Assignment (страница 6)

“But I knew as soon as he looked blankly at that magnificent Evans Jackson canvas that my first instinct was right.” Pierce shuddered. “The very idea of threatening to wipe his feet on it! I only hope Evans doesn’t hear what I said about his work.”

“I doubt the two of them hang around in the same circles.”

Pierce laughed. “That’s certainly true.”

“And all good gallery owners talk that way, don’t they, to gain the customer’s confidence?” Susannah didn’t even try to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Pierce, about this assignment you’ve saddled me with... Surely you don’t expect me to pass myself off as a staff member, because I won’t do it.”

“Oh, no. We’ll refer to you as—let’s see...”

She cut in ruthlessly. “We’ll call me exactly what I am—the museum’s public relations representative.”

“Actually,” Pierce mused, “that’s ideal. Because of your inexperience—”

“I thought you told Marc I was qualified.”

Pierce shrugged. “I didn’t say expert. So any errors can easily be passed off—”

“Are you saying you want me to make errors?”

“Susannah, my dear, you’ll have all of the museum’s resources to draw on. And I expect you to use all the expertise the Dearborn can provide. Including me.”

“I suppose that means you’ll make the errors? Never mind.”

“I’m still determined to end up with this collection, Susannah. So just remember—if you value things high, you’ll have to raise the money to pay for them and explain to the board why they’re worth so much.”

“And if I value them low, I’ll end up looking like a fool.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Pierce said easily. “Didn’t you see the way he was looking at you—sort of like a hungry wolf? I imagine, if you play your cards right, you’ll be able to keep Marcus Herrington from asking any questions at all.”

Tryad’s office, a converted brownstone not far from the green expanse of Lincoln Park, was quiet when Pierce dropped Susannah off early that evening. The same couldn’t be said of the rest of the neighborhood; since it was still mostly residential, the streets really came alive after work and school were over. And with the newly warmer weather to celebrate, kids were out in force.

Susannah dodged two roller skaters, paused to observe a cutthroat marbles tournament, finished teaching the two little girls next door a rope-skipping rhyme from her childhood, and stopped to study a hopscotch layout drawn in chalk on Tryad’s own front walk.

“You know,” she told the hopscotch artists, “this doesn’t make us look very professional, having big white-numbered squares drawn on the concrete leading straight to our offices.”

The girls looked stricken. “But we drew it as neatly as we could, Susannah,” one of them said.

Another chimed in, “And it’s only chalk, you know. It’ll wash off when it rains.”

The third added, “Maybe we could use colored chalk next time. It’d be prettier. Would that help?”

Susannah laughed, shook her head, and skirted the carefully drawn hopscotch field. The hopscotch craze would last only a few weeks; good neighbors—of any age—went on forever.

Almost automatically, she waved at the bay window of the house on the other side, the twin half of Tryad’s brownstone. She wasn’t surprised to see the white lace curtain flutter as if the corner had been hastily dropped. Mrs. Holcomb might be a recluse, but there wasn’t a move made in the neighborhood which escaped her.

What did startle Susannah was a glimpse of a hand behind the curtain, half raised in what might have been a hesitant wave. It was the first time Mrs. Holcomb had ever responded directly to any approach Susannah had made, and she was surprised at the surge of pleasure which swept over her.

Such a little thing a wave was, to cause such a reaction. And yet, for Mrs. Holcomb—who, so far as Susannah knew, had left her house only once in the three years since Tryad had moved in next door—it was a major overture of friendship.

Inside, the office was dim and quiet. A few rays of late sunshine found their way in through the stained-glass panel at the top of the main stairway, and security lights glowed here and there, lighting the way to the exits. The usual hum of copy machines and computers, and the muted chime of the telephones, had stilled into silence.

In the receptionist’s office, once the brownstone’s living room, Rita’s desk was neat, the blotter empty except for tomorrow’s to-do list. The in-basket marked with Susannah’s name was empty.

That was one minor miracle, Susannah thought. At least she was no farther behind than she’d been early this afternoon—it felt like a million years ago—when she’d left the office to attend Cyrus’s funeral...

Except, of course, for the job Pierce had dumped on her. Putting a value on an art collection was hardly a public relations job, but Susannah liked both art and research, and under other circumstances she might have found it an enjoyable challenge. If she had plenty of time, if she didn’t have a dozen pressing projects...

“Be honest,” she told herself. “If it didn’t involve Marc Herrington, you’d like the job a whole lot better.”

She climbed the stairs from the main level to her own office, at the back of the building. Her desk was in chaos, piled with papers and folders, just as it had been late this morning when the telephone calls started to come in. The project she’d been working on was due to be presented to the client tomorrow afternoon, but Susannah had no enthusiasm for facing the final details tonight. She’d come in early in the morning to finish.

She sailed her picture hat across the room toward the chintz-covered couch. The hat landed almost atop a calico cat, curled up nearly out of sight under the edge of a cushion. The cat opened one yellow eye and surveyed her warily. Susannah apologized and went on down the hall to Kit’s office, with its view of the street and the green expanse of Lincoln Park beyond.

The room was unnaturally neat, and Susannah thought the air smelled a bit stale after ten days of disuse. She wasn’t quite sure how that could happen, since the door had been open all the time. Perhaps it wasn’t staleness she felt, but loneliness.

She flung herself down on the chaise longue. She missed Kit. Missed being able to bounce ideas off her, to share frustrations and problems and triumphs.

“So what would Kitty do?” Her voice was loud in the silence of the office.

Stupid question, of course. Susannah would have bet money that Kit—straightforward, uncomplicated Kit—had never had a secret in her life.- She’d even fallen in love so transparently that Susannah and Alison had known it- almost before Kit herself had.

Susannah sighed.

Alison, the warmhearted and practical, wouldn’t be much more help. She’d be sympathetic, of course, but Alison—who had X-ray vision when it came to predicting the outcome of a business decision—would never comprehend how, even at the tender and inexperienced age of eighteen, Susannah could have been so foolish, so impractical, so shortsighted.

The truth was, if she tried for a month Susannah couldn’t explain to Alison what had happened eight years ago between her and Marc—because she wasn’t certain she understood it herself.

And neither Kit nor Alison would be able to fathom why they’d never heard about Marc Herrington before. If he had once been an important part of Susannah’s life, they should have known all the details long since. And if he hadn’t been significant, why was she making such a fuss about meeting him again now?

No, Susannah decided, her partners would be no help whatsoever. She was in this one on her own.

The last rays of sunlight were still filtering through the hallway, but Kit’s office had dimmed slowly and imperceptibly till Susannah was sitting in darkness.

Maybe she was overreacting, she told herself hopefully. Despite what Marc had said about being involved in the fate of Cyrus’s art collection, perhaps he really had no intention of doing anything of the sort. Maybe he’d just been pushing buttons, simply to see what her reaction would be. She wouldn’t put that sort of behavior past the new Marc.

Besides, the collection was big, and with her lack of experience, valuing it wouldn’t be the work of a few days. The task could stretch over a period of months, especially since she couldn’t just drop her other obligations. Surely Marc couldn’t rearrange his life to leave room for that.

Marc wasn’t the sort to be without a job. He’d never been too proud to work at whatever came to hand, and Susannah doubted that had changed. Besides, hadn’t Pierce said something about Cyrus’s funeral being delayed because Marc was on vacation? A vacation surely implied a job, and also an employer—who would not be likely to look kindly on a lengthy absence.

But what kind of a job? she found herself wondering.

Once, Marc had been a welder in a factory which built farm machinery. She supposed he might have made the jump into management, pushing numbers instead of steel. As a supervisor of sorts, perhaps; his hands—though not calloused—had been hard, as if he still did physical work. She hadn’t realized till just now that she’d noticed.