Leigh Michaels – The Playboy Assignment (страница 7)

But then there was the fit of his pin-striped suit. Susannah still had trouble reconciling that suit with the Marc she remembered.... Not that it mattered, she told herself firmly. It was a waste of time to speculate about a man from a far distant past. A man who could never be important to her again.

She’d do her job, and Marc would go back to his regular life, wherever it was. And whatever—and whomever—it involved.

In the end, Susannah was glad her presentation was scheduled for Friday afternoon, because it forced her to push the entire problem of Cyrus’s paintings out of her mind. Instead, she spent the day concentrating on how to carry off a widespread recall of child safety seats without creating a national panic, and—less important but perhaps even more difficult—how to present her strategy to the manufacturer without causing an uproar which might cost Tryad future business.

By late afternoon, she’d managed both, and she celebrated by taking a cab back to Tryad’s offices. The work was far from over, but with all the plans approved and in place, the rest would be relatively easy.

She’d actually forgotten Cyrus and the paintings until she reached into her handbag to pay the cabbie and her fingertips touched a small square envelope. Rita had handed it to her as she went out the door for her presentation, saying it had just been delivered by a courier service. Susannah hadn’t even opened it, just shoved it into her bag. But she knew what was inside; through the heavy paper, embossed with Joseph Brewster’s name, she’d been able to feel the shape of a key.

The key to Cyrus Albrecht’s house, no doubt. Well, Monday would be soon enough to figure out how she was going to handle the problem of setting a fair value on Cyrus’s art collection and keep Pierce and the museum’s board happy.

The good news, she told herself, was that by Monday, Marc Herrington would have gone back to—wherever it was he’d come from. In fact, she thought he was probably gone already, or Joe Brewster wouldn’t have sent her a key. Not that she was planning to check; she deserved a peaceful weekend.

And the sudden drop in spirits she was suffering at the moment was an aftereffect of hard work and stress, of relief, of worry about how she was going to pull off this assignment. It had nothing to do, she was certain, with whether or not Marc Herrington. was still in Chicago.

She handed the fare over to the cabbie and reached for the door handle, only to feel it slide away under her hand as the door was opened from outside.

Another commuter, she thought, anxious to pick up a cab at rush hour. At least he could wait till I’m out!

But the odds were that anyone hailing a cab in this neighborhood was a client of Tryad’s, so she swallowed the tart comment she’d have liked to make and smiled instead. “I’m glad I happened along just when you needed the cab,” she said sweetly, and planted one foot on the curb.

“Perfect timing, in fact,” a rich baritone answered.

Susannah’s heel went out from under her and she tumbled back against the cab’s seat.

“Except that since you’re here, I don’t need a cab,” Marc went on reasonably. “May I offer you a hand, Susannah, since you seem to be having trouble getting out on your own?”

Today he looked more like the Marc she remembered—his jeans worn to pale blue and clinging to narrow hips, his pullover shirt emphasizing the breadth of his shoulders and the strength of his arms. Without apparent effort he almost lifted Susannah out of the cab, then stood with a hand still on her arm as if to steady her as he waved the driver away.

“What are you doing here?” As soon as the words were out, Susannah wanted to bite her tongue off; as opening gambits, that was about the worst she could think of.

“Don’t you think we have a few things to talk about?”

Pierce had said something yesterday about Marc looking at her like a hungry wolf. Susannah couldn’t see anything of the sort, herself. And she could detect nothing suggestive about his voice; his tone was perfectly level, and in fact he didn’t sound particularly interested. The combination made her feel a great deal more sure of herself, and she attacked. “I can’t imagine what we’d have to discuss. If you happen to be wondering what makes a public relations person qualified to appraise an art collection—”

“Oh, nothing so dull as that,” Marc said. “Besides, who am I to question your aptitude for the job? Growing up in such a privileged family, one of the Northbrook Millers—I imagine you absorbed more about art with your infant formula than I know now.”

A privileged family. For a moment, she wondered if there was the smallest hint of sarcasm in his tone. But Marc didn’t know. Marc couldn’t know...

He added, very gently, “I left a message for you with your receptionist, that I just wanted to talk over old times. She seemed to think you’d be disappointed to have missed me.”

Just my luck, Susannah thought, to have caught him on the way out. If I’d been five minutes later—just five minutes...

The white lace curtain on Mrs. Holcomb’s bay window next door didn’t just flutter as it usually did when anything of interest happened on the street outside. This time the lace was actually folded back, and Susannah didn’t think she was imagining the shadowy face which appeared behind the glass.

And if Mrs. Holcomb could see this very interesting conversation, so could Rita and Alison—if they happened to look out the window. And if Susannah walked into Tryad with Marc Herrington in tow, she might as well issue engraved invitations to a grilling, with herself on the barbecue spit.

She sighed. “There’s a little restaurant around the corner. How about a cup of coffee?”

“I thought you’d never ask. Shall I carry your briefcase?”

Susannah surrendered it, and pretended not to notice when Marc offered his arm. She spent the couple of minutes’ walk debating with herself. Had he always been a gentleman, or was that, too, something new? At eighteen, in the midst of a revolt against her parents’ values—a rebellion which had come a little later but no less violently than that of most teenagers—would she even have noticed such things as courtly manners?

The same waitress who had been working at breakfast hour on Monday brought their coffee, and dimpled when Marc thanked her.

Susannah stirred cream into her coffee and said, “Old times, you said. All right—you go first. What have you been up to for the last eight years? What are you working at these days?”

“I’m still in manufacturing.” Marc stretched out his hands—long fingers arched, each knuckle tensed. It was a gesture Susannah remembered seeing often, though the reason for it was less vivid in her mind. She vaguely recalled that he’d said something about the need to keep his hands flexible, for the work he did...

“Welding must be paying better these days,” she said crisply, “for you to afford to dress like that. The suit you were wearing at the funeral yesterday—”

“Did you like it? I bought it just for the occasion.”

“Is that why the funeral was delayed—to let you go shopping? Nice that you thought that highly of Cyrus.”

“I didn’t, particularly. I never met the man in my life.”

That much didn’t surprise her, but it chipped away at her original theory that Cyrus’s mysterious heir was also his son. To the best of Susannah’s recollection, Marc had had a perfectly serviceable set of parents... “I must admit I’d like to know how your mother met him.”

“I’ll have to ask her sometime. As long as we’re talking about families, how’s your daughter, Susannah?”

The question came at her like a curve ball, hanging just out of reach for an impossibly long time, taunting her. She wasn’t shocked, exactly; she’d been half expecting something of the sort. Why had he fixed on a girl? “I don’t have a daughter.”

“Really? It seemed a perfectly reasonable conclusion. A professional office probably wouldn’t provide hopscotch layouts on the front walk for clients’ children—at least, not the sort of firm yours obviously is. And since hopscotch is not only a little girl’s game, but is most fascinating to girls exactly the age yours would be...” -

“Very logical,” she admitted. “Very reasonable. And very wrong. The neighborhood girls like to play there. It’s the widest and flattest walk around.”

“A son, then?”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Marc was stirring his coffee. “Oh, I couldn’t be any more disillusioned with you than I was eight years ago. I must admit, however, I’d like to know what happened. I expected, after you told me that you hadn’t married after all, that you’d still be trying to convince the world your child was also mine, and I’d been too much of a bum to marry you. Naive of me, wasn’t it, to think that? Of course the Northbrook Millers would figure out a neater, easier way. What was it, Susannah? A convenient miscarriage?” The spoon didn’t stop moving in concentric circles as his gaze lifted to meet hers. “A very private adoption?”

“As you pointed out yourself, it’s none of your business.”

“Perhaps I should ask Pierce.”

“He doesn’t know.”

“In that case, it might be even more interesting to compare notes.”