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“Lisa Woodsen gave it to you. She should have confided in you. And I keep telling you that your forehead isn’t the root of the problem. It’s the way your neck gets all knotted up. Turn around.”
I wanted to be obstinate, but it would have been a little like cutting off my nose to spite my face. Sam has hands to die for.
I turned and gave him my back. His strong fingers flexed at the base of my skull and found all the tight spots down the line of my vertebrae. My headache waned even as something coiled in the pit of my stomach. This was a normal reaction to Sam’s neck rubs that I had learned to ignore over the months. But this time I think I might have groaned aloud.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much. I’m still mad at you, though.”
He laughed and his hands fell away. My loss. I turned to face him again.
His dark hair had fallen over his brow sometime during our long afternoon in court. Together with his just-slightly crooked, bad-boy grin, it gave him a rakish look. It was something else I’d noticed before and that I tried to disregard. As a general rule, it’s not good to get all quivery inside over your best—platonic—friend.
“Our first priority should be those kids,” I said finally, pulling myself back to business.
“Agreed. So share your scampi with me and we’ll talk about it over dinner.”
“No.” I pivoted sharply and headed for the big oak doors and all that sunshine outside.
“I have a date, anyway!” he called after me.
I swung back to him. “That’s two already this week, Sam. You’ve got an obsession going on here. Want me to ask Lisa Woodsen for the name of her shrink?”
“Hey, I’m busy looking for the wrong woman.”
Which I knew he had found many, many times. More accurately, Sam didn’t seem to want to find the right one. I put my back against the door and pushed it open.
“Good luck,” I called back to him. “Maybe she can make you shrimp and linguine.” I was all the way down the big stone steps outside before I shook my head and let myself laugh aloud.
“Sam again?” asked a voice from behind me.
I turned to find Grace Simkanian on my heels. Grace was also my neighbor. She lived one floor up from Sam in a one-bedroom unit she shared with Jenny Tower. They had to buddy-up to afford the place. Jenny was a waitress and Grace clerked for one of the criminal court judges. Law clerks are paid worse than volunteers, but they have very bright futures.
“Sam again,” I agreed. I matched Grace’s stride and we headed for the municipal lot. I always gave her a ride home when I was in court in the afternoon.
“When are you two going to stop fighting and start clawing each other’s clothes off?” she asked.
My stomach lurched hard and suddenly. “There’s a ridiculous notion.”
“Ah. Clawing is beneath you.”
That stopped me in my tracks. Grace headed on to my car without me.
“I claw,” I protested finally, shouting after her.
Grace stopped at the trunk of my Mitsubishi and looked back at me. “When? Tell me the last time you even considered it.”
I caught up with her and unlocked the trunk, and we tossed our briefcases inside. “Let me think.”
“This will take a while.”
The hell of it was, she was right. I was coming up empty. I hadn’t had a date in six weeks and even then, Frank Ethan—the last guy—had definitely not been the clawing type.
“Well,” I said finally, “I could claw if I wanted to.” Then I frowned. “Why are we even discussing this?” I asked.
“Because I think you should be clawing with Sam. He’s got the look of a man who’d be good at it.”
There was that action with my stomach again. I was starting not to like this conversation. “Sam isn’t interested in me that way.” I wondered who he was seeing tonight, if it was the same voluptuous blonde from Monday.
“You’re touching your hair again,” Grace said. “What’s that all about?”
I dropped my hand fast. “What?”
“Whenever you talk about him, you touch your hair.”
“I do not.” Then I thought about it. As I’ve mentioned, Sam has a strong preference for blondes. Specifically, he likes blondes with a lot of hair. Mine is short and black. I have that kind of face, with small features. Anything more would overpower me. I have that kind of life. I’m a single parent. I don’t have time to fuss with voluminous layers.
My headache chose that moment to come back with an extra punch. “If you’re that impressed with Sam, then why don’t you claw with him?” I asked her.
Grace shrugged. “I scare him.” She’s sleek, sophisticated and sharp as a tack. She says what’s on her mind and she makes no apologies for it. She’s a stunning woman with reams of dark hair, a flawless dusky complexion, and the kind of figure that stops men dead in their tracks. Then they get to her mind, and that usually backs them off. At least it does if they have any sense.
“He tried to snuggle up to Jenny once, though,” Grace said.
I frowned. This was the first I’d heard of it. Jenny is a sunny blonde transplanted from Kansas.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Nothing. He scares her.”
I nodded, understanding that, too. Jenny is waiting for Mr. Right. The last time I checked, her list of prerequisites had not included good-hearted wolves like Sam.
I opened my car door. “I want to go home now. I’ve had a long day.”
“Let’s go to McGlinchey’s, instead,” Grace suggested. Jenny worked at the bar there and would be getting off at five-thirty.
I looked at my watch and decided that I really didn’t want to cook shrimp for two tonight after all. I took my cell phone out of my purse. “If Mrs. Casamento can keep Chloe an extra hour, then I’ll go.”
Grace settled into the passenger seat. Grace doesn’t sit, she settles. It’s a kind of gentle floating-down with her. Men tend to be very appreciative of the phenomenon.
I made the call to the baby-sitter as I got in the car with a little less finesse. Sylvie Casamento keeps me on a short leash even as she laps up the money I pay her. Sam says it’s her express purpose in life to ensure that no one she knows enjoys anything. No one except Sam, that is. Most women adore Sam, and Mrs. C. is no exception.
I got the okay from the baby-sitter, but not without a lot of aggrieved and chastening sighs over the fact that I might—heaven forbid—have a good time. I started the car. When I turned out of the parking lot, Sam was just stepping into the street. I stomped on the gas to pass him before I was tempted to run him over.
McGlinchey’s was mobbed, as it usually is at that hour. The bar was crammed with enough bodies to rival a New York subway at rush hour. I was still trying to explain my feelings about clawing to Grace as we squeezed past a knot of people in animated conversation. They, too, were lawyers.
Philadelphia’s legal community is incestuous. Don’t get me wrong—we all know how to draw lines in the dirt and keep to our own side of them. Favors are owed, calculated and warily exchanged, but that occurs during regular business hours. The rest of the time, it’s sort of a family affair. Many of us have, at some point in time, been married to a handful of the others. For example, Chloe’s father is an attorney here in the city, though I pride myself on the fact that I had the good sense not to go tying any knots with him. But the bottom line is that everyone seems to know everyone else’s personal business, and they talk about it.
As I shoved my way through the crowd, I saw too many considering expressions on faces I recognized. Here’s Mandy, those expressions said, and she’s with a female friend again.
I never considered myself exempt from the storytelling, but I did think I knew what they said about me: She’s more interested in her career than in men. Chloe’s father started that one. His name is Millson—Millson Kramer III. If he were going to be honest, he’d tell you that he was actually relieved when I refused to marry him. He was just “doing the right thing” by asking me in the first place. Right after Chloe was born, he suffered a hiccup of conscience and tried to make things neat and legal and tidy for all of us. I declined his offer, and that, of course, looked bad for him, so he saved face by informing Philadelphia’s legal community that he had tried his best but that I was a cold and brittle workaholic.
I’m pretty sure that Frank Ethan—the last date I’d had six weeks ago—contributed to Mill’s version of Mandy Hillman when I declined to go out with him a second time. There have been a few others like Frank over the years who’ve failed to excite me, so no doubt they’ve all tossed their two cents into the pot, as well. But I’m not cold. I just like my own company. And your perspective on these things changes when you pass that milestone of turning thirty-five, which I had just done. You don’t need to claw quite as much.
“When you’re in your twenties, you’re just seized by all the possibilities,” I tried to explain to Grace as we waded through McGlinchey’s clientele. For all her jaded world-wisdom, Grace is only twenty-six.
Someone nearly spilled a drink on her, and she curled a lip in the man’s direction. He apologized profusely. “What possibilities are those?” she asked me.
“Sexual. Life advancement. Societal compliance.” We finally reached the bar. I had to raise my voice to order. Then we began trolling for a table, each of us armed with a glass of Chardonnay.
At McGlinchey’s, this is a game not unlike musical chairs. The trick is to be near a table when the inhabitants stand to go. It took us twenty minutes, but we managed it. Grace slipped into one of the vacated seats. Her stockings whispered as she crossed her legs. The noise level in McGlinchey’s was at full throttle, but every male within a six-foot radius heard the sound. Heads ratcheted in Grace’s direction.
“That,” I said, looking around at their faces, “was the sexual part of it.”
Grace shrugged. “It’s the Pavlov syndrome, an automatic response to stimuli. It means nothing.”
I pursued my point. “Anyway, when you’re young, you’re more inclined to settle into a relationship just because the sex is fantastic.”
“That’s a very good reason at any age, Mandy. Assuming one was the settling type.”
“Over thirty-five, you’re less likely to be satisfied by the sex alone,” I insisted, sipping wine. “And you’re less likely to hook up with someone for the express purpose of having children and raising a family. Most people take care of that issue in their twenties.”
“Not so much in this day and age. Women are having their children later and later in life.”
“I said most, not all.” I held up a three fingers. “Third, you’re also not likely to settle down in your thirties just because it makes it easier to get a mortgage. You’ve probably already done that, too.”
“You haven’t.”
“I live in Philadelphia. Real estate is ridiculously expensive.”
“So move out of the city.”
“I love the city. What number was I up to?”
“Four.”
I nodded. “Last but not least, you’re also less likely to take a mate just because society is geared almost exclusively toward couples.”
“That’s the compliance part?”
“Yes. So you see, if you hook up with someone once you get past thirty-five, I think you do it for the purest of reasons. Compatibility. Comfort. Conversation. Then throw in a little lust for fun and games. The whole situation becomes easy and noncombative. You don’t fall into a relationship for what the guy can give you, because you’ve probably already gotten it for yourself. You don’t have the need to demand anymore. You can just accept.”
Grace swallowed wine. “Oh, joy. I can hardly wait. Does this come hand in hand with crow’s feet?”
I ignored that. “It’s why I don’t date…much,” I explained. “And why I don’t have an overriding need to claw.”
“Because you’ve already got a child, you don’t want a mortgage and you don’t care what people think anymore?”
“In a nutshell, yes. I can afford to be selective now, so I am.”
Grace put her wineglass on the table and leaned forward. “Mandy. You haven’t dated lately because you spend all your free time with Sam. Let’s not lie to each other here.”
My spine jerked straight, hard enough and suddenly enough to hurt a little. “That’s not true.”
“What’s not?” Jenny Tower asked, flopping into one of the chairs. By the way she shifted her weight in her seat, I knew she was toeing her shoes off under the table. She looked tired.
“Mandy doesn’t date because she’s too busy hanging out with Sam,” Grace said.
“It’s my choice!” I was going to get that through to her if it killed me. “I can afford to wait for compatibility, comfort and conversation because I’m thirty-five!”
Jenny took her apron off and laid it on her lap, pulling a wad of tips from the pocket. She started sorting the ones from the fives. “I don’t ever want to be that old.”
“It’s better than dying young,” Grace said, “but barely.” Then she grabbed the money from Jenny’s hand. “Honey, you’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Jenny looked around the bar and blinked as though coming out of a dream. If there’s anyone in the world more trusting than Jenny is, then it would have to be Toto himself—and even Toto had the good sense to bark at that goofy wizard. “You think someone’s going to snatch it right out of my hand?” she asked disbelievingly.
Grace took the hand in question and pressed the money back into it, folding Jenny’s fingers over it. “Call me mercenary, but our rent is due in two weeks.”
Jenny sighed and pushed the money into her jeans pocket. “Okay. I’ll count it later. Let’s get back to why Mandy doesn’t date.”
I launched into my theory again. “I haven’t met anyone recently who particularly inspires me, and I don’t need all those other things I was mentioning—the mortgage and whatnot—so I won’t tolerate someone who doesn’t inspire me.”
“Which brings us back to Sam,” Grace said. She cut a look at Jenny. “We were talking about clawing his clothes off, at which point Mandy went off into this business about relationships at a certain age. Compatibility. Comfort. Conversation. Wait, what was the other thing you mentioned?” She glanced at me again and tapped a finger against her cheek exaggeratedly. “Ah. Now I remember. Lust.”
“Lust is good,” Jenny contributed. “But I agree, the other things matter a whole lot, too.”
“You and Sam are compatible,” Grace continued, still aiming her words at me. “You’re comfortable with each other. The conversation between you is great—just ask any of us who’ve ever tried to horn in on it. Therefore, according to everything you just told me, the progression is obvious. You two ought to be having sex.”
I opened my mouth to argue and realized that I had just been boxed in by my own theory. Grace was going to make one hell of a lawyer when she finished clerking for the criminal court judge.
Then she sat up a little straighter and looked over my shoulder. I turned in my chair and followed her gaze and my pulse hiccuped.
Sam had just arrived. He was standing at the bar.
Chapter Two
“Who’s that with him?” Jenny asked, leaning forward at our table to check out the situation.
My gaze hitched to Sam’s left. It was the woman he’d taken out Monday night. Surprise—she had a lot of hair and all of it was blond. “I think he said she works for Fox, Murray and Myers,” I said. “She’s a receptionist.”
“She looks like a bimbo,” Grace observed.
My gaze dropped to her not insignificant bosom. “I don’t think he wants her for her mind.”
Then, as though my attention had drawn his, Sam looked around and saw us. He grinned at me and picked up his scotch-and-water from the bar. I knew it was scotch because that was pretty much all he ever drank—Glenlivet specifically. With his glass in one hand and the blonde’s elbow in his other, he began steering her toward our table.
Jenny ogled them. “He’s bringing her here? He’s bringing his date to sit with Mandy?”
“He probably wants my stamp of approval,” I murmured.
