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Tonya still remembered cowering in the hall when she was seven years old, listening to her mother screaming accusations at her father. When he left for work the next day, her mother had dumped his stuff on the front lawn and changed the locks on the doors, telling Tonya that her father was gone and to quit crying because they were better off without him.
Two stepfathers came next, and the story was the same. Through it all, Tonya grew more and more suspicious of men and their motives. At the same time she would lie awake at night and imagine a forever kind of love with a man who would want her and only her. It was nothing but a fairy tale, of course, but that didn’t keep her from wanting it.
Then, when she was twenty-three, Jared had come into her life, a charming motorcycle mechanic with a line of bull a mile long. Six months into a marriage that seemed to be going along just fine, she saw his car parked at a no-tell motel on the east side of town. When she confronted him about it later, he spun some story about stopping by to see a buddy from out of town who was staying there.
Relieved, she had told the other stylists at work what had really been going on. To her surprise, they had laughed out loud. Tonya had shouted at them to shut up, telling them that Jared loved her and would never cheat on her. A week later she had dropped by his shop unexpectedly and found him and a slutty little blonde going at it on the ugly vinyl sofa in his office, and she wondered how many other times it had happened that she’d never known about. That was the moment she had come to believe wholeheartedly that her mother was right.
Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.
Eventually she’d had to tell the girls what had happened and face the humiliation. They’d acted sympathetic, but she could see that look in their eyes. You’re such a sap. Didn’t we tell you he was a cheating fool?
Tonya had walked away from that experience wondering if, like red hair or brown eyes, attracting cheating men ran in families, and for the next twelve years she believed that her dream of a forever kind of love was well and truly gone.
Then she met Dale.
She turned and looked back at the house, at Dale lounging on the sofa. No matter how big a fool it made her, she still wanted him so much she could barely breathe. She thought she’d been in love with Jared, but she knew now that she couldn’t possibly have been because he had never made her feel the hot, breathless, swooping sensation that came over her every time she looked at Dale.
But now everything was a big, fat mess. Was she supposed to listen to his lame excuses the way she’d listened to Jared’s? Defend him? Tell everyone that even though it looked bad, of course he’d never cheat on her?
If she did, she had the most terrible feeling that the joke was going to be on her again.
She wiped away her tears and started the car, intending to go to her apartment and stay there until hell froze over if she had to. She refused to be a silly little fool who went back to a cheating man as if she had no self-respect at all. Unless he apologized and promised never to do it again, Dale wasn’t going to have a chance of getting her back.
At nine o’clock the next morning, Monica sat in the lobby of Cargill & Associates, a cramped office inside a low-rent building filled with plastic ferns, walnut-veneer furniture and dollar-store art. Behind the reception desk sat a young redhead with a ring on every finger and probably a few on her toes, sipping a cup of Starbucks. On Monica’s arrival, the woman had her fill out the obligatory application. She said Mr. Cargill was tied up right now, but he’d be with her in a minute, then turned her attention back to a dog-eared copy of Cosmopolitan, moving her lips as she read about the seven ways to drive her boyfriend wild in bed.
Monica closed her eyes for a moment, trying to calm her churning stomach. How in the hell had it come to this?
Thirty-two résumés, eleven job applications, four interviews and four no-thank-yous. That was how.
No. She had to stop thinking about how she’d failed so far and focus instead on how she could succeed. She knew how lightweight her résumé was, so she was going to have to compensate for her lack of skills in other ways.
She unfastened another button of her blouse and spread the neck apart, calling attention to the one asset of hers that men had never been able to ignore. She turned in her chair to allow the slit of her skirt to inch open farther. Then she pulled her shoulders back, lifted her nose a notch and assumed an air of total indifference, because the only people who got jobs were those who acted as if they didn’t need them, even though she needed this one badly. Once Cargill came out to the lobby and she had his attention, she’d slink into his office like a lioness and go in for the kill.
She heard a door open. “Ms. Saltzman?”
Count to three, she told herself. Don’t act too eager.
With a studied grace that came from all her beauty pageant years, Monica slowly turned her head for her first look at her future boss. And for another count of three, she gritted her teeth and tried not to cry.
She was used to bosses who wore raw silk and Italian leather. This guy was double-knit polyester and leatherette. He was pushing sixty, with a shiny scalp showing through an embarrassing comb-over and a hefty set of jowls tumbling over his shirt collar. If the guy happened to smile, which at the moment didn’t seem likely, she was sure he’d have tobacco-stained teeth.
He wore no wedding ring. No surprise there.
She took a deep, calming breath, reminding herself of her dwindling savings and the mortgage payment she wasn’t going to be able to make in a few months if she didn’t get a paycheck coming in soon.
She rose from her chair, gave him a dazzling smile and extended her hand. “Hello, Mr. Cargill,” she purred, like the lioness she was. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
His eyes never met hers. She was used to that from men because they were usually busy checking out other parts of her body. But when he didn’t bother looking at any of the rest of her, either, she felt a shot of apprehension.
He gave her hand a cursory shake. “This way.”
She followed him into his office, where he plopped down in his pseudo-leather executive chair.
“Catch the door,” he said.
Strike one: he was ugly. Strike two: he had no manners. God only knew what strike three was going to be. Just the thought of unleashing her feminine charm on this man was making her a little queasy.
She closed the door and took a seat. He slouched in his chair as he looked at the application she’d filled out, frowning the whole time. “It says here your most recent experience was as an executive assistant to a bank vice president.”
“That’s right.”
“You worked for him for five years.”
“Yes.”
His frown deepened. “I’m not seeing much computer experience. What programs do you know?”
“Well, Word, of course. And Excel. And maybe a little bit of PowerPoint.”
“Those are pretty much the baseline. What else do you have?”
Not a blessed thing. Her job at First Republic Bank had been to keep Jerry Womack’s calendar, make travel arrangements, answer his calls, chat up any clients who came by for meetings, order lunch and look like a million dollars.
In the past five years, while she’d been working her way toward the forty-fourth-floor executive suite where the espresso machine was the most complicated thing she’d have to run, technology had taken a quantum leap. Unfortunately, she hadn’t leaped along with it.
“What about office machines?” Cargill said. “Typing?”
She could type. Just not very well. As far as office machines, a simple phone system, a fax machine and a copier were about the only things she was sure she could handle.
If he persisted in this useless line of questioning, they were going to get nowhere.
“Let’s cut right to the chase here, Mr. Cargill.” She leaned in and folded her arms on his desk, slowing her words and letting her voice drop to a deeper register. “You and I both know that you can hire just about anyone to perform all those technical tasks. But that’s not what makes an executive assistant so valuable, is it? In the end, there’s only one qualification that’s even worth talking about.” She fixed her gaze tightly on his, giving him a smoldering look that had been known to bring men to their knees. “What you need, Mr. Cargill, is an assistant who can anticipate your every need—” dramatic pause “—and fill it.”
She nearly choked on the words, even though they were something she could easily take back later. You thought I meant what? Her words appeared to have the desired effect. He sat up slightly, his bland brown eyes widening with interest. His gaze roved over her face, dropped slowly to her breasts, hovered there for a moment or two, then rose again—every flick of his eyelashes so blatantly assessing that she knew she had him on the hook.
Five seconds passed. Then ten. And no matter how unsightly he was, she forced herself not to look away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I don’t think you’re qualified for the job.”
Monica felt a jolt of shock, followed by a deluge of humiliation. He tossed her application onto his desk, pushed away from it and stood up.
Oh, God. He was brushing her off. How could this be happening?
“But…but I’m a very fast learner,” she said, “if only you’ll give me a chance.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I know I’m a little shy on technical knowledge, but I’m perfectly willing to—”
“Thank you, Ms. Saltzman.”
Just like that, rock bottom sank even lower.
Monica rose from her chair, feeling a little shaky, but she forced herself to thank him for his time and walk away with her chin up because she had more class than this big, blind bozo could ever hope to have.
She opened the door to his office and stepped into the lobby. Another woman was waiting there now to be interviewed, a platinum blonde who looked as if she’d cut cheerleader practice short to make it on time. And suddenly a different man was standing in Cargill’s fake leather shoes.
“Well, hello, there,” he said with a smile, practically tripping over himself to usher the woman into his office. As he closed the door behind them, Monica stared with disbelief, feeling like a wallflower at a high school dance.
“Well, she’s a shoo-in,” the receptionist said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she’s got all the qualifications he’s looking for, if you know what I mean.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re lucky he didn’t hire you.”
“Why?”
She leaned over and whispered. “Because he’s a dirty old man. I’ve got more bruises on my ass than I can count.”
When she turned back to her Cosmo, it occurred to Monica that she used to read that magazine herself when she was younger.
About twenty years younger.
During the other job interviews she’d had recently, she’d told herself that she just wasn’t pouring on enough charm to get the attention of her prospective employers in a tight job market. But now she had to face the truth: she had nothing left that even a man like Cargill would be interested in.
One of two things was going to happen here. She was going to cry, or she was going to get mad. Since getting mad had recently bought her eight weeks in an anger management course, she left the office and hurried down the hall to the ladies’ room, where she grabbed a tissue from her purse just in time to keep mascara-laden tears from rolling down her cheeks.
She turned her gaze up to the mirror, leaning in to take a closer look at herself, and maybe for the first time in years, she saw herself as she really was.
Lines she swore had never been there before fanned out from her eyes. Skin sagged slightly at her jawline. Wrinkles had crept onto her neck. She’d been coloring her hair for so long that it could be gray all over by now for all she knew. But time had marched on, in spite of all her efforts to halt it.
All her life she’d had only one thing going for her, and that was her looks. It seemed to astonish everyone that anyone so strikingly beautiful could have been raised in such a dirt-poor family. In light of that, her mother had dragged her to beauty pageants from the time she was old enough to twirl a baton. She learned how to wink at those judges long before she knew that about half of them were dirty old men who loved looking up little girls’ skirts. Because she’d always been told she was all beauty and no brains, she’d goofed off in school and skipped college, doing what a lot of beautiful but brainless girls did—she set out to marry a rich man. And she’d almost accomplished that goal. Three times. But something always happened to nip her plans in the bud.
The first man had a wife he hadn’t bothered to tell her about. The second one decided, after a three-year relationship, that it was time for him to come out of the closet. The third time around, when Monica actually had a ring on her finger, she told herself that for the Highland Park lifestyle, she could overlook her fiancé’s drinking habit. And she did, right up to the moment he got his third DUI and a judge threw the book at him. Conjugal visits during that five-year sentence just hadn’t seemed all that appealing to her.
Somehow she turned thirty-five. Then she was pushing forty. During those years, she hadn’t bothered to acquire job skills beyond basic clerical ones, telling herself that marriage was just around the corner, only to realize that the pool of wealthy, available men was drying up, at least those wealthy, available men interested in her. And she was still working in the same low-paying, dead-end jobs she had been for the past fifteen years, so her financial future looked pretty bleak.
Then, one night at an uptown bar, she met Jerry Womack, a vice president at First Republic Bank. He was fifty-four and recently divorced. As he stared at her breasts, he told her his executive assistant was leaving and Monica might be just the woman he was looking for to replace her. The next day when she went to his office to talk to him, she discovered that the job came with a bigger paycheck than she’d ever seen in her life and very few responsibilities.
At least, very few responsibilities within the confines of the office.
At first, the whole situation made Monica a little sick to her stomach. Marrying rich was one thing, but putting out to keep a job was something else.
But the money. God, the money.
Suddenly she could afford to shop at Neiman Marcus rather than sift through the junk at outlet stores. She could buy a car that didn’t end up in the shop once every three months. She could afford a condo in a decent neighborhood rather than rent an apartment next door to a guy she was pretty sure was dealing crack.
So she did it, telling herself that maybe one day she’d marry that boss she was sleeping with. A couple of times Jerry even suggested it might be a possibility. So when the bank president had retired and Jerry ascended to that position, Monica had been thrilled. Only, it wasn’t Monica whom Jerry decided to bring with him to the executive suite. It was pretty, perky, young Nora O’Dell.
You understand, Jerry had the nerve to say. It’s just business.
So she showed him some business in the form of a flowerpot right thought the windshield of his lemon-yellow Hummer. And right now, she was thinking about the fake potted palm in the corner of Cargill’s office, wondering what kind of car he drove.
No. She had to get Cargill out of her mind. This had just been a fluke. He was simply a man who needed to rescue his own aging self-image by surrounding himself with young women. And losing out on those other four interviews had simply been a run of bad luck. That was all.
She repaired her makeup and left the bathroom, telling herself that everything was going to be fine, that a new job was just around the corner. Still, it was hard to ignore the scary little ball of nerves rolling around in her stomach, the one that was telling her that finding a job was going to be a far greater challenge than she’d ever anticipated.
CHAPTER 4
The gymnasium at Parker Heights Middle School was old, musty and smelled like dirty athletic socks, and every time Susan climbed the bleachers to sit on one of the metal benches, she actually wished she were back in the hospital, which smelled like antiseptic and sick people. The bounce of basketballs echoing off the gym walls and the squeak of shoes on the wood floors grated on her nerves the way nails against a blackboard grated on other people’s. But she still showed up with a smile on her face, cheering when she was supposed to, because that was what moms did.
She sat down on a bench by herself, thinking about how she’d always felt sorry for the single and divorced moms who showed up alone to school events. They always had that look in their eyes as if they were frantically trying to remember everything they had to do. At the same time there was a droopy-shouldered weariness about them that said completion of those tasks was going to be impossible. Now she was one of them. Of course, in a world where divorces were more common than lifelong marriages, she was really just a face in the crowd.
She turned to see Lani hopping up the bleachers. “Mom, gimme a hair scrunchie.”
Susan dug through her purse, eventually having to put half its contents on the bench beside her before finally locating one wound around a box of Band-Aids. Lani grabbed it and swooped her hair toward the crown of her head.
“Where’s Dad?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you remind him?”
“Yes, honey. I reminded him.”
“Did you tell him I was starting?”
“Yes.”
“Then why isn’t he here?”
“I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”
She hoped he would be, anyway, because Lani didn’t handle it well when he didn’t show up. Lani didn’t handle much of anything well these days. Susan’s happy, perky daughter of a few years ago seemed to have vanished, replaced by an adolescent girl whose moods were so volatile that Susan never knew what she was in for from one moment to the next. In the span of an hour, she could go from crying to laughing to being angry to shutting down communication completely, and there was no way to predict which one it was going to be.
“He didn’t come to my last game,” Lani said.
“He had to work late.”
“I’m starting tonight. What if he doesn’t get here until the second half?”
Lani! We’re divorced! Don’t ask me these questions! Ask him!
“He told me he was coming, so I’m sure he’ll be here.”
Lani frowned. “Is he bringing Marla with him again?”
“I really don’t know.”
