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Hunt rested his hands on overstuffed arms of the chair. “Ben, you and I both know that you didn’t have to take the fall for the rogue traders in your group. And anyone who really knows you, knows you’re completely honorable.”
“Honorable, maybe, but not above fostering a climate of cutthroat competition that encouraged people to do whatever it took to make money.”
“That’s called capitalism. Now, can we get back to the business of making us richer, and forget about the whole rotten world out there?” Hunt grabbed for the magnifying glass and for the first time noticed the flier that Ben had been reading. “Is that what you were talking about before?” He picked up the pamphlet and held the round lens up to his eye, magnifying it to scary proportions.
Baby blues that perfect didn’t need to be any bigger, Ben thought. “Yes, that’s it. And if the introduction to the flier isn’t ridiculous enough, you should see the attached note.”
Hunt lowered the magnifying glass. “Let me take a wild guess. My mother?”
“Your mother.” Ben picked up the corner of the booklet with the tips of two fingers. “I should really get the barbecue tongs to avoid direct contact.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
Ben dipped his chin. “This is your mother we’re talking about.”
“Please, what an accusation. After all, you’re talking about a woman who is both president of the garden club and chairs the capital campaign for the new Grantham Hospital. A woman so exalted by the local community she has won the Rupert L. Phox Award, named after my grandfather by the way, for being the outstanding Granthamite three years in a row? Wait.” He held up an index finger. “On second thought, you’re right. This is my mother you’re talking about. Get the tongs. Better yet, get a face mask and bug spray.” Then he flopped back in the chair and chuckled heartily. “So what does my mother want now?”
Ben flipped open the pamphlet and peeled away a Post-it note stuck to the page. “It seems Iris thought it would be a…a—” he read from the message “—‘a nice gesture of community goodwill’ to speak at the first session of this class.”
Hunt smiled. “I like that. ‘Nice gesture.’ Very ladylike but also unmistakably insistent.”
Ben frowned. “Ladylike my you-know-what. Imperial command is more like it.”
“So what class did she have in mind?”
“Well, she’d hardly pick flower arranging. No, it was something to do with investing.”
Hunt bent forward again and placed the magnifying glass atop a pile of books on Etruscan art. He pursed his lips and strummed his fingers on the edge of the table.
“What?” Ben asked.
“Now don’t jump all over me. The sins of the mother should not be visited upon the son, but—”
“But?” Ben didn’t like the way this was going.
Hunt raised his hands on high, a definite save-me, save-me gesture.
Ben wasn’t buying it. “Speak quickly before I inflict extreme pain.”
“Hear me out,” Hunt said. “Did you ever consider that she might be trying to be helpful? Trying in her own warped way to keep you from living the life of a hermit?”
“No.”
Hunt sank back in the chair in exasperation. “My God, Ben, except from playing piano after hours at some neighborhood bar, you’ve just about cut yourself off from civilization. Do you have any normal contact with the outside world?”
Ben wet his lips. “I occasionally go grocery shopping when I forget to put something on the list for Amada.”
“C’mon. I’m serious. Look at you!”
Ben was dressed like a reject from an Army-Navy store—worn jeans, overly washed T-shirt and scuffed work boots held together by knotted shoelaces and duct tape.
Hunt swept his hand around the room. “And look at where you live. In a cabin in the woods! It’s…it’s practically Little House on the Prairie! This from a man who had a loft in Tribeca that graced the cover of Architectural Digest!”
“It’s not a cabin. It’s an eighteenth century stone cottage.”
Hunt looked around in disbelief. “So that’s what they call bastions of damp rot now?” He scratched his head.
Ben scowled and looked away.
“Okay, let’s leave aside the discussion of real estate and get back to what’s really bugging you,” Hunt said. “Tell me, what’s so bad about lecturing a bunch of retirees? It’s just one night, and they’re probably hard of hearing anyway.”
Ben snapped the course booklet shut. “I don’t care if half the audience comes with their seeing-eye dogs. My life, as you well know, has recently become complicated enough. It’s hard enough just trying to make it through one day at a time, and I don’t need the added hassle of lecturing a bunch of strangers on, on—” he flipped open the booklet to the page with the sticky note “—on the ‘Fundamentals of Personal Investing,’ this damn course your mother’s so hot on.”
From beneath a pile of books on classic racing cars and Civil War history arose the sound of a ringing cordless phone.
Ben stared at the ringing pile but didn’t make a move.
“Aren’t you going to get it?” Hunt asked.
“The phone hasn’t been exactly kind to me of late.” Ben narrowed his eyes and finally dug it out. “Yes?…Oh, Amada, what’s up?…What do you mean he wasn’t there when you went to pick him up? I thought you said he was going to his friend Vincent’s house to study?” Ben nodded as he listened. “Sorry, sorry. Okay his friend, Verjesh. So where is he? Does Verjesh know?”
He crooked his elbow to read his Breitling sports watch, one of the few vestiges of his former high-flying lifestyle. To his surprise, the time was already seven-thirty. “No, he doesn’t? Well, he couldn’t have gotten far.” He ran his hand through his hair. “What’s that? He’s got his bike? And Verjesh said his backpack looked full?” He paused. “You don’t think…All right, all right. I’ll handle it. You just go on home.”
Ben rang off. “Sorry, Hunt, but we’ll have to continue this discussion later. I’ve got to head off on a search party. What a day. First your mother. Now my son!”
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU KNOW, DEAR, IT’S only natural to be nervous,” Lena Zemanova said to her granddaughter standing nearby. She had to raise her voice to be heard above the torrential rain that lashed at her stalwart frame. It was a dark, February evening, making the downpour cold and menacing, a real Horatio Hornblower moment in land-locked Grantham, New Jersey.
Katarina Zemanova wrestled with locking her grandmother’s ten-year-old Corolla while simultaneously trying to open her own umbrella. Like clockwork, the over-the-shoulder strap of her Coach briefcase chose the exact same moment to slip down, thereby crushing her left wrist. She might never play the violin again, Katarina ruefully acknowledged, not that she ever did, mind you. Whatever. She pressed the small button on the remote again—and again—but when the car refused to lock, she gave up and bent forward to do it manually. That meant her umbrella tilted back, which, as fate would have it, allowed a sudden burst of wind to pop it inside out. Oh, yeah.
Katarina closed her eyes and bit back a sigh. To think that she had once been an accomplished multitasker. The only thing more awkward that could possibly happen would be if her headband slipped down over her eyes.
Her headband slipped down over her eyes.
Life was not meant for the faint of heart.
Katarina pushed it back on her already soaked head, and blinked in despair, the raindrops beading on her lashes. Once upon a time, she had had her two hundred dollar coiffure professionally washed and blown dry before work each morning. Once upon a time was a mere four months ago. How quickly times change. Merely thinking “whatever” was a little more difficult the second time around.
“Really, Babička, I’m not a delicate flower,” Katarina said to her grandmother.
As a young bride, Lena had left what was then Czechoslovakia to come to live in New Jersey. Despite a passage of fifty years, certain Old World connections, especially Slovak phrases and vocabulary, lived on, including the Slovak word for grandmother, Babička.
“Of course you’re not a delicate flower. None of the Zemanova women are delicate flowers,” Lena said. “Still, if you’d wear a proper hat instead of carrying one of those overpriced gizmos, you wouldn’t be soaked to the bone.” She tsked at Katarina’s Burberry umbrella. Unlike her granddaughter she wore a sensible, eye-popping yellow rain slicker along with a pair of high Wellington boots. With a few tweaks here or there, she could have modeled for the figure on the Morton’s salt container.
The wind blew Katarina’s hair, and a wet lock slapped her cheek. “I don’t like hats. They give me hat hair. Though I’m beginning to rethink that prejudice.” She held the umbrella into the wind and worked the catch a few more times to pop it right side out. “Good,” she said, and holding the umbrella overhead, offered an outstretched hand to guide her grandmother over the uneven pavement of the parking lot. Unfortunately, the high school lot was closed due to neverending construction, and they were forced to make the trek from a temporary lot down the block.
Her grandmother promptly ignored Katarina’s gesture, and together they bent forward into the stiff wind and made their way toward the sidewalk. In the darkness of the evening, Katarina had to concentrate on the tricky footing due to all the construction around the school. With her weakened leg she felt especially vulnerable. She tightly gripped the collar of her coat around her neck. The driving rain bit into her pants, causing the still tender muscles of her right leg to spasm. She pretended it wasn’t happening. Denial was a powerful weapon, one she’d been living with these last months. Her briefcase flopped against her hip with each limping stride.
“Okay, so I am nervous,” she said. “It’s not like I’m in any position to back out now anyway. The proverbial die has been cast, and, a die, I might add—” Katarina felt herself wearying of the metaphor before she’d finished using it, but seeing no where else to go “—that in no small part is due to a certain small person walking next to me.”
Lena didn’t bother to turn her head as she trudged forward. “Excuse me. I don’t know where you get the idea that I had anything to do with your teaching this class at the Adult School. I’ve been much too busy making sure I got into the Tai Chi class to meddle in your affairs. It happens to be very popular among people of a certain, more mature, age. That’s the problem with you young people today. You always think the world revolves around you. Haven’t you ever heard of Copernicus?”
“That’s Galileo, Babička, and, no, I hardly think the world revolves around me.” In fact, these past few months Katarina had felt more as if the world, at least the world as she knew it, had passed her by. “And besides, at thirty-three years old, I hardly qualify as young anymore.”
“In my book, anyone under the age of sixty is young. And for your information, I am not small!”
Katarina smiled. Her grandmother barely scraped the bar at five feet. Not that Katarina was any giant at five-four, but she could still claim to be the tallest woman in her family. Her mother, for all her outsize personality, stood a mere five foot two.
“All right, I take back the comment about you being small, but stop pretending you didn’t interfere, or, if you prefer, influence.” Katarina lifted her umbrella to talk face-to-face. “I know you, Babička. You wouldn’t have been able to stop yourself from calling Iris Phox and suggesting I teach a course on inves—”
Thwa-ack! A wall of water drenched Katarina. It got her face, splashed her coat. Soaked her shoes. Her designer umbrella? Gone with the wind. Having flown out of her hand, it tumbled down the street, ricocheting from one curb to the other, eventually chasing a speeding motorcycle like a Border collie dashing after a Frisbee.
Katarina wiped her wet bangs out of her eyes and fumbled for her headband, only to find it had disappeared somewhere in the torrent, too. “I don’t believe it! F—” She quickly remembered that her grandmother was standing next to her. “Sorry, Babička.” She looked sideways. Her grandmother wasn’t there. She looked down. She wasn’t there, either. Frantically, she looked behind her. “Oh, my god, Babička! Where did you go?”
Despite the glow of the streetlamps, the moonless night and pouring rain made it difficult to pick out more than diffuse shapes in the distance. She scanned the sidewalk up ahead, and at last spotted her grandmother standing next to a tree.
Katarina rushed to her side. The spurt of energy accentuated her limp. “Are you all right?”
Lena stood there undaunted in her foul weather gear, a rubberized Rock of Gibraltar. She harrumphed. “I thought we just finished establishing that Zemanova women are not delicate flowers.” Lena patted the back of her hand against Katarina’s arm. “Move. You’re in the way. I can’t see.” She peered down the street.
Katarina followed her grandmother’s gaze. The motorcycle that she had glimpsed earlier? It had come circling back, slowly, coming to a stop within arm’s distance. The rider’s feet, clad in a pair of mangy-looking hiking boots, touched the pavement on either side of the bike. He softened the throttle and lifted off the seat. The rain spattered against the black visor of his helmet. In a quick, fluid motion, he reached behind.
For Katarina, memories instantly came flooding back. The routine stop at an ATM machine late at night…The thief from out of nowhere…The gun…The threats…The pain…
The biker brought his arm forward.
Katarina didn’t stop to think. She went ahead and pushed her grandmother behind her. Then when she saw the biker hold up something long and cylindrical, her heart gave an extra jolt, and her eyes widened.
Four months ago, she had stared down the barrel of a gun, a horrific sight she’d never forget. Once more it looked as if fate had chosen to mark her as a victim of violent crime. She staggered, but refused to waver. If nothing else, she would make sure Babička wouldn’t have to go through what she had already experienced once.
“ Babička, here, take these.” She fished the car keys out of her coat pocket and thrust them out. “Run back to the car. Get in and drive away.”
Lena tried to step forward, but Katarina blocked her. “What are you talking about?”
“The gun.”
“What gun?”
Katarina wiped away the rain that clung to her eyelashes and blurred her vision. She blinked. What gun indeed?
What he was holding was her umbrella. And by the look of it, right side out, closed and neatly snapped shut.
The surge of adrenaline gradually dissipated. Okay, her heart was pounding like a pile driver to be sure, but at least it was functioning.
“Did one of you ladies lose an umbrella?” the stranger asked.
Lena stepped from behind the speechless Katarina. “My granddaughter. She dropped it when you got her all wet when you went driving by like some crazy maniac. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
The biker flipped up his visor. The glow from a streetlamp cast his features in shadowy angles and planes. But despite the rain and other obscuring elements, his firm jawline cut the air like a piece of granite.
“I’m very sorry,” he said.
Did slabs of granite move? Katarina wondered.
“It’s just that I’m…uh…kind of preoccupied at the moment—” he rubbed his chin “—and I didn’t see you in the dark with the rain. I know it’s no excuse, but I hope you’re okay. No permanent damage or anything?”
Katarina shook her head. It was impossible to make out the color of his eyes but his teeth shone white as he spoke in low, rushed tones, and she could sense the anxiousness in his voice, a sexy, mellifluous baritone of a voice.
Katarina told herself not to take any notice, that whatever she was sensing was more probably an aftershock from envisioning what might have been. “Wet but otherwise fine,” she said in answer to his question. At least the wet part was accurate.
“Well, if you’re sure…?” He fidgeted with the handlebars. “Listen, I don’t mean to, to…ah…splash and run, but if you’re really okay, I have a small family crisis I need to deal with. It’s really urgent.” He worked his lower lip.
Katarina couldn’t help noticing how full it was. Aftershock, aftershock, she told herself and swallowed. “Not, not to worry,” she said.
“I can give you my phone number to let me know about dry cleaning expenses or something?”
“No, really, I’m fine. And everything will be fine once it dries out.”
He reached for his visor.
Katarina held out her hand. “Just one thing. My umbrella?”
“Oh, right. Sorry about that.” He seemed to hesitate, then thrust it at her. “If you’ll excuse me then.” He nodded goodbye, flipped down his visor and thundered off into the night. The heavy strumming of the rain muffled the sound of the engine until it vanished into oblivion.
“‘Splash and run.’ I like that,” Lena said. “But careless, much too careless.” She turned and inspected her granddaughter. “Katarina? What do you think?”
“Yes, Babička?” Katarina pulled her gaze away from the disappearing figure, half hearing what her grandmother said and having less than half an interest in responding. She sucked in the insides of her cheeks and forced herself to concentrate on the essential here and now. “Listen, I think we need to hurry if we’re not going to be late to class.”
Lena stood unmoving with her eyes focused on the receding figure. “Don’t pretend you didn’t hear what I said.”
“I didn’t,” Katarina said.
Lena held up her hand to thwart any protests. “Waddayaknow! Look!” She pointed down the road. “He’s stopping at the high school! All I can say is, if he turns out to be the defensive driving instructor, I’m going to have to call Iris again and let her know. We can’t have that.”
Katarina pointed her umbrella triumphantly in the air. “Ah, hah!” she said. “See, I was right! You did call Iris Phox about me teaching! Now you can’t deny it.”
Lena turned back to her granddaughter. “So sue me. As your grandmother, I only had your best interests at heart.” Then she nodded and smiled what could only be described as a very ungrandmotherly-like smile. “He was something, wasn’t he?”
“Babička!”
Lena shrugged. “I may be no spring chicken, but I still know a rooster when I see one.” She sniffed loudly. “Unlike some people, I might add.”
“I’m not immune to the opposite sex, you know,” Katarina protested.
“What I know would fill a book, a very large book. Come, I hate being late. And, you, brush your hair and wipe your face when you get inside. You never know what might happen.”
CHAPTER THREE
