Anything for Her Marriage

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Rod shifted in his chair, caught himself. “Marketing’s what I do.”

“What you do, huh? Not…what you love?”

A beat, then: “You don’t have to love something to be good at it.”

“Fine. Then come on board with the foundation, put your skills to good use for something you actually believe in. Something close to your heart.”

“They get my money, Arlen,” he said quietly. “That’s enough.”

The ghosts hovered on the edges of the conversation, taunting. After a moment, Arlen let out a sigh. “Dammit, Rod. For years, I watched you bust your butt to please your father—”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Arlen—”

“Then we won’t. But growing up in that house…” He shook his head, his mouth taut with disgust. “That you turned out as well as you did is a testament to the human spirit.” He hooked Rod’s gaze in his own, obviously expecting a reply. When there was none, he rose from his chair, circled around to ease one hip up on the front edge of his desk. “Your parents have been gone for twenty years, Rod. You don’t have to play it safe anymore, you know.”

Rod stood, slipping his hands in his pant pockets. Breezy. Nonchalant. Far more shaken than he dared let on. “I really do need to be going—”

Arlen stood as well. Eye to eye, he thrust one finger in Rod’s face. “You don’t want to talk, I can’t make you. But let me tell you something—keep up this pretense of everything being fine, ignoring the fact that you’re one of the most miserable bastards I’ve ever met, and you’re headed straight to cardiovascular hell. You have no life, Rod.” He backed up a millimeter, crossed his arms. Grinned. “For that matter, when’s the last time you had sex?”

Shards of tension shot up the back of his neck, as Nancy’s laughter and tenderness and sweet, lush scent slammed into his consciousness. “None of your business.”

Arlen grinned more widely, misinterpreting. “That’s what I thought. Well, here’s a news flash, son—unless you want to shrivel up into something putrid and unrecognizable, you need female companionship from time to time.” He pointed that damned finger at him again. “In your case, more than from time to time. And next time, I suggest you try marrying a woman you love.”

That got a hollow laugh. “Oh, no. Not after—”

“Screwing up twice already? So what? Took me four trips to the altar to work the bugs out. But work out they did.” His eyes narrowed. “Might for you, too, if you stopped trying to choose the kind of woman you think you’re supposed to marry and pick one you want to marry.”

“No such woman exists, Arlen,” he said mildly, ignoring the hair bristling on the back of his neck, “because I’m not getting married again. And if you value our friendship, you’ll kindly remove that nose of yours from my business.”

He turned to leave, but Arlen grabbed him before he’d gone three feet. Concern simmered in those blue eyes, concern Rod had seen many times before. “You don’t have to listen to me, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to keep my mouth shut. Not this time. Not like I did before.”

“Your concern is duly noted,” Rod said through the ghosts. Through the ever-present pain. “But I’m fine, Arlen. Really. Everything’s under control, okay?”

Out in the hall, the polished steel elevator doors shushed open as he heard from ten feet away, “And who the hell d’you think you’re kidding?”

Without answering, Rod stepped inside the elevator, let the doors close.

Chapter 4

Nancy knew it was crazy to still be ruminating about her whatever-it-was with Rod after nearly three weeks. You’d think, with all the practice she’d had at getting over men, this would have been a piece of cake.

Work, she told herself, forcing bleary eyes back to the Sheldons’ contract. Selling one house and buying another concurrently was always a pain. Now that they’d gotten a decent offer on their old one, she had to find them new living space as quickly as possible. God, she was tired….

Okay, girl—listen up: One cup of coffee and one night of hot sex do not a relationship make, got it? Except that one night of sex put the dribs and drabs of her previous experiences to shame. Maybe Rod wasn’t burned into her soul or anything romantic and profound like that, but he sure was burned into her body. Yowsa—she twirled her string of garnet beads around one finger—a week with the man would probably hold her for the next forty years.

Again, she stared at the paperwork in front of her, grabbing a handful of hair and tugging at it, as if trying to let more air into her brain. He’d done her a kindness, she told herself. Man had more baggage than an airline.

Her stomach growled, as if she needed reminding. What was with this, anyway? She’d been hungrier than a bear all this week—

“Oooh, don’t we look serious this morning.”

Nancy looked up, forced the muscles between her brows to relax, then waved Guy into her office while she filled in three more lines in the contract. Elizabeth’s husband plopped himself in the gray upholstered chair in front of her desk, munching onion rings from a cardboard container.

She glanced up, chuckled. Salivated at the onion rings. “Mmm…nice tie.”

Brilliant blue eyes sparkled in the clear winter light pouring from the shadeless window behind her, thanks to a truckers’ strike that had delayed delivery of the miniblinds for Millennium Realty’s new offices. Guy plucked the tie, festooned with Mickey Mouses, off his plaid-shirted chest, and grinned. “Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it?” He let it drop, held out the onion rings. “Kids gave it to me. Want one?”

She started. Oh. An onion ring. Not a kid. She gratefully accepted, then flipped the page, fighting a slight wave of dizziness. “Didn’t figure Elizabeth had. So,” she said as she munched, “what’s up?”

Her peripheral vision caught the nervous shift in the chair before he laced his hands over his stomach, almost immediately lifting one to scratch behind a gold-studded ear. He wore his hair shorter than when Nancy had first met him, longish in back but neatly layered on top and front. On Guy, it worked. “Actually, I—we—need a favor. See, Elizabeth’s been a little cranky lately—”

“Our Elizabeth?” Nancy said in mock amazement, sparing him a smile as she wrote. “Cranky?”

“Well, that’s the kindest word I can think of at the moment. In any case, I got tickets to the Detroit Symphony concert tonight, aaand…” his face scrunched up into a please-don’t-hit-me grimace “I wondered if you could sit?”

Nancy leaned back in her chair, her arms crossed over her velour tunic. “It’s Saturday, Guy. What if I had plans?”

His face fell. “Do you?”

She sighed. “I wish. Yeah, I suppose I can sit tonight—”

“And I’ve made reservations to spend the night someplace fancy, expensive and childless,” he added in a rush.

Look at that face, wouldja? No wonder he had Elizabeth eating out of his hand. “Anybody ever tell you you’re devious?”

“Most of my clients, actually, but let’s not go there.”

She laughed. “Fine. I can spend the night, no problem. But I assume I was second choice?” Elizabeth’s mother was besotted with her new step-grandchildren, ready to baby-sit at a moment’s notice.

Guy got up, peered out the office door, then came back, leaning over Nancy’s desk. “Maureen backed out on us,” he whispered. “Hugh asked her to go away for the weekend.”

Nancy’s brows shot up. “Really?” For several months, Nancy’s widowed mother had been dating Hugh Farentino, the developer of the planned community that had been primarily responsible for the agency’s sudden boom in business. “You think things are getting serious, then?”

“Let’s just say Elizabeth and I are taking bets on whether we have a baby or a wedding first.”

Nancy fixed a smile to her face, refusing to let this good news get to her. It really did seem at times as if she was the only woman in the world destined to remain single.

“Hey, baby!” Cora Jenkins swept into the office, her bright purple cape in full sail, plunked a white bag reeking of something gloriously greasy on Nancy’s desk, then turned to Guy. “There you are,” she said to Guy. “The Reinharts are here, honey. Said you were supposed to show them houses this afternoon. Whoa, Nancy—you okay?”

She’d stood to walk to her file, found herself clutching the open drawer to keep from losing her balance. The dizziness passed in a second, but she looked up to find two pairs of eyes trained on her like bird dogs.

“What? Yeah, I’m fine.” She straightened up, brushed a curl off her cheek.

Guy tossed the empty onion-ring container in her garbage can. “There’s that nasty flu going around,” he said to whoever was listening as he made his way to the door. “All three kids had it last week. My mom even came down to help out, otherwise Elizabeth might have gotten it, too.”

Nancy smiled at the love in Guy’s voice. She didn’t know all the details of why his first marriage had failed, but Elizabeth had confided that Guy sometimes still had to fend off vestiges of guilt about his wife’s walking out on him and their three children when the youngest was barely six months old.

His first wife had been one clueless woman, that was for sure.

“It’s not the flu,” she reassured him, her gaze lighting on the bag on her desk. “Oh, Cora—please, please, please tell me some of that’s for me!”

“It’s all for you, baby,” Cora said as Guy left.

“Oh, bless you!” Nancy tore into the bag. “How’d you know I wasn’t going to get lunch today?”

“You still weren’t back from your morning appointment when I left, and I know you’ve got that one o’clock. Lucky guess.”

Groaning in sweet anticipation, Nancy attacked the turkey club before she’d even gotten the wrapping completely off. “I don’t know ’ut’s wrong wi’ me,” she forced out around the bite, then swallowed. “I used to be able to skip lunch all the time without any problem.”

“Which probably accounts for why you weigh less than a good-size chicken.”

Nancy swatted at her, crammed a French fry into her mouth. “It’s weird, though—the past few days, I’ve been eating constantly.”

A big grin split Cora’s face. “And at the rate you’re going, that’s going to be gone before the grease has had a chance to set on the fries. Lord, I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone eat like that.” A laugh thundered from her chest. “Save when Elizabeth got pregnant and didn’t know it for two weeks. Oh, there’s the phone—”

Nancy never saw Cora leave.

Dizziness. Exhaustion. Ravenousness. Oh, no no no no no…

Oh, hell.

The sandwich abandoned, she frantically pawed backward through her calendar, only to realize—duh!—it didn’t go past January 1. But surely it wasn’t that late, she thought as she lugged her shoulder bag up onto her desk, hauled out her checkbook and the handy-dandy calendar inside it. Okay, okay…God, they could probably hear her heartbeat in Toronto. There it was. December 17, which made her due on the…she counted forward…fourteenth.

Which was five days ago.

But…but…she’d used a diaphragm. And the stuff. That should have been fine, right? It had always been fine before….

Barely two minutes later, she burst into her house, racing to the bathroom without even removing her down coat. Her heart thudded against her chest as she yanked open the vanity drawer, rummaged through the contents. She found the spermicide first, flipped it over to read the expiration date. See? See? February, it said. February… She looked closer, squinting.

Nineteen-something.

Uh-oh.

Unable to shake the feeling that life as she knew it was about to end, she plucked the diaphragm case out of the drawer, her hands shaking so hard it took three tries before she could unsnap it. She snatched the rubber cylinder from its little plastic bed, then waded through a sea of cats to the living room, where the southern exposure-lit windows were brightest. The animals writhed around her feet as she held the diaphragm up to the light, having to clamp one hand on her wrist to stop the trembling. “Oh, dear God,” she whispered, as the sunlight clearly defined, like a microcosmic constellation, a series of tiny holes in the rubber.

Her mother would have a field day with this one.

Arms tightly twisted together over her suede jacket, Hannah Braden hunched in the passenger seat of her mother’s Cadillac, as far away from Claire’s overpowering perfume—and her cigarette smoke—as possible. Outside her window, which she wished she could open without freezing to death, tree after boring tree whipped past, a charcoal blur against an overcast sky. She’d forgotten to bring her Walkman, which meant she’d been subjugated for the past hour to that New Age crap her mother loved. If she’d been younger, she would have been sorely tempted to cry. Or pitch a fit. But over the past several years, the edges of her emotions had worn down. Oh, yeah, she was seriously pissed off. She just no longer had the energy or enthusiasm to act on it.

All she’d wanted was to spend the weekend with one of her girlfriends, like any normal kid, you know? They’d planned on going to one of the malls tomorrow, seeing a movie, just hanging out. But noooo. She had to spend the weekend out in the boonies with her father, because that’s what children of split parents did, bounced back and forth between Mommy and Daddy like good little Ping-Pong balls. At least when Dad still lived in Bloomfield Hills she’d been able to see her friends at some point during the weekends she and Schuy stayed with him. Now that he’d moved permanently into that mausoleum, however, every weekend she spent with her father was a weekend of being consigned to oblivion. And what really ticked her off was that neither of her parents seemed to care that they were seriously screwing up her life.

“I hope my picking you up early was okay,” her mother said over Yanni or somebody, flicking ashes in the tray suspended from the dash. “But Rafe and I are going out this evening, so I have to be back in town by six at the latest.”

Hannah shrugged, removing her velvet headband, pushing it back into place. A still-glowing ash floated up from the tray, barely missed putting a hole in her sleeve. God. At least Myrna hadn’t smoked.

“My chemistry teacher wasn’t thrilled about it,” she said, picking up the thread of the pseudoconversation. Her voice sounded as flat as the leaden sky outside. “We were in the middle of a crucial lab.”

“Oh, well—” more ashes into the tray “—I’m sure you can make it up.”

Right. At the expense of missing basketball practice. But then, Claire had never thought that a high priority, either.

The seat shifted behind her as Schuyler leaned forward, sticking his face between the bucket seats, then popped a bubble right in Hannah’s ear.

“For God’s sake, Schuy—cut it out! Ewww—why do you have to chew that watermelon stuff? It’s disgusting!”

Schuy grinned, then popped another bubble.

Slugging him would be too kind. Besides, he was nearly as big as she was now. Kinda took the joy out of it, knowing he could hurt her back. In any case, they were through the iron gates leading to the mansion. The place was huge. And amazingly ugly. Why her father had bought the thing to begin with, she had no idea. A “vacation” home, he’d said. Yeah, right. For the Addams family, maybe.

Claire navigated the car into the circular driveway, cut the engine as she stubbed out her cigarette. Apprehension sizzled through Hannah’s veins, as it always did at these changings of the guard. When they’d all still lived together, it had been much easier to gauge their moods, although her father was generally so even-tempered, it was hard to actually describe what he had as “moods” at all. Still, she always felt uneasy, almost like a stranger, during these transitions. Especially with Dad, since his mental state was so much trickier to figure out than her mother’s. Actually, now that Hannah and Schuy were older, their mother paid little attention to them. Which was just fine with Hannah, since she and Claire had never exactly been bosom buddies to begin with. In any case, it was pretty clear that her mother’s catching herself another husband had taken precedence over nurturing her children, and the procession of potential candidates zooming in and out of their lives was positively dizzying. Doctors, lawyers, business moguls, software developers, even a professional race-car driver. Hannah didn’t even bother to look up when the doorbell rang anymore, let alone leave her room.

Not that her relationship with her father was much better. It wasn’t strained, exactly, as much as…she couldn’t quite find the word. Foggy, she supposed. Like a fuzzy photograph. Maybe it was that he tried too hard, you know? The typical divorced dad - gotta - spend - quality - time - with - my - screwed - up - kids syndrome. Neither she nor Schuy could make a move without his being right there. Yet despite all her father’s efforts to “be” their father, and though Hannah really believed he cared about them—he called nearly every day, even when he was traveling—there was something missing.

So her mother didn’t have much use for her children in her life, and her father didn’t seem to know what to do with them at all. Just your typical dysfunctional all-American family, that was them.

Dad was standing on the steps, in cords and a heavy off-white turtleneck sweater, the bitter wind ruffling his thick hair. Still pretty good-looking, she supposed, for someone his age. He was smiling, but he looked…tired.

And far older than he’d looked the last time she’d seen him.

She wasn’t prepared for the worry that stepped up her heart-rate. He’d said it was just as well Star had let him go, that the freelance work suited him much better. He’d said he and Myrna had parted by mutual agreement, that the marriage had simply been a mistake. And Hannah knew Dad and Mom didn’t belong together. Sheesh. How had they ever hooked up to begin with, was what she’d like to know. Still, it seemed the more things changed—supposedly for the better, to hear her parents—the more unhappy everybody was.

God. They were all, like, totally screwed up.

Every time Rod saw the kids, it was a shock. Spawned from tall stock—Claire was only a few inches shorter than he—they grew faster than crabgrass after a rainy spring. Good Lord! Hannah was what? Five-ten already? And even though she’d put that height to full advantage playing basketball, she still often wore a defensive expression, as if daring anyone to point out what she clearly regarded as her freakish size. He caught that look now, as she climbed out of the car, jerking a hank of long, pale blond hair behind one ear.

Or maybe her size had little to do with it.

Schuy bounded up the drive, a marionette in baggy jeans, a navy hooded sweatshirt underneath a ski jacket, and one of those knit caps the kids called a “beanie” pulled down past his eyebrows. Braces glinting in the dull light, his brainy, geeky son gave him a hug, then disappeared into the house and presumably into the kitchen. Claire minced along behind, grimacing as her heels sank into the gravel driveway, puddled in places from the last snow. Leave it to his ex to coordinate her outfit to the gray day, from the fox jacket over matching wool slacks to the ridiculously high heels. She’d pulled her still-blond hair back into a slick, neat chignon at the nape of her neck, accentuating features as classic as ever. But in the stark daylight, her makeup looked desperate, her salon tan sprayed on. She’d been a beautiful woman once. Could still have been, had she not fallen victim to vanity and self-indulgence. He thought, briefly, of how much Myrna had been like Claire fifteen years ago.

Of how little like either of them Nancy was. How predictable and safe he’d thought them, Claire and Myrna, how unpredictable Nancy was, even including the bizarre times she picked to pop up in his thoughts. Well, there you have it, he thought for the thousandth time. If he couldn’t manage a relationship with “predictable and safe,” clearly he’d made the right decision about Nancy, who was anything but.

Then why couldn’t he get the woman out of his mind? Why did he continue to see Nancy’s generous smile, those bottomless my-soul-is-yours-for-the-taking eyes, superimposed on the face of every woman he met?

“For God’s sake, Rod,” Claire barked, slamming him back to earth. “When are you going to get this driveway properly paved?”

He shrugged, thinking that Claire probably wouldn’t be amused to know the thought of having made love to her—willingly—now vaguely repulsed him. “I like the sound of gravel crunching underfoot,” he said mildly, slipping one hand into his pocket. “Reminds me of my grandparents’ driveway, when I was a kid.”

Before Claire could comment, Rod changed the subject. “Any trouble getting them out early?”

“What?” She navigated the granite stairs, careful not to touch the carved stone railing which would hardly be clean, now would it? At the top, she extracted a silver cigarette case from her leather purse. “Oh. No, none. They weren’t doing anything important, anyway.”

“I see. I’m hocking my soul to send them to one of the best private schools in the country, and you’re telling me they’re not doing anything important?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rod—you know what I mean.” She clicked open the case; he took it from her, shut it, slipped it back into her purse.