Loe raamatut: «Ms. Taken»

1

ONE ORANGE. Five Triscuits. Three baby carrots. One ounce Jarlsberg cheese, cubed. Two Oreo cookies.

Jane Dobson smiled at the perfection that was her lunch. The napkin, a new color for her, blue, had unfolded on her desk in a nice, neat square to reveal each item of food just as she’d packed it this morning. No crumbs. Not a one. That Hello Kitty lunch pail was really doing the job.

Peeling the orange came next, which wasn’t easy because her nails were so short. She tried not to bite them, honestly. But it was hard to catch herself in the act. Mostly, she’d just notice her fingers as she typed, and the nails would be bitten to the quick.

Oh, well. It’s not as if she was a hand model or anything. Besides, short nails made her really fast on the computer. She’d clocked herself at nearly one hundred words-per only last week. Four words more than a month ago.

She ended up biting the orange peel, getting a squirt of that really sour stuff in her mouth. Grimacing, she turned her gaze to her special project, and the bad taste disappeared. Christmas cards were strewn across the right side of her desk. Some were very religious, with angels and wise men and stables. Some were whimsical, with animated reindeer, Santa in all sorts of situations, and several grinning mice. Then there were the more difficult kind. The ones with just words. Oh, sure, the calligraphy was always great, but how many Merry Christmases and Seasons Greetings could she put in her collage?

She popped a cube of cheese into her mouth and chewed it very slowly. She always ate slowly, and it drove her family nuts, but too bad. She wasn’t ashamed of her eccentricities. They made her special.

“Girl, you better not let him see you messing with those cards.”

Jane looked up to see Kadisha King, a friend from the secretarial pool, standing right next to her desk. Kadisha held a manila folder against her chest as if it were top secret. Jane hadn’t even heard her approach. “It’s Christmas.”

“He doesn’t care. Mr. Warren says no personal decorations at the desk, and that’s what he means.”

“Surely Christmas is an exception.”

Kadisha shook her head in that knowing way of hers. “Fine. Do your paper dolls. But do you know how many personal assistants Mr. Warren has had in the last five years?”

Jane shook her head. She’d only been at Warren Industries for a year, and she wasn’t very good at gossip.

“Eleven. You do the math.” Kadisha tapped the manila folder with one perfectly manicured nail. Then she went to Delia’s desk and put the folder in the in box.

Delia Robinson was Mr. Warren’s executive assistant and she was on vacation until January 5, which meant that all the other secretaries had to work overtime. And that Jane got to see Mr. Charles Warren a whole lot more.

At the thought, the myriad cards on her right faded away. She continued to eat her food, but she didn’t taste it. She might as well have had a sign around her neck: Preoccupied. Check Back in Ten Minutes. All she could see was Charles. Her poor, sweet, misunderstood Charles.

He smiled at her in that adorable, gruff way. A stranger would have thought nothing of it, but Jane…she knew the smile was an extraordinary event. It was filled with love, with mischief, with gratitude. Charles said it himself—what would he do without her?

He turned to their Christmas tree, a massive Douglas fir fit for the White House, and put an ornament on a limb. She shook her head, teasing him gently, then moved the ornament up half an inch.

“Of course,” Charles said, his voice filled with adoration and admiration. “That’s the perfect spot. I never would have seen it. Is there nothing you can’t do?”

She blushed demurely, which always drove Charles wild. He pulled her into his arms and—

The buzz, so loud it probably woke up half of New Jersey, slashed through her daydream. She looked down to find nothing but orange peel on her napkin. Hmm. She didn’t remember anything past peeling. But there was no time to wonder about all that.

Grabbing her notebook, she dashed past Delia’s fortress of a desk to Mr. Warren’s office. Before she entered the great man’s domain, she straightened her skirt—tartan, on sale at Barneys for twenty-two dollars, and you couldn’t even see the stain. She adjusted her mohair sweater, five dollars at Goodwill, thank you very much. And of course, she made sure her tartan beret was at the perfect jaunty angle. When she was certain everything was tip-top, she knocked quietly on the thick wooden door, then stepped through the portal.

It wasn’t until she was inside that she remembered to check her teeth for lipstick. She closed the door behind her as quietly as she could, then nonchalantly ran a finger quickly over her teeth. Good. He hadn’t seen. In fact, he hadn’t looked at her at all.

She headed for his massive teak desk, so highly shined it was almost a mirror. With each silent step across the thick gray carpet her heart pounded harder in her chest. The closer she got, the more difficult it was to breathe. Luckily, even when she was as close as she could get, she was really quite far from the man himself. You could land a plane on this desk. “Yes, sir?”

He didn’t look up for a long moment. Long enough for her to drink in the sight of him. He wasn’t classically handsome; his face was too flawed for that. But it was the flaws that drew her to him. The slightly crooked nose, the small scar on his forehead. His eyes were perfect, however. Dark brown, penetrating. Captivating. And when he smiled it was sheer heaven. He wasn’t terribly tall, maybe six feet, but he had one of those wiry, strong bodies. She’d seen his bare arms once, when he’d rolled up his sleeves. They were corded with muscle and sinew and had been a major part of her dreams ever since.

“I need you to take some dictation.”

She jumped, but just a little. “Yes, sir,” she said as she went to the small chair in front and to the right of the desk. She crossed her legs, making sure her skirt crawled up her thigh so much and no more. Then she put her pad on her knee and smiled brightly. He just kept reading the papers on his desk.

“Take this down exactly—Holly Baskin, late of Vassar, call C.W.”

Jane looked up, pen poised. “Go on.”

“There is no more. I want you to type that up and, first thing tomorrow morning, take it to the offices of Attitudes magazine. I want it in the December 18 issue.”

“In the personals?”

“Yes.”

“Holly Baskin?”

He spelled both names slowly. Then he looked at Jane. Maybe glanced would be a better word. But there was no fooling her. She’d seen the unmistakable passion in his dark, dark eyes. He loved her. He did. He just didn’t know it yet.

So, who was Holly Baskin? Why would Charles, of all people, have to find her in the personal ads? At least Attitudes was an upscale magazine, glossy and terribly hip—must-have reading for those in the know. The ads ran to Beemers and PalmPilots. But the real popularity of the magazine was in “The Personal Touch,” the column where twice every month, Gen Xers paid $4.98 to find love, spurn love, make friends, blast friends. The city had been enamored with “The Personal Touch” for years now, some people making it their goal in life to have the coolest ad. Jane bought the magazine from time to time, when she could afford it, and, after she’d read the ads, she’d cut out pictures of things she wanted for her dream home.

But that wasn’t important now. The ad was. Holly Baskin. Was she an old friend? From his Harvard days, perhaps? Maybe she was a business associate. A lover? Oh, please, not that.

Jane studied Charles, searching for clues. Nothing. His gaze was inscrutable. Beautiful, yes, but still not easy to read.

“Ms. Dobson?”

“Yes?”

“Why are you still here?”

She snapped out of it, trying like hell to look as if she hadn’t been caught with her pants down, so to speak. Giving him one of her best smiles, she got up and backed away until her butt hit the door. His gaze stayed on her as she fumbled with the knob, then dropped her pad, but halfway to picking it up, he went back to his papers. She scurried out, closed the door and sagged against the frame.

Not a particular success, that. He rattled her so. Of course, he hadn’t meant to. It was her own fault, really. But couldn’t he just once smile?

As she headed back to her desk she glanced down at the name on her notepad. Holly Baskin. Holly. It didn’t seem the kind of name Charles would go for. With his firm footing in the world he needed a woman with a stronger name. A traditional name. Jane, for example.

The phone rang and she hurried the last few steps to her desk. “Mr. Warren’s office.”

“Hi, Janey.”

“Oh, hi, Darra.” Jane sat down, propping the notebook open before her. “How are you?”

“Great. Listen, I wanted to let you know that we’re opening another restaurant three weeks from Sunday. It’s not far from your office.”

Jane put her pad facedown on the desk and gave her sister her whole attention. Darra never invited her to any of her celebrity-studded events. She and three other models, whose combined income could wipe out the national debt, had opened five restaurants, subtly named Haute Couture. They’d done so without Jane’s attendance, so what was different this time?

“Jane? Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Would you like to come?”

“Me?”

“Of course you, silly. It’s about time you saw what I’ve been up to.”

“I’ve been to the restaurant in SoHo.”

“You have?” Darra cleared her throat, but from her it sounded sophisticated, sexy even. “How did you like it?”

“It was nice. Very, uh, modern.”

“Good. Now, I can mark you down as a definite?”

“I think so. What’s the date?”

“December 23. It’s a Sunday.”

Jane had flipped the pages on her calendar to see that she had nothing jotted on the twenty-third. Or the whole week, for that matter.

“And Janey?”

“Yes?”

“Maybe you could, you know, ask your boss if he wanted to come, too. As our guest, of course.”

A feeling as familiar to her as breathing hit her chest: disappointment, dark gray and sticky, her old friend, her childhood companion. It was as if she were full to bursting and empty, both at the same time. Merry Christmas, Janey. “Mr. Warren has a very busy schedule,” Jane said, her voice not even hinting at her condition.

“But couldn’t you even ask?”

“Why?”

“Because…because he’s just the kind of clientele we’re looking for. If he likes it, maybe he’ll come back. And bring his friends.”

“He won’t.”

“He won’t what?”

“Be able to come. I just looked at his calendar. He’ll be out of the country.”

“Damn it.”

“But I’ll tell him about it when he comes back.”

“Thanks,” Darra said, and Jane could practically see her patented pout. It was a doozy of a pout, and it had made her sister a household name. Gorgeous Darra, whose face haunted Jane from billboards all over Manhattan.

“Put it there.”

Jane almost asked her sister what she was talking about, but then she realized the comment hadn’t been addressed to her. It was probably for Darra’s boyfriend, Guy. He pronounced it “Gee,” like some French baron or something when Jane knew perfectly well that he’d been raised in Omaha, Nebraska. Oh well. Guy pronounced “Gee” went better with Darra, whose real name was Darlene.

“I gotta run, Janey. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Bye,” she said, but the phone cut her off. It wasn’t that Darra meant to be mean. She really didn’t. She just had this rather myopic view of the world. Copernicus be hanged; Darra was the center of the universe. At least when she wasn’t around their other sisters.

The remarkable Dobson girls. Jane’s eldest sister, Pru, had just finished a triumphant concert series with the Boston Symphony. Just days ago Jane had seen a little piece on her in the Times, about how her precious violin had been stolen. It turned up the next day, and Jane would bet the price of the Stradivarius that Pru had lost the damn thing. She was notorious for misplacing stuff.

Then there was Felicity. Two years younger than Pru, and already on the USA Today bestseller list. “The novelist of our generation,” according to People magazine. All Jane knew was that Felicity hadn’t answered her last three letters.

Darra came next. She’d started modeling at fourteen, and then there was that Sports Illustrated cover and she’d become a supermodel. As if that was a word.

Three incredible, beautiful, talented girls, all in a row. And then came Jane. Tone-deaf Jane. Moderately attractive Jane. Mediocre Jane, who was best known in New York society for not being her sisters. When she was mentioned, someone inevitably mentioned her hats.

Her hats.

With a deep sigh, Jane let go of her familial thoughts and turned to something far more interesting. Holly Baskin. It was a puzzle worthy of a woman like herself. Who was this Holly Baskin? Why didn’t Charles have her phone number? What part had she played in his past? Was she beautiful? Of course she was.

Jane typed the ad, printed it, took it back to her desk and decided it was all wrong. Holly wouldn’t be intrigued enough by such a sterile request. What it needed was some pizzazz.

Her fingers flew across her keyboard as she typed and deleted and typed and deleted until she came up with the perfect ad. Not too much, not too little. Holly wouldn’t be able to resist.

The phone book came out, and Jane called to get the address and hours for Attitudes magazine. Of course, she’d thought about placing the ad via phone or e-mail, but that was too impersonal. This was for Charles, and it had to be done exactly right. In person. Besides, she hadn’t decided which ad to use, which was a major big deal.

After she hung up, she called the switchboard, alerting them to the fact that she would be an hour or so late tomorrow morning. And then she took both ads, his and hers, and put them in her purse. There was the afternoon to get through. She had some reports to type up and some filing to do. But first, she picked up her notepad one more time.

Holly Baskin. She didn’t sound at all like someone Charles would love. But what if…?

AS SHE WAITED, Jane read her ad, then his ad, then her ad again. Hers was poetic, sincere, moving. His was bare and cold and clinical. She pictured herself as Holly Baskin, seeing the ad for the first time. The one in her left hand—the one Jane had written herself—would pique her interest instantly. No way would she overlook it. But his ad? No romance whatsoever. No promise of a sparkling future.

It was Jane’s turn at the desk. The woman behind it didn’t seem to like her job very much. She hadn’t smiled once, barely spoke, and her brow seemed permanently furrowed.

“I’d like to place a personal ad, please.”

The woman frowned. “You have it written out?”

Jane nodded, knowing she had to make her decision now. This instant.

“Well? I haven’t got all day.”

Jane knew her ad would bring Holly back into Charles’s life. She knew it with absolute certainty.

She handed the woman the other ad.

She wasn’t stupid, for heaven’s sake.

THE DOW WAS DOWN five points and Charles had a headache. One was not caused by the other. It only seemed that way.

It was eleven-thirty. Maybe he should take some aspirin and call it a night. He eyed the paperwork strewn across his bed. If he quit now, he’d just have more to do in the morning.

He decided to go with the aspirin, however. Putting his lap desk to the side, he headed for the bathroom. Fourteen million for the Riverside complex, and that was just for starters. The architectural firm was a good one, the prospectus top-notch, and yet there was something about the deal that bothered him. Whatever it was, it had better come to the fore soon. The papers were due on the twenty-first.

He turned the light on in the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. The aspirin bottle shared space with antacids: chewable, caplet and liquid form. The rest of the cupboard was bare. The women in his life were always trying to fill this particular cabinet, and Charles had disposed of a plethora of miracle herbs, god-awful colognes and even the occasional feminine hygiene product. Finally, it appeared that his housekeeper had gotten the hint. And since she was the only woman currently in his life, he had his agreeably spare cabinet back.

He took three aspirin, turned off the light and went back to bed. MSNBC was still on, but it wasn’t financial news. It took him a moment to get settled, then he started rereading the Riverside deal.

Not five minutes later, the phone rang. Charles sighed. There were only two people in the world who would call him at this hour. David, or his mother calling from the cruise ship. He hoped it was David.

“Darling, you’ll never guess!”

“Hello, Mother.”

“I won!”

“What did you win?”

“The costume contest. I was number one on the whole ship. It was a triumph. The applause…Oh, Charles I wish you could have been there.”

“I wish I could have, too, Mother.” His gaze fell on the thick file on his lap, then the clock. It was no use fighting it. He’d simply get up a half hour earlier tomorrow. He closed the file, then leaned back. “Tell me about it,” he said.

His mother did just that. In excruciating detail. She’d worn her hair up and used a charming little Hermès scarf across her forehead to give her the look of a flapper. He heard about her dress, her bag, her shoes, her dinner. On and on. When she’d pause he’d say something. Nothing much, just an acknowledgment that he was indeed still there. Still listening.

But his mind did wander. Not too far, or she’d have guessed. Just to his day, then, naturally, to the decision he’d made last Friday. As his mother waxed lavish praise on the lobster claw hors d’oeuvres, he toyed with the idea of telling her. What an uproar he’d cause from here to the Caribbean. She’d tell him he mustn’t go back to Holly. That he needed someone who had a heart. A soul. His mother was very big on souls.

What she didn’t understand was that Holly was exactly what he needed. Her no-nonsense approach to life suited him. She knew how to entertain, and she was savvy enough about business to make any dinner conversation flow. She was attractive, she came from a good family. What he couldn’t remember was exactly why they’d split up. It had been a few years. Probably something to do with his father’s death. That had been a difficult time. But Charles had survived. He’d taken over the company. He’d taken over the care of his mother. Now it was time for the next phase. A wife. A child. He’d be thirty-two soon. By then, he wanted this marriage business over and done with.

It all depended on whether Holly still read that damned magazine. Why she’d left no forwarding address or phone number with her last landlord, he couldn’t fathom. Her parents had died several years ago, and she had no siblings. He’d tried finding her through the alumni association, the Harvard club. He’d even called Le Cirque to ask the maître d’ if he’d seen her.

The only information Charles had was that she’d been living abroad. Maybe she was back in the States, or maybe not. Wherever she was, she’d subscribe to Attitudes. When he’d known her, it had been her favorite reading material.

“Darling?”

“Yes, Mother?”

“You didn’t answer me. Are you reading the Wall Street Journal while I’m talking to you?”

“No. Of course not. I was just distracted by this headache.”

“Did you take something for it?”

“Yes.”

“Chamomile tea will do wonders. You should brew some up right away.”

“That’s a great idea. As soon as we’re done, I’ll do just that.”

Her sigh carried across the ship-to-shore phone line. “You won’t. But I can’t do anything about that, can I?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you think I’m a crackpot, with crackpot ideas. Imagine, winning a costume party at my age.”

“If you like it, there’s nothing wrong with it. You’ve earned your fun, Mother.”

“I suppose. Kim and Molly are taking good care of me. You don’t have to worry.”

He winced. She wasn’t supposed to know about Kim and Molly. They’d been hired to keep a discreet eye on his mother. They’d obviously done a poor job of it.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Stop pouting. You knew I would figure it out sooner or later. You’re nothing if not predictable, Charles. Now go to bed. It’s far too late for you to be up. You need to sleep.”

“Good night, Mother.”

“I’ll call again soon.”

He put the phone down and thought about opening the Riverside file again. For once, though, he obeyed his mother. He put away his reports and papers and headed off to brush his teeth. He must remember to set his alarm for four-thirty instead of five.

As he got down to the business of preparing for sleep, he tried to remember the specifics of his breakup with Holly. He’d instigated the proceedings, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember why. It was probably nothing. Nothing at all. She’d make a fine mother to his children. A very capable wife. And, if his memory wasn’t playing tricks on him, she was very capable in bed, too.

He just hoped she’d answer him soon, or he’d have to hire a private detective. Charles wanted to be married soon. If he couldn’t find Holly, it would mean looking for someone new. The thought made him shudder.

It would have been so much easier for him if Mrs. Robinson hadn’t gone off to Idaho for the holidays. Or was it Ohio? He didn’t recall. His work was getting done, but everything took far more of his time than he cared to give. At least that girl—what was her name? Joan? At least she had a firm grip on the English language, and she could spell. Granted, it wasn’t much. But his luck with employees had never been stellar. For now, she’d do.