Strange Bedpersons Read online

  “Yes,” Christine said. “Norbert Nolan Welch.”

  Tess blinked. “Nolan?”

  “Nick just called,” Christine said. “He’s on his way in. He said to tell you he’s sorry you had to wait and he hopes you’re not bored.”

  “No,” Tess said, trying to digest what she’d just learned. “I’m not bored.”

  Nolan.

  Lanny.

  Norbert Welch was Lanny.

  The office swung around and then righted itself as she tried to decide how she felt about that, about how Lanny’s greatest enemy was Lanny himself, about how Lanny had betrayed everything he believed in and everything she believed in, too, about how her quest to save a long-lost friend ended in losing that friend forever. Lanny wasn’t dead, but he might as well have been.

  He was Welch.

  But somehow, once she’d absorbed the enormity of the fact, that wasn’t where her mind wanted to go. It wanted to think about Nick. Nick and that partnership. No matter how she felt about that damn partnership, it was vital to Nick and it rested on Welch. And now she had Welch right where she wanted him. Welch wanted to run for office as a conservative, but she could tell the world he’d been a radical in the sixties, that he’d written the fairy tale he was making fun of and had meant every word of it at the time. His snotty little book wouldn’t seem nearly as funny if people knew he’d written the fairy tale in the first place. It didn’t seem like much to her, but it would to Welch because it would make him look foolish. All she had to do was say, “Don’t publish that book or I’ll tell the world about Lanny and CinderTess,” and she had him. Everything was in place, and the book wouldn’t be published.

  And Nick wouldn’t get the account, because without the book there was no contract to negotiate.

  She looked at it from every angle she could for the next fifteen minutes, and from every angle it looked the same. If she stopped the book, she stopped the partnership. If she didn’t stop the book, she was sacrificing everything she believed in for Nick’s partnership.

  Hello, Mrs. Jekyll.

  “Oh, damn,” she said, and Nick heard her as he breezed through the door.

  “What’s up?” he said, dropping his briefcase on the desk. “No, don’t tell me now. We’ve got five minutes before we have to be at the restaurant. What the hell are you wearing?”

  Tess looked down at her T-shirt and miniskirt, momentarily distracted. “I just grabbed something,” she said. “Gina—”

  “Oh, great,” he said. “And we’re having dinner at The Levee. Christine!”

  The secretary appeared in the doorway. “You bellowed?”

  “Did you replace that jacket?” Nick said, not taking his eyes off Tess. “If you cover up that god-awful T-shirt, the skirt won’t look too bad. Good thing you’ve got great legs.”

  Christine faded out of the room and then back in, handing Nick a suit box. “Donna Karen, navy pinstripe,” she said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Tess froze, looking at the box.

  “Warn me about what?” Nick said, but Christine was already gone.

  “What’s in that box?” Tess asked in a strangled voice.

  Nick handed it to her. “A suit jacket. You’ll look great. Put it on and let’s go.”

  “I have a suit jacket. A great navy jacket. I love that jacket.”

  “This one is better.” Nick snapped his fingers at her and moved back toward the door. “Move it, babe.”

  “No,” Tess said, and Nick froze at the edge in her voice and then turned to face her. “You took my jacket,” she said coldly. “I told you not to, and you took my jacket.”

  “Tess, it was moth-eaten and it looked like hell,” Nick said. “What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that it was my jacket, and you didn’t like it so you threw it out. And you’re doing the same thing to me.” Tess thrust out her chin. “You’re throwing me out. You’re turning me into Mrs. Jekyll. Be quiet, be polite, don’t get involved. I listened to you and almost let Park and Gina screw up their lives. I know you want me to stay out of things and just look decorative, but I can’t, Nick. I can’t live in designer clothes with my hands tied behind my back while everything goes wrong around me. Today I had to explain to Gina why I stood by and let Park lie to her, and somehow ‘Nick asked me not to get involved’ didn’t quite satisfy either one of us.”

  “She found out?” Nick said, appalled.

  “Park’s dad told the society page his son was marrying Corinne.”

  “Oh, hell.” Nick closed his eyes and tipped his head back a little before he looked at her again. “So now what?”

  “I fixed it,” Tess said. “Park’s introducing Gina to his parents tonight at dinner.”

  Nick looked at her as if she were insane. “Oh, great, you fixed it all right. That’s great. That’ll impress Welch.”

  “Welch has his own problem,” Tess said. “Me.”

  Nick stopped, wary. “Tess, I told you if you waited until after dinner—”

  “You’re always telling me,” Tess said. “Now I’m telling you. There are things that are wrong in my life. And I’m going to fix them. And if you can’t deal with that, then you can’t deal with me. You’ve got to take me as I am, or not take me at all.”

  “Is that an ultimatum?” Nick asked, his jaw tight.

  “Pretty much,” Tess said. “I tried it your way. I can’t do it. So this is it.” She swallowed once, and when Nick didn’t say anything, she put the suit box down on the desk and opened it. The jacket was beautiful. She took it out and shook it once but then was distracted by something else in the box. She dropped the new jacket on the desk and pulled back the tissue paper. “Well, good for Christine,” she said, and pulled her old jacket from the box. She shrugged into it not looking at Nick. “We’d better get a move on. We’re going to be late for dinner,” she said, and then she looked at him, defiant in her tattered tweed.

  Nick opened the door, stone-faced, and followed her out.

  Chapter Twelve

  They were late to the restaurant, and Kent and Melisande and Welch were already seated. Tess could see them through the archway, a little triumvirate of privilege and arrogance, and she thought about how rude she wanted to be and how ineffectual rudeness would be. Nick had taught her something. Tact. Diplomacy. Underhandedness. She was going to charm the socks right off Welch and then attack him when he was well fed— just like taking a pig to the slaughter.

  “If I’m going to behave all night, I need a drink,” Tess said.

  “Get me one, too,” Park said behind them, and Tess turned to see Gina standing blankly beside him, her eyes red from crying, her face slack with fear.

  “Gina?” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Gina said. “I’m perfectly fine. Everything’s going to be fine. I’m ready to meet Park’s parents. Really I am. I’m fine.”

  “I’m not,” Park said. “Get me a drink. We took a cab, so drunkenness is not a problem.”

  “Gina, honey?” Tess asked.

  “I’m fine,” Gina said again. “Can I have some gum?”

  “No,” Tess said.

  “Oh, hell,” Nick said.

  The seating arrangements could have been better, Nick thought as he surveyed the situation. Somehow they’d ended up with the Pattersons on one side of the big round table, staring across at Park and Gina who had Welch on one side and him and Tess on the other. Park winced under his father’s gaze like a sinner on Judgment Day with a few things to explain about the little ethnic woman by his side who was obviously not Radcliffe material, while Gina sat, dazed with terror, across from Melisande, a woman who was never amused and often appalled. And clearly, Melisande had never had as much to be appalled about as she had now. In desperation Nick gestured to the waiter.

  “Bring wine,” Nick told him. “Any wine. Now.”

  “Very good, sir,” the waiter said.

  Kent Patterson smiled tightly. “The Chateau Roths