Just Curious Read online

  Pausing in her wiping, she looked in the mirror and knew that she was lying to herself. Last night she’d held Ann’s new daughter in her arms and she’d wanted that child so much that she’d nearly walked out the door with her. Frowning, Ann had taken her baby from her sister-in-law. “You can’t have mine,” she said. “Get your own.”

  To cover her embarrassment, Karen had tried to make jokes about her feelings, but they had fallen flat, and in the end, she’d left Ann’s hospital room feeling the worst she had since Ray’s death.

  So now Karen was at the office and she was nearly overpowered with a sense of longing for a home and family. Making another attempt to mop up her face, she heard voices at the door, and without thinking, she scurried into an open stall and locked the door behind her. She did not want anyone to see her. Today was the office Christmas party and everyone was in high good spirits. Between the promise of limitless free food and drink this afternoon and a generous bonus received from Montgomery-Taggert Enterprises this morning, the whole office was a cauldron of merriment.

  If Karen hadn’t already been in a bad mood, she would have been when she realized that one of the two women who entered was Loretta Simons, a woman who considered herself the resident authority on McAllister J. Taggert. Karen knew she was trapped inside the stall, for if she tried to leave the restroom, Loretta would catch her and badger her into hearing more about the wonders of the saintly M.J. Taggert.

  “Have you seen him yet?” Loretta gushed in a way that some people reserved for the Sistine Chapel. “He’s the most beautiful creature on earth—tall, handsome, kind, understanding.”

  “But what about that woman this morning?” the second woman asked. If she hadn’t heard all about Taggert, then she had to be the new executive assistant, and Loretta was breaking her in. “She didn’t seem to think he was so wonderful.”

  At that, Karen, hidden in her stall, smiled. Her sentiments exactly.

  “But you, my dear, have no idea what that darling man has been through,” Loretta said as though talking about a war veteran.

  Standing against the wall, Karen put her head back and wanted to cry out in frustration. Did Loretta never talk about anything but the Great Jilt? the Great Tragedy of McAllister Taggert? Wasn’t there anything else in her life?

  “Three years ago Mr. Taggert was madly, insanely in love with a young woman named Elaine Wentlow.” Loretta said the name as though it were something vile and disgusting. “More than anything in life he wanted to marry her and raise a family. He wanted his own home, his own place of security. He wanted—”

  Karen rolled her eyes, for Loretta was adding more to the tale each time she told it: fewer facts, more melodrama. Now Loretta was on to the magnificence of the wedding that Taggert had alone planned and paid for. According to Loretta, his fiancée had spent all her time having her nails done.

  “And she left him?” the new assistant asked, her voice properly awed.

  “She left that dear man standing at the front of the church before seven hundred guests who had flown in from all over the world.”

  “How awful,” the assistant said. “He must have been humiliated. What was her reason? And if she did have a good reason, couldn’t she have done it in a more caring manner?”

  Karen tightened her jaw. It was her belief that Taggert waited until the night before or the day of the wedding to present his bride with one of his loathsome prenuptial agreements, letting her know just what he thought of her. Of course Karen could never say that, as she was not supposed to be typing Taggert’s private work. That was the job of his personal secretary. But beautiful Miss Gresham was much too important to actually feed data into a computer terminal, so she gave the work to the person who had been with the company the longest: Miss Johnson. But then Miss Johnson was past seventy and too rickety to do a lot of typing. Knowing she’d lose her job if she admitted this, and since she had a rather startling number of cats to feed, Miss Johnson secretly gave all of Taggert’s private work to Karen.

  “So that’s why all the women since then have left him?” the assistant asked. “I mean, there was that woman this morning.”

  Karen didn’t have to hear Loretta’s recapping of the events of this morning, as it was all the office staff could talk of. What with the Christmas party and the bonus, yet another of Taggert’s women dumping him was almost more excitement than they could bear. Karen was genuinely concerned for Miss Johnson’s heart.

  This morning, minutes after the bonuses had been handed out, a tall, gorgeous redhead had stormed into the offices with a ring box in her trembling hand. The outside receptionist hadn’t needed to ask who she was or what her errand was, for angry women with ring boxes in their hands were a common sight in the offices of M.J. Taggert. One by one, all doors had been opened to her, until she was inside the inner sanctum: Taggert’s office.

  Fifteen minutes later, the redhead had emerged, crying, ring box gone, but clutching a jeweler’s box that was about the right size to hold a bracelet.

  “How could they do this to him?” the women in the office had whispered, all their anger descending onto the head of the woman. “He’s such a lovely man, so kind, so considerate,” they said.

  “His only problem is that he falls in love with the wrong women. If he could just find a good woman, she’d love him forever” was the conclusion that was always drawn. “He just needs a woman who understands what pain he has been through.”

  After this pronouncement, every woman in the office under fifty-five would head for the restroom, where she’d spend her lunch hour trying to make herself as alluring as possible.

  Except Karen. Karen would remain at her desk, forcing herself to keep her opinions to herself.

  Now Loretta gave a sigh that made the stall door rattle against its lock. Since Loretta had told every female in the office all about the divine Mr. Taggert, she wasn’t worried about anyone overhearing.

  “So now he’s free again,” Loretta said, her voice heavy with the sadness—and hope—at such a state. “He’s still looking for his true love, and someday some very lucky woman is going to become Mrs. McAllister Taggert.”

  At that the assistant murmured in agreement. “The way that woman treated him was tragic. Even if she hated him, she should have thought of the wedding guests.”

  At those words, Karen could have groaned, for she knew that Loretta had recruited yet another soldier for her little army that constantly played worship-the-boss.

  “What are you doing?” Karen heard Loretta ask.

  “Filling in the correct name,” the assistant answered.

  A moment later, Loretta gave a sigh that had to have come straight from her heart. “Oh, yes, I like that. Yes, I like that very much. Now we must go. We wouldn’t want to miss even a second of the Christmas party.” She paused, then said suggestively, “There’s no telling what can happen under the mistletoe.”

  Karen waited for a minute after the women were gone, then, allowing her pent-up breath to escape, she left the stall. Looking in the mirror, she saw that the time she’d spent hiding had allowed her eyes to clear. After washing her hands, she went to the towel holder and there she saw what the women had just been talking about. Long ago some woman (probably Loretta) had stolen a photograph of Taggert and hung it on the wall of the women’s restroom. Then she’d glued a nameplate (also probably stolen) under it. But now, on the wall above the plate was written “Miserably Jilted” before the M.J. Taggert

  Looking at it for a moment, Karen shook her head in disgust, then with a smirk, she withdrew a permanent black marker from her handbag, crossed out the handwritten words, and replaced them with, “Magnificently Jettisoned.”

  For the first time that day, she smiled, then she left the restroom feeling much better. So much better, in fact, that she allowed herself to be pulled into the elevator by fellow employees to go upstairs to the huge Taggert Christmas party.

  One whole floor of the building owned by the Taggerts had been set aside f