A Purrfect Romance (3 page)

“I’ve taken the liberty,” he said, “of preparing for this moment. I opened it before you arrived so it would have a chance to breathe.”

He poured out two glasses, handed one to her and lifted his in a toast.

“To the success of your book,” he said.

She sniffed, swirled and sipped, approving the excellent Bordeaux. Then she lifted the glass again, in a toast of her own.

“To Silk and Satin,” she said. “Long may they live.”

“T
ell me all about it!”

The excited voice on the telephone pierced the remnants of Bridey’s dreams. She opened one eye just enough to see the clock next to her bed.

“Marge,” she groaned, “it’s not even seven o’clock.”

“Yes, it is. Well, practically. And I couldn’t wait another minute.” Marge’s voice was at its usual hypomanic pitch: enthusiastic, endearing, and always irresistible, like a small bell going
ding! ding! ding!
“Come on, Bridey, tell me all about it. Is it magnificent?”

Bridey lifted her head and looked around sleepily. Yes, the Queen Anne highboy was still there, between the tall windows that opened out to the terrace. And the thick, pale beige carpeting that contrasted so delicately with the soft rose of the walls. There was the mirrored dressing table, with its silver and crystal accessories, and opposite her bed was the enormous dressing room in which her small wardrobe now hung in modest simplicity. It hadn’t all disappeared during the night. It was not all a figment of her dreams. She was really here, on Park Avenue, in the most stunning apartment she’d ever seen, like something out of
Architectural Digest
. She snuggled luxuriously into the lush bedding that surrounded her.

“Yes, Marge,” she said dreamily. “It really is magnificent. When I get settled, you’ve got to come up and see it.”

“I can’t wait! And will you really be able to work on your book there?”

“Absolutely. The kitchen is unbelievable. It’s huge and totally professional. I’ll be starting this morning. First thing.”

“Cool! That’s so cool! I want to buy you breakfast, to celebrate. I won’t keep you long. Just a quick cup of coffee.”

“Well—”

“I promise I won’t stand in the way of culinary progress, but I just have to hear all about it. Forty minutes. No more. I promise.”

“Well, okay. As long as we make it really quick. Just give me a half hour to shower and dress. And feed the cats.”

“Half an hour, at the deli on Lexington and Sixty-Fifth. I can’t wait,” Marge repeated. Her enthusiasm bubbled right through the phone. “Oh, Bridey, I can’t get over how lucky you are!”

“I know. I’m the luckiest girl in New York.”

She hung up. In the silence, she let those words resonate in her head.

The luckiest girl in New York.

She blinked a couple of times, stretched once—lazily—and smiled into the sunlight that streamed through the windows. Then, as though taking her energy from the brilliance of the day, she threw back the covers and sprang out of bed.

Silk and Satin were waiting for her outside the bedroom door, sniffing at her toes as she emerged and mewing hungrily around her bare feet, ready for their breakfast. They followed her impatiently through Henrietta’s sitting room and down the hall to a room off the kitchen that had formerly been the servants’ eating quarters but was now devoted entirely to the cats’ care and comfort. Their bowls were on the floor, along with their beds—pink for Silk and blue for Satin, to match their embroidered collars. While they rubbed their heads against her ankles, Bridey washed out the bowls, dried them with a paper towel, and refilled them with fresh water and the special dry cat food that was custom mixed just for them and stored in a large wooden bin. Their litter boxes were in a small bathroom off the cats’ dining room, and Bridey quickly cleaned them. These were her sole chores.

“Okay, you guys,” she said. “You’re on your own now.”

She left them to their breakfast and went to the sumptuous bathroom, all marble and mirrors, where she quickly showered and dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and flip-flops. She went through the apartment to the cloakroom just off the parquet-floored, mirror-paneled foyer. Her denim jacket, her lightweight raincoat and her one good topcoat looked lonely hanging on one of the two long, empty rods on which hundreds of hangers waited for the masses of visitors who no longer came. She grabbed the jacket in one hand in case the day turned chilly, slung her large tote bag over her shoulder, and headed for the door.

“Be good, you two,” she called to Silk and Satin as she left. “I’ll bring you back a fish.”

No empty promise. Later, as soon as she got organized, she’d be starting on her chapter entitled,
Fish: Fast and Mostly Fat-Free
, and her mind was already at work, mentally choosing and rejecting. Reluctantly, she’d have to omit one of her personal favorites, a Russian
coulibiac
.

Even if I Americanized it
, she was thinking,
and substituted salmon for the eel, it’s still too complicated for my purposes. All those layers of fish and rice and mushrooms and sliced egg and bean thread, wrapped up in
blinchiki
and pastry dough. Too elaborate for this book—but I’ll definitely use it in the next one.
She made a mental note to include
coulibiac
in her next book, which was already in the planning stage. It would be titled,
The Guy Thing: For Men Only
, and it would be a collection of recipes for the man who needs to have one specialty dish, some elaborate concoction, his very own signature dish to dazzle a date with.

She opened the door, and her thoughts were instantly scattered.

A large black dog of the retriever persuasion, trailing his leash, filled much of the hall and began instantly to sniff inquisitively at her.

The dog’s owner, at the door to 12B, paused as the lock responded to his key, and he turned to glare at Bridey. She caught a glimpse of wavy black hair, fierce black eyes, and a very correct dark business suit under a lightweight raincoat. That, and a distinctly military bearing.

“Scout! Come!”

The man spoke sharply—angrily, in fact—and the dog responded instantly to his master’s command. They both disappeared without another word as the door closed abruptly behind them.

Well, hel-lo
, she said to herself.
So that’s my new neighbor.

Her fantasy of a gracious, gray-haired old gentleman was embarrassingly silly in light of the man’s brusque snub, and she had to revise the image drastically.

Drastically!

Subtract about fifty years, first of all. Though she’d been right about the conservative part. This man looked starchy enough to freeze a bear in its tracks.

And what was he so mad about? She certainly hadn’t done anything to earn that glare. Talk about your rude New Yorkers! She could almost feel her spine stiffen against the man’s apparent hostility.

But still, you’d have to give him points for dynamite good looks. Almost took her breath away. What a pity. That such coldness came in such a handsome package.

“Well,” she said to Silk, who was trying to squirm through the door as Bridey poked a foot at her to make her get back into the apartment, “at least the dog was friendly.”

Mackenzie Haven Brewster shut the door behind him and leaned back against it, his hand still on the knob.

“Jeez, Scout,” he said to the dog, who was nuzzling his hand. “Did you get a look at her?”

He closed his eyes, but the image of her still radiated brilliantly in his head, like a burst of sunlight, fixed in glowing colors on his retinas.

“I think they’ve thrown us a curve.”

The dog looked up at him inquiringly.

“They couldn’t get some little old white-haired biddy to look after those damned cats?” his master said. “Or some out-of-work actor, some guy with wild hair and noisy friends. Oh, no. Leave it to those scheming lawyers to come up with someone who looks like that.”

It had been only a glimpse as she’d opened the door, but it had been enough. He’d seen the pretty, open face, the flash of coppery red hair with the light behind it, filling it with sprinkles of gold. He’d seen the slim, curvy figure in simple, casual clothes, the cordial smile turned so innocently toward him.

He took a deep breath, shook his head as though to clear it and opened his eyes.

“Not to worry,” he announced forcefully to Scout. “She’s not my type.”

He took a step away from the door and tossed his newspaper onto a chair.

“No, she’s definitely not my type,” he repeated insistently, as though to head off an argument.

Mack Brewster liked his women tall, glamorous, and elegant. And the more pampered the better. Pampered and dependent. He liked women who expected to be protected by men.

He peeled off his coat and dumped it in a disorderly heap on the chair, on top of the newspaper, instead of hanging it up in its proper place in the closet.

Then he stood there for a long time, right there in the middle of his foyer, with Scout circling around him, trying to figure out what was going on. Mack was a man of careful habits. Even before his years in the Navy, he’d been taught to keep everything around him shipshape. His shoes were always polished to a high shine, his pants were creased just so, and he never tossed his clothes around.

Scout knew something was up.

Mack picked up the phone on the hall table.

“Gotta call Maudsley,” he said to Scout. He started to punch in the numbers. “Gotta find out—”

He stopped and looked at his watch.

“Too early.” He stopped punching. “I’ll get him later, at the office.”

“Well, you’re looking snarly,” Marge said as she caught up with Bridey, who was just entering the delicatessen.

“Oh, Marge. New Yorkers can be so hostile.”

Bridey was still feeling the irritation of her neighbor’s glowering snub.

“Tell me about it,” Marge said flippantly. She slid over on the leatherette seat and piled up her bag, her coat, her Bloomie’s shopping bag and her Coach laptop case, all in a disorderly stack next to her. She tossed her long dark hair away from her eyes and picked a breadstick out of the basket that was already set on the table. She took a nibble of it, mentally counting the calories as she nibbled. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Bridey said. “Nothing unusual, that is. Just another Manhattan moment.” She pushed her tote bag into the corner of the booth and picked up the menu.

“You didn’t get mugged or groped or anything, did you?” Marge said absently. She was concentrating on the menu, calculating fat grams and her daily allowance of carbs.

“Nothing like that. Just a neighbor with an attitude.”

“Happens all the time,” Marge said. “By now you should be used to it.”

“I’ll never get used to it, Marge. Back home in Warrentown, people were so different. If someone moved in next door, you brought over a plate of cookies. This guy looked at me like I stole his morning newspaper or something. Too bad, too, ’cause he was really cute.”

“Oh?” Marge was suddenly all attention. She put down her menu. “A cute neighbor? What else? Married?”

“How should I know?” Bridey remembered there was only one umbrella in the stand. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, well, well.” Marge licked her bright red lips like a cat contemplating a canary. “So tell me all. Is he tall?”

“Yes.”

“And dark?”

“Yes.” Bridey remembered those black eyes glaring so fiercely at her. “Yes. Black eyes. Black hair.” Wavy, she thought. Wavy and thick, but cut close and conservative . . .

“And handsome?”

“Very.”

“Age?”

“I’d say late twenties, maybe early thirties.”

“More. More. What was he wearing?”

“Something very starchy. White shirt. Dark tie. Dark suit. Very conservative. And a raincoat. A Burberry.”

“All belted up?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Oh, it’s very important how a man wears his raincoat. Tells a lot about him.”

Bridey was surprised to realize she could see him perfectly. As though he’d been photographed inside her head.

“His coat was open. Like he’d just thrown it on.” Funny, about that. Maybe he wasn’t altogether 100 percent starchy. “Yes, open. Loose over his business suit.” Actually, rather casual, she thought. “And he had a dog,” she added.

“Now that’s really important! What kind of dog?”

“A big black lab. Very big.”

“And well-behaved, I bet.”

“Oh, yes. The dog was a perfect gentleman. Friendly, you know, not overtrained. But not a nuisance, either. His name is Scout.”

“Omigod!” Marge waved her hands delightedly in front of her face, tossing crumbs from her breadstick. “You even know the dog’s name!”

“So what?”

“So what? Oh, Bridey Berrigan, you are such an innocent. A good-looking neighbor with a dog. What could be better? A dog is the perfect excuse to get to know the guy. You really are the luckiest thing.” She used the breadstick to tick off the items of Bridey’s good fortune against the tips of her sculpted fingernails. “A fabulous apartment free of charge, a perfect kitchen, a quiet place to do your cookbook, a couple of sweet cats, and a cute guy next door.”

“Yeah. Well, ‘cute’ won’t cut it if the guy’s temper is bad. No girl needs that.”

“So what was he so mad about?”

“Beats me.”

“Listen, Bridey. Take it from me, as soon as the aroma from your kitchen wafts out . . . well, you never know. Don’t they say, ‘The quickest way to a man’s heart . . .’”

“I don’t know if this one has a heart, Marge. Anyway, he’s not my type.”

“Oh, you could tell that right away?”

“Sure. Pure stuffed shirt. Black shoes polished for inspection. Upright and uptight. No, not for me, Marge. And anyway, the last thing I need is distractions. Especially the romantic kind. I have to concentrate on cooking and writing. Nothing else. This is my big chance and I mean to take advantage of it. No time for men.” She scanned the menu. “I’m starved,” she said, changing the subject. “Let’s order.”

Their waiter had arrived, and reluctantly, Marge picked up her menu and glanced at it. As usual, she wanted something special, something that wasn’t listed.

“Be a dear,” she said to the waiter, “and bring me just one egg. Poached. And please ask the chef to put a little white vinegar in the poaching water, and tell him not to let the yolk get hard. And one piece of dry toast. No butter. Leave off the hash brown potatoes. And black coffee. Would you possibly have a mocha/hazelnut blend?”