Interior Designs (6 page)

The sense of letdown stayed with her, a weight inside her chest as she walked to her car parked in the back of the huge lot. The heaviness didn't abate as she switched on the engine, flicked on the air-conditioning, and ramped up the sound on the CD player.

She eased her Jaguar sedan out of its slot. A mournful song about love gone wrong played loudly, and Cathryn impatiently switched off the music. She pulled the visor down against the glare of the hot sun glinting off the chrome and polish of hundreds of parked cars. It was unseasonably warm for early April, even a South Florida April, and the asphalt of the parking lot fairly oozed with the heat.

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she waited for a yacht to pass under the drawbridge to Palm Beach. The thought crossed her mind that she shouldn't be in such a hurry to get home. Nothing and no one waited for her there, and this bothered her tonight for some reason.

Cathryn parked her car in the covered parking area beneath the exclusive apartment building where she lived. She stepped into the elevator and let it deliver her to the luxury penthouse she called home. The first thing Cathryn did when she got inside was to kick off her hot shoes, chuck her panty hose into the nether regions of her closet, and wiggle her toes up and down in the plush white carpet. Next, she switched on the stereo, not caring what it played as long as it wasn't something torchy. She felt lonely, and she thought of calling Judy. But then her mind flashed to the scene at Judy's house, where her friend was undoubtedly preparing a meal for Ron and Amanda, each of them telling the details of their day. This was family time in most houses.

Here there was no one to care about her day, no one to greet her and make her feel as though she had come home. The apartment seemed silent and empty. Was it always this way? Always one-dimensional? She'd decorated it to her taste, seeking harmony in space and form, but suddenly the lack of clutter seemed merely cold, the brass and gilt and glass hard. Why hadn't she ever noticed it before?

In the kitchen, even the bright colors of the framed Haitian primitive painting on the wall failed to cheer her. The shiny metal oblongs of the dishwasher, range, and refrigerator greeted her like silent sentinels.

"Hi, guys," she said to none of them in particular, and she tugged at the door of the freezer until it swung open to reveal her choices for dinner.

Rectangular cardboard packages, bought by the dozen in the supermarket, were stacked in neat rows on the shelves. She ran through the contents rapidly. Lasagna? No, she'd eaten that last night. Skini-mini zucchini-and-rice casserole? She'd had that the day before yesterday—again.

She had just selected a foil-packaged chicken-and-noodle casserole and switched on the oven to preheat when the shrill sound of the doorbell startled her. Turney, the doorman, was supposed to announce all visitors over the intercom before they came up, but lately the intercom had been out of order. Cathryn wished it had been repaired by now.

Slightly apprehensive, she opened the massive carved-cypress door cautiously, leaving the chain on. Through the small opening she was amazed to see none other than Drew Sedgwick standing there with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in hands, grinning expectantly and looking exceedingly handsome in a short-sleeved knit shirt the color of his eyes.

"Cheers!" he said. "I hope I'm not too late for dinner!"

She stared at him, speechless, as the stereo played on, offering them a light Chopin melody as a backdrop.

"Couldn't you at least invite me in?" His eyes danced as his gaze swept across her face and to the room behind her. He saw a bar, long windows with a balcony beyond, a glass-topped gilt cocktail table.

She stood barefoot on thick white carpet. Her height pleased him. He liked tall women and looking into a face that was almost on a level with his.

He couldn't stop himself from being curious about the way she lived, and he wondered if her natural habitat was decorated to be soft and warm or cold and inflexible—she was such an unpredictable combination that it had been impossible for him to guess.

Drew couldn't get a feeling for the place from where he stood outside the doorway, but the first impression was one of luxury. He stopped looking past Cathryn and focused on her face. Her eyes were wide and surprised, and he noted with interest that the irises were green rimmed with gold, not gold-flecked as he had originally thought. The gold rims put him in mind of picture frames, and he studied her eyes as he would a fine painting, trying to fathom the meaning behind them.

"What
are
you doing here?" she asked. "There's supposed to be a security system in the building with alarms and things. And a doorman."

"Your doorman is the father of Bud Turney, the manager of our Caloosa Mall store. Both Turneys, junior and senior, think very highly of me. Say, do you have any Champagne glasses? I'm getting tired of standing here holding this bottle."

Cathryn gave up. "Come in," she said. "It's hard to deny someone who is so persistent."

"Thanks," he said approvingly. "At last, persistence paid off. You know, I had no idea when I began all this that you were going to be so difficult."

He went to the bar at the other end of the living room while she stood motionless and watched him make himself at home in her apartment. He moved with grace and assurance, as though he took it for granted that she would brook no objection.

"Do you always take charge when you enter someone's home? Most people wait until I ask them to—well, whatever."

He proceeded to pop the cork off the Champagne. "No, I usually wait to be invited to—well, whatever. When I'm not sure I'll be invited, I find it's best to just charge ahead. How else could I get you to drop that aloofness?" His eyebrows lifted in a kind of shrewd impudence. With considerable finesse, he poured Champagne into her hollow-stemmed Champagne glasses and held one out to her. She had to walk around the couch to get it.

"So you find my manner off-putting," she said, playing for time while she absorbed the surprise of his being there.

"You know yourself that you're often reserved and self-contained, isolated in your own thoughts. Come on, admit it." His eyes riveted hers. The Champagne in her glass wobbled, and he noticed.

When she was too startled to answer, he raised his glass. "To designs," he said, whatever that meant. Still in a state of shock at his nervy invasion and at his equally nervy assessment of her, she raised her glass to his. She couldn't be angry with him, not when she'd spent the last few weeks agonizing over whether she'd ever see him again. For him to be standing in her living room was totally unexpected.

She took a sip and then she remembered. "I've left the oven on!" She set her glass on the cocktail table and hurried to the kitchen. Uninvited, Drew followed her.

His eyes took in the chicken-and-noodle casserole on the counter, the lack of any serious preparations for dinner.

"Would you like to go out to eat?" he offered quickly.

"No, thank you," she answered just as quickly. She picked up the casserole and pretended to read the directions even though she knew them by heart.

"We might as well. We could go to—"

She shot him an impatient look, but her meaning was clear—no.

"We can hardly share this one tiny little casserole, can we? Do you have another?"

"Well," she said, reluctantly amused all over again at his persistence. No wonder he had succeeded in building up his department store chain from practically nothing. It was almost impossible to say no to the man, and he got his way without bulldozing. In fact, he didn't allow time to think of any objections before he accomplished exactly what he set out to do.

He opened the freezer door. "Quite a choice, I see. I'll have chicken-and-noodles, too—" and he tossed one of the foil containers on the counter next to hers "—and we should eat escalloped apples with it, I think. Oh, and here's a nice spinach souffle." He lobbed the containers one by one so that they slid across the countertop to rest beside the others.

"Drew Sedgwick, you're too much," she said, smiling at his performance.

"We'll set the table, of course," he said. "Would you mind digging out the best china while I put these in the oven? I thoroughly detest eating out of aluminum-foil disposables."

Reluctantly adopting his festive mood, Cathryn gathered plates and silver from the china closet in the dining room and arranged them on the octagonal teak top of the dining-room table.

"Very nice," he said when he saw the table. He appropriated her arm. "Let's sit down in your living room and enjoy that lovely view of the Atlantic. We have to finish our Champagne." He grasped her elbow and guided her gently but firmly to the couch.

The store,
she thought in desperation,
that's what we can talk about. My boutique.
Those seemed like safe topics.

"The response to my Design Boutique has been excellent," she said, keeping her voice businesslike. "I've taken on four big jobs as a result of it."

"You're a good drawing card. You've spruced up our usually sluggish spring sales, did you know that? Sales have gone up in Furniture, in Linens, in every department having to do with home furnishings. People know who you are, so they stop in to see what's new in your section, and while they're there, they buy that new bedspread they've been thinking about."

"Then we're embarked on a venture that's mutually beneficial," she said, smiling at him, liking the way he so openly expressed his enthusiasm. Opalescent light from the uncurtained window, softened by approaching dusk, shimmered across Drew's features. His eyes were long-lashed and expressively framed by wing-shaped brows. His dark hair glinted with blue-black highlights in the fading light from the wide window.

"And so," he said, after another sip of Champagne, "tell me about your work schedule. Have you had to work even harder to keep the Design Boutique going?"

"I delegate most of the work connected with the boutique. I'm fortunate to have competent people working for me, so..." She gave a little shrug.

"That's one of the secrets, isn't it?" he said, studying her. "Hiring competent people. Sometimes it's hard to let them take over a job, though."

She nodded in agreement. "I used to want to poke my finger into every Cathryn Mulqueen pie, itching to see every swatch of fabric that came into the studio, pushing myself to dicker with every antique dealer. It isn't possible, of course, not anymore. My business has grown so big."

"Too big?"

"No, not too big. Not unwieldy. Yet I can't help thinking that I've lost some of the excitement that personal contact with every aspect of the business gave me."

Drew nodded understandingly. "I remember the first store I opened out of town. I used to lie awake nights, worrying that I couldn't handle all the day-today details. But everything fell into place, finally. I learned to save myself for wheeling and dealing and aggressively pursuing certain markets. Inventories, ordering, and ad campaigns could all be handled by employees."

"You've been highly successful," she commented.

"So have you," he replied, turning the focus of the conversation back to her. He wanted her to talk about herself, to tell him about her business. At the moment nothing could have fascinated him more.

All at once Cathryn felt vulnerable and exposed beneath the gaze of those discerning eyes. Drew Sedgwick was a pretty good psychologist. He knew exactly how to wear down her defenses. This would be the time that most women would expose their hidden vulnerabilities. They would say, "Oh, but success isn't everything," and then go on to tell him in ways subtle and not so subtle how success had left them unfulfilled and wanting, providing everything but a man. Well, she wasn't falling into that trap.

Instead, she sidestepped. "That was an interesting article about you in
Business Week,"
she said, recalling the story that had appeared perhaps six months earlier.

"Not nearly as interesting as the one about you in
Palm Beach Parade
," he shot back. "Did the Sheikh of Isphat really give you a seventeen-karat emerald that you wear in your navel?"

In spite of herself, she felt her cheeks flush crimson. "I didn't know anyone with any sense read that scandal sheet," she managed to say. "And I don't remember the
Palm Beach Parade
article saying anything about an emerald. Even though I did design the interior of the Sheikh of Isphat's local residence, I can assure you that he never gave me a seventeen-karat jewel to wear in my navel or anyplace else."

He burst out laughing. "Well, that's a relief. A shame, though. You should wear emeralds. They'd do so much for your eyes."

"Where did you hear that ridiculous rumor, anyway?"

He laughed again. "I'm not about to tell you." He had her attention now; rumors about the illustrious sheikh abounded in Palm Beach.

"Drew! I can't imagine how such a story got started."

"Neither can I, especially when you act so prissy all the time. No one would ever, ever suspect Cathryn Mulqueen of wearing an emerald in her navel."

"I'm not pr—"

"Oh, but you are."

She set her glass down impatiently. "Look, first you stroll in here unannounced and invite yourself to dinner. You tease me with a ridiculous rumor and then become overcritical. What gives you the right to pull a stunt like this? The fact that I let you buy me a drink at our class reunion? Because we're business associates? I hardly even know you, and—"