Mr. Fix-It (7 page)

“You don’t have to understand,” she muttered, shoving her cardkey into the power pad mounted on one of the penthouse’s heavy double doors. When the security light flashed green, she pushed the doors open and walked through them, allowing them to swing back in Carter’s face.

“I’d like to,” he insisted. “This is the closest I’ve ever been to the life of a celebrity, and—”

“I’m no celebrity.” She dropped her tote bag on the cocktail table on her way to the bar. “My
books
are well known. Not me.”

“You wrote them,” Carter persisted, watching her slam a crystal tumbler on the lacquered bar. “You can’t separate yourself from them.”

Breathing hard, she grabbed a bottle from under the bar and uncapped it. She sloshed a dram of pale liquid into the tumbler, plunked the bottle on the bar, and raised the tumbler. She tossed back her beverage in one gulp. Carter doubted that it had a chance to warm in her stomach before she hunched over, clutching at her throat and gut.

“Water!” she coughed, the cords in her neck protruding. “
Help!
”

Carter slowly strolled over to her and picked up the bottle. “Wow,” he said, reading the label. “Knappogue Castle Irish Whiskey. Nothing but the best for the VIPs, huh?” He raised his voice to better hear himself over Khela’s strangled coughing and the sound of her fist pounding the bar. He poured himself a swallow and sipped it.

“This is really good, Khela. Crisp, clean…slightly sweet, actually. It has a really smooth finish, unlike the peat-aged Irish whiskeys.”

“Water,” she hissed. “Please…”

Carter rounded the bar and took a bottle of Waiwera Infinity water from the minifridge. He’d barely removed the cap when Khela grabbed it from him and began chugging it. “Overpriced New Zealand water is more agreeable to you than overpriced Irish whiskey, I see.”

Her esophagus no longer on fire, Khela took several deep breaths and several more sips of water. “That’s the problem,” she shouted at him.

“Not if you cut the whiskey with a little water,” he suggested with a little laugh.

“You think this is funny? Gimme a pen and I’ll really crack you up by gouging out one of my eyes. I’m not talking about the damn drinks, anyway! I can’t separate myself from my work anymore, and I don’t believe in my work!”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “So the logical conclusion would be that you don’t believe in yourself.”

She slammed her palms flat on the bar. “Don’t you dare try to use logic on me, Carter Radcliffe! Logic has nothing to do with how I feel!”

He snickered. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

Khela left the bar and headed for the Chippendale desk in the office section of the suite, kicking off her dressy jute slide sandals as she went. She untucked her white linen blouse and unfastened the top button of her tobacco-washed silk pants before sitting down and opening her laptop. She held her head in her hands until her desktop appeared.

“What are you doing?” Carter asked from a safe distance.

“Writing a letter to my editor.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for dinner and the ball?”

“I’m not going to dinner, and I’m especially not going to that dopey ball.” She opened a blank document and began typing.

“Your letter is so important that you have to miss out on the social event of the weekend?”

“I think announcing my retirement is much more important than a bunch of middle-aged headcases running around in bed sheets.”

“You make it sound like a clan ral—hey!” He went to stand behind her, to read over her shoulder. “You’re retiring? Seriously?”

“I wanted to announce it at the luncheon, but I couldn’t.” Her fingers whizzed over the keyboard, committing to paper all the things she wished she’d said in her keynote address.

“Wait a minute here, just hold on,” Carter said. “I don’t understand this at all. Those people down there respect you. I met a few of them in the hotel restaurant this morning when I got back from my run.”

Her fingers paused over the keyboard. “Is that where you were when I woke up?”

Her tender inquiry drew him closer.

“I agreed to spend this weekend with you, and I’m a man of my word. Besides, I wouldn’t have missed your keynote address for anything.”

She propped her elbows on the desk and buried her face in her hands. “I’m sorry, Carter. I’m letting this weekend get the better of me.”

“I’m sure it happens to the best of them.” He scrubbed a hand over her head as though she were his little brother. “The irony is that you
are
the best of them.”

“Carter?”

His grin faded once he spotted the tears sparkling on her lower lashes. “Jeez, Khela, what is it?” He kneeled next to her chair, spinning it so that she faced him.

“Everyone down there, especially Daphne, would hate me if I’d given the keynote I’d originally planned.” Her tears spilled over her lower lids, dotting her blouse with dark spots.

Ordinarily, a woman’s tears had the power to send Carter scurrying for cover. Khela’s had the opposite effect. They kept him rooted to the spot and determined to erase their cause. “You weren’t going to tell everyone that romance sucks, were you?” he joked.

She chuckled in spite of her misery. “Sort of. For me, it does.”

The quiet, delicate tears that heightened the rich chocolate of her eyes were the preamble to a flood that turned her into a weeping, drooling mess in Carter’s arms. He stroked her hair and her back, soothing her with gentle words that made her feel doubly guilty about having been so cross with him the night before.

When she calmed enough to speak, she did so, her mouth moving against the side of his neck. “I started writing romance because I lucked into it. As I was hammering out that first book, I fell in love with it. It became something I really believed in. I don’t anymore.”

“You’re not just talking about the Disney-distilled Brothers Grimm type stuff, are you?”

She pulled away a bit, but remained in his embrace. “I’m talking about the ‘stuff,’ as you call it, that my Grandma Belle and Grandpa Neal had. They weren’t really my grandparents, but they adopted me when I was six. They were together for fifty-two years. They were the happiest couple I’ve ever seen, and it was genuine. It was everything. They understood each other. They knew each other. They had a trust and a love that I’ve never been able to find for myself.” She laughed sadly, then revealed the deepest, most painful secret in her heart. “I make it up. I write books that let me dream about what I want because I’m scared I’ll never find it in real life.”

* * *

Khela assumed that her melancholy was contagious as she and Carter sat in a pensive yet comfortable silence in the limousine taking them back to Khela’s brownstone. In no mood for further festivities, she had decided to go home, a decision fully supported by Carter, who had called the car for them.

The view of downtown Boston through the dark tinted windows seemed far more interesting to Carter than more conversation, and Khela respected his silence by keeping her own. His new quiet filled the luxurious cabin, making it seem even larger. He stared out as if watching the inventory of his own secret heart tumbling down the sidewalk.

When they arrived at the brownstone, Khela spent a moment in the car with Carter while the driver unloaded her bags.

“The driver will take you home,” she said. “Thank you, for…helping me out this weekend. I owe you one.”

He finally looked at her. “What you owe me is a real date.”

She blinked, undecided as to which surprised her more—his calm, blunt delivery or the fact that he wanted to see her again at all. She hid her discomfiture behind lukewarm indignation. “First of all, when I said I owed you one, I meant a favor, not a future.”

“Spoken like a true sourpuss.” Carter slid across the seat and exited the limo. He offered his hand and waited for her to take it.

She crossed her legs and arms and stubbornly waited for him to drop the chivalrous act. Carter grinned at the impatient tap of her right foot in her fancy sandal, but then his heart surged when her hand slipped into his and she allowed him to help her onto the sidewalk. He held onto her hand and drew her close. “I had fun, Khela, and I think you did, too, at least with me. I want to do this again, only for real.”

“I’m a sourpuss, remember?”

“I shouldn’t have said that.” He dropped his eyes and his voice, forcing Khela to move in closer to hear him. “I actually found you rather sweet.”

Khela suddenly felt feverish. “I was hoping you wouldn’t mention that. Ever.”

“Okay, I won’t mention it anymore. When can we do it again?”

She looked at her feet to hide a smile.

“C’mon, Khela,” he cajoled. “What d’ya say? Let me take you out. Think of it as a favor to me. We could grab some dinner right now. We’ve got the car for the rest of the evening.”

She had a dozen good reasons to not accept his offer. Trouble was, the number one reason was that she really wanted to accept it. That fact alone convinced her that she would be better off saying goodbye to him right there on the sidewalk.

“I’m flattered, Carter, I really am, but…” She swallowed, but the tiny lump in her throat only wedged itself more firmly. “I’m not interested in a relationship.”

“Not interested or scared?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” She pulled her hand from his and put some space between them. “The bottom line is that I can’t go out with you again.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. Khela waited for him to respond—to argue or plead, insult or tease.

The noises of a busy Boston summer evening filled the empty silence between them as Khela tipped and thanked the driver, politely refusing his offer to carry her bags up to her apartment.

“Thank you for everything,” she told Carter before grabbing her bags and lugging them up the steep stone stairs to the front door. She turned back before closing the door behind her. Carter still stood at the wide open limo door, seeing her into the building.

Only a fool would turn down a man like him
, Khela thought, her heart as heavy as her footsteps as she bypassed the stairs to take the elevator.
Then again, that’s me. Your typical romantic fool…

* * *

“Where am I taking you, Mr…?”

The driver waited for Carter to respond, which took awhile, since he was surfing the Internet on his cell phone. “Radcliffe,” Carter finally said.

“Where do you live, Mr. Radcliffe?” the driver said pleasantly.

“Uh, across the street,” he said tersely. “But I think I need to make a stop first.”

“Yes, sir. Where to, sir?”

Carter Googled Khela Halliday, then selected the site most likely to give him the information he wanted.

“I really need to get this boat moving, Mr. Radcliffe,” the driver said. “There’s a meter maid incoming at a pretty good clip.”

“Sorry,” Carter said absently. “Just drive.”

“Not a problem, sir.”

Carter scanned the information he’d selected, then logged off and slipped his phone back into his pocket. The driver smoothly pulled the car into traffic, and Carter turned around in his seat to look back at the brownstone. High above Commonwealth Avenue, Khela was probably climbing into her loft and unpacking. Having spent time with her, Carter now realized that her top-story condo was no more than a luxury prison, and that she would never let down her hair and give a prince a fair chance.

I write books that let me dream about what I want…

Khela’s confession moved through his head and settled deep in his chest. If her books held the key to unlocking her heart, then there was only one thing for Carter to do.

“I’d like to go to Waterstone’s,” he called to the driver. “It’s a bookstore in Harvard Square.”

Chapter 5

“You are the most base of thieves, one who schemes to steal that which is freely given you—my heart.”

—from
The Pirate’s Princess
by Khela Halliday

“You didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Khela…you couldn’t have.”

“I couldn’t stop myself.”

“It’s not right.”

“I was asked to make a cake, so I made a cake. There was no guideline as to what it could or couldn’t be made of.”

“This isn’t going to do much to contradict the general perception that you’re a little bit weird.”

“Are you going to bid on my cake or not?”

“I don’t have much choice, do I? I’d hate for anyone else to cut into that thing and find out what you did.”

Khela studied her cake with an unbiased eye as she and Daphne strolled side by side along the length of the display table. It was just as pretty as the others, though not as artistic as architect Jonathan Brady’s, which was a double-fudge masterpiece sculpted and frosted to look like Trinity Church. Nor was it as ornamental as fashion designer Katrinka Klinche’s chiffon-pink dome encased in a shell of spun-sugar threads sprinkled with genuine fourteen-karat gold flakes.

Khela considered her cake far more interesting than cartoonist Ray Crowley’s effort, a 28-inch pyramid constructed of Twinkies cemented together with melted Hershey’s Kisses and mini marshmallows.

The two-layer cake Khela donated looked like a typical, grocery-store bakery offering: smooth white frosting, puffy shell borders, red roses clustered on top.

It didn’t matter which cake looked and tasted better or fetched the highest bidder. Boston “celebrities” had been asked to create them for an auction to benefit the Greater Roxbury Literacy Fund.

Katrinka Klinche had been asked to create a “fashion forward confection.” Jonathan Brady had honored the Fund’s request to “build an edible example of form and function.”

The Literacy Fund was one of Khela’s favorite charitable organizations, but having been asked to bake a cake “faithful to the spirit of true love and romance,” she had done almost the exact opposite.

At least that had been her intent.

Daphne nudged Khela’s elbow. “Looks like your abomination has drummed up some interest.”

Khela looked over her shoulder. Through the crowd she saw two men examining the description placard set before her cake. They were both tall and broad-shouldered, and they seemed to know each other. The shorter of the two, an African-American man with nut brown skin, a shaved head and big diamond studs in his ears, stood out in a cream-colored suit with a cranberry square in his upper breast pocket. His taller friend passed a hand through his short, dark blond hair as he leaned over Khela’s cake. He grasped a shiny black paddle in one hand, the gold number 88 glinting from it. Wearing a smart white shirt, jeans and a snappy black blazer, he looked more relaxed than his companion. He was dressed with casual perfection for the event, and he blended with the chic artists and wealthy Literacy Fund benefactors milling about the Stahp/Geaux Gallery of Modern Art, which was hosting the auction. When he turned in her direction, Khela’s jaw dropped and her face snapped forward.

“What’s he doing here?” she hissed at Daphne.

“Sniffing at your cake, looks like.” Daphne grinned around the slim polka-dotted straw sticking out of her blue margarita.

“How’d he know about this event?” Khela set down her cranberry, apple and honey “mocktail” on the nearest object, the flattened, feather-covered top of a giant yellow head made of plaster.

“It was in the
Herald-Star
, the
Globe
, the
Metro
—” Daphne started.

“But why is he
here
?” Khela ducked behind Daphne when Carter and his friend seemed to glance her way. She fluffed Daphne’s voluminous red mane, hoping it would act as an invisibility cloak.

“Either he really likes cake or because
you’re
here. Duh.” Daphne finished her drink, set the empty glass next to Khela’s, and stepped to the side to expose Khela. “He knows you’re here. Quit acting like a child and let’s go say hi. I haven’t seen him in ages, and I need my fix.”

“You go. I’ll wait here.”

“What is with you?” Daphne stamped her foot. “There are too many hot, available, employed Beantown bachelors here tonight.”

She grabbed Khela’s upper arm and turned her toward a giant sheet of glass two inches thick hanging from the ceiling. A wide stripe of black acrylic paint divided the panel into equal halves. Titled
Parallel Perspectives
, the art piece made an impromptu mirror for the two women to inspect their reflections.

“We look amazing, if I do say so myself, and I’m not going to waste this Zac Posen on you.”

With a twirl of her flirty cocktail dress, Daphne left Khela alone with her reflection. Khela watched her friend’s disappearance in the glass. Male and female heads alike turned to track the diminutive redhead. Daphne cut a striking figure with her flaming hair and the Kelly green baby doll dress that complemented her fair complexion. Givenchy heels undercut the sweetness of the dress, leaving no doubt that Daphne was a kitten on the prowl.

* * *

Alone in the crowded room, Khela studied her reflection, deeming it more panther than kitten. She had chosen one of her little black dresses, a fitted, brushed cotton jersey soft as cashmere. It was sleeveless with a high collar and armholes cut deeply, fully exposing her shoulders and shoulder blades. The dress was a fine advertisement for her boxing coach’s push-up regimen.

The skirt hugged her hips, the hem resting just under her knees. Two notch pleats in the back allowed for walking ease and continued the line of Khela’s seamed stockings. Her upswept hair was casual but chic, and with the modest champagne diamond studs in her earlobes, her whole look was sultry sophistication. The finishing touch wasn’t the light application of nude lip gloss and smoky eye paint, but the black, four-inch Roger Vivier heels on her feet.

Fine, double straps circled her ankles to fasten with delicate, diamond-studded buckles. A satin rose, too big to go unnoticed yet too small to be considered ostentatious, decorated the narrow vamp. From head to toe, Khela was classy and provocative in equal measure.

Yet she would have given anything to be back at home in her office, slogging around the house in jeans and a T-shirt, lost in the pages of her current writing project. Her feet wandered along with her mind as she moved through the gallery, scarcely noticing the wacky, whimsical and ridiculous works for which the Stahp/Geaux Gallery was renowned.

She would never have done what Carmen had done at the awards dinner—discuss her storylines with others. Other than her editor, her books had only one reader before publication, Daphne, and even after ten years, it was still hard to turn a manuscript over to the best friend who was her best editor and harshest critic.

Daphne’s first serious crush was on William Strunk Jr., the Cornell professor behind the classic grammar guidebook
The Elements of Style
, and she had spent a week in mourning when an illustrated version came out in 2005.

“What’s next?” she’d ranted. “Dr. Seuss illustrating the Bible?”

Daphne’s eagle eye for typos, grammatical mistakes and incongruities was the secret behind Khela’s reputation for highly polished manuscripts.

The story occupying Khela’s mind now was a brand new ‘what if?’ Most of her books began with a ‘what if?’ Her current project had its genesis in a fight she witnessed while walking home from the Boston Public Library a few weeks ago.

A wiry man and a squat woman stood on Boylston Street. The man bent over her, angrily jabbing his finger at her as he spoke words that Khela couldn’t hear. It was raining, cars packed the street, their drivers honking as if that would decongest traffic, pedestrians moved in steady currents along the slick sidewalks, and no one seemed to notice the man and the woman.

Khela wouldn’t have noticed them, either, if she hadn’t been trying to wrestle open her stubborn umbrella. Once she saw them, she couldn’t look away. She had scoured them with her eyes, noting every detail.

The greasy dirt ground into the knees of the man’s jeans. The torn pocket on the woman’s poncho, which looked as if it had last been cleaned when the poncho was first fashionable. The way the hard raindrops matted the man’s thin dark hair to his skull, and how the woman’s dark hair, heavy with rain, hung lifelessly from her bowed head. The way the man used his sleeve to wipe spittle from his mouth, and how the woman hunkered away from him, her shoulders hiked up to her ears. Khela especially noted the way water flew from the ends of the woman’s hair after the man slapped her hard across the face, sending her head rocking violently to one side.

Khela had used her cellphone to summon the police, who’d been nearby, fortunately. As the man was led off in handcuffs, still cursing, Khela watched the woman. Her assailant was long gone by the time a female police officer touched the woman’s chin, raising her face. And then it happened. Khela’s ‘what if?’

What if she’d hit that son-of-a-bitch back?
she had thought.

All the rest of the way home, Khela kept having to stop to scrawl notes on the tiny pad of paper she kept handy for just such occasions, no easy task with her heavy book satchel and umbrella in her arms. She had the bones of a story by the time she’d arrived home. She was soaked through to her underwear, but didn’t bother to change until she had the first rough draft of an outline. The best stories were always the ones that wouldn’t let Khela go, and this was one of them.

Working on the story had been so fulfilling that she’d hardly thought of Carter in the weeks since they’d last seen each other. Hardly meaning only once…or twice…a day.

She had declined Daphne’s repeated requests to visit following the convention, because she knew that Daphne would lure Carter to her apartment. Her new book was the perfect thing to keep her isolated—from Daphne, Carter and everyone else.

* * *

Khela paused in front of a seven-foot sculpture of an old-time baseball player. The placard in front of the work read that it was Red Sox legend Ted Williams in his classic batting stance. The piece was made of Big League Chew bubble gum, personally chewed by the artist, an ardent Sox fan. Khela circled to the rear of the grayish-pink creation. To onlookers, she might have been studying the work from its other side. Khela was actually scanning the crowd for the man she desperately tried not to think about.

He stood at one of the chest-high, white melamine tables near the bar. While his friend drank one of the garish, glow-in-the-dark martinis specially concocted for the auction, Carter had his hand loosely curled around the neck of a Sam Adams. He and his friend had been at the table for all of three seconds before they were joined by an older woman in a long black dress that fit her as closely as her own skin.

The woman’s frosted blonde hair was styled in what Daphne called the Cougar Do—the sporty but sophisticated flip that certain plastic surgery patients get because it showcases their rejuvenated, mask-like faces while hiding nip-and-tuck scars.

Khela was trying to shake off the first pricks of jealousy when a grinning man seemed to materialize right out of Ted Williams’s back pocket.

“Boo,” he greeted pleasantly.

“Blecch,” Khela grunted at the truly terrifying sight of her ex-husband, Jay Frederickson.

Jay straightened his purple silk tie, and the chunky gold rings on three of his fingers glinted in the track lighting. “It’s so good to see you too, Khela,” he said, his voice syrupy. “Don’t worry. I’m not here for anything from you. I was in the mood for a new piece, so uh, I thought I’d come by. Do a little shopping.”

She tugged the program that he’d curled into a loose tube from his hand. Three of the Literacy Fund organizers’ publicity mug shots were circled in blue ink: Constance Nearing-Cook, the widow of one of Boston’s most successful and respected attorneys; Jamie Shouten, an heiress whose family fortune had been made in Boston shipping; and Esmé Wilhoite, the Latina divorcée famous for walking off with half of her banking magnate husband’s half-billion dollar fortune upon their divorce.

“Shopping?” she snorted. “Looks more like you’re hunting.”

He raised his half-tone Gucci sunglasses, resting them on his head. “Are you jealous?” he whispered, girlishly batting his long, thick eyelashes.

“Please,” she retorted. “Come on, let me introduce you to those chippies.” She took his purple silk cuff between her thumb and forefinger and dragged him forward. “The sooner you marry some rich sucker, the sooner you’ll stop sucking alimony out of me.”

“Hey, beautiful, where’s the fire?” snickered the man Khela almost trampled in her haste to get rid of her ex-husband.

“Holy—!” Khela gasped. She looked from the stranger to her ex and shuddered. They could have been twins, right down to the cut of their suits, their Gucci half-tones and their preference for silky, disco-shiny shirts.

“I said,” Jay’s doppelganger licked his lips, “where’s the fire, baby?”

“Excuse me,” Jay grinned, pulling his cuff from Khela’s weak grasp. “I see someone I’d like to know.” With that, Jay made his way straight to Constance.

“Miss Halliday,” the stranger greeted, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips. “What a pleasant surprise to run into you here tonight.”

“I’ll bet,” Khela mumbled skeptically. She wriggled her hand free and absently wiped the stranger’s kiss on the back of her skirt.

“I tend to be more of a homebody, but when I was invited to attend this event, I knew I had to come out and support the efforts of this group,” he went on smoothly.

“Wonderful.” Khela tried to move past him, but he stepped in her path.

“I’m Sheldon Perry.” He extended a hand. “It’s truly my honor to meet you, Miss Halliday.”

Khela gave his hand a curt shake, pinching her lips to suppress a grimace at the sight of the clear polish glossing his fingernails. Everything about him—his peanut-shaped head, yellow-brown complexion, glib manner of speech, tailored sharkskin suit and yellow silk shirt—reminded her so much of Jay that she wanted to slap him on principle.