The Fixer Upper (28 page)

“Now, Libby, if anyone understands appropriate fashions, I do.”

Libby supposed Bonnie did. She edited a slick fashion magazine; that required a certain expertise. And if she wound up buying Reva a fashion that didn’t pass the “appropriate” test, Libby would simply have Reva wear one of her old subdued outfits for the concert.

Ned was thrilled to hear that Reva would be sleeping down in SoHo Saturday night. He pretended he was delighted about Reva’s shopping spree, but Libby knew the real reason her news made him happy. It made her happy for the same reason.

After lunch on Saturday, she swallowed hard and sent Reva off on the IRT. When Reva phoned her from Harry’s house to report that she’d arrived safely, Libby headed for Ned’s apartment. She huffed and puffed up the stairs and found him and Eric waiting in the hall outside their apartment. “We need your help,” Ned announced. “We’re carving a pumpkin.”

They spent the afternoon creating an elaborate jack-o-lantern. Libby taught Ned and Eric how to roast the pumpkin seeds. She would have thought that in rustic Vermont, folks would know how to do this. Weren’t they all back-to-nature types up there? Earth mothers and gardeners who canned their own produce? Apparently, Ned and Eric had never realized pumpkin seeds were edible. Libby suddenly felt like a cordon bleu chef because she could spread the pulpy seeds on a cookie sheet and stick them in the oven until they turned crunchy.

She, Ned and Eric also spent some time assembling Eric’s costume. Originally, he’d thought he wanted to trick-or-treat as a bum, but as he explained it, he’d realized there were lots of homeless people in Manhattan and they might not think a “bum” was such a funny costume. His friend Gilbert would be trick-or-treating as Spiderman, but Eric didn’t want to wear stockings, which eliminated most superheroes. Libby suggested a pirate, a cowboy and a fireman, but Eric seemed to think those ideas were juvenile. Finally, he decided he would be a handyman. Ned rigged a tool belt for him and promised to bring home a hard hat from work on Monday. With blue jeans, his hiking boots and a couple of dirt smudges on his face—“Fixer uppers get dirty on the job,” Ned insisted—Eric would have an excellent costume.

They sent out for pizza for dinner. Reva loved pizza, and Libby suffered a pang of regret that her daughter would not
be enjoying this treat with Harry and Bonnie tonight. They would probably take her to some exclusive restaurant where she’d have to order something with truffles or au poivre, and Bonnie would glower at her throughout the meal to make sure she didn’t eat too much. But an extravagant and appropriately fashionable ensemble would be her reward for putting up with Bonnie.

After dinner, Ned, Eric and Libby played a cockamamie card game that Libby never quite caught on to. Then Eric went off to read—he’d just discovered
A Wrinkle in Time
—and Libby and Ned played gin, which Libby knew inside out. She took great pleasure in trouncing him.

Neither of them could concentrate fully on the cards, however. They were both thinking about the time, waiting for Eric to go to bed and drift into his nuclear-explosion-defying slumber.

Less than a minute after Eric fell asleep, Ned and Libby were shut inside Ned’s bedroom, naked, going at it with the enthusiasm of lovers who had been celibate for years rather than not quite a full week. Libby didn’t care what Ned said; this was nothing like riding a bike. If it was, she would quit her position at the Hudson School and find a job as a bicycle courier, just so she could feel this spectacular every day.

But of course, the only way she could feel this spectacular was if Ned was her bicycle, lean and strong, fitting so perfectly between her legs and carrying her to a gloriously carnal destination. He joined her there, groaning and pressing deep inside her, then nuzzled her cheek. “We’re good at this, you know?” he mumbled.

“Yes,” she agreed. A single-syllable word was pretty much all she could manage.

He rose slightly, propping himself on his arms. “You’re not sorry, are you?”

She focused on his face above hers, his sly smile and his
mussed hair, and gave him a shove, although he was too big and heavy for her to push off her. Not that she truly desired to have him off her. “Don’t you dare sing that song,” she warned.

“Come on. I’ve got a great voice.”

“Well, if you’ve got to sing something, choose another song. How about ‘It Ain’t The Meat, It’s The Motion’?”

“How about ‘I’m On Fire’?”

“Or you could do a few bars of ‘Whole Lotta Love.’”

“Mmm.” He moved his hips, stirring inside her. “‘Gonna give you every inch.’ Now, that’s a song I can relate to.”

She laughed, but when he moved his hips again her laughter faded. Even spent and half-soft, he could make her come. She gasped and let out a quiet sigh. Were other men so amazing in bed? If so, why hadn’t she ever felt like this before?

He bowed to kiss her, slowly, softly, like Sleeping Beauty’s prince awakening her from her trance. She opened her eyes again and saw Ned, only Ned. And she realized, with an odd mixture of joy and dismay, that she was insanely in love with him.

He eased off her, then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. “Don’t run away this time.”

“I didn’t run away last time,” she said.

“No, you walked away—at six in the morning.”

“Because Eric—”

“The hell with Eric.” He laughed. “I don’t mean that. Eric can handle seeing you over his pancakes in the morning.”

“Maybe he can. I’m not sure I can handle him.”

“You ought to get used to handling him.” Ned twirled his fingers through her hair. Such a simple, casual motion, yet it very nearly made her come again. “We can’t keep sneaking around like a couple of kids, Libby. We’re grown-ups. We’re allowed to have sex.”

“I know, but—”

“And kids are smart. They can figure out what’s going on. Wouldn’t you rather be honest about it?”

“Kids in the abstract is one thing,” she rationalized. “Eric and Reva aren’t in the abstract. They’re our children.”

He stroked through her hair to her nape and traced gentle circles against her skin. “Is it such an awkward thing that you have breakfast with Reva and then you see her at the Hudson School?”

“Reva is my daughter,” Libby argued. “It’s completely different.”

“Would it be awful if you had pancakes with Eric and then ran into him at school?”

“I don’t eat pancakes,” Libby muttered. “They’re fattening. And while I can’t say your scenario would be awful, it would be…uncomfortable.”

“For you. Not for Eric.”

“How do you know? Some kids would die of embarrassment if they realized their parents were having sex.”

“Eric’s not like that.”

Libby wished she could believe Ned. Eric was his son, after all. Perhaps he was right and Eric wouldn’t think twice about the Hudson director of admissions sleeping with his father.

“Okay,” Ned said, relenting. “If you don’t want to deal with this yet, we won’t. But sooner or later we will. Because I think we’ve got something special, Libby. I’d like Eric to get used to your presence in his life. And once Eric starts attending Hudson, you’ll be seeing him there.”

A tickle of cold ran down Libby’s spine, not from Ned’s teasing caresses but from his words:
once Eric starts attending Hudson
…He sounded as if this was a given, as if not a single question existed, but that Eric would be accepted into the Hudson School.

Libby was the director of admissions, and much as she hoped he’d get in, even she couldn’t predict whether he would.

She eased back from Ned and sat up. “Ned,” she said. “I’d like to believe Eric will be attending Hudson next year, but he hasn’t been accepted.”

He blinked, his smile fading, his eyes quizzical. “
Yet
,” Ned said. “He hasn’t been accepted
yet
.”

“If I had anything to do with it, Ned, he’d be in. No doubt about it.”

Ned sat straighter, too. A line dented the bridge of his nose. “
If
you had anything to do with it? You run the show over there. You’re in charge of who gets in.”

“Yes, but I’ve recused myself from Eric’s application.”

“What?” The word burst out of him with the force of a nuclear explosion. She glanced at the door, half expecting Eric to stagger in, rubbing his eyes and whining about having been awakened.

“I won’t participate in Eric’s application decision. I can’t, Ned. The process has to be objective, and I’m not objective about him. If I pushed for him, when we’ve got a personal relationship…it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Wait a minute.” Ned appeared outraged. “You’re telling me that you could get Eric in and you’re not going to?”

“I’m going to step aside and let the rest of the admissions committee decide.”

“Libby. Attending Hudson is Eric’s dream. He’s never asked for anything, but he asked for this. He deserves it. He
should
go there.”

“I agree—”

“But you won’t lift a finger to help him.”

“I can’t, Ned.” His anger unnerved her. Surely if he looked at the situation logically and dispassionately, he’d understand her dilemma. She was a professional. She had
to be objective. It was her job. “What if everyone on the committee had personal connections with some of the applicants? Getting into Hudson would be about nothing more than who you knew.”

“Isn’t that the way the world works?” Ned raised his eyes to the ceiling, as if it might contain instructions for how to regain control of his temper. Apparently, it didn’t, because when he leveled his gaze back to Libby his face was etched with anger. “For once in his life, my kid asked for something. For once in my life, I knew someone. And you won’t do a damn thing for him.”

“I can’t.”

“Shit.” He spun away from her, swung off the bed and stormed out of the room. She heard him in the bathroom, banging things, slamming things. Several minutes passed and she began to wonder whether he planned to remain in the bathroom until she was gone.

She began to wonder other things, too.
For once in my life, I knew someone.
Was that why she was in Ned’s bed now? Was that why he’d made such sweet love to her? Was that why he’d fixed her fireplace and persuaded Harry to honor his promise of financial assistance? Was this all Ned’s way of “knowing someone,” someone who could get his son into a highly selective private school?

Some people gave her flowers and candy to ease their children’s entry into the Hudson School. Some people gave her gift baskets and loofahs. Ned had given her a rehabbed fireplace, restored funding for her apartment and mind-blowing sex.

And she’d given him her heart.

Her heart wasn’t what he wanted, though. What he wanted was a guaranteed slot for his son in next year’s fifth-grade class at the Hudson School.

That was something Libby couldn’t give him. As she
gathered her clothes from the floor where they’d fallen when Ned had torn them off in a frenzy, she fought back the tears that pressed against her eyelids, and tried to assure herself that she wasn’t stupid. Godiva chocolates and pandering she was used to. Bouquets and bath oil she could cope with. Being bribed with love was way beyond her experience, though. Just because she’d fallen for Ned’s con didn’t mean she was a fool.

But she felt pretty damn foolish as she stalked down the hallway of his apartment, through the living room and out the door without a glimpse of him, without even a goodbye.

The sound of the front door slamming shut jolted Ned into action. He yanked open the bathroom door, raced down the hall, checked his bedroom to discover it empty and Libby’s clothing gone, then continued to the living room. His hand was on the doorknob before he remembered that he was buck naked. He couldn’t very well chase after her in his birthday suit.

Why the hell had she bolted on him? He’d been gone only a few minutes, figuring they’d both be better off if he got his anger under control before they continued the conversation. His justifiable anger. How could she abandon Eric to the whims of some anonymous school committee? How could she toss Ned’s son away like that?

His anger surged and he wrestled it back down. He had to go after Libby, bring her back here and work this thing out. But he couldn’t very well go after her with smoke pouring from his ears and rabid foam spilling from his mouth—and his butt exposed for all of Manhattan to see.

He couldn’t very well go after her at all, he realized back in his bedroom as he tugged on his jeans. By now, she would already be halfway home—either in a cab or walking up West End Avenue. He glanced at his clock radio: 10:35. Not
too dangerously late for her to be walking home alone, but he sure as hell hoped she’d found a cab. And anyway, before he could pursue Libby, he’d first have to see if Lindsay from down the hall could come over and stay with Eric. Sure, Eric was asleep, and he’d probably never even know that Ned had stepped out for a few minutes—but this was New York City, and Ned would never leave Eric, not even for the time it took to find Libby and return with her.

He lifted his shirt from the floor and slid his arms through the sleeves. It seemed inconceivable that just a half hour ago she’d been unbuttoning this shirt, pushing back the fabric, running her hands over his torso and pressing a kiss to his chest. His groin twinged at the memory.

“Fuck,” he said. The anger was back, full-bore. He couldn’t believe she’d run out on him—especially when she was in the wrong. She should have been waiting to greet his return from the bathroom with an apology and a vow to secure a place for Eric at the Hudson School.

He sprawled out on the bed and smelled her on his pillows. Then he jumped off the mattress as if it were on fire, grabbed the phone, dialed her number and leaned against the wall while he listened to it ring unanswered at her end. At least Reva wasn’t home, so Ned wasn’t disturbing her.

When her answering machine clicked on, he hung up and left his bedroom for the kitchen, where the cordless phone had a redial button. He dialed Libby’s number again, let it ring four times, disconnected the call, waited a minute and hit Redial. Four rings, disconnect, count to ten and redial again.