The No Sex Clause (13 page)

With great care and concentration, she managed to get her feet under her just as another roving yellow cab came by. Mercifully, this one was empty and stopped for her with the additional courtesy of not spraying wet snow and salt all over her.
There were still some gentlemen left in the world, after all!

But the gentleman turned out to be a gentlewoman,
a thirty something, tired looking driver who managed a smile as Anna climbed into the back seat.

“Thanks. I’d just about given up hope of ever finding a cab, with the snow storm and all,” Anna told her as she settled herself in the blissfully warm vehicle.

“Well, honey, let me tell you – I’d just been flagged down by a couple of drunk guys who made all kinds of boorish suggestions the moment they opened the doors and saw I was a girl. I saw you slipping in the snow, saw that other cab slow down and then rush past you – and you didn’t even make a rude sign! So I told the guys I had another fare waiting for me. Left ’em standing in a snow bank and took off. I guess your patience was rewarded. So where are we going?”

“Do you know where Knotting Grove is? That’s where I want to go, and I’ll double or triple your fare to take me there.”

The driver looked back startled. “I know Knotting Grove – it’s the last stop before you fall off the ends of the earth. Whatever does a girl like you, all dressed up, want to go there for?”

“It’s home.”

“Poor you. Okay, then, home it is. But it’ll cost you. My name’s Eileen, by the way.” Eileen flashed her a big smile through her rear view mirror.

“Mine’s Anna – Anna Findlay.”

“Nice to meet you, Anna” she said as she began to guide the cab away from the curb. “Uh, uh – is that hunky guy in the executive suit chasing after a cab, or looking for you?”

Anna craned her neck, wiping condensation off the rear window, to see. She had to rub her eyes and look again – Jed Walker, resplendent in his well-cut business suit, was chasing the cab and waving at her!

“Nope, don’t know him,” she told Eileen, settling back in her seat with a tight smile.

Take that, Mr. High and Mighty Media King!

Sofia Adams took one look at Anna standing on her doorstep in the snow, and burst into tears.

“What’s wrong, Sofia? Who’s at the door at this time of day?” her husband called from an inner room.

“It’s Anna, Dan – our Anna has come home!” Tears continued to course down the woman’s wrinkled cheeks as she stared at her visitor as if she expected her to disappear like the melting snowflakes.

By this time Anna was shivering violently with the cold in her inadequate jacket and skirt. She wasn’t sure whether Mrs. Adams was crying with rage, sorrow, or what. All she knew was that if she didn’t get inside into the warmth soon, she’d turn into a Popsicle. One half of her mind was already wondering what flavor she would be when a hefty bear of a man, shoulders stooped with age, bustled along the corridor to stand behind his wife and peer out at her.

“Sure as God made little apples, it really is Anna! Come in girl, come in – Sofia, don’t leave her standing there, the pair of you will get pneumonia!”

Mrs. Adams seemed to shake herself out of her stupor. “Come in and get warm, Anna – what on earth are you doing outside in those clothes? Is this what bestselling authors do in big cities – not have enough sense to dress for the weather?”

Anna’s stomach clenched. Apparently nothing had changed – still the same old carping, criticism from her foster mother, even after all this time.

“If that was so, Sofia, the streets of New York would be littered with frozen writers each winter.” Mr. Adams flashed a quick smile at Anna, resting his hand on his wife’s shoulders. “No, I think Anna was in the middle of a big New York business meeting when she suddenly remembered her roots and came rushing home.”

And Anna realized just how true this was. She’d felt even more of a fake than usual in the fine hotels and formal dinners that Alex, her publicity manager, had insisted she go to.

“Anna, you’re shivering – my, your clothes are all wet. Go up to your room and change!”

How often had she heard those words – usually when she was wearing something that her foster parents, in their old-fashioned and tight laced view, considered unsuitable or inappropriate.

Obediently, her feet found the remembered way through the hallway and up the steep and narrow stairs of the old house, into the room that had been hers, at the very end of the hall. The interior was sparkling clean and sweet smelling – she remembered Sofia’s habit of opening all the windows in the house, even in the winter, to bring in fresh air.

The room was tidier than when she’d left it, swearing that she would never return to Knotting Grove, in what seemed like an eternity ago. But all the things she’d left behind were still here – the rock group posters on the wall that the Adams had so disapproved off but never made her take down, the CD player they had bought for her one Christmas, the battered teddy bear she’d brought with her when social services had fostered her out to the Adams.

It all came back to her – the shell-shocked feeling of finding herself so suddenly an orphan – it seemed like her parents were there one minute, and the next they had vanished like humming birds migrating. Except that, unlike hummingbirds, her parents didn’t return the next spring. Or ever.

And she’d come to the Adams’ home, an angry, resentful little girl, hugging her grief and her tattered teddy bear.

She shook the memories away and opened the closet – the hinges still squeaked on the right hand door – and gasped with surprise. Her clothes still hung there, albeit a lot tidier than when she’d left them. Sweaters and jeans, a couple of Sunday go-to-church dresses and skirts, and the skimpy skirts and revealing tops that had caused so many rows in the household. Her clothes – the ones she’d left behind when setting off on her big adventure to go to university. These clothes had not been good enough for the cool student she intended to become.

She had reinvented herself at college, and again when she went to England and took up a graduate teaching position in Yorkshire while she worked on her thesis. Now she was re-inventing herself as Ms. Bestselling Author.

She realized now that none of these new skins had ever fit her properly. That was why her subconscious mind had prompted her to come back to the Adams when she felt so disorientated in her new persona. Despite her rejection of them as too strict, too Bible thumping, too old-fashioned, the Adams had provided a solid, predictable home.

They’d treated her as their daughter, and she’d given them nothing but grief.

Anna pulled a big wooly sweater and a pair of ancient jeans out of her closet and pulled them on. They felt just right, so much better than the extravagant evening gown and the sodden, wet, elegant Italian leather boots.

She sat on the bed and cried.

* * *

He was going out of his mind. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. He was spending most of his waking hours, hours that he would normally have had no trouble dedicating to the growth of his media empire, to finding one elusive young woman.

But Anna Findlay seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

Jed did manage to trace the taxi cab that Anna had been in – the cab he’d chased after. His mouth set in a grim line when he thought of how Anna had looked him right in the eye from the back seat of the vehicle and deliberately ignored his shouts. Not that he could blame her. He wasn’t sure he’d have wanted to talk to himself, either, after all that had happened between them.

He finally tracked the cab driver down and met up with her. Eileen was a tired looking but pretty blonde who eyed him suspiciously. He told her he was searching for the woman she’d given a ride to, and named the date and place.

Eileen raised an eyebrow and said it was confidential information. If Anna – the cab driver knew her name? - had wanted him to know where she was going, then she’d have told him. If she hadn’t then he could go whistle before he’d get the information from her.

“What is this? Some sort of women’s lib conspiracy?” hed muttered under his breath.

Eileen had sharp ears and didn’t think that was funny

“Look, Mister Whatever-Your- Name- Is – women leave their men without a forwarding address for many different reasons. All of them bad. Far as I’m concerned, most of those reasons involve some macho character who thinks it’s okay to knock his woman around. So, if Anna wants to stay hidden, I’m damned if I’m going to hand her over to you.” Eileen stood with hands on her hips and glared at him.

Jed gaped.
My god, did this woman actually think he’d have hurt Anna?
Well, maybe he had,
his conscience niggled
, but not like that…

“There’s nothing like that between Anna and me – damn it all, we’ve only just met!”

“Is that why you gave the poor woman such a hard time on your TV show?” Jed’s jaw dropped. “Oh, yes, I know who you are, and I know who she is, and as far as I’m concerned, if she’s ever fool enough to see you again, it’s up to her.”

“Look, I’ll pay you whatever you want if you’ll just take me to wherever you took Anna.” Eileen’s scowl grew darker at his words. “You can even chaperone me, see what she says about seeing me….” He was close to begging.
What was happening to him?

“You people – you think you can buy anything and anyone. Well, I don’t want your money.” And she turned on her heels and walked away without even a backward glance, leaving Jed standing there looking like a fool.

Which seemed to be how he felt all too often these days.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Anna was sitting quietly in her foster parents’ living room, a brightly colored Afghan wrapped around her shoulders. She remembered how Sofia worked, using multi-colored scraps of wool, to make afghans and even blankets. With cooking, baking, canning, sewing, and knitting, the woman’s hands had never been still.

And she had never tolerated laziness or waste in Anna or any of the other children she and Dan had fostered on a shorter term basis. Sofia had often said that people who knew how to do for themselves never needed to worry about going without.

Now Sofia came back into the room bearing a bowl of her home made borscht, created no doubt from the cabbages and other vegetables Dan grew in their huge yard.

How I used to hate having to weed those flowers and vegetables! And all the chopping and dicing and mixing for soups and stews and canned goods!

Yet the soup was delicious – better than anything she’d tasted at the dinners and special events she had been to on her book tour – and certainly better than Felicity Freyer’s $500 a head dinner!

“Would you believe I was at a dinner the other night – it cost $500 per person, to raise money for charity, and none of it tasted as good as your soup, Mrs. Adams,” she told her foster mother.

The older woman smiled, and her face had a little glow of pride. “I cannot believe that anyone would pay that kind of money for a dinner – wouldn’t it be more practical if they just handed the $500 from each person over to a charity that needs it, rather than eating a large chunk of it?” Ever practical, Sofia had hit on a thought that Anna herself had had while watching all the conspicuous wealth at the Freyer dinner dance.

“Hey, Dan,” Sofia said as her husband came into the room. “Our little Anna got to go to a dinner which cost hundreds of dollars per person, and she says the food wasn’t as good as my borscht!”

Dan grinned and wagged a finger. “Don’t go giving your mother ideas, now. Her cooking’s good and plain, and I don’t want her thinking she can start getting fancy.”

Your Mother.
Once upon a time that would have sent Anna off into a diatribe about how the Adams weren’t her parents, they were just her foster parents, and they would never be anything like her real parents.

How that must have hurt them.
Anna realized now, as if a layer of ice was falling from around her heart, that the Adams had done their best to be her parents. In reality, they had looked after her and loved her as much as any parent could. But it’s hard to compete with the dead.

Tears rose to Anna’s eyes as she realized how her ingratitude and coldness must have hurt the only two people who had stepped forward to offer her a home after her parents died. It wasn’t easy to find foster homes for older children, and usually it was only for a short time. The Adams
had looked after her for years – they had loved her through adolescence and all the turmoil that that had brought about. For that, alone, they deserved sainthood.

Anna pulled the thick, hand knitted blanket around herself.

It seemed she had a lot of rethinking to do about her life.

* * *

He thought about her soft skin, the gentle curve of her breasts. Images of her lying naked with him would suddenly pop into his mind in meetings, and he’d find himself growing hard at the most embarrassing of times.

Like right now.

Outside his office door he could hear his secretary and one of his producers, Aaron Green, talking.

“Is Jed all right? He seems awful distracted,” Aran said.

“It’s true – he didn’t even squawk when there was that glitch in programming….” Kathryn replied.