Love Between the Pages: 8 Romances for Booklovers Page 25

  She saw he had the charming smile even now, as if he couldn’t sense the emotional temperature in the room. Or possibly he could feel the emotion but concluded it had nothing to do with him. She tried to reserve judgment, but it was hard.

  Sadie took a step back as Jordan straightened and turned to see his stepfather come into the room.

  Surreptitiously, she wiped her eyes but Jordan didn’t bother; his face closed down the moment he registered his stepfather’s presence.

  “Good morning, Randall,” Jordan said, his voice neutral, as if the awful news that had just been told didn’t exist. He would not share any kind of vulnerability with this man, that was clear.

  Sadie sat down hard on the plastic visitor’s chair and wondered if a battle would erupt and if it did, what she thought she could do about it.

  Jordan squeezed his mother’s hand, then stepped away from the bed.

  “Good morning.” Randall spoke in a booming voice that belonged on the courthouse steps (Sadie was forcibly reminded of him declaiming his innocence when he was indicted in an antitrust case), but which had no place in a hospital room.

  “Elaine, you’re looking well,” he said with a glance in his wife’s direction and Sadie stared at him. How could he overlook Mrs. Matthews’ paleness, her red eyes, her tear-stained cheeks? Or was he just not looking? But Mrs. Matthews held out her hand to him and said with a warm smile, “Good morning, darling,” which just went to show that Sadie didn’t know anything about anything and should probably keep her thoughts and opinions to herself.

  Randall Matthews came over to the bed and kissed his wife’s cheek. “Can’t stay too long, my dear,” he boomed. “But wanted to pop in and see how soon I can bring you home.”

  Mrs. Matthews shot a warning look in Jordan’s direction and he said nothing, though Sadie could see it cost him something to keep quiet. Mrs. Matthews looked at her husband and said, “The doctor will be in later. We’ll know more then.”

  “Excellent, excellent,” Randall said. Sadie found it far easier to think of him as “Randall” than to think of Mrs. Matthews as “Elaine.” He glanced at his watch and said, “You’ll let me know what he says.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Matthews murmured, and Randall planted another kiss on her cheek. Now he gave his attention to Sadie, turning a big smile on her and saying, “Who do we have here?” while thrusting his hand in her direction. She shook it and Mrs. Matthews answered his question. “This is Jordan’s Sadie. Sadie Rose Perkins.”

  “Of course, of course,” Randall said, pumping her hand several times before abruptly releasing it. “I’ve heard all about you.”

  “No, you haven’t,” Jordan drawled, his voice and posture appearing lazy and unworried but Sadie could feel the tension radiating from him. She supposed he had to challenge Randall about something, and if it couldn’t be his mother, it might as well be Sadie. “I haven’t spoken of her in your hearing before,” he pointed out and Randall coughed into his hand and said, “It’s very nice to meet you, Sadie,” and she smiled faintly because what else was she going to do. Then a pained and awkward silence descended.

  Sadie spoke, finally. “We should let these two have some time together.” She got up and reached for Jordan’s hand.

  That galvanized Randall. “No, no,” he said. “I have to be off. Elaine, don’t forget to call.”

  “I won’t,” she said and offered him her cheek, which he kissed. Then he was gone, leaving Sadie entirely confused about what had just taken place. She loosened her hold on Jordan’s hand but he just gripped hers tighter. She slanted a glance in Mrs. Matthews’ direction. Mrs. Matthews gave the ghost a smile and said, “He knows,” and shrugged.

  Randall knew his wife was dying, and that was the kind of performance he gave? Sadie could feel the shock register on her face; her jaw dropped in disbelief. But she couldn’t help herself. She turned to Jordan, who was simmering in his tension but his only reaction was to grip her hand even tighter. Experiencing Randall went a long way toward explaining Jordan.

  Finally Mrs. Matthews spoke. “I want you to do something for me.”

  “Anything,” Jordan said through stiff lips.

  A smile tilted the corners of her mouth. “I’m going to hold you to that,” she said and at the teasing sound of her voice, Jordan relaxed a little. Sadie wasn’t so sure he should.

  “I want to go to Paris. You and me and Sadie.”

  Chapter Ten

  Jordan didn’t make a habit of dwelling on his mistakes, regretting things he’d done. He fixed the problem, made apologies and reparation if required, and moved on, learning what he could from it and then forgetting it.

  He wondered what he was going to learn from this. Try not to make idiotic gestures without spending more time thinking about them first. And he was almost sure it was the one mistake of his adult life that he would dwell on. It wasn’t going to be that easy to dismiss, although he wasn’t quite sure why. It ought to be no different from any of the other mistakes he’d made. Except this one had involved his mother. And Sadie. And somehow that made everything complicated.

  “This was a mistake,” he said. It was always best just to get it over with. Yet giving voice to the words made him feel worse, not better. Before he could waver, he said firmly, “It was a very ill-considered idea.”

  They were in the hospital cafeteria, drinking bad coffee. Sadie was picking at a salad but he couldn’t even pretend to eat.

  Sadie sighed and pushed the salad away, dropping the fork onto the plate with a clatter. She regarded him with her plain brown eyes. He could see the compassion in them and wished he couldn’t. She was so ordinary, and yet she wasn’t ordinary at all.

  “Seeing as I’ve never been to Paris, it’s not as if I object to going,” she said. “But I don’t think … ”

  He gave a tight nod and swallowed more coffee. Still bitter, still vile. “We can’t go.”

  She cleared her throat. “No.” Then, “You were right, though. It did reassure your mother to think you’d have someone to look after you when she dies.”

  Don’t say that word, he wanted to shout. Sadie wasn’t the type to use euphemisms, although she was kind and compassionate and could be diplomatic. But she didn’t seem to think she needed to sugarcoat things with him. In a way, he wished she would.

  “It was still a mistake,” he said, against the treacherous feeling of maybe it could work. It couldn’t. But his heart didn’t seem terribly persuaded.

  “I don’t disagree with you,” she said, as if it were her he was trying to convince. She played with the fork and didn’t look at him. “It was a mistake, however well-intentioned.”

  “Then you’ll understand if I send you home in the morning.”

  She nodded slowly, still not looking up, turning the fork over and over. He put a hand out to stop her.

  “I’ll pay you as agreed,” he added. “After all, this whole thing is my fault.”

  She didn’t say anything to that. Of course, what was there to say? You can make the check payable to Sadie Rose Perkins. Or, You’re right, it is your fault. Sadie wasn’t the kind of person to say things like that.

  He waited and then added, just to be perfectly clear, “Under the circumstances I don’t think you should go back in with me.”

  Again she nodded. Then: “What will you tell your mother?”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t blame you.”

  “I’m not worried,” she said gently. This time she did look up to meet his eyes. “I’m just curious. You didn’t want her to be upset. There are some explanations you could give her that would be less upsetting than others.”

  “I suppose,” he said, trying to imagine what those explanations were and not for one moment inclined to ask Sadie for her opinion.

  “And you should take her to Paris, anyway.”

  I don’t need your input anymore, he didn’t say. “I will,” he did say.

  Chapter Eleven

  Three months later


  The rain had not let up in three days. Sadie sighed and set the Caterina’s Closet catalog aside. Propping her chin on her palm she stared out the window. The thing about an adventure was you were supposed to be glad to come home afterwards.

  The phone shrilled in the silence. Sadie jumped, then fumbled with the receiver. “Pages,” she said a little breathlessly. “This is Sadie.”

  “Sadie.”

  Peter. She gripped the phone tight against her ear.

  “She’s dying.”

  “Oh, Peter. Jordan must be — ”

  “Will you — ”

  “I can be there tonight,” Sadie said, her fingers flying over the computer keys as she checked the flights.

  “Thank you.”

  • • •

  Jordan was holding his mother’s hand, his head bent. Almost certainly not praying, but turned inward, reflecting. Sadie watched from the door for a moment, drinking in the sight of him, someone she had never wanted to leave. A businessman, not a poet, and it turned out she wanted him anyway. But she wasn’t here for that; she knew he did not reciprocate.

  Her heart ached for him, for both of them. The quiet of the room presaged the stillness that was yet to come, like a blanket of snow on the ground. She didn’t want to think about that. She slipped into the room and put her hand on Jordan’s shoulder.

  He started and glanced up, then scowled and demanded in a low voice, “What are you doing here?”

  “Peter called me,” she said, although she knew perfectly well that that didn’t answer the question.

  A low murmur from the bed made Jordan turn his head. He leaned closer to his mother. He said, “Yes, Sadie is here,” and Sadie came around to stand where Mrs. Matthews could see her.

  “Sadie.” The word was a sigh, and Mrs. Matthews seemed to expend great effort to say it.

  “I’m here,” she said, her voice faltering a little.

  “You came home,” Mrs. Matthews said. Sadie slanted a glance at Jordan. What had he said to his mother about their “break up”?

  “I’m home,” she said, and she didn’t even feel bad saying it. It wasn’t a lie, because it felt like it could be true.

  • • •

  The knock sounded on her hotel room door, jerking her out of a restless sleep.

  “Sadie?”

  The voice was low and hoarse but she recognized it immediately. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and padded across the floor.

  “Jordan?” she whispered as she undid the chain.

  “She’s gone,” he said, and came into her arms.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jordan looked down at the blonde head on his shoulder. Thought it was still dark out, he had awakened with his mind clear though the grief still sat heavily on his heart.

  He wouldn’t do to Sadie what Randall had done to Jordan’s mother. Last night, he had succumbed to weakness. He had just wanted some comfort and all he could think was Sadie would give it to him. And she had, but that did not mean they had any future together.

  He moved her head to the other pillow and lay on his side for a moment looking down at her as she settled in with a murmur.

  He needed to send her back home. To Aunt Gertrude — his lips twisted in an ironic smile — and her friends and the customers who did not look for efficiency in her operations.

  He couldn’t help reaching over one last time to touch the blonde curl that rested against her cheek.

  “Goodbye, Sadie-belle,” he whispered, and slipped out of the bed as dawn lightened the eastern sky.

  • • •

  Sadie awoke slowly, the way she usually did, coming to awareness one stage at a time. She opened an eye. The morning sun was streaming in through the window. She didn’t have to look to know that Jordan was gone from his side of the bed. Still, she rolled onto her back and sent exploratory fingers across the expanse of cool, empty sheets. He’d been gone long enough for the warmth from his body to dissipate.

  She turned to face the empty part of the bed. If she buried her face in his pillow, she would smell his scent. So she didn’t.

  She pushed the covers off and got out of bed, the muscles unaccustomed to that kind of workout giving off twinges of pain. On another morning, she might have luxuriated in that. She might have delighted in it. This morning she didn’t; unhappiness weighted down with grief made her sag. Not that she felt used, exactly. Just that she should have known exactly what he would do.

  Damn it. Damn him. Sneaking out before dawn because he didn’t want to face her, to face them, what it meant that he had come to her in the night.

  Her knees wobbled and she sat down hard on the edge of the bed.

  You have to fight for what you want, Gramps would say.

  A man who won’t fight for you isn’t worth having, Gran would say.

  Sadie supposed she could call Aunt Gertrude for her tie-breaking vote. She pushed her hair out of her face and went into the bathroom, not looking back at the rumpled sheets on the bed.

  Damn him.

  • • •

  “Son of a bitch,” Jordan said under his breath. The news networks were replaying the footage of Randall posed on the steps of the hospital, looking haggard, as if he had kept vigil over his wife’s bedside hour after hour. His grave announcement of his wife’s death — as if he had been any comfort to her — seemed a mockery.

  Jordan aimed the remote at the television and changed the channel. Randall was going to turn the death of Jordan’s mother into a goddamned circus and there was nothing Jordan could do to change it. All he could do was endure — the way he always did. Shut down his emotions and get through it.

  With his mother gone, there would never be another reason for Jordan to interact with Randall. Nothing to tie them together. Wasn’t that, at least, some good news on an otherwise dreadful day?

  He had the urge to unearth the bottle of Scotch he surely had around here but he could almost hear Sadie chiding him about that. Not because she objected to drinking alcohol, but because she could consider it a predictable and banal response to his anger and annoyance. Drowning his demons instead of facing them.

  So he got up, clicking the television off, and made a pot of coffee. He was tempted to call Sadie, but he ignored the temptation. He had made a mistake, showing her his weakness and vulnerability. He had had sex with her, comfort sex — no, he wouldn’t lie to himself. He wouldn’t be like Randall that way. He had enough self-regard and self-understanding to know that being honest with himself was the only way he could keep looking in the mirror.

  It hadn’t been just sex. He knew that. They had made love, and although he had been hurting, he had known what he was doing, and he had done it anyway, deliberately, because he wanted to, regardless of how it might hurt Sadie in the end, which meant he was not as different from Randall as he liked to think.

  He knew what he had to do, which was to make her understand that there was no relationship between them, no future for them. Like Randall, it seemed he was incapable of loving a woman; unlike Randall he wouldn’t lie about it. A woman like Paula understood the score. A woman like Sadie might pretend she did, but she was only fooling herself. She wanted what ordinary women wanted: an orderly domestic life, children she could dote on, a husband who put her before anything else, and who made a good father to their children.

  He thought of Randall on the television screen and his bile rose. He picked up the phone. If he was braver, or perhaps more callous, he would have called Sadie himself. Instead, he called Peter and told him what he needed to do.

  • • •

  It should have rained. Hadn’t it been raining all along? You’d think the sky could muster some iron-gray clouds and a miserable drizzle, in keeping with the depressing nature of the occasion. But instead, it was a bright spring day, warm with the promise of summer.

  Sadie had taken a cab to the church where the service was being held. She hadn’t expected the crowd — Elaine’s life had seemed so quiet — but she realized
she should have known better. The funeral was more about Randall than about Elaine. She also hadn’t expected the reporters and again guessed that was about Randall, not Elaine. She could just imagine how Jordan was going to feel about the crowd and the reporters.

  She stood on the sidewalk, feeling like the hick cousin from the country. No one had asked her to be here. The way Jordan had cleared out the morning after made it obvious he believed that they had no future together. Despite what had happened in that tangle of sheets. He hadn’t called; he hadn’t even sent a message by his tame underling, Peter. Well, you couldn’t say Jordan had led her on. Damn him.

  Someone pushed by and she murmured an apology and stepped back, out of the path of the foot traffic. She was here, so she supposed she might as well go in to the church —

  A familiar town car slowed and stopped at the curb. How many times had Peter pulled to the curb like that, then come around to open her door? Her heart squeezed and she watched, unable to look away. Jordan ducked out of the backseat, his face impassive. Then he leaned down and offered his hand to someone still in the car. An elderly aunt?

  No. A stunning platinum blonde in a dove-gray suit.

  Of course. That was probably Paula, his on-again-off-again girlfriend. How foolish for her to think Jordan would come alone. And yet, she had thought he would be by himself. She had imagined him alone with his grief, and she had wanted to be there, so he could look up and know that there was one person in the world who cared about him. But that was foolish, too; she wasn’t the one person in the world who cared about him. There were plenty of people who did. A man like Jordan didn’t have to go a day without companionship if he didn’t want to.

  Sadie took another step backward. So she was a fool. There were worse things in the world than being a fool —

  Jordan passed by her without a glance in her direction.

  “Sadie.”