“Your partner, Andrew Dedham,” she said.
“Then the joke is on him,” he said coldly. “Because today is not my birthday.”
She glared at him. “Then why didn’t you say so at the beginning?” she challenged. “You surely didn’t think I came in off the streets selling magazine subscriptions!”
His heavy brows lifted. “I wouldn’t buy that kind of magazine,” he said curtly.
Her eyes narrowed icily. “Why not, you look as if you could use some tutoring,” she returned. “Frozen clean through, are we?” she added with a cold smile.
He seemed to grow three inches. “Whatever I am is none of your business. And if you aren’t out that door in three minutes flat, I’ll have you arrested for soliciting.”
“I am not a prostitute,” she told him, sliding into her coat. “But if I were, honey, you wouldn’t be rich enough!”
“I wouldn’t be desperate enough,” he corrected. “Out.”
Just like that, as if she were a dog! She stared holes in him, but he only folded his arms over his formidable chest and glared back. Her eyes fell. She’d never encountered anybody like this giant dead fish, and she never wanted to again. From now on, Marla could do her own messages!
“When you do have your birthday, Mr. North Pole,” Amelia said at the door, “I hope your birthday cake explodes in your face!”
“Just make sure you don’t jump out of it,” he returned coldly.
“I couldn’t,” she replied with a sweet smile. “The heat from all the candles would burn me alive!”
And she closed the door with a hard slam. Her hands trembled as she refastened the coat.
The receptionist came back in with a tray of Styrofoam cups obviously filled with coffee. She smiled in a friendly way. “Are you waiting to see Mr. Carson?” she asked. “Sorry I wasn’t here, I just sneaked out to get them some coffee.”
She remembered belatedly the name of this building. “The…Carson Building…wouldn’t be…?” Amelia faltered.
“Yes, it would. Named for the late Angus. Did you want to see Mr. Carson?”
“I already have,” Amanda said with a rueful laugh. “His poor wife.”
The receptionist blinked. “Wife?”
Amelia was already at the other door, but she turned. “Isn’t he married?”
“Not him,” came the laughing reply. “There isn’t a woman anywhere brave enough.”
“I understand exactly what you mean. So long.”
Two
Amelia was stoked up and fuming like a steam engine when she got back to Marla’s office. She was dripping from the combined temperatures of Chicago in the summer and the winter trench coat she’d been wearing over the flamboyant belly dancer’s costume.
Marla looked up, an elf with blond hair and blue eyes. “Well?” she asked, all wide smiles.
“Wentworth Carson,” she began as she stripped off the trench coat and fumbled in Marla’s office closet for her neat gray suit and blouse, “is a giant dead fish. He has the sense of humor of a giant dead fish, and he looks like a giant dead fish.”
Marla, who’d known Amelia for almost a year, as long as the Georgia girl had been in Chicago, had never heard her fume before. She stared. “Andy said he had a sense of humor,” she began.
“Where is it, visiting relatives in New York?” Amelia demanded.
Marla burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. “Oh, darling, I’m sorry, I know Andy didn’t mean…”
“It wasn’t his birthday,” Amelia continued as she dragged on her slip and blouse and skirt with quick, methodical fury. “He said so. He accused me of being a prostitute. He threw me out of his office. He said not to jump out of his birthday cake. I hate him!”
Marla had long since buried her face in her hands on the desk, and her thin shoulders were shaking.
“What did you do?”
“I kissed him.”
The laughter got worse.
“It made him furious, of course,” Amelia said. She fumbled for a small brush in her purse and dragged it through the tangle of her hair. “I couldn’t resist it, he looked so almighty arrogant. He should have tried to enjoy it, I can’t imagine that he’s ever been kissed by any woman who was actually willing and didn’t have to be paid!”
Marla was just now catching her breath. “He did make an impression, didn’t he?” she gasped. “I’m so sorry! If Kerrie hadn’t been sick, you’d have been spared.”
“I wouldn’t go near that man again for anything,” she grumbled. “He’s a…a…a…”
“Giant dead fish?”
“Yes!”
“Andy will die when I tell him.” Marla sighed. “I hope Wentworth Carson is a forgiving man, or my poor Andy will be out looking for work again.”
“What possessed Andy to pull such a joke on a man like that?” Amelia asked. “He obviously has no sense of humor, and it wasn’t even his birthday!”
“Maybe Andy didn’t know that,” Marla said comfortingly. She studied the older woman, dressed now in her familiar staid business clothes, her hair neatly arranged in a French twist. No one who saw her now would believe her capable of pulling off a joke like that.
“This is not how I want to spend my next hard-earned day off,” Amelia said.
“Well, thanks a million for helping me out,” Marla said and hugged the taller girl affectionately. “Andy will be thrilled, even if you aren’t.”
“I hope so. Tell him it was a sacrifice I’ll never make again, will you?” She waved as she went out the door.
All the way home she thought about Wentworth Carson, and her teeth ground together. Horrible, humorless man, he must be the world’s worst lover. He couldn’t even kiss. Of course, he hadn’t wanted to kiss her back. She flushed, remembering the hardness of his closed mouth. He seemed like a lonely man. She shook herself. She even felt sorry for squashed spiders, she reminded herself forcibly.
She went back to the sink in the small kitchen of the efficiency apartment she rented from a kindly couple in a residential area near the beach. It was really a garage apartment, but it had the advantage of being like a real house. She had the family, the Kennedys, nearby if she needed help, and she could walk to the beach. She had a phone of her own and even shared the family cat, Khan, a puffy Siamese-Persian, who visited her whenever she had chicken. She’d changed into a comfortable caftan and was just putting the finishing touches to tuna-salad sandwiches when her doorbell rang.
She frowned. Nobody ever came calling except Marla, and Marla went out with Andy practically every night now. It could be one of the Kennedys, of course, except that they were an elderly couple and never bothered her. Perhaps it was a salesman. She grinned, thinking up ways to get rid of him. Her social life was so dull that even a salesman became a welcome pest. It was great fun deciding how to get rid of them tactfully.
The last one had been selling subscriptions to an underwater publication. She promised to send a check as soon as her sunken living-room pool was finished. She’d closed the door on a face like a mask as he tried to decide between going meekly away or calling the nearest sanitarium on her behalf.
She opened the door as far as the chain latch would allow—it was night, after all—and