It didn’t. A three ring circus underfoot wouldn’t have distracted her. A herd of elephants tapdancing on Forty-second Street probably wouldn’t have distracted her. She only thought about PJ—about spending the weekend with PJ—and grew more and more apprehensive.
She got a cup of coffee from the hospitality center. Having something in her hands would help. It would keep her from biting her fingernails, if nothing else. She sipped it and burned her tongue, muttered under her breath, paced some more.
She should have said she would meet him in the Hamptons. There were jitneys that traveled back and forth between the city and the Hamptons. She needn’t have committed herself to a full afternoon in the car, just she and PJ.
But it was too late now.
She would have needed to make a reservation. And she would have had to tell him. And calling PJ was not on her list of things she wanted to do.
She knew he’d say, “Chicken, Al?”
And she wasn’t. Really. She wasn’t. Just … wary. Edgy. Nervous.
She would go through with it. Of course she would. But it would help if he would get here so she could stop fretting about it and start resisting.
“Ready?”
The sound of his voice right behind her made her jerk. Coffee splattered on the floor, on her shoes, on her shirt, on her hand.
“Oh!” She spun around and sloshed it on his shoes, too. “Stop sneaking up on me.”
“I wasn’t sneaking. You were walking away. I couldn’t run around in front of you and say, ‘Here I am,’ could I? Are you okay?” He took the coffee out of her hand and set it down on a table while she tried ineffectually to mop herself up.
“I’m fine. Terrific. Never been better.” She was muttering while she scrubbed at her shirt, then sighed and gave it up for a lost cause. “I need to change.” She gave her still-stinging hand a shake.
“Let me see.” PJ caught her fingers in his and examined her hand. It was red where the coffee had burned. But somehow the stinging from the burn was less intense than her awareness of his touch.
Abruptly Ally tried to pull her fingers away. But PJ held them fast and grimaced. “You should have some ice.” He lifted his gaze, meeting hers. “And a kiss to make it better?” He grinned lopsidedly.
Ally snatched her hand out of his. “Ice, yes. A kiss, no.”
“Don’t want a repeat of last night, Al?” His tone was teasing.
But Ally had spent the night in far too deep a funk where kissing PJ was concerned. She compressed her lips. “I’ll just get some ice and change my shirt and we can go.”
Before he could reply, she took a fresh coral-colored pullover top from her suitcase, then, leaving the case with PJ, hurried to the ladies’ room where she changed quickly, glared at her reflection in the mirror, exhorted herself to shape up, stay calm, cool and collected and, above all, resist PJ Antonides’s charm.
Then she got a plastic bag of ice from the ice machine in the refreshment center, put it on her face before she put it on her hand. And then she made her way back to the lobby.
PJ had put her suitcase in his car—a late-model midsize SUV with a surfboard on the roof.
She stared at it. “I’ll bet you’re the only person in New York City with a surfboard on his car.”
“I’m probably not,” he said. “You’d be amazed at what you see in the city. How’s your hand?” He opened the door for her and she climbed in, glad it was a good-size car and that she would be able to keep her distance.
“It’ll be fine.” She fastened her seat belt. He fastened his, then slid the car out into the crush of midtown noontime traffic.
Ally loved the city, but she never ever considered driving there. Honolulu was stress enough. But PJ maneuvered through the traffic as easily as he picked out and rode the waves he surfed.
“I become the wave,” he’d told her once.
“Do you become the traffic?” she asked him now.
He slanted her a quick grin. “How’d you know?”
She resisted the grin and silently congratulated herself. “You make it look easy.”
“I manage.” He made a wry face. “It’s not the most relaxing way to spend a Friday afternoon.”
“You should have let me take one of the jitneys. I could have met you out there.”
“No. I don’t mind. Besides, it will give us a chance to spend some time together.”
Precisely what Ally would have preferred not to have. But she said, “Yes. Are there going to be lots of people there?”
“Enough,” PJ said grimly. “All the immediate family. The grandkids. My grandmother. A couple of my mother’s sisters. One of my dad’s crazy aunts. She’s a widow, but her husband was the cousin of Ari Cristopolous, which is why my dad decided he could justify inviting them that weekend.”
“But he really invited them because of … you … and the daughter?”
“Not that he’d ever admit it,” PJ said cheerfully.
“Won’t he be upset?”
PJ shrugged. “He knows now. Ma has to have told him. And he never stays upset long. He’s pretty easygoing.”
“But what about the Cristopolouses? And their daughter? Won’t they be expecting …?”
“An unattached son?” PJ did a rapid tattoo with his fingers on the steering wheel, grinning. “Yep. Poor ol’ Lukas.” Ally stared. “Lukas?”
“My little brother.” PJ rolled his shoulders and sighed expansively. “Bless his heart.”
Ally gave him a long skeptical look.
He just laughed. “Lukas won’t mind. He never minds when people throw beautiful women at him.”
“Do people often throw beautiful women at him?”
“Mostly beautiful women throw themselves at him. It’s a little annoying.” PJ shrugged. “They think he’s good-looking. No accounting for taste. Tell me,” he went on, “what happened yesterday at the gallery? With Gabriela del Castillo?”
Ally was curious about this brother whom women threw themselves at. It was hard to imagine anyone better looking than PJ. But then, maybe women threw themselves at him, too. She wanted to ask. But she didn’t want to know. So she focused on the question he’d asked her.
“We had a really good meeting. I took half a dozen pieces—fabric art, quilted pieces, collages—and she accepted them all.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, a couple of Thai beaches—very stylized. A couple of New Zealand ones. A bit of Polynesian Maori influence. And some landscape collage type things—a New York skyline at night.”
One she didn’t tell him about, was a much more personal piece—and one of the earliest she’d done. It had been her memories of the morning after the night they’d spent together, the view from his window toward the sea, the sand, the sunrise, the lone surfer on his board riding toward shore.
All the longing she’d felt that morning had gone into that piece. It had accompanied her everywhere. She’d shown it in several galleries, had had offers to buy it, had never sold. Couldn’t bring herself to do it.
But she’d offered it for sale at Gaby’s. She’d carried it with her too long. Like the marriage she was ending, it was time to part with it. So she’d told Gaby all the pieces she’d brought were for sale.
“I’m sending