And here came another one. Apparently noticing that Tom was alone, Darlene began murmuring and air-kissing her way out of her crowd and gliding back over toward him. Her smile didn’t look right. Shit. What had he done now? Had he violated the twenty-minute rule? That was about how long she could take being ignored without getting snitty.
Tom glanced at the water again and wondered how many degrees it was. If only he weren’t wearing his most comfortable old cords, he might actually do it. Between Darlene and O’Toole, this party was going down.
“Hey,” Darlene said, making the word two warm syllables with honey on top. Darlene’s body might be Botticelli, but her voice was pure Gone with the Wind. Still, her smile didn’t look right.
“Hey, there,” he responded carefully. He wondered if it was possible she’d heard Bailey’s comment about her lease expiring. Like all good old boys, Bailey did tend to boom a bit.
But would that be so terrible? Tom was going to have to end it soon anyhow. He didn’t want a trophy wife. He didn’t want a wife period.
Ten years ago, after the…fiasco…he’d decided his life needed some strict ground rules. He had no intentions of living as a monk, all hair shirts and no sex, but he did try to keep all his relationships clean and sweet and mutually satisfying. He’d been pretty successful, so far. That sixth sense about parties applied to love affairs, too, ordinarily.
“I stopped by the apartment on my way over here,” she said.
He tried not to react to her word choice. The apartment, she said these days. Not your apartment. It was just one step short of our apartment, and it was a big mistake, though she obviously didn’t know it.
“I got Otis to let me in,” she added casually.
He wasn’t sure why that shocked him so much. Otis was the seventy-year-old doorman, and he was drooling in love with Darlene. Otis would probably agree to let her into any apartment in the building, even if she were carrying a metal detector and a large black sack.
Tom supposed he was shocked that Darlene would take advantage of the nice old guy like that. Whatever the reason, his smile felt tight.
“And why did you do that?”
“I’d left my driver’s license next to the sofa,” she said, and he had to admit she told the lie beautifully. “Anyhow, I also picked up the mail for you. I knew you’d been waiting for that transcript.”
“Really. Was it there?”
“No.” She lifted her gold clutch and opened it deftly. “But this was.”
She held out a small pink envelope. Immediately he caught the cloying scent of gardenias.
Damn it to hell. He had hoped he’d never see another one of these. But even if he had to, he wasn’t supposed to get it yet. Not for another week.
Could it possibly be a coincidence?
But he knew it wasn’t.
He knew it was Sophie.
As always, he felt his lungs tightening, as if they wanted to reject the sickeningly sweet smell. Or was he just trying to reject the idea that Sophie had sent him another “anniversary” card? Every year he told himself that surely this would be the last. She’d forget, she’d lose interest, her therapists would finally convince her that it did no good, especially since he never responded.
It had been ten years now. Ten years since he’d walked out of a church filled with these poisonously sweet white flowers. Ten years since he’d walked out on Sophie.
But she’d never forgotten. And she clearly intended to make sure that he didn’t, either. Which was fairly ironic, actually.
Darlene pushed the card forward a fraction of an inch, and he realized he needed to do something. He held out his hand calmly and took it. He flipped it over, glanced at the return address just to be sure the gardenia smell hadn’t tricked him, then flipped it back to see whether Sophie had addressed his name the usual way, with a small heart where the O in Tom should be.
She had.
No wonder Darlene’s smile looked so tight and thin.
“Well?” She snapped her little gold clutch shut sharply.
“Well, what?” He slipped the envelope into his wind-breaker pocket, patted it to be sure it was secure, then zipped up his jacket against the fresh, high wind that hinted at a squall before sunset.
Darlene paused, her mouth half-open. She obviously knew the next few moments were dangerous and was looking for the right words.
“It’s really too cold for a boat party, don’t you think?” He hunched his shoulders. “But I guess Saroyan couldn’t wait till spring to show off his new baby.”
In his head Tom begged Darlene to be very careful, to take the conversational fire exit he was offering. He didn’t like being cornered, and she’d gone too far when she’d pawed through his mail. And he damn sure didn’t want to talk to her about Sophie.
If she forced him to do this now, he might say things he’d regret.
She wasn’t great at reading his thoughts, though, and he knew his face revealed only a tilted smile and a slightly sarcastic arch to one brow. It was an expression he’d perfected over the last decade.
The arched brow probably tipped her over the edge. Darlene had odd moments of self-respect, and though she might let a man cheat on her, she wouldn’t stand for being mocked.
“Who exactly,” she demanded, “is this Sophie Mellon?”
What a stupid question. What did it matter? When a love affair was over, did it make any difference exactly what, or who, had killed it?
When he didn’t answer, Darlene’s jaw tightened. “So far I know this much. She writes your name like a lovesick adolescent, and she soaks her cards in cheap perfume. Things haven’t been right between us lately, Tom. Is this why? Is she someone I should worry about? Or is she just a—”
A what? Darlene seemed to understand she’d gone too far, but the echo of the unspoken thought seemed to hang in the air between them. What word had she been going to say?
And what was the right word, anyhow? What was Sophie? Slut? Stalker? Psycho? Maybe all those labels applied. And many more, as well.
Maybe the best word was cursed. Poor beautiful, tormented Sophie was cursed, and still she signed his name with a heart.
Suddenly Tom realized he was furious. If Darlene insisted on doing this right here, right now, he was ready. He felt his smile tilt another inch. It probably looked like a smirk by now. He didn’t give a damn about that, either.
“Sophie Mellon is the woman I almost married.”
“What?” Darlene’s eyebrows knitted hard. “Married? When?”
“Ten years ago.”
She shook her head, looking confused and slightly annoyed. She looked, he thought, like an infant rejecting an unappetizing spoonful of strained peas. “But surely…” She took a breath. “If that’s true, why—why didn’t you ever tell me about it?”
“It wasn’t important.”
Her chin went up. “Wasn’t important?”
He shrugged. “Not to you.”
That was rough. Two circles of hot pink broke out on her skin. But her chin didn’t waver. She was a strong woman, and a distant part of Tom admired her. Maybe she was strong enough that, someday soon, she’d thank him for setting her free.
“When you say you almost married her… What