Prelude to a Wedding Page 3

  "That's right." He waited.

  "What is it? What's your specialty?"

  He liked Bette Wharton a lot at that moment. She didn't want to have to ask. He figured she felt not knowing the answer represented a slipup in her preparation. But she didn't show any of that in her tone. No grudging echo tainted a single syllable.

  He wanted to kiss her. Right then and there. To lean forward across the small table and let his lips explore that up-swung lip of hers, to slip his tongue along it and then inside it.

  The blood quickening through his body was a warning. Better get his mind—and his hormones—off that track and on business, or he'd be doing just what his imagination had conjured up. And he had a feeling Bette was the kind of woman to take it all too seriously.

  Yes, better to stick to business. Even if she wasn't likely to take his business too seriously.

  He shrugged. The movement helped a little, although he knew no shrug would ease the tension that had begun to tighten certain of his muscles. "It's pretty simple. I mostly appraise cards, trains and books."

  "Cards, trains and books?" she repeated blankly.

  "Baseball cards, toy trains and comic books."

  Bette stared at him. "You're kidding."

  "Most of the time, yes. But not about this. I also operate as a sort of clearinghouse for specialists in other areas from all over the country, and I specialize in appraising other stuff myself, too. Things like original Monopoly games, nineteenth-century mechanical toys, vintage Erector sets. But I'd say those three—baseball cards, toy trains and comic books—are the most common in my trade."

  "Then your occupation really is child's play."

  He'd heard it before. He'd heard notes of censure a lot stronger than the faint echo in Bette's words. But they had never bothered him before.

  He did his best to shake it off. He grinned and tossed out the words of truth.

  "That's me, a kid at heart."

  Chapter Two

  Bette tried to ignore the strange frisson of relief and disappointment that touched through her.

  A kid at heart. She believed he'd spoken no more than the absolute truth, and that relieved her. Because that meant the odd undercurrent of attraction would soon wither. Dependability, solidity, maturity—those were the attributes she valued. Someone who would work through the difficulties in life as she did, someone who anticipated them and prepared for them. Certainly not someone who admitted to being—bragged about being—a kid at heart.

  So why are you disappointed? asked a voice inside her.

  To quiet it, she asked, "How did you get to know Mama Artemis and Ardith?"

  "I did a job for them back when I was starting out. In fact, before I'd set up the business."

  "What kind of job?"

  Paul gestured widely to the room around them. "Appraising." For the first time Bette noticed one wall was decorated with assorted wooden game boards, the colors mellowed and softened by age. On a shelf along the opposite wall resided arrangements of old-fashioned toys, a teddy bear appearing to pull a wagon bearing two dolls, a wooden sled next to ancient-looking skates, a hoop and stick.

  "The toys? You appraised these toys?"

  "These and a whole lot more. This collection's the tip of the iceberg."

  "Did they bring all these things with them when they came to America?" She wondered again about the origins of Mama Artemis and her family. Not Poland; she'd heard no trace of her grandfather's speech in Ardith's voice.

  "No way. Mama Artemis had just been widowed and didn't have much anyway, but she left everything behind except the clothes on her back and her two children. She came to Chicago because she had a cousin she could live with at first, though I guess it got pretty crowded."

  Bette's lips curved. She could hear her grandfather's rich, deep tones and exotic accent, recounting with pride each step his family had taken toward the American Dream. As if it were a bedtime story, he would tell her again and again, each movement forward in education or position or savings.

  "So Mama Artemis started looking around for a job . . ." Paul went on.

  Like Mama Artemis, Bette's grandparents had lived with relatives at first. How proudly he had recounted to her how soon they had rented a whole apartment for themselves. Then came moves to a better neighborhood, a bigger apartment. He would say over and over how proud he was of his daughter—Bette's mother—who had graduated from high school and married a man who owned his own home. She remembered how her grandfather beamed the day she'd graduated from college, and how two years later, sick as he was, he had made her sit on his hospital bed and tell him every detail of the ceremony that entitled her to the initials M.B.A.

  "Are you with me?"

  Paul Monroe's touch on her wrist was fleeting, but left behind a tingle of warmth.

  "What? Oh. Yes, I'm with you." She wasn't surprised to discover that one level of her mind really had absorbed what he said. Many times in business she'd blessed her dual-track mind. "You were saying Mama Artemis went to work as a housekeeper for this eccentric old man."

  "Yeah, and it turned out he had this terrific collection of toys and games and dolls he'd put together bit by bit for decades. When he died, he left it all to Mama Artemis."

  "And that's where you came in? How did you get her as a client?"

  "I didn't. At least not if you mean going out and pursuing the account. I hadn't even set up in business at that point. I'd been working for this insurance company—a rising young executive, they said. I hated it."

  He said it so cheerfully she could almost doubt he meant it. "Then why'd you do it? Did you plan that as a springboard to establishing your own appraising business?"

  "I used it as a springboard to paying my rent," he said dryly. "I drifted into insurance after college."

  "You majored in business?"

  "No. History. Probably the only history major who never considered going on to law school." The sharp note was so at odds with his usual tone that she wondered if she imagined it. Especially when he continued easily, "But that might be because I didn't intend to be a history major. I just liked history. A quarter before graduation, I looked at my courses and figured I lacked one class each to major in psych and history, and I liked the history offering better that spring, so there I was—a history major."

  Bette shook her head, thinking of her own carefully considered selections, each a plotted step along the road to owning her own business, each a piece in the foundation on which to build her future.

  He took her gesture another way. "Go ahead and shake your head. You probably already know what I discovered—there aren't any want ads in the Sunday paper for history grads." He shrugged. "That's where insurance came in."

  "And then Mama Artemis?" she prompted.

  He grinned. "I lucked into that. I'd fallen into being sort of a troubleshooter for the insurance company, getting appraisals for unusual stuff nobody else wanted to bother with. Not the real antiques, but nostalgia items and some really oddball collections. It was an excuse to get out of the nine-to-five rut at the office, so I took courses, read a lot, asked questions. A friend of a friend told Mama Artemis about me, and she asked me to help. I was too stupid to know what I'd gotten myself into until I stood waist-deep in one of the finest collections in the country. It was worth a fortune." He gestured to the surroundings. "More than enough to set up a successful restaurant on the Near North Side."

  "So you helped Mama Artemis sell off some of the collection to finance the restaurant?"

  "You mean as a dealer? No." His hands and face had stiffened and his words were crisp. Bette contemplated this new aspect of Paul Monroe with something more than surprise. But just as suddenly he was his easy, amused self once more. "You just ran smack-dab into my hobbyhorse. I don't think appraisers should be dealers, and vice versa. If nothing else, somebody telling you your Great-Aunt Gertie's vase is worth $22.50 when that same person's in the market to buy it poses one hell of a conflict of interest. Most folks who do both ar
e honest, but why go dangling temptation out there like a carrot?"

  "And Mama Artemis's inheritance was worth considerably more than $22.50?"

  He grinned at her dryness. "Considerably more. Even with a string of zeros. I tell you, I spent the first few months scrambling around trying to figure out exactly how over my head I was. By the end of it, Mama had her restaurant, I had enough contacts to get out of insurance, a couple dozen collectors and several museums had acquired rare finds and the people of Chicago had the opportunity to enjoy some great cooking."

  Bette looked at Paul and considered how different his approach to business—to life itself—was from hers. He talked of drifting, luck, happenstance and scrambling. She lived by planning, forethought, diligence and persevering.

  What bothered her was, despite all that, she couldn't resist smiling back at him.

  Ardith's arrival made Bette jump a little at the realization that she and Paul had been smiling foolishly at each other. It must have been contagious, because Ardith wore the same kind of smile as she set platters of steaming, aromatic food on the table, fussed with their arrangement, then exhorted Paul and Bette to enjoy their meal.

  They did. Both the food and the conversation.

  Bette surprised herself. She seldom dived into food like this—and never during a business meal. She found herself using a business trick of drawing out her companion by asking questions. But she knew the difference between obligatory questions and a true desire to know. She'd never laughed as much as she did at Paul's accounts of his hair-raising childhood exploits. And she'd never felt so disinclined to move away from the brush of arms and legs that occurred in the tiny booth.

  Replete, and with an additional sensation of content, she sat back. "You've lived a charmed life, Paul Monroe."

  He considered that as he examined his half-full water glass. Maybe he had lived a charmed life. He had good friends, a good business. He'd benefited from a good mind and good education. And family . . . Well, he couldn't deny the strains and differences, but the bottom line was that he loved them and they loved him—with one exception. And he'd fought his way clear of that one exception's influence years ago, so he had freedom, too. What else could anybody need?

  Without conscious thought, his gaze went to Bette's face.

  Her smile pleased him at a level he couldn't explain. More than the way her lips curved—although that was nice, too—he liked the way her cheeks and eyebrows lifted, providing a new showcase for her deep blue eyes. Even more, he liked knowing he had lured the smile into the light. It was a shame to keep that spark locked up behind the dusty seriousness she seemed to think necessary. The challenge appealed to him.

  He wanted to see her laugh again. Here, in the soft shadows of their corner.

  "You sound just like Michael," he said.

  "Michael? Your brother?"

  "No. Friend. Michael Dickinson, Grady Roberts and I were college roommates." He told her about finding fungus growing in the closet at the end of sophomore year and, though she wrinkled her nose in distaste, she laughed. Laughter looked even better on her than a smile.

  "By the time Tris came we had quite a reputation."

  "Tris? Your sister?"

  "Nope. Wrong again." He recognized the flick of annoyance. Bette didn't like being wrong, and especially not twice.

  "But you do have a sister."

  "How can you be so sure—oh, of course, Ardith. Yeah, I have a sister, but Judi's in college now. She's eleven years younger than me. Tris Donlin's my cousin. Her freshman year the three of us—Grady, Michael and I—were seniors, and we all hung around together."

  "It sounds as if you had a wonderful childhood."

  "Had? You look like you think I'm still going through it." He laughed, but he noted the startled look in her eyes, as if he'd caught her at something not totally polite.

  "I'm sorry, I—"

  "It's all right, I was kidding." He had to cut her off. He didn't want a repeat of the tone she'd used to describe his work as child's play; he didn't want a repeat of the feeling. Better, much better, to turn the conversation.

  "Of course everything wasn't roses, you know. At one time I thought the only answer was to get away. I wanted nothing to do with my family." He kept words and tone light, consciously pushing aside the jumble of those old feelings threatening to rise again. Why had he brought this up?

  "About sixteen or seventeen? I think every kid goes through that stage, don't you?"

  "I must have been an early developer, then, because I was twelve and a half."

  "Twelve?" She cocked her head and her hair swung, exposing the side of her neck in a most distracting way. She pursed her lips—an even greater distraction—and said in ponderous tones, "A manifestation of sibling rivalry, perhaps, since you were displaced by your younger sister?"

  He shook his head, but more at his own thoughts than at her words. "Nah, I'd gone through that the year before. But I guess it was about being displaced in a way."

  He shifted, and felt the rub of her elbow against his jacket, the sensation translating directly to a prickling along his skin.

  "What happened, Paul?"

  Her voice, quiet and soft, lured him.

  "We'd just moved. Only across town but a world away to a kid. My grandfather had retired. Not because he wanted to kick back and relax or anything, but because the doctors gave an order he couldn't refuse." He tried to fight stronger feelings with ironic humor. He wasn't sure it worked. "Given the choice of dying or going to Palm Springs, he took Palm Springs. But that didn't mean he gave up the reins. Not Walter Wilson Mulholland."

  Not a man who'd spent his whole life dictating. Not a man whose only communication with his grandson had come in the form of orders. Sit erect. Take your elbows off the table. Straighten your shoulders. Wear a shirt and tie for dinner at my table.

  Not the man who bad talked in front of Paul as if he didn't exist. The boy needs a haircut. The boy needs discipline. James, if you and Nancy won't send him away to school, at least stop babying the boy.

  Paul propped his elbows on the table and picked up his wine glass, concentrating on the feel of its smooth, warm surface between his palms.

  "He named Dad head of the firm in his place and ordered us to move into the big house on the lake where Mom had been brought up. She didn't want to go, either."

  He remembered sitting on the stairs of the little suburban house he'd been born in, out of sight, listening to his parents.

  Jim, we have a home here.

  We'll make a home there, honey.

  I don't want to go back to that house, Jim. Don't you see what's happening?

  Shh, there's nothing to cry about, honey. This is a great move up for us.

  "But Walter Mulholland said it was more appropriate for our new standing in the community. And nobody disobeyed him." Certainly not James Monroe. "Big, dark furniture and drapes that looked petrified. The only noise was the hall clock. God, I hated it."

  His own vehemence discomfited him.

  Without looking at Bette, he produced a deprecating grin. "I guess I missed our old place. The neighborhood, my friends."

  He remembered the tidy little house not far from the railroad tracks. His mother had baked cookies and helped him grow a tomato patch each summer. His father had taken the train into the city every day, and home every night.

  "We used to play baseball together, Dad and I. He'd been a pro. He had a tough time growing up. His folks were really poor, and baseball was his only real fun. He got through college on baseball scholarships and he started law school during off-seasons from the minors. He loves the game."

  In the drawn-out twilights of summer, his father had coached the Little League team or they'd just thrown the ball back and forth, an endless pendulum connecting father and son. He could still feel the lung-bursting pride at his pals' awe that James Monroe had been a pro baseball player, a gifted fielder who'd reached the highest level of minor leagues and come this close to being in the maj
ors.

  Until he married Nancy Mulholland and went to work in Walter Mulholland's law firm.

  "He still has his glove," he told Bette, turning his wine glass around and around, "but when he took over the firm, he didn't have time for that sort of thing anymore. And Mom was busy with Judi and the move and the new house. I was a little at loose ends. When Walter Mulholland returned for his version of a state visit late that summer, it all came to a head."

  Paul consciously eased the muscles in his shoulder.

  "Walter Wilson Mulholland never bought the theory about letting people 'find themselves,' " he continued. He listened to himself critically. light irony, that was the appropriate tone. "He knew what everyone should do with his life and how to achieve it—and he didn't mince words saying so."

  "That can be a sign of caring," said Bette. "That someone wants only the best for the people he loves."

  "Maybe." He conceded the point because he didn't want to have to consider how little he believed it. "But with him it was more force of habit. He was born and bred to be a despot." He saw the quick frown that pleated Bette's brows. Sympathy? Or disapproval? Not liking either possibility, he forged on. "When he started diagramming my life, I didn't care for the grand design, so I ran away, complete with bedroll, clean underwear and seven dollars and thirty-four cents."

  Two decades later he could still remember dinner that night—a formal meal with several strangers joining them at the big, polished table. He could still hear the stern, upright old man proclaiming that he'd decided that Paul would become a litigator. He could hear the deep, determined voice of his mother's father detailing exactly where Paul would fit into the firm's roster fifteen years in the future. And each step of his life over the next two decades. The right prep school. The right university. The right law school. The right marriage. The right family. The right address. All selected by Walter Wilson Mulholland.

  Paul had never liked his grandfather. That night he'd started hating him.

  He'd slipped out of the house while the guests enjoyed after-dinner drinks. He'd headed for the old neighborhood. He couldn't even remember which friend he'd intended to go to, but he'd ended up in front of his old house, standing in the cold, chilled rain that can bring a preview of fall to an Illinois summer and realizing his home now belonged to another family.