The Wrong Wife

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Ben wandered around the big living room that his mother had converted to a showroom for her antique lace dresses. His mother and Brittany sat side by side on the love seat. All he could see was the backs of their heads. They twittered and turned the pages of Elizabeth’s display books, while she made quick sketches on the artist’s pad in her lap.

He knew both women were making an effort to like one another because of him.

But nothing could alleviate the boredom of listening to the endless snatches of clothes conversation. He drove his hands deeper into the pockets of his chinos and sighed deeply.

“That’s enough,” Elizabeth said, looking up. “Go away, Ben. You’re driving us both nuts.”

Brittany flashed him a radiant smile. “Sweetie, I know this is boring for you. Why don’t you go to the club and have a drink. I’ll call you from the car when I leave.”

“Better yet,” Elizabeth said, “go talk to Marian in the workroom.” She flicked a hand toward the back of the house. “Everybody else has already gone home, but she hasn’t seen you in months, and I’ve got a new chef d’atelier straight from an upscale Seventh Avenue house in New York. At the moment, she’s helping with everything from ordering materials to sewing, but if I could keep her, I’d turn her into a designer. She’s very good. Introduce yourself if she’s there. Think of it as practice for vote gathering.”

“Well…”

“Go. Shoo.”

He’d spent many afternoons after school studying upstairs in the workroom, when his mother was just starting to turn a profit with her antique-lace creations and before his life shut down.

Marian Wadsworth was more like an aunt than his mother’s employee. She’d even tried unsuccessfully to teach him the fundamentals of sewing. His hands were too big and too clumsy. But she’d been endlessly patient.

And he had been remiss not to keep in closer touch.

He took the back stairs two at a time. The rubber matting deadened his footsteps. He would surprise her.

He tiptoed across the landing to the baize-covered door to the attics, long since converted to work space for his mother’s designs. He took a deep breath, grasped the knob, turned it silently, flung open the door, spread his arms and shouted, “Maid Marian, it’s Robin Hood returned from the Crusades. Come and kiss me!”

“Are you nuts?”

Ben only had time to glimpse an infuriated female face before the woman dropped to the floor.

“Damn and blast! You’ve made me spill the paillettes!”

At that point, all he could see was a well-rounded upturned bottom in black leggings.

“Don’t just stand there, get down here and help me dig these things out of the cracks in the floor.”

“I-I’m sorry,” Ben stammered. “I thought Marian was here.”

“Well, she’s not. I am. She’s gone to get some more blue paillettes.” The woman at his feet was picking up small flat disks of what looked like blue glass. “Ah, gotcha!” she said, and held up one of the shards. “Are you going to help or not?”

Ben dropped onto his haunches. A completely unruly mass of chocolate curls fell over the woman’s face. Her fingers were workmanlike with short, unvarnished nails. He slid one of the fragments of blue from a crack and handed it to her. “Here.”

“Lovely. That only leaves about fifty more. We’ll never find them all.”

She sat back on her heels, pushed her hair off her face and turned to frown at him. She peered over horn-rim half glasses and said, “Ben. Of course it would be you.”

Her eyes were the color of dark Barbados rum.

He sucked in his breath and felt suddenly as though he were Butch Cassidy in the last scene of the movie. Everything had turned golden. The world tilted into slow motion.

“Close your mouth, Ben Jackson. You look like a dead carp.”

He tried to snap his mouth shut, but only succeeded in gulping. “Uh…wha…who?”

“You don’t even recognize me. Par for the course.”

He wanted to say, “You look edible, luscious, wild and sexy and dangerous and crazy and I want you.”

“Uh, familiar” is what he said. He controlled his libido—it didn’t control him. Or never had, until now. Then the penny dropped. “Annabelle? Annabelle Langley?”

He heard the door open behind him. “Ben! Belle! Why are you two crawling around on the floor?”

He tore his eyes away, and reached a hand back to Marian as though she were offering him a lifeline.

“Get up, Ben, you’ll get filthy,” Marian Wadsworth said.

He stood easily and realized he was smiling stupidly at the woman on the floor.

“You going to leave me down here?” The woman held out her hand.

Ben took it automatically and felt the same jolt he’d experienced once when he’d plugged his electric razor into a bad socket. The hair on his arms stood up.

She pulled against him, and a moment later came up against his chest.

The hair on his arms wasn’t the only thing that came to attention.

“Sorry, Marian,” Annabelle said, and stepped back. She kept looking at him warily. Why not? He must look as fatuous as Bottom after he turned into a jackass in Midsummer Night’s Dream. How appropriate.

“Ben surprised me. I dropped the paillettes. You think we’ll have enough if I don’t find them all?”

Marian held out a small cardboard box, perhaps five inches by seven. “Plenty. You have to stop squirreling things away in your apartment, Belle. Or at least develop a decent filing system.”

“Sorry. Next time, I’ll go do the hunting.” She glanced at Ben. “It’s safer.” She picked up a fragile length of white Belgian lace off the worktable, and took a three-inch glass-headed dressmaker’s pin from a large pincushion on her wrist.

“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you at first.” Ben said. “You were in my brother, Steve’s grade. Right?”

“It’s been a long time. High school.” Annabelle stuck out her hand. “I was a lowly freshman when you were a senior, but everybody knew the president of the senior class. I’m your mother’s new chef d’atelier.”

Ben closed his eyes and whispered, “I am going to kill my mother.”

“Ben!” Marian said.

“Oh, God.” Ben opened his eyes. “I didn’t mean—I’d never…”

“Get out now, please,” Annabelle said. “Before I toss you out.”

“It’s just an expression.”

“Now!” She crunched up the lace in her hand. “Ow!” She held up her hand. The pin had embedded itself in her left index finger. She yanked out the object and raised her finger to her lips to suck the drop of blood, but didn’t manage to catch it before it fell on the lace she held in her other hand. “Now look what you’ve made me do.”