17. Ruby
17
RUBY
It feels even more surreal to be traveling home again.
The mind adapts to its new surroundings, survival instinct, I guess, making it the new normal and replacing the old. We’re quiet during the flight, each lost in our own thoughts. When we were flying to the UK, we had the unknown on our side, like going on vacation and not knowing what to expect when you arrive. But now…
I know that Harry is worried about his business. He wouldn’t tell me what his dad said, but it clearly wasn’t good news. I feel guilty for keeping him away for so long, but whenever I mention it, he tells me he wouldn’t have swapped this trip for the world. And I know that he means it.
I only hope that he won’t regret putting this ring on my finger.
We go directly to Harry’s place, a sleek, one bedroom apartment in a building on East 54 th Street. It’s decorated in neutral colors with bold patterned rugs on the wooden floors, abstract paintings on the walls, and ivory cabinets in the open-plan kitchen. It’s bright and spacious. And it tells me nothing about Harry Weiss.
We both shower and Harry orders takeout noodles which we eat sitting on chrome stools at the breakfast bar. Neither of us has said the words out loud, but staying here together is going to be a whole different ball game to staying in Eileen’s B&B.
This whole new persona seems to have dropped onto Harry’s shoulders, one that I didn’t even see when he was in the hospital, a sharp-pronged reminder that we know so little about each other.
While Harry gets dressed in the bedroom, I call home. I can’t put off speaking to my mom forever.
“Hello?” The greeting is more like a growl than a welcome.
“Mom.” I swallow hard.
“Ruby! Where are you? What’s going on?” The second question is more hushed than the first, and I hear the rustle of her moving about in our home.
A pang of homesickness swells inside my chest. “I’m in New York.”
“What are you doing in New York? When are you coming home? What has that man done to?—”
“Mom!” I’m too tired to fight with her. That will have to wait for another day. “That man has a name. Harry. His name is Harry, and I’m going to marry him.”
“Like hell you are, Ruby. Not if I have anything to do with it.” The growl has transformed into a hiss, like a serpent slithering down the telephone line searching for its prey.
“Why? Why are you being like this, Mom? We love each other. I thought you’d be happy for me, or doesn’t love count for anything anymore?”
“You don’t know the first thing about him. What are you going to do when you realize that he isn’t the man you think he is, huh?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that he turned your head at a fancy party and now you think you’re going to spend the rest of your lives together.”
Deep breath. “The fancy party that you wanted me to attend.”
Harry walks through to the living room of his apartment, and I almost don’t recognize him in a smart gray suit, crisp white shirt and silver tie. His hair is slicked back, and his chin is smooth. I swear he looks ten years younger.
‘Your mom?’ he mouths, and I nod, covering the mouthpiece with my hand.
“Don’t go yet,” I whisper to him before going back to the telephone conversation. “Mom, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you again tomorrow.”
“Ruby, wait. Don’t you dare hang up?—”
I end the call and cross the room to Harry, breathing in the smell of his aftershave. “So, this is how Harry Weiss looks when he’s in the office?”
He wrinkles his nose. “I’m glad I got that ring on your finger before you saw me in a suit.”
“Hmm.” I tap my top lip with my fingertip and walk a circle around him, eyeing him up from all angles. “I don’t know. I think I’ll enjoy undressing you when you get back from the office.”
Harry laughs and pulls me in for a hug, wrapping his arms around me, his plaster cast resting on my shoulder. “How did your mom take the news that you’re in New York?”
“As expected, she was thrilled to bits, and says she can’t wait to celebrate with us when we’re next in Chicago.”
He pulls away, holds me at arm’s length, and studies me intently. “We can go as soon as I’ve sorted out whatever’s going on in the office. Or would you rather go without me? Speak to her alone first?”
“No. I’m in no hurry to see her.” I chew my bottom lip when concern flashes behind Harry’s eyes, guilt rearing its head inside my chest. “What time will you be back?”
“Missing me already?” His smile is wide. “I don’t know, sorry. I don’t want to leave you here alone, but I-I’ve been away too long…” He leaves the sentence hanging, torn between needing to resolve whatever is going on, and not wanting me to feel bad for keeping him away.
“Can I come with you?”
He blinks furiously—he obviously hasn’t considered this as an option.
“Please? I want to know everything about you, Harry. Who knows, perhaps your secretary will let me in on a few of your secrets.”
“If I had any secrets, I’m certain that Lizzie would be only too happy to sit you down and reveal them over a bottle of wine.”
“You’re worried now though, aren’t you?” I tease. “Now I simply must come. And I’m not taking no for an answer.” I peer down at my travel-stained clothes. “I don’t have anything to wear though.”
“I tell you what,” Harry relents. “I’ll take you into the office, introduce you to my father.”
“And Lizzie.”
“And Lizzie. And then you can take my credit card and go shopping for some new clothes. Deal?”
The words ‘I love you’ are on the tip of my tongue, but I hold them back. Maybe I’m being silly or over-cautious or paranoid, but they’re not ready to come out yet. We still have to break down the Celia barrier first.
“Deal.”
Harry’s company—Weiss Petroleum—takes up one level in a Manhattan skyscraper owned by the Russo family. When we leave the elevator, the office is bright and busy, and it seems immediately apparent that Harry is ready to expand.
Despite the ‘eligible bachelor’ title bestowed upon him by the news reporter, I hadn’t given much thought to Harry’s company until now, and my chest swells with pride. Harry did this. He built this business, he gave it wings, and now he’s the man in the saddle, steering it onward to greatness. But no one would ever know, because he’s just Harry when he isn’t wearing a suit.
I’m introduced to Lizzie, a woman in her mid- to late-forties, with a blond 70s perm, glossy lips, and wearing a dress with shoulder pads.She smiles with her teeth and blushes slightly when her gaze flits between me and Harry.
“Oh, honey, I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited for this moment.”
She hugs me, squeezing my arms against my sides. As she releases me, her hands drift down to mine, her fingers settling on the diamond. She raises my hand and studies it closely, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish bobbing to the water’s surface for food.
“Is this…?” Her eyes narrow.
“It is,” Harry answers for me.
Her cheeks turn even rosier, and she squeals with delight. “Oh my God, why didn’t you warn me?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you needed a warning.” Harry succumbs to his secretary’s hug with a chuckle. “We wanted to surprise you.”
“Surprise me? You’ve almost given me a heart attack. Does your father know?” Her eyebrows lower briefly. “No, of course he doesn’t. He wouldn’t have complained…” She clamps her lips together, eyes darting around the office and settling on a door with Harry’s name printed on a neat gold sign.
“Is he through there?” Harry gestures at the door.
“He is.” Lizzie takes my hands in hers again. “Good luck, honey. I promise you his bark is worse than his bite.”
I glance at Harry, but he isn’t listening. He has already opened the door to his office and is waiting for me to join him.
“Dad, I want you to meet?—”
“When did you get back?” His dad cuts him off. “I said I’d have organized the car.”
“I wanted to go home first, Dad. We were traveling almost twenty-four hours.”
“Well, you’re here now.” Pause. “We?”
Harry stands aside, and I join him just across the threshold of his office to meet my future father-in-law for the first time. “Dad, this is Ruby Jackson, my fiancée.”
Karl Weiss is nothing like his son. Taller, stockier, darker, I can instantly tell that Harry’s looks were softened by his mom’s genes. He must’ve inherited the blue eyes from his mom too.
“Hello, Mr. Weiss.”
I cross the room and reach out to shake his hand, but he turns away from the desk, walking around it instead, with his head lowered.
A glance at Harry, and he is watching his father’s reaction with furrowed brows. “Dad?” he prompts him.
Mr. Weiss freezes, his spine stiff. “Your fiancée?” he mutters without looking at either of us.
“Yes.” Harry is undeterred. “Ruby Jackson.”
“I heard you the first time.”
Harry faces me, and I can see anger sparking behind his eyes and in the set of his thin lips. “I apologize for my father’s rudeness, Ruby. I can only assume that he left his manners at home this morning. I’ll ask Lizzie to come shopping with you, and we’ll try again another time.”
I don’t understand what’s going on, but now’s the time when Karl Weiss should relax his shoulders, smile at us apologetically, and begin the conversation over. Only, he doesn’t. He keeps his back turned as if he can’t bear to look at me, and tears well in my eyes for Harry because he doesn’t deserve this inexplicable reaction.
I follow Harry back to Lizzie’s desk in a daze. Lizzie doesn’t even question Harry but grabs her purse and ushers me back through the office to the elevators keeping up a steady stream of chatter that I barely even register.
Outside, I can’t help comparing the busy city streets with the tranquility of the farm by the sea, the water lapping the shore and the sheep bleating as they run away. There are too many sounds, too many people, too many cars.
Lizzie takes me into a small café, sits me down at a table-for-two by the window, and orders two espressos. “You look a bit shell-shocked, Ruby,” she says with a motherly smile. “He can come across as a bit of a tyrant at first, but he’s lovely when you get to know him.”
I only have her word for it, and from what I’ve seen so far, I’m not sure that I believe her.
I buy some clothes to get me through the next few days: jeans, sweaters, and a couple of shirts. I still feel unsettled after the introduction-from-hell to Harry’s father, and spending Harry’s money doesn’t sit well with me. I need to sort my life out and think about getting a new job if I’m going to stay in New York.
I’m so lost in thought that my brain takes a couple of beats to recognize my mom waiting for me inside the lobby of the Russo tower when we get back, she’s so out of context.
“Mom?”
“You wouldn’t come to me, so I came to you.” Her gaze skims Lizzie, but she doesn’t acknowledge the other woman with a greeting. Her lips form a tight O of disappointment.
“Not here, Mom.” I close my eyes briefly, tiredness crashing through me and sending my brain cells reeling. I don’t understand why everyone is trying to keep me and Harry apart. “Not now.”
“Yes now.” She hoists her purse higher onto her shoulder like she’s arming herself for battle.
“Ma’am,” Lizzie interjects, “perhaps you’d like to come up to the office and talk to Ruby in private.”
“No.” Mom turns her steely glare on Lizzie. “I’d like my daughter to come home with me, that’s what I’d like.”
“Mom, I’m not coming home.” I stand my ground.
“Okay, have it your way, Ruby.”
Mom’s voice is cold, laced with something sharp, and I realize too late that I should’ve taken her outside. Whatever is going on, she intends to do this right here in the foyer of Harry’s place of work.
“Let’s go grab a coffee,” I say.
“I don’t want coffee. I want my daughter to call off this ridiculous fiasco and come home.”
“ Ridiculous fiasco ?” My voice is shrill. “Is that what Grandma said when you fell in love with Dad?”
Mom blinks at me furiously, eyelash extensions creating shadows on her cheeks. “You’re not in love with Harry Weiss. You’re playing a foolish game to get back at me for something, and it ends now.”
My chest is heaving with the effort of containing my temper. “That’s where you’re wrong, Mom . It’s only just beginning.”
“You leave me no choice then, Ruby. I didn’t want to tell you, but I don’t know how else to get you to see sense. Karl Weiss is the reason your father’s company went bankrupt. Because of that man, your father had a stroke and has never worked since.”