CHAPTER NINE
I touch a hand to the pearls around my neck before raising the other hand, one finger pressed against the doorbell. I can hear it ringing inside the house, and soon, the sound is followed by footsteps.
Peter is practically my grandfather, though as far as I know, he and grandmother have never been together that way.
He’s been her faithful butler, driver, cook, and companion for pretty much my entire life.
And the smile that shines from his lined face tells me he’s as happy to see me as I am to see him.
“Miss Kathryn, it’s been too long,” he chides, ushering me into the foyer.
“How many times do I have to tell you to let the Miss Kathryn thing go?” I tease.
No matter how many times I’ve asked him to call me plain old Kathryn or, preferably, Kitty—though he never will since grandmother would have a fit—he insists on keeping things formal.
“As always, avoiding the question,” he teases right back, though he’s much drier about it than I am.
“Peter, come on now. You know how busy I am, writing books my grandmother pretends don’t exist.” I give him a wink and a grin to soften my words, but there’s a heck of a lot of truth in them.
She would rather pretend I do something respectable like, I don’t know, live as the wife of a successful man.
“Just the same, you work too hard.” He pats my cheek, which is about as close to physical contact as we’ve ever gotten. From him, this is the same as a warm hug, and I soak it up just like I would if he really were hugging me.
“She’s in the sitting room,” he informs me.
“I’ll have lunch ready in a few minutes.
” I follow him down the hall, taking in the same surroundings as ever.
My grandmother doesn’t believe in change, though I guess if I lived in a magnificent brownstone on Park Avenue, I wouldn’t feel the need to change anything either.
“Kathryn. Punctual as ever.” I get the whole double-cheek kiss thing before she sits me down on the silk-covered sofa. “Can I fix you a drink?”
She’s not talking about iced tea either.
“No, thank you.” I demurely cross my legs at the ankles, the way she’s always harping on me to do. “It’s a little early for me.”
If she gets that I’m making a pointed comment about her drinking habits, she lets it go. She’s from the days when people drank a heck of a lot more than they do now. Afternoon cocktails, drinks before dinner, a pitcher of daiquiris while playing cards with the girls.
“Very well. Now, I can ask what’s been on my mind since I saw you yesterday.” She turns to me, cocktail shaker in hand. “Who was that gorgeous hunk of manhood, and why in the world haven’t you locked him down yet?”
“Grandmother …” I warn, rolling my eyes.
“I’m serious, Kathryn. I nearly forgot to breathe! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man like that in person. And to think, he was having lunch with you!”
“You don’t have to sound so astonished,” I mutter.
“And a doctor on top of everything else! What does he do in his spare time? Pull small children from burning buildings?” She snorts, pouring her drink into a glass before adding garnish. “I can imagine he’s pretty good with his hose.”
I’m used to this. On the outside, my grandmother is the picture of elegance, refinement. And for the most part, she’s just as she appears to be.
On the inside, however? She has a wild streak a mile wide. And she certainly has no trouble sharing her thoughts with me.
“What I wouldn’t give to be your age again,” she sighs, shaking her head as she crosses the elegant room. “That man would be tied to my bedposts right this very minute, begging for mercy.”
“Grandmother, please.”
“Why am I not surprised at your attitude?” she sighs, shaking her head in dismay. “You’ve always been too prim for your own good.”
“I am not either!”
“No?” She sits at the other end of the sofa, fixing me with an appraising look. “Then, you’ve slept with him?”
“Is this seriously why you asked me to lunch? So we can talk about my sex life?”
“No, there is another reason, but all I’ve been able to think about since yesterday afternoon is that gorgeous doctor. You’re going to blow this, aren’t you?”
“Thank you so much for all your faith in me. To answer your question, no, we haven’t slept together.”
“I thought so.”
“I met him a week ago and only because I twisted my ankle and went to the emergency room. He was the doctor who treated me. Jeez Louise, I was laid up most of the week with a sprained ankle! What do you expect me to do?”
“Sweetheart, you might think your grandmother is old-fashioned and behind the times—”
“Trust me, that’s not what I think at all.”
“But I know the way the world works. If you don’t lock him down—and fast—you’re going to lose him. They always used to say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but I think you and I both know better.”
When she wiggles her eyebrows up and down, leaving absolutely no question as to what she has in mind, I find myself wishing I could melt straight through the polished walnut floor.
“It was just a lunch date. We’re not picking out our china patterns just yet.”
“All the more reason for you to get on the ball,” she reminds me, holding my gaze as she sips her martini. Dry, two olives, just like always.
The only reason I can handle the way Maggie talks about sex and men is because I’ve been hearing it from my grandmother ever since she decided I was old enough to be spoken to this way.
She’s a very beautiful woman, and she was born into a family where money was never a problem.
As such, I’m sure she had more than her fair share of interested men during her single days and even after she married my grandfather, who’d also come from a good deal of money.
He passed away a little more than a decade into their marriage, and I can only imagine how many men have fought and clawed their way over each other in an attempt at getting close to her.
Something tells me she hasn’t turned all of them away either. And why should she?
“Aren’t you the one who always reminds me that you’d rather shoot yourself in the head than ever get married again? Yet here you are, trying to put me into a marriage with a guy you spent all of ten seconds with yesterday.”
She puts on a sour face. “That’s different.
I have already been married, and I loved your grandfather very much—even if we never agreed with his insistence on managing my money as if I couldn’t be trusted.
I also had your mother. I had a secure home life.
Lord knows I have enough money of my own.
And I’m certainly past the point of ever having another child by around thirty years. Why would I want to marry a man now?”
“So you’ll have somebody in your life?”
This earns me indulgent laughter.
“Darling, I can have somebody in my life whenever I want. I happen to prefer being able to ask them to go home when I want to be alone, is all.”
Even though she drives me crazy and seems to take pleasure in embarrassing me, I want to be her when I grow up.
“All of that is neither here nor there,” she sighs, waving a hand. “I want you to bring him to my birthday party. You must.”
“Birthday party?”
“Yes, darling! My seventy-fifth! I’ve never understood this obsession with hiding one’s age, to be honest. I’ve lived nearly seventy-five years and think I ought to celebrate, don’t you?”
“I wholeheartedly agree.” I also feel like garbage, having forgotten her birthday was even coming up.
It’s hard, having nobody else in my life to bring up things like this in conversation. I’m sure if Mom were still alive, she’d have reminded me of the upcoming day.
She nods firmly. “It will be here, at the house, and I plan on inviting all of my friends. Naturally, you’d be my most honored guest. I know everyone would love to see you; it’s been too long.”
“That’s true. I haven’t been to one of your big, swanky parties since you turned seventy.”
“Don’t say swanky, dear,” she chides, wrinkling her patrician nose. “It sounds low-class.”
Oh, and complaining that I haven’t slept with Jake yet is so high-class?
I have to bite my tongue a little to keep my thoughts on that to myself. “Sure, I’d love to be here.” I smile and then, “Though I don’t know about Jake.”
“Come now. You have to bring him. I want everyone to see him.”
“He’s not a zoo exhibit, you know.”
“You know very well what I mean. My granddaughter’s gorgeous doctor boyfriend!” She clasps her hand over her heart like her wildest dream has come true.
“He’s not my boyfriend—and he’s a doctor in an ER, which means his schedule might not permit him dropping everything and spending an evening here.”
“The party is two weeks away. I’m sure he can work something out.”
“Spoken like a woman who hasn’t worked a day in her life,” I sigh.
“Oh, you know I do board and committee work,” she reminds me, waving her hand again like this is all nothing more than a lot of silly nonsense. Which, I guess, it sort of is.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I implore. “He’s probably going to look at this as a trap. Like, a family event after knowing me for a few weeks? And the first week doesn’t even count since our first date was yesterday.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She reaches out, shifting my hair over my shoulders with a gentle, loving touch. “You’re my beautiful, brilliant Kathryn. You’ll come up with something to convince him.”
“I wish I had as much faith in myself as you seem to have in me.”
“I wish you did too,” she murmurs with a soft smile moments before Peter announces that lunch is ready.