26. The Unnatural Interlude
26
THE UNNATURAL INTERLUDE
ARCHER
I’d never given enough credit to the appeal of putting a woman in her underwear.
O’Connor sat across from me at the restaurant, looking all prim and proper and modest. The fact that I knew she was wearing satin and lace beneath her conservative clothes was driving me wild.
I knew what she wore, and no other man did. I was the only one. That knowledge was mine.
Huh. I was feeling possessive.
That was new.
“You don’t like the pizza?” I asked her. She was cutting off wafer-thin slices to nibble on. It would take months and the intervention of a whole family of mice to get through her quarter-of-a-small pie.
“It’s good,” she said. “There’s just so much of it, you know?” She looked up and made a face at me. “You’re one to talk. You’ve taken about two bites. ”
“Yeah, but they were big, manly bites.” I gave her a smirk and then was forced to confess. “I regretted them immediately. Both bites are sitting right here in my belly, refusing to be digested.”
Her laughter brought her out of her hunch over her plate. “I know, right? It’s so much bread.”
“And so much cheese.”
“We’re pathetic.”
“Well, we tried.” I gestured for the waitress, who was keeping an eye on me, of course, as she went to her other tables. “Can we get two green salads? Do you have just oil and vinegar?”
“We’re famous for our blue cheese dressing,” the waitress said hopefully.
I smoldered at her, and she giggled nervously. “Just the oil and vinegar, thanks.”
O’Connor shook her head as the waitress left. “You don’t even know you’re doing it, do you?”
“What, charm them? Oh, I know. I didn’t go too hard on her.” O’Connor was trying to hide her grin, which made me happy. “If you told the manager who you were, he’d comp you the pizza, wouldn’t he?”
“Probably. But I wouldn’t.”
“Because?”
“Because . . .” She pushed her plate away from her as she thought about her answer. “Because I don’t do food. And I really don’t do deep-dish pizza. So, if I’m not willing to try twenty or thirty different pies”—we both groaned at the thought—“then I couldn’t judge well enough to say which one was good and which one was sublime. Besides, I guarantee this place doesn’t serve the best pizza.”
“Huh?” I looked around. I’d taken her to a bad pizza joint?
“No offense. This place is fine. But there’s no way the best deep-dish pizza in Chicago is here in the high-rent district, you know? It’s in some backwater neighborhood. It’s from a hole in the wall that’s had several run-ins with the health department, but there’s no denying their pizza ovens have achieved that mysterious balance of perfection. Only locals know about it, and they’re not talking. So, the idea of someone like me saying this is the best deep-dish pizza? It’s not worth selling my good reputation.”
Her face flowed from emotion to emotion, mesmerizing to watch. She was lovely, and not afraid of her own intelligence. “That’s admirable,” I said. “So, you can’t be bought for the price of a pizza, huh?”
I meant it as a compliment, a socially smooth witticism. It should have gone over easily. Instead, she winced and changed the subject. “Who would you say your best friend is?” she asked. “Is it Mal? Or Ian?”
My mom had a cat when I was growing up. You could dance your fingers under the bedspread and Mr. Frisky would eventually leap on the tented cloth, but I knew his heart wasn’t in it. I felt like Mr. Frisky, wondering if I was going to let O’Connor distract me. Was it worth it to go after a hand under the bedspread when what I was longing for was a fat, juicy mouse running along the floorboards?
“I’ve known Ian longer,” I said slowly, “but I’d guess they’re both my best friends. Why? Who’s your best friend?”
She waved me off. “I’m boring. Is it just the music that unites you?”
“ Just the music?” Our salads arrived, and we dressed them. What a relief—something to eat that wouldn’t clog my every artery. “Music is enough. What’s boring about your best friend?”
She shrugged, working the crisp crunch of the leaves in her gorgeous mouth. “I don’t have a best friend. That’s why it’s boring. ”
I put my fork down. “What’s that mean? How can you not have a best friend?”
A wash of color broke over her cheekbones. “Well, I’m an adult. Lots of adults don’t have best friends. You guys have been friends since school, and I don’t keep track of anyone from my youth.”
“Come on. No one?”
“Tell me about your family. I’m going to meet them in a few weeks, remember?”
“Look, O’Connor, give up. It’s my turn to be interested. Who are your friends?”
She took a sip of her Diet Coke and then gestured, the movement somehow encompassing emptiness. “I’m a social media influencer. That means everyone I meet has an opinion about what I should be covering. Eventually, what I post about will come in conflict with what any potential friends think.” She shrugged, attempting to look cooler than the fire now blazing on her cheeks. “It happens. And it’s fine.”
I thought about it. “Let’s say you have to move a sofa. Who do you call?”
She laughed. “Moving company?”
“Um, you’re having a poker party. Who’s at the table?”
“Shut up. Tell me about your family.”
“Tell me about your family. Would you invite any of them to play poker?”
“Well, they’re all in Connecticut, so no.”
“Who’s all? Brothers and sisters? Mom and Dad?”
“Aren’t you Mr. Chatty all of a sudden.”
I matched her “emptiness” gesture and waited. She sighed.
“My mother died when I was two. Drunk-driving accident. Not her fault. My father remarried when I was five. My stepmother is fine. I have no problems with her.”
An idiot would know she was lying about that—probably lying to herself. “Brothers and sisters? ”
“I have a half brother. Teddy. He’s six years younger than me.”
“And he’s . . .?”
“What?”
“What’s Teddy like? Would you invite him to poker?”
She shrugged, uneasy. “Teddy likes video games. At least, he did. I haven’t talked to them in . . . a while.”
“How long?”
“Tell me about your family. Please?”
Her eyes were large and wounded. Every woman, it was said, had daddy issues. O’Connor apparently had family issues. “What do you want to know?”
“Who am I going to meet when I go to Long Island?”
“I imagine you’re going to meet the entire clan.”
“There are lots of Armstrongs?”
“And Sharps and Winslows and Harpers and Lithgows. Mom and Dad are both from big families and they both grew up on the island, so yeah. We’re all local. Get ready for some adorable baby pictures and stories of how cute I was as a toddler.”
“Sounds excellent. Names and identifying occupations, please.”
I grinned. “You don’t want to take notes?”
“I have a good memory. Spill it.”
Okay. She no longer looked unhappy, so I was willing. “Dad is Steve Armstrong. He’s an accountant. My mom, Ellie, teaches seventh grade and is counting the days until she can retire.”
“How long?”
“Two years. Or until Aftermath makes it big enough for me to replace her salary.”
She angled her head in thought. “You’d do that?”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Of course. Who wouldn’t?”
She raised her own in thought and didn’t reply, which spoke loudly enough. “Who else? ”
“My oldest sister, Paulette. She and her husband, Evan, just had their first baby about a year ago. Want to see a photo? Look.” I pulled out my phone and made her look at chubby, beautiful Denny. “For a long time, all he could do was drool and poop, but he’s going to be one in December, and he’s really making strides in the witty conversation department.”
“Another adorable toddler in the Armstrong family. Probably makes you a little jealous, huh?”
I laughed and then realized she was serious. “You wait until you meet this little guy. You’ll become his helpless slave too. He’s got a superpower.”
“I don’t doubt it.” She had no idea, but she’d get it. Once she held that wiggling little body, she’d understand. “So, that’s your immediate family?”
“God, don’t forget Tina. She’d never let you forget it. She sells Maybachs to Manhattan billionaires. Tina is very, very cool. Hang on, let me find her picture.”
O’Connor was very patient as I remembered other, better photos to show her, and she never glazed over when I told her about Dad’s two brothers and one sister and their families, and Mom’s two sisters and their families, plus Gran and Pop-Pop.
How lonely she must be , I thought, to not have any photos in her phone that she was longing to share .
“We’ll adopt you into the Armstrong family,” I said as I finally put my phone away. “You can be one of us.”
Her smile was entirely too wistful. “Eight first cousins. When you all get together, it must be so . . . I don’t know, noisy?”
“Hell yes. Only one other male, too, although lots of my cousins are married now, so the male-to-female balance is a little evener than it was when I was, like, pretty much the lone boy. So yeah, it’s noisy. Plus, we make Mal’s mom come to any gatherings, and all the O’Rourkes—that’s Ian’s family. And now Nicky will come. Cast of thousands. You going to be able to keep up? ”
“And all of them tell you you’re the second coming of Abraham Lincoln or something.”
“Teddy Roosevelt,” I corrected, giving her the teeth. “Bully. Yeah, they love me. Who wouldn’t?”
“Who, indeed.”
I flagged down our starstruck waitress for the check and helped O’Connor into her coat. We ducked back into the blasting cold of nighttime Chicago in November and hustled the block and a half to our hotel. “So,” I shouted over the wind, “what would you have rather spent those calories on? If you hadn’t eaten a cannonball’s worth of pizza?”
“I’m not sure.” She tucked her hand into my elbow, and we leaned together for warmth. “Maybe a glass of wine?”
“Didn’t those maids say we had champagne?”
“But . . . champagne and pizza?”
“We could live recklessly for once. Be mad, wild fools.”
“Archer Armstrong, you are an enabler.”
“You get the flutes. I’ll pop that cork, baby.”
Her laughter brightened the night. We found Charlotte holding court behind the front desk and retrieved our girl before heading up to the cloud-level palace.
I fed my dog and put her bowl of water in the vast bathroom under the theory that the tiled floor would best handle the mouthfuls of water she carried with her after every drink, ensuring that her bowl was in a perpetually soggy swamp.
Bonnie Raitt poured out of the excellent speakers in the ceiling. Ian would know what the song was. O’Connor had found a whole-house music system, and she’d found something low and sultry.
How encouraging.
Charlotte taken care of, I went in search of my redhead. And her lavender lingerie.
O’Connor had already found the champagne. I found her in the dining room again, sitting barefoot on one of those armless, dark velvet chairs, turned away from the table. “I thought,” she said, “that you might like to sit here while I did a little striptease.”
I grinned. Amazing I didn’t faint from the blood that rushed into my cock. “I believe for this fantasy to work, I need to strip for you first. Right?”
“Excellent plot advancement. Please show me your moves.”