Glass Houses Page 5

  Phoenix was staring at us with eyes wide and anxious disbelief etched onto his face. I flashed him a grin. “See if you can find The Adventures of Tom Sawyer anywhere. Sounds like it might improve your chances—oh, and take your sister. She deserves a fair chance, don’t you, Z?”

  “You’re really good with them,” Elliot said, once we found ourselves alone, or as alone as we were likely to get in a crowded bookstore. My libido cared nothing for the distinction.

  “They’re good kids.”

  “They are,” Elliot agreed. “Although from what Bridget said, I imagined them more like little terrors. Oh, careful—” He took my arm in his big, broad hand, gently drawing me away from the shelves as another shopper ventured close, absently browsing through the stacks.

  It was one of my biggest pet peeves—to be treated like I was invisible—but any annoyance I might have felt at the shopper’s rudeness dissipated thanks to the warmth of Elliot’s touch. Fantasy was all good and nice, but this was the real thing. It was my undoing and I was lucky it lasted only a fraction of a second.

  A shiver of want went through me at the thought of Elliot straining to reach for me, the leather around his wrists creaking, despite his best efforts. Focus, I told myself. Clearly I had been without for far too long. As soon as Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton got back from their impromptu vacation, I was going clubbing. A good, no-strings-attached lay would set me right.

  Even as I made the pact with myself, my skin prickled warm, every nerve attuned to Elliot’s presence beside me.

  “We didn’t get a chance to finish our conversation last night,” he murmured, his voice dropping an octave.

  “No,” I agreed. “You had to play designated driver.”

  He chuckled. “That was Jana’s job. Perks of being married to a hedonist…”

  I pretended to browse the shelves as his warm laughter washed over me. My damp skin warmed. I still liked the sound of his voice. “Are you?” I asked. “Married, I mean.” The website had only said he lived in Nantucket with three dogs and a cat named Millie. That didn’t mean he was single. In fact, I very much doubted that a man of his good looks would find himself without admirers.

  To my surprise, Elliot shook his head. “I’ve been divorced since the nineties. You didn’t know?”

  Why should I? I hadn’t looked for a ring the last time we’d spoken. I’d been too busy staring for my shoes under his hotel bed. True, at the time, I probably wouldn’t have cared enough to stop, but somehow the knowledge that he hadn’t cheated on his wife with me made me breathe easier.

  “No girlfriend?” I wondered, trying to sound nonchalant and not like I was quizzing a near-stranger about his personal life.

  “No,” Elliot said, so casual that I wondered if he was messing with me just because he could. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he thought I was easy pickings—guys I’d slept with in the past often made the same mistake. “Why? Are you interested in the position?”

  He asked it like we were discussing an internship.

  I gaped. “Um…” My thoughts screeched to a halt. “No?” Last night’s solo fun aside, I’d never been the kind to jump head first into a relationship. Sex was one thing—I knew what I liked and I wasn’t ashamed about seeking out partners with whom to spend a night or two or ten. I didn’t think I was promiscuous as such. Good sex was like fine cuisine—I was thrilled when I found it but I didn’t get blue if I had to make do with Burger King. Or my trusty vibrator, as the case might be.

  Elliot grinned. He was kidding, the jerk.

  I resisted the urge to shove my elbow into his ribcage. “Don’t act shocked,” I quipped. “Takes more than a pretty face to bowl me over.”

  “The bike doesn’t help?”

  “I’ve only seen the helmet. For all I know, the rest is just a figment of your imagination.”

  “Wait until you read my books—”

  “I have.” The confession spilled out before I could stop it. “Well, one book. And I skimmed it.” The last thing I wanted was to have him think I was invested.

  Surprise arched his eyebrows. No wonder, last night I hadn’t known he was a novelist, let alone what he’d written. “When?”

  I shrugged. “Last night. Sleep is for the weak.”

  “Dare I ask…?”

  “I liked Bare Silence. Never knew out of control automatons could be so exciting.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “A little. But what do you expect? I’m speaking with a famous writer.”

  Elliot shook his head, putting up his hands in surrender. “I give up,” he said, grinning. “I thought the planets might have aligned when I saw you last night—and again just now, but…”

  “What?” I asked, turning to face him. “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind so soon. I like the idea that your sex life’s somehow driven by cosmic phenomena. I’m betting that’s the plot of your new novel.” Okay, so maybe I was still a little sour about the past. I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t some smitten undergrad anymore and the idea that he was some romantic, sensitive soul did nothing for me.

  I could take the bad boy poet, though. That was more up my alley.

  I caught Elliot stealing a glance at my cleavage and clucked my tongue in mock disapproval. It was only mock disapproval. My earlier anxiety quickly fell by the wayside as I realized that my longing was shared.

  “Sorry,” he apologized.

  I remembered this, too—his trepidation as I tightened the belt, the bobbing of his throat as he swallowed. I think he liked me more when I took charge than when we were drinking in the hotel bar.

  I shook my head. “I don’t mind you looking.” Who was this plucky vixen and what had she done with the flustered, sweaty-palmed version of me that I knew so well? “I didn’t mind you looking the last time,” I pointed out huskily. “Professor. That’s not why we lost touch.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “It’s not?”

  “Nope…” I leaned in, my voice barely louder than a whisper. I hadn’t changed my phone number ever since I’d gotten a cell phone. It didn’t take much for me to recite the digits back to him, letting each consonant become a purring note against the shell of his ear.

  When I pulled back, I noticed that Elliot’s eyes were dark with want. He swayed a little, as if meaning to follow my lead, then righted himself. “About that—”

  “The rain stopped!” Phoenix announced at the top of his voice. His nose was practically plastered to the glass door. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him so eager to go outside.

  And for once, I wasn’t.

  I let whatever yearning I might have felt evaporate into thin air, replaced by my more usual forbearance. Duty called. I offered Elliot a thin smile. “Rain’s stopped.” We could go our separate ways again—me back to work and him—I didn’t know if he was staying in town or going back to Nantucket. My Internet stalking skills were leaving much to be desired.

  “Wait, Miriam—” Elliot caught my hand. “Can I call you sometime?” He was disarming when he smiled. I couldn’t resist.

  “Sure.” I didn’t expect him to do it. Two years ago, I’d been naïve and excited about the prospect of exploring my kinky side with a man who wasn’t afraid to let me have my way with him. I remembered lying awake after I got home that night and conjuring all sorts of scenarios in my head, each one more daring than the last.

  But in the end, Elliot hadn’t called and I was pretty sure he had lost my number since then. My teasing, flirtatious comeback had been nearly twenty-eight months in the making. I felt no better or worse for delivering it. I’d still moped in my room thinking of Elliot. I still blamed him for opening my eyes to a world of possibilities and disappearing into thin air.

  I hated that I’d spent so much time questioning myself because of him, but that was on me. He hadn’t promised to keep in touch. He owed me nothing.

  The sun was out again by the time I started home with the kids. A collection of Mark Twain’s works purch
ased at Phoenix’s request weighed down the handlebars of Zara’s stroller. I wondered if he’d really bought the cannibalism story that Elliot and I had conjured up or if he was just covering his bases. He was his mother’s son, though, and would never tell me.

  I stomped down any desire to glance back over my shoulder. I doubted that Elliot would be staring longingly at my retreating back. Hollywood was some five hundred miles south and I was no one’s leading lady.

  “Who was that man?” Riley asked out of the blue. Her peep-toe shoes slapped the wet concrete, splashing us both.

  I schooled my features into a mask of indifference. “Elliot McFarland? He’s a friend of your mom and dad.”

  “Duh… But how do you know him?”

  I kept my cool. I had fibbed my way through worse interrogations, mostly in college, for finals I hadn’t studied for. “We met last night, remember?”

  It had been a short dinner for the kids. Once they stopped being relevant to the conversation at hand, they were ignored and eventually dispatched to bed. That didn’t mean they hadn’t been paying attention while they were with us.

  Riley snorted. “Yeah, right…”

  A shiver ran down my spine. I blamed it on the damp tank top and the pneumonia I was likely cultivating in my lungs. “You’ve caught me,” I said, sighing heavily. “You want to know the truth? Here goes… Truth is that once upon a time, Elliot McFarland was my Romeo and I was his Juliet—”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am! We lived a tragic romance until he tore my heart to pieces. It was horrible. I swore I’d never marry, never date another man—never have children. And then your mother offered me a job.” I affected a sniffle for good measure. It had the desired effect. Riley rolled her eyes, scoffing.

  “You’re such a dork.” I watched her pluck her phone out of her knitted bag.

  Disaster averted, I thought, heart still thumping violently. That part of my past wasn’t just private—it was secret for a reason.

  I needed to be more careful next time, talk about the weather and the state of the economy instead of how much I still wanted Elliot.

  In fairness, I hadn’t brought it up—he had.

  The thought surprised me. It was just as well we were stopped by a crosswalk because I didn’t want anyone to see me falter. Was it just another attempt at seduction? Two years ago, he’d had the aura of adulthood and experience, and I’d been drawn to him like a moth to a flame. I’d often wondered what I would feel if I saw him again. I had always assumed the answer to be nothing.

  Did I want Elliot to call? Knowing his track record and my own struggles in juggling relationships and a full-time job didn’t make for a particularly desirable scenario. I hadn’t even kept in touch with my best friend, much less merited an invitation to her wedding. I wasn’t the kind of person Elliot could count on to drop everything and be with him—and wasn’t that what a man in his position would expect from a woman?

  Well, I wasn’t that kind of girl. I didn’t want to be. And yet the closer we got to the Hamiltons’ house on Clay Street, the more I wished my phone would ring with a call from Elliot. It didn’t.

  I should have seen it coming.

  Chapter Four

  I woke up on Monday morning to the incessant buzzing of the alarm clock. It was the same thing every week—I always regretted going to bed too late on Sunday night. I constantly felt like the weekend had passed by too quickly. I dreaded the frenzy of preparation that prefaced driving the kids to school on Monday morning, because it was an uphill battle.

  Before, when I’d been the one getting bullied out of bed and into the shower, I had gone to great lengths to avoid the whole experience. There was, after all, a solid reason why it had taken me five years to finish a three year degree.

  Dread wasn’t enough to keep me down. For one thing, I couldn’t afford it. I staggered out of bed and into my matchbox of a bathroom, showered and used the facilities with record speed. I was lucky I’d gotten away without a sniffle after yesterday’s jog through the rain. My hair had frizzed badly with the humidity, but I didn’t have time to straighten it. I put it up instead and focused on finding clean clothes. Urgency was the name of the game.

  My first stop was Riley. She took the longest getting ready, so I tried to give her a slight advance on her siblings. “Riley? It’s seven o’clock, honey.” I knocked before entering, something I insisted on the kids doing whenever they opened any closed door. A little courtesy went a long way toward avoiding awkward run-ins.

  Riley was still in bed, covers drawn up to her chin. She peeked an eye open at me and groaned into the pillow.

  “Morning,” I said, trying to inject cheer into my voice. “Time to get up and seize the day!”

  “I hate you,” Riley said.

  I didn’t take it personally. That was her usual greeting.

  “No, you don’t,” I scoffed. “Hurry down, I think I heard Paolo and if he’s making pancakes, it’s every man for himself.”

  Paolo was the family’s housekeeper—Honduras-born, naturalized American, blonder than many Scandinavians I’d met. He had been working for the Hamiltons for a good few years and was very protective of the family. When I’d first started as the kids’ nanny, he’d been very frosty and distant. I think he was waiting for me to quit within a week, exasperated with Mrs. Hamilton’s demands on my time or the kids themselves. Fat chance. I didn’t exactly have head hunters queuing outside my door to give me a chance, and unpaid internships didn’t help pay my rent. Paolo and I got along a little better now that it seemed like I was here to stay. Truth be told, he was just about the closest thing I had to a friend these days.

  I tried not to think about Penny as I gave Phoenix his wakeup call—a courtesy he received with a near-perfect replica of his sister’s sunny retort.

  Paolo smiled when I trooped down the stairs with Zara in my arms. “Hola, Miriam.”

  “Hola.” About a week after I’d started working for Mrs. Hamilton, I’d asked Paolo to speak to me in his native tongue. I had grown up hearing Spanish more often than I did English, so that by the time I hit first grade, my mother tongue was a weird pidgin mix of Farsi, Spanish and English. It threw my teacher for a loop. Other kids might’ve teased me if I hadn’t been so quick with my fists. “How was your weekend?” I asked Paolo as I set Zara down at the table. She was easy to get ready compared to her siblings—she did as she was told.

  Paolo flipped a pancake out of the skillet. “The wife still complains about her back aching, but we’ve been to the hospital and they’re saying it is—what’s the word? Psychosomatic?” He shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell her.”

  “Maybe she needs a specialist,” I suggested. I pried the orange juice out of the fridge, filled three glasses then started portioning the kids’ pills into three separate mounds. Mrs. Hamilton insisted that I give them vitamins every morning. Six different types of vitamin. I had checked the labels via Google when I’d first started and they seemed harmless, but I wasn’t a pharmacist. I swallowed back my trepidation as I served Zara her juice.

  She didn’t like the vitamins, but she took them anyway.

  “Easy does it, honey. Small sips, yeah?” I stroked her head when she’d finished. She burped.

  There wasn’t a lot of movement upstairs, so I poked my head out of the kitchen door and called up to Phoenix and Riley. “Hurry up, you two. Don’t want to be late.” I didn’t want them to be late. They didn’t seem to care.

  Paolo flashed me a sympathetic smile and passed me a mug of hot steaming coffee.

  “You’re a kind man,” I gushed.

  “You didn’t get much sleep, did you? Zara keep you up again?” I knew what he meant. Sometimes Zara had nightmares that wouldn’t give her peace. Other times, she wet the bed. I was used to both and could usually nap in the armchair in her room if it came to that.

  But last night I’d stayed up for reasons to do with me, myself and I, and my own stupid infatuation with a man who would a
lways let me down. I shook my head. “You missed party night,” I told Paolo, arching my eyebrows. “They had guests on Saturday. Mr. Hamilton cooked.”

  “No…” The horror on Paolo’s face might have been comical if I hadn’t spent Sunday trying to get through the mountain of dishes left in the wake of the Hamiltons’ latest bash.

  “We Swiffered,” I pointed out, trying to sweeten the pill. “It doesn’t look that bad, does it?” Glancing around, I could still see some sticky patches on the kitchen island, possibly from the yolks that had congealed on the granite.

  Paolo slapped the pancakes onto a plate, shaking his head in dismay. “Did I tell you I once found cheese behind the fridge?” He had. I decided not to say as much. He needed to vent more than I needed to be a smartass.

  “I think you’re safe this time,” I muttered into my coffee, sticking to Spanish. “From what I saw, Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton were wearing most of the ingredients…” Gossip was half of how we’d first found common ground, Paolo and I. The rest was good old-fashioned shared enemies. He might have been loyal to the Hamiltons, but he was an opinionated guy and he didn’t appreciate Mrs. Hamilton’s stiff upper lip any more than I did.

  “Well,” he drawled. “Couples counseling must be going well.”

  I’d had no idea they were seeing a shrink and there was no time to grill Paolo for answers. Behind me, Riley and Phoenix finally trudged into the kitchen, dragging their feet. Maybe I’d built up the pancakes too much, because neither of them seemed impressed as they bathed their breakfast in organic maple syrup.

  Desperate times, desperate measures. The silence was making me sleepy. “So am I driving you to your violin lesson tonight,” I asked Riley, “or do you want to take the bus?”

  She glanced up, surprised. I could see her trying to puzzle out the catch. Her mother didn’t like her taking the bus—I suppose for fear that mingling with the little people would lead to her catching some disease. I knew that Riley did it anyway—in secret, without telling me—when she told me she would be getting a ride from one of her friends. The few times I’d waited for her on the sidewalk, I had noticed that there was no carpooling involved.