Part 16 (1/2)
She had put on weight since the summer--all that inactivity--but her muscles were still toned and firm and the dress flattered her. It wasn't quite right for a job interview--a bit too c.o.c.ktail party--but it was better than a business suit or a pair of jeans and a sweater, which were her other choices.
Ariel took a deep breath and grabbed the door's wrought-iron handle. It was cold to the touch. She pulled the door open and stepped inside.
No one manned the maitre d' station or the front bar. Some people wearing jeans and turtlenecks laughed heartily at a table in the corner. A man, looking sad and depressed, sipped from a tiny gla.s.s cup as he made large slashes across a yellow legal pad on the table in front of him.
Her heart was beating hard. Somehow she had thought Andrew Vari would appear before her, his pugnacious face drawn up in a frown, ordering her to leave. Once or twice she had imagined the elegant Alex Blackstone--a man she had only seen in photographs--would stalk up to her and order her off the premises.
But she hadn't expected to be ignored. She glanced over her shoulder at the gla.s.s door. Rain had started to fall, light rain, something Oregonians called a shower. Oregonians had a hundred names for rain, she'd learned, much like Eskimos had for snow.
She was about to turn away when a woman came down a curving set of stairs. The woman was a pet.i.te blonde who wore a bright red business suit. She seemed to be in her mid-thirties and had the kind of easy confidence that always made Ariel nervous.
Ariel couldn't tell if the woman was a customer or part of the staff. She was smiling at Ariel, though, and Ariel couldn't move away.
”Hasn't anyone helped you?” the woman asked, as if someone had committed a crime.
Ariel smiled. ”Not yet.”
The woman walked to the maitre d's desk. It was almost as tall as she was. ”Table for how many?”
”None,” Ariel said. ”I came about the job.”
The woman smiled. The smile made her seem very young, almost as if she were a teenager trapped in an adult body. ”I'll get my husband, then. It'll be just a moment. Go ahead. Make yourself at home.”
She turned away and headed toward the back.
Ariel didn't move. The woman had to be Nora Barr, Blackstone's lawyer-wife who Ariel had read about on so many different websites. One of Portland's most important attorneys, acting as hostess in her husband's restaurant. How strange was that?
She probably wasn't really the hostess. Just making sure everything ran smoothly.
Ariel glanced at her van again. She hadn't given her name. She could still retreat. Drive away, pretend she hadn't been here.
Take Andrew Vari's hints and never see Darius again.
She bit her lower lip, unwilling to make that choice. Instead she walked to the nearest bar stool and leaned against it, waiting to meet the famous Blackstone.
Darius was peering through the crack in the swinging doors. Ariel was standing in the restaurant, wearing a dress that made her look radiant. The green accented her eyes, made her skin into a lovely shade of ivory, and highlighted her auburn hair. She no longer looked like she needed a good meal, and the extra weight emphasized curves he hadn't noticed before.
She was even prettier than he remembered.
Beautiful, actually. Even more beautiful than he remembered.
He groaned as Nora spoke to her.
'Go away', he thought--he wished--he prayed. 'Please go away.'
The Fates weren't going to be that kind to him. They were going to make him find that woman a soul mate.
Dammit.
”Okay,” Blackstone said from behind him. ”You have gotten stranger by the minute. What's going on out there?”
Darius jumped and let the door close. He tried for nonchalance as he wandered back to his chair by the table. ”Nothing.”
”Nothing? Nothing has you spying like a little boy who's afraid his mom will discover that he was the one who put the frog down his sister's dress?”
”I'm not real fond of little boy a.n.a.logies,” Darius said, resisting the urge to go back to the door.
”Well,” Blackstone said, ”it was the first one that came to mind. From the back, you could have been posing for Norman Rockwell's version of it.”
”Then when I turned around, I'd be Andy Warhol's parody of it.”
Blackstone grinned. He set down his knife and walked to the swinging door, peering through the diamond panes at his eye-level.
Darius held his breath. He didn't want Blackstone to see her. The reaction was partly defensive--he didn't want Blackstone to know what was bothering him so--and partly reflexive--in the past, women flocked to Blackstone, and Darius didn't want to see Ariel do the same thing.
Blackstone turned toward him, eyebrows raised. ”A woman? You're fl.u.s.tered by a woman? I thought you always fl.u.s.tered them.”
Darius shrugged. ”I'm not fl.u.s.tered.”
Blackstone let out a low whistle. ”Then I don't want to be around you when you are fl.u.s.tered.”
At that moment, the door swung open and hit him in the stomach. He let out an 'oof'! and stepped back.
His wife Nora came in and grinned at him. ”I saw you spying on me.”
”Actually,” he said, apparently unhurt, ”I was spying for Sancho.”
She looked at Darius. ”You know that woman?”
”What woman?”
”The one who has you fl.u.s.tered.” Blackstone grinned.
”Has 'you' fl.u.s.tered?” Nora said. ”That's not possible.”
”That's right,” Darius said, hoping Nora wouldn't press him further. He had promised her years ago that he would never lie to her. ”Not possible. I have none of the softer emotions, and therefore I have none of the embarra.s.sment emotions.”
”Embarra.s.sment emotions?” Blackstone said. ”Is that what this is about? She embarra.s.ses you somehow?”
”No,” Darius said, feeling as if he were digging himself into a hole he didn't completely see, ”fl.u.s.tering is an embarra.s.sment emotion. One, I hasten to add, that 'I'm' not having.”
Nora's grin grew. She obviously thought he protested too much. And he probably was. ”Well, one of you should have some kind of reaction. She's here for the job.”
”Really?” Blackstone's voice rose. ”That's your province, my friend. She'd make a pretty hostess.”
Ariel would. But then he'd have to watch her every day, and he'd know when that one man walked through the door, the one she was going to fall in love with.
”Tell her the job's been filled,” Darius said to Nora.