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bought clams to store in the freezer, and a Fry Daddy in which to attempt to
concoct their magic recipe. When I was done with the effort, I carried a
trayful into the living room.
"Not even close." Jake laughed. "Tell the girls they've got nothing to worry
about. Must have something to do with their shack and its ambience."
The main course was the easiest. Chris and Betsy Larsen kept one of the family
fish markets open in town all year long. They had boiled two three-pound
lobsters for me in the afternoon, and the caretaker had brought them up to the
house. I reheated them in the oven, melted some butter, and we feasted for an
hour on the meaty tails and claws.
Jake added logs to the fire, and I stretched out on the living room floor
while he opened a bottle of champagne. "Merry Christmas, Alexandra," he said,
joining me in front of the hearth and filling a flute for each of us. I rested
my head against his knee and wished him the same. We clinked our glasses
together and I watched the bubbles rise and burst before I began to sip.
"Where are you?"
"Just thinking."
"About what?"
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I rolled onto my back, a pillow from the sofa beneath my head, and stared into
the flames. "How much my life has changed this year. What a sense of stability
you've given me, in the middle of all the turbulence I see on the professional
side every day."
"Can't you look me in the eye when you tell me these things?"
I slowly turned my head to glance at Jake, smiling. "I wasn't planning on
saying them. I'm not sure that I've even stopped to reflect on them before
now. I just know how very differently I feel about everything I do and think.
If I hadn't been able to talk to you when Mercer was shot, I can't imagine
what "
"You don't let people in easily." He was stroking my hair and placing tender
kisses on my nose and forehead. "You've got to be more trusting."
"The problem is that at the beginning I trust everyone. That's what's so damn
disappointing. It seems as though every time I open the door to something new,
the odds are twice as likely that it will slam shut on my fingers."
"Let's try to come up with solutions. For example, darling, think about this.
Here's two of us, each with a ridiculously over-priced, way too large for one
person who's hardly ever home, Manhattan apartment. Same general
neighborhood same proximity to your favorite restaurants, delis, liquor store,
and Grace's Marketplace. Critical factors in a relationship."
I had been drinking enough to know that whatever Jake said, I wasn't going to
have the appropriate answer. I could feel my pulse quickening and knew the
silken pajama top couldn't muffle the sound of my pounding heartbeat. I
shifted back to watch the flames dance in the fireplace.
"I think this morning's broken window and bumbling scaffolders were an omen,
Alex. Why don't you give up that place and move in with me? I'm not even in
town enough to get in your way very often." Jake had rested his glass on the
floor and was massaging my neck. "Imagine that every single night could be
like this one."
He couldn't see the tears that had welled up in my eyes. My head was swimming
with conflicted feelings. It had been so long since the heartbreak of my
fiancé s death, and I had struggled for years to keep free of emotional
attachments, fearing that I would lose whomever I let get close to me. For the
first time, I had someone to come home to who listened to me talk about my
passion for my work, the failures when I couldn't solve a victim's case and
the triumphs when justice was actually achieved. Jake never carped when
something kept me late at the office or when the phone rang in the middle of
the night.
"I know what you're thinking now. You can't make this kind of decision
yourself, without consulting your friends. This move will take a summit
meeting. All the major powers have to be assembled. No problem, darling. I've
covered summits for years. The Middle East, the former Soviet Union, the
Pacific Rim, Camp David. How difficult can it be to move one
five-foot-ten-inch, hundred-and-fifteen-pound prosecutor less than ten city
blocks? Even a stubborn one? We'll bring Joan in from Washington and Nina from
Los Angeles. We'll import Susan and Michael. Louise and Henry, are they on the
island for the holiday? With Duane?"
I nodded my head, licking the tear that had dripped to the corner of my mouth
and smiling despite myself as he ticked off the names of my friends.
"Well, I'll start with them at the crack of dawn. Take a doe sleigh up Herring
Creek Road to get to them through the snow, if you insist. If I can't win you
over myself, then I'll bring in all the allies I need to persuade you that
it's the only sensible thing to do. Get Esther on the line. Get me Lesley
Latham. Where are Ann and Vernon?"
I wanted to speak but knew that I would break the spell of the moment. Nothing
Jake could say would convince me to move in with anyone, without being
married. And he wasn't any closer to thinking about that permanent kind of
commitment than I was. I knew him well enough to know that. I cherished my
freedom and my independence. As much as I loved being with him and around him,
it had only been half a year since we met, and we both had such frenetic
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lifestyles that it was impossible to know whether we could sustain the
intensity of our relationship.
Jake put on his best anchorman's voice. "News flash. Ladies and gentlemen,
this bulletin just in to our desk. Exclusive from Liz Smith. We take you live
to Chilmark, on Martha's Vineyard, where former prosecutor Alexandra "
"Former prosecutor?" I rose on one elbow and faced Jake, sure that the tip of
my nose must be red, betraying my tears.
" Cooper has announced that, after a conference with her college roommate and
dearest friend, Nina Baum, and with the encouragement and support of a bevy of
other loyal Cooperites, she is going to vacate apartment number 20A at "
"Can we get back to this 'former' business?"
"I needed to do something to get your attention, didn't I? You seemed
positively spellbound by the flames. How about it, darling? Of course you can
bring your clothes. Yes, all your clothes. I'll get rid of my own, and the
golf clubs and tennis rackets cluttering up the hall closet. You look
bleary-eyed." He paused to kiss my damp eyelids. "I swear I'll make plenty of
room for all the boxes of Stuart Weitzman shoes. What am I forgetting?"
"You're forgetting that anything I say at this glorious moment my brain soaked
in scotch and wine, topped off with a touch of champers in the state of
Massachusetts, lying off the coast of North America somewhere in the middle of
the Atlantic Ocean, is not binding on me when we get back into the
jurisdiction of New York. So even were I to acquiesce to your generous offer "
"You can say anything except the word 'no.' You can tell me you're flattered, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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