Sundays at Tiffany's - James Patterson [44]
After my heart-pounding date with Michael (it was so a date), and my weird talk with the mysterious Vivienne, I’d gotten about twenty minutes of sleep. Now it was the next morning, and I was praying that Michael would be waiting in the lobby to walk me to work. God, I wanted to see him again, at least one more time. Please. Please. Please. Let him be downstairs. Don’t let him be gone from my life again.
I considered running down the ten flights.
My Saks Fifth Avenue shopper — Vivienne’s birthday gift to me (and what kind of gift says “you embarrass me” better than a personal shopper?) — had sent over a chic Lagerfeld suit, slacks and jacket in a pale bluish green silk. I thought that I looked okay in it, maybe even better than okay.
Damn it, I looked good! I’d even lost three pounds!
Three whole pounds. That had never happened to me before.
The elevator finally arrived, and as I rode in it I wanted to jump up and down to make it move faster. Jane. Please! Relax, I told myself, and tried to listen to my own advice.
When the elevator finally arrived at the lobby, I put a smile on my face, but my heart was racing off the charts. The doors opened. And then . . .
Only the morning doorman, Hector, was standing there.
“Good morning, Miss Jane,” he said.
“Good morning, Hector. How are you?” I’m devastated myself.
No Michael in the lobby!
No Michael lurking outside the front door.
No Michael anywhere that I could see.
“May I get you a taxi?” asked Hector.
I stalled for time.
“I’m not sure. I may walk.”
“Yes, of course. Beautiful day for it.”
“Yes, it is lovely.”
Maybe Michael was late. Fat chance. Michael was never late. Not once when I was a kid.
“I guess I will need a cab,” I finally said. As I waited under the building’s canopy, I looked up and down the street in the hope that Michael’s face would suddenly appear in the sea of businesspeople and tourists and schoolchildren marching along Park Avenue.
But Michael wasn’t anywhere in the crowd.
Had he gone out of my life again? If so, I would kill him if it took me till the end of my days. Or at least put a collar on him, with a little bell.
I mean, why had he bothered to come back in the first place?
Fifty-one
AS I WALKED into the reception area of ViMar Productions, I was feeling a little shaky, but strangely balanced, about myself, about who I was, and about where I ought to be going with my life. Was that the reason Michael had come back, because my confidence needed a little touch-up or, to be more honest, an overhaul? Was that what Vivienne was trying to say last night?
I saw Elsie waving from behind the reception desk.
“In your office,” she said. “It’s a surprise.”
Oh yes, and I was so in the mood for something unexpected. I don’t like surprises even on good days, and today it was about to make me run screaming down the hall. When I opened the door I was certainly startled, but not in a good way. It was Hugh. And he was seated at my desk, going through my mail.
“Now that you’ve done the snail mail, why don’t you check my BlackBerry?” I said, and threw it on the desk.
He leaped to his feet. “Jane,” he said, walking toward me with his arms spread wide. He was wearing faded jeans, black Prada boots, the watch I’d given him last Christmas, and a pricey denim shirt distressed to look as if it cost ten dollars or less, though it probably went for a couple hundred.
Ignoring my look of dismay and my rigid stiffness, he hugged me and moved in for a kiss. Grimacing, I turned my head so his lips brushed against my cheek.
“I’m not mad at you anymore,” he said.
“Wow. Wish I could say the same. Why don’t you please go now.”
“I see you made it back safely from Brooklyn.”
He waited for my reaction to his little joke, which, sadly for him, was a narrowed-eye look. I removed his hand from the small of my back, walked to my desk, and sat down. “Hugh, why are you here?”
“I’m here because you’re my best girl. C’mon, Jane. Give me a break.”
Unlikely. It wasn