Envy(15)

“You had affairs, too, Maris.”

“Two. You had that many a week, and you had a ten-year head start.”

He grinned at her exaggeration. “I’m not even going to honor that with a comment. The point is that I married you.”

“Sacrificing all that fun.”

Laughing, he patted the spot beside him on the bed. “Why don’t you stop this nonsense, retract the talons, and simply forgive me? You know you want to.”

Her eyes narrowed with feigned malevolence. “Don’t push it.”

“Maris?”

Reluctantly she moved toward him. When she was still a distance away, he reached out far enough to take her hand and draw her down beside him on the bed. He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and kissed her cheek. She put up token resistance, but not for long.

When their first long kiss ended, she whispered, “I hankered for this all day yesterday.”

“All you had to do was ask.”

“I did.”

“So you did,” he said with a regretful sigh. “Let me make it up to you.”

“Better late than never.”

“Didn’t you say something earlier about dispensing with these jammies?”

Moments later they were both down to their skin. Nibbling her neck, he asked, “Who called?”

“Hmm?”

“The telephone call that woke us up. Who was it?”

“That can wait.” Seizing the initiative, she guided his hand down her belly to the notch of her thighs. “If you want to talk now, Noah, talk dirty.”





Chapter 4


Daniel Matherly laid aside the manuscript pages and thoughtfully pinched his lower lip between his thumb and fingers.

“What do you think?” Maris asked. “Is it my imagination or is it good?”

Taking advantage of the mild morning, they were having breakfast on the patio of Daniel’s Upper East Side townhouse. Terra-cotta pots of blooming flowers provided patches of color within the brick enclosure. A sycamore tree shaded the area.

While Daniel was reading the Envy prologue, Maris had helped Maxine put together their meal. Maxine, the Matherlys’ housekeeper, had been practically a member of the family a full decade before Maris was born.

This morning she was her cantankerous self, protesting Maris’s presence in her kitchen and criticizing the way she squeezed the fresh orange juice. In truth, the woman loved her like a daughter and had acted as a surrogate since the death of Maris’s mother when she was still in grade school. Maris took the housekeeper’s bossiness for what it was—an expression of her affection.

Maris and Daniel had eaten their egg-white omelets, grilled tomatoes, and whole-wheat toast in silence while he finished reading the prologue. “Thank you, Maxine,” he said now when she came out to clear away their dishes and pour refills of coffee. “And yes, dear,” he said to Maris, “it’s good.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

She was pleased with his validation of her opinion, but she also valued his. Her father was perhaps the only person in the world who had read and reread more books than she. If they disagreed on a book, allowances were made for their individual tastes, but both could distinguish good writing from bad.

“New writer?”

“I don’t know.”

He reacted with surprise. “You don’t know?”

“This wasn’t a typical submission by any stretch.” She explained how she had come to read the prologue and what little she had learned about the elusive author. She ended by recounting her predawn telephone conversation with him.

When she finished, she asked crossly, “Who goes strictly by initials? It’s juvenile and just plain weird. Like The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.”

Daniel chuckled as he stirred cream substitute into his last permitted cup of coffee for the day. “I think it adds a dash of mystery and romance.”

She scoffed at that. “He’s a pain in the butt.”

“No doubt. Contrariness falls under the character description of a good writer. Or a bad one, for that matter.”

As he contemplated the enigmatic author, Maris studied her father. When did he get so old? she thought with alarm. His hair had been white almost for as long as she could remember, but it had only begun to thin. Her mother, Rosemary, had been the widowed Daniel’s second wife and fifteen years his junior. By the time Maris was born, he was well into middle age.

But he’d remained physically active. He watched his diet, grudgingly but conscientiously. He’d quit smoking cigarettes years ago, although he refused to surrender his pipe. Because he had borne the responsibility of rearing her as a single parent, he had wisely slowed down the aging process as much as it was possible to do.

Only recently had the years seemed to catch up with him. To avoid aggravating an arthritic hip, he sometimes used a cane for additional support. He complained that it made him look decrepit. That was too strong a word, but secretly Maris agreed that the cane detracted from the robust bearing always associated with him. The liver spots on his hands had increased in number and grown darker. His reflexes seemed not to be as quick as even a few months ago.

But his eyes were as bright and cogent as ever when he turned to her and asked, “I wonder what all that was about?”