What I Did for Love (Wynette, Texas #5)(104)

At the next table, Laura toyed with a bite of lobster and surreptitiously pushed up her bra strap. She’d planned to wear a garden-party dress tonight, like so many of the other female guests, but at the last minute, she’d changed her mind. This was a business occasion, and she couldn’t afford to be tugging on a bodice that would inevitably show too much cleavage or worrying about bare arms that weren’t as toned as they should be. Instead, she’d opted for a simple beige business suit, a draped-neck camisole, and pearls—the sort of outfit Mrs. Scofield had worn. Other than her perpetual problem with bra straps, she’d done fairly well keeping herself neat.

Paul’s invitation had been a shock. She’d called to break the news that he’d struck out on his first audition, but that the casting agent wanted to see him about another part. Just as she’d launched into her standard ego-repairing pep talk, he’d cut her off. “I wasn’t right for the part, but the audition was good practice.” And then he’d invited her to the party.

She would have been foolish to refuse. Being seen here tonight would help put a little of the luster back on her professional reputation, as Paul very well knew. But she couldn’t help being wary. Paul’s icy personality had always been the perfect antidote to his good looks and other male assets, but his new vulnerability made it tempting to view him in a more unsettling way.

Fortunately, she understood the perils of female rescue fantasies. She was clear about what she wanted from her life, and she wouldn’t screw that up just because Paul York was both more interesting and complicated than she’d ever imagined. So what if she was sometimes lonely? Her days of letting a man distract her from her real goals were long behind her. Paul was a client, and being seen at this party was good business.

He’d been attentive all evening, a perfect gentleman, but she was too nervous to eat much. While the others at the table were engaged in private conversations, she leaned closer. “Thanks for inviting me. I owe you.”

“You have to admit tonight hasn’t been as awkward as you thought it would be.”

“Only because your daughter is a class act.”

“Quit defending her. She fired you.”

“She needed to fire me. And the two of you haven’t been able to stop smiling at each other all evening, so don’t bother playing the tough guy.”

“We talked. That’s all.” He pointed to the corner of his mouth, indicating she had something on her face. Embarrassed, she snatched up her napkin, but she didn’t get the right spot, and he ended up dabbing at her with his own.

She grabbed her water glass when he was done. “It must have been a great talk.”

“It was. Remind me to tell you about it the next time I’m drunk.”

“I can’t imagine you ever getting drunk. You’re too self-disciplined.”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“When?”

She expected him to brush her off, but he didn’t. “When my wife died. Every night after Georgie fell asleep.”

This was a Paul York she’d only just begun to know. She gazed at him for a long moment. “What was your wife like? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

He set down his fork. “She was amazing. Brilliant. Funny. Sweet. I didn’t deserve her.”

“She must have thought differently, or she wouldn’t have married you.”

He looked slightly taken aback, as if he’d gotten so used to regarding himself as a second-class citizen in his marriage that he couldn’t comprehend it any other way. “She was barely twenty-five when she died,” he said. “A kid.”

She rolled her pearls between her fingers. “And you’re still in love with her.”

“Not in the way you mean.” He toyed with the spun sugar miniature of the Scofield mansion resting above his plate. “I guess the twenty-five-year-old inside me always will be, but that was a long time ago. She lived in her head a lot. I was as likely to find the car keys in the refrigerator as in her purse. She didn’t care anything about her appearance. It drove me crazy. She was always losing buttons or ripping things…”

Gooseflesh crept along the base of her spine. “It’s hard to imagine you with anyone like that. The women you date are all so elegant.”

He shrugged. “Life is messy. I look for order wherever I can find it.”

She pleated her napkin in her lap. “But you haven’t fallen in love with any of them.”

“How do you know? Maybe I fell in love and got rejected.”

“Unlikely. You’re the grand prize in the ex-wives sweepstakes. Stable, intelligent, and great-looking.”

“I was too busy managing Georgie’s career to remarry.”

She heard his leftover self-rebuke. “You did a good job with her for a lot of years,” she said. “I’ve heard the stories. As a kid, Georgie couldn’t resist either a microphone or a pair of dancing shoes. Stop beating yourself up about it.”

“She loved to perform. She’d climb up on tables to dance if I wasn’t watching.” His expression clouded over again. “But still, I should never have pushed her so much. Her mother would have hated that.”

“Hey, it’s easy to criticize when you’re standing on the celestial sidelines watching somebody else do the heavy lifting.”