“Ah, Jo,” her grandmother said, sighing and shaking her head. “You always have been far too influenced by your emotions. He still would be a good, logical choice for a husband whether you truly care for him or not.”
Jo bit her lip to stop her own reply. She knew her grandmother well enough to know that there was nothing she could say to convince her otherwise.
“Then again,” Eleanor added, “your Danny is a nice boy too. From what I hear, he’s turning in an impressive appearance with the powers that be at
Scene It
.”
“I’m sure he is,” Jo replied, simultaneously glad that her grandmother approved but irritated that she was keeping tabs.
They reached Times Square, and the driver pulled through the drop-off lane of the Marriott and came to a stop. A hotel doorman opened the door, and as Jo gathered her purse and tote bag, her grandmother reiterated her invitation to come and stay at her house, insisting that her door was open in case Jo changed her mind.
“Thanks, Gran. That means a lot,” Jo said, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. The woman, in turn, flinched from the kiss and then dismissed Jo with the wave of her hand.
“Love you,” Jo said softly.
“Very well,” her grandmother replied. “Keep us posted on the foot, won’t you?”
Feeling oddly rejected, Jo stood and watched as the limo pulled away. Then, walking awkwardly in the new cast, she thanked the doorman and made her way into the vast hotel. It was times like this that Jo most missed her other grandmother, who had passed away a little over a year ago. Jo’s Grandmother Tulip had been everything that Grandmother Bosworth was not: warm, nurturing, and incredibly kind. Truly, if not for her paternal grandparents, Jo might have grown up without any real love at all.
“Except for Danny,” she amended to herself, smiling, as she stepped onto the escalator. Danny had always been there, in Jo’s life and in her heart. Now that they had moved from friendship-love to love-love, it was as though a missing puzzle piece had finally fallen into place. That’s probably why she was now able to face Bradford and wrap up all of those loose ends and unanswered questions. Once Jo talked with him and heard what he had to say, she could finally move forward with her life.
Jo took a whole series of switch-back escalators to get to the hotel’s main lobby on the eighth floor. Though she wasn’t willing to share a meal with Bradford, there was a nice public area with plenty of comfortable seating where they could sit and have coffee and talk in relative privacy.
She glanced at her watch, glad she was early. She wanted to choose the seating herself, not to mention collect her thoughts, put together an ice pack, and check her e-mail. Last night, just before going to bed, she had thought about e-mailing Danny to tell him about this visit with Bradford. But in the end, she had decided against it. News like that was better given over the phone, so she would tell him the next time they talked instead.
In theory, Danny wanted Jo to have one final, wrap-up conversation with Bradford so that she could finally put all of her questions to rest. But in reality she knew that the idea of her getting together with her former fiancé while Danny was an ocean away was probably a bit unnerving. She just hoped he wasn’t worrying too much. There was nothing for him to worry about.
Danny had her heart hook, line, and sinker, and he always would.
Jo found the perfect spot, isolated yet public. She ordered a soda and an extra cup of ice and made herself comfortable, discreetly propping up her foot on the wide, low table in front of her. Once her drink came, Jo pulled a small plastic bag from her purse, poured the extra ice into the bag, sealed it, and propped it on her foot, against her sock, under one of the Velcro straps. When she was all set, she pulled out her handheld digital assistant and checked her e-mail. There was nothing from Danny yet, much to Jo’s disappointment.
There was, however, a new message from [email protected], her anonymous library correspondent. Heart pounding, Jo scrolled down and pressed the button that would bring the e-mail up on the tiny screen.
The sender had copied back part of Jo’s last e-mail: <<
May I help in some way? Perhaps act as a go-between with the authorities?
>>
The reply, which followed underneath, took Jo’s breath away.
Dear Jo Tulip, I don’t need you to be a go-between because the person in danger is YOU
.
There, I told you. Please don’t try to find me. I got nothing to do with this, I just heard about it and thought you deserved to know. I’ve seen you on your website and in the newspaper, and you seem like a nice person and I don’t think this is right
.
Be careful and watch your back
.
The note was signed, as before, by
Trying To Stay Out of It
. Underneath was a PS:
One of the toaster ovens I’m looking at has a Teflon interior. What do you think? Would a nonstick coating be worth the extra cost?
“Hello, beautiful.”
Jo looked up, startled.
There, in front of her, was Bradford, smiling and holding out a dozen roses.
F
lustered, Jo found the button that would save the e-mail, quickly exited the program, and closed the device. She didn’t know how to process any of it: the e-mail telling her she was in danger or the fact that Bradford was standing here in front of her. The last time she’d seen him, she was flat on her back in the hospital, terribly injured, and he had barged into her room without warning, hidden behind a giant bouquet of flowers. Funny, but she almost felt as helpless now as she had then.
“I guess the roses are a little over the top, huh?” he said, the smile fading from his face. He let his arm fall down by his side. “Sorry about that. Here I go again, trying too hard. I can tell I’ve upset you.”
Jo tried to pull herself together, her mind still racing from the e-mail. Maybe this toaster oven guy really was just some nut out for kicks, like the Kreston detective had said. Forcing herself to focus, Jo tucked away her PDA and turned her full attention on Bradford. She would deal with the e-mail later, after he was gone.
Bradford stood there in front of her, a little weathered but still movie-star handsome, with blond hair and blue eyes and a chiseled jaw straight out of
GQ
magazine. Truly, he was so gorgeous that Jo wouldn’t have been surprised to look out of the window onto Times Square and see his face on a billboard. She didn’t know why it had never crossed her mind before that he was better looking than she was. In a world that favored equal-beauty dating, somehow she had bagged one slightly beyond her limit—physically speaking, that is. She wasn’t unattractive, but she was more cute than pretty, kind of like her surname, a tulip, sitting there looking up at a rare orchid.
Correction. Not a rare orchid, that was too lovely. Bradford is more like a carrion flower—beautiful on the outside, putrid on the inside
.
“Have a seat,” Jo said, finally finding her voice.
Bradford set the roses on the coffee table and took the chair that was at an angle to hers, his knees coming to rest against her thigh. Back when they were dating, he had been a very physical guy, always standing close, sitting even closer, brushing his legs against hers or running his hands lightly along her back. Back then, she’d thought it was sexy, if sometimes a little forward.
Now it seemed almost threatening.
Jo sat up straight, visibly pulling her leg a few inches away so that they were no longer touching.
“You said you were completely recovered,” he told her, spotting her foot propped up in the cast. “That doesn’t look good.”
“Just a sprain, taking its time to heal. It’ll be fine soon.”
“Good. Otherwise, you look great. You look beautiful, Jo. But then, you always do. With all your injuries in that explosion, you’re so lucky you didn’t have any cuts to your face.”
He flashed her what she’d always thought of as his million-watt smile. She studied it as if it were some sort of artifact. How that smile used to captivate her. Now it only seemed foreign and somehow artificial. Jo wondered what it was like to be so perfect—and if he expected his loved ones also to be perfect. If so, would cuts to her face and the resultant facial scarring have disqualified her from his affections? She felt nauseous at the thought that she had almost married this man.
“You wanted to talk, Bradford. So talk.”
He glanced away, seeming nervous. Wringing his hands in his lap, he looked furtively around the room and then back at her.
“Just hear me out,” he said, his voice suddenly very low. “Because you’re going to have trouble believing what I have to tell you.”
Oh, please. Here we go with the drama
.
“Bradford, why did you walk out on our wedding?” Jo asked, not bothering to lower her voice. That was the question she’d been wanting to ask for months. It was high time he answered it.
“Because…” he said, nervously tugging at the back of his hair, “because I realized I was falling in love with you.”
Jo just stared at him, wondering what
Twilight Zone
episode she had wandered into. She thought she was beyond caring about this, but suddenly she could feel her chest fill with an emotion she couldn’t name. Hurt? Righteous indignation? She supposed that
rage
was the best word for it. She was furious.
“Isn’t love supposed to be part of a wedding?” she asked, trying to hold her temper. “Kind of a big part?”
He nodded, his expression grave.
“Yes, but when you came walking up the aisle, and I looked into your beautiful green eyes, I knew I couldn’t do it, not that way. I was in love with you. You deserved better than that.”
“Better than a fiancé who says ‘I don’t’ rather than ‘I do’ and then runs away?”
“Jo, I—”
“Better than a groom who cashes in the two coach-class honeymoon tickets to Bermuda for one in first class and takes the trip without the bride?”
“I had to get away,” he pleaded. “I had to think.”
“I hope you enjoyed the honeymoon suite.”
“I was miserable. I never expected love to enter into it. But you deserved better than to be the victim of a hoax.”
Jo squinted at him, trying to understand.
“You’re calling our wedding a
hoax?
” she cried. “Funny, but I seem to recall paying actual money for the wedding gown, not to mention the cake and the flowers and everything else. I certainly used real friends as my bridesmaids, and my own, actual father walked me down the aisle. Even the pastor at the front of the room was a bona fide, ordained minister. I know that for a fact. If he had pronounced us husband and wife, it would’ve actually stuck. Yeah, sure sounds like a hoax to me.”
Jo didn’t like the sarcastic bitterness in her own voice, but she was unable to stop herself. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how much anger she still carried about the whole incident. Obviously, she still had a ways to go in the forgiveness department.
“Look,” Bradford said softly, “when I first walked out, I tried to figure out how I could tell you the truth about what had been going on without losing you. But I knew that could never happen. You were lost to me forever.”
“Hey,
you
ran out on
me!
”
He nodded miserably.
“And I knew that if you found out the truth, you’d never take me back. Finally, I just tried to get over you. Tried to forget about you. Tried to go on with my life.”
“Good. I’ve certainly gotten over you.”
“But it hasn’t worked for me because somewhere in all of that pretense, I really fell for you. I fell hard, Jo. Finally I decided the only chance I might have of winning you back was to come completely clean. That’s why I showed up at the hospital and why I’m here now. I want to tell you everything, and in spite of it, I want you to consider giving our relationship a second chance.”
Jo ran a hand through her hair. She wouldn’t get back with him if they were the last two beings on earth and her only choice for companionship was between him and a potted plant. At least the potted plant would be exactly what it was, not something else it only pretended to be.
The image of Danny suddenly filled her mind, and she felt a deep, silent gratefulness that God in His infinite wisdom had sent Bradford running out at the last moment, saving her from making the mistake of a lifetime. But even if Danny weren’t in the picture, which he most absolutely was, Bradford was
so
over, so been-there-done-that, so finished. Their relationship was as done as done could get. He had hurt her beyond belief, and even though in the end his rejection had turned out to be a tremendous blessing in disguise, it had still been a hard pill to swallow.
“Bradford, please get to the point. What sham? What hoax?”
“Our relationship. It was all fake.”
Jo’s eyes widened.
“Fake?”
“From the very beginning. The courtship, the engagement, even the engagement ring.”
“That’s not true. That diamond was no fake and you know it.”
Before the wedding, Jo had had the ring appraised for insurance purposes—and she’d been shocked to learn that it was worth almost $25,000. Given that, once everything felt apart, she had shipped the ring back to Bradford heavily insured, along with a note kindly suggesting he get a refund and use it to sponsor the national budget for a small country.
“Yes, the ring was real. But what I mean is, I’m not the one who paid for it.”
Jo’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.
“My feelings were real,” she said softly, irritated that she was crying. But the tears weren’t for Bradford—they were for her hurt, her shame, her humiliation. Sometimes she wondered if she’d ever get over the shock of what he’d done to her. Now it seemed as if there would be even more to get over.
“Jo, listen,” he said, leaning toward her, elbows on his knees. He leaned so far forward that his face was only inches from hers. Her heart pounding, she wondered if he was the danger to her, if he, in fact, was the one that the Kreston e-mailer had warned her about. In her gut Jo didn’t think so, but she couldn’t be sure. At the very least, she was glad they were in a public place.