Love at First Flight (16 page)

“You can still go, you know. It's never
too late.”

“There's still no money,” she said with
a sad smile.

“There're lots of options—financial aid,
scholarships. You could do it.”

“I think that ship has sailed for me.
Besides, I like my job, and I feel lucky to have it. Panache is one of the best
salons in the city. I've built up a pretty decent following and hardly ever
have an open appointment anymore.”

“You're good at it. I've seen your work,
remember?” He ran a hand through his hair to make his point.

“I'd hate to think of you as one of my
few unsatisfied customers.”

“I'm a very satisfied customer. The
women in my office went crazy over it today.”

Juliana raised an eyebrow. “Did they?”

“Uh huh,” he said, grinning. “And Paige
hated
it, so good job.”

Juliana threw a sofa pillow at him. “Glad
I could help.” She reached for her wineglass. “You're lucky, you know?”

He covered her free hand with both of
his. “Because I'm here with you?”

She gave him a withering look. “No.
Because you have such a nice family. Mine's a disaster area. Yours sounds so
normal.”

His handsome face grew somber. “We've
had our chal-lenges.” After a long pause, he said, “I had a brother.”

“You did?”

“Patrick. He died when he was twelve and
I was seven.”

Juliana squeezed his hand. “Oh, Michael.
I'm sorry.”

“He had leukemia. He got sick in the
middle of the summer and was dead by October.”

“It must've been so shocking.”

“Yeah, my parents were never quite the
same after.”

“Of course they weren't.”

“The worst part was after he died, we
never talked about him. It was like we were all afraid to mention his name
because we didn't want to upset my mother, so we just stopped talking about
him.”

Juliana's eyes filled with tears.

“He was the most important person in the
world to me and then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone, and I had to act
like he never existed.”

Juliana rested her head on Michael's
shoulder and held his hand. “What was he like?”

“He was a great athlete—an all-star
baseball and football player. The coaches used to tell my dad he was going to
be a pro. It was just a matter of which sport. But I think he would've been a
firefighter. He used to take me with him everywhere he went, and he never
complained about having me around. He called me Mikey.”

“That's cute.”

“I've never let anyone else call me
that. He's been gone twenty-five years, and I still miss him.” Michael raised
his arm and put it around her. “Can I be self-serving again for a minute?”

She smiled up at him. “If you must.”

“In all the years I was with Paige, I
never told her about Pat. There was just never a time when I felt comfortable
telling her.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Juliana
said, touched by his confession.

“It's not just me, is it?”

“What?”

He held her eyes with his. “You feel it,
too, don't you? Even just a little bit?”

She couldn't look away. After a long
moment of silence, she bit her lip and nodded.

He leaned in to kiss her.

Under the hand she had on his chest she
felt his heart begin to pound and told herself she should stop, that kissing
him like this was wrong because she was still involved with Jeremy. But then
she remembered that she wasn't
with
Jeremy now, so technically this wasn't wrong. And,
damn,
it felt so good to be in Michael's arms, to feel the weight
of him resting against her as he kissed her with wild abandon.

“Juliana,” he whispered against her ear.
“God, you smell so good. I can't get enough of you.” He kissed her again and
groaned when her arms closed tight around him. As his tongue teased hers, he
caressed her back under the black T-shirt she had worn to work.

“Michael, wait,” she said, tearing her
lips free of his. “This is happening too fast for me.”

He took her hand and put it over his
pounding heart. “Feel that? You did that.”

“Please.” Her own heart skipped an
unsteady beat. “I can't do this. I can't jump from one guy to another. It's
just not who I am.”

“I know. I'm sorry.” He helped her sit
up next to him and dropped his head into his hands. “I said I wouldn't push
you.”

“You haven't.” She rested her arm on his
back. “It's just that things are so complicated right now—for both of us. If we
let this get out of hand, someone's going to get hurt.”

“You're right.”

“I'm not going to deny there's something
between us,” she said, smiling when he brightened at her admission. “But we
need some time. You've just ended an engagement, and I'm still involved with
Jeremy. We're having some problems right now, but it's far from over between
us.”

“We'll take it slow and see what
happens.”

“Promise?”

He kissed her hand. “I promise.”

***

Juliana had to work at noon the next
day, so she slept until nine thirty. She lay in bed for a long time wishing
there was someone she could talk to about everything that had happened in the
last week. Most of her girlfriends were part of couples she and Jeremy were
friends with, so there was no way she could share this with them. She could
talk to Carol at work, but with the trial starting she hated to burden Carol
with her problems. Her sister Dona would take far too much pleasure in hearing
there was trouble between her and “Mr. Wonderful”—the sarcastic nickname she
and Vincent bestowed upon Jeremy years ago.

Juliana was almost startled to realize
there was no one else. She had turned to Jeremy for everything she needed for
so long that she had isolated herself from other relationships.
Interesting,
she thought as she got up
to shower. When she was drying her hair, it occurred to her that there was one
person she could talk to who wouldn't pass judgment on her—or Jeremy. The last
thing she wanted was anyone treating him differently if they managed to work
things out.

She got dressed for work and walked the
short distance to Collington Street. Mrs. Romanello's door was never locked,
and Juliana went in calling out, “Hello? It's just me.”

“Come on in!” Mrs. R called from
upstairs. “I'll be right down. There's coffee on if you want some.”

The television blared on the counter as
Juliana poured herself a cup of coffee. Jeremy always said Mrs. R's coffee was
better than any coffee shop's. When he was home he went next door on many a
morning to fill his mug—and his stomach—before work. The memory made Juliana
sad. Suddenly, it seemed like a hundred years had gone by since they lived
happily next door.

“This is a nice surprise,” Mrs. R said
with a kiss to Juliana's cheek. She wore one of the stylish sweat suits Juliana
had given her for Christmas the year before.

“Coffee?” When the older woman nodded,
Juliana filled a second mug.

“You're all in funeral colors, so you
must be working today,” Mrs. R said, turning the television down to a normal
decibel.

“I know, I know: young girls don't
belong all in black. You don't have to say it.”

“It's ridiculous. The owners of that
salon of yours need to have their heads examined.”

“Think of it this way—I never have to
spend even one second wondering what to wear to work.”

“That's true, but you're not here to
have this old argu-ment with me, are you? What's on your mind, hon?”

Juliana shrugged and sat down at the
kitchen table. “I seem to have gotten myself into a bit of a mess.”

“What kind of mess?”

Juliana poured out the whole story—from
meeting Michael in the airport, to Jeremy's desire to be with other women and
their decision to separate for a few months, to moving in with Michael, his
broken engagement, his confession that he was falling for her, her growing
feel-ings for him, and Jeremy's campaign to keep her in his life. Remembering
her promise to Michael, the only thing she left out was the part about
Rachelle.

“Well,” Mrs. R said with a stunned
expression, “all this in one week?”

“I know! It's too much. I can't process
it. What should I do, Mrs. R?
I'm so
confused.
”

“I'm going to be honest with you, hon.
I'm disap-pointed in Jeremy. I can't imagine what he's thinking. If you fall
for this Michael fellow or someone else for that matter, Jeremy's going to have
to acknowledge that he let it happen.”

“Don't be mad with Jeremy,” Juliana
pleaded. “I don't want you to hate him if we manage to get through this and
stay together.”

“I could never hate him. I love you both
like my own. You know that, Juliana.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I love him, but I'm disappointed in
him, too. He's put you in a terrible position by telling you his most private
thoughts.”

“But wouldn't it have been worse if he'd
acted on them and kept it from me? I mean, he could've gotten away with it,
right? I never would've known.”

“You would've known. You know him better
than anyone on this earth, and he knows there's no way he would've gotten away
with cheating on you. I have to give him a few points for respecting you enough
not to do that.” She took a sip of her coffee.

The local newscast at the top of the
hour led with the Benedetti trial.

“Listen. They're talking about the
trial—Michael's trial.”

“Attorneys met today in a pre-trial
conference with Judge Harvey Stein,” the anchorman reported. “Jury selection
gets under way on Monday in what promises to be the contentious trial of Marco
and Steven Benedetti, accused in the shotgun slayings of Baltimore teenagers
Jose Borges, Timothy Sargant, and Mark Domingos.” The news shifted to a shot of
the courthouse steps where reporters surrounded Michael and several other men in
suits.

“Oh, look! That's him. That's Michael.”

“Mr. Maguire!”

The reporters all talked at once.

“What can you tell us about your trial
strategy?”

“Not much,” Michael replied confidently.
“Except that we're ready to go for Monday and looking forward to seeing justice
served on behalf of the Borges, Sargant, and Domingos families. That's all I'm
going to say at this time.”

“Mr. Maguire, is it true your case rides
on the witness you have in protective custody?”

“No comment.”

Juliana watched him push his way through
the crowd of reporters. When the news shifted back to the anchor, she noticed
Mrs. R watching her with an odd expression on her face.

“Oh, my,” Mrs. R said.

“What?”

“You're in love with him. It's all over
your face. You couldn't take your eyes off him.”

“I am
not
in love with him,” Juliana protested, her heart beating hard. “I
like him, though. A lot.”

“You could be in danger living with him
during all this craziness.”

Juliana reached across the table for
Mrs. R's hand. “It's safe. They have a cop watching the house. There's nothing
to worry about.”

“I don't like this, Juliana. Not one
bit. Will you promise me if you're ever scared there you'll come stay here with
me?”

“I promise, but you don't have to worry.
Besides, I've got bigger problems.
What
am I going to do?
”

Mrs. R appeared to give Juliana's
question consid-erable thought before she answered. “My Tony and I, bless his
soul, were married for fifty-three years. Fifty-three beautiful years.” A soft
look of love fell over her wrinkled face. “In all that time, I never once
wondered if he was thinking of someone else. Not once.”

Juliana looked down at her coffee cup.

“Jeremy loves you. I know he does. But
what he's asked of you is almost too much. I've wondered why the two of you
never married.”

Juliana shrugged. “We just never got
around to it.”

“You need to think about why that is.”

“Vincent says it's because Jeremy
doesn't need to buy the cow when he's getting the milk for free,” Juliana said,
blushing.

Mrs. R raised an eyebrow. “Vincent's an idiot,
but he's got a point. Maybe you were too good to Jeremy, and he began to take
you for granted. But you have to ask yourself: if you're able to work all this
out and he manages to win you back, is he going to get itchy feet again a year
or two down the road when you're married and maybe have a baby on the way?”

“I don't know how to
be
without him. He's been everything to
me, you know? He rescued me from the hell of my family, and gave me this safe
place to be for so many years. How do I just walk away from that?”

“You did the right thing taking this
break, hon. You both need to figure out what you want. Just because you've been
with him for ten years doesn't mean you're meant to be with him forever. Why
don't you give yourself this time to learn how to be without him? When the
three months are up, you can see how you feel about it and decide what to do
then.”