Seems Like Old Times (29 page)

The thought of Tony and Ben going off to the park, a place
of such incredible beauty it scarcely seemed real, made her feel a little
wistful, and more than a little lonesome for their company and even for
California.

When Tony said he wished she could be with them, she
almost replied, "Just ask me." But she didn't, and had he asked, she
wouldn't. Still, it was nice to dream.

o0o

The following Friday, Tony was full of happy tales of his
vacation, and Lee had lots to say about the nasty 'politics' going on at the news
station, so they both talked and laughed until they were quite worn out.

Lee had to go out of town the Friday after that night to
handle a special assignment for the weekend. She tried to reach Tony a couple
of times on Saturday when she was free, but there was no answer. Each time her
cell phone rang, she looked at it with anticipation, but none of the calls were
from Tony.

He’d asked twice if he could call her, and both times
she’d said no. Had that been wrong of her? She couldn’t help but wonder how it
made him feel. Did he think she didn’t want him interrupting her life, or did
he realize it was purely self-defense on her part? Or, was there something more
going on here, more than she dared admit?

o0o

The following Friday night, the same time as she usually
phoned Tony, she sat staring at her phone. All week long she'd agonized over
what to do this evening. To carry on a long distance whatever-it-was with him
didn’t make sense. He might have even thought she was chasing him, which she
didn’t think she was doing because she didn’t know what she’d do if she caught
him. She had a full
life,
she had friends, even if her
best friend, Melanie, had disappointed her. It was just that her life seemed a
little fuller, a little richer, with Tony in it again. Was that so wrong?

On the other hand, a part of her argued that it might not
even be healthy to make these calls. It set up the semblance of a long-distance
relationship that, in truth, didn't exist.
And shouldn't
exist.
And had no hope for existence given their differences.

Her apartment was ungodly silent.
Beyond
silent.
Empty. Finally, she couldn't stand it any longer and picked up
the phone.

"Hello?" His voice sounded tentative.

"Hi, Tony."

She could hear his breath come out in a rush.
"Lisa..."

She had planned on sounding calm and indifferent, but
instead the words poured out of her. "I was out of town last
weekend."

"Ah. Well, sure, I expected it. I mean, I never
expected you to sit alone in your apartment every weekend, especially with your
important
boyfriend "

"I was working."

She could hear his smile as he exclaimed,
"Working?"

Relief filled her like helium, lifting her ten feet high.
“It was actually an interesting assignment…”

o0o

The next week, Tony told her how surprised and pleased
Gene
Cantelli
was to get a big order for his top
English saddles from a ranch near a small town in Pennsylvania. Lee said she,
too, was surprised. Tony told her he looked up the towns on a map. They were
right near the New York border.

o0o

Tony was lower than Lee had ever heard him the following
Friday. The court hearing was postponed again, but this would be the last
postponement. He would have gladly kept postponing the hearing as long as he
could because, until the hearing, Ben was his. After it, anything could happen.
He didn’t trust the courts or judges. He didn’t trust anyone to do right by his
son except himself. In eight more weeks, he would be meeting his ex-wife, and
Ben's fate would be decided. Lee did her best to cheer him up. They talked for
almost two hours, and he thanked her for listening to him, for just being there
when he needed her.

o0o

Gene
Cantelli
got more orders
for saddles from Pennsylvania, as well as some from New York and Connecticut. Lee
confessed to Tony, as she had earlier to Miriam, that a few weeks earlier she
had visited some friends at their estate in Pennsylvania. The friends owned
four beautiful horses. Through them, she met other horse lovers. Could she help
it if the saddles they were using weren't half as interesting or distinctive as
the ones Gene made? She was doing them a favor by telling them about the
exclusive shop in a small, northern California village.

Tony laughed at her description of Miwok, but she pointed
out she had bent the truth only a little, and that to Easterners, everything in
northern California seemed either weird or quaint- San Francisco and its jaunty
little cable cars being prime examples. He believed it.

o0o

Tony’s phone rang without answer when she called the
following Friday. She phoned again, then once more.

There was no reason she should have grown to expect him to
sit home every Friday night. He was young and handsome. She shouldn’t be
surprised to find he’d gone out on a Friday night and didn’t want to answer her
calls.

Could he be with Trish Hollingsworth? He had never
mentioned her after the Miwok picnic. Judging from the way she acted around
him, though, they had been quite close.

Feeling jealousy three thousand miles away was terrible.
Even worse was the detailed way her mind imagined the two of them passing their
time this evening. Trish's hand, low on Tony's hips as they walked away from
her at the Settler's Park picnic, gave her a clear picture of the kind of
relationship those two had. She remembered her own hand on his hips the night
she spent with him. He had solid, sexy hips, tight buns. The kind of body that
looked great in jeans...or out of them.

The thought of Trish Hollingsworth touching him that way
made her wild.

The hypocrisy of being jealous of Tony when she had
scarcely raised an eyebrow at the possibility of her own fiancé’s infidelity
with her supposed best friend wasn't lost on her. But it made sharper the fact
that she and Bruce had no relationship worth saving.

She went to bed, facing a restless sleep when the phone
rang. It was three o'clock in the morning.

"Hello," she murmured, half-groggy, as she
struggled to sit up.

"I know I promised you I’d never call, but--"

"Tony?"

"Oh, hell, I'm sorry. Christ, it's not even midnight here,
but I just realized you must have been sound asleep. I shouldn't have disturbed
you. Go back to
sleep "

"No! Wait, I'm glad you called." She swallowed
hard, trying to get her tongue to function, her head to clear. "I was
worried."

"It was my father's birthday. Vic turned 65
today--ready for Social Security and everything. We went out with some of his
old friends."

"Really?"
She settled
back against the pillow. His voice was so sexy it made her toes curl.
"How great."

"I missed talking to you, though." He sounded
suddenly hushed. "That is,
if
you tried to call me tonight."

"Of course I did." A couple of beats passed in
the silence of her dark bedroom,
then
she spoke
softly. "I missed you, too. I still do miss you, in fact. I miss seeing
you, going to games...being with you."

"God, Lisa, don't," he whispered. "Please.
Hell, I hate being so far from you!"

"Me, too."

"Hey," he tried to make himself sound playful.
"You got too much special stuff to do to waste time missing old Tony. You
know that."

Tears welled in her eyes, and when she spoke, her voice
quivered slightly. "The 'stuff' I do is my job. After a while, it doesn’t
seem all that special. For sure, I'm not special."

He didn't say anything for a long moment. "Tell me
what's wrong, Lisa."

"Nothing."

"Your job?"

"No. It's fine."

"Friends?
That jerk you hang
around with giving you trouble?"

"Oh, Tony..."

"Well?"

"Nothing."

"If only you were here, Lisa, if only I could see
you...it's so hard on the phone sometimes...."

She wondered what was wrong with her. She couldn’t love
this man; she had no business being in love him. Nonetheless, somehow, lying
here on her back in the dark, silent tears flowing into her hair, her ears, and
her pillow, she realized she just might be. And that worried her. She wiped the
tears,
coughed, pretending her hoarseness was a cold,
nothing more.
Certainly nothing involving her heart.

She was making a mess out of everything. Why was she
saying these things to him, upsetting him,
herself
,
when she knew she couldn't act on her words? She rubbed her eyes. "Maybe
I'm just tired. Maybe I need to try to get to sleep now."

Silence stretched for an eternity. "Are you crying,
Lisa?"

"No. I...I'm fine. I’m glad you called."

He gave a half-laugh. "Oh? You could have fooled
me." She thought she could hear tears in his voice as well.

She laughed as best she was able, wanting to tell him what
was in her heart, but instead saying, "Oh, you."

"And Lisa?"

"Yes?"

"No one ever said you had to
stay
in New York,
you know."

o0o

They had twice as much to say the following Friday, since
they had missed their usual marathon conversation the week before. How had she
managed to live so many years without Tony in her life? Without feeling the way
she felt when they spoke together? Strangely, everything else in her life
seemed to take on a warmer, happier glow as well. She felt better about the job
she was doing than ever before.

For a little over an hour, once a week, she knew what it
meant to live with her heart and not simply with her intellect, to act and
speak on a gut level, and not for any logical or practical reason. Was this
love?

o0o

In October, Tony's ex-wife, Catherine, had detectives
combing the town for any unsavory piece of gossip they could find about him.
Luckily, he did little that anyone could look askance at. Living in a small
town with his father and his young son, he was so squeaky clean he should have
gotten a medal.

The knowledge that someone was purposefully prying into
his life, however, made him mad. If those detectives got too nosy, they'd at
least learn something about his temper.

Despite his blustering, Lee could hear the worry in his
voice. Using news sources, it was easy to check out Catherine's new husband,
Dr. Graham
Durelle
, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon.
The man was everything Tony had claimed--well respected and very wealthy. His
only weakness had been an eye for younger women, but since he married the
young, vivacious Catherine Santos, his roving eye had wandered no more. He was
said to be passionately in love with his wife, and heartbroken that he couldn't
give her children. He would do all he could, therefore, to get back for her the
one child that was hers.

Lee tried to find out if there was anything more Tony
could do to fight Catherine. There wasn't. He had a good attorney, and all that
was left was to state his case and hope.

o0o

"We go to court next Thursday," he said on the
telephone on Friday night, "so, I guess when we talk on Friday,
I'll
tell you what happened."

"Call me as soon as there's a decision," she
said. "Please."

"I will...if I can." His voice broke. "I
don't...I don't know what I'll do if I lose him, Lisa. I just don't know."

Tony's words, his voice, his heartache filled Lee's
thoughts throughout the weekend, pushing aside everything else she tried to
concentrate on. On Monday, a thought struck her that was so impulsive and
irresponsible she doubted her own sanity. By six a.m. Wednesday, she was en
route to JFK airport.

On the plane somewhere over the Rocky Mountains, the
possibility she’d taken leave of her senses hovered around ninety to one. She
should take the next plane east and return to her job.

A family crisis, she had said when requesting time off. In
a sense, it was.
Her
crisis.

Max Hobbs had given her the leave while making it clear he
didn't like it one bit and demanded she return to New York as soon as she
could. She knew one person, at least, would be ecstatic by her absence--Edie
Canham
, her
Newscene
temporary
replacement.

For the first time in her adult life she was acting
against her career’s best interest, and it scared her to death. And yet, her
instinct told her Tony needed her now.

Her spirits leaped as she gazed upon the sparkling
whiteness of San Francisco's skyline against the deep blue of the bay. Driving
her rented Lincoln Towne Car over the orange hued Golden Gate Bridge, her
excitement grew, settling finally into
a deep
,
clutching warmth as she turned off the highway and headed westward toward the
rolling hills of Miwok.

A couple of weeks earlier Miriam had called to say she'd
decided to move back to Miwok permanently. She would have to return to San
Diego for a while to get her house ready to be put up for sale--a new paint
job, inside and out, perhaps some new carpeting or other cosmetic touches that
could mean the difference between a fast sale and a slow one. Surprisingly Gene
Cantelli
was going with her to help. Most of Miriam's
belongings would be placed in storage, but all the things that were truly
precious to her would be taken back to Judith's house. Then, after her current
house sold, she'd begin to look for a small, easy to care for house in Miwok.
She'd made up her mind that she'd buy only if the house was exactly what she
wanted. Once settled this time, she said she'd leave only to go to the
cemetery. Lee knew that Gene
Cantelli
would be
playing a big part in Miriam’s decision on where she would live. Lee still
couldn’t get over the way her aunt fell for Gene. She could scarcely imagine
two people more different, or whose tastes were less similar. There was no
logic behind a confirmed bachelor and a longtime widow becoming devoted to each
other. Perhaps the point was that such things defied logic.