The Replacement Wife (20 page)

“You can’t blame a guy for wanting to show off a beautiful woman,” he said in defense of his gender.

“Yes, but a woman wants to be appreciated for more than just her looks.”

“Well, I don’t think you have anything to worry about on that score. Your accomplishments speak for themselves.”

She smiled at him, her smoky-green eyes shining in the soft glow of the candles that provided the room’s only light. “Spoken like a true gentleman.” She set her wineglass down on the coffee table and angled her body so she was all but leaning against him. “Frankly, if I found someone like you I’d be willing to bend the rules,” she said, with a directness he’d come to expect from her. He felt a rippling sensation, low in his belly, that was part unease and part excitement. “When I saw you at the meet-and-greet, naturally I thought you were there for the same reason I was. I couldn’t believe it when Camille told me who you were. I finally come across a guy who I could actually see myself with, and he turns out to be my matchmaker’s husband. If it weren’t so funny, it’d be pathetic.”

Edward was getting a clearer picture now. Camille, after discovering Kat Fisher had her eye on him, had decided to run with it. Was the plan hatched then and there or had it taken a few days to formulate? Either way, here they were, alone together, and the implication was clear: Kat was his for the taking. Was that secretly part of the plan, too? Was he supposed to make love to her?

Heat climbed into his face at the thought. He was pondering how to politely extricate himself before the situation grew any stickier when Kat closed the few inches of space between them, winding her arms around his neck, her breasts, spilling from the low neckline of her dress, pressing into him. At first, he was too startled to pull away; then he realized to his dismay he felt no inclination to do so. She was so beautiful, and it had been so long . . .

It wasn’t until she tilted her head toward his with the look of someone waiting to be kissed that he was jolted to his senses. He quickly disentangled himself and stood up. “Trust me, this isn’t a good idea. I apologize if I gave you the wrong impression,” he added, ever the gentleman.

Belatedly, Kat seemed to come to her senses as well. A chastened look came over her face and she sat up straight, tugging at the hem of her dress. “Honestly, I never intended—” She gulped, red stripes outlining the curves of her cheekbones. “You must think I’m a horrible person.”

“No, nothing of the sort,” Edward hastened to assure her. If anyone was at fault, it was Camille. Maybe she hadn’t meant for it to happen, but this was what came of playing with fire.

“I adore your wife. I just thought . . .” Kat bit down on her lower lip, her eyes welling with tears. “I don’t know what I was thinking. But that’s me: the girl who’s got it all but who can’t seem to get it together. Shit, I shouldn’t have had so much to drink. Red wine always does this to me.” She bowed her head and began to weep. Edward fought the impulse to flee and sank back down on the sofa. He couldn’t just abandon her when she was so upset. This wasn’t her fault.

He patted her on the back in an awkward attempt to comfort her. “We both had too much to drink,” he said, speaking in a soothing tone. “Let’s pretend it never happened, all right?”

Kat lifted her head to flash him a teary smile. “You’re a good man, Edward. Why can’t I find someone like you?”

“You will,” he said.

She followed him to the door, where she planted a demure kiss on his cheek. “Friends?”

“Friends,” he said, though he knew he wouldn’t see her again if he could help it. Too dangerous.

Edward felt sick inside as he rode down in the elevator. All those years ago on his wedding day, he couldn’t imagined it would come to this: that one day he’d be slipping away from another woman’s apartment, late at night, with a guilty conscience.
I did nothing wrong,
he told himself. But he’d been tempted, if only for a moment. And sometimes a moment was all it took.

Outside, he paused as he was heading for the corner to hail a cab. Suddenly, he couldn’t bear the prospect of going home and having to face his wife after what had just happened. Better he stay away until he was sure she’d gone to bed, and then they could talk in the morning when he was less likely to say something he’d regret. What he needed right now, he realized, was a friend. Out of the blue, he thought of the caterer from the meet-and-greet. Angie. He remembered how comfortable he’d felt with her, and before he knew it, he was fishing her card from his wallet, which thankfully he’d saved. He punched in her number on his cell phone, and she picked up after three rings.

“Edward. What’s up?” she said cheerfully, sounding not at all surprised to hear from him. He might have been an old friend checking in. “Don’t tell me. You’re at a party and need rescuing.”

“Something like that,” he said, wincing anew at the thought of Kat. “I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.” She’d mentioned that she worked late hours, but it was nearly midnight.

“Not at all. I just got off work. I’m headed out for a bite to eat. Care to join me?”

“Sure, why not?” he said, glad for the invitation.

“I hope you like sushi.”

“Just what I’m in the mood for.” He realized suddenly he was starving. His stomach had been in knots when he was at Kat’s, so he had eaten only enough of the meal she’d served to be polite.

He hailed a cab and ten minutes later he was at the restaurant, at East Sixty-First and First. He spotted Angie at the blond-wood sushi bar as he pushed his way in the door. Seated alongside her were two Hispanic men, one with a scruffy beard and the other covered in tattoos, whom she seemed to know from the way they were interacting. “This is where a lot of chefs hang out,” she explained after she’d introduced him to her friends, Miguel and Julio. “Best sushi in the city and it’s open until three a.m.—the shank of the evening in our line of work. Have a seat. The guys were just leaving.” She waved good-bye to Miguel and Julio as they headed off.

“Do you always dine this late?” he asked as he sat down next to her.

“Only when I’m working a gig. Usually, by the time I knock off, I’m starved. One of the ironies of my profession—you’re constantly surrounded by food, but there’s no time to even nibble. You won’t need that,” she told him, plucking the menu from his hand as he was picking it up. She explained that ordering from the menu in a sushi restaurant was strictly for amateurs.

“I see. So all these years I’ve been going about it all wrong?”

“You and everyone else, unless you’re a serious foodie. For us chefs, it’s basic 101.”

“So, how do we do this?”

In response, she signaled to one of the chefs, a rather austere-looking Japanese man wearing spotless chef’s whites, who broke into a smile and hurried over. She ordered two pieces of tuna sashimi.

“Is that all we’re having?” Edward asked.

“No, but you don’t want it to look like you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s like with wine, you taste first before you have them pour you a glass.” When the order arrived, he watched her delicately tweeze one of the glistening pink oblongs with her chopsticks and pop it in her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully under the chef’s watchful gaze, then nodded to him, indicating it met with her satisfaction. Edward followed suit, though he wasn’t as nimble with his chopsticks.

Angie ordered
omakase
—chef’s choice—and soon small, impeccably prepared dishes began arriving, one after another. Petite as she was, she matched Edward bite for bite. He found her enjoyment of the food as refreshing as he did Angie herself. Though he squirmed a little when she asked lightly what a family man like him was doing out so late on a Saturday night without his wife.

“Camille and I were invited to a dinner party,” he explained. “But at the last minute, she wasn’t feeling well, so I went without her. She insisted. She didn’t want the hostess to be disappointed by us both being a no-show.”
Or ruin any chance of said hostess becoming my future wife,
he thought dismally, struck anew by the bizarreness of the situation he was in.

“Must’ve been some party,” Angie said, eyeing his plate, which was scraped clean of the last of the dozen small courses. “Was the food bad, or was it the company that put you off your feed?”

“Neither. I had a nice time,” he said in a flat voice.

Angie’s ponytail had wandered onto her shoulder, and now she pushed it back as she cocked her head to study him, those dark Fellini eyes of hers seeming to see right through him. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool. We can just hang out. But for the record, I’m a good listener.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know,” he replied dolefully.

“Try me.”

His defenses were down and there was something about Angie that made him want to confide in her. Before he knew it he was telling her about his wife’s dying wish and his “date,” if that’s what it was, with Kat Fisher, leaving out only the part about Kat coming on to him—the quicker he put that out of his mind the better. Angie didn’t bat an eye, though it must have seemed as bizarre to her as it did to him. “It’s only because she wants what’s best for me and the kids,” he defended Camille, in case Angie had gotten the wrong impression.

She nodded slowly. “Understandable.”

“She grew up without a mom, and she’s afraid the same thing will happen to our kids.”

“So she’s doing this for the kids?”

Edward sighed and shook his head. “No, she worries about me, too. She thinks I’m in danger of becoming a crusty old widower. Loveless and probably friendless. Oh, and a workaholic, though that wouldn’t be much of a stretch.” He refilled both their sake cups. His head felt fuzzy from all the alcohol he’d consumed tonight and he realized he was ever so slightly drunk.

“You don’t sound like you’re too keen on the alternative,” she observed.

“Having her pick out my next wife? Oh, I’m thrilled. Isn’t that what every husband wants?”

She regarded him curiously. “Why did you agree to it, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“She’s dying.” Edward grimaced as he spoke; saying the words made it more real. He stared bleakly into the cloudy depths of his sake cup before lifting it to his lips. “It’s what she wants.”

“And what do
you
want?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.”

His fingers tightened around the cup. “What I want is to hold on to what I’ve got.”

She nodded, eyeing him with sympathy. “Look, I’m no shrink,” she said. “But I know one thing: When you go against your principles, it usually backfires. I bent over backwards with my former boyfriends trying to please them, and all it did was drive them away. Because I wasn’t the person they fell in love with; I wasn’t being true to myself. So now I live alone and work weird hours and eat sushi at one a.m., and any guy who has a problem with that can take a flying fuck.”

“Those former boyfriends of yours are jerks. They don’t know what they’re missing,” he said, feeling a rush of indignation on her behalf. “Any man would be lucky to have you as a wife.”

She blushed and looked down. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m not exactly wife material.”

“Maybe you just haven’t found the right person.”

Angie fiddled with the wrapper from her chopsticks, folding it into neat accordion pleats. He thought how pretty she was; not a knockout like Kat, but there was something so appealing about her. She was tough on the outside but had a kindness that manifested itself even in small ways, like when she’d brushed away the stray grains of rice and bits of dropped food at the end of the meal, folding it into her napkin so their server wouldn’t have to clean up after them. “Maybe,” she said.

He paid the bill, and they went outside. It was nearly two a.m. but strangely he didn’t feel the least bit tired. As they lingered on the sidewalk saying their good-byes, she told him about the cooking class she taught at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Youth Center, where she volunteered one night a week. “You should come by sometime and meet my kids,” she said. “Some of them have never met a doctor outside the ER. It’d do them good to see there are other career options besides the fast food industry or a life of crime. Though I shudder to think of any of them wielding a scalpel. They’re bad enough with kitchen knives. They can be a bit, um, boisterous at times,” she explained, and he chuckled at the image of petite Angie riding herd on a bunch of rowdy teenagers.

“Sounds like fun,” he said.

“You doing anything this coming Wednesday?”

“Not that I know of. What time?”

“Six to eight. And you wouldn’t have to do anything except show up. That is,” she said with a sly grin, “unless you want to go
mano a mano
with me, show off those knife skills.”

He grinned in return. “Count me in, in that case.” Camille might have plans for that night, but to hell with it. He’d gone along with tonight’s plan and look where it had gotten him. At least with Angie, he didn’t have to worry about her trying to seduce him—she was like a little sister. Not that Camille needed to know about Angie. She might get the wrong idea. Though, really, she wasn’t exactly in a position to hurl accusations after the dirty trick she’d pulled on him tonight, with Kat. He handed Angie his business card. “Email me the details.”

Seconds later, Angie was climbing into the back of a cab. She paused to look up at him as she was pulling the door shut, a petite figure in a faded Che Guevara T-shirt and holey jeans, her dark hair trailing in wisps about her freckled face where it had escaped her ponytail. “See you next week,” she said, adding with an impish smile, “Oh, and Edward? Try and stay out of trouble until then.”

CHAPTER TEN

“D
aarel, I said to
debone
the chicken, not massacre it.” Angie shook her head in despair at the mangled lump on the boy’s cutting board, which bore only a vague resemblance to a chicken breast.

“Yeah, like you be boning Tamika,” snickered Raul, in the next station.

Angie cast Raul a stern look. “That’s enough out of you, Romeo.”

He adopted an air of innocence. “Me? I ain’t the one got a group rate at Planned Parenthood.”