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The teddy first, and the sheer stockings followed by the violet dress, which floated down around her like the petals of a flower. She slipped on the silver shoes. Thanks to Mick, her hair was now loose on her shoulders, layered just lightly around her face. It needed only a fluff of the brush, and her new makeup—eyeliner, mascara and a touch of pale lip gloss—was easy enough to touch up, even with trembling hands.
Because her hands were trembling now, and her teeth were tapping together like castanets.
What in the hell had prompted her to do this?
She swung toward the mirrored wall against which the vanity table stood and stared at herself. She had awakened in a hospital room weeks ago, a stranger to herself.
Now, she’d replaced that stranger with another, one David had never seen before.
The enormity of what she was doing almost buckled her knees. But there was no going back now.
Joanna gave her reflection a shaky smile.
“Carpe diem, kid,” she whispered, and gave herself a thumbs-up.
She hadn’t only seized the day, she was about to wring it dry.
* * *
David was sitting behind his oak desk in his spacious office in lower Manhattan, his chair turned to the window and his back to the door, staring sightlessly over the gray waters of the Hudson River while he mentally cursed his own stupidity.
What other word could you use to describe the way he’d trapped himself into the upcoming evening of unrelieved boredom?
He’d attended parties like tonight’s in the past. Joanna belonged to virtually every committee around; she’d dragged him from one mind-numbing gala to another, all in the name of what she considered to be “Good Causes,” where the same dull people stood in little clusters talking about the same dull things while they chomped on soggy hors d’oeuvres and sipped flat champagne.
Finally, he’d put his foot down and said he’d write checks to Save the Somalian Snail and the Androgynous Artists of America but he’d be damned if he’d go to one more inane benefit on their behalf.
In a way, that had been the beginning of the end. He’d taken a good, hard look at the four years of his marriage and admitted the truth, that the Joanna he’d married had metamorphosed into a woman he didn’t understand, a woman who was interested in knowing the right people and buying the right labels, whose only goal was to be accepted in the upper echelons of New York society…
…Who had loved his money and his position but not him. Never him.
He had to admit, she’d done a fine job of pulling the wool over his eyes. She’d been so young, so seemingly innocent, and he’d been so crazy about her that he’d even worried, at the beginning, that he might overwhelm her with the intensity of his love.
He’d admitted as much to Morgana, who knew him better than anyone after working beside him for five years, and she’d generously offered him the benefit of her insight into the members of her own sex.
“I understand, David,” she’d said. “Joanna’s a child, only twenty-two to your thirty, and a free spirit, at that. You must be careful that you don’t make her feel trapped.”
His mouth twisted. He needn’t have worried. While he’d been busy trying to keep his wife from feeling trapped, she’d been busy rearranging his life until the night they’d been at some stupid charity ball and he’d suddenly realized that he was the one who was trapped, in a loveless marriage to a woman with whom he had absolutely nothing in common and never would have.
Until the accident. Until a bump on the head had wiped away Joanna’s memory and turned her into…
“Dammit,” he said.
It was dangerous to think that way. The accident hadn’t “turned” her into anything but a woman struggling to recover her memory. Once she did, life would return to normal and so would Joanna.
And then they’d be back where they’d been a couple of months ago, with their divorce only days away, and that was just fine. It was better than fine, it was freedom. It was—
“David?”
He swung his chair around. Morgana had inched open the door to his office, just enough so she could peer around the edge.
“I’m sorry to bother you, David. I knocked, but…”
“Morgana.” He straightened in his chair, feeling strangely guilty for having been caught with his thoughts anywhere but on the papers strewn across his desk, and smiled at his assistant. “Come in.”
“Are you sure?” she said, as she stepped inside the office. “If you’re busy…”
“Don’t be foolish. I’m never too busy to talk to you and anyway, I really wasn’t working. I was thinking about—about this party I’m supposed to go to tonight. Did you phone and say I’d changed my mind about not attending?”
“I did. And Mrs. Capshaw herself told me to assure you it wasn’t too late. She wanted you to know that the entire Planning Committee would be delighted to know you’d decided to come.”
David smiled thinly. “How nice.”
“She asked if Joanna would be with you.” Morgana’s perfect features settled into serious lines. “I told her it was far too soon for Joanna to be up and about. Which reminds me, David, I haven’t asked in days…I do so want to stop by for a visit Do you think she’s up to seeing anyone yet?”
“That’s kind of you, Morgana, but—”
“It isn’t kind at all. I’ve always liked Joanna, you know that And I know how difficult this must be for her and for you both.” She hesitated, the tip of her pink tongue just moistening the fullness of her bottom lip. “She hasn’t shown any signs of recovery yet, I suppose?”
The muscle in David’s cheek knotted. “No.”
“It will be good for her, knowing you’ve gone to a party she helped plan.”
“She doesn’t know she helped plan it”
“Oh? But I thought—I assumed that was why you decided to attend.”
David frowned. Morgana was his assistant and his friend, and from the time of his marriage, she’d been Joanna’s friend, too. But he wasn’t about to tell her that he’d decided to go to tonight’s gala only to make it clear to his wife that their lives went in separate directions…
…And what a stupid thing that had been to do, when he could make the same point just as easily and far more comfortably by going home and asking Mrs. Timmons to serve him his supper on a tray in his study.
“Actually,” he said with a little smile, “now that I think about it, I’m not sure why I decided to attend. Eating soggy hors d’oeuvres and drinking flat champagne while I stare at the paintings of some artist who probably needs a bath more than he needs a paintbrush—”
“It’s Tico the Chimp.”
“What’s Tico the Chimp?”
“The artist You know, they profiled him in the Times a couple of weeks ago. The party’s in his honor.”
“That’s just great” David began to laugh. “Soggy hors d’oeuvres, flat champagne…and for the guest of honor, a bunch of bananas.”
“The art critic for the Times called him a great talent.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me? Morgana, do me a favor. Phone Mrs. Capshaw, offer my regrets—”
“The mayor’s going to be there, and Senator Williamson, and the Secretary-General of the UN. I know they’re all friends of yours, but—”
“Acquaintances.”
“Either way, it can’t hurt to touch bases with all three of them with this new project in our laps.” A sympathetic smile softened his assistant’s patrician features. “Besides, it will be good for you to get out a bit. I know it’s not my place to say so, but these last weeks surely must have been a strain.”
David nodded. Morgana was the only person, aside from his attorney and Joanna’s, who knew he and his wife had been about to divorce when the accident had occurred. Of course, she didn’t know any of the details. Still, it helped that he didn’t have to pretend with her.
“Yes,” he said quietly, “it has been.” He drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “
For Joanna, too.”
“Oh, certainly.”
Morgana sat down on the edge of his desk, as she often did, and the skirt of her pale yellow suit hitched a couple of inches above her knees.
He almost smiled. When she became engrossed in something, her skirt would often hitch up, or she’d forget that her neckline might delicately gape open as she leaned forward to draw his attention to an item in her hand.
He’d have thought such things were deliberate if any other woman had done them but Morgana, though beautiful, was incapable of playing such games. She was the complete professional, a quality he’d come to appreciate more and more during the years she’d been working for him.
She’d started in his office as his secretary.
“But I don’t intend to stay in that position,” she’d told him bluntly when he’d hired her.
