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Once again, Adrienne felt foolish. “I’m sorry, Lloyd. Give me your address.”
He lived in a doorman building on the Upper East Side. The lobby was bigger than the first floor of many museums. Adrienne gave her name and the doorman waved her on by. Her high heels clicked across the marble floor of the lobby until she reached the elevator. It was a smooth, quiet ride to the penthouse floor. She was shocked when the elevator door opened and she found herself in Lloyd’s foyer.
He was wearing a crisp, light-blue oxford button-down shirt, a pair of ironed blue jeans, and his bare feet were tucked into Gucci loafers. He grinned at her. “Hi, there, gorgeous.”
He looked so sexy in jeans that Adrienne could only mumble a “hello” in return. She peeked over his shoulder. The place looked enormous.
“Why don’t I take your coat and hang it up while you have a look around?”
A white sofa on white carpet was in the living room. Several pieces of expensive art lined the walls, along with Lloyd’s diplomas, but there wasn’t a single picture of Lloyd at all or a woman who could have been his ex-girlfriend, Patricia. In fact, there were no photos of anyone. There was no way to peek into Lloyd’s past, present, or what the man intended for his future.
He bounded into the room, plunked himself down on the sofa, and patted the space beside him. “I’ve asked my maid to bring us some wine, but you must sit down and tell me what’s going on before I burst from curiosity.”
Adrienne gave him a teasing smile. “I’m sure you’ll live until I get back from your bathroom. Where is it?”
He pointed. “Up those stairs.”
She climbed the circular staircase up to the second floor. The first door opened onto a bathroom that was as big as her living room. All of the fixtures including the bathtub were ivory and gold. The tub’s gilded legs stood on cream-colored floor tiles with an exquisite inlaid design of the same color. There was a huge movie-star mirror with lightbulbs on all four sides that was fixed to the wall above the double sink. Adrienne was in awe. She stood in the sumptuous room and remembered the desperate young boy she had known in high school. He had dragged himself from a situation that would have defeated a lesser human. It was quite a feat, and her admiration for LaMar had never been greater.
Adrienne went down the stairs and found Lloyd still sitting on the sofa. There was a spread of crackers, cheese, and fruit on the table in front of him, along with a bottle of wine and two crystal glasses. She sat down beside him and started rummaging through her briefcase for the papers she had printed out. When she found them, she positioned her body so that they were facing each other.
“Lloyd, you have done so much for me in the last couple of months, and I gave a lot of thought to finding a special way to repay you for the job, the money, and just being an all-around caring friend. I found the answer yesterday, and I hope that these papers bring you all the happiness that you’ve always deserved.” She extended the papers and he eagerly took them from her hand.
Lloyd skimmed the first page, and his facial expression changed from happiness to a mask of shock.
Adrienne sat waiting for the gleeful shriek and the dancing around the room that she had imagined so vividly. Lloyd read the skimpy information and then placed the papers on the sofa between them. Adrienne was starting to feel uneasy. Something was terribly wrong. Why did Lloyd seem frozen in place? Why were his eyes impossible to read? Why were his hands curling into fists? She opened her mouth to speak, but the words stuck in her throat. Her mind told her to flee, but that didn’t make sense. She sat rooted to the spot, utterly bewildered.
“You decided to find my sisters.” It was an icy declaration.
“Lloyd, what’s the matter?”
“I’ve known where my sisters are for a long time. If I wanted to see them, I could have done it a long time ago.” His jaw was locked tightly, and his voice was so low he nearly hissed the words that he spoke.
Adrienne trembled at the glacial gaze he fixed on her. She was confused by his anger. “I . . . I don’t know what to say . . . You used to love your family and I thought . . .”
“How dare you meddle in my private affairs!”
“I . . . I . . . I,” Adrienne began to cry.
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
Adrienne’s instincts told her not to respond.
His tirade was just beginning. He threw his wineglass at the wall, shattering the glass frame of one painting.
“Lloyd, take it easy,” Adrienne began.
“No. I’m mad as hell, and I’ll never forgive you for this. May I ask you a question?”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you clean up your own backyard before you leaped the fence to fiddle around in someone else’s garden?”
“My own backyard?”
“That’s right. Don’t you have serious issues in your own home? I mean, from what I saw at your brother’s house, your marriage needs every ounce of energy you can muster up. Or have things changed dramatically? Tell me, Adrienne, are you and hubby soaking in a tub of marital bliss?”
“Lloyd, you’re being mean, and if I thought you were going to act like this . . .”
