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That didn’t mean that Talia wanted to get involved with him.
Well, she wanted to, of course, but she wouldn’t.
“Talia.” Gloria waved a hand in front of her face and clicked her fingers a couple of times. “Focus, girl. Snap out of it.”
“Okay, look,” Talia said, seriously annoyed now. Why did she have to explain herself to the person who should understand her reasons better than anyone else on the planet? “There’s an attraction there. I admit it. But I think I have enough going on in my life without—”
Gloria gave her a wide-eyed look of incomprehension. “What’s going on in your life, exactly?”
Talia lost it, which was probably the whole point. “I’ve got things to accomplish! You know this! I’m taking time off to travel, and I—”
“Is this about Paul?” Gloria interrupted quietly, ignoring the tirade.
“What? No! Of course not!”
“He broke your heart.”
Talia tried that on for size and decided it didn’t fit. “No. I was hurt, but he didn’t break my heart. Actually, he did me a favor by bailing on me before things went any further, right? So let’s just call it a lesson learned.”
“What was the lesson?”
Talia thought about Paul, and this, naturally, bled into thoughts of her father. He was a prominent surgeon who’d walked out on their mother for the greener pastures of his twenty-two-year-old medical transcriptionist. These experiences had led Talia to one inescapable lesson: “Men can’t be counted on when the going gets tough.”
“I knew it!” Gloria’s eyes gleamed bright with triumph. “Don’t lump all men together with Paul—”
“And Dad,” Talia reminded her.
“Right, right—forget Dad. My point is that Tony seemed like a good guy. And he seemed like he was really interested in you. So give him a chance. Go out for drinks. See what happens. Have some fun. I’m telling you, I’ve got a good feeling about him.”
Talia couldn’t believe her ears. “A good feeling? Is this the same kind of good feeling that led you into your ongoing two-year affair with a married man?”
Talia regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, especially as Gloria winced and turned the vivid purple of a beet. Talia tried to backtrack.
“I didn’t mean—”
A ghostly smile flickered across Gloria’s face. “You meant it.”
Talia put a hand on Gloria’s arm and gave her a sympathetic squeeze. “Look. I guess the bottom line is that we both want the best for each other. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on what the best is.”
Gloria never went down without a fight. “Tony might be the best for you. I know Aaron is the best for me.”
Oh, for God’s sake. Talia smacked her own forehead in frustration, wondering why Gloria needed the same blast of brutal truth over and over again.
“If Aaron wanted the best for you, he wouldn’t be smuggling you to Brooklyn hotels every time he wanted to see you, and I’m guessing he probably wouldn’t have kept you dangling for two good childbearing years with promises to leave his wife.”
This clear-eyed analysis, predictably, made Gloria furious. “He’s leaving her over Memorial Day weekend,” she shouted. “You know he is! Why do you keep—”
Talia held up her hands and surrendered to the queen of denial. “Fine. You win. You win! Subject dropped.”
Gloria, who wasn’t quite ready to forgive and forget, got up in Talia’s face. “You’ll be eating those words soon, and I’ll be expecting an apology.”
“I’ll be happy to apologize,” Talia reassured her. “What I can’t do is stay with you and hold your hand through another night of crying over that bastard.”
Wrong choice of words. Again. Gloria’s eyes welled up and overflowed, and she swiped angrily at the tears. “I don’t need you to—”
“Sorry. One of the other tenants let me in, so I came on up.”
The male voice made them both jump, and they whirled around to discover Tony peering around the ajar door. His concerned gaze went directly to Talia and latched on, and his cheeks flushed with what looked like the kind of heightened awareness that she was feeling. If he knew Gloria was also in the room, he gave no sign of it.
