Midnight Resolutions. Kathleen O'Reilly
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around, waiting for lightning to strike. None did. Ian smiled, relieved.
“Still on your feet, I see. No pesky recession to strike you down?” There was respect in her eyes, and Ian knew he’d answered correctly. He loved that flare in a woman’s face, more powerful than a beknighting sword to the shoulder, more satisfactory than when the tellers at the bank had greeted him by name. He exhaled, his chest swelling with pride, completely undeserved.
“I survived, but it’s been tough. A total bloodbath, but they like me. I do a good job for the firm. What about you?” he asked, getting the subject away from him. He didn’t want to talk about his prelayoff job; he didn’t want to talk about his postlayoff life. That pretty much limited the conversation to her, which was fine with him; he wanted to know everything about her, every secret, every dream…every inch underneath her dress.
“I’m a personal assistant. Not as glamorous as you.”
“Still, I bet it’s a cool job.”
“Someday I’m going to do more.”
“Like what?” he asked, reading the uncertainty in her face. He saw it all the time in his world. People adrift, not sure which way to move, frozen into doing nothing.
She shrugged, a small lift to an elegant shoulder. “I’m not sure. Nothing feels right. How did you know that banking was for you?”
“I’ve wanted to be in banking for…pretty much forever. Dad didn’t make much money, and I wanted more. Greedy, I guess.”
“I call that ambition.”
“See, this is why I like you. With spin like that, you should consider a career in advertising.” Automatically his brain shifted to job-finding mode—there was an agency in Park Slope, small, boutique and…Stop it, Ian.
Rose glanced toward the doorway where a waiter appeared carrying a large porcelain vase of two dozen perfect white roses. Handpicked by Ian only two hours before. Every woman’s eye was drawn to the bouquet, longing to be the one, and Ian’s smile got a little more cocky. The man started toward the window.
Walked closer to the table by the window.
Walked even closer to the table by the window.
Finally, with a continental bow, the waiter presented the two dozen perfect white roses to the elderly woman seated at what used to be Ian’s table. Her husband, a white-haired man with silver glasses—and most likely, a fat bank account—beamed, as if he’d given her the world. The wife blushed. Ian seethed. Quietly, unobtrusively, so no one would notice.
“Is something wrong?” asked Rose.
Ian blanked his face. “No. He looks like a VP that I once worked with. Really didn’t like him. Always took credit for the slog he didn’t do. You know the type—they haunt every office of every industry in America.”
“Of course,” she said, but she was watching the couple, her heart in her eyes. “It’s fascinating. He still orders her flowers. Why?”
“Maybe there’s no reason.” Not every gift needed an occasion; sometimes it was just because.
“I don’t think so. There’s always a reason, even if they don’t realize there’s a reason. People don’t give without expecting in return.”
“Wow, beautiful and cynical, too.” He’d assumed that men paid homage to her, built temples and monuments, wrote odes and symphonies. But contrary to her hard words, her gaze was firmly glued to the sight of those white roses and the contented smile on the other woman’s face.
So it was flowers that were her raison d’être? One more piece of data to put in the Rose file. Bring flowers for no apparent reason.
Eventually she looked away, her eyes more firmly entrenched in the here and now. “In the long run, pretty isn’t the big whoop that everyone thinks it is. There are levels in the world. Pretty will get you invitations, five dollars off on your laundry and maybe a free pass on a parking ticket, but that’s as far as it goes. But the man at the top, the one who sits fifty stories above the masses, that’s the pinnacle. He lives life on his terms, and no one tells him what to do.”
Ian felt a cold knot in his gut, and wondered if she had guessed at his sorry truth. “You’re talking about money, aren’t you?”
She nodded once. “Sure. Money, power, control.”
Something flashed in her face—pain? And then the moment was gone, the shutters in place. The impassive Mona Lisa was back and the light began to dawn. This wasn’t about him. This was about her. “He did a number on you, huh?”
“Who?” she asked sharply.
“I have no idea.”
Immediately the wistful dreams reappeared like magic. “I’m not sure what’s bothering me tonight.”
“Don’t want to talk about it? I’m a good listener, and I know absolutely nothing about you.”
“Not much to say. Personal assistant. Moved from nowhere to New York. I manage.”
With a pile of men trailing after her with their tongues hanging out. Like Ian. “So what happened with your date?”
She didn’t pretend she didn’t understand or play coy, and he admired her for that. He liked that. She might sell herself short on brains, but she could read people well. Including him. Politely he dabbed at his mouth, in case his tongue was hanging out, as well.
“His name is Remy. It was our fourth date. He’s very nice. He’s perfect.”
“How perfect?” asked Ian, now surreptitiously checking for hidden cameras, in case this was reality TV at its worst.
“He’s a heart surgeon. Pediatric. Saving small children is a line on his resume. Good-looking. Family money.”
“Cheats on his taxes?”
Sadly she shook her head.
“Undisclosed porn addiction.”
Rose looked at him and laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“Wow. I don’t see anything wrong there.”
“I know,” she told him unhappily.
“Rose? Why are you here?”
“Do you believe in it?” she asked him, her face serious and nervous.
“What’s ‘it’?”
“Fate.”
He could invent something really romantic and magical, something to make her sigh, but she’d probably heard all that before. Instead Ian went with the unremarkable truth. “In the past, I didn’t. I mean, I wanted to, but it never went my way, so it was a lot better for my mental health to think it wasn’t out there.”
“Why not?”
There were a lot of ways to answer that question. Ian chose the least incriminating. “There was this kid in third grade, Kevin Trevaskis, and his parents were a total pain because every year he stayed up waiting for Santa Claus and he never got any presents. But he still believed in this great concept of goodness, even though nothing ever came his way, either. I always felt sorry for that kid. At least, if your parents perpetuate the Santa Claus myth, you have those formative years to hang your hat on, but Kevin didn’t even have that. It was sad.”
“You didn’t tell him the truth?”
Now that he thought about it, it was becoming completely obvious that Ian had issues with truth, even as a young child. Yet now was not the time to dwell on past—and possibly present—indiscretions.
“Who am I to take away his hope? And before New Year’s I’d been thinking about Kevin, thinking maybe he had it right. What if we were the ones who had it all wrong? I went down to Times Square, drinking the enchanting elixir, because