Her Man Friday(64)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

And he’d never be coming as Leo Friday, either.

Unfolding the collar of his jacket up around his neck to ward off the chill—though somehow, it wasn’t the chill of the wind that bothered him most—he walked to his car, got in, and drove away.

Lily stood in her bedroom for a long time wondering what she could have done differently that might have kept Leo from leaving the way he had, might have kept him from thinking the worst of her, might have kept him from becoming such a stranger overnight.

Well, she supposed not tunneling off all that money from the Kimball Technologies profits might have been a good start.

But if she hadn’t funneled off all that money, then the entire last decade of her life would have been pointless. If she hadn’t funneled off all that money, then her work for Schuyler would have been for naught. And if she hadn’t funneled off all that money, then there would have been life-threatening repercussions that Mr. Leonard Freiberger—or whoever that man was that had just left—couldn’t possibly have imagined.

She sighed, suddenly feeling more tired than she had ever felt in her life. Whoever that man was, she echoed to herself. More than all the other problems she had facing her right now, figuring out that one was the most pressing. Because whoever that man was, he was under the impression that she wasn’t who she’d claimed to be from the start.

Of course, if she were honest with herself, Lily supposed she really hadn’t been who she had claimed to be from the start. And now that she thought more about it, hiding her identity the way she had all these years probably hadn’t been as good an idea as she and Schuyler had thought it was in the beginning. Naturally, their reasons back then had made sense. But now…

Now everything was a complete mess, she thought. And it was only going to get messier—a lot messier—before they cleaned it all up. If they cleaned it all up, she thought. Which, she had to admit, was a mighty big if.

She didn’t bother to change for dinner before making her way back downstairs to the dining room. Frankly, eating was the last thing she had on her mind right now. That unmitigated feeling of fear pretty much filled her belly full. She and Schuyler had a long night ahead of them if they were going to salvage the tragicomedy that Leo had just put into play.

Unfortunately, when Lily arrived in the dining room, it was to find that, although the usual suspects had gathered for cocktails, Schuyler wasn’t among them.

"Where’s Schuyler?" she asked the room at large.

Everyone turned to stare at each other in curious silence, as if they’d just now realized Schuyler wasn’t in attendance tonight. Finally, when it appeared Lily wouldn’t receive an answer at all, Chloe spoke up.

"He’s up," the teenager said.

"He went out?" Lily demanded. "Where?"

She shrugged. "Dunno. But he was all fine duded up. Big-time penguin suit. Mega roses."

Tuxedo and bouquet? Lily translated to herself, awed by the news. That made no sense. Schuyler didn’t have any engagements this evening. None that he’d told her about anyway. And he told her about all of his engagements. In spite of her additional duties and activities, Lily was still an exceptional social secretary. And if Schuyler had had an appointment with a woman this evening—even a woman of the night—Lily would have known about it. How odd. Where could he have gone?

And wasn’t it just like him to take off now, right when she needed him most?

"Schuyler," she said under her breath as she spun around to leave, "you’d better have an awfully good explanation for this when you get home."

Chapter Seventeen

As he lifted his hand to knock on the front door of #3B in a South Philly brownstone, it occurred to Schuyler that, in all his years, he had never dropped in on a woman unannounced. Nor had he ever wanted to drop in on a woman unannounced. Nor had he ever brought flowers with him when he did drop in on a woman—announced. Nor had he ever actually wanted to hand pick and pay for the flowers he brought to that woman he’d never brought flowers to before.

Or something like that.

Hmmm… Call him overly analytical, but all of this seemed highly significant somehow.

He hesitated before allowing his hand to make contact with the door, surveying his surroundings again. The building was old, but sturdy, the paint in the dark hallway peeling, but clean. The mingling scents of Lysol, cigarette smoke, and cooked cabbage warred for possession of the air, but there was something surprisingly appealing about the smell. It reminded him of his childhood, something he would have just as soon not been reminded of.

In spite of that, however, as he stood at Caroline Beecham’s front door, a bubble burst inside him that was warm and soft and strangely reminiscent of affection. Though admittedly, it had been so long since he’d felt something like that, he wasn’t entirely sure he was correct in his identification of the feeling.

The neighborhood Caroline called home seemed safe enough—though it was clearly, Schuyler fought off a shudder, working class—but he had instructed Claudio to remain parked at the curb and to stay with the car at all times. Certainly Schuyler wasn’t anticipating any kind of trouble—not with anyone other than the resident of this particular apartment, at any rate—but he wanted to make sure he had an easy escape route, should something like escape become necessary this evening.

And where Caroline Beecham was concerned, escape was never far from the front of his brain. So far in their acquaintance—he hesitated to call it anything more—she had tried to strangle him, had called him stupid, had accused him of being unfeeling, and had seen him, dammit, at his most vulnerable. Which, granted, was none too vulnerable, he assured himself, thanks to that cool, steely armor he had erected around himself over the years, by God. Still, running away was looking more and more like a viable option where she was concerned. He wondered why he hadn’t taken advantage of it already.

It was because of something in her eyes, he decided. Something in her voice when she spoke about the Van Meter Academy in general, and Chloe in particular. Something about the way she looked at Schuyler, too, that made him… curious… to know more.

He and Caroline—yes, he did rather like the feel of her first name rolling about in his head—had ended up spending the entire evening together last night, and not all of it had been used up discussing Chloe’s health, education, and general well-being, either. For instance, Schuyler had discovered that, when she was a senior in high school, Caroline had been both the captain of her debating team and voted Most Likely to Appear with Staples in Playboy. For some reason he had yet to understand, she’d been much more proud of that first accomplishment than the second. In spite of all that, it was a combination no man would be able to resist.