The Color of Love

Chapter Twenty-six

Derian only knew one way to handle confusion and anger and disappointment—she moved on to the next stop on the revolving stage of her life. Head down, cutting her way through the early evening sidewalk strollers with the ease of years of handling casino and racetrack crowds, she pulled up the number on her phone of her favorite travel agent, one of several kept on retainer by the corporation to handle all the upper-level management travel needs, including hers.

“Monica? Derian Winfield.”

“Yes, Ms. Winfield. How can I be of assistance?”

“I need to be in Rio by this time tomorrow.”

“Just a moment.” Monica sounded as if the peremptory request was just another ordinary item in a day’s work, which Derian guessed it was. She imagined Monica must go everywhere with a mobile, because no matter what time of day or night she called her, Monica always took care of her.

“I can get you on a direct flight from DC at six ten a.m. You’ll fly the corporate jet to Reagan National. Shall I send a car for you at four?”

Derian hesitated. She needed to go—she’d been putting off Antonio, her business manager, for weeks. If he said she needed to put in an appearance to woo some nervous investors before the next leg of the circuit, she believed him. She had nothing pressing at the agency—nothing she couldn’t have Vonnie delegate with a quick phone call. After all, Emily could have been doing her job all along, and she’d planned to have Emily step in while she was away. At the moment, talking to Emily and pretending everything was business as usual felt like more than she could handle. She ruthlessly pushed aside the quicksilver flash of pain when she imagined Emily at the office, looking beautiful and sexy as only she could in casual business clothes. Looking beautiful and sexy no matter where she was or what she was doing. “Yes, have me picked up at the Dakota.”

“Very good—shall I arrange a wake-up call when the driver is en route?”

“That would be fine.” She didn’t have much to pack. Once she’d left, the Dakota staff would take care of disposing of the few things in her kitchen, sending any clothes she left behind out to be laundered, and cleaning the place.

“I’ll reserve your usual suite at the Copa?”

Suddenly weary just thinking about the high-octane world she’d be jumping back into the next night, Derian sighed. Maybe the nonstop parties masquerading as business meetings would be just what she needed to quench the seething unrest souring her stomach. “Sure. Thanks.”

“Of course, Ms. Winfield. Have a good flight.”

“Good night.” Derian shoved her phone into her pants pocket and tried not to think about the hash she’d made of the night. Since kicking herself was a physical impossibility, she’d just keep walking until she burned off some of the anger. Nothing had turned out the way she’d expected, and she still couldn’t figure out where things had gone so wrong. She mentally replayed the conversation with Emily—hell, all their conversations—wondering how she’d misread the signals so completely. One minute they’d been closer than she’d ever been with anyone, not just physically, but in every way, and the next she’d felt like she’d been talking to a stranger. Emily had actually suggested Derian’s proposal was meant to manipulate Emily into doing something just so Derian could gain an advantage over Martin. Pain knifed through her chest. That Emily could imagine Derian was like him—a manipulator, someone who used people as weapons against one another—hurt far more than all the insults Martin had ever hurled her way.

Martin was the last person in the world she wanted to be like, and if that was how Emily saw her, a game player on the grandest of scales, then she’d been a fool to think Emily would want…anything…with her. She couldn’t even claim her tarnished reputation, deserved or not, was at fault for Emily’s impression of her. She’d revealed more of herself to Emily than to anyone in her life, even Aud, and that hadn’t been enough to matter. She slowed, let out a deep breath. She should have known she couldn’t change who she was like she changed her clothes, no matter how much she might’ve wanted to. She had been living off her inheritance and her name, she was a player, just as Emily had intimated, and wanting to be someone else didn’t erase that. Wanting Emily to see her as more than that wasn’t enough to make it so.

And feeling sorry for herself was just another form of self-indulgence. Emily had seen what she’d momentarily forgotten—she’d chosen her path a long time ago. She hadn’t wanted the Winfield legacy and had made herself into the woman everyone thought her to be.

Derian stopped at the corner and glanced around. Nothing looked familiar. She checked the street signs and couldn’t decipher which direction they were telling her to go. A cold sheet of panic sliced between her shoulder blades. She’d done this before. Countless times when she’d been very young. Found herself in a place she hadn’t expected to be where everything looked foreign, as if she had stepped through an invisible curtain into another universe. Alone, and unable to find the way home.

But she wasn’t ten anymore. She took a breath, pulled out her phone, and punched in a number.

“Hey, Dere,” Aud said, sounding uncharacteristically subdued when she answered. “Is this a friendly call or business? Because I’m wrapping up for the day and I’ve had business up to my a—”

“I’m a little bit lost.” Derian laughed wryly. In more ways than one. “Turned around. Street signs say…um, West Third and Mercer. And I could use a drink.”

A beat of silence. Then Aud’s brisk voice. “I’m closing my computer right now. I’ll grab a cab and be there in ten minutes. Is there a bar somewhere that you can see?”

Derian scanned the streets, stepping out of the way of a vendor pushing a cart full of T-shirts toward the open van pulled up to the curb. “There’s one on the corner, neighborhood-looking place. Tony D’s.”

“I’ll find it. Ten minutes. Okay?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

The tavern, lit only by the neon beer signs hanging on the walls at irregular intervals, was a single room about the size of Derian’s living room at the Dakota. A big plate-glass window looked out on the sidewalk, a scarred bar down one side, a handful of small mismatched tables pushed against the opposite wall. A sign pointing to restrooms in an alcove at the back. A few men and women occupied stools at the bar, most hunched over their glasses in silent communion. Derian found a seat at the far end and ordered a draft. The sharp yeasty bite felt good going down. The last of the panic washed away as she finished it off and signaled for another. Right now, she was tired of thinking about who she was and how much of her father might be in her.

The barkeep slid a bowl of nuts in front of her.

“Thanks.” She wasn’t hungry, but she ate them automatically, the same way she drank the beer.

Aud slid onto the stool beside her. “How far ahead of me are you?”

Derian shot her a sideways glance. “Not very. This is my second.”

Aud waved to the bartender. “Dry martini, two olives.” She grabbed a handful of nuts, turned sideways until her knees rested against Derian’s thigh, and ran a hand down Derian’s back. “So, how the hell did you end up here?”

“Went for a walk.”

Aud laughed. “From where?”

Derian clenched her jaw. “I was in the neighborhood.”

“Okay, fine.”

Derian registered the hurt in Aud’s voice and shook her head. “Sorry. I dragged you down here and you came without a second thought, even though I haven’t been much of a friend.”

“Oh, Dere,” Aud said, “that’s not true. Just because I wanted you to stay here with me and you couldn’t doesn’t mean you weren’t a good friend. I haven’t reached out to you either. I’ve been too pissed at you for leaving me.”

“Running away, you mean.”

“Hey, sometimes we have to run in order to survive.”

“Maybe you can’t outrun who you are,” Derian said.

“Bullshit. Martin was poison to you.” Aud sipped her martini. “Wow, this place is a find. Best martini I’ve had in forever. So, why are you here? It’s not Henrietta, is it?”

“No, she’s fine. Making great progress.”

“What the hell happened?” Aud finished her cocktail and asked for another. “If it’s not Henrietta, and you haven’t had another run-in with Martin—”

Derian snorted. “Martin and I have nothing left to say to each other. We both know where we stand, and nothing will change that.”

“Then it has to be a woman, and that being the case, I’d say it’s Emily May.”

“What makes you think that?” Derian tensed at the mention of Emily, wanting to protect her even though Emily could do that perfectly well herself.

“I’ve seen you two together, more than once, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look at a woman the way you look at her. Like she mattered.” Aud ran a fingertip around the wide-open mouth of the glass. “She looks the same way at you.”

“Apparently, looks are deceiving.” Derian laughed at the lie. She’d always wanted to use that excuse when others judged her on appearances, but in her case it wasn’t true. “We had a thing, and that’s over now.”

“A thing. A thing as in you’ve been sleeping together.”

“That’s generally part of a thing, yes.”

“Really, Derian, Henrietta’s protégé? Do you have to follow your clit everywhere it leads?”

“According to popular opinion, yes.” Derian didn’t even mind the verbal assault. She didn’t feel it, really. She was strangely numb.

Aud rolled her eyes. “So…what? You broke it off and things got messy?”

“Actually, that’s not the way it went. Emily changed the game.”

“She put you on the street? Well, that must be a first.”

“Thanks,” Derian said dryly.

Aud sighed. “Hey, all right, I’m being bitchy. I’m sorry. What happened, exactly?”

“I told her I thought we ought to get married, that that would solve her visa problem and take care of the agency going forward.” Derian finished her beer and thought about another. She wasn’t driving anywhere, hell, she couldn’t really even walk anywhere. She pointed a finger at her glass and the bartender magically whisked it away and set a fresh, foaming draft in front of her. “Apparently, my offering to help her out with something we both knew she wanted was manipulative. She suggested that my motivation was to piss off my father.”

“Well, wasn’t it? Sort of? Because it certainly would make Martin crazy.”

“No,” Derian said. “Sure, anytime I manage to get to him is a good day, but that’s not why I said it.”

“Then why in the world did you? Marriage is a serious thing, Dere. It’s a legal commitment, at the very least, and usually a lot more. Honestly, what were you thinking?”

The numbness dropped away like ice shattering under a too-heavy tread. Anger came roaring back, scalding and indiscriminate. “I was thinking that Henrietta needs Emily not just now, but to pass on her life’s work. I was thinking Emily loves this place, deserves her job, and needs to know she’s not going to be sent back to Singapore after everything she’s put into getting where she is now because of a bureaucracy that doesn’t deal with individuals, only quotas and categories and groundless prejudices. I thought I was offering help.”

“What about you, Dere? What were you thinking about you in all of this?”

Derian stared, the heat dissipating as fast as it had flared.

“How many women have you slept with?”

“What?” Derian might have trouble navigating in new places, especially when she was emotionally unsteady the way she had been earlier, but the rest of her mind worked perfectly, and she wasn’t following Aud. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Go ahead, answer the question.”

Derian laughed despite herself. “I don’t know. A lot. Why?”

“Because you don’t know anything about women at all. I’m sure you’re fabulous in bed, but do you have any idea what makes a woman tick?”

“Well I should, I am one.” Derian stopped, admitting she rarely thought about why she did what she did, beyond the one primal motivating force in her life. Escaping Martin. Escaping the constant rejection. Getting away from the thousand cuts that were bleeding her to death. “You’re saying I’m insensitive and self-centered.”

“No,” Aud said softly, “I’m not, because I know you’re not. But has it occurred to you that marriage is something that most women—hell, maybe most people, I don’t know, I can’t speak for guys—think about, maybe even dream about, their whole lives? It’s not a business decision, Derian.”

“It often is, and you know it,” Derian said. “Besides, Emily is all about her profession. She’s not looking for a romantic relationship. We talked about it.”

Aud’s eyes widened. “The two of you talked about getting married?”

“Not exactly,” Derian said, exasperated. “We talked about the future, you know, what we wanted and didn’t want. We both pretty much said marriage wasn’t for us.”

“Pretty much…” Aud laughed wryly. “Oh, Dere. You mean marriage isn’t for you. I bet Emily is all about her job right now. I get that. Me too. But that doesn’t mean that somewhere down the road she didn’t see that for herself.”

“Well, there won’t be any down the road at Winfield’s if she’s back in Singapore.”

Aud gave her a long look. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it. You don’t want her to leave.”

“That hardly makes any difference, since I’m leaving myself.”

Aud stiffened. “Are you? When?”

“Soon.” As soon as she could.

“For how long?”

“I don’t know how long, a couple weeks probably. Henrietta is doing really well, and as long as she keeps to her regimen, she’ll be back before too long.”

“And does Emily know this?”

“I mentioned it, yes.”

“So you announced you were leaving in the same breath as you suggested the two of you get married?” Aud said dryly.

Derian flushed. “Not quite like that, no. I don’t know. We didn’t actually get to the planning part. What are you getting at?”

“That maybe you don’t know the woman you’re sleeping with as well as you think.”

Derian rubbed her face. “Well, she certainly knows me.”

“Don’t be so sure.” Aud leaned over to kiss Derian on the cheek. “Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t know you.”