When Samantha nodded, he went to the west side of the room and opened a door, exposing a narrow, dark stairway leading downward. “It’s the servants’ stairs,” he explained. “The house hasn’t been remodeled into apartments, so you and I will have to share a kitchen.”
She looked at him sharply.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” he said, annoyed that once again he was defending himself. Maybe he should give her a police statement that swore to his clean record, swore he wasn’t a rapist or a murderer or had ever had so much as a speeding ticket. “I know less about kitchens than I do about computers, so you won’t be running into me in there very often. I can work a refrigerator and that’s about it. Even toasters confuse me.”
Saying nothing, she continued to look at him, letting him know that she was far from convinced of his good intentions.
“Look, Sam, maybe the two of us got off on the wrong foot, but I can assure you that I’m not a…a whatever you seem to think I am. You’ll be perfectly safe here with me. Safe from me, that is. All your doors have good, sturdy locks on them, and I don’t have keys to the locks. Your father had the only set. As for sharing the kitchen, if you want, we can set a schedule for use. We can arrange our whole lives around a schedule if you want, so we don’t have to see each other at all. Your father paid me a year’s rent in advance, so I think you should stay here. Besides, I’ve already spent the rent money on that pile of metal downstairs, so I wouldn’t be able to refund your money.”
She wasn’t sure what to answer, whether to say she’d stay or not. Of course she shouldn’t stay, not after the way they’d met, but right now she could feel her father’s presence more strongly than she could remember this man’s touches. Maybe she shouldn’t stay here with him, but could she leave the second home her father had created? She had lost her home in Louisville with all those memories and all those ghosts, but here she could feel the beginning of new memories.
Reluctantly, she put the photo of her mother down and started walking down the stairs, all the way to the ground floor where the kitchen was. For all that this man said he knew nothing about cooking, someone did, for the pretty, spacious, blue and white kitchen looked to be well equipped and highly usable.
She started to ask questions, but then she looked toward the end of the kitchen across a charming little breakfast room and saw the double glass doors leading into the garden. Turning away from him, leaving the kitchen behind, she went out the doors and into the garden. As backyards go, the space wasn’t very large, but it was surrounded by an eight-foot-tall solid wooden fence, so the yard was private and secluded. Upon closer inspection, she could see that the garden was prettier than it had seemed from the fourth-floor balcony, with pink climbing roses just budding, growing over the fence. They were the old-fashioned full-blown fragrant roses that she had always loved, not the modern tight scentless roses.
Turning, she smiled at Mike. “You have done a beautiful job.”
“Thank you,” he said, seeming to be truly pleased by her praise.
As she inhaled the fragrance of the roses and thought about the rooms upstairs—her father’s rooms—she whispered, “I’ll stay.”
“Good. Maybe tomorrow I could show you a few places to buy furniture. I’m sure you’ll want to change the rooms, since they’re not exactly what a female would want. My sister is an interior designer, and I can get things wholesale through her so—”
Turning toward him, her face was stern. “Mr. Taggert, thank you so much for your offer, but I want to make myself clear from the start. I am not looking for a friend, a lover, or a tour guide. I have a job to do in this city and when it’s finished I’m leaving, and between now and then I have no desire to…start anything. Do you understand?”
Looking at her with one eyebrow raised, he let her know he did indeed understand. “I understand perfectly. You don’t want anything to do with me. Fine. Your keys are on the kitchen countertop, one for the front door, another for the deadbolts inside your apartment. Your father wanted the locks in his apartment keyed alike so he’d have only one key to bother with.”
“Thank you,” she said, walking past him toward the kitchen.
“Samantha,” he said as she passed him. “I have a request.”
She didn’t turn around. “What is it?” she asked, bracing herself.
“We’re going to be seeing each other now and then in passing, especially in the kitchen, and I’d like to ask you…” His voiced lowered. “If you should come downstairs at night or early in the morning, don’t wear one of those white lacy things. You know, the kind that floats around you. Red or black is okay, I can handle red or black, and blue would be easy, but I could not deal with white lace.”
Without a backward glance, Samantha ran into the house, grabbed the keys and ran up the stairs.
3
On her first night in New York, Samantha slept in a bed chosen by her father, and the trauma of the day was somewhat softened. But when she awoke, she felt worse than she had when she went to bed, because the full reality of her situation hit her. In Louisville, in her father’s house, she’d been all right, but now she was in a strange place, surrounded by strangers. Never in her life had she been alone before. Not really, truly alone, for she’d had her parents, her grandfather, then her husband.
Hearing a noise outside, she got out of bed and went to the window to look out into the little graden below. The man, her landlord, was watering his plants, and the moment Samantha moved the curtain, as though he’d heard her, he turned and waved, making Samantha jump away from the window, flinging the curtain back into place.
Not only was she alone, she thought, but she was surrounded by predators. The image came to her of being lost at sea, bobbing in the ocean with a life preserver about her waist, watching an ocean liner filled with happy, laughing people who were having too good a time to hear her cries for help—and sharks were circling her. At the moment, the sharks seemed to be in the form of one Michael Taggert.
After she showered and dressed, she pulled her hair back from her face and waited until she heard the front door open and close before venturing down the stairs. Pausing at the front door of the town house, she dawdled, not wanting to go outside. In fact, she wished she didn’t have to leave the house at all, but she had to buy food and open an account at a bank so she could have money transferred from Kentucky.
Quite honestly, New York terrified her. Now, peeking out the curtains, there wasn’t a story she had ever read or heard about the city that didn’t enter her head the moment she stepped outside. All over the world New York was used as a bogeyman for adults. When something dreadful happened in any other town in America, people said things like, “This place is getting as bad as New York,” or “At least this isn’t New York.” Well this was New York and she had to go out into it all alone.
What happened when one walked alone in the city? she wondered. Through the door glass she could see women walking past the town house, some of them with dogs on leashes, some of them in long, tight black suit jackets with tiny skirts below. None of them seemed to be terrified.
Taking a deep, fortifying breath, she finally opened the door, closed and locked it behind her, then went down the stairs, walked to the end of the block, and took a left. Reading the green street sign, she saw she was now on Lexington Avenue. As she walked north along the block, she saw a grocery with outdoor bins of fruit and vegetables, a shoe store, a dry cleaners, a branch of the Bank of New York, a tiny video rental store, a delicatessen that had freshly baked breads and pastries in the window, and a bookstore.
Within two hours she had opened her account at the bank and bought groceries, fresh flowers, and a paperback novel—and she’d done it all without so much as crossing a street. She went back to the corner, took a right, and went straight back to the town house where she put her key in the front door lock, opened it, closed the door behind her, then leaned against the door
, giving a great sigh of relief. She had just made a foray into the city of New York all alone and she had returned safely. She hadn’t had a knife held to her throat, hadn’t had her purse snatched, nor had anyone tried to sell her drugs. Right now she felt as though she’d climbed a mountain, planted a flag on top, and returned home to tell the story.
After putting the groceries away, she made herself a bowl of cereal and a pot of herbal tea, took a cranberry muffin from the bakery bag, put it all on a tray, and took it into the garden.