Glenys patted her arm. “What are you talking about? You’re wonderful with people.”
“Not really, although I’m better one-on-one than I am in a crowd. But I want to be the sort of person who can bound into a room and be the life and soul of a party. It must be great to feel that comfortable and confident.” She watched as Harvey picked his way over the snow. “I’m a coward.”
Glenys stopped walking. “Oh no, honey. You’re nothing of the sort. You are brave.”
Harriet thought about the number of times she’d almost called Ethan Black and canceled. “I’m really not.”
“Think about it—” Glenys waggled her gloved finger. “Is it hard for Fliss to bounce into a room and talk to everyone?”
“No. She does it naturally.” And it was a skill she’d always envied. There were so many days when she wished she were more like her sister.
“So what’s brave about that? She does it without a second thought. Brave is walking into that room when it’s the last thing you want to do. Brave is putting yourself out there when you’d rather hide away in the safety of your apartment. Brave is what you’re doing. Moving in with a guy you hardly know to protect that innocent little dog.”
“You’re freaking me out, Glenys. You’re making it sound like the biggest risk.”
“It’s going to be fine,” Glenys said, her voice devoid of conviction. “You’re brave as a lion, honey.”
Harriet didn’t feel particularly lionlike as she hauled her suitcase across town to Ethan’s apartment in the West Village.
Unlike the rest of Manhattan, where the streets were laid out in an ordered, logical grid, here they meandered and curved. It was easy to get lost, particularly as Harriet didn’t know this area as well as the rest of Manhattan. She walked past an organic bakery, a craft store and an artsy boutique all decked out for the holidays with garlands of holly leaves and twinkling lights. Now, with the cobbled streets hidden under layers of snow, it felt as if she’d stepped straight into the pages of a Dickens novel.
She reached Ethan’s apartment block and took the elevator to the top floor.
He’d already left for work and there was no sign of Madi.
Concerned, Harriet dumped her suitcase in the living room and sprinted upstairs.
Madi was sprawled in the middle of his bed, her eyes closed.
Harriet shook her head in disapproval. “You are a bad girl.”
Madi opened her eyes, then sprang off the bed and gave Harriet an ecstatic welcome.
“You are not allowed to sleep on his bed. Are you listening to me?”
Madi wagged her tail.
“You have to behave. I’m not taking any nonsense from you.”
It was the first time she’d had the chance to take a proper look at his apartment. The first time she’d come here it had been dark, and yesterday she’d been too busy focusing on the fact he wanted her to dog sit to pay any attention to her surroundings.
But now she looked.
The sun-filled living room had high ceilings and exposed brick walls. There was a large wood-burning fireplace, and three oversize windows faced west and offered a view of the Hudson River.
Harriet walked across to the window. From her own apartment she saw other buildings. Brick walls, trimmed with iron fire escapes. If she stood on a chair and craned her neck she could just about see the tops of a few trees in Central Park. Her view was nothing like this.
She gazed for a moment and then turned back to the room.
A large leather sofa faced a fireplace that was flanked with bookcases. They ran the whole length of the wall and reached up to the ceiling.
For Harriet, a bookcase was too much of a draw to simply walk past without giving it attention.
Curious, she stepped forward to read some of the spines.
Dickens and Dostoyevsky nestled alongside modern authors such as Stephen King. There were medical textbooks, books on music and art history. If she’d had to compile a character study of the owner of the apartment based on the contents of his bookshelves, she would have struggled.
What it told her was that Ethan Black read what he wanted to read. The books on the shelves hadn’t been chosen to impress, but were a haphazard catalog of the owner’s varied tastes and interests.