Naughty or Nice? Page 4

“Is she around?” Jack scanned the room, grateful to Grady for having talked him into buying a new suit for this gig.

  “She’s over there, strutting her stuff for Daddy Warbucks.” Pia pointed toward the Christmas tree. Sure enough, there was Kat, half-hidden by its branches as she leaned toward her tall, entirely bald companion to say something. Whatever it was made Daddy Warbucks chuckle appreciatively.

  “That’s Harry Livermore,” Chantal said into Jack’s ear. “Kat’s newest project—one of those dot-com zillionaires who didn’t crash and burn. What can I get you to drink, hon?”

  “Anything, as long as it’s a double.” Jack couldn’t wrest his gaze away from Kat, incandescent in a gleaming black sheath adorned with a jeweled brooch the size of his hand that was shaped like a sprig of holly; he assumed the emeralds and rubies were real. The dress skimmed her curves and was short enough to show off those nonstop legs to excellent advantage. Her carelessly upswept hairdo revealed a good-size pair of diamonds sparkling on her ears.

  Shouldn’t there be some unwritten rule, Jack wondered, against wearing diamonds given to you by one man while you were “strutting your stuff” for his prospective replacement?

  Or maybe this Harry Livermore wouldn’t be so much a replacement as a supplement. Was it possible Kat wasn’t constrained by fidelity after all, that she permitted herself to be kept by more than one man at a time? More to the point, would the men permit it? It seemed to Jack that he’d heard of courtesans in Paris and Venice who were shared by several wealthy protectors. Did the same sorts of arrangements exist today?

  It could happen. And where was it more likely to happen than in Manhattan, the world capital of jaded sophistication?

  Was Kat the type to juggle three or four deep-pocket benefactors that way? Not that she couldn’t pull it off if she wanted—just look at her—but did she have the stomach for it?

  No way, he thought, picturing her in that goofy Christmas sweater, talking about going to church every Sunday with her grandma. But then he looked around at all this opulence, watched her smiling at Harry Livermore, laughing at his jokes, and he wasn’t so sure.

  “Here you are.” Chantal handed him a hefty crystal glass filled with whiskey on the rocks. “I hope you like scotch.”

  Jack had detested the stuff ever since he’d gotten sick on it at fourteen, thereby reaping a particularly memorable ass-kicking from the old man, but he tossed it back anyway, in one burning tilt.

  When he lowered the glass he found Kat watching him from across the room. She smiled a little tentatively, mouthed Glad you could make it. He nodded, his gaze fixed on her, his hand tightening around the glass.

  Her smile faded, and he realized too late that he hadn’t returned it. They stared at each other for a few long seconds, and then Harry Livermore said something to Kat and she turned toward him and Jack raised the glass to his mouth again.

  It was empty, of course. He’d already drained it.

  Chantal and Pia exchanged a look.

  “Come on, Jack—let’s go to the den, where it’s quieter.” Chantal took one of his arms, Pia the other, and together they guided him to the small, sage-colored room. The light was dimmer here—most of it came from candles—and the crowd thinner, and you didn’t have to yell to be heard. There was another, smaller fireplace in this room, its mantel draped in evergreen swags. Jack breathed in a pleasantly sharp fusion of woodsmoke and pine.

  “How about a refill?” Chantal plucked the glass out of his hand as she gestured him into a milk-chocolate leather sofa.

  “Better not,” he said, but she was already fetching him another one from the built-in carved-oak wet bar in the corner, manned by a middle-aged woman in a tuxedo shirt, cummerbund, and earrings shaped like Christmas lights.

  If he sat all the way back and tilted his head, he could still see Kat, he discovered, only now she was facing away from him. Her dress, modestly cut in front, scooped down to her waist in back, displaying a sweep of bare, creamy flesh that he hadn’t anticipated.

  “It’s Vera Wang.”

  “Huh?” He turned to find Chantal lowering herself into the squishy couch next to him; Pia had already settled in on the other side.

  “Her dress.” Chantal handed him a fresh scotch and took a sip of the eggnog she’d snagged for herself. “It’s a Vera Wang. Doesn’t she look faboo?”

  “Kat could wear a feed sack and she’d look faboo,” Pia said.

  Jack raised his glass. That distinctive scotch aroma, which always reminded him of burned rubber tires, merged with the unctuous nutmeg-and-cream eggnog smell to make him feel woozier than he should have after just the one drink.

  A waiter came around with a tray of skewered shrimp wrapped in prosciutto. Pia and Chantal helped themselves; Jack waved it away. “So, how do you ladies know Kat?” he asked.

  “We’re on staff at her old junior high,” Pia said. “I teach vocal music. Chantal teaches English.”

  “You two are teachers?”

  Jack’s tone must have betrayed his incredulity, because Chantal deadpanned, “We left our schoolmarm costumes at work.”

  “No, I mean . . .I didn’t mean . . .” Jack chuckled uneasily. “You gotta understand, I was educated by hatchet-faced, ruler-swinging nuns. If it had been you two instead, I might have stuck around to graduate.”

  “Kat was a school counselor,” Pia said, “before she left to do her thing.”

  “My ears are burning. You guys talking about me?”

  Jack looked up to find Kat standing over him. He braced himself one-handed to rise, but it was the kind of couch that swallowed you up and didn’t want to let you go.

  “Don’t get up.” She waved him back down and perched on the edge of the marble-topped coffee table. “I just stopped by to say hi. I am glad you came.” She reached out and lightly touched his knee, her fingers warm through the wool of his trousers, her smile shyly luminous. It was as if a mild electric current were shivering through him, scrambling his brainwaves and rendering him incapable of speech.

  “How’s it going with Harry Livermore?” Chantal asked Kat. “Got him eating out of your hand yet?”

  Kat gave her friend a look. “Harry happens to be a swell guy, and we’re hitting it off just fine, thank you. But Kirsten wandered off before I could sweet-talk her, and she’s the key.”

  “Kirsten?” Jack inquired as he raised his glass to his mouth.

  “Harry’s wife,” Kat said. “I’ve got to try and get the three of us together and show her what I can do.”

  Jack’s scotch went down the wrong hole. “The three of you?” he choked out.

  Chantal slapped him on the back. “They say he never makes a move without her.”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Kirsten’s been a sucker for glitz ever since their ship came in,” Kat said in a low voice, glancing around. “That’s why I pulled out all the stops this year. My Christmas parties usually aren’t quite this Dynasty-esque.”

  Pia barked with laughter. “Most years, Kat cons us into decorating her tree for her, then we get maybe a bowl of popcorn and a six-pack while she makes us watch It’s a Wonderful Life for, like, the umpteenth time.”

  Chantal chuckled. “That’s Kat’s idea of heaven—washing popcorn down with ice-cold beer and weeping like a baby at the end of that movie, like it’s the first time she’s seen it.”

  “Which only goes to show,” Kat said with mock loftiness, “what a genius Frank Capra was, to get to me every time like that. And it’s not like I’m alone. It’s a Wonderful Life is ranked—”

  “Eleventh,” Chantal and Pia recited in eye-rolling unison, “on the American Film Institute’s list of the one hundred greatest movies ever made.”

  “Because it’s a masterpiece,” Kat said, “which I’m sure even Jack the Grinch will agree with.”

  “Uh . . .” Jack winced exaggeratedly. “Truth be told, I’m not that crazy about it.”

  Kat’s jaw actually dropped. Pia snickered as Chantal shook her
head, murmuring, “Boy, you done blown it now,” into her eggnog.

  “I mean, I don’t hate it,” he hurriedly amended. “I’ve only seen, like, bits and pieces on TV now and then. It just struck me as being a little . . .”

  “Sappy?” Kat asked.

  “Let’s just say I watch movies for amusement, not to have big, gooey life lessons wrapped up in tinsel and shoved down my throat.” Nice going, Scrooge, Jack chided himself even as Chantal gored him in the ribs with her elbow. “Nothing personal,” he added. “I’m sure it’s basically a good movie. It’s just not really . . . my scene.”

  Not really my scene? Who do you think you are, Maynard G. Krebs?

  Kat said, “You should try watching the whole thing sometime. I’ve got a videotape I could lend you, because unfortunately I don’t think either of my so-called best friends, or should I say former best friends”—she made a face at Pia and Chantal, who stuck their tongues out at her—“is going to be willing to watch it with me this year.”

  “You don’t have it on DVD yet?” Pia asked.

  “You know how low-tech I am,” Kat said. “I’m going to be the last kid on the block with a DVD player.”

  Ask Preston for one when he comes back from Aspen, Jack thought uncharitably as he took another odious swallow of scotch. Or Harry Livermore. Or . . . How many more were there? he wondered.

  Chantal said, “I saw an ad for the DVD version. It’s got a couple of those making-of-the-movie type documentaries on it, and the original theatrical trailer.”

  “Really?” Kat sat forward, her eyes girlishly wide.

  “Argh! Chantal!” Pia reached across Jack to playfully slap her friend. “Now look what you’ve done. She’s gonna upgrade to DVD, lure us here on some pretext, and make us watch it again. I thought we’d get a reprieve this year.”

  “You can rest easy,” Kat said. “I won’t be upgrading any time soon. You know how much I’ve got on my plate lately. And it took me two days just to figure out how to hook up the VCR after I bought it, so the idea of taking the time to replace it with . . .” She trailed off, tilting her head to see something through the doorway. “There she is.”

  “Who?” Jack asked.

  “Kirsten Livermore. She’s talking to Harry in the living room. Time for me to kiss a little booty.” Kat stood and smoothed her skirt, whispering, “Wish me luck,” as she turned and disappeared through the doorway.

  “Okay . . .” Leaning forward, Jack thunked his glass down on the coffee table. “You two are gonna have to brief me on the whole Harry Livermore thing, ’cause my imagination is pretty much making an ass out of me here.”

  Chantal’s perplexed stare turned into a grin of disbelief. “Omigod, you thought she had designs on him! Or them.”

  “As if.” Pia joined her in an uproarious burst of laughter, then muttered something in Spanish that included the name “Preston” and ended on a disparaging little snort. Before Jack could ask her for a translation, she said, “Harry Livermore’s just some guy looking for a good cause to help ease his guilt about being filthy stinking nouveau riche. Kat’s hitting him up for funding for Augusta House.”

  Jack cocked his head as if to say, And that would be . . .?

  “You don’t know about Augusta House?” Pia glanced in bemusement at Chantal, then back at Jack. “What do you think Kat’s been doing since she quit the school system two years ago?”

  Drawing on his all too meager reserves of prudence, Jack said, “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “It’s a little complicated,” Chantal began, an echo of Kat’s It’s hard to describe in a nutshell. “But I guess you’d have to call her a full-time do-gooder.” Pitching her voice low, she added, “You do know she comes from money.”

  “Uh . . .” Jack tracked Chantal’s gaze into the living room, where Kat was deep in conversation with the Livermores.

  “Big-time money, a trust fund and all that, but she’d always wanted to counsel kids, so she went to college and got a master’s in child psychology.”

  “She wanted to work in inner-city schools,” Pia said, “where she felt she could do the most good. She was great at it, too—never came off as a little rich girl slumming it. Very down-to-earth, really in touch with the kids. They loved her. And she loved them.”

  Jack stared, dumbfounded, as Kat gracefully bent her head to absorb some comment of Kirsten Livermore’s, her arm on the other woman’s, her smile warm and attentive.

  “The family situations of some of these kids really got to her,” Chantal said. “Lots of single-mother-scraping-by situations, even some homeless families. When she handed in her resignation, some of the staff thought it was because she just couldn’t take it anymore. Her grandmother Augusta had just died, so Pia and I thought maybe she was in a weakened emotional state, what with the grief and all. Augusta left her this building and millions in—”

  “This building?” Jack asked. “The building we’re in?” Kat owned a five-story luxury apartment building?

  Pia said, “Yep. There are seven units upstairs. She rents those out and lives on the first two floors, like Augusta did.”

  “So, anyway,” Chantal continued, “she took the money Augusta left her and bought another building with it—this vacant old dinosaur uptown. It had been a private school for girls once—Miss Fussybutt’s Academy for Young Ladies, something like that—but they shut it down years ago.”

  “At first we didn’t know what to think,” Pia said. “But then she told us she wanted to create a residence for mothers with children who needed a place to live while they got their lives together and looked for permanent housing. Augusta House has been up and running for over a year now.”

  “There are over sixty families there right now,” Chantal said. “They get furnished apartments, crisis intervention, child care, job training, permanent housing assistance . . .”

  “Chantal and I are part of the volunteer staff,” Pia said. “She established a reading program for the kids, and I’ve recruited a couple dozen of the teenagers for a mixed chorus—they’ll be here later, in fact, to sing some carols and hopefully put Mr. and Mrs. Warbucks in the check-writing mood.”

  Chantal said, “We’ve got some paid staff, too—counselors for drug abuse, mental health, AIDS, teen pregnancy, domestic violence . . .”

  “Then there’s CFF,” Pia said. “Caring for Families. It’s a coalition of volunteers that Kat’s trying to get off the ground. It’ll oversee programs for battered women and runaways, among other things, but to do that, she needs to buy and furnish another building. She spent buckets of her own money getting Augusta House started, so a big part of what she does is to court deep pockets like ol’ Harry and his wife to write checks to CFF. She’s one busy lady.”

  “So, if this is all news to you,” Chantal asked Jack, “what did you think she did?”

  “Uh . . .”

  Hook up with sugar daddies and milk them for all they’re worth. That was how Jack had assumed she made her living. Now he knew that wasn’t the case at all, that she was not only wealthy in her own right, but a philanthropist. She didn’t need to seduce prosperous men who’d grown bored with their wives.

  Maybe she just preferred them.

  Kat was laughing now, head thrown back, diamonds flashing. No wonder she reminded him so much of Grace Kelly, another high-society blonde who, as an ingenue, had reputedly enthralled her share of married man.

  “She is seeing someone, you know.” Chantal met Jack’s gaze with an apologetic little smile. “It’s just . . . the way you’ve been looking at her, ever since you got here . . . I thought I should—”

  “No, I know about that.” Jack reached for his drink again. “Preston something, right?”

  “We just call him P-Four,” Pia said as she drained the rest of her eggnog, “ ’cause before him, Kat dated this guy Phil, and last year it was Pretty Paolo, and back when she was still working, it was our old vice principal, Peter Peterson.”

  “Pumpkin Eaterson?�
� Jack asked.

  “You’d fit right in with the junior high crowd.” Chantal shook her head. “They seemed like great guys in the beginning, all of them—so serious about her. Pumpkin proposed to her on the third date. Turned out all they were really serious about was her bank balance.”

  Pia said, “Preston’s so rich himself that he couldn’t care less whether she has money or not. We think that’s his appeal, ’cause he doesn’t seem to have much else going for him. We keep hoping she’ll come to her senses and jettison the guy. It’s a dead-end relationship, anyway. It can never go anywhere.”

  “Why?” Jack asked with studied nonchalance. “Because he’s married?”

  They both fell silent for a moment, then burst out laughing. “What on earth makes you think that?” Chantal asked.

  They didn’t know! With a careless shrug, Jack said, “I just thought maybe that was why you disapproved of him.”

  “Trust me,” Pia said, “Kat is the last woman in the world who’d stoop to dating a married man.”

  Jack looked down and rubbed the back of his neck, disheartened that Kat’s lie of omission encompassed even her closest friends.

  “In fact,” Chantal said, “I remember her telling us about her first date with P-Four. She asked him how come a catch like him was still single, and he fed her some Hallmark line of bull like, ‘I’ve been waiting for someone like you my whole life.’ ”

  Jack stared at her. “She said that? That he told her he was single?”

  “Yeah, and I’m with Pia. No way would Kat have anything to do with a married man. She has very strong feelings about infidelity.”

  “I think it has to do with her parents’ marriage breaking up,” Pia offered. “She said the Other Woman was just as answerable as her father. The only time I’ve heard her curse was when she was talking about that woman.”

  She doesn’t know! Jack realized. Oh, my God, she doesn’t know!

  He shook his head as if that would jar his brain into getting this. “Then . . . why is it you think the relationship is going nowhere?”

  “ ’Cause he’s totally not her type,” Pia said. “He’s, like, waaay older than her, and this super-WASP to boot.”