Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
It was the first time he noticed how Mika, and as an extension of her and what she’d said about Yoko Ono, others in the present and in the past, were dismissed.
It would not be the last.
* * *
Several years after that…
The look she gave him could have stripped the wallpaper from the walls.
“Do you know Mika?”
“We haven’t formally met,” Tom told his hostess of the evening, Eleanor Ellington, a pompous woman he didn’t like all that much, but she loved tennis, and she personally funded ten scholarships to Tom’s summer camp. Scholarships that included strict criteria which boiled down to one statement she’d made when she’d first offered the money.
“Arthur can’t be the only one, now can he?”
“Well, Mika, this is Tom Pierce, normally escort to our darling Imogen Swan, who could not attend this evening,” Eleanor purred. Mika’s expression cleared as she smiled broadly at the introduction, all the while Tom grimaced and shook his head. “He also knows how to play tennis. Tom, this is Mika, she is, quite simply”—she floated a hand through the air—“everything.”
Tom dipped his chin to Mika.
She treated him to an expression like she was rolling her eyes, without rolling her eyes.
“Tom is flying solo tonight, as are you, my darling,” Eleanor said to Mika. “So allow him to entertain you. I’m sure he’s capable of doing that for at least half an hour. And then we’ll sit for dinner, I will seat you close to the brilliance and humor that is me, and you will be saved.” She finished on, “Tra la,” and drifted away.
“Apparently, we’re partners for the evening,” Tom noted when they were alone.
“She’s seventy-eight. She’s lived her whole life thinking that a woman alone needs some sort of companion or guard, if she doesn’t have a significant other, that significant other’s priority purpose, according to Eleanor, being acting as a companion and guard,” Mika replied. “However, I can assure you that I’m perfectly capable of maneuvering this evening without your aid.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t,” Tom pointed out.
“What I’m saying is you shouldn’t feel like you need to stick around. It’s one of my least favorite things to do, mingling. But I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe I’ve heard quite a bit about you and want to get to know you.”
“Maybe your wife doesn’t want you to get to know me.”
“Maybe my wife knows I love her down to my soul, so she understands I can have a conversation with another woman, and even be friends with her, without getting jealous or territorial because she knows I would never go there,” Tom drawled.
That shut her up.
“Jesus, does every man you meet hit on you?” he asked.
Her gaze moved through the room, she lifted a hand, pointed and shared, “That one over there hasn’t.”
Tom looked in the direction she was pointing to see literary critic and nonagenarian Niall Greenaway asleep in an armchair.
Tom burst out laughing.
“And I know a fair few homosexuals who aren’t interested in me, though some of them are interested in my closet, which, perversely, I find far more threatening because I carefully curated that closet and even one piece purloined I would consider the end of the world,” she continued.
Tom kept laughing.
When he finished, he noted, “Genny isn’t here because Genny’s pregnant with our third and the doctor doesn’t want her traveling. As for me, I couldn’t get out of this because my camp kids need Eleanor’s scholarships, and Eleanor needs me to kiss her ass. So I’m here, rather than where I should be. With my wife.”
“Poor you,” she murmured, lifting a pink drink in a coupe glass to her lips.
He knew all about pink drinks and coupe glasses, so he felt his lips twitching.
“Pink Lady?” he asked.
“Mary Pickford,” she answered.
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“Rum, pineapple, cherry liqueur, grenadine. Sublime.”
Tom made a face.
“Let me guess. Bourbon,” she surmised.
“Not just, though I like bourbon. It’s that I don’t go too sweet.”
She said nothing.
Which meant, for some reason he didn’t understand, he carried on, “Tart. Bitter. Smoky. Okay. Sweet, not so much.”
“Fascinating,” she whispered, and if they hadn’t spoken of what they’d just spoken of, he might have thought she was flirting.
Tom maneuvered them out of that lane.
“Maybe we should address the fact that Andrew Winston is an asshole,” he suggested.
That was when she laughed.
Watching her do it was when Tom got it.
Sure, she was attractive. Tall and rounded with a head of golden-blonde hair that could be described as nothing short of extraordinary. She also had an interesting face. Not beautiful, not pretty, interesting, with a statement nose, broad lips with a stretched bow up top and brutally honest aquamarine eyes.
On a certain level, he always got why she was attached to some of the most important people of any given moment. It was her unusual looks and how well she carried them. She also had a flair for fashion and clothes looked good on her, or she had acute skill in picking clothes that did.