“What if you cooked something for me, and I didn’t like it?” “Then I’d eat your serving as well as mine.”
“And what would I eat?” “Your heart out.”
After so many months of sorrow, how good it felt to be sharing an evening with an attractive and amusing man.
Elliot put away the dishwashing liquid and the wet dishcloth. As he dried his hands on the towel, he said, “Why don’t we forget about going out to dinner? Let me cook for you instead.”
“On such short notice?”
“I don’t need much time to plan a meal. I’m a whiz. Besides, you can help by doing the drudgery, like cleaning the vegetables and chopping the onions.”
“I should go home and freshen up,” she said. “You’re already too fresh for me.”
“My car—”
“You can drive it. Follow me to my place.”
They turned out the lights and left the room, closing the door after them.
As they crossed the reception area on their way toward the hall, Tina glanced nervously at Angela’s computer. She was afraid it was going to click on again, all by itself.
But she and Elliot left the outer office, flicking off the lights as they went, and the computer remained dark and silent.
14
ELLIOT STRYKER LIVED IN A LARGE, PLEASANT, contemporary house overlooking the golf course at the Las Vegas Country Club. The rooms were warm, inviting, decorated in earth tones, with J. Robert Scott furniture complemented by a few antique pieces, and richly textured Edward Fields carpets. He owned a fine collection of paintings by Eyvind Earle, Jason Williamson, Larry W. Dyke, Charlotte Armstrong, Carl J. Smith, and other artists who made their homes in the western United States and who usually took their subject matter from either the old or the new West.
As he showed her through the house, he was eager to hear her reaction to it, and she didn’t make him wait long.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Stunning. Who was your interior decorator?” “You’re looking at him.”
“Really?”
“When I was poor, I looked forward to the day when I’d have a lovely home full of beautiful things, all arranged by the very best interior decorator. Then, when I had the money, I didn’t want some stranger furnishing it for me. I wanted to have all the fun myself. Nancy, my late wife, and I decorated our first home. The project became a vocation for her, and I spent nearly as much time on it as I did on my legal practice. The two of us haunted furniture stores from Vegas to Los Angeles to San Francisco, antique shops, galleries, everything from flea markets to the most expensive stores we could find. We had a damn good time. And when she died . . . I discovered I couldn’t learn to cope with the loss if I stayed in a place that was so crowded with memories of her. For five or six months I was an emotional wreck because every object in the house reminded me of Nancy. Finally I took a few mementos, a dozen pieces by which I’ll always remember her, and I moved out, sold the house, bought this one, and started decorating all over again.”
“I didn’t realize you’d lost your wife,” Tina said. “I mean, I thought it must have been a divorce or something.”
“She passed away three years ago.” “What happened?”
“Cancer.”
“I’m so sorry, Elliot.”
“At least it was fast. Pancreatic cancer, exceedingly virulent. She was gone two months after they diagnosed it.”
“Were you married long?” “Twelve years.”
She put a hand on his arm. “Twelve years leaves a big hole in the heart.”
He realized they had even more in common than he had thought. “That’s right. You had Danny for nearly twelve years.”
“With me, of course, it’s only been little more than a year since I’ve been alone. With you, it’s been three years. Maybe you can tell me . . .”
“What?”
“Does it ever stop?” she asked. “The hurting?”
“Yes.”
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