What Makes a Family Read online

  “That’s not the least bit true,” Maryanne argued. “My dad isn’t a snob, only…only if you do meet him take off the raincoat, okay?”

  “The raincoat?”

  “It looks like you sleep in it. All you need is a hat and a scrap of paper with ‘Press’ scrawled on it sticking out of the band—you’d look like you worked for the Planet in Metropolis.”

  “I hate to disillusion you, sugar, but I’m not Ivy League and I’m not Superman.”

  “Oh, darn,” she said, snapping her fingers. “And we had such a good thing going.” She was feeling too mellow to remind him not to call her sugar.

  “So how old are you?” Nolan wanted to know. “Twenty-one?”

  “Three,” she amended. “And you?”

  “A hundred and three in comparison.”

  Maryanne wasn’t sure what he meant, but she let that pass, too. It felt good to have someone to talk to, someone who was her contemporary, or at least close to being her contemporary.

  “If you don’t want to tell me how old you are, then at least fill in some of the details of your life.”

  “Trust me, my life isn’t nearly as interesting as yours.”

  “Bore me, then.”

  “All right,” he said, drawing a deep breath. “My family was dirt-poor. Dad disappeared about the time I was ten and Mom took on two jobs to make ends meet. Get the picture?”

  “Yes.” She hesitated. “What about women?”

  “I’ve had a long and glorious history.”

  “I’m not kidding, Nolan.”

  “You think I was?”

  “You’re not married.”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged as if it was of little consequence. “No time for it. I came close once, but her family didn’t consider my writing career noble enough. Her father tried to fix me up with a job in his insurance office.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing much. I told her I was going to work for the paper, and she claimed if I really loved her I’d accept her father’s generous offer. It didn’t take me long to decide. I guess she was right—I didn’t love her.”

  He sounded nonchalant, implying that the episode hadn’t cost him a moment’s regret, but just looking at him told Maryanne otherwise. Nolan had been deeply hurt. Every sarcastic irreverent word he wrote suggested it.

  In retrospect, Maryanne mused one afternoon several days later, she’d thoroughly enjoyed her evening with Nolan. They’d eaten, and he’d raved about her Irish stew until she flushed at his praise. She’d made them cups of café au lait while he built a fire. They’d sat in front of the fireplace and talked for hours. He’d told her more about his own large family, his seven brothers and sisters. How he’d worked his way through two years of college, but was forced to give up his education when he couldn’t afford to continue. As it turned out, he’d been grateful because that decision had led to his first newspaper job. And, as they said, the rest was history.

  “You certainly seem to be in a good mood,” her coworker, Carol Riverside, said as she strolled past Maryanne’s desk later that same afternoon. Carol was short, with a pixielike face and friendly manner. Maryanne had liked her from the moment they’d met.

  “I’m in a fabulous mood,” Maryanne said, smiling. Nolan had promised to pay her back by taking her out to dinner. He hadn’t set a definite date, but she half expected to hear from him that evening.

  “In that case, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but someone has to tell you, and I was appointed.”

  “Tell me? What?” Maryanne glanced around the huge open office and noted that several faces were staring in her direction, all wearing sympathetic looks. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  Carol moved her arm out from behind her and Maryanne noticed that she was holding a copy of the rival paper’s morning edition. “It’s Nolan Adams’s column,” Carol said softly, her eyes wide and compassionate.

  “W-what did he say this time?”

  “Well, let’s put it this way. He titled it, ‘My Evening with the Debutante.’”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Maryanne was much too furious to stand still. She paced her living room from one end to the other, her mind spitting and churning. A slow painful death was too good for Nolan Adams.

  Her phone rang and she went into the kitchen to answer it. She reached for it so fast she nearly ripped it off the wall. Rarely did she allow herself to become this angry, but complicating her fury was a deep and aching sense of betrayal. “Yes,” she said forcefully.

  “This is Max,” her doorman announced. “Mr. Adams is here. Shall I send him up?”

  For an instant Maryanne was too stunned to speak. The man had nerve, she’d say that much for him. Raw courage, too, if he knew the state of mind she was in.

  “Ms. Simpson?”

  It took Maryanne only about a second to decide. “Send him up,” she said with deceptive calm.

  Arms hugging her waist, Maryanne continued pacing. She was going to tell this man in no uncertain terms what she thought of his duplicity, his treachery. He might have assumed from their evening together that she was a gentle, forgiving soul who’d quietly overlook this. Well, if that was his belief, Maryanne was looking forward to enlightening him.

  Her doorbell chimed and she turned to glare at it. Wishing her heart would stop pounding, she gulped in a deep breath, then walked calmly across the living room and opened the door.

  “Hello, Maryanne,” Nolan said, his eyes immediately meeting hers.

  She stood exactly where she was, imitating his tactic of leaning against the door frame and blocking the threshold.

  “May I come in?” he asked mildly.

  “I haven’t decided yet.” He was wearing the raincoat again, which looked even more disreputable than before.

  “I take it you read my column?” he murmured, one eyebrow raised.

  “Read it?” she nearly shouted. “Of course I read it, and so, it seems, did everyone else in Seattle. Did you really think I’d be able to hold my head up after that? Or was that your intention—humiliating me and…and making me a laughingstock?” She stabbed her index finger repeatedly against his solid chest. “And if you think no one’ll figure out it was me just because you didn’t use my name, think again.”

  “I take it you’re angry?” He raised his eyebrows again, as if to suggest she was overreacting.

  “Angry! Angry? That isn’t the half of it, buster!” The problem with being raised in a God-fearing, flag-loving family was that the worst thing she could think of to call him out loud was buster. Plenty of other names flashed through her mind, but none she dared verbalize. No doubt Nolan would delight in revealing this in his column, too.

  Furious, she grabbed his tie and jerked him into the apartment. “You can come inside,” she said.

  “Thanks. I think I will,” Nolan said wryly. He smoothed his tie, which drew her attention to the hard defined muscles of his chest. The last thing Maryanne wanted to do was notice how virile he looked, and she forced her gaze away from him.

  Because it was impossible to stand still, she resumed her pacing. With the first rush of anger spent, she had no idea what to say to him, how to make him realize the enormity of what he’d done. Abruptly, she paused at the edge of her living room and pointed an accusing finger at him. “You have your nerve.”

  “What I said was true,” Nolan stated, boldly meeting her glare. “If you’d bothered to read the column all the way through, objectively, you’d have noticed there were several complimentary statements.”

  “‘A naive idealist, an optimist…’” she said, quoting what she remembered, the parts that had offended her the most. “You made me sound like Mary Poppins!”

  “Surprisingl
y unspoiled and gentle,” Nolan returned, “and very much a lady.”

  “You told the entire city I was lonely,” she cried, mortified to even repeat the words.

  “I didn’t say you were lonely,” Nolan insisted, his voice all too reasonable and controlled. That infuriated her even more. “I said you were away from your family for the first time.”

  She poked his chest again, punctuating her speech. “But you made it sound like I should be in a day-care centre!”

  “I didn’t imply anything of the kind,” he contended. “And I did mention what a good cook you are.”

  “I’m supposed to be grateful for that? As I recall you said, I was ‘surprisingly adept in the kitchen’—as if you were amazed I knew the difference between a goldfish bowl and an oven.”

  “You’re blowing the whole thing out of proportion.”

  Maryanne barely heard him. “The comment about my being insecure was the worst. You want security, buster, you’re looking at security. My feet could be molded in cement, I’m that secure.” Defiant angry eyes flashed to him as she pointed at her shoes.

  Nolan didn’t so much as blink. “You work twice as hard as anyone else at the Review, and twice as many hours. You push yourself because you’ve got something to prove.”

  A strained silence followed his words. She did work hard, she was trying to prove herself, and Nolan knew it. Except for high school and college, she’d had no experience working at a newspaper.

  “Did you wake up one morning and decide to play Sigmund Freud with my life?” she demanded. “Who, may I ask, gave you that right?”

  “What I said is true, Maryanne,” he told her again. “I don’t expect you to admit it to me, but if you’re honest you’ll at least admit it to yourself. Your family is your greatest asset and your weakest link. From everything I’ve read about the Simpsons, they’re good people, but they’ve cheated you out of something important.”

  “Exactly what do you mean by that?” she snapped, ready to defend her father to the death, if need be. How dared this pompous, arrogant, argumentative man insult her family?

  “You’ll never know if you’re a good enough journalist to get a job like this without your father’s help. He handed you this plum position, and at the same time cheated you out of a just reward.”

  Maryanne opened her mouth, an argument on the tip of her tongue. Instead, she lowered her gaze, since she couldn’t deny what he’d just said. From the moment she arrived at the Seattle Review, she’d known that Carol Riverside was the one who’d earned the right to be the local-affairs columnist, not her. And yet Carol had been wonderfully supportive and kind.

  “It wasn’t my intention to insult you or your family,” Nolan continued.

  “Then why did you write that column?” she asked, her voice quavering. “Did you think I was going to be flattered by it?”

  He’d been so quick with the answers that his silence caught her attention more effectively than anything he could’ve said. She watched as he started pacing. He drew his fingers through his hair and his shoulders rose in a distinct sigh.

  “I’m not sure. In retrospect, I believe I wanted to set the record straight. At least that was my original intent. I wrote more than I should have, but the piece was never meant to ridicule you. Whether you know it or not, you impressed the hell out of me the other night.”

  “Am I supposed to be grateful you chose to thank me publicly?”

  “No,” he answered sharply. Once more he jerked his fingers roughly through his hair. He didn’t wince, but Maryanne did—which was interesting, since only a few minutes earlier she’d been daydreaming about the joy she’d experience watching this man suffer.

  “Inviting myself to dinner the other night was an impulse,” he admitted grudgingly. “The words slipped out before I realized what I was saying. I don’t know who was more surprised, you or me. I tried to act like I knew what I was doing, play it cool, that sort of thing. The fact is, I discovered I like you. Trust me, I wasn’t in any frame of mind to talk civilly to you when you got to the radio station. All along I’d assumed you were a spoiled rich kid, but I was wrong. Since I’d published several pieces that suggested as much, I felt it was only fair to set the record straight. Besides, for a deb you aren’t half-bad.”

  “Why is it every time you compliment me I feel a knife between my shoulder blades?”

  “We certainly don’t have a whole lot in common,” Nolan said thoughtfully. “I learned most everything I know on the streets, not in an expensive private school. I doubt there’s a single political issue we can agree on. You’re standing on one side of the fence and I’m way over on the other. We’re about as far apart as any two people could ever be. Socially. Economically. And every other way I could mention. We have no business even speaking to each other, and yet we sat down and shared a meal and talked for hours.”

  “I felt betrayed by that column today.”

  “I know. I apologize, although the damage is already done. I guess I wasn’t aware it would offend you. Like I said, that wasn’t what I intended at all.” He released a giant sigh and paused, as though collecting his thoughts. “After I left your place, I felt good. I can’t remember a time I’ve enjoyed myself more. You’re a charming, interesting—”

  “You might have said that in your column!”

  “I did, only you were obviously too upset to notice it. When I got home that night, I couldn’t sleep. Every time I’d drift off, I’d think of something you’d said, and before I knew it I’d be grinning. Finally I got up and sat at my desk and started writing. The words poured out of me as fast as I could type them. The quality that impressed me the most about you was your honesty. There’s no pretense in you, and the more I thought about that, the more I felt you’ve been cheated.”

  “And you decided it was your duty to point all this out—for everyone in town to read?”

  “No, it wasn’t. That’s why I’m here. I admit I went further than I should have and came over to apologize.”

  “If you’re telling me this to make me feel better, it isn’t working.” Her ego was rebounding somewhat, but he still had a lot of apologizing to do.

  “To be honest, I didn’t give the column a second thought until this afternoon, when someone in the office said I’d really done it now. If I was hoping to make peace with you, I’d failed. This friend said I was likely to get hit by the wrath of a woman scorned and suggested I run for cover.”

  “Rightly so!”

  “Forgive me, Maryanne. It was arrogant in the extreme of me to publish that piece. If it’ll make you feel any better, you can blast me to kingdom come in your next column. I solemnly promise I’ll never write another word about you.”

  “Don’t be so humble—it doesn’t suit you,” she muttered, gnawing on her lower lip. “Besides, I won’t be able to print a rebuttal.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t plan on working for the Review any more, or at least not after tomorrow.” The idea seemed to emerge fully formed; until that moment she hadn’t known what she was going to say.

  The silence following her words was fraught with tension. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t act so surprised. I’m quitting the paper.”

  “What? Why?” Nolan had been standing during their whole conversation, but he suddenly found it necessary to sit. He lowered himself slowly to the sofa, his face pale. “You’re overreacting! There’s no need to do anything so drastic.”

  “There’s every need. You said so yourself. You told me I’ve been cheated, that if I’m even half as good a reporter as I think I am I would’ve got this ‘plum position’ on my own. I’m just agreeing with you.”

  He nodded stiffly.

  “As painful as this is to admit, especially to you,” she went on, “you’re right. My family is wonderful, but they’ve
never allowed me to fall on my face. Carol Riverside is the one who deserved the chance to write that column. She’s been with the paper for five years—I’d only been there five minutes. But because my name is Simpson, and because my father made a simple phone call, I was given the job. Carol was cheated. She should’ve been furious. Instead, she was kind and helpful.” Maryanne sat down next to Nolan and propped her feet on the coffee table. “And maybe worse than what happened to Carol is what happened to me as a result of being handed this job. What you wrote about me wondering if I had what it takes to make it as a journalist hit too close to home. All my life my father’s been there to tell me I can be anything I want to be and then he promptly arranges it.”

  “Quitting the Review isn’t going to change that,” Nolan argued. “Come on, Maryanne, you’re taking this too seriously.”

  “Nothing you say is going to change my mind,” Maryanne informed him primly. “The time has come for me to cut myself loose and sink or swim on my own.”

  Her mind was galloping ahead, adjusting to the coming changes. For the first time since she’d read Nolan’s column that afternoon, she experienced the beginnings of excitement. She glanced around the apartment as another thought struck her. “Naturally I’ll have to move out of this place.”

  “Are you going back to New York?”

  “Heavens, no!” she declared, unaccountably thrilled at the reluctance she heard in his voice. “I love Seattle.”

  “Listen to me, would you? You’re leaping into the deep end, you don’t know how to swim and the lifeguard’s off duty.”

  Maryanne hardly heard Nolan, mainly because she didn’t like what he was saying. How like a man to start a bonfire and then rush to put out the flames. “The first thing I need to worry about is finding another job,” she announced. “A temporary one, of course. I’m going to continue writing, but I don’t think I’ll be able to support myself on that, not at first, anyway.”

  “If you insist on this folly, you could always free-lance for the Sun.”