The Invitation (Montgomery/Taggert 19)

I listened to everything she said and noticed that for once she didn’t bring flowers or food—concrete proof that the publishers were genuinely annoyed. Bet they wished they could shake me until I saw sense, saw that it was my duty in life to kill people on paper and support the family of everyone who worked at my publishing house.

Funny thing was, I wanted to write mysteries. I was happy when I was angry. I was happy and confident when I was having fights with cab drivers and imagining which character I was going to kill next. Yesterday I had to go to Saks to return a suit that didn’t fit, and I told the taxi driver to take me to Fiftieth and Fifth. Ten minutes later I’m over on First Avenue—this is in the opposite direction from Saks. I just said calmly, “You’re going the wrong way.” When the driver told me in all of his seven words of English that this was his first day on the job, I smiled and told him how to get to Saks, then I paid the whole excursion fare and tipped him a dollar fifty. Trust me, this is not the real me.

Chapter Twelve

Cale was in her apartment, the terrace doors open, playing with an unreadable story of unrequited love when she heard the sound of a helicopter. At first she paid no attention to it, but it seemed to grow louder, then to remain in one place, a place that seemed to be just outside her windows. Annoyed, frowning, she got up to close the doors when she saw that the helicopter was indeed hovering above her terrace. Surely that was illegal, she thought. Surely New York had laws against helicopters being that close to apartment buildings.

With her hand on the knob, she started to close the terrace door when she heard an odd noise. Curious, she looked up at the wind-producing, noisy helicopter, then opened her mouth in astonishment.

Descending from the copter, his foot in a stirrup, holding on to a thick rope, was a man. Cale’s first impulse was to slam the door and get out of the apartment, but then she looked again. On the man’s feet were what looked to be cowboy boots of a deep carmine red. Only one person she’d ever met in her life wore cowboy boots: Kane Taggert.

She wanted to shut the door and go back inside the apartment, but she couldn’t. Instead, she stepped out onto the terrace and watched the slow descent of the man. Of all the absurd things, he was wearing a tuxedo at four in the afternoon, and if she could see clearly, he had a large green bottle under his arm and two champagne flutes in his hand.

She stepped back when he alighted and took his foot out of the stirrup. She didn’t say a word when he motioned to the helicopter that he was safely down. Even when the copter was gone and it was once again quiet, she still said nothing, just stood there and looked at this big man standing on her terrace, and waited for him to say something.

With a bit of a smile, he set the bottle down, opened it, poured, and handed her a glass of champagne. She didn’t take it.

“What do you want?” she said with as much hostility as she could manage.

Kane took a deep drink of the wine before answering her. “I came to ask you to marry me.”

Cale didn’t so much as hesitate but turned away and headed for the doors into her apartment. When Kane caught her arm, she jerked from his grasp.

“Get away from me,” she said. “I never want to see you again.”

“Cale—” he began.

She whirled on him. “I can’t believe you know my name,” she snapped. “I thought I was ‘the writer.’ ” With a sigh, she made herself calm down. “Okay, you’ve made your big entrance and I’m impressed, so now you can go. You can go down the elevator, unless you plan to use a parachute.”

Kane put himself in front of the terrace doors. “I guess I deserve whatever you hand me. I know I’ve been a heel. You’ve told me, Mike has told me, Sandy, my own sons have told me. Even my sister-in-law and my mother, neither of whom has met you, have told me in graphic terms that I am an idiot, stupid, and in general a fool.”

Cale wasn’t in the least swayed by what he was saying. “I’m sure there are other women who can tell you from your brother,” she said, “so go find one of them. Your tactics are wasted on me.”

Again Kane caught her arm. “It wasn’t the twin thing. It was that you made me forget my wife.”

She turned to frown at him. “Ruth made you forget your wife.”

Dropping her arm, Kane walked away from her to stand at the edge of the terrace and look at the back of the General Motors Building. Before it was built there was a scrumptious view of the Plaza Hotel and Central Park. “I don’t know if anyone told you or not, but Ruth looks like my wife. When I saw a photo of Ruth, I began to imagine that I’d get back what I once had. I thought about bringing Janine back to life; I thought of picnics and moonlight walks and the four of us snuggled together. I never questioned what Ruth was like because I thought I knew. She’d lost her husband and child in an accident, just as I had, and I knew we were meant to be together.”

Turning to look at Cale, he saw that her face was unforgiving. “I think I was attracted to you from the first moment I saw you. You were sitting there on that suitcase looking mad at the world. Then you started sneezing, and when you looked at me…” He grinned. “Well, you made me feel like every movie star, athlete, and astronaut rolled into one. I thought you were the prettiest thing I’d seen in years, and that annoyed the hell out of me.”

He took a drink of champagne then looked at her. “I was pretty awful about the rattlesnake. I should have said thank you, but the fact that you were competent, unafraid, and beautiful all in one didn’t fit into my plans. There was Ruth, my ideal woman, and I was lusting after a feisty little blonde. You made me feel…well, adulterous.”

He drained his glass, poured himself more champagne, and turned away again. “I’ve spent the last month with Ruth Edwards. It took a long time, but I finally realized that she wasn’t Janine, that she was someone else altogether. In fact, she was someone I didn’t like very much.” He chuckled. “And my sons hated her.”

Turning back around, he looked at Cale, still standing by the terrace doors, her face unreadable.

“So I’m your second choice,” she said. “Come on, cowboy, surely you could find a third woman and choose her. Why do you pick on New York women? Find yourself some nice cowgirl and—”

“I live in New York,” he said, obviously not planning to elaborate on that statement.

“You’ve had your say, so now you can go,” she said, turning toward the doors, but Kane caught her in his arms, spun her around, and kissed her. He kissed her ears, her neck, her face.

“I love you, Cale,” he said against her lips. “I love the way you make me look at you so that I can’t see any other women. I love your cynicism, your sense of humor. I love the way you look at my sons, the way you look at me. I love the way we make love together. I love your competency, your vulnerability, your neediness, your—”

“I am not needy!” It wasn’t easy to think when he was this close to her.

At that Kane snorted. “I’ve never met a human who needed more than you do. You need”—he kissed the end of her nose—“love.” He kissed her cheek. “Kindness.” With each word he gave a sweet kiss to another part of her face. “Attention. A family. Security.”