“All I want is a household of my own,” Margaret said. “With my own people, who look to me first instead of last.”
Anna thought of Bambina and Celestina Mezzanotte and of all the other women she knew who considered themselves less than women because they had no households or husbands or children to care for. And she thought of Jack, the kind of man she had never even dared imagine.
She said, “If you had broken bones or a punctured lung I could help you. I wish there were more I could do.”
The two of them sat quietly side by side swaying with the movement of the cab as it dodged one way and then another through traffic around Union Square and turned toward Waverly Place.
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SOPHIE WAS STILL at Cap’s, but everyone else was in the garden when Anna and Margaret got home, Jack and the little girls included. There was a great deal of talk and laughter and then a spirited discussion about supper. Jack wanted to take Anna away to an appointment—she was still unclear on exactly what he meant with that word, but she had her suspicions—and promised to come back for Sunday dinner the very next day; there was a lot to discuss, after all.
Aunt Quinlan took his face in her hands when he bent down to kiss her cheek and studied his eyes for a long moment.
“Endeavor to deserve her,” she said, and let him go.
“It’s what her father said to her first husband when they married,” Anna explained as they went back through the house. “Her husband said it to all her daughters’ husbands.”
Jack caught her wrist and drew her up against him while pressing her to the wall in the cool shadows of the front hall. When he had kissed her—less kiss than she had anticipated, but sweet nonetheless—he rubbed his cheek against hers.
“Did she say the same to Cap?”
“Multiple times, I’m sure.”
He kissed her again, more seriously now and with all his attention.
“Wait.” It was the only word she could get out between one kiss and the next, and in response she got only the curve of his smile pressed to her cheek.
She pulled away to say, “You can’t smile and kiss at the same time.”
“Watch me,” Jack said.
“What about this mysterious appointment?”
He let her go, nodding. “There is that. Come on, let’s get it over with.”
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THEY CROSSED WASHINGTON Square Park at a sharp angle, Jack only slowing when he realized she was almost running to keep up. Her expression was one he couldn’t quite place, but the tone of her voice gave her irritation away.
“Where exactly are we going?”
He gestured with his chin to the southern border of the park. “Mazzini’s Hotel.”
She pulled up short and he stopped, too.
“Hotel?”
“Mazzini’s, yes.”
A line appeared between her brows. “For what purpose?”
And now he understood. He hadn’t been clear and her mind had gone off in the wrong direction. An intriguing direction, but wrong. She stood in front of him in the late afternoon sunshine, framed all around by dogwood and crab apple trees in blossom with her own color rising in her cheeks. The most sexually open woman he had ever known, but inexperienced, too, confused and affronted and aroused, on top of all that.
He could not resist. “You’re asking about my purpose?”
She crossed her arms and scowled at him, then stepped back when he stepped toward her. Jack advanced at a leisurely pace and she retreated, step for step.
“What purpose do you imagine I have?”
The next step brought her back up against a dogwood tree, and a flurry of petals fell, catching on her hair and shoulders. She was beautiful and irritated and confused.
“Did you think I meant to seduce you in a hotel room?” He propped a forearm against the tree trunk just over her head and leaned in to smell her hair. “Is that what you imagined?”
She pushed at him, half laughing now. “Get away.”
“But I just got back.” He nuzzled her temple as she pushed and pushed at his chest, and then, relaxing, slipped her arms around his waist and turned her face up to his.
“Did you really think I was taking you to a hotel room?”
She bit the lining of her cheek. “If you had just told me—”
“You did think I was taking you to a hotel room.”
Anna ducked as if to slip away, but he caught her up again. There were people on the paths, people who could see them and at this moment, he didn’t care and more than that, he didn’t want Anna to care, either. So he kissed her until she forgot about the tree at her back and the park all around and the people in the park and everything in the world but the two of them.
Then he took her hand and pulled her away, to run with him through the park, breathless and flushed with a youth he had thought long past.
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