She turned to see Cal Nordhoff standing in front of the closed door. She hadn’t heard him enter. Kathy dropped down into Ray’s chair. “Go away.”
“And miss the aftermath of that display? Never!” He went to a cabinet, opened it, and poured vodka and tonic water into a glass and held it out to her.
“No thanks,” she said, but when he didn’t put it down, she took it and drank half of it in one gulp. “Shades of Mad Men,” she muttered, not knowing if the show was on the air or not.
Cal smiled. “Are you Peggy, but you look like Joan?”
Kathy almost smiled at his allusion, but she didn’t. “Why are you here? To tell me I’ll never make it in a man’s world? That my father and the other men will eat me alive?”
Cal’s handsome face lost its smug look and he seemed genuinely puzzled by what she’d said. “No, not at all. I was glad of what you did, and I think it’s about time. You’ve been helping your dad for free for too long.”
It was Kathy’s turn to be puzzled. “I’ve never done anything.” Since this was before she’d married Ray, that was true.
“You’re kidding, aren’t you?” Cal sat down on Ray’s black leather Chesterfield sofa and looked at her. “You aren’t aware that Bert Cormac owes you for his own personal market research?”
“I know he asks Mom and me what we think of products, but I’ve certainly never made a presentation to him.”
“Not that you know of, but ole Bert tells me. ‘Kathy likes this one,’ he says. ‘She thinks the blue they used in the package is off. Let’s present it in a darker shade.’”
She knew exactly which campaign he was talking about. Her father—thankfully—stayed in his apartment in the city most of the time, but when he came home he talked only of advertising. And he always brought home cartons of products and asked what they thought of them. When he left, she and her mother sighed in relief.
“Kathy, pretty girl,” Cal said, “you’ve been part of your dad’s advertising business since you were on a bottle. He told me he experimented in formulas with you. One of them made you throw up.”
She was leaning back in Ray’s big leather chair, the one that had been custom-made to fit him, and thinking about what Cal had said. “Why do you always sneer at me?”
He couldn’t hide the shock on his face. “I didn’t know you saw that.”
It was true that before she married Ray, she hadn’t noticed Cal at all. Between Larry and Andy and her fear of her father, she hadn’t seen much else in her life. But she had an idea that it was only after her marriage that Cal had really begun his looks of contempt. And with Ray’s boundless energy around her, she didn’t have time to dwell on why one of her father’s employees didn’t like her.
In fact, if it hadn’t been for Olivia asking about Cal, she probably wouldn’t have been so angered at the way he’d smirked at her in her father’s office today. And if she hadn’t been enraged, she might have slunk out without presenting the ads.
She watched him go to Ray’s bar, pour himself a whiskey, then go back to the couch.
“So who are you going to settle for?”
“You mean which account?”
“No, which man? You’ve got four men hanging around you.”
“You know, I’m not liking this conversation. I want you to leave.”
“It’s not your office,” Cal said. “First there’s that skinny kid. What’s his name?” Kathy didn’t answer.
“Three last names. Laurence Winbeck. That’s it. He wants your daddy’s money. Then there’s Andy Donaldson.”
Kathy drew in her breath. No one knew she was interested in Andy. Ray thought she had a crush on him.
“Andy says he’s playing hard to get so he won’t be accused of going after the boss’s daughter.”
“He says that?” Kathy whispered.
“Only to a company VP who takes him out to lunch. After two martinis he enjoyed telling me what his goals in life are.” Cal snorted. “He’ll never make it in advertising. Blabs too much truth.”
Kathy was frowning. “Why would you do that?”
Cal didn’t answer her question. “Then there’s Ray.”
Kathy’s lips tightened.
“Oh, I see that you do know about Ray’s interest in you. He’s catching on that clients like tablecloths and that those two forks have different uses. He’s beginning to think marriage is a business proposition. You could give him what he doesn’t know, and in return, he’d give you the privilege of being near his glorious self.”
Kathy couldn’t help it but that image made her give the tiniest bit of a smile. “That’s three men. Who’s the fourth?”
“Me.”
All Kathy could do was blink.
“Didn’t know that, did you?” He got up and walked to the window to look out. “Those men want you for how you can advance their lives, for what you can give them. But me? I want you. I like your brain, the way you think. You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for.”
Turning, he looked at her—and his eyes were hot. Like something out of a movie, she thought. Cal looked as though he might throw her across the desk and tear off her clothes.
No man had ever looked at Kathy like that and it made her heart leap into her throat.
He took a step toward her. “I like that glorious, lush body of yours.” He took another step. “I like women.” He was standing beside the desk and he gave her a look up and down that made her feel like she might melt into the leather of the chair.
When he held out his hand to her, she started to take it, but she glanced at the door.
“I locked it,” he said, his voice throaty. “And I told Martha we weren’t to be disturbed no matter what she heard.”
She took his big hand in hers.
Chapter Thirty-One
“OMG,” Elise said. “That’s... Oh! That’s wonderful. Great. I love it!”
Olivia was smiling in an I-told-you-so way.
“Don’t you dare take credit for this!” Kathy said to Olivia, but she was laughing. “Cal and I would have happened eventually. It’s just—” She stopped. “No. It never would have happened. After being married to Ray, I would have been too scared to even think about marriage again.”
She picked up her wineglass and twirled the stem in her hand for a moment. “I didn’t know how bad my life with Ray was. The comparison I had was my parents, and my marriage was a lot better than theirs.” She looked up. “When people ask about a bad marriage, the only thing they really want to know is, Does he hit you? If the answer is no, then you’re put into a category labeled SAFE. Whatever else is done to you is okay.”
She paused. “Ray never yelled at me, was never unkind. But he beat me down in a way that killed the inside of me. He didn’t mean to because he truly loved me, but he wasn’t in love with me.”
Kathy smiled. “Cal and I fight. We have arguments. He thinks he knows everything in the world and I have to stand my ground to make him even hear me.”
When she looked up, she was smiling. “But we make up in bed. Fabulous sex. The kind out of novels. And out of bed we’re kissing. And hand holding. And cuddling while we watch TV. Every day he lets me know that I am loved. Good moods and bad, I know he loves me.”
“I know what you mean,” Olivia said. “Reliving our lives made the dynamic between Kit and me change. When we got married when we were older, even though I loved him, under the surface I still harbored a lot of anger and resentment that he’d ruined my life. I loved him but I hated him too. But I was so afraid that rage would come out that I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t talk about the bad that had happened to me. We were only married for a year and it was sweet, but I was afraid that if I let my anger out, it would destroy everything.”
She paused. “And there was the guilt. I was a woman who’d given up her child. The guilt ate at my soul. When I went back, I yelled at Kit, cursed him, but he was still there. He didn’t go away. I don’t know whether he believed me or not, but he helped me.” She smiled. “And also, when I met him so many years later, he’d had a lot of time of being a big shot and he kept that attitude. He decided things, gave orders. All decisions were his.”