Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

Revision. This is the last time I’m going over this scene until the whole book is done because I need to see the end to really understand the beginning, but it’s definitely better. I think.

Andie Miller sat in the reception room of the North-Archer Legal Group, holding onto a purse full of uncashed alimony checks and a lot of unresolved anger against her ex-husband. The anger had swamped her as soon as she’d walked back into the old Victorian where he lived and worked, which was dumb. This is why I never came back here. Nothing wrong with repressed anger as long as it stays repressed.

“Miss Miller?”

Andie jerked her head up to see North’s secretary, and a lock of her hair fell out of her chignon. She stuffed it back into the clip on the back of her head, thinking that if that secretary had a chignon, nothing would escape from it. The secretary was discreetly dressed and probably efficient and undoubtedly in control of her emotions. North was probably crazy about her.

“Mr. Archer will see you now,” the secretary said.

“Well, good for him.” Andie stood up, yanked on the hem of the only suit jacket she owned, and then wondered if she’d sounded too hostile.

“He’s really very nice,” the secretary confided as if trying to reassure her.

“No, he isn’t.” She walked to the door of North’s office, opened it before the secretary could get in ahead of her, and then stopped, taken aback in spite of herself.

North sat behind his massive desk, his cropped blond hair almost white in the sunlight from the large, mullioned window behind him. His wire rim glasses had slid too far down his nose again, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up over his forearms—Still playing raquetball, Andie thought—and his broad shoulders were as straight as ever as he studied the papers spread out across his massive desk. He looked exactly the way he had ten years ago when she’d bumped her suitcase on the door frame on her way out of town—

“Miss Miller is here,” his secretary said from behind her, and he looked up at her over his glasses, and the years fell away, and she was right back where she’d begun, staring into those blue-gray eyes, her heart pounding.

He stood up. “Andromeda. Thank you for coming.”

She crossed the thick rug, smiled tightly at him, decided that shaking his hand would be weird, and sat down. “I called you, remember? Thank you for seeing me.”

He sat down and said, “Thank you, Kristin,” to his secretary, who left.

“So the reason I called—” Andie began, just as he said, “How is your mother?”

So they were going to be polite. “Still crazy. How’s yours?”

“Lydia is fine, thank you.” He straightened the papers on his desk into one stack. A lot of really heavy trees had died to make that desk. His mother had probably gnawed them down and used her nails to saw the boards. “I’ll tell her you asked after her,” he said.

“She’ll be thrilled.” She opened her purse and took out the stack of alimony checks and put them on the desk. “I came to give these back to you.”

North looked at the checks for a moment, the sharp planes of his face looking drawn in the dim light.

“They’re all there,” she said, “one hundred and nineteen of them.”

His face was as expressionless as ever. “Why?”

“Because they’re a link between us. We haven’t talked in ten years but every month you send me a check even though you know I don’t want alimony. Which means every month I get an envelope in the mail that says I used to be married to you. And every month I don’t cash them, and it’s like we’re nodding in the street or something. We’re still communicating.”

“Not very well.” North looked at the stack. “Why now?”

“I’m getting married.”

She watched him go still, the pause stretching out until she said, “North?”

“Congratulations. Who’s the lucky man?”

“Will Spenser,” Andie said, pretty sure North wouldn’t know him.

“The mystery writer?”

“He’s a great guy. He’s good for me. He makes me laugh.” And he never forgets I exist. “I’m ready to settle down. So I’m drawing a line under my old life.” She nodded at the checks. “That’s why I came to give you those back. Don’t send any more. Please.”

After a moment, he nodded. “Of course. Congratulations. The family will want to send a gift .” He pulled his notepad toward him. “Are you registered?”

“No, I’m not registered,” Andie said, exasperated. “Technically, I’m not even engaged yet. He asked me. I haven’t told him yes yet. I needed to give you the checks back first.” She didn’t know why she’d expected him to have a reaction to the news. It wasn’t as if he still cared. She wasn’t sure he’d cared when she’d left.

“I see. Thank you for returning the checks.” North straightened the papers on his desk again, and then looked down at them for a long moment, as if he were reading them. He’d probably forgotten she was there because his work was more important. But when he looked up again, he said, “Perhaps, since you haven’t said yes yet, you could start your new life in November.”

“What?”

“I have a problem that you might be able to help with. It would only take you a month—”

“North, did you even hear what I said?”

“—and we’d pay you ten thousand dollars, plus expenses, room, and board.”

She started to protest and then thought, Ten thousand dollars?

He straightened the folder on his desk again. “Theodore Archer, a distant cousin, died last year and left two children orphans. He made me their guardian. I went down to see them at the family home where their aunt was taking care of them and they seemed fine. Unfortunately, she died in June. Since then I’ve hired three nannies to go down there, but none have stayed.”

Ten thousand dollars would pay off her credit card bills and her car. Ten thousand dollars would mean she could get married without debt. Not that Will cared, he’d told her it didn’t matter, but it would be better to go to him free and clear—

“We tried to bring the children here in June after their aunt’s death, but the little girl had a psychotic break when the nanny tried to take her away from the family home. The boy was sent away to boarding school at the beginning of August, but he’s back again, sent home for setting fires. I need someone to go down there and stabilize the situation, bring the children’s education up to standard for their grade level, and find a way to move them up here with us.”

Psychotic break? Setting fires? Andie shook her head and another chunk of hair slipped out of her chignon. “North, I have no idea how to help these kids,” she said, as she stuffed it back. “You need—”

“I need somebody who doesn’t care about the way things are supposed to be,” he said, his eyes sliding to her neck. “I think that’s where the nannies are going wrong. These kids are . . . different. I need somebody who will do the unconventional thing without blinking. Somebody who will change things.” He met her eyes. “Even if she doesn’t stay for the long haul.”

“Hey,” Andie said.

“Go down there for a month. I would take is as a personal favor. I’ve never asked you for anything—”

“You asked for a divorce.” As soon as she said it, she knew it was a mistake.

He looked at her over the tops of his glasses, exasperated. “I did not ask you for a divorce.”

“Yes, you did,” Andie said, in too far to stop now. “You told me that I seemed unhappy, and if that was true, you would understand if I divorced you.”

“You were playing Rita Coolidge every time I came up to the apartment. ‘I’d Rather Leave While I’m In Love.’ As hints go, it was pretty broad.”

He looked annoyed, so that was something, but it didn’t do anything for her anger. “There are people who, if their spouses are unhappy, try to do something about it.”

“I did. I gave you a divorce. You had one foot out the door anyway. Do we need to review that again?”

“No. The divorce is a dead subject.” And the ghost of it is sitting right here with us. Although maybe only with her. North didn’t looked haunted at all. Except by Rita Coolidge.

“I realize you’re getting ready to start a new life,” he went on. “But if you haven’t made plans yet, there’s no reason you couldn’t wait four more weeks. You could use the money for the wedding.”

“I don’t want a wedding. I want to get married. We can do that at a courthouse.” That’s what you and I did. Her anger welled up again. “And another thing, why are you offering me ten thousand dollars for a month of babysitting? You didn’t pay the nannies that. It’s ridiculous. For ten thousand dollars, you should not only get child care, you should get your house cleaned, your laundry done, your tires rotated, and if I were you, I’d insist on nightly blow jobs. Did you think I wouldn’t notice that you’re still trying to pay me off?”

He sat very still, which meant he was gathering his patience. Then he drew a breath and said, calmly, “Andromeda, I’m asking for a favor, a big one, and I don’t think the money is out of line. We didn’t leave our marriage enemies, so I don’t see why you’re hostile now.”

“I’m not hostile,” Andie said, and then added fairly, “Well, okay, I am hostile. You didn’t do anything to save our marriage ten years ago but you’ve been sending checks ever since as a way of holding on. It’s passive aggressive. Or something. You know the strongest memory I have of you? Sitting right there, behind that desk. You’d think I remember you naked or something with all the mattress time we clocked, but no, it’s you, staring at me from behind all that walnut as if you weren’t quite sure who I was. You have no idea how many times I wanted to take an ax to that damn desk just to see if you’d move.”

North looked down at his desk, perplexed.

“You hide behind it,” Andie said, sitting back now that she wasn’t repressing anything any more. “You use it to keep from getting emotionally involved.”

“I use it to write on.”

“You know what I mean. It gives you distance.”

“It gives me storage. Have you lost your mind?”

Andie looked at him for a moment, sitting there rigid and polite and completely inaccessible. “Yes. It was a bad idea coming back here. I should go now.” She stood up.

“She said the house is haunted,” North said.

“Excuse me?”

“The last nanny. She said there were ghosts in the house. I asked the local police to look into things to see if somebody was playing tricks, but they found nothing. I think it’s the kids, but if I send another nanny down like the previous ones, she’s going to quit, too. I need somebody different, somebody who’s fast on her feet, somebody who can handle the unexpected, somebody like you. And you’re the only person like you that I know.” He met her eyes again, and suddenly he was the old North again, warm and real and irresistible with that light in his eyes as he looked at her. “They’re little kids, Andie. I can’t get them out of there, and I can’t leave them there, and with Mother in France, I can’t leave the practice long enough to find out what’s going on, and even if I could, I don’t know anything about kids. I need you.”

“I don’t—”

“Everybody they’ve ever been close to has died,” North said quietly. “Everybody they’ve ever loved has left them. They need you. Not somebody, you.”

Bastard, Andie thought. She sat down, and the lock of hair fell out of her chignon again. Well, the hell with that, too.

“Give them a month, that’s all I ask. You can draw your line under us, I won’t call you and you won’t call me, you can send reports to Kristin, hell, take your fiance down there with you.”

“I’m the least maternal person I know,” Andie said.

“I don’t think they need maternal, I think they need you.”

“A little girl who’s a spoiled brat and a boy who’s growing up to be a serial killer.”

“They’re growing up alone,” North said, and Andie thought, Oh, hell.

He’d changed after all. She could see the stress in his face now, the lines that hadn’t been there ten years ago, the tightening of the skin over his bones, the age in the hollows under his eyes. His brother Southie probably still looked as smooth as a boiled egg, but North was still trapped behind that damn desk, taking care of everything in the family. And now there were two more in the family and he was still handling it alone.

“Please,” he said, those blue eyes fixed on her.

“Yes,” Andie said.

North drew a deep breath. “Thank you.” Then he put his glasses back on, professional again. “There’s a household account you can draw on for any expenses, and a credit card. The housekeeper will clean and cook for you. If you come by tomorrow,Kristin will give you a copy of this folder with everything you need in it and your check, of course.”

“Okay.” Andie sat there for a moment, still a little stunned that she’d said yes. She’d felt the same way after he’d proposed.

“I’d appreciate it if you could go down as soon as possible. The kids need you. And of course you’ll want to get the month over with so you can get married.”

“Right.” She shoved her hair back into the bobby pin, picked up her purse, and stood up again. “I’ll drive down tomorrow. I’ll keep in touch with Kristin. You have a good autumn terrorizing the opposing counsel.”

She headed for the door, refusing to look back. This was good. She could spare a month to save two orphans. Will was in New York for the next two weeks anyway, and he’d come home to a fiancee with no debt, and then–

“Andie,” North said, and she turned back in the doorway.

“Thank you,” he said, standing now behind his desk, tall and lean and beautiful and looking at her the way he’d used to.

Get out of here. “You’re welcome.”

Then she turned and walked out before he could say or do anything else that made her forget she was done with him.