Mixed Messages

Glumly Carly picked up her plastic fork and took a bite of her salad. Perhaps Janet was right, and love was about bruised hearts and insomnia. Maybe it was some kind of neurotic compulsion.

Hell, maybe it didn’t exist at all.

At the end of her lunch hour, Carly returned to her office to find a note propped against her computer screen. It was written on the back of one of the envelopes, in firm black letters that slanted slightly to the right. This guy needs professional help. Re: dinner—meet me downstairs in the lobby at seven. Mark.

Carly shook her head and smiled as she took the letter out of the envelope. Her teeth sunk into her lower lip as she read about the plight of a man who was in love with his Aunt Gertrude. Nothing in journalism school, or in a year’s reign as Miss United States, had prepared her for dealing with things like this.

She set the letter aside and opened another one.

Allison popped in at five minutes before five. “Hello,” she chimed. “How are things going?”

Carly worked up a smile. “Until today,” she replied, “I had real hope for humanity.”

Allison gestured toward the Rolodex on the credenza. “I trust you’re making good use of Madeline’s files. She made some excellent contacts in the professional community while she was here.”

Madeline, of course, was Carly’s predecessor, who had left her job to join her professor husband on a sabbatical overseas. “I haven’t gotten that far,” Carly responded. “I’m still in the sorting process.”

Allison shook a finger at Carly, assuming a stance and manner that made her resemble an elementary school librarian. “Now remember, you have deadlines, just like everyone else at this paper.”

Carly nodded. She was well aware that she was expected to turn in a column before quitting time on Wednesday. “I’ll be ready,” she said, and she was relieved when Allison left it at that and disappeared again.

She was stuffing packets of letters into her briefcase when Janet arrived to collect her.

“So how was it?” Janet asked, pushing a button on the elevator panel. The doors whisked shut.

“Grueling,” Carly answered, patting her briefcase with the palm of one hand. “Talk about experience. I’m expected to deal with everything from the heartbreak of psoriasis to nuclear war.”

Janet smiled. “You’ll get the hang of it,” she teased. “God did.”

Carly rolled her eyes and chuckled. “I think he divided the overflow between Abigail Van Buren, Ann Landers and me.”

In the lobby the doors swished open, and Carly found herself face-to-face with Mark Holbrook. Perhaps because she was unprepared for the encounter, she felt as though the floor had just dissolved beneath her feet.

Janet nudged her hard in the ribs.

“M-Mark, this is Janet McClain,” Carly stammered with all the social grace of a nervous ninth grader. “We went to high school and college together.”

Carly begrudged the grin Mark tossed in Janet’s direction. “Hello,” he said suavely, and Carly thought, just fleetingly, of Cary Grant.

Mark’s warm brown eyes moved to Carly. “Remember—we’re supposed to meet at seven for dinner.”

Carly was still oddly star struck, and she managed nothing more than a nod in response.

“I take back every jaded remark I’ve ever made about love,” Janet whispered as she and Carly walked away. “I’ve just become a believer.”

Carly was shaken, but for some reason she needed to put on a front. “Take it from me, Janet,” she said cynically, “Mark Holbrook may look like a prize, but he’s too arrogant to make a good husband.”

“Umm,” said Janet.

“I mean, it’s not like every dinner date has to be marriage material—”

“Of course not,” Janet readily agreed.

A brisk and misty wind met them as they stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the Times building, and Carly’s cheeks colored in a blush. She averted her eyes. “I know he’s the wrong kind of man for me—with all he’s accomplished, he must be driven, like Reggie, but—”

“But?” Janet prompted.

“When he asked me out for dinner, I meant to say no,” Carly confessed, “but somehow it came out yes.”

2

Carly arrived at the Times offices at five minutes to seven, wearing an attractive blue crepe de chine jumpsuit she’d borrowed from Janet and feeling guilty about all the unread letters awaiting her at home.

She stepped into the large lobby and looked around. She shouldn’t even be there, she thought to herself. When she’d left home, she’d had a plan for her life, and Mark Holbrook, attractive as he might be, wasn’t part of it.

An elevator bell chimed, doors swished open, and Mark appeared, as if conjured by her thoughts. He carried a briefcase in one hand and wore the same clothes he’d had on earlier: jeans, a flannel shirt and a corduroy jacket.

“This almost makes me wish I’d worn a tie,” he said, his warm brown eyes sweeping over her with admiration. Another of his lightning-charged grins flashed. “Then again, I’m glad I didn’t. You look wonderful, Ms. Congeniality.”

Carly let the beauty-pageant vernacular slide by. Although she’d had a lot of experience talking to people, she felt strangely shy around Mark. “Thanks,” she said.

They walked three blocks to Jake’s, an elegantly rustic restaurant-tavern that had been in business since 1892. When they walked in, the bartender called out a good-natured greeting to Mark, who answered with a thumbs-up sign, then proceeded to the reservations desk.

Soon Mark and Carly were seated in a booth on wooden benches, the backs towering over their heads. A waiter promptly brought them menus and greeted Mark by name.

Carly figured he probably brought a variety of women to the restaurant, and was inexplicably annoyed by the thought. She chose a Cajun plate, while Mark ordered a steak.

“Making any progress with the letters?” he asked when they were alone again.

Carly sighed. She’d probably be up until two or three in the morning, wading through them. “Let’s put it this way,” she answered, “I should be home working.”

The wine arrived and Mark tasted the sample the steward poured, then nodded. The claret was poured and the steward walked away, leaving the bottle behind.

Mark lifted his glass and touched it against Carly’s. “To workaholics everywhere,” he said.

Carly took a sip of her wine and set the glass aside. The word “workaholic” had brought Reggie to mind, and she felt as though he were sitting at the table with them, an unwelcome third. “What’s the most important thing in your life?” she asked to distract herself.

The waiter left their salads, then turned and walked away.

“Things don’t mean much to me,” Mark responded, lifting his fork. “It’s people who matter. And the most important person in my life is my son, Nathan.”

Even though she certainly wasn’t expecting anything to develop between herself and Mark, Carly was jarred by the mention of a child. “You’re not married, I hope,” she said, practically holding her breath.

“No, I’m divorced, and Nathan lives in California, with his mother,” he said. There was, for just an instant, a look of pain in his eyes. This was quickly displaced by a mischievous sparkle. “Would it matter to you—if I were married, I mean?”

Carly speared a cherry tomato somewhat vengefully. “Would it matter? Of course it would.”

“A lot of women don’t care.”

“I’m not a lot of women,” Carly responded, her tone resolute.

He shrugged one shoulder. “There’s a shortage of marriageable men out there, I’m told. Aren’t you worried that your biological clock is ticking, and all that?”

“Maybe in ten years I’ll be worried. Right now I’m interested in making some kind of life for myself.”

“Which you couldn’t do in the Midwest?”

“I wanted to do it here,” she said.

Mark smiled. “Exactly what kind of life are you picturing?”

Carly was beginning to feel as though she was being interviewed, but she didn’t mind. She understood how a reporter’s mind worked. “Mainly I want to write for a newspaper—not advice, but articles, like you do. And maybe I’ll buy myself a little house and a dog.”

“Sounds fulfilling,” Mark replied.

There was so little conviction in his voice that Carly peered across the table at him and demanded, “Just what did you mean by that?”

He widened those guileless choirboy eyes of his and sat back on the bench as though he expected the salt shaker to detonate. “I was just thinking—well, it’s a shame that so few women want to have babies anymore.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to have babies,” Carly pointed out. Her voice had risen, and she blushed to see that the people at the nearest table were looking at her. “I love babies,” she clarified in an angry whisper. “I plan to breast-feed and everything!”

The waiter startled Carly by suddenly appearing at her elbow to deliver dinner, and Mark grinned at her reaction.

She spoke in a peevish hiss. “Let’s just get off this topic of conversation, all right?”

“All right,” Mark agreed. “Tell me, what made you start entering beauty pageants?”

It wasn’t the subject Carly would have chosen, but she could live with it. “Not ‘what,’” she replied. “‘Who.’ It was my mother. She started entering me in contests when I was four and, except for a few years when I was in an awkward stage, she kept it up until I was old enough to go to college.”

“And then you won the Miss United States title?”

Carly nodded, smiling slightly as she recalled those exciting days. “You’d have thought Mom was the winner, she was so pleased. She called everybody we knew.”

Mark was cutting his steak. “She must miss you a lot.”

Carly bent her head, smoothing the napkin in her lap. “She died of cancer a couple of weeks after the pageant.”

When Carly lifted a hand back to the table, Mark’s was waiting to enfold it. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

His sympathy brought quick, stinging tears to her eyes. “It could have been worse,” Carly managed to say. “Everything happened almost instantaneously. She didn’t suffer much.”

Mark only nodded, his eyes caressing Carly in a way that eased the pain of remembering.

“How old is Nathan?” she asked, and the words came out a little awkwardly.

Mark’s voice was hoarse when he answered. “He’s ten,” he replied, opening his wallet and taking out a photo.

Nathan Holbrook was handsome, like his father, with brown hair and eyes, and he was dressed in a baseball uniform and was holding a bat, ready to swing.

Carly smiled and handed the picture back. “It must be difficult living so far away from him,” she commented.

Mark nodded, and Carly noticed that he averted his eyes for a moment.

“Is something wrong?” she asked softly.

“Nothing I want to trouble you with,” Mark responded, putting away his wallet. “Sure you don’t want to go take in a movie?”

Carly thought of the pile of letters she had yet to read. She gave her head a regretful shake. “Maybe some other time. Right now I’m under a lot of pressure to show Allison and the powers-that-be that I can handle this job.”

They finished their meal, then Mark settled the bill with a credit card. He held her hand as they walked to his car, which was parked in a private lot beneath the newspaper building.

Barely fifteen minutes later, they were in front of Janet’s door. Mark bent his head and gave Carly a kiss that, for all its innocuousness, made her nerve endings vibrate.

“Good night,” he murmured, while Carly was still trying to get her bearings. A moment after that, he disappeared into the elevator.

“Well?” Janet demanded the second Carly let herself into the apartment.

Carly smiled and shook her head. “It was love at first sight,” she responded sweetly. “We’re getting married tonight, flying to Rio tomorrow and starting our family the day after.”

Janet bounded off the couch and followed Carly as she went through the bedroom and stood outside the bathroom door while she exchanged the jumpsuit for an oversize T-shirt. “Details!” she cried. “Give me details!”

Carly came out of the bathroom, carrying the jumpsuit, and hung it back in the closet. “Mark and I are all wrong for each other,” she said.

“How do you figure that?”

Turning away from the closet, Carly shrugged. “The guy sends out mixed messages. He’s very attractive, but he’s bristly, too. And he’s got some very old-fashioned ideas about women.”

Janet looked disappointed for a moment, then brightened. “If you’re not going to see Mark anymore, how about fixing me up with him?”

Carly was surprised at the strong reaction the suggestion produced in her. She marched across Janet’s living room, took her briefcase from the breakfast bar and set it down on the Formica-topped table with a thump. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to see him again,” she said, snapping the catches and pulling out a stack of letters.

After tossing her friend a smug little smile, Janet said good-night and went off to bed. Carly looked with longing at the fold-out sofa, then made herself a cup of tea and set to work.

Although there was no sign of Emmeline when Carly arrived at work the next morning, suppressing almost continuous yawns and hoping the dark circles under her eyes weren’t too pronounced, a memo had been taped to her computer screen.

Staff meeting, the message read. Nine-thirty, conference room.

Carly glanced at her watch, sat down at her desk and began reading letters again. It was almost a relief when the time came to leave her small office for the meeting.

The long conference room table was encircled by people, and they all seemed to be talking at the same time. An enormous pot of coffee chortled on a table in the corner, and a blue haze of cigarette smoke lapped at the walls like an intangible tide. Carly poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down in the only empty chair in the room, shaking her head when a secretary came by with a box full of assorted pastries.

Through the sea of smoke, she saw Mark sitting directly across from her. He grinned and tilted his head slightly to one side in a way that was vaguely indulgent.

Mixed messages again, Carly thought, responding with a tight little smile.

The managing editor, a slender, white-haired man with the sleeves of his shirt rolled back to his elbows and suspenders holding up his pants, called the meeting to order.

Carly listened intently as he went over the objectives of the newspaper and gave out assignments.

The best one, a piece on crack houses for the Sunday edition, went to Mark, and Carly felt a sting of envy. While he was out in the field, grappling with real life, she would be tucked away in her tiny office, reading letters from the forlorn.

Mark sat back in his chair, not drinking coffee or eating doughnuts or smoking like the others, his eyes fixed on Carly. She was relieved when the meeting finally ended.

“So,” boomed Mr. Clark, the managing editor, just as Carly was pushing back her chair to leave, “how do you like writing the advice column?”

Carly glanced uncomfortably at Mark, who had lingered to open a nearby window. Now’s a nice time to think of that, she reflected to herself, and Mark looked back at her as though she’d spoken aloud.

She remembered Mr. Clark and his affable question. “I haven’t actually written anything yet,” she answered diplomatically. “I’m still wading through the letters.”

Mark was standing beside the table again, his hands resting on the back of a chair. “You’re aware, of course,” he put in, “that Ms. Barnett doesn’t have any real qualifications for that job?”

Carly looked at him in stunned disbelief, and he favored her with a placid grin.

Mr. Clark was watching Carly, but he spoke as though she wasn’t there. “Allison seems to think Ms. Barnett can handle the work,” he said thoughtfully, and there was just enough uncertainty in his voice to worry the newest member of his staff.

Carly ignored Mark completely. “You won’t be sorry for giving me a chance, Mr. Clark,” she said.

The older man nodded distractedly and left the conference room. Carly was right behind him, but a sudden grip on her upper arm stopped her.

“Give me a chance to explain,” Mark said in a low voice.

The man had done his best to get her fired, and after she’d uprooted herself and spent most of her life savings to move to Oregon, too.

“There’s no need for explanations,” she told him, wrenching her arm free of his hand. “You’ve made your opinion of my abilities perfectly clear.”

He started to say something in response, then stopped himself and, with an exasperated look on his face, stepped past Carly and disappeared into his office.

She went back to her office and continued working. By noon she’d read all the letters and selected three to answer in her column. The problems were clear-cut, in Carly’s opinion, and there was no need to contact any of the experts in Madeline’s Rolodex. All a person needed, she thought to herself, was a little common sense.

She was just finishing the initial draft of her first column when there was a light rap at the door and Allison stepped in. She hadn’t been at the staff meeting, and she looked harried.

“Is the column done by any chance?” she asked anxiously. “We could really use some help over in Food and Fashion.”

Carly pushed the print button on the keyboard and within seconds handed Allison the hard copy of her column.

Allison scanned it, making hmm sounds that told Carly exactly nothing, then nodded. “This will do, I guess. I’ll take you to F&F and you can help Anthony for the rest of the day. He’s at his wit’s end.”

Carly was excited. She wouldn’t be accompanying the police on a crack-house raid like Mark, but she might at least get to cover a fashion show or a bake-off. Either one would get her out of the building.

Anthony Cornelius turned out to be a slim, good-looking young man with blond hair and blue eyes. Allison introduced Carly, then disappeared.

“I’ve been perishing to meet you,” Anthony said with a straight face. “I would have said hello at the staff meeting, but the smoke was absolutely blinding me. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”

Carly smiled. “I know what you mean,” she said as Anthony gestured toward a chair facing his immaculate desk.

“I’ve got a tape of your pageant, you know. You were splendid.”

“Thank you,” Carly demurred. She was getting a little embarrassed at the reminders of past glories.

Anthony gave a showy sigh. “Well, enough chitchat. I’m just buried in work, and I’m desperate for your help. There’s a cooking contest at the St. Regis Hotel today, while the mall is putting on the biggest fashion show ever. Needless to say, I can’t be in two places at once.”

Carly hid her delight by crossing her legs and smoothing her light woolen skirt. “What would you like me to do?”

“You may have your choice,” Anthony answered, frowning as he flipped through a notebook on his desk. “Fashion or food.”

Carly had already thought the choice through. “I’ll take the cooking contest,” she said.

“Fabulous,” Anthony responded without looking up from his notes. “St. Regis Hotel, two-fifteen. I’ve already sent a photographer over. I’ll see you back here afterward.”

Eagerly Carly rose from her chair and headed for the door. “Anthony?”

He raised his eyes inquiringly.

“Thanks,” Carly said, and then she hurried out.

After collecting her purse, notebook and coat, Carly set off for the St. Regis Hotel, which turned out to be within walking distance of the newspaper office. She spent several happy hours interviewing amateur chefs and tasting their special dishes, and she even managed to get them to divulge a few secret recipes.

Returning to her office late that afternoon, having forgotten lunch entirely, Carly absorbed the fact that a new batch of letters had been delivered and sat down at her computer to write up the piece on the cooking contest.

Anthony turned out to be a taskmaster, despite his gentle ways, and Carly willing did three rewrites before he was satisfied. She was about to switch off her computer and go home for the day, taking a briefcase full of letters with her, when a message appeared unbidden on the screen.

“Hello, Carly,” it read.

Frowning, Carly pushed her big reading glasses up the bridge of her nose and typed the response without thinking. “Hello.”

“How about having dinner with me again tonight? I’ll cook.”

It was Mark. She wondered whether the message was appearing on every computer screen in the office, or just hers. In the end it didn’t matter, since it was late and most everyone else had already gone home. “No, thanks,” she typed resolutely. “I never dine with traitors.”

“I’ll explain if you’ll just give me the chance.”

“How are you doing this?”

“Trade secret. Do we have a date or not?”

“No.”

“Will begging help?”

Carly shut off her computer, filled her briefcase with letters and left the office. She walked to the department store where Janet was employed and found that her friend was still working.

After consulting a schedule, Carly caught a bus back to the apartment building and was overjoyed when the manager, Mrs. Pickering, greeted her with the news that her car and furniture had been delivered.

“I made sure they set up the bed for you,” the plump, middle-aged woman said as Carly turned the key in the lock.

The living room was filled with boxes, but the familiar couch and chair were there, as was the small television set. The dining table was in its place next to the kitchenette.

Carly set her briefcase and purse down on the small desk in the living room, then lifted the receiver on her telephone. She heard a dial tone and smiled. Her service was connected.

Feeling unaccountably domestic, Carly thanked Mrs. Pickering for her trouble and set out immediately for the parking lot. Her blue Mustang, one of the prizes she’d won as Miss United States, was in its proper slot.

Taking the keys from her purse, Carly unlocked the car, got behind the wheel and started the engine. She drove to the nearest all-night supermarket and bought a cartful of food and cleaning supplies, then came home and made herself a light supper of soup and salad in her own kitchen.

She dialed Janet’s number and left a message on her friend’s answering machine, then called her father, knowing he’d be up watching the news.

Don Barnett picked up the telephone on the second ring and gave his customary gruff hello.

“Hi, Dad. It’s Carly.”

She heard pleasure in his voice. “Hello, beautiful,” he said. “All settled in?”

Carly sat down in her desk chair and told her father all about her apartment and her new job.

He listened with genuine interest, and then announced that Reggie was engaged to a nurse from Topeka.

“It didn’t take him long, did it?” Carly asked. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected—maybe that Reggie would at least have the decency to pine for a month or two.

Her father chuckled. “Having a few second thoughts, are you?”

“No,” Carly said honestly. “I just didn’t think I was quite so forgettable, that’s all.” They talked a little longer, then ended the call with promises to stay in touch.

Carly was feeling homesick when a knock sounded at her door. She had never been very close to her mother, despite the inordinate amount of time they’d spent together, but her dad was a kindred spirit.

She put one eye to the peephole and sighed when she saw Mark standing in the hallway.

She opened the door to the length of the chain and looked out at him uncharitably. “Aren’t you supposed to be participating in a crack-house raid or something?”

He flashed one of his lethal grins. “That’s tomorrow night. May I come in?”

The living room was still filled with unopened boxes, and Carly was wearing her pink bathrobe. Her hair was probably a mess, too. And this man had tried to get her fired just that morning.