Page 12 of Always

I’ll be there,Anika promised.I just have to find my racquet.

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7

In the weeks that followed, leading up to the Red Line Gala, Anika hoped she would see less and less of James. He had only been recruited to this project through Liam Doyle and via Aunt Molly’s unknowing request for assistance, a tenuous connection at best. Surely such a secondhand obligation could not endure long.

Aunt Molly was indeed horrified at what she had inadvertently brought to pass, and she called Anika more than once to apologize. She carried a heavy burden of embarrassment, remembering only too well the part she played in convincing Anika to end her relationship with James. To have James back in town, flaunting the success that was in direct opposition to Aunt Molly’s pessimistic predictions, gave her a highly unpleasant sensation of guilt. She told Anika she would understand if her niece harbored resentment over the whole situation.

“It’s not your fault, Aunt Molly,” Anika sighed. “I made my own decision. Besides, we were so young then. We probably would have broken up no matter what.”

She only said the latter part to ease her aunt’s mind. Whatever the outcome, she would give a great deal to go back in time and let the relationship run its course. But that was impossible. So there was no point lashing out at the one person who, this situation aside, had always given Anika the love and support she was unlikely to get from the rest of her family.

Given a choice, James might have found an excuse to pull back after his initial meeting with Anika, but he had charmed Gwen and Hannah too thoroughly. They latched onto him, pulling him into all their plans and preparations. Under their friendly harassment, he was soon soliciting donations from a dozen influential friends and accompanying the Fletchley sisters on all their errands and outings.

While it was annoying to watch Gwen and Hannah abandon the more tedious aspects of their job duties to drive around in James’s roadster, it was infinitely worse when they did come into the office. The laughing and flirtation was nonstop, as were the invitations to join them for lunch or after-work drinks, which Anika could only find so many excuses to avoid.

Most obnoxious of all were Calvin’s continual debates over whether it was Gwen or Hannah that James seemed most interested in dating.

“Gwen is sexier,” Calvin would say. “She’s got that whole angsty bad girl thing, like you’re a little afraid she might murder you if break her favorite coffee mug, but you also know she’ll do some really freaky stuff in bed.”

“Calvin, please stop talking before I have to hire an HR department,” Anika said.

Ignoring her, he continued: “But Hannah is so sweet. She has that innocent girl-next-door thing that guys love, and she’s definitely the one you would want to introduce to your parents. Gwen is a little bit smarter—you know Hannah locked her keys in her car twice this week. But Hannah is taller, and James is tall, and maybe he wants his kids to be basketball players?”

“It’s a real live episode of The Bachelor, isn’t it?” Anika said. “Now please leave me alone.”

She found herself deliberately assigning the girls to all the outside activities they desired, (sampling caterers, visiting the florist, finding the musical entertainment, ordering decorations), just to keep them all away from her.

Anika heard Hannah whisper to James, “It feels like planning a wedding, doesn’t it?”

Anika closed her office door, using every ounce of restraint not to slam it in their faces.

She continued to distract herself with runs through Central Park every day after work, twice-weekly tennis sessions with her girlfriends, and any other excuse she could think of to keep out of the increasingly tense environment in the penthouse apartment. The close quarters were beginning to wear on Bennet and Stella as much as on Anika, resulting in endless squabbling between her father and sister.

Anika went back to her book club, signed up for a watercolor class, even took the train out to the Hamptons one weekend at Mr. Doyle’s request.

He said the horses were missing her. They came trotting over as soon as she stepped out of her cab. Domino thrust her nose into Anika’s hand while Goliath nuzzled her face with his cheek.

“Don’t knock me over!” she chided them, so happy to see them she could hardly stand it. She’d almost forgotten that warm, musty-sweet smell they had, and how soft their noses could feel.

Tom gave her a long hug. “You’d better ride Goliath first,” he said. “He’s been unmanageable without you.”

Anika knew Tom was only being kind—the horses were his babies and obeyed him completely. But climbing onto Goliath’s saddle and riding across the field gave her the first genuine burst of happiness she’d felt in months.

The turf was damp and beautifully springy. There was a light breeze bringing the smell of the ocean. And a susurrus from the beech leaves rustling together.

After an hour or two of riding, Mr. Doyle came out to see how she was getting on.

“Don’t let me interrupt you!” he called out. “Keep going as long as you like!”

Only when she felt the bruises forming on her bottom was she willing to hand the reins back to Tom. She gave the horses one last rub down and fed them some carrots, then joined Mr. Doyle in the house.

He had the housekeeper bring out a plate of turkey croissants and a tray of mojitos. Anika protested that she rarely drank, but he pressed her to try the fresh mint from the greenhouse. When her first glass was empty, he persuaded her to take another.

Anika asked Mr. Doyle to tell her about his work in Silicon Valley. He obliged, explaining what it was like to work with computers in the very early days, when no one knew what the applications of the technology would be, but the possibilities were endless.

“I had always liked taking things apart,” he said. “So when I first heard about these machines, I saved up twelve hundred dollars—that was a lot of money to me then, almost everything I’d made with a landscaping business over the summer—and I bought one and completely dismantled it. Then I put it back together again, which took a lot longer. And immediately I started thinking how it could be improved. They didn’t have hard drives back then, or any way really to store memory, so the first thing I wanted to do was solder in a drive for memory storage. So I did that, and I added a few other features that you couldn’t buy ready-made at the time, and I sold it to a friend at college.

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