The woman took away the dirtied-up clothes I'd come in wearing, and I settled on a black denim mini-skirt and a cornflower-blue blouse with ruffles to wear out of there. The outfit was dressy, but just casual enough it didn't seem crazy paired with my sneakers.
Instead of us having to haul a big bag of clothes back up to the cabin, Smith made arrangements for my clothes to get delivered the next day, along with our groceries. Ah, so that explained how the food got there. Apparently, the delivery boy had a motorcycle—a dirt bike—that he rode the trails with.
Smith took me for dinner at a cozy place, an old house that had been converted into a restaurant that defined the word quaint. The building was still divided into several rooms, each containing hints of the room's former life. The hostess tried to seat us in the nursery, but Smith wrinkled his nose and said it wasn't to his liking. She steered us all the way to the back of the place, to a former mudroom with big multi-paned windows overlooking the back yard.
“Perfect,” he said, grinning broadly. “My cousin Sandy and I will dine in the mudroom.”
We sat at the antique-looking table, and he pointed up to the ceiling, which was covered in silk flowers and feathers.
“Now that's just ridiculous,” I said, giggling. “I love it.”
The mudroom was decorated with a variety of footwear running up and down the walls, but with the evening sun filtering in through the wisteria vines covering the window panes, the place was as golden and romantic as anywhere I'd ever been.
He reached for my hand across the table and grasped my fingertips gently. “You look so beautiful tonight. The shirt matches your eyes, and your creamy skin is positively glowing.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling the flush of my cheeks turning red.
With my free hand, I rubbed the spot on my leg where he'd pinched me. It was up high enough that the skirt covered it, but I'd noticed a bruise forming when I was in the changing room.
Our waitress came in and rattled off a long list of things that sounded French. Smith nodded knowingly and asked a dozen questions about the wine list. It hit me: I was nervous because I was completely outclassed. He was a bestselling author, and if memory served me correctly, he'd already been wealthy from business endeavors even before he started writing.
And who was I? A barely-middle-class girl with freckles and a pile of student loan debt. I didn't know what all the various-sized forks laid out in front of me were for. I knew one was for salad, and one for the main course, but there were more than two.
Smith had let go of my hand when the waitress came in, and I was wringing a napkin nervously on my lap.
The waitress turned and asked me which wine I'd prefer.
“You decide,” I said, smiling at Smith. “I think sometimes you know what I want before even I do.”
The waitress grinned and said, “Have you two been dating long?” Apparently the hostess hadn't passed along Smith's fib that we were cousins.
“No,” I said. “We're not—”
“Less than a month,” he said, beaming. “We met scuba diving and she saved my life.”
The waitress tilted her head. “Aww!”
“Yes,” I said, kicking him under the table. “That was really … unbelievable. Like something out of a book.”
“Or a movie,” the waitress said. “I love the meet-cute.”
“He barfed,” I said.
“Sweetie!” He pretended to be shocked and embarrassed.
The waitress giggled, each little laugh making her look more stupid to me and more interesting to Smith.
Grinning, Smith took another look over the wine list and made his selection, then ordered food for both of us.
After the waitress left, I said, “Thank you for ordering for me. I had no idea what anything was.”
He laughed, tipping his head back and filling the mudroom with his booming laughter.
I kicked him again. “Don't laugh at me.”
He frowned. “You're being silly. Who cares what some waitress thinks? As long as she doesn't think you're rude, and stick her dirty thumb in your food, it doesn't matter.”
“I guess. Easy for you to say, with your big wallet full of cash and your … good looks.”
Looking smug, he turned to look out the window at the lush green garden. “My good looks, you say? Do go on.”
“You're not bad-looking, for an older guy.”
“Ouch.”
“Smith, can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask me two. Now go ahead with the second one.”
The waitress came by with our wine, so I waited until we were alone, and said, “Is this how you wrote all your novels?”
He swirled his wine and stared into his glass. “You mean did I have sex with my other typists? Come now, I didn't ask you for your sexual history.” He leaned across the table with his glass raised in a toast. “To fresh stories.”
“To fresh stories.”
Despite my toast, I wasn't satisfied with Smith's answer. In the olden days, pre-internet, a woman would have to wait for a man to divulge his secrets, but these were not the dark ages. I had my cell phone with me. After we ate dinner, I excused myself to the washroom, where I did some web searches on his name.
It took me ages to find anything that wasn't a book review or a fluffy interview. What little I did find was not exactly what I wanted, but still illuminating.
I discovered that he preferred to write first drafts in his cabin in Vermont, which meant the cabin wasn't a brand-new thing. One article said he spent months researching his stories ahead of time and outlining them. That part was news to me, as I hadn't seen any notes or outlines at the cabin. I read on, to a quote from him, where he said he put away all his research when it came time to write the first draft, and went on his memory alone. He said that if an element of the book didn't stick in his memory, then it wasn't important enough to have in the book.
I found scant information about his personal life, except for a brief mention of his divorce, two years ago. I found no mention of a new wife, which was a relief. The thought had crossed my mind that he could be married. I doubted any sane woman would send her husband off for two weeks in a cabin with a young secretary, but that didn't guarantee he wasn't doing it in secret.
Wife or no wife, was I still his secret? Was that why he introduced me to that woman as his niece, and then asked to sit at the very back of the restaurant?
My mind flitted around all the possibilities as I went to the sink and tidied up my hair. I appraised myself in the mirror. The blue blouse was flattering, and the clothes had that crisp look only brand-new things have. My skin really was glowing, and except for my sneakers, I looked like someone who mattered.