Danielle Steel - The Apartment

“I’ve been wanting to meet you,” he said effusively to Sasha and sounded as though he meant it. “The beautiful young doctor who delivers babies. Your parents must be very proud.”

“Not really,” Sasha said, smiling at him. “Our mother wanted me to be a lawyer—she thinks what I do is a pretty messy job. And my father is very proud of Valentina. His wife was a model too.” He brushed off what she said as though she were joking, although there was truth to it, and he put an arm around Valentina and kissed her. She was wearing a black leather skirt that barely covered her crotch, and thigh-high black suede boots with high heels. Sasha thought her outfit looked a little S&M, but Jean-Pierre seemed to love it as he slipped a hand up her skirt. Sasha was used to men who behaved that way around her sister, they all did, and Valentina liked it. If Alex had done that to her in public, she would have slugged him. And she smiled when she realized he hadn’t done it in private yet either, which suited her just fine.

“I am very much in love with your sister,” he told Sasha with a soulful look. “She’s a wonderful woman and she makes me very happy.” Sasha tried not to think of what that meant. “I have not been this happy since I was a young man.” To Sasha, that meant he was using Viagra, but she didn’t want to think of that either. He looked a little more respectable than Valentina’s usual consorts. He was wearing a serious business suit and a dark tie from Hermès, and he was a tad younger than her last boyfriend, but there was still a toughness to him that scared her, and she knew instinctively that it would be dangerous to cross him. And Valentina had no idea what he did for work.

“Do you do business in the States?” Sasha asked him, fishing, but he was too smart for that.

“I do business all over the world. The world is very small now. Your sister and I were in Dubai last week, and we’ll be in Marrakech in two weeks, for a little vacation.”

“How fun,” Sasha said, trying to look as though she meant it, but something about his eyes truly scared her. He looked like he had X-ray vision. And she wouldn’t have trusted him farther than she could throw him. He hadn’t said or done anything wrong, but something about him just didn’t feel right.

They chatted for a while, sitting on the couch in Valentina’s apartment, and finally Sasha got up and said she had to go. She was meeting Alex at the apartment. The others would be out and she had promised to cook him dinner, which she had warned him he might regret, but he said he was game. She told him he was a very brave man.

Jean-Pierre hugged her and kissed her on both cheeks again when she left, and Valentina was beaming at her, convincing herself that Sasha loved him, which was not the case. Sasha just didn’t know what was wrong about him and what to object to, but she was sure that something was wrong. But hopefully Valentina would never find out, and he’d be gone long before he caused a problem. Whatever he did for a living, she was sure that he was good at it, and if it was illegal, maybe he wouldn’t get caught.

She took the subway north to Hell’s Kitchen, and Alex arrived at the loft a few minutes after she did, carrying the groceries they’d agreed on for dinner. He looked at her closely after he kissed her and asked if everything was okay. She seemed distracted.

“Yeah. I just met Valentina’s boyfriend, and I can’t tell you what’s wrong with him, but something didn’t feel right. That always happens with her, and later we find out they were dealing heroin to small children. This one’s a little better, or a little smoother maybe, but he’s got the meanest eyes I’ve ever seen. The good news is that they never last long. She’s crazy about him, but that doesn’t mean anything with her.”

“I don’t know how twins can be so different,” he said as he unpacked the food. “It doesn’t get any more different than you and your sister.” And he thought that was a good thing.

“I know, it’s weird,” she agreed. “She’s crazy, and she has the worst taste in men in the world, but I love her anyway.” Alex understood that, and he had been respectful of her and was careful of what he said.

The two of them started to make dinner, enjoying the night because they knew the others would be out, so they had the place to themselves.

—

Claire still hadn’t told anyone but Morgan, but the romance with George was going well. They were going to Palm Beach on his plane the following weekend. There were suddenly a million plans that all sounded like fun to her. He wanted to take her to the Super Bowl where he went every year, the World Series, skiing in Courchevel and Megève, Aspen, Sun Valley, the Caribbean, and the South of France in the summer. There were a thousand things he promised to do with her, and in between he told her he wanted to spend his life in bed with her. Claire was trying not to be, but she was distracted by him. Every time she sat down at her drawing board, at home or in the office, her mind drifted off, and she could see him naked in front of her. She had even done a sketch of him, which she had hidden in a drawer at work. And all he kept saying to her was that he knew that this was it. And even though she didn’t want to believe it yet, she knew it was true. This was it. She just hadn’t expected him to come into her life so soon. She wondered sometimes if this was what had happened to her mother, when she had fallen head over heels in love with Claire’s father, and followed him to San Francisco. But Claire also knew that this was different. George was a legendary success on Wall Street and a brilliant businessman. People said he had the Midas touch. And he would never ask her to give up her career.

She was beginning to think of things she had never thought of before, like getting married and having children. He was opening new horizons and previously locked places in her heart. It was too soon to think about any of it, or making changes in her life, but she was falling madly in love with him.

The following weekend, when he took her to Florida, they spent a night in Miami, and the second night in Palm Beach, and had even more fun than they had had in Vermont. They already knew each other better, and were learning more every day. He didn’t like talking about his childhood, but Claire had finally told him about her depressing father, and her mother giving up her career for him. It explained how desperate she was to remain independent and do her work. She never wanted to be dependent on a man, even him. And George understood.

They went water-skiing in Miami off a yacht he had chartered for the day, and ate at all the best restaurants. She felt like a fairy princess living in a dream with him.

—

“What’s happening with Claire?” Sasha asked Morgan on Saturday morning, when they were making coffee in the kitchen. Abby was still asleep. She had been at her computer working constantly on the new play and staying up late, so Sasha and Morgan were alone at the kitchen table. “She’s out all the time, and away for the weekend,” Sasha commented. Morgan was quiet for a moment and didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know the details, but she was aware that Claire was with George for the weekend.

“She’s seeing someone,” Morgan said simply.

“Wow, she didn’t say anything to me. Do you know who it is?” Sasha asked her.

Morgan nodded, trying not to look worried about it. “It’s George.” It took a minute to register, and then Sasha’s eyes opened wide.

“Your boss?” Morgan nodded. “How did that happen?”

“We had dinner at Max’s restaurant, George was there, and stopped at our table. I introduced him to Claire. And the rest, as they say, is history. They’ve been crazy about each other ever since.” It hadn’t been long, but it was intense. And Claire looked like she was walking on air whenever Morgan saw her. She just hoped it would last, but she wasn’t sure. George was hard to read, and even harder to predict.

“Do you think it’s for real with him?” Sasha asked with concern.

“I don’t know. It could be. One of these days, some woman will land him, and it might as well be Claire. He has a history of short relationships, but just from the little I know, and can sense from her, I don’t think he’s ever been this serious before.”

“Wow,” Sasha said again. “Where is she this weekend?”

“Florida, I think. They went on his plane.”

“What a cool thing for her, if this works.” Morgan smiled at what she said, and hoped so too.

“What about you?” Morgan asked her as they sat at the table with their coffee. “How’s it going with the young doctor?”

“Nicely. Slow but sure. Neither of us wants to make any fast moves and screw it up.”

“That sounds good.”

“It works for us.” Sasha stayed in the kitchen after Morgan went to get dressed. She was going to help Max with his books at the restaurant. They all had relationships now, in various stages, three of them with good, interesting, worthwhile men. The only rotten apple in the barrel was Ivan, and all Sasha could hope, for Abby’s sake, was that she’d get rid of him soon.

In October, when Morgan was going over research for a presentation, she asked for some files from accounting, and realized within a few minutes that they’d given her the wrong ones. She called them to have them send her the right ones, and something caught her eye on the balance sheets while she waited for them to pick them up. There had been a transfer of a hundred thousand dollars, and a withdrawal of twenty thousand that didn’t look right to her. The money didn’t belong in that account. She could see that a week later there had been an unexplained deposit of the twenty, and the hundred thousand had been moved back again, into the right account. It didn’t make sense to her. She wondered if it had been an error in accounting that they had corrected. All the numbers looked right at the end, but there had been some moving and shifting that she couldn’t explain. She thought about telling George about it, but since the money had all ended up in the right place, it didn’t really matter. But it seemed odd to her. A lot of money came in and out of their office for clients, and she knew George had a remarkable head for numbers and a keen radar, and he kept a close eye on their books. It was important to do that in a firm like theirs, so maybe he knew about it, and had demanded the correction. It wasn’t really worrisome since no funds were missing, but she couldn’t explain it to herself. Just to be sure, if the subject came up later, she xeroxed the file before they came to pick it up, and she put the xeroxed pages in a locked drawer in her desk. And then she got to work on the research she had to do for the next day.

The error in accounting slipped her mind entirely after that. They had a number of new clients, and she had a lot of work to do.

She had noticed what good spirits George was in since he’d started seeing Claire, and he didn’t say anything to Morgan, but he looked like a man in love. She had never seen him as happy or as relaxed, and Claire was like a field of flowers in spring. She had even stopped complaining about her boss.

And Sasha was happy too. She was busy, content, and at peace, and she and Alex were having fun. They laughed a lot whenever he came to the apartment, and they had dinner at Max’s restaurant at least once a week. And Alex and Max were cooking dinner together now on Sunday nights at the loft. Max was still the master chef, and Alex was the sous chef, anxious to learn new tricks from him. Alex fit in perfectly to their self-made family, and the others hoped that he’d stick. It was too soon to tell.

The only one who clearly wasn’t happy, and seemed downright miserable, was Abby. Ivan was torturing her, and there were even more excuses than before about why he wasn’t around, or was out of range. He was sick, he had a migraine, he had put his back out moving scenery, he had to meet with backers or his accountant, he was reading new plays, he was exhausted from reading new plays, his cell battery had died, and he lost the phone itself once or twice a week, or there was no cell service wherever he’d been. He was like chasing quicksilver across the floor. Abby was constantly looking for him, and listening to his excuses when he turned up. And Daphne was around increasingly, while he claimed he was trying to teach her the business. And her father was supposedly eluding Ivan, and constantly traveling for business, so they hadn’t met yet. And their bank account was nearly empty. Their financial situation was desperate.