“Bergdorf’s, of course,” she said smugly. “It’s the only place to shop in New York.”
“Aren’t you a little snob?”
Unperturbed, the child looked up at her uncle with flirty eyes and stuck out her foot. “But I got the shoes at Lamston’s,” she said, speaking of a popular dime store in New York.
Laughing, Mike scooped her off the ground, buried his face in her neck, and began to make disgusting noises. The noises seemed to be a silent call for children, for they seemed to emerge from every part of the park, from behind trees and rocks, running across fields—and they all attacked Mike. One sturdy little boy attached himself to Mike’s leg, sitting on his foot, while two identical twin girls took the other leg. Mike held Lisa with one arm while she fought the children who tried to climb up Mike, yelling, “I found him first!” Within minutes Mike looked like a Zuni storyteller doll with children hanging off the front of him, arms around his neck, legs hanging down his back, and two boys swinging from the arm that wasn’t holding Lisa.
Laughing, Samantha watched him walk toward the picnic tables, dragging screaming, laughing children with him.
When four children ran up to him and were disappointed that they couldn’t find a square inch of Mike that wasn’t already taken, Mike said, “Bring Sam.”
With trepidation on her face, Samantha backed away from the approaching children who collectively outweighed her, as they, with impish grins, started for her. Holding the baby to her protectively, she looked as though she were facing a pack of wolves.
One minute she was on the ground and the next she and the baby were swept into a pair of strong arms. After an initial gasp of shock, she looked up into her rescuer’s eyes: eyes that were like Mike’s except older.
“Ian Taggert,” he said, as though they were being presented to each other in a ballroom instead of her now being carried by him. “Mike’s dad,” he said unnecessarily. “And who do you have there?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, looking down at the baby.
“Plan to give him back?”
Samantha turned red as she realized that she was still holding the baby as though someone meant to harm him and she was going to protect him with her life. She didn’t know it, but that gesture won her a place forever in Mike’s father’s heart. Ian had never liked any of Mike’s other girlfriends; they always worried about their clothes getting dirty, but he liked this one.
“Get your own girl,” Mike said and took Samantha from his father’s arms.
“Michael Taggert, put me down!” she said under her breath as he carried her to the table and everyone, all eight hundred of them, gathered around to look at her.
After the first twenty names, Samantha didn’t try to remember who they were, and she was grateful when she saw a few familiar faces: Raine, Blair, and Vicky—who managed to look elegant even in a pair of jeans. Sam noted Mike’s very pretty mother, his sister Jeanne who had decorated her rooms, and she noticed Mike’s oldest brother, Frank. Frank looked like the rest of the men in his family, but he was an example of how expression could change a person’s features. The honest, open eyes, so like Mike’s, were narrowed, as though he were scrutinizing everything and everyone, and the beautiful, soft Taggert mouth was drawn into a firm line.
As Frank shook her hand, he didn’t flirt with her as Mike’s other brothers had, instead, he looked at her speculatively and said, “You will, of course, be willing to sign a prenuptial agreement?”
Putting his arm around Samantha’s shoulders, Mike told Frank to stuff it as he led her toward the trees. “You’ve met the worst of the family, now meet the best.” As they walked she asked him questions about his family and was told that Frank planned to be a billionaire by the time he was forty and it looked as though he was going to make it. Samantha laughed at the way Mike spoke of millions and billions the way the rest of the world spoke of tens and twenties.
Sitting under a tree, a little apart from the noise of the rest of the family, was a very pretty young woman, about twenty, who looked as though she’d stepped out of the pages of a children’s storybook. She was the beautiful princess the knights risked their lives to save, the princess who knew that a pea had been put under her mattresses. She wore a long draped skirt of layers of chiffon, a gauzy blouse, and a big picture hat like the one Scarlett wore to the barbecue. Beside her was a straw bag full of romantic novels and on her lap was an exquisitely dressed, picture-perfect baby, who Samantha found out later belonged to one of Mike’s cousins.
“Jilly, honey,” Mike said softly, “I want you to meet Samantha.”
Jilly looked at Samantha; Samantha looked at Jilly. Mike, with a smile, excused himself, for he knew that Sam had found a friend in his overwhelming family. Samantha sat under the tree with Jilly talking about books they had read. Within minutes there were four children sitting near them, just sitting and listening as Jilly and Samantha talked.
One by one the women of Mike’s family came to sit with them, so Samantha got to exchange a few words with each of them. She was pleased to tell Jeanne how much she liked the apartment, how the colors were perfect, how everything was perfect. She again thanked Vicky for helping her that day in Saks and apologized for her naïveté about the cost of the clothes.
She was a little nervous about talking to Mike’s mother, and Pat made it worse when she said, “What do you think of my Michael?”
Samantha didn’t hesitate. “Except that he lies constantly, never picks up his clothes, pretends to be dumb when he wants to get out of doing something, and has the ability to be utterly oblivious to the fact that I am doing nearly all the housework in his house, I think my Michael is perfect.” There was an emphasis on the word my.
Laughing, Pat squeezed Sam’s hand affectionately and said, “Welcome to the family,” then went off to play with her grandchildren.
In between visits with the others, Samantha and Jilly talked, or rather Samantha talked, telling Jilly all about Mike and Maxie and about all that had happened since she’d come to New York.
It was late afternoon when Samantha felt secure enough to leave the haven of Jilly and move to the picnic tables. It was while she was talking to a young woman named Dougless, who was a Montgomery and m
arried to a very nice man named Reed and looked to be in her fortieth month of pregnancy, that she had an experience that she never again wanted to have happen to her.
As Samantha straightened from reaching for an olive on a platter, Mike put his arms about her shoulders and kissed her on the neck. “Thanks a lot for coming today, Sam-Sam,” he said.
It was a perfectly ordinary encounter, perfectly acceptable—except that the man who was touching her wasn’t Mike. He was wearing clothes just like Mike’s and he was approximately the same size as Mike, but he didn’t feel like Mike, didn’t smell like Mike, didn’t kiss like Mike.
“Release me,” she said, standing stiffly in his arms.