"Really?" Margo beamed at her. "I wouldn't ask, but this is so exciting, and we're in it together."
"You've always been in it together," Susan said.
"It perked her up." Margo loitered in the lobby after their brief contact with Laura. "It's frustrating to have to wait until Sunday to go back and look, but with her schedule we're lucky to manage that."
"Don't you think she's taken on an awful lot?"
Kate scanned the sweeping lobby with its elaborate potted plants, half hoping to see Byron breeze by on some executive mission. Instead she saw wandering guests, bustling bellmen, a group of women standing near the revolving doors with shopping bags heaped at their feet and a look of happy exhaustion on their faces.
"I know she likes to fill her time," Kate continued. "And it probably helps keep her mind off… things. But she barely has a minute in the day just for herself."
"Ah, you finally noticed." Then Margo shook her head and sighed. "I can't nag her about it anymore. When I suggested that the shop could probably swing a part-time clerk and that she could cut back there, she almost took my head off." Absently she rubbed a soothing hand over her belly as the baby kicked. "I know the bulk of her salary here at the hotel is earmarked for the kids' tuition."
"That bastard Peter." Kate's teeth began to grind even as she thought of it. "He was a slimy creep for taking Laura's money, but taking his own children's… that makes him whatever's lower than slime. She could have fried his sorry ass in court."
"That's what I'd have done," Margo agreed. Amused, she noted that two men in one of the lobby's plush seating areas were trying to catch her eye. "What you'd have done. Laura has to handle this her own way."
"And her way is to hold down two jobs, raise two children on her own, support a full staff because she's too softhearted to lay anyone off. She can't keep working twenty out of twenty-four hours, Margo."
"You try telling her." Out of long habit, she sent the hopeful men a quick, flirtatious smile.
"Stop playing with those insurance salesmen," Kate ordered.
"Is that what they are?" Carelessly, Margo scooped her long hair back. "Anyway, Josh and I have pushed Laura as far as we can push. She's not budging. Nobody could tell you to take a vacation, could they? To see a doctor?"
"Okay, okay." That was the last thing Kate wanted to hash over. "I had reasons, and I'll explain it to you when we have a little more time. I should have told you before."
"What?"
"We'll talk about it," she promised, then baffled her friend by leaning in and kissing her. "I love you, Margo."
"Okay, what have you screwed up?"
"Nothing. Well, everything, but I'm starting to fix it. Now, back to Laura. We'll just have to do more to pick up the slack. Maybe take the girls off her hands a few hours every week. Or run some of the errands she's always got a million of. And worrying about this is spoiling my mood." She pulled the coin out of her pocket, watched it glint. "Once we find Seraphina's dowry, the rest will be irrelevant."
"Once we do, I'm going to open a new branch of Pretenses. In Carmel, I think."
Surprised, Kate swept her gaze up to Margo's face. "I'd have figured you for a cruise around the world, or a new haute couture wardrobe."
"People change." Margo shrugged. "But I might add in a short cruise and a swing down Rodeo Drive."
"It's a relief to know people don't change too much." But maybe they could, Kate mused. Maybe they should. "Look, there's something I want to do. Can you handle the shop until closing?"
"With Mr. and Mrs. T there, I don't have to go back myself." With a chuckle, Margo dug out her car keys. "If I could keep them in the shop for a month, we'd double our profits. Oh, say hi to Byron for me."
"I didn't say I was seeing Byron."
Margo sent a sly smile over her shoulder as she walked away. "Sure you did, pal."
It was demoralizing to realize she was so obvious. Demoralizing enough that Kate nearly talked herself out of going up to the penthouse. She was still arguing with herself when she stepped out of the elevator. When she was told Mr. De Witt was in conference, she decided it was for the best.
At loose ends, she rode back down, but rather than heading to her car, she wandered out to the pool. Leaning on the stone wall that skirted it, she watched the play of the courtyard fountain, the people who sat at the pretty glass tables sipping colorful drinks under festive umbrellas. She spotted name tags pinned to lapels that id
entified conventioneers taking a break from seminars.
In striped lounge chairs around the curving tiled pool lounged bodies slicked with sunscreen. Magazines and bestsellers were being read, headphones were in place. Waitpeople in cool pastel uniforms delivered drinks and snacks from the poolside bar and grill. Other guests splashed and played in the water, or simply floated, dreaming.
They knew how to relax, Kate thought. Why had she never acquired this simple skill? If she were to stretch out in one of those lounge chairs, she'd be asleep in five minutes. That was how her body was trained. Or if sleep refused to come, restlessness would have her up and gone, with her mind ordering her not to waste time.