The January Girl Read online

  “When can we see her?”

  “It will be a few hours before she is awake,” Jack answered.

  Over the following year, the family had moved into a tiny apartment just south of the medical complex while Sonja recuperated. They wanted to stay close to Dr. Gabrielle, for the Chapman family trusted no one else. After six weeks of radiation, Jack prescribed the standard PCV chemotherapy.

  Jack checked the date of the operation; that was three years ago. Sonja and Fred Chapman were now waiting in an exam room.

  “She’s a very lucky young woman,” Jack whispered to Sandy as he scanned down the test results.

  “Lucky they found you,” the nurse replied.

  Fred and Sonja left the office relieved. An MRI study was ordered to confirm full remission, but Jack was not worried.

  Jack returned to his office, to the window. He leaned on the sill, pressing his fingers against the glass. He stood there for at least ten minutes, watching the traffic stream by below, his mind squarely on the one thing he could not cure. Complete in herself, comfortable in her skin, Thandy seemed to be conquering the world—without him.

  These days, he took more weekends on call, despite having six well-trained physicians on staff and at the ready. He was resigned to this life, he thought to himself, no ready means of escape, with no clear will to simply get up and walk away, no desire to liberate Etienne from the prison she built for herself. Even so, Jack had little patience for imperfection. He’d long since tired of his wife’s love affair with vodka-drenched lunches. Were it not for his sons, he would be perfectly happy if she drank herself right into the grave. Divorce now felt imperfect as well. If she wanted out, he would hold the front door open and let her drag her bags to the curb.

  Ninety-nine problems but a bitch ain’t one!

  Sandy brought him a no-fat vanilla latte from the café and dropped a thin stack of phone messages on his desk. He took a sip and leafed through the pink slips.

  “Are you ready for the next one?”

  “Let’s get to it,” he said.

  Working gave him less time to think about what he’d lost.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Long after his office staff had gone for the evening, Jack finally drove out of the parking deck and into the starless night. It was well after midnight when he clicked the button on the remote to open the wrought-iron gate and pulled his Porsche 911 Turbo into the long, hedge-lined drive.

  He was pleased to find Etienne sleeping, in all likelihood lulled by a mild sedative and an evening nightcap. For once she was not pacing the floors, waiting for him like a caged bird. He was tired of fighting.

  Jack left the bedroom and went down to the kitchen. He poured and drained a shot of Rémy Martin Louis XIII. Better than cognac, Louie is a work of art, not unlike the priceless oils that adorned the home’s foyer and living room. The idea that three generations of cellar masters had patiently and artfully created the fine liquor was nearly as intoxicating to Jack as the drink itself.

  He poured another, went down to the cellar, and stripped down to his Skivvies. He sat in the damp, cool basement, surrounded by old furniture and boxes, vestiges of the days when his mother welcomed the full of Atlanta society into her home. Thoughts of Thandy crowded his mind. He didn’t want to miss her, but even then, still inebriated with his own success, he could not bring himself to admit that he needed anyone. She, like the cognac, had been a perk of power. He had earned them both.

  The first time he saw her ten years ago, he was fixated on the way she moved. She floated across the department store’s tiled flooring as though it were a vast, marbled ballroom. She danced alone; her hips swayed beyond assorted merchandise displays until she disappeared into a fog of elegant clothing. Without thinking, he followed, trailing her by a few paces. He did not know where she had come from or where she was going.

  He watched as she purchased a silver bracelet. A gift, he reasoned. He remained several yards away, just out of her line of sight and watched her. Her hands were delicate. Her buttery skin looked smooth and clear. She had wonderful, bone-straight, jet-black hair that fell generously about her shoulders and flowed as if picked up by an unseen breeze.

  There was an inviting mystery in her full peach lips and in her pecan-shaped eyes framed by perfectly etched brows. He did not know her name, but he knew it would be divine all the same. He had, in that moment, forgotten why he had come and moreover, what appointment he needed to keep. She was a worthy distraction. He didn’t want to seem desperate. But desperate he was, desperate to know her, to be in her company. Shifting through a rack of shirts, he searched for an opportunity to approach.

  He watched as the clerk wrapped the bracelet in sheer tissue, then boxed and handed it over. When she turned to leave, he followed.

  Without thinking he said, “Go to dinner with me.”

  It was more of a demand than a question. He didn’t even know her name.

  “Well,” she smiled. “I don’t know—”

  “Maybe just coffee,” Jack interrupted. “I promise I won’t keep you long.”

  “I meant to say, I do not know your name. And don’t make any promises you can’t keep. I’m Thandywaye Malone.”

  “It is good to meet you, Ms. Malone,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Nice to meet you . . .”

  “Jackson. And I can tell you now that I intend to break that promise. I’m going to keep you as long as you let me.”

  She smiled.

  “My friends call me Jack. Jack Gabrielle. Dr. Jackson Gabrielle.”

  “And Mrs. Gabrielle?”

  Jack was immediately confused.

  “You’re wearing a wedding band. I can assume that there is a Mrs. Gabrielle,” she said, looking past his shoulder.

  “There is. Well, there isn’t and there is. We’re separated,” he lied. The sugar-tinged drawl deepened. “I am certain your mother will be delighted with your gift,” he said, changing the subject. “She must be quite beautiful.”

  “It’s for my daughter,” she corrected in something just shy of presweetened iced tea. “Her birthday is Saturday. And yes, she is quite beautiful.”

  “Just like her mother.”

  Thandy blushed. She was quite used to strange men accosting her on the street. She’d been waved down in traffic, chased through grocery stores, and stared down to her lingerie during business meetings enough to understand that whatever she had was worth having. But Jack was different. His voice was positively melodic, yet powerfully masculine. He was the one man who looked at her as if he wanted something after tomorrow came and went.

  “So you will join me for dinner, maybe Friday evening?”

  She paused. “I don’t know if I’m interested in a man who is, shall we say, otherwise encumbered.”

  “Don’t go spending five-dollar words on me.”

  A grin crept up from the corner of her mouth. “You’re the doctor. You must know everything.”

  “In all likelihood yes,” he assured. “Can you at least have dinner with a new friend?”

  “How long have you been watching me?”

  Ashamed, but delighted, he admitted he had indeed followed her from the moment she walked into Bloomingdale’s. There was no concealing his enchantment. He was happy that she found his admission charming.

  Thandy shifted feet. “There are many beautiful women in Atlanta. Do you follow all of them?”

  “With my practice, I wouldn’t have the time for that,” he bragged, hoping to lead her into more conversation. He felt like a schoolboy. He felt a warmth in his core he hadn’t felt in years.

  “Between your patients and the stalking habit you’ve acquired, you must keep quite busy,” she joked.

  “I don’t have any habits. I am anything but common. And I wasn’t stalking you, Miss Lady,” he said plainly.

  “You were so. You said it yourself. What kind of medicine?”

  “I’m a surgeon and you are incredibly beautiful.”

  “Well, th
at makes you Dr. Uncommon and likely a compulsive neurotic.”

  “Are you always so judgmental?”

  “Are you always so flirtatious?”

  “Are you always so cynical?”

  “Are you always so evasive?”

  They laughed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Her eyes swept past her watch, then slowly upward, moving across his face. Her skepticism nearly evaporated. Until then Thandy had not noticed his wide, nickel-sized eyes, the heavy but pleasant bed of brows, his strong cleft chin, the soft salt-and-pepper black curls of hair, and brilliant cocoa-brown eyes. She noticed the perfectly etched lines that joined his mustache and goatee.

  Nervously, she pulled away. For that moment, she saw her own splendor reflected in his eyes.

  Jack studied her again. God Himself could not have rendered a more exquisite creature. He couldn’t help but believe that the woman standing before him, craftily evading his dinner invitation, was the sum total of all the women in the world.

  “What do you do?” he asked.

  She was a lawyer by training, she explained, shifting her weight, an officer with McDonough, Press, and Sweet Asset Management. “I manage acquisitions. Sell-side.”

  “I am a buy-side kind of guy.”

  She grinned.

  “C’mon now. That’s worth a laugh,” he said.

  Her smile grew. “Well, Dr. Gabrielle, I really must be going,” she said, turning away. “I’ve got a birthday cake to bake.”

  “You bake, too? Do they still make women like you?”

  “Baking is the least of my skills,” she boasted, as he turned to follow her.

  Jack knew that Etienne hadn’t seen the inside of a kitchen in over a decade and didn’t see the value of red velvet cake unless, of course, it was laced with vodka.

  “But how will I find you again?”

  “I’m listed,” she threw over her shoulder.

  “How will I know which . . . ?”

  “Ain’t but one.”

  “What if I can’t spell it?” He laughed.

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  “Will you buy dinner if I do?”

  She stopped walking. “Not a chance, Dr. Uncommon. Not a chance.”

  He couldn’t see her face, but he knew she was still smiling. With that, he was satisfied. He would indeed seek her out, find her, and know her. If one believes his first love to be his last and his last the very first, then she had been both. He gave little thought to the current Mrs. Gabrielle, who was shopping with their son on the third floor. He gave little thought to the string of other beautiful women who came and went at his pleasure. Thandywaye Malone was different.

  His older son was now twelve and a second son, Jacob, was turning six. It would be ten years since that day in October and Thandy had made a big deal out of every anniversary of their meeting.

  Jack regretted not giving Thandy the celebration he so often told her she deserved. He hadn’t been very good about birthdays, either. Never quite able to remember which day it was, Jack would invariably show up with a ten-dollar bundle of roses from the checkout line at the grocery store and a pearly smile, days late. Handling her disappointment, he’d kiss her until it was all gone. Each night as he got onto the elevator and went home to Etienne, the pangs of wanting set in. He never wanted to leave.

  There had been too many vacations to Sea Island, too many days when she’d come home from work after a steady eighteen hours in the office to find a sweet voice mail message, too many times when she’d called his paging system just to hear his Southern lilt, too many dime-store flowers always in just the right color, too many tickle fights when both of them laughed so hard they could barely talk, too many bowls of Brunswick stew and plates of lemon pound cake ferried to the hospital when he hadn’t had time for a dinner break, too many pool games when he whipped her behind because he said his foot was itching for a win only to wind up rubbing her feet as a consolation prize, too many fevered afternoons wrapped in each other’s arms when neither of them wanted to be anywhere else. She rarely asked for more. They believed they had everything.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  At three thirty in the morning, he was still in the cellar, still trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. He’d never believed she would leave him. The tear-soaked voice mail messages had gone unchecked, various others left with his office ignored. He’d taken her for granted. He could not sleep; nor could he get himself to join his wife in bed. His and Thandy’s last encounter replayed itself again and again in his head.

  After the plane from Barbados landed he’d made a beeline for her condominium. The fire was already burning when he turned the key.

  “Who is she?” Thandy had demanded as he stepped inside.

  “Who is who?”

  “Stop it, Jackson!” she shouted. “You can’t just stroll in here and pretend everything is everything!” The hurt poured out of her bones like a rolling tide. “Don’t you think you owe me something?”

  “I don’t owe anybody anything,” he countered.

  He believed that.

  Notwithstanding his trust fund, he firmly believed that he’d made himself through his work, his skills, and talents. He had earned everything, every single thing that the world had to offer because he had commanded it. Whatever his father had left him paled in comparison to what he’d made of it. The medical practice had grown exponentially under his charge. The Great Doctor Jackson Gabrielle was lord and master over the largest, most profitable surgical office in the southeast and it was all because he had made it so.

  None of this impressed Thandy. She was in his face, shouting. “She called me!” she barked. “She called this house!”

  “What?”

  “She is still your wife, right? She called me last week and told me you were in Barbados! She said you were at some goddamned doctors’ convention with some bitch!”

  He was accustomed to coming and going as he pleased. Barbados was not the first of his indiscretions. Anguilla, St. Bart’s, Nevis. There were three different medical conferences and three different women all within the span of a year. Surely Etienne knew about them all and had never uttered a contrary word. But for Etienne to place a call to Thandy . . . she must have secretly acquired and run through his cell phone bill. He mentally counted over five hundred outbound calls in the past few months alone. But she had said nothing. In fact, these days Etienne was playing the role of the dutiful wife. She was better than June Cleaver, notwithstanding the bedtime shot of vodka. But he would deal with Etienne later. For now he was dead set on managing the collateral damage.

  “And you believe her?” he said, backing up.

  “Damn right I do,” Thandy said, closing in on him. “Show me your fucking passport!”

  “Who carries their passport around with them?”

  “You do!”

  His contentment with her seemed a distant memory. Her anger was unmanageable. Seeing it now, raw and unbridled, filled his chest with an unexpected pang of regret.

  “Look, I haven’t been to Barbados,” he lied. “And there is no one else.”

  “Then show me the goddamned passport!” she spat.

  “C’mon, Thandy. You’re smarter than that,” Jack said, tossing his arms in the air. “She’s a lunatic.”

  “Don’t tell me she’s crazy now. Just show me the damn passport,” she sniffed. “We can solve this right now.”

  Already caught up in a space as tight as a sinking coffin, he said, “You don’t need to see my passport. It’s me. Jack. C’mon, now.”

  He gripped her arms and pulled her in close. Thandy snatched away. Jack grabbed her again and tugged her back to him. “C’mon, now. It’s me,” he said softly, edging in closer.

  He kissed her tears. She buried her face in his chest as he wrapped his arms around her.

  “I don’t know who you are,” she sobbed.

  “Of course you do. We were made for this. You are the next and the last Mrs. Gabrielle,” he croon
ed. “I know. I shouldn’t have gone without you. But I’ve missed you and only you.”

  He kissed her down the hall and into the master bedroom. He took off her clothes and then his own, still kissing, still caressing, still crooning as he worked his seduction. He tossed her onto the bed, worked his way through her body, lifting her firm legs around his back, grasping her meaty behind. He grasped and pushed until he could feel her anger turn to passion. He left no spot untouched, nothing undone until her wetness covered him. When it was over, he looked into her eyes, expecting to see pleasure and relief. Instead, she cried like a baby as she pushed him aside.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Damn,” he said under his breath.

  Jack sniffed, threw his head back, and wished her and her tears away. He went to the bathroom and came back with a wet hand towel. “Here. Get cleaned up,” he said flatly.

  She didn’t move. He sat on the edge of the bed and waited. Nearly an hour crept by before she muttered, “I want to know where you were. Who were you with?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I need to hear you say it,” she said.

  He almost said something, then caught himself. It didn’t really matter; the juried conviction had long since been rendered. Thandy pulled herself up in bed. He turned and looked at her.

  “Go right ahead! Deny it! Deny it all, Jackie boy!” she screamed, almost laughing, almost crying.

  Not even his mother, rest her soul, had called him Jackie.

  “Misery loves company,” he sighed under his breath.

  “Misery? Yes, Jackson. I am miserable,” she said, kicking him through the blankets. “Goddamn it! I am fucking miserable! Miserable! I gave you my life! And what is it that you give me in return? A bunch of empty promises?” she shrieked. “C’mon, Jack! If I’m just a piece of ass, shouldn’t you write a check before you leave?”