“You what? You're not serious.” She leapt to her feet and paced the small room nervously. “You don't even know me yet.”

“Yes, I do. All my life I've been going out with women whom I knew on the first date I never wanted to see again, but I figured what the hell, give it a try, you never know …and two months later, or three or six, I threw in the towel and never called them again. Now I find you, and I knew the first time I laid eyes on you that I was in love with you, and the second time I saw you I knew you were right for me and that you were the best woman I'd ever meet, and if I was very, very lucky, you'd let me shine your shoes for the rest of my life … so what am I supposed to do now? Play games for six months and pretend that I need to figure it out? I don't need to figure out anything. I love you. I want to marry you.” He was beaming at her, and he suddenly knew that the best thing possible had just happened to him. “Will you marry me, Liz?”

She was grinning at him and she looked even younger than her twenty-seven years. “You're nuts. Do you know that? You're crazy.” But she knew the same things. She was wild about him. “I can't marry you after three weeks. What are people going to say? What will your mother say?” She said the magic words and he groaned, but he still looked happier than he ever had in his life.

“Listen, as long as your name is not Rachel Nussbaum and your mother's maiden name wasn't Greenberg or Schwartz, she's going to have a nervous breakdown anyway, so what difference does it make?”

“It'll make a big difference to her if you tell her you met me three weeks ago.”

She walked back to where he stood, and he pulled her back down on the couch next to him and took her hands in his. “I'm in love with you, Elizabeth O'Reilly, and I don't care if you're related to the Pope and I met you yesterday. Life is too short to waste time playing games. I never have and I never will. Let's not waste what we've got.” And then he had an idea. “Tell you what. We'll do this properly. We'll get engaged. Today is August first, we'll get married at Christmastime, that's almost five months away. If you can tell me by then that that isn't what you want to do, we'll cancel everything. How does that sound?” He was already thinking of the ring he would buy …five carats …seven …eight…ten …anything she wanted. He put an arm around her shoulders and she was laughing with tears in her eyes.

“Do you realize you haven't even slept with me yet?”

“An oversight on my part.” He looked unimpressed, and then looked at her thoughtfully. “As a matter of fact, I meant to discuss that with you. Do you suppose you could find a babysitter one of these days? It's not that I don't love our little girl”—she was already his, too—“I do, but I have this wicked, lewd, lecherous idea that involves your coming up to my place for a few hours …”

“I'll see what I can arrange.” She was still laughing at him. It was the craziest thing that had ever happened to her. But he was such a good man, and she knew he would be wonderful to her and Jane for the rest of their lives, but much more important, she knew she was in love with him. It was just so damn difficult to explain that she had fallen in love with him and knew it was right in just three weeks. She couldn't wait to tell Tracy, her best friend at school, a substitute teacher, who was due back from a cruise. She left Liz a lonely woman and when she came back she would find Liz engaged to the general manager of Wolffs. It was absolutely nuts. “All right, all right, I'll get a baby-sitter.” He was pressing her.

“Does this mean we're engaged?” He was beaming and so was she.

“I guess it does.” She still couldn't believe what they'd done, and he was squinting now, trying to figure something out.

“How about having the wedding on December twenty-ninth? That's a Saturday.” He already knew that from plans they'd made at the store. “That way we'll have Christmas with Jane, and we can go to Hawaii or something for our honeymoon.” Liz was completely bowled over by him and as she laughed he leaned over and kissed her and suddenly it all made sense to both of them. It was a dream come true, a perfect match … a match made over a banana split with Jane watching over them, like a guardian angel.

Bernie leaned over and kissed Liz, and she could feel his heart pounding as he held her close to him. And they both knew with absolute certainty, this was forever.





Chapter 7

It took her two days to find a babysitter, and she announced it to Bernie over the phone that afternoon, and blushed when she mentioned it. She knew exactly what he had in mind, and it was embarrassing to be so unspontaneous about it. But with Jane in the only bedroom she had, there wasn't much else they could do. The woman was coming at seven o'clock and was willing to stay until one.

“It's a bit like Cinderella, but it'll do,” she said with a smile.

“That's all right. Don't worry about it.” He had a fifty-dollar bill just begging to fall into the woman's hands when Liz went to kiss Jane good night. “Wear something a little dressy tonight.”

“Like a garter belt?” She was as nervous as a bride, and he laughed at what she said.

“Sounds great. But wear a dress over it. Let's have dinner out.”

She was surprised. She had visions of going to his apartment straight from hers, and getting the “first time” over with. It seemed almost like a surgical procedure to her. First times were so awkward anyway, and the idea of going to dinner instead appealed to her enormously.

And when he picked her up that night, they went to L'Etoile, where he had reserved a table for two, and she began to relax as they talked the way they always did. He told her what was happening in the store, about the plans they'd made for the fall, the promotions, the fashion shows. The opera show had come and gone and been a great success and the others were under way now. She was fascinated by what he did, and even more so because he was so much a businessman. He simply applied the principles of good economics to whatever he touched in the store, that and his extraordinary sense for upcoming trends, and everything he touched turned to gold, as Paul Berman said. And lately, Bernie didn't even mind having been sent to San Francisco to open the store. The way he figured it, he had one more year in California at best, and that would give them time to get married and spend a few months alone, before they went back to New York and Liz would have to deal with his mother at close range. They might even have a baby on the way by then …and he had to think of schools for Jane …but he didn't tell all that to Liz. He had warned her that they were going back to New York eventually, but he didn't want to worry her with the details of the move yet. It was a year away after all, and they had their wedding to think of first.

“Are you going to wear a real wedding dress?” He loved the thought of it, and had seen one in a show at the store only two days before that would have been fabulous on her, but she blushed at the thought as she smiled at him.

“You really mean it, don't you?”

He nodded, holding her hand under the table as they sat side by side on the banquette. He loved the feel of her leg next to his, and she had worn a pretty white silk dress that showed off her tan, and her hair was swept up in a bun high on her head. He noticed that she had worn nail polish, which was unusual for her, and he was glad, but he didn't tell her why as he leaned over and kissed her gently on the neck. “Yes, I do mean it. I don't know …somehow one knows when one is doing the right thing, and when one isn't. I've always known, and the only mistakes I've made have been when I didn't trust my instincts. I've never gone wrong when I have.” She understood him perfectly, but it seemed amazing to move into marriage so quickly, and yet she knew they weren't wrong, and she suspected that she'd never regret it. “I hope one day you feel as sure as I do right now, Liz.” His eyes were gentle on hers, and her heart went out to him as they sat side by side. He loved the feel of her thigh next to his, and it thrilled him to his very core as he thought of lying next to her, but it was too soon to think about that now. He had the whole evening planned to perfection.

“You know, the crazy thing is that I do feel sure. … I just don't know yet how I'll explain it to anyone.”

“I think real life happens this way, Liz. You always hear about people who live together for ten years, and then one of them meets someone else and they get married in five days …because the first relationship was never really right, but in the twinkling of an eye that person knew the second relationship was.”

“I know, I've often thought of things like that. I just never thought it would happen to me.” She smiled at him, and they ate duck and salad and souffle, and then they moved into the bar, where he ordered champagne, and they sat listening to the piano and chatting as they had for weeks now, sharing opinions and ideas and hopes and dreams. It was the most beautiful evening she had had in a long, long time, and being with him made up for everything bad that had ever happened to her, her parents' death, the nightmare with Chandler Scott, and the long lonely years alone since Jane's birth, with no one to help her out or be there for her. And suddenly none of it mattered now that she was with him. It was as though all her life had been in preparation for this man who was so good to her now, and absolutely nothing else mattered.

After their champagne, when he had paid the check, they walked slowly upstairs hand in hand, and she was about to stroll outside when he directed her through the hotel instead, guiding her gently by the arm, but she didn't think anything of it, until he walked her to the elevators and looked down at her with a small, boyish smile, barely concealed by his beard.