Knitting Under the Influence by Claire Lazebnik

Author:Claire Lazebnik
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA
Published: 2008-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

IV

When Kevin arrived at Kathleen's apartment to pick her up for dinner that night, he told her that he had run into Sam Kaplan in the lobby, and they had agreed it would be fun to all have dinner together. Kathleen wasn't sure who the “all” referred to but soon discovered that it meant that Sam's ex-wife, Patricia, was with him.

It had never occurred to Kathleen before how much of the time she'd previously spent with Sam Kaplan had been one-on-one, just the two of them alone in his apartment. Tonight they were with other people, and she almost didn't recognize her sharp-tongued and occasionally brutal upstairs neighbor in the sociable and relaxed guy who sat across the table from her, his arm casually resting across the back of his ex-wife's chair. If it hadn't been for the way he rubbed all his flatware clean with his napkin and occasionally rolled his eyes at things she said, she might have suspected that he, like her sisters, had an identical twin.

The wine was good, and the waiter and Sam and Kevin all kept refilling Kathleen's glass as soon as it was half empty, so she had probably had a lot more than she even realized by the time the conversation turned to Jackson Porter.

“It was wonderful seeing him and your mother at the benefit,” Sam said to Kevin. “It's been a while.”

“They just don't go out as much as they used to,” Kevin said. “Much as I hate to admit it, they're getting older and starting to slow down.”

“They may not go out together as much,” Kathleen said, “but your father certainly manages to get around.”

“Excuse me?” Kevin said.

“Oh, you know,” she said with a slightly inebriated wink.

“Those daily lunches with attractive young women in private hotel rooms.”

“Ah,” he said. “You've been listening to gossip.” He turned to Sam and Patricia with a smile. “Every once in a while, the office rumor mill comes up with an exciting double life for my father. I guess it's one of the ways people keep themselves entertained during a long day at work.”

“Offices can get boring,” Sam said. His eyes moved quickly back and forth between Kevin and Kathleen, assessing the situation without giving any of his own thoughts away. “And everyone enjoys a good scandal, even a fictional one.”

“But in this case it's true,” Kathleen said. She didn't really care that Jackson cheated on his wife, but she found it incredibly annoying that Kevin was making it sound like she was some kind of gullible stooge. “Half the office could tell you which hotel he uses. Which room.”

Kevin looked at her, his brows drawn together. He drew his breath in.

“Kevin,” Patricia said suddenly, “do your parents still have that house on the beach in Santa Barbara? Or was it Montecito? We went out there once and it was just lovely.”

Kevin answered in the affirmative, and the talk shifted to beach houses and whether the Southern California real estate bubble was likely to burst anytime in the near future.

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