The Awakening of Nina Fontaine Read online

  She looked down at her empty glass and leaned in to Karen during a break in the conversation. “Going to get another drink. Want one?”

  “Yes please,” Karen said, handing over her empty glass.

  “Excuse me,” Nina said to the two men, now deep in conversation.

  They nodded vaguely and Nina stepped into the crowd, making her way toward the bar at the front of the restaurant. The crowd had only gotten bigger as the night wore on, evidence that some of the people invited to the reading had skipped it and gone straight to the after-party.

  As far as Nina was concerned, it was their loss. She’d been fascinated by Vincent’s reading, and even more so during the Q and A session that had followed. Vincent’s book centered around the socioeconomic and cultural challenges of a continent struggling to reconcile its violent and in many ways regressive past with the unstoppable encroachment of the global economy, the internet, and social media.

  The man was impressive, well into his seventies and still traveling the globe, using his billions to further causes ranging from healthcare to a worldwide ban on child marriage to universal access to high-speed internet. Nina had been especially impressed with the photographs — an array of rich, emotional images — surrounding him during the reading, although Vincent had made it clear they hadn’t been taken by him, but by a photographer who had traveled with him.

  She reached the bar feeling like she’d crossed the finish line of an unexpected obstacle course, set down the two empty glasses, and waited for the bartender to come her way. When he got to her, she called out her order over the din and waited while he poured, then left a five dollar tip, grateful Karen’s employer was sponsoring the open bar.

  Picking up the glasses, she turned away from the bar and nearly ran into someone standing not two inches away. When she looked up, it was into a pair of familiar blue eyes.

  The man from the coffee shop near her apartment.

  He laughed and glanced at the drinks in her hands. “This city is going to have to cut you off from liquids.”

  She shook her head with a smile. “Or you from places that serve them. This town obviously isn’t big enough for the two of us.”

  He grinned, his teeth white and straight. “It’ll be a fight to the death.”

  He had endearing — and yes, sexy — dimples, his five o’clock shadow as present at eleven p.m. as it had been at ten in the morning. This time he was wearing slacks and a midnight blue button-down, the jacket stretched across his shoulders somehow looking both tailored and casual.

  She was saved from formulating a comeback by the sound of Karen’s voice beyond his shoulder.

  “There you are!” She angled around the man in front of Nina and took her drink from Nina’s hand, then drained half of it before turning toward him. Her face lit up with surprise. “Liam! I didn’t see you come in.”

  Liam. His name was Liam.

  “That may or may not have been intentional,” Liam said.

  Karen shook her head. “You’re bad. You didn’t come to the reading. Everyone was talking about your photographs.”

  Nina was just starting to make sense of the words flowing between them when Karen turned to her.

  “Speaking of which — Nina, this is Liam McAlister. He’s the one who took the pictures you liked so much.”

  “You’re the photographer?” Nina asked. “The one who traveled with Vincent?”

  “Guilty as charged,” Liam said. “I’m glad you like them.”

  “They’re beautiful,” Nina said, searching for a better word for the way the pictures made her feel. “Powerful.”

  His smile was slow, aimed only at her, and for a split second the crowd seemed to recede, the murmur of conversation and laughter muted.

  “Nina’s a friend of mine,” Karen said, speaking loudly to be heard over the noise.

  Liam leaned down, his breath against her cheek. “Any friend of Karen’s is a friend of mine.”

  She was paralyzed by his nearness, by the brush of his jacket against her blouse, the scent of his cologne, spicy and raw.

  By the time she gathered her wits he was walking away, his broad shoulders parting the crowd like a ship parting the sea. She didn’t know if he’d said goodbye to Karen — if he’d said anything at all. She only knew that her body was vibrating, an unfamiliar flush spreading out from her stomach.

  Karen smirked, raising her eyebrows as she took another drink from her glass.

  6

  Nina nursed her third drink and hung around the restaurant long enough for the buzz to wear off. Karen had offered to let Nina stay at her apartment if she didn’t want to go back to Brooklyn — the offer making it sound like Nina was traveling to the ninth circle of hell instead of just across the river — but Nina wanted to get up early for her Ikea trip.

  Karen was talking to a good-looking man at least ten years her junior — his suit reeking of money, his expression making no secret of his appreciation for Karen’s many assets — when Nina said goodbye. Karen gave her a quick hug and told her to text when she got home, as if she were some kind of den mother instead of a woman on a mission to get Junior into her bed.

  Nina made her way through the thinning crowd to the coat check and handed over her ticket. She was shrugging on her coat when she glanced out the restaurant window and realized it was raining.

  Or was it snow?

  She couldn’t quite tell from inside, but something wet was falling from the sky, the pavement glistening with either ice or water.

  Fuck.

  She hadn’t thought to check the weather before going out. In her old neighborhood, rain and snow was only an impediment when she rushed from home to car and car to grocery store. Now she had to make her way to the nearest subway station and hope she didn’t get lost while getting soaked.

  She sighed, pulling up the directions to the subway on her phone. She tucked her tiny purse under her arms and buttoned her coat, then stepped outside.

  The first thing she realized was that she’d been wrong: it was neither raining nor snowing. A wet, icy mix of the two slanted down from the sky and clinked against the concrete.

  Sleet then. Wonderful.

  She was already wet, the cold hitting her body like a freight train after the heated restaurant. She took a step and felt herself slip, then reached out for the restaurant’s brick exterior to get her balance.

  She glanced through the window. Maybe she should take Karen up on her offer after all. They would undoubtedly take a cab — Karen only used the subway when she came to Brooklyn, the rest of the time she got a cab or arranged for a car — and Nina could wait in the cozy restaurant until Karen was ready to go.

  But when she looked inside, Karen and Junior had moved to the bar, sitting close enough that their thighs touched.

  Nina chewed her lip. This was her life. No one was coming to her rescue. She had to figure it out.

  She pulled out her phone as she took another step forward, rain leaking down her temple as she glanced at the screen to make sure she was headed in the right direction.

  She had a split second to feel victorious — she was going the right way, the subway station on the next block — before her feet went out from under her.

  She grabbed for the side of the building, hoping it would be her savior for the second time that night, but she went down hard, the concrete jolting her hard enough to rattle her teeth.

  “Fuck!” she shouted.

  She’d just done the full-body scan that was a recent by-product of her middle age — she could feel all her limbs, could move everything, nothing felt broken — when a strong hand clamped around her upper arm.

  “Are you all right?” She looked up into a pair of warm brown eyes flecked with amber, an expression of concern on the refined, clean-shaven face of an older man. “My god, you went down fast.”

  “I… I think I’m okay,” Nina said.

  She didn’t even have a chance to be embarrassed. She was still reeling from the rudeness of
the fall, the swiftness with which the pavement had risen to meet her ass.

  “Let me help you up,” he said.

  He reached around her waist and hauled her to her feet. They stood there for a long moment, Nina locked in his steely embrace, afraid to let go.

  It wasn’t just his grip that was like iron. There was something powerful in the way he handled her, something that said he had a lot of experience handling women. His overcoat was thick wool, probably custom-made. A crisp white shirt and bow tie peeked from above the top button.

  He was older than her, but there was nothing old about this man. Nothing infirm.

  She felt herself pulled into the vortex of an authority she didn’t understand. Everything in her body screamed danger, and all those same things screamed for more.

  “Thank you,” she said, trying to put some distance between them. “I appreciate the help.”

  The corners of the man’s mouth turned upward, his smile sly and knowing, like he was privy to the workings of her body, the difficulty with which she was breathing, the sweat blooming on her skin under her coat.

  “I can’t just leave you here,” he said. “Let me give you a ride. I have a car right here.”

  He gestured to a black car with tinted windows idling by the curb, a driver in a coat and cap standing near the driver’s side door, seemingly impervious to the bad weather.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m going to get the subway.”

  “The subways will be a mess in this,” he said. “Please, I insist.”

  “I’m going to Brooklyn,” she blurted, hoping it would be the same kind of deterrent for Mystery Man that it was for Karen.

  “Brooklyn’s fine,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I… I really can’t, but thank you.”

  He kept ahold of her arm and propelled her toward the car. “The subway station then. Please, I can’t possibly take no for an answer. My good breeding simply won’t allow it.”

  She had to glance at his face to see that he was kidding, poking fun at his obvious wealth.

  “All right,” she said. “The subway station.”

  It was only a block away, and accepting the ride was less humiliating than standing in the street, arguing against it like some kind of blushing ingenue.

  The man had a car, and right now, she needed one.

  The driver opened the door and Mystery Man held her arm as she slid into the backseat. He got in next to her and closed the door, and she immediately exhaled her relief.

  The driver got behind the wheel and pulled out into traffic, and the man next to her angled his body toward her.

  “You’re sure you won’t let us take you across the river?”

  She smiled. “I’m sure.”

  He nodded and held out his hand. “Jack Morgan.”

  “Nina.” Her mascara was probably smeared, her hair likely hanging in lank pieces around her wet face. She laughed. “I must be a mess.”

  To her surprise, he reached out and tucked a piece of wet hair behind her ear, his eyes locked on her face.

  “You’re lovely.”

  The car stopped and she tore her eyes away from Jack’s gaze to look through the window beyond his shoulder. The subway station was there, blurry through the moisture tracking down the glass.

  She fumbled in her bag for her MetroCard, as much to be prepared as to give her somewhere else to look — anywhere but into the eyes of this man whose power she felt like a lightning storm charging the air.

  “Thank you,” she said, avoiding his eyes. "I really appreciate your help.”

  The door opened before she reached the handle and the driver held out his hand to help her out of the car.

  “Safe travels,” Jack said before the door closed.

  Was it her imagination that his voice was wistful?

  The driver helped her to the curb, and a moment later her thoughts were swallowed by the cold, her attention back on finding her way home.

  7

  Nina sipped at her coffee, surveying the people passing by on the other side of the window. After two weeks fighting the crowds at Roast, the tiny coffee shop where she’d first run into Liam McAlister, she’d stumbled onto The Brew coming home from the market. It was still an intimate space, but compared to Roast, The Brew was cavernous, leaving plenty of room for a scattering of tables near the front window.

  She’d been hesitant to give up on Roast, then realized she was secretly hoping to run into Liam McAlister again. She could only laugh at herself. As bad as it was to have a school girl crush on a significantly younger man, she wasn’t willing to tread into stalking territory by sticking with Roast when The Brew was more suited to her purpose, which was… well, she didn’t know exactly.

  Most days she took her computer to the coffee shop where she idly searched job listings in Brooklyn. She had no idea what she wanted to do, what she was even qualified to do. She had a degree in Art History with a minor in Philosophy, two of the most useless degrees imaginable, from a small, upstate liberal arts college, and she hadn’t had a job in the last fifteen years, since Peter had suggested the stress of balancing work with their fertility treatments might be contributing to their ineffectiveness.

  Afterwards, when it became clear even the most aggressive fertility treatment would never result in a child, she’d been too devastated to contemplate returning to work. Her depression had lasted the better part of a year, after which she and Peter had upgraded houses — to their “forever home,” they’d said — and Nina had thrown herself into orchestrating every detail, as if the perfect home would compensate for the ache of a missing child she felt in her bones.

  She wasn’t too worried about money yet. There was enough from the divorce settlement to see her through at least a few months. Longer once she got a job.

  She ignored the voice in her head that said she should have fought for alimony. Peter may have been the one to suggest she leave her job in the creative department of a local magazine, but she hadn’t been bullied into the decision, and no one had stopped her from going back to work once they’d given up on having a child.

  Besides, she was an educated, able-bodied woman. She would figure it out.

  She turned her eyes back to her laptop screen, scrolled through a couple more job listings, and shut the computer. She stood and slipped on her coat, then slid her laptop into her bag before standing.

  “Thanks, Iris,” she called out to the young woman behind the counter.

  Iris looked up with a smile. “Anytime! See you tomorrow?”

  The piercing in her nose caught the light, and Nina felt a split second of longing as powerful as any she’d felt for a child. Iris was no more than twenty-five, with taut dewy skin, long blond hair pulled into a messy bun, and the bright eyes of someone with an unshakable belief in her own possibilities.

  Had Nina ever been that young?

  “See you tomorrow,” Nina confirmed.

  She stepped onto the sidewalk, her body recoiling from the cold. The brilliance of the shining sun and lack of snow had made it too easy to forget it was mid-March.

  She was about to turn left, her usual route back to the apartment, then changed her mind and went right instead. There was nothing and no one waiting for her. The apartment was spotless, more organized than a Container Store, and she had hours before she was due to meet up with Karen, Robin, and Amy for drinks.

  At first she’d been nervous to wander the city, but it hadn’t taken long to realize that armed with time and her phone, not much could go wrong, and she’d taken to stepping outside at odd times of the day and night, walking around the block or down the street or sometimes just seeing where her feet took her.

  It was still strange to realize she owed nothing to anyone but herself, and her previous sadness was slowly replaced by something that, if not relief, was at least a kind of silver-lining acceptance.

  It was late Thursday morning and the streets were quiet, empty of everyone who spent daylight hours in an office, a
few lone hipsters keeping a leisurely pace on the sidewalk. They were the most foreign of all her new neighbors — a demographic she didn’t quite understand. Karen called them Millennial Slackers, while Robin was of the opinion that they were getting life right, doing work they enjoyed rather than trading their freedom for money.

  Nina didn’t have an opinion one way or another, although she wanted to know how they paid the rent between band gigs and online sales of homemade jewelry.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been walking when a flash of color caught her eyes through one of the windows. She stopped in her tracks, turned to face the glass, and was pulled into a swirl of scarlet, fuchsia, and orange in motion.

  The photograph wasn’t the one at the center of the display — that was an enormous image of flowers floating alongside debris in what looked to be the Ganges River in India.

  The photo that had caught her eye was small, placed against a tabletop easel on the floor of the display, its corner touching the edge of another photograph. It looked accidental, like the frame had slipped since being placed in the window, and she had the sudden urge to reach through the glass to straighten it.

  She leaned in for a closer look, trying to figure out the image. When she got closer she saw that it wasn’t just color in motion — amber beads caught an unseen source of light, shimmering against the fabric of what she now determined to be a sari.

  There were other things in the background — a lapis lazuli vase, flickering candles, bare feet — but it was the sari that captivated her, that lifted something small and frozen in her chest like a bird taking flight.

  She took a step back and looked up at the words painted on the window: Stockholm Gallery.

  She hesitated, then opened the door.

  Like everything in the city, the gallery was small. A brick wall led from the front window to the back of the room, partially hidden by a frosted glass panel. Photographs were displayed on the brick, white track lighting hanging discreetly from the exposed pipes in the ceiling, highlighting the images that Nina knew belonged to the same artist whose work was displayed in the front window.