Finding Isadora Read online

  A few seconds later, we stepped out at the conference level. I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. Remembering that Richard, too, was feeling anxious, I threaded my fingers through his. “Everything will be okay, sweetheart.”

  He squeezed my hand. “Sure glad you’re here, Iz.”

  I could have been at the clinic, keeping company with Martin and Felipe and miscellaneous animals, wearing my comfortable clothes, eating veggie lasagna. But now, for the first time, I was glad to be at the Hotel Van. The man I loved needed me.

  The babble of voices guided us. We turned a corner and paused to survey the scene. More than a hundred people stood in clusters, and straggly line-ups pointed the way to two bars.

  “The banquet will be in that ballroom,” Richard said, pointing through an open door. I saw chandeliers, a host of round, white-clothed tables, and a few uniformed busboys fine-tuning the table settings. Next door was a room marked Silent Auction, with a slow stream of people moving in and out of its door.

  Everyone was formally dressed, and Richard blended right in with his designer tux—even though he’d bought it second-hand. When you’re saving for a down payment on your first house, you don’t buy brand new Armani.

  Embarrassed to be wearing my old trench coat, I hurriedly undid the buttons. Richard said, “We’ll check that,” and hooked his hand in the collar. Gratefully, I shrugged out of it. My cocktail dress might have come from a consignment store, but it too bore a designer label.

  He shook his head ruefully. “Seems like I’ve seen that dress somewhere before. Iz, it looks great but I wish you’d let me buy you something else so you don’t have to wear it all the time. It’s not like you’re a guy and can get away with only one tux.”

  “You’re not buying me clothes,” I said calmly. “At least not until we’re married. Even then, I’ll still shop consignment stores and mark-down sales.”

  I made decent money, but I was paying off my student loans and Vancouver wasn’t a cheap place to live. But even if I were wealthy, designer clothing wasn’t something I could imagine ever wanting. It was so frivolous in a world rife with serious problems. In some ways, I really was my parents’ daughter.

  When Richard had checked my coat he looked me up and down. “Simple but elegant.”

  “Elegant?” I brushed a kiss across his cheek. “You’re sweet, but don’t go overboard with the flattery.”

  He shrugged. “Short hair, long neck, diamonds. Classy.”

  Classy? Me? “Thanks, Richard,” I murmured. “You look great, too.” Although he never made time to exercise, he had a naturally lean build. He looked good in anything, though I liked him far better in jeans than the conventional suits and ties he wore for work. His strong, classic features would only improve as age gave his face more character. Dark brows and lashes accented his hazel eyes, and his fashionable glasses lent a professional look that aged him a few years and was no doubt an asset in his work.

  I marveled—not for the first time—at how fate had brought the two of us together. I’d always assumed I’d marry a vet, and Richard’s obvious choice would have been another rising young lawyer. And yet, despite our differences, we had some important things in common.

  “Let’s get a drink,” he said.

  As we headed toward the shorter of the bar line-ups, I said, “I was thinking about how we met.”

  “A little different from this, wasn’t it?”

  “We do owe our parents,” I admitted. Richard and I had been seated side by side at a blood donor clinic, and he’d asked how I got started donating. Giving blood was taken for granted in both our families. When I’d mentioned Grace and Jimmy Lee, Richard had commented about me calling my parents by their first names as he did with his father, Gabe DeLuca. The first stories we shared were about our flaky parents. We’d each been delighted to find someone who truly understood, and who shared the drive to make our own lives into something very different from those of our parents.

  Richard said he took after his mom. His parents had split up more than a decade ago. His mother Diane had married a comfortably wealthy businessman named Frank Bracken. Richard had liked Frank well enough—or perhaps been annoyed enough with Gabe—that he took Frank’s surname. I found Diane and Frank pleasant, if overly materialistic. I’d never met Gabe DeLuca.

  In fact, in the year I’d known Richard, he hadn’t seen his father once. They spoke occasionally on the phone, but that was it. Although they were both lawyers, they were polar opposites. While Richard practiced corporate law on the thirty-fourth floor of a thirty-five floor tinted-glass tower near Vancouver’s harbor, his father had a storefront legal office in the infamous Downtown Eastside. Gabe represented low-income clients, minorities, people with disabilities—people who didn’t easily fit in the money-oriented justice system. He had some admirable qualities, but, from what Richard said, he’d been a rotten father.

  My parents were both radical activists like Gabe DeLuca, but they’d always been loving parents. I was so lucky, compared to my fiancé. I hoped he and his dad would reconcile one day. I hated to see Richard carrying around all that bitterness and resentment.

  We’d reached the front of the bar line-up. Richard was lost in a world of his own, so I nudged him. “What do you want to drink?”

  “Oh, sorry.” He reflected a moment as I ordered a glass of white wine, then said, “Scotch on the rocks.”

  “A power drink?” I teased. Normally he drank wine, or occasionally beer.

  “Caught me. Got to fit in with the movers and shakers.” We collected our drinks and moved out of the main traffic flow. “God, I hate events like this.”

  “That makes two of us.” I tucked my arm through his.

  He squeezed my hand. “Thanks for coming, Iz. I feel more confident, knowing you’re here.”

  I winked. “You’re definitely going to owe me.”

  He laughed, then his eyes narrowed as he focused on someone behind me. “There’s Matt Lexington, the CFO of NewReality Corporation. I should say hello. Want to come and be introduced?”

  Want? What I wanted was to go back to the clinic and check on Pussywillow. Second best was surviving the evening without making any major blunders. “Do you need me to?”

  He shook his head. “It’s dinner where I’m counting on you. I don’t want to sit at one of those big tables without a date.”

  “Then I think I’ll make a quick call to the clinic.”

  Glancing around, he said, “Dinner’s at seven. How about I meet you in the silent auction room just before that?”

  “Perfect.” I could browse in there without having to chat with strangers. “Want me to bid on anything?”

  “No. Let’s save the money for our down payment.”

  When we got married, we intended to buy a house. I would live in a real house, mortgage and all, not a rental unit. It would be the first permanent home in my life, and my heart went mushy just thinking about it. “Absolutely,” I agreed. “Okay, sweetheart, you go schmooze.” I gave his arm a parting squeeze.

  In search of a quiet spot, I worked my way through the crowd and into the hallway by the elevators, then pulled my cell phone from my purse and dialed the clinic.

  Martin said Pussywillow had woken enough to drink some water. While we were talking, an elderly couple emerged from an elevator, arguing loudly over who’d be the designated driver.

  “Ouch,” Martin said. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

  “I’m at the Hotel Van with Richard. It’s a fundraiser.”

  “La-di-da. Though it doesn’t sound like a friendly one.”

  I glanced after the unhappy couple. Their clothes and jewelry were likely worth enough to feed an African village for a year. “Be nice,” I said, as much to myself as to Martin. “It’s for the Multicultural Center, a cause I know you support.”

  “They saved my life.” His voice was soft and deadly serious.

  A substance-abusing dropout from a small reserve in Manitoba, Marti
n had drifted west and ended up, as so many troubled kids did, in the Downtown Eastside. He’d paid for his drug habit by turning tricks, but had the good luck not to contract HIV.

  His life changed course the night he stumbled into the Multicultural Center and talked to a counselor. Now, at the age of twenty-one, he was drug free and had not only earned his high school equivalency but taken a veterinary assistant program at college. He’d been accepted into university for the fall, and planned to become a vet himself.

  “You saved your own life,” I told him. “But I agree, the Center’s an invaluable resource.”

  “Hope they raise lots of money.”

  “Me too. The attendees certainly look wealthy enough.”

  “Any, uh, multicultural folks?” he asked dryly.

  “A handful.”

  “In tuxedos?”

  “Uh-huh. And designer gowns. One gorgeous silk sari, accented by ten pounds of gold jewelry.”

  “Doesn’t sound like any Center clients got invites.”

  Located near Main and Hastings, the Multicultural Center served not only poor and disabled people, but also addicts and sex trade workers. I wondered how many of tonight’s attendees had even visited the Center, much less volunteered their time there. “Wouldn’t want to offend anyone’s sensibilities.” Then, feeling bad for sniping, I added, “The important thing is, these people are opening their wallets.”

  In fact, who was to say they weren’t making a bigger contribution than my parents, whose preferred strategies included picketing, blocking roads, and chaining themselves to logging trucks? Grace and Jimmy Lee also volunteered in soup kitchens and at needle exchanges, but weren’t their efforts inconsequential compared to the thousands of dollars people would donate tonight?

  And then there was me, sitting squarely on the fence. Looking down my left-wing little nose at tonight’s snobby crowd, yet avoiding getting my own hands dirty the way my parents did.

  “Doc? You still there?”

  Doc. Every now and then I wondered if being a vet was a cop-out or a wise solution to my mixed feelings. I was doing something worthwhile, but didn’t have to deal with addicts and schizophrenics. If the world was made up of people like me, Martin would never have received the help he deserved. But it wasn’t. There were people like my parents, too.

  The parents who’d always encouraged me to follow my passion. And that’s absolutely what I’d done. Since I was a toddler I’d adopted stray animals the way Grace and Jimmy Lee adopted stray people. I shouldn’t feel guilty. “I’m stalling,” I told Martin. “I’d rather talk to you than hang out with the rich and famous.”

  He gave a soft, pleased chuckle. I’d only been telling the truth but I realized that, to him, it was a compliment.

  “I’ll stay overnight at the clinic,” he said, “and keep an eye on Pussywillow.”

  To thank him for staying would insult him. I knew he valued our animal patients just as highly as I did. Instead, I said, “You’re going to be a wonderful vet.”

  “Sure hope so. If only I can handle the academic stuff.”

  “You’re doing all the right things, getting the text books ahead of time and studying up.”

  “This stuff’s hard,” he said softly. “Especially sciences.”

  “Yeah, I can relate.”

  Martin was bright, but not a natural academic. Maybe I could help him, except I wasn’t all that academically inclined myself. I might not have made it through my own university science courses without the help of my best friend, Janice Wong, a brilliant scientist and wonderful teacher. Hmm. An idea began to form. “Martin—” I began, then broke off. No, I needed to talk to Jan first. Changing direction, I said, “I’ll put my cell on vibrate. Phone if there’s any problem.”

  After we hung up, I headed reluctantly back into the crowd. Making my way through nose-wrinkling clouds of cologne and perfume, I overheard snippets of conversation. Generally, the topic was business. People would go home tonight with new contacts, new deals, power lunches scheduled in their smartphones. After all, business was the reason Richard had come. His firm wanted to be seen as a good corporate citizen.

  Not that Richard would ever really be part of this crowd. At least I hoped he wouldn’t. Sometimes he did seem a little driven in terms of upward mobility.

  I could see how seductive it must be, that climb through the legal ranks, but we’d talked about our goals and agreed our two priorities were financial security and a happy family life. Solid middle-class goals. Goals my parents and his father rejected completely.

  As I moved toward the door of the silent auction room, my attention caught on a man who stood talking to a couple of women. I froze in place like a cat that’s spotted a bird. A very tempting bird. A woman stumbled into me and we both murmured apologies, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the man. How could one tux-clad guy, among all the other penguins, stand out this way?

  Because he wasn’t a penguin; he was a panther.

  His stance was casual, one hand holding a glass of red wine, the other in a pants pocket, but there was an energy about him. A vitality and magnetism. Despite his formal clothes he didn’t look quite civilized. I thought of what happened when people tried to domesticate a wild animal. Even if the creature behaved properly, somehow its wild origins always showed through.

  The man looked away from his companions and caught me staring. His expression sharpened, turned to something knowing and purely male, and he held my gaze. I felt a flush rise up my neck to my cheeks before I forced myself to look away.

  Flustered, I straightened my spine and again headed for the silent auction room, ducking inside the door with relief. My heart raced and I stood still, waiting for it to slow, studying the room. Tables lined the walls, displaying auction donations. People formed a straggly line, snails crawling from one exhibit to the next. I squeezed my way in between a couple of overweight women, breathing shallowly in a futile attempt to avoid inhaling their cloying perfume. But when I tried to focus on one of the displays, my eyes still retained the man’s image.

  I examined that image objectively, trying to figure out why I’d been so mesmerized. He was tallish, with broad shoulders, rangy rather than stocky. The pocketed hand had pulled his tuxedo jacket back, so I’d seen he had a slim waist and narrow hips.

  Dark skin. He might be Italian or Greek, or maybe he’d just spent a lot of time in the sun this spring—skiing perhaps, or on holiday. Black hair combed back from his face showcased craggy features. He must be in his thirties, and had the kind of appeal some men acquire as they age and character lines appear.

  A Greek tycoon? Suave and sophisticated, yet with an untamed edge that made him enticing. Untamed? Why did I think that? Why was my impression of a panther rather than, say, a sleek black labrador? Had it been that knowing, almost predatory gleam in his eye when he stared back at me?

  An impatient throat-clearing broke into my musings. Obediently I shuffled along to the next display. I’d certainly managed to memorize the man, just from one quick—okay, lingering—look. The only thing I didn’t know was the color of his eyes. Dark, for sure. Brown? Maybe black or indigo?

  I forced myself to focus on the table in front of me. This particular auction item was a huge wicker basket filled with gourmet treats like beluga caviar and black truffles. The bid was at five thousand dollars. Someone would have to pay me that much to make me eat fish eggs and fungus. How odd that tonight you could spend exorbitant sums on delicacies, and end up feeding soup to hungry souls in the Downtown Eastside.

  I shuffled along to the next item, a set of ivory-colored pillow cases with hand-made lace. Impractical, but utterly romantic. The delicate border begged to be touched but I didn’t extend a finger; my skin, rough from multiple scrubbings every day, might snag the lace.

  The next display featured bottles of Okanagan Valley ice wine and gourmet chocolate truffles—now this kind of truffle I’d definitely eat—which went nicely with the romantic pillow cases. And the next
was for a weekend at the Empress Hotel in Victoria—a perfect setting for the pillow cases, the wine, the chocolate. And the right man.

  Suddenly, the back of my neck prickled. Someone was watching me. Richard? The prickles didn’t think so, and when I turned I did it cautiously.

  The panther-man. Alone now, he stood in the doorway to the silent auction room, one shoulder against the doorframe, his head cocked to the side. Staring at me. Again I felt my cheeks color. Such an idiotic, childish reaction.

  He raised an eyebrow and smiled. Slowly, almost lazily. God, it was a sexy smile.

  I spun away. Why was my heart pounding? So, big deal, a stranger had smiled at me.

  An exotic stranger had smiled a bedroom-eyes smile at me. All right, this was a first in my life, but I knew exactly what to do. Ignore him. He obviously had me confused with a woman who belonged in a setting like this and engaged in idle flirtations, rather than an inexperienced, conventional, engaged veterinarian.

  Which display had I been looking at? Oh right, the fixings for a romantic weekend with the right man. My right man was Richard. I knew that unquestioningly, but as I stared at the Empress Hotel display, I wondered why we’d never gone for a romantic weekend. We were both practical, and my budget was tight, yet there should be room for romance in our lives.

  I checked the bids for the hotel weekend. Whew! A two-night stay certainly couldn’t cost that much. But of course it didn’t. That was the point to a charity auction. It gave rich people a game to play, a contest, plus a tangible reward for their generous donation. I wished I had the money to contribute myself. But my first priority was paying off my student loan. After that came the down payment on our house.

  I was probably the only person in this room whose dearest desire was financial security in her old age. No doubt they’d all achieved that long ago and were on to far more lofty dreams.

  What was the handsome stranger bidding on? Would he win the weekend getaway, and who would he take? Did he have a wife, gorgeous and sophisticated, or was he a play-the-field kind of guy? The latter, I hoped. It would be disgusting if a married man was flirting with me.