Free Ladies' Man by Suzanne Brockmann Page B

opportunities. They’d gone on every one of what Ellen called “long-shot” auditions, cattle calls, for which they would not have made the drive down from Connecticut. But since they were in the city, they went.
    “Not me?” Jamie asked, clearly disappointed. “Are you sure I can’t read for the part anyway?”
    “You tell me,” Ellen said, lifting her eyebrow to look at her son. “Can you play a fifteen-year-old girl?”
    Jamie pretended to consider it. He probably hadn’t showered yet this morning, and his light brown hair stood up straight, reminiscent of Bart Simpson’s. His round wire-rimmed glasses were crooked, as usual, perched atop his freckled nose. His eyes were a beautiful shade of blue-green, rimmed by lashes nearly twice as long as his older sister’s—didn’t it figure? He had just turned thirteen this past May, but he was small for his age and still auditioning for nine- and ten-year-old roles. Nine- and ten-year-old
boys
’ roles.
    “I’m an actor,” he said with exaggerated gestures, “but even for me, a fifteen-year-old girl would be a stretch. Besides, I’m probably too short,” he added à la Groucho Marx, sliding back out of the room.
    “Do you know where Lydia is?” Ellen called after him.
    “Up in the ballroom, practicing her saxophone,” he called back.
    Up in the ballroom. Jamie wasn’t kidding. Bob’s town house was like something out of an old movie starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. The house—if you could call it a house and not a palace—was five stories high, with both an elevator and a sweeping marble staircase winding its way up to the top floors.
    The ballroom—and it was indeed a huge, wooden-floored ballroom complete with glittering chandeliers and a stage large enough to hold a full orchestra—was three flights up from the guest bedrooms. It was on the top floor, with what at one time had been a magnificent view of the surrounding city. Nowadays the view wasn’t much to brag about, with the skyscrapers that had gone up blocking the river, but the ambiance and old charm still remained. Bob had taken care to have the entire house restored exactly as it had been in the early 1930s—with the exception of the extremely up-to-date security system he’d had installed. But the security system was nearly invisible. Stepping through the front doors was like going through a time warp.
    And Bob was kind enough to share his beautiful home with Ellen and her kids for the summer.
    Their summer of madness, she and Jamie and Lydia had called it back in Connecticut. They each had made a wish list of things they wanted to do while in the Big Apple for the summer. Jamie had wanted to visit the Museum of Natural History at least a dozen times and bum as many free tickets for as many Broadway shows as possible off of Bob, who was frequently sent comps. Lydia had wanted to shop for secondhand, ultrachic clothing in the Village, take jazz saxophone lessons with a real, live New York City jazz musician, and have at least one audition for a part in what she considered a
real
movie.
    And Ellen…Ellen had wanted to leave her teaching job far, far behind, to check out the possibility of a career change, to investigate this acting thing that her kids had been doing so naturally for so long. She had wished for time to be totally selfish, to do things entirely for herself.
    She’d gotten one hell of a jump on
that
part of it the night before, that was for darn sure.
    Not only had she had an evening of totally hedonistic pleasure with a young, sexy, gorgeous man she barely knew, but she’d also allowed herself an after-midnight soak in her attached bathroom’s Jacuzzi and a good, long, thoroughly selfish cry.
    The kids had been asleep when she’d first gotten home, thank God, and she had crept up to her room feeling remarkably blue. It was odd, considering she’d spent most of the evening laughing.
    Ellen hadn’t been crying over Sam, that was for certain. For God’s