Bleeding Heart by Liza Gyllenhaal

chances with Tom, the answer was an unequivocal “no.”

    “Guess who called me,” Gwen said, her voice on the phone sounding girlishly breathy.
    “Tom,” I said. It was a week after my run-in with him, and the whole bruising business was still taking up way too much of my time and attention.
    “Who?”
    “Tom Deaver. Didn’t you want him to—”
    “What? No—Graham Mackenzie! He called me at the office about half an hour ago and we talked. And talked. We just hung up. He’s coming by later this afternoon to see Bridgewater House. The timing couldn’t be better. The place looks run-down as hell,but this is the perfect time of the year to show the gardens. The peonies and lilacs are blooming.”
    “Don’t forget to mention to him that they go back generations.”
    “I won’t. I’ve been working on my pitch ever since you told me about his foundation. I’ve got it down chapter and verse. And I’m going use everything in my power to persuade him that the Bridgewater House gardens deserve his funding dollars.”
    “What do you mean by
everything
in your power?”
    “Well, I think he might be susceptible to some of my physical charms, don’t you?”
    “You’ve got a great story, Gwen. You don’t need to oversell it.”
    “What are you implying?”
    “I think you know what I mean,” I told her. Gwen was an unabashed flirt. She was certainly attractive enough to sit back and let men come to her, but that just wasn’t her style. And though I hated to admit it, sometimes I found the way she threw herself at guys—especially those who had something she wanted—a little embarrassing. All too often Gwen took up with wealthy married men. And these relationships always followed the same basic and usually very brief dramatic arc: euphoric opening, tumultuous intermezzo, abrupt denouement. The fact that several of Gwen’s lovers had offered to leave their wives for her—and that she’d turned them down flat—had convinced me that my friend preferred the excitement these liaisons provided over the men themselves.
    “No, I think you better spell it out,” she replied.
    “Okay,” I told her, undeterred. I decided she really needed to hear what I had to say. “I think you should approach Mackenzie in a businesslike manner. He strikes me as the kind of man who doesn’t need much persuading when it comes to certain things—like your physical charms. And you don’t want to end up mixingbusiness with pleasure. You don’t want to come across as unprofessional, do you? This is just too important.”
    “Perhaps you’d like to come over and chaperone?” she asked, but I could hear the irritation behind her glibness.
    “No, of course not,” I said. But I lied. I was responsible for bringing the two of them together. My needy, impulsive best friend and an entitled, volatile man. Had I done something I would come to regret? All sorts of alarm bells began to go off in my head.

8

    T he June issue of the
Woodhaven News
, our local monthly, carried a write-up on the special meeting at the town hall that had been held on a Saturday morning at the end of May to discuss Tom Deaver’s wind power initiative. The last paragraph of the story read:
    After a series of unfortunate exchanges between Mr. Deaver and Mr. Mackenzie, who represented the Powell Mountain Homeowners Association, the chair of the planning board was forced to abruptly adjourn the session. The selectmen would like it known that all such forums should be kept cordial and in the public interest, and that personal disparagements and inappropriate language will not be tolerated. The Wind Power Initiative has been put on indefinite hold.
    No wonder Tom was upset when he saw me at the post office that day. He’d just come from what was clearly a bruising confrontation with Mackenzie, not to mention dashed hopes for his project. It changed nothing, I knew, but it helped explain his anger, andI was able to gradually stop obsessing so much about what had