Leave It to Cleavage (30 page)

Blake didn’t argue the point. “I don’t think she’s going to last in your man-haters’ club. How many members you up to now?”

Miranda blushed. “Our numbers are legion. Converts are born daily.”

He looked down at her with a knowing look. Kind of like a Twinkie planting himself outside a Weight Watchers meeting.

A voice reached them from the other side of the tent wall. “Don’t ya’ll think this party should have been cancelled out of respect for Tom Smith?”

An angry buzz of voices joined in, though their words couldn’t be discerned. Miranda’s shoulders tensed, and she froze in place.

Wanting to end the uncomfortable silence surrounding them, she turned her attention to the relay teams being formed on the other side of the meadow. “Excuse me,” she said as she stepped away from the tent, “I’m going to go check on things.”

“There you go, Carly,” Sam Skinner boomed into the microphone as Miranda neared. “If you add Miranda and the chief you’ll have an even number.”

“What?” Blake reached her at the same moment Carly stepped up. And began to tie Miranda’s ankle to Blake’s.

“Hey, wait.” Miranda protested, but Carly had already moved around them to start on the other line. “If you want to keep that promotion you’ll come back here and untie us.”

Before Carly could respond, a white flag flashed downward and their team’s first couple lurched forward.

Miranda and Blake stood tied together at the back of what was now their team’s line. Blake’s heat pressed against her side and his arm hung behind her back.

“Sorry.” He lifted his arm, letting the hand trail casually up her rear end before slinging it across her shoulder. He didn’t sound at all apologetic. “I have to put my hand somewhere.”

The first couple returned laughing and out of breath and the next took off. Blake and Miranda moved forward, and he used the hand on her shoulder to weld her more tightly to his side.

“You know, if you ever decide to fraternize with the enemy . . .” he began as their teammates went down in a tangle of arms and legs. A groan went up from their side.

“Me?” Miranda made the most of her tone since she was wedged too tightly to him to risk serious shoulder movement. “Fraternize with someone who investigated me, then slept with me, and then locked me up and interrogated me? I’m surprised you didn’t come right out and ask me whether or not I killed my husband.”

She risked turning under his arm and her breast smashed against his chest. “How could you make love to me the way you did and then grill me like that?”

The duo in front of them swiveled around. At Blake’s glare, they spun back toward the front, and then took off in a practiced skip.

“Miranda, I have to ask the questions whether I think I know the answer or not. I’m also required to investigate any death in this town to the fullest extent of my ability. And it’s not like you didn’t tell a few lies along the way.”

They were busy staring into each other’s eyes and neither of them saw the white warning flag go up. “You are the most confusing and irritating woman I have ever known. And I can’t seem to get you out of my head.”

“Go!” There was a push from behind, and Miranda and Blake hurtled forward in reaction—pretty much all feet at once. They clutched at each other in an effort to regain their balance. The other team’s couple took off in a smooth, coordinated lope.

“Middle foot!” Blake shouted. “Pick it up!”

Before she could argue, Blake’s arm clamped tighter around her shoulder and he surged forward, pulling her along with him. The other team waved as they raced by.

They were moving now, in a rough and totally uncoordinated way. Actually Blake was moving; she was being hauled along like a sack of potatoes. She jounced against his side as they moved.

“This is ridiculous!” she shouted.

“Yeah!” He yanked her closer and increased his speed. “But I hate to lose. Let’s move!”

His arm was a vise on her shoulder; she rammed against his rock-hard edges with every step.

The other couple rounded the end marker and began to head back.

“Ow!” She yelped as Blake’s hip rammed into her waist and all five of his fingers dug into her upper arm.

“Can’t you move any faster?” he asked.

“Good grief.” Their thighs knocked as they half walked, half skipped toward the turnaround point. They’d been left in the dust, but had finally managed to find some semblance of a rhythm. She slipped her arm around his waist and held on.

“This race is starting to remind me of our relationship.”

“What relationship?” She shouted as her foot dipped into a hole and her knee buckled beneath her.

Blake hauled her up tighter against his side and lengthened their stride.

“We’ve spent the night together twice and we argue a lot,” she pointed out. “Last time I checked, that was not the foundation for a relationship.”

The couple who’d been about to pass them slowed down to listen. Blake kicked up their pace a notch and they shot past them.

“Don’t be stupid, Miranda. We have enough chemistry to blow up a small country. You don’t walk away from something like that.”

“I’d be happy to walk at all.”

They were skipping toward the finish line now; he’d given her absolutely no choice about that. But she was not going to be led or dictated to. She’d already been there and done that. Testosterone and tingling were not enough.

Miranda dug in her heels and applied the brakes. Through sheer surprise or some law of physics she’d failed to learn in school, she brought them to a screeching halt. Blake shouted in surprise and his body slammed backward into hers. The air whooshed out of her lungs as they crashed to the ground and then tumbled, still joined at the ankle, down the slight incline toward the finish line, where they landed in a much-too-intimate heap.

Enmeshed from the top of their grass-strewn heads to the toes of their tied-together feet, they lay in their own personal pile while something sprang up between them.

Cringing with embarrassment, Miranda lay flush on top of Blake as a crowd gathered around them. She could feel their curious stares on her backside and hear the whir of a motor drive as Clara Bartlett moved in closer to capture the
Truro Gazette
’s page-one photo.

chapter
28

B
lake rolled them onto their sides and reached down to untie the rope around their ankles. Miranda’s breathing was still ragged, and he considered offering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but he suspected they’d already commandeered enough attention.

“You’re supposed to signal before you stop,” he pointed out as he pulled her to her feet. “I’m pretty sure that’s rule number one in the three-legged race strategy book.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She yanked her hand back and swiped at the seat of her jeans. He considered offering to help with that, too, but her sense of humor seemed to have disappeared when they hit the ground.

The murmuring swelled around them as he followed her out of the circle of onlookers and into the fresh afternoon air.

“Are you all right, Miranda?” Her mother and grandmother claimed places on either side of her and glanced over at Blake suspiciously, as they brushed grass off her clothes and removed twigs from her hair.

“I really don’t think rolling around on the ground with the chief is advisable right now, Miranda,” her mother admonished. “And it’s time to name Ballantyne’s contestant for Miss Rhododendron. Sam sent me to bring you up to the stage.”

Miranda turned back to look at Blake, and he thought for a moment she was going to say something. Instead she bit her lip and hurried toward the stage. Like a massive herd of cattle scenting water, everyone else followed. Andie and her friends formed an excited knot on the far side of the platform, and the older folks left the tent to mill around beside them. The relay contestants surged forward, too, many of them still chewing over the spectacle of Miranda rolling in the grass with the chief of police, and there was an edge to their muttering that Blake didn’t care for one bit. Concerned, he elbowed his way forward and took a position in front of the stage where he could spring into action if necessary.

The music ended as Miranda stepped up to the microphone. A light breeze off the lake teased at the stray tendrils of dark hair on her neck, and her nose looked red from an afternoon in the sun. A large grass stain covered the right breast of her white Ballantyne T-shirt. Only the slight flutter of the sheet of paper in her hand betrayed her nervousness as she waited for the talk to die down.

He watched her carefully, even as he monitored the whispering behind him. Her gaze rested on him briefly and then swept across the crowd toward Andie. Blake braced himself and felt a faint glimmer of unease.

“Thank you all for coming today. We hope you’re having a good time,” Miranda said into the microphone.

There was a groundswell of applause and shouts of “Best one ever” and “Let’s hear it for Ballantyne,” but there was grumbling, too, and an undercurrent of negativity that had Blake scanning the crowd.

“So,” Miranda said. “The time has come to announce the name of the young woman Ballantyne will sponsor in this year’s Miss Rhododendron Pageant, which as you know takes place in August.” She nodded to Sam, and the Mountain Men broke into the opening chords of “Pretty Woman.”

Miranda waited for the song to get established, then she looked directly at Blake and said, “This year, Ballantyne Bras will be sponsoring a talented and multifaceted young woman. It was a difficult decision, one the selection committee devoted a lot of time and thought to.” She paused. “I’m pleased to announce that this year’s contestant is . . . Andrea Summers. Come on up here, Andie, and accept your applause.”

Girls shrieked, not all of them with pleasure. His daughter stood in a circle of shouting teenage girls who were jumping up and down around her like the working parts of a washing machine. Jake Hanson gave Andie a brilliant smile as she made her way up onto the stage.

As he’d been forced to admit at the ball, she looked just like the dog-eared pictures Blake had of his mother. She had the same sleek blond hair, the same bright blue eyes, the same elegant cheekbones. He’d been trying to deny the resemblance since Andie’s childhood, had almost managed to obscure it by turning her into a boy. But there it was, staring right at him.

Andie threw her arms around Miranda and then stepped up to the microphone. His daughter
was
beautiful; Miranda had been right about that. And as he listened to his daughter speak, he acknowledged that she was a lot more than that. Unlike his mother, her beauty ran deep beneath the surface.

“I’m honored and thrilled to be given this opportunity to represent Ballantyne and Truro.” She looked directly at Blake, and her smile was so full of promise that it broke his heart. “I promise ya’ll I’m going for a full-court press on this. And I promise my father I won’t break any more bones while I’m at it.”

Mary Louise stood to the side of the stage trying to smile through her tears. Her mother looked mad enough to eat nails. “Don’t you worry, Mary Louise,” she said loudly enough to be heard. “We can all see what kind of favoritism is going on here. It doesn’t hurt to have a relative on close and personal terms with the sponsor, now, does it?”

Miranda fixed the woman with a stare as Andie walked off the stage. Blake moved closer and prepared to step into the fray if necessary.

“Well, Miranda Smith knows about beauty pageants all right,” someone shouted. “But why is she making so many changes at Ballantyne?”

There was a more pronounced murmuring in the crowd, and people started to surge toward the stage. Blake glanced up to see how Miranda was handling things and saw that her hands were clenched at her sides, just like his, and her gaze was steady. He felt a burst of pride as he watched her stand her ground.

Most people saw the beautiful package and never bothered to untie the bow and look inside. Which was pretty much what he had been doing right up until the moment she’d told him to take a hike.

He looked now at the
real
Miranda, not at the dark hair and the green eyes he liked so much, or the long legs and lithe body. Those were nice, more than nice. But they were nothing compared to what lay inside; like his daughter, she was so much more than he’d given her credit for.

Their eyes met and he recognized, clearly, who she was and what she was made of. And realized just how much he wanted to walk up there and tell her so.

He wanted Miranda to resign as president of the Truro Man Haters’ Club and give whatever was between them a chance. Because he cared for her, cared deeply. Might even be in love with her. He could just imagine what she’d have to say about that.

From the stage, Miranda studied the employees and townspeople before her. “You’re right,” she said clearly into the microphone. “There have been a lot of changes. They were made to preserve our company. And the jobs it provides here in Truro.”

There were a few cheers but the grumbling continued. She saw Blake step closer to the stage, and for a mad minute she thought he was planning to rush it and—what? Take her in his arms? Declare his love? She must have hit her head harder than she’d realized during the three-legged race, because her imagination was running wild. Not at all appropriate for a woman who had sworn off men, and this man in particular.

Her mother stepped up onto the stage beside her. Her mother, Miranda thought, had come a hell of a long way. Then her father was there, too.

“What happened to Tom Smith? Why isn’t anyone being held responsible for his death?” The words were hurled at the stage.

“The chief is covering up for her,” someone else shouted. “In this town, Ballantynes can get away with anything.” There was a pause. “Even murder.”

Clara Bartlett scribbled madly, clearly intent on capturing every word for the
Truro Gazette
.

“Oh, pshaw.” Gran climbed up the stage steps and elbowed her way toward the microphone. Gus clambered up behind her.

Miranda looked down into the crowd. The only one not on the stage was . . .