The Fiance Thief (15 page)

“You’re wrong,” Hank said.

“What is it then?”

“You’ll find out someday,” Hank said, getting back to his work. The spelling checker on his computer was an ancient one from the days before Yuppie food ruled the universe. It had no trace of adobo. Hank compromised on “a smoky Mexican chile sauce” and went on with his cook-off write up. Before he and Mick had allowed themselves to have a break at the barbecue, he had begun searching through Alec’s notes, trying to piece together some of the stories he had written. As soon as he was finished with this, he’d continue that work. Mick’s assignments were to write up the city council meeting and the wedding Lissa had left undone. Since Mick had actually been at the nuptials, Hank thought it was the least he could do.

After finishing the write-up, he glanced over at Mick. He’d fallen asleep at Lissa’s desk, and was snoring a little as his head lolled over some papers. Hank let him rest. Tomorrow, he’d make sure Mick wrote something, even if he had to write it for him.

8

I
F SHE WERE FOND
of black, low-riding cars of the seventies, Lissa would find the Maverick acceptable. As it was, she longed for her red compact, still up on blocks at Eddie’s.

“Do you know how to get to Loudon?” she asked Scott. He nodded. “Do you want to drive?”

He grinned as he took the keys from her. “The questions is, do you want me to drive? It’s been a while since I’ve driven, since I don’t have a car in New York, and I was kind of a hellion before that.”

“As long as you get us there in one piece,” she said. Now, barreling down the road at well over thirty miles an hour above the speed limit, she began to think that was iffy.

If the wipers had broken before she realized the car was headed in the wrong direction, she might have been okay. But when the two things happened simultaneously, her spirit broke.

“Oh, Scott,” she said despondently.

He leaned toward the steering wheel and stuck a hand out the window, wiping away just a fraction of the rain on the windshield. “We haven’t known each other long enough for me to have caused that tone of disappointment.” He stuck his soaking arm out again. “Damn, this isn’t helping.”

“You told me you knew how to get to Loudon. You’re going the wrong way.”

“That’s not possible,” he said.

“Scott, we’re forty miles on the other side of the lake from where we’re supposed to be.”

He slowed the car down a little, keeping up his impromptu wiping. “What makes you think so?”

“This is west Ridgeville. This is not Loudon. I know because our publisher, Mick Regan, has our Christmas and summer parties in his house on the lake, which is about a half mile from here.”

Scott shook his head, seemingly amazed at himself. “You know what? This is the way to Claire’s grandparents’ house. We used to come down to the park then take a boat to Loudon.” He shook his head. “The subconscious is a tricky thing.”

“My subconscious usually has the decency not to fool me into driving halfway across the state,” Lissa said. “Yours must not like you.”

Before he had a chance to respond, the skies opened for real, and the steady rain turned into a tremendous downpour. Thunder boomed, and although Lissa hadn’t seen any lightning, it was loud enough to make her wonder if the fireworks were headed their way.

Scott hadn’t made an attempt to turn around, and she saw Mick’s driveway coming up on their left. “Pull in here,” she ordered.

“Here?”

“Now,” she said. He turned the wheel quickly, and they slid into the driveway, taking out Mick’s mailbox on the way. Feeling she’d been a little harsh with Scott, she put a hand on his arm and said, “Don’t worry. He can afford to buy another one.”

“What are we going to do here?”

“We’re going to sit and drink coffee with Mick till the storm passes. Then we’ll head out again.”

They got out of the car, the wind whipping Lissa’s hair into an uncontrollable rat’s nest, and the hard drops of rain stinging her face. They dashed for the covered porch.

Lissa pounded on the front door. “He’s got to be here.”

Scott moved past her and rang the doorbell. “Maybe this will help, although it isn’t as dramatic as trying to beat down the door.”

She would have rebuked him, except that just then she felt electricity in the air and saw lightning crack across the way. The thunder was only a second behind. “Whether he’s here or not, we’ve got to get in,” she said. “He leaves a key around here somewhere for his kids. Help me look.” Scott went through the planter while Lissa shook out the welcome mat. As he poked around the windowsills, Lissa unearthed the key under a large rock in the flower bed. They got the door open as lightning hit nearby and thunder shook the whole house.

C
LAIRE HATED
thunderstorms. Let Alec go on about property values all he wanted to, but that was one disadvantage of living on the lake. The storms blew harder over the water, and there were many nights when she held her breath until sunrise, waiting on the next roll of thunder.

So when this one hit while she slept, she woke for a second, startled, but then fell back to sleep. She had the sensation that someone was here to protect her from harm.

She would have dismissed it as a middle-of-the-night fancy if she hadn’t awakened the next morning to feel strong arms around her, to feel herself being held close. Her eyes still closed, she rolled over to bury her face in the hard chest of her protector. Still half dreaming, she took a deep breath and breathed in the clean, fresh scent of Alec.

Alec? Claire sat up in a hurry, throwing the blanket off of both of them and giving Alec a good hard shake. She took a good look at him, happy to see that he’d slept in his
cotton shirt, now a wrinkled mess, and his khakis, also in bad need of ironing. She, at least, was still wearing her red dress. Alec hadn’t responded to her shake, so she did it again, this time with more vigor.

“What? What is it?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. He opened them and looked at her. “Oh, hey, Claire,” he said, taking her hand. “How did you sleep?”

She dropped his hand as though it were a wet fish. “Don’t you Hey, Claire, how did you sleep?’ me. I want to know how you wound up in this bed.”

He sat up. “So it’s that kind of day, is it? I want to know how you came to be sleeping in this bed when you volunteered for the couch.”

Claire thought. She remembered Roger walking her back to her room, but she hadn’t invited him in. She’d had this idea she could get some work done on her story, but instead, she’d picked up a magazine and started reading it on the bed, where the light was better. Since she didn’t remember anything of the story she was supposed to be reading, she guessed that she had nodded off right away. She hadn’t meant to steal the bed from Alec, but that was no excuse for his sleeping with her.

“I fell asleep reading,” she said.

“Yes, that magazine and your dress were convenient props.”

“It was an accident. You should have done the decent thing and slept on the couch.”

“That’s exactly what you meant for me to do.”

She walked the few steps to the couch, then collapsed there. Even though she’d slept better than she had in a long time, she now felt cross and out of sorts, probably because of the shock she’d received upon awakening. She hadn’t even had time to daydream about and relive the kiss they’d shared the night before, when she’d woken up to find herself in Alec’s arms. Even worse, she’d had to force herself to remember that she didn’t belong there.

After getting up to retrieve the magazine from the bed, she sat back down with it, trying to read the same story she’d intended to read last night. Putting it aside for a second, she said, “Don’t worry. You can have the bed tonight.” She began reading again.

“Oh, sure. That’s what you said yesterday.”

She threw the magazine down. “Are you mad about the bed or is there more?”

“More. For one thing, there’s that shy-little-mouse act you’ve perpetrated for the four months you’ve worked for the paper, when all along you were ready to throw on a red dress and play the femme fatale.”

“You really hate this color, don’t you?”

Alec scooted across the bed and threw himself on the couch next to her. “It’s not that. I want to know why the you I see here is so different from the you I know.”

Because you don’t know me, she wanted to say. Because from the first second I saw you, I’ve been a hopeless and tongue-tied mess. Because I’m pretending to be more confident than I am. But she didn’t say any of those things. Instead, she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your fiancés, for example. How did you get this football team full of men who wanted to marry you?”

“It wasn’t a football team’s worth.” She began ticking them off on her fingers. “There was Brad, who actually was a football player. I felt obligated to go out with him because he’d dumped the head cheerleader for me. I dated him for about a year in high school, but I got worried when he started talking about marrying me before he went to college so I could write his papers for him.”

“Who else?” Alec demanded.

“Brian, who was a sensitive artist type, and who threatened to throw himself in a vat of paint if I ever left him. He lived. And in the first year of college, Rick, who was my biology TA. There was also Russ, who went out
with me twice then bought me a ring, but I don’t count him because his parents had him institutionalized shortly thereafter.”

“And Scott,” Alec said softly.

She was surprised that the name only caused a fraction of the pain she had felt when she heard it just a week ago. “And Scott.”

“I noticed Roger couldn’t stop himself from fawning over you at dinner last night.”

Claire smiled. Alec actually sounded jealous.

“Roger is crazy about Miranda. I wouldn’t say he was fawning,” Claire said.

“I’m surprised he had enough polysyllabic words in his vocabulary to keep his end of the dinner chat up that long.”

“Another misjudgment on your part,” Claire said. “Roger happens to be a really bright guy, and we were having an interesting conversation.”

“An interesting conversation?” he scoffed. “Everyone in the room thought you would duck out before dessert was served.”

“Take that back,” she said. A flattering interest in her affairs was one thing, but not outright slander.

“I’m sorry, but it’s true,” he said. “I don’t know how you could have let him make such a play for you, after that kiss.”

That kiss. Her heart jumped, and her pulse started pounding, remembering that kiss. The way his lips had felt, the strong feel of his body pressed against hers. But the kiss was an act, part of the farce they were perpetuating throughout the weekend. Had he forgotten that? Or, more likely, was he using her attraction to him as a way of manipulating her?

“That kiss wasn’t real, Alec.”

He looked hurt, only it was a genuine hurt, not the kind of mock-pouting he did when he was trying to talk her into
some despised task. “It was real,” he said. “You felt what I felt.”

“But that has nothing to do with us, with who we are and what we’re here for. That kiss was about as real as this sapphire. The stone’s genuine, but the story behind it isn’t.” She grabbed a suitcase, and took off into the bathroom. “I’ve got to meet Christine Colby after breakfast.”

She showered, blew her hair dry and dressed. The word for the interviews was “look as though you’re going on a picnic.” For a normal picnic, she’d probably throw on a pair of oversize shorts and a giant T-shirt—either that, or one of those dresses that resembled a caftan. For this day, she put on a neatly pressed pair of khakis and a white sleeveless blouse, one that buttoned up the front.

If she expected to find Alec in a better mood when she emerged from the bathroom, she’d been engaging in wishful thinking. He was reading her magazine and sulking on the bed. “Thank goodness I don’t have to share a bathroom with you all the time,” he said. “I’d never get to work. As it is, I’m running late.”

“Yes, I could tell that Miranda was very eager to talk to you.” Ouch. That was a cruel cut, and she hadn’t really meant to say it.

He rebounded quicker than she thought he would. “I guess she’ll be eager to talk to me when she finds out that you haven’t been able to keep your mouth shut about her youthful indiscretions. Isn’t that just the kind of vengeful story a jilted ex-friend would spread?”

Claire smiled. “Except that’s it true. And you’re the one who’s petty enough to bring it up.”

“People ought to be able to account for their actions, don’t you think?”

“It means nothing to me,” Claire said. “I don’t have any skeletons in my closet to rattle.”

“Are you sure about that?” Alec asked. “Mrs. Schibley said you, not Miranda, were the hit of that play. Didn’t Trent Daniels notice you?”

She grinned. “You’re guessing. And you’re wrong. I didn’t need Trent Daniels. I had Scott, remember?” She turned the knob. “Besides, he just didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d propose on the first date.”

With that, she left the room. When she stepped outside the house, she was pleased to discover that it was a beautiful, bright day. The storm of the night before had cooled the air down, and left some debris on the sidewalk, but all other traces of it were gone. Everyone was clustered around a breakfast buffet by the pool, most of them fighting and pawing over the danishes and pastries at the end of the table. Reluctant to enter the fray, Claire took a cup of fruit salad and a small container of yogurt, and sat down by Chris in a chair next to the pool.

Christine Colby walked through, trailed by a cadre of assistants and cameramen. “The friend, the friend. I want to start with the friend.”

Claire waved a hand. “Here I am.”

Christine stopped in front of her. “Are you finished eating yet, sweetie? We’ve got to hurry.”

Claire nodded and stood, throwing her things away in a nearby wastebasket. “Okay, people,” Christine yelled as she passed. “Some of you don’t look dressed,” she said, as the relatives looked down, puzzled, at their bathing suits and jogging shorts. “Be ready when we call for you, okay?”