The Fiance Thief (7 page)

“Scott Granville,” she read. “I remember that now.”

With a few expert maneuvers, Hank got out of the data base. “Of course you remember, now that we’ve spent all this time on a fifty-dollar-an-hour data base.”

“It’s for a good cause,” Lissa said. “Now what do I do?”

Hank sighed. “Do you think he still lives in New York City?” At her nod, he suggested she try directory assistance. “I doubt he’ll be listed, though. If I were Miranda Craig’s ex, I wouldn’t be.”

“Don’t you see? That’s exactly the reason I’m going to find him waiting by the phone.”

And he was. Picking up after one and a half rings, Scott seemed eager to listen to Lissa’s spiel. Quickly she explained who she was and how she knew Claire. Then she went for the zinger, telling him how glad she was she caught him before he left for the retreat.

“Claire and our editor are going to be interviewing the attendees there, but I’m trying to get a few comments from people before they go, you know, in case they can’t talk freely once they arrive,” she said.

He was quiet for a second. “Retreat? This is the first I’ve heard about it.”

Lissa feigned shock. “You aren’t invited? But you’re such an integral part of Miranda’s history. You’re the authority on that whole struggling actress era of her life.” She sighed. “Please say you aren’t mad at me for calling you and unearthing all this painful old history. I never dreamed you weren’t invited.” She went for the clincher. “I know for a fact that Claire expected you to be there.”

Hank went into a hysterical coughing fit. Scowling, Lissa put her fingers on her lips and mimed cutting her throat.

“She did? And she was still going to go?” Scott said after a long pause.

“Yes,” Lissa lied. “I think she was looking forward to seeing how you’d changed.”

“I’ve changed for the better,” he said. She found herself kind of touched by his boyish tone. “I’m not the same guy who ran off with Miranda.”

“I’m sure Claire would like to hear that. If only you were going to be there.”

Across the telephone wires, she could practically see the little cogs in his brain whirling. “You know, there’s got to be some way I can go. If I crash the thing, the worst Miranda can do is throw me out. And that’s going to look kind of bad for her, especially if she knows there’s a reporter there.”

“There you go,” Lissa said. “I don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve been back here, but if you’re serious about coming, they have one-stop flights from New York City to Ridgeville. Getting here would be no trouble at all. I’d be more than happy to pick you up at the airport and give you a ride out there, so you don’t have to rent a car.” She remembered that she was supposed to be a part of the paper’s story. “That would give me a chance to get some quotes from you along the way.”

“Lissa, you’re great,” he said in a warm voice.

They agreed that he would call her when he’d made arrangements for his flight, and she reeled off her home number to him. They said their goodbyes and, satisfied, she hung up the phone and beamed at Hank.

He was plainly less than impressed. “Rhetorical question,” he said. “What kind of man flies hundreds of miles to crash a party?”

“One who’s desperate for revenge or hopelessly in love.” Lissa got her purse from the bottom drawer of her desk. “Both, I bet.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to pick up Scott.”

“He hasn’t even booked a flight yet,” Hank said.

“I want to be ready when he calls.” She pointed to her rayon skirt and casual blouse. “I’m not driving to the Craig home looking like this.”

“What about your stories?”

“I’m sure I’ll be back in plenty of time to finish them. But just in case, let me tell you where some of this stuff is.” She pointed to a stack of press releases on her desk. “The information about the barbecue contest is somewhere in the pile. It’s at seven, but don’t feel like you have to stay for very long. You don’t even have to hang around for the end of the contest—just ask one of the judges to call you.” She dug in her purse for a piece of paper. “Here’s the rough draft of that wedding story I was supposed to be writing. Mick was there, since he’s friends of the bride’s parents, but don’t expect him to remember anything about it. I seem to remember there was some ruckus by the punch bowl with the mother of the groom.” Pointing to an engagement picture on top of the pile she said, “That’s the bride.”

It was the first time she’d seen Hank with his jaw hanging open. “I can’t believe you have the nerve to do this.”

Just because he didn’t have any big ambitions didn’t mean no one else did. “Hank,” she said, giving him a hurt look over her shoulder as she hurried out the door. “I’m doing it for Claire.”

4

I
T WAS THE FIRST TIME
she’d seen him without a suit, and during the first few miles of their trip, Claire was wholly engrossed in her struggle not to ask Alec whether he felt naked without it. Theirs was a casual office, even by newspaper standards, and there was no dress code, per se, but Alec came to work each morning decked out in the uniform of corporate America. Claire suspected it was his way of showing he was at the top of the journalistic food chain.

The khakis and white polo he’d donned for this trip didn’t subtract from the aura of power he wielded around the office. In fact, his casual clothes highlighted the fact that he had a body far more muscular than that of the stereotypical pencil jockey. She tried to ignore the sinewy muscles of his arm as he reached for the tape player, and the definition of his thigh as he braked and shifted gears. Claire resolved to stare at the scenery until they reached Loudon.

“How did you come to live in that house? Did you say it belonged to your grandparents?”

Damn. For months, the man had made it clear to her that she was no more worthy of his attention than a common housefly, and now, just when she needed for him to ignore her, he was trying to make small talk.

“Sort of,” she said, her voice coming out as a croak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “They lived in a house on the same land, and they built that one for my
parents when they first married. Years later, their own house started falling down around them, so they razed it and moved into the smaller one. After they died, my family could only justify keeping the land if someone wanted to live there.”

“So if not for you, your family would have made a killing with that property? Just asking.”

She stared at him, exasperated. “I’m glad you aren’t a real-estate agent. I can see you, calling me every morning at 8:00 a.m. sharp. Miss Morgan, have you changed your mind yet about selling?’ Miss Morgan, I have it on good authority that your property taxes are about to skyrocket’.”

“I’m only trying to get to know you,” Alec said. “Don’t forget that I’m supposed to be your fiancé. I have to at least pretend I understand you.”

So Alec thought he should try to understand her? He didn’t know that
not
understanding her was what had made her so appealing to the guys who’d immediately started thinking about marriage at the first sight of her. They’d never looked beyond her girl you could take home to mama persona. But Claire knew that mama and her boy would probably faint if they ever caught a glimpse of the real inner her.

Sarcastic, a bit goofy, with thoughts that ran a hundred miles an hour. Scott was the only man with whom she’d shared that side of herself. When he’d rejected her, he’d rejected the real her. That was what made it so hard to accept.

Alec seemed oblivious to her growing moroser by the minute mood. “Listen, Claire. We’ve got less than an hour to synchronize our answers on this wedding thing. So start asking me some questions.”

“Okay,” she said. “When are we getting married?”

“December.”

“No,” she said automatically. “My parents married in December, and they spend their anniversary at the mall cafeteria while they Christmas shop. Let’s say October. I can plan a wedding in five months. Is it small or large?”

“It’s at your parents’ house, and it’s small.”

“My parents retired to Florida last year,” Claire said. “It’s at your parents’ house.”

“My sister and her family live with my parents,” he said. “It’s so cramped, we couldn’t even squeeze in a bridesmaid. So let’s say it’s going to be at one of those historic old homes around Ridgeville. We haven’t decided which one yet, but we’re leaning toward the Ramsey-Ivy house.”

“That’ll work,” Claire said, admiring his taste. The Ramsey-Ivy house was one of her favorite local homes. She wondered if Alec really liked it, or if it was the first thing that popped into his head. “We’re going to live in my house, right?”

“No,” Alec said. “We’re going to sell your house, take our share of the money and buy a condo.”

“You have no soul,” Claire told him. She tried to think of other questions people asked prospective couples. Dwelling on her own disastrous last engagement wasn’t a good idea, so she tried to remember what she had asked women who told her they were engaged. “The ring,” she said. “Where’s my ring?”

“What ring?”

“The ring a man gives a woman when he asks her to marry him.” She held up her left hand. “I don’t have one.”

“Not everyone has an engagement ring,” Alec said. “Poor young couples like us can decide to get married, then scrimp and save for the ring.”

Claire shook her head, surprised by how strongly she felt about this issue. She grabbed the tail of Alec’s untucked
knit shirt. “You spent at least seventy dollars on this shirt. You can afford to get me a ring.”

“This was a seasonal markdown item last year, so it was just thirty-five dollars.” He turned and stared at her. “Listen to yourself, Claire. You aren’t serious, are you?”

“Yes, I am,” she said, letting go of the shirt. “I’m not stepping out of the car at Miranda’s unless I have a ring.”

“Look,” Alec said. “Be reasonable. We probably should have thought about this ring thing, but there’s no way we’re going to get one at this late stage.”

“I’m sorry,” she said stubbornly. “But we have to. I’m not going up there and facing Miranda and all her friends and family, just so they can all whisper about me when I leave the room. Isn’t it a shame about Claire? Once again deluding herself into thinking she’s getting married, when this jerk is too cheap to buy her a ring.”

“I resent that,” Alec told her. “Tell them I bought you one so big that you’re afraid to actually wear it. Or tell them I bought you one but it’s being sized.”

Claire slouched in her seat. “Don’t you think everyone will see through those lies?”

“Not if they don’t see through the rest of the ones we’re telling.”

“That’s my point,” she said vehemently, so vehemently, in fact, that Alec swerved a little on the road before Claire grabbed the wheel. He pushed her hand away, the sudden contact leaving her even more rattled than she was before. She continued, trying to stay calm. “I think that the ring is the prop on which this whole charade is going to hinge.”

Without warning, Alec pulled the car into a fast-food drive-thru restaurant and parked. “If this discussion is going to get any livelier, I’d like to be off the road for it. Claire, when a couple tells me they’re engaged, I believe them. I don’t question their relationship, and I don’t start calculating in my head how much that rock set him back.”

This had gone all wrong. She’d never meant to get so hysterical and materialistic. Over what? Over not getting a diamond from someone who probably wouldn’t spare the fifty cents it would take to get a toy ring from a Cracker Jack box? She said quietly, “I think you look at everything with a cynical eye, and so do a lot more people than you expect. I think that if I were Miranda, and my old friend Claire showed up with someone that she was trying to pass off as a fiancé, but this Claire didn’t have a ring, and the fiancé just happened to be a newspaper reporter—editor, I mean—I think I’d either put two and two together or pay someone to do it for me.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, then Alec started the car. “I’m convinced,” he said. His tone had lost its belligerence. “Since we’re only a few miles out of town, we’ll turn back and hit a pawnshop. Do you want to split the cost of it?”

Claire hesitated before speaking. “Actually, I know a way we could get a ring without either of us spending money.” Cheered some, now that he seemed to be paying attention to her ideas, Claire began to outline her plan for Alec. “But first,” she said, “let’s swing through that drive-thru and get something to eat. All this arguing has left me starved.”

D
ID HE DOUBT
himself? Hank answered his own question. No, he did not doubt himself. It wasn’t even noon yet, and he had already polished off all of his work. Even though no one else was in the office, force of habit made him download his articles onto a disk and shove it in his drawer. Everyone else uploaded their work straight into the paper’s net server, where articles written by one writer were open to perusal by all. This meant that Alec, when feeling nitpicky, or Lissa, being bored, or Mick, trying to be helpful, would invariably scratch and poke at everyone else’s stories until press time. He knew Claire did the same
thing he did, handing Alec only hard copy and hiding the electronic copy somewhere untouchable until press time.

His own work behind him, Hank moved on to Lissa’s rough draft, wondering where she was the day her journalism professor covered the difference between “draft” and “notes.” A draft implied that sentences had been put together, paragraphs at least vaguely sketched out. This, instead, was a list of names, guests at the reception he supposed, with cryptic comments like “sixties sheath” and “chiffon ruffle thing” written out to the side.

“Where the hell is everybody?”

Hank looked at his watch. It was only eleven, a record for Mick. “Claire and Alec went to the taping, remember? You’re here early.”

“I’ve got to write a story. Kind of nervous about it,” Mick said, hanging up his hat and pouring the remaining dregs of the coffee Hank had made earlier. “Where’s Lissa?”

“She had to run an errand. I’m sure she’ll be back,” Hank said.