Masquerade (19 page)

Chapter 22

Clarissa had planned on a low-key day for their fourth day at the resort. Maybe something educational like teaching the girls about sea life. Slade dropped by with Bella in the morning, and the little girl happily fluttered inside to see Elaina. “I’m wearing my princess slippers,” Bella said, and proceeded to show Elaina a pair of sparkly pink shoes.

Instead of leaving
, Slade leaned in her doorway. He looked handsome and brooding. Sort of the way Hawk Hawthorn always did before he went out and set the world right.“I thought about our conversation last night,” Slade said, “and I think you’re right. I do need to spend more time with Bella. So I want to go out sightseeing today.”

“
Oh,” Clarissa said, warmed by the fact that Slade had actually listened to her. She’d forgotten that men did that sometimes.

“
So are you and Elaina ready to go?” he asked, eyeing the simple sundress she wore.

“
You want us to come?” Clarissa asked.

“Of course,”
he said.

“
Okay.” She began mentally listing the things she needed to gather. “Where are we going?”

“I’
m not sure yet.” Slade stepped inside and let the door close behind him. “Some place where Landon won’t find us.”

“Why are you avoiding
Landon?”

“I’m not avoiding him, you are. I’m just driving.”
Slade gave her a meaningful nod. “And your husband owes me a big favor for this.”

Clarissa
rolled her eyes.

“You think I’m kidding, but I talked to
Landon last night, and he thinks your marriage is a sham.”

“Really?” Clarissa half choked out the word.

“He said you’ve been sending him signals that you’re interested in him.” Without giving her a chance to respond, Slade added, “Did he really help you pick out a bathing suit?”

She picked up her large beach bag and
began putting things inside. “Well, sort of. Although not because I asked him to. I ran into him while I was trying them on.”

“You ran into him in the dressing room?”

Clarissa dropped sunscreen into the bag. “No, I was wearing one out on the sales floor.”

It sounded perfectly legitimate to Clarissa, but Slade shook his head. “Clarissa, I don’t think you understand what I’m tell
ing you about men, so I’ll put it this way: don’t talk to Landon, don’t look at him, don’t blush at him, and absolutely don’t use any interested body language around him.”

She rolled her eyes again.

“Which reminds me, let me see you smile.”

“What?”

He gestured to her. “Smile for me.”

She gave him a smile that felt more like she was baring her teeth than being pleasant.

“Hmm,” he said. “I didn’t see your eyes glow.”

She
lifted an eyebrow. “Was this in my job contract? Because I don’t remember anyone warning me about interrogations.”

He
returned her gaze and when he spoke, his voice was completely serious. “Just promise me you’ll think carefully about what you do from now on.”

“I promise,” she said.

She had to remind herself of this promise over and over again throughout the day. Not that Landon was anywhere around. He didn’t even make an appearance in her thoughts. It was Slade’s presence that was plaguing her now. He smiled so easily at her, treated her like a friend and not the hired help, and kept distracting her whenever he stood close by.

They went to an outdoor aquarium so he could keep his baseball hat and sunglasses on
. As they walked around, Slade held the girls’ hands, often lifting both girls up so they could get a better view.

Elaina cried at the
sea lion exhibit because lions were “scary and going to get her.”

Instead of
telling her she was being ridiculous like Alex would have done, Slade squeezed her hand and said, “You don’t have to worry. I can tell exactly what the sea lion is thinking.” Then Slade did a monologue in a Jamaican accent about how the sea lion only ate squid and the occasional Cheeto. Before long Elaina was laughing and Bella begged him to tell her what the starfish thought, and what the octopus thought.

Clarissa was glad he couldn’t tell what she thought.

If someone had asked her a few weeks ago what attracted her most in a man, Clarissa wouldn’t have said, “A good father.” And yet watching Slade with the girls, she couldn’t think of anything more attractive than the attention he paid to Bella and Elaina. That had to be the reason her frustrations with him melted, and in their place she felt a strange ache and a quickened pulse rate.

He was so down-to-earth. So openly casual. So horribly good-looking.

The last thought plagued Clarissa the most.

I
f she didn’t think carefully about what she did, she was bound to make a fool of herself by doing something rash— like, say, throwing herself at him.

Well, so much for
her resolution to swear off men.

The group
had lunch at seaside café, then walked along the beach so the girls could look for shells. Slade talked to Clarissa about all sorts of things. It felt like a date, and not just any date—the really good kind of date that left you breathless and hoping the guy would call you soon.

Clarissa
had to tell him the truth. She knew that now. She had to find some way to tell him she was divorced, to tell him she was free if he was interested.

W
ould he be interested, though?

The thought brought a sharp pain to her stomach.

Of course he wouldn’t be.

It wasn’t even in the realm of p
ossibilities. After all, at the employment center Mr. Peterson had told her that Slade wanted to hire a married woman. Slade wasn’t looking for a love interest in his nanny.

So
Clarissa had to squelch these feelings, which kept popping up every time she noticed how perfectly rugged his features were. And how broad and muscular his shoulders were. And how his voice had a deep rich tenor that made something inside of her quiver.

If he had ever shown any hint he was attracted to her, she
could have perhaps mustered the courage to tell him everything, but he hadn’t. Instead of attraction, he’d only shown annoyance that she was young and pretty. He wanted her to talk about her husband in sweet and loving tones so no one got the wrong idea about them.

B
esides, Slade would be angry at being deceived. Clarissa didn’t want that, and she couldn’t afford it, either. So she would go on pretending to be married. In fact, if Slade extended the nanny position after they got back to California, she’d go out and invent a husband just to continue the facade. Maybe some time in the months to come, after she knew Slade well enough to feel secure in her position, she’d tell him one day that her husband had been inadvertently killed in a freak manhole accident. But only after she felt secure with the position.

*
* *

On Monday morning
while Slade went off to the
Undercover Agents
set to find AJ, Clarissa took the girls to the beach in front of the hotel. For a time, the three of them played in the water, edging toward the ocean as the water pulled back, then trying to outrun the waves as they came surging onto the shore. Several times the waves won, crashing into their legs and backs—once or twice toppling the little girls in the foamy water.

Clarissa
quickly picked them up and set them right. She brushed wet sand from their faces, looking for tears, but never found any. Bella thought her face plants were especially funny. “Look ’Laina,” she said opening her mouth. “I got sand on my tongue!”

After a while the girls settled down to the less da
ngerous pastime of building castles, and Clarissa spread out her towel to watch them. She tugged at the front of her swimming suit as she sat down, wishing it weren’t so low cut.

She hadn’t noticed this about the suit when she bought it. All that business with
Landon had distracted her, and she hadn’t looked closely at the suit until the next morning. And then it was too late to wear anything else. She’d already thrown out her old blue suit, and housekeeping had disposed of it along with the empty soap wrappers and used towelettes.

Clarissa stretched out her legs
and watched the girls throwing sand over their shoulders. She didn’t even notice Sylvia walk up to her until the older woman set a folding beach chair down beside Clarissa.

Sylvia wore a different swimsuit than she had at the pool, a black one-piece with bright pink lines running from the shoulder to the waist. Her dark hair was still pulled back in a bun, this time wrapped in a pink scarf that exactly matched
the shade of her lipstick. She wore the same dark sunglasses and surveyed the sky with a smile. “It’s another beautiful day in paradise, isn’t it?”

Clarissa folded her arms. “No comment.”

“Oh, you’re not mad about Friday, are you?”

“Slade is the perfect boss, and Bella is an angel.”

Sylvia laughed, but it held no humor. “You don’t have to worry about me, dear. As far as reporters go, I’m one of the good kind. I never make things up. I just get to the truth. That’s why I’m the top columnist at
The Scoop
.”

Sylvia took off her glasses and nodded down the beach. “See that man walking over there—the tall, blond one with the yellow towel
? He’s the one you have to worry about.”

The man she referred to walked along the shoreline, hands in his pockets, surveying the people on the beach. He wore regular glasses, not sunglasses, and reminded Clarissa of a science teacher she once had. Stuffy and proper. “Why would I worry about him?”

“He’s Doug Rockwell, a reporter from the Celebrity Buzz, and he doesn’t share my respect for the truth.” As Sylvia looked over at him, her eyes narrowed. “Inside sources, my foot. I’ll tell you what his inside sources are: his wishful thinking, his wild imagination, and his delusions of grandeur.” She slipped her sunglasses back over her eyes with a humph. “You know that article he ran last week on Angelina Jolie? Pure fiction. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had never even talked to Angie. Just look at him.” Sylvia shook her head. “He’s over there scouting for some big name out on the beach, and that, my dear, is why I will always be a better journalist. I don’t wait for the stories to come to me—I dig, and I never overlook the small details.” Her attention suddenly turned back on Clarissa, and her pink lips curled into a smile. “You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this, aren’t you?”

Actually
, Clarissa was simply letting Sylvia go on in the hope she’d talk herself out and leave.

“I’m telling you
,” Sylvia continued, “because you are one of those small details of which stories are made.”

“I don’t have anything to tell you, and—”

“Oh, but you do,” Sylvia interrupted. “Some of my best sources are the worker bees around the great hive of the superstars. You’re the ones who see things as they really are.”

“My employment contract says I can’t talk to journalists, and even if it didn’t, I still wouldn’t. Slade has a right to keep his private life private.”

The pink smile didn’t falter. “Pity. Then I’ll have to go with my other story. The one about the nanny who is an old friend of Landon McKellips, the nanny who works for Slade Jacobson, the nanny who isn’t happily married at all.”

Clarissa felt her stomach tighten into knots. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Hadn’t Sylvia promised
Landon she’d leave Clarissa alone if he gave her an interview?

Sylvia leaned toward Clarissa. “I did a little research and called your ex-husband. He wasn’t at all hesitant to talk to me. In fact, he had a lot to say about you. For example, he didn’t even know you were a friend of
Landon’s, but it didn’t surprise him. He said you were always meeting men in your last job at the fitness center.”

“I handed them towels. That’s different than meeting men.”

“He said you taught yoga because you enjoyed prancing around in tight, skimpy exercise clothes.”

“I taught
yoga because it paid better than checking people in at the front desk.”

“So you put on the
tight, skimpy clothes for money?”

This wasn’t happening. Clarissa absolutely wasn’t sitting here talking to a reporter about her divorce and discussing the skimpiness of her
exercise outfits.

“You’re twisting my words,” Clarissa said. “
You’re probably twisting Alex’s too.” But the truth was, Clarissa wasn’t sure if Sylvia needed to twist Alex’s words. He had a way of twisting reality all by himself. Since the time things had gotten bad in their marriage, he’d made a habit of taking minor incidents, blowing them up, and throwing them back at her. Or rather, he’d thrown them at the marriage counselor. It was at counseling that Clarissa had learned she couldn’t keep a budget, was a hopeless flirt, an incurable slob, and that the occasional clothes she’d bought for Elaina constituted “running up a huge credit card bill every month.”