Mountain Mystic (19 page)

Victoria laughed. “What do I need a key for? You hardly ever lock your house.”

“It’s symbolic,” he told her with a crooked smile.

She stared at the key, knowing it represented progress in the trust department. He hadn’t come all the way yet, but he was trying. “Thank you. I love it.”

Under his watchful eye she added his door key to the car key on her necklace.

Victoria was cursing as she roared up in Joshua’s driveway. The only thing he’d ever asked her to do was help him entertain his agent, who insisted on visiting to talk about promotion on the new book. The only thing Joshua had asked of her—and she had to be running late.

Sighing with relief, she saw that only Joshua’s car sat in front of the house, which meant the agent hadn’t come early. As quickly as she could, she braked to a stop and killed the engine. One glance at her watch warned her that she had a scant twenty minutes to shower and change.

By the time she’d gotten in the front door, she was thanking her common sense for prodding her to put her clothes and a bag of cosmetics in the truck that morning—just in case—so she wouldn’t have to go home. She swung through the living room on the way to the back of the house and dropped her purse by the couch. “Joshua!”

“Yeah,” he called from the back of the house.

She started for his voice. “I’m late.”

“I noticed,” he assured her as he came down the hall toward her. He had on gray slacks and a bulky knit sweater the color of the winter sea on Cape Cod.

“Oh, thank God, you’re dressed. I need the shower and your bathroom mirror.”

“You look fine.”

Victoria gave him a dirty look. “Fine is not a word you want to use to a woman about to meet your agent.”

“What’s all the fuss?”

Clenching her teeth, she forced air out in a strangled sound as she passed him. “I’d like to make a good impression.”

“You weren’t this way about meeting my grandmother, and you wanted to make a good impression.”

“I dressed for her out of respect, not because I thought she’d size me up and dismiss me based on my image.”

Joshua reply was very soft. “Neither will Derrick. I’m not Richard, love. I don’t care whether or not you impress the people I know.”

If she heard him, his words didn’t seem to register. She stopped in the bedroom doorway, tapping her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Would you get me those silver dolphin earrings in the bottom of my purse? The dangling ones I bought last week? Thanks.”

Joshua watched her disappear into the bedroom.

A quick search of the house yielded the location of the suitcase she called a purse. Joshua hoisted it onto the coffee table, wondering if this quest was going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. With trepidation, he unzipped it.

Her journal was on top, which made rummaging impossible. Joshua lifted out the book, resisting the urge to peek inside. It was a clothbound volume that looked more like a book of poetry than a journal. A red satin ribbon was attached to the spine as a marker. Just like Victoria, her possessions rarely yielded impressions as he handled them. He set it on the table and looked back in the purse.

Now that he had room to work, he angled the purse opening toward the light and started shifting things with his hand. He found a wallet-sized photo album, a Magic Marker, four paper clips, spare change, cash register receipts, assorted pens and pencils, loose change, cinnamon candies, and a mink checkbook cover, no doubt left over from Connecticut days. Something lustrous and square was wedged in a crease at the corner, so he fished around and caught hold of the object.

As soon as he did, he fell into a moment of the past. The emotions inside the object caught him, urging him along until he settled into the rhythm of the moment. He hovered above and yet inside Victoria as the scene played out. The split consciousness was as familiar to him as breathing.

She was young—fourteen maybe—and standing in the center of a gazebo. Joshua felt her crushing unhappiness before he felt the first tear. When she opened the object in her hand and lifted it to eye level, he realized it was a fancy gold compact with mirror. The face he saw was solemn, one tear streaking down toward the corner of her mouth. She reached out and caught it with the tip of her tongue. She wanted a new face, Joshua knew that as well as he knew his own name. When she spoke, it was in a whisper.

Mirror, mirror, in my hand, who’s the fairest in the land? Not me. Never me. Powdering my nose in a gold compact isn’t going to make me pretty.

Caught in the never-never land between child and woman, she couldn’t see what those around her saw. She couldn’t see the promise of beauty in eyes too large for her face or in the rich darkness of her hair. Her birthday gift was such a disappointment, it had been all she could do to act delighted and then slip away to cry.

Suddenly, Victoria snapped the compact shut and put it in the pocket of her shorts, which looked too short for the long legs poking out beneath them. Drawing in a breath and expelling it in a deep sigh,
Victoria headed back to the house, hiding her emotions again.

As she walked away, the feelings faded, and Joshua was left holding the engraved metal compact. He turned it over and read the inscription, wincing as he did. “To my very own funny-face with love, Daddy.”

“Wrong choice of words, pal,” Joshua whispered. “If you only knew.”

Then his hands tightened on the compact. This time the rush of feelings he got was his own. He’d finally gotten an emotional impression of Victoria, albeit it secondhand. He finally had a piece of a connection. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

Giving up on the earrings, he let everything slide out of his hands and back down in the purse, which he picked up and carried with him to the bedroom. He rapped on the bathroom door. When he heard her turn off the shower, he said, “Victoria, I can’t find the earrings, so I brought your purse to you.”

“I could have sworn I put them in there,” Victoria griped as she came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. Her hair was twisted into a bun on top of her head and held up by nothing more than a pencil.

“How’d you do that?” Joshua asked, and deftly pulled the pencil free.

Victoria’s hair came tumbling down, and she combed it with her fingers. “Trade secret.” She plucked her purse out of his hands. “I’ll be ready in five.”

“Right,” he said with skepticism.

“Okay, it’ll be more like ten minutes.”

“Well, I can’t wait that long.” His voice was deep and his tone final. He kissed her, slow and thoroughly. Pulling the towel away, he let his hands roam over soft, supple skin which was still damp from the shower. When he broke the kiss, he handed her the towel and raised an eyebrow, giving her a choice.

Victoria read his intent from the desire swirling in his blue eyes and snatched her towel back, covering herself. “Oh, no, you don’t. We shouldn’t.”

“Oh, but we should.”

“
We can
’
t.
”

“Not the way I’d like, but we most certainly can.” Joshua reached for her. “Derrick invited himself. If he has to wait on the doorstep, I say let him wait. He’s lucky to have a free place to stay.”

“You’ve got a point. Let him wait,” Victoria echoed, and dropped the towel.

Her ten minutes stretched to twenty, but that included the diversion engineered by Joshua. Never in a million years had she imagined she’d respond to a man the way she responded to him—with complete abandon. God, what would her mother have said about her behavior? A guest had been expected at any moment, but she’d made love to Joshua rather than get ready to answer the door. Victoria smiled. And she’d do it again in a heartbeat.

While she was applying makeup, she heard Derrick Tremont arrive. Not that she’d intended to eavesdrop, but the commotion was hard to miss since
Joshua had left the bedroom door cracked, and the agent had a big, booming voice. Especially when Joshua had explained that she’d be joining them for dinner.

“Lord, Joshua! I thought you’d sworn off women.”

“I thought I had too, and then I met Victoria.…”

Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to hear any more because the conversation drifted out of the hallway and into the living room. With one last dab of perfume behind her ears, she rearranged the cowl neck on her soft red sweater and ran a hand lightly over the silver dolphin pin which was her only decoration.

Ready at last, she went out to meet the man that Joshua trusted enough to manage his publishing interests. Her smile was in place; clever chitchat was on the tip of her tongue. She walked on the balls of her feet so she didn’t clump loudly across the hardwood floors. In short, she felt ready to make a bang-up first impression. Until she turned the corner of the living room and saw a strange man eagerly scanning her journal, guffawing at a section he must have thought particularly funny.

That’s when her smile slipped. That’s when the chitchat died a sudden death. That’s when her next step reverberated through the house with a thud.

The middle-aged blond man looked up at the sudden noise and rose to his feet when he saw her. He gave her a big smile and said, “Well, hello. I’m Derrick Tremont. You must be Victoria, and this must be
your journal.” He waved her book back and forth in the air like a trophy.

“Hello, and yes, I’m Victoria Bennett. Where … where did you get my journal?”

Showing surprise at her tone, Derrick quickly explained. “Off the table. Joshua’s outside, fiddling with the grill. He said to cool my jets and find something to read for a few minutes.”

“You found it on the table?” Victoria echoed, and then guessed that Joshua had probably taken it out of her purse when he tried to find the earrings.

“Yes.”

“That was a mistake,” she explained as graciously as she could, and moved into the room with her hand outstretched for the diary.

“Mistake? I don’t think so.”

He was handing her back the book, when Joshua came back into the room. “What mistake?”

“My journal was on the table. Mr. Tremont—”

“Call me Derrick, please.”

“Derrick found it and didn’t realize it was a private journal.” Sheer force of habit made Victoria smooth over the awkward situation.

“Oh, I realized it was private all right,” Derrick told her bluntly and without any discernible remorse. “But it was also damn good. I thought Joshua left it out for me to discover.”

“It was just a mistake,” Victoria repeated.

“Mistake or not, I think we should do some talking.”

Joshua moved stiffly toward the bar in the far corner.
He needed a drink to settle the apprehension in his gut. He’d been betrayed too many times not to recognize the signs of a well-managed “mistake.” The suspicious side of his nature was already halfway convinced that Victoria had staged the earring hunt, hoping to create exactly this situation. If that hadn’t worked, she probably would have had Plan B waiting in the wings. He hadn’t forgotten that she grew up in an atmosphere that rewarded fame.

“Can I get anyone else a drink?” Joshua asked as he passed them.

“Scotch if you’ve got it,” Derrick told him, then looked at Victoria as if waiting for her to ask for something.

“Nothing for me.”

“Then sit down, Victoria, and tell me how Joshua managed to find someone like you in the hills of Tennessee. You’re gorgeous, smart, and you can write.”

“I found Joshua, not the other way round. I was new, and he helped me learn the area.” She directed a quick smile at Joshua. “I’m a certified nurse-midwife, not an aspiring writer. These pages are just my thoughts about my experiences since opening my practice.”

Silently, Joshua saluted her for managing exactly the right amount of naïveté and genuine disbelief. With every passing second he was less certain of his trust in Victoria. Even after weeks of intimacy he still didn’t
know
her, still couldn’t read her emotions unless she wanted him to. The fact that he loved her made his nagging distrust all the more bitter to accept.

“Oh, but you are most definitely a writer,” Derrick assured her, commanding Victoria’s attention again. “Writing talent is the one thing I know.”

Here it comes
, thought Joshua as he approached with the drinks.
The surprised “Do you really think so?”
He handed Derrick his drink and resigned himself to whatever happened next. He’d heard this same kind of conversation too many times to count. If it wasn’t over publishing, it was about academic appointments, publicity opportunities, or how best to utilize his abilities for someone else’s benefit.

“I think you must be mistaken in my case,” Victoria told his agent. “I don’t know how anyone could possibly judge talent from a few pages of chicken scratching.”

“I looked at more than a few pages. Besides, you’ve got something else going for you.”

“What’s that?” Victoria asked with a laugh.

“Joshua Logan, the mystique of the mountains, people’s perceptions of rural Appalachia as a place of moonshiners, faith healers, and snake handlers.”

“But it’s not like that,” protested Victoria.

“Who cares! I leafed through a lot of that journal, and I’m telling you, we can create a lightning strike with it. Knowing that you have a relationship with Joshua Logan will make this little story fly off the shelves! The bit with the healing touch in your kitchen was great.”

Joshua’s eyes narrowed as he realized how completely he had revealed himself to Victoria. And so had his grandmother. They’d said and shown her things
that were never meant to be commercialized. He didn’t blame his agent for trying to capitalize on opportunity; he blamed himself for creating the opportunity. This was a left hook that he’d walked right into.

“Joshua Logan is news,” Derrick continued. “Especially after he finishes the publicity tour.”

“I’m not doing the tour,” Joshua said softly. “Not even the mini-tour. I told you that before you wasted your time coming here.”

Derrick laughed and waved aside his comment. “A vacation is never a waste. What do you say, Victoria?”

She didn’t say anything for a long time, then she started to chuckle. Finally, she laughed out loud and tried to frown at Joshua. “Okay, I deserve this for keeping you waiting. I’ll admit, you guys had me going for a while. But I’m on to you now, so you can stop the kidding around.”