The Fiance Thief (16 page)

Christine and Claire walked down past the pool, down into the pasture. Christine looked as classy walking through the Craigs’ farmland as she did on her television specials. “Watch your step,” she said. “This is a working pasture.”

“That’s what I heard,” Claire told her. “Where are we headed?”

“There’s a run-down barn over this hill. It isn’t the one the Craigs use for their cows, so we turned it into a temporary headquarters. I’ve got some bales of hay for you to sit on while you talk to me, then I think Miranda might join us for a shot on the swing in the gazebo nearby.”

Claire wasn’t looking forward to taping an intimate talk with Miranda. Her feelings about her friend were too mixed-up to come out coherently. It was awful to have a friend you couldn’t trust, but in some ways it was worse not to have that friend at all. There were times when she missed the sparkle Miranda had put into her life. She knew she needed people in her life who liked to live for the moment. Scott had been like that, as were Allie and Lissa. And Alec, Claire thought to herself. Alec seems like someone who seizes the day the second the alarm clock rings.

Claire followed Christine into the barn. Several cameras had been set up in there, and lights blared at her from all directions. Christine shielded her eyes. “Tone it down a little, guys.”

An area had been cleared out for the makeup woman and hairstylist, and Christine shooed Claire off in their direction. “Hurry up with her,” she said. “We’ve got to get rolling. I think her hair is fine, but do her face up brighter.”

Claire wanted to protest, but she didn’t. After an expert application of blush and eyeliner, she was sent back to the bale of hay, where Christine was perched in a chair across from her. “I know you feel like you’re wearing a lot of makeup,” Christine said, “but you won’t look washedout this way. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to sit here and talk to you for a second, then we’re going to turn the cameras on and talk about Miranda.”

Christine Colby was one of Claire’s favorite newspeople, even though Claire had never had any interest in doing broadcasting. And although Claire wanted to move
from life-style features to hard news, Christine Colby had done the opposite, moving from a network correspondent’s position to being able to host her own one-hour specials on celebrities and public figures of her choice.

“Where do you live, Claire?” Christine asked her.

“I live in Ridgeville, in a house my grandfather built for my parents when they were newlyweds.” The familiar story, almost her own kind of fairy tale, calmed her out of her nervous state, and she and Christine chatted about her time in school as an English major and her career as a reporter.

“All right,” Christine said, “we’re going to start rolling the tape now. You’re doing great.

“How did you meet Miranda?” she asked.

“It was the third week of first grade, and Missy, as I knew her then…” She remembered that the Missy/Miranda question of yesterday had never been settled, but at Christine’s nod, she went on. “…Missy had just been kicked out of Miss Talley’s class for making faces at the teacher. She came to my first-grade class, sat down beside me and offered me a piece of bubble gum, which we weren’t allowed to have. We were friends from then on.”

Christine led her through more memories of Miranda, including their first school play. “We were elves in this Christmas pageant, but our mothers didn’t finish our long caps until right before the show. No one thought to stuff them with newspaper to make them stand up on our heads, so they kept dangling in front of our eyes. The whole house was howling at us, and we were so proud, because someone had told us it was a comedy and that we were supposed to make people laugh.”

The trip down memory lane veered into more recent territory. A high school field trip, when the back end of the bus had fallen through a wooden bridge and Claire had helped a hysterical Miranda disembark. A high school production of
The Importance of Being Earnest,
with the
two of them in the young female leads. College, when the two of them were roommates and Claire had run lines with Miranda, helping her learn her parts.

Claire was thinking that she’d gotten off pretty easily when Christine said, “Do you ever look at your friend’s glamorous life and think What if that were me? Is that something you wanted for yourself? Do you ever think Why am I still stuck in Ridgeville?”

Although she’d done a lot of soul-searching about her relationship with Miranda, she didn’t have a ready answer. Slowly she began to talk. “I think it’s wrong to want to be famous for the sake of being famous. In Miranda’s work, celebrity is the goal. In my work as a reporter, I almost think invisibility is the goal. If I can help somebody out by staying behind the scenes and writing my copy, that’s what I want to do.”

“In Ridgeville?” Christine asked.

“I came back to Ridgeville by choice,” Claire said. Although she knew Miranda wanted the subject of Scott to be off-limits, it was important to her that she be able to finish what she had to say. “My fiancé, Scott Granville, used to talk all the time about moving to New York. He believed that was the only place he could make.his mark as a novelist. I argued and resisted, until one day he went to New York with Miranda. When that happened, I did leave Ridgeville, although not for New York. But when I came back, I knew I was at peace with being there.”

Claire could tell that Christine was grateful to her for sparing her the dirty task of introducing Scott’s name into the conversation. “A lot was said in the press at one time about Miranda’s betrayal of you. Do you forgive her now?”

“Yes, I do,” she answered, and as she said it, she realized she meant it. “I can’t deny that part of the reason I forgive her is that I no longer have feelings for Scott. If I were still pining away for him, I don’t think I’d be here.”
Saying it, she realized that was true, as well. No matter how unwilling she had been to come here, how many twinges of pain she’d felt at his name, it wasn’t the same as that wild and sick loneliness she’d endured when he left. If she’d still felt that, nothing would have made her see Miranda again. “My relationship with him didn’t work out. He and Miranda didn’t work out. There’s no sense in anyone remaining bitter about that. Wherever he is, I wish him luck.”

That was a wrap. She found herself shaking a little when Christine cued the cameras to stop. “I know that was hard for you,” Christine said. “You were wonderful.”

Claire got up and brushed some clinging hay from her pants. An assistant had retrieved Chris for his turn at the camera, and Claire considered hanging around to see what mischief he would pull. Instead, she decided she’d head back to her room and finish the south Ridgeville story. She hadn’t acquired the typewriter just to use as an interesting paperweight. Walking out of the barn, past the glaring lights, she bumped into Alec, standing by the door.

“You did great,” Alec said. “You’ve got a great camera presence. And the way you talked, it all sounded so believable.”

“The truth usually does,” Claire said.

Alec’s jaw tensed. He stood in front of her, trying to block her path as people milled about them, going to and from the barn. He seemed to forget that they were in the great outdoors, not trapped in the office or in their room. She sidestepped him easily, but he grabbed her arm. “I came up here to apologize,” he said. “I didn’t mean for our argument to get so out of hand, and I didn’t mean to hint anything about you and Trent Daniels.” He paused to take a deep breath, and she knew then that getting that apology out had been difficult for him. “Also, I meant to tell you. You look beautiful today.”

“You don’t have to get carried away,” she said. She twirled a piece of hair around her finger, and was shocked into silence when Alec reached up to tuck the stray lock behind her ear. “You know, that used to drive me crazy, the way you played with your hair. It still does, but in a different way.” He leaned over and kissed her, a sweet brush on the lips. She heard one of Miranda’s cousins yell “Public Display of Affection!”, and she broke off the kiss, blushing.

“Whose benefit was that for?” she asked him.

“No one but mine and yours,” he said. “Did you mean what you said about being over Scott?”

“Of course I did,” she said, looking straight at him. He wore another one of his polo shirts, this one red, but he had on jeans, tight in all the right places. That first day she had seen him on the elevator, she’d thought no man could be that gorgeous, but he looked even better today than he had all those months ago.

“But that was the whole reason you didn’t want to come here, remember?”

She took his hand and steered him under the shade of a nearby tree. “You can be sad about something and still think that it turned out okay in the long run. I was upset because of Scott, of course, but also because the whole thing told me something I didn’t want to know about Miranda. Or Scott. I didn’t want to think the people I loved could be that shallow.”

“But you wanted to marry Scott,” Alec said stubbornly.

Claire laughed. “There are a lot of people here who would tell you that doesn’t put him in a very select category. But let me try to explain.” They sat down on a nearby rock. “Those guys before Scott…”

“Brad, Brian, Rick and Russ,” Alec interrupted.

“You remembered,” she said, pleased in spite of herself. “These guys, who wouldn’t take I won’t marry you’
for an answer, didn’t fall in love with the real me. I can be sweet, sure, but as you know, I can also be pretty darn sour.”

“And sharp-tongued,” Alec said.

“That, too,” she admitted. “When Scott and I started dating, I thought he loved me for the real me. And maybe that was true. But he didn’t love the real me enough to give up the chance to go to New York with Miranda.”

“What if you had gone to New York with him instead of Miranda?” Alec asked.

“I can’t say,” she said. “I don’t know if we’d still be together, and I don’t know that he would have written any more novels with me than he wrote with her.”

“What about you, though?” Alec asked. “What would you be doing?”

“I think I would have still found my calling. I think journalism is what I was meant to do. When my front of the paper stories start coming out, I want to be able to see that they really have meaning for the people I write about.”

“You really believe that what you write matters?” Alec asked.

“Don’t you?” He looked so uncomfortable and stricken by the question that she moved on to something else. “Thanks to Miranda’s book, you know all the secrets of my love life. I know you dated Lissa, but who else?”

He seemed honestly shocked. “How did you know about that?”

“She told me.”

“And I thought you didn’t gossip.”

“I don’t gossip,” she said, squeezing his arm. “I just listen very well. She never told me about anyone else you dated, though, so tell me about all the old loves out there pining away for you.”

He cupped her chin with his hand and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I’ve never met anyone I wanted to get
serious about. I guess I never realized what I was looking for.”

“And what’s that?” she asked, half out of breath from his light touch.

“Someone who gets under my skin,” he said. “Someone who keeps me off balance. Someone who surprises me.”

He bent toward her, as though he were going to give her another one of those marvelous kisses, but suddenly stopped and gestured to the land nearest the house. “See that little dot in the sun hat?” he asked Claire, straightening up.

She shook her head. “Not really,” she said, squinting at the distance.

“It’s Miranda. Listen, I’ve got to get her to talk to me. This is great. I brought my tape recorder with me,” he said, patting his pocket as he stood. Claire pulled him back down.

“Alec,” she said, “we’re having a meaningful discussion here. I don’t think this is exactly the time for you to rush off, chasing Miranda.”

“Claire, I’d love to hang out with you all day. But this story is going in the next issue. That’s just days away,” he said.

“Oh, I forgot,” she said, knowing she was going to sound hateful but unable to stop herself. “Ridgeville residents don’t buy enough copies of the
National Enquirer
to be able to figure out what Miranda’s up to now.”

His face darkened. “If that person in the sun hat were a company executive dumping toxic waste in south Ridgeville, you’d be the one running down the hill.”

“That’s different,” Claire said.

“Why? Because
Weekly Tribune
readers care a lot more about industrial bad guys than they do about blond actresses? I don’t think you know your reader very well.”

“I don’t think you do,” Claire said. The set of his jaw made it clear she had angered him, and she went on, making an attempt to smooth over what she’d said. “I think if you’d give the people some real journalism, they’d want even more of it. I don’t disapprove of you trying to get this story about Miranda. I disapprove of you acting like it’s the most important story you’ll ever write.”

So much for smoothing things over. Alec grabbed his tape recorder and took a few steps away from her. “When you get down off your ethical high horse, let me know,” he said.

“I’ll get down from my high horse the day you become a little less…” She paused, knowing she shouldn’t say it. “Shallow,” she finished, and watched as he tightened his shoulders before walking down the hill toward Miranda.

9

“T
HE SUN IS SHINING
, and it’s a beautiful morning. It’s a day that just calls out, Mick. Why don’t you write about the recent city council meeting and that distinguished wedding you attended?”

Mick lifted his head off Lissa’s desk and glared at Hank. He said, “Coffee,” and Hank put a steaming cup down on the desk across from him.

Mick looked outside at the clear day. “Was there a thunderstorm last night or was that one of the nightmares that came from sleeping with my head crooked?”

“No, it was real,” Hank said. “I had to shut the computers off and work on Alec’s stories by hand, but I got a couple of them re-created and entered into the computer this morning. By looking at the assignment sheet, I’ve also been able to put back together a few of Lissa’s stories. She left names in her notebook, and her stories are all the same anyway.” Together he and Mick said, “I went to a wedding, the food was okay, the women were pleasant and the bride was pale.”