The Fiance Thief (17 page)

Mick nodded. “Sounds like you’ve got the formula down pat at least. How about writing my stories?”

“No can do.” Hank sat down at his computer. “Tell me all about that city council meeting. You talk, and I’ll type.”

“Let’s see,” Mick said. “I went to the municipal building. I looked around to see if there was anyone there I wanted to avoid….”

“WAKE UP. The sun’s out. We’re free to go.” Not sure where she was or who was addressing her, Lissa opened her eyes to see an incredibly good-looking man looming over her. Who was he? More importantly, would he someday inherit a thriving manufacturing plant or palatial estate?

She sat up and looked around. This looked like Mick’s house. It was Mick’s house. The whole thing came back to her and woke her up in a matter of seconds. Scott. Cute he might be, but in the end, she told herself, way too much trouble to justify. Unless, of course, he had a lot of money. She hadn’t had an occasion to ask him about that yet.

“Is there coffee?” she yawned.

“Great coffee. Your friend has taste.”

“Mick?” She shook her head. “No, he doesn’t. Isn’t he here yet?”

“Nobody but you and me. I hope nothing happened to him.” At Lissa’s questioning glance he said, “Because you’d be upset.”

“That’s sweet of you,” she said, genuinely touched. “But I’d get over it, really.” Privately she wondered where this altruistic streak had come from. And why was he in such a bouncy mood? He’d even brought her suitcase up from the car. As she toddled off to get ready, cup of coffee in hand, she wondered if Scott’s good mood had to do with the prospect of winning Claire back. For the first time, she considered the idea that she might be just setting him up for heartbreak, and was surprised to find herself bothered by the idea.

They locked up the house and hid the key in the same spot. Scott behind the wheel, they tore out of the driveway, flying past the downed mailbox at the bottom.

Near the end of Mick’s road, she saw a man holding up a sign that said Slow.

“Whoa,” she and Scott yelled at once, as he put the brakes on quickly. The car lurched, spun a little, then spun
back as they came to a stop just a few feet shy of a mammoth tree lying across the road.

The power tools the men were using didn’t seem to be making a dent in its hundreds-of-years-old flesh. Lissa and Scott got out and approached a man standing to the side of the work.

“You’d better watch your speedometer, son,” the man said. “Ivy’s grown over the speed limit signs, but it’s thirty miles an hour around here.”

Scott ignored the man’s admonishments. “How long’s it going to take to get this out of the way?”

“All day I guess.”

“We need to get to Loudon,” Lissa said. “Can you tell us how to do that?”

“Wait for the tree to get cut up,” the man said. “This is a dead-end road.”

“No,” Lissa said, her cry one of agony. “We can’t.”

“If you had a boat, you could get there that way.”

Scott was shaking his head in disgust, but Lissa said, “A boat? We have a boat.”

“We do?” Scott asked.

Lissa bobbed her head up and down. “Back at the house. A pontoon boat. One of those flat party boats. We’ll be in Loudon in no time.”

“Not ten minutes from here by water,” the man agreed. Scott and Lissa got back into the car. “The speed limit,” the man yelled after them, as Scott floored it on the way back to Mick’s.

T
HE LUNCH BUFFET
was set up inside, in the casual dining room. The fruit and yogurt she’d had earlier didn’t have much staying power, and Claire’s stomach rumbled as she walked into the house, intending to grab a sandwich and take it back to her desk. With Alec out of the way, maybe she could get some work done. She ignored the voice that told her she’d rather have Alec tucked away beside her than
all the sandwiches and typewriters in the world. Looking at the spot where she and Alec had kissed the night before, she felt a hunger and an ache that had nothing to do with the food set out on the buffet table.

“I’m glad you made it.” She turned to see Roger standing beside her. “I hate to eat alone.”

A bit flustered, Claire said, “Oh, I wasn’t going to eat here. I’ve got some work to do in my room.”

He gave her that dazzling cinematic smile. “You can’t take fifteen minutes to sit at a table and eat with me?”

Her plate full, he steered her toward a seat. “You don’t know how nice it feels to talk to somebody who knows something about the world outside of Hollywood.”

“Have you gotten to see a lot of Miranda this weekend?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “No, I’ve barely been able to say two words to her. When she gets involved in something, she goes all out after it.”

“Believe me, I knew that too well,” Claire said.

Roger blushed. “I didn’t have to bring up what happened between you and Miranda. You know, she wouldn’t have invited you if she hadn’t thought that maybe you two could still be friends somehow.”

“Do you think so?” Claire asked, interested. Friends with Miranda. That was something she hadn’t seriously considered when she’d packed her three suitcases for this trip. She’d never dreamed there would be a day when she could look at Miranda without seeing a ghost image of Scott standing beside her. This weekend, though, she was having a hard time remembering exactly what Scott looked like.

There was no denying that there were things about Miranda that had always fascinated her. Miranda had had a sense of personal style from the day she started mismatching her socks at age six. She’d never hesitated with a wisecrack or joke, even if it meant ticking off someone
important. She was the first one to say “get lost” to a group of annoying guys at a bar, even as Claire had decided to suffer their company in silence. Claire would have probably been engaged to a whole other cast of losers if Miranda hadn’t been there to stand up for her.

But she had her faults, too. She’d never cared how her actions affected other people. She envied things—everything from Starr McCoy’s “Charlie’s Angels” lunch box to their college suitemate’s candy red convertible. And she had minimal impulse control.

This is not a woman who would be very understanding if she caught you out with her boyfriend. “Are you sure Miranda won’t mind if she sees us eating together?” Claire asked.

“Don’t be silly,” Roger said. “Miranda wants me to make sure you have a good time on this trip, considering that you have every reason in the world not to be here.”

“Did she tell you that?” Claire asked.

“Not exactly,” Roger said. “But I know she’s thinking it.”

Just then, Claire heard an unfamiliar voice say, “How did you get rid of that reporter?” Eavesdropping was one of her best tricks in trade, and she’d developed an unconscious habit of tapping into conversations around her just long enough to figure out whether she needed to hear them or not.

The question was answered by Miranda, walking into the room as she spoke. “I told him to meet me by the frog pond. He’s cute, but, man, is he a pest.”

Roger’s back was to Miranda, and if he had heard her enter the room at all, he hadn’t let on. There was nothing to do except pretend that she didn’t know Miranda was in the room until the actress actually ventured to their table.

Claire looked up when Miranda tapped a long fingernail on their table. “Hey, Miranda. How are you?”

Her smile was tight. “Did the two of you have a nice lunch?”

Claire groaned theatrically. “I can’t believe how wonderful this food is, Miranda. It’s so nice of you to feed us so well.”

Miranda looked down her nose at the remnants of the sandwich on Claire’s plate. “Claire, you had pimiento cheese.”

“But it was your mother’s homemade pimiento, wasn’t it?” Claire asked, praying that it was.

“Well, yes,” Miranda admitted, plopping down in the seat next to Roger, who leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. It didn’t seem to placate her.

“I can always tell the difference,” Claire said. She put her napkin down on the plate and started to stand up.

“Don’t go on my account,” Miranda said, accepting a plate from her personal trainer and frowning at its contents.

“Oh, I’m not,” Claire said, unable to believe how nervous she was in front of her old friend. This was the Miranda she’d had to comfort after she’d been laughed out of the changing room in seventh-grade gym class for being the only one who still didn’t wear a bra. This was the Miranda who had called Claire the morning after she’d spent the night with Trent Daniels. There was nothing Miranda could do to her. Except steal Alec, a warning voice said. Ridiculous. Alec wasn’t Claire’s to steal.

“I’ll give you guys some time alone,” Claire said.

“Christine is going to want to interview the two of us together sometime,” Miranda said. “I’m afraid we’re behind schedule, so I don’t know exactly when it will be.”

“You know where to find me,” Claire said.

She left, wondering if she should go retrieve Alec from his lonely post at the frog pond. She decided that he could take care of himself. Besides, it wasn’t like he hadn’t abandoned her, midkiss, to chase after Miranda. Let him
grow moss-covered down by the water. She really did have work to do.

S
INCE
A
LEC HAD HEARD
a great deal on the news about an apparent worldwide shortage of frogs, he thought he should bring all those alarmed scientists down to the Craigs’ pond, where he had just spent at least half an hour being tormented by the amphibians’ croaks. Every “ribbit” was designed to sound like “idiot.” He was surrounded by a crowd of critics, all telling him what he already knew. Claire didn’t respect him, and Miranda was playing him for a fool.

Passing the time with the pondside crowd had given him plenty of opportunities to brood about his argument with Claire. Last week, he would have had a good laugh at the expense of anyone who’d asked him whether it was possible that he and Claire could ever be right for each other. This past day and a half, though, had made that possibility not only realistic but tempting. Now he was back to the divide that had existed between them earlier.

He was the kind of guy who wanted to bulldoze farms for upscale housing developments, and she was the kind of girl who encouraged the commonfolk to lie down in front of the bulldozers. He was all flash and style, and she was nothing if not rock-solid substance wrapped up in deceptive packaging. She was all integrity. He was, as she’d said, shallow. He plopped down on a grassy spot on the bank. He hadn’t always been shallow, he told himself in his own defense. Claire only thought that because she was new to this business. She was still at that neophyte save-the-world stage. She didn’t know yet how quickly her ambitions would whither, how skeptical she would become about any story that didn’t arrive via fax machine or as a result of drinks with some political insiders at the local bar. Although Alec had once wanted to turn the town on its ear
with the paper, he was now content simply to make less spelling and grammar errors than the daily. When exactly had that happened? he wondered.

“I’m so glad you’re still here,” he heard someone yell. He looked up to see Miranda flying down the hill toward him. She looked like a commercial—in fact, during her early days, hadn’t she played in a commercial in almost this setting? Lavender-scented soap, he recalled. He stood, and she reached him at last and took him by the arm.

“You won’t believe the trouble I had getting away from everybody at the house. And all the time I was thinking, Alec’s at the frog pond, and he’s going to think I was trying to stand him up.” The corners of her mouth turned down a little. “Please say you forgive me.”

“Of course,” he said. The scientists also talked about the hallucinogenic properties of some frogs. Had he caught some of that in the air, or was Miranda really apologizing to him?

She went on. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about how the
Weekly Tribune
wasn’t around when I played Elena in
Uncle Vanya,
and that it’s not really fair to punish you for what the daily did.”

“Right,” Alec said. “Plus, this would be one way of maybe getting back at them. They know that you’re never going to give them an interview—for good reason, of course. They’d hate it if they saw that you had decided to take your story to us.”

Miranda was nodding thoughtfully. “You’re right, you know. I don’t have to be anywhere for a couple of hours. Is this a good time for you?”

“Perfect,” Alec said. He couldn’t understand his good fortune, although he was trying not to question it. But the only explanation he could think of was that the kind things Claire had said about Miranda had softened her up.

He switched his tape recorder on, and they chatted as they walked toward the lake. Alec clarified the basics of
what he knew about Miranda’s career, while trying not to duplicate questions he knew she’d been asked many times before. They sat down on the pier beside the lake, and Miranda slipped her shoes off, dangling her feet off the pier toward the water. Alec remembered that he had dreamed about this moment, Miranda confiding to him at lakeside. But as he looked off toward the shore, all he could think of was Claire. Did she ever sit on the bank of her lake? What went through her head when she was there?

“What are you thinking about?” Miranda asked him.

Alec came back to earth and grinned at Miranda. “I’m supposed to be interviewing you, not the other way around.” He ran through some possible answers that didn’t involve Claire. “I was wondering if you ever miss sitting beside this lake when you’re in California or New York.”

“I miss it a lot, actually,” she confided. “It’s funny—as soon as I had the money, I built this house for my parents so they could go fishing. I always say it’s my home, too, but that’s the kind of thing I left Tennessee to escape. Now, sometimes when I’m eating lunch at some really trendy place, I wish I was sitting here with a bologna sandwich.”

Alec took a good look at her. She seemed sincere. She continued, “I’m not saying I’m sorry I left. I like what I do, and I wouldn’t want to work in some office or some restaurant. I didn’t really have any other plans.”

Alec restrained himself from filling the silence, wanting to give Miranda a chance to share more of her thoughts. Instead, she asked him another question. “What about you? Did you want to do something besides be the editor of the
Tribune?”