The Fiance Thief (5 page)

Claire seemed genuinely puzzled. “Odd how?”

“If you really cared about him, I wouldn’t think you would bring him anywhere near her.”

“I don’t think so, Lissa.” Claire’s denial seemed sincere. “I think if I really cared about him, I’d trust him so absolutely that I wouldn’t mind if he were introduced to other women.”

Alec cleared his throat. “Could you stop talking about me like I’m the teenaged bride in an arranged marriage?”

The two women ignored him. “Whatever you say,” Lissa told her. “But don’t be surprised if she asks you about it.”

Claire made the connection quickly, and Lissa nonchalantly flipped through a magazine while she waited for the small talk to pass. Claire missed Mrs. Craig’s cornbread, yack yack yack. She was so excited to be able to see the new house, yack yack yack. Lissa stifled a yawn.

She put the magazine down when Claire finally broached the subject of Alec, literally squirming as she lied to the woman. Lissa was just glad Mrs. Craig couldn’t see Claire’s guilty expression.

“How’s it going?” Lissa mouthed. She didn’t have to wait very long for an answer. Claire listened intently for a moment, then gulped a little, her cheeks reddening again and that same grim expression taking over.

“No, Barbara, I know that she’s not the sort of person who acts out of malice. Whatever she’s done she’s done out of her incredible spontaneity.”

Oh, really. Surely the old lady wasn’t going to fall for that. She must have, though, because Claire was once again on the listening end of the conversation.

“Barbara, I know what you’re trying to say.”

Uh-huh, Lissa thought. I bet I do, too.

Claire let out a kind of strangled laugh. “I don’t have any worries in that department. I mean, he seems like the most wonderful man in the world to me, but what would Miranda want with him?”

Alec’s expression darkened, and he stomped back to his desk. He left before he could see the expression Lissa caught as Claire looked toward the ground and said into the phone, “No, you’re right. Scott was no prize, either, was he? No, Barbara, I wasn’t worried about him—I knew all along he wouldn’t be there.”

There was eavesdropping, and then there was making a spectacle out of someone’s psychic pain. Having none of her own, and wanting to keep it that way, Lissa stopped paying attention to Claire’s increasingly despondent tone and turned her computer on for the first time that morning.

She looked up again when she heard Alec say, “Hey, Claire. Thanks for making me sound like Clark Kent.”

Claire said nothing, only went to her computer, turned it on and began typing in that same mindlessly dedicated way she always did.

“So what’s the deal?” Alec asked. “Can I go or not?”

“You can go.” At Claire’s distressed tone, Lissa looked up to see someone who was about to go on an all-out crying jag. Her eyes were blinking rapidly behind her glasses, her nose looked like she’d been out on an all-night drinking binge and her voice was cracking. Lissa was about to offer a sympathetic word or two when Claire bolted out of her chair and ran for the stairwell. To the ladies’ room, no doubt.

Alec stared after her. “Can you explain that to me?” he asked Lissa.

“Not so you’d understand,” she said sarcastically, and continued her one-word-per-minute typing routine. The slow pace of her work left her with plenty of time to think about other things. Plenty of time to think of a way to help out poor Claire.

3

“Y
OU DON’T KNOW
what I would do to have this hair,” Claire’s friend Allie told her as she whipped a wide-toothed comb through Claire’s brown locks. “It’s thick, it’s heavy. There’s a lot of it. You could work hair like this.” Allie and Claire had been having this argument since high school. Then, as now, Claire simply ignored her.

She didn’t know what she was doing at Allie’s Designs of Your Life Hair Studio anyway, not when tomorrow was
The Day.
Whatever she could do for her looks tonight was not going to rival the kind of beauty support team Miranda was sure to have working for her. Changing her looks would only make Alec think she was insecure about this trip. Unless he didn’t notice at all. Now there was a comforting thought.

Growing up, people had always defined Miranda and Claire by their differences. Claire was the quiet one, Miranda the outgoing one. Claire smart, Miranda funny. She winced when she thought of the other distinction. Back then, Miranda was referred to as the tomboy, and Claire was the pretty one.

The same people who’d once said it was lucky that the awkwardly teenage Miranda had such a fun personality were now falling all over themselves to say they always knew what a beauty she’d grow up to be. Grateful that people had finally stopped comparing her to Miranda, Claire never paid any attention to her appearance at all, except for availing herself of the opportunity to blend in
with the walls whenever possible. She knew that drove Allie crazy.

“It’s not enough to keep your hair clean, Claire,” Allie said. “You need a style.”

Claire made a face at her in the mirror. Allie’s idea of a hairstyle inevitably involved hot rollers, cases of hair spray and at least two hours of labor each morning. No thanks.

“I have bangs,” she said.

“Bangs are not a style.”

“I can’t fit complicated hair into my life,” she said, as the stylist snipped her split ends with an expert hand.

Allie snorted. “I know what your life involves, Claire. Going to movies by yourself and sitting at home writing. You could hang out in curlers all day and no one would notice.”

“Thanks,” Claire said. It was true that she’d spent as little time in the office as possible this week, trying to avoid Alec. Since she’d stood up to him about the invitation, she hadn’t exactly been the same quivering mass of jelly he knew and disdained. It would be great if she could keep up the act, but she didn’t trust her new composure. Look at that embarrassing minibreakdown she’d had after talking to Barbara Craig. She didn’t want to be in the middle of some brave speech to Alec, then start to stammer and stumble at the crucial point.

Allie looked at her with a critical eye. “At least let’s give your hair a little color. Something that will bring out the copper glints that are already there.”

Claire lifted a lock of hair and looked at it. “I’m just grateful it isn’t gray.”

“Gray hair should be the least of your worries,” Allie said in the conspiratorial stage whisper she used before she launched into an especially choice piece of gossip. “I heard that Miranda got so stressed out on the set of her last movie that her hair fell out and she had to use falls.”

“Where did you hear that?” Claire asked.

“From her cousin, Chris. I saw him at the grocery store.”

She should have guessed. Every time Claire ran into Chris, he had a new revelation. “I’m surprised anyone buys those gossip mags at all,” Claire said. “With him stationed by the impulse rack, waiting to tell people what he’s already spilled to them.”

Allie acted as though she didn’t hear her. “He also said she’s throwing this big Miranda lovefest on the lake, for her friends and family, and that Christine Colby is going to film and air the thing. She’s invited a bunch of people there to say how wonderful she is for the cameras.”

Claire shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “That sounds interesting,” she said. But even though she’d successfully fibbed to Barbara Craig days before, that had been over the telephone, and Barbara’s limited skill for seeking out scandal was no match for Allie’s.

“You’re going, aren’t you? That’s why you made this appointment.” Claire nodded. “If I have to handcuff you to this chair with spiral rollers, you’re getting some red in your hair.”

Allie had to be filled in on all the details of the trip. Although she and Claire had been close friends in high school, she and Miranda had never gotten along, probably because it was hard for two people to share center stage gracefully. As Claire told Allie the story of the invitation, she realized how ridiculous it all sounded. Allie, in her inimitable way, got straight to the heart of it.

“You have a crush on this guy, don’t you?” she asked.

Claire balked at such a mundane characterization. “No, I don’t have a crush on him. In fact, I feel kind of ill and disoriented whenever he’s around.”

“Claire, honey,
that is a crush.
You’re out of practice, girl.” The color rinse was finished, and Allie handed Claire a magazine to read while she sat and waited for her hair to
dry. She sat down in the chair next to Claire. “Is he very cute?”

“The poison in his soul far outweighs his outside attractiveness,” Claire said.

“Very cute, then,” Allie said. “And is he seeing anyone?”

Claire had to plead ignorance. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about his personal life besides the fact that he can’t tolerate me. The other woman who works there, Lissa, once hinted to me that they went out when they were in college.”

“Lots of people go out, Claire. They go out on one or two dates, but they don’t feel the need to pursue it any further. Most women don’t consider getting hitched to every man who rings the doorbell.”

“Neither do I, anymore.” Starting tomorrow, she’d be called upon to tell lie after lie, beginning with her and Alec being a couple and continuing on through the moment she pretended to forgive Miranda her trespasses. But she wasn’t lying about what she told Allie. She was too old to keep going out with guys she couldn’t stand just because she couldn’t break it to them that she wasn’t interested. Better to make sure they didn’t notice her at all. And as for the kind of engagement she’d had with Scott—well, she never wanted to give her heart away like that again.

“Do you want my advice?” Allie asked.

“Tell me how I could stop you from giving it to me.”

“I think you should take your new hair and new wardrobe up to the Craigs and enjoy yourself like there’s no tomorrow. Eat great food, drink great wine—oh, wait, the Craigs don’t drink—okay, smuggle in great wine, and let their servants wait on you hand and foot.”

Allie had painted a tempting picture, but Claire was hung up on one of the details. “I didn’t buy a new wardrobe.”

“Not yet.” Allie pointed to the large clock on the wall to the right of Claire. “You’re my last client. When we get out of here, we’re going shopping.”

“I have clothes, Allie. I’m already packed.”

Allie put her finger on her chin in an exaggerated motion. “Let me guess what you consider clothes for the weekend. You were going to pack that midcalf navy skirt you wore to my great-aunt’s funeral, the designer dress you got on clearance even though it’s a little irregular, your faded baggy jeans and that huge white shirt you stole from Scott. To top it all off, a bathing suit with a skirt attached to it, probably one your mother gave you because she considered it too old for her.”

“They’re back in style,” Claire said.

“For people who are planning to time-travel back to the turn of the century,” Allie said. “Look at me.” Claire obeyed. “I look good. But what you see here is work. You’ve seen me without my makeup, or trying to get my hair to hold a curl. Now I look at you and I say, “Gee, Claire’s got great hair, beautiful big eyes, a body Marilyn Monroe herself might have envied, and what is she doing with it? Hiding it all.’“

Claire pretended to read the poster-sized advertisements hung around the room, but Allie went on. “So I ask myself why? Now in high school, Claire might have lost her mascara tube a few times at the bottom of her grocery sack of a purse, and she didn’t always have time to brush her hair thoroughly before class, but at least she wore clothes that fit. She didn’t try to hide how pretty she was. So do you know what I think?”

Claire didn’t answer.

“I think you don’t want anyone to know you’re attractive. You’re terrified that some man will find out how cute and smart and funny you really are, and fall in love with you again.” She shook her head. “I’ve seen your type on Oprah.’“

Claire dismissed Allie’s rant, trying not to dwell on whether or not it was true. “All this free analysis just because I won’t go shopping with you?”

Allie put her brush down and looked Claire straight in the eye. “I’m not going to let you go to Miranda’s looking like some low self-esteem poster child. Look—do you act this shy when you go out on stories?”

“I never get to go out on real stories, probably because Alec thinks I’m too quiet. But in the one I’ve been working on, no, I haven’t been shy.”

“How do you get past it?”

Claire blushed, realizing that what she was about to say might sound silly to her friend. “I pretend I’m a hardhitting, tough-as-nails kind of girl reporter. Sort of like Rosalind Russell in
His Girl Friday.”

Allie was nodding. “So for this weekend, what you do is decide to play the part of self-confident, attractively dressed, assertive young woman. Let that character deal with Miranda and Alec. That’s all you have to do. We’ll go get your costume right now.”

Claire gave her a dubious look, and Allie said, “Don’t worry. We’ll find some compromises between my tastes and yours.”

Claire knew what that meant. Whatever else she came home with, you could bet that at least one of the items would be scarlet and cut to there.

G
IRL DIRECTIONS
.
He should have known that’s what Claire was giving him when he talked to her on the phone the night before. Girl directions relied on landmarks rather than on exact distances, especially if they were landmarks that no longer existed. He, for example, was supposed to look for Mr. Turner’s store on the right, although Claire said Mr. Turner had been dead for almost twenty years and the store, after a number of fly-by-night owners, was now operated by some Yuppie upstarts. Her phrase, not his.
There it was on his right—Gorgonzola and Pine Nuts On Sale, This Week Only.

Girl directions were also marked by a stubborn refusal to use the interstate for its intended purpose—to get from one part of the city to another. So it was that Alec, having spent his morning on the windy, twisting back roads heading into the western part of the county, stuck behind a tractor at one point and stopped by a herd of cows at another, found that the road Claire lived on was just a short hop from an interstate exit, near where their publisher, Mick, lived. He crumpled up the directions he’d scribbled down, and turned left.