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Authors: Tracy South

Tags: #Romance, #Fiction, #Contemporary

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BOOK: The Fiance Thief
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Far be it from Claire to know exactly how far down the road she lived, although she had guessed it was about three miles. Instead, she had given him the names of subdivisions, and he grew increasingly uncomfortable as he eyed the minimansions in Belle Meade Estates, Knottingwood Forest and Riversound. Riversound? Hey, people, it’s a lake, he thought to himself. A fairly boring one at that. Still, waterfront property was waterfront property, and he wondered how Claire could afford to have a house out here. Miranda’s book hadn’t said Claire was rich.

She wasn’t. As he took the gravel road right past the entrance to Westchester Court—”across from what used to be a huge ditch, but then some teenager fell in and they filled it, even though he was okay”—he saw a small frame bungalow at the top of the hill. He rolled up the driveway, his tires crunching on the rocks, and parked next to the house. Before he went to the door, he wanted to confirm a suspicion he had. He started to climb on his car, but then considered his new wax job. Instead, he sized up a tree at the back of the house and shimmied up it, careful not to rip his khakis as he did so. Peering through the branches, he could see a few rickety old buildings to his left, along with what looked to be the crumbling foundation of a house. At the bottom of the hill was the lake. Just as he’d
thought. You could fit a whole subdivision on Claire’s property—two, if people didn’t mind their neighbors saying “Bless you” when they sneezed inside their own homes. All that property, all that water, and all of it wasted on the impractical Claire.

“What are you doing in my tree? Making sure you weren’t followed by a rival reporter?”

A muffled curse escaped his lips as he hit his head on the branch above him. Clutching his head with one hand, he lowered himself down to the ground with the other, and found himself face-to-face with Claire. At least, he thought it was Claire. There was a resemblance in the face, sure, but her wide amber eyes were highlighted against her pale skin, and her lips and cheeks were bright and—there was no other word for it—inviting. Her hair waved out over her shoulders, and the sun captured its copper glints. Alec caught himself staring at the simple white dress that hugged her chest, shimmered over her hips and halted unexpectedly at midthigh.

Unbusinesslike thoughts were racing through his head, but he managed to refrain from saying any of them. Instead, he settled on, “You’re wearing that?”

Her mouth twisted into the frown he knew she reserved for him alone. It was Claire, all right. “What’s wrong with it?”

Nothing was wrong with it. That was precisely the trouble. “It’s so…”

“So…? So what exactly? Come on, Alec. You know lots of adjectives.” She crossed her arms. “Would you like to borrow a thesaurus?”

He changed the subject back to one that put him in a more favorable light. “I would have been here a lot sooner, except that your directions took me past every roadside stand and home-based flea market in the county. I don’t know why you didn’t tell me your house was just off of Exit 10.”

Claire was walking back toward the house, and he scrambled to catch up. As she held the screen door for him, she said, “There’s more to see if you travel the back roads. The interstate’s so boring, don’t you think?”

“Efficient. That’s the adjective for the interstate,” he said. As Claire disappeared from the living room into a hallway, he surveyed what he could see of the small house. The kitchen was a cluttered and funky area filled with older-model appliances and knickknacks straight out of the 1950s. Yellow linoleum flooring gave way to hard wood to mark where the kitchen ended and the living/ dining room began. Books were stacked all over the dining room table, and magazines were nestled among the pillows on the faded pin-striped sofa. The refinished wood was partly covered by a comfortable cotton rug. The framed prints hanging on the walls—Edward Hopper and a few artists he didn’t recognize—lent a quirkiness to the homey feel of the place.

He was going through her bookshelves when Claire came back into the room, hauling one, two, three suitcases behind her.

“You’re only going to be gone three nights,” he said. “You wear a suitcase full of clothes everyday?”

“I was a Girl Scout,” she said. “I’m always prepared.”

He grabbed two of the suitcases and took them to his car, Claire following him with the last one. “It’s the Boy Scouts who are prepared, remember? Of which I was one. I only have one suitcase and the bag my computer gear is in.”

She didn’t answer him, simply walked back into the house. “I have to make sure I didn’t forget anything,” she told him. She peered at the on/off switches of each appliance. “So, anyway, you never told me what you were doing in my tree.”

This was something he had only recently noticed about Claire. When she asked something, she never let it rest
until she got the answer she wanted, like that thing about whether or not XYZ corporation was doing whatever in south Ridgeville. Normally, he would have said such persistence was the sign of a good reporter. In her case, he chalked it up to Claire’s being stubborn.

“I was…uh…looking to see if your house was on the lake. I noticed there was a lake out here. Umm…Boy, that must be fun for you, huh?” Was it his imagination, or was he stammering? He had never heard caution or unease in his voice before. He’d only been in Claire’s house five minutes, and he was already acting like her.

“Why didn’t you ask me if I lived on the lake? Or even walk down the hill and see?”

“I was being sort of…well, not secretive, but…” His voice trailed off.

Her remark was almost too quiet to hear. “Yeah, you were real inconspicuous up in that oak.”

“I’m sorry. What did you say?” He pointed to his right ear. “I played guitar in a band in college, and it left me with a slight hearing problem.”

“That’s too bad,” Claire said. “If you need any help eavesdropping this weekend, let me know.” She cut off the drip in her sink faucet, and closed and locked the kitchen window. “I’ve got to make sure I turned off the TV in my room,” she said. “Be right back.”

When she returned, carrying her purse, he said, “I guess you get really tired of people telling you how much money you could make by selling this land.”

She fished an earring out of her purse and put it on, then found the other one. “Everyone who knows me knows that’s a useless conversation.”

“I bet your neighbors don’t think so.” He hadn’t meant to get into this topic at all, but her amused expression spurred him on. “I’d say they think that since the demographics of this area have changed, that it really isn’t fair for one person to be able to buck that tide.”

“Wait a minute,” she said. As soon as he heard the indignation in her voice, he remembered the passion she’d brought to her argument about going to Miranda’s. “My grandparents, and their grandparents, lived out here way before it was fashionable. They were farmers, and this was considered the sticks. No one wanted to drive out this far. But now that people are so accustomed to zipping along the interstate in their BMWs and—” she looked out the window at his car “—Hondas, they think they should have all the prime real estate. Well, I think it’s okay if I hold on to this land.”

“Where would the country be if everyone had that attitude about progress?” he asked her. As soon as he’d said it, he knew he’d lost.

“I guess it would still be in the hands of the Native Americans, wouldn’t it?” she said sweetly.

He looked at his watch. “Miss Hollywood’s going to think you chickened out on bringing your fiancé. We’d better get moving.” He watched as she turned the key in the dead bolt and gave the door a good hard shake.

“I guess that’s it,” she said. She looked all too confident and cheery. He stopped her as she got into the car. “By the way, Claire. That tree in your backyard? It’s a maple. If I were you, I’d call your old Girl Scout leader. I don’t think your parents got their money’s worth out of the organization.”

“D
AY ONE WITHOUT
our leader. Will we be able to pull together as a team? Or will we give in to laxness and ennui? The heart and soul of the newspaper depend on the two writers seated here,” Hank said as he stood in front of Lissa’s desk looking down at her.

Lissa scanned her desk for the nearest unbreakable, nonlethal object to toss at Hank. It was a pencil. “Will you quit it already with the bad Twilight Zone’ imitation? I
have a lot on my mind today without being plagued by you.”

Catching the pencil in one hand, Hank went back to work, and Lissa curled up in her seat, trying to make herself comfortable.

She was lost in her daydreams, this close to drifting off into a tempting catnap when Hank asked, “Like what?”

Lissa jerked her head up. “Like a lot on my mind.”

“For instance.”

“For instance, I’m wondering how to cover that barbecue cook-off tonight. I’m now a vegetarian.”

“Since when?” Hank asked.

Lissa crumpled up the bag that had held that morning’s grilled chicken and biscuit. “Since breakfast.”

“Since you’ve already broken your vows today, you should become one tomorrow, after the story’s done.”

Hank sounded too much like Alec when he said things like that. This was something Lissa was going to have to nip in the bud, or today and Monday were going to be unbearable. “To borrow a quaint phrase you may remember from your childhood, you are not the boss of me. This just came to me, right after breakfast, as something I had to do. I’m not the kind of woman who puts idealism on hold.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s Claire’s influence. She’s a vegetarian.”

Hank busied himself looking for something on his desk. “Yes, but Claire lacks a lot of your more carnivorous aspects.”

“Well, her life would be a lot different if she knew how to get her claws out every once in a while.”

Hank’s disdain for gossip was notorious, so Lissa was surprised when he said, “How so?”

“How so what?”

“How would her life be different?”

She wanted to comment about his new interest in his coworkers’ personal lives, but the office was a barren and
empty place today, and she couldn’t afford to alienate her one hope for conversation. She began to share her theories about Claire.

“If she had gone up to New York to try to get Scott back from Miranda, he would have come back. Just from reading between the lines in that book, I can tell that Scott and Miranda knew they’d made a mistake. They were probably praying for Claire to give them an excuse to break up. But because she gave up, she lost him.”

Hank had been typing away at his computer while she talked, but when she finished, he looked up and said, “Maybe she was relieved.”

Lissa shook her head. “Didn’t you see that faraway look in her eyes when his name came up the other day? Then she practically burst into tears when she talked to Miranda’s mother about him.”

“I wasn’t paying attention.”

He was a promising student, Lissa thought, but he was going to have to have a lot more practice at this. “She still loves him. I’ve been trying to think of a way to help her get on with her life, but I’m clueless. Short of getting Scott back, I don’t know what’s going to do it.”

As soon as she’d said it, she looked at Hank, who met her gaze with some alarm. “I can’t believe I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “But no, you can’t. It’s impossible, immoral and it will ruin Alec’s story.”

“It isn’t impossible. I bet I could find Scott without much trouble at all. And it would make Claire happy. Anyway, by the time he gets there, Alec should have his story already.”

“What about Alec and Claire?” Hank asked.

Lissa waved a hand at him. “We can work around this phony engagement thing. Don’t worry about that.”

“What if it isn’t as phony as we think? Not the engagement, I mean, but the two of them. You know.”

Let a man think he understands a little bit about human behavior, and all of the sudden he’s declaring himself an expert on the subject. “There is nothing going on between them,” Lissa said.

“What makes you so sure?”

Slowly, patiently, as though she were explaining the birds and the bees to someone very young, Lissa tried to tell him why Claire and Alec could never be a couple. “There are two kinds of people in this world. Fling people, and commitment people. Commitment people are the kind who wind up getting engaged to almost everyone they date—like Claire. Fling people can go out a lot, but never have a serious relationship—like Alec.”

“You don’t think the two can ever be happy?”

“Rarely,” Lissa said. “And certainly not in the case of Claire and Alec, all other differences aside. That would be like you and…” She started to say, “and me,” but she didn’t want to give him any ideas. Instead she said, “Miranda.”

“Don’t ask me for help,” Hank said, turning back to his work.

“I won’t need it,” Lissa said. She got straight to work, took a sheet of paper out of her desk and wrote “Find Scott” on it. There, that was a start. She underlined the phrase. Scott…Scott who? She opened up her desk drawer, hoping Alec had replaced her copy of the Miranda Craig biography, but it wasn’t there. She went to his desk and rifled through the drawers, but didn’t see it there, either. Now how was she supposed to find out Scott’s last name?

“I need your help,” she told Hank.

“I’m not aiding and abetting this crime you’re trying to pass off as an act of friendship,” he said.

“Don’t be melodramatic.” Lissa relished being able to say that to someone else. “You know that seminar we were supposed to go to, the one where we learned how to do research
from data bases? Remember how I met that cute stockbroker at registration and never quite made it there? Well, now I need to know how to find something.”

Everyone had a weak spot. As she’d hoped, Hank wasn’t able to resist an appeal to his skills and his knowledge, and he turned over his terminal. Caught up in the challenge of tracking down the information, he seemed to forget his concerns about the wisdom of what she was doing. Fortunately, Lissa remembered the year Miranda dropped Scott, and they were able to locate stories about her using that date and Scott’s first name.

Hank called up a full-text version of one of the stories. Lissa, reading over his shoulder, stopped when she came to the flagged term “Scott.”

BOOK: The Fiance Thief
13.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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