The Stranger: The Heroes of Heyday (Harlequin Superromance No. 1266) (11 page)

Mallory didn't say anything. He was telling the story with a lightly sarcastic melodrama, but she wondered whether there might be a touch of true bitterness beneath it all. And yet why should there be? Surely he didn't mind so terribly much that someone had exploited his youth and naiveté. Even the great Tyler Balfour could be forgiven for being foolish at twenty-two.

“She flattered me until I was so bloated with my own importance I couldn't tie my shoes.” His smile seemed to find the young Tyler ridiculous. “In her tight red party dresses, she took me around and introduced me to powerful people I hadn't ever met. And in the red-velvet gown, she introduced me to bedroom tricks I'd never imagined. Naturally, I fell head over heels in love with her.”

“Oh,” Mallory said. She pleated the sheet with her fingertips and wondered what the right thing to say was.

“I didn't sleep for six months, working my regular job during the day, and at night secretly drying her tears, worshipping at her red-velvet breast and gathering my story. Then I proudly turned it in.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Yep. I could hardly wait to see my name on the front page. But, thank God, that's where I finally got lucky. My editor knew the lady and her husband only
by reputation, but apparently that was enough. He recognized it for the total crap it was.”

“What did he do?”

Tyler's smile finally reached his eyes. He made a sound that was clearly a chuckle.

“He printed out my story, walked over to my desk right in front of everyone and dumped the whole thing into my trash can. He said I could either be that rich bitch's pet Chihuahua or I could work for that newspaper, and he didn't much care which, given what an unmitigated moron I seemed to be. He gave me thirty seconds to choose.”

He was laughing openly now, and the sound was infectious. She put her hands over her face and let out a gasp that was half moan, half chuckle. She could just picture it.

“Oh, Tyler,” she said. “How terrible.”

“Yeah, it was probably the most embarrassing thirty seconds of my life. Some of the other reporters knew her and thought she was pretty hot, so they were calling out raunchy suggestions from all over the room. Lots of dog metaphors. The worst thing was that, judging from some of their comments, I could tell one or two of them had spent a good bit of time in her bedroom, too. But at least they hadn't been stupid enough to write the story.”

Mallory smiled. “Well, at least that probably cured you of being in love.”

“You'd think so, wouldn't you?” Tyler shook his head ruefully. “But to tell you the truth I thought about
her for years. Every time I saw a woman in a red dress.” He raised one eyebrow. “Or a Chihuahua.”

They sat there in silence for a few moments, smiling at the poor kid who had been so dumb. Mallory had a few choice thoughts about the lady in the red dress, too.

“Funny,” he said. “I haven't told that story in ten years. Not since I sobered up the next day. I fear I told most of D.C.'s bar scene about it that night.”

She looked at him. She could believe that. The story humanized him, made him seem real and vulnerable. He wouldn't like that. He worked so hard at not being human.

“So why did you tell me? Did you want me to understand why you try not to get personally involved with the people in your stories? I knew that already.”

“No.” He seemed to be studying her, as if he wasn't quite sure of his reasons himself. “I think I told you because you wouldn't let me kiss you.”

“What?”

“Just now. You reminded me of her, if only because you are so different. She was quite comfortable using sex to manipulate the story, to try to get me to write what she wanted me to write. Doing that wouldn't ever have occurred to you, would it?”

“No,” she said, folding the sheet and comforter around her lap neatly and resting her hands in her lap. “It wouldn't occur to most of the women in the world, either. And if you think it would, you've been hanging around in the wrong places, with the wrong people.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, giving her a look she couldn't quite interpret. “I'm beginning to think you may be right.”

 

T
YLER WONDERED
if he was losing his mind.

He stood at the front reception desk of the Heyday Chronic Care Center, looking for someone who might care that, due to a power surge, Elizabeth Rackham's television was broadcasting snow instead of classical music.

He'd just spent about twenty minutes in Mallory's mother's room, feeling like both a fool and an interloper. He didn't belong there. He didn't know what to say to the beautiful, sad-faced woman who lay lost in her coma.

He shouldn't have come. He had met Elizabeth when he was in town three years ago, and probably she hated him just as much as everyone else did. If she had realized who was sitting by her bed, she undoubtedly would have kicked him out on his ear.

But he hadn't come to please Elizabeth. He'd come to please Mallory.

Mallory, stricken to realize that her mother had gone forty-eight hours without a visit, had begun to talk about getting dressed and coming down here. She wasn't well enough for that, and he'd tried hard to stop her.

Then he made the mistake of saying that, if Elizabeth really was in a deep coma, she could have no idea whether she had visitors or not.

Mallory, who had been laughing with him over the old Sonja Jean Mattingly red-dress story just moments before, had turned indignant immediately. Of course her mother knew whether she had company. Of course she knew whether people cared enough to visit.

Tyler realized he was in danger of squandering any goodwill he might have earned by tending Mallory through the flu.

Why he should give a damn about that he wasn't sure. But he did. He wanted her to stop hating him, to stop thinking of him as an unfeeling bastard who had a computer keyboard where his heart should be.

The fact that it just might be true—somehow only made things worse.

So he'd taken another tack. He'd warned her that she couldn't import her flu germs to a nursing facility, where people were weak and vulnerable. She couldn't risk giving her illness to her mother.

At first he'd thought that keeping her safely at home was enough. But when she had lain back, white-faced and disappointed, against her pillow, he had felt a twist of something that felt strangely like guilt.

And so, instead of returning to his own apartment, where he had at least half-a-dozen interviews that needed to be transcribed, he'd trotted down the stairs, climbed into his car and driven to the care center.

And spent the most uncomfortable twenty minutes of his life. What on earth could he say? But just sitting there felt like cheating. Mallory had described how much her mother “loved” chatty, upbeat visits.

So he'd talked about the weather, which was the perfect flowery Shenandoah spring…he'd omitted the gray, nasty rain. He'd talked about Mallory's bookstore…he'd omitted the fact that most of the customers were kooks.

What next? He had to be careful. Nothing about Mindy. Or the book.

But what else could he talk about? Could he say, well, I have to tell you, your daughter is driving me crazy. I'm writing a story about all of you, and that puts her strictly off-limits. But my hands itch from wanting to bury themselves into her hair, and I dream things I'll never admit to anyone.

Of course he couldn't say any of that. He'd eventually found himself talking to Elizabeth Rackham about his problems liquidating the hideous buildings he'd inherited from Anderson. He talked about the leaping zebra house, which, he'd discovered was quite lovely inside, the kind of house he'd want to live in if he ever settled down. Which he had no plans of doing, of course.

He quickly changed subjects. He told her about the stupid carnival-colored diner, and the boxy tract plots in Yarrow Estates, and how he wished he'd inherited something simple and easy to unload.

Like diamonds. Or Krugerrands.

“What exactly are you doing here, young man?”

He looked up to see Aurora York coming through the double glass doors. She was one of Heyday's most interesting characters. She was a bossy, over-the-top
eccentric, but she had a no-nonsense mind he couldn't help admiring. Like that wild Mrs. Milligan from the property offices, most of Aurora's quirks seemed deliberate, not the result of true weirdness.

Plus, she'd endeared herself to Tyler at the bookstore this afternoon by shutting up that whacko Major Beanstaff, who seemed disturbingly interested in alien probes. Aurora had entered the alcove where Beanstaff had Tyler cornered and said loudly, “For God's sake, Mack, give it a rest. Aliens may find your colon fascinating, but I guarantee you the rest of us are sick to death of it.”

“Hi, Aurora,” Tyler said. He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She seemed to like it, though she harrumphed and reached up to adjust the angle of her feathered hat. Tonight the feather was as orange as a pumpkin, and almost as big. “Thanks for the soup. Mallory loved it.”

“Of course she loved it. I make a damn fine chicken soup.” She frowned at him. “But you haven't answered my question. What are you doing here? Visiting Elizabeth? I know you've inherited the McClintock ego, but surely even you don't think you're good enough to squeeze information out of a woman in a coma.”

He smiled. “No. It's just that Mallory's been worrying about leaving her mother alone too long. I thought maybe I could fill the gap.”

“Very interesting.” The intense look Aurora directed at him proved she was telling the truth. “I thought you were Super Journalist. I thought you'd taken vows of
complete detachment. And yet, here you are, in one day playing doctor, bookseller and a little Florence Nightingale on the side. Isn't this coming dangerously close to…getting involved?”

“Journalists do all kinds of things, Aurora. We're just regular people.”

She snorted her skepticism. “There's nothing regular about any of the McClintocks. They do things differently. Or rather, they overdo them, with that fierce McClintock passion.”

“I'm not really a McClintock,” he said, smiling, although he was getting a little sick of repeating that line. “I was raised a Balfour. And I'm afraid an excess of passion is something Balfours have never been accused of.”

“Not a McClintock!” She laughed out loud. “Baloney. Besides, passion shows up in strange ways. Take Kieran, for instance. Until he found Claire, he channeled his McClintock passion into being virtuous. Before Lara, Bryce channeled his into being mad. You have decided to bury yours under a mountain of indifference. But that doesn't mean it's not there.”

Arguing was pointless. She had her mind made up. He opened his mouth to say good-night, but then, to his surprise, she reached out and tucked her hand under his arm.

“Come buy me a candy bar, son. As long as you're pretending to be human today, I'd like to tell you some things about your father.”

Oh, brother, it didn't get much worse than this. Ac
tually, she hadn't been far off in her evaluation of him. He didn't give a damn about most people, including—perhaps especially—Anderson McClintock. Tyler was a professional observer. From inside his sealed bubble of objectivity, he watched people, analyzed them and recorded their behavior.

He'd spent ten years making sure the bubble was airtight. He'd always suspected that even one little crack was enough to screw things up. It started with a trickle, but before long the messy, destructive outside world would just come flooding in.

“Mallory will be waiting,” he said, aware that he was making excuses, and also aware that he was fighting a losing battle. They were already walking down the dimly lit corridor toward the snack room. “Since she's been sick, I've been checking in on her before she goes to sleep.”

“She can wait,” Aurora said testily. “I want to get to know you better. I'd like to find out what you plan to do with all that passion once it busts free.”

Suddenly she stopped in her tracks. “Wait a minute. Have you two already started having sex?”

He had to laugh. Her mental connections were about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

“No,” he said, chuckling. “Even if I
had
inherited the McClintock ego, I draw the line at seducing a woman delirious with fever.”

“Okay, never mind.” Aurora took his arm again. “In that case, she can wait.”

“S
WEETHEART
,”
Freddy said as Mindy led him toward the Home and Hearth Shoppe, “I'm sure I'll love whatever dishes you picked out. I don't need to look at them, honestly.”

Mindy hugged his arm and kept walking. “I know, but I'll feel better once you see them. We've got a few minutes before I have to be back to work, and it's right here, so…”

She wasn't sure why she was so uncomfortable about this fairly inconsequential decision. After all, Freddy's mother, Sarah Earnshaw, had spent the entire afternoon this past Saturday helping her pick it out.

Sarah had insisted that the decision was entirely up to Mindy. But she had hinted and nudged until Mindy had somehow been left with only one choice: an intensely formal gold-and-black-trimmed set of ivory bone china.

To be honest, Mindy had thought the dishes looked slightly funereal. But when she'd dared to admire a livelier pattern, Sarah had laughed merrily, as if Mindy had surely been kidding. “Just imagine how those
tacky flowers would clash with your food,” she'd said with a grimace.

So gold and black and ivory it was. Mindy, who had grown up with simple department-store stoneware, wouldn't have dreamed of going against Sarah's exquisite taste. The thought of playing hostess for all the political dinners Freddy would require was intimidating enough. Mindy couldn't face that future if she knew the guests would be whispering about her tacky china.

“Oh, yeah, very nice,” Freddy said when she pointed it out to him. “Really. It's perfect.”

To his credit, he made an effort to look interested. He even picked up a butter plate and turned it over to read the back. There were no prices on anything in this store, but Mindy had seen a brochure on her new china pattern, and she knew it cost a fortune.

It almost embarrassed her to list it on the gift registry. The Earnshaws' powerful friends might not bat an eye, but Mindy knew that her co-workers would all have to pitch in together just to buy one place setting.

“Hey, look, there's Bill,” Freddy said abruptly. He set the butter plate down, paying little attention to the elegant arrangement. “I'll be right back, Mindy, okay?”

She nodded, though Freddy was already gone. She should have known he'd run into someone he knew, even here. He always did.

She was probably in for a wait. Oh, well. She ran
her fingers idly across the cool, slick surface of her new china, wondering why it made her so uncomfortable.

It wasn't as if the Earnshaws were the first rich people she'd ever met. Heyday might be small, but its tucked-away charm attracted plenty of wealthy people. The McClintocks, for instance.

And Roddy Hartland.

Now that she thought about it, it was probably the awareness of what Roddy would say that made her so queasy about this china. Roddy had more money than even the Earnshaws, but she'd never seen him spend it on stuff like this. He threw wild parties and took exotic trips and bought X-ray machines for the local clinic. He did have a big, fancy house with its own tennis court, but he played on that court with everyone from Kieran McClintock to Jim Stiller, the guy who changed the oil in Roddy's car.

To Mindy, Roddy had always been a surrogate big brother, so his opinion mattered. And he didn't pull any punches. When she was a rebellious sixteen, he'd been the first to tell her she was a jerk for tormenting her mom. When she was twenty, he'd laughed her out of getting a tattoo and run her secret pack of cigarettes through his garbage disposal.

And, recently, when he'd heard she was getting married, he'd told her flat out that she was making a mistake. “Come on, squirt,” he'd said. “Don't be a dork. You can't be happy with a stick like that.”

That had hurt her feelings. The last time she went
home to Heyday, she hadn't even gone by Roddy's house to say hello.

But now, standing here in this perfumed, snooty home store, she found herself wondering what Roddy would say if he knew she planned to eat off dinner dishes that cost more than most people earned in a day.

She could hear him now. “If plates cost more, do they make the food taste better?”

Glancing down at her watch, she realized it was getting late. Darn it. Freddy might have all day to schmooze with potential voters, but she had to be back in ten minutes or get docked a full hour. She needed every penny to pay off the turquoise bikini…and a few other indulgences.

Where was he? She looked around the store, over the tops of gold-leaf chocolate pots and through the cut-glass goblets lined up on shelves like so many crystal soldiers.

Good, he was still nearby, next to the door.

But who was that man he was talking to? Did she know him?

An extremely thin, tall, man.

Suddenly she felt dizzy. Her pulse beat against her temples, and her vision flickered strangely. She squinted, praying she was mistaken.

She wasn't. The man standing next to Freddy was…

It couldn't be…

But it was. It was Dorian Swigert. She thought
she'd probably recognize that skinny, elongated back anywhere on earth.

Oh, God, oh, God.
What did he want with Freddy? What was he saying to Freddy?

She tried to breathe, but her lungs might as well have been made of cement. Only half-conscious of the gesture, she pressed the palm of her hand against her skirt and wiped it, as if she felt something sticky there, something bloody and disgusting and hot.

Oh, God.
She needed more oxygen, or she would faint.

But then the man turned. And the face…. the face was completely different.

Her knees trembled slightly as she sucked in her first real breath. It wasn't Dorian. She'd just imagined that it was. This was someone else, some other friendly, smiling,
normal
face. Someone named Bill. Someone quite safe.

The men shook hands, and then Freddy hurried back over to Mindy. He put his arm around her and planted an apologetic kiss behind her ear.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “I haven't seen Bill since my senior year at Annapolis. He's a great guy. I think I'll add him to the invitation list.”

At first she didn't understand. She was focused on trying to take deep breaths, forcing clear, fresh air into the corners of her agitated mind.

“The
wedding
invitation list?” She shook her head. “Your mother said five hundred is the absolute outer limit, and we're already there.”

Freddy sighed. “We
were
there, yesterday. But this morning Inigo White got arrested. Security fraud, poor devil. He won't be getting an invitation now.”

“He won't?” Mallory hadn't ever liked Inigo White, the pompous CEO of a plastics company, but something about the easy way his name had been x-ed off the list surprised her.

“Of course not.” Freddy looked confused. He probably wondered why she cared. “There will be a full SEC investigation. Dad can't afford to be tainted by all that right now, just a few months from the election.”

“But…I thought Inigo was one of your dad's best friends.”

“He was. I mean, he is. It's just that right now—” He put his arm around her and gave her a hug. “Oh, don't worry about it, sweetie. Inigo understands. Come on, let's go. I refuse to spend my last precious minutes with you discussing the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

She let him lead her out of the crowded little store. She was glad to have his arm around her, because her legs were still a little wobbly, and there were pieces of precariously perched, disastrously fragile glass and china everywhere. It felt like maneuvering through an obstacle course, where the least mistake would result in immeasurable loss.

When they were outside in the full warmth of the spring sun, she felt that she could breathe again. Out here, there was plenty of room, and the air smelled of blue violets.

“Freddy.” She turned to him with an impulsive urgency. “Is it that easy, really, to eliminate people from your life? Suppose I—”

She took another breath. “Suppose I was the one who'd been arrested. Would you have to x me off your list, too?”

Freddy looked at her blankly for a second, and then, laughing, he picked her up and twirled her around in a quick circle.

“I don't mean to hurt your feelings, sweetheart,” he said. “But I don't think the Securities and Exchange Commission has ever even heard of you.”

When he put her down again, he kept her tucked up close to the breast of his navy blazer. The scent of his aftershave mingled with the scent of violets, and she thought how very much she loved him. She rested her cheek against him and wondered why this was the only place in the world she felt truly safe.

But still the thoughts wouldn't go away.

After a couple of seconds, she lifted her head and looked up at him. “You know what I mean. Suppose you found out I had done something awful, something that could embarrass your father. Something that could embarrass
you.
What would happen then?”

He smiled quizzically, as if he weren't sure whether she was pulling his leg. But the smile didn't quite match the furrows that had appeared between his brows, or the flicker of something dark and wary she saw in his eyes.

In an instant, though, all that had disappeared. He was her Freddy again.

“What a nut you are,” he said, chuckling. “I adore you.”

“I love you, too,” she said. “But that's not an answer.”

He sobered, and he took her face between his hands. The expression in his eyes almost brought tears to her own.

“I love you, Mindy Rackham,” he said. “There is nothing I could
find out
about you that would ever change my mind. I know you too well. You're good and beautiful, and I'm the luckiest man on earth. Is that answer enough for you?”

She nodded slowly. What was the use in pushing? She already had her answer. Not in his words, he always said the right words. She saw it in that momentary frightened flash behind his eyes.

It had told her two terrible things.

The first thing was this: If Freddy found out about the Heyday Eight, their relationship would be over.

And the second followed with a cruel and inescapable logic.

She was never going to be able to tell him.

 

M
ALLORY LET
the phone ring so long it annoyed the honey-toned Telephone Goddess.

“The person you are calling is not answering,” the recorded voice pointed out, as if Mallory might be a little slow. “Please hang up.”

Mallory clicked the end button, lamenting the days when you could slam the receiver down with a satisfy
ing thump. But
why
wasn't the person answering? Why didn't the know-it-all voice tell her that?

Mallory knew she was overreacting. She was edgy today, because she was going to have to go to Dan's wedding. But darn it, Mindy should have been home. It was Saturday morning, and Mindy always lay around in bed late on the weekends.

At least the young Mindy used to do that. Mallory reminded herself that Mindy was an adult now. Maybe she'd gone out to breakfast with Freddy, who was probably an early riser. A-personalities usually were.

Whatever the reason, Mallory knew it was crazy to let an unanswered call upset her so much. She had no earthly reason to believe anything bad had happened to Mindy.

But it would be a long time before she could forget that one terrible day two years ago, that day when an unanswered phone really
had
been the precursor of something dreadful.

Mallory had been at the café that morning, calling home, furious with Mindy for refusing to answer the telephone. Mindy was always trying to avoid being tagged for chores, but this time Mallory really needed her. The deep fryer had gone out, and she needed the electrician's private cell number, which was at home on the foyer table.

She knew Mindy was there, but no matter how many times she'd called, she'd had the same result. Just the repetitive, echoing buzz, over and over. Furious, she'd closed the café, put out the hanging sign that said, Back
In Twenty Minutes, and driven home, muttering under her breath that when she got hold of that little slacker, she'd—

She'd found Mindy in the bathroom, slumped against the sink, ribbons of red blood forming a lacy network over her hands and onto the checkerboard tiles.

Shaking off the vision, which was still as horribly vivid as it had been on that day, Mallory picked up the phone and dialed Mindy's number one more time.

Again no answer.

Luckily, at that moment Tyler's knock sounded at the door. Mallory glanced at herself in the mirror. The face that looked back at her was somber, still wrestling with old ghosts, so she pinched her cheeks and tried on a smile.

That helped. She pushed her anxieties to the back of her mind. She had to stay focused today. If she was going to attend this wedding, she needed to hold her head up and look confident.

And it shouldn't be that hard. She wore a sky-blue dress that fit just right, and, though she hadn't had time for a haircut, she'd tamed her shaggy curls with a blue hair ribbon. If she smiled, she actually looked pretty good.

She picked up her purse and opened the door.

“Hi,” she said. “I'm ready.”

Tyler tilted his head, surveying her. “Nice. Very nice.” He grinned. “Maybe too nice. You don't by any chance have a secret agenda? We're not trying to bust up this wedding, are we?”

She flushed. “Don't be silly. I'd like to save the poor kid from Dan's clutches, but not enough to offer myself in her place. I served my time in that jail already.”

But as they walked down the stairs to his waiting car, she had to admit she'd felt a lovely wriggle of pleasure at the look on his face. And she realized suddenly that the tight blue dress wasn't all about showing Dan Platt what he was missing. It was all about lighting that fire in Tyler Balfour's eyes.