B008KQO31S EBOK (11 page)

“What’s going on? Phil, what did you find?”

That captured her attention, though he had a sense that wasn’t a good thing. One dark brow raised, those snapping baby blues meeting his in the mirror again. “Exactly what you thought I would.”

Her voice was low and dangerous, a trait he had never associated with Phil before.

But then, you never knew how people were going to deal with a shock like finding a corpse.

“Look out!”

She had already seen the old Ford limping along ahead of them. She checked her mirrors, changed lanes and circumnavigated the Ford with such daring that the Bronco nearly rolled over and played dead. She left a couple of inches to spare and the Ford’s driver looking as astonished as Nick felt.

He was tempted to cross himself, as the women passengers in tiny mountainous countries were prone to do, particularly when buses executed death-defying hairpin turns.

Instead he braced his elbows on the back of the front seats. He kept his voice calm as the truck hurtled toward Boston, sounding as though it would self-destruct before they got there. “Phil, it’s okay if you’re upset. Just talk to me. Tell me what happened back there. Tell me what we’re doing.”

“It’s okay?” She sputtered for a moment, her eyes flashing. “I’m sure it is
okay
. I’m sure you’d love for me to lose my temper. I’m sure you’d enjoy being able to laugh at the success of your little trick.”

She hauled the truck over to the shoulder suddenly and hit the brakes with such ferocity that they squealed. The truck fishtailed to a stop, raising a cloud in its wake and he got a much better look at the windshield than he might have preferred.

Phil spun to face him, her eyes blazing. “Get out of my truck.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Out!”

“I heard you, but I seem to be missing a few pages from the script here.” So much for calm. His voice rose. “What in the hell is going on?”

“What’s going on?” Phil’s eyes flashed and she jabbed her finger at him. “I thought we were
friends
, Nick. I thought you were someone I could trust. And you know what? I just found out that I was wrong. Dead wrong. I found out that you’re just like all the rest of them, not above a little trick on Fat Philippa.”

“What trick?”

But Phil was on a roll, his question trampled beneath the stampede of her words. “What did you expect me to do? Did I miss some booby trap? Or was it enough that I was terrified going into that house? Did you rig a camera to capture the moment on film forever? Maybe you can get together with all the boys and have a chuckle over how you fooled me into making a fool of myself, maybe...”

He interrupted her tirade. “Phil, I didn’t...”

“Spare me the play of innocence,” she said coldly. “Lucia isn’t dead. There’s no rotting corpse in the greenhouse, and I’m sure there never was. The paphiopedilum orchids, however, are in full bloom and the plumeria smells divine. So, why don’t you go and phone your grandmother, have a cup of tea, enjoy your homecoming and forget that we ever knew each other.”

He didn’t know what had happened, but he didn’t like what was happening now. He held Phil’s gaze, willing her to believe him. “Phil, I didn’t play a trick on you.”

“Bull.” She glared back just as steadily. “Get out of my truck.”

“Just give me a chance to explain.”

Her eyes widened. “Why you couldn’t just come home and leave me out of it? I’m sure I don’t want to know.”

“Phil...”

“Don’t you dare suggest that you wanted to see me. If that was the truth, it wouldn’t have taken you fifteen years to bother.” There was heat in those words but she didn’t give him time to think about that.

She leaned past him, reaching to open the door of the truck and showing a breathtaking stretch of leg in the act. “Get out.”

He’d never seen Phil angry and could have done without it. She was completely composed, her voice flat, her eyes cold. In a way, it was much worse than if she had screamed and shouted. The traffic whizzed past them as they stared at each other.

He didn’t get out. “All I want a chance to explain.”

“Then tell someone who gives a damn. Your account with me is overdrawn.” She pointed again to the door.

He knew better than to force the issue. He’d argue from the shoulder of the road. He got out of the truck, but had no chance to lean back in and make a last appeal.

Because Phil slammed the truck into gear and floored the accelerator, swerving back onto the highway in a daring merge that spewed loose gravel all over him . The open door swung wildly, then slammed of its own accord. He coughed and, when the dust cleared, stared after the hulking silhouette of the truck.

It didn’t seem that Phil even looked back.

He blew out his breath and ran a hand through his hair as he reviewed the bidding.

Lucia wasn’t dead in the greenhouse. There was no way she could be. He knew Phil was telling the truth—and there was no other reason for her to be so angry.

Which meant someone had cleaned up after he had been there. Come to think of it, he had left the front door wide open. It couldn’t have been the cops, or they would have been all over the house.

Wouldn’t they have been?

But then, what did he really know of police procedure? Maybe this last half hour would have progressed very differently if he had gone into the house instead of Phil.

He would have bet good money his brother knew the answers to most if not all of those questions. He should probably visit Sean, demand an explanation and see this resolved.

But that might be exactly what his brother would be expecting. There was nothing that could be done for Lucia at the moment and He wasn’t inclined to make things easy for his brother, at least not this time.

Let Sean wait. Let him worry. Let him wonder.

He had more important things to do. He found himself straining to make out a hulking green silhouette rollicking down the road ahead. Phil’s truck was already indistinguishable from the line of commuters.

But the hurt in Phil’s voice was going to haunt him for a long, long time, unless he fixed this. She was wrong—they
were
friends.

It stung that she thought him guilty of the kind of cheap trick Sean had once pulled on her. But then, it seemed he hadn’t left things as pristine behind himself as he had always thought.

If he was going to walk away now without leaving some kind of scar behind him, then he had to straighten this out and make sure Phil knew the truth.

He could only hope that by the time he caught up with her, she would have calmed down enough to at least listen to him.

It was a long shot, by any accounting.

* * *

Once upon a time, in a pragmatic New England town where skepticism held sway and all things unseen had bad PR, a magical transformation took place. That this went unnoticed by most isn’t surprising, but doesn’t make the event any less important to the participants.

One participant in particular.

You see, there was a girl in this town, a girl who had never fit in and never failed to disappoint her family, a girl who by the ripe old age of fourteen had decided that things would pretty much stay that way for the rest of her life and that maybe, just maybe she even deserved the things that happened to her.

Though it was her nature to be as cheerful as a ray of sunshine, this epiphany made her sparkle a little less. She took consolation in simple sugars and starches, not the wisest choice in hormonally rampant teenage years, and she had both the thighs and the pimples to show for it. The other boys and girls taunted her, because she was so trusting that she made an easy mark for their malice and so plump that they never lacked for ammunition.

They called her Fat Philippa, which hurt, just as they had known it would. She knew that no worldly means could bring about her acceptance, so she did what she could. She pressed four leaf clovers and followed rainbows, she avoided cracks in the sidewalk and tucked a rabbit’s foot into her pocket.

And one day, just when she might have given up, her efforts bore fruit. On the cusp of her fifteenth birthday, her body was making a metamorphosis of its own, her ample figure developing some dips and curves that showed some promise for the future.

She was sure that no one noticed—until Sean Sullivan invited her to senior prom.

Sean was a dashing rogue of a football player, well deserving of the hero’s role in any fairy tale. He was a boy that all the girls whispered about and one who starred in any number of teenage fantasies. He certainly starred in several of our heroine’s, though she would have died if anyone had guessed.

Yet, as though some otherworldly force drew them together, he had invited her to the prom. Things were coming up roses, her ship was in, the future looked bright. That the prom was to be held on the night of her fifteenth birthday was the perfect guarantee.

Her mother was even pleased by this social coup. She insisted that our heroine have a proper dress, borrow her pearls, learn to walk in high heels, twist her hair up into an elegant chignon, wear lipstick. For a brief shining moment, she was Cinderella heading to the ball, albeit looking more like her mother than she might have preferred.

The first transformation was physical, a change in her appearance that convinced her not only that she was lovely, but that magic could happen to her.

Magic, though, is sly stuff and never waiting where one expects it. It plays by its own rules and darts through shadows, pouncing on the unsuspecting. That’s certainly what it did on this ill-fated night. Our heroine discovered too late that Sean was using her, just as everyone else had used her, that he had invited her so that she could provide amusement for others when his trick was revealed.

She was his admission to the closed ranks of the popular set. He hadn’t noticed anything about her—except that she made easy prey. They mocked her and excluded her from the moment she crossed the threshold—when he laughed harder than the others, she knew the truth.

She fled their laughter in tears. And here it is that magic had its say, for she encountered none other than Sean’s brother, a quiet loner who had always caught her eye. She was at her worst, trapped in the harsh light of an all-night diner and nursing a cold cup of coffee because she didn’t want to go home and admit the truth. He came in, saw more than she wanted, and sat at the next table. She spoke to him because he looked lonely.

As is so often the way with those who have nothing left to lose, the act of taking that chance changed everything and ensured that she won a great deal.

To her surprise, Nick was more interested in listening than talking. He drew the humiliating story from her in dribs and drabs, and then he gave her an unexpected pearl of wisdom.

“
Trust,” he said as he stirred his coffee, “is a gift, and one that shouldn’t be wasted on those who don’t deserve it.”

And our heroine realized then that she had played a role in her own tormenting. By trusting the crowd over and over again when they only proved themselves untrustworthy, by taking the bait of an acceptance which they would never truly give, she offered them a willing target.

A target she could remove, simply by refusing to trust them any longer. Instead of playing the role of victim, she could choose to step off the stage.

Magic, as anyone knows, does its work in threes. This then was the second element of her transformation, the awareness that she held alone the key to change her own life.

And this sense of empowerment, this talisman so critical to the triumph of any heroic character, restored both her smile and her inherent optimism. She might have declared her birthday night worthwhile at this point, but Nick insisted on repairing what his brother had destroyed.

He wanted her to have the magical evening she had anticipated.

So he took her home, to his disreputable and eccentric grandmother, a woman who always knew what to do. If our bedraggled heroine was startled by the sight of the former opera singer in a Chinese red silk robe, her cigarette in an ebony holder, her eyes lined with black reminiscent of Cleopatra, she hid it well.

For her part, Lucia Sullivan took one look at the hopeful young girl, blew a smoke ring, and saw a great deal more than anyone might have liked.

A more unlikely fairy godmother could not have been found in the forty-eight contiguous states, but that was the role Lucia played that night. She cranked up the Victrola, lit the fairy lights strung around her overgrown patio, and proceeded to give waltz lessons. She was big on feeling the music, instead of responding to it, and an exacting teacher. She abruptly pronounced herself exhausted and insisted that Nick dance with our veritable princess instead.

That was the moment when the starlight slid into her veins, blending with the music in an ancient alchemical formula due to all girls in their teenage years.

For it was there, on the Sullivan patio, on the night of her fifteenth birthday, that a part of this young woman awakened for the first time. She felt strong and beautiful, she was in command of her fate. The view ahead was blue skies and sunshine all the way.

When she looked into the eyes of Nick Sullivan, her breath caught in tingly new way. She noticed suddenly the strength of his arm around her waist, the resolute grip of fingers on hers, the alluring scent of his skin.

She realized she had not only mistaken the frog for the prince, but worse, not even noticed the prince at all.

Until now. A dragon awakened in her belly, contenting himself for the moment with a growl that rolled straight down to her toes, shooting sparks all the way.

Nick helped her pick the biggest and brightest for her birthday wish, for luck. She wished—quite predictably—that this magical night would never end and maybe for a bit more than that. As long as that night endured, she was Cinderella, caught in the arms of her prince, dancing barefoot beneath the stars, hoping against hope that midnight would never come.

But even when the clock did strike twelve, Philippa Coxwell would never be the same again.

S
o, maybe I over-reacted.