A Fine Mess (6 page)

Nope. People got their ticket through the Pearly Gates by being good. And if marrying a virtual stranger to help her father out of a jam wasn’t being good, he didn’t know what was.

And on that thought, Ian closed his eyes, willed his body to relax, and began counting backwards from one hundred.

~~~~

Ian smothered a grin as he watched Annie’s fingers clutch the armrests so tightly that her fingers turned white. Then he noticed the paleness of her face.

“Afraid of flying?” he asked, hoping his voice didn’t sound as amused to her as it did to him.

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been in a plane,” she murmured, eyes squeezed shut as she took slow, steady breaths. If they were helping her, he couldn’t tell.

“Afraid of heights then?”

“There is that.” She
squinted
one eye open to peek at him, then closed them tightly as the plane began to taxi down the runway. “Mostly I’m afraid of crashing. My plan has always been to die quietly and painlessly in my sleep when I’m ninety-nine, not splattered all over the ground like a water balloon at twenty-seven.” Ian had to clear his throat several times before he could ask the question that he just knew he had to have the answer to.

“Why not a hundred?”

“I don’t want to be
too
old.” At that he did burst out laughing.

“And ninety-nine isn’t?”

“Well, ninety-nine is only two digits. One hundred is three,” she explained, as though it made perfect sense.

“I guess that is true. I always figured I’d be old when I hit sixty-five.”

“No, that’s not old anymore. Not when the new forty is fifty.”

“What?”

“Forty used to be considered middle aged. Now people are healthier, living longer and thinking younger, so fifty is the new forty.”

“Is that something you just made up?”

“No, I did not. Don’t you read magazines?”

“Nope.”

“You ought to try it someday. You could learn a lot from them.”

“You can let go now.”

“Huh?”

“We’ve leveled off so it’s clear sailing from here. Rather clear flying.”

“We’re in the air?” Annie gasped, eyes opening wide. Ian nodded.
“How- How high?”

“I’m guessing that you really don’t want to know the answer to that question, so I’m not going to tell you. But I will give you this.” He tossed a small notebook at her and was surprised that she was able to pry her fingers out of the leather upholstery in time to catch it.

“What’s this for?” He held up his matching notebook.

“Homework.
We’re going to find out everything we can about one another and write it down in these. And then we’re going to memorize the information. It will help us pull off the charade of being happily married.” It might also help to take her mind off her fear of crashing.

“What kinds of things?” she wanted to know, opening the cover and digging a pen out of her purse. She was, apparently, ready to fall in with his suggestion immediately, and he wondered if she was thinking it was a good distraction, too.

“I’ve compiled a list of questions.”
After he’d given up on sleep somewhere around three in the morning.
“Like we should probably know each other’s full names.”
She winced and he wondered if she already knew his.

“Okay. What’s yours?” Okay, so she didn’t know. Now it was his turn to wince as he said,

“Walmond Ian McCann.”

“Uh- Could you repeat that?”

“Which part?”

“The first one.”

“Walmond?
Want me to spell it for you? It’s like almond with a ‘w.’” He watched the corners of her mouth twitch as she tried valiantly to hide a smile. “My father liked the meaning of it.”

“Which is?”

“Powerful. I guess it didn‘t occur to him that it wasn‘t a very popular name.”

“Oh. I guess I thought you were a junior. You go by Ian.”

“
Wouldn’t you
?
“
he asked, only slightly sarcastically. “Okay, what’s yours?”
Again, the wince.

“Couldn’t we move to the next question?”

“When you know my ugly little secret? I don‘t think so. C’mon. Give it up.” Hanging her head for a moment, she took a deep breath then looked straight at him.

“Anna Pheodora Blake.”

“Excuse me?” He was positive he hadn’t heard that correctly.

“Which part didn’t you understand?”

“The second.”

“Pheodora?” she asked, parroting his answers to her questions about Walmond. “Want me to spell that for you?”

“I think you’re going to have to,” he admitted, unable to hide his grin. Annie couldn’t help it and grinned back at him as she spelled it aloud.

“I guess our parents had something in common in choosing uncommon names because they liked the meanings.”

“Sounds like it to me. What does yours mean?”

“Anna means ‘graceful.’ Pheodora means ‘God’s gift.’”

Ian started to say what was on the tip of his tongue, which was, “It would almost have to mean something like that, wouldn’t it?” However, by sheer force of will, he stopped himself. But not before Annie noticed.

“Go ahead and say it,” she encouraged He shook his head vigorously and she chuckled. “Go ahead, I’ve heard it all. I’m tough enough to take it.”

“Not a good way to start a marriage, I think.
Even one like ours.
I will say this though. I used to think that there wasn’t a worse name in the world than Walmond.”

“Well, you were wrong, weren’t you?”

~~~~

Annie McCann.

Ian had a wife and her name was Annie McCann.
 

He glanced down at her, where she stood, leaning against him, mostly asleep, as the elevator took them up to what as close as one could get to a penthouse apartment this region of the world. Lansing couldn’t boast of any skyscrapers, except for the old Michigan National Tower anyway.

When the doors opened into the wide foyer, he had to pull her along with him because, if he’d taken his arm from around her waist, he was sure she would have curled up on the plush blue carpeting for what was left of the night.

It had been an extremely long and tiresome day and he, too, was exhausted.
Though he’d been able to nap a bit during the return home flight.
Only to awaken to a ghostly white bride who was again clutching the armrests because they’d run into a bit of turbulence. Given the vast amount of flights he’d taken over the years, it was nothing he’d have had the slightest concern over.

To a novice air traveler he supposed that an imminent crash might be uppermost in their mind. It certainly had been uppermost in Annie’s.

He dropped her duffle bag in the hall and flipped the light switch thinking that might wake her enough so she could get herself into bed in his spare room, but another glance showed that her eyes were almost completely closed and he had to grin.

She was pretty much asleep on her feet!

Without wasting time, he leaned down and ripped the sheet and comforter back, lowered her onto the mattress and quickly slipped her shoes off, before tucking her in snugly.

At the doorway he turned to see that she had curled up on her side and was fast asleep.
Snoring ever so softly.

Nodding his head in satisfaction as he turned the light off and closed the door almost all the way behind him.
It never hurt to be in possession of important information. The fact that Annie snored could come in handy someday.
If she were, like most women, appalled at the thought.

Not that he really believed in blackmail for
evil
purposes, but he might lower himself to threaten to reveal her secret-if she didn’t make him a batch of the hot fudge cake she’d served the night before at her parent's house.

Of course he really never would tell anyone. But she didn’t have to know that.

Yawning mightily, Ian walked into his private bathroom so he could brush his teeth before settling in for a few more hours of sleep. It wasn’t until he raised a glass to rinse his mouth that the flash of gold caught his eye.

His wedding band.

He stared at its reflection in the mirror for several long moments.

It was funny but the few times he’d actually thought about the day he might marry, and especially his wedding night, this particular scenario had never once crossed his mind.

~~~~

Annie was surprised. She’d wondered if she might be disoriented when she woke in a strange place but, though she couldn’t recall entering the apartment, or lying down on the full sized bed, fully clothed, she knew immediately where she was.

In the guest room in her new husband’s apartment.

Sitting up she glanced down at the rings now circling the third finger of her left hand. Ian had spared no expense there. Given a choice, she would have chosen a simple band but he’d overruled her objections immediately.

Though the marriage was nothing more than a sham, appearances must be kept up, for both their sakes, he‘d insisted. And so she sported a larger diamond than she ever would have chosen, set in etched white gold bands.

Sighing deeply she rose from the bed, picked up her duffle bag and went in search of a bathroom. Sleeping in the clothes she’d worn for more than twenty-four hours left her feeling more than a little grungy!

~~~~

Wow. During the long flights Ian had given her volumes of information about himself, as she had done for him. One tidbit had been that he didn’t cook.

He hadn’t exaggerated even a little
bit,
Annie discovered a short while later. Mother Hubbard had nothing on Ian McCann.

His many cupboards contained a set of dishes that would serve no more than four people, half a box of crackers, a bag of potato chips with mostly crumbs in the bottom, and two packages of chocolate creme sandwich cookies.
And nothing else.

The refrigerator wasn’t much better. A banana, a can of coffee, a two inch thick slab of cheese, several bottles of water, two bottles of cola, and jars of catsup, mayonnaise and mustard.

So much for making breakfast, she thought, reaching in for the coffee.

“I did warn you,” Ian said from the doorway, startling her so that she clutched her hand to her throat.

“Oh! You scared me!” she gasped, her heart pounding like a jackhammer.

“Sorry,” he said with an unapologetic grin. “Did you think I mean to starve you?”