Backing the car out of the drive, Miranda roared toward town trying to ignore the sparkle of sun on the ice now melting off tree branches and the thin trickle of water slipping down the hard rock face of the mountain. The air was crisp, and the sky so blue and clear that she could see a lone hawk circling above Ballantyne Bald. Spring was practically here, and she felt like a Grinch looking for a Christmas to steal.
How could her world look so clean and shiny when the weight of it hung so heavily on her shoulders? And how could she be lusting after Blake Summers when that world could come crashing down at any minute?
In town, she screeched to a halt in front of the Dogwood and raced in to pick up a cup of coffee and two chocolate doughnuts, which looked like the closest thing to sexual satisfaction she was likely to get.
The place fell silent, and twenty-some pairs of eyes bored into her back as she took the bag from Jewel. When she turned slowly to face them, those eyes dropped to her stomach.
“I am NOT pregnant, and my personal life does NOT belong in the
Truro Gazette
.”
No one blinked, and nobody spoke.
“Fine,” she said. “Have a nice day.” Dropping a five on the counter, Miranda squared her shoulders, stomped out the door, and roared through town in her BMW, hoping someone would be stupid enough to try to give her a ticket.
By the time she reached Ballantyne, her angst and sexual frustration had reached epic proportions. Helen St. James pulled into the parking lot right behind her, and as they crossed toward the building, Miranda waited for the bookkeeper to say something—anything—she could take exception to. The woman remained infuriatingly quiet.
Outside the front entrance Miranda rounded on her. “Don’t mess with me today, Helen.”
“Okay.”
“I am in such a shitty mood that
I
don’t even want to talk to me.”
She gave Helen the eyebrow, but the other woman just smiled. “I know the feeling.”
Oh, great, just what she needed, something else in common with her husband’s girlfriend! She added the other eyebrow and the woman stepped back.
Good thinking
. Miranda entered the lobby alone.
At the reception desk Leeta shot her a big grin and stole a peek at her stomach. “Mornin’, Mrs. Smith. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
Miranda gritted her teeth and forced the corners of her mouth up in what she hoped would pass for a smile. If she didn’t shake this mood soon she was going to rip someone’s head off.
She checked her stride as she passed Carly’s empty desk. Finding her own office door open, she called out as she entered. “Carly, I need you to—”
“My mommy’s not here.”
The little-girl voice stopped Miranda cold. She and the pint-size person sitting in her chair stared each other in the eye.
“That would make you Lindsey,” Miranda observed.
“Uh-huh. My mommy wented to make coffee for the boss.” The child smiled Carly’s smile and twirled a single blond curl around a chubby finger.
“Well, now, I guess that would be me, since that’s my desk you’re sitting at.” She gave the child the eyebrow, but it apparently didn’t work on small, blond-haired children. “Are you planning to do my work for me today?”
“Sure.” She held up a crayon. “What kind of picture do you need?”
“Lindsey?” Carly’s horrified voice reached them from the outer office.
“In here,” Miranda called.
Her assistant rushed in, coffee in hand, and came to a halt in front of Miranda’s desk. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Smith. I didn’t have anyone to leave her with.” She leveled a look at her daughter. “And she knows this room is completely off limits.”
She hurried around the desk and lifted her daughter out of Miranda’s chair. “I was thinking there might be a call from Mr. Smith later this morning when Helen comes in for the scheduled meeting.”
“Sure.” Miranda nodded numbly. Might as well torture someone else. It was no fun feeling this crummy all by herself.
“I’ll take care of it,” Carly replied. “And, uh, I was wondering if you’d like me to set up a lunch or something with your mother. We haven’t heard from her for a while.”
Leave it to Carly to notice the cold shoulder Joan Harper had turned Miranda’s way.
“No,” Miranda said, “that won’t be necessary.” There was no point in sitting down with her mother if she wasn’t going to back down or explain completely, neither of which she could picture doing right now. “I’ll talk to her when I get back in town. But I would like you to schedule an appointment for me with Dana Houseman while I’m in Atlanta.”
“Okay.” Carly’s look of sympathy made her feel even more alone. As Miranda watched, she turned a serious parent face back to the child in her arms. “Tell Mrs. Smith you’re sorry, Lindsey,” she admonished as they moved toward the door.
Miranda looked from mother to daughter and back again as the child made her apology. Same smile, same eyes, same curly blond hair. She felt a prickling behind her eyelids. Her grandmother and mother had daughters. Blake Summers had a daughter. Even unmarried Carly Tarleton had a daughter. Everybody, it seemed, had a daughter but her.
“It’s all right.” Miranda grabbed a tissue off her desk and blew her nose to camouflage the sob that was trying to escape. “Maybe we should put her to work on our advertising campaign. I understand she has her crayons with her.”
Carly smiled in relief and hurried the child out of the office, pulling the door closed behind her. Miranda waited a beat to be sure they were gone. And then she sat down in the still-warm chair and burst into tears.
chapter
19
I
t took Andie four days to work up the nerve to ask Jake Hanson to the Guild Ball. She wanted to be the kind of woman Miranda Smith had described—bold, sure of what she wanted, determined to succeed—but when she looked deep inside to see what she was made of, she discovered that she was built a lot like a Tootsie Pop—hard and shiny on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside.
Today, she’d decided, the wimpiness was going to end. Which was why she was standing in front of Jake’s locker watching him and ML walk toward her. Jake’s eyes got a really cool kind of twinkle in them when he spotted her, which was the only thing that kept her from abandoning her position. Mary Louise’s eyes narrowed, and she wrapped herself more tightly around Jake, but Andie intended to see this through even if she had to conk ML on the head and stuff her in an empty locker to do it.
“How are those paper flowers coming?” The other girl’s tone was snide. “Must be kind of rough with your hand out of commission and all.”
“I’m managing.”
“Too bad about missing the game,” Jake said. “That would flat out drive me crazy.”
“Yeah, you can say that again,” Andie said.
Conversation stopped as Jake opened his locker. Mary Louise stepped even closer to him, then reached past him to pull a half-opened gift box off the top shelf.
“Here, Jake,” she said, shooting a triumphant look at Andie. “Why don’t you put on some of the cologne that I bought you?”
Jake looked distinctly uncomfortable, but before he could respond, Mary Louise lifted the bottle up and sprayed some behind Jake’s ear. Then she sneezed.
Andie sucked the stuff into her lungs. It was heavy and musky, and totally obliterated that wonderful Jake smell. She coughed lightly.
Mary Louise’s eyes watered as she doubled over from the force of another sneeze. “Ah-choo!”
Andie couldn’t help noticing how bad ML’s face looked.
“Oh, God, how can I be allergic to Libido by Donati?” Mary Louise wailed. “The saleslady told me it was her number one seller.” She sneezed again as tears ran down her cheeks.
Andie and Jake exchanged looks.
“Gosh, Mary Louise,” Andie said innocently. “Are those hives?”
The other girl shrieked. “Oh, my God, I’m starting to swell.”
“Do you want me to take you to the clinic?” Jake asked. “You should probably take an antihistamine.”
“No!” She shrieked again. “Don’t look at me!”
Andie was trying not to enjoy herself. “Wow,” she exclaimed. “Look at the size of those welts.”
Mary Louise’s fingers flew to her face, and she shrieked again. “Don’t look! I’ve got to get home!” And she raced down the hall away from them, already whipping her cell phone out of her purse. The last thing they heard was a sneeze and a wail.
“Guess she should have smelled that stuff before she bought it for you,” Andie observed.
“Yeah.” She could tell he was fighting back a smile just like she was. She liked that he was too nice to crack up over it.
The bell rang and Andie knew it was now or never.
“So, um, I was wondering.” She brought her books to her chest and paused to gather strength. “Did Mary Louise already ask you to be her escort to the Guild Ball?”
“Yeah.”
Andie’s shoulders drooped. “Okay.” She knew she should get to class. She’d lost track of how long ago the bell had rung.
Jake reached out and placed a hand on her arm. His fingers were warm, and his eyes were . . . God, she really liked his eyes.
“I was kind of hoping you’d ask me first,” he said. “But when you didn’t . . .” He shrugged. “Well, I figured maybe you’d asked somebody else.”
Andie shook her head and tried not to sigh with disappointment when his hand dropped to his side. “Just slow,” she said.
And chicken
, she thought, as she walked beside him to the office to pick up a tardy slip.
But Mrs. Smith was right. If she’d dragged her feet this way on a basketball court, she’d have had a permanent spot on the bench.
“Have a good trip,” Carly called out as Miranda stopped at her desk on the way out of the office on Friday afternoon. “Tell Mr. Smith I said hey.”
Miranda stopped in her tracks and looked around. She and Carly were completely alone.
“Sorry,” her assistant said. “I got a little carried away.”
Miranda sighed. The week had been long and brutal, and the only thing it had going for it was that it was almost over.
“I’ll call you on Monday after I meet with Selena. You can reach me on my cell phone if you need anything before then.”
“Got it, Boss!” Carly saluted smartly. “Maybe when you get back we can talk about that promotion . . .”
Too tired to raise an eyebrow, Miranda exited the building and crossed the parking lot. She’d cancelled her Rhododendron group in order to make her alleged flight out of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, and now it was time to leave for her imaginary weekend with Tom.
In hindsight, the whole charade felt slightly ridiculous and unnecessarily expensive. She’d spent twelve hundred dollars on an airline ticket to a place she had no intention of going, and an arm and a leg on a suite at the Ritz-Carlton that she’d be inhabiting alone. Spending a weekend holed up at the Ritz in Atlanta wasn’t going to solve any problems, but the further south she traveled the lighter her heart grew. A couple days outside the fishbowl could do great things for the fish.
Beginning to look forward to her weekend away, Miranda zigzagged down the mountainside, passing through Dillard and Mountain City on her way to Highway 985. She was approaching the on ramp when the BMW began to lose power. One minute she was moving along at a good clip, the next the car was decelerating, and putting her foot on the gas pedal had no impact whatsoever. Unsure what else to do, she steered the car onto the shoulder of the two-lane highway and rode the brake lightly until the car sputtered to a stop.
“Damn.” Resisting the urge to beat her head against the steering wheel, Miranda put the car in park, clambered out, and used all of her pent-up frustration and anxiety to kick the front tire. When this failed to make her feel better, she took aim at the front bumper—another meaningless gesture that did nothing but dent in the toe of her shoe.
“Shit!” Fresh out of things to kick and unable to come up with anything more profound to shout, she popped open the hood, stomped back around to the passenger door, and leaned in to grab her purse from the front seat. It took a little longer to figure out whom to call.
By the time Blake made it back to the house to pick up Andie for the drive to her mother’s in Atlanta, he was doing a slow burn. The day hadn’t been all that great to start with, but it had taken a serious nosedive when the rest of the answers to his inquiries about Tom Smith had begun to trickle in.
He didn’t know why he was so upset to receive confirmation that Tom Smith had never used the airline ticket to Hong Kong that Ballantyne had bought for him, or checked into, or been seen at, the Hong Kong hotel where he’d been booked, but the more he found out, the more confused and irritated he became.
There was nothing like wanting to sleep with a woman to make a man abandon all semblance of objectivity.
“Get a move on, Andie,” he barked. “We’re going to hit major traffic as it is.” He wanted to drop his daughter and get to the airport in time to find out where Miranda was really going.
He and Andie made sporadic and unsuccessful attempts at conversation as they passed through Truro, their gazes locked on the road and the small towns that flew by.
They were almost to the Interstate when the traffic slowed unexpectedly. Blake spotted a tow truck backing into position and recognized Gabe Holcomb from Gabe’s Gas ’n’ Such in Truro at the controls. The car it was grappling was a bright red BMW.
“Hey, look, Dad. That’s Mrs. Smith’s car.”
Blake pulled off the road and drove slowly up the shoulder toward the tow truck and its shiny prize. Miranda stood out of the way, shivering in her leather jacket, tapping the tip of one strangely dented shoe on the pavement. He and Andie got out of the car and walked toward her. Miranda greeted Andie warmly; he got a nod.
“What happened?” Blake asked.
“Not sure,” Gabe replied. “I think it might be a leak in the transmission. I’m going to tow it in and look at it in the morning.”
Blake glanced at Miranda. She had a dust-covered leather carry-on sitting at her feet and didn’t look at all glad to see him.
“You okay?” he asked.