Snowbound Heart (8 page)

From her room Clare could call Beverly, explain the delay and her plans for the evening, and arrange to meet her the following morning. Logan would take care of having her car retrieved, since he would be better able to give the garage tow truck directions to it. With that out of the way, he would have to go shopping. When he had packed for his stay at his mountain home, formal attire had not been one of the things he had thrown into his luggage. Though he had worn a suit for the flight into Aspen, the shirt with it had been open-necked in the European style. With a different shirt and a tie, it would serve the purpose. His purchases out of the way, they would be able to dress for dinner in comfort, and then, after dinner, Logan would not have to drive back out to his house over roads in uncertain condition. In addition, Clare would not have to ask Beverly and John to undertake the same trouble and risk.

The trouble could not be minimized. By the time Logan had zipped his clothing into a travel bag and carried it with Clare’s suitcase out to the car, clouds had closed down over the tops of the mountains once more. Before they reached the main road toward Aspen, snow mixed with icy rain had begun to fall.

The town of Aspen was founded in 1879 by a group of men prospecting in the hills for silver. Originally called Ute City, it was renamed a few months later by B. Clark Wheeler, a promoter who helped to turn the collection of tents and log cabins into a boom town. Millions in silver were taken from the hillsides in the following decade; then, in 1893, silver was demonetized. The mines closed, but the Victorian town remained at eight thousand feet, high in the mountains, a perfect setting for a ski resort. The possibilities of the fine slopes and deep powder snow had not been lost on the miners. The first skis had been unloaded in Aspen in 1880. The sport only began to receive serious attention, however, just before World War II. It was not until long after the war, however, in 1957, that Aspen really began to come into its own.

This much of the background of the area Clare had been able to glean from the guidebook she had studied before she left home. Now, as she and Logan entered Aspen itself, she looked about her was interest. It was not a large town, but it was a pleasant one. The streets were wide and well-marked, the buildings a blend of nineteenth-century carpenter’s Gothic, Swiss Alpine complete with Christmas motifs, and sharp-angled modern. Since all three styles favored the use of wood rather than masonry, they coexisted comfortably. Summer and winter visitors were the mainstay of the economy. Because of this it was not unnatural that most businesses were oriented toward their wants and needs. Specialty shops of all types abounded, from jewelry and glassware to ski rentals. In the center of town there was a shopping mall cobbled with brick and featuring small elegant shops with charming Victorian facades.

It was an experience walking into a hotel with Logan Longcross, something Clare intended to remember for a long time. Logan stepped out of the car and held the door for her. Glancing at the doorman, he smiled his slow smile. Immediately, heads turned, people appeared to take their bags, to park the car, to swing the heavy glass doors of the hotel open. A growing murmur of voices followed them to the desk in the lobby. The clerk behind the counter looked up, his frown a signal of the unlikelihood of their receiving a room without a reservation at that season. Looking again, he changed his mind. He even discovered, after a hurried consultation with the manager, that two rooms were available, one for Mr. Longcross, one across the hall for his fiancee.

As they were closed into the elevator with a bemused bellhop clutching the handle of a luggage carrier, a pair of gray-haired matrons with wide eyes leaned with the closing door to catch the last possible glimpse of the actor, Clare glanced at Logan as they moved soundlessly upward, one brow lifted expressively. He grinned at her with a flash of white teeth and gave a slow shake of his head. “Sometimes it has its uses,” he said.

In her room, Clare took off her coat, threw it with her tote bag into a chair, and moved to the telephone. She had no trouble getting through to Beverly. Her friend’s rapturous greeting was quickly followed by a demand to know where she was and what had happened. Clare, leaning back against the headboard of the bed on which she was seated, told her.

“What did you say?”

Clare had to smile at the blank incomprehension in Beverly’s voice. It was all she could do not to laugh aloud at the contrast to her first eager questions.

“I said, I wish I could see you tonight, but I promised to have dinner with Logan Longcross.”

“I thought that was what you said. Have you gone stark, staring mad?”

“Not at all. I told you I had to take refuge from the snowstorm. Logan Longcross just happened to own the place that was closest to hand.”

“You are joking, of course,” Beverly said in resigned tones.

“Do you honestly think I would joke about such a thing, Beverly Hoffman?”

“I suppose not,” Beverly conceded. “Still, I have the strangest feeling you haven’t told me everything. Start at the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”

“Couldn’t it wait until in the morning?” Clare pleaded. “Logan will be coming back any minute, and I have to go and help him choose a shirt.”

“You what!”

“You heard me. I’m not sure, but I think my job is to keep people at bay while he chooses it, but at any rate, I’ve told him I would be there. You will come and get me in the morning?”

“Yes, I will, though I’m not sure I’m not taking my life into my hands, having anything to do with such an affair. I don’t suppose I could stand to stay away, though, not until I hear what you have got yourself into. Tell me the name of the hotel again.”

Clare gave it to her, then apologized once more for being such a laggard guest. They exchanged a few more words; then Clare, with a final good-bye, dropped the receiver into its cradle. With a faint smile still curving her mouth, she turned away. Beverly was a grand person. It was sweet of her to be so concerned and interested. The interest was inevitable, it seemed. Logan had not gotten where he was without being able to arouse the interest of women. Not that he tried. After the time they had spent together, she actually believed the attraction was a natural, unconscious force. She had been aware of it at first; then, as the hours had passed, she had come to see Logan not as an actor but as a man. With faults, yes, but also with ideals and a deep vein of sensitivity. Regardless of what Beverly might think, even in spite of the reasons she had given her own conscience, it was for the man and what he believed in, rather than for the actor, that she was here in this hotel room at this moment.

It came as no great surprise that the scene in the hotel lobby was repeated in the men’s store where they went to replenish Logan’s wardrobe. The sales clerk, a vision of sartorial splendor, seemed to think it was a specially conferred honor to be asked to help choose a shirt and tie to complement a dark blue suit. The combinations available appeared to be endless as the man snatched shirts from the shelves and folded ties artistically at their collars. He was only prevented from covering the counters with such ensembles by Logan, who held up a hand, pointed at a subdued yet distinctive set, and told the clerk to put it in a bag. If the price of the simple purchase made Clare blink, she was not alone. The crowd at their back, to judge from their whispers, were no more used to simple white tone-on-tone shirts and diagonal-stripe silk ties running to those figures than she was.

Autographs, the minute Logan’s attention was free, were inevitable. With the ease of long practice, he managed to slash a few words and his signature on whatever was thrust at him, and keep moving at the same time. Clare, jostled and pushed by the growing crowd, saw herself being separated from him, until Logan reached out and caught her hand to draw it through the crook of his arm. He pressed it firmly against his side, and never stopped walking. Gamely smiling, ignoring the questions thrown at her, Clare was able to keep up with him as they passed through the swinging doors of the shop and out onto the street.

They were nearly through the gauntlet. The car was before them. Logan handed back the last immortalized paper bag and reached for the car’s handle. At that moment there came a scream from across the street that sounded like his name. An automobile’s brakes squealed, a horn blared, and then, as they turned, a woman dashed toward them across two lanes of traffic and flung herself into Logan’s arms.

“Logan, darling! The things I do to get to you. Aren’t you flattered?” She would have kissed him if he had not turned his head. As it was, her mouth brushed his cheek, leaving a smear of lip gloss.

“Janine, I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“No, I’m sure you didn’t. Wasn’t it clever of me to remember your passion for the mountains? You also mentioned skiing here at Aspen once or twice in my hearing. I have spent the past few days positively hounding the real-estate agents trying to discover whether you owned a condo or a house, without success. And then, just as I was about to give up and go meekly back to L.A., to the home and husband I deserted a week ago, I saw a man being trailed by a horde of women. Who else could it be, my darling Logan, except you?”

“I see.”

“Not an enthusiastic welcome, I must say, but I will overlook it if you will come to dinner with me this evening at the lodge where I’m staying.”

“Sorry, but my fiancee and I have made other plans.”

“Your fiancee!”

“I haven’t introduced you, have I? Clare, darling, this is Janine Hobbs, the wife of the man you met this morning. Janine, Clare. And, yes, you did hear right — we saw Marvin this morning. It is your husband we are dining with this evening.”

Clare acknowledged her introduction with a quiet word. If it had not been for the scathing glance directed at her by Janine Hobbs earlier, relegating her to the status of one of the women trailing Logan, she might have felt sorry for the other woman. It would have been wasted pity. One minute she was pale beneath the golden, beautifully even tan of her skin, and her carefully made-up green eyes were wide with shock. The next, her color had returned and she was smoothing at the fur of the coat she wore with long, manicured fingers.

“Marvin is here?” the woman inquired, her tone nonchalant.

“The way I understand it, he flew in this morning.”

“And went straight to where you were? His method of finding you was better than mine, it seems. He has always been good at twisting arms. But what was the hurry?”

Logan stared at her with narrowed eyes. “He seemed to think he might find you with me.”

Janine shrugged. “I wonder where he could have gotten that idea.”

“So do I,” Logan answered.

“Oh, come, Logan, don’t be so stuffy,” Janine said, reaching out to touch his arm. “We both know very well what Marvin thought I only wish it had been true. If it had not been for that terrible snowstorm — “

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Logan interrupted.

Clare, despite the fact that she had no real claim to consideration as a fiancee, was oddly grateful for the reminder of her presence. Janine Hobbs had not looked at her again after the brief startled glance when they had been introduced. Annoyance at the woman’s familiarity with Logan and deliberate bad manners to herself rose within her. One hand was still caught in the crook of Logan’s arm. Placing the other over it, Clare said, “I don’t like to interrupt your conversation, darling … but shouldn’t we be going? We still have to dress for dinner, and we don’t want to keep Mr. Hobbs waiting. Besides, we seem to be gathering an audience.”

The last was true enough. The spectators, talking excitedly, had gathered seven and eight deep in a circle aronnd them and were beginning to spill out into the street.

Logan sent a quick look around them. “Yes, I think you are right.”

“Oh, what does it matter?” Janine exclaimed, fluffing her coat around her face, shaking back her fine, perfectly cut black hair. “Let them look.”

Clare gave the other woman a pleasant smile. “There is always the possibility that one of the horde of women trying to get close to Logan will not be satisfied with looking. That kind of thing can get out of hand, you know, and I would just as soon he stayed in one piece. I don’t intend to share him with anyone.”

Janine’s brow snapped together. “Are you suggesting I am one of the horde?”

“I wonder where you could have gotten that idea?” Clare, repeating Janine’s mock-innocent phrase, could feel the tension in Logan’s arm. She knew he had turned to look down at her, but she refused to meet his gaze.

Janine Hobbs looked from one to the other, anger hardening in her green eyes. “Don’t let me keep you, then,” she said. “I have an idea of the nature of your business with my husband, and how important it is to you.”

There was an inflection in her voice Clare did not like, though Logan appeared not to hear it.

“We would invite you to join us this evening,” he said, “but under the circumstances I doubt it would appeal to you.”

Janine made no reply. The set of her face was cold, and her hands were clenched in the soft fur of her coat as she stood back so they could get into the car. As they drove away, she was still staring after them.

The distance back to the hotel was not long. Clare, staring through the windshield, spoke at once. “I am sorry if I embarrassed you.”

“Amazed me, is more like it”

“I … it was nothing personal. I simply got tired of her pretending I didn’t exist”

“I think she noticed you,” he commented.

The ghost of a smile flickered across Clare’s lips in response to his wry tone. “Do you think she will leave Aspen?”

“Somehow I doubt it,” he answered, his voice tight and a frown between his eyes as he stared straight ahead.

Back in her room at the hotel, Clare ran a deep, hot bath and sprinkled a generous amount of rose-scented bath-oil beads into the water. She lay soaking in the silken luxury for a long time. At first she tried to hold her thoughts at bay, but they came crowding in. What had she let herself in for? She had been crazy to agree; the proof of it was her reluctance to explain her folly to Bev. She would make a fool of herself, be exposed as a fraud.