“You’re so weird.” Lucy curled against her.
“I know. That’s why we like each other.”
“Who said I liked you?”
“You didn’t have to say it.” Without thinking, she kissed the top of the teenager’s head. For a few seconds, Lucy seemed to go limp in her arms, then she pulled away, as if a simple kiss were too much for her. Or as if she thought Nealy might take it back if she didn’t get away first.
Nealy smiled at her. “I’ve got an idea, but don’t make fun of me, okay?”
“Why would I make fun of you?” Lucy sat cross-legged on the floor and grabbed Button for a morning cuddle.
“Because I want us to do something that you’re going to think is really dumb.”
Lucy grinned. “Like what else is new?”
“I want to do makeovers.”
“Get real!”
“No, really. I want to.”
“Because you think I wear too much makeup, right?”
“You do wear too much makeup. Come on, Luce, it’ll be fun. Get your stuff and I’ll get mine.”
Lucy regarded her with teenage condescension. “If it’ll make you happy.”
“I’ll be delirious.”
After they’d both gotten their cosmetics, Lucy insisted on fixing up Nealy first. While Button toddled after a long-suffering Squid, the teenager applied layers of makeup to Nealy’s face, then surveyed the results with a matchmaker’s satisfaction. “You look so hot. Wait till Mat sees you.”
Nealy studied herself in the mirror they’d propped on the arm of the couch. All she needed was a pimp and a street corner. She was afraid to laugh for fear her face would crack. “It’s my turn.” “I’m going to look like such a dweeb.”
“But you’ll be a cute dweeb.”
She set to work, applying only the lightest touch of eye makeup, then running her own pale lip pencil over Lucy’s mouth, followed by a layer of colorless Blistex. “This is what Sandra Bullock uses instead of lipstick.”
“Like how would you know?”
Like Sandra Bullock had told her. “I read it in a magazine.”
Lucy regarded herself a little less critically.
Nealy pulled out three pink butterfly pins she’d hidden in the pocket of her shorts. She’d bought them as a surprise, and now she slipped them into Lucy’s bangs.
Lucy stared at her reflection. “Ohmygod, Nell, they’re so cool.”
“Look at you, Luce. You’re completely gorgeous. Promise me you’ll only wear that heavy makeup if you’re having one of those I-feel-like-a-slut days.”
Lucy rolled her eyes.
“You don’t need to hide behind a mask,” Nealy said softly. “You know exactly who you are.”
Lucy began picking at the arm of the chair. Nealy decided to give her a few minutes to think about what she’d said and picked up Button, who was trying to stuff her head in the wastebasket. “Come on, punkin’. It’s your turn.”
She set the baby on the chair, dabbed the tip of her nose with pink lipstick, then drew on a delicate set of whiskers with Lucy’s eyebrow pencil. Lucy giggled.
Button was carrying on a delighted monologue with her reflection when the sultan of the palace walked into his harem. He’d finished his run, and he had a basketball tucked against his sweaty T-shirt. All three of them turned at once.
The sultan was wise in the ways of women, and he knew exactly what to do. “Who’s this cute little mouse?” He rubbed Button’s downy head, and she gave a round of baby applause.
Then his eyes settled on Lucy.
Nealy saw a whole world of feelings pass across her face: uncertainty, longing, and the protective armor of her sullenness.
“You look beautiful,” he said simply.
She took a shaky breath. “You’re just saying that.”
“I say what I mean.”
She began to glow. He squeezed her shoulder, then slowly turned to Nealy, but her appearance seemed to have left him at a loss for words. He studied the heavy foundation, the sooty eyes with their thick coat of black mascara, and her crimson mouth.
“Doesn’t Nell look great,” Lucy exclaimed. “I mean, if she didn’t have that stupid pillow on, she’d look like a model.”
“She does have commercial appeal.”
He countered Nealy’s raised eyebrows with a grin, then turned back to Lucy. “Come on, kid. Get your shoes and let’s go shoot some baskets. Nell, stay here, you got it?”
“Got it.” She tossed him a salute.
Lucy frowned. “You shouldn’t let him boss you around so much.”
“She likes it.” Mat gave Lucy a gentle push toward the door.
Nealy smiled after them. Watching Lucy these days was like seeing a flower bloom.
She hummed to herself as she put away their mess, then gave Button a snack and changed her. Afterward, she decided to take her across the street to the playground so they could watch the basketball game.
She was just stepping out the front door when a dark blue Taurus pulled up in front of the house. The doors of the sedan opened, and a man and a woman dressed in business suits got out. They had “government agents” written all over them, and she felt the blood rush from her head.
Not yet! She had a house and a dog. She had two little girls and a man with whom she’d fallen in love! Just a little longer.
She wanted to run back inside and lock the door, but she pulled Button closer and forced herself to the edge of the front porch.
Both of them studied her carefully as they came up the sidewalk. “I’m Agent DeLucca with the FBI,” the woman said. “This is Agent Williams, Secret Service.” They took in her stomach, and she silently blessed Mat for forcing her to wear the padding.
She kept her overly made-up face carefully blank. “Yes?”
“You’re Mrs. Case.” Williams made it a statement instead of a question, but she thought she detected a thread of doubt in his eyes.
“Mrs. Case? You mean the First Lady?” She attempted Lucy’s you’re-a-moron look. “Yeah, right. That’s me.”
“Could we see some identification, ma’am?” the female agent asked.
“You mean like a driver’s license?” Her heart was pounding so hard she was afraid they’d hear it.
“That would be fine.”
“I don’t have one. Someone stole my purse a couple of days ago when I was at a Laundromat.” She swallowed. “Is that what this is about? Did you find my purse?”
She saw their hesitation. They thought they had her, but they weren’t absolutely certain. A spark of hope flared inside her. If she’d been positively identified, there’d be a battalion of agents here, not just these two.
“We’d like to talk with you privately, ma’am. Could we go inside?”
Once she let them in the house, they could interrogate her for hours. “I’d rather talk here.”
Mat came roaring up like the cavalry. His T-shirt clung to his chest and one of his sweat socks had collapsed near his ankle. “What’s going on?”
“I—I think they found my purse,” she managed.
Mat didn’t miss a beat. He immediately turned to confront them. “Do you have her purse?”
Neither agent responded. Instead, the woman asked for his driver’s license.
Lucy, looking wide-eyed and nervous, ran up as he handed it over. She had the basketball clutched to her chest as if it were a life jacket. She recognized authority when she saw it, and Nealy realized she thought they were after her. “It’s okay, Luce. They want to talk to me.”
“Why?”
“Do you have any identification at all, ma’am?” Agent Williams asked her.
“Everything was in my purse.”
“She’s my wife, “ Mat said. “Nell Jorik. That’s all the identification you need.” The female agent gave him a hard look. “Mr. Jorik, we happen to know you’re single.”
“I was until a month ago. Nell and I got married in Mexico. And why do you know anything about me at all?”
“Whose children are these, sir?”
“My ex-wife’s. She died about six weeks ago.”
Lucy crept closer to Nealy.
Williams spoke. “Ma’am, could we step inside so we can talk in private?”
She shook her head. “No, the place is a mess.”
She could see that they wanted to press the issue, and she blessed the Fourth Amendment. She decided to take a chance. “Luce, this is Agent DeLucca and Agent Williams. They’re looking for Cornelia Case.”
“And they think you’re her?”
“I guess.”
All the tension left Lucy’s body. “Nell’s not Mrs. Case! This is because she was in that contest, isn’t it? That was my idea because I wanted to win a television so my baby sister could watch Teletubbies, but all I got was a power drill.” She turned to Nealy. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
“You didn’t get me in trouble.” Nealy felt a twist of guilt. Lucy was defending her out of perfect innocence.
The agents exchanged glances. They knew something wasn’t right, but Lucy’s obvious sincerity had been effective, and they still weren’t certain of Nealy’s identity.
The female agent gave her a woman-to-woman look designed to inspire camaraderie. “You’d really help us out if we could sit down in the house and talk this through.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Mr. Tough Guy said. “You want in the house, you come back with a search warrant.”
Williams gazed at Nealy. “It seems to me that someone who doesn’t have anything to hide would be more cooperative.”
“It seems to me that you should have better things to do than hassle a pregnant woman,” Mat countered.
Nealy stepped in before he got himself arrested. “Maybe you’d better go. We can’t help you.”
Agent DeLucca gave her a long, clear-eyed gaze, then turned to Lucy. “How long have you known . . . Mrs. Jorik?”
“About a week. But she’s nice and everything, and she wouldn’t do anything wrong.”
“So you just met her?”
Lucy nodded slowly.
“You don’t have to talk to them, Luce,” Mat interrupted. “Go on inside.”
Lucy looked confused, but she did as he asked. Button squirmed in Nealy’s arms and reached toward Mat. “Da . . .”
He took her.
“Boy or a girl?” Agent DeLucca asked, glancing toward Nealy’s stomach.
“Boy,” Mat said without hesitation. “For sure.”
Nealy pressed her hand to the small of her back and tried to look frail. “He’s a big baby, and I’ve been having a hard time. I’m not really supposed to walk around too much.”
Mat slipped his arm around her shoulder. “Why don’t you go on in, honey, and lie down?”
“I think I will. Sorry I couldn’t help.” She gave the agents what she hoped was a wan smile and turned away.
“MA!” Button squealed at the top of her small lungs.
Nealy turned back.
Button threw up her arms—So big—then reached out.
She took her from Mat and buried her lips in that dandelion hair.
Neither Toni nor Jason spoke as they drove away from the house. Toni took a left when they reached the main drag, then pulled into a KFC parking lot. She found a place off to the side, turned off the ignition, and stared through the windshield at the Burger King across the street.
Jason finally broke the silence. “It’s her.”
“Did you see a freckle by her eyebrow?”
“She was wearing too much makeup.”
“She’s pregnant! Barbara Shields didn’t say a damn thing about that!”
Toni reached for her cell phone, and a few minutes later she had Shields on the phone. Their conversation was short and to the point. When she hung up, she looked over at Jason.
“At first she said it wasn’t possible. Then she admitted she didn’t get a clear look at her stomach because the baby was in the car seat, along with some groceries. And Jorik blocked her view when he stepped in front of her to pay.”
“Damn.”
“You’re right. It is her,” Toni said.
“She sure doesn’t want to be found.”
“Did you see the way she looked at those kids? Like they were her own.”
“Maybe she isn’t Aurora.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know what I believe.”
They watched two businessmen come out of the restaurant and walk toward a new Camry.
“We can lift some prints from the door of the motor home, but we’ll have to wait until dark to do it,” Toni said.
Jason gazed straight ahead and asked the question that was on both their minds. “Are we going to contact the boss now or later?”
“Do you want to tell Ken that we talked with her but still aren’t sure if we have Aurora?”
“Not particularly.”
“Neither do I.” She reached for her sunglasses. “Let’s give ourselves a couple of hours and see what else we can come up with.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Mat walked out onto the sunporch and regarded Nealy grimly. “Looks like the jig’s up.”
She pressed her lips to the baby’s soft cheek, trying to shut everything out except this wiggly little bundle. “I’m sure Button didn’t know what she was saying when she called me ma.”
“Hard to tell.” The expression in his eyes mirrored her own feelings. “Nealy, they’ve got you.”
“Not yet. They don’t know for sure. If they did, this place would be swarming with Secret Service.”
“The day’s still young.”
She gave him her best attempt at a cheeky smile. “You were coming on out there like Public Enemy Number One.”
“I’ve always wanted to talk back to cops, and I decided this was the best chance I’d ever get. As long as I’m with you, I figure I’ve got diplomatic immunity.”
“I wouldn’t push it.” She gazed out into the backyard. “I need to find Lucy.”
He gave her a long slow look. “Are you going to tell her?”
“I used her out there. Now I have to make up for it.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No. I have to do this by myself.”
She searched the house and the motor home before she found Lucy sitting in the hollyhocks that grew behind the garage. Her knees were tucked against her chest, her shoulders bowed.
Nealy eased down next to her. “I’ve been looking for you.”
At first Lucy didn’t respond. When she finally glanced over at Nealy, her expression was wary. “Did they come here because of your husband?”
“Sort of.” She took a deep breath. “But not the husband I told you about.”
“What do you mean?”
Nealy watched a pair of bumblebees explore the skirt of a bright yellow hollyhock blossom. “My husband was President Case, Luce.”
“No!”
“I’m sorry.”
She jumped to her feet. “You’re lying. You’re just saying this. You’re Nell! You’re—” Her voice broke. “Just say you’re Nell.”
“I can’t. I’m Cornelia Case.”
Lucy’s eyes filled with tears. “You lied to us. You lied to all of us.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Did you tell Mat?”
“He figured it out a couple of days ago.”
“And nobody told me.”
“We couldn’t.”
Lucy was smart, and she already understood exactly what this meant to her. A shudder passed through her. “You won’t marry him now, will you?”
Her insides cramped. “There was never a question of the two of us getting married.”
“Yes, there was!” Her lips trembled, and she looked as if her entire world had crumbled. “You like him! You liked him a lot! And you cared about me and Button!”
“I still care. This doesn’t cha
nge the way I feel about the two of you.”
“But this means you won’t ever marry Mat. Not after you were married to the President. And somebody like you wouldn’t ever adopt Button.”
“Lucy, let me explain . . .”
But Lucy didn’t want to hear any explanations. She was already running toward the house.
19
MAT FOUND NEALY in the hollyhocks a short time later. He sat beside her in the same place Lucy had been, except he was crushing part of a plant. He’d taken a quick shower and his damp hair had finger marks where he’d run his hand through it. Drawing up his knees, he propped his forearms on top and gazed over at her. “I’m guessing you’ve had better days.”
Nealy rubbed her eyes. “What’s Lucy doing now?”
“Charlie showed up to take her swimming right after she ran into the house. At first she told him she wouldn’t go, but he said Bertis was making fudge and her feelings would be hurt, so she grabbed Button and they took off.”
“You let her take Button?”
“Lucy protects Button better than the Secret Service protected you.” He straightened one leg, gazed out into the backyard of the house behind them. “And the baby needs time away from us.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s . . .” He looked uncomfortable. “She’s getting pretty attached.”
Even though she knew what he meant, a chill crept through her. “Babies are supposed to get attached. That’s what being a baby is all about.”
“Nealy . . .”
She rose to her feet. “People are supposed to get attached.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
She walked away from him and hurried into the house. As soon as she got inside, she went upstairs to put away her clothes, anything to keep from thinking, but she heard his tread on the steps.
The bed was still rumpled, the place where they’d made love last night. Things like making beds had always been done for her, and she kept forgetting she needed to do it for herself.
He stopped inside the door. “I can’t keep those kids. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want me to keep them.”
She grabbed the sheet and pulled it up. “You should have seen Lucy’s face when I told her who I was. She’s built this fantasy around the two of us. I know we both told her it wasn’t realistic, but she refused to believe it. She thought if she clung to her dreams hard enough, she could make them come true.”
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