by Helen Conrad
“What friend?” she asked idly, looking through her mail. Tired of waiting for Tony, she’d sent out inquiries to video publishing houses on both coasts and in Chicago. So far there had been no reply, but it did give an extra boost to waiting for the mail. Today there were Christmas cards from three old friends, one who lived in Japan, and she smiled, looking forward to reading their messages.
“That fellow who teaches drama at your college,” her mother went on. “He stopped by to pick up those tapes you wanted him to see.”
Glenna’s mouth dropped open and she tossed down the mail. “You’re kidding. He finally came through for me. What a great guy.” Excitement skittered through her system. “I’ll call him right away and see what he thinks.” Then she frowned. “I hope you gave him the right tapes. I only wanted him to see the edited ones.”
Anna came out of the kitchen, a dish towel in her hands. “I gave him the stack you keep on that middle shelf. The top one said “Edited Play in Sandbox,” so I thought those must be the ones.”
“Those are the ones.” Glenna felt like dancing. “This is wonderful. I just hope he sees the potential. And I hope he sees flaws he can help me correct. What time did he come by? Do you suppose he’s had time to watch all four of them yet?”
“Four? I gave him five.”
Glenna frowned. “Five? Oh, no. There must have been a ringer in the stack. I’ve only edited four to the point where I wanted them seen. Some other tape must have been stuck in the pile. I hope he doesn’t watch that first and think...”
Suddenly the truth hit her and she stopped talking. Staring at the wall, she let her mind slowly encompass what had happened. The last time she’d watched the tape of the park, the one that had her father’s car in the background, she’d had to put it away hurriedly. She remembered now that she’d lifted the top edited tape and slipped it into the stack.
“No,” she whispered. Oh, no. He couldn’t have taken that one.
Her mother had gone back into the kitchen, and Glenna hurried to the den. Searching feverishly, she went through one shelf of tapes after another. But she knew the answer even as she hunted. The tape was gone. The tape she should have erased long ago was now in someone else’s hands.
She felt sick, dizzy. She couldn’t let this happen. She had to stop it.
Her mouth was dry as she flipped through her address book, looking for Tony’s home phone number, and her fingers were shaking as she punched it out on the telephone. She waited impatiently, then spoke to his answering machine, afterward jamming down the receiver and hurrying to get her car keys.
“Mom, I have to go out,” she called. “I’ll be back soon. Sorry.”
She stopped in the living room, where the kids were busy “helping” with the tree, and hurriedly asked her dad to keep an eye on them. She couldn’t wait and explain. She had to hurry. She had a feeling of dread, a fear she would be too late. Jumping into her car, she pulled out of the driveway and headed for Sugar Creek.
Tony’s address turned out to be an apartment building, and she didn’t have his apartment number. There were no names listed on the mailboxes. In desperation, she turned to the manager’s office.
“Tony Perini?” said the gray-haired lady, nodding wisely. “Ah, yes. You just missed him. He left for the airport about an hour ago. He’s heading for the coast, don’t you know? Going to spend the holidays with his brother in Los Angeles. You can probably reach him there.”
She felt as though her heart would burst out of her chest. “Do you have that address? Phone number?”
The lady shook her head. “Sorry. If you want to leave your name and number, I’ll tell him if he happens to call.”
It was the best she could do. Sick at heart, Glenna slowly returned to her car.
What now? What the heck now?
Get on with things, that was the answer.
She took Jimmy and Megan to the movies. A new Disney animation film was playing and they were both excited about it. Glenna had been, too, but once the curtain rose and the lights dimmed, she found herself immersed in thought again, and the bright animals and happy tunes faded away. She was alone once more, alone with her hopes and fears.
Michael Kenton was back in town. He’d disappeared for a few days, but the buzz was that he’d returned on Sunday, walking into church while some of the congregation were debating Sarah’s fitness as a preacher. He’d said his piece to them all, supporting her strongly, and had even ended up his speech asking her to marry him—in front of everyone. And she’d accepted. It had turned out she was the alibi Liza had been hinting at. Sarah had been with Michael the night of the fire. He couldn’t be charged.
That meant the position as prime suspect was up for grabs. Lee’s gaze might fall on almost anyone. Glenna shivered when she thought of it.
Her tape was in California. She had to get hold of it again, but she was calmer about that now. Tony wasn’t going to connect the scene in the background of a children’s tape with the fire. He would carry on, watch an edited video and realize that one had been included by mistake. In some ways, it was probably safer to have it out there on the coast for a few weeks. Glenna forced herself to relax, since there wasn’t much she could do about it anyway.
And then there was Lee—gorgeous and sexy and completely out of her reach. If only she could stop thinking about him.
“Look at the baby monster, Mommy,” Megan urged, and Glenna turned her attention back to the screen.
Whatever else, she had her children. That was all she needed.
CHAPTER TEN
“CHRISTMAS TIME is comin’ and the geese are getting fat.”
Glenna was singing Christmas songs as she eased her car down Main Street, heading out of town. The day was ominously gray and the wind whipped down the streets like an old-fashioned villain with a sneer. Some would call it a miserable day, but not Glenna. She was doing some holiday shopping, and that always put a sparkle in her eyes.
She’d left her two little ones with her mother, and was now turning on Old Farmhouse Road, heading for Swenson’s Dairy. Lars Swenson’s wife, Sherry, carved beautiful traditional wooden toys, and Glenna wanted to get a few for her two and for some other children on her gift list.
The day had a certain wildness to it, and that seemed to touch a chord in her, to stir something in her blood. She felt restless and excited at the same time, and she had to remind herself to ease up on the accelerator.
Sherry Swenson had a room full of treasures she’d carved, and Glenna took an hour looking them over and choosing the two that were best for her children. She bought a small wooden train with animals in all the windows for Jimmy, and a jointed puppet for Megan. Then she added some carved fairies and a cute little pig for nieces and nephews. Each piece of wood was rich with finely carved detail and hand polished to a burnished hue.
“You do such lovely work,” she told Mrs. Swenson.
“Yah, I’ve been practicing since I was five years old,” the stout blond woman told her. “You’d better get good by then, or give it up altogether.”
There you go, Glenna thought to herself. Beautiful classic toys and then words of wisdom thrown in free. Work hard at things and you should get good at them. Right on, Mrs. Swenson. I’ll give it a try.
She drove away from the dairy farm feeling so full of energy, she was almost vibrating with it. Why did she feel so keyed up, so stimulated? She really didn’t know, but she drove back to Tyler feeling like she was on a cloud. As rolling farmland gave way to suburbs once again, she began looking forward to a nice mug of hot cocoa when she got home.
She felt the rhythmic thumping before she heard it.
“Oh, no,” she moaned. “Not a flat tire, not on a day like this.”
She pulled over to the side of the road. It was still a divided highway here, and there were no buildings to spe
ak of on her side, and certainly no telephones. On the other, way off down the road there was a strip mall with a coffee bar and a video store, but the highway was wide and she didn’t really want to walk that far. She was stuck. Getting out, she went around the car, looked at the flat right rear tire and kicked it.
Well, she supposed there was nothing for it but to change it. She’d done it before. Of course, that had been many years ago, when she was a teenager and taking driver’s training in high school. But cars hadn’t changed all that much since then. Surely it would all come back to her.
She opened the trunk of the car and frowned. Where the heck was the spare tire? She pushed aside the sack of newspapers she’d been meaning to drop off at the recycling center, the box of old toys she’d meant to donate at the hospital and the bag of decorations left over from the TylerTots Bazaar, which was small, as the event had been quite successful. And still there was no sign of it.
“Who stole my spare?” she muttered, feeling forlorn. Had she ever had one? She couldn’t remember seeing it. She stared down into her trunk space and realized the thing had a false bottom. Two wing nuts blinked at her. Moving her bundles, she worked at them until she could lift the fabric-covered pressboard, and there it was, revealed in all its glory.
“My spare!” she cried.
It looked lovely and unused. A tire iron lay across its circumference. But where was the jack? No jack in sight. Now what? She leaned against the car and groaned, realizing yesterday would have been a great time to buy a cellular phone. Today was just too late.
* * *
LEE WAS DRIVING ALONG, minding his own business, when fate reached out and grabbed him. He’d done a pretty good job of avoiding Glenna so far. He’d been back in town for a full day and had managed to stay away from all the places he might run into her. By now he felt pretty strong. A few times that day someone had brought up her name, but he’d ignored it and no one had persisted. Lee was pretty proud of himself. That was one intense temptation he’d resisted quite well.
This afternoon he was driving out to visit with a retired firefighter who lived outside of town and might have some information for him. He wasn’t sure if he would catch the man at home, because he hadn’t called first, but he was taking a chance. Tom Reilly was supposed to have a special instinct for arson, and Lee was going to run some test results past him, just in case.
As he made his way out of town, cruising along, and enjoying the feel of the road, he caught sight of Glenna with a disabled car along the side of the highway. Lee smashed the palm of his hand down on the steering wheel and swore aloud. Going another half block, he pretended to himself that he was going to be able to ignore her, even though he knew that was impossible and that he was going to turn around as soon as he could on the divided highway.
He’d known he would have to face her at some point. In a small town like Tyler, how could he avoid it? But he’d hoped it wouldn’t be alone like this, out in the middle of nowhere. It would have been better at the supermarket or at the library, in front of lots of people, where they would have to be formally polite to each other. Not here. There was no one around to make sure he didn’t give in to...
To what? He wasn’t sure. But he didn’t want to do it.
He pulled his car in behind her, turned off the engine and sat looking at her for a moment. She’d recognized his convertible and was standing with her hand shading her eyes, staring back. Her silky black hair was loose around her face and her crystal-blue eyes were huge. Two bright red spots accentuated her cheeks. Dark green tights and a short skirt peeking out from her warm-looking parka completed the picture. She looked good enough to run away with. He was really going to have to watch himself.
Slowly, reluctantly, he unfolded his long, lean body and sauntered toward where she was waiting. Stopping before her, he looked down into her eyes and took his own sweet time about saying anything. She just waited, watching.
“Your lips are practically blue,” he noted at last. “You’re freezing.”
“I’m fine,” she said defensively.
He shrugged and looked down at the tire. “Why don’t you get into the car and out of the cold and let me take care of this?” he suggested.
Before she answered he could see she would never do anything he suggested and he groaned inside, wondering why he was here.
“There’s no jack,” she told him, folding her arms over her chest and staring at him with eyes as hard as polished azurite. “Listen, why don’t you just go and call the triple A for me? I’ll wait here for them to come.”
His mouth tilted at the corners and he looked down at her, bemused.
“Do you really think I’m going to leave you all alone at the side of the road like this?” he asked.
That surprised her. She would have thought he would be looking for an excuse to get away. “Why not?”
He grimaced, not looking at her any longer. Picking up the tire iron, which she’d dropped on the ground, he flipped off the hubcap with one deft move, then handed the tool to her.
“Start on the lug nuts,” he told her, watching for a moment to make sure she was doing it right.
She hesitated for only a moment and then went at it, determined not to miss a beat and give him any more excuse for sneering. And she surprised herself. The nuts were tight, but not impossible, and she needed help on only one of them. He gave the help, then nodded his approval of her style and started back toward his car to get his own jack.
“You see?” she called after him triumphantly. “I can do some things on my own. And I could wait beside a car for the mechanic, too, you know, without the world coming to an end.”
“Maybe you ought to read the papers now and then,” he called back to her as he pulled out the jack and closed the trunk. “Things happen to women like you.”
“Women like me,” she repeated mockingly as he returned with the tool. She had all the nuts off and was proud of herself. “And just what kind of woman am I?”
He sank down on one knee and began placing the jack. “A very tempting woman,” he grumbled, focusing on the tire.
She blinked, surprised and rather pleased. “Oh. You’re teasing me, Lee. I—”
He frowned, rising and beginning to crank the handle of the jack. “I’m not teasing you. I’m a man. There are certain things about men you just don’t quite get. This is one of them. I’m not leaving you here.”
She shivered and rubbed her hands up and down her arms, trying for a little warmth. She knew it made sense for her to get in the car. She wasn’t doing any good out here any longer. But she didn’t want to go, despite the cold.
“You’ve surely got better things to do than to hang around here rescuing me,” she said, though at the rate he was going, trying to get him to stop working on her tire was getting to be a moot point.
“Oh, no. I love rescuing you.” Irony dripped from his voice as he began removing the tire from the wheel well. “You’re just the person I was dying to rescue today.”
Well, that was great. Now her back was definitely up. Here she was, trying to be nice, and he had to act as if she’d done this to him on purpose. She’d been trying to give him an out since he’d arrived on the scene. There was no need for ridicule.
“Thank you very much for changing my tire,” she added stiffly when he was finished.
He rose, set the flat tire in the trunk, then turned to her. “You’re very welcome.”
She gazed up at him, wavering slightly. He looked so good, so rough and ready and big and strong. Something in her was responding, and she felt her pulse speed up.
He sensed it at the same time, and his own excitement turned up a notch. Without thinking, he reached out and touched her cheek. “You’re freezing,” he said, as though it were a surprise.
This was it, time to leave, and he knew it. This was his opening. He had
to get out of here, had to leave her alone. His work was calling to him. The road lay in wait. He had to go.
So why was it that the words that came out of his mouth had nothing to do with leaving? “Come on,” he said softly, caressing her cheek. Had he ever felt anything so soft, so round? “We’ve got to warm you up.”
“No,” she said, drawing back, looking shocked at the suggestion, and his wide, slow grin took over.
“Don’t take it personally,” he told her. “I’m talking about a hot cup of coffee, not a hot half hour in the back seat of your car.”
“Oh.”
Dropping his arm, he grabbed her hand and looked down the highway. “Come on,” he said. “There’s a coffee bar across the road.”
She followed his gaze. The Java Hut was new and patronized mainly by high-school kids, so they weren’t likely to run into anyone they knew.
“It’s awfully late,” she said, hesitating. “It’s practically dinnertime.”
“Come on, Glenna,” he said, looking downright seductive. “Take a chance.”
She stared at him. “Okay,” she said, knowing she was agreeing to take a step into the unknown. “Let’s go.”
And they did.
* * *
THE INTERIOR OF the Java Hut was all dark woods and rich upholstery. Glenna called home on the pay phone to check on the kids. Then she and Lee sat in a booth and listened to soft, dreamy jazz being played on the sound system, sipping giant mugs of mocha coffee and smiling across the table at each other. All the prickliness seemed to have evaporated, and they were talking like old friends.
Glenna supposed it was partly the anonymity of the place that helped them act that way. The room was full of people, but she didn’t know any of them and neither did he, so they were part of a crowd, surrounded by buzzing conversation and music and even a couple dancing in the corner. And yet they were alone.
“Someone was telling me the other day about the taping of children playing you’ve been doing.” He sat back and smiled at her across the table, thinking that she looked like a teenager again. “Tell me about that. What exactly is it all about?”