Masquerade

by Janette Rallison

  He slipped his card through the lock and opened the door. He always left the bathroom light on for Bella. It threw enough light into the room that he didn’t flip on any others. He kicked his shoes off while and walked into Bella’s bedroom. The covers on her bed were rumpled and wadded as they always were, but she wasn’t laying there among the blankets and the stuffed animals. The bed was empty.

  He checked the floor first to see if she’d rolled off. No Bella. Panic hit him like a hammer. Where had she gone?

  He went back into the living room and put his shoes on.

  Bella must have awakened, seen he wasn’t there, and gone to find him. Even now she was wandering around the hotel in her nightgown, sobbing uncontrollably. He had to find her.

  No, he’d call security first, then go search for her.

  It was during this moment of indecision that he noticed the shape in the recliner by the door.

  He first saw Clarissa, and then noticed Bella in her lap, half covered by a blanket. Both were fast asleep.

  How the two had gotten there only briefly occupied his mind. Relief was his first reaction, and then staring at them quickly took precedence. Bella’s delicate head and wild curls lay nestled on Clarissa’s chest, and Clarissa’s head rested softly against the back of the chair. In the dim light he studied Clarissa’s every feature—her dark lashes, her half-parted lips, her hair cascading everywhere.

  It didn’t matter how many times he told himself otherwise, he wanted Clarissa and not just someone like her.

  He sat down on the couch, still staring at her, and digested this information. His first thought was that he would just take what he wanted. Isn’t that how the world worked? Divorces happened. And it was too bad for Clarissa’s husband that one was in store for him. The guy seemed like a jerk, anyway. Clarissa deserved better.

  And then, pained that he’d even thought about it, Slade rejected the idea. How could he think of tearing apart a family because he’d fallen in love with someone he shouldn’t have? That would be his gift to the woman he loved? He’d destroy her marriage and the home life of her daughter? Slade had already lived through that sort of pain with Bella. Of course he couldn’t do it.

  Still he stared at Clarissa. It would be hard, horribly hard, but he wouldn’t let her know how he felt. He would never do anything to jeopardize their professional relationship. He would stay as far away from her as good judgment required.

  After convincing himself of these things, he got up from the couch and went to the recliner. He would put Bella back to bed and then awaken Clarissa. He leaned forward. Before reaching for his daughter, he paused, contemplating Clarissa. I’m so close to her, he thought. I’m close enough that I could lean over a little more and let my lips brush across her cheek. She’d never know. No one would ever know—except for the devil, and he’d immediately make reservations in hell under my name.

  Stepping back, Slade called softly, “Clarissa.”

  She didn’t move.

  He reached out and touched her lightly on the shoulder. Her eyes opened, and she stared blankly at him. “What are you doing in here?”

  “This is my hotel room,” he told her.

  She blinked in confusion, and then seemed to remember. “Oh,” she said, drawing out the word huskily.

  That was probably how she sounded after she kissed someone. Husky and half dreaming.

  He was going to have to work on reining in his thoughts.

  Slade reached for his daughter. “Let me have Bella. I’ll put her back in bed.”

  Still seated, Clarissa helped lift the sleeping girl into his arms. He took her into the other room, laid her on the bed, and pulled the blankets around her. She didn’t stir at all.

  When Slade returned to the living room, he switched on one of the lamps. Clarissa stood by the door, beautifully disheveled. She wore an old T-shirt and a pair of flannel shorts that looked like boxers. He found the combination somehow more alluring than Natalie’s micro skirt and halter top. He made himself stop staring at her legs.

  Clarissa ran a hand through her hair sleepily. “Bella heard your door close, so she got up to look for you. When she couldn’t find you she came and pounded on my door. I figured if I kept her in my room, you’d worry. And since I had your key . . .” She glanced over at the recliner where he’d found her. “I only meant to sit with her until she went back to sleep. I guess I fell asleep instead.”

  “I guess so.” He suddenly thought of Goldilocks. She’d run away when the bears had come home and found her sleeping in their bed. There was probably a good reason for that. Run away, he thought. Run away before I decide to eat you up.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing’s wrong.” Except for everything.

  “Where were you?”

  He nearly sat down on the couch, then decided against it. Sitting down would encourage more conversation. He remained standing and thrust his hands in his pockets. “It was another one of Natalie’s stupid ploys. Apparently making my life difficult during the day is no longer enough.”

  Clarissa looked at him, her head tilted in a thoughtful way. “You know, for all the lectures you’ve given me about Landon, you’d think you’d be the last one to jaunt off for a midnight rendezvous with a woman of questionable moral character.”

  “Oh, there’s no question about Natalie’s moral character,” Slade said. “That’s already been established.”

  “The point is,” Clarissa continued, “you need to be careful too. If anything happened between the two of you and it got out—AJ would blacklist you and Sylvia would blast the news to the entire world.” Clarissa sent him a serious look. “Temptation can pop up even when you think you’re impervious.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  He must have said the words too harshly, because her brows furrowed together in frustration. “You’re impossible.”

  “So you’ve told me.”

  “Yes, well, I was right then too.”

  Go ahead and be mad at me, he thought. I’ve just saved you from a broken marriage and myself from hell. As he watched her leave the room, he still wasn’t sure he had made the best choice.

  Chapter 26

  The next morning when Slade brought Bella over to Clarissa’s room, his face looked drawn. The lines on his face were too sharp. Probably from lack of sleep.

  “I’ll only be an hour or two,” he told her at the door. “I need to go over some things with Meredith and talk to my agent. I’ll call you when I’m done.” Then he turned and stalked off down the hallway.

  Clarissa shouldn’t have been disappointed that he didn’t stay longer. She was, though. She’d gotten used to talking to him and now felt vaguely empty and restless.

  Instead of ordering room service, she took the girls to restaurant for breakfast. It probably wasn’t the best cure for restlessness—trying to keep two preschoolers seated and well-behaved for the duration of a meal.

  As they left the restaurant, Bella asked, “Can we go swimming?”

  Clarissa took hold of Elaina’s hand. “I don’t think we have enough time before your dad comes for you.”

  Bella shuffled her feet as she walked. “Can we play hide-and-seek then?”

  “Sure. We’ll play in my room.”

  Bella hurried her pace at this, skipping across the lobby past Clarissa. She stopped in front of the elevator and pushed the button. “I get to hide first.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’ll never find me.”

  Clarissa smiled down at her. “We’ll see.”

  The elevator door opened and Meredith stepped out, looking crisp and professional in a business suit and heels. “Oh, hello,” she said. “Are you out for a stroll?”

  “We just finished breakfast.” Clarissa reached over to stop Bella from going into the elevator, and the door slid closed. “Is Slade done with his business already?” If he was, perhaps Clarissa should take Bella to
his room instead of starting new games.

  “Only his business with me,” Meredith said. Then she leaned toward Clarissa and lowered her voice. “And I don’t know when I’ve seen him in such a bad mood. Trust me, steer clear of him today.”

  Okay. So maybe this wasn’t the best day to tell him about Sylvia.

  “I don’t think he got a lot of sleep last night,” Clarissa said.

  “He’s upset about something,” Meredith said. “Honestly, the man needs to work on his vacationing skills.”

  Clarissa pushed the elevator button again. “I’ll let you suggest that to him.”

  It was then she noticed that Bella was gone.

  Clarissa looked around the lobby for some sign of her. “Did you see where Bella went?” she asked Meredith.

  Meredith shook her head and joined Clarissa in casting glances in every direction.

  “Bella?” Clarissa tried to quell the panic that gripped her. Not this. Not again. Not when Slade was already in a bad mood.

  “Bella, come out here right now. We’re not playing hide-and-seek yet.”

  “Hide-and-seek?” Meredith asked. “Oh, no. You’ll never find her.”

  Clarissa turned to Elaina. “Did you see which way Bella went?”

  Elaina nodded and pointed down the hallway where the conference rooms were. Clarissa gave Elaina’s hand to Meredith, and with a sickening feeling that she was reliving her first night at the resort, ran to the hallway. Her feet felt heavy, and her purse thunked wildly against her side as she went.

  The hallway was empty. She hurried down it, peering into a couple of open rooms. No Bella. Clarissa ran to the end of the hallway and pushed open the door to the stairwell. She looked up it. Bella wouldn’t have gone up there, would she? She listened to hear the echo of little feet against the steps. Nothing.

  Clarissa turned and hurried back to the conference rooms, this time opening the doors that were closed. The first was filled with businessmen, a few of whom turned to stare at her as she stood in the doorway.

  Okay, Bella probably wasn’t in that one.

  She only found rows of empty chairs in the second room. No four-year-old. She called out, “Bella!” and looked behind the podium anyway. Where was that little black dog when she needed him?

  When Clarissa came out of the room, she saw Meredith walking down the hallway with Elaina in her arms. “I’ll check up the stairwell.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We’ll find her.”

  Clarissa didn’t answer. An assortment of frightening scenarios had entered her mind. What if Bella had been abducted? What if Elaina had been wrong about where Bella went? After all, Clarissa was taking the word of a three-year-old to determine her search area. What did Elaina know about directions? She couldn’t even find her way home from the mailbox yet.

  Clarissa pushed these thought away. No one had taken Bella. She was here, somewhere, playing hide-and-seek and proving the point that no one could find her.

  Clarissa darted into the third room and found it full of tables and chairs. A few silk plants lined the wall. She hadn’t noticed those the first time. Now she checked behind each of them, feeling her heart pound more intensely with each moment that passed.

  She pushed open the door to the fourth room. It was set up for some sort of luncheon. Round tables dotted the room, surrounded by chairs on all sides. Two long buffet tables sat end to end in the back with bird-of-paradise centerpieces on them. As she circled around the tables in the middle of the room ,Clarissa called out, “Bella, I need you to come out now.”

  She got no answer.

  Tears stung the back of her eyes.

  On her trip around the third table, she stopped and looked at the tables against the back wall more closely. They were draped with long tablecloths, just like Bella’s dining room table back home.

  Clarissa walked to one and lifted the edge of the tablecloth. In the far corner, Bella sat huddled against the wall. She let out a shriek of laughter.

  Clarissa stood holding up the cloth, torn between relief and anger. Part of her wanted to cry the other part wanted to abandon everything she’d learned in her family science classes and pull Bella out by her feet and spank her.

  “Come here, right now, Bella!”It sounded harsh, even in Clarissa’s ears.

  The smile immediately dropped from Bella’s face. She gaped at Clarissa, wide-eyed, and didn’t move.

  And then Clarissa’s relief suddenly outweighed her anger. “Listen, Bella . . .” she said more softly. The change in tone had no affect on Bella. Her bottom lip trembled, a preamble to tears.

  Clarissa had handled this wrong. All those years of training had been undone in one moment. She sighed, got down on her hands and knees, and crawled underneath the table, dragging her purse across the floor as she went.

  Once she got to Bella, she lay down on her stomach and looked at the little girl. “Listen,” she said, this time so softly it was no more than a whisper. “I was so worried about you that I felt sick. I was afraid you were hurt.”

  Bella gulped and blinked at Clarissa. “Like when you jumped into the pool?”

  “Just like at the pool.”

  And then without thinking about it, Clarissa gathered Bella into her arms and held her close. Bella hugged her back, burying her head into Clarissa’s shoulder.

  They remained like this for awhile, Clarissa afraid to let the moment end, enjoying this piece of love she felt.

  Then she heard the conference room door open and quick footsteps crossing the floor.

  Meredith.

  Clarissa reached over to the tablecloth, lifting it in order to call out to her, then dropped the tablecloth back down.

  It wasn’t Meredith. It was Sherry, glancing tentatively around the room, but thankfully, not under the tables. Clarissa had no idea why Sherry had come into the room or why she was headed to the back wall, back toward their hiding place.

  This was bad. How was Clarissa supposed to explain to a near-stranger why she was hiding under a buffet table in an empty room?

  Wasn’t it bad enough that the woman had already seen her jump into a pool wearing a robe?

  Clarissa turned to Bella and held one finger against her lips. “Shhh,” she whispered. “We’re playing spies now.”

  A smile lit up Bella’s face, and she slipped one of her hands into Clarissa’s, clearly pleased to be a coconspirator in this new game.

  Please don’t come near this table, Clarissa thought. Please be passing by and on your way out.

  Sherry’s heels stopped at the far end of the table.

  Even worse. Every moment this was getting harder to explain. Well, you see, Sherry, I was giving Bella an educational lesson on how tables work. And we study in silence; otherwise, we would of course have said something to you when you walked in.

  The corner of the tablecloth by Sherry’s heels lifted up. Next—although Clarissa wasn’t sure why—Sherry would look under the table and discover them.

  Clarissa hoped Sherry wasn’t the type who screamed loudly when startled.

  Clarissa looked toward Sherry, with what she hoped passed for a casual expression, and willed a plausible explanation of her situation to come to her lips. But only Sherry’s hand came under the table. She thrust it under the cloth and pressed a pale green envelope onto the underside of the table. It stuck there. The next moment the tablecloth dropped back down, and the sound of Sherry’s heels clicked away from the table and back across the room.

  Clarissa stared at the envelope, too surprised to even be relieved that they hadn’t been discovered. When she heard the conference room door close, she crawled to the envelope and peeled it off the table.

  So Sherry was one of Sylvia’s sources.

  As she ripped the envelope open, Clarissa wondered what sort of horrible story Sylvia had on Sherry that would make her turn over information about her own cast.

  “Is it a clue?” Bella whispered.

  Clarissa pulled out a pale green piece of
stationery and unfolded it. “I think so. Let me read it.”

  Written in a hurried scrawl were the words:

  Parker Wentworth came to the set with such a big hangover on Monday that had he been carrying a real gun, he would have shot half the cast. Crew members are beginning to grumble about his unprofessionalism on the set.

  Natalie Granger is on another of her odd diets. For the third day in a row, she’s eaten only lettuce and raw fish for lunch.

  Landon McKellips and Sherry Reynolds spent a good portion of the evening together on Saturday at a party, fueling talk of an offscreen romance between the two.

  Nice of her to include herself in the muckraking.

  Landon’s trademark carefree attitude may soon be changing. Rumor has it that Landon’s father is drinking so heavily that he needs an intervention. Landon may ask for a leave from the show to help get his father treatment.

  Clarissa took a sharp inward breath.

  Apparently Landon shouldn’t have spent so much time with Sherry on Saturday. She was not the woman to discuss your life with.

  Clarissa held the paper in her hand and reread the last entry. Was it true? She supposed it didn’t matter, not to Sylvia, not to Sherry, not to the millions of people who would read it. It mattered only to Landon and his family, to those who would be wounded by the report.

  Clarissa hoped for Landon’s sake that the talk of a romance with Sherry was just a red herring. Landon deserved better than that in a girlfriend.

  Clarissa ripped up the letter, then looked at the ragged strips of pale green paper lying on the floor and wondered what to do next. She hadn’t solved the problem. If Sylvia didn’t get her report from Sherry now, she’d get it in a different way later.

  So Clarissa would march right up to Sherry and tell her she knew who was feeding Sylvia information. If Sherry ever told Sylvia anything again, Clarissa would let the entire cast of Undercover Agents know who was turning over their personal information to the tabloids.

  And the cast would, of course, take the word of some unknown temporary nanny over one of their own.

  “Why did you rip up the clue?” Bella asked.