by Bird, Peggy
“I agree. My idea flies in the face of everything I said about the situation, but it’s the only way I can see for you to get together with him soon. It would be a test of your acting skills. But you did okay pretending in San Fran.”
“Come on, Mary Lynn. Spit it out.”
“How about this? How about you go whole hog into this Claire-from-Seattle thing? Create the rest of your new persona—get a new e-mail, a Seattle area phone number …”
“But he wants to come see me. How can I do that when I don’t have a place in Seattle? And don’t tell me to rent an apartment there. I can barely afford Portland, let alone a second place.”
“Let me finish. You can use my address. You’ve stayed at my house often enough. You should feel somewhat at home there. I’m out of town on business pretty often. You’d have a place to stay in Seattle where you can entertain him and my car with Washington plates you can drive him around in.”
“I don’t know my way around the city very well.”
“That’s what Google and GPS are for. Besides, from the way he looks at you, I very much doubt he has sightseeing in mind when he’s with you.”
Now it was Claudia’s turn to be quiet while she thought about the idea. Finally, she said, “Do you really think it’ll work?”
“Has my advice ever failed you?”
“About my literary life, no. But I’ve never asked you for advice about my personal life.”
“I’m just as good there. Trust me.” Mary Lynn dipped into her bag and brought out a notebook and a pen. “Let’s start making lists of what you need to do to pull this off.”
• • •
It didn’t take long to establish Claudia’s new identity as Claire Mason. In fact, it was frighteningly easy. Claudia kept telling herself it was all research for a future book. Shakespeare must have done similar research when he wrote all his mistaken identity comedies, she decided. Well, except for the phone and e-mail trails. He wouldn’t have had to worry about those things. But rationalizing she was following in the footsteps of the Bard faded away when she remembered she was doing it so she could have another weekend with Brad. Then any reluctance disappeared in a haze of desire.
After less than a week, everything was in place and Claudia wrote an e-mail to Brad using her new Gmail account. Her first draft read:
How was your flight home? Mary Lynn and I made it back without incident. Sorry it took so long to get in touch. It’s been hectic since I got home. If you still want to get together, how about coming up to Seattle in a couple weeks? Assuming your schedule works. And, like I said, you still want to.
Oh, hell. Erase. Erase. Erase. That wasn’t how she wanted to come across. It sounded like a mash-up between something she’d write to one of her friends and a middle school girl writing to her crush. Try again.
See? I’m making good use of your e-mail address. Here’s my cell number: 425-000-9876. And, of course, you now know my e-mail address. Let me know you got this.
Claire
There. Better. She read it through twice, moved a comma or two, and hit “send.” The ball was in his court. If he wanted to see her, he would answer. If he didn’t, he could …
Before she could finish the thought, the burner phone Mary Lynn had sent her, so he wouldn’t see a Portland area code, buzzed. She had a text.
Got it, lovely. Can I see you this weekend? I’ll come to Seattle. Or meet you wherever.
Her heart was beating so hard she could feel her pulse in her thumbs, which made answering the text something of a challenge. Finally, after massive editing and overriding autocorrect a dozen times, she got off a response.
This weekend would be great. I’ll send you an e-mail with directions to the house. Will you get here Saturday morning?
The response came back even faster than the first one had.
Can’t wait ’til Saturday. Friday night about 8 or so. Late dinner?
Claudia stared at the response for a long time. She was happy Brad was so eager to see her again; she was excited to see him. But there was another emotion roiling around. One she didn’t recognize at first.
Finally she texted back:
I’ll have dinner waiting for you.
When she turned her phone off, the other feeling rose to the surface and burst, not like a bubble but like a bomb. The enormity of what she was about to do hit her, and she was scared spitless about whether she could pull it off.
Not for the first time with this man, she wondered what she was doing.
• • •
During the summer, Claudia’s teaching schedule was light to nonexistent. This summer in particular, she wasn’t committed to much more than a few guest lectures and some mentoring sessions with a couple of her graduate students. And since she usually tried to have Friday afternoons free, she had a convenient way to escape for a weekend away. This weekend, in particular, she was happy she’d planned her summer that way.
As soon as her writing hours in the morning were over, she headed for her car. Her suitcase had been packed the night before, full of some of the clothes she’d worn in San Francisco along with a newly acquired sexy nightgown, sneakers, a pair of jeans, and a couple of turtleneck sweaters. She believed in being ready for anything.
All she had to do was get through the traffic to Mary Lynn’s home, get her things in the right place in the bedroom, get dinner started, and she’d be ready for Brad’s arrival. At least, as ready as she was likely to ever be, given that she was about to try to pull off the biggest con of her life.
When Mary Lynn first suggested the idea of creating a Claire Mason identity, it had sounded fun. A challenge. Then, as she put in place the pieces of her “new” self and it had gotten more real, she made notes about what she was doing in case she really did want to use it as a storyline for a future book. Now, however, she was beginning to wonder exactly what it said about her that she was so willing to continue to fool—all right, lie—to this man she found so compellingly attractive.
The easy answer was, she had to protect her reputation until after she had tenure. She couldn’t take a chance on Brad letting something about her slip to someone at St. Mary’s who knew someone at Portland State. Or, even worse, to her boss when he was guest teaching. Then there were the teachers she knew at most of the schools in Portland who might also know him. Portland was a very small town in many ways, and they were bound to have acquaintances in common. She shuddered to think of all the chances there might be for him to let the information slip about what she wrote, information that would inevitably find its way back to the tenure committee. And, as she’d told Mary Lynn, she’d worked hard for tenure for more years than she cared to count, and she didn’t want to blow it now when it was so close.
But deep inside, she knew there was another reason. One she hesitated to admit. She was afraid if Brad Davis, Mr. Hot and Handsome, knew she was boring Claudia Manchester, PhD, he wouldn’t be nearly as interested in her as he was in April Mayes/Claire Mason. Oh, he said he was attracted to her brains as well as her body, but men say things like that if they think it’ll score points with a woman. At least, in her experience. Even the man with whom she’d had the torrid affair, the one that had inspired her first book, a man who had wined and dined her, taken her on trips to Seattle and Las Vegas, and had brought her enough flowers to stock a small florist … even he had admitted, eventually, how intimidated he was by her intelligence and her advanced degree. He only had a master’s.
It wasn’t the reason they called it off. But it was the reason they had never gotten beyond the friends-with-benefits stage, she was sure.
Then there was the fascination Brad seemed to have for what she wrote. She had always been afraid people—specifically, men—would look at her differently if they knew what kind of romances she wrote. Granted, Brad admitted he’d never read any of her books, but, hey, all he had to do was look at the covers to know exactly what was inside. And he’d had plenty of time to look at the covers of her books while they wer
e sitting side by side at the book signing. Was his attraction to her based on some fantasy about who he thought a steamy romance writer was?
Of course there was her own fantasy about living life dangerously, like one of her heroines. She had felt so alive when they’d connected at the conference, so much like something out of a book, not out of her rather routine life. Was she using Brad to fulfill her own ideas of what an exciting romance was?
All of this consumed her thoughts as she drove north for the second weekend in a row. The Saturday before, she’d stayed overnight with Mary Lynn, at her agent’s suggestion, to accustom herself to the house. She’d stayed there before but had never, for example, slept in the master bedroom. Mary Lynn spent two days drilling her on where everything like fresh towels, the corkscrew, silverware, and pots were. Sunday afternoon, when Mary Lynn cross-examined her on what she knew about the house, it felt like the orals for her doctorate all over again except, this time, she’d had only a few hours to prepare.
On her way out of Portland, Claudia stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few things to add to what she’d seen in Mary Lynn’s pantry. For dinner, she planned to cook her favorite chicken cacciatore with a salad and a nice wine. And she wanted to have plenty on hand for breakfast on Saturday and Sunday.
Breakfast. Brad would be there for breakfast. He’d be spending the night. Two nights. The thought made her shiver in anticipation. If what she was presenting as her life was a charade, it was some comfort that at least she was being honest with him when they were in bed.
Traffic wasn’t too bad heading into Seattle. She got to Mary Lynn’s house with plenty of time to do what she needed to do to carry out her plan. First, she parked two blocks away from the house so a car with Oregon plates wouldn’t be in the driveway. Next, she put her clothes in the closet and in bureau drawers. Luckily, she and Mary Lynn were much the same size so clothes that didn’t belong to her looked as if they could. Her feet were smaller than her agent’s were so she hid the collection of boots and shoes from the master bedroom in the guest room.
After that was all settled, she put her own iPod into the dock in the living room, so she didn’t have to explain anyone else’s taste in music. And added her favorite wine and Scotch to supplement what was already there.
When she was sure every place in the house looked like it might be her home, she changed into jeans and one of the turtlenecks. April Mayes’s artificial nails were long gone, as were her hennaed extensions. Mary Lynn had volunteered to get her made over again, but Claudia had turned down the offer. To retain some shred of integrity, she wanted Brad to know at least some part of who she really was, even if it was only the cosmetic changes she’d made for San Francisco. It was taking a chance. But if Brad was only attracted to her in the Queen of Steam costume, she wanted to know.
With her clothes and the scene all settled, she started the sauce for the chicken, tossed the salad, and poured a glass of wine for herself. Then she put on the music she usually used when she was meditating and waited.
She didn’t have to wait long. Brad must have flown up the freeway because when the doorbell rang, it was not yet seven thirty. Opening the door, she found Mr. Hot and Handsome standing there, a backpack over one leather-clad shoulder and a big grin on his face.
“Hi.” She hated how her throat closed at the sight of him, making her greeting come out in a squeak.
“Hi? That’s all I get after fighting through the Friday traffic in Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle? Don’t I deserve something better?” He stepped inside the door and pushed it closed with his rear end.
After swallowing a couple of times and licking her lips, Claudia said, “Okay. Hi, I’m glad to see you. Better?”
“Not really. This is more what I had in mind.” In a smooth motion, he dropped the pack on the floor with one hand and drew her against him with the other. Before she could register that she was in his arms again and loved being there, his mouth came down on her and she tasted the sweet maleness of him, mixed with the scent of fresh air and a spicy smell from some aftershave or shower gel. She moaned, and he slid his hands down her back to her rear, snugging her against him so there was nothing between their bodies but thin layers of clothes. She could feel the heat from his body, the firm muscles of his chest. The hard thickness of an erection began to press against her stomach.
Her arms twined around his neck as he thoroughly explored every bit of her mouth, his tongue making promises of what she knew would come later in the evening. By the time he lifted his head and touched his forehead to hers, she was breathing raggedly and so was he.
“Now you can say hi,” he whispered.
She coughed. “I’m not sure I can speak coherently.”
“Good. That’s what I was going for.”
• • •
Brad had left Portland as soon as he could, after a class he was teaching every afternoon at the Oregon Historical Society on how to do historical research. It wasn’t early enough to suit him, but unfortunately, it was the way it worked out. Traffic on I-5 north to Washington State was the usual slow crawl, but almost magically, once he cleared Clark County, things moved along at the speed limit. Even the dreaded Tacoma Dome curves weren’t too bad, and he must have missed the end of shift at Joint Base Lewis-McChord because it wasn’t too bad there, either. Only when he was creeping past Boeing Field, with Seattle in sight, did things get dicey. Even so, he made it to Claire’s door more than a half hour earlier than he expected.
She was as lovely as he remembered, as sexy as his dreams had made her out to be. In fact, in bare feet, jeans, and a turtleneck sweater, her face scrubbed of makeup and the fake glasses nowhere in sight, she looked even better than she had in San Francisco.
“You’ve cut your hair,” he said, bringing some of it from behind her ear where he’d noticed she’d nervously tucked it after she answered the door. “And it’s not as red as I remember it.”
She looked startled at his comment, almost afraid. “Yes, it’s sort of different. I guess. Is it so noticeable?”
“It looks great. I thought you’d be impressed I noticed.” He couldn’t let her go quite yet, although she looked like she needed to move away from him. It was cute she was nervous.
He took her hand, picked up his backpack, and asked, “Where shall I put this?”
“I’ll take it. And put it in the … in my room.” Avoiding his eyes, she made good on her word and disappeared down a hall.
As he shed his leather jacket, he took the chance to look around at her home. It was a small, cozy Craftsman house, his favorite northwest architectural style. The built-in bookcases in the living room were filled with books, which he would have expected. The art on the walls was a surprise, though. It consisted of fussy still life pictures of fruit and flowers, not the kind of work he thought Claire might like. In fact, the more he looked around at the living and dining rooms, the more puzzled he was. The furniture was upholstered in a cream colored fabric covered in huge, overblown roses. The dining room table had a runner down the center in a similar pattern. The hardwood floors were the only relief from the flowers and fruit that were everywhere else.
Not at all what he expected. But then, hadn’t Claire been completely unexpected in almost every way since he met her?
“I was having a glass of wine while I waited for you. Would you like one?”
He hadn’t heard her return to the living room, but there she was, in arm’s reach again. So his arms reached. “More of this first, I think. Then wine.” He kissed her, wanting to do more than give her a sweet kiss but also wanting her to make the move first to deepen their connection.
She did. It was her mouth that demanded more. Her arms that tightened around him. Her hands that pulled his hips into hers. It was what he had fantasized all the way up I-5. And more.
It was also Clair who broke the kiss this time. “I have a little bit left to do for dinner. Come into the kitchen with me and keep me company.”
• • •
Claudia brought the chicken, which she had already sautéed, out of the refrigerator and began to arrange it in the pan of sauce bubbling gently on the stove. “Why don’t you pour yourself some wine?” she asked, wanting more than anything to find a topic of conversation other than one with the potential to end up with her kissing him again. Or included his noticing how different she was from her April Mayes persona. That almost scared her more than his finding out about her PhD. She was still worried that he was attracted only to the woman who had hair extensions and wore fake cat-eye glasses, although the two kisses had gone some way to allaying her fears.
He picked up a bottle of wine from the counter. “Do you mind if I open this one even if we’re having chicken? It’s one of my favorite reds.”
She looked over her shoulder, saw he had found one her favorites, and nodded. “Be my guest.”
He opened a few drawers, rummaging around in each one. “I give up. Where do you keep your corkscrew?”
She panicked for a moment, drawing a blank. Where did Mary Lynn keep the damn thing? She couldn’t remember even though it was one of the items she’d been tested on a week before.
“Oh, never mind. It was out on the counter.” He opened the bottle and filled the glass she had put out for him. After he took a healthy slug of wine, he leaned one hip against the kitchen counter and smiled. “It smells amazing in here. What are you cooking?”
“It’s the tomato sauce for my favorite chicken dish.” She looked around for a moment, found the large spoon she needed, and grabbed it. When she tasted the sauce and licked her lips, she saw his eyes widen. “Would you like a taste?” She scooped up more of the sauce and extended the spoon to him.
“Of the sauce or of you?”
“Tasting the sauce was what I meant,” she said.
“Tasting you again has been on my mind for days. You’ve been damn distracting.” He took the two steps he needed to get next to her, covered her hand with his, and guided the spoon toward his mouth. “But this’ll do. For the moment.” His gaze holding hers the whole time, he very efficiently licked the spoon clean.