Identity Crisis

by Grace Marshall

  ‘And just what did you think you were going to do for me … For Tess? Throw drinks at her? Slap her around? Try to drown her?’

  Once again they found themselves nose to nose, and Kendra couldn’t believe the sense of loss she felt, the sense of rage that this man had, in less than five minutes, destroyed her hero. And damn, she was furious! She was actually fighting back tears. How could she have let the bastard reduce her to this? ‘Fuck you.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper. ‘Tell Bachman to find someone else.’ She shrugged her bag up her shoulder, turned on her heels, and headed for the door.

  ‘Wait.’ He grabbed her by the arm, more gently than she would have expected, and swung her around to face him. The look on his face was desperate, a look K. Ryde had seen often. Suddenly, he struggled to hold her gaze. ‘Are you as good as Don says you are?’

  For a second her anger flared, but the look on his face was earnest, and she held her tongue. ‘Would I be here if I weren’t?’

  He studied her unabashedly for a moment, and she returned the favor.

  ‘There isn’t time for Don to find someone else.’ He gave a desperate glance around the room and shook his head. ‘I need help now.’

  If there had been even the least hint of subterfuge, she would have punched him hard and left. But she’d made a living at reading people. The man was desperate. K. Ryde came to the forefront. She took a deep breath. ‘All right. Tell me what you need.’

  Instead of moving behind the desk, he guided her to a sand-colored sofa flanked by a small woodland of tall plants, then he sat down on the edge of a matching chair facing her, hands folded in his lap, leaning forward into her gaze. ‘I need you to be Tess Delaney for me.’

  She blinked twice. ‘You what?’

  ‘I need you to be Tess Delaney.’

  A pot of strong coffee and two cans of Diet Pepsi later, neither of them had moved, and Kendra had to admit that, in spite of the nervous riot of unrest raging in her stomach, in spite of the cold sweat breaking on the back of her neck at the very thought of putting herself out there again in such a public way, she was more intrigued than she had been in her whole life.

  He looked like a nervous schoolboy about to ask a girl out for the first time, and she had to admit she sort of liked that look on the arrogant face of Garrett Thorne – er – Tess Delaney. ‘What do you think? Can you do it on such short notice?’

  She should have told him no. This was so not what she expected Tess to require of her. There were reasons, good reasons for telling him no, not the least of which was that the idea itself was insane. No doubt that’s why it intrigued her. Instead, she found herself saying, almost as though her voice had ignored the rage of nerves and the fears and the bad memories and acted unilaterally, ‘Of course I can do it. Don wouldn’t have called me if I couldn’t.’ What the hell was the matter with her? She didn’t need to impress Garrett Thorne. She didn’t care what he thought about her. She was just about to tell him that, though she could do it, she would have to turn him down.

  And then he said, ‘You do have a temper.’

  She smiled at the thought that he might be just a little intimidated by her. ‘Kendra Davis has a temper,’ she said. ‘K. Ryde simply does what she has to do to get the job done. If you need me to be Tess Delaney for the Golden Kiss Awards, well, I’m up for the challenge.’ No, she wasn’t! What the hell was she talking about? She should be running away now! She didn’t like Garrett Thorne. Let him deal with his own mess. This was not something she should get involved with. It was too much deception. That she could handle. But it was way too public a situation for her to deal with, way too soon. She couldn’t guarantee how she would react, she couldn’t guarantee if she could keep the past in the past and just do her job. It wasn’t fair to him. It wasn’t fair to Tess. It wasn’t fair to anyone, and besides, the very thought of what would be involved in such a ruse scared the hell out of her.

  Just when she was about to back-pedal, just when she was about to extricate herself from a situation that she really wasn’t ready for, he breathed a huge sigh of relief and moved onto the sofa next to her. ‘Good, then we’ll have to get our stories straight. We’ll have to create a life and hobbies and a past and the whole nine yards for Tess, and we’ll both have to know it.’

  And he had her. She knew it. Once he’d actually started scheming, once her mind had actually latched on to thoughts of how they could make it work, he had her. She was in. She would be his Tess Delaney. Besides, the past was the past. The only way to shake it off was to move forward. She breathed a sigh of her own and scooted closer on the sofa.

  ‘No, Garrett, we don’t both have to know it. You’re my date. You can know relatively little about me. And Tess, being the recluse that she is, isn’t likely to give very much away even if she’s up on stage. All you have to do is trust me enough to let me lead the way.’

  ‘But you don’t know Tess like I do, and there’s so little time.’

  She reached out and touched his arm, feeling the tension pass up through his body under her hand. ‘Listen to me, Garrett, the less everyone knows about the Tess you see in your head, the better. It’s really fairly simple. We go to the banquet and, with any luck, we’ll have to do nothing more than smile and nod, maybe have a few microphones shoved in our faces, and I’ll make short, evasive answers. We’ll sit through the meal smiling and nodding, then make our escape at the earliest possible moment.’

  ‘What if someone follows us?’

  ‘They won’t. Trust me, I’ll make sure they don’t. Tess is not the first celeb I’ve had to keep away from the press, Garrett. It’ll be all right.’

  He didn’t look like he believed her, but she’d seen that look before too.

  He made a weak attempt to laugh, then he stood and moved to look out the window with his broad back to her. ‘Who’d have thought this would happen? Who’d have thought I’d end up depending on you?’

  She bristled but calmed herself. ‘Who’d have thought Garrett Thorne was Tess Delaney?’

  He turned so quickly that he nearly knocked over one of the potted ferns in his effort. ‘Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that out loud.’

  ‘All right.’ She sat with her hands folded around a half empty Diet Pepsi can and watched as he paced again. ‘Mind if I ask why not?’

  ‘You’ll laugh,’ he said, dropping back onto the sofa next to her.

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘It’s just that saying I’m her, or she’s me … Well, it feels like it’ll jinx it all somehow. I know that sounds stupid, but it just feels that way.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound stupid at all,’ she said. ‘I’m astounded you’ve been able to keep her a secret all this time, that you’ve been able to keep the world thinking you’re living the life of luxury off your brother’s money. How have you managed to get Ellis to agree with this arrangement? I can’t imagine he’s pleased with it.’

  ‘He didn’t know for a long time. Then he found out.’

  ‘How?’

  A light blush crawled up Garrett’s throat, and she had to admit he was sexy when he was wrong-footed. ‘Rumors got out that he was supporting me.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He shrugged. ‘I might have started them. Possibly. And it really wasn’t that hard for people to believe. No one knew who Tess Delaney was, and I had no visible means of support. I mean, I couldn’t really do a part-time job and write like I needed to to keep up with the demand for Tess’s books.’

  ‘It couldn’t have been that easy,’ she said.

  ‘It wasn’t as hard as you think.’ She thought she saw pain cross his face, but wasn’t certain. He straightened his jacket and was suddenly all business. ‘We’ve only got a week. I’m willing to do what we have to. I don’t want Tess outed. Are we clear?’

  ‘Very clear,’ she said. She pulled out her iPhone and began to make notes. ‘I’ll get Don Bachman to send me all the information about the event along with any other relevant details. Then you send me anythin
g else you think I need to know, I don’t care how minute. If you think it’s important, then it probably is.’

  ‘What if there are questions about Tess’s work?’ he asked.

  ‘Trust me, Tess Delaney making her first public appearance on the arm of the enigmatic Garrett Thorne will be such a sensation that no one will be thinking about Tess’s work. Besides, I have a great memory. I promise no one will stump me if they do ask.’

  She looked down at her watch. ‘I’ve got to go, Garrett. There’s a lot to be done, and I’m a perfectionist. If you need to get in touch with K. Ryde, I’ve just emailed an address to Gary Rose. Otherwise you already have Kay Lake’s email.’ She stood, and he walked her to the door. ‘I’ll email you as soon as I have everything sorted.’

  ‘What if I want to get in touch with plain old Kendra Davis?’ he said.

  ‘Now, why would Garrett Thorne want to get in touch with Kendra Davis?’ She offered him a smile that was probably a little more of a smirk than she intended. ‘After all, they hate each other, remember?’

  Once she was out of the office, she made a mad dash for the restroom in the main reception area. She managed to lock herself in a cubicle before the shakes began. She collapsed against the wall, sliding down it until she was seated on the floor breathing in and out, in and out, trying to slow the mad hammering rage of her heart. Was she crazy? Was she out of her mind? She should go right back in there and tell Garrett no. No way could she do this thing. No way should she even think about doing this thing. Not now, not ever! Not ever again. Hadn’t she learned her lesson? Hadn’t she paid in spades for her quiet life, and here she was about to go public in the biggest possible way. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. She was sorry for Garrett, but she couldn’t run the risk. She couldn’t put herself through it all again.

  For a long time she sat on the floor of the cubicle looking up at the ceiling through a mist of tears that was brought on by the first panic attack she’d had in a long time now. But, as her mind cleared, logic once again took over. What had happened in Santa Monica was the past. It couldn’t hurt her now. She could live her life in the open again. She could do whatever she wanted. And until she did step outside the little cozy comfort zone she had created for herself here in Portland with Dee and Harris, how could she ever expect to truly get over the past? She’d stopped seeing the psychologist three months ago, but she knew that getting back on the horse was a big part of the healing process. And really there was no denying that playing Tess Delaney for Garrett Thorne was by far the most intriguing prospect she’d had in a very long time, even when she was head of the Ryde Agency, working with the stars.

  By the time she was able to stand again and had found her way out of the cubicle to freshen her make-up she had convinced herself that being Tess Delaney for Garrett Thorne might be the best thing that could happen to her right now. It would be interesting work, challenging work, work that might be very healing. She could help Garrett keep Tess’s identity secret while at the same time helping herself back into a world that was a little less neurotic.

  Yes, she was disappointed there would be no wildly feminine romance author flouncing around her lush Victorian house, laughing wickedly at Kendra’s dry wit and sharp questions. But how could she not be intrigued? All of those stories that gripped her, all of those stories that seemed to come straight from the core of everything that was powerful and vulnerable and mysterious and wild and female, all of those stories about the magnetic draw between the sexes had actually been written by a man, and one who was pretty much a jerk at that. It was the kind of challenge K. Ryde could never resist. By the time she got to the parking lot and was securely belted into the Mustang, she was already making a list in her head of things that had to be done to prepare both Tess Delaney and her bad boy date for the glitz and the glam, and for the subterfuge of the Golden Kiss Awards.

  Chapter Six

  Garrett went straight home from the Pneuma Annex. His head was reeling. How could anyone as explosive and impulsive as Kendra Davis be the queen of PR, and how the hell could she possibly pull off what had to happen to make sure Tess didn’t get outed?

  By the time he got home, just as she’d promised, he found an email address, a cell phone number, and a list of questions for him to answer that would help her determine the best way to approach her representation of Tess Delaney. He found the whole professional demeanor of the email to be irritating. This was the woman who had pushed him in the lake at his brother’s engagement party. This was the woman whose powerful right arm, he was convinced, could knock out a bull moose if she was angry enough. She was volatile, unpredictable and, from all outward appearances, just as unemployed as he was. And if she held a grudge over what he and Stacie had inadvertently done to Ellis and Dee that had nearly ruined their relationship and their careers, then he was so fucked. Yet what choice did he have? Don believed this woman was his only hope, and the email he’d received from him even before he left the Pneuma Annex was just more evidence of his faith in Kendra Davis – er – K. Ryde.

  The emails to Garrett weren’t signed K. Ryde. They were signed Kay Lake. God it was all so confusing. What was he supposed to call her? Who the hell was she really? He changed into jeans and a T-shirt, opened a beer, and settled in at the computer. He’d barely thought about the deadline for Texas Fire. The stress of Tess’s imminent outage weighed so heavily that writing anything serious had been next to impossible. And that wasn’t likely to change until after the Golden Kiss Awards were safely behind him, and he and Tess could go back to their quiet life.

  With a start, he realized the always nebulous picture of Tess Delaney he held in his head wasn’t so nebulous any more. The face smiling back at him was now Kendra Davis’s face. And the woman standing beside his desk in his mind’s eye, whispering the story in his ear, was dripping wet. Baby blue bikini top and satin shorts clung revealingly to curves that were athletic and muscular but outrageously feminine. Her nipples beaded heavily beneath the wet top and the shorts hugged the rounded hillocks of her bottom. There were no panty lines. Oh yes, he’d noticed that when she’d turned to walk away from him the other day at the lake. By that time he was doing his best to hide the rise of his cock that had been so stunning and had happened so fast it had completely taken him by surprise. The woman was a bitch, he reminded himself. And whatever else she might be, she was most definitely not his Tess Delaney. Well, at least for no longer than it took her to play the role, for no longer than it took her to make sure that Tess’s true identity was protected. And if she betrayed him, if this was her way of getting revenge … He didn’t want to think about that. He couldn’t. He had no choice, and frankly the woman in his imagination, the luscious wet Kendra Davis, offering him a full-lipped pout, had his complete attention. The longer she stood there, in his imagination, watching him work, the more transparent her clothing became, and the more transparent her clothing became, the more uncomfortable the front of his jeans became.

  He couldn’t recall his thoughts of Tess ever being truly sexual. She was him, for chrissake! He’d never wanted to date her. He’d never wanted to fuck her. And if Tess Delaney had Kendra Davis’s face – not to mention her body – and he started really seeing her that way in his head, he was so screwed!

  ‘The woman’s a bitch,’ he said out loud. But as he said it, he was already busy fumbling with his zipper. As he said it he pictured her all dressed up for business. Even all professional and ready to work, she looked like something he’d like to eat with a cherry on top. He’d like to start right at her ankles, just above those pink stilettos, and work his way on up, tongue first, taking the middle path, all the way up those endless legs of hers to what was just barely hidden by her wet shorts, what looked luscious enough to keep him in very filthy thoughts for a long time to come. And it was already clear exactly where those filthy thoughts were leading. He shoved back from the desk and headed for the bathroom jeans open, boxers shoved low around his hips, stroking as he went.


  Later, when he returned to his study, there was another email from Kay Lake.

  Mr. Rose,

  I’m ready to meet with you tomorrow. I’ll need several hours of your time, at your convenience.

  Sincerely,

  Kay Lake

  It chafed, volatile Kendra Davis emailing him all business-like and professional. He ground his teeth and emailed back.

  Ms. Lake,

  Shall we say 2.00 again?

  Then he gave her his home address. He didn’t like the idea of doing what they had to do in the annex of his brother’s business, especially now he knew who she really was. He hoped that the whole distasteful situation could be kept secret as much as possible. Though he figured Dee and Ellis would ultimately have to know, he hoped he’d be able to keep it from Stacie. He wanted no more loose ends than absolutely necessary. If all went well, by the time the banquet was over, Tess Delaney could go happily back into hiding and he and Kay Lake or Kendra Davis could shake hands and never have to speak to each other again.

  Don had dropped a quick text that he’d had an email from K. Ryde saying the meeting had gone well and the situation was being dealt with. Garrett wrote back a terse answer basically agreeing but not giving anything away. The less anyone knew the better. It was embarrassing, really. The woman he couldn’t even think about without getting both angry and stiff was going to be Tess Delaney for an event that could turn out to be detrimental to Tess’s career.

  Within minutes, Kendra emailed back confirming their appointment.

  Garrett had half hoped she would be at least a little bit late, but the professional PR version of Kendra Davis was right on time. She was dressed in black trousers and a light summer blazer over a silky white blouse that draped her body like its only purpose was to caress her. He felt an irrational stab of jealousy as she slipped out of the jacket and handed it over for him to hang. They were barely seated, her with her Diet Pepsi and him with his coffee, before she pulled out her iPad. ‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked without looking up from what she was doing. Her lips curled into a hint of a smile. ‘You should sleep better now that I’m on the job.’