The Complete Novels of the Lear Sister Trilogy

by Julia London

  “Oh those!” she said. “I threw them away.” And with that, she shut the door.

  On the other side of the door, she heard Myron laugh. And then gasp, “That’s hilarious!”

  She locked the door, lit her candles, and crawled into the steaming water to read what her medieval knight was up to today. Saving the woman he loved from a burning castle, apparently. Wouldn’t it be nice if he could come around and save her from the bungalow?

  After reading awhile, Rachel closed her eyes, felt the hot water and bubbles sliding over her body. She saw Flynn’s face peering down at her in her mind’s eye, only he had long, shoulder-length wavy hair. And he was wearing leather. Lots of leather. And there was deep concern etched into the fine lines around his gray eyes, that lock of hair falling across his brow . . .

  A muffled but persistent knock on her front door brought her up with a splash and a toppling of at least one candle as the book went flying across the bathroom.

  She sat for a moment, straining to hear. It couldn’t be Dagne—she’d walk on in. If it wasn’t Dagne, and it wasn’t Myron . . .

  Flynn.

  She heard the second round of raps on the door more clearly and managed to get out of the tub and throw the towel around her, but her hands were wet, and she wrestled with the doorknob for a moment before the thing finally came open. Flying across her bed, she panicked at the sound of another series of knocks, and vaulted down the stairs, skidded across the polished oak floor, almost slamming into the front door, which she managed to throw open at the same time she grabbed for her towel before it slipped from her body.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What?” Dagne demanded on the other side of the screen door when Rachel groaned.

  “Why didn’t you just come in?”

  “I can’t find my key.” She adjusted the heavy stick thing she was holding.

  “What is that?” Rachel asked, peering at it.

  “It’s a coatrack. I got it off eBay,” Dagne said proudly, adjusting it again. “But it’s really heavy.”

  Rachel pushed the screen door open and stepped aside, let Dagne struggle through with her big wooden coatrack, which she managed to get inside by taking only an inch of skin from one of Rachel’s shins. Rachel closed the screen door, grabbed the front door, and was shutting it when she saw a sporty blue car drive by that looked vaguely familiar. But not so familiar that she was willing to stand there and freeze to death and figure out whose it was, so she shut the door.

  “Why don’t you have any clothes on?” Dagne asked, standing there with her ridiculous coatrack.

  “Because, Dagne, I was taking a bath. Why did you bring a coatrack here?”

  “It’s for you,” Dagne said, beaming. “I bought it for dirt cheap from eBay and figured you could use it. And I don’t have room for it in my apartment.” She put the coatrack next to the door, stood back to admire it.

  “I’m going to ask a crazy question here . . . but why do you buy things you don’t need?” Rachel asked.

  “Who says I don’t? I’d keep it, but it’s too big for my place.” She walked into the living room and tossed aside her coat. “It smells funny in here,” she said thoughtfully. “Has Myron been here?”

  “Yeah—he brought my phone. Listen, I’m going to go get dressed.”

  “Wait!” Dagne cried. “Did he call?”

  With one foot on the stairs, Rachel glanced over her shoulder at Dagne. “No,” she said, feeling absurdly disappointed, like she’d just missed winning the lottery by one number. “Nothing. Not even a message.” Those words tasted bitterly familiar in her mouth, and without waiting for Dagne’s response, she ran up the stairs to dress.

  She returned a few minutes later in a mock turtleneck and a pair of faded jeans. Dagne was sitting on the couch going through her spell book, having helped herself to a glass of wine, some crackers, and the last of the cheese. Rachel didn’t get paid for another week. She sure hoped she could make a box of mac and cheese and saltine crackers last that long.

  “So listen,” Dagne said, flipping through the pages of the spell book as if they were a fashion magazine, “don’t be too upset that he didn’t call.”

  “I’m not upset—who said I was upset? Whatever,” Rachel said. “I just saw him last night. If he calls, he calls. If he doesn’t, no skin off my nose. I can take him or leave him, really.” And that was such an enormous lie that Rachel couldn’t even look at Dagne.

  Dagne kept flipping through the pages of her spell book. After a moment, she said, “I read in Cosmo that they did this study of who are the sexiest people, as in nations? And the Hungarians were the sexiest, can you believe it? I would have guessed Spaniards.”

  “Spaniards?”

  “Like Antonio Banderas,” Dagne said with a dreamy sigh. “Anyway, the Hungarians have sex like a million times a week. And then it was the Russians, and the Americans were up there, too. But guess where the British were?”

  “I don’t know—where?”

  “Almost at the bottom. Just above Iraq.”

  Rachel laughed.

  “I’m just saying, you might be better off if he never calls. He probably didn’t call because he doesn’t think like most guys.”

  “Huh?” Rachel asked as she walked into the kitchen to get herself a wineglass.

  “I mean, most guys think about sex all the time, something like once every seven seconds—”

  “No way!”

  “Yes, it’s true! They reported that in Men’s Health magazine. But Flynn is British, so he probably doesn’t think about it all that much, maybe something like once every seven days. Therefore, he doesn’t call.”

  She said it as if she had some scientifically controlled study to back it up.

  “So . . . you think that the kiss was just a fluke, and his interest in me was just about sex?” Rachel asked, reappearing with an empty wineglass. “Because that kiss was fabulous, maybe the best kiss I’ve ever had in my life, and if it was only about sex, I should be insulted, but I’m not. I’m okay with just sex. Just sex is great! Actually, just sex would be beyond fantastic. But I don’t see how a basically British guy, and therefore a basically sexless guy, could kiss like that.”

  “Good point,” Dagne said thoughtfully. “Okay, so maybe he’s not sexless, just really repressed. They’re all repressed over there. I mean, look at the queen. Can you see the queen doing it?”

  “Don’t!” Rachel protested. “That’s like imagining Grandma and Grandpa—no, no, I am not going there. And anyway, there are lots of Brits probably sitting around their flats sipping tea right now trying to imagine the president doing it, and therefore, using your example, they’ve probably come to the conclusion that Americans are sexless, too.”

  “Ah. But Cosmo has the study to back up America,” Dagne politely corrected her.

  “Oh, that’s right. Cosmo,” Rachel said as she poured a glass of wine. “Here’s a different theory for you to chew on,” she said, lifting her glass to toast Dagne. “Maybe he didn’t think the kiss was all that great, and maybe he didn’t call because he’s not that interested, which is really okay, because I have enough on my plate trying to figure out how to pay my bills around here without worrying if some temporary British guy is going to call me or not,” she said, and sat on a floor pillow across from Dagne.

  “First, don’t worry about your bills,” Dagne said, waving a hand at her. “Things are going to work out for you. You’ll see,” she added with a confident nod.

  “Oh right,” Rachel said with a roll of her eyes. “Great. Maybe I’ll pay all my bills and die a lonely old woman.”

  “Oh God, here we go,” Dagne exclaimed to the ceiling.

  “What would you think if it were you?” Rachel challenged her. “I mean, we have this absolutely amazing kiss, and he gets my number, says he is going to call, and doesn’t. What am I supposed to think?”

  “Maybe he liked that kiss very much, so much that it scared him, and he’s not sure how to act on thos
e feelings, so he pours himself into his work—what is his work, anyway?”

  “Computers.”

  “He pours himself into computers and tries not to think of you because he knows he is really drawn to you—witchcraft, hello!” she said, jabbing her hands to the ceiling. “Of course he’s drawn to you, but he’s afraid because if he starts anything, he won’t be able to finish it because he has to go back to England.”

  “We had one night out,” Rachel said. “It wasn’t as if he had to declare the rest of his life or anything. What’s wrong with having a little fling while he’s in town? And what about my class? He signed up for my weaving class, dammit!”

  “There you go!” Dagne said brightly. “You’ll definitely see him at class next week.”

  “But that’s a whole weeeeek,” Rachel moaned, and laid her forehead on the coffee table. “If he’s going to call, he has to do it before next week. I can’t wait that long, I’ll be a basket case by then, and I’ll make a fool of myself at class, and we’re in the middle of looms.”

  “Not to worry,” Dagne said, reaching across the table and patting Rachel on the head. “We’ll do a little spell.”

  “Jesus, Dagne, is that your answer to everything?”

  “It’s a lot better than moping,” she said, lifting her chin a little. “Anyway, I have to do something about Glenn,” she said. “It’s so stupid. Never play around with magic.”

  “Excuse me, but what do you think you’re doing on a fairly routine basis here? So, anyway, what happened?”

  Dagne sighed. “Okay, here it is. I wanted to do a spell on Ricky Bayless. Remember him?”

  “The greatest sex of your life? That Ricky Bayless?”

  “That Ricky Bayless,” Dagne said. “Man, the guy was good—he did things I didn’t even know you could do. So anyway, I was going to do a spell on him, but I wanted to make sure it was right, so I practiced it. And . . . and I sort of used Glenn instead of Ricky. And then the next thing you know, I run into Glenn down at the hair place—you know, where his sister works?—and he’s all smiles and goo-goo-eyed.”

  “That’s because he’s always had a crush on you,” Rachel reminded her. “That’s why you quit going to his sister’s place.”

  “But she’s so much cheaper than anyone else. So anyway, apparently the spell worked, because he was so gaga. ‘How have you been, Dagne?’” she mimicked him, making huge moon eyes. “I’ve been thinking a lot about you, Dagne.’” She laughed. “And now he keeps calling since I invited him over—”

  “What? You invited him over?” Rachel said.

  “Unfortunately. But he was sort of cute that day, and besides, I had to. How else was I going to break the spell? The only problem was, I couldn’t break it without the spell book, and now he won’t leave me alone. I have to do a spell that drives him away before he makes me completely bonkers,” she said, and looked down at the book, tapped on a page. “Do you think we could get Mr. Valicielo’s cat to pee into a cup?”

  “Oh please no, God,” Rachel groaned, and dropped her forehead to the coffee table again. Only this time, she banged it against the table. Three times.

  That night, when Dagne finally gathered her spell things to go home (having been astoundingly unsuccessful in finding the right ingredients, or substitutes, for her spell), Rachel walked with her to the door. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said as Dagne walked down the steps of the porch. She watched Dagne lope to her car, then glanced at her watch—a little past one in the morning. She glanced up again to make sure Dagne was in her car, and from the corner of her eye, she saw the blue car turn onto the next street. Odd, she thought, but it looked like the one she had seen earlier. Where had she seen that car before?

  With a shrug, she waved to Dagne, closed the door, and headed to bed.

  Flynn was awakened the next afternoon by the ring of the telephone, and stumbled out of bed to retrieve it. “Hello,” he mumbled into the phone through a yawn.

  “Flynn, darling?”

  “Hi, Mum,” he said, sleepily scratching his bare chest.

  “Have you been sleeping?” his mother asked, sounding terribly offended.

  “I’ve had quite a lot of work—all day yesterday and well into the night.”

  “Oh Flynn, I don’t think this particular assignment is very good for you. You sound absolutely ill.”

  “Thanks, Mum, but I’m fine. Really,” he said, standing and stifling another yawn. “How’s Dad?” he asked as he stumbled into the kitchen for a glass of water.

  “Oh, he’s quite all right. He hung tartan curtains in the guest rooms all morning, and this afternoon, he nearly took off a finger hanging that sign that says a hundred thousand welcomes in Gaelic. You know, whatever it is the Scots say.”

  Flynn lowered his glass, stared straight ahead for a moment before asking, “Why?”

  “Why? Because the Americans and Japanese love that sort of thing,” Mum explained matter-of-factly, as if it was perfectly natural to own a bed and breakfast in Butler Cropwell, smack-in-the-bloody-middle-of-jolly-old-England, and dress the place up as if it were a bed and breakfast in the Scottish Highlands.

  “I didn’t tell you, but we had some rather important people come through last week,” Mum said.

  “Did you?”

  “The Winston party. From America,” she said, as if it were a palace instead of a country. “They are part of the Winston tobacco family, fourth cousins once removed. That’s rather exciting, isn’t it?”

  Actually, Flynn thought his socks were a bit more exciting, but his mother reveled in such things. “That’s brilliant, Mum.”

  “We’ve really got a reputation, what with our ties and all,” she sniffed.

  Mum meant, of course, their aristocratic ties—the ties he’d been hearing about all his bloody life, owing chiefly to a very distant relation to the Duke of Alnwick on his mother’s side, the cousin of a cousin of a second cousin, something like that. Which meant, therefore, that they, the lowly Olivers, were in line for the throne . . . should there be a nuclear war that left absolutely no one else in England.

  “Flynn, love,” his mother said, then paused to sigh wearily.

  Flynn braced himself for what he knew was coming.

  “I know you are quite cross with Iris, but the poor dear has been pining since you left. Don’t you think you could just ring her up and speak to her?”

  Iris had not pined for him in two years, but his mother was far too naïve to understand a woman of Iris’s nerve. “If I’ve time.”

  “You can make the time, can’t you?”

  “I’ll try. But I’m really astoundingly busy at present.”

  “Iris is frightfully upset about your misunderstanding,” his mother purred.

  What a lovely way to put an unpleasant turn of events— a man comes home early from a business trip and discovers his fiancée in bed with another man. Both wearing dressing gowns, mind you, and both having a bit of a post-coital smoke. What part, exactly, had he misunderstood? “It was hardly a misunderstanding, Mother,” Flynn said. “Delicately put, she was shagging another man in my absence.”

  “She didn’t mean to. You were away so long and she rather forgot herself!” Mum insisted. “It won’t happen again.”

  Flynn removed the phone from his ear and stared at it for a moment, wondered which puffy little cloud his mother had descended from, and put the thing back to his ear. “How can you be so sure?”

  “She gave me her word,” Mum said earnestly. “I hardly think she’d lie at this point, do you?”

  That was too ridiculous to correct. But this was hardly a debate he wanted to wage with his mother of all people, so Flynn did what he typically did in these situations with his mother—he lied. “I’ll give her a ring.”

  “Thank you, Flynn. She’ll be thrilled. Now, when are you coming home? We’ve been invited to the Farmingham Fall gala. It’s rather important that we all attend, as they are our cousins after all.”

  “They are
not our cousins,” Flynn said calmly. “They are only distantly related through several questionable liaisons.”

  “That’s not true!” his mother cried hurtfully. “We are related through the Duke of Alnwick. How I wish you’d take it more seriously, Flynn. Something horrible and catastrophic could happen and we could very well be called to Buckingham.”

  “Mum,” Flynn said patiently, “even if we were related to the Farminghams in some believable or even traceable way, we are roughly 1,536th in line to the throne. We will not be called to Buckingham, with the possible exception to hoover their bloody floors!”

  “Oh!” Mum exclaimed crossly. “I refuse to listen to this. Now please come home before the Christmas holidays because I will not allow the Olivers to snub the Farminghams. Do I make myself quite clear?”

  “Exceedingly,” he said. “And if there’s nothing else, I really must get to work.”

  “All right, then, darling. And don’t forget Iris. She’s very sad.”

  “Good-bye, Mum. Hello to Dad for me.”

  Flynn hung up the phone and shuffled off to the shower, where he seriously contemplated getting a new number. Perhaps at a maximum security loony bin or someplace likewise exotic and far away from England.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rachel’s mood did not improve the next day.

  Three days of maniacal typing had yielded a whopping $108.33 after all the tax and FICA were removed. It wasn’t even enough to cover the utility bill. Thankfully, Mom’s check had arrived for that.

  Which meant, after depositing the stupid check, Rachel had exactly $163.13 in her account to pay for phone and cable (which she was cutting just as soon as they saw the last episode of this season’s Trading Spaces), and to fill an empty pantry.

  So, to review: It was a good thing Flynn had not called the last couple of days, because she was really too busy squeezing blood from a turnip to even think about going out with him.