The Fiance Thief

by Tracy South

  he asked them. They shook their heads in unison. “Have you been engaged since this…um…whatever his name was?”

  “Scott,” she said. “If it’s any of your business.”

  “So you haven’t,” he said. “You bring me, your fiancé, to this shindig to show your friend Missy/Miranda that all is forgiven. After all, if she had let you marry that Scott creep, you never would have stumbled on terrific me.”

  If it wasn’t his imagination, the glare she gave him held a tiny bit of admiration. “That’s the most despicable thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “I can’t agree to it.”

  He saw that his ingenious plan had captured Lissa’s imagination at least. “Why not?” Lissa asked. “Be a sport.”

  Claire didn’t say anything, merely took the letter back to her desk and stuck it in her purse. Imagining that she was about to crack under their relentless enthusiasm, Alec stepped up his campaign, chatting to Claire as she ignored him.

  “Claire, the only good players are team players. I see I was wrong to think you were one. We would have had a lot of fun scooping the daily paper, but since you aren’t willing to go that extra distance for us, that isn’t going to be possible.” He stretched his arms a little, yawning as he did so. “That’s the news business. Not much of a way to make a living. It just keeps food on our tables and gives Mick a hole into which to pour his money.” Alec peeked at her to see how she was taking his lecture.

  “Mick,” she said. “Did you ask Mick about my story? The one about how Carbine Industries is illegally dumping toxic waste in South Ridgeville?”

  In fact, he’d forgotten all about it, but before he had a chance to confess, she continued, “Harlan Edwards, a community activist—”

  “Harlan Edwards is a professional crank,” Alec interrupted. “And professional cranks make bad copy.”

  At that moment, the door to a small room off the side of the office opened and Mick Regan stumbled out. He walked past the group, saying a terse one word, “Lunch,” to them as he passed.

  “Alec was just quoting you,” Hank told him. “Your feelings on career scofflaws.”

  “One of my better ones,” Mick said, his hand on the door.

  “I was just telling Alec,” Claire said, her voice rising a bit to catch Mick’s attention, “I had an interview with Harlan Edwards earlier this morning.”

  “Was he sober?” Mick asked.

  Claire favored him with a slow smile. “That’s funny. People always ask me the same thing about you.”

  Alec sucked his breath in at that, as did Hank and Lissa, but Mick merely laughed and adjusted his hat. “Kid, you’ll get some spunk yet. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to build a story off what one crank tells you.”

  They watched him go out the door and board the elevator. Alec and Hank, both former students of his, looked after him admiringly. “He was a genius in his day,” Alec said.

  “And what a short twenty-four hours it was,” Claire countered, half under her breath. Alec grinned a little before he caught himself.

  “Claire, I’m surprised at you,” he said. He watched her stuff a paperback in her oversize purse and hoist the bag onto her shoulder. “Where are you going?”

  “Lunch.”

  He stood in front of her, blocking her way. “Not until you give me a decision on this Miranda Craig thing.”

  She ducked around him, whopping him in his midsection with her purse as she passed. “I gave you a decision,” she said. “My decision was no.”

  Alec, wincing from the hit, made sure he could speak in something lower than a soprano before he addressed Claire again. “Think it over at lunch,” he said, as she crossed the room to the stairwell.

  “I don’t have to,” she said. “I’m not changing my mind.”

  Alec had sent her to microwave oven demonstrations. Future Farmers of America meetings. A recital given by preschoolers who had not quite grasped the musical instruction provided to them. She had gone anywhere, without complaint. Now was a hell of a time to get a backbone.

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t come back from lunch,” he said. “Unless you’re ready to say yes to this story.”

  Hank and Lissa looked up, alarmed. “Alec,” Lissa said, glaring at him. “Claire, he doesn’t mean it. He used to give me ultimatums like that all the time. You just pretend not to hear them, and he’ll figure out they don’t work.”

  Alec turned to her, frowning. “Will you be quiet?” he rasped. When he turned back to the door, Claire was gone. The two reporters stared at him accusingly.

  “She’ll be back,” Alec told Lissa, who ignored him. “Trust me,” he told Hank, who clucked his tongue at Alec and resumed typing. “I know psychology,” he said to no one in particular.

  He walked to his own desk and took out a stack of current magazines and regional newspapers. “I’ve got all this reading to catch up on,” he told them. “So I’m just going to sit here and read, do a little trend-spotting, till Claire comes back.”

  Lissa flicked off her computer and stood. “I’ll leave a note for the cleaning service to dust you off when they come.”

  “Claire will be back,” he said. “She needs this job.” Even as he said it, he realized he didn’t know if it were true. Finding out about her friendship with Miranda Craig made him realize he didn’t know anything about Claire. Nothing except that until a few minutes ago, she had shaken like a leaf every time he spoke to her. He missed that reaction already.

  “You’re not going to lunch, too, are you?” he asked Lissa.

  “People eat, Alec. They don’t all live on venom like you do.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Claire before? If you knew about the book?”

  Lissa shrugged. “Until I read…umm…”

  “Until the contents of that letter were accidentally revealed to you,” Alec supplied.

  “Yes, exactly,” Lissa said. “Until then, I didn’t have any idea it was the same Claire Morgan. I didn’t even know Claire was from here.”

  “You wouldn’t still have your copy, would you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Lissa said, heading out the door for the elevator. “I think I may have left it around here somewhere.”

  As the doors swished shut behind her, Alec stepped into the hallway and watched the numbers track the elevator’s movement, waiting until Lissa had landed safely in the lobby before making a mad dash for her desk.

  SO MICK THOUGHT she’d get spunk someday, huh? As if spunk were something you could throw into your grocery cart with your yogurt and peanut butter. As though it were a muscle you could develop with exercise, like power abs in ten minutes a day.

  She knew it was wrong to be annoyed with Mick. He was basically harmless, famously tactless and spent his days in an ineffectual muddle. But as Alec and Hank often pointed out, somewhere in his brain were the long-buried secrets of a great newspaperman. Lissa had told Claire that Mick had spent years living off stories from his journalistic heyday, but when he’d inherited some money, he’d had enough of the old newsman’s fever to buy the equipment from a sinking paper and crank out his own weekly. Making it almost profitable was something else. That was Alec’s doing.

  Alec. Claire stabbed at a piece of lettuce in her salad, picturing his face. His regrettably handsome face. When he called to offer her the job with the paper, she’d had a clear vision of him, almost like someone was beaming his photograph to her. She’d imagined his thin, ashy hair, his unassuming build, his Adam’s apple constantly bobbing up and down. He could have been straight out of central casting, an actor who plays the peevishly sensible fiancé in a romantic comedy, destined to get thrown over by the last scene.

  Two days after his phone call, she’d stumbled into the real thing. More specifically, she’d tripped him as he got on the elevator, and she caused him to shut his tie in the door. He was nice enough about it as she blundered through her apologies, but throughout the elevator ride, she’d prayed that she’d never see this man again. Th
ere was something about him—his curly black hair, fabulous blue eyes, the way his lean body seemed to fill the whole elevator with his presence. It was the kind of chemistry they posted warning signs about in laboratories. When they’d gotten off the elevator together, she’d hoped he was just a visiting salesman. When she’d asked for Alec Mason and heard him say “I’m Alec,” she saw in his eyes that he was as disappointed as she was. Since that first fateful stumble, their nonrelationship had only gotten worse.

  She slipped the paperback mystery out of her purse and opened it, noting with pleasure, that the first victim had many of Alec’s traits. Arrogance. Looks to kill for.

  “Drowning your sorrows in ranch dressing?” Claire looked up to see Lissa take a seat across from her.

  “Low-cal buttermilk, actually,” she said, closing her book. She liked Lissa in spite of herself, especially since in many ways the other reporter reminded her of Missy. Or Miranda, as she might as well get used to thinking of her. They were both a little shallow, and neither could hold a secret any longer than it took it to go from her ears to her lips. But both of them had some sparkling quality that made it easy to forget how unreliable they were.

  Lissa waved the waitress away, and leaned across the table towards Claire. “He’s not worth it,” Lissa said. “No man is worth all this trouble.”

  Claire sighed and pushed her half-eaten salad away. “I know. It’s ridiculous to go through this. Even if I couldn’t get another job with a paper here, I could go back to school, become qualified to do something. And I’ve always got waitressing experience.”

  Lissa was staring at her. “Do you think I’m talking about Alec?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Lissa shook her head. “Of course not. You need this job with Alec. I’m talking about Scott.”

  If Mick was right, and spunk really was a tangible thing, then hers had been stolen by Scott. If it had existed at all, then it had long ago been hocked in some New York City pawn shop, probably to pay his rent.

  Miranda had been the only person who understood how much she loved Scott. Although that had proven to have its disadvantages, the good part of it was that no one else ever thought to mention him. To her other friends and relatives, he blended in with the string of boys Claire didn’t marry. Today was the first time anyone had spoken his name to her in a while, and she was flooded with memories.

  Their first meeting, in fact, had been too much like her first meeting with Alec. She hadn’t shut his tie in an elevator, but she’d exploded a canned cola on his white oxford shirt on the first day of class, managing to get all food and beverages in the classroom banned by the professor. The other students were a little upset, but Scott hadn’t minded. Whatever she did only seemed to endear her more to him. Back then, in her early twenties, she’d had the confidence that came with knowing she was loved. Now, at twenty-six, she had the skittishness that came with knowing she’d been dumped and betrayed.

  “Claire.” Lissa snapped her fingers. “Come out of fantasy land and decide what you’re going to do. You cannot let this shallow, arrogant, deceptive scum keep you from participating in one of the singular experiences of your life.”

  “Scott’s not…” Claire started to say. “Well, he is, actually, all of those things. But there was more to him than that.” There was no way, she knew, that she could communicate his charms to Lissa. How could she describe his killer smile, or the way his eyes used to light up every time he saw her? Considering what he’d done to her, what could she say to redeem him? He indulged all of her whims. He never found anything about her to criticize. He seemed to love her completely right up until the day he left.

  “I’m sure he had his good points,” Lissa said soothingly, “Before his betrayal of you made you forget them. My point, though, is that you now have an opportunity other people only dream about.” At Claire’s questioning look, she said, “Okay, let’s do this. Imagine you’re looking at a group picture from the third grade.”

  Claire obeyed. She could see them all, lined up on the gym bleachers. Wild print shirts and wide-legged jeans were in style, and half the girls wore their hair like Princess Leia’s.

  “What were some of their names?” Lissa asked.

  “Shelly, Darrell, Starr, Kelly…” Her voice trailed off. “What’s the point of this?”

  “Wherever those kids are, they’re telling everyone they know that they went to school with Miranda Craig. In this town right now, someone’s claim to fame is that he pulled Miranda’s pigtails.”

  “That would be Joey Bradley,” Claire said.

  “Right now, old Joey’s down at the auto store, bragging about Miranda being his childhood sweetheart. Shelly and Kelly are gossiping about her at the Laundromat. But do they have invitations to this retreat?”

  “I see your point,” Claire said. “But I can’t go. I don’t want to see Miranda again.”

  “You don’t have to forgive her for what she did. That’s not part of the invitation.”

  “To tell you the truth,” Claire confided. “I don’t want to see Scott. It’s not like I’m still in love with him, but I just don’t want to see him again.”

  Lissa was shaking her head even before Claire finished. “Scott’s not going to be there.”

  “He was a significant person in her life,” Claire said.

  “Not. Your best friend from first grade to freshman year in college—that’s the kind of person who belongs in a tribute to you. Not the guy you left behind when you made it. He’d have lots of lovely things to say for the cameras.”

  Like Miranda, Lissa had at the core of her personality a hard-as-nails pragmatism and a well-trained eye for the main chance. If Lissa said Miranda wouldn’t have asked him, then Claire believed her. Lissa rose, smoothing her linen skirt out as she stood.

  “Come on back to work,” she told Claire. “Even if you don’t change your mind about going to the filming, Alec’s not really going to fire you. If he did, you’d just have to go crying to Mick. After all, he’s the one who signs the checks.”

  That, Claire thought, epitomized the difference between them. Lissa was the kind of woman who noticed who signed the checks, while she, Claire, let those details slip by. Maybe it was time to start paying attention.

  “Even if you don’t want to work for Alec anymore, you’re still holding a ticket for an all-expense-paid trip to Miranda Craig’s spread. You should use it.”

  She should use it. As she bid goodbye to Lissa, Claire felt the first shivers of a great idea coming on. She signaled the waitress for more coffee and slipped a notebook out of her purse. She would meet with Alec, but she wouldn’t be as unprepared for this encounter as she had been for their first one. This time, she would know what to expect. This time, she had a plan.

  2

  “I BROUGHT YOU something, Alec.” As Lissa dropped a wrapped sandwich on his desk, Alec shoved her purloined copy of the biography in his top desk drawer and hastily picked up the Wall Street Journal.

  “Lots of interesting human-interest stuff in here today,” he told Lissa, unwrapping the layers of aluminum foil and biting into the sandwich, so hungry he didn’t care whether it was liverwurst or lean roast beef. “Lots of lifestyle features,” he told her, gesturing at the paper. “You should read it sometime.”

  “Yeah, well, if they come up with a new way to say the bride wore white, be sure and let me know.”

  Turkey with mustard. A good choice, he thought, as his tastebuds finally identified the meal he was gulping down. “Did you happen to see Claire?”

  “She wasn’t at the deli,” Lissa said, and left it at that. Alec waited at his desk, his whole body tuned to the sounds of the building, waiting for Claire’s light step on the stairwell or the ping of the elevator as it rose. He got his hopes up when the elevator stopped at their floor, but it was only Mick, returning from his lunch.

  It didn’t take Mick long to spot what was wrong with the picture. “Where’s Claire?”

  “Claire is…
umm.” There was no use lying about it, Alec realized. Lissa would rat on him in a second if he didn’t come clean. “We’re not exactly sure.”

  “You didn’t fire her, did you?”

  “In a manner of speaking, no.”

  “But in another manner of speaking, maybe?” Mick asked. “You’d better come to my office.”

  No one ever had the heart to tell Mick that his office was meant to be a utility and supply closet. Extra pens, computer paper and all the other supplies the staff needed had to be stacked in boxes along the floor of the larger office, or hidden in the paper’s basement office with the production and four-person advertising staff. Last year, at Christmas, Alec had taken up a collection to put heating and air-conditioning vents in Mick’s quarters, but he only had raised enough for a clearance-model ceiling fan. He sat down in one of the room’s two chairs and began to fill Mick in, the fan whirring above him noisily as he spoke.

  He glossed over the part about how he’d learned what was in Claire’s letter, but he could tell that even without hearing about that particular breach of ethics, Mick didn’t approve of what he’d done.

  “You fired her because she wouldn’t take you to a party?” Mick asked him.

  That wasn’t how he would have put it, but it seemed to be what he’d done. He tried to justify his actions. “It’s not that. It’s that she had this valuable connection, and she never mentioned it.”

  Mick seemed puzzled. “I know Miranda Craig is from here, and I know you want to pull one over on the daily, but I just don’t see why America’s eating her up. She’s kind of horse-faced, isn’t she?”

  Alec sighed. He could feel the day’s adrenaline rush seeping out of him, leaving him subdued and depressed. He’d chased a story and lost it. That had never happened before to Alec, and he didn’t like the feeling.

  “Mick,” he said. “Girls look like that now.”

  “What? You mean like their genes are changing or something? All that radiation we’ve been fooling around with since the war?” He shook his head. “Claire’s a hell of a lot prettier, if you ask me.”