by Tracy South
“In Ridgeville?” Christine asked.
“I came back to Ridgeville by choice,” Claire said. Although she knew Miranda wanted the subject of Scott to be off-limits, it was important to her that she be able to finish what she had to say. “My fiancé, Scott Granville, used to talk all the time about moving to New York. He believed that was the only place he could make.his mark as a novelist. I argued and resisted, until one day he went to New York with Miranda. When that happened, I did leave Ridgeville, although not for New York. But when I came back, I knew I was at peace with being there.”
Claire could tell that Christine was grateful to her for sparing her the dirty task of introducing Scott’s name into the conversation. “A lot was said in the press at one time about Miranda’s betrayal of you. Do you forgive her now?”
“Yes, I do,” she answered, and as she said it, she realized she meant it. “I can’t deny that part of the reason I forgive her is that I no longer have feelings for Scott. If I were still pining away for him, I don’t think I’d be here.” Saying it, she realized that was true, as well. No matter how unwilling she had been to come here, how many twinges of pain she’d felt at his name, it wasn’t the same as that wild and sick loneliness she’d endured when he left. If she’d still felt that, nothing would have made her see Miranda again. “My relationship with him didn’t work out. He and Miranda didn’t work out. There’s no sense in anyone remaining bitter about that. Wherever he is, I wish him luck.”
That was a wrap. She found herself shaking a little when Christine cued the cameras to stop. “I know that was hard for you,” Christine said. “You were wonderful.”
Claire got up and brushed some clinging hay from her pants. An assistant had retrieved Chris for his turn at the camera, and Claire considered hanging around to see what mischief he would pull. Instead, she decided she’d head back to her room and finish the south Ridgeville story. She hadn’t acquired the typewriter just to use as an interesting paperweight. Walking out of the barn, past the glaring lights, she bumped into Alec, standing by the door.
“You did great,” Alec said. “You’ve got a great camera presence. And the way you talked, it all sounded so believable.”
“The truth usually does,” Claire said.
Alec’s jaw tensed. He stood in front of her, trying to block her path as people milled about them, going to and from the barn. He seemed to forget that they were in the great outdoors, not trapped in the office or in their room. She sidestepped him easily, but he grabbed her arm. “I came up here to apologize,” he said. “I didn’t mean for our argument to get so out of hand, and I didn’t mean to hint anything about you and Trent Daniels.” He paused to take a deep breath, and she knew then that getting that apology out had been difficult for him. “Also, I meant to tell you. You look beautiful today.”
“You don’t have to get carried away,” she said. She twirled a piece of hair around her finger, and was shocked into silence when Alec reached up to tuck the stray lock behind her ear. “You know, that used to drive me crazy, the way you played with your hair. It still does, but in a different way.” He leaned over and kissed her, a sweet brush on the lips. She heard one of Miranda’s cousins yell “Public Display of Affection!”, and she broke off the kiss, blushing.
“Whose benefit was that for?” she asked him.
“No one but mine and yours,” he said. “Did you mean what you said about being over Scott?”
“Of course I did,” she said, looking straight at him. He wore another one of his polo shirts, this one red, but he had on jeans, tight in all the right places. That first day she had seen him on the elevator, she’d thought no man could be that gorgeous, but he looked even better today than he had all those months ago.
“But that was the whole reason you didn’t want to come here, remember?”
She took his hand and steered him under the shade of a nearby tree. “You can be sad about something and still think that it turned out okay in the long run. I was upset because of Scott, of course, but also because the whole thing told me something I didn’t want to know about Miranda. Or Scott. I didn’t want to think the people I loved could be that shallow.”
“But you wanted to marry Scott,” Alec said stubbornly.
Claire laughed. “There are a lot of people here who would tell you that doesn’t put him in a very select category. But let me try to explain.” They sat down on a nearby rock. “Those guys before Scott…”
“Brad, Brian, Rick and Russ,” Alec interrupted.
“You remembered,” she said, pleased in spite of herself. “These guys, who wouldn’t take I won’t marry you’ for an answer, didn’t fall in love with the real me. I can be sweet, sure, but as you know, I can also be pretty darn sour.”
“And sharp-tongued,” Alec said.
“That, too,” she admitted. “When Scott and I started dating, I thought he loved me for the real me. And maybe that was true. But he didn’t love the real me enough to give up the chance to go to New York with Miranda.”
“What if you had gone to New York with him instead of Miranda?” Alec asked.
“I can’t say,” she said. “I don’t know if we’d still be together, and I don’t know that he would have written any more novels with me than he wrote with her.”
“What about you, though?” Alec asked. “What would you be doing?”
“I think I would have still found my calling. I think journalism is what I was meant to do. When my front of the paper stories start coming out, I want to be able to see that they really have meaning for the people I write about.”
“You really believe that what you write matters?” Alec asked.
“Don’t you?” He looked so uncomfortable and stricken by the question that she moved on to something else. “Thanks to Miranda’s book, you know all the secrets of my love life. I know you dated Lissa, but who else?”
He seemed honestly shocked. “How did you know about that?”
“She told me.”
“And I thought you didn’t gossip.”
“I don’t gossip,” she said, squeezing his arm. “I just listen very well. She never told me about anyone else you dated, though, so tell me about all the old loves out there pining away for you.”
He cupped her chin with his hand and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I’ve never met anyone I wanted to get serious about. I guess I never realized what I was looking for.”
“And what’s that?” she asked, half out of breath from his light touch.
“Someone who gets under my skin,” he said. “Someone who keeps me off balance. Someone who surprises me.”
He bent toward her, as though he were going to give her another one of those marvelous kisses, but suddenly stopped and gestured to the land nearest the house. “See that little dot in the sun hat?” he asked Claire, straightening up.
She shook her head. “Not really,” she said, squinting at the distance.
“It’s Miranda. Listen, I’ve got to get her to talk to me. This is great. I brought my tape recorder with me,” he said, patting his pocket as he stood. Claire pulled him back down.
“Alec,” she said, “we’re having a meaningful discussion here. I don’t think this is exactly the time for you to rush off, chasing Miranda.”
“Claire, I’d love to hang out with you all day. But this story is going in the next issue. That’s just days away,” he said.
“Oh, I forgot,” she said, knowing she was going to sound hateful but unable to stop herself. “Ridgeville residents don’t buy enough copies of the National Enquirer to be able to figure out what Miranda’s up to now.”
His face darkened. “If that person in the sun hat were a company executive dumping toxic waste in south Ridgeville, you’d be the one running down the hill.”
“That’s different,” Claire said.
“Why? Because Weekly Tribune readers care a lot more about industrial bad guys than they do about blond actresses? I don’t think you know your reader very well.”<
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“I don’t think you do,” Claire said. The set of his jaw made it clear she had angered him, and she went on, making an attempt to smooth over what she’d said. “I think if you’d give the people some real journalism, they’d want even more of it. I don’t disapprove of you trying to get this story about Miranda. I disapprove of you acting like it’s the most important story you’ll ever write.”
So much for smoothing things over. Alec grabbed his tape recorder and took a few steps away from her. “When you get down off your ethical high horse, let me know,” he said.
“I’ll get down from my high horse the day you become a little less…” She paused, knowing she shouldn’t say it. “Shallow,” she finished, and watched as he tightened his shoulders before walking down the hill toward Miranda.
9
“THE SUN IS SHINING, and it’s a beautiful morning. It’s a day that just calls out, Mick. Why don’t you write about the recent city council meeting and that distinguished wedding you attended?”
Mick lifted his head off Lissa’s desk and glared at Hank. He said, “Coffee,” and Hank put a steaming cup down on the desk across from him.
Mick looked outside at the clear day. “Was there a thunderstorm last night or was that one of the nightmares that came from sleeping with my head crooked?”
“No, it was real,” Hank said. “I had to shut the computers off and work on Alec’s stories by hand, but I got a couple of them re-created and entered into the computer this morning. By looking at the assignment sheet, I’ve also been able to put back together a few of Lissa’s stories. She left names in her notebook, and her stories are all the same anyway.” Together he and Mick said, “I went to a wedding, the food was okay, the women were pleasant and the bride was pale.”
Mick nodded. “Sounds like you’ve got the formula down pat at least. How about writing my stories?”
“No can do.” Hank sat down at his computer. “Tell me all about that city council meeting. You talk, and I’ll type.”
“Let’s see,” Mick said. “I went to the municipal building. I looked around to see if there was anyone there I wanted to avoid….”
“WAKE UP. The sun’s out. We’re free to go.” Not sure where she was or who was addressing her, Lissa opened her eyes to see an incredibly good-looking man looming over her. Who was he? More importantly, would he someday inherit a thriving manufacturing plant or palatial estate?
She sat up and looked around. This looked like Mick’s house. It was Mick’s house. The whole thing came back to her and woke her up in a matter of seconds. Scott. Cute he might be, but in the end, she told herself, way too much trouble to justify. Unless, of course, he had a lot of money. She hadn’t had an occasion to ask him about that yet.
“Is there coffee?” she yawned.
“Great coffee. Your friend has taste.”
“Mick?” She shook her head. “No, he doesn’t. Isn’t he here yet?”
“Nobody but you and me. I hope nothing happened to him.” At Lissa’s questioning glance he said, “Because you’d be upset.”
“That’s sweet of you,” she said, genuinely touched. “But I’d get over it, really.” Privately she wondered where this altruistic streak had come from. And why was he in such a bouncy mood? He’d even brought her suitcase up from the car. As she toddled off to get ready, cup of coffee in hand, she wondered if Scott’s good mood had to do with the prospect of winning Claire back. For the first time, she considered the idea that she might be just setting him up for heartbreak, and was surprised to find herself bothered by the idea.
They locked up the house and hid the key in the same spot. Scott behind the wheel, they tore out of the driveway, flying past the downed mailbox at the bottom.
Near the end of Mick’s road, she saw a man holding up a sign that said Slow.
“Whoa,” she and Scott yelled at once, as he put the brakes on quickly. The car lurched, spun a little, then spun back as they came to a stop just a few feet shy of a mammoth tree lying across the road.
The power tools the men were using didn’t seem to be making a dent in its hundreds-of-years-old flesh. Lissa and Scott got out and approached a man standing to the side of the work.
“You’d better watch your speedometer, son,” the man said. “Ivy’s grown over the speed limit signs, but it’s thirty miles an hour around here.”
Scott ignored the man’s admonishments. “How long’s it going to take to get this out of the way?”
“All day I guess.”
“We need to get to Loudon,” Lissa said. “Can you tell us how to do that?”
“Wait for the tree to get cut up,” the man said. “This is a dead-end road.”
“No,” Lissa said, her cry one of agony. “We can’t.”
“If you had a boat, you could get there that way.”
Scott was shaking his head in disgust, but Lissa said, “A boat? We have a boat.”
“We do?” Scott asked.
Lissa bobbed her head up and down. “Back at the house. A pontoon boat. One of those flat party boats. We’ll be in Loudon in no time.”
“Not ten minutes from here by water,” the man agreed. Scott and Lissa got back into the car. “The speed limit,” the man yelled after them, as Scott floored it on the way back to Mick’s.
THE LUNCH BUFFET was set up inside, in the casual dining room. The fruit and yogurt she’d had earlier didn’t have much staying power, and Claire’s stomach rumbled as she walked into the house, intending to grab a sandwich and take it back to her desk. With Alec out of the way, maybe she could get some work done. She ignored the voice that told her she’d rather have Alec tucked away beside her than all the sandwiches and typewriters in the world. Looking at the spot where she and Alec had kissed the night before, she felt a hunger and an ache that had nothing to do with the food set out on the buffet table.
“I’m glad you made it.” She turned to see Roger standing beside her. “I hate to eat alone.”
A bit flustered, Claire said, “Oh, I wasn’t going to eat here. I’ve got some work to do in my room.”
He gave her that dazzling cinematic smile. “You can’t take fifteen minutes to sit at a table and eat with me?”
Her plate full, he steered her toward a seat. “You don’t know how nice it feels to talk to somebody who knows something about the world outside of Hollywood.”
“Have you gotten to see a lot of Miranda this weekend?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “No, I’ve barely been able to say two words to her. When she gets involved in something, she goes all out after it.”
“Believe me, I knew that too well,” Claire said.
Roger blushed. “I didn’t have to bring up what happened between you and Miranda. You know, she wouldn’t have invited you if she hadn’t thought that maybe you two could still be friends somehow.”
“Do you think so?” Claire asked, interested. Friends with Miranda. That was something she hadn’t seriously considered when she’d packed her three suitcases for this trip. She’d never dreamed there would be a day when she could look at Miranda without seeing a ghost image of Scott standing beside her. This weekend, though, she was having a hard time remembering exactly what Scott looked like.
There was no denying that there were things about Miranda that had always fascinated her. Miranda had had a sense of personal style from the day she started mismatching her socks at age six. She’d never hesitated with a wisecrack or joke, even if it meant ticking off someone important. She was the first one to say “get lost” to a group of annoying guys at a bar, even as Claire had decided to suffer their company in silence. Claire would have probably been engaged to a whole other cast of losers if Miranda hadn’t been there to stand up for her.
But she had her faults, too. She’d never cared how her actions affected other people. She envied things—everything from Starr McCoy’s “Charlie’s Angels” lunch box to their college suitemate’s candy red convertible. And she had minimal impulse control.
“Don’t be silly,” Roger said. “Miranda wants me to make sure you have a good time on this trip, considering that you have every reason in the world not to be here.”
“Did she tell you that?” Claire asked.
“Not exactly,” Roger said. “But I know she’s thinking it.”
Just then, Claire heard an unfamiliar voice say, “How did you get rid of that reporter?” Eavesdropping was one of her best tricks in trade, and she’d developed an unconscious habit of tapping into conversations around her just long enough to figure out whether she needed to hear them or not.
The question was answered by Miranda, walking into the room as she spoke. “I told him to meet me by the frog pond. He’s cute, but, man, is he a pest.”
Roger’s back was to Miranda, and if he had heard her enter the room at all, he hadn’t let on. There was nothing to do except pretend that she didn’t know Miranda was in the room until the actress actually ventured to their table.
Claire looked up when Miranda tapped a long fingernail on their table. “Hey, Miranda. How are you?”
Her smile was tight. “Did the two of you have a nice lunch?”
Claire groaned theatrically. “I can’t believe how wonderful this food is, Miranda. It’s so nice of you to feed us so well.”
Miranda looked down her nose at the remnants of the sandwich on Claire’s plate. “Claire, you had pimiento cheese.”
“But it was your mother’s homemade pimiento, wasn’t it?” Claire asked, praying that it was.
“Well, yes,” Miranda admitted, plopping down in the seat next to Roger, who leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. It didn’t seem to placate her.
“I can always tell the difference,” Claire said. She put her napkin down on the plate and started to stand up.
“Don’t go on my account,” Miranda said, accepting a plate from her personal trainer and frowning at its contents.