The Fiance Thief

by Tracy South

  “Do you see any signs of life?” Scott asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I do. A wall.” As they walked toward the entrance, a collection of voices carried to them. Lissa thought them disturbingly familiar voices. She ducked down, and motioned for Scott to follow. Lissa crept along the wall until she came to a place where she could see. She looked, then looked again. It seemed to be Mick and Hank, with two strange women, all of them standing outside of Hank’s car and arguing with a man in a security guard’s uniform.

  “I’m telling you, there’s an emergency on the paper he’s got to know about,” she heard Hank yell.

  “Who are those guys?” Scott whispered.

  “Not my fan club, that’s for sure,” Lissa said back. “It doesn’t look like he’s going to let them in.”

  She crept a little closer to get a better angle on the situation. Everyone was out of the car, Mick and Hank and a cute girl in a short skirt gesturing wildly, an older woman hanging back with a smile on her face. The security guard was standing in front of them, shaking his head no. The gate behind him was shut tight.

  She gestured to Scott, and he crouched down beside her. “Here’s what we can do,” she whispered. “We can go plead our case with Dudley Doright. Or we can go over the wall.”

  He looked up at the wall, then at the tree next to it.

  “I’ll lift you over, then I’ll climb up this tree and hop over that way. Are you ready?” he asked her.

  “Ready,” she said, putting her foot in his hand. “Do you know what, Scott?” she whispered before he lifted her up. “As much as I never really wanted to be one, this makes me feel like a real reporter.”

  “GOT IT,” the hairdresser said, snagging the last tangle out of Claire’s hair.

  “Ouch,” she said, and thought she saw Miranda smirk a little beside her.

  “Thick hair tangles up for no reason,” the hairdresser said sympathetically. “If you don’t want tangles, you should have hair like Miranda’s. It’s so thin that it’s barely there.”

  “Could we get these people off the set please?” Miranda yelled, swatting away the makeup artist who’d bent down to give her one more look.

  “Touchy,” the hairdresser muttered as she walked away.

  They were seated in the summer den, finally ready to do the joint interview Miranda had promised Christine. Although Miranda had greeted Alec warmly at dinner, she’d been edgy and short with Claire. Fortunately, they hadn’t had to sit at her table, although that didn’t ease the tension between Alec and Claire. He said Miranda’s foul mood was because she was finally facing her envy of Claire. Claire thought it was because she sensed that the new, assertive Claire wasn’t going to let her get away with trying to steal another fiancé, even a fake one.

  Christine signaled for silence, and those gathered to watch the taping quickly quieted. Chris was there, looking eager and impatient. Larry and Roger were standing along one wall, Alec near them.

  Christine began. “Most little girls have best friends, but for many of them that lineup changes from time to time. You two were always inseparable. Miranda, can you tell us what made you want to be Claire’s friend?”

  “She was smart,” Miranda said, with a glance toward Claire that Claire read as, See, aren’t I being nice to you? Miranda continued, “She was pretty. And she always listened to me.”

  “Did everything you told me to do,” Claire filled in.

  “That’s right,” Miranda said, then realized what she’d agreed to. “Oh, you know, I might have been sort of bossy, the way little girls are.”

  Claire nodded her agreement. Christine’s eyebrows knitted together in a frown, and she looked at her notes.

  “Tell me, was there ever any competition between the two of you?”

  “Not really,” Claire said, figuring she could play straight person for at least one or two questions. “I was into books, and she was into sports, so we were never competitive that way.”

  “And then, I’m not competitive anyway. I’m one of those people who does best in harmonious, cooperative situations,” Miranda added.

  That didn’t even come from Miranda’s head, Claire thought. “I’m afraid she’s playing down some essential parts of her personality,” she said. “Miranda is one of the most competitive people I know.”

  “How so?” Christine asked.

  How could she resist an opening like this? “Once when we were playing Monopoly, she hit me over the head when I got Park Place. She got to be Donald Trump that day, that’s for sure.” She turned to watch Miranda’s expression. “And then there was a play, in college, and Miranda really wanted the role. She wanted it so badly that she…” Her former friend’s face turned ashen, and she gaped for air like a fish. Claire felt a tinge of triumph before she looked across at Alec. He turned away, plainly disgusted by what she was about to do. Didn’t he understand that this was her only means of getting back at Miranda? Back at her for what? She could practically hear his voice in her head. For flirting with him because she felt insecure? For constantly trying to prove that she was better than Claire? That wasn’t something to get back at someone for; that was something that should inspire pity and compassion.

  “She wanted it so badly that?” Christine prompted.

  “Oh,” Claire said, coming out of her reverie. She looked into Miranda’s eyes and said, “That she was devastated when she actually played the role, and I wound up getting a better review for the part she’d abandoned.”

  “I see.” Christine went on to another question, and Miranda’s eyes offered up silent gratitude to Claire. She looked at Alec, who smiled back.

  “So were you two ever competitive over stage roles?” Christine asked.

  “No,” Claire said. “I didn’t act in college, except for that once. And before that, I never tried to compete with her for the roles she wanted. It just wasn’t that important to me.” As she said it, she realized she was saying it not because she was trying to be self-serving, but because she now knew that had been a key issue of her friendship with Miranda. She hadn’t wanted to undermine Miranda’s confidence on things that were important to her. She had cared about Miranda’s feelings enough to watch what she said and did around her. If Miranda had never learned those particular lessons of friendship, she had still been an important part of Claire’s life.

  She mulled all this over, continuing to lob back easy answers to Christine’s questions, joining in with Miranda where it seemed appropriate. Miranda made a sign with her hands and said, “Can we take a break?”

  “Cut,” someone yelled as Miranda got up and stretched. “I’m going to get a cola.” She turned to Claire. “Do you want one?”

  “I’d like that, thanks,” Claire said, knowing how difficult it was for the other woman to put herself out after getting used to having her own whims catered to every second of the day. It was just a soda, but it was a start.

  As she walked out of the room, almost everyone there, with the exception of Alec, offered to retrieve the soda for her, but she waved them away. “I need a walk,” she said.

  Claire stayed where she was, eyeing Alec on his side of the room. When Christine stepped away from the camera, Alec came over and sat beside her, taking her hand in his.

  “You’re holding my hand?” she asked. “Come on, for what I did, I deserve better than that.”

  “How about this?” He kissed her then, and all the sounds and distractions in the room faded. She broke off the kiss to look at him, brushing a curly lock away from his forehead.

  “I didn’t just do it because you wanted me to,” she said.

  “Believe me, I know,” Alec told her. “I don’t expect that at any time during our lives together you’re going to do something just because I want you to.”

  “During our lives together?” Claire asked. “Don’t you mean during our phony engagement?”

  He tapped the sapphire ring. “About that phony engagement. Let’s make it real.”

  “How? By bl
owing on the stone and saying Abracadabra?”

  “No. By swearing to love each other for the rest of our lives,” he said, holding her close.

  “Alec, I swear.”

  It was a wonderful moment, one she would have liked to have savored, but it was interrupted by Miranda’s indignant voice saying, “Will you look at what I found in the hallway?” and by a flat, emotionless voice, saying “Claire.”

  She looked up to see Miranda in front of her, cola apparently forgotten, throwing her hands around and looking like she was on the verge of a hysterical fit. There, beside Miranda, as though he’d materialized in the many times she’d seen him that way in her dreams, stood Scott Granville. There was no leap of emotions on seeing him, no pains in her heart. Face-to-face with him again, she couldn’t imagine why she’d spent so many years making herself miserable because of him.

  It appeared that Miranda wasn’t going to take charge of the situation, and Claire didn’t want to. Instead, she said, “Hello, Scott. I’d like you to meet my fiance, Alec Mason.”

  Alec stood and shook hands as though meeting her and Miranda’s mutual ex-love in Miranda’s house was the most natural thing in the world. “What brings you out this way, Scott?”

  “I just wanted to say. Um, Claire…I, uh, just came to tell you guys hey.”

  “Guess what, Claire?” Miranda finally had her voice again. “Scott says hey.”

  “How sweet,” Claire said, pulling Alec down beside her once again.

  Frightened, no doubt, by the murderous look on Miranda’s face, Scott began backing away from them. A familiar hand shot out of the crowd and held him still, the well-cared for pink nails pinning him in place.

  “Claire,” Lissa said, emerging from behind Scott. “Don’t be mad at Scott. He just wanted to tie up some loose ends with you two, and he thought this would be the best place to do it. He’s impetuous, you know.”

  Claire had to hide her grin. “I don’t think I knew that about Scott.”

  Lissa greeted Alec, then extended a hand to Miranda, “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Lissa Barnard, the society editor for the Tribune.”

  Miranda grudgingly accepted the handshake, then turned to Claire. “Did you bring the whole staff here or what?”

  “No,” Claire said, but then heard a noisy argument traveling down the hall toward them. She thought the voices belonged to Hank and Mick. Her suspicions were confirmed when she saw the men enter the room, followed by Allie and an unfamiliar middle-aged woman.

  “At least the production and business people aren’t here,” she told Miranda. “That’s a real unstable bunch.”

  The security guard was close behind them. “They say they had some emergency at the paper, and they’ve all got to be here to see somebody named Claire and Alec.”

  Alec stood and turned to Lissa. “Is that how you got in, too?”

  Lissa pointed to the tear in her blouse. “We got in the old-fashioned way.”

  “Ms. Craig, I don’t know what to think,” the guard told Miranda.

  She sighed. “Let them stay.”

  “But I don’t think they had the proper authorization to get in here.”

  Miranda put her forehead in her hands. “Let them stay. Chris, honey, will you and Larry go round up all the liquor in the house and bring it up here?”

  “What’s that line from one of those plays you loved?” Claire asked Miranda, knowing she would know what she was talking about.

  She smiled. “I’m just having a real bad day,” she quoted. She leaned toward Claire and whispered, “I owe you one.”

  “Forget it,” Claire said.

  She felt Alec’s hand squeeze hers just as she heard Mick’s booming voice.

  “I think we’d better go hunt for some food,” Lissa said, grabbing Scott and slipping into the crowd.

  “Don’t think I’m not going to ask you where my boat is,” Mick called after her. He introduced his ex-wife to Claire and Alec, and Claire introduced the two of them to Miranda.

  “Did you have trouble finding the place?” Miranda asked politely.

  “Oh, no,” Mick said. “Claire’s friend Allie found it with no trouble at all.”

  “I’ll bet,” Miranda said, as they all looked over to where Allie was drinking wine with Chris and Roger in the corner.

  “What was the emergency on the paper?” Claire asked.

  “Somehow,” Mick said, blushing, “all the stories got thrown away.”

  Claire and Alec gasped as Mick said. “Hank fixed it, though. He recreated Alec’s and Lissa’s stories, and Allie dropped off some of Claire’s.”

  Claire looked at Mick, confused. “But if Hank fixed it, why did you all rush out here?”

  “Because Scott and Lissa stole my boat,” Mick said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  “What?”

  Alec bent down to kiss Claire. “I don’t understand it, either. Let’s agree to figure it out together later.”

  As she and Alec concluded their kiss, Claire noticed that Miranda was still standing near them, out of the limelight. Claire started to say something to cheer her, but was interrupted by the appearance of Hank. She presented Miranda to Hank, then was as shocked as everyone else apparently was to hear him say to Miranda, “I love your work.”

  “You do?” Claire felt a teeny stab of guilt when she heard the doubt in Miranda’s voice. Surely she hadn’t sapped Miranda of her self-esteem forever.

  “I really love your part in Sundays at the Park. It isn’t everyone who can bring that kind of depth to the small role of teen-aged babysitter.”

  “But you think I did?” Her voice was hopeful.

  “Oh, absolutely,” he said. “Tell me something I’ve always wanted to know. In the Rand Walsh art movie Mystery Generation, are you the voice of the ex-girlfriend who keeps calling the hero?”

  Claire hit herself on the head. “How could I not have known that? I knew that voice was familiar.”

  Miranda was visibly excited over Hank’s discovery. “No one has ever figured that out.”

  “That voice steals the movie,” Hank said. “Why isn’t it listed on your résumé?”

  Miranda looked a bit downcast. “They didn’t list me in the credits because it was such a nonpart, Walsh thought, and I was a nobody. Now he doesn’t want to admit that somebody as mainstream as I am was in one of his movies.”

  Hank shook his head. “He’s only shooting himself in the foot with that kind of reverse snobbism.”

  “Since when do you know about movies?” Alec asked.

  Hank kept talking to Miranda. “I think you have the kind of crossover appeal that could bring mainstream audiences to smaller films. I think you especially have a gift for making what may seem to be a small character larger than life. Although I’m sure it will be an excellent movie, A Woman’s Heart is just that kind of saintly-woman-ofthe-South stuff you keep getting handed.”

  By this time, everyone in the room was openly listening to Hank and Miranda.

  “Oh, I know,” Miranda said. “I wish someone would give me a script where I played a real person. A working girl, you know, but a funny one. But I don’t want there to only be comedy in the script.”

  “I have a script just like that,” Hank said. “One that I wrote especially with you in mind.”

  As those who knew Hank stood there in stunned silence, Miranda put her hands on her hips, now openly flirting with him. “Do you know how many guys say that to me?”

  Hank drew a computer diskette out of his pocket. “But how many of them actually have great scripts? Can we use your computer, Alec?”

  “Be my guest.”

  As the two of them walked off, Mick turned to Claire and Alec and said, “Looks like you two are getting pretty serious about this phony engagement thing.”

  Miranda stopped and turned around. “Phony engagement?”

  Alec waved a hand at her. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

  Claire tur
ned to Alec. “Sweetheart, you made a Wizard of Oz reference. Now I know you love me.”

  Mick and his ex-wife wandered discreetly away. As Claire and Alec started to kiss, they were interrupted by an annoyed Chris. “What about the scoop you were going to reveal?”

  “False lead,” she said. At his irritated glance, she told him, “But I’ve got something better. Why don’t you phone the tabloid editor and tell him that the script Miranda is looking at is going to be her hottest movie yet? Everyone is going to be talking about Hank Jensen.”

  “Do you really think so?” Chris asked, scurrying away.

  “Alone at last,” Claire said, snuggling up to Alec in the crowded room.

  “Never alone again,” Alec answered her. “Not when we have each other.

  They kissed again as Claire heard Lissa say, “Mick, did I ever tell you about my little sister? She’d love to be a society reporter.”

  Claire and Alec broke off their kiss and smiled at each other. “I forgot to tell you. The psychic also said I was going to have four children and many more grandchildren. Won’t this be something to tell them about?”

  She looked around the room, where Allie and Roger were laughing in the corner, Renee, Christine and Larry were sharing a bottle of bourbon, Mick and his ex-wife had their arms around each other and Scott was holding hands with Lissa.

  “You’d better grab Christine’s video recorder,” Claire told Alec. “Otherwise, I don’t think they’re going to be lieve it.”

  Epilogue

  From the Tribune…

  Morgan-Mason Wedding Bells Chime

  by Krista Barnard

  Claire Morgan, senior editor of this paper, whose story on toxic dumping in South Ridgeville sparked several criminal and civil investigations and indictments, was wed October 7 to Alec Mason, Tribune co-owner and editor in chief. Nuptials were held at the historic Ramsey-Ivy house. The bride’s parents were in from Florida for the occasion, and the groom’s extended family filled out the crowd.