RAZZLE DAZZLE

by Lisa Hendrix

  “You said to stick to the truth, but he was so suspicious, and—”

  “Suspicious how?”

  “Asking questions. Looking at me like I was stealing his daughter’s boyfriend—which I am supposed to be doing, you know. Anyway, when I mentioned I was doing some work on your garden, he misinterpreted and decided I was your landscape designer. I just went along with it and told him you had hired me to design some new perennial beds for your mother.”

  “So that’s what he meant.” Mason chuckled, and when Raine looked quizzical, he explained about Angus’s comments on her behalf. “I just hope he doesn’t mention anything to Mother.”

  “He won’t,” said Raine. “At least, not if he can keep a secret. I told him the new gardens were a surprise, and that you had asked me to dinner so I could get a feel for your mother’s personality and tastes without her knowing what I was up to.”

  “He bought that?”

  “It sucked him right in,” she said, sounding somewhat amazed herself. “You know, one of my psych professors used to say that there was nothing like a conspiracy to bind total strangers.”

  “Wise professor.”

  “He hit a few things right.” She paused while they cleared the security gate at the Highlands entrance, then added, “And it probably didn’t hurt that I flirted a little, too.”

  “With Angus? You’re kidding.”

  “I figured it would throw him off the track.”

  “Apparently it did.”

  She shrugged. “There are occasional advantages to being blonde and twenty-four.”

  “Not to mention having legs like Cyd Charisse.”

  She tugged her skirt down a fraction of an inch and avoided his eyes, and Mason guessed that if the light were better, he’d see a blush.

  “So,” she said. “I guess things worked out.”

  “On that front, but I’m afraid we may have another problem.” He told her about Miranda’s open window, and the possibility that his sister had overheard her conversation with Angus.

  “Uh-oh.” She sighed. “Well, that was a short run. Sorry.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about. And the ‘run,’ as you say, is not over.”

  She turned to look at him, her brows high over disbelieving eyes. “You still want to go through with this?”

  “Absolutely. My mother believes we’re under the influence of their potion,” he went on. “And she and Miranda are both certainly aware that you know about Caroline after that little incident with the fertilizer. Even if Miranda overheard every word you said to Angus, she and Mother may convince each other that you were just trying to protect me from embarrassment in front of Angus.

  “In fact,” he continued, inspired, “we can work on convincing them of that ourselves, tomorrow night. We can play a couple of sets of tennis, and then join them for dinner afterward. Are you up for it?”

  “Of course.” The streetlights flickered past outside, making pale green sparks in her eyes. She was quiet for several blocks, then asked, “What if your sister isn’t convinced about us? Do you think she would, say, come nosing around my neighborhood?”

  Mason hadn’t considered that. “I’m not sure. Anything’s possible with Miranda. Why?”

  “Mrs. Perlmutter,” she said. “She’s as big a gossip as she is a snoop. We’d probably better go through all the boyfriend-girlfriend stuff when you drop me off.”

  “I think I can manage.”

  “I’m sure you can.” Her mouth curved into that wry grin he was learning to expect. “What should I wear?”

  It took him a minute to figure out that the topic had switched back to the next evening’s activities. “Anything comfortable. We’ll play at the house, not the club. But do bring a change of clothes for dinner.”

  “Oh,” she said doubtfully. “Okay.”

  They rounded the final corner, and Mason wheeled the car into the still-empty spot behind her truck. He helped Raine out, then escorted her up the steep, crumbling, concrete stairs.

  The side gate creaked when he pushed it open, and within seconds a narrow beam of light sliced across the walk as a drape was pulled aside.

  “Mrs. Perlmutter,” whispered Raine. “Right on cue. Oh, shoot. I forgot to leave the porch light on. Watch your step.”

  She led him past the window into the dark backyard, through a garden full of odd shapes and earthy smells, and toward a tiny cottage attached to the garage at the rear of the property. Her keys jingled as she stopped on the narrow stoop and pulled open the screen door. “This is it. Home Sweet Home.”

  Mason held the screen while she opened her door and felt around inside for a switch. The light inside flared into yellow brilliance, and Mason got a quick impression of pale blue walls before she yanked the door shut.

  “It’s kind of a mess,” she said apologetically. “I guess this is good night.”

  “Um-hmm.” Very deliberately, he put his hands on Raine’s waist and backed her against the door frame.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Boyfriend stuff. Per your instructions.” He leaned close. The screen door banged gently against his shoulder and hip. “We can’t disappoint Mrs. Perlmutter. Put your arms around my neck.”

  Her lips parted, and he quickly covered her mouth, catching the first words of her protest and turning them into a sigh of pleasure. She moved in his hands, and her arms slipped obediently around his neck.

  He dragged the kiss out, spending the long moment enjoying the feel of a strong, young, female body in his arms. When he finally broke the kiss, Raine sighed, a faint sound that made him want to do something reckless, and he had to concentrate a moment before he remembered his purpose and stepped back. Needing something to do with his hands, he reached into his inside jacket packet and pulled out a black leather wallet, from which he extracted a business card.

  “Here’s my office number. If something comes up, call me.” Mason pressed the card into her hand. “Otherwise, I’ll pick you up here at five-thirty tomorrow. You do have a racket?”

  “Old Faithful.” The huskiness in Raine’s voice raised his pulse by a good ten beats per minute. “I think Reagan was still president the last time it had new strings. Don’t expect a lot.”

  “After this evening? Raine Hobart, I expect miracles from you.”

  Mason turned and strode away before she could muster an answer, waving to the invisible Mrs. Perlmutter as he passed her window on the way back to the car.

  *

  “I don’t talk about my employers,” said Paul Chang firmly.

  “I should hope not,” said Miranda. She looked her brother’s driver straight in the eye with what she hoped was her most guileless expression. “But I’m not asking about Mason; I’m asking about Miss Hobart.”

  Paul shook his head and used the turkey feather duster to knock a few specks off the right front fender of the Rolls. “Nice try, miss. You wouldn’t want me telling Mr. Alexander about your dates, would you?”

  “He wouldn’t ask,” Miranda said, but the lift she detected at the corner of Paul’s mouth made her ask, “Would he? Has he?”

  “Not recently.”

  “I haven’t had a date recently. That rat. What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing.” Paul hung the duster back on its hook and reached for a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle full of glass cleaner that sat on the shelf above. “Which is precisely what I’m going to tell you.”

  He sprayed the front window as Miranda considered her next tack and watched him work.

  It was a pleasant sight. Paul had changed out of his uniform and into a pair of jeans and a navy and teal Seattle Mariners T-shirt. She’d noticed his great shoulders long ago, but it was the jeans that held her attention tonight: they fit like a second skin. She leaned back against the wall and watched the muscles in his butt and thighs ripple as he worked over the car; by the time he finished the glass and moved on to the chrome, she was entranced.

  She sighed, then re
ddened as Paul glanced over his shoulder and raised one black eyebrow. She covered her reaction quickly, saying, “I don’t understand why you’re being so uncooperative.”

  “Call it job security.”

  “Mason would never fire you. You’re the only driver we’ve ever had who could keep that bloody Jaguar of his running. Besides, he won’t be mad once he figures out that I’m just looking out for his welfare.”

  Paul chuckled. “He used the same line once.”

  The rat. She really was going to have to set big brother straight once this was all over. “All I want is to know how involved he is with Miss Hobart.”

  Paul gave the taillight a flourish and stood up. He cocked his head to one side, listening. “Ask him yourself. He’s home.”

  The distinctive purr of the Jag’s big engine shook the air, and an instant later the garage door opener powered up. Miranda’s eyes widened. “Oh, crap. Where can I hide?”

  Grinning, Paul pulled open the nearest door, and Miranda ducked blindly inside. The lightless space smelled of grease and solvents. Great. A cleaning closet. Well, snoopers couldn’t be choosers. She listened as the Jag’s engine roared closer. It rumbled to a stop, and a car door opened and closed.

  “Good evening, sir,” said Paul. “How is she running?”

  “The dashboard lights started acting up on the way home,” Mason said, so close that Miranda involuntarily stepped backward—right into a damp mop. She bit back an exclamation of disgust.

  “What was that?” asked Mason.

  “Probably the cat, sir. I tossed some catnip on the floor upstairs a little earlier. What exactly happened?”

  To Miranda’s relief, Mason let himself be distracted and, after a brief explanation of the problem, told Paul good night and left the garage. As much as she wanted to escape the soggy cotton strands wrapped around her ankle, she stayed put, waiting for Paul to call all clear.

  He took his own sweet time, and when he did finally pull the door open he was grinning. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

  “Quit enjoying this so much.” She pushed past him.

  “You have to admit, miss, it’s funny.”

  “I don’t either. Now, back to business.”

  “Exactly. I have a short circuit to find.” He stepped to the outside door. “And you need to sneak back inside without getting caught.”

  She trailed after him. “Be reasonable, Paul.”

  “I am. I’m not going to tell your brother that you’re enlisting the staff to spy on him.” He pushed the door open. The motion sensor lights that lined the drive blazed to life. “Good night.”

  “Oh, all right. I guess I can recognize a stone wall when I run into one.” She stopped in the middle of the doorway. “Maybe you could just tell me if he kisses her the next time they’re together?”

  “I’ll bet you don’t have your keys,” he said, ignoring her.

  “Of course I do.” She touched her pocket, but it was empty, and she flushed. “I must have left them on the hall table.”

  Paul shook his head. “I’d offer to let you in, but you obviously don’t want to be seen with me. I’d suggest the service entrance. Williams will still be awake.”

  “You are just no fun at all.”

  “I’m the chauffeur. I’m paid to be competent, dependable, and discreet, not ‘fun.’”

  “Come on, Paul, it’s—”

  “Good night, Miss Alexander.”

  With a sigh of disgust, Miranda slipped out the door and ran toward the house, tripping security lights all the way. As she waited for Williams to answer the service bell, a smile turned up the corners of her mouth.

  She always had enjoyed a challenge. Paul would make a lovely one.

  *

  Five

  « ^ »

  “Noon,” said Zoe the next morning when Raine picked up the phone.

  “Noon to you, too,” said Raine. She yawned and peered at the clock on the dresser. “Actually, it’s five-thirty in the morning. What are you talking about?”

  “The P-I says they didn’t take the wall down until noon.”

  Raine was suddenly wide awake. “We made the paper?”

  “Hell-o-o. We made both papers, plus KIRO picked us up on the eleven o’clock news. Where were you while we were getting famous?”

  “I had sort of a last-minute date. I was barely even home.” Geez, there was still laundry on the couch waiting to be folded.

  “Well, you’ve got to see this. It’s so cool. They quoted the press release and everything. Meet me down at the diner in half an hour.”

  “Fifteen minutes. I’ve got to be at work by seven.”

  “Oh, gack. Okay, but don’t expect me to look very good. ‘Bye.”

  The phone went dead, and Raine dropped it back on the cradle and headed for the bathroom. So much for folding laundry.

  Despite Zoe’s protests, every hair was in place when Raine slid into the green leatherette booth across from her exactly seventeen minutes later. She had the morning Post-Intelligencer spread across the table, and she started reading out loud before Raine even got settled.

  “‘The Berlin Wall appeared Monday morning on the Fremont waterfront,’” Zoe read. “‘This time it was a model built on a rooftop, but if a local citizens group is to be believed, a structure with the same chilling effect as the real wall is about to be built on the site by MMT Properties. According to Fremonters United to Secure Energy (FUSE), the group claiming responsibility for the wall, analysis of the proposed Canal Place development using ancient Chinese techniques indicates that the building will disturb the energy lines of the earth and may cause economic and cultural harm to the Fremont neighborhood.’ Then there’s a bunch of stuff about Fremont and MMT and all the history of the site and all that. And the Times was just as good. They even did a sidebar about feng shui.” She pronounced it “fing shooey,” instead of “fung shway,” but Raine had long since given up on correcting her.

  “Let me see.”

  Zoe handed across the previous evening’s Seattle Times, carefully folded to the right page.

  Raine read the paper with growing disbelief. “I don’t believe it. One pile of scrap plywood and a few cracked store dummies and we’re suddenly legitimate. We should have done this a year ago.”

  “FUSE wasn’t around a year ago.”

  “I was,” said Raine.

  Just then the waitress came over, pad in hand, and squinted at them through a heavy coating of gothic white makeup and black eyeliner. “Let me guess. The usual number four and large OJ for Blondie, here, and two over easy with hashbrowns and black coffee for Betty Boop. Like I need to ask.”

  “I’ll have coffee instead of juice today,” said Raine. “High octane.”

  “Wow. Massive change. I’m not sure I can handle it.” The waitress slouched off.

  “We’ve got to find a new place to eat cheap,” Zoe said.

  “She’s not any worse than she was three months ago.”

  “She’s not any better, either.” Zoe drummed her red fingernails on the Formica tabletop and looked Raine up and down with the assessing eye of a yenta. “So. Out late, major caffeine fix. Who is he and where did you meet him?”

  “Don’t get all excited. It’s that guy I told you about from Saturday.”

  “The rich one who kissed you because you slimed his girlfriend?”

  “That’s not why he kissed me,” said Raine, laughing. “But, yeah, that’s the guy.”

  “You went out with Mr. Moneybags and you tell me not to get excited?”

  “We didn’t really go out. It was more like business.”

  “Is he commissioning a piece for his garden, or what?”

  “No.”

  The waitress came back with two stained crockery mugs and the coffeepot, and Raine took advantage of the interruption to think about how she wanted to put this. She hadn’t really considered what her arrangement with Mason sounded like until it came time to say it aloud.

  The waitress poure
d the coffee and moved on, leaving Zoe staring at Raine expectantly. “So? What gives?”

  “He, uh, hired me to date him for a couple of weeks.”

  Zoe’s jaw dropped. “There’s got to be a better way to pad your bank account.”

  “I doubt it,” said Raine, thinking for the thousandth time of Mason’s obligatory but nonetheless sexy good-night kiss. There couldn’t be a better way to earn money.

  “Whatever it is, we’ll fix it,” Zoe was saying. “You don’t have to do this. My old man’s always good for a couple of bucks. I can call him tonight and—”

  Laughing, Raine waved her to a stop. “It’s not like that. Really.”

  Zoe wrapped her fingers around her mug and raised one eyebrow. “No Pretty Woman?”

  “Kind of the reverse, actually,” Raine said, grinning. “Kissing is permitted, sex isn’t.”

  Her friend’s shoulders relaxed. “Then why is he paying you? I don’t mean it that way, but is the guy a total nerd, or what?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Well?”

  Raine hesitated. She’d love to tell Zoe everything, but she had a sense Mason didn’t want his family business trotted out in public. “He just still wants to yank his mother’s chain. Apparently they have some kind of joke going back and forth and he’s willing to spend some bucks to keep it going—you know rich people.”

  “I wish,” said Zoe with sincerity. “This all sounds pretty weird. Why’re you going along with it?”

  “Because he’s paying me five thousand dollars.” She paused to let Zoe absorb the figure. “We’re going to need it, you know. I figure MMT’s lawyers are already working on something to make us go away.”

  Zoe sighed. “If we had any brains, we’d go away by ourselves. We’re nuts, you know, taking on a big real estate developer and a bunch of lawyers.”

  “We can’t just sit back and let them kill Fremont without a fight. I can’t, anyway.”

  “I know, sweety. And that’s why I’m behind you—even if I don’t understand how the lay of the land can affect whether business is good or bad.”

  “If you’d read that book I gave you…”

  “I know, I know. I’ll get to it. Some day.” Zoe sipped at her coffee.