“Martin has mentioned something along those lines,” he said carefully, afraid to reveal too much.
“The celeb column isn’t hard,” she said. “If you don’t have anything interesting to report about somebody, you can always make something up. The key is for it not to be harmful. You know, like saying that somebody did something illegal. I would never do that, and I know you wouldn’t, either.”
“Great,” muttered Conn.
“Oh, look there’s Madonna,” Bentley said, distracted as the star swept past with her entourage. They watched her disappear into an adjoining VIP room, and Bentley whipped back around again, ready to give him her full attention.
“Anyway, you could do such a great job with the column,” Bentley said earnestly. “Martin’s hoping to give it a different spin altogether, and I believe you’re the man for the job.”
“I’m not sure the job requires a man,” he said. “Readers are accustomed to you and your style of writing.”
She laughed. “Naturally. The column was my creation, but with Martin trying to bring new credibility to the Probe, I can’t expect it to go on the way it always has. It’s time for new blood.”
“I’m not exactly new,” Conn pointed out. He scooped up a bit of goat cheese and tomato on a water cracker and took a bite.
“No, but your style is perfect for hooking readers. And anyway, you know what Martin told me? You’re only out on medical leave.”
“Medical leave?” How could that be? When Martin had fired him, he’d told him in no uncertain terms to take his belongings and get out.
“Martin never finalized your termination papers. He decided to list you as being on medical leave because he had doubts about your mental state. Upending the trash can on his desk was what made him suspect you were in, I think he said, ‘a dissociative state.”’
“Burying Martin’s desk in garbage made a point. He had ordered me to comb through the senator’s trash. So, Bentley, after I toss a bunch of garbage on my boss’s desk, I’m only on medical leave? It might be Martin who’s got the mental problem.”
“Now, Conn, Martin was leaving your options—and his—open.”
“Maybe he still is. Martin says he has someone else in mind for the job, someone who will jump at the chance.”
Bentley’s expression hardened. “So he told you that, did he?”
“He left a message on my machine.”
“Martin didn’t mention who it is?”
“Nope.” Not that he had cared, nor did he care now. But evidently Bentley did.
She edged her chair closer. “Promise you won’t tell a word. Oh, there’s Warren and Annette.” She yoo-hooed at the couple, who waved back. “Annette looks so soignée after having her last baby,” Bentley said with considerable envy. She swiveled back around again. “Conn, I don’t want you to tell Martin that you and I discussed the other candidate for the job.”
“I won’t say anything,” Conn told her, not sure that this was wise.
Bentley adopted a conspiratorial tone. “It’s Joy-Ellen Bauer. She’s coming on hard and fast, and she really wants the celeb column.”
Everyone at the Probe knew that there was a fierce rivalry between Bentley and Joy-Ellen, starting a few years earlier when Joy-Ellen had arrived on the scene and proceeded to steal Bentley’s then-boyfriend out from under her. Worse yet, the boyfriend was the publisher of the Probe, a wealthy Australian, and he had ultimately married Joy-Ellen, much to Bentley’s distress.
“I think I understand,” Conn said cautiously.
“Of course you do. You can see that I don’t want Joy-Ellen to take one more thing from me than she already has. So if you’ll tell Martin you’re considering the celeb job, seriously considering it, he won’t give it to Joy-Ellen. There’s another slot opening soon, the Weird and Crazy Pet Stories column. You know how Joy-Ellen loves animals. She’s bought five llamas for their estate in Napa. Joy-Ellen will set her sights on Weird and Crazy Pets once she finds out it’s available, but the present pet columnist is Ron Fleming, and he’s not giving notice until he comes back from vacation in a couple of weeks.”
Conn frowned. Despite her pretensions, he liked Bentley, and he would never forget that she had taken his side in the Bridlingame flap. “Bentley, I suppose if it means that much to you—”
“Oh, Conn, it does! You don’t know how much. I can’t retire in peace until I know that Joy-Ellen Bauer won’t succeed me as the celeb columnist. I mean it. And you know, Conn, if there’s ever anything I can do for you—anything else, that is—please let me know.”
Conn let this not-so-subtle reminder of his debt to her sink in as he watched Brad Pitt wend his way out of the restaurant. Bentley seemed to know him because she waggled a finger in the star’s direction, and Pitt winked back. Bentley knew everything and everybody famous, even people who didn’t live in Hollywood.
His previous debt notwithstanding, it occurred to Conn that Bentley could be useful to him. It might be possible to use the Probe for his—and Dana’s—own purposes.
“Actually, Bentley, there is something you can do for me,” he said slowly.
“What’s that, darling?” She focused wide eyes, enhanced by lavender contact lenses, on his face.
“I’ll tell Martin I’m interested in the job if it will help you out with Joy-Ellen. But first tell me everything you know about Day Quinlan. Everything,” he said, emphasizing the last word. “And then I’ll tell you what I need from you.”
Bentley tipped her head to one side and favored him with a cool, assessing gaze. “Thanks, Conn, and of course I’ll pour out every last little detail. But, Conn, why in the world do you want to know about Day Quinlan?”
“YOU’RE DEFINITELY NOT in labor. These are Braxton-Hicks contractions,” said the obstetrician. He stopped palpating Dana’s abdomen and stashed his stethoscope in his lab-coat pocket.
Dana stared at Dr. Evans over the mound of her stomach. “In other words, false labor?”
“Absolutely. When is your due date?” He gave her a hand up on the examining table.
She pulled the gaping examination gown around her. “It’s still two months away. On the other hand, as I recall, my doctor in Chicago wasn’t too sure, mostly because I’ve always been irregular and I might have given her the wrong date of my last period.”
“So possibly your due date could be sooner?”
“I didn’t think so when we figured it out. I hope not. I mean, I’m not ready to have this baby.”
Dr. Evans chuckled. “Of course you are, Mrs. Cantrell. Or at least you’d better be.”
He handed her an information sheet about how to tell if she was really in labor and said goodbye with the admonition to call him at any time if she was in doubt. Dana dressed and proceeded to the counter in the waiting room to settle her bill.
The woman next to her kept staring. “You look mighty familiar,” she said. She studied Dana’s face. “You kin to any of the Rawlings clan?”
Dana shrank away from her. “No,” she said. “No, I’m not.”
“Why, you know who you look like? And sound like? I mean, really?”
“Um,” Dana said, reaching for the receipt that the young clerk handed across the counter. “I’m really in a hurry, and—”
“You look a lot like that lady that walked off her talk show a few months ago. You look enough like Day Quinlan to be her sister!” The woman turned to the clerk. “Don’t she?”
The clerk cocked her head to one side. “If you take away the reddish hair and make it blond,” she allowed reluctantly.
Dana backed away. She almost tripped over a baby in a stroller that she hadn’t seen behind her.
“You take it easy, Mrs. Cantrell. You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?” the clerk said anxiously.
“No,” Dana said. As she fled, the woman and the clerk began debating why Day Quinlan, who hosted one of the most popular shows on daytime TV, had left.
“I think she got mixed up in some drug problem.
Remember the time she interviewed that drug lord from Colombia about drugs? Must have been drugs, I say.”
“She doesn’t seem the type,” protested the clerk. “Why, Day Quinlan was always speaking out against marijuana and stuff.”
It was the first time since she’d left Chicago that anyone had guessed who she was. And it had never happened in Cougar Creek. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to get back to the small town and her little cabin where she felt safe.
But her heart sank as she realized that she’d have to leave there soon. She’d better start preparing to move to the apartment hotel in Flagstaff so she’d be near the hospital in case she started labor in earnest. The idea of leaving the cabin near Cougar Creek brought tears to her eyes. She’d fixed the place up, made it her own. She hadn’t thought she could grow so attached to it, but she had. Oh, she had.
Still, the thought of the baby’s imminent arrival made her smile through her tears. “Not much longer now,” she said to it in a conversational tone, though she had felt no more contractions since she had left the doctor’s examining table.
Perhaps she could be out of the cabin and far away from Cougar Creek before Conn returned from Los Angeles.
DANA SPENT the next couple of days after her doctor’s appointment packing. There wasn’t a whole lot to take with her, but she’d ordered some baby things from catalogs—tiny hats, aqua-and-yellow bootees, sweet little gowns. She folded them with leaden hands before packing them in cardboard boxes. Her clothes, the few she’d brought with her, went into a couple of suitcases. When she was finished, she worked feverishly on the second of her cross-stitch samplers and finally, amazingly, finished it late the next day. Since she was planning to leave early the next morning, she decided to drive into town to show Esther her handiwork, even though she was alarmed to see that the sky was gray and lowering. For a moment she reconsidered. She didn’t really have to see Esther before she left.
But she wanted to say goodbye. Esther had been kind to her, and she owed her at least that. She’d be back before dark, anyway, and this night was going to be hard enough. It was her last night in a place that she’d grown to love, and she knew she would be thinking about Conn.
She told herself that leaving Cougar Creek was the best thing for both her and the baby. She only wished she could make herself believe it.
THE NURSING HOME where his mother lived depressed Conn so much that he didn’t stay long. It seemed to him that Gladys was dying in the worst way, her mind worn out long before her body. His mother didn’t know who he was, of course, and she slept through most of his visit. During that time, her roommate complained that the staff didn’t turn her often enough to prevent bedsores. He saw spider webs in the corners of the ill-lit bathroom. And the intercom in the rooms was improperly used to page attendants ceaselessly so that no one trying to sleep could get enough rest.
“I’ll get you out of here, Mom,” he said to Gladys. He didn’t know if she heard him or not. She was awake but kept staring at the ceiling.
The visit, short though it was, made his decision easier. He knew for sure now what he had to do.
DANA, AFTER SHE ARRIVED in town, found Esther alone in the library shelving books. When she presented her needlework, Esther fingered the recently completed sampler admiringly. “Nice job,” she said. “Real cute. You want to have Billy Wayne frame both of the ones you did? I could take them over to him.”
“Well, actually,” Dana began. She stopped, unsure how to tell Esther that there wouldn’t be time for this.
“Is something wrong, Dana?”
Dana looked at the floor, dismayed that her eyes were filling with tears. One fell and splashed on the librarian’s slipper.
“Dana? Why, honey, you’d better come over here with me and set a spell. We’ll have a cup of coffee and you can tell me what’s bothering you.”
Dana wiped the tears away. “No, Esther,” she said, but the librarian steered her across the room where she sat her in a chair and pushed a box of chocolates in her direction.
“I’ll get the coffee,” Esther said, and Dana, unable to resist, helped herself to a chocolate butter cream mint and popped it into her mouth.
“Chocolate is a mood raiser,” Esther said as she returned and set a cup of coffee in front of each of them. “I think it’s been scientifically proven.”
Dana tried to smile but couldn’t. Tears threatened to spill over again, and Esther patted her shoulder comfortingly while she dabbed at them with a tissue.
“I’ve heard that pregnant women are overcome with all sorts of emotions,” Esther said. “Don’t worry, I don’t mind if you cry your little heart out.”
And then Dana was sobbing, her face in her hands, and before she knew it, Esther’s arms had gone around her, and she was smoothing Dana’s hair. “Shhh, honey, now, it can’t be that bad,” she said.
“I…I’m leaving Cougar Creek tomorrow,” Dana sobbed. “And I like it here, I really do, and Conn’s gone, and…” She pulled herself up short before telling Esther that Conn knew her secret and might even now be discussing it with people at the Probe. She reminded herself that Esther didn’t even know that she had a secret.
“Conn’s coming back to Cougar Creek, Billy Wayne says. Billy Wayne’s taking care of those birds of his.”
“I won’t be here when Conn comes back,” Dana said, adding miserably, “and he wouldn’t care, anyway.”
Esther considered this. “Do you care about him, dear?”
“I’m going to have a baby,” Dana wailed. “It doesn’t matter if I care or not. He’s not going to want me. I’m…I’m only passing through his life, like Oscar passed through mine.”
“Oscar?”
“That’s what I named that fool owl. I wasn’t supposed to get attached to him, but I did.” She sniffed and made a great effort to hold back her tears.
Esther wrinkled her brow. “Look, I’m not looking to pry into your personal life, but I figure your husband walked. So whether you care about this falconer does matter, I think. Maybe a lot. It’s okay to find comfort in a handsome man like Conn McTavish. Who wouldn’t want to?”
I can’t. Not if he’s selling me out to the Probe, Dana thought, but she couldn’t say it.
“My guess is that Conn cares about you, too. Billy Wayne said that all Conn could talk about when they were up at Shale Flats was you. He said Conn kept relating everything they did to a day when you and he went up there and you flew the birds. Billy Wayne said that Conn talked about how pretty the sun looked on your hair, and how you loved flying that big bird of his, can’t recall its name—”
“Aliah,” Dana breathed, recalling the brush of feathers against her cheek, the feeling of exhilaration when Aliah stooped and dived toward the lure, the look of Conn silhouetted against the sunrise. She would never go to Shale Flats with Conn again, would never fly the falcons. Would never know that great sense of freedom.
“Yes, the bird’s name was Aliah, I remember now. So if Conn McTavish cares enough to talk with my young nephew about you, I think you can take it for granted that you mean more to him than just any old neighbor. Billy Wayne is a reliable witness, even if he does look a mite unusual.”
Dana wiped away one last tear. “So what do you think I should do about it?”
“Well, what do you say we go over to the Powwow Diner and eat us an early dinner? Susie’s blue-plate special today is pot roast with horseradish gravy, and she does a mighty good job with it. This storm that’s coming is supposed to be a whopper, but it’s not here yet and you and I can have a nice long visit.”
“What storm?”
“Oh, I forgot you don’t get television or radio weather forecasts out there at the Cantrell place. A big snowstorm blew up out of nowhere, and it’s heading right this way. Wait a minute while I go get my purse and close up the library.”
“It’s a little early for snow, isn’t it?”
“Not really, honey, we normally get a few flakes in November. Now where did I put m
y keys?”
Esther exchanged her slippers for a pair of shoes, shut the library, and Dana allowed herself to be dragged along to the diner.
While they were waiting for dinner, Esther leaned across the table, her eyes bright behind her glasses. “Everybody in town likes Connor McTavish the more they get to know him. They think he’s—well, cool is the way Billy Wayne puts it. And handsome? Honey, the falconer wrote the book on handsome.”
After dinner, Esther would have liked her to stay longer, offering her dessert at her place. But snowflakes had begun to skirl out of the sky on a whippy sharp wind, and Dana told Esther that she’d better be getting back to the cabin.
Esther walked her to her car. “I’ve really enjoyed knowing you, honey. You keep in touch.”
“I will,” she said. Sadly, she knew she wouldn’t be back to the cabin for a long time, but she promised to send Esther a Christmas card and a picture of the baby.
It was already dark when she rolled out of Cougar Creek. She had tears in her eyes after saying goodbye to Esther, the one friend she’d made here other than Conn, and she was distractedly thinking of all she had to do to shut the cabin up before she left. Another car was behind her as she turned onto the highway toward home, and it continued to follow hers at a respectful distance. It was unusual to see strange cars on this remote road, especially at night. Dana thought about the other car and wondered who would be driving way out into the country at an hour when most people in Cougar Creek were at home with their families, and on a night when a storm was headed their way.
But then she turned on the windshield wipers to clear away the increasing snowflakes, and she didn’t think about the car anymore. She wanted to mull over all the things Esther had said about Conn. Maybe he would want to seek her out after she’d left here. Maybe he really did care.
Maybe. But she’d probably never find out, because she intended to leave no forwarding address.
CONN SETTLED BACK WEARILY into his seat on a 4:15 flight from L.A. to Flagstaff and ordered a martini. Then, on the seat tray in front of him, he carefully spread out a few of the clips from Bentley’s column that she had given to him before he left. They were complete with photos.
Pregnant and Incognito Page 21