Seven Books for Seven Lovers

by Molly Harper, Stephanie Haefner, Liora Blake, Gabra Zackman, Andrea Laurence, Colette Auclair

  “But it feels like so much more time than that,” I told her. “Every day with Josh is like its own eternity.”

  Vaughn pulled a face as I smiled blithely. “Aw, honey,” he ground out. “You’re so silly.”

  “Silly for you, lamb chop,” I cooed, snuggling against his arm. He pinched my side lightly and I nudged him in the ribs.

  The fantastic thing about socialite types is that when their masks slip and those pesky feelings show through, they are intense and very difficult to pass off as facial tics. For a split second, Lydia looked well and truly pissed. I didn’t get the impression that she wanted him back. She just wanted him to suffer.

  I wondered if I’d pushed the whole impostor girlfriend thing too far. Vaughn seemed just as unhappy with me as he was with Lydia’s presence. And the way he was gripping my arm didn’t exactly communicate gratitude.

  “Well, I’ll just let you get back to work.” Lydia said the word “work” as if it were mildly distasteful.

  “Tell your lawyer I said hello,” Josh replied, but there wasn’t any heat in it.

  Lydia walked away, her butt swaying with every step. Pretend girlfriend or not, that saunter seemed insulting. I turned to voice my objections to Vaughn, who had flushed an unpleasant shade of eggplant.

  “Okay, Vaughn, I realize I may have overstepped back there, but let’s not overreact,” I said, holding my hands up in a defensive position.

  “Naw.” He pulled at his tie as if it were trying to strangle him. “It’s okay. I appreciate it. I froze. I never freeze. She just pisses me off something awful. Damn it.”

  I was caught off guard by Vaughn’s use of “naw.” His real accent seemed to slip through when he was upset. Normally, he spoke with a clipped midwestern staccato you only heard on news broadcasts. But that “naw” was pure tobacco fields and back roads. I went to high school with guys sporting homemade Dale Earnhardt tattoos whose accents weren’t that pronounced.

  I scanned the crowd surrounding us to make sure Josh wasn’t drawing attention. I seriously considered urging him toward the men’s room to hide until the race was over. But he just looked so pale and lost. As indifferent as I was to his overall well-being, I just couldn’t leave him like this.

  “Come on,” I said, sighing. I pulled him into an alcove where a giant potted palm shielded us from the rest of the room. Josh braced his hands against his knees and took deep breaths. Sensing turbulence, Kelsey stuck her head into our little oasis, emergency kit in hand. I shook my head and shooed her away before Josh noticed.

  He straightened, tugging at his tie and popping the top button of his collar. “That was my ex-girlfriend.”

  “So I gathered.” Did he really respond like this every time he ran into an ex-girlfriend? I didn’t get this upset when I ran into “Felony Phil,” who stole my identity on our third date and applied for a mortgage on a chinchilla farm outside Trenton, New Jersey.

  Josh seemed to pick up on my disbelief and sighed. “We met through some friends at work. She seemed like such a nice normal girl, even though she came from money. Her family owns a shipping company based in Atlanta, has since the days of horse-drawn buggies. I loved her. And I’d never loved anyone before.

  “I had the job, the girl, the nice apartment. It all looked like it was going to work out like some sort of upper-middle-class fairy tale. Lydia was getting ready to graduate from law school and I wanted to plan something special for her. We’d already talked about marriage and she had our wedding planned down to the last corsage, wedding party and all. I just wanted my part of it to be a surprise, you know? I was going to take her out to dinner. We’d show up at the restaurant and all of her friends would be there to surprise her and I would propose right there in front of everybody. I started e-mailing her best friend, Shanna, to ask for advice. You know, where to take her for dinner, who to invite, where to shop for a ring. I was being secretive and I was so excited about what I was doing, I didn’t think about how it might look to someone who didn’t know what was going on.

  “Lydia found all of these e-mails and texts I sent to Shanna with references to ‘keeping it quiet’ and ‘making sure Lydia doesn’t find out.’ And she assumed I was sleeping with her best friend. She didn’t scream or cry. She didn’t even talk to me about it. Instead, she wrote this awful letter about what I had supposedly done behind her back. She hired an Internet company, And One Last Thing . . . , to put it in a fancy e-mail format with a skull and crossbones. And then she sent it to all of my contacts from work, my family, my friends, and her family and friends.”

  Josh seemed to have forgotten I was there. Or maybe he’d forgotten the identity of the female-shaped person standing next to him. Why else would he be spilling so much information? I could get a lot of mileage from this stuff. And throughout this unburdening his accent became more pronounced, as if the leash he kept it on were loosening with every word.

  “It was so humiliating. Lydia’s daddy threatened to hunt me down like a dog. My mother called me, crying hysterically because she just didn’t raise me to be a cheater. Poor Shanna’s fiancé actually broke it off with her before we managed to convince him that Lydia was wrong. I lost some clients, who didn’t appreciate receiving e-mails with ‘My fiancé, Josh Vaughn, is screwing my best friend’ as a subject line. I was lucky I didn’t lose my job. My boss seemed to be caught between being embarrassed for me and being pissed that I let my personal life splash all over the office server. Oh, and Lydia took my credit cards and did a little shopping, to the tune of sixty thousand dollars. I bought her a whole new post-breakup wardrobe, including some crazy expensive lingerie, which I find both offensive and upsetting. That outfit she’s wearing, I probably paid for it. I even paid for the company that formatted and sent the e-mail for her.”

  “Good Lord, did you file criminal charges against her?”

  He shrugged. “She was an authorized user on the card and technically, it was legal. I took her to civil court, but she could afford a much better lawyer than I could. My credit was completely ruined. I couldn’t make the minimum payments and everything just snowballed. I came back to Kentucky to try to get some control over my life again.”

  “Did she apologize when she realized she was wrong?”

  Vaughn made an indignant snorting noise. “Oh, hell no. As you can see, she still seems to think she has the right to be angry with me over this. She told me I shouldn’t have gone behind her back in the first place, that if I’d just come up with a proposal on my own instead of asking Shanna for help, there wouldn’t have been a problem. I thought at first that I was okay, you know? I’d dodged a bullet, not marrying into all that crazy. But then I started thinking about our relationship and the life I thought we were going to have and how wrong I’d been about her.” He groaned, tipping his head back against the wall. “It’s not that bad. I’m okay.”

  “I hate to be the one to point this out, Vaughn, but she’s reduced you to hiding behind potted greenery.”

  “Good point,” he grumbled. “And, considering you’re watching me hyperventilate, do you think you could call me by my first name?”

  I nodded. Vaughn—Josh—took a few more deep breaths and I led him out from behind the plant. I stole a glance at Lydia, who was watching us as she sipped a glass of champagne and chatted with the state attorney general. I gave Josh a clearly adoring smile and leaned close to him to say, “Look, you’ve got a few minutes before the main race starts. Why don’t you go outside and get some air? I’ll keep an eye on things in here.”

  He nodded, breathing deeply and giving me a shaky smile. And, looking over my shoulder at Lydia one last time, he pressed the barest of kisses against my skin. I felt the strange prickle of flushed cheeks as his lips brushed over my skin.

  “Thanks,” he said softly, and he stepped out into the hall.

  I stared after him for a long time. While it was a little dramatic, I was impressed with Josh for spilling his guts like that. I wasn’t silly enough to think it meant we
were now girlfriends. But at least I got to scrape past the polished exterior and see that he was human after all. I wouldn’t shove him out of a lifeboat, which, considering our brief history, was saying something.

  “Are you playing Fashion Police in your head? Because I know I am,” Kelsey murmured behind me. I turned to find that she was taking a break from the welcome table. Kelsey was too busty to get away with the traditional suit. She always ended up looking like a teenager who’d borrowed her mother’s church clothes. Today, she had opted for a dramatic cobalt blue dress instead, the sort of thing a nice girl might have worn to church in the 1940s. Short puffed sleeves, a knee-length paneled skirt, and a cute little bow tied under the gathered bustline. Of course, being Kelsey, she didn’t fasten the top two tiny pearl buttons meant to keep it modest.

  “Some of the women in here should learn not to trust salesclerks,” she marveled.

  I brushed her thick dark hair over her shoulder. “Meanwhile, I love you dearly, but if you keep bending over to find the participants’ name badges, a certain state senator is going to fall face-first into your cleavage.”

  “Well, we work with what we have. Everything okay with Josh?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I actually think I’m making some progress with him. He ran into an ex just now and I managed to talk him off the proverbial ledge,” I said, casting a look toward the doors where Josh had just exited. “I don’t think we’re ever going to be super close, but we may be on our way to understanding each other a little better— What the hell?”

  Through the double-wide doors, I saw Josh talking to Gina, who wore a robin’s-egg-blue dress that brought out the sun-kissed glow of her skin and her freakishly huge blue eyes. He was laughing, with his head thrown back like he was in a damn pirate movie. His fingers were wrapped around her hand while she stared up at him through her lashes. He looked considerably more relaxed than when he’d stood before me, all pale and panicked and sad. And he seemed to have recovered remarkably quickly.

  My jaw dropped and Kelsey quickly turned me so my back was to the rest of the room. Nobody needed to see that expression.

  “You took him off your internal ‘people you’d shove out of the lifeboat’ list, didn’t you?” she asked sadly, gently patting my arm.

  It took some effort to keep the irritated frown from marring my “party face.” Had he faked that whole thing? His shock and hurt had seemed a bit over the top, but it felt so genuine. For just a moment, I felt like we’d connected like two ordinary people rather than gladiatorial opponents. But he’d miraculously recovered from his mini-breakdown just in time to flirt with Gina? Was this some sort of trick to make me feel sorry for him so I’d lay off the pressure at work and give him a better shot at the promotion? Had he arranged for Rowley to show up too, so I’d be knocked off-balance at one of the biggest events of our year?

  Well, this certainly proved that Josh Vaughn was everything I suspected and more. Besides being a great big jackass, he was a very convincing actor. For a minute I’d been fooled into thinking he was a flawed, approachable human being. I vaguely registered bells ringing and an excited hum fluttering through the crowd around me. The guests surged forward, toward the observation deck overlooking the track. The race was starting. And I couldn’t bring myself to even turn toward the track.

  I’d felt sorry for him. The . . . jackass.

  Behind us, the finish bell rang and screams and hollers echoed triumphantly from the track. Two of the most important minutes of the Kentucky calendar had just gone by and I’d missed them. I didn’t see my horse run. I felt like such an idiot. I was in a neck-and-neck race with my rival for the same job and I thought he would let me see him hyperventilating like a heartbroken sixth-grade girl at her first dance? Really? And honestly, what were the odds that his girlfriend would show up at his very first Derby Day? She was probably a cousin or something.

  Josh Vaughn was not to be trusted. I would not fall for his baby blues, the puppy-dog eyes, or any other ophthalmological ploys on his part to make me feel anything but professional contempt. Or at least, I would stop lying to former girlfriends for him.

  Kelsey jostled my arm gently. “Sadie, you got that look in your eye.”

  “He is back on the list,” I muttered.

  Instant Karma, indeed.

  In Which I Am Stranded with Ho Hos

  5

  While my horse barely made it around the track in one piece, Kelsey’s more scientifically chosen entry squeaked out the win by a nose, netting her four hundred dollars. She rewarded her loyal subjects with a twenty-four-pack of Red Bull and a bulk barrel of Skittles.

  Ray was pleased with our good behavior at the Derby and even more so when the Columbus-Belmont staff gave us the thumbs-up for our recruitment campaign. Meanwhile, the printer’s deadline for my state fair project was looming. I’d decided on the “Bizarrely Bluegrass” theme: uniquely, charmingly Bluegrass events. But Josh’s constant hammering about my cheerleader tendencies had me doubting the overall look as well as the idea behind my promotional campaign. Which was just freaking irritating. And I was procrastinating, which was completely unlike me.

  Josh—Vaughn—whoever he was—was confused when I returned to my cold-shoulder methods after the Derby. He seemed hurt that I would respond to his intimate revelation with more distance. So he reverted to his previous delightful tactics of implying that I was incompetent and ridiculing my ideas in front of the rest of the staff at meetings. But it seemed halfhearted, as if he were doing it out of habit rather than actual disdain.

  For my part, I was still in get-even mode over Josh’s mind games at the Derby. But I’d already eliminated several of my best ideas because they could be traced back to me too easily. These included an elaborate scenario in which I had Kelsey intercepting his dry cleaning so I could pull all of the tiny threads out of his perfect pants with a stitch picker.

  While the thought of Josh’s pants disintegrating in the middle of an important meeting was beyond entertaining, I decided on more of a psychological torture route. Josh would expect me to attack him with petty girl tricks. He would not expect what was coming.

  • • •

  “How exactly did you convince him to do this?” Kelsey whispered. We sat waiting in a state-issued car while Josh took a restroom break at a McDonald’s a few blocks from our destination in Fort Mitchell.

  “I told him there would be several celebrities present,” I told her, slicking a coat of cranberry gloss across my lips and flipping the visor mirror up. “And there will be. Charlie McCarthy is prominently displayed right up front.”

  Kelsey clapped her hand over her face. It had taken quite a bit of acting to convince Josh that he should attend the special presentation at the Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell instead of me. I had to pull a reverse Br’er Rabbit on him. As in, “Oh, please, let me go to this super important museum event because it would go a long way in ensuring I meet the right people.” But I had really wanted him to swoop in and take over and arrange to take Kelsey with us as support staff to record the presentation for the commission’s site.

  Vent Haven is the world’s only museum dedicated to the history and preservation of the art of ventriloquism. Housed in a private home in Kenton County, the facility boasts a collection of hundreds of dummies, from Edward Bergen’s iconic Charlie McCarthy to more historical specimens, such as the cigarette-smoking “Granny” dummy constructed in the 1850s. Aside from the collection being unique and pretty darn cool, traveling to see it was one of the first long-distance road trips I’d experienced with my grandfather, so it held a special place in my heart.

  The museum director had contacted me the month before to say that Jimmy Burkhardt, a comedian who had made quite a name for himself using a mix of stand-up and puppetry, was making a sizable monetary donation to the museum for its upkeep. He was also adding several of his earlier dummies to the museum’s collection, including Jojo the Caveman and Bob the Judgmental Banana. It was a boon for the museum, a
nd presented a wonderful media opportunity to remind visitors about the museum and promote the ConVENTion, the museum’s annual summer gathering of voice-throwing ventriloquists and their pint-size friends. Two birds, one stone, lots of quirk. And since Josh seemed to have trouble with puppets, it was just the right opportunity to introduce him to the other side of Kentucky tourism.

  “And how did you describe this to Josh?” Kelsey asked, casually checking her camera settings as Josh made his way across the parking lot, straightening his tie.

  “I said it was a museum featuring oral history and hands-on art exhibits,” I said, my lips twitching. “Also, I may have changed the name in his press packet to ‘The Fort Mitchell Vocal Craft Museum’ so he wouldn’t realize where we’re going. I made it sound super complicated and dithered that I just wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get everything set up. I changed the time on the video team request sheet a few times. I didn’t know if I could handle working with a celebrity, et cetera, et cetera. He finally got so frustrated with me that he said he’d take over. I think, in his head, this is something a director of marketing would do.”

  “You’re pure evil,” Kelsey told me. “And I would like to formally file my objections to this plan. It seems a little mean. Usually I like a little mean, but if someone found out about my spider issues and exploited them at work, I wouldn’t rest until I’d pawned everything they ever loved and used the money to pay for my therapy.”

  I shrugged, just before Josh opened his car door. “I’m more like ninety percent evil. And I’m noting your objections, while ignoring them.”

  Josh stretched his seat belt across his waist as I started the car. All morning he’d been pissy about my driving, making noises about city driving in Atlanta training him for almost any traffic situation. And then I reminded him that the area just across the river from Cincinnati had changed quite a bit since he’d lived in Kentucky and I’d spent more time there. Reluctant to actually say that he didn’t trust my skills behind the wheel (or my willingness to sacrifice his side of the vehicle in an unavoidable collision), he’d grumbled his way into the passenger side.