The Best-Kept Secret

by Adrianne Lee

  So why was she noticing him now? Because of his resemblance to Grant? Because of the connection they shared in losing someone both had loved? Or was it something more personal, more primal? Something amiss in her basic personality structure that explained this undeniable, and wholly wrong, need to be held by her dead fiancé’s brother?

  Her lungs ached as though she hadn’t taken a breath in hours. The sensation unnerved her. She stepped away from Mac, confused by her overwhelming urge to step into his arms instead.

  He broke the heavy silence. “I want a look at that simulator cord. It wasn’t frayed last week.”

  “Oh, good idea.” Tia nodded, glad for the first suggestion of a course of action. She’d been up for hours and ought to be asleep on her feet. Instead, she felt stimulated. Too much coffee? Too much grief? Too much intimacy with this kinder, gentler version of Grant? “Could we go to your factory now?”

  “We?” His blond eyebrows shot toward the ceiling. “No way.”

  “Why not?” Tia’s temper seized on his chauvinistic tone. Maybe he was more like Grant than she assumed. “Because I’m female?”

  He frowned, not making the association. “No.”

  “Then why?” She felt as befuddled as he looked. “I don’t know about you, but right now I could use a mental distraction.”

  “I understand, but I won’t deliberately put you in danger.”

  “Danger?” She crooked a lock of hair around one ear. “Do you really think the killer will strike again if he or she believes you’re dead?”

  “If I’m caught inspecting the simulator—then, yeah, it’s highly likely.” His mouth firmed. “I want you to stay as far away from Coy Toys as possible.”

  Tia schooled her temper. Resignation and a finite sense of uselessness sifted through her. It was his business, his property. She couldn’t argue with him. Why didn’t she just go home?

  She nodded. “Fine. I’ll clean up these dishes for you, then call a cab.”

  She gathered the mugs, intending to put them in the dishwasher. But Mac caught her arm. His touch startled her, warmed her. Their gazes collided and the unspoken connection skipped a notch higher. He said, “Don’t go.”

  His expression was bleak. Tia suspected he wanted help with funeral arrangements. A shiver slid down her spine. She supposed for his sham to work they’d have to stage a funeral for Mac. Naturally they’d hold the real one after the toy was safely on the market. “I know you have to continue letting the world think Mac Coy is dead—”

  “Exactly,” he said, releasing her, pulling back his warmth as surely as if he’d been embracing her. “I knew you’d understand. I have to be Grant for the next week or so. It’s the only way to figure out who killed him without inciting another attempt on my life. And hopefully by the time the toy is safely in stores, I’ll have found enough evidence to interest the police.”

  “So you want me to make the arrangements?”

  He frowned, reached for his chin. Dropped his hand. “Arrangements?”

  “For the funeral.”

  His face paled. “Oh, God. I hadn’t thought of that. What…How…?”

  He looked ready to crash again, as though anything veering from his mind-set was too much of a segue for him at the moment. She touched his hand. The contact sent a warm frisson up her arm, and she wanted to pull back. Couldn’t. She swallowed hard. “I’ll help you with the faux funeral, Mac, and the real one. We’ll get through this together.”

  He tugged his hand free as though she’d burned him. “Thank you. But there won’t be a funeral until the toy goes out and we can bury Grant honestly.”

  Surprise wound through Tia, and yet, she saw his logic. She recalled again his honest and fair approach with the children at the shelter. And instinctively, she knew any funeral Mac gave for a loved one would be private and dignified, respectful.

  She suspected, however, if Mac had really been dead, Grant would have exploited the fact, used the funeral as a sympathy ploy, a publicity opportunity. He’d have made certain the toy’s launch and his twin’s interment took place on the same day.

  “If not the funeral arrangements,” she asked, at a loss to what he needed from her, “then what do you want?”

  He reached for his missing beard again. “Do you suppose you could stay here?”

  “With you?” An odd, unbidden warmth tightened her throat, dampened her hands.

  “Separate bedrooms,” he rushed to reassure her. “Of course.”

  “Of course,” she agreed. His earnest expression was endearing. Childlike. Difficult to refuse. Despite that, she shook her head. “Look, Mac, I promise not to tell anyone that the rumors of your death are premature.”

  “It isn’t that. It’s…well…I want you to show me how to dress and talk, and whatever else I need to do to convince my employees that I am Grant.”

  He looked as though a magic wand couldn’t make that happen.

  So how did he expect her to accomplish it?

  Chapter Three

  “Oh, no,” Tia said. “You’re on your own.”

  Mac gaped at Tia. “How in hell am I supposed to figure out how to be Grant all by myself?”

  She spread her arms, palms outward, her eyes wide as though he’d said something stupid. “Well, you’re doing a pretty good job of it right now.”

  “What?” He glanced down at his crumpled T-shirt, at his bare feet, and his hand went automatically to his chin, gathering a fistful of bristled jaw. He jerked his hand down, but not before his ears burned. How could he unlearn a gesture he’d employed for years? “I’m wearing his clothes. I have his hairstyle. But we both know that’s where the similarities end. Grant never wrinkled. Never grew whiskers. He was James frickin’ Bond in the flesh. Look at me—I’m…Geppetto.”

  He could swear she wanted to laugh. But she shook her head, her jaw set in a stubborn tilt. “I don’t want to help make you into Grant”

  Mac’s frustration doubled, squeezing a heavy breath from him. Didn’t she know it was the only way? “Don’t you understand that if I can’t pull this off, the killer will murder me, too?”

  “That’s exactly my point.” Tia’s mouth went dry. Didn’t he understand the danger? Even after Grant’s death? No, she supposed most people couldn’t conceive of bad things happening to them; their lives were untouched by true evil. She’d had the opposite experience. Twice now. She not only envisioned evil, she feared it.

  She sure as hell didn’t want to get grabbed by it again.

  “I can’t do this without you.” Mac frowned, desperation issuing from his turquoise eyes. “And time is running out.”

  Despite her resolve to flee before the avalanche of disaster crashed down on her even harder, Tia felt it cracking the solid foundation from beneath her like ice on a pond at spring thaw. “Okay. I don’t know what I can do to lend you credibility as Grant, but I’m not scheduled for another flight until next Sunday. So I’m free for the next six days, and I’ll do whatever I can.”

  Relief snatched his frown; the change in his eyes was like sunlight hitting fresh-fallen snow. “Yes!”

  As though it was an everyday thing, he swept her into an embrace, startling her. The hug had none of Grant’s tried-and-tested smoothness, but sang of spontaneity, gratitude, and warmed Tia as nothing had in a very long time.

  Immediately she felt Mac tense, his arms stiffening, the hug becoming an awkward clutch. Why? It was natural they would seek solace from each other in their shared grief. Before she could reassure him, Mac released her as though he’d just realized he was holding an armload of fire.

  “Mac…”

  Spewing apologies, the tops of his ears pink, he fled the kitchen and hurried into the living room with the speed of a man escaping some unpleasant encounter.

  Tia stood riveted in place, uncertain what to think. To feel. If it was natural that they share a hug in their mutual grief over losing Grant, then what explained the guilt gnawing at her belly? And why had Mac reacted as though h
e also felt guilty?

  Or had he? She pushed her hair away from her face. Was she misreading him, thinking because she felt disloyal he should, too? Probably. More likely he was just embarrassed.

  She began loading the dishwasher. She couldn’t recall ever seeing Grant embarrassed. He’d been bold and outgoing. Mac seemed shy, introverted, not normally demonstrative. The type of man who would feel extremely ill at ease whenever his feelings overwhelmed him to the point that he expressed them physically and vocally.

  And yet…the image of Mac with Jonathan Tucker, a little boy whose house and all its possessions had fallen victim to the marauding Cedar River last winter, filled her mind. No one—certainly not his shellshocked parents—had been able to draw as much as a smile from the frightened and inconsolable child. But Mac had done much more. His generous gift of new toys—none from his own company, which specialized in electronic toys—reached through the boy’s stupor. Tore down his walls of resistance. That afternoon, Jonathan had laughed out loud. Tia could still hear that wonderful sound.

  She found Mac in the living room. He stood with his back to her, holding himself apart as surely as if he’d erected a fence around himself. How unlike Grant he was. Opposite in every way.

  This was, of course, Mac’s dilemma. The very things that made him different from Grant could give him away. Get him killed.

  The impact of the danger facing them froze her blood like water in a blizzard. She hugged herself against the inner chill. Lord, she had her work cut out for her. She turned on all the lights in the living room.

  Mac spun around, his eyes so full of grief she felt as though she was intruding on him. She considered leaving him alone for a while, then quickly rejected the impulse. Somehow, she sensed he needed her to force this, just so he could get through it.

  “We’ve got less than eight hours to pull off this hat trick,” she said. “We’d better get started.”

  “Where?” He drew a shaky breath, but he seemed ready and willing, if in need of some direction.

  She considered a moment. “Grant used to say the way a person walked could give him away. Walk across the room.”

  Mac strode toward the kitchen and back, his shoulders hunched slightly forward, his muscles taut, each step deliberate and soft. She had the odd sensation he could cross the room without stirring the air—as though he were invisible. Or wanted to be.

  Tia cringed and shook her head as she realized he was deliberately drawing as little attention to himself as possible. Exactly the opposite of Grant. “No, no, no.”

  Mac stopped, eyeing her questioningly.

  She circled him once, slowly, his neck twisting as he craned to watch her. She poked a finger between his shoulder blades with the same hard thrust her foster mother had used on her throughout her teens, something she’d sworn she’d never do to anyone. And even as her finger connected with his solid back, she felt infuriated at how life turned self-promises into self-prophecies.

  At the jab, Mac jerked straighter, the reflexive action squaring his stance.

  She smiled, nodding. “Yes, that’s it. Keep those shoulders back. Grant didn’t walk so much as strut. He wanted everyone to notice him when he entered a room.”

  And everyone usually had. The thought that someone so large in life was gone, his brilliant light snuffed out as easily as candles after Christmas mass, squeezed her heart “Close your eyes.” Her voice choked. “Picture Grant a minute, then try the walk again.”

  Mac did as requested, crossing the room three more times, but for all the determination on his face, strutting didn’t come naturally to him. A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. Tia never paid much attention to the way people walked, except as one noticed a limp or a drunken sway or as women noticed men’s backsides.

  Studying Mac now, she found the easy shift of his lean hips in his fanny-hugging jeans distracting, his graceless stride diverting because it was artless, unpracticed and infinitely male.

  “I’m pathetic, right?” He stopped, frustration rife in his eyes.

  “No…” She blinked, embarrassed that she’d been staring at him with God knew what expression. Her cheeks burned.

  “You’re a lousy liar.” He made a face at her.

  “No, you’re improving.” But even she heard the lack of conviction in her words. “Look, let’s take a break, have another cup of coffee.” Before he could protest, she made a beeline for the kitchen.

  He arrived behind her as she was filling two clean mugs, these blue with myriad lacy snowflakes. She and Grant had not bought these together. A gift, he’d told her. From a previous girlfriend? Had he collected mugs with other women? The possibility didn’t stir as much as a breath of jealousy in her, and Tia realized she hadn’t really loved Grant. Not as a fiancee should.

  Mac reached for one of the mugs, his hand a bit unsteady, either from weariness or grief, or perhaps a combination of both. “How am I going to convince my employees I’m not me, if I can’t master Grant’s persona?”

  Her cup was halfway to her mouth. She lowered it, struck by a thought. Were they going about this all wrong? Aiming for an undoable, unnecessary perfection? “Maybe…just maybe, you won’t need to master it.”

  “Why not?”

  Her nerves pinched. “How often did Grant visit Coy Toys?”

  His frown deepened, furrowing his forehead, catching in dual lines above his straight nose. A stomachtensing moment passed while he considered.

  “Once,” he said finally, speaking slowly as though ticking off items on a Christmas wish list. “When I first opened the plant…then not for a long time. Maybe three more times over the past five years. Then twice this November, when he came to the lab and spoke with me and Gwen, my assistant. All other visits were after hours.”

  “Then Gwen is the only one of your employees he interacted with?”

  “Yes, as far as I know.”

  “Good.” Tia released a huge breath, grasping her new idea with fervor. “Good. That means in order to fool your employees you don’t need to be a clone of Grant—”

  “I just can’t be Mac,” he finished for her. He smiled crookedly, obviously finding the same relief and hope in this fact as she did. “Yeah. That should make it a lot easier.”

  But it didn’t. The next few hours trudged past and Mac couldn’t seem to quash the habits of reaching for his beard or his glasses or his ponytail. Always he’d catch himself, drop his hand and blush. Besides that, reminding him to keep his shoulders squared and to project his voice when speaking required her constant prompting. And every time he came close to getting the walk right, or the posture, or the voice, pain shot through his expression, choked his words, undermined him.

  The clock chimed five. Darkness still hugged the windows. A hopeless anxiety nipped at Tia, zapping her waning energy. He wouldn’t make this on his own. Suddenly the week ahead seemed like a life sentence, a trek to the North Pole, fraught with hidden peril and a deadly, unknown menace. Any misstep could be Mac’s last.

  How would he maneuver the maze? Make it through alive?

  She could think of only one way to improve his chances. But he wasn’t going to like it. “I know you don’t want me near Coy Toys, but to be brutally honest, you need me there. Right by your side.”

  “What?” Disbelief lifted his brows. “Why?”

  She sighed. “To keep you from making unconscious gestures that are going to give away your true identity.”

  He tensed, violently shaking his head. “No. I won’t put you in danger.”

  “Mac, listen to reason.”

  “No.” He raked his hand through his hair, a gesture Grant had made every day of his life, and paced the length of the room once more, his stride more assured this time, his shoulders as squared as concrete blocks. Her conviction of his shakiness faltered. Was she wrong? Could he do this without her?

  He turned toward her and his hand went for his absent glasses. He stopped himself, but not before his ears glowed pink. In that moment, s
he saw him accept she was right.

  “I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?” His voice rang with resignation.

  She pressed her lips together.

  “I’m a disaster as Grant.” Anger at himself filled his words, but his face was tight with worry, lined with sorrow. “I’ll be lucky to make it through today.”

  “We’ll make it through together.” Wishing she felt as certain as she sounded, Tia slumped tiredly onto a corner of the sofa. Mac dropped down beside her. The shadow of his beard had darkened sometime during their long night. Perversely, it made him even handsomer. Reminded her of Grant on an early morning.

  She shoved the thought, and all its accompanying confusion of grief and guilt, away. If she gave in to her sorrow now, they’d never get through the day. And they had to survive this day and the next, and the next.

  Her gaze fell on the brightly wrapped package she’d left on the coffee table. She gathered it into her hand. It felt weightless in her palm, a box small enough to hold a ring.

  “What did you get him?” Mac’s whisper cut through her musing.

  She glanced up, frowning, not understanding his question. “What?”

  “Grant.” He grimaced, pointing at the gift. “Do you mind telling me what you bought him?”

  “I didn’t get this for him. I found it out on the doorstep when I arrived last night.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Who is it from?”

  She shrugged. “The tag says Santa.”

  Mac paled.

  Her pulse leaped. “What’s the matter?”

  “It looks like the gift I got from Santa.”

  His meaning struck home and her eyes widened. “The one with the sprig of holly berries?”

  Nodding, he swallowed hard and reached for the box. Tension filled the space between them. He tore at the wrapping paper. In the silence the sound resembled the crackle-pop of a string of tree lights bursting one at a time in rapid succession.

  A second later he held up a tiny box that might contain anything from a piece of jewelry to a miniature bomb. The name of his Taiwan competitor, Lei Industries, was stamped all over it. He said, “It’s identical to the one I received.”