Their quickie Las Vegas wedding had been intended only as a short-term strategy to protect her from her wealthy relatives, who had a strong financial motive for seeing her dead. The decision to give the marriage a real try had come later, after all the excitement of nearly getting murdered had faded.
They had agreed to take things slowly; after all, they were well aware that each of them had brought a lot of baggage into this arrangement. It was a good bet that any reputable counselor or therapist would have advised against the marriage, and not just because it had been carried out in such haste.
Zoe wouldn’t have blamed the professionals. The odds against a successful, stable relationship between an escapee from a psychiatric hospital and a man who had been married and divorced three times had to be somewhere in the vicinity of astronomically bad.
Added to those negatives was Ethan’s opinion of psychics. It had been formed in the wake of his brother’s murder, when a charlatan who claimed to see visions had convinced Ethan’s sister-in-law, Bonnie, that her husband was still alive. The emotional pain caused by the phony had been nothing short of devastating. Ethan’s vengeful fury had been white-hot. Bonnie had confided to Zoe that she was amazed that the fraudulent psychic had survived Ethan’s wrath.
And just to top it off, Ethan had once had a very bad experience with an interior designer.
But in spite of all the reasons why the marriage was probably doomed at the outset, Zoe thought, she and Ethan had decided to fling caution to the wind and take their chances. Probably because both of them had had a lot of experience with taking risks.
Up until the first of November she had convinced herself that they were going to win the big cosmic bet—they were going to make it. She had even invested in a new set of vibrant, chili-red dishes.
For the first couple of weeks of their odd marriage, they had shifted naturally and easily into a pattern that she would have described as “domestic” were it not for the fact that it was difficult to use that word when talking about Ethan. He was a lot of things, including smart, sexy and strong-willed, but he definitely did not invoke the sort of warm, cozy images implied by the term “domestic.”
Although she had kept her apartment at Casa de Oro, the two of them had spent every night together, usually out at Nightwinds, Ethan’s pink monstrosity of a home. All the building blocks of a solid, stable relationship appeared to be coming together. They were learning to work around each other in the kitchen. They had discovered that they were both early risers. Neither of them left their clothes on the floor. They both showered daily. What more could you ask for at the start of a marriage?
But things had changed with the advent of November. She sensed that Ethan was pulling back, putting some distance between them. He seemed restless and moody. She knew he wasn’t sleeping well. The silences between them were no longer comfortable or companionable and there were more of them. He avoided her attempts to get him to talk about whatever it was that was bothering him.
It was as if they were involved in an affair rather than a marriage, she thought; an affair that was headed for the rocks.
Maybe it had been a mistake to start remodeling Nightwinds so soon. The decision to repaint had forced them to vacate the big house with its multiple bathrooms and large living spaces and move into her tiny apartment. Here there was only one bath and no place where either of them could go to be alone for a while.
She told herself that housing Ethan in this small, cramped space was akin to keeping a lion in a cage at the zoo. You had to expect that there would be some issues.
“How did Katherine Compton handle the final scene this afternoon?” she asked, setting the tray down on the coffee table.
“She wasn’t happy about having her suspicions confirmed, but she was pretty cool about it.” Ethan clicked off the TV and set the remote down next to the tray. He picked up one of the glasses. “The hardest part for her is dealing with the fact that she allowed Dexter Morrow to get past her defenses. She told me that she felt like she’d been a fool.”
Zoe curled herself into the corner of the sofa and rested one arm along the back. “I can understand that. What did you say to her?”
He shrugged. “I reminded her that she was the one who called me and asked me to investigate Morrow. Whatever else she is, Katherine Compton is no fool. It may have taken her a while to face the problem, but in the end she took care of it like the gutsy executive she is. She’ll be okay.”
“What about you?”
He had been about to take a swallow of wine but he paused, the glass a few inches from his mouth. “What about me?”
“This case seems to have gone very well. You said yourself that it was fairly routine.”
“It was.” He drank some wine and lowered the glass. “Morrow was greedy. When he started to smell the cash I was offering, he got careless.”
“If it was all so cut and dried, why is it bothering you so much?”
For a few seconds she thought that he was not going to answer her.
“Damned if I know,” he said finally.
She smiled slightly. “You know what I think?”
“No, but you’re going to tell me, aren’t you?”
“Of course. I consider it my duty as your wife, and you know how strongly I feel about the importance of communication in a marriage.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I think that, at heart, you’re a romantic,” she said gently.
He winced. “Bullshit.”
“You had problems with this case because you knew that, in the end, your client was going to get hurt.”
“Clients get bad news from me all the time. Katherine wasn’t the first and she won’t be the last.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean that you like that part of the job or that you find it easy.”
He took another swallow of wine and settled into the opposite corner of the sofa. “You think maybe I’m in the wrong line of work?”
She nearly dropped the cracker she had just picked up off the plate. Her first thought was that he was joking. Then she saw his eyes.
“No,” she said. “I think you’re doing the kind of work that you were born to do, the only kind that you can do.”
“Yeah?”
“Yours is a calling, Ethan.”
In spite of his obviously grim mood, his mouth twitched a little at the corner. “That’s got to be the one and only time in the entire history of the world that anyone referred to the private investigation business as a calling.”
“In your case it’s the simple truth. Tell me about what happened in that hotel room today.”
He ate a cracker with some cheese, took another swallow of wine and then started to talk. She listened while he described how he had lured Dexter Morrow to the room and how Katherine Compton had insisted on hiding in the bathroom against his recommendation.
“My biggest concern was that Morrow would want to use the facilities before I got him to implicate himself,” Ethan said. “But I understood why she needed to be there so I agreed to let her wait in the bathroom. Luckily everything went smoothly. Like I said, Morrow was greedy. He didn’t want to waste any time. But I sure as hell didn’t offer him a beer or a bottle of water.”
“Good thinking.”
“Thanks. I was pretty proud of that bit of strategy, myself.”
He talked some more, eventually following her into the kitchen to finish his story. He lounged in the doorway, drinking his wine and watching while she put the finishing touches on the vegetable curry she had prepared.
Like a real husband. The thought lifted her spirits.
There was one aspect of the tale that worried her.
“You’re sure that Morrow won’t be a problem?” she asked while she scooped the rice out of the rice maker and piled it into one of the new chili-red bowls. “He must blame you for ruining his cushy setup there at Compton.”
“I told Katherine that guys like Morrow don’t hang around once the con goes sour, and th
at’s the truth. He’ll cut his losses and take off.”
Ethan sat down at the table. He examined the array of little side dishes containing curry condiments with what appeared to be real enthusiasm. Her spirits rose a little higher. Ethan’s sister-in-law, Bonnie, swore by the old saying that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. Maybe she was right.
Zoe put the platter of fragrant curry and the bowl of rice on the table. “Do you think Morrow felt anything at all for Katherine Compton?”
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t strong enough to prevent him from betraying her for a couple hundred thousand bucks.”
“Obviously.” She got the salad out of the refrigerator, set it on the table and sat down across from him. “What a shame that Katherine was genuinely in love with Morrow.”
“She wasn’t blindly in love.” Ethan picked up the half-finished bottle of wine and refilled their glasses. “When she realized what was going on, she did what she had to do.”
“Guess that’s why she’s a successful CEO of her own company.”
“Guess so.” Ethan ladled curry over the small mountain of rice he had put on his plate and helped himself to peanuts, raisins and chutney from the little dishes. “She also has the distinction of being my first major business client here in Whispering Springs, for which I am profoundly grateful.”
“Correction, I was your first major business client.” She glowered. “I’m crushed that you could forget a thing like that.”
“You were my first private client. Big difference.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. And believe me, I have not forgotten anything about your case.”
“Probably hard to forget a case when you end up marrying the client,” she said.
“This is true.”
She did not know where to go with that. It occurred to her that this was the second time within the hour that she had found a way to slip a reference to their marital status into the conversation. The first had occurred out in the other room, when she had made it clear that she felt it was her duty as his wife to give him her opinion, and now this unsubtle comment about marrying his first client.
Ethan got a reflective expression. “This feels weird.”
She froze. “The curry?”
“Not the curry. The curry is great. I meant that it feels weird to talk about a case after it’s all over the way I’m doing this evening.”
She tensed, vaguely defensive. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m just not used to it, that’s all.”
She relaxed slightly. “Ethan, it’s what married people do.”
“Yeah?” He gave her a wry smile. “I never did it with any of my former wives.”
“Why not?”
“Probably because none of them was interested. Let’s face it, most of the stuff a PI does sounds pretty boring when you try to explain it to someone else. Ninety percent of my job is handled on the phone and the computer.”
“But it’s not boring to you, right?” she asked.
“No. But then, it’s what I do.”
“If it doesn’t bore you,” she said patiently, “it doesn’t bore me.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Okay, so much for my day.” Ethan forked up a bite of curry. “How was yours?”
“Not nearly so exciting. I spent the morning in my library at the Designers’ Dream Home. I think it’s finally coming together.”
The invitation to participate in the annual Designers’ Dream Home project had been a coup for her and her one-person interior design firm, Enhanced Interiors. A committee had selected a newly completed, high-end Whispering Springs residence to be the model home. The same committee had chosen a handful of local designers to finish the project. She had been one of the lucky few.
Each designer had been assigned a room and asked to create a dream space. She had gotten the library.
The project had chewed up far more of her time than she had anticipated, but she told herself it would be worth it. In addition to being a profitable fund-raiser for Whispering Springs charities, the Designers’ Dream Home focused invaluable attention on those designers selected to work on it. When it was completed there would be media coverage and public tours. The various rooms and their creators were slated to be photographed for a major southwestern lifestyle magazine.
“Lindsey Voyle give you any more trouble?” Ethan asked.
Lindsey Voyle, an interior designer who had recently opened a business in town, was the only fly in the show house project ointment, in Zoe’s opinion. Their professional styles were one hundred and eighty degrees apart, but that was not the real problem. The chief issue was that, from the moment they had been introduced, Lindsey Voyle had exuded an inexplicable, thinly veiled hostility toward her.
She wrinkled her nose, aware that Ethan found the rivalry between Lindsey and her amusing.
“Lindsey was at the show house when I went there today.” She reached for the bowl of mango chutney. “She had the nerve to give me advice on my feng shui technique. She said that I had created a bad energy flow by my use of too much intense color.”
“Bad energy flow, huh? Sounds scary.”
She reminded herself that Ethan also found the concept of designing proper energy flows in a room or a workspace extremely humorous.
“Lindsey claims that she took a workshop from a feng shui master in LA and knows all of the basic principles,” Zoe said.
“What did you tell her?”
“Not what I felt like telling her, that’s for sure. I just said that my design style wasn’t pure feng shui. I explained that I use elements of several different design philosophies—some ancient, some new—to create positive energy flow in a space.” Zoe spooned more chutney on her curry. “I made it clear that I rely on my own sense of a space for ideas and inspiration, not the rules of a particular school of design.”
Ethan raised his brows. “You told her that you believe you’re psychic when it comes to getting a feel for a room?”
“Of course not. She already thinks that I’m a half-baked professional with no real sense of color or style. I didn’t want her to spread the word that I’m a complete flake.”
He nodded. “Probably be bad for business.”
“There’s a fine line between being known as a fashionable designer who uses the principles of feng shui and getting a reputation as a phony who is into the woo-woo thing.”
“I can see that.”
“Forget Lindsey Voyle. The less said about her the better. The sort of good news today is that I got a phone call from Tabitha Pine.”
“Speaking of complete flakes,” Ethan said around a mouthful of salad.
She frowned. “There is nothing flaky about teaching meditation techniques. A lot of people find them very useful for stress reduction. There’s scientific evidence that meditation can lower blood pressure and anxiety levels.”
“I’ll stick with my own tried-and-true method of stress reduction.”
“What’s that?”
“Sex.”
“Regardless of your opinion of meditation as a stress-reducing therapy, it so happens that teaching the techniques can be quite profitable. Tabitha Pine recently bought a very large, very high-end estate just outside of town. She wants the interior completely redone with the goal of maximizing the flow of positive energy.”
“Right up your alley. Congratulations. I can see it now, Zoe Truax, the designer of choice for gurus everywhere. Pine sounds like an ideal client.”
“Not quite.” Zoe sighed. “Not yet, at any rate. Turns out she wants to see proposals from me and someone else before she chooses her designer.”
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this.”
“Guess who else was asked to draw up a proposal?”
“Lindsey Voyle?”
“Yep.”
“Oh, man, this could get ugly,” Ethan said. “We
could be looking at dueling designers meeting at high noon in the middle of Fountain Square for a showdown. What will it be? Measuring tapes at twenty paces? Fabric swatches at ten?”
“I’m glad you find this entertaining.”
He chuckled. “Honey, my money is on you. When it comes to designing positive energy flow, nobody does it better.”
“I do not want any wisecracks from you, Truax. Just because you don’t buy into the concept of enlightened interior design, that doesn’t mean that the people who do buy into it are complete wack jobs.”
Ethan managed to look deeply offended. “I would never call the folks who pay you actual money to rebalance the psychic energy in their homes wack jobs.”
“What would you call them?”
“Clients,” he said smoothly.
She gave him an approving nod. “Right answer.”
“I learn fast.” He turned serious. “But are you sure you really want to do Tabitha Pine’s house? Given this guru gig of hers, she probably has some strong opinions about energy flows. Could be frustrating to work with her.”
“I enjoy clients who have definite notions about what they like and dislike. Their ideas sometimes make me see things in a different light. It’s always challenging to design for strong-minded people, and I learn something when I do it.”
“I have plenty of strong opinions about what you’ve got planned for Nightwinds, but you never call my ideas challenging. Mostly we argue about them.”
She thought about their latest discussion regarding Nightwinds. The old mansion was an over-the-top, flaming-pink, Hollywoodesque version of a Mediterranean-style villa. Ethan had more or less inherited it from his uncle because no realtor in Whispering Springs had been able to sell it.
“Not true.” She gave him her most polished, professional smile, the one she reserved for difficult clients who needed extreme guidance. “As a client, you are always a challenge.”
“But?”
“But if I let you have your way you’d have nothing but plain white walls and recliners in every room at Nightwinds.”
“That is a gross exaggeration.” A gotcha gleam lit his eyes. “I don’t need recliners in the bathrooms.”
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