Sweet Liar

by Jude Deveraux

  Mike was looking at her in bewilderment. “What in the world have I done to make you have such a low opinion of me?”

  Turning away from him, Samantha knew she wasn’t being fair, for he had been so very kind to her all day. He’d taken more time with her in this one day than any other person had since her mother had died, yet here she was saying vile things to him because he was making a pass at her. But wasn’t that what males were supposed to do: try?

  Maybe his kindness and constant attention was the problem. Maybe she didn’t want anyone to pay attention to her.

  “I apologize,” she said. “I thank you for today, for taking me to the store, for introducing me to your cousin, for—”

  “I don’t want your bloody thanks,” Mike said angrily before turning away to stalk out the door.

  Samantha stood where she was for a moment, then went up the stairs to her apartment. She undressed slowly, carefully hanging her lovely new suit up, and for a moment she leaned against the closet door. Sometimes she wished she could cry. Sometimes she wished she could just sit down and bawl like other women seemed able to do, but as much as she wanted it, Samantha knew the tears would not come.

  After washing and creaming her face, she put on her nightgown and went to bed. From the lights in the garden below, she could see the outline of her father’s furniture. Taking a deep breath, she gave a bit of a smile, for it was good to have her father’s things around her, very good indeed.

  She went to sleep and somewhere in the middle of the night she woke when a flash of lightning lit the room. Over the outside noise she heard what was becoming a familiar sound to her: Mike was typing. Feeling calmer, she went back to sleep.

  8

  Samantha woke at seven o’clock, but the rain gently coming down outside her windows made her not want to get out of bed. Snuggling under the covers, she went back to sleep. After all, it was Saturday, so why should she get up?

  Waking again at nine-thirty, her first thought was of Daphne telling her that Mike was a heartbreaker. Samantha did not want more heartbreak. After a reassuring glance about her father’s room at his furnishings, smiling, she went back to sleep.

  At eleven she was awakened by a brief knock then the door to her bedroom opening. Sleepily, she looked up to see Mike entering with a tray covered with white food bags. “Go away,” she murmured and hid under the covers.

  Of course he didn’t obey, for as far as she could make out, Michael Taggert was a combination of watchdog, militant nurse, and lecher.

  Putting the tray down on the edge of the bed, he sat down beside it. “I brought you food and your clothes from Saks came and Barrett has invited us to tea day after tomorrow. He’s sending a car for us.”

  “Oh?” she said, turning over and looking at him. It was almost beginning to feel familiar to have him sitting on the edge of her bed.

  “Which one interests you? The food or Barrett or the clothes?”

  “Do you think that little blue jacket came? The one with the big buttons?”

  He pulled a muffin from a bag. “So it’s the clothes. I don’t blame you for being uninterested in a man who may or may not be your relative. Relatives give me a pain too.”

  Slowly, yawning, Samantha sat up in bed and leaned against the headboard. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know how lucky you are to have relatives. Your cousin Vicky was very sweet to me—and very tolerant of you.”

  Handing her a muffin and a large styrofoam cup full of freshly squeezed orange juice, he said, “She’s one of the few Montgomerys who’s even tolerable, but then she’s not one of the Montgomerys from Maine.”

  Mike already had his mouth full and there were crumbs on her bed, but he looked so good sprawled there. His thick, dark hair was still damp from a shower, he was freshly shaved, and he had on a soft old denim shirt that outlined every muscle in his body. It was better to keep him talking, she thought, for if he were talking, he wouldn’t be touching her. She took a deep breath. “Who are the Montgomerys?”

  “They’re my cousins and a bigger bunch of wimps you never saw.”

  “Wimps?”

  “Wimps. Pansies,” he snapped. “Tea drinkers. There isn’t one of them that wouldn’t faint at the mere sight of a beer served in its very own bottle.”

  “And these cousins live in Maine?” she asked as she bit into a bran muffin.

  “Yeah.” There was hostility in his voice, and she wondered what his cousins had done to cause his antagonism. Seeing the look on her face, he began to explain. “It’s a tradition in my family that the Montgomery kids spend half the summer in Colorado and the Taggerts, half in Maine. I don’t know who started that tradition, but I’m sure he’s roasting in hell now.”

  “Oh? What happened when you were in Maine?”

  “My bastard cousins tried to kill us!”

  “You must be kidding.”

  “Not in the least. They did everything they could to see that we didn’t live through the summers. The lot of them live on the sea and they’re half fish. My brother says they have fish scales for skin. They used to do things like row us out into the ocean, then dive off the boat and swim back to shore. They knew that not one of us could swim.”

  “How did you get back to shore?”

  Michael smiled in a smirking way. “Rowed. We couldn’t swim, but all of us have a bit of muscle.”

  Samantha smiled at the way he flexed his biceps when he said this. “And what happened when they came to Colorado?”

  “Well, we were a bit miffed at the way they’d treated us when we were in Maine.”

  “Understandable.”

  “And, too, you have to understand the Montgomerys. They are the most annoying bunch in the world. They were always thanking my mother, and they never forgot to use their napkins at the table. And they folded their clothes.”

  “That bad, huh?” Sam said, hiding her smile in her cup, but Mike didn’t seem to hear the sarcasm in her voice.

  “We all felt we were justified in what we did. We put them on the wildest horses we could find. We used to take them into the Rocky Mountains and leave them alone at night with no food or water, without any covering.”

  “Wasn’t that dangerous?”

  “Hell, no, not to a Montgomery. As far as we could tell, they’re not killable. One of my brothers took one of them out, put the son of a gun at the end of a rope, lowered the rope down a cliffside, and went off and left my cousin hanging there.” Mike smiled in memory. “It was two hundred feet down.”

  “What did your cousin do?”

  “I don’t know. Somehow, she got back up the rope. She wasn’t even late for dinner.”

  It was the “she” that made Samantha start laughing. Setting her orange juice on the bedside table, she put her hands over her stomach and laughed hard. “Mike, you’re dreadful,” she said, now realizing that he had been joking all along, creating the story (or, at the very least, exaggerating extravagantly) to entertain her, to make her laugh.

  As Michael lay on the bed, he smiled at her, looking thoroughly pleased with himself, the cheshire cat, the cat that ate the cream. His smile made her certain his story hadn’t been serious at all, that he had meant to amuse her and was glad he’d done so.

  “I’m glad to see that you can laugh,” he said, reaching into one of the bags and withdrawing a delicious-smelling muffin. “I got this especially for you.”

  As she took it from his hand, she thought, He feeds me and he makes me laugh. “What kind is it?”

  “Chocolate chip.”

  Regretfully, she handed the muffin back to him. “Too fattening. I can’t eat it.”

  Sprawling back on the bed, he didn’t take the muffin from her. “Just as I thought.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. I just won a bet with myself. You don’t drink any alcohol to speak of, and left on your own, you dress like an old woman. You ever eat any food that isn’t good for you? I’m sure you’ve never even been
tempted to do drugs.”

  She glared at him. “Hand me that pat of butter. Better yet, hand me two pats.”

  Smiling at her suggestively, he passed her the butter and a plastic knife. “If you’re worried about working those calories off, I know a great exercise.”

  Samantha was too intent on her utterly delicious muffin to pay any attention to him. Chocolate chips. Soft white dough. Melted butter.

  “Damn it, Samantha, stop looking at food like that,” Mike said, genuine anger in his voice. Grabbing her hand, he pulled it toward his mouth and took a bite out of her muffin, catching one of her fingers in his soft, warm mouth and licking butter from it. As he did so, he looked at her with hot eyes.

  She snatched her hand away. “Does anything, anything at all, discourage you?”

  “No,” he said without much concern, licking his fingers. Lazily, he got up off the bed and stretched.

  Watching him, Samantha halted with her muffin halfway to her mouth. He had broad shoulders, a slim waist, and heavy thighs, and the sight of Michael’s body displayed that way was enough to make her forget even chocolate.

  When he stopped flexing, she looked away quickly before he saw her gawking. Bending agilely, he shoved leftover food back into the bags.

  “Why do you…I mean,” she said, clearing her throat. “Why do you look as you do?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked with exaggerated innocence.

  Samantha knew he was trying to get a compliment from her. No doubt he wanted her to say, Why are you dripping muscle? Why do you look like a Greek god? Why do you have a body that Michelangelo would have loved to sculpt? Instead of the words he wanted to hear and the words that came to her mind, she gave him a look that said, You know very well what I mean.

  “Power lifting,” he said, picking up the tray and setting it on her father’s desk.

  “Like in the Olympics?”

  Mike gave a snort of derision. “Pretty boys. That’s Olympic lifting and what Schwarzenegger does is bodybuilding. I power lifted in college in competitions. Heavy stuff. Now I just do what I can to maintain.”

  Samantha wasn’t very good at hiding a smile. “I take it that power lifting is what ‘real’ men do.”

  He smiled at her as though he had no idea she was making fun of him, but then, with lightning speed, he scooped her and a couple of blankets off the bed, and while she was demanding that he put her down, he opened the door to the terrace and carried her outside.

  Samantha had her hands to her side. “Put me down,” she said, doing her best not to touch him.

  As though she weighed nothing at all, Mike held her over the rail, then half dropped her.

  With a squeal of fright, Samantha grabbed him about the neck, holding him tightly.

  “I like this,” he said, nuzzling her neck, and when Samantha’s grip loosened, he let his arms go slack until she again almost fell. She renewed her tight grip.

  Samantha liked being in his arms, liked it very, very much. He was big and warm and so very strong. When he put his lips on her neck, for a moment she closed her eyes.

  “Samantha,” he whispered.

  She had too much self-discipline to give in to his plea or her own desires. “Release me,” she said, her voice serious.

  Reluctantly, he set her down and for a moment he put his hand to her cheek. “You want to tell me what’s bothering you?” he asked softly.

  For a moment, Samantha opened her mouth to speak but closed it again and quickly moved away from him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. If I seem unusual to you, I’m sure it’s because I have recently buried my father and gone through a divorce. I doubt if anyone is ‘normal’ for a long time after two such traumatic events.”

  “Did you write that little speech then rehearse it?” he asked, then when she started to speak, he put up his hand. “I don’t want to hear any more lies or platitudes. Why don’t you get dressed and come downstairs and make that computer work? Or better yet, don’t dress.”

  Although Samantha let out a sigh of seeming frustration, she was glad he was no longer being serious. For a happy-go-lucky guy, he could sometimes be disconcertingly perceptive, which was yet another reason for her to get out of New York and away from him.

  Grinning, she tried to match his mood. “I shall wear a white lace gown and—”

  “Don’t!” Mike said, his eyes serious.

  “I was just kidding.”

  Turning away, he went to the door. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes, then I want you downstairs. You can’t stay up here in this mausoleum.” He frowned at the dark furniture and the dark curtains. “You can’t stay in this shrine to your father.” He left the room before Samantha could think of a reply.

  Samantha spent the day with Mike. Heaven, she thought, but he was easy to be with. He was as unlike her father and husband as a person could be. Both her father and Richard had been CPAs, and perhaps that’s what gave them their exaggerated sense of order, but both men had always wanted everything in its place—a place chosen by them. Richard’s organization of the refrigerator had sometimes made Samantha want to scream. Her idea of doing something wild had been to put the bread in the milk spot. Once, when he was away on an overnight trip, she had taken everything out of the refrigerator and put it all back in different places. She’d even put the breads on three different shelves, something that would have sent Richard into a rage. Of course she put everything back in its correct order before he returned.

  Mike wasn’t like Richard or her father. Mike seemed to have no hard and fast rules about anything. He didn’t eat by the clock, he ate when he was hungry. And he could feed himself! To Samantha this was a miracle. After her mother had died, Samantha had taken over the household chores, and it had been her responsibility to feed her father. She prepared meals at eight in the morning and twelve and at six-thirty, and after she had married, the schedule had stayed the same. Once, at a dinner party in Santa Fe, after she’d had two glasses of wine, someone had philosophically asked, What does it mean to be rich? Samantha was feeling too good to remember her place and control her tongue. Before anyone else spoke, she said, “A rich woman is one who, when she is in the vicinity of a man and that man says he is hungry, does not have a responsibility to feed him. The woman is truly rich.” Everyone at the table had laughed uproariously at Samantha’s comment, but Richard had been furious and after that he’d talked to her about her “tendency toward alcoholism” and had “suggested” that she stop drinking.

  Mike wasn’t like the two men she had known, for he didn’t seem to have rules. Except maybe something on the order of, If it feels good, do it. When he saw Samantha pick up two of his shirts where he’d tossed them across a chair and without thinking about what she was doing slip them onto hangers, he snatched the third shirt out of her hands and threw it on the back of the couch. “I have a maid,” he said.

  Embarrassed at having performed such a wifely little chore Samantha went to the boxes in the corner of the room and opened them. Pulling the flaps back, she inhaled what has come to be a heavenly smell to modern people: new vinyl. Mike laughed at the look on her face, which made Samantha feel embarrassed again, but she’d already discovered that Mike could take teasing as well as dish it out, unlike her ex-husband who considered himself sacrosanct.

  “The smell of new electronic equipment is certainly better than the cheap perfume that you seem to prefer,” she snapped at him, making him laugh.

  She had an idea that he meant to sit back and watch her hook up the computer, but she told him she wanted his help. Of course he had no idea how different this was for her. Her father and Richard believed that there was woman’s work and men’s work and that the two of them should not mingle. In the house she shared with her husband in Santa Fe, she had been in charge of computers, and it wasn’t unusual for her to come home from her second, evening job and find Richard in bed asleep, the computer left on, ready for her to save the material he had written that day and turn the machine
off.

  Now, it didn’t take Samantha long to hook up the computer and screen and attach the laser printer. It took a little more time to install the word-processing software, make an autoexec.bat, and set up a few other batch files.

  Once the computer was set up, she told Mike she was ready to teach him the basics of how to use it. In the past four years she had taught many people how to use a computer, and she’d dealt with some bizarre problems. There was the woman who had stapled floppies to her printouts and the man who had broken the plastic case off the floppy and tried to insert the thin inner membrane into the disk drive.

  But not in four years had she encountered anyone as difficult to teach as Mike, for he couldn’t seem to remember anything she told him. In teaching, she’d learned that patience was everything, but after two hours with him, she was losing her composure.

  She found herself beginning to shout. “F seven, not the number seven,” she said to him, but Mike once again hit the number seven key, then looked at her with wide eyes.

  Ten minutes later Samantha lost it. Clutching his neck with her hands, she began to choke him. “The F seven key! Do you hear me? The F seven key!”

  Laughing, Mike pulled her into his arms, and they went tumbling to the floor together. It was then that she realized he had been pretending to be stupid, and she understood that he’d wanted to know how far she’d go before she lost her composure.

  As she rolled away from him, she was extremely annoyed. Why was he always trying to drive her to the point where she was angry?

  “Come on, Sam,” he said. “Don’t give me that look. Don’t turn back into little miss goody two shoes.”