Sweet Liar

by Jude Deveraux

  Moving just a bit forward, he put his face close to her neck so she could feel his warm breath on her skin. “Tarzan? How about if we stay in today and play Indian brave and uptight missionary’s daughter? All your family could be killed by Indians, then I’d save you, but you’d hate me at first until I made you cry out in ecstasy, then we—”

  Try as she would, she couldn’t keep from laughing. “Oh, Mike, you’re crazy. And what in the world have you been reading?”

  “Crazy with wanting you,” he said, nuzzling her neck, but he still kept a breath of space between them, as though he had to keep distance between them. “If you don’t like Indians, I could show you a few tricks with red silk scarves. Or I could be a pirate and…” He stopped talking because his mouth was on her neck.

  When he began to relax, Samantha ducked under his arm and moved away from him, hiding a smile at the groan of misery he emitted when she left the circle of his arms. Keeping her back to him so she wouldn’t see him in his present bare state, she left the bedroom and went upstairs to get dressed, smiling all the way.

  She had no more than pulled on a pair of jeans than Mike knocked on the outside door of her apartment. His knocking was certainly only a formality as the door had a foot-size hole in it. Even at that formality, he didn’t bother to give her time to open the door before he entered and made himself at home in the living room. When Samantha entered the room, still buttoning her blouse, Mike was sprawled in a chair, his feet on the ottoman.

  “You make up your mind yet?”

  “You mean about which book I’m going to read? There’s what looks to be an excellent biography here on Captain Sir Frank Baker, the Victorian explorer. I thought I’d start that.”

  Mike’s frustration showed on his face. “What does a guy have to do to get a date with you? My bony cousin—”

  “Raine asked me,” she said pointedly. “He asked me politely and gave me twenty-four hours’ notice. Women appreciate that sort of thing. Asking a woman on a date shows a little more finesse than saying, ‘Uh-oh, my towel has fallen off,’ or ‘Let’s play doctor.’ ”

  Slowly, Mike got out of the chair and stood before her. Taking her hand in his, he kissed the back of it with exaggerated politeness and courtesy. “Miss Elliot, may I have the honor of a day spent in your company?”

  “With or without red scarves?” she asked with narrowed eyes.

  “It is milady’s choice,” he said, again kissing her hand, but this time he touched her skin with the tip of his tongue.

  Smiling in spite of herself, Samantha looked down at his tumble of black curls. “What will we be doing on this date?”

  Mike looked up at her in disgust. “Not swings and ice cream.” After kissing her hand a third time, he smiled up at her mischievously. “We could always visit Vanessa.”

  “Only if I can bring Raine,” she shot back at him with an equally impish grin.

  Mike laughed and straightened. “How’d you like to see more of New York? Chinatown, Little Italy, the Village, that sort of thing. Believe it or not, there’s more to this city than Fifth and Madison avenues—both of which, I might say, you have adjusted to with amazing adaptability.”

  “Let me change clothes and—”

  “No, jeans are perfect for where we’re going.” He slipped his arm in hers and in another minute led her out the front door.

  Samantha had her first experience of New York on the weekend. It seemed that on the weekend, midtown Manhattan emptied of all the beautifully dressed and groomed people and was refilled with what were unmistakably tourists. There were women wearing baggy dresses or shapeless trousers with elastic waistbands hanging onto big-bellied men with four cameras strapped over their polyester shirts.

  “Where have they gone?” Sam asked.

  “Country houses and neighborhoods around the city,” Mike answered, leading her north. First he took her to a street fair on Sixty-seventh near First Avenue, and Samantha saw table after table full of costume jewelry from the thirties and forties. She fell in love with a silver basket filled with flowers created out of colored stones. “It’s Trifari,” the woman said as though that meant something. Samantha wanted the pin, but she’d already spent too much the day before, so reluctantly she put the little basket down.

  Mike didn’t hesitate as he bought it for her, but when he handed it to her, Samantha protested that he shouldn’t have, that he’d already done too much for her. When he urged it on her, she refused to take it. “You’ve done so much for me, I can’t take any more.”

  Mike shrugged. “Okay, maybe Vanessa would like to have it.”

  With a glare at him, Samantha snatched the pin out of his hand, closing her palm around it so tightly the pin bit into her flesh. Smiling, Mike lifted her hand, pulled her fingers from around the pretty pin, then fastened it onto the collar of her shirt. The sparkling pin wasn’t right for her casual attire, but she couldn’t have cared less as she happily took the arm Mike offered and walked beside him.

  They walked down First Avenue together to Sutton Place. Mike led her into a pretty little park that had a few women with baby carriages; the women were obviously nannies and the town houses around them were obviously for the very rich.

  As Samantha stood at the wrought-iron fence and looked up at the bridge over the East River, watching the barges along the river, Mike came up behind her and slipped his arms about her waist. As she always did when his touches became too intimate, she started to move away, but he said, “Don’t, please,” in a rough voice that she couldn’t deny. She stayed where she was, allowing him to hold her, the back of her body pressed down the length of the front of him, and for a moment she allowed herself to enjoy his nearness.

  As he pointed out things to her across the river, they stood locked together, his arms around her, her hands on his bare forearms. Leaning her head back against his shoulder, she could feel the warmth of him, the solid sturdiness of him, knowing how safe she felt when he was near, as though nothing or no one could ever hurt her again. “Mike, thank you for the pin.”

  “Anytime,” he said, his voice soft and low, as though he were feeling some of what she was.

  Samantha started to say more, but a child, a toddler about two years old, came hurtling toward the fence, running on unsteady legs and not looking where he was going. His nanny yelled, but the child didn’t stop running. As easily as though he’d done it a million times, Mike’s hand scooped down and caught the child’s head, keeping him from hitting the fence.

  Safe but startled, the child looked up at Mike, then his eyes widened and welled with tears, while Mike knelt in front of the child. “You were running pretty fast there, Tex,” he said. “Might have made a hole in that fence. We couldn’t let that happen, could we?”

  Nodding, the child sniffed and smiled at Mike just as his nanny, at least seventy pounds overweight, came trudging up to her charge.

  “Thank you so very much,” she said, then took the child’s hand and led him away. The little boy looked back over his shoulder and waved at Mike, who waved back.

  When Mike turned to Sam and held out his hand for her, she didn’t hesitate in entwining her fingers with his. They started walking south, leaving Sutton Place behind.

  “Do you know that I’ve never so much as changed a baby’s diaper?” she said, thinking of how familiarly Mike had dealt with the little boy.

  “It’s not exactly a highly skilled task,” Mike said, then looked at her. “I’ll tell you what, we’ll go to Colorado and visit my family, and you can change all the nappies you want. I’d place money on it that my whole family will let you learn on their kids. Inside a week you’ll be an expert.”

  “I’d like that,” she said seriously. “I’d like that very much.”

  Squeezing her hand, he led her to the curb, caught a cab, and gave directions to the driver to take them to Chinatown.

  By four o’clock Samantha was tired, but very happy, for she had spent yet another heavenly day with Mike. They had walked
until her legs hurt and seen and done more than Samantha could remember. Mike had fed her until she was ready to pop. He had made her laugh, made her see things she never would have seen without him. He took her to tiny, out-of-the-way stores, such as the Last Wound Up, which had nothing but wind-up toys. He showed her statues and parks and street fairs; they listened to street musicians and saw performers who were very, very good. She tried on hats at a stall and talked Mike into buying a shirt made of Balinese cotton. And as they walked and saw things, they talked.

  The talking was what had pleased Samantha most. For the first time since she’d met him, Mike didn’t try to be Sherlock Holmes and get every little piece of information out of her that he could. He didn’t ask her a single question about her father or her husband or about what her years in high school had been like. The absence of questions made Sam relax, and as she relaxed, she asked him questions about his life and childhood. Mike didn’t seem to have a secret in the world—with the exception of other women, that is. If she’d not been able to look at him, not seen the way other women in the street looked at him, she would have thought he’d never so much as had a date before, for all the mention he made of the women in his life.

  He told her about his brothers, all eight of them, and his three sisters; he told of his parents and his many cousins. He told about what he’d studied in college and his many years of graduate school. He told her anything and answered everything she asked, but he didn’t mention women.

  At four o’clock they sat down at an outside table in a little restaurant, and when a very good-looking, well-built young man walked by, Samantha glanced up at him, only to turn back to see Mike scowling at her. “Think he’s a bodybuilder?” she asked with exaggerated innocence.

  Glancing over his shoulder at the man as he took a drink from a glass of beer, Michael Taggert, who, if allowed, would eat nothing but beef and beer, muttered, “Looks more like a bellybuilder to me.”

  Laughing, Samantha gave her order to the waitress.

  Over Cokes and muffins, Samantha fiddled with her straw and said idly, as though it meant nothing to her, “You haven’t been married?”

  He didn’t answer, so she looked at him. He was staring at her intently, with no humor in his eyes.

  “Sam,” he said softly, “I’m thirty years old, and I’m heart-whole. I’ve had affairs with women—Vanessa and I were together for two years—but I’ve never been in love. In my family we take marriage seriously; we actually believe in those vows a man and woman exchange. I’ve never asked a woman to marry me; I’ve never met one I wanted to spend my life with. I’ve never met a woman who I thought was good enough to be the mother of my kids.” Reaching out, he took her hand in his. “Until you.”

  Her breath held for a moment, she pulled her hand back. “Mike, I don’t—”

  “If you’re again going to give me that crap about not wanting to commit, save it. I don’t want to hear it.” He looked down at his plate. “Sam,” he said softly, “I want to ask you a question and I want you to answer me honestly.”

  She braced herself. “All right.”

  “Did your father ever…touch you? Sexually, I mean.”

  For a moment, she felt anger race through her, but then she calmed herself. In a time when every magazine brought a new confession of some woman who had been a victim of incest, it wasn’t a bad question. “No,” she said, smiling at him, “my father never crawled into bed with me, never touched me in any way except with affection and love. He was a very good father, Mike.”

  “Then why…?” he began, but closed his mouth. He had started to ask her why she was so turned off by him, but he didn’t want to hear her answer. Maybe it was just him. Maybe she didn’t like him and that was the reason she continually pushed him away. “Is it me?” he said in spite of himself. “Do you like a different type of guy?” He looked up at her. “Raine maybe?”

  “Mike, you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen in my life. Why would any woman like Raine better than you?”

  He didn’t smile. In fact, her answer seemed to make him more confused. Although he’d found out a great deal about her, there were still missing pieces of the puzzle that was Miss Samantha Elliot. But the more time he spent with her, the more he was sure she was worth the effort.

  Standing, he put money on the table. “You ready to go? I have to get back and get cleaned up. I have a date tonight.”

  Slowly, she stood. He talked to her about marriage vows and children in one breath, then told her he had a date in the next.

  19

  In the silence in the taxi on the way back to the town house, Samantha had time to think, but at first all she could do was feel, and what she felt was old-fashioned, gut-wrenching jealousy. This was a new emotion for Sam, and it didn’t take much analyzing to know that she didn’t much like the sensation. Of course, to be jealous, she told herself, you had to feel as though you owned another person, that you had a right to that person’s time and attention…and love. But she certainly didn’t own Mike and he didn’t own her. Wasn’t this lack of ownership, this freedom from possession, what she had worked so hard to achieve? Hadn’t she fought him at every turn just so she wouldn’t be tempted to have any feelings for him?

  Samantha was well aware that right now she was as vulnerable as a person could get. After all, she’d recently lost the last person on earth who had any connection with her; her husband, her relatives, all of them were gone. Being alone in the world and grieving could make a person do odd things, such as think you were in love with a person when actually you were merely very grateful. That’s what she was to Mike: grateful. She’d told him that when he’d kept her from sleeping for whole days at a time, she was merely tired, not depressed, but even then, even when she’d said it, she’d known she was lying. She had been so depressed that she hadn’t wanted to continue living; although she had never actually contemplated suicide, she had wanted to sleep without waking up.

  Mike had taken her out of herself and forced her to wake up by using a combination of enraging her and just plain, ordinary paying attention to her. He had also given her hope, which was something that had been missing from her life after her father died. Mike had given her hope that she would be able to find her grandmother, that she could find the last person on earth who had a link to her.

  Of course, to Mike’s way of looking at it, everything he had done, all the kindnesses, all the attention, had backfired because he’d involved Samantha in something that had turned out to be dangerous. But Sam didn’t regret any of it. If her life was going to be threatened, she’d rather have it threatened by an outside force than by her own hopelessness.

  Now, looking at Mike in the taxi, she did her best to squelch her feelings of jealousy. He had said that he was heart-whole, that he wasn’t in love with another woman, but then you didn’t have to be in love to go out on a date, did you? Of course it was none of her business whether he dated or not since she was just his tenant, but it seemed odd that he seemed to enjoy her company but now wanted to spend time with someone else.

  “Have you had this date a long time?” she asked, trying to sound as though she were just making conversation. Maybe his mother had arranged a date with a friend’s daughter.

  “Three weeks,” he said tersely.

  “Ah. Then you must go?” Is it an obligation? is what she really wanted to ask.

  “Yes.” He turned to her. “Jealous?”

  She saw that he was trying to be lighthearted, to be his usual teasing self, but Samantha sensed tension under his words. He’s hiding something from me, she thought, trying not to frown. There’s something he doesn’t want me to know. Immediately, her first thought was, he’s going out with Vanessa and he doesn’t want me to know about it. How silly that he should try to hide it, she told herself. What he does with his time is absolutely and utterly none of my business. He could date actresses, models, whomever, and it would mean nothing to her.

  As she thought about Vanessa or any o
ther woman who might be in Mike’s life, she realized that every muscle in her body was rigid. This is absurd, she told herself, utterly ridiculous. Mike and I are…friends, that’s all. We’ve been forced to spend a great deal of time together and we’ve made the best of it, and that’s all there is between us. Of course he was probably lonely living in that big house by himself and he was grateful to have some company, which is why we’ve spent so much time together going places, doing things, laughing together, touching each other, kissing—

  She broke off as she looked at his profile. Mike would never in his life be lonely. He was too likable, too gregarious, too caring, too—

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he whispered, not even turning to look at her.

  Self-consciously, Samantha turned away to look out the window of the cab. Something was bothering him, but she didn’t know what it was. In that moment she knew what was wrong. He’s lying, she thought. He doesn’t have a date. But why is he lying?

  She knew the answer the moment she thought about it. He’s lying to protect me. Warmth spread through her. Not just warmth, but joy, pure undiluted joy ran through every vein in her body. Just as she’d known that if she could signal Mike when the man was choking her he would come for her, she knew that now Mike was trying to keep her safe. What was it Mike had said to her? “Your father gave me the care of you and I mean to be worthy of his trust.” She knew he felt that the attempted murder was his fault because he’d not considered the old gangster legend about the missing money. Since the attempt on her life, Mike had done everything he could to get her to safety. He’d so much wanted to protect her that he’d been willing to send her away with his cousin Raine, who he disliked—at least Mike disliked Raine when it came to Samantha, she thought.

  Leaning her head back, trying not to smile, she remembered the last time Mike had gone out on a date. That night he’d wanted her to be jealous and had been disappointed when she hadn’t been. Later he’d told her that his “date” was an eighty-six-year-old woman who he thought had worked in the nightclub where Maxie had worked.