Sweet Liar

by Jude Deveraux

  Mike was looking over the very long register tapes. “Twelve minutes to drag half the store to the counter, eleven minutes to haggle over the price with all the gusto of an Egyptian camel merchant; seventeen minutes to tie up three registers and use four rolls of paper, and thirteen minutes to pack the taxi while half of New York gave me directions on how to do it. Yes, Sam, we’re right on time.”

  Leaning across two shopping bags, she smiled at him. “Do you mind?”

  “No,” he said honestly, reaching out to caress her cheek. The patronizing look was gone and in its place was again that look of desire.

  Still smiling, Samantha leaned back against the bags. It didn’t look as though Mike was going to expect her to be a docile little thing who served him breakfast in bed.

  Since the movers didn’t bother to arrive on time, Sam and Mike arrived only twenty minutes after they did to find Maxie sitting up in bed and giving orders to the three robust young men who were sweating as they hauled the furniture into the room. A doctor had a stethoscope to her heart.

  “Lady, we already told you that we just move things, we don’t hang pictures,” one of the men was saying.

  “Well, Nana,” Samantha said upon entering the room, “it looks as though you have everything under control.” She kissed Maxie’s cheek as the doctor straight-end up, then after he’d left the room, Samantha started telling her all about what Mike had done to her apartment, then how Mike had bought so many books and magazines and how Mike said this and did that and—

  Mike left the room with the doctor. “How is she?”

  “Failing,” the doctor said, then grinned. “But she’s happy while she’s here. I wish all my patients had a couple of fairy godmothers like the two of you. But go easy on the booze, all right?”

  “She brought chocolates today.”

  “Fine,” the doctor said, then grew serious. “I hope your wife is prepared for Abby’s death.”

  “Yeah, Sam’s prepared for death,” Mike said, no longer smiling. “She’s had lots of rehearsal time. Lots.”

  It was three hours later when the telephone beside Samantha’s newly decorated bed began ringing and Michael realized that it was his own line and pushed the appropriate button. After removing Samantha’s ankle from his ear and replacing it with the telephone receiver, Mike said, “Hello?”

  “Michael? Is that you?”

  “Mom! Good to hear your voice. You sound so close.”

  Samantha untangled herself from Mike with the speed of a preacher’s daughter caught naked at a revival meeting and sat up primly, the covers clutched to her neck.

  “Oh, God, no,” Mike was saying, his voice filled with trepidation, then looking up at Samantha, he saw that she’d gone white—as though she thought he’d just heard of someone’s death. Mike put his hand over the receiver. “My family has come to New York to meet you.”

  After the long moment it took for the meaning of those words to sink into Samantha’s brains, she collapsed back against the bed. She almost, almost wished it had been a death.

  “How many of you are there?” Mike asked then paused. “Oh? That many, huh?” Pause. “Dad come too?” Pause. “Great, it’ll be good to see everyone and I’m sure the kids will have a good time.” Mike’s face changed from mere dread to horror. “Mom, Frank didn’t come, did he? Tell me Frank didn’t come too.” Pause. “Well yes, of course I’ll be glad to see him, and no, Raine and I didn’t scratch his precious car.” Pause. “Sam? Oh, she’s here with me.”

  Samantha watched Mike’s face turn red.

  “Mother! I’m shocked by you. Okay, okay, we’ll be there just as soon as we get dr…er, ah, as soon as we can. See you in a few minutes.” As he hung up the telephone, Samantha could hear Mike’s mother laughing.

  For a moment they lay on the bed, not touching, both looking up at the underside of the canopy.

  “Why?” Samantha whispered.

  Mike rolled on his side and ran his finger down her bare stomach. “I told you: They want to meet you.”

  “Why do they want to meet me? What have you told them about…us? Did you tell them that we…that we…?”

  Mike grinned at her. “One of the major reasons I left Colorado was because of things like that call. But it didn’t do any good to come to New York, they still know everything about me. But to answer your question, no, I didn’t tell them about us, but I’m sure Raine did and Blair did and Jeanne and Vicky did. I don’t know why I left Colorado, since it’s a regular convention of Taggerts and Montgomerys right here in New York.”

  She rolled toward him. “Oh, Mike, I’m scared. What if they don’t like me?”

  “How could they not? I like you.”

  “But you’ve wanted to go to bed with me.”

  “What does that mean? That I’m indiscriminate? That if she’s pretty and sexy and I want to go to bed with her, then I’ll like her?”

  “How in the world can you separate pretty and sexy and wanting to go to bed with someone from liking them?”

  Mike gave a shrug that was the male equivalent of, I don’t know and don’t plan to analyze it.

  Samantha got off the bed. “What am I going to wear? The pink Chanel or the red Valentino or the gray Dior?”

  “Jeans. They’re in Central Park having a picnic, and there’s over a hundred of them.”

  Samantha sat down heavily. It would have been nice if there had been a chair placed where she sat, but there wasn’t.

  Moving to the edge of the bed to hang over the side and look down at her sitting on the floor, stark naked, legs crossed, Mike smiled. “You want to try the guest bedroom before we leave?”

  Samantha groaned.

  “Come on, Sammy-girl, how bad can it be? A hundred people inspecting you, asking you personal questions, my mother wanting to know if you’re a fit person to live with her precious son, the other wives looking you over, my father—”

  She hit him in the face with a pillow.

  26

  It was over an hour before they made it to Central Park because Samantha and Mike nearly had a fight when Mike wanted her to wear skintight jeans and a red T-shirt with no bra. Perhaps the argument had gone farther than it need have because she’d as soon have a fight as go to the park and be put under the scrutiny of a hundred of Mike’s relatives.

  When they finally did reach the park, Mike pointed. “There they are.”

  It took Samantha a moment to realize that the group of people she’d assumed was the entire population of one of those oddly named European countries was Mike’s relatives. There weren’t a hundred of them, there were at least four hundred, maybe five, she thought. Without a conscious thought, Samantha turned on her heel and started back toward the safety of Fifth Avenue, but Mike caught her arm. Smiling and teasing her all the way from the town house to the park, he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, so it took a moment for him to see that she wasn’t kidding, that she was indeed petrified with fear.

  Turning to look at his family, at the zillions of kids running around, at the chumminess of them all, he thought that maybe Sam was right to be a little nervous.

  “Stay here and I’ll get something to calm you down,” he said as he started toward his family.

  “Michael!” Samantha hissed at him. “I do not want something to drink!” But Mike didn’t hear her or else he ignored her, as he was already at the first table that was set up under the trees. Half behind a bush, half exposed so she could watch, Samantha saw Mike walk to a woman sitting on a chair under a tree, holding what appeared to be a nursing infant. Mike spoke to the woman for a few minutes, she nodded, then pulled the child from her breast and handed the baby to Mike.

  As though the sight of Mike taking a child from its mother’s breast weren’t enough, the fact that no one at the gathering said anything to him was, in Samantha’s eyes, quite odd. She knew he hadn’t seen any of them in at least two months and they had come all the way from Colorado and some from Maine to see him, so why did they say n
othing when he walked into the midst of them?

  A moment later he was in front of her and was offering her the drowsy baby as though he were a bouquet of flowers.

  Samantha took a step backward. “Mike, I don’t know anything about babies.”

  “You didn’t know anything about sex either but you learned,” he said, smiling lecherously. “Take him.”

  Looking at the baby he held, she thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful as this pink and white creature. There was milk on the baby’s chin, and she used the blanket edge to wipe it away.

  “He needs to be burped.” Watching with great interest, she saw Mike expertly unwind the blanket from the baby, exposing fat arms and legs, a plastic-coated diaper, and a little shirt. Draping the blanket over Samantha’s shoulder, he then pressed the child to her until she was forced to take it into her arms.

  Instinct and desire went together to make Samantha gather the child to her.

  “A perfect fit,” Mike said, leaning forward to kiss her mouth softly. “Now jostle him around a bit, thump him on the back, and get a belch out of him.”

  “Like this?”

  “Perfect.”

  When the baby gave an enormous burp, she looked at Mike with eyes that said she’d accomplished the most wondrous feat in the world, making him laugh, but she could tell that he was proud of her.

  “You’re Uncle Mike,” said a voice some distance below them. They looked down to see a very pretty little girl, about eight years old, golden brown hair perfectly curled and arranged, wearing a divine little white dress with hand-embroidered rosebuds across the front and white shoes and stockings.

  “Well, Miss Lisa,” Mike said, “aren’t you the fashion plate for a picnic? Where’d you get that dress?”

  “Bergdorf’s, of course,” she said smugly. “It’s the only place to shop in New York.”

  “Aren’t you a little snob?”

  Unperturbed, the child looked up at her uncle with flirty eyes and stuck out her foot. “But I got the shoes at Lamston’s,” she said, speaking of a popular dime store in New York.

  Laughing, Mike scooped her off the ground, buried his face in her neck, and began to make disgusting noises. The noises seemed to be a silent call for children, for they seemed to emerge from every part of the park, from behind trees and rocks, running across fields—and they all attacked Mike. One sturdy little boy attached himself to Mike’s leg, sitting on his foot, while two identical twin girls took the other leg. Mike held Lisa with one arm while she fought the children who tried to climb up Mike, yelling, “I found him first!” Within minutes Mike looked like a Zuni storyteller doll with children hanging off the front of him, arms around his neck, legs hanging down his back, and two boys swinging from the arm that wasn’t holding Lisa.

  Laughing, Samantha watched him walk toward the picnic tables, dragging screaming, laughing children with him.

  When four children ran up to him and were disappointed that they couldn’t find a square inch of Mike that wasn’t already taken, Mike said, “Bring Sam.”

  With trepidation on her face, Samantha backed away from the approaching children who collectively outweighed her, as they, with impish grins, started for her. Holding the baby to her protectively, she looked as though she were facing a pack of wolves.

  One minute she was on the ground and the next she and the baby were swept into a pair of strong arms. After an initial gasp of shock, she looked up into her rescuer’s eyes: eyes that were like Mike’s except older.

  “Ian Taggert,” he said, as though they were being presented to each other in a ballroom instead of her now being carried by him. “Mike’s dad,” he said unnecessarily. “And who do you have there?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, looking down at the baby.

  “Plan to give him back?”

  Samantha turned red as she realized that she was still holding the baby as though someone meant to harm him and she was going to protect him with her life. She didn’t know it, but that gesture won her a place forever in Mike’s father’s heart. Ian had never liked any of Mike’s other girlfriends; they always worried about their clothes getting dirty, but he liked this one.

  “Get your own girl,” Mike said and took Samantha from his father’s arms.

  “Michael Taggert, put me down!” she said under her breath as he carried her to the table and everyone, all eight hundred of them, gathered around to look at her.

  After the first twenty names, Samantha didn’t try to remember who they were, and she was grateful when she saw a few familiar faces: Raine, Blair, and Vicky—who managed to look elegant even in a pair of jeans. Sam noted Mike’s very pretty mother, his sister Jeanne who had decorated her rooms, and she noticed Mike’s oldest brother, Frank. Frank looked like the rest of the men in his family, but he was an example of how expression could change a person’s features. The honest, open eyes, so like Mike’s, were narrowed, as though he were scrutinizing everything and everyone, and the beautiful, soft Taggert mouth was drawn into a firm line.

  As Frank shook her hand, he didn’t flirt with her as Mike’s other brothers had, instead, he looked at her speculatively and said, “You will, of course, be willing to sign a prenuptial agreement?”

  Putting his arm around Samantha’s shoulders, Mike told Frank to stuff it as he led her toward the trees. “You’ve met the worst of the family, now meet the best.” As they walked she asked him questions about his family and was told that Frank planned to be a billionaire by the time he was forty and it looked as though he was going to make it. Samantha laughed at the way Mike spoke of millions and billions the way the rest of the world spoke of tens and twenties.

  Sitting under a tree, a little apart from the noise of the rest of the family, was a very pretty young woman, about twenty, who looked as though she’d stepped out of the pages of a children’s storybook. She was the beautiful princess the knights risked their lives to save, the princess who knew that a pea had been put under her mattresses. She wore a long draped skirt of layers of chiffon, a gauzy blouse, and a big picture hat like the one Scarlett wore to the barbecue. Beside her was a straw bag full of romantic novels and on her lap was an exquisitely dressed, picture-perfect baby, who Samantha found out later belonged to one of Mike’s cousins.

  “Jilly, honey,” Mike said softly, “I want you to meet Samantha.”

  Jilly looked at Samantha; Samantha looked at Jilly. Mike, with a smile, excused himself, for he knew that Sam had found a friend in his overwhelming family. Samantha sat under the tree with Jilly talking about books they had read. Within minutes there were four children sitting near them, just sitting and listening as Jilly and Samantha talked.

  One by one the women of Mike’s family came to sit with them, so Samantha got to exchange a few words with each of them. She was pleased to tell Jeanne how much she liked the apartment, how the colors were perfect, how everything was perfect. She again thanked Vicky for helping her that day in Saks and apologized for her naïveté about the cost of the clothes.

  She was a little nervous about talking to Mike’s mother, and Pat made it worse when she said, “What do you think of my Michael?”

  Samantha didn’t hesitate. “Except that he lies constantly, never picks up his clothes, pretends to be dumb when he wants to get out of doing something, and has the ability to be utterly oblivious to the fact that I am doing nearly all the housework in his house, I think my Michael is perfect.” There was an emphasis on the word my.

  Laughing, Pat squeezed Sam’s hand affectionately and said, “Welcome to the family,” then went off to play with her grandchildren.

  In between visits with the others, Samantha and Jilly talked, or rather Samantha talked, telling Jilly all about Mike and Maxie and about all that had happened since she’d come to New York.

  It was late afternoon when Samantha felt secure enough to leave the haven of Jilly and move to the picnic tables. It was while she was talking to a young woman named Dougless, who was a Montgomery and m
arried to a very nice man named Reed and looked to be in her fortieth month of pregnancy, that she had an experience that she never again wanted to have happen to her.

  As Samantha straightened from reaching for an olive on a platter, Mike put his arms about her shoulders and kissed her on the neck. “Thanks a lot for coming today, Sam-Sam,” he said.

  It was a perfectly ordinary encounter, perfectly acceptable—except that the man who was touching her wasn’t Mike. He was wearing clothes just like Mike’s and he was approximately the same size as Mike, but he didn’t feel like Mike, didn’t smell like Mike, didn’t kiss like Mike.

  “Release me,” she said, standing stiffly in his arms.

  “Nobody minds.” He continued nuzzling her neck.

  Samantha had done her best to be polite, but she did not want this stranger touching her. As she opened her mouth to say something stern to him, she felt his hand slip down her back to just above her buttocks—and the hand was moving lower. She panicked. “Stop it!” she yelled, beginning to fight him. “Stop it this instant. Let me go!”

  Even knowing that Mike’s family was staring at her in open-mouth astonishment, she didn’t care. Let them think of her what they would.

  “Get away from me. Don’t touch me!”

  Releasing her, the man stepped back, looking at her in astonishment. Everyone was looking at her as though she’d lost her mind.

  Just when Samantha was wishing the ground would open up and swallow her, Mike, walking with a couple of his cousins, a football in his hands, stepped into view, and she ran to him.

  Putting his arm about her protectively, he held her, but from the way he was laughing, she had no doubt that he’d known all along that another man planned to touch her. “Sam, honey, meet my twin brother, Kane.”

  Mike was grinning at her, as was Kane, and they seemed to expect her to smile at the two of them and forgive them their little deception. She had no doubt that this game of pretending with each other’s girlfriends had been played many times before.