Finding Bess

by Victoria Gordon

  None of which did anything to dispel the truth. He already had fallen in love with Bess. The question now was what to do about it He was so intrinsically involved in business problems at the moment, he didn’t dare leave the state, much less the country. Which prohibited a flying visit to Colorado.

  How in hell he could convince her to come to him, he didn’t know. But there had to be a way, and he'd find it.

  And then he did ... or rather it was done for him.

  Idly shifting back and forth between the link messages he had received during the day, he came across a brief announcement that seemed to leap off the screen at him and yell: Hey, look at me!

  A mystery writer in The States and a romance writer here in, of all places, Tasmania, were announcing their intention to collaborate on a book. That’s all that was said, but it was enough. Geoffrey’s brain went into overdrive.

  So much for sleep after his eighteen-hour day! He was still awake when dawn cast a pink blanket over the city of Launceston. Tired, to be sure, but not exhausted. Weary, to be sure, but so exhilarated he couldn’t be bothered noticing.

  He had his bait. Now all he had to figure out was which pond to throw it in. His own website, where patience would be the key to success? Or a private email to Bess, which would force an answer more quickly, but might force it too quickly, and therefore make it the wrong answer?

  “Bugger ... bugger ... bugger,” he muttered, tossing the choices around like a handful of peanuts. It was, Geoffrey realized, a decision of vital importance. He knew without exactly knowing why that Bess was a woman of extreme complexity. A vulnerability had surfaced at the time of her earliest link messages. Ever since, she'd displayed a coolness that was sometimes daunting. And yet, despite her ice-maiden's masquerade, she was a caring, thoughtful, warm person.

  Geoffrey's broad shoulders gave the semblance of a shrug. In the passionate, often chilling, passages of her books, where murder and rapine surged to life, there was ... something else. And although he sensed he might be alone in seeing it, he also wondered if he wasn’t sometimes making it up.

  “No,” he said, his fingers still suspended above his keyboard. “Nobody could be that obsessed with those elements, and she is bloody obsessed. I’d bet the farm on it. She has to have a dark side, too damned dark for words, or she's been there herself. So think carefully on what you’re about to do, young Geoffrey. Because whatever else, it isn’t going to be bloody easy.”

  Impatience got to him in the end, and although he identified it, Geoffrey was incapable of dealing with it. So he chose private email.

  “My dear Ms. Carson,” he wrote, using her pen name because he knew of no other for her. It was probably her mother’s maiden name, he thought, assuming she had followed that quaint American custom.

  “Loved your responsive poem, although it was perhaps a bit over-reactive.

  “But now that I have your attention, as the man with the four-by-two said to the mule, may I ask you to open your mind and read the attachment, which is an outline of a book proposal for which I desperately need your help.”

  He paused several times during even that short introduction, then sighed and got stuck into it again. In for a penny; in for a pound.

  “The concept seems to me to fall squarely between my area of expertise and your own. Given that it involves both our countries during the frontier times we both favor writing about, and given that it involves more romance than I am used to dealing with, and given that I think it will go into territory with which I am totally unfamiliar, I propose that we collaborate.”

  He rubbed at his suddenly tired eyes and stared blearily at the word “propose,” wondering if he shouldn’t change it, wondering if it would prove the provocative, proverbial last straw, then wondering if he wasn’t making far too much of this in his own mind.

  “Bloody cheek calling her obsessive,” he muttered. “If it wasn’t impossible business-wise, I’d just fly there, toss her over my shoulder, and bring her home. We could sort out all the rest later.”

  “What I suggest - and honestly, Bess, I am deadly serious here,” he continued, “is that you think about flying to Tasmania for a few weeks. At my expense, of course. So that we can thrash this concept out and have a bash at seeing if we can work together. Because I can’t do this one alone, and I am bound and convinced it’s worth doing. It would shove both of our careers in a somewhat new direction, perhaps, but surely there is nothing wrong in having more than one iron in the fire.

  “So please, give it serious thought and an honest evaluation and let me know. Being aware that while I will take 'no' for an answer, I will nonetheless do my best to change your mind.”

  Enough? Too much? Geoffrey decided he was too damned tired to worry about it. Adding the attachment, which outlined the book proposal he had just spent all night creating from nothing at all, he sighed with a mixture of despair and excitement.

  And sent the damned thing.

  ~~~

  “You’re not going to seriously consider this, are you darling?”

  Mouse raised one eyebrow and peered at Bess with a scowl that was fiercely, comfortingly protective. Then he shook his so-ugly-it-was-beautiful, gnome like head in a gesture both sad and provocative.

  “Of course you are,” he said. “What a dreadfully silly question. But why, darling? I mean, Australia? Worse than Australia, Tasmania!”

  “Mouse, please.”

  His eyes widened in mock shock. “Isn’t Tasmania that little bit that hangs off the bottom of an Australian map ... like an afterthought?”

  “Yes, Mouse,” she replied, then quickly added, “and no, Mouse. Tasmania is not on my agenda. There, does that answer your question?”

  “Answers mine, but I guarantee it doesn’t answer yours,” he snapped, then softened the remark with a grin. “Don’t ever play cat-and-mouse with me, darling, because it’s a game you can’t win, so let’s not go there.”

  “I won’t, believe me. But why should I want to go all the way to Australia to collaborate on a book with a man I don’t even know? I have a book here that’s half-finished and really should get finished soon, even if I haven’t a strict deadline for this one. And I have a dozen ideas for others. And I don’t even have a passport. I’ve never been out of the continental United States in my life. And—”

  “Okay, you can stop now. You’ve convinced me,” Mouse growled with a shake of his head. Then he whooped with almost childish laughter. “Now listen, I have some absolutely fabulous ideas for positively decimating this guy’s website. We could have him so busy running around chasing his tail, he wouldn’t have time to bother you.”

  “No, Mouse. Please. I appreciate the thought and I know you’d love the challenge, but it wouldn’t be right. He is, whatever else, a professional colleague. So thanks, but no thanks. And I mean it,” she added, doing her best to look formidable.

  “All right, dear, I'll leave him alone ... for now. But if he keeps bothering you, I'll roar.”

  “I doubt it will come to that, honest.” She glanced at her watch. “I've got to get back, Mouse. My story is finally submitted. However, my book isn’t going all that well and I have to whip it into shape before I lose it entirely.”

  She was about to leave and travel through the labyrinth of passages that led to the street when Mouse muttered something she couldn’t quite hear, so Bess turned back to see him positively beaming at her. She raised one eyebrow, which only caused the beam to turn into a veritable beacon.

  “What did you say, Mouse? And don't you dare say you didn't say anything, or I'll cut off your tail with a carving knife.”

  Standing, Mouse was six feet, four inches tall. He shrugged his massive ex-football-player shoulders, not one whit dismayed by her show of strength.

  “I didn’t actually say anything, Bess darling. I just asked if you’ve applied for your passport yet.”

  He grinned, then laughed as she turned and fled.

  Because, of course, she had applied for the
passport. Her Mouse visit was in the nature of seeking validation, after suffering through many vivid second thoughts.

  The passport was nothing in itself. She had occasionally been invited to address groups where a passport would have been needed, and had at the time graciously declined. Now she could, if she desired, go to England, where she had been invited three times. Or New Zealand (once). Or Australia.

  “This,” she said with a sigh some few weeks later, “is totally insane. I think I must be losing it.” And she stared at the still half-finished novel, no longer sure whether she liked the heroine, the story, the work she’d done so far, or even the idea of facing her recalcitrant computer again tomorrow.

  She had replied to Geoffrey, politely but firmly declining his kind offer. Only to find the next time she accessed his website that he had made the offer public.

  “Quit doing that,” she had replied on his personal email address. Only to be ignored. And Mouse, with care, managed to do his best to make things worse.

  “I told you to stop messing with Geoffrey’s website!” she shouted at his answering machine a few days later, after Geoffrey’s picture had somehow been replaced by one of a cartoon Taz, whirling like a dervish, wearing a bright pink tutu . “Damn it, Mouse, pick up your phone. This minute!”

  “He started it.” Mouse hardly sounded contrite, displaying a belligerent tone in his usually silky voice that Bess had never heard before.

  “I can fight my own battles, Mouse. Will you please just lay off? Please, please, please! I am begging you, here, you rotten rat.”

  “Oooh. Aren’t you the one? Sticks and stones, darling, sticks and stones. Or should I be talking about getting more bees with honey than with vinegar?”

  “You should be talking about stopping this inane vendetta,” Bess snapped. “Damn it, Mouse, I want it stopped. Now do it, or I’ll find another computer guru and never speak to you again as long as I live.”

  Obviously, Mouse didn't believe her. The next email from Geoffrey was so sarcastic, she thought her computer might melt.

  “Call off your tame wolf - or else,” it ended, and that statement was the most gentle comment in it.

  “He’s not a wolf, he’s a Mouse,” she replied without bothering to stop and think. “And he’s out of control, having decided to make this into some sort of vendetta, for reasons I cannot imagine. I’m truly sorry, Geoffrey, but I think it’s beyond me. I don’t even know why he’s doing it.”

  “He’s probably in love with you,” was the next morning’s reply, a remark that had her sputtering coffee all over her desk.

  Which did nothing to ease her mood, much less ease her growing anger with Mouse.

  “I rather doubt that,” she finally typed, thankful that, by this time, they seemed to have confined the issue to private emails. “Mouse is gay. So I think there's some other agenda here, although I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is.”

  “Maybe he’s in love with me, then,” came the reply. “Poor little bugger’s on a hiding to nothing if that’s the case, but there you go. Anyway, just to change the subject, have you got your passport yet?”

  How to answer that one, she wondered, looking down at the pristine document that stared accusing up at her from the desktop. Then, rising to her feet, she walked to the bathroom and stared into the mirror at a face flushed with emotions that had somehow sneaked under her usually rigid guard. Her turquoise eyes were more like opals, filled with fiery colors that seemed to flash in conjunction with the fire of her hair as she shook her head.

  She could not go to Australia, could not go to Geoffrey’s home and become professionally intimate with him. The intimacy that was required to collaborate on his book might lead to another kind of intimacy. She wasn't ready for that, and this time there was no “just now” about it!

  So why was it that his book idea filled her mind, having driven out her own like an unwanted stray cat?

  “Of course I have a passport,” she eventually replied, deftly skirting the issue. “But that isn’t the point. I simply do not feel we should be even thinking of such a project. I have a book half done and several others waiting their turn. I don’t need this 'new challenge' as you put it. Besides, I hate to fly.”

  “You’ve done book signings and conferences all over the bloody country,” Geoffrey wrote. “How did you get there ... by Greyhound bus? Come-on, Bess, you’re prevaricating here. You’re just hunting up excuses, and your stock is getting pretty thin.

  “Oh, by the way, there’s an open-ended ticket waiting for you at the L.A. airport. All the way - L.A. to Melbourne to Launceston. I’ll leave it to you to figure out how to get to L.A., but if you expect to be met at this end, you’d best let me know when you’ll be arriving.”

  Her huuumph of annoyance echoed through the room. The nerve! The absolute bloody nerve! Wincing at her use of the undeniably Aussie word “bloody,” she punched her way through the process of shutting down the computer. Then she flung herself into an indignant march around the apartment, heedless of the fact that she must look as ridiculous as she felt. She had to do something to wear off the frustration and confusion Geoffrey Barrett insisted upon stirring in her.

  And she was still marching, still not the least bit mollified, when the telephone rang. Given the hour, Bess knew it could be only one person, and she absently picked up receiver and said, “Yes, Father. What can I do for you?”

  “Come home.” Dover Warren Cornwall’s staccato voice came through loud and clear. “I need you here, Elizabeth. Surely you can spare your father a portion of your life.”

  “I have no interest in returning to New York,” she said firmly, not even bothering to keep the simmering anger from her voice.

  “Your interests are not the only things to be considered,” was the stern reply. “You might give a thought to the future of our holdings. After all, you’ll inherit the whole kit and caboodle one day.”

  “By then I will be too old to care, Father. You’re going to live forever and we both know it.”

  They had been here before, often, Bess thought. She had absolutely no desire to inherit the Cornwall interests. She was making a perfectly satisfactory living doing work she enjoyed and...

  “What happens when you get too old for your writing,” he snapped, somehow managing to put the same connotation on the word writing as if he’d said garbage. “Or if your markets dry up? My sources in the publishing industry tell me the entire future is nothing but a round of merger after merger after merger. There are editors being replaced or displaced every day of the week. They’ll be starting on authors, next.”

  “Then I'll do something else. It isn’t as if I’m helpless. I could ... I could wait tables if it came to that.”

  This, too, was old ground. She only tread upon it because she could be certain of stirring him up so much he might forget the reason for his call, if she was lucky.

  She wasn’t.

  “There's someone here in New York that I want you to meet,” her father said, sliding into his super-salesman’s persona as if conveniently forgetting Bess had seen that one often enough to recognize it. However, tonight she was in no mood.

  “Are you trying to marry me off again? How many times do we have to go through this, Father? I am not, repeat not, a company chattel. I am not interested in some corporate mating just to satisfy your shareholders.”

  “Our shareholders,” he snapped back, obviously unable to help himself from acting like a corporate mogul, even in a discussion with his own daughter. “And I'm not trying to involve you in some corporate marriage. It’s just that there's a man here from England whom I think would suit you very well. He has seen your picture and expressed an interest, so I said I would call you and try to arrange a get-together. Is that so wrong, Elizabeth? Does that make me out to be an ogre?”

  Bess sighed. If she didn’t give at least some ground, this would go on for hours. Angry as she felt, she could hardly hang up on her own father for appearing to want to look af
ter her. “No, it doesn’t make you an ogre. It makes you a concerned father. But there's nothing to be concerned about. I'm an adult, running my own life my own way, and I intend to continue doing so. If this Englishman is so wonderful, introduce him to your hair stylist, your astrologer, your dietician, your personal train—”

  “He says he prefers you. Apparently he's fond of natural redheads.” A chuckle that was supposed to soften the chauvinism of the remark followed.

  Bess, losing patience, didn’t bother to hide the contempt in her voice. “Then keep him on ice for a week,” she snapped. “By then it’ll doubtless be natural blondes he fancies. Listen closely, Father. I ... am ... not ... interested.”

  His pause gave her hope that he might, for a change, give up.

  “Listen closely,” he mimicked softly, too softly, warning Bess that he planned to drop a bombshell. “The man from England has to be in Denver next week on business. I gave him your address and phone number, so you can expect a call about Friday. This is supposed to be a secret, Elizabeth, but he asked me if you liked diamonds.”

  “Diamonds? I don't like di—”

  “Or emeralds. I said emeralds. He went straight to Tiffany's. His name is...”

  Her father got no further. Bess thumbed the disconnect button and ran out onto the balcony, tears of frustration pouring down her cheeks. When the phone rang again, she rushed back into the apartment, turned off the ringer and her answering machine, then fled back to the balcony. She needed – craved – fresh air.

  Deciding sleep was the only immediate relief, she found herself tossing on a sweat-soaked pillow, dreaming nightmares that brought her awake every five minutes, or so it seemed. In them, Paul lived again, the Highwayman’s horse pranced and galloped, and the characters in Geoffrey Barrett’s proposed book came to life and began to speak to her.