Mystery Date

Something was already sinking inside Leigh’s chest. “No.”

Margot shrugged. “My publisher canceled my last contract. Sales were declining, they said.”

“Oh, Margot.” Leigh sat away from the headboard.

She held up a hand. “No pity, please. Don’t they say that when a door closes on you, a window opens? Well, that’s what happened with this new blog and the ‘city girl goes country’ book I’m working on. You know the blog’s getting a lot of hits, and maybe that could lead to another publisher buying a book or two. And then there’s Clint.” Margot got a dreamy look in her eyes. “He’s the best opened window of all.”

“So life is good?”

“How can it not be with him around? Everything’s great, including the fact that his brothers, who were about to sue the pants off of him because he didn’t want to sell the cutting-horse ranch, have backed down now that we’ve got a bulldog lawyer on our side.”

Leigh leaned against the headboard again, smiling at her friend.

Margot returned the gesture. “Know what the worst part of all this was, though?”

“What?”

“Telling you that I’d failed.”

Leigh knit her brows, about to argue, but Margot went on.

“We’ve had this competitive thing going on since college. Last month you even told me that you’ve always wanted to be just like me, and that everything came so easily to me.”

Leigh remembered. They’d been in a bridal shop, perusing gowns for Dani. She had gotten a pang that day—the sense that she would probably never get married because her inner chubby girl kept telling her no man would want her in the long run, after she inevitably gained all her weight back. She’d told Margot that she more or less envied her because Margot had always been the perfect one, but then her friend had gotten that expression on her face....

Now Leigh understood the reason.

“In my eyes,” she said to Margot, “you’re always going to be a winner. Look at how you’ve bounced back already.”

Margot smiled, and she was just about to say something when Leigh’s cell phone rang.

They looked at each other, gazes wide.

“Well?” Margot said, nearly bursting. “Are you going to get that or what?”

Leigh promised to talk to Margot later as she grabbed the phone and peered at the ID screen.

“It’s Beth Dahrling,” she said, her pulse whipping into a frenzy again, just before she pushed the answer button.

* * *

WHEN ADAM RECEIVED Beth’s Skype call on his computer that night, he was in his bedroom near the attic of the mansion, a room that hadn’t been included in Leigh’s tour.

He pushed aside the quarterly projections for one of the biofuel companies he’d invested in and focused on Beth instead.

She was wearing a silk dressing gown, her hair in a bun at her nape, as she sat at a desk in the guest cottage on the mansion’s property. “I just thought you might want to know that Leigh officially said yes to tomorrow.”

Adam sat back in his chair, smiling. He’d been trying to steady his heartbeat for the past couple of hours while wondering if Leigh would sincerely want to have a second encounter with “Callum.” He’d ended the date so abruptly that he thought he might’ve made a mistake in trying to leave her with her curiosity about him intact.

“You’ll make arrangements for a limousine to pick her up at her hotel tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yes, and I told her where to wait on the beach below the mansion after she’s dropped off. After your date, it’ll be taking her back to her hotel, too.”

“She’ll be here just in time to enjoy the sunset.”

He had a little something planned—slow seduction, heated suggestion, sweet words on a phone as she strolled down the shoreline much as she’d strolled through his rented mansion tonight, flirting with him.... He wasn’t sure what would come after that, though.

All he knew was that he had to see her again. Hear her voice, her laugh.

Beth reached for the keyboard as if to terminate the connection.

“Wait,” he said. “You’re not still angry with me.”

“Angry isn’t the word.” She looked away from the computer, offscreen.

“Then what’s going on with you?”

Her jaw tightened, and he could tell he was in for it.

“We’ve known each other a fairly long time, Adam,” she said, still unwilling to meet his computer gaze. “I didn’t know you in college—you weren’t there long enough for that—but you were still young when you and Carla hired me to manage your business affairs.”

“My late twenties wasn’t that young. Especially after what I’d gone through when Dad died.” And a few years later, he’d felt even older after watching how much Carla had suffered with the damned cancer.

“Believe it or not,” Beth said, finally looking into the computer’s eye, “you were different back then. You were...normal.”

The word struck him. “Normal?”

“You actually had the capacity to feel. You wouldn’t have shut yourself away and screwed with a woman’s head like you did tonight...and like you’re probably going to do tomorrow. Unless I’m wrong and you’re going to be Adam Morgan with her.”

A short laugh escaped him. “What’s normal anyway?”

Was it setting yourself up like a target and waiting for life to shoot bullets at you? Was it taking those bullets and pretending that they hadn’t ripped you apart? Or was “normal” the opposite—putting on layers and layers of protection just so you could make sure you never got hit again?

Beth was shaking her head. “Don’t ever ask me what normal is, Adam. I might not have the definition, but I know it’s not this. And I don’t think for a minute that this Callum act is going to make you happy in the end. As I told you earlier, someone’s going to get burned in your little game, and I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be you.”

He bristled. “Overly concerned for Leigh, are we?”

“She was one of my sorority sisters and in general she’s a nice person. I don’t like to see people hurt.” She tilted her head. “I don’t like to see you hurting, either.”

At that moment, he wished he could be different, if only for Beth’s sake. But he liked being this way, didn’t he? Or maybe he just had to be this way to tolerate what life dealt out.

“Truthfully,” Beth said, drawing her robe around her tighter, “I’m surprised Leigh is going for this.”

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