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The Stranger
Come back to Heyday.
Tyler thought of the silly little city, where everything, even the coed prostitutes, had a circus theme. He thought of the old bastard Anderson McClintock, who had run the city like a feudal overlord. He thought of his brothers, Kieran and Bryce, whom Tyler had seen occasionally on the streets or in the stores, but had otherwise avoided.
Now that he’d committed to writing this book, he was going to have to return to Heyday sooner or later. He was a good reporter, and he wouldn’t leave all those stones unturned.
But he remembered the Heyday residents who hated his guts. He particularly remembered Mallory Rackham, who had run the Ringmaster Café, where the Heyday Eight had gathered to make their dates and count their profits.
Mallory, who had let Tyler spend so many hours there, chatting her up and complimenting her coffee, never guessing that he was gathering notes for his exposé.
Mallory, beautiful and ridiculously naive, whose husband had been one of the Heyday Eight’s best customers. Mallory, who had tossed a plate of French fries, complete with ketchup, into Tyler’s face when she found out who he really was.
Mallory, who for some strange reason was the only person in ten years to put Tyler’s disciplined objectivity and emotional distance in jeopardy.
“All right,” he said, ignoring the wriggle of doubt. “I’ll come back to Heyday.”
Dear Reader,
It’s not easy being the older sister. I should know—I’ve got one, and I’ve spent most of my life driving her crazy!
My sister is only two years older than I am, but in our family she’s called the “mother pretend.” At five, I was afraid to go upstairs alone, so she trotted up into the darkness at my side. At ten, I broke the priceless Oriental vase, but she told our parents she did it. Later she pierced my ears, cut my hair and taught me that sometimes less is more, especially in bad boys and blue eye shadow. She played ambassador (“Let her go, he’s a nice guy”), counselor (“let him go, he’s a jerk”) and cheerleader (“look at her go, isn’t she super?”). I didn’t ask her to do these things. I didn’t have to.
So when I had to write the story of Mallory Rackham, who suddenly finds that protecting her troubled younger sister will be both frightening and expensive, I knew where to go for inspiration. All I had to ask myself was—what would my sister do to save me? The answer was simple. Anything.
A woman like that deserves a special man, someone who understands all about love and loyalty. But sexy Tyler Balfour hardly fits that description. The third brother in the complicated McClintock clan, Tyler is a confirmed outsider. He has no interest in getting involved.
Then he meets Mallory.
I hope you enjoy their story. And if you have older sisters or brothers like mine, give them a hug today. They’ve undoubtedly earned it!
Warmly,
Kathleen O’Brien
P.S. I love to hear from readers! Please write me at P.O. Box 947633 or stop by my Web site, KathleenOBrien.net.
The Stranger
Kathleen O’Brien
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Three-time finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA® Award, Kathleen is the author of more than twenty novels for Harlequin Books. After a short career as a television critic and feature writer, Kathleen traded in journalism for fiction—and the chance to be a stay-at-home mother. A native Floridian, she and her husband live just outside Orlando, only a few miles from their grown children.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
MALLORY RACKHAM LOVED many things about owning a bookstore in Heyday, Virginia, but balancing the bank accounts wasn’t one of them.
Balance? What a joke! Watching the numbers on her computer screen cling to the “plus” column was as nerve-racking as watching an acrobat bicycle across the high wire without a net.
And she hadn’t even entered this month’s sales-tax payment. She typed a few keys, and, sure enough, the dollar total tumbled off the tightrope and somersaulted straight into the red.
She put her head in her hands and groaned. Apparently living your whole life in Heyday did things to your mind. Heyday had been built around a circus legend, and from the Big Top Diner to the Ringmaster Parade it was a one-theme town. And now she was even going bankrupt in circus metaphors.
“Mallory?” Wally Pierson, the teenager she’d hired to work the cash register in the afternoons, stuck his head through her office door. “The guy from the place is here. He wants to know if you need some more thingies.”
She looked at Wally, wondering when teenagers had stopped using nouns. She was only twenty-eight, but Wally always made her feel old, with his tattoo and his piercings and his multicolored hair.
“You mean the sales rep? About the bookmarks?”
“Yeah.” Wally clicked his tongue stud against his teeth. “So you want some?”
She stared at the computer screen. She wanted some, all right. They sold well, and the markup was extremely advantageous, much better than some of the books. But how was she going to pay for them?
“Yes. But tell him just to replace what’s sold. Nothing new until next month.”
Wally nodded and disappeared, leaving her alone with the computer screen, which was still blinking bright red.
She was going to have to borrow money from her personal account again this month. She began typing. Goodbye to the haircut, even though she’d put it off three months now and her “breezy, low-maintenance” cut stood up in spikes that made her look slightly electrified. Goodbye to the steak dinner she’d been going to cook for Roddy Friday night—he’d have to settle for pasta, though if ever a man was a born carnivore, it was Roddy Hartland.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. When she saw the final number in the home account, she grimaced. Not even enough for pasta. She felt herself sliding toward self-pity, so she closed her folder of bills briskly and wiggled her fingers to shake it off. Roddy was a millionaire. She’d make him take her out to dinner.
“Mallory?” Wally’s head was in the door again, so she arranged her face in a calm smile. He knew she was doing the books, and of course he knew business had been off lately. Wally’s weekly paycheck wasn’t huge, but it was important to him. No need to make the kid wonder where his next Whopper was coming from.
“Phone’s for you. Some rude guy, won’t give his name. Just said to tell you it’s about your sister’s wedding.”
Mindy’s wedding. Oh, hell. Mallory had completely forgotten that the first check was due to the country club at the end of the month, to reserve the room. Her eyes instinctively darted back to the computer screen. If she typed that entry in right now, the whole thing would probably explode in a storm of flying red numbers.
“Another salesman, do you think?” The minute Mindy’s engagement had hit the papers, the phone had started ringing. Apparently people assumed that when you married a state senator’s son, you had a fortune to spend on satin and lace and geegaws. They seemed to forget that the bride’s family paid for the wedding.
“Doesn’t sound like a salesman,” Wally said, toying with the silver ring in his eyebrow. “Sounds like a weirdo, actually. Voice like Darth Vader.”
Great. Just what she needed. Darth Vader peddling pink votives and silver-tasseled chair shawls.
“Thanks, Wally,” she said. “I’ll handle it.”
He ducked out, clearly relieved that she hadn’t asked him to get rid of the caller.
“Good morning,” Mallory chirped as she pulled the phone toward her. You’ve reached the offices of Maxed Out and Dead Broke. But when she picked up the receiver, sanity reasserted itself, and she merely said, “Rackham Books. This is Mallory Rackham.”
“Good morning, Miss Rackham,” a strange, electronic voice said slowly.
Mallory’s hand tightened around the telephone. How bizarre. The voice didn’t even sound quite human, and yet it managed to convey all kinds of unpleasant things with those four simple words. Everything from an unwanted familiarity to a subtle threat.
That was ridiculous, of course. A threat of what? She was a small-town bookstore owner, not James Bond. And yet this voice was mechanically altered. Why would anyone do that?
“Who is this?”
“I want you to listen to me carefully. I have some instructions for you.”
“Instructions for me? Who is this?”
He ignored her question again. “I want you to go to the bank this afternoon. I want you to get fifty twenty-dollar bills and wrap them in a plastic baggie.”
Oh, good grief. This was ridiculous, like something out of a gangster movie. Did she recognize anything about this voice? Could it be a joke? Roddy loved jokes.
But the hard kernel of anxiety in the pit of her stomach said no. She didn’t begin to understand what was going on here, but she somehow knew it was no joke.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t like your tone. I’m going to hang—”
“I’m only going to say this once, Mallory, so you’d better listen.” The metallic voice had an implacable sound, a cruel sound. She felt her spine tingle and go soft. She leaned back against her chair and tried to think clearly. Who would dare take this tone with her?
“Put the baggie in a small brown lunch bag and close it with packing tape. Then take the bag to the Fell’s Point Ferry tomorrow morning.”
In spite of her confusion, in spite of her outrage that anyone would talk to her this way, she instinctively reached for a pencil and began to make notes.
“Buy a ticket for the 11:00 a.m. trip,” he continued. “The Green Diamond Ferry. When you get on, go immediately to the front. Put the bag under the first seat on the left, the one closest to the bow. And then get off the boat and go home.”
She scribbled, her mind racing. Not because she had any intention of taking orders from an anonymous blackmailer, but because, at the very least, she should have some concrete record to show the police.
“Did you get that, Mallory? Do you know what you’re supposed to do?”
“Yes,” she said. She put down her pencil. “What I don’t know is why you think I would agree to do it.”
He chuckled. It was a terrible sound, full of unnatural metallic reverberations, like laughter emanating from a steel casket.
“You’ll do it because you’re a good sister. You’ll do it because you love that spoiled brat Mindy, and you wouldn’t want to see anything happen to that classy wedding of hers.”
Mallory scalp tingled. “Her wedding?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t want me to ruin her wedding, would you? Senator Earnshaw’s son…Frederick, isn’t it? He’s such a good catch. So handsome, so—”
“How could you do that?” She reached out blindly and clicked off the computer screen, her body on autopilot while her mind struggled to figure out what was going on. What was he getting at? What exactly was he threatening to do? “How could you possibly ruin my sister’s wedding?”
He laughed again. “Easy,” he said. “I’d just tell the senator and his son about Mindy’s nasty little secret.”
For a second Mallory couldn’t answer. She was suddenly aware that her heart was thumping, hard and erratic, like a fish struggling on a wooden dock.
This wasn’t possible. This couldn’t be happening. No one knew about…that. Not even Tyler Balfour, big-time, muckraking, investigative journalist, had discovered Mindy’s part in the whole—
“Are you there, Mallory?” The voice slowed, no doubt savoring her shock. “Are you thinking about it? About the scandal? Mindy’s always been a little weak, hasn’t she? Not too stable. God only knows what she’d do if her fancy wedding fell apart.”
Mallory opened her mouth, but in place of her normal voice she heard only a strange, thin sound, so she shut it again.
The electronic voice hardened. “Be on that ferry, Mallory. Or I’ll have to tell poor Freddy Earnshaw that his lovely bride is nothing but a two-bit prostitute.”
FOR AS LONG AS she could remember, when things got a little bumpy, Mallory had turned to her smart, sensible mother for advice and comfort.
Elizabeth Rackham had a straightforward approach to life. She called it “Eliminate Step B.” Life was as simple as ABC, she said. Everyone faced problems—that was Step A. Most people dithered and worried and agonized, which she called Step B. Then they reacted, which was Step C. Elizabeth’s theory was that, if you could just discipline yourself to eliminate Step B, you’d make much better decisions about Step C. And save yourself a lot of grief in the process.
So naturally, as soon as Mallory closed down the bookstore that night, with the ugly echoes of the metallic voice still ringing in her ears, she headed straight for a visit with her mother.
The Heyday Chronic Care Center was brightly lit and welcoming, though it was late by the time Mallory arrived. The nurse at the front desk smiled and waved her back to the private rooms. No one bothered to make Mallory sign in anymore. They all knew her too well. She’d been coming through those double glass doors almost every night for two years now.
Her mother’s room was dim, and the satellite television was set to a classical music station. Small white letters inched their way up the black screen. Verdi, the letters said. Rigoletto.
In spite of everything, now that she was here, Mallory felt herself begin to relax. Her mother always had that effect on her. Even now.
Dropping her heavy purse on the floor, she plopped down onto the bedside chair, kicked off her sandals and took her mother’s hand in a warm hello squeeze.
“I’m sorry I’m late, Mom,” she said. She leaned her head back against the soft headrest and shut her eyes. Verdi washed over her like a bath, cleaning away the dirty feeling that had clung to her ever since she’d spent five minutes on the telephone with a blackmailer. “It was a crazy day.”
But where should she begin? Ordinarily, on these visits, she kept the conversation light and upbeat. She didn’t burden her mother with the petty problems of everyday life. She didn’t mention the overdue bills or the crummy book sales. She didn’t mention that Dan, her bum ex-husband, who had never forked over the last installment of the divorce settlement, was now dating a teenager and said it was “serious.” Not that Mallory cared, except that apparently this teenager was expensive, which meant that Dan was even less likely to get around to paying up.
And, of course, she never, ever mentioned what she had discovered about Mindy. How could she? They’d all been so horrified when Tyler Balfour had uncovered a prostitution ring at Moresville College. And when they had learned that the Rackhams’ own little café had been the headquarters, the rendezvous point for the girls and their customers, her mother had been furious and mortified.
Then, about three months later, one of the betrayed wives whose husband had been “outed” in Balfour’s story had thrown a gasoline can through the front window of the café and followed it with a lighted match. Heyday firefighters had done their best, but the place, which Elizabeth Rackham had built from scratch after her own divorce twelve years ago, had burned to the ground.
“I’ve got a big problem, Mom.” Mallory didn’t open her eyes. She just held on to her mother’s soft, graceful hand. Elizabeth Rackham was fifty-five, but she didn’t look a day over forty. Everyone said she was the most beautiful woman they had ever met.
“It’s about Mindy. She’s fine right now—the wedding is only eight weeks away. Frederick is crazy about her, it’s really sweet to see them together. But there’s someone—someone who would like to spoil things. I think I can stop this guy, but I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do.”
She felt hot moisture pushing at her eyelids, so she squeezed her eyes even more tightly. She would not cry. Crying over a problem fell into Step B, and strong women never indulged in Step B.
“What should I do, Mom? Should I protect Mindy, no matter what it takes? I just don’t know what she’d do if she lost Frederick now. She’s better, really she is. It’s not like before, when she…when she didn’t even want to go on living.”
Her throat closed painfully as she remembered that horrible time. The blood all over the bathroom, spilling over Mindy’s pale wrists like red lace cuffs.
Finally she opened her eyes, letting the tears fall silently down her cheeks. She looked at her mother. If only she would answer her. If only she would give her some advice, tell her what to do.
But she wouldn’t, not ever again. Elizabeth Rackham looked as if she were peacefully sleeping, but it was nothing as natural as that. She’d had a stroke two years ago, and the doctors told Mallory that, according to all the tests, her mother wasn’t aware that her daughter was in the room.
The next morning, Mallory got in the car, a brown paper package on the seat beside her, and drove carefully through the silver spring rain. She passed the police station. She passed Roddy’s house. She passed the Heyday Chronic Care Center. She found the sign that said “Maryland—Fell’s Point Harbor” and she hit the gas. She’d have to hurry if she was going to be on that ferry before eleven.
CHAPTER TWO
TYLER BALFOUR WAS running late, and he didn’t like that. He refused to spend all day playing catch-up, so he pulled out his cell phone, called his assistant and, after about two seconds’ hesitation, told her to cancel his lunch with Sally.
The two seconds were because Sally, a beautiful blonde with the temper of a blazing redhead, had warned him that the next time he canceled a date she would assume he was canceling the whole relationship.
She didn’t mean it, of course. It probably wouldn’t take him more than another two seconds to sweet-talk her out of her snit. But he realized suddenly that he probably wouldn’t bother. Sally was gorgeous, but the thrill was gone. She was too high-maintenance anyhow. Two seconds here, two seconds there…it added up.
On the spur of the moment, he also told his assistant to ditch his three-o’clock interview. That interview was worthless. The guy might be a U.S. Senator, but he wouldn’t ever talk on the record, and Tyler hated anonymous sources.
Besides, he needed to free up some serious time. The man he was on his way to meet right now might be a lot less exalted, but he was a whole hell of a lot more interesting.
Dilday Merle was the chair of academic affairs at tiny Moresville College in Heyday, Virginia, which meant that, in the grand scheme of things, he was pretty much nobody.
But when Professor Merle had called Tyler yesterday and asked for an hour to talk about the Heyday Eight, Tyler hadn’t even hesitated. Hell, yes, he had time. He’d make time. The Heyday Eight had won Tyler a Pulitzer when he broke the story a few years ago, and they were expected to make him a couple of million dollars next year, when he published his detailed hardback version of the scandal.
He’d taken his time finding the right publisher, though several houses had been interested. He wanted to find someone who would let him tell the story straight, not just as pure exploitation. And, of course, he’d wanted a lot of money.
It was ironic, really. Eight ditzy blond college girls who spanked grown men with toy whips, then bedded them for fun and profit, had done what a decade of serious investigative reporting couldn’t do. They had set Tyler free from the underpaid grind of life at a daily newspaper.
No clock-punching for Tyler anymore. Mostly he worked on the upcoming book, which the publisher wanted to call Shenandoah Sex Circus, though Tyler was fighting to keep it simple. The Heyday Eight was good enough.
If he wrote anything else these days, he did it for magazines. In-depth and on his own schedule. In fact, his New Yorker piece should have hit the stands today. He had arranged to meet Dilday Merle in front of Bennie’s News Stand on M Street. If he hurried, he might get there early enough to grab a copy before the professor showed up.
Bennie had been selling Tyler newspapers and magazines for more than ten years, ever since Tyler was a senior at Georgetown and working on the school paper. Back then, Tyler had bought the Washington Post the way some men might buy a lottery ticket, just holding it reverently and praying that maybe, someday, it would be his byline on the front page.
“Hey, there, big shot! Who’s the man?” Bennie hailed Tyler with enthusiasm from the shadows of his crowded counter. Though it was a muggy spring day in D.C., Bennie wore his usual uniform, a pair of black sweatpants and a black sweatshirt with a hood pulled up over his balding head. He held up a copy of the New Yorker. “Who’s famous today?”
Tyler pulled out a couple of bills and traded them for the magazine. “I believe that would be me,” he said with a smile. He leafed through the pages to his story, scanned it to make sure they hadn’t cut him too much or spelled his name wrong. Good—they’d given him great play. Six pages, with full color.
Snapping it shut, he looked back at Bennie. “Did you read it?”
No one ever actually ever saw Bennie reading the merchandise, but he was the best-informed man in Washington, so Tyler assumed he must be doing it on the sly.
“Yeah,” Bennie said. “You’re slick, man. Real slick. You did a tap dance on that oil boy. You fishing for another Pulitzer?”
Tyler rolled up the magazine and stuffed it in his pocket. “It’s the Ellies when it’s magazines. But no, I’m not fishing for anything. I just tell the truth. I just tell it like it is.”
Bennie stuffed a sweet-smelling slab of gum into his mouth and eyed Tyler speculatively. “So you say. But is it really as easy as that? You gonna sleep okay when oil boy’s busting rocks in the slammer?”
Tyler thought of oil boy and his bankrupt company, his laid-off employees, his creditors who were basically screwed, and his investors who were suddenly destitute. One of them, an eighty-year-old man, had already shot himself to death rather than end up a burden to his children.
“You bet I will,” Tyler said. “Like a baby.”
Bennie looked as if he might enjoy a good debate, but Tyler, who had, as always, been subtly scanning the other customers—just in case the vice president’s wife had chosen this spot to rendezvous with her boyfriend, or the local minister was shoplifting a copy of Penthouse—realized that one of the old guys reading in the back of the store looked vaguely familiar.
He narrowed his eyes. Who was it? Thin, stooped, with shaggy white hair. Even from the back, the man was obviously not a local. His clothes were too ill fitting and tweedy for D.C.
Finally, the light went on. It had been almost three years since Tyler had seen him, but this had to be Dilday Merle.
He cleared his throat. “Good afternoon, Professor.”
Bennie’s store was small enough that Tyler didn’t even have to raise his voice. Which meant, of course, that Merle must have been able to hear every word Tyler had said since he walked into the newsstand. Tyler wondered why the old man had kept silent so long. The last time they’d met, when Merle had been trying to talk Tyler out of printing his story on the Heyday Eight, he hadn’t exactly been shy.
