Underneath It All

“Drop in anytime,” Bart said as he watched Darren.

“I’m in trouble.”

“Hey,” Bart complained, as Darren tugged on the cap. “You can’t wear that! You’re a Giants fan.”

“I’m in serious trouble, Bart.” Darren panted, expecting any second to hear the sounds of that crazy female after him like a baying hound after a juicy fox.

“You have to help me.”

As well as being a good friend, Bart was a dedicated lawyer. He immediately assumed an air of concern. “You did the right thing coming here. What’s up?”

“I quit my job just now and I have to get out of town. Go far away where no one has ever heard of Matchmaker.”

Bart’s expression of concern was replaced with one of hastily suppressed amusement. “Is that what your trouble is?”

“Yes! It’s that magazine.”

“I don’t want to make your day any worse, old buddy, but you’re everywhere. It’s not just the magazine. It’s the Internet, chat groups, newspapers and on the TV. You, my friend, are news.”

“I need to stop being news. Damn it, I never agreed to be Match of the Year. I want to sue Matchmaker Enterprises or whatever they call themselves, Bart.”

“What for?”

“You’re my lawyer. Aren’t you supposed to advise me? How about defamation of character? Harassment? Libel?”

“Buddy, they aren’t defaming you when they call you God’s gift to women. It’s supposed to be a compliment.”

“I can’t even live in peace in my own home. I’m being mobbed, stalked. Women I don’t know give me their bras. Mary Jane Lancer proposed.” He’d known Mary Jane for years. Their fathers belonged to the same club. She was part of his social circle, but there never had been a hint of attraction between them until the bachelor thing.

A rich chuckle answered him. “Harassment. Hmm. There are men all over America who would kill to be in your shoes. You’d only make a fool of yourself.”

There was a long pause. Darren waited while Bart drummed his fingers on his blotter, obviously deep in thought.

“But libel, now you’ve got something. Let’s see, I just happen to have a copy of the magazine.” He twirled his chair and found the hated magazine in a stack of papers and flipped it open. “Ah, here it is. They called you rich, good-looking and intelligent. Man, we can sue for millions.”

Darren’s heart sank. “Okay, very funny. So what do I do?”

“My best advice is to go with the flow. Have fun with it. Make your father’s company a few more millions. Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame and kiss a bunch of gorgeous women. Seriously, have you seen the babes who go for stuff like this? Be the rich boy all the girls want to marry. It’ll be over in a year and long before that somebody else will be news.”

“You don’t get it. It’s not just me being a minor celebrity and that’s it. A week ago I was a happy single man living a wonderful single life. I was a New York bachelor. One of millions. Now I’m some freakin’ great catch and no one but no one thinks I should remain a happy bachelor.”

He paused to take a breath and a quick check outside Bart’s office. So far he seemed safe.

“In the past week, I have been proposed to by girls with braces, women old enough to be my mother, loonies, the lonely, the desperate, and even women I thought were my friends, Like Mary Jane Lancer.” That, he thought, had been the worst. “It’s like they’re trying to snap me up before any other woman gets a chance.”

Bart started to chuckle. “Let me get this straight. Are you telling me you don’t want women all over the country throwing themselves at you? Is that what I’m hearing?”

“Yes! I told Serena Ashcroft I won’t cooperate. They should admit they made a mistake and find someone else. She told me to think about it. No hurry. I told her I won’t change my mind and she laughed.”

“I’m sure they would stop writing about you if you won’t cooperate. They have the right to choose you as the most eligible bachelor, though. You can’t stop them loving you.”

“I don’t know. She’s a devious woman. Who knows what she’s planning? I can’t stand it anymore.”

Bart shrugged. “Do what movie stars do when they want some privacy. Hide. Lay low somewhere until this blows over.”

“Hide?”

“Sure. If you insist on trying to avoid publicity, why don’t you pretend you’re in the Witness Protection Program? Find a new locale, a new identity. Maybe a disguise.”

Bart had enjoyed a brief spell of fame in college as an actor. Particularly memorable had been his Falstaff. Truly a method actor, he’d become roaring drunk every night for weeks before the performance in order to prepare for the role. He’d been good, too. Except that his brain had been so alcohol-saturated and his hangover so severe, that he’d forgotten half his lines on opening night.

What Bart was suggesting was that Darren run away. He’d never been the type to run from his problems, but suddenly it seemed as though he were being offered freedom, the likes of which he’d never known.

He sat up, slipping his sunglasses down his nose so he could regard his friend more clearly. “If I hide out somewhere, I can take some time to work on my own stuff.” Not having to sneak in his real work at night would be incredible. He had some money saved up, and if he sold his BMW he would have some decent cash quickly, enough to live on for a while. He could probably finish his line of software programs in less than a year.

“Right. You’re the next Bill Gates. I forgot.”

Darren didn’t bother to correct him. He had one line of educational software he was developing to help kids read. His younger brother Eric had a symbol-retrieval problem and he’d found a way to help him by writing a simple program. Eric was now studying engineering at college—and the fact that he’d made the difference in his younger bro’s life gave him a lot more pride and satisfaction than his most successful day at the family firm. Now he wanted to see if he could create a more elaborate program that might help other kids like his brother.

Maybe his program wouldn’t cure cancer, but helping kids overcome learning hurdles felt more useful to him than getting some KIM client’s brand of deodorant up two percentage points in the marketplace.

“Okay. But you’ve got to help me.”

Bart grinned. “You have come to the right place,” he said, almost rubbing his hands with glee. “You’re one of the most famous faces in America. But, my man, we’re about to change all that.” Bart, the sometime actor, rose majestically from behind his desk and gestured. “Follow me,” he said. After a surreptitious glance up and down the hallway, they surmised the coast was clear, then took the elevator to the main floor.

After hiding in the back seat while Bart drove them out of the building’s car park, Darren wondered how famous people handled celebrity. He felt hunted, and the baseball cap and dark glasses, not to mention the Brooks Brothers suit, weren’t helping him blend in with the crowd.

They ended up in a drugstore, where Bart pondered a row of Miss Clairol boxes. “You want to blend in with the locals, but look completely different from how you look now. Where are you going, anyway?”

Maybe it was the throwaway comment about Bill Gates, but it made up Darren’s mind. “Seattle.”

“That’s a long way away.”

“Exactly. I don’t know anyone there, I’ve no reason to go. Hell, I was only there once for a weekend. No one will think to look for me in Seattle.”

Bart picked up a box of dark brown hair dye.

“What are we doing in the girl aisle?”

“Women’s hair dye doesn’t last as long as the men’s stuff,” Bart explained, reading the instructions on the box as though he might actually need them.

“I’m not dying my hair.”

“Do you want to disappear or don’t you?”

“Yes. But…” He stared at the box. “If I wear Miss Clairol, I might as well pierce my ears and wear pink golf shirts.”

Bart snapped his fingers. “Now, that’s a great—”

“Forget it.”

“Listen, here’s some advice from a once potentially great actor. If you want to become a character, you step into his shoes and into his skin.”

“And into their hair dye. Yeah. I’ve got it.”

“It’s not just his hair. It’s the whole persona. What we’re doing is building a character. Who is this man who’s going to appear in Seattle? We’ll start with the hair and see where it goes.”

A woman glanced at them curiously and then picked up a box with a picture of a blonde on it.

Darren stood there surrounded by women’s hair-styling products, wondering how his life had ever come to this. Finally, he pulled out his wallet and handed Bart a twenty.

“You’re buying it.”

Two hours later, they were at Bart’s place and his damp hair was now brown. Darren couldn’t believe how it changed his appearance. His skin tone seemed lighter, his eyes darker.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Bart, who was getting right into this dye-your-hair and dress-up thing. “You really are a computer geek, and you’ll be living in Silicon Valley north, so why not dress like one? It’s the perfect disguise.”

“What, you mean wear plastic pocket protectors and plaid weenie shirts?”

“Too much?”

“Definitely.”

“Okay. The trick is to keep people’s attention off your face. I’ve got some black thick-framed glasses from when I played Willy Loman. They’d be perfect. The hair, baseball caps, those will help. But I’m thinking wild shirts like boarders wear. Loud, casual and cheap.” His buddy laughed and then clapped him on the back.

“Geek chic.”

Darren snorted. But he kind of liked the idea. Who’d look for him under a loud shirt? He’d never owned such a thing in his life.

“Okay,” he said, knowing he couldn’t pass up this opportunity to escape being marriage bait and at the same time follow his private dream. “I’ll do it.”

“Great.” Bart dug in a drawer for a pair of kitchen shears. “Now, hold still,” he said, and picked up a lump of Darren’s still-damp hair.

“I paid two hundred bucks to have my hair cut two weeks ago,” Darren informed his old buddy.

“Welcome to the world of—hey, what are you going to call yourself?” Bart asked as he started cutting.

KATE MONAHAN SAT AT HER kitchen table with her calculator and her monthly budget. She had the pleasant feeling of being ahead of her target.

She’d worked a lot of extra shifts to get here, but knowing her investment account with Brian’s bank was growing, and that soon she’d be able to follow her life-long dream and enroll in teacher’s college, had her beaming.

She heard the broken cement at the end of the duplex’s driveway rattle as a car rolled in. The landlord was too cheap to fix the drive, or much else, but the rent was reasonable so she didn’t complain. She wondered if this could be the new tenant moving in upstairs, and got up to look out the window.

She hoped it would be someone as friendly as the last tenant, Annie.

Kate went to the kitchen window and peeked out. Well, it was a guy moving in. Annie had been a fun-loving flight attendant—a girl after Kate’s heart—and the house had been more like a single home than a duplex. But Annie had been transferred to Denver. Somehow, Kate didn’t think this guy and she were going to be watching old movies together and sharing bowls of popcorn, or borrowing shoes and jackets.

He got out of a nondescript beige compact that had seen better days and glanced around as though suspecting he might have been followed.

The guy was tall, and he stretched his back as though he’d been driving a long time, pulled off the baseball cap he wore low over his eyes and scratched his scalp. He had dark brown hair in a cut his barber ought to be ashamed of, glasses with thick black frames on a pleasant, strong-boned face. He looked sort of familiar, though she was certain they’d never met. But it was hard to concentrate on his face when he was wearing such a wild shirt. Bright red, with big white flowers. The shirt was open to expose a white T-shirt that was soft from many washings. He wore creased cargo shorts and navy flip flops.

Shoving the cap back on his head, he popped open the trunk and pulled out a computer keyboard and a cardboard box with computer-type stuff sticking out and started toward the outside stairs that led up to his suite. Suddenly, he stopped, his gaze focusing on her kitchen window.

Her hair. It must be her wretched hair that had caught his attention. She’d thought she was hiding behind her curtains, but obviously he’d caught sight of her.

Well, she’d have to introduce herself now.

She opened the kitchen door and stepped out. “Hi,” she said, with a friendly smile.

He nodded. Not smiling. Not speaking. Looking at her as though she might be an assassin sent to kill him. Oh, great. He looked like a cross between a California surfer boy and a computer nerd, and was paranoid to boot.

He stepped past her and kept going toward the stairs. “I’m Kate,” she said. “I live downstairs. If you need anything—”

The upstairs door opened and then slammed shut.

3

OH, NO. Kate groaned when she saw the note taped to the washing machine. Now what?

“Occupant of Apartment B,” the note was headed.

Plunking her overflowing laundry basket on the floor, Kate ripped the scrap of paper from under the tape. The sight of the cramped black scrawl annoyed her even before she read the note.

Occupant of Apartment B,

Please don’t leave your clothes in the washer.

Thank you.

D. Edgar. (Occupant of Apartment A)

“Now, what’s his problem?” Kate grumbled, her words echoing off the gray cement walls of the duplex’s laundry room.

Glancing around, she quickly spotted the problem and uttered a cry of distress. On top of the dryer was a tangled, limp mess of pink and white. She recognized the remains of her brand new satin camisole, which had started life a sexy deep red. The camisole snaked around a pair of formerly white men’s briefs that blushed furiously at the intimacy.

Just before breakfast she had carefully put the camisole on to wash in cold water and mild soap. Occupant A had obviously thrown in his clothes without checking that the washer was empty and cranked up the hot water.

And goodbye to last month’s clothing treat.

Kate held the limp, twisted fabric up to her body and sighed. The pitiful remains of the camisole hardly covered her full breasts. It had shrunk as well as run, ruined beyond hope.

Screwing the camisole into a ball, she hurled it at the trash. “Jerk,” she muttered. Tossing back her hair, she poked her tongue at the ceiling, in the general direction of her brand-new upstairs neighbor.

Furiously she stuffed her laundry—bright reds, greens, blues, purples and dramatic blacks—into the washer and cranked the water setting back to cold. Should she stand here in the laundry room until her load was done? Computer brain might blow a circuit if he came in and discovered she’d started washing laundry and left it again.

Kate had known in her heart she wouldn’t be lucky enough to get another Annie for a neighbor, but she had hoped for someone compatible.

What she’d got was the biggest jerk on the planet.

Now he was messing with her clothes. And, instead of apologizing, he was blaming her for his own mistake.

Picking up his blotchy pink briefs, she shook them at the ceiling.

“If you think I’m taking this, you need to learn a thing or two about Occupant of Apartment B.”

She had to live here, but she didn’t have to put up with a rude and unpleasant neighbor. Since he’d ignored her initial greeting, they hadn’t seen each other again. She was working more hours than not, and he never seemed to leave his apartment.

The slammed door was bad enough, but no way she was putting up with snarky correspondence in the laundry room. But how should she send the man a message that she wasn’t to be messed with?

A cold note like his wasn’t going to have enough impact. Kate paused, still holding the formerly white discount-store briefs, and an idea hit her. She knew how to send him the message. A glance at her watch told her she had just enough time.

She was still smiling when she pushed through the doors of the department store and sailed toward Men’s Wear. Shirts, ties, T-shirts, socks—her gaze roamed the aisles until she spotted what she was searching for.

As she entered the department, she felt uncomfortable. Did nice girls buy underwear for men they’d never met?

“Can I help you?” The young male voice stopped her in her tracks. Lunging toward a pile of woolen socks, Kate grabbed a pair of scratchy gray knee-highs and turned, pinning a bright smile on her face.

“No thanks, just looking around.”

The clerk was a pimply faced boy, likely not out of his teens, and his eyes bulged when she faced him. His protuberant gaze reminded her how tight her fuchsia tank was—maybe she should have bought the large, after all—and how short her black skirt.

“Well.” The word came out like a squeak. He flushed and tried again. “If you want anything, let me know. I’ll be, like, you know…here.”

Her own embarrassment evaporated in a smile. “Thanks,” she said casually, sifting through the socks until he moved away.

She slunk around, feeling as guilty as though she were planning to rob the place, until there was no sign of customer or clerk, then sidled into the racks of briefs, where she lost her embarrassment in the joy of the hunt.

Scanning the rows of possibilities, she was drawn first to a pair with a deep blue background dotted with perky sunshine-yellow happy faces.

No, she decided, too happy.

Then she almost succumbed to a pair of designer bikinis emblazoned with red-and-white hearts—one prominent red heart centered in the front—but heaven forbid the jerk should think she was coming on to him.

At last, she spotted them—a pair of deep burgundy bikinis adorned with ivory-colored Rubenesque cherubs. She chuckled aloud. They were more expensive than anything with so little fabric should be, but the delicious sense of revenge was worth it.

Disguising the briefs under a pair of the gray socks, Kate wandered surreptitiously out of Men’s Wear and kept walking until she found a pay station with a female cashier.

She was running late for her shift by the time she returned home from the mall so she ran into the laundry room, propped the designer briefs on the dryer and penned a quick note:

Dear Occupant of Apartment A,

Tell your mother this is what men wear nowadays.

These are on me. (Crossed out).

These are for you.

Please look in washer before you add clothes next time.

K. Monahan (Occupant of Apartment B)

CURIOSITY TUGGED HER to the laundry room the next morning. A basket of clean towels was her cover, in case Occupant A happened to be there. She was dying to see whether or not he had picked up his new briefs.

They were gone. In their place on top of the dryer was a gold-and-white box embossed with the name of Seattle’s most expensive lingerie shop.

Intrigued, Kate walked over to it. She didn’t see a note. Putting down the basket of towels, she removed the cover from the box. Inside, even the gold-and-white tissue was printed with the store’s name. Very classy. She breathed in the scent of roses emitted by the rustling tissue as she dug into the box.

A gleam of palest cream-colored silk peeked out. She stroked it softly before withdrawing an exquisite camisole embroidered with dainty peach rosettes. The tag told her what she had already guessed, the garment was pure silk. Even without a price sticker, Kate knew this camisole was far more costly than the red polyester satin it was replacing. The garment tag also told her it was the correct size.

How could Occupant A have guessed? She stood for a moment, horrified to think he’d checked out her body while blowing her off.

She stood frowning, caressing the soft silk thoughtfully until she remembered the discarded camisole in the trash can. Sure enough, when she picked it up she saw the size label had been neatly snipped off. He’d thought of everything. Maybe he was trying to say he was sorry? She rubbed the soft fabric against her cheek and then noticed the note in the box.

Dear Occupant of Apartment B,

This is what women of taste have always worn.

D. Edgar (Occupant of Apartment A)

Kate felt a sharp pang of hurt. Women of taste. How classy that sounded.

Women of taste didn’t grow up in her neighborhood fighting with four other siblings for a few minutes in the bathroom in the morning. Women of taste had hours to bathe and scent themselves before stepping into their silk lingerie. Kate was probably the only one in her family who owned lingerie—even if it was only polyester.

And what did Occupant A know about women of taste? Him with his too-bright shirts and horrendous hair? In the week since he’d moved in, the only company he’d had was that computer of his.

Who did he think he was to insult her like this?

Kate had an Irish temper to match her auburn hair and green eyes, and it blazed into life in a sudden rage. A veil of red shimmered before her gaze as she snatched up the camisole and marched up the outside stairs.

She was banging on the door of Apartment A in no time, ready to explode. She could hardly stand still; phrases she would say to him bubbled madly in her boiling anger.

The door opened.

Before Occupant A could say a word, Kate threw the silk camisole in his face.

It snagged on his glasses, hanging like a tassel on a life-size loser lamp.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” she shouted.

His eyes widened.

“How dare you…” she spluttered, looking at the badly dressed, slouching, bespectacled figure in front of her.

“How dare you—you suggest I don’t have taste. When I need tips on how to dress from a surfer boy comic strip I’ll ask you!”

He opened his mouth to speak but she kept on shouting.

“I happen to work in a beauty salon. It contains the word beauty, which is something you don’t know the first thing about. I have plenty of taste and not…not…computer chips for brains.”

“I—”

Kate drew a shuddering breath and raised her hand to shake her forefinger in his face. “Furthermore, I hate your attitude and your rude behavior and your stupid notes and I think you owe me an apology because—”

“You’re right.” The words were quiet and calm.

She’d expected a shouting match and the quiet words caught her off guard.

Occupant A had taken off his glasses in order to unsnag the camisole, which seemed to be caught in the hinge. He looked down, fiddling.

“What?” she shrieked.

A pair of clear gray eyes met hers ruefully. “I said, ‘You’re right.’ I was out of line.” He sighed, his face wrinkling as though in pain. “I apologize.”

All Kate could think was what a shame it was that such beautiful eyes were wasted on a jerk who covered them up with glasses and stared at a computer monitor all day.

With a nod that sent her dangling earrings swinging, she said, “Well, okay. No more nasty notes.”

“It was a stupid thing to do,” he agreed.

His voice was a surprise. Deep and rich, with an upper-crust East Coast accent.

Kate drew a long breath. She’d expected a battle. Adrenaline pumped through her body. She’d been ready to rant and rave and throw things.

His unexpected apology took the wind out of her sails, leaving her stalled on his doorstep, with no anger to push her on. Her rages were always over as suddenly as they began, and in the calm aftermath she felt a little foolish. She backed up a couple of steps and, taking another shaky breath, suddenly smiled.

“I’m sorry, too, if my temper led me to say anything I shouldn’t have.”

When she smiled at him she noticed his eyes widen in shock and he shoved the now-freed glasses back on his face.

She turned to leave.

“Wait.”