Whispers and Lies

by Diane Pershing

“Hey,” Will said, “I’ve known her for years and I couldn’t agree more. Care to dance, Dr. Lou?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he took her hand and led her onto the dance floor. The band was playing a slow oldies rock number and as he pulled her to him, he said, “I forgot that the Thorne family place is up the mountain in Cragsmont, and that Kayla Thorne would have inherited it.”

  “Kayla Fitzgerald, she’ll have you know, and yes, they live up there, but not at the Thorne place. Paul’s built them their own home and it’s darling. Just in time for the baby, who will have to be gorgeous. Look at the genes he’s inheriting. I’m so happy for them both.”

  And I want what they have, Lou added silently, as Will pulled her close.

  She was taken aback by the strength of this thought. Since Will had reentered her life just two days ago, it was as though some sort of stopped-up drain of the mind had been unplugged, allowing all kinds of random thoughts to tumble out. Fantasies about Will, about having a baby, a naked yearning to be part of a couple.

  It was the wedding, of course, two people who loved each other so much getting married. And chatting with the Fitzgeralds, practically newlyweds themselves. Love in the air and on people’s faces. Even Paul, with his stern, scary face—a man she’d warned Kayla about in the beginning but who now occupied a place of affection in Lou’s heart—seemed more relaxed, even grinned when he and Lou talked about the upcoming birth.

  Nancy and Bob, Kayla and Paul. She could name a few other good, solid relationships between couples that seemed to work well, despite enormous personality differences.

  And a lot of bad ones, too, she reminded herself. Let’s not forget that. But she didn’t want to think about it, not now, not in Will’s arms, moving to the subtly arousing music of twenty years ago.

  “I wanted to apologize,” Will murmured in her ear, interrupting her musings.

  Startled, she lifted her head from his chest and gazed up at him. “For what?”

  His crooked smile was self-effacing. “All the questions I asked you last night. You got annoyed and I don’t blame you.”

  “You’re a reporter. You can’t help it.”

  “Don’t make excuses for me. Not everyone is a potential story. Sometimes I forget that what’s appropriate to ask in my professional life is inappropriate in my private life. We all have dark places inside that we prefer to keep to ourselves. You have every right to yours.”

  “Nope, sorry,” she said lightly. “Too much mea culpa going on here. I bear some of the responsibility. After all, you asked, and I didn’t have to answer.”

  “True. But just asking can be invasive.”

  She thought about that one, then nodded her head. “Okay. I accept your apology.”

  “Whew,” he said and she laughed.

  Will pulled her close again, her head against his chest, the faint dry-cleaning smell of the tux and his pine-scented aftershave mingling pleasantly in her nostrils. They danced in silence for a while, and Lou felt so good, so right, in his arms. The feel of him, the smell of him, surrounded her. There was the faint starch of his shirt, the soft satin of the tux lapel against her cheek, his strong hands holding her much smaller ones. During her days at the clinic, her nights alone or with a friend, she rarely got to feel like this…like a pure, unadulterated female. It was absolutely lovely.

  Will began to hum along with the tune that was being played. Although to call it humming was an act of kindness. She raised her head and grinned up at him. “Oh, good, another shower singer.”

  He grimaced. “And I should keep it to the shower, I know. It’s not fair—I have all this music in my soul and I can’t express it without people howling and putting their fingers in their ears. I want to come back as Sting or Chris Isaak, or even Tony Bennett.”

  “k.d. Lang or Tori Amos for me.”

  The music changed to a more upbeat rhythm. Will raised an eyebrow. “Game?”

  “Yep.”

  She loved to dance, and it had been years since she had. For the next several minutes, everyone on the dance floor sang along with “YMCA,” complete with steps, hand gestures and lots of laughing.

  Afterward, feeling a light layer of sweat on her face, Lou told Will she needed a drink. As they were walking off the dance floor, he asked, “So did you get everything put away at home?”

  Until that moment, with all the wedding hoopla and excitement, the self-analysis she’d engaged in and the sensations aroused by being in Will’s arms, she’d nearly forgotten the morning’s discovery.

  Which was pretty astonishing, considering how shocked she’d been at the time. She laid her hand on his arm. “Oh, Will, I’m so glad you asked. I found something this morning that really shook me up.”

  “What?”

  “In the attic. I went up there to see if the men who broke in had been up there. I don’t think they had. And there’s a kind of secret compartment. Well, not really secret. It’s just that Mom had covered it up with a bookcase. I moved the bookcase and there was a box of stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Her past, I think,” she said thoughtfully, then met his gaze again. “I’m pretty sure. That whole life she never talked about.”

  Like a hungry field hand responding to the dinner bell, Will’s reporter’s antennae crackled to life, and he was reminded again of Lincoln DeWitt and the questions that remained unanswered about his relationship with Janice McAndrews. Lincoln DeWitt seemed to have disappeared, or, at least, he still wasn’t returning Will’s phone calls, more of which Will had made that morning. Was Lincoln avoiding him? Or had something happened to him?

  Whatever was up with Lincoln, right now Will wanted to hear all about Janice McAndrews’s past, but he needed to tread lightly here. Lou’s feelings were important to him.

  “Come,” he said, leading her over to a quiet corner where chairs had been set up. He sat her in one, then grabbed another and drew it close. After seating himself, he took her hands in his and said, “Tell me about it.”

  “Well, there were some pictures of long-ago people. I think they may have been my grandparents and my aunt.”

  Will raised his voice slightly over the surrounding din of music and the buzz of excited conversation. “Your aunt?”

  “Remember I told you that Mom had a sister who died? There were a couple of pictures of two girls—sisters, I’m positive. One was Mom, for sure, and there was a real family resemblance between them both.”

  “Go on.”

  “And there was a birth certificate with Mom’s birth date but a different year. And a different name.”

  “A different name,” Will repeated.

  What was it Lincoln had said?

  I may have been, shall we say, intimate with the lady? Only that wasn’t her name…I think. I really don’t remember for sure.

  “Really?” Will said. “What name was it?”

  “Rita Conlon. C-O-N-L-O-N. But it might have been her sister’s. I’m not sure.”

  “Was Conlon your mother’s maiden name?” He slapped his palm to his forehead in a mock how-dumb-am-I? gesture. “There I go again, interrogating you.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t mind, and the answer is I don’t know.” She made a face of self-disgust. “Isn’t that awful? When I was young I asked Mom so many questions, but she never answered them and after a while I stopped asking. At some point, I wondered if maybe she and my father never married, and she might have been ashamed to tell me that. She was kind of straitlaced, you know. That meant McAndrews was her maiden name…or so I thought. I really didn’t know. At any rate, when they ask for mother’s maiden name on forms, I always put McAndrews. It’s the only one I know.”

  He nodded, then asked, “Was that it? Did you find anything else?”

  “A passport. With Mom’s picture…I think, as a child. Same birth date, two years earlier than Mom’s. And that name again, Rita Conlon. The entire thing is very puzzling.”

  “I imagine it must be.” Will’s head
was buzzing with possibilities, none of them concrete, but presenting more little threads to unravel.

  “I’m not sure what to do with this,” Lou said, her large brown eyes filled with confusion and not a little trepidation.

  He didn’t know why—maybe an attack of conscience—but he actually hesitated a moment before taking the next step. However, take it he did. “Would you like my help?”

  “What kind of help?”

  “I’ll be back in D.C. tomorrow. I can use all the resources at my disposal to investigate for you. We reporters have lots of connections, trust me. We’re plugged into several worldwide research networks, and I can find out most anything I need to.”

  “Can you really? But I wouldn’t want to bother you.”

  “Hey, I offered. You could ask Nancy to do it for you, I suppose, but—” the side of his mouth quirked up “—I think she’ll be kind of busy for a while.”

  She returned his smile. “I sure hope so.” Then the amusement drained from her expression. “Besides, Nancy’s local. I’d like to keep this whole thing quiet for the moment, until I know what we’re dealing with. Mom had a lot of friends in town and I wouldn’t want to do anything to cause gossip about her. She would have hated that.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “You’re sure you have the time?”

  “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that when someone offers to do something for you, you don’t say ‘Really?’ and ‘Are you sure?’ but simply ‘Thank you’? Say ‘Thank you.’”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Her gratitude and faith in him made Will squirm a bit inside. Again, he had a double agenda here, only one part of which he was willing to share with her. He really did want to help Lou—who, in the space of barely three days, was now someone who counted in his life—but he also really did want to put some of the puzzle pieces together and see if they formed something juicy he could use in his article.

  “That’s a real load off my mind,” Lou said. “Although, to be honest, part of me doesn’t really want to know. I mean, part of me wishes I hadn’t found all this out, that I hadn’t moved the bookcase.”

  “Yeah, the Pandora’s box syndrome.”

  Nodding, she sighed. “Well, too late now.”

  He waited a moment before saying, “Have you thought that those papers might be what the break-in was about?”

  Lou frowned. “No, I guess I hadn’t. Do you think so?”

  “Who knows? It’s a possibility, though. Nothing else has come up.”

  “But that would mean Mom—” She stopped, her frown deepening.

  “Go on,” he encouraged.

  “I don’t know, that she might have been involved in something mysterious or even illegal.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No. And if you knew Mom, you’d know it just wasn’t possible. She was the most honest person I’ve ever known.”

  “Honest, yes, but with secrets.”

  She thought about that for a moment, then nodded. “That about sums it up. Honest with secrets.” She gave a small shudder. “Good heavens, my mother with a secret past. It’s hard to picture it. Do you remember her at all?”

  “Not really. Sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay. But if you had known her, you would have laughed at that entire concept. She was so, well, as I said, straitlaced. I can’t imagine her any other way.”

  He grinned. “That’s how it is with our parents, isn’t it? It’s hard to picture them young and foolish, or in love, or stupid with lust. But we’re examples of the fact that they, too, were young once, and passionate. I mean, we’re here, aren’t we?”

  She laughed. “That we are.”

  Her face was shiny, and when Will remembered that Lou had requested something to drink before they began this conversation, he said, “Come on. Let’s get something cold to drink, then we’ll go out to the balcony for some air.”

  As they rose, Kathy-Ann came rushing up to them. Her blond hair was arranged artfully around her face, and she managed to make her bridesmaid dress look sexy, with dangling earrings, high cleavage and even higher spiked heels. “Hey, Will,” she said, grabbing his elbow. “Dance with me.”

  Gently, he disengaged her arm from his. “Can I take a rain check, Kathy-Ann? Lou and I are going out to get some air.”

  “Lou?”

  Lou felt a tiny, oh-so-unattractive surge of triumph as Kathy-Ann looked back and forth between her and Will, a frown between two beautifully shaped brows. Kathy-Ann, ex-cheerleader and prom queen, had been married and divorced twice; at the moment, she couldn’t seem to put Lou and Will together on the same planet. “Well, sure, just remember, next dance is mine.”

  “You got it.”

  Putting his hand under Lou’s elbow, Will steered her toward the balcony, swiping two glasses of champagne from a nearby tray on the way.

  Lou felt the cool night air hitting her warm cheeks the minute they stepped outside. Leaning on the balcony’s concrete ledge, she breathed in deeply. Another one of the things she loved about living in the mountains of upstate New York—no matter how hot the days were, the nights were always cool.

  “Alone at last,” Will said, handing a glass of champagne to her.

  “Until Kathy-Ann comes after you for the next dance.”

  “She’ll have to catch me first.”

  She laughed, filled with a silly sense of joy that Will preferred her company to Kathy-Ann’s, and aware that she was really living in the past with that one: The Revenge of the High School Nobody.

  “Let’s make a toast,” Will said, and held his glass up to hers.

  “To what?”

  He gazed around him, then said, “To the night, the stars, my sister and her new husband, and to the beautiful lady who is gracing me with her presence.”

  She felt herself blushing again—damn her pale skin! “Um, okay. Whatever,” she said lamely.

  They clinked glasses and drank. She drained hers. Then Will took her glass and his, set them both on the ledge and drew her into his arms. “I have to kiss you,” he said gruffly. “Tell me it’s okay.”

  Instead of answering him, she raised her arms, put her hands on the back of his head and drew his face down to hers, where her eager mouth waited for his touch.

  Chapter 7

  As though plunged into a swirling, fiery cosmos, Lou was lost, drowning in the tastes and sensations that were Will Jamison. The moment their lips touched, heat poured through her. She couldn’t get enough of his mouth; she wanted to devour him, right there on the balcony.

  It seemed to be mutual. Bodies pressed as close as their clothing would allow, he maneuvered them into a dark corner, where none of the revelers inside could witness anything. He backed her up against the wall, his body hard and insistent against hers. All of his body, she marveled, especially a specific part of it. One kiss, and Will had become instantly ready to mate with her. Which meant, she realized through a haze of lust, he really, truly, deeply desired her. There was no way a man could fake it.

  And that gave her all the courage she needed, because she really, truly, deeply desired him. With every pore and cell of her body.

  “Lou, Lou, Lou,” Will murmured, his hands all over her, down her bare arms, across her breasts. Feeling thoroughly wanton, she too caressed him with her hands, even moving one of them down between his legs to cup him.

  Gripping her hand in his, he eased it away. “Better not,” he whispered, his breath hot in her ear.

  “Why? Because people might see us?”

  “No, because I’m way too ready, and that is not how I want our first time to be.”

  “Ah. I see.” Slowly, she brought her hand up and rested it on his shoulder. In the balcony’s shadowed corner, on a star-lit night, they gazed deeply, hungrily into each other’s eyes. “Is there going to be a first time?” she asked.

  “God, I hope so,” he said fervently. “But it’s your call.”

  Again, they
stared at each other, both her breath and his, heavy and rasping, mingling in her ears. Caught up in a romantic, sensual bubble, she made up her mind in an instant. “I’d like to leave now, Will,” she said, her voice husky. “Will you take me home?”

  As he watched Lou insert the key into her front door, he realized he was shaking and was not at all pleased with the fact. He was shaking with desire, but also with another sensation he had no name for. Had he ever been this eager to possess a woman? Too eager, for sure. It had been years since he’d felt not quite in control of himself, and that was how it was now…on the edge of saying or doing something irrational, something he might regret later.

  A low animal growl came from the interior of Lou’s house, and that snapped Will out of any future worries he’d been dwelling on. “What’s that?”

  “Not to worry,” Lou said. “Just a minute.”

  Before he could stop her, she had stepped inside and closed the door. He heard her murmuring inside, then a few more moments went by when he wondered if she’d changed her mind. Eventually, the door was opened again and Lou stood there, holding the collar of a fierce-looking Doberman pinscher.

  “This is Mr. Hyde, Will.”

  He didn’t much care for the looks of the animal, but if Lou was introducing them, he had to figure this particular example of the breed was okay. He offered his hand to the animal’s snout; the dog sniffed it, then nuzzled and licked Will’s hand. “Whew. I’m real glad he decided to be friendly.”

  “He’s a sweetheart,” Lou said. “I brought him up here for protection. He’s a terrific growler, mankind’s original early warning system.”

  Will patted the animal on the head as Lou went on. “By the way, he’s trained to A-T-T-A-C-K if you say the word but only to overpower the bad guy by holding him down with his paws, baring his teeth and growling.”

  “Interesting,” Will murmured, making a mental note not to say the word attack in the dog’s presence. From the doorway, he watched as Mr. Hyde made his way to the rug in front of the fireplace, circled a few times, then lay down, his long snout resting on his paws.