Scarlet Nights

by Jude Deveraux

  It went against Mike’s grain to throw any sports match, but he didn’t want to make Sara’s father look bad. At the first tee, Mike didn’t make his best effort and the ball fell far short of the hole.

  Dr. Henry Shaw looked at Mike in speculation. “The lower your score, the better I’ll speak about you to my youngest daughter.”

  Mike looked at the man for a moment, mumbled “another matchmaker,” then made a hole in one.

  By the time they got back to the clubhouse, half a dozen men were asking for games with him.

  “What they need are lessons,” Dr. Shaw said under his breath and slapped Mike on the shoulder.

  “So what about our deal?” Mike asked.

  “I would have done that anyway. Luke said you were a natural athlete, and I wanted to see if it was true.”

  “Now I see where Sara got her love of conniving.”

  Dr. Shaw laughed heartily. “Don’t tell her mother that. Ellie thinks Sara is the ‘weak’ one.”

  The two men had lunch together, and Mike was introduced to everyone as “Sara’s friend.” Not one person mentioned that Sara’s wedding date—to another man—was soon approaching.

  That night, Mike was to go on his date with Ariel Frazier.

  “I’ll cancel it if you want,” he told Sara when he got back to the apartment.

  “Why would I want that? Ariel is intelligent, well traveled, and she’s beautiful. I’m sure you’ll have a great time.”

  It was, of course, absurd, but Mike was disappointed when Sara didn’t mind that he had a date with another woman. During the last few days, they’d come to … well, almost live together. They shared most meals, went nearly everywhere together, and people in Edilean seemed to consider them a couple.

  “Are you sure?” Mike asked.

  “Go on. Have a good time. I’ll see what Joce is doing. Luke said he’d be busy writing, so Joce will be alone.”

  “If you’re sure it’s all right …”

  “Go! Enjoy yourself.”

  As soon as Mike was out the door, Sara texted Joce:

  DID I EVER MENTION THAT I HATE ARIEL FRAZIER?

  Jocelyn replied with

  MIKE WON’T LIKE HER. COME OVER AND WE’LL TALK ABOUT IT.

  As Sara clicked off her phone, she tried to remember Greg’s face. She could, but not clearly. And she had no pictures of him to remind her. One of Greg’s former girlfriends had been a professional photographer, and he said she’d been so horrible to him that she’d turned him against ever again having his picture taken. When Sara thought of that now, she wondered if it was a true story.

  Over the last few days not only Greg’s face had faded from her mind but also the … well, the essence of him. All she seemed able to remember now was the work he piled on her and how he made her feel confused and inadequate.

  Where was he? she wondered. And what was he doing? She still sent him messages now and then, but they no longer had the urgency they once did.

  She knew it was all Mike’s fault. He was easy, pleasant to be with—and when they weren’t together, like tonight, she missed him.

  She didn’t want to think about it, but she did not miss Greg.

  Sara left the apartment and went to see Joce to talk about the man who’d taken over her life.

  From the first moment Mike had seen Ariel Frazier in her car at Edilean Manor, he knew he wasn’t interested in her. Her diamond earrings and three gold bracelets had reminded him too much of the women in his past. Besides, in that first glance, he’d recognized Ariel’s aggression and her self-sufficiency.

  Now, she was sitting at the bar of what posed for a country club in Edilean, wearing black trousers, a green top, and high heels that probably cost as much as his last month’s salary. There were at least four men eyeing her and trying to decide when to make a move.

  In other circumstances, meaning before he’d met Sara, Mike would have been pleased to see such a woman waiting for him. But now, he thought she looked gaudy and overly made up.

  When he looked at her eyes, he saw amusement in them and understood that she knew what he was thinking. He went to stand beside her at the bar and gave two of the men watching her looks to get lost. Only then did he turn back to Ariel. She really was quite beautiful. There was no need to introduce themselves, so they didn’t.

  When the maître d’ told them their table was waiting, Mike stepped back to allow Ariel to go ahead of him. When they were seated, she didn’t open her menu. “I’ll have the ceviche, then the trout,” she told the waiter.

  “Same here,” Mike said, and their menus were taken away.

  As soon as they were alone, Ariel said, “You’ve fallen under Sara’s spell, haven’t you?”

  “I’m not sure what that means, but, yes, I do like her.”

  The waiter poured white wine into Mike’s glass. After he’d tasted it and nodded, the waiter filled Ariel’s glass.

  When they were alone, Mike said, “So you’re about to become a doctor?”

  “Now why is it that I think you have no interest in what I do? My guess is that you accepted this date so you could find out more about Sara. Am I right?”

  She was correct; Mike did want to know what she knew, but he said nothing. It was his experience that people always filled up silence.

  “Everyone in town knows what you’re doing,” Ariel said, then paused to take a sip of wine. “You’re trying to win Sara away from her fiancé.”

  Mike didn’t show it when he let out a breath of relief. For a moment he’d thought she—and maybe the entire town—knew about the case.

  “Did Sara tell you that in school she and I were rivals?” Ariel didn’t wait for him to answer. “She was always surrounded by boys asking her out, wanting to study with her, whatever, but she wouldn’t let them get near. It drove the boys mad. As for me, it was always ‘Hey, Ariel, wanta play baseball?’ or ‘Ariel, grab the other end of the picnic table and help me carry it.’

  “I couldn’t wait to get out of this town and away from my overprotective father and brothers. I wanted to go someplace where men saw me as female, not as ‘one of the Fraziers.’”

  Mike felt a sense of déjà vu, that he was back on one of his cases. Ariel Frazier had everything going for her, but she was still whining about what had happened to her in high school.

  “It’s not working, is it?”

  “And what’s that?” Mike’s voice was cool.

  “The ‘poor little me’ act.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Well, good,” she said as she reached into the bread basket. “If I can’t impress you, then we’ll have to be friends. And that means I don’t have to play the dainty lady. How about some butter?”

  Mike’s smile was genuine. “Good idea.”

  “So what do you want to know about dear little Sara?”

  Mike gave her a look that said “cut it out” and Ariel laughed.

  “Tell me about her first boyfriend,” Mike said as their food was served. “Brian something.”

  “Never met him.” Ariel bit into a piece of heavily buttered bread.

  “It’s my guess that you remember every word you’ve ever heard about Sara. Right?”

  Ariel smiled. “You got me there. His name is Brian Tolworthy, and he’s an archaeologist. Just like in some fairy tale, Sara went to Williamsburg and came home with a gorgeous Englishman. And of course he was to inherit the obligatory Big House and a fortune with it. Sara would have been Lady Tolworthy. I remember the name because when I came home at Christmas it’s all my mother could talk about. I was entering med school, but all she wanted was for me to get married and have babies like perfect little Sara was going to do. Sorry. Sara Shaw is a sore point with me.”

  “So why didn’t she marry him?”

  “This town is saying that Tess and Luke conspired to get you and Sara together. Is that true?”

  “This town talks too much. Why didn’t Sara marry the English guy?”

  Ariel’s face cha
nged to more serious. “I wasn’t here, but my mother wrote me that he received a call in the middle of the night. Someone said his parents had been killed in a car crash. Sara drove him to the airport and—” Ariel shrugged. “I heard that she never saw him again. My mother wrote me a couple of months later that Sara had received a letter saying he was marrying his childhood sweetheart back in England.” She looked at him. “If you’re living with Sara, why aren’t you asking her about all this?”

  Mike was experienced at ignoring questions he didn’t want to answer. “So then what happened?”

  “What happens to all the Princess Saras of the world? Another man showed up right away.”

  “Anders.”

  “Yeah. Greg Anders.” Ariel gave a little smile. “Do you know him?”

  “Never met him, but I’ve heard a lot about him.”

  “He likes to cause problems.” Her smile broadened and she gave a little laugh under her breath.

  “It sounds like you know him.”

  “Every half-decent-looking woman in this town—who isn’t likely to tell Sara, that is—has had an encounter with him. My brother Colin told me that Sara couldn’t be getting much in bed in the last few months because he’s been too busy jumping on Erica at the store—and with two of his clients. He seems to like older women.”

  Mike thought about what he’d read in the files. Stefan’s marriage was one of those arranged deals so favored by his family. When he was sixteen, he was married off to a thirty-four-year-old widow. Stefan’s son was now eighteen and his daughter seventeen—and he had a stepson born the same year he was. But for all the age discrepancy, the marriage had worked. Everyone knew that Stefan genuinely loved his wife, who was a year older than his mother, but that didn’t make him stay faithful to her. And, yes, their records showed that Stefan liked older women for his many affairs.

  Ariel looked down at her plate for a moment. “I can’t imagine how I must sound to you, but those old school yard rivalries die hard. In high school I had to work night and day to be included with the other kids. I was on the cheerleading squad and I put the yearbook together. You name it, I did it. But you know who won Best Liked? Sara. I don’t think she had even one extracurricular activity.”

  Ariel was quiet for a moment. “So do you plan to take her away from Anders then go back to … Where is it you live?”

  “South Florida.”

  “So you two will live in a condo on a beach and deal with hurricanes every summer?”

  “Only people who don’t live there worry about hurricanes.”

  “That was a good nonanswer.”

  “And the best one I have. You ready to go?”

  “In a hurry to get back to Sara?”

  Mike started to make a noncommital reply, but instead, the truth came out. “Yes.”

  “I envy her.”

  Mike paid, and they left the restaurant. Mike made sure Ariel got into her car safely, then he called Tess and asked her to find out anything she could about Brian Tolworthy of England.

  “Can I send him hate mail?”

  “You knew him?”

  “Of course. We all thought he was going to marry Sara, but then he dropped her in a really rotten way. I wanted to go to England and kick him, or better yet, to send you to beat him up. I wrote you all about it.”

  “Did you? I can’t remember every dumped-on girl you wrote me about. Could you find out everything you can about him now? Tell the captain to send me any stats he can find and to call the police in England. Tell them to send someone out to talk to Tolworthy—and take a tape recorder. I want to hear the bastard’s side of what he did to Sara.”

  Tess was silent for a moment. “You think Greg had something to do with this, don’t you? I can hear it in your voice. Do you think maybe he threatened Brian and made him leave? I know Greg showed up in town not long after Brian left, and we’ve all thought Sara latched on to Greg on the rebound. She seemed to want to prove to us, and herself, that she could get a man and keep him.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me all this?”

  “I did tell you!” Tess yelled. “I told you every word of it!”

  “You probably did,” Mike said calmly, “but I forgot. Find out everything, will you?”

  Tess regained her calm. “How are the tarot cards coming?”

  “I haven’t seen them. Can you get it spread around town that Joce is going to tell fortunes with a very unusual deck of gypsy cards?”

  “Sure. Easy. I’ll call one person, and three hours later, everyone in town will know. Mike, Joce won’t be in any danger, will she?”

  “No, but I hope a deck or two of cards disappears. We’re making a curtain that can be drawn, so Joce can look away when customers of the right age show up. If Mitzi is here, we hope she’ll pocket an unopened deck. And one of Luke’s cousins is installing a camera system so we can record everything that goes on in the tent.”

  “Which one?” Tess asked.

  “The cameras are made by—”

  “No, you idiot! Which cousin is setting up the camera system?”

  “How the hell would I know? Everyone I’ve met is a cousin or aunt or whatever to Sara.”

  “So how’d you like Ariel? Too much of a good thing, right?”

  His sister didn’t fool him; he knew exactly what she wanted to know. “She’s a hag compared to you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Good night, baby sister.”

  “Good morning, big bro.”

  When Mike got back to the apartment, he was glad Sara was in bed. He’d again brought in some files to go over, searching to see what he’d missed.

  Hours later, Mike closed the files and tucked them under the mattress. No matter how many times he read about what Mitzi had done, it still shocked him. That such crimes could go undetected and unpunished for so very long—generations—made him sick.

  It was six A.M. when he turned off the light and for all that he’d found out, he still had no idea why the Vandlos were after Sara.

  17

  ON SUNDAY MORNING, Sara told Mike through his closed bedroom door that he had to get out of bed and get dressed to go to church.

  “Go away,” he said, sounding like he had a pillow over his head.

  “I’m not leaving without you. You get up every morning before daylight to go to the gym. It’s after nine A.M. now, so you can get out of bed to go to church.” She waited but heard nothing. Quietly, she turned the knob and went into the room. It was so dark that Sara guessed Tess had had a thick interlining put in the curtains. In anticipation of her brother visiting? Sara wondered.

  Tiptoeing, she went to the window, threw back the curtains, and sunlight flooded the room. She turned at Mike’s groan. All she could see of him was one bare arm holding the pillow over his head.

  “Get up, Mr. Sleepy. It’s time to go.”

  “Edilean …”

  She couldn’t understand what he’d said, so she lifted the corner of the pillow, but Mike pulled it back down. “Did you say a naughty word on the Lord’s Day?”

  Mike turned his head away and didn’t release the pillow.

  “Michael Newland!” Sara said, her hands at her waist. “You must get out of bed. I’m not facing church alone. Everyone will drive me insane with questions about you. You can—Oh!” she squealed as Mike’s hand shot out and pulled her off balance. She fell forward, her hands out. When they touched the bed, Mike swiped his hand across her wrists so she landed facedown on the bed, her feet still on the floor.

  “Good. Quiet,” he said, sounding more like Tarzan than ever.

  Sara pulled herself upright. “Brute strength will get you nowhere. I said get up and I mean it!” She grabbed the quilt and threw it back. Mike didn’t move so much as a muscle—which was unusual, since it seemed that he slept in the nude.

  For a long moment Sara stood there looking at him, her eyes wide. “Then I take it he has his clothes on,” Tess had said that first night, and now she knew what his siste
r meant.

  Mike’s body was magnificent. He could have modeled for a Grecian statue of an athlete. His wide shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist, and even lying absolutely still as he was, she could see the deep muscles on his back. There were mounds and valleys that she very much wanted to touch.

  Below his waist, his round, firm buttocks were perfectly shaped above legs that curved down to the back of his knees.

  “Cold,” he murmured.

  “Wh … what?” Sara asked but the word came out in a croak. “What?”

  “I’m cold. If you’re through examining me, doc, put the cover back.”

  Sara swallowed and took a breath. Heaven help her but she wanted to skip church, forget about her promise of marriage, and climb into bed with this Adonis.

  Instead, she got herself under control. “Inspect you, ha! I’ve seen the Frazier boys stark naked, and you’re not even a close second.” As she went to his closet to pull out his only suit, she didn’t add that the boys had been in preschool and she was little more than a baby. “If you can stop showing off, you have thirty minutes to shave and dress.”

  When she heard movement behind her, she didn’t look back because she knew Mike had turned over. She’d resisted him once this morning but she didn’t think she could do it a second time. Besides, she didn’t know if he’d pulled the cover over the lower front of him.

  “Thirty minutes,” she repeated as she left the room, shutting the door behind her.

  A minute later, she was running out the back door to go to her own apartment. She was dressed for church, but once she was inside, she began to remove her clothing and toss it on the floor. She was happy to see that Luke had put in a new toilet, but that wasn’t her objective. She quickly got into the shower and turned the cold water on full blast. If she’d had time, she would have filled the tub with ice and jumped in.

  She ran the shower as long as her ecologically minded conscience could stand, then turned it off. She was covered in goose bumps, but they didn’t remove the images in her mind. Mike naked, facedown on the bed. His muscular arms, legs … his back! The valleys of muscles in his back were deep enough to plant seeds in.