Passion

by Marilyn Pappano

  She gave him a long look. “And what’s the verdict?”

  “You do.” He had envisioned her, for no reason he could recall, as a brunette instead of a graying blond, but, other than that small detail, she was pretty much what he’d expected.

  “I must say, you’re nothing like I expected.”

  “And what did you expect? A raving lunatic? Wild hair and wild eyes?” He smiled faintly. “Sorry to disappoint you, but the only thing I’m crazy about is Teryl.”

  Rebecca leaned against the front of her desk, crossing one ankle over the other. At his side, Teryl was standing behind one of the two chairs, resting her arms on the high, curved back, clasping her hands together. Neither woman looked particularly comfortable. “I understand you’re visiting here from Colorado by way of New Orleans,” Rebecca remarked. “How long will you be staying?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Where will you go from here? New York?”

  It was the obvious choice, John acknowledged. If he was intent on playing out this scam—or if he really was crazy enough to believe that he was Simon Tremont—the next likely target, Candace Baker at Morgan-Wilkes, was in New York. “I haven’t decided that, either,” he replied, fixing his blue gaze on her. “But, you know, I always thought New York might be a nice place to visit—see the Statue of Liberty, catch a Broadway show, maybe take a tour of the house that Jack built.”

  There was a moment of utter stillness as Rebecca went stiff, her smile frozen on her unmoving mouth, and her eyes widened in shock. So she did remember that long-ago note. John allowed himself only the faintest smile of triumph as he went on. “You lived there a long time, didn’t you? If I decide to go, maybe you could make a few recommendations—you know, hotels, restaurants, sights to see.” He paused. “Maybe a lawyer.”

  She was still staring at him as, without waiting for a response, he claimed Teryl’s hand and began pulling her toward the door. “It was nice meeting you, Ms. Robertson. I’d better be going, Teryl. Come and walk me to the door.”

  Teryl didn’t speak until they were at the back door again. Looking puzzled, she offered him the umbrella, but he refused it with a shake of his head. “What did I miss back there?” she asked. “What gave her such a shock?”

  “Jack is a nickname for John, right?”

  She nodded.

  “And Morgan-Wilkes is a publishing house that was pretty small-time until they bought the first Tremont book.”

  “Which made a name for them and helped turn them into one of the big boys in the publishing world. Hence, the house that John built—or, in keeping with the nursery rhyme, the house that Jack built. I assume this is a private joke between you and Rebecca.”

  He shrugged. “Not exactly. It’s just something she mentioned in a note a few years back, and it stuck in my mind.”

  “Apparently, it stuck in her mind, too.”

  Nodding, he opened the door and stood there for a moment, watching the rain. The storm had passed, although if the black clouds off to the west were any indication, another system was moving in fast. The rain didn’t look as if it ever intended to stop. He knew he should leave, should go on home before the next storm hit, but it was still early. No one else was in the office, and he wasn’t keeping Teryl from work.

  She stood beside him in the doorway, leaning her shoulder against the wood frame on the opposite side. “Did anyone ever call you Jack?” she asked, her voice soft, her curiosity idle.

  “No. Sometimes Tom and Janie called me Johnny, usually when something else had gone wrong between our parents and me.” When they were trying to cheer him up or calm him down. When they were trying to make him forget that, no matter what kind of kid he was, no matter how good or bad, their folks were never going to love him the way they loved their older son and younger daughter. He had often wondered whether they had ever loved him at all. Today he knew it didn’t matter. His parents were a long-ago part of his past. They had no place in the present and no place at all in his future.

  “Johnny.” She tilted her head to one side and studied him, then grinned. “I can see that.” Before he could fully savor the sound of the nickname in her voice, she gestured outside. “The rain seems to be letting up a bit. Go now so you don’t get soaked.”

  He gave her a kiss, then started for the truck. Halfway across the parking lot, he turned back and found her watching him. “Hey, Teryl?” Feeling suddenly awkward, he hesitated, then blurted out, “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “Believing me. Trusting me. Helping me.”

  She smiled in response, and he turned again, skirting a puddle at the back of the truck. A moment later, he heard the door close, but just before it did, he swore he heard a soft murmur.

  “Any time, Johnny.”

  Given a choice, Rebecca never would have left her office for lunch on such a miserable day, but thanks to Teryl and this crazy man she’d gotten hooked up with, she didn’t have a choice. She had to keep the appointment she’d made this morning. She had to reassure herself that her suspicions—Teryl’s suspicions and this John Smith’s claims—were unfounded.

  This crazy man. Truth be told, John Smith didn’t strike her as mentally unstable. She had certainly understood her assistant’s attraction to him. He was handsome, and he seemed nice enough, friendly enough. And, face it: there was something about a big man that made a woman, feminist or not, simply feel safe. Cared for. Protected. She would bet that John Smith made Teryl feel cared for in every way.

  Funny how, at the same time, he made her feel that her world was at risk of coming apart.

  The house that Jack built. As a woman who was always all business and serious work, she occasionally had a clever moment, and just such a moment had produced that description of Morgan-Wilkes. Although she had often thought of the publisher that way, beyond the one time she’d included it in a note to her client, she had never repeated it to anyone else. That meant there were only two ways John could have learned it: if her client had repeated it to him, or if he was her client.

  Oh, Christ, don’t let that be the case, she silently prayed. Please let the man approaching her now be the real Simon.

  He drew no attention as he crossed the dining room. If anyone recognized him as the man from the “New Orleans Afternoon” interview, they didn’t show it. Maybe it was his appearance; he wore a baseball cap that covered most of his light brown hair and plastic-framed glasses that gave his eyes an overlarge owlish look, and he looked as if he hadn’t shaved in two days or more. Or maybe it was simply that the other diners didn’t expect to find the great Simon Tremont in their midst for lunch. Whatever the reason, he seemed to be traveling pretty much unrecognized.

  From what little she knew of him, that probably didn’t make him very happy.

  “Rebecca.” He sat down across from her and laid a black folder on the table. “I was surprised by your invitation this morning. I figured a luncheon appointment would be scheduled at least a few days in advance.”

  She responded to the chastisement in his voice with an apology, even though it annoyed her. “I’m sorry for the short notice, Simon. It won’t happen again. I had intended to clear this with you last week, but there was a mix-up,” she lied.

  “It seems your assistant isn’t very reliable. It would probably be in the agency’s best interests if you replaced her.”

  She gave him a long, unwavering look. She wasn’t feeling kindly toward Teryl this morning, but her employees were rather like family: she could criticize them, but she didn’t care to hear someone else do it. “My assistant is very reliable, Simon. I would find it very difficult to replace her.”

  Picking up the menu, he shrugged as if he couldn’t care less. “It’s your business. So… what was it you wanted that required a trip into town in weather like this?”

  “It’s nothing important, really. I just thought that, since you’re ready to give up all the mystery, it would be a good idea for us to get together periodically—you kn
ow, to discuss the future, look ahead, make plans.”

  He gestured with a nod toward the folder he’d brought with him. “There’s the future.”

  “What is it?”

  “The first two chapters of my next novel.”

  “May I see it?”

  He shrugged and continued to study the menu. She reached for the folder, withdrawing the stack of pages tucked inside. She delayed reading only long enough to order a salad and iced tea when the waiter came; then she turned her attention to the chapters. Moment after moment passed. She was only vaguely aware of the waiter bringing their drinks and of Simon, passing the time by tapping his fingers on the edge of the table. By the time she finished reading, the young waiter was serving their meal.

  “Well?”

  “Nice. Very nice.” She returned the pages to the folder, then spread her napkin over her lap. “Interesting characters, strong mood. You’ve captured the futility of the man’s feelings for Eliza very well.” She offered him a confident smile. “It’s your usual outstanding job.”

  Her words satisfied him, damned near made him preen, and they weren’t really lies, she assured herself. The chapters were nicely done. They were intense, the atmosphere creepy, the menace building from the very first scene. The story was just different. There was a mean-spiritedness to it that she’d never seen in a Tremont book. He didn’t like the character of Eliza Byrd. He was taking pleasure in setting her up for the fate that was to befall her.

  Still, the writing was good, and the readers would like it… probably. And it was just the first few chapters. By the time he finished the outline and showed it to her again, it would be much farther along in development. Eliza and the unnamed man would be more fully fleshed out, and all the emotion, all the understanding and the skill that had made him a master of characterization would be in place.

  “I didn’t expect you to be working again so soon. I thought that, after the way you pushed so hard on Resurrection, you would take off at least a few months, maybe even a year, before starting again.”

  He shrugged her off. “I don’t need time off. I figure I’ll have enough of this ready to show to Candace by the end of the week. I want this one to come out as soon after Resurrection as possible.”

  “Morgan-Wilkes will be thrilled.” She infused her smile with all the warmth she could muster—a tremendous amount, considering that simply being near him made her cold. “You know, with all the Tremont successes, they really are the house that Jack built.”

  Simon gave her a disinterested look. “Jack who?”

  Her smile began slipping, and nothing, damn it, nothing she could do could stop it. Needing a drink to clear her throat, she reached for her glass, but her hand was unsteady. Instead, she clasped her hands together in her lap and concentrated on keeping her voice even, level, and empty of panic. “You know, Jack is a nickname for John. And there’s that old kids’ rhyme about this is the house that Jack built, and publishers are often referred to as…”

  He was looking at her, his brown eyes blank, as if he had no idea in the world what she was rambling on about. Trailing off in mid-sentence, she called up the best smile she could manage, but it felt much more like a nervous twitch. “Never mind. It was a bad joke.”

  Somehow she made it through the rest of the meal, paid the bill, and stood to say good-bye. On impulse, she reached for the manuscript pages. “Can I keep these? I’d like to read over them again.”

  Still seated, Simon shrugged. “That’s why I brought them—so you’d have a copy.”

  Not for her approval, not for her opinion, just so she would have a copy. Rebecca curled her fingers tightly around them. “It’s been a pleasure, Simon.”

  He gave her a long, disarming, gazing-right-through-her look, then smiled. It was a chilling thing to see. “Let’s do it again. But next time, call ahead. A week’s notice should be sufficient.” Then, with a dismissive gesture, he turned back to the wine he was finishing.

  Leaving him there at the table, she walked stiffly and quickly through the dining room and outside to her Mercedes. She didn’t even notice the rain that dampened her hair and ran down the jacket of her suit. Locked inside the car, she dropped the folder on the seat, disliking even the feel of it in her hand. She started the engine, turned the air conditioner on, then reached for a tissue from the box in the other seat to pat her face dry. Her hands were trembling, making the thin paper flutter, and her heart was thudding painfully in her chest.

  The man in the restaurant, the man she knew as Simon Tremont—the man to whom she had recently sent a check of John Smith/Simon Tremont’s money with more zeroes on it than she cared to count—acted as if he’d never heard her little joke before. Even with her explanation, he hadn’t understood it. It hadn’t been the least bit familiar to him.

  But Teryl’s John had known it. He had understood it perfectly.

  Could Teryl be right? she wondered, dreading such a possibility so badly that she felt sick with it. Could he be the real Simon Tremont? Could that man in the restaurant right now be a fraud?

  Taking a few breaths, she calmed herself. She needed a clear head to sort this out. No panic, no fear—at least, none yet. Not until she was convinced there was reason to fear.

  What evidence did John Smith have to prove that he was Simon? None that she could see. Teryl had admitted that the paperwork—all the records that eleven years of writing as a business would have generated—had supposedly been destroyed by an explosion. As far as she could tell, all he had was his claim, an extraordinary knowledge of Simon’s career, familiarity with her inside joke, and an uncanny ability to mimic Simon’s writing style.

  There was surely some logical explanation for the knowledge. He probably knew the real Tremont, had probably been friends or neighbors with him, had probably been in and out of his house up there in Colorado. He had probably sneaked peeks at Simon’s work, at Simon’s mail. As for the writing, any reasonably talented author could, with practice, successfully mimic another author’s style. The write-like Hemingway and Faulkner contests held each year proved that.

  And what evidence did Simon have? He was also certainly knowledgeable about Tremont’s career. Presumably he had all the paperwork that John couldn’t produce at home in his office. Granted, he hadn’t been familiar with her silly little joke, but if he hadn’t understood it or thought it funny in the first place, it was perfectly logical that he would have forgotten it by now.

  And he had the biggest, most important proof of all: Resurrection. No one disputed that he’d written it, not Teryl, not even her John. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that only Simon Tremont could have written that book and no doubt in anyone’s mind that the man in the restaurant was the one who wrote it. Therefore, he had to be Tremont.

  With Resurrection on his side, there was no reason to debate. No reason to doubt. Not that damnable joke that still bothered her. Not the fact that John certainly fitted her image of Simon Tremont far better than the real Simon did. Not the fact that, in comparing John’s pages about Liane Thibodeaux and Simon’s pages about Eliza Byrd, John’s writing felt much more like Simon’s than Simon’s did.

  Simon wrote Resurrection. He wrote the best book she’d ever read, and that made him the winner. Her trust, her support, and her agency were behind him.

  All the way.

  Simon sat at the table, his fingers curled around the stem of his wineglass, and stared moodily out the window at the parking lot beyond. More than five minutes had passed since Rebecca had left the restaurant, and yet she still sat out there in her big expensive car. She couldn’t be waiting for the rain to stop; any fool could see that wasn’t going to happen for a long time. She could be rereading his partial, but somehow he didn’t think so. She seemed to simply be sitting there.

  Why?

  He tossed down the last of his wine, then pushed his chair back with a scrape. This trip into town had certainly been a waste of time that would have been much better spent at his computer. Whe
n she had called this morning insisting that he meet her for lunch—insisting, he’d thought at the time with some amazement; didn’t she realize that no one insisted anything of Simon Tremont?—he had thought something important was up. He had expected to be given schedules for his next talk show appearances, to be informed of new and more impressive requests for his presence. He had expected to hear how Barbara Walters and Larry King had wheeled and dealed to win him for their shows, had thought People might want him on the cover, had considered a preliminary discussion for the major cross-country or international book tours that were inevitable before the end of the year.

  Instead Rebecca had wanted nothing. She had wasted his time for nothing. Vague talk about discussing the future and making plans—neither of which they’d done—a little lukewarm praise for Eliza Byrd, a joke too dumb to be deserving of the name, and small talk. Nothing.

  Walking out the door, he stood for a moment underneath the canopy that sheltered the entrance. The Mercedes was gone now. Maybe she had seen him leave the table. Maybe she hadn’t wanted him to see her sitting out here.

  She had gotten weird after reading the chapters. Had she recognized Teryl in Eliza? Maybe he should have changed the description. Maybe he shouldn’t have written her as a dead ringer for Teryl, but he found the process easier that way—when he could call a real person to mind, when he could borrow looks, mannerisms, voices, attitudes. Besides, it was so much fun planning Eliza’s demise and seeing it in his head happening to Teryl—imagining the fear coming into those big brown eyes, disfiguring that soft creamy skin, crushing that slender, delicate throat, and, ultimately, watching the life drain out of that deceptively sweet, allusively innocent face.

  He honestly didn’t think Rebecca could have made the connection between her assistant and doomed Eliza. Her mind didn’t work that way. She was a bright woman—he wouldn’t have her for an agent if she weren’t—but she didn’t have even a fraction of his complexity. So maybe it hadn’t been the chapters that had made her edgy. What had come after? A comment that she’d thought he would take some time off. He’d said the partial would soon be ready to send to Morgan-Wilkes, and she’d made her dumb remark. You know, with all the Tremont successes, they really are the house that Jack built. She had watched him, waiting for a response, and then she had gone into that edgy explanation before finally, awkwardly letting it drop mid-sentence.