Sweetly Contemporary Collection - Part 2 (Sweetly Contemporary Boxed Sets)

by Jennifer Blake

  “You can’t stay here forever,” Clare said, raking a smooth spot in the snow with the toe of her boot.

  “No,” he said, “but I am hoping that by the time I have to go back to the coast, Janine will have found somebody else.”

  “If you really think she will, I suppose I will have to acquit you of conceit,” Clare said, slanting him a quick glance. “What will you do if she doesn’t?”

  “I’ll have to find myself another producer, won’t I? Marvin Hobbs may be the best; that doesn’t mean he is the only one.”

  Clare gave a slow nod. “I ... I hope you make your picture. It would be a pity if no one ever saw it.”

  He looked down at her, an arrested expression in the clear blue of his eyes as he surveyed the delicate arch of her brows, the firm set of her chin, and the tender curls escaping from the clip that held back her hair. He looked away again. “I expect we had better be getting back,” he said, his voice flat.

  They had a quick lunch of soup and a sandwich, sitting in stiff formality at the table. Afterward they cleared away the dishes, then scrubbed the frying pan and pots they had been using in the coals of the fireplace, making short work of the job with the now plentiful supply of hot water. The blankets were folded and put away, the sheets placed in the laundry, and the cushions settled back on the couch. Clare and Logan worked silently. In little more than an hour all trace of the hours they had spent cooped up in that one room had been removed. As soon as the road was clear, Logan would take her into town, where she could call Beverly, and at the same time, a garage to tow her car into town for repairs. If Beverly was able to come and take her back to their cabin, then that would be that. If not, Logan had offered to drive her to Beverly’s cabin himself. Clare would just as soon it did not come to that: the sooner she was able to put this episode behind her, the better it would be.

  She was in the upstairs bedroom putting the last of her things in her suitcase when she heard the grinding of gears and the roar of a straining engine. That would be the snowplow, she thought. She snapped the latches of her suitcase shut and looked around for her coat. Logan would be ready to go almost at once. He had gone outside some time ago to clear the drive so he could get his car out of the closed garage at the back of the house.

  Finding her coat, Clare slipped it on. Her tote bag lay beside it, and she slung the strap over her shoulder before turning to pick up her suitcase.

  She had reached the stairs and started down before she realized the snowplow, if that was what it was, had stopped in front of the chalet. Quiet fell as the engine was switched off. There came the sound of an automobile door closing, followed by the crunch of footsteps moving toward the front door. Frowning a little, Clare continued down the spiral staircase, coming to a halt at the bottom. A slight sound from the direction of the kitchen drew her attention. Logan stood there, still in his boots and jacket, a water glass in his hand. His expression was withdrawn as he met her eyes across the room. As the front doorbell pealed, he set the glass on the cabinet and moved with deliberation to answer it.

  The man who stood outside on the deck was not large, and yet, with his burly shape, his craggy features and commanding attitude, he gave the impression of being a big man. From his steel-gray hair and the lines in his tanned face, he appeared to be in his early fifties. He wore an overcoat hanging open to reveal a business suit of conservative cut and color.

  “Logan,” he said with a curt inclination of his head. “Mind if I come in?”

  Logan swung the door wider and stepped back. The man gave a perfunctory scrape to his shoes on the doormat, then stepped inside, striding farther into the room as Logan pushed the door to behind him. “Have a seat,” Logan directed.

  “I’d rather stand,” the man replied, his voice hard. “My business won’t take long. I think you know why I am here.”

  “I don’t believe I do,” Logan answered, a softly dangerous inflection threading his tone, “any more than I know how you found me.”

  “Finding people is not hard, if you know the right person to ask. All I had to do was mention to your agent that I was anxious to talk to you. For some reason he was certain you wouldn’t mind being interrupted; he seemed to think you would be alone, something we both know isn’t true.”

  “That’s right, Marvin. I’m not alone,” Logan answered, ignoring the heavy sarcasm directed at him, and also the edging of menace in the producer’s tone. “There is someone here with me you should meet.”

  “I am well aware,” the man began angrily, swinging to keep Logan in view as he moved toward the spiral staircase. At the sight of Clare, he stopped in mid-sentence. The blank look of surprise on his face was so obvious it came near to being comical.

  “Clare,” Logan said, touching his fingers to her elbow to lead her forward. “This is Marvin Hobbs. Marvin, Clare Thornton.”

  Hobbs recovered quickly. “How do you do?” he said, his eyes moving from Clare to Logan and then to the suitcase behind her. Ignoring her civil greeting, he went on. “Are you leaving, or just arriving?”

  “Leaving,” Clare answered.

  “Then you must have been caught here by the blizzard?”

  Clare flung a quick questioning glance at Logan. If he saw it, he gave no sign. “Yes,” she said finally.

  “And I suppose you were alone, you and Logan?”

  “That’s right,” Clare said, twin spots of anger beginning to burn on her cheekbones.

  Amazingly, a crooked smile moved over Marvin Hobbs’s mouth. “I see,” he said, a knowing, satisfied sound in his voice.

  “No,” Logan corrected him quietly, “I don’t think you do. Clare is my fiancée.”

  Clare swung her head to stare at Logan. His face was closed and unreadable.

  The older man cleared his throat, the dull flush of a decent man caught in the wrong rising under his skin. “I didn’t ... I must congratulate you then, and apologize, doubly. You will have to admit I had cause for my error.”

  Marvin Hobbs had expected to find his wife with Logan; there could be little doubt of that. His words could apply to his misjudgment of the situation between Logan and Clare, but they could just as easily mean he thought he had been given reason to believe Janine would be there. Clare was not surprised that Logan refused to commit himself by agreeing or disagreeing with the man. As for Logan’s announcement, it was not every day that she received the honorary title of fiancée. Though the shock of it still tingled along her veins, she was not so stupid as to think Logan meant anything except to save her embarrassment and to put any suspicions Hobbs might have completely to rout. It appeared to have served the purpose, but if Logan was not going to undo what he had accomplished, he must begin to yield a little.

  In defiance of the tension between the two men, Clare said, “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Hobbs. I believe you drove here, didn’t you? Could you tell us what the roads are like?”

  “Anxious to get away, are you?”

  “Not at all,” Clare said, aware even as she searched her mind for an excuse that would blend with what he had been told that she was not cut out for this kind of subterfuge. “It is only that I ... I don’t want to distract Logan from his work.”

  “I don’t imagine he minds,” Hobbs said. “But what work is this, Logan? I thought you had finished this screenplay of yours?”

  “So did I, but Clare seems to think that certain characters, most of them female, need to be a bit stronger.”

  “Does she, now? She may be right, but I hope you don’t intend to make any major changes. I like the script the way it is. As a matter of fact, I think it would be a good idea for us to get down to some serious discussion about it.” He turned back to Clare. “Are you staying in Aspen, Miss Thornton?”

  “Not in Aspen, but in the area.”

  “Good. I want you and Logan to have dinner with me tonight. I owe you that much for barging in here, and it will be as good a time as any for seeing what terms we can come up with on this new production.”

>   Once again Clare glanced at Logan. The look on his face was far from helpful as he stood watching her, with one arm resting on the newel post and something perilously like laughter lurking at the back of his eyes.

  Clare turned to the other man. “It is kind of you to include me in the invitation, Mr. Hobbs,” she said finally. “However, I am sure you and Logan can get along much better if I am not there.”

  “I don’t know about that. It seems to me you may be a young lady with something worth contributing.”

  “No, really, I would rather not.”

  “Logan, I leave it to you to persuade her,” Marvin Hobbs said. “I am sure you can do a much better job than I can. I will reserve a table for seven o’clock in the dining room of my hotel. I hired a four-wheel-drive vehicle to get up here, but I don’t see why you can’t make it out with street tires and chains, after the plow comes. I’m looking forward to seeing both of you at seven.”

  Furnishing them with the name and address of the place where he was staying, the producer shook hands with Logan, nodded to Clare, and took his leave.

  Four

  “I don’t suppose he will be too disappointed when I don’t show up,” Clare said when the sound of the four-wheel vehicle had faded in the distance.

  “I think he will,” Logan answered. “He is still not sure you are real.”

  A small smile curved her mouth. “He’s right, I’m not.”

  “You could be.”

  The suggestion was tentative, as though he was trying the taste and feel of it himself. Clare tilted her head. “Off the record, of course,” she said dryly, “and only long enough to convince Marvin Hobbs that you have no designs on his wife?”

  “Something like that,” he agreed, his gold-tipped lashes shielding his expression. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to know how the meeting turns out?”

  She stared at him. “Of course I would, but I can’t believe you would be willing to have me there.”

  “Yes, it’s strange how things work out, isn’t it?”

  His tone was much too bland. Her gray eyes narrowed in suspicion, she said, “Aren’t you afraid I might take advantage of the situation? If you acknowledge me in public as your fiancée, things could get sticky.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “They might, but I think you are too intelligent for that.”

  “Intelligent instead of ethical? I like that!”

  “I thought you would,” he murmured.

  Clare chewed the inside of her lip. Did he really want her to come, or was he making the suggestion only to see what she would say? She did not think for a moment that he needed to hide behind the fiction of a fiancée, despite his offer. What she should do was firmly refuse to have anything to do with it. That would show him she had no designs on him, either as a fan or as a writer of newspaper articles. But wait — was that by any chance his purpose in encouraging her, to find out once and for all the truth of what she had told him about herself? If she was what she had said, an amateur freelance writer who had stumbled upon his retreat by accident, then she must refuse. But if she were an experienced professional out for a big story, then she would not dare let such an opportunity as this slip through her fingers.

  “What’s it to be?” he inquired, his smile just a shade too knowing for her liking.

  “You really expect me to jump at this chance, don’t you?” she said with a lift of her chin. “You have it all figured out, because you never believed what I said in the first place. Well, Logan Longcross, as much pleasure as it would give me to prove you wrong, I think I would prefer to confuse you instead. Has it occurred to you that if I wanted to go out of my way to convince you of my good faith and throw you off guard, I would refuse to play this role you have written for me and hope to catch the juicy developments from the sidelines? As it is, I am going to do no such thing. I am going to accept Marvin Hobbs’s invitation to dinner. Whether you wanted one or not, you have just acquired yourself a fiancée for the evening.”

  After some discussion, Clare and Logan decided the best thing to be done was to follow Hobbs into town as soon as possible. There they could take rooms at a hotel. From the way Logan spoke, Clare thought he meant to pay the cost of her room, since she would be staying, more or less, for his sake. She was just as determined to pay her own way, though she saw no point in making an issue of it just now.

  From her room Clare could call Beverly, explain the delay and her plans for the evening, and arrange to meet her the following morning. Logan would take care of having her car retrieved, since he would be better able to give the garage tow truck directions to it. With that out of the way, he would have to go shopping. When he had packed for his stay at his mountain home, formal attire had not been one of the things he had thrown into his luggage. Though he had worn a suit for the flight into Aspen, the shirt with it had been open-necked in the European style. With a different shirt and a tie, it would serve the purpose. His purchases out of the way, they would be able to dress for dinner in comfort, and then, after dinner, Logan would not have to drive back out to his house over roads in uncertain condition. In addition, Clare would not have to ask Beverly and John to undertake the same trouble and risk.

  The trouble could not be minimized. By the time Logan had zipped his clothing into a travel bag and carried it with Clare’s suitcase out to the car, clouds had closed down over the tops of the mountains once more. Before they reached the main road toward Aspen, snow mixed with icy rain had begun to fall.

  The town of Aspen was founded in 1879 by a group of men prospecting in the hills for silver. Originally called Ute City, it was renamed a few months later by B. Clark Wheeler, a promoter who helped to turn the collection of tents and log cabins into a boom town. Millions in silver were taken from the hillsides in the following decade; then, in 1893, silver was demonetized. The mines closed, but the Victorian town remained at eight thousand feet, high in the mountains, a perfect setting for a ski resort. The possibilities of the fine slopes and deep powder snow had not been lost on the miners. The first skis had been unloaded in Aspen in 1880. The sport only began to receive serious attention, however, just before World War II. It was not until long after the war, however, in 1957, that Aspen really began to come into its own.

  This much of the background of the area Clare had been able to glean from the guidebook she had studied before she left home. Now, as she and Logan entered Aspen itself, she looked about her was interest. It was not a large town, but it was a pleasant one. The streets were wide and well-marked, the buildings a blend of nineteenth-century carpenter’s Gothic, Swiss Alpine complete with Christmas motifs, and sharp-angled modern. Since all three styles favored the use of wood rather than masonry, they coexisted comfortably. Summer and winter visitors were the mainstay of the economy. Because of this it was not unnatural that most businesses were oriented toward their wants and needs. Specialty shops of all types abounded, from jewelry and glassware to ski rentals. In the center of town there was a shopping mall cobbled with brick and featuring small elegant shops with charming Victorian facades.

  It was an experience walking into a hotel with Logan Longcross, something Clare intended to remember for a long time. Logan stepped out of the car and held the door for her. Glancing at the doorman, he smiled his slow smile. Immediately, heads turned, people appeared to take their bags, to park the car, to swing the heavy glass doors of the hotel open. A growing murmur of voices followed them to the desk in the lobby. The clerk behind the counter looked up, his frown a signal of the unlikelihood of their receiving a room without a reservation at that season. Looking again, he changed his mind. He even discovered, after a hurried consultation with the manager, that two rooms were available, one for Mr. Longcross, one across the hall for his fiancée.

  As they were closed into the elevator with a bemused bellhop clutching the handle of a luggage carrier, a pair of gray-haired matrons with wide eyes leaned with the closing door to catch the last possible glimpse of the actor. Clare glanced at Loga
n as they moved soundlessly upward, one brow lifted expressively. He grinned at her with a flash of white teeth and gave a slow shake of his head. “Sometimes it has its uses,” he said.

  In her room, Clare took off her coat, threw it with her tote bag into a chair, and moved to the telephone. She had no trouble getting through to Beverly. Her friend’s rapturous greeting was quickly followed by a demand to know where she was and what had happened. Clare, leaning back against the headboard of the bed on which she was seated, told her.

  “What did you say?”

  Clare had to smile at the blank incomprehension in Beverly’s voice. It was all she could do not to laugh aloud at the contrast to her first eager questions.

  “I said, I wish I could see you tonight, but I promised to have dinner with Logan Longcross.”

  “I thought that was what you said. Have you gone stark, staring mad?”

  “Not at all. I told you I had to take refuge from the snowstorm. Logan Longcross just happened to own the place that was closest to hand.”

  “You are joking, of course,” Beverly said in resigned tones.

  “Do you honestly think I would joke about such a thing, Beverly Hoffman?”

  “I suppose not,” Beverly conceded. “Still, I have the strangest feeling you haven’t told me everything. Start at the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”

  “Couldn’t it wait until in the morning?” Clare pleaded. “Logan will be coming back any minute, and I have to go and help him choose a shirt.”

  “You what!”

  “You heard me. I’m not sure, but I think my job is to keep people at bay while he chooses it, but at any rate, I’ve told him I would be there. You will come and get me in the morning?”

  “Yes, I will, though I’m not sure I’m not taking my life into my hands, having anything to do with such an affair. I don’t suppose I could stand to stay away, though, not until I hear what you have got yourself into. Tell me the name of the hotel again.”