RAZZLE DAZZLE

by Lisa Hendrix

  Sam contemplated the list with a critical eye. It didn’t look like much, but in a house where nothing very exciting ever happened, it was a lot.

  Sam smiled. Yep. There was definitely something going on. And she was the perfect person to find out what.

  *

  “He didn’t look very happy this morning,” said Tish to Miranda over coffee. “And, perversely, that makes me hopeful.”

  “There’s obviously some strain between them.”

  “When she didn’t come out yesterday, I thought it was embarrassment over me walking in on them, but then it turned out she was gone altogether and, frankly, I was relieved. It would have been too awkward with Sam here. She’s much too young to see her father behaving like he has during the past week. And speaking of Samantha, is she planning to go into town with you?”

  “Of course. She insisted on her first-day lunch with Daddy, even though Mason hadn’t scheduled her in. She’s picking out clothes as we speak.” Miranda took a sip of coffee and set the cup down. “Did you see how tight-lipped Mason got when Raine wouldn’t answer the phone yesterday?”

  Tish nodded. “He looked even grimmer when he got home last night. I got the impression she refused to see him.”

  “It must have been a hell of a fight.”

  “I hope so,” said Tish. “A real humdinger, as Angus would put it. A clean break would be so much tidier than a peaceful parting of ways, and that’s what we might end up with from simply reversing the spell. That could easily leave some residual affections to cloud the waters. We don’t want that.”

  “I suppose,” said Miranda.

  “We’ll still reverse the spell next week, of course, even if they have broken up,” Tish went on. “We are going to leave nothing to chance. In fact, if I could arrange it, Mason would never even think about Raine Hobart again once this is over.”

  “I wouldn’t want to go that far.”

  “Miranda, I’m surprised at you. Are you somehow in sympathy with this relationship?”

  “No, well, I don’t know.” She sighed. “She’s very nice, you know, and a lot more pleasant to be around than Caroline.”

  “Yes, she is. But she is also poor, and while that doesn’t make her less human, it does make her less than suitable for Mason under current circumstances.” Tish poured herself another glass of orange juice. “It’s a shame that we can’t combine the best features of both: Miss Hobart’s personality and Caroline’s financial statement.”

  “You should have seen Mason and Raine dancing Saturday. There was something so different about him. It would be terribly sad for him not to remember he was ever in love with Raine.”

  Tish patted her hand. “Oh, darling, of course it would, if he never loved anyone else. But by the time we’re done with him, he’ll be as much in love with Caroline as he is with Miss Hobart. And he’ll have the money we need, too. You’ll see, he’ll be ecstatic.”

  “But he’s ecstatic now. Or at least he was until yesterday.”

  “But that’s changed, and I suspect the reason is that this relationship was never meant to be in the first place. Those two have separate paths to walk, darling. We will do everything we can to ensure they walk them.”

  *

  “Daddy?”

  “Hmm, squirt?”

  “Did I hear you go out last night after I was in bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you go?”

  Mason glanced over at his daughter, who had come to have lunch with him, an annual “first summer day with Dad” tradition. As a further part of the tradition, she had stayed to commandeer his big ebony desk for a few hours of “work.” It was the first time he’d trusted her unsupervised at the desk, and she was busy sending e-mails and snooping through his drawers while he went over sales reports on the couch. Just now, Samantha had one index finger pointed at the reminder line on his appointment book.

  “I’m the parent here,” he said. “I’m supposed to ask you that kind of question.”

  “I know. I just thought maybe you went to see Caroline, but your calendar says that she’s in Singapore.”

  “She’s doing some business in the Far East,” said Mason. “I guess this is the day she goes to Singapore.” Strangely, he’d lost track of Caro’s itinerary. He supposed he’d better try to touch bases with her at Raffles Hotel a little later, when it would be tomorrow morning there.

  “Are you still seeing her?”

  “Not while she’s out of town.”

  “Da-a-addy. She travels a lot, doesn’t she?”

  “Quite a bit.”

  “As much as Mom?”

  “Fewer trips, but usually longer ones.”

  “Mom’s going to spend a whole month in Europe this time. That’s pretty long. Who’s J. Kraut—”

  “Kreutzmiller. He’s the corporate attorney. You met him last year, remember?”

  She considered. “The man with the silver hair and the growly voice?”

  “That’s him.”

  “What are you going to see him about at four o’clock?”

  “Some trouble we’ve been having on our new building at Canal Place

  . Are we playing Twenty Questions?”

  “Of course not. If we were doing that, you’d have to answer yes or no.” She flipped some more pages. “Who’s R. Hobart?”

  “A friend.”

  “A girlfriend?”

  “Samantha. I’m trying to work.”

  “Well, this name’s on practically every day last week. That looks pretty girlfriendy.”

  Mason flipped the report shut and threw it down on the table in front of him in surrender.

  “All right. R stands for Raine, and yes, we’ve been seeing each other. She’s a struggling artist who graduated from a very good school, and she’s twenty-four years old with blonde hair and blue-green eyes. Anything else you’d like to know, Miss Investigator?”

  “Twenty-four is pretty young for you.”

  “I know, but we thousand-year-old men like to run around with the young cuties every now and again.”

  Sam giggled, then sobered up. “Does that mean you aren’t seeing Caroline anymore?”

  “No, it doesn’t. As I said, Caroline is out of town.”

  “Are you going to date both of them?”

  “Samantha, this isn’t appropriate conversation for us to be having.”

  “I’m just curious.” She spun Mason’s leather chair around twice. “When do I get to meet R. Hobart?”

  “I’m not sure you do, squirt. She’s mad at me right now.”

  “Then you should go see her and say you’re sorry.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

  “Tish says it’s hardly ever more complicated.”

  “Please don’t call your grandmother ‘Tish.’ It’s disrespectful.”

  “But she told me to this morning at breakfast. And I think it would be more disrespectful not to mind her, since it’s her name,” she said with perfect eleven-year-old logic, then tossed her black ponytail to dismiss the subject.

  “Sam,” Mason warned.

  “Hey, I forgot to e-mail Daria.” She turned back to the computer, already on to other concerns.

  Despite Sam’s impertinence, her advice hung on his mind, and after Miranda came by to pick Sam up at half past three, Mason buzzed his assistant. “Cancel the rest of my appointments and put me through to Johnson’s Landscaping.”

  “Are you sure, sir? I believe Mr. Kreutzmiller has the information you wanted regarding that citizens group in Fremont.”

  “FUSE.” Mason turned it over in his mind. “That will hold. Reschedule him for later in the week.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll have Johnson’s for you in just a moment.”

  *

  Raine was steering a riding mower across a half acre of lawn when she spotted Mason’s car pulling up at the curb. Fortunately, she’d already done the end of the lawn closest to the street and was working her way toward the house
. She continued moving away, watching out of the corner of her eye as Paul got out and opened the rear door.

  So, the scumbag was here to sweet-talk his way out of things. She resented him showing up at her job, trying to trap her like this. On the other hand, she felt fairly safe on the mower. The roar of the engine would keep her from hearing Mason if he called out, and she could just pretend she didn’t see him. However, when he stepped out and the sun hit that trademark gray suit, the nice straight line she’d been tracking took a distinct bobble in the middle. She finished the row and made a tight turn to go back the other direction. That was better; she couldn’t even see him.

  But while she wasn’t watching, he made an end run straight to Craig, who, not knowing any better, came over to flag Raine down. She pretended not to see him, too, until he walked right in front of the mower and her only choices were to acknowledge him or run him down. She knew what her choice would have been if Mason had tried that technique, but it was Craig, so, reluctantly, she shut the engine down.

  “Your boyfriend wants to talk to you,” said Craig.

  “I don’t have time. I still have to make the second pass. You know how Mr. Tiedeman likes his cross-hatching.”

  “Ooh.” Craig flinched as though he were the one taking the hit. “Like that, is it?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “Should I tell him you’ll be putting in overtime?”

  “Sure, as long as I don’t really have to.”

  “Damn. Didn’t fall for it.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  She fired the tractor back up and finished the first pass on the yard, taking a minute to correct the bobble. By the time she checked the street, Mason was gone.

  Craig avoided mentioning her problems on the ride back to Johnson’s, and Raine didn’t ask how Mason had taken being blown off. She was tense as they pulled into the yard, half expecting to see the Rolls sitting there, Mason ready to pounce, but only work trucks and the crew’s personal vehicles filled the back lot.

  Good. He’d gotten the message.

  She drove home quickly, anxious to get her life back into its familiar groove. She’d have a shower, play with Bugsy a little, water the plants. Maybe she’d ask Zoe to go out for dinner. She could stand a little Greek food at Costas Opa, and they could splurge on a bottle of Roditis to forget the past week.

  Just to be sure, she checked the streets around her house before she parked. There was no sign of the Rolls nor of any other Alexander car, so she pulled into her usual spot in front of the house and grabbed her gear. The mailbox was empty, drat. She trotted up the stair and through the gate.

  And almost turned around.

  He was sitting there, on her front step, with Bugsy swirling around his legs and leaving multicolored streamers of hair hanging off his gray linen pants.

  “Just go away,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Oh, damn it, Mason. What’s the matter, didn’t you get enough for your money?”

  He stood up and brushed at his pants. Clouds of cat hair whirled in the air and settled back on his shoes. “Do you really want to discuss this in the garden for all your neighbors to hear?”

  “I don’t want to discuss it at all.” She stepped around him. “Buzz off.”

  He tried to hold the screen open for her while she unlocked the door, but she jerked it out of his hand. She tried to slam the door on him, but he stuck his foot in and followed her into the house anyway, uninvited.

  “You must think I’m pretty low,” he said.

  “You’ve got it.” She tossed her backpack on the kitchen counter and dropped her water bottle in the sink.

  He leaned on the end of the counter, watching her rinse the bottle. “And it must be embarrassing for you, being such a sap to fall for the flimsy trick I played on you Saturday night.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel better, I had to work pretty hard setting that up. Getting Miranda to have her friends cut in. Arranging all that stuff with Elizabeth to make some excuse to send Samantha out early and call at just the right time so my mother would walk in and see us. But the really hard part was getting you horny enough that you’d be sure to come downstairs half dressed so I could fuck you.”

  She slapped him. “You son of a bitch.”

  His eyes narrowed and his jaw went solid beneath the white imprint of her hand on his skin. “You don’t like that word, do you? Good, because it has nothing to do with what happened between us.”

  “Gee, it sure felt like the right word.”

  “And for that, I’m sorry. I screwed up, and I’m sorry, and I don’t know what else to say. I used very bad judgment—hell, I used no judgment at all—but I swear to you, what happened was not planned as some sick show for my mother.”

  “Then how do you know that’s what I think it was?”

  “Because, being the single-minded bastard that I usually am, I thought of it, too, after the fact, and when I did, I realized how bad it looked.”

  “Yeah, right, especially since before the fact, you had mentioned you wanted to turn the heat up on your mom and Miranda. Boy, I guess you managed that.”

  “I wanted to turn up the heat, not scorch their eyeballs,” said Mason. “Having them think we were sleeping together would have been enough; they didn’t need a demonstration. And if I had wanted them to catch us in bed together, all we had to do was fake the afterglow. Hell, you could have even left your clothes on. It would have been a damned sight easier to put together than that unfortunate set of coincidences Sunday morning.”

  “Oh, yeah, and it was just coincidence that you left the doors open.”

  “Were you thinking about doors?”

  Her cheeks flamed. She turned away and started unloading her pack.

  “Being a single-minded bastard,” he continued, “there was exactly one thing on my mind at the time.”

  “Getting me to bed.”

  “Absolutely. But sure as hell not because of my mother and sister.”

  “Then why?”

  “The same reason you came downstairs in the first place. Because I wanted you. Because we wanted each other.”

  “All I wanted was to dance with you. I just wanted to finish that one dance.”

  “So what happened?”

  “You know what happened.”

  “I’d like your take on it.”

  “You seduced me.” She grabbed the ice pack out of her lunch kit and tossed it in the freezer.

  “I could make a case that you seduced me. That dress. The zipper. No panties. And after all, you came to my room.”

  “To dance. That’s all.”

  He came around and trapped her in the corner between the counter and the fridge. “I told myself the same thing, Raine, that I just wanted to finish the dance, that it would just be a few minutes of holding you, a harmless thrill. And then I had my arms around you and all bets were off.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe all this?”

  “No, but you’re supposed to believe this.”

  He slipped his hand behind her head and pulled her to him.

  “Mason.” She started to add “Don’t,” but it never came out. His kiss was firm, but tender, as sweet as it had been in front of his mother Saturday night. It burned just as hot, too, ripping through the past two days of anger and hurt like fire through a haystack.

  She didn’t want a clean burn, she wanted to stay mad at him, so it would never happen again. She put up her hand to fend him off and felt the pounding of his heart under her palm, and remembered how his skin felt against hers. Her groan parted her lips, and he kissed her more deeply, his tongue sweeping into her mouth.

  Her fingers curled into the front of his shirt, turning the push she had planned into a tug that drew him closer, and she raised on her toes to better return his probing kiss. His hand dropped away from her head just as she laced her fingers together behind his neck, but his lips demanded more.

&nbs
p; He gave more, as well, leaving her mouth to sear kisses over her face and down her throat to find the place where the pulse beat in her throat. His tongue swirled over the spot, and she threw her head back and arched into him.

  “See?” he said against her throat.

  It was then she realized his hands weren’t on her and hadn’t been on her for a few minutes. She was backed against the cabinets, but his arms, to either side of her, shook with tension, and when she looked down at his hands, he was gripping the counter’s edge with fingers bleached white from pressure.

  She met his eyes, a question frozen on her lips.

  “If I touch you right now, it will be just like Saturday night,” he said carefully. “Except it will be here instead of in a bed, and we’ll never get all of our clothes off. And you know it.”

  The center of her throbbed. It was exactly what she wanted and precisely what she didn’t need. Making herself small, she covered her burning cheeks with her hands and tucked her elbows in close to her body so she didn’t touch him by accident and set off a chain reaction neither one of them would be able to stop. She could feel the effort as he pulled himself together, and, after a moment, he stepped back.

  The old pine flooring squeaked as he walked into the living room. His back to her, he adjusted his tie. “Again, I apologize. I don’t know what comes over me.”

  “‘It’s like you’re under a spell,’” murmured Raine.

  He shot a look over his shoulder. “What?”

  “Something a girlfriend said about times when things get out of control, that it’s like you’re under a spell.”

  “Come on, Raine. You can’t possibly think—”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I do, and there are no such things, which is what we’re in the midst of proving to my mother and sister. You’d better get showered and changed.”