by Peggy Bird
His smile said he knew what the word she almost said was, and he liked it.
Chapter 9
Now what was she going to do? Trace Watkins didn’t recognize her from Portland, as she’d feared. No, it was worse, if that was possible. He was Mister Elizabethan Hunk, the man she’d spent the most exciting night of her life with, who’d inhabited her dreams ever since, and who was, it turned out, the manager of the bank she was about to sue. No wonder she’d thought of Halloween when she’d met him and noticed his buff body. And his smile was certainly familiar—that was about all of Romeo’s face she’d seen that night.
And here he was, sitting in her living room. Because he wanted to “get to know her?” Really? Or did he want something else?
Like a chance to damage her reputation with what he knew. But if he made public what she’d done, he’d also be telling everyone what he’d done. He’d said so himself. Would he want to start a new job as the town’s banker with a rumor of bad behavior?
Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t trying to use Halloween as leverage on her. Should she believe he’d searched for her only because he wanted to see her again? Could she trust he was any different than Paul Dreier in Portland? Didn’t what happened on Halloween mean her judgment still wasn’t reliable when it came to men?
She looked at the clock. She’d been sitting on her bed running the same thoughts around and around in the squirrel cage of her mind for ten minutes. Time to get changed and see what damage control she needed to do.
She pulled out her favorite dress and boots, hoping they would be armor for the battle, added a little makeup, and spritzed on the perfume she loved. Standing at the top of the stairs, she tried to settle her thoughts before she faced him.
• • •
Trace poured a glass of wine and took it to the living room, where he made himself comfortable, raised the glass in a little toast to his success, and took a sip. He’d done it. He’d found her. His victory lap was short-lived, however. He had to admit, from the tone of her response, finding her might turn out to be the easy part.
Maybe he’d been more impressed with their night together than she’d been.
But that didn’t seem right either. Not when she’d reacted to him as she had. When she trembled at his touch, she was no ice queen. And the look in her green eyes tonight sure said she wanted him. But she fought admitting what was only too obvious to them both. Why?
Was there someone else? Not that he’d heard of when he’d asked around town about the ice queen lawyer who was threatening to sue the bank. Nor was there a man around either in October or last night at the brewpub. And if there were another man, wouldn’t she have told him right away? It would have been the easiest way to turn him down.
If it wasn’t someone else, there was something else. Something he needed to figure out so he could clear it away. Because there was no way in hell he would let her elude him again.
When she returned, she’d changed the jeans and turtleneck sweater she’d been wearing for a short black dress, a denim jacket, a heavy scarf around her neck, and knee-high boots. She was stunning. But then, she could have worn a trash bag, and he’d think the same thing.
He stood as she came into the room. “You look beautiful.”
“Thanks.” She actually blushed at the compliment.
“Where did you decide you want to eat?”
“Italian, I think. I cleaned all day and didn’t take the time to eat much. Pasta always sounds good when I’m hungry.”
He waved her to the door and followed. “I can recommend a good cleaning service, if you want to save yourself the work.”
“So can I, but I prefer to do it myself. It’s a kind of therapy.”
“Sounds more like a kind of punishment to me.”
“Maybe it’s both.”
Now what could she need therapy and punishment for? Halloween? Going out to dinner with him? What? She was a mystery he hoped a long dinner with her would solve.
• • •
The rain had stopped, and it wasn’t too cold. He suggested they walk to the restaurant, and she agreed. As soon as they were settled at their table, the waiter took Trace’s order for a bottle of pinot grigio.
When the server left, a silence settled in. Trace hesitated before starting the conversation. It certainly wasn’t their first time together, but he thought playing the “first date game” might reassure her he wasn’t up to anything bad. What he wanted to do would probably scare the bejesus out of her—he was having one hell of a time keeping his hands to himself. He saw her naked every time he looked at her and would give anything to get her that way again. But his instincts said she needed reassurance, needed to be soothed, not seduced. So, he started with a softball question. “What made you decide to move to Ashland?”
Her eyes narrowed and her mouth pursed for a moment before she answered. He was sure she was weighing each syllable, parsing every sentence he’d spoken, trying to figure out what he was up to and how to react. She must have finally decided the question was innocuous enough to answer. A small smile moved one corner of her mouth incrementally up, and she said, “My transmission.”
He was sure he looked as puzzled as he felt. “Explain.”
“I was moving back to California when my transmission crapped out on the freeway. I was stuck in Ashland for a week while the shop tracked down what they needed to fix my car.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I liked the place and, when I found out there was a law practice on the market, I decided to stay.”
“You must have pissed off whoever was holding a job for you in California.”
She squirmed uneasily in her chair. “No job waiting. I was just going there.”
“You have guts. I’m not sure I could have taken off without a job to go to.”
“Not brave at all. I was … never mind. Not important.”
The server arrived with their wine, and he and Trace went through the drill of tasting and pouring. When the server left, Trace began, “Now I’m curious. What were you, if not brave?”
She didn’t answer but turned the question on him. “Why did you want to leave Portland and come to a small town like Ashland? I assume it had nothing to do with a car part.”
He paused, trying to decide whether to pursue the question he’d asked her or stick with his “first date” program. It seemed wiser to let his question go so he laughed before answering hers. “No car parts were injured in my transfer, I promise. I was tired of Portland. Wanted to get back the feeling of community I had in the town where I was raised. So I looked around at possibilities, and there was Ashland. After I was offered the job, I came down for a few days to look around before I accepted. I liked what I found.” He took a sip of his wine and hooked her gaze with his. “I very much liked what I found.”
She looked down at the table, fiddled with her knife. “Wasn’t it a step down from your job in Portland?” When she looked back up, her expression was almost defiant. “Or do you prefer being a big fish in a little pond to being a minnow in the ocean of the city?”
Sure she was making the jab about ponds and fishes to get back at him for his oblique mention of Halloween, he answered only her first question. “Actually, it was a step up. I’m the manager here, probably the youngest in the organization. I was one of a number of officers in Portland. And I’m happier with my life here, which would have made even a step down a good move.”
“How do you know you’re happy when you’ve been here less than a month?”
“How did you know Ashland was a good place for you when you’d only been here a week?”
The small smile appeared again. “Point taken. Anyone ever told you you’d make a good attorney?”
“Thanks but I’m not cut out for grad school. I couldn’t get away from academia fast enough. I don’t like sitting in classrooms. I’d rather learn on the job.”
“So, no MBA then.”
“Nope. A measly bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico. You must lik
e academics to have gone on to law school.”
“It’s probably genetic. My mother has a PhD and teaches Shakespeare. Which is how I ended up as Juliet with sisters named Cordelia and Desdemona. We are unanimous in our dislike of our names but grateful only one of us got stuck as the daughter of King Lear.” She looked as if she were challenging him.
“Cordelia isn’t bad, even Regan. But Goneril? It would be hell in high school with a name like that. And you were all named for women who died during their plays. Why not Katerina? Or Portia? That would have been a good name for a future lawyer.” He cocked his head and lifted his wine glass to her. “Did I pass your test?”
“Sorry. Busted. I should have known. You quoted the balcony scene when we …” The smile disappeared, she lowered her gaze again, and changed course. “It’s a game my sisters and I have played forever to see if people know where our names came from.”
He topped off their wine glasses. “I had a modest liberal arts education along with my business courses. Mostly because I was trying to impress a woman. Which apparently is what I’m doing tonight, too.”
She squirmed in her seat and moved to yet another subject. “Do you have siblings? And do they have normal names?” she asked.
“I don’t know if there’s much normal about my twin sister, including her name.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Like your parents, mine had strange ideas about what to call their kids. We were christened Tracey and Lacey. I dropped the ‘y’ at the end of mine because there were two other Traceys in my high school class, and they were both girls. My sister goes by her middle name, Anne, because she hated the whole rhyming name thing.”
By this time, Julie was giggling. When she could stop, she asked, “What about your parents?”
“Other than the urge to give their kids cutesy names, nothing too unusual. Father’s a banker. Mother was a schoolteacher until she had us and then became a stay-at-home mom. You didn’t mention your dad.”
She played with the stem of her wine glass, the laughter gone. “My father died when I was in middle school. He was a civil engineer.”
Nice going, Watkins. Another detour away from making her comfortable. “I’m sorry. It sounds like you miss him.”
“You couldn’t have known.” She looked up at him with eyes that appeared full. “I do miss him.”
The arrival of their salads gave them both a chance to regroup.
An exchange of Ashland gossip accompanied the salad course and then their pasta. By the time coffee arrived, Trace decided she’d calmed down enough for him to try and find out the answer to the question she’d cut off. He had a hunch it might help him understand what was behind her reaction to him.
As he handed her the cream, he asked, “So, to get back to how you came to be in Ashland … if heading to another state without a job and then deciding to change plans in midcourse because you liked the town where your car broke down wasn’t brave, what was it?”
• • •
Her hand was shaking so hard she could barely hold the pitcher. She should never have made a comment like that. She still hadn’t discovered whether he knew about her past in Portland but, even if he didn’t, she’d left so many cookie crumbs in their conversation, even the most obtuse person could follow them. Or at least question her about where the crumbs led. And he was far from obtuse.
“I don’t really like to talk about what made me decide to move. None of my colleagues or acquaintances in Ashland know. I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
He leaned across the table, his dark eyes intense. “Juliet, we are way past the colleagues and acquaintances stage, no matter how brief our relationship has been. You and I know each other in ways most people can only dream about, don’t you think?”
Hesitating for a moment while she tried to figure out the safest response, she concluded she couldn’t bluff her way past it. He was right. “I guess so. If you mean physically. But what does sex have to do with answering your question?”
“It wasn’t just sex.”
She looked around quickly to see if anyone was listening.
He didn’t seem to notice as he continued. “We made ourselves vulnerable to each other from the first time I smiled at you across your living room. Everything else that happened took what’s between us to a whole other level, to someplace amazing, whether you want to admit it or not.” He took the pitcher from her still-shaking hand. “Either of us could damage the other if we wanted to. But I would never hurt you. And I don’t think you would deliberately hurt me either. Although even if you did, it would still have been worth it.”
Leaning back in his chair as if to open up space for her to say what he wanted to hear, he went on. “Nothing you could tell me will change my opinion of you, change the way I feel about you. Nothing will make us any more vulnerable to each other than we already are. Nothing at all.”
Why she wanted to tell him, she didn’t know. But for the first time since she’d left Portland, the need to have someone know about it, know her side of the story, overwhelmed her. Her eyes closed, she sorted through a half dozen ways to tell him what had happened, trying to find one that put her in a more favorable light. There really wasn’t one. So she opened her eyes and started talking.
“Do you remember hearing a while back about a lawyer in Portland who was involved with the Russian mob stealing intellectual property and selling it to the highest bidder?”
“Vaguely.”
“He was my boyfriend.” She shook her head. “That’s not exactly right. I thought he was my boyfriend. He was really trying to use me to keep track of what the D.A.’s office was doing.”
“You worked for the D.A.?”
“Yeah, I was a deputy D.A. for Multnomah County. And a good one. Until I was investigated by the feds. After that I might as well have been a law clerk. I lost all credibility with my colleagues and the Portland Police Bureau.”
“Why? Obviously, you were cleared.”
“Yes, of course I was. I hadn’t told him anything. He told the FBI I hadn’t. So did I. So did all my friends who were interviewed. Legally, I was off the hook. But not in the minds of everyone around me.” She poured herself the last of the wine and downed it in one gulp. “My bad judgment in being involved with him was a ‘career-limiting move,’ to quote my former boss. When I couldn’t take any more of the snubs and cold shoulders, the assignments a paralegal could handle blindfolded, I quit.”
“Why would they blame you? No one else knew he was a crook, did they?”
“Everyone in the legal community knew he skated very close to the edge of the law, maybe over. But in my arrogance, I thought I knew better than the rest of my peers. After all, the guy had the good taste to want me. I didn’t read the other signs—his curiosity about my job, the questions about what I was working on. I thought he was interested in my life, and dismissed his other questions with something noncommittal. I was so sure no man would ever use me, convinced he was after me for my brains and looks, not my job. I didn’t put two and two together until it was too late.”
Trace’s sinful smile appeared again. “You were right about one thing—any man who’s introduced to you would be attracted to your brains and your looks.”
“Don’t. It’s not funny.”
“I’m not being funny. I’m telling the truth.” This time when he leaned over the table he took her hands in his. “Jesus, Juliet, there’s not a person alive who hasn’t made a bad call with a relationship. Why are you so hard on yourself?”
“Because I didn’t think it was possible for me to make a bad call about a man, about anything, really. I didn’t think I had ever made a misstep, even a little one, much less a judgment call bad enough to trigger a federal investigation.”
From the expression on his face, he was trying hard not to break out in a grin—or a laugh. “You have me there. I’ve never heard of anyone who did that. But, beautiful, can’t you cut yourself some slack? Even if you made one mistake, what makes you think you’ll repeat it?�
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“I already did. On Halloween. I’d never done anything so outrageous, so risky. Not even Greer at her worst would have.” She withdrew her hands from his.
“You think I go around doing things like that? No one who knows me would believe it if I told them what happened. I’m the most dedicated rule-follower you’ll ever meet. Halloween was something unique, something special. And who’s Greer?”
“Greer was the name I went by for most of my adult life; that’s who I was in Portland. When I moved to Ashland I changed my name back to what people called me when I was growing up—Julie, for Juliet, as you figured out. I’d been Greer since high school because I hated the teasing about being Juliet.”
“So … the problem is, you’re worried people will think our behavior on Halloween won’t reflect well on the person you want to be here. Right? With your reputation in town, I doubt there’s anything you could do short of terrorism to change people’s opinions of you.”
Frowning at the idea of people talking about her, she asked, “How do you know what people think? You’re new in town. No one would tell you anything.”
“Unless the new banker in town is asking about the lawyer who’s threatening to sue him.”
“You asked people about me?” The frown was much deeper now.
“Of course I did. Didn’t you ask around about me?
“That’s different.”
“No, it’s not. And what happened between us on Halloween …”
“‘What happened between us’ sounds like we were holding hands and exchanging phone numbers. It sure doesn’t sound like hooking up with a perfect stranger and spending hours in his motel room without even knowing what he really looked like or what his name was.”
“When you describe it that way, it does sound a bit …”
“Sleazy?”
“I was going for impulsive.” He tented his fingers and rested his chin on them. “I’d never have suspected the woman who barged into my office and terrified me the first day of my new job would be so insecure about herself.”
