Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight

by Ann Mauren

It completely silenced the cynical naysayer in my mind who insisted that his attraction must surely be rooted in some financial motivation, as opposed to a truly romantic sort of magnetism. The peaceful quiet in my mind matched the silence inside the tree house for a time and that euphoric tide washed back over me again. But then I realized that he was going to ask me the same question, and I could feel the embarrassment building over having to confess my shallowness to him.

  “May I ask the same of you?”

  Honesty. Go with honesty.

  “The very same,” I confessed.

  He seemed pleased with this answer. That was a relief.

  “When was that, exactly?”

  Oh no.

  I didn’t think honesty was going to go over quite so well this time. But it was his reaction to what I’d done to him that had endeared him so much to me in the first place. I decided to make a full confession. It would be a good test of his character to see how he handled my stupidity; something he’d need to be an expert at if he intended to spend any additional time with me in the future.

  “The day my best friend, Sam, took me home when I got sick at the theater last fall.”

  His eyes started darting in that unfocused stare into the past, back to Tinseltown, to what I knew had been a very bad day for him. I watched him reviewing the entire episode until his eyes flashed back up to mine. There was no anger at the memory, just confusion, it seemed. I was bracing myself and it must have been pretty obvious.

  “What is it? What am I missing?”

  What you’re missing is how I wronged you!

  “Do you promise not to be mad at me? It was very early on, before I’d ever seen you, and I never would have done it if I’d known what it would be like for you. I felt absolutely horrible afterward.”

  He was still at Tinseltown. His eyes had fallen to the floor while he replayed the events in his mind. I decided the best way to explain would be to recreate the soundtrack to a particular scene. So Kit, my British Goth alter ego, spoke up and said, “Do you think it could have been this Ellery who was retching in the last stall?”

  Just like when he had physically responded by veering towards the restrooms that day, his head snapped up from looking at the floor, and veered back to my face. Those unusual, gorgeous, intense eyes were now about three times their normal size, as they bore into my own. I observed him carefully as full understanding dawned over him. He looked totally shocked. I had to remind myself that there is power and advantage in being underestimated, and that I had no business being affronted.

  My business now was to explain myself to him.

  “Sam thought it would be fun to trick our friends and I agreed to let her dress me up in Goth, though my reasons were different. I had never seen any of you at that point; well, accept for Helga. And I thought it would be a good way to flush you, well, not specifically you, but one of you…out. It worked.”

  His eyes were looking through me once again, taking his thoughts back to the lobby at Tinseltown, to the Goth consortium he’d approached for help.

  “Then, when you came up to us, to ask about me, I thought I was going to pass out,” I explained, laughing at myself.

  “But you didn’t recognize me, and all I could think about was that you were worried for me, well, more than that. You looked kind of…panicked.”

  I cringed at the memory of that.

  “So it was a combination of things. You were the most handsome boy I’d ever seen in real life; but I’m not shallow, I mean, looks aren’t everything to me, that is. But it was the way you looked, your expression. Not ticked off, like I’d given you the slip, but genuinely worried, like you cared about me, about what had happened to me.”

  I was searching his eyes for the final judgment and overall reaction to my unkind deed.

  He spoke calmly, and a soft reassuring smile played in his expression.

  “I was. I did then and I do now.”

  Oh good.

  My stupidity hadn’t chased him off…just yet. His eyebrows pushed up and into each other.

  “Who’s Helga?”

  I laughed once.

  “Oh, that’s my nickname for the little Austrian lady that kicked butt in front of the drugstore.”

  That shocked look flashed back, for just a second before it evened out and he said, “Her name is Petra Von Hirt. She and her husband Max were there that day. They put you back in bed because they thought they would be fired if you remembered them. We get released if you engage us. There’s a zero déjà vu policy in place. We can’t be transparent if you recognize us.”

  We both smiled at the irony.

  So it was just as I’d suspected. When I had approached any agent directly, they’d been dismissed directly. I knew Ash was special, obviously. But under these rules my idiotic stunt with the corn-hole game pieces should have been our final encounter. Though I was burning with curiosity over this anomaly, I decided to let that mystery go for now, and just be thankful for the atypical outcome.

  He asked the obvious follow-up question now.

  “So, I saw you leave the theater, looking pretty sick. How was that possible if you were dressed up, in…Goth?”

  In a tiny voice my self-preservation instinct objected to giving this secret away, but it was overruled by the rest of me that wanted to make the full confession.

  “Well, right after the movie, we went to the Ladies’ Room and dressed me up in the handicapped stall: clothes, makeup, wig, and platform boots. Then we came out and she introduced me to our Goth friends as her cousin from England. Not long after that, you came up asking about me. I felt terrible for tricking you when I realized you thought something bad had happened to me. That’s when I decided I’d better say something about how maybe it was Ellery getting sick in the last stall. We went back in, supposedly to help ‘Ellery’, and I changed back into my normal clothes and cleaned all the make-up off. Then I pretended to be sick and Sam walked me out and drove me home. Except after I saw how upset I’d made you…I really did feel sick. I’m so sorry.”

  Although I wasn’t sorry for the way it had all turned out, leading to this unlikely but still very likable encounter tonight.

  There was a moment of pause while we gathered our thoughts. I began to feel that same old self-conscious burn because I’d done too much talking, wondering which admission or turn of phrase had done the most harm to his estimation of me.

  “Ellery, you can’t imagine what it means to me, to be here with you, speaking face to face. I’ve been dreaming of this for a very long time, but I never thought it would happen so soon. I have feelings for you that I realize are inappropriate, or perhaps premature, considering the difference in our ages, and the circumstances of my employment.”

  Hey, don’t worry about my age! Sam thinks I’m old enough…

  “What I want is to get to know you and for you to get to know me. Then, if it turns out that I’m what you want, I’m hoping you might consider me…as a potential marriage mate…someday,” he explained, all the while carefully scrutinizing my reaction.

  Did he just use the word marriage in connection with me?

  I couldn’t suppress the outward expression of the inward elation I felt over that. He smiled in relief and continued.

  “I know this is a lot to lay on you during our first conversation. Probably too much, and I’m sorry about that, but I’m just trying to say that even though my regard for you isn’t accompanied by good timing on my part, I have nothing but honorable intentions toward you. I just want you to understand my interest in you.”

  So apparently he has a high tolerance for idiocy. What a relief! I’ve definitely found my soul mate!

  I needed to conclude this session while I was ahead. He was fabulous and amazing, but even he couldn’t top what he’d just said to me. I wanted to be alone to get my mind around it and make my exit before I said something I would regret. But there was one more question I needed to ask.

  “Those two thugs at the drugstore—do you know
who they were or what they wanted?”

  I cringed at my own foolish question. Did I actually expect him to know the answers to either of those questions? I found that I was suddenly feeling very nervous over what had always felt like a bad dream as opposed to an actual event.

  His demeanor darkened a bit before he seemed to sense my scrutiny and he adjusted his expression to reassure me.

  “No, unfortunately, a police officer happened upon the scene shortly afterwards and the agents on duty didn’t get to…learn any more about them,” he explained in a soothing manner, though I sensed there was more which he chose not to say.

  “Do you think they’ll come back for me?”

  I sounded distinctly pathetic as I asked this.

  He smiled a little sadly, tilting his head as he reached out to pat my hand in a reassuring way. But then a sardonic expression formed in his eyes as he replied, “We’re all hoping for that, actually. But I really doubt it. It’s likely that it was a random attack. I’d try to steal you, if I were a bad guy, I think,” he paused, smiling self-consciously and then added, “But please don’t worry. You’re very well protected—all the time.”

  The attack seemed about as random as the security team in place to foil it. Still, I felt certain that he wasn’t trying to mislead me, so much as comfort me. And speaking of being over protected, I sensed that my mom must have already switched into ‘worry mode’ since it was so late.

  “Okay. I’d better get inside. May I see you again tomorrow night: same time, same place?”

  I wouldn’t be able to live through time out of his presence without concrete arrangements for my next hit.

  The smile and the nod he furnished in response to my request nearly stopped my heart. Then the accompanying jolt of adrenaline shocked it back into quadruple time. At any rate, I had some reading to do, as it occurred to me that I needed to review the contents of my new and improved jump drive—his first present to me. But then again, thinking back over the last few months, this would just be one more gift in an amazing series…

  Chapter 20 – Hidden Falls

  I felt sorry to mislead her. But it was necessary, so I let my mom believe that I was spending my Saturday with Sam, when she wrongly assumed that, as I was gathering my keys and purse on the counter by the garage door.

  “Give Sam my love,” she offered sweetly and I knew she meant it. She loved anybody who loved me—unconditionally. No matter if they looked scary, and I hoped, no matter if their job was watching my every move from the house next door.

  It was exactly one week since my life had started over. Though it was a new and improved existence, I noticed that time now behaved erratically with some stretches moving like ketchup in a glass bottle while other moments shot by like whipped cream from a can. I soaked up the whipped cream moments with the same enthusiasm I felt for the topping: eager addiction. These took the form of short phone calls once or twice each day and even shorter late night tree-house encounters, about every other evening with Ash—the guy of my dreams and now my reality! Today was to be our first real date, and my first date ever. I was beside myself wrapped up in a painful yet pleasurable mixture of anticipation and nervousness.

  I headed off in the Jeep and glanced at the instructions one more time, though I felt like I knew where I was going.

  Oldham County was fairly close to where we lived, but further away from Louisville, and more rural and picturesque with horse and cattle farms linked between rolling hills and open spaces that were dotted with woods and lakes. After a twenty-minute drive, which was an enjoyable activity in itself, especially with the windows down and the radio cooperating with a pleasing string of favorite songs, I came to the neighborhood called Hidden Falls. It was heavily wooded and each home looked to be custom built with large tree-filled properties providing lots of space between neighbors. The area was very hilly and this place seemed sort of precariously perched on the edges of a fairly steep ravine running along the back of the development.

  The address I was looking for took me to the very end of the road, to the last house. There was a ‘For Sale’ sign near the end of the driveway and I realized with amusement that I knew the person whose picture was smiling back at me. The last time I’d seen Leah Shelby and her husband, Jim, was at our house for a cookout last summer.

  Had it been that long? Well, probably so.

  It was hard to get with them because she was so busy, especially on weekends—a common side effect of being a successful realtor.

  But then I had a scary thought. Was Ash planning to move away from me? Was I going to have to pretend to like this house so as not to hurt his feelings? I wasn’t sure my acting skills were up to that. He hadn’t explained anything about this place or why we were meeting here, other than we were having a picnic. I decided to hold off on the panic attack until he gave me something definite to panic about.

  As I pulled around to park next to his Hyundai SUV (an odd vehicle choice for a security professional, but one I hadn’t inquired about) he appeared from inside the garage and walked over to open my door for me; helping me out of my vehicle in an ultra-polite, gentlemanly, and totally unnecessary move—but I loved it anyway.

  “I hope you’re hungry,” he said with a warm and wonderful greeting smile.

  I still couldn’t get over how gorgeous he was. When I was away from him I felt certain I must be greatly exaggerating his appeal quotient in my mind, but the real thing, so obviously happy to see me, was even better—far better—than my distinctly rose hued mental reflections of him.

  Poor thing.

  Watching my psychotic life had made him crazy too, and now he thought he wanted to date me. Just because I didn’t understand his choice didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to humor him. I was certainly charitable enough for that.

  He guided me, hand in hand, through the empty garage passing inside to the kitchen. Looking around I could see that the house was unoccupied, totally vacant and ready for a quick sale. We kept moving across the kitchen to a door that led to the decking off the back of the house.

  Set up on wide deck suspended over what I guessed must be a sheer drop to the ravine and creek far below was a round table with two chairs. It was very elegant with a lace tablecloth and fabric skirts on the seats. As I approached I noticed the centerpiece was a stunning floral arrangement which smelled as beautiful as it looked.

  “Lily of the Valley?” I asked as I turned to him, surprise flavoring my tone.

  “Do you like that?” he asked, seeming pleased, or maybe amused was a better way to describe his expression.

  “I love that, and yellow roses too. How…how did you know about that?”

  Nothing surprised me much anymore, but I was certain we’d never talked about my floral preferences. They weren’t normal yellow roses. They had a gorgeous kiss of deep red on the very tips. I’d never seen anything like it before. I couldn’t take my eyes off them…until I saw it, resting on one of the plates. Just like a bee to nectar, I was instantly drawn to the exquisitely miniaturized bouquet of just four flowers: another yellow red tipped rose, flanked on each side by a red rose and a yellow rose, with a tiny spray of lily of the valley in the front and center, all tied together with a simple piece of twine. The understatement of the string was in perfect contrast to the glory of the floral quartet it bound. My hand closed around it and I drew it up for a closer look and smell.

  I was completely dazzled. I didn’t know the first thing about flowers or their meanings, but I knew for certain that this piece of nature’s artwork could have no other combined sentiment than ‘I love you’ as its theme, and that notion made my heart race wildly.

  “Just lucky, I guess. I’m glad you like them. Will it be alright for you to take them home later so that you can enjoy them while they last?” he asked.

  Apparently he was thinking the same thing that I was, or would be, once I recovered from romantically induced cardiac arrhythmia.

  “I wish. But how would I explain them to Mom?�
�� I wondered out loud. Then a happy solution took shape in my mind. “I guess it would be true to say they’re from a secret admirer.”

  He gently drew me closer and said, “Well, as long as my admiration is no secret to you, then I’m fine with that explanation, and I’ll bet she will be too.”

  Then he drew up my hand, the one holding the tiny perfect bouquet, and held it so that we could both smell the fragrance while looking into each other’s eyes. The pounding arrhythmia was coming back stronger. My poor heart could barely handle the glorious assault of those gorgeous, unusual, piercing eyes, the heavenly fragrance of rose and lilies, his warm hand on mine, his other hand on my back, this place, this day, and this fantasy come true!

  “Come and sit down so I can serve you lunch.”

  He probably sensed I was close to swooning and decided it was a good time to seat me.

  I don’t know how I overlooked it, because it was obviously the reason we were there, but once I was seated I guess I could no longer miss the stunning, forty-foot waterfall flowing over the rocks of the other side of the ravine, just like the main attraction at a state park. With all the rain we’d had recently it was thundering, and obviously had been the entire time, but as I became aware of it, the sound turned on in my head and then it seemed suddenly very loud to me. It’s amazing what being so well distracted can obscure.

  He laughed at my reaction to the waterfall. It must have been very plain that I’d only just now noticed its amazing beauty and sound…and presence.

  “This is the hidden falls…of Hidden Falls,” he explained. “I thought you’d like this secret place, in fact, I thought of you the first time I saw it, and I’ve been hoping to bring you here to see it ever since.”

  He looked at me with a wistful expression.

  “Well, then I’m honored to be involved in your wish fulfillment. Is there anything else I can do?”

  Did I just say that out loud?

  I was being flirtatious. I’d never done it before, but I was glad it was coming naturally. Of course, there would have to be something seriously wrong with me if it didn’t, present company being what it was. No, I realized that I was feeling more healthy and feminine than I ever had in my life.