by Kait Nolan
“Then who the hell is Selina Kyle and why did she say she’s been dating you since August?”
Oh fuck me. He didn’t know how it’d come out. Now was absolutely not the time to ask.
Reed inhaled a long, deep breath and decided he really didn’t give a good damn about Brenda’s feelings at the moment. “She said it because it’s what she was paid to say as part of an invisible girlfriend service I signed up for before Cecily and I got together.”
Whatever Norah had been expecting, that wasn’t it. Pure bafflement cut through a few levels of her anger. “Invisible girlfriend?”
“Virtual Match is a service that provides an invisible significant other—texts, emails, that kind of thing. People use it to prove they’re in a relationship when they’re not. It was Zach’s idea.”
He pulled out his phone and sent Selina a text. Cat is out of the bag. Please reply back with true details about VM service. It’s urgent.
Her reply came almost at once. If you’re sure…
Reed: I’m sure.
Selina: I work for Virtual Match as an invisible girlfriend. Reed and I have never met. This is not my real name, not my picture. There was never any real relationship.
Reed handed the phone to Norah.
“Anybody could say that as a planned cover story,” she retorted.
Yanking the phone back, he pulled up his account, handing it over so Norah could see the profile they’d built that night at Los Pantalones.
“How utterly moronic. Why would you need such a thing?”
“It seemed like a way to put a stop to Brenda’s inappropriate come-ons without embarrassing us both by actually bringing it up as an issue.”
Brenda made a strangled noise and flushed the color of a beet.
“That,” Reed said, gesturing toward her. “I was trying to avoid that.”
Norah squeezed her temples. “Okay, leaving aside the fact that you’re an idiot man, why wouldn’t you have canceled the service when you and Cecily got together? Or told her about it and had a good laugh over it?”
“We got to be friends, so I felt bad for firing Selina when she hadn’t done anything wrong.”
Norah snorted with disgust. “God, that’s so you.”
“I didn’t mention it to Cecily because, frankly, I was a little embarrassed. It was never anything inappropriate and sure as hell never a real relationship. I’d never do that to anyone. How did you even find out about it?”
“Cecily came to me in tears, gave her notice, and withdrew her offer on the train station property.”
Reed felt the blood drain out of his head. “Where is she?”
The last of Norah’s anger faded away, leaving sympathy in its wake. “Gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?” He’d go after her, explain that he was a dumbass and—
“I don’t know. She said she was leaving town.”
Reed was already dialing Cecily’s cell. Of course she didn’t answer. He left another voicemail. “Look, it’s me, and nothing is what you think. I didn’t cheat on you. Selina’s not even a real girl. And okay that sounds ludicrous, but there’s an explanation. Please, just…call me back.”
The moment he hung up, he looked to Norah. “How long ago was this?”
“A couple of hours.”
Maybe she hadn’t made it out of town. Reed bolted for the door.
“Reed!”
He turned back at Brenda’s shout.
She seemed to deflate, curving in on herself in misery. “I’m sorry.”
Reed didn’t have time to deal with this. He aimed a finger in her direction. “Stay here and man the store. I’ll deal with you later.”
Sprinting to his car, he tore through town at speeds that would’ve gotten him arrested had any of their boys in blue been looking.
Please still be here. Please still be here.
Her car wasn’t in the drive when he screeched to a halt. But Christoff’s was.
Reed pounded on the door. Christoff opened it, and Reed narrowly avoided the fist the other man led with.
“It’s not what you think!”
“What I think is that you broke my best friend’s heart, you son of a bitch.” He landed a firm thump against Reed’s shoulder.
“I didn’t cheat on her. It’s all a misunderstanding.” Reed kept his arms up in a defensive position and slowly edged off the porch under Christoff’s onslaught.
“I fail to see how that’s possible since she heard it from your first girlfriend’s mouth.”
What? “That can’t be possible. Selina is a fake girlfriend. From Virtual Match.”
Christoff stopped trying to hit him. “What the hell would you need to use that for?”
“Because Brenda’s a cougar and she was after me.” And if he’d ever made a more emasculating statement, he couldn’t remember it. God.
Christoff cocked a considering head. “Okay, yeah, I can see that. You figured having a fake girlfriend would be less awkward than confronting her about it.”
“Yes! Selina isn’t real. But Cecily doesn’t know that and I have to tell her. Where is she?”
“I wish I knew. She didn’t even come home to pack. Just called to tell me she was going.”
Panic was starting to claw its way up Reed’s throat to strangle him. “When’s she coming back?”
Christoff hesitated. “I don’t know that she is. She was really upset.”
All the starch went out of him, and Reed sank down onto the porch step. Cecily couldn’t be gone for good. Surely she’d come back when he explained.
But how could he explain when there was no way she’d take his calls? She’d probably delete any voicemails or messages or emails from him entirely unread. So unless someone got through to her, explained…she’d go on to…anywhere else that wasn’t here.
All because of a woman who wasn’t even real.
What have I done?
Chapter 10
Cecily came to wakefulness like a diver rising slowly from the deep. Her body ached and her skull felt stuffed with cotton. But she could hear the rhythmic wash of the sea, and that soothed something soul deep. When she opened her eyes, her face was stiff with salt from dried tears.
The guest room she’d stumbled into near midnight the night before was awash in light that bounced off the white and blue beach cottage decor. Definitely not Dinah’s usual style, but Cecily supposed her aunt couldn’t be picky when looking for a fully-furnished rental, and beach chic was de rigueur in Hilton Head. She slid out of bed and padded over to the window, parting the curtains to look out at the beach.
Pale blue sky bled into silver tipped water far off on the horizon. If a boat had been moored at the little dock, Cecily would’ve stepped into it, raised the sails, and kept going until she found some solace. She was, after all, a sailor’s daughter. But that wasn’t practical or feasible. Today was a new day, and she would have to face the thing she’d just run six hundred miles to escape.
Reed Campbell, the man she’d been ready to change her life for, had betrayed her. She’d made yet another crap decision. Picked the wrong man. Again. At least she’d been able to rescind her offer on the train station before the sale went through. This mistake would only affect her. But God, God she thought she’d made a better choice this time. She’d learned absolutely nothing. Her judgment, it seemed, was permanently flawed. Cecily knew running wasn’t a long term answer, but she had to get away, had to be able to think and decide what was next.
The fist around her heart gave a vicious squeeze.
Okay. Soon. But not yet. She was still in an hour-at-a-time mode. For the next hour, priorities were shower, hydration, and caffeine.
And then she remembered she had nothing but the clothes she’d been wearing and what had been in her car when she bolted.
Great job planning there, Cecily. It occurred to you to stop and get a new cell phone so Reed can’t reach you, but not to pick up a toothbrush and clean underwear?
She’d have to go into
town later and pick up the basics.
Settling for cleaning her face with a couple of the makeup wipes from her purse, she revised her order of priorities to put caffeine first and headed for the kitchen. As she passed the other spare room, she could hear Dinah’s fingers tap tap tapping away on the keys of her laptop. Cecily had been welcomed last night with open arms and no questions, but she knew better than to interrupt now to thank her. The writer at work was an intense creature. Dangerous when provoked.
Dinah kept coffee on until noon, so Cecily found a mug and poured herself a cup before settling into the window seat of the breakfast nook. To keep from falling into a brood, she began mulling over the issue of Tony Becker’s canceled book signing. Reed would be out a significant chunk of money. Regardless of their personal issues, she had no desire to see Inglenook fail or the community suffer. Was there some way to turn the marketing at this late date?
“Jesus, honey, you look worse this morning than you did last night.”
Startled, Cecily looked up, realizing the half cup of coffee in her hands had gone cold. “Yeah, well, sixteen hours of sobbing will do that to you.”
Dinah crossed the room, her bare feet soundless on the tile floor, and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. She plucked the mug from Cecily’s hands and shoved the bottle into it. “Drink.”
“Yes ma’am.” Dutifully, Cecily took a slug.
“What’s his name?”
“How do you know it’s a man?”
“Please. I write romance for a living. I know that look perfectly well. I put it on my heroines’ faces on a routine basis—usually with a fair amount of malicious glee. Besides, I just talked to your mother yesterday, so I know everyone in the family is fine. Spill.”
“And if I’m not ready to talk about it?”
“Then you crashed at the wrong house. You had last night to keep the trauma to yourself. Now you purge it.”
Cecily pouted. “If I’m going to be spilling my heartsblood, can’t you at least bribe me with pancakes?”
Dinah’s lips twitched. “I suppose I can take that much pity on you.” She began moving around the room at lightning speed, and Cecily wondered that the two pencils sticking out of her messy strawberry blonde bun didn’t fall.
She took another fortifying glug of water and let the whole story spill out, from their long flirtation, to the weekend at the lake, to how they’d finally gotten together. By the time she got to the damning texts, Dinah slid a plateful of golden, fluffy pancakes in front of her with a bottle of real maple syrup.
“So, let me get this straight. You’re head over heels in love with this guy—”
“I never said I was in love with Reed.” Her stomach flopped like a beached fish. Just because she hadn’t said it, didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
Dinah rolled her eyes. “Yes, you did. You just didn’t use those exact words. Anyway, you’re in love with him, and at the first real test of your relationship, you cut and run?”
“Excuse me? He cheated on me. Or, no,” Cecily corrected, “apparently he cheated with me since it seems she was with him first.”
“Says a girl you don’t know in a series of text messages that you didn’t even stick around to talk to him about. Come on, Cecily, this is not the kind of shero you are. At the very least you should’ve had the moxie to confront him.”
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you by not being as brave as the women in your books.”
“Oh don’t be ridiculous. You’re every bit as brave as they are. But that’s not the point. You don’t come to me to sugar coat things. You come because I’ll tell you the hard truths. And the truth I’m hearing is that cheating doesn’t fit at all with the actions of the man you’ve described to me. In my experience, when things seem out of character, it’s because I don’t know the character as well as I thought I did or there are circumstances I wasn’t aware of. In your case, I’d say because of that fiasco in college and the fact that you hide who you are and don’t let yourself get close, you don’t know everything there is to know about Reed.”
“You’ve just made my point. I didn’t think he was the kind of guy who’d cheat.”
“You’re misunderstanding me entirely. I’m saying there’s more to the story.”
“I don’t know how else it can be interpreted, Aunt D.”
“You need to talk to him, if for no other reason than to call him out. You’re not going to find out any other way.”
Cecily shook her head. “I don’t want to talk to him. Not yet, anyway.”
“Don’t you want to find out that you’re wrong?”
“I’d be ecstatic to find out I’m wrong. But I thought I was wrong about Jefferson, too, and we see how that turned out.”
“Jefferson was a complete ass, and you’re well rid of him.”
Cecily could hardly argue differently. “At this point, I just want to go to my interview in San Francisco at the end of the week with as clear a head as possible. I don’t want things with Reed cluttering up my mind.”
“And you really think not dealing with this is the way to a clear head?”
“It’s the only way, right now.”
Dinah narrowed her blue eyes and pursed her lips in disgust.
Cecily laid down her fork. “Okay, you know what? Fine. I’ll make you a deal. The author we set up the signing for canceled at the last minute—it’s too late to pull most of the publicity, but it’s not too late for me to change the who. I’ve got remote access to everything. You go to Wishful in Tony Becker’s place. You meet Reed and get your own feel for him. You’ve got good instincts, and I know you’ll pull no punches. If you still think he deserves a chance to explain, then I’ll talk to him after my interview.” Her notoriously reclusive aunt would never agree to that.
Now those narrowed eyes took on an intrigued gleam. “You want me to go do a last minute signing at your boyfriend’s bookstore?”
Cecily huffed. “He’s not—”
“Fine.” Dinah held up her hand like a traffic cop. “When is the signing scheduled?”
She gaped. Dinah was going to go? “Day after tomorrow. Seven P.M. at Inglenook.”
“Okay. Get me the address.”
As she picked up her fork again, Cecily reflected that absolutely nothing was going as she’d planned.
~*~
Christoff had taken pity on Reed.
“It’s a last ditch effort, but I’d say you’re desperate enough to try it.”
It was true, so Reed hadn’t argued the point. Instead, he’d taken the first flight he could find to get him to Greenwich.
Now he looked up at the house sitting at the address Christoff had given him. House was really a misnomer. Mansion was probably putting it mildly. He was looking at a full-on estate. And judging by the number of vehicles parked out front, he’d arrived in the middle of something.
His phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Selina: Make it yet?
Through the long hours of waiting in assorted airports, he’d texted her the whole story. She’d kept him focused instead of completely freaking out.
Reed: Yeah. This may have been a mistake.
Selina: You’ve come this far. The worst they can do is throw you out.
Reed: That isn’t a comfort.
But he put his rental into gear and drove up the long drive to the house.
A big van with Simply Elegant written out in script along the side was surrounded by people unloading in a steady stream. He parked where he hoped he’d be out of the way and tried to figure out who he should ask. Scratch that. He didn’t even know exactly what he should ask. A smart man would’ve planned that out somewhere in all the hours he’d spent sitting in airports for his three connecting flights. Reed had spent that time continually trying Cecily’s cell and trying to craft an appropriate apology and explanation. At least until her voicemail was full. Probably evidence she’d turned off her phone.
Reed poked his head around the open back of the v
an, looking for somebody to ask who was in charge, and found a large box thrust into his hands.
“Take those to the kitchen,” the man inside ordered, already turning to grab the next box.
Reed started to say something about not being part of the crew, but he seemed to be gumming up the steady rhythm the group had established, so he turned to follow the other workers through the front door. Despite the soaring entryway, he was struck by how much the house felt like a home the moment he walked inside. The banister of the long staircase looked like the kind kids had slid down. The wide expanses of glossy wood floors were covered in faded rugs—no doubt expensive and high quality, but used. Nothing about the place had the brittle, don’t-touch air he’d expect of a place like this.
He trailed the person in front of him down a hall, through a wide living room done up in leather and comfortable fabrics and more of those antiques that actually got used, and finally into an enormous kitchen. A woman in a slim black skirt and white shirt was barking out orders. At her direction, Reed added his box of dishes to a growing pile in one corner of the room.
“Excuse me,” he said.
At his accent, she stopped speaking, perfectly manicured brows going up. “You are not from around here.”
“No, ma’am. I’m not on the crew. I’m actually looking for someone. Cecily Dixon?”
“Who wants to know?”
Reed turned and immediately knew where Cecily had learned that regal air. “Mrs. Dixon?”
She tipped her head slightly in acknowledgment, her eyes—the same as Cecily’s—not welcoming but not cold either.
Reed wished he’d taken the time to get a hotel so he could’ve showered and changed out of his rumpled clothes. But as he’d been taught, impeccable manners made up for a lot. He crossed over to her. “Ma’am. My name is Reed Campbell. I’m—” After what had happened, he could hardly call himself Cecily’s boyfriend. “—looking for Cecily.”
His name didn’t seem to ring any bells, which made him wonder whether she’d ever even mentioned him.
“You’re from Mississippi.” It wasn’t a question.
