“Are you still swamped at work?” he asked after a moment.
“Not so much since Ryan joined the practice,” she said. “I broke my leg last summer in a car accident, and he moved back to town to help me out.”
He kept his hand on hers. “Was it a bad accident?”
“Bad enough. It was dark and rainy. I was going too fast, and my car skidded off a road and hit a tree. I was lucky it wasn’t worse.” She told the story matter-of-factly, the way she did most things. “Anyway, once I recovered, Ryan stayed on.”
“And you finally had more time to spend with Armstrong,” he finished, bringing their conversation full circle.
“Yes, finally.” Sierra affected a little shrug. “Except you know how that worked out.”
“Your relationship should have ended long before it did.”
She pulled her hand from under his and gave him a chilly look. “What do you mean by that?”
“You never really knew the guy very well, did you? I mean, you couldn’t invest much in a relationship when you were in residency and starting a career. You and Armstrong obviously weren’t a good fit.”
“I thought we were.” She sounded defensive.
“I only just met the guy and I know you’re not,” he said. “He’s way too subdued for you.”
“And you know this how?”
“I’m observant.” He grinned. “That’s why the newspaper pays me the big bucks.”
“So what have you observed about me?” She sounded skeptical, as though his assessment couldn’t possibly be correct.
“You need to be around people who will bring out the extrovert in you,” he announced.
She took a sip of her refilled glass of wine. “Like you?”
“You can’t deny I can get your temper flaring,” he said. “But not only me. You should let other people see how much fun you can be.”
She laughed without humor. “Oh, come on. I told you Chad broke up with me because I’m boring.”
“Armstrong’s an idiot,” he said. “The woman I met the other night was not boring.”
“She wasn’t me, either. I was trying on a new personality for size. It didn’t fit.”
A waiter appeared with their plates of food. Before he could set them down, Ben raised a finger. “Could you make those to go?”
The waiter paused with their plates in midair. “Um, yeah. I guess.”
“What are you doing?” Sierra asked when the waiter left them to do as Ben asked.
“Proving a point,” he said. “Are you game?”
She nodded, just like he knew she would.
“APRIL’S A LITTLE COOL for alfresco dining,” Sierra said from the passenger seat of Ben’s parked convertible. The top was down, and the temperature felt to be in the fifties.
“Let’s see what I can do about that.” Ben put an arm around her, gently pulling her as close as the gearshift would allow. She tensed, waiting for him to act on the sexual tension that had been simmering between them. When it became clear he didn’t intend to kiss her, she relaxed. Her reward was a flash of warmth.
“Better?” he asked. “Because I’m not ready to leave.”
Sierra wasn’t, either. After they’d left the restaurant with their take-out food, Ben had driven the convertible to a spot along the Lehigh River not far from Indigo River Rafters.
He’d been good company, listening to her reservations about being a member of the festival committee and letting her run some ideas by him. He’d expanded on them, seconding her notion to recognize the town’s military heroes and suggesting they receive free tickets to some of the paid events.
She felt herself relaxing, the responsibilities she’d agreed to take on not quite as daunting. It was too difficult to remain close to each other with the gearshift in the way. When they separated and leaned back against the headrests, however, their faces were as close together as possible.
She raised her eyes. The lights from the city were distant enough not to dilute the beauty of the night sky. Stars twinkled overhead like tiny white sequins, so numerous they lit up the blackness. It was surprisingly loud, with the voices of frogs, insects and owls mingling in song.
“What’s your favorite constellation?” Ben asked.
“Pleiades. Hands down,” she said immediately. “Although it’s more of a star grouping than a constellation.”
“Ah, the Seven Sisters,” he said. “I should have figured a professional woman like you would favor the girls.”
“That’s not why.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It’s because of the Pleiadeans.”
“Pleiadeans?”
“The humanlike extraterrestrials who originate from the stars. They live on the planet Erra. You’ve probably never heard of it, right? That’s because Erra’s located in an alternate dimension.”
“What?” His face took on a comical expression of shock.
“You’re right to worry.” She gazed at him in all seriousness. “The Pleiadeans who’ve come to earth are big on warnings that humanity is heading toward self-destruction.”
“Come to earth?” His face went through a workout in skepticism, and she could tell he was carefully choosing his words. “You believe there are aliens among us?”
“Oh, yes.” She made her eyes wide and earnest. “And the only way to tell them apart from actual earthlings is to prick their fingers to see if their blood runs green.”
His mouth dropped open.
Her lips trembled as she tried to hold back a laugh. It was no use. It tumbled forth, a burst of mirth. “Oh, that was fun. You should see your face.”
“You were teasing me?”
“Not about the Pleiadean lore,” she said, still chuckling. “That part’s on the level and quite interesting, although I did make up the part about the green blood. I don’t actually believe any of it.”
“You had me going,” he said.
“I didn’t even get around to the Pleiadeans and the CIA mind-control conspiracies,” she said.
“And Armstrong said you were boring,” he remarked, shaking his head.
“I never told Chad about the Pleiadeans,” she said. “He wouldn’t appreciate it.”
“He didn’t appreciate a lot of fine things.” His eyes lingered on her face.
Pleasure shot through her at his compliment, no doubt reflected in her smile. “So what’s your favorite constellation?”
“After your entertaining answer, I’m ashamed to say it’s the Big Dipper,” he said. “Mostly because it’s the only one I can ever pick out.”
“It just takes practice, is all.” She leaned her head back once again and let her eyes feast. “Once you find Orion’s belt, it’s pretty easy to go from there.”
“How come you know so much about the stars?”
“When you grow up in a small town, you find ways to amuse yourself,” she said. “If I’d known we were going to stargaze, I would have dug up my binoculars.”
“Why’d you become a doctor instead of an astronomer?”
“It’s all I ever thought about doing,” she explained.
“Because of your dad?”
“You’re good at that,” she said instead of answering.
“At what?”
“Asking questions,” she said. “But I’ve answered enough of them. It’s my turn. What can you tell me about your family?”
“What do you want to know?” He sounded wary.
“Where you grew up, how many sisters and brothers you have, if you’re close to them.”
“Pittsburgh. No sisters. Two brothers. And no, we’re not close.”
“That’s not fair,” she said when he failed to expand on his answers. “You hardly told me anything.”
“Not a whole lot to tell,” he said. “Things were a little…unsettled when I was growing up. Then just before I went off to college, my father got remarried and moved to Philadelphia so his new wife could be near her family. My brothers were ten and twelve at the time so it wasn’t like I had
a whole lot in common with them.”
“They lived with your father and stepmother in Philadelphia?” She was surprised. She inferred from his comment about his “unsettled” family life that his parents were divorced. In most cases, the children of divorce stayed with their mother.
“Yeah,” he said. “I went to college at Pitt, which is far enough from Philly that I didn’t visit much. My apartment had a twelve-month lease so I spent summers in Pittsburgh, scrounging up whatever jobs I could.”
“How about after you graduated? Is that when you started working at the Tribune?”
“I’ve only been there a few years. Before then, I got around. Erie. Altoona. Johnstown. I worked at all those newspapers.” He seemed suddenly uncomfortable, as though he didn’t like talking about himself. “So back to my question—did you decide to become a doctor because of your dad?”
She didn’t see any harm in letting him change the subject, especially since she’d managed to find out a little more about him. “Yeah, I did. Whenever he’d talk about his day, it was just so impressive, the difference he made in peoples’ lives.” It suddenly seemed important he understand exactly what sort of man her father was. “He was one of those larger-than-life characters. Everybody in town liked and respected him.”
“Everybody except Quincy Coleman,” he said.
A shock wave traveled through her body. “What do you know about Quincy Coleman?”
“Just what I’ve heard around town,” he said casually, “that he and your dad didn’t get along.”
She scooted away from him on the leather of the bucket seat. “I thought you were leaving my father’s name out of your investigation.”
“Not when someone else brings him up,” he said. “So did you ask Quincy if he was the one who sent the e-mail?”
His motivation suddenly became stunningly, embarrassingly clear. “You came by Coleman’s house to talk to him. It wasn’t to give me moral support at all.”
“That’s not true,” he said.
“You don’t plan to interview him?”
“Sure I do.” He ran a hand over his lower face. “A man can have more than one reason for acting, you know. I am here in town working on a story.”
And she’d do best to remember that. She shook her head, incensed at him for duping her, but even angrier at herself for forgetting, even for a single second, that he was a journalist.
“I’ll tell you what I found out, but only so you can get it through your head the type of man my father was,” she said. “Even Quincy acknowledges it. He feels so badly about how he treated my father he was the one who suggested the memorial.”
“Did you ask him about the e-mail?”
“I did,” she said woodenly, “and he didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“That’s good information,” he said.
She’d do well to remember information was what he was after. She thought back over the last few hours, mentally tabulating how many times the conversation had swung around to her father. She felt sick to her stomach.
“You’ve been pumping me all night for information about my father,” she accused.
“You’re the one who keeps bringing him up.”
“Only because you’re a master manipulator,” she said. “That’s what reporters do, isn’t it? Steer the conversation to what they want to know.”
“That’s not what I was doing,” he said.
“So you’re satisfied my father didn’t know Allison Blaine?”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “But one thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other.”
“How can you say that? This is my father we’re talking about. You obviously spent some time digging up information on him. What exactly are you trying to prove?”
“I’m trying to prove Allison Blaine’s death wasn’t accidental.”
“What?” She should have expected the answer, yet it sounded shocking when stated so boldly.
“Too many things don’t add up,” he said. “First the e-mail and now the camera. If she wasn’t photographing anything, there was no strong reason for her to be at the lookout once darkness hit.”
“She could have stopped to check if it was still light enough to see the view.” The reason sounded lame even to her ears.
“Then why was she close enough to the edge to fall?”
“Are you saying somebody pushed her?” The chill of the night penetrated her light jacket. “Are you implying it was my father?”
“I’m not implying anything.”
She was shaking, not from the cold, but from anger. She remembered something else he’d said earlier, something she should have questioned. “Why did you go back to see Frank Sublinski?”
“I’m having a hard time tracking down Alex Rawlings.” He named the former police chief. “I thought Frank might have some idea of how to go about it. He didn’t.”
Sierra, on the other hand, had Alex Rawlings’s contact information written down in her address book. Not that she’d share it with Ben.
“Take me home,” she ordered.
He put up the convertible top and did as she asked, driving in silence until they reached the town, which was shutting down for the night. He didn’t speak until he put the car in Park in front of her town house.
“I know you won’t believe this, but I asked you out tonight because I wanted to be with you,” he said.
“You’re right. I don’t believe you.”
She heard his heavy exhalation of breath.
“I’d love to see you again, but I guess that’s out of the question?”
“On the contrary, you’ll be seeing a lot of me,” she said. “I plan to keep tabs on what you’re up to.”
She got out of the car and slammed the door. What did it say about her, she wondered, that even after what happened tonight she was actually looking forward to seeing him again?
CHAPTER SIX
LOUD, RELENTLESS laughter erupted, like the sound-track at a fun house. The laughter was directed at her. Sierra had no doubt of that.
Suddenly, mirrors surrounded her, all of them reflecting Ben Nash’s compelling face. His mouth was open, his teeth flashing, his eyes mocking.
The sound traveled through her like barbed wire, the jagged edges cutting into her thoughts. It was no less than she deserved for falling for his act a second time.
He laughed again, loud enough that her eyes snapped open. To blackness.
She blinked, confused about why she could no longer see Ben. A bedroom slowly came into focus as her eyes adjusted to the dark. Her bedroom.
Cool air fluttered over her heated skin, bringing with it the sounds from the street. A car engine starting. Voices. And mirth.
She remembered not being able to fall asleep after Ben brought her home and raising the window, hoping the fresh air would do the trick. The tactic had worked, but not for long. The room was freezing.
Untangling the sheets from around her legs, she sat up and shoved the hair out of her eyes. Now that she was awake again, she knew instinctively that sleep would again be a long time in coming.
She slid off the bed, stood up and switched on the bedside light. On bare feet, she went to the window and closed it. A paperback novel lay on her nightstand. She considered picking it up, but had tried reading before bed and couldn’t concentrate. It was an old Agatha Christie novel, the various plot threads interweaving and leading to what she was sure would be a stunning climax.
She should give the book to Ben to illustrate the difference between an actual mystery and the fictional plot he’d concocted about Allison Blaine’s death. All on the strength of an e-mail that libeled her father.
To think she’d actually been enjoying his company tonight. She’d have to be much more careful in the future to keep up her guard around him.
Her gaze fell on a box sitting atop the cherrywood dresser against the wall. It was filled with old photos her mother had never gotten around to putting in albums. Sierra was supposed to bring h
er mother the box so she could put together a collage of photos of her husband to be displayed at the festival. Sierra had been so caught up with Ben Nash that she’d left it behind on their recent visit to Mountain Village Estates.
A short time later, she was sitting at her kitchen table, a tall glass of ice water beside her as she went through the photos. Time was growing short, with the festival starting in just five days. There was no reason she couldn’t do the collage herself.
The first photo she pulled out couldn’t have been taken much before her father’s death. It must have been summer because his skin appeared tan against the white of his lab coat, the gray hair at his temples adding a distinguished touch. Intelligence shone out of his eyes.
She traced the photo with the pads of her fingertips, blinking back the moisture in her eyes. After two years, she still missed him, still wished she would have had more time to make him proud of her.
She set the photo aside, then rummaged through the rest of the snapshots, keeping an eye out for the images that showed his philanthropic side. The minutes on the too-loud kitchen clock ticked by as she picked out photos of her father hosting a fishing tournament, handing water to competitors at a charity run and working the concession stand at a high school football game.
There were also photos of other family members, which she quickly leafed through. A flash of orange stopped her. It was the color of the cap her father wore in a photo of him standing by a golf cart. His sideburns had yet to turn gray and his face looked relatively unlined so she placed him in his forties.
She smiled, remembering the way he’d embraced the often-garish color choices seen on the golf course. Good thing he wasn’t wearing his favorite pair of yellow-and-burgundy plaid pants with the orange hat.
The logo on the hat read Lakeview Pines Golf, the name of a resort in the Poconos that held a charity tournament every year in May. The photo would definitely fit in to the collage. She flipped it over to check the date, curious to see exactly how old her father had been when it was taken. The year, nineteen years in the past, made sense. The date—July sixth—did not.
A vague memory floated in her brain of the year the golf course sustained storm damage and postponed the tournament, of her parents switching their vacation plans so her father could participate.
An Honorable Man Page 8
