by Ruth Wind
She spied a dark man with an armful of gilded scarves first. She waved and headed toward him.
“Miranda! Aren’t you going to say hello, darling?”
She whirled, struggling to keep the dismay off her face. “Mother!”
Chapter 11
Carol Rousseau was a New England blue blood, and looked it. Her hair was smoothly cut into a sleek, dark pageboy she could let swing or gather into a ponytail for a game of tennis or sweep into an updo with glittering jewels tucked into it discreetly. Her figure was not an ounce over what it had been the day she graduated from high school, and she had no tolerance for anything less. She found fat vulgar.
Today she wore a yellow cotton suit with short sleeves, and a jaunty little boater hat on her head. “You look wonderful as always, Mother,” Miranda said, bending to kiss her cheeks Continental fashion as she insisted upon. With Max, she didn’t mind. With her mother, it grated.
“Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s gone to take the car around.” She peered at Miranda. “You’ve been in the sun too much again, haven’t you? I’m starting to see sun damage around your eyes.”
“I have sunscreen SPF 50 on, Mother,” she said. “I’m not sure what else a person can do.”
“Wear a hat, darling.” She touched her own.
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “I need to talk to that man over there for a few minutes. I’ll come find you when I’m done. Will you excuse me?”
“Of course, dear.”
Miranda dashed across the room, smarting even though she knew better than to expect anything besides criticism from her mother. She hurried over to the man with the scarves and took no small amount of satisfaction in knowing how much her mother would hate the fact that the bridesmaids were so errantly dressed.
James spied Miranda’s hair from the elevator, and—ridiculously, joyfully—his heart leaped. He made his way through the lobby, crowded with more runners and their relatives, and vacationers in expensive resort wear, homing in on Miranda. It seemed as if a shaft of light fell on her, but when he blinked, he realized it was only his eyes that saw her that way.
She was wearing the most amazing dress. Sheer enough he could see the straps of her undergarment, and buttons all the way up the front that he instantly imagined undoing, one at a time. She was admiring a fall of pale pink and green fabric, woven through with threads of gold, and although he thought it beautiful, he hoped she wasn’t choosing that particular color scheme for herself.
He came up beside her. “Hello, little girl. Is that for you?”
“Oh, God, no. I’d look terrible in these colors. It’s for Desi. What do you think?”
He nodded at the man who’d brought the saris, and shrugged. “I have no idea, Miranda. This is not my area.” He pointed at a length of blue silk on the chair. “That color would look beautiful on you, I think.”
“Think so?” She picked it up and draped the gossamer, embroidered scarf around her neck backward, letting the hems trail behind her. She put out her hands. “Do you like it?”
James swallowed. The blue in the scarf picked out the blue in the flowers on her dress, which drew his eye to the lace edging on whatever it was underneath the dress, and her breasts, moving with her arms.
“Beautiful,” said the salesman.
“Yes,” James said. He imagined the scarf over her white body, with nothing else on it, and urgently wanted to make it true. “I’ll buy it for you.”
“Don’t be silly. I have pots of money my grandmother left me. Save your money.”
Stiffly he backed away. “Okay.”
“Oh, James, I’m sorry, that sounded careless and rude and—” She broke off. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said, even though it wasn’t. There was, suddenly, a giant hole in his gut, that thing that told him how foolish he was for longing for things so far out of his reach. Not only beautiful, not only well-traveled, but rich, too. “I’ll wait for you in the bar over there.”
She looked at him for a moment. “Okay.” To the man she said, “I’ll take the pink and the blue,” she said.
In the bar, he was sorely tempted to order just one beer. It might ease the sting of that careless rejection, and help him sleep later. But the race was in the morning and he’d just as soon have the best chance he could. There were schools of thought that said a beer would be all right, but he noticed the difference in his body when he had one and when he didn’t.
He settled next to an older man with the clean jaw and good shoes of a yachtsman. “How’re you doing?” he said.
“Fine, fine. You here for the run?”
“Among other things.” He eyed the man’s rangy leanness, the sun-freckled forehead. “You, too?”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see how I do. It’s a tough run, especially for an old dog like me.”
“Better to run than not.”
“I reckon so.” He sipped a clear drink.
James ordered a soda water with lime and waited for Miranda, eyeing her as she paid the man for the clothes. He grinned, showing very white teeth, and saluted her as he left, whistling on his way out. Obviously well paid.
Miranda came toward the bar, and he saw the cynical tightness in her mouth, but felt no urge to erase it. Her arms full of clothes, she came into the bar, shaking her head.
The man next to him stood, a little formally, and said with genuine pleasure, “Miranda, girl! You’re a sight for sore eyes, as always.”
Politely she kissed his cheek. “Hello, Daddy. You’re looking well.” She drew James into the circle with a gesture. “This is James Marquez. He’s helping us figure out the Claude business.”
The man held out a hand, his gaze direct, his grip firm. Miranda said, “James, this is my father, Paul Rousseau.”
James halted midshake and blinked. “The poet?”
“God love you, boy. Yes.”
“I’ve read everything you’ve written, sir,” James said honestly, an attack of hero worship filling his lungs. “Poems, short stories, the essays on running for the New Yorker, the travel pieces in the Atlantic—” He paused, feeling idiotic. “I love your work. Very much.”
Rousseau smiled. “Thank you, son. As a runner, you’re probably in tune with some of the same things I am.”
“Right.” He felt flummoxed, pleased. Also conscious of Miranda standing beside him radiating a tense, weird energy. He gave her a glance, and she met it with a heavy-lidded blink. “You might appreciate this, sir,” he said to her father. “I met Peter Bok when I first got here the other day.”
“No kidding. Didn’t he set the record for this race?”
“Whoa, whoa,” Miranda broke in. “If you guys are going to talk racing, I’m leaving. I’m going to take these back to the house and I can meet you here in an hour if that works?”
“Are you talking to me or our friend here?” Rousseau asked.
“I was speaking to James, but of course I will see you.”
“Didn’t Juliet set up a dinner somewhere?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t heard.”
“She did.” Rousseau glanced at his watch. “Six o’clock, so we can meet her beau. I thought you were going to be there.”
James saw the panic on her face and said, “I’m really sorry, but I need her tonight. She’s been helping me collate facts, and there’s been a lot of information that’s come in today.”
Her expression of gratitude was reward enough. “I’ll see you and Mother after dinner, how’s that? And I’ll be there to cheer you on tomorrow for the race. Shouldn’t you have been here to acclimatize or something?”
“Our cabin is at eight thousand feet, sweetheart. I’ve been training all summer, but thanks for your concern.”
Miranda wrestled with the clothes in her arms. For a moment, James was torn between helping her and staying to talk to a poet he had admired for years. Thinking of her uneasy relationship with her parents, however, he knew which side he’d better land on if he ever
wanted the chance to talk with her again.
“Miranda, I’ll help you carry those back. Sir,” he said, standing, “it was great to meet you. I hope we’ll have a chance to talk more tomorrow.”
“I’m sure we will. Good to meet you.”
“Thank you,” Miranda said as she dumped half the weight into his arms. “I have a lot to tell you.”
“And I have a lot to tell you.” As they walked down the sidewalk, thin plastic covering the silk, he said, “I didn’t realize your background was so—” he floundered for the word “—high end.”
She said nothing for a moment, and her face gave nothing away. “Is this going to be an issue between us?”
“Is there an us?”
Her irises were as liquid as mercury. “That’s not a fair question.”
“I think it’s very fair.”
“Why do I have to say first? Why don’t you say? Is there an us?”
Suddenly he got it. She wasn’t rejecting him; she was afraid of being rejected.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “From my end, the answer is yes.”
She swallowed. Dipped her head. “Mine, too.”
“Miranda.” He touched her smooth, perfect jawline. “I meant it, last night. There’s something here that matters. Let’s see what it is, huh?”
“It goes both ways, though. You don’t get to set all the rules.”
“Okay, which means what?”
“Look, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings over the sari. But the truth is, it was just expedient. Here is a fact—I have money. I have money of my own and I have a fat inheritance my very wealthy grandmother split among my sisters and I, and I’ll probably have more when the poet and his wife kick the bucket. So, it was just expedient to say I’d pay for it when I’m sure you—”
“Don’t have any?” He halted in his tracks.
She stopped. “Well, yeah.”
“I’m hardly poor,” he said stiffly.
“I’m sure you aren’t.”
“The thing is, you robbed me of the pleasure of buying you something by making the assumption that I couldn’t afford it.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“I know.”
They stood on the sidewalk holding yards of bright silk, and Miranda wouldn’t look at him. “This is crazy,” he said. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Then get off your high horse and don’t be so proud.”
“I’ll do that if you’ll stop trying to be in control of everything.”
Her head popped up. “I’m not doing that!”
“Oh, really?”
He saw the recognition dawn on her face. “I don’t mean to.”
“I’m sure you don’t.” He shifted the silk on his arm. “You know what I’d like to do, Miranda? I want to come with you to the dinner for your parents and see how the family dynamic works.”
She looked positively horrified. “Why?”
“I want to know who you are.”
Her entire body went still, which served to underline how she was always in motion. “This is kind of weird, James.” She looked off toward the ski slopes, the top of the mountain, anywhere but his face. “We only met a few days ago.”
“That’s true,” he said. And left it at that.
At last, she looked at him. “Okay. We’ll go to dinner. But no fair thinking I’m a bitch, or fawning over my father. There are things you don’t understand.”
“Deal.”
They took the saris to Juliet’s house, and Miranda was parched and hot and faintly irritable. Juliet was nowhere in sight, but her big red dog, Jack, made an absolute fool of himself over James.
“Okay,” she said, nudging him aside. “That’s enough.”
“He’s cute,” James said, chuckling, bending to scratch the dog’s chest and sides with expertise.
“Do you want something to drink?” Miranda asked, pulling open the fridge. “There’s soda water. I noticed you drink that a lot.”
“Sounds good.” The kitchen and living room were divided by an open counter and James sat on one of the stools. “We do need to touch bases. A lot of information came up today.”
She settled across from him, leaving the counter safely between them. “I heard some things, too. You go first.”
“I met with Christie Lundgren,” he said.
Miranda blinked. “No kidding? That’s pretty interesting. What changed her mind?”
“As long as you weren’t around, she’d talk to me. And it was illuminating.” He quickly recounted the highlights.
“So, who does she think killed Claude? The dentist’s wife?”
“Maybe. I was intrigued by the art connection, actually.” He explained Christie’s confusion on Claude’s art pieces.
“She made a good point—why would his work be so popular so fast? I mean, it happens, but not very often,” Miranda said. “I have some more to say about that, but I’ll hear all your material first.”
James nodded. “I also used some connections to get the sheriff to let me look at the files for Desi’s case, and there are some interesting things in there. For one thing, the car that nearly killed her appears to have had state license plates.”
“It was a government car?”
“Looks like it.”
“What else?”
“There’s been a real effort to suppress the investigation and let Desi take the rap. The evidence against her is entirely circumstantial, except the blood on her clothes, and that’s been explained by the fight they had earlier in the day. A lot of people saw that.”
Miranda frowned. “So, do you think it’s the killer, or somebody else?”
“I don’t know, but my gut still says the killer is a woman. It could be, however, that somebody is using the situation as it crops up, probably because they want that land.”
“What if,” Miranda said, “it’s all connected somehow? What if somebody wanted revenge on Claude and used the land as a cover?”
He nodded. “Quite possible.”
“I met Renate Franz this afternoon, and I just pretended to be an artist who wanted to show in her gallery, and I asked about Claude. I think she knows something, too,” she said, not realizing until that very moment that she did think so.
She sighed. “But how the hell are we ever going to catch somebody red-handed?”
“Won’t. We have to set ’em up, figure out who it is, and see if we can get them to tip their hand.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Maybe a little.” He sat back and measured her. “I would like to go to the hospital and talk to your sister Desi about the land. Do you think she’s up to it?”
“We can try.” Brusquely she picked up their glasses, put them in the sink. “I need to run a comb through my hair first. And I need to gather some things to take to her.”
He stood up. “Wait a minute.”
She paused, touching her face, thinking she must have something on it. “What is it?” she asked, touching her mouth.
“This,” he said, and slid a hand around her neck. “I need to kiss you.”
“Oh!” she managed before he was doing just that, his mouth claiming hers with elegance and knowledge, his hands on her neck, and arm, his thumb tipping her chin up.
Heat raced through her body, tweaking her breasts to sharp points that wanted his hands, swelling her sex to readiness for him, for the actions that were mimicked by his tongue now rolling around her mouth, filling her, coaxing her closer.
She melted against him, touching his long back, his strong arms. Against her belly was the hard nudging of his sex, and she rubbed against it, acknowledging his arousal, and he groaned softly. “This dress,” he said in between kisses, rubbing his hands on the thin fabric, heating her skin. “This dress has been driving me crazy.”
“Yeah?” she whispered.
He pressed his head to her forehead, looking down to where his hands moved on her shoulders. His fingers slid tow
ard the edge of her slip, traced the lace that followed the shape of her breasts, halted. “It’s so thin, so easy to imagine you not having anything on at all.”
An inch, two, and his fingertips would touch the sharply tender tips of her breasts. She could feel the heat of his palms over her breasts, close but not touching. She made a soft noise and tipped her head up to kiss him, nipping his lips lightly. Her breath was high in her throat as he sucked her lower lip into his mouth, rubbing the tender flesh with his tongue, his fingers caressing up and down the slope of her chest. Up to her collarbone, down to the top of her slip. He suckled her lip, let go, nipped her lightly and rubbed the sting with his tongue.
Her brain turned to a puddle of sensation, and she just let him do what he would, waiting for the next thing, the slide and thrust of that tongue, the slow rocking of his hips below, the tantalizing hover and stroke of his hands that never, never quite touched her breasts.
At last, he gathered up her hair, and used it to tug her gently back to reality. “We have to go,” he said.
“Do we?”
“Yes. But don’t forget.”
“No,” she whispered. She backed away, turned on the water and splashed cold water on her face.
And that was only a kiss. Good grief.
He came up behind her and touched her shoulder, brushing her hair away to press a kiss to the back of her neck. “See, if you relinquish control sometimes, life can be interesting.”
Miranda could not think of a single thing to say to that.
Desi had been moved to another room. She was desultorily flipping channels when Miranda and James arrived. She looked, Miranda thought, quite a lot better. Some color had returned to her face, and the general look of weariness was gone. She looked again like Desi—an annoyed, bored, Desi.
“Hey, you,” Miranda said, coming in. “I brought you some things. First, the chai.” She handed it to her with a flourish, a hot, steaming drink in a paper cup with its special sleeve. “Also, the computer and some DVDs to watch.”
