“You were sleeping with Stuart Lasher?” Tony demanded as we stood in my kitchen. “Behind my back?”
“Behind your back?” I said. “This may come as a news bulletin, buttercup, but you and I aren’t engaged. We’ve been faking it, remember?”
“And doing a pretty good job of it, too,” he said. “That is, until you cheated on me.”
“I didn’t cheat on you, Tony! Stop saying that!” Boy, I hadn’t expected this reaction when I’d called him in a panic and told him I’d been interrogated by the police. He’d come right over to my apartment that night, which I appreciated, but what I didn’t appreciate was all the badgering.
“Hey. I’m teasing you about sleeping with the guy,” he said, his voice assuming its more customary wiseass tone. “I know you can’t stand him any more than I can.”
“Oh, so that performance you just gave was only mock indignation?”
“Not entirely. You’re still gonna have to explain to me why you were meeting him at the Plaza. Fiancé or no fiancé, I never figured you’d do something like that.”
“Fine. I’ll explain. I went there to satisfy my curiosity. He called me out of the blue and said he wanted to be alone with me. I wondered why.”
“Because you’re a beautiful woman and he was hot to get you into bed, that’s why.”
“Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. I couldn’t tell from his phone call. But I also wondered how I would feel about being alone with him after what happened four years ago. There was something tempting about being the one to reject him this time around.”
“Okay. You were hurt by him once. I can understand that.”
“And then there was the issue of his marriage to Tara. I wondered why he was calling me if the marriage was as rock solid as they made it out to be. I was dying to find out if there was a chink in her armor. I couldn’t help myself.”
“That part I don’t understand. Your obsession with her is off-the-charts nuts.”
“Was, Tony, was. That’s what I realized when Stuart didn’t show up at the Plaza today. I’m over my need to prove myself to her or pay her back. I’m done with all that. Finished. Cured.”
“I’m not buying it.”
“Buy it, because it’s true. After I sat there waiting in that hotel room for over two hours, I promised myself I’d never be humiliated by either of those two again. Of course, the cops at my door added a new wrinkle to the situation. She actually had the nerve to—”
“Hang on. Before we get into serious police business, I need a drink. Do you have any red wine open?”
“I think there’s some Cabernet in the refrigerator.”
He looked at me as if I had six heads. “Cabernet in the refrigerator?”
Damn. In the hubbub over Stuart, I’d forgotten that I was supposed to be a wine connoisseur, and wine connoisseurs don’t stick Cabernet in the fridge. I was caught. It just wasn’t my day, I guess.
“I don’t know a thing about wine,” I said sheepishly. “I only pretended to, because I had to get you to like me enough to play my fiancé.”
His eyes widened. “You mean your entertaining speeches about noble bouquets and velvety textures were—”
“Bullshit. Yes. I don’t know anything about hockey, either. New York Rangers. Forest rangers. They’re all the same to me.”
“I don’t believe this. I’m really shocked.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I suppose your passion for Ferraris was part of the ruse, too? No real interest in the three fifty Spider with the twelve cylinders under the hood?”
I lowered my eyes, too ashamed to meet his. “No real interest,” I said.
“Good. Because there is no three fifty Spider with twelve cylinders,” he said. “The car has eight cylinders and they’re not under the hood. They’re mounted in the middle, behind the seats.”
I picked my head up. “What?”
“You heard me. I made that stuff up about the car—to test you. I had a feeling you were pulling something that night you invited me to your apartment for dinner, and I was right.”
“Tony!”
“Well? That’s what you get for playing games with a smart guy like me.”
I smiled in spite of myself. So he’d known all along. And my games hadn’t deterred him from helping me, standing by me, being there at my apartment in my hour of need. “I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have lied. It’s just that when Tara started raving about you, I thought I’d wage a campaign to win you over. Connie told me you were into—”
“Connie was in on this?”
“Only because I begged her. I told her I needed you to pose as my fiancé, and while she didn’t love the idea, she agreed to aid and abet.”
“So you pretended to like the things I like in order to—what?—convince me that we had a lot in common?”
“Exactly.”
“Then here’s the question: Is there anything at all about you that’s real?”
“I—Of course there is.”
“Name one.”
“That’s easy. What’s real is how much I’ve enjoyed these past few months with you. I’ve become very fond of you, Tony.”
“Fond of me?” He smirked.
“Yes. We’re pals, aren’t we? Partners? You’ve been doing me a favor and I’ve been doing you a favor. That’s all it’s been for you, too, right? An arrangement that was practical for both of us?” Sure, I was fishing. What else was I supposed to do?
“ ‘An arrangement’?” he repeated, his blue eyes drilling me.
“Well, yes. You’ve been my fiancé and I’ve been your research project.”
“Give me a break. You know it’s been more than that for me.”
“Do I? If memory serves, you only decided to play my fiancé to get a better handle on what it felt like to be in a committed relationship, so you could flesh out Joe and Lucy’s marriage and make converts out of the reviewers who’ve been tough on you.”
“That was a big factor at first.”
“At first?”
“Yeah. Once we started spending time together, I just wanted to be with you.”
“Oh.” So there had been a change in direction. I had sensed it but couldn’t let myself believe it.
“That’s all you have to say? ‘Oh’?” He moved closer to me.
“I, well, what’s your point?” I said, feeling my face flush now that he was nose-to-nose with me.
“My point is that I’ve been playing your fiancé not so that I could research Joe and Lucy’s marriage, but so that I could keep doing this.”
He leaned over and kissed me. It was another one of those knockout kisses that made my insides melt, only there was no audience this time, no one to perform for, and the fact that Tara and Stuart weren’t around to observe it gave it an exquisite sense of intimacy.
“So you haven’t just been using me as a writing aid?” I teased when I came up for air.
He smiled. “No, although I think the love scenes in my books are ripe for some tweaking.”
He kissed me again, longer this time, and with his body pressing against mine. Whatever defenses I’d been putting up, whatever reservations I’d had about getting involved with him, whatever reasons I’d given myself for keeping my distance, all faded away in that moment. After the shock of Stuart’s disappearance and Tara’s accusations, life was suddenly too short not to let myself succumb to Tony Stiles’s considerable charms.
“I, um, really do need to talk to you about what happened to Stuart when you have a chance,” I sputtered as he slid his lips down the side of my neck and his hands down the sides of my thighs. “Those detectives showed up at my door out of nowhere tonight. I don’t have any idea who’s coming next.”
“I do,” said a very aroused Tony as he took my hand and led me into the bedroom.
“So you really don’t like the Rangers,” he mused as we lay in each other’s arms on my bed, our faces rosy with the afterglow.
“I don’t know the Rangers,” I said. “I could like them, I guess. I’m sure they’re nice people.”
He laughed. “You’ll learn to like them, just the way you learned to like me. It wasn’t all that long ago that you couldn’t stand the sight of me, don’t forget.”
I ran my bare foot along the inside of his leg. “The sight of you was never the problem, Tony, believe me.”
“Then it must have been my personality you weren’t wild about.”
“Well, you were pretty difficult to work with,” I said as he was tracing little circles around my belly button with the tip of his finger.
“I wasn’t difficult. I was ‘my own man,’ as they say.”
“No, you were difficult.”
He laughed. “Well, I’ve mellowed. Now I just want to be your go-to guy.”
“My go-to guy, huh? The one I can count on no matter what?”
“That’s the general idea.”
“Then tell me what I’m supposed to do about this Stuart mess. Tara ratted me out to the cops.”
“What did you expect? She thought you were screwing her husband. She must have been furious at you and felt like striking back, and I can’t say I blame her. Look, we don’t even know if he’s dead. We only know that he’s missing. Either way, you were probably at work when they found his car this morning. Chances are, you have an alibi. She can’t hurt you.”
I smiled. “You’re right. She can’t hurt me. Not anymore. But if he is dead, I think she’s the one who did it. I think she found out he was meeting me and got so mad that she killed him.”
“You don’t think that and you know it. She was your friend for a very long time and, regardless of what’s gone down between you, you care about her.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you do. You wouldn’t try so hard to impress her if you didn’t care about her.”
“You’re wrong. I hope she fries for his murder.”
“Amy.”
“Fine, no frying. I’ll settle for a stoning in the public square.”
“She didn’t kill him, because he’s not dead. Call it instinct, but that’s what I think.”
“Okay, then where is he?”
“Don’t have a clue.”
“Well, you’re my go-to guy now. Plus, you’re the best mystery writer in America. If anyone can solve this puzzle, it’s you.”
He rolled over onto me. “Why don’t we just leave it to the police to sort out? Or not?”
“What do you mean ‘or not’?”
“Right now, all they’ve got is an abandoned car. They’re probably figuring that Stuart’s alive and well and left town without telling anybody—to hide from creditors, to be with another woman, whatever. Their investigation has got to be very low-level at this point, because people vanish every day, usually of their own volition.”
“Okay, but I’m still not crazy about being under suspicion. What’ll it take for the police investigation to go from being low-level to high-level?”
‘Time. The longer Stuart stays missing, the more heat you and Tara will feel from the cops.”
“Swell.”
“Not to worry. He’ll resurface. You’ll see. Meanwhile, I’d much rather concentrate on our new and improved relationship.”
“Oh, you mean our pretend-free relationship?”
“That’s the one. For instance, I could pretend that I don’t want to make love to you again now, but I’m not going to.”
I laughed. “You can’t pretend about that. Your anatomy is giving you away.”
He lowered his head and kissed me, and there was nothing inauthentic about what happened next.