Whispers and Lies. Diane Pershing
the founder and editor of the town’s single newspaper, for his workaholic nature which kept him from his family. And in his determination not to follow in his father’s footsteps, he might have run away from working on the paper.
But with maturity, he had come to understand that he was just like the old man—tunnel-visioned and driven. Career came first. So he had decided he could avoid hurting others—avoid making them suffer the same destiny as his own family had suffered—by never getting too involved with a woman, thus avoiding the possibility of a family of his own.
At this point in his life, he might have lost his taste for reporting on the world’s pain and violence, but he hadn’t lost his ambition, his need to get ahead, his hunger to be more. It was what drove him, gave him energy and a reason to get up every morning.
He rose, walked over to Lou at the sink. As he gazed into the sad, scared, tired brown eyes of Lou McAndrews—a woman he’d known for years but felt he had met today for the first time—he took her hand, squeezed it comfortingly and smiled. “You go to bed now, get some sleep. You’re safe here. I’ll see you in the morning.”
After a quick moment of hesitation, she nodded and left the room. Will sat some more at the kitchen table, thinking.
Mostly about the calls he’d made earlier from his bedroom, following through on that niggling little notion that wouldn’t go away. He’d punched in Lincoln’s number at his D.C. condo. When no one picked up, he’d left a message. Then he’d tried his Florida home and his cell phone. No answer at either. Will left messages everywhere, asking that Linc call him ASAP. That it was important.
He checked his watch. Midnight. Lincoln had always been reachable before, but he might be out, carousing with buddies or with a woman, might have his cell phone turned off.
Well, he’d done all he could do. It was time for him to go to bed.
Will tossed and turned all night, thinking about not getting through to Lincoln, and going in and out of dreams about Lou, who was spending the night just down the hall in the guest bedroom, probably cuddled up with a small, black cat.
Will wished he were there in its stead.
Chapter 4
Saturdays were always busy at the clinic and this one was no exception, beginning with euthanasia on a twenty-three-year-old, completely worn-out, part Siamese, part alley cat named Rose Tiger. After comforting the cat’s owner, Lou went on to caring for a terrier-schnauzer mix with mange, a Manx who’d been bitten by a spider and a terrified golden retriever who had gotten a chicken bone stuck crosswise between her upper teeth.
She was cleaning out the wounds of a cat fight victim when she was called urgently to the phone. Leaving the animal in Alonzo’s capable care, she went into her office and picked up the receiver.
“Lou?”
“Oh, hi, Nancy, what’s up?”
“Sorry to bother you like this but I have a huge favor to ask you.”
“Anything, you know that.”
“Molly is sick. Can you believe it? She has chicken pox, poor thing. Never had it as a kid and she hugged her nephew and the rest is history.”
“That’s awful,” Lou commiserated.
“Anyway, she’s my maid of honor tomorrow and she won’t be able to do it.”
A feeling of dread came over her. “Yes?”
“Please, please, please, will you do it? You were my first choice, remember? But that was right after your mom died, and of course you were in no shape to do anything like that. Now it’s a couple of months later and, well, I really, really need a maid of honor.”
“But what will I wear?”
“That’s just it. It works out great. You can wear Molly’s dress.”
“But she’s tiny.”
“So are you. I mean, not to be insensitive, I know it’s because of your mom and all, but Lou, you would have no trouble fitting into her dress now, trust me. I can get it to you today and Mrs. Crump from the cleaners says if there are any last-minute alterations, she’ll do them tonight. Please Lou.”
Tiny? She was tiny? There was a narrow mirror on one of the walls of her office—why, she had no idea—and Lou gazed at herself in it. It was true. As always, she was pretty short, but now she was also pretty thin. There were cheekbones where there had been none. No more plumpness around the jawline. Her neck looked longer now.
Tiny.
Lou found herself semipleased with the word, but also not. Tiny was a word that lacked, well, substance.
“Lou?”
“Yes? Oh, sorry. Of course I’ll do it.”
There was a huge sigh on the other end of the line. “Thank you, bless you. You are free tonight, aren’t you? I mean, you’ll have to attend the wedding rehearsal and the bridal dinner afterward, and that’s tonight. Yes?”
“Yes.”
Another relieved sigh. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me. So, will you be coming back to my place this afternoon? Oh, no, I can’t believe I haven’t asked you how you are. Have you been upstairs yet? Did the fingerprint guy come? Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine, Nancy, really. Yeah, he was there and he’s all done. He came downstairs and took my prints, too—he says for now they only found one primary set, mine we figure, and older, fainter traces of another, probably Mom’s. Whoever broke in, they were pros.”
“But how awful, to have your house broken into. So will you spend the night back at your place then?”
“I don’t know. I want to see what it’s like upstairs first.”
“Come here, okay? Really.”
Another night spent under the same roof with Will, sharing a bathroom, smelling his shaving soap? “I’ll have to let you know.”
“Well, either way, you’ll have the dress later this afternoon. And Molly wants you to know that the last time she tried it on was a couple of weeks ago and she doesn’t think you can catch chicken pox from a fabric after two weeks.”
Lou chuckled. “Tell her thanks and I already had all the usual childhood diseases.”
After she hung up, she gazed in the mirror again. Tiny. Petite. Feminine. There were lots of men who liked those adjectives when they applied to their women. Was Will one of them? He’d found her attractive, he’d said. Would he still say the same thing if she were her usual, not-tiny self?
He kissed me.
And so what? she told herself sternly, as she had been all day. He’d been honest with her, found her attractive—for all she knew, he probably found all women attractive—but didn’t want to start something that had nowhere to go.
Before getting back to her patients, she snuck one last look at herself. Yes, she most definitely was not the same old Lou McAndrews. And however ambivalent she might feel about the change in herself, at least now she would be able to do her best friend a favor—wear a dress that actually fit and maybe even look good in it. Hey, after opening her house and her arms to her last night, whatever Nancy needed, Lou was here to make sure she got it.
Will’s bedroom had last been updated in high school. At that point, as he’d sprouted up nearly five inches in one year, the twin bed he’d slept in while growing up had been traded in for a full one. There were large posters of Aerosmith and Bruce Springsteen on one wall, a movie poster from Top Gun on another; along a third stretched a huge banner for the Susanville Sluggers, his baseball team. The shelves of two narrow bookcases were filled with schoolbooks, some fiction and a lot of history and biography. There were CDs and tapes, even a few old LPs, although the needle on his record player had long since gone south.