Everybody Loves Evie (10 page)

He looked at his team. “I'll drive up and interview the senator's wife in person.”

“So we're taking the case,” Gina said. “Because if we don't, seems to me we're facing something more permanent than suspension.”

Beckett didn't comment. Either he didn't care or he wasn't concerned.

His silence triggered hard stares and confrontational body language. I wasn't sure what I'd stepped into, but I hoped it worked itself out before I returned.

“You can't come with me, Beckett,” I said. “How would I explain you to my family? Chameleon's covert and you're a Fed. What if I'm wrong? What if there's no swindle? What if my mom
is
having an affair?” I clamped my hand over my mouth as soon as the words flew out. Crazy talk.

“Didn't you say something about a high-school reunion?” Beckett asked.

“A civic theater benefit with high-school alumni. Yes, but—”

“Will the others bring their husbands?”

“Yes, but—”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Pops asked.

I thought about Arch, looked at Beckett. I forced my fingers not to scratch. “No.”

He smiled. “You do now.”

M
ILO STARED DOWN
the rental-car representative—a pale, thin-lipped kid with slicked-over hair. Pee-wee Herman's younger brother. “What do you mean there are no available cars? I have a reservation.”

“You
had
a reservation, sir. You canceled it.”

“I didn't.”

“You did.” Pee-wee passed him a computer-generated form. “Says so right here.”

“No one has luck this bad,” Evie grumbled from behind. “Not even me.”

Nonstop flights had been sold out, doubling travel time to four and a half hours. To aggravate matters, due to misinformation, they'd missed their connecting flight. Stranded at the Cleveland airport for what seemed like days. Now this. Milo glanced down at the sheet, glanced up at the representative. “My girlfriend and I have been traveling for—” he checked his temper and his watch “—ten hours. We're exhausted, we're frustrated and we're expected. I need a car. Stick. Automatic. Compact or luxury. Whatever you've got.”

“But I don't have anything, sir. There are several conventions in town. Good for us, bad for you.” He passed Milo back his credit card. “Sorry.”

“Unbelievable,” he said to himself as he turned to Evie. Only she wasn't there. She was standing across the way, talking on her cell phone. He wondered if she was talking to Arch—or, rather, to his voice mail. The Scot had mentioned dodging her calls, hoping to cool any lingering heat. Although that had been before the whiskey/Midol incident.

After driving Evie home and seeing her settled, he'd called Arch to disabuse him of the notion that he'd made a pass. Allowing him to believe otherwise, using Evie to somehow manipulate him, didn't sit right. Granted, he'd considered it, but he couldn't do it. To Arch, yes. To Evie, no. “You know me better than that,” he'd said.

“
Dinnae
mistake my concern for anything beyond friendship,” had been Arch's reply.

They'd left it at that, and Milo decided, whether the Scot was in love or not, he was sticking to his personal code, distancing himself so, if the need arose, he could walk away from Evie without a second thought. It made Milo feel less uncomfortable about his own interest in the woman.

His mouth curved when she turned around and he got another look at her Mighty Mouse T-shirt. It didn't matter that she was over forty; like Goldie Hawn, she was perpetually cute. He wondered if she'd appreciate the observation. Probably not, given her dislike of her moniker. Twinkie. Not degrading, he thought,
fitting.

She closed her eyes and massaged her jaw and he felt a stab of guilt. She was worried and tired, and here he stood admiring the curves even her cargo pants couldn't disguise. He wheeled over her beet-red suitcase along with his beat-up Samsonite just as she disconnected.

“I booked us a room at the Airport Ramada.”

So she hadn't been talking to Arch. This day was looking up. “Why? Your parents live ninety minutes north.”

“Except we don't have a car.”

“We'll try another agency.”

“Even if we snag wheels,” she rasped, “by the time we fill out the paperwork, load the luggage and get on the road, we won't hit Greenville until one in the morning.” Between exhaustion and her lingering cold, she barely had a voice. “I'm fried, Beckett. I need a clear head to focus on our ruse. I need energy to deal with whatever's happening at home.”

He could use some downtime himself. He'd volunteered for this unofficial mission on a whim. She'd walked in, Miss Damsel in Distress, and he'd jumped on his white charger.

I'll save you.

My hero.

But it was more than an opportunity to bring his fantasy to life that had prompted him to offer himself up as her boyfriend. He knew she'd been nervous about compromising her job with Chameleon by taking a leave of absence before she'd even started. That she'd set aside her own ambitions to race to her family's rescue stirred him. Yes, he was physically attracted to Evie, but he also felt genuine affection.

Mixing business with pleasure suddenly seemed like a kick-ass idea. This trip to Small Town, USA, provided him with a chance to get to know Evie away from Arch, away from Chameleon. Some quiet time to reevaluate his life. Even though he'd assured the team he'd look into Crowe's unofficial directive, that didn't mean he'd take on the job. He hadn't signed up with the Agency to bail rich politicians out of financial jams. He'd signed up to burn low-life grifters who scammed naive marks out of their life savings. Specifically the scum artists, as Arch called them, who targeted the needy, preyed on the vulnerable and naive. Everyday Joes like Mrs. Parish. Not that he was convinced the woman was being scammed.

Twinkie, on the other hand, was certain her mom had fallen victim to everything from a Sweetheart swindle to a Nigerian scam. While he'd tried to unsnarl the travel knot in Cleveland, she'd had her nose stuck in a research book she'd purchased online. The more she read, the greater her fears. Like a hypochondriac perusing a medical encyclopedia.

“All right,” he said. “We'll call it a night. Want to call and give your mom an update?”

“The only one who knows I'm coming is my brother, and he's not expecting me until tomorrow or the day after.”

On the flight, he'd asked her about her family. She'd confessed they weren't close, but she loved them and assumed they loved her, even though they'd never said the words out loud. Having grown up in a repressed environment, he marveled at her natural vitality and warmth, although she
had
called herself the black sheep of the family.

He was beginning to feel the same way about himself and the AIA.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Just tired,” he said, fighting the urge to confess his career crisis. Even though he knew she'd empathize, she had enough on her mind. And, besides, he'd figure it out. He always did. “Good thinking. The room,” he clarified while hauling their bags toward the signs marked Taxi Service.

“Luckily, there were some cancellations so I booked two.” She hurried alongside. “I know we're supposed to be sleeping together. I know we'll have to put on a show once we get there. But until then—”

“Got it, Twinkie.”

“I wish you wouldn't call me that.”

“I know.” Smiling, he loaded their bags into a cab parked curbside, helped her into the backseat and gave the driver their destination. It was late. Dark. He couldn't see her expression, but he could feel the tension radiating from her compact body. “Whatever's wrong,” he said, “we'll fix it.”

“I appreciate this, Beckett.”

“Milo. Starting tomorrow, we'll be a couple. Beckett won't cut it.”

“Got it.”

He frowned at her weary tone, instinctually wrapped his arm around her shoulders, offering comfort. She didn't pull away, but she didn't relax against him, either. “You all right with this, Twinkie? Sure you'll be able to convince your family and friends you're crazy about me?”

“Absolutely,” she said with a smile in her voice that inspired hope for the better man. “I'm a damn good actress.”

D
EAR
D
IARY
, I
FELT
another snap.

Hunched over the cheap desk of my standard, generic hotel room, I scribbled in my diary. Two pages of purple-penned rant.

The first snap had been three weeks ago. The audition from hell. That snap had been loud and proud, felt by me, witnessed by a dozen or so bystanders. This snap had happened tonight, when Beckett put his arm around me. A quiet but worrisome snap. And, because of my superb acting skills, no one knew about it but me. And my diary.

I like Beckett. A lot.

He didn't make my heart flutter, like Arch. He didn't summon my inner bad girl. I didn't want to jump his bones, but I did want to take comfort in his arms.

Would my heart flutter if he kissed me?

On the cruise ship, we'd engaged in a brief couple's dance. A slow dance. I remember he had good rhythm. I'd been impressed. I remember my skin tingled. I'd been unsettled. I'd told myself I wasn't actually attracted to him, but he was an attractive man and I was desperate for physical intimacy.

Only now I wasn't desperate. I'd just had two weeks of nonstop creative physical intimacy with Arch.

What's wrong with me?

I started making a list, but that seemed unproductive, so I started another list. Make that two.

Arch

Unpredictable

Smart

Dangerous

Sexy

Shady past

Kind

Skewed morals

Beckett

Stable

Smart

Safe

Sexy

Commendable past

Kind

Solid morals

“Crap.” Arch had more cons than pros, which made sense, I guess, considering he's a
con
artist. “Former con-artist,” I reminded myself. Then I added to his list
Doesn't do relationships.

If I recalled right—and I usually do—Arch had mentioned Beckett had been married for several years, before his wife left him, which prompted me to add to his list
Dumped like me.

No doubt about it, Beckett was more my old-fashioned, good-girl speed.

But Arch was the one who made my spirit zoom.

I blinked down at my lists, noted that I'd doodled hearts and tried on both their last names for size. “How old am I—fourteen?”

I slammed the diary shut, thinking that was a bad question, because the correct answer was: forty-one. Old enough to know that someday, when the time was right, I wanted to commit to one man. Kind of hard to pledge your heart to someone who doesn't do relationships. “I'm not even sure if he can do friendship.”

The shower came on in Beckett's room. I remembered finding him in his towel two days earlier. I tried not to think of the hard-muscled chest. It didn't help my confusion at all.

Brain buzzing, I reopened the diary.

This is all your fault, Ace.

And spent the next twenty minutes blasting Arch Duvall and the dark horse he rode in on.

M
ORNING CAME SOONER
than I would have liked, given I'd slept like a kid hopped up on a six-pack of Red Bull.

Although we'd easily booked a car and were now zipping up the interstate, my mood was tense. Sure, I was worried about my parents and, yes, I was uncomfortable with this awareness of Beckett, but it was Arch who'd plagued my restless dreams. In la-la land I'd hit him with everything I'd written in my diary before I'd collapsed on that hotel bed. In la-la land, as in reality, he calmly listened to my rant, pointing out
I
was the one who ended the affair and, had I left him a message about my mom,
bloody hell, aye,
he would have been on the next plane. In la-la land, as in reality—or at least my old reality—we ended up rolling around on the floor making crazy, heated whoopee.

This morning I was more vexed with him than yesterday. I refused to analyze the tightness in my chest. “Bastard.”

“Me or the driver who just cut me off?” Beckett asked.

Arch,
I wanted to say but didn't. “He could have at least used his turn signal.” A calculated guess, since I'd been zoning.

Hands steady on the steering wheel, Beckett just smiled. He'd insisted on driving, even though we were on my home turf. The man was a control freak—add that to the list—but I didn't mind. Not in this instance. Too much travel and anxiety in too few days, coupled with the tail end of a cold, made me grumpy. I slurped more Dunkin' Donuts java, gunning for a caffeine jolt.

“Maybe you should ease up. That's your third cup in two hours.”

“I need all the bean juice I can chug. I didn't sleep well last night.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Nervous?”

“Anxious. Except for a quickie weekender last year when I attended my brother's wedding, I haven't been home in three years. How awful is that?”

He didn't comment.

“My track record wasn't much better before that. It used to be because of work. Either I was booked or, if I wasn't, I was afraid to leave for fear of a last-minute offer. In show biz, when it rains, it pours—you take it when you can get it.”

“Unstable business. I'm sure they understand.”

“Not really. Mom never approved of my performing for a living. She wanted me to go to college. Wanted me to have something solid to fall back on. Logically, she was right. I'd be flipping burgers right now if it weren't for Chameleon. It's just she wanted me to be something I'm not.”

“And that would be?”

“Normal.”

He laughed and the tension in my jaw eased. He wasn't laughing at me. He got why my mom's vision was absurd. He got
me.

I ignored the warm fuzzies, sipped more coffee and studied my boss—make that
boyfriend
—over the rim of my foam cup. Beckett was certainly attractive, though in a quiet way. He didn't ooze charisma like Arch, but he oozed confidence. He was talented and nice—mostly—and smart. A flipping government agent, for crying out loud.

“Do I have doughnut crumbs on my face?” he asked.

“What? No. Why?”

“You're staring.”

I blushed. “I was just…I was wondering…do you have a girlfriend?”

“Yeah. You.”

“I mean, for real.”

“No one steady.” He cast me a sidelong glance. “Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“So you said.”

“It's just that I'd prefer not to kiss someone else's boyfriend.”

Another glance. “You're going to kiss me?”

“When I have to.”

He shook his head. “Good thing I don't have a fragile ego.”

“I didn't mean it like that. I just meant it will be easier to pretend I'm hot for you if—”

“I know what you mean.”

I pressed back in my seat, overwhelmed with a wave of déjà vu.

Arch and I had traded similar words the first day we met. I'd been hired to play his wife, only I'd thought it was a gig, not a mission. Pretending to be hot for the man had been cake since I wasn't pretending. With Beckett, I'd definitely be acting. Although it wouldn't be a
huge
challenge since I wasn't exactly repulsed by the man. An understatement, and one I chose not to dwell on.

I swallowed. “So there's no one special.”

He focused on the road. “I wish there was.”

Okay, that was sweet. That was…dangerous. I focused on my coffee instead of his handsome profile. It would be weird to kiss Beckett. Not just because he was my boss but because he was Arch's friend. And because I had feelings for Arch, although I kept trying to squash them down. And—gads—what if Beckett's kiss tripped my heart the same as Arch's? Wouldn't
that
be a mess? Although it could be a blessing. Maybe I needed a distraction. Maybe the fling with Arch had merely been a warm-up for the real thing with…someone else.

Maybe you should forget about your love life and focus on your future as a Chameleon. Face it—mixing the two is a recipe for disaster. Beckett's said so himself more than once.

Right.

It's the reason you broke off with Arch to begin with, right?

Mostly.

So you better hope to hell Beckett doesn't make your heart flutter.

When, I wondered, had my life gotten so complicated? Although complicated beat depressing. Or boring.

My temples throbbed with a tension headache. “You wouldn't happen to have any aspirin, would you?”

He pulled a travel packet from his pants pocket and passed it to me. His lip twitched. “You don't get looped on Tylenol, do you?”

“No,” I said, cursing my heated cheeks. I ripped open the packet and swallowed two caplets, wondering what kind of a man carried aspirin in his pocket. Did Beckett suffer from chronic headaches? Migraines?

“Sure are a lot of cornfields around here,” he said before I could ask.

“This
is
farm country.”

“I can smell that.”

I wrinkled my nose, smiled. “Pigs.”

“Your family doesn't—”

“No. We live in town. Speaking of—make that next right.” My adrenaline spiked as he veered off the highway and onto the narrow gravel road I'd traveled a bazillion times in my youth. The rental car's tires bumped in and out of potholes and crunched over rocks as we zipped past pastures, fields, barns and hundred-year-old farmhouses.

“I'm seeing lots of tomatoes—”

“Soybeans.”

“—and towers—”

“Silos.”

“But no town on the horizon,” Beckett said. “Sure you remember the way? It's been three years, after all.”

I rolled my eyes. “I'm taking you the back way.”

“So is Greenville like Hooterville?” he asked, tongue in cheek.

“A
Green Acres
reference? I'm shocked. Can't imagine you watching hokey sitcoms. You seem more like a CNN kind of guy. Anyway, yes, Greenville's a speck on the map. Hope you weren't expecting signal for your cell or access to the Internet.”

He frowned.

“Kidding,” I said. “Well, about the splotchy Internet access anyway.”

He flipped open his phone, noted the signal. Or absence thereof. “Shit.”

I grinned. “Sorry you came?”

“No.”

“Me, neither.” God help me, I meant it.

A
S ANXIOUS AND
distracted as I'd been for the last twenty-four hours, the moment I saw the sign—Greenville, Population 10,200—I pulled it together. Call me calm and confident. Call me motivated. I fully intended to solve the mystery of my mom's peculiar behavior and to reunite my parents within a week's time, if not sooner. What's more, I intended to fool my family and my drama-club alumni into thinking that, though divorced, I was currently and blissfully involved with Milo Beckett, owner of a retro bar known as the Chameleon Club, where I'd recently landed a house gig.
The more we stick to the truth,
he'd said,
the more they'll buy it.
I'm thinking he also figured the less the chance I'd crack out of turn. All because he thought I was a terrible liar. Arch thought so, too. I'd show them—or at least Beckett—and I'd secure my place on the team.
Until you get better at lying, I'm not putting you in the field.
Yeah, boy, watch my smoke.

I directed Beckett to make a right onto Main Street. “Our house is four blocks down on the left. Two-story. Redbrick, green trim.”

“You just described half of the houses on this street.” He glanced around. “Quiet. Scenic. Nice. What are those, maple trees?”

“Mostly. A few oak. All ancient.” They lined both sides of Main, along with an occasional gas lamp. Greenville was big on retaining certain historical aspects. Several properties had wrought iron fences, and the sidewalk—buckled and chipped—was constructed of brick. Hazardous but charming.

Like Arch.

Stop thinking about him.

“More Mayberry than Hooterville,” Beckett said.

Another sixties sitcom reference. “Didn't realize you were a TV addict.”

“I've been battling insomnia lately. Three words. Nick at Nite.”

Fatigue headaches,
was my first thought. That explained the Tylenol. Maybe. My second thought was that we had something in common aside from both being dumped by our spouses. A fondness for classic TV. It occurred to me that I knew even less about Beckett than I knew about Arch, and since I knew next to nothing about the sexy Scot, that was saying a lot. I massaged an ache in my chest.

Stop thinking about Arch.
Right.

“What's up with the insomnia?” I asked.

“Restless.”

Duh. “Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Maybe you're lonely.” Sleeping alone after sharing a bed with someone for umpteen years was a difficult adjustment. Been there, experienced that.

“Maybe we should get into character. This is your block. Which is your house?”

I pointed. “That one.” Stage jitters attacked as he swung into the driveway and I prepared for a humdinger performance. I methodically abandoned the real me, the me who felt as though she was returning home a failure—no husband, no agent, no Oscar or Grammy—and channeled the me I wanted to be. A confident, adventurous woman pursuing a new career. “I can do this,” I said to myself as Beckett rounded the car and helped me out.

“
We
can do this,” he said with a reassuring smile.

I took the hand he offered, my concocted persona seeping into my bones as our fingers interlaced. I didn't feel a zing or a zap, but I did feel the support of a friend. Warm fuzzies. Fuzzy fur.
Unless the gorilla was docile,
Jayne chanted in my head. Then the dream was forecasting a new and unusual friend.

Then where did that leave Arch?

I choked back unexpected tears, assuring myself that the bizarre reaction was due to my conflicting emotions regarding my parents and their troubles and not because of the confusion regarding my feelings for Arch and Beckett.

Yeah. That was it.

We scaled the cement steps, my pulse racing as we crossed the porch and I prepared to knock. Even though I'd grown up here, I didn't feel comfortable just walking in. It's not as though Mom expected me. But then the front door swung in and there she stood. At least I think it was her. The judgmental blue eyes and pinched mouth were familiar. As for the rest—holy makeover! I'd never seen Mom in jeans, let alone with her shirttails hanging out. She'd knotted a navy-blue scarf at her neck and—color me shocked—after fifteen years of the same look, she'd allowed her stylist to dye and cut her hair. Goodbye dull gray bob, hello soft blond pixie. She looked at least ten years younger than her sixty-three, and my first thought was,
Oh, my God, Christopher's right. She's having an affair!
She cashed in those bonds to fund a new Marilyn Parish—new wardrobe, new lifestyle and, sweet lord, maybe that trip to Mexico.

“You could have prepared me, Evelyn,” she said. “I raised you better than that.”

Some
things never change. My foot wasn't even in the door and I'd already disappointed her. I fumbled for an excuse.
I thought Christopher might have mentioned it
wouldn't wash since he'd called me on the sly. I settled for, “I wanted to surprise you.”