Identity Crisis (4 page)

It was long after midnight at the end of her third week of searching when she finally found what she was looking for, or rather, it found her. It was an email from the Bachman Agency, a PR firm Kendra had quite a bit of contact with when she was in the business. Most often they’d been competitors, though it had been friendly competition for the most part, and on occasion they’d actually helped each other out. The email was sent to K. Ryde personally. Not many people knew that address. In fact, it was pretty much an inactive account now, and yet there it was, a message from Donald P. Bachman.

Dear Mr. Ryde,

Everyone always assumed K. Ryde was a man.

I’m emailing on behalf of Ms. Tess Delaney, who would like to employ a PR person for a special project, one of a sensitive nature. Ms. Delaney requires a woman in her early to mid-30s, one comfortable with making public appearances and speaking in public, should the need arise. Ms. Delaney is looking for someone who can represent her publically and discreetly. She would need this person as soon as possible. Please send résumés on to me or contact me personally.

Sincerely yours,

Donald P. Bachman

Did she actually whoop out loud? She looked around the room to make sure no one had heard her, which was totally ridiculous, since she was all alone. She was exactly what Tess Delaney needed. Though the woman didn’t know it yet, Kendra was totally certain of it. With a few short email exchanges, Kendra made sure that Donald P. Bachman knew it as well. Just before she shut down for the night she gave Mr. Bachman a call, or rather, Kay Lake gave him a call, Kay Lake with her newly created email address, Facebook page and Twitter account. Kay Lake who had studied PR at university as well as acting. Kay Lake who until just a few hours ago didn’t exist. If the Bachman Agency were desperate enough to email her old K. Ryde account, then they would find Kay Lake to be exactly what they were looking for. And by the time she ended their conversation, she had Don Bachman eating out of her hand. She was going to work for Tess Delaney. She was as sure of it as she was her own name.

She shut down her laptop and headed off to bed. In her mind’s eye, she could imagine rubbing Garrett Thorne’s nose in just how wrong he was about her suitability to represent Tess Delaney. As she brushed her teeth, making her usual faces in front of the bathroom mirror, she berated herself for even considering Garrett’s opinion. The Bachman Agency would take her at her word no matter what Garrett Thorne thought. After all, she was recommended to them by K. Ryde. If she said she could get the job done, then for all practical purposes, they could count it already done. The red Shelby Mustang parked safely in the underground car park of her apartment complex was evidence of that.

She stripped out of her yoga bottoms and her tank top and slid naked into the bed. As the sheets grazed the tips of her nipples and the cool cotton embraced her, the memory of Garrett Thorne wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into the lake on top of him made her feel wet in places that had nothing to do with lake water, places that had been tetchy since they’d made their big splash at Harris’s bar-B-Q. She couldn’t say she didn’t like the feeling. But, God, did it really have to be Garrett Thorne who made her wet? Tess Delaney would not have palmed her heroines off on the unemployed bad boy little brother of the hot shot of the business world, she was sure of it. That was not a story the woman would write. Surely Tess would give the brilliant young PR exec a better match than that.

Damn it, listen to her. Tess Delaney wrote romance novels, for fuck sake! She didn’t write real life because nobody wanted to read about real life. The truth was that if you could give up the stupid fantasies about happy ever after and hearts and flowers, you could have sex. Sex was easy, sex was abundant. You simply had to remember that it was just that. There were no strings and there were no expectations. That way no one got hurt and everyone knew up front what the rules were. She always made certain of that, and she always made certain the rules were her own. It had worked for her all these years. It had kept her satisfied and it had kept her heart safe. And she had always been a firm believer that if you let your heart get broken, well, at the end of the day, you had no one to blame but yourself. No one but yourself.

For a long time she lay in the darkness listening to the night sounds of Portland, thinking about Garrett Thorne and Tess Delaney. Maybe tomorrow night she’d go back over to the Boiling Point. There were always interesting people to be met there, and how long had it been since she’d actually had sex? Of course, Dee and Harris thought she had it all the time, thought she had it whenever she wanted it. And she did. Didn’t she? For some strange reason, she just hadn’t wanted it all that much lately. She wondered if she should see a doctor. But then the memory of being pressed up close to a very wet, very aroused Garrett Thorne came back with a vengeance, nearly taking her breath away, and she slipped her hand down between her legs. Her breath caught at the feel of herself, the need that she’d usually let someone else take care of, the itch that was somehow never quite scratched even with the thrill of the chase and the buzz of the conquest. Underneath it all was the feel of her; just her, just Kendra Davis alone on her own, and honesty seemed an easier thing in the wee hours. The feel of her coupled with the thoughts that made her need, made her open and soft and achy, were all thoughts that involved being angry and wet and pulled up tight, even for only a moment, against an angry, wet Garrett Thorne. As she replayed the event in her head, she let herself remember the shape of him, then she turned and twisted the memory until, when they burst from the water, no one on shore noticed them there together in the lake. No one noticed that Garrett Thorne was kissing her. And certainly no one could see what their hands were doing under the water, his shoving at her shorts, hers busy with his fly, yanking and tugging until she could feel him hard and warm and pressing anxiously toward her.

No one could see his tentative exploration with anxious fingers, opening her, spreading her. No one could see her guiding him home, up deep inside her to scratch that itch. And certainly no one could see him cup her bottom and lift her, pull her tight to him, coax her to wrap her legs around him.

No one could feel the friction and no one could see the rocking and pressing of their bodies, tightening and gripping and forcing the breath from each other. And no one could hear their quiet gasps and cries and groans as they came together, came together just like the lovers in Tess Delaney’s novels, came together nearly drowning each other in power of their orgasms.

Kendra was alone when her orgasm snaked up her spine and trembled through her nervous system like leaves rustled by a breeze, and she was probably way too far gone to be thinking straight. Maybe she was even already asleep and she only dreamed the calling of Garrett’s name. And anyway, it was just a fantasy, wasn’t it, and everyone had them. She’d had fantasies about her dentist, for God’s sake. Why not have fantasies about Garrett Thorne? 

Chapter Four

Garrett answered his BlackBerry with a growl. ‘This had better be good news, Don. Time’s running out. And if that happens, things will get very ugly.’

‘I’m fine, Garrett. Thanks for asking. How are you?’

Garrett growled louder.

Then Don was on his usual spiel about his difficult task, the same spiel Garrett had been hearing for three weeks now. ‘It’s not that easy to find someone who can act and keep your secret and knows enough about Tess and her books to go in front of an audience if need be and speak like Tess Delaney. I mean, this is a tall order.’

‘Goddamn it, Don, I don’t want to hear it! We barely have a week. I want to hear that you’ve found someone to be Tess, and I want to hear it now, or I promise you, Romancine can sue my balls off if they want to, but they’ll still wish they’d left well enough alone.’

He could hear Don shuffling papers and clicking computer keys on the other end of the phone. ‘There’s only one way I could see to deal with this situation, and it’s something I never thought I’d have to do, but I’m going to have to hand you over to the competition.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

Don puffed a sigh into the phone. ‘You ever hear of the Ryde Agency?’

‘No. Should I have?’

‘Not unless you’re in Hollywood, and even then probably not. The Ryde Agency is the epitome of discretion in the PR world. They were the new kid on the block. We never expected them to be real competition. They came out of nowhere, and the next thing we knew, they were kicking ass – ours, most of the time. They’ve handled all kinds of nasty PR problems for the rich and famous. You remember the accusations against Devon Barnet a few years ago?’

‘What accusations? As far as I know Devon Barnet has a shining reputation, and in the past couple of years he only has to do a cameo in a film and that film’s a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination.’

‘Exactly,’ Don said. ‘K. Ryde almost single-handedly turned Barnet’s career around. Very few people know this. I only know it because, as I said, the Ryde Agency is the competition, and when K. Ryde agreed to take on Barnet personally, well, the Bachman agency didn’t stand a chance.

‘It’s a miracle I was able to get hold of him, actually. I took a chance with an old email address. K. Ryde is almost as elusive as Tess Delaney, but when the rich and famous have a PR disaster they need taken care of discreetly, it’s the Ryde Agency they go to. To this day Barnet won’t say a word about K. Ryde, only that Ryde’s the best, that Ryde’s a genius. There are no photos of them together, no text or email trails, no sightings, and God knows the paparazzi tried.

‘Apparently K. Ryde no longer has much involvement in the business. They say he’s retired. Maybe he’s a romance fan. I don’t know. But for Tess Delaney, he’s willing to do what he can.’

‘Look, I don’t care if you’ve got to call God out of retirement,’ Garrett said. ‘I don’t want to out Tess, so what can this Ryde fellow do for me?’

‘Turns out he has contact with a woman who loves Tess Delaney novels, who happens to live close to the Portland area, and who’s dying to meet Tess Delaney and do whatever Tess needs. Of course I didn’t tell Ryde the details; just told him what we needed, and that we needed the woman yesterday.’

Garrett sat up on the edge of his chair and wiped a suddenly sweaty palm against his jeans. ‘And?’

‘I told Ryde that there would have to be some coaching to make sure the woman could do what Tess needed her for and that this was top, top secret.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well,’ Don said. ‘I talked to the woman last night extensively, and if she can’t be your Tess Delaney, I don’t know who can. If you pull up your email, I’ve sent you her address. You set the time, and she’s yours.’

With fingers none too steady on the keys, Garrett pulled up his email and, sure enough, there was a message from Don with the address for a Kay Lake. ‘Got it,’ he said. Then he hung up and emailed the woman he hoped would save his bacon.

Dear Ms. Lake,

Ms. Delaney has agreed to interview you for the position. Can you meet tomorrow at 2 p.m. at the Pneuma Annex? Suite 3B.

Best wishes,

Gary Rose

Secretary to Tess Delaney

He sent the message off. It was brief. He’d found that brief was always better when keeping a secret was essential. Even when Tess was quoted in press releases, it was always very brief, very Garbo-ish. It wasn’t the first time he’d used one of the Pneuma Annex offices for official Tess Delaney business and, though Ellis grumbled about it, he always kept suite 3B open for him. And Garrett had always used the name Gary Rose for Tess’s secretary. Somehow it seemed right that Tess should have a male secretary. It was really only a way to give Tess Delaney and Garrett Thorne one more level of separation to protect their anonymity. He’d never had to meet anyone face to face before. He wondered if he should find someone to be Gary Rose this time too, but then that was another complication he didn’t need, and time was quickly running out. Besides, if he didn’t trust Don’s opinion on his future female self, he sure as hell wasn’t going to trust someone he’d hired off the street. After all, he was screening for the perfect Tess Delaney.

Almost immediately the response came back.

Dear Mr. Rose,

Tomorrow at 2.00 is fine for me. I look forward to it.

All the best,

Kay Lake

For a long time Garrett stared at the screen. He hoped this Ryde Agency was as good as Don said and that they truly had found him the right Tess Delaney. He was furious at being put in this position. Right now, he just wanted it all behind him, Golden Kiss nomination or not. He picked up a fountain pen and began to write on the back of a sheet of his waste paper again.

I’m not comfortable with any of what’s going on. There’s so little time to prepare. I don’t know who Kay Lake is, and that makes me really nervous. It makes me nervous that she’ll know my secret, it makes me nervous that the myth and the reality of Tess Delaney are about to collide in a very dangerous way.

But when I think about it, I suppose I’ve never really pictured Tess as anything but dangerous. Who could I ever tell that Tess writes my soul in a way I never could do it myself when I was younger and writing testosterone-laced shoot-’em-ups? I would have rather been the King of the Thriller. That was my dream. Then Tess shoved her way into my life, and instead, I’m the Queen of Romance. How the hell did that happen?

And another thing, this Kay Lake, will I begin to think of her as Tess Delaney? Will she convince me that the figment of my imagination who splintered and became my other half lives and breathes manifest in her body? Jesus, that’s too strange to even think about. More likely she’ll always be an actress to me. Well, I’m hoping after the award ceremony I can retire Tess back to her reclusive life and swear Ms. Lake to secrecy on the life of her first born.

But it’ll never be the same again, will it? Someone else will know my secret, Tess’s secret, and the way I picture Tess Delaney in my head will forever be tainted by Kay Lake’s version of Tess.

He laid the pen aside and closed down his computer. Tonight was the night he’d be watching Amy dance the Sleeping Beauty if he’d made the trip to New York. It was over between them. He knew that. He’d known it when he’d gone back to her the last time. He didn’t deal well with endings, and now it felt like he was losing Tess too. He opened the French doors and moved onto the balcony. ‘She doesn’t exist,’ he said out loud. ‘She never has.’ Someone a little less neurotic than he was would have let it go a long time ago. But sometimes it was easier being Tess Delaney than it was being Garrett Thorne.

He turned and went back into the house, closing the doors behind him. Tess Delaney. He had never assigned her a real physicality. In his mind’s eye, she’d never looked like Amy or any of his other lovers. Strange that he had always been happy with her being physically undefined, but then she wrote the stories, she wasn’t in the stories. Her boundaries were far more permeable than those of the heroines she created or those of the women he’d loved.

Kendra had spent the better part of the morning trying to find any last-minute information she could about Tess Delaney. There were rumors all right, lots of rumors. They seemed to surface and rise every time Tess released a novel, then fade into the background until there was another new release. But beyond the rumors, it seemed no one really knew anything about Tess Delaney. That made it all the more exciting for her to be the first to have contact with the elusive woman. Oh, she was sure there would be strict protocol, non-disclosure and who knew what other measures set in place to protect the woman’s identity, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t interested in sharing her experience of Tess Delaney with anyone. That would ruin it, actually. She just wanted to meet the woman, see what she was really like.

Though she could find nothing of any real value about Tess Delaney. She was pretty sure her knowledge of the woman’s novels would be invaluable. She’d read once that all novels, in some way, were about their authors. She wondered if that meant Tess had lots of passionate lovers or only wished she did. She wondered if that meant Tess was a woman totally out of touch with reality, or if it meant that, just like Kendra, Tess wrote the life she didn’t really believe in, but she loved to fantasize about. Kendra had never fantasized about romance – ever. At least, not until she picked up her first Tess Delaney novel. She was never really sure if she should praise the woman for that or curse her. The jury was still out. One thing was for certain, the woman and her romantic notions had played havoc with Kendra’s sex life. She’d read every novel Tess had ever written, and most of them more than once. She had them all on Kindle as well as in pristine hardback copies on her shelf at home. A few she even had in tattered, dog-eared paperback as well. She had played some of the most powerful passages over and over in her head, her heart racing with an ache she didn’t want, and yet didn’t want to be without now that she had it. Now that she’d felt it. Problem was, now that she had felt it, she didn’t really know what to do with it. She couldn’t bring herself to talk to Dee about it, though she probably should, since Dee was the one who would know about real romance. And what could she say to her that didn’t sound totally silly and adolescent?

But Tess Delaney didn’t sound silly or adolescent, and she would soon be set to find out why that was. She pretty much knew the job with Tess was hers. If Bachman had called her in for help, then it was hers. Kendra didn’t get where she was in the PR world without a very finely honed attention to detail, and a scalpel-sharp memory; that, and a deliver or die attitude that always left her clients more than 100 per cent satisfied.

She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Dee about the meeting because Dee was off in Paris on business, and though she wouldn’t have minded picking Ellis’s brain about his knowledge of Tess Delaney, he was in Spain. And she wouldn’t give Garrett the satisfaction. Besides, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t help her anyway. Clearly he hated her. Well, she didn’t like him much either.

She flipped through her closet until she found the rose-pink linen suit that looked romantic and yet very chic and professional. It wasn’t exactly sexy, but it definitely wasn’t unsexy either. With a blouse and matching heels just a few shades darker and a string of freshwater pearls, she figured she looked like the perfect assistant to a romance writer. As she added the final pins to the French knot in which she wore her hair, she felt the change she always felt when K. Ryde took control. Though, in all honesty, K. Ryde never made public appearances. This time it was Kay Lake who would take the lead role representing the Ryde Agency, and she was an expert at enthralling an audience, even if that audience were only a world-famous romance writer and her secretary. By the end of the day, Kendra Davis fully intended to be in the employ of the reclusive, mysterious, much whispered about, much admired Tess Delaney. She slipped into her heels, then gave a turn in front of the full-length mirror. God, she’d forgotten how much she loved the rush of adrenaline that always accompanied the challenge offered by a difficult client. She could hardly wait.