Moonlight Masquerade (23 page)

“I have a better idea. Let's shower them with guilt.” Roan took his mobile phone out of his pocket and pushed a few buttons. “Betsy?” he said. “I'm over at Daisy's.” He paused. “Yeah, I've found a tenant and she plans to open it right away, so I want you and the other two girls to come over here and scrub the place down.”

Sophie could hear Betsy's voice raised in anger.

“Since when do you think we've become cleaning women for you, Roan McTern? Just because Dr. Reede is out of town doesn't mean we don't have anything to do and we are professional women, not—”

“Sophie is going to run it, and she knows everything,” Roan said into the phone.

Betsy took a moment before speaking. “How much is everything?”

“Lies, concealments, the town being in on it. Every last dirty detail.”

When Betsy spoke, her voice was meek, apologetic. “We'll need to get supplies.”

“Make it fast,” Roan said and clicked off the phone. He looked at Sophie. “What else do you need?”

“I don't know,” Sophie began, then smiled. “This is like being given wishes.”

“Does that make me your fairy godmother?” Roan asked, eyes narrowed.

“If the shoe fits, Cinderella,” Sophie couldn't help saying.

At that insult, Roan turned on his heel and started for the front door.

“I'm sorry!” Sophie said and went after him and put her hands on his arm. “I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I—” One look at Roan's eyes as they sparkled in delight and she knew he'd been teasing her, and she couldn't help laughing. “I need everything! All of it, from furniture to curtains to pots and pans to a sign painter for the windows.”

“What are you going to name the place? Sophie's Revenge?”

“How about No Doctors Allowed?”

Roan put his hand over his heart. “I love that name. At least then I might have a chance.”

She stepped back from him and put her hands up in defense. “No. No more men. At least not for a while.”

“How long?” Roan asked seriously.

“Until . . . ” She looked around the little shop. “Until all the walls are covered with my work.”

Roan looked at her for a moment. “That's right, you're an artist too, aren't you?”

“I was. I wanted to be.”

“I've always wanted to be a writer,” he said. “Problem is that I can't write.”

“I doubt if that's true,” Sophie said. “Surely you can—”

He was shaking his head at her.

“What?”

“I don't think I've ever met a person with a softer heart than you have. You bring out every protective instinct in me and make me feel like some knight of old. Maybe I should show up on a black horse and—” He broke off at the memory, and Sophie's narrowed eyes. “Sorry.”

He wouldn't say it, but he now knew what had made Reede agree to wear that ridiculous costume Sara had made for him. When Sophie looked up with her big blue eyes, Roan felt like grabbing a sword and a shield and fighting off any man who came near her.

Too bad, he thought, it wasn't the Middle Ages. If it were, he could challenge his cousin to a joust, with Sophie being the prize. Since Roan was bigger than Reede, he'd surely win.

Alas, it was the twenty-first century and all he had was a cell phone. “Didn't Sara make that red and black costume for you?”

“The one that didn't fit?”

Roan wanted to say that he thought it fit exceptionally well, since most of Sophie's luscious figure was spilling out over the top, but he didn't dare. “Sara knows lots of women who can sew. We'll have curtains for you in twenty-four hours.”

“Furniture?”

“From the attics of Edilean. Sara's mother can handle that. She's the town's mayor.”

“What do I cook with?”

“You and I will go to a restaurant supply store and fill my pickup.”

“I can't—”

Roan held up his finger for her to stop talking.

“But you can't—”

“At!”

Sophie gave a sigh. “Thank you.”

“That's all I want to hear. That and the sound of a cash register ringing.”

“Speaking of which . . . ”

“We'll get one of those too.” Roan started punching buttons on his cell phone. “Let me talk to Sara's mom, Ellie, and she'll get everything started. You better open the door.”

Sophie turned to see Betsy and Heather outside, buckets and mops in their hands.

“Alice is getting supplies and bringing her husband's shop vac,” Betsy said as soon as she was inside. “Sophie, we didn't mean you any harm.”

“It's just that Dr. Reede can be such a jerk that we'll do
anything
to give us some peace,” Heather said. “And when we met you and you are so very pretty, we hoped that—”

“That's enough,” Roan said. “I'm taking Iphigenia here out to do some shopping. When we get back I want this place to be sparkling. There'll be furniture here this afternoon. See that it gets placed correctly.”

Sophie was trying to hide her smile over his Iphigenia remark. In Greek mythology she was a young woman who had been placed on an altar to be sacrificed to help others. Whether or not this was carried out differed from one storyteller to the next.

“Ready?” Roan asked Sophie, and she nodded.

Later, when he and Sophie stopped for a late lunch, Roan slipped away to call Reede to tell him that Sophie had found out who he was.

“Who told her?” Reede asked.

That it was hours later and no one from Edilean had told Reede, Roan took to mean that they were too chicken. “She went to your apartment and saw you sprawled on the couch. I don't know why she didn't drop something else on that ugly mug of yours. She—” Roan broke off because Reede wasn't making his usual protests. “You okay?”

“No,” Reede said. “How angry is she?”

“More depressed than angry, but I'm working on her.”

“She probably thinks I'm like Treeborne.” Reede was standing in the hospital corridor, his white jacket rumpled. There were dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep, from the trauma of his patients, and
from Sophie not answering any of his six text messages, three e-mails, or four phone calls.

“Treeborne?” Roan said. “Like the foods?”

“You didn't hear me say that name. Got it?” Reede said. “Just tell me about Sophie. I was afraid she'd leave town when she found out. That's why I tried to get her to rent a house.”

“The old Gains place? Al tore up that lease, although I heard that his wife made him pay a deposit plus the first and last month's rent. But don't worry about Sophie. We're taking care of her.”

“What does that mean?” Reede asked. “And who is ‘we'? And what has she said about me?”

Roan had expected to enjoy his cousin's misery as much as he'd loved seeing beer poured over his head. But there was such sadness, such
despair
in Reede's voice that Roan couldn't derive any pleasure from it. At the Halloween party Reede had been the happiest anyone had seen him in years—which is why the town had played along with his prank.

“It's all been Al's idea,” Roan said, and told Reede about the sandwich shop.

“She can cook,” Reede said in a voice that seemed to have no life in it. “But then Sophie can do most anything. You'll have to see the sculpture she made for me. It's as good as anything I've ever seen in an art gallery.”

“So when are you coming back to town?”

“I don't know. Today. Tonight maybe. I have office hours tomorrow. If I could I'd get on a plane and—”

“Run away!” Roan snapped and his voice rose as he spoke. “Like you did when the Chawnley girl dumped you? Only this time you deserve what you got. Listen,
I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm going to help you. I'll call some people and see if I can get someone to take over your office here in Edilean. That way you'll get to run away and lick your wounds for another ten years. And Reede, I want to say that I'm really glad you're going to leave town because I'm going to do everything I can to get Sophie for my own. She and I spent today together and I like her. And unlike you, I am
not
a coward. I'll fight for what I want.”

With that, Roan clicked off the phone and shoved it into his pocket. “Idiot!” he said aloud.

The truth was that Roan knew that Sophie was never going to be his. She wasn't interested in him, didn't even seem to see him as a man. Even though they'd spent a day together and he'd worked hard to make her laugh, there was an emptiness in her eyes that was haunting.

They'd spent the day buying necessary equipment for the little restaurant, and try as he might, Roan could never get Sophie to purchase so much as a spoon that she didn't think was essential. Since Roan also liked to cook, they'd talked a lot about food, but Sophie wouldn't speak of anything personal. It was as though she was shutting down, putting a wall around herself—and he hated to see that. Maybe Reede was the main culprit of what had been done to her, but so was the town.

When they stopped for lunch and Sophie excused herself, Roan called Sara and told her what was going on.

“We
all
did this,” Sara said. “Not just Reede, but
all
of us. That poor, poor woman. How can we make it up to her?”

“Show her Edilean isn't full of lying, conniving low-life scum?” Roan suggested.

“That would be a start. Listen, keep her out as long as possible and I'll get everyone together to do what we can to make her feel welcome. Kim and Jecca are going to murder us. I have to go. I need to—I don't even know where to begin.” Sara didn't say any more but clicked off, and Roan went back to the table to Sophie.

“What else do we need?” he asked her as he slid into the booth across from her.

“This is all too much. I don't know how I'm going to pay you back,” Sophie said.

He wanted to say “Forgive us” but he didn't. Instead, “Let me work with you” came out of his mouth. “I took a year off from teaching so I could write a novel, a murder mystery that was going to take the world by storm, but . . . ” He waved his hand. “Let's just say that the world is safe. I've been known to cook a bit so maybe I could . . . ” He shrugged.

“Help make nanny sandwiches?”

Roan didn't understand, so she told what Al had said.

Roan laughed. “Under a pound of beef and Al would think the sandwich was for girls.”

“Maybe I should make a roast beef sandwich that weighs as much as Al—or maybe just his foot. I'd call it The Al.”

“With horseradish sauce?”

“Of course.”

Roan grinned. “What about his wife? Mrs. Eats-Only-Lean?”

“The Two Sticks of Celery lady? Salad with grilled chicken pieces not—”

“Not a whole breast.”

“Of course not. That would be too much. And very, very thin bread. No mayo. Just a little olive oil with a touch of lemon juice. The Mrs. Al.”

Roan leaned back in the booth. “You might have something here. Sandwiches for the people of Edilean.”

“In that case, should I include arsenic or hemlock?”

“Yeow!” Roan said.

“Sorry. I'm sure they're very nice people and I'm sure they just wanted to help Reede. But when I think of everyone laughing at me because I was working for a man I'd poured beer over, it gets to me. I don't know how I'm going to face them in that shop. How can I serve sandwiches and soup to people who . . . who . . . ?”

“I guess that in Edilean we tend to take care of our own so much that we forget about outsiders. A few years ago a young woman, Jocelyn, inherited the big Edilean Manor, and we kept it from her that her gardener was actually Luke Adams.”

“The writer?”

“That's him.”

“And she thought he was the guy who planted the petunias? How angry was she when she found out?”

“Not bad, but
all
her anger was at Luke, not the town.”

“You're saying that I should understand and be forgiving, aren't you?”

“I guess so. At least give us a chance to make it up to you. Will you do that?”

“I'll . . . ” Sophie looked across the table. “Ask me again on the fifteenth of January.”

Roan smiled at her. “Fair enough. You ready to go? What kind of sandwich do you think a famous writer would like best?”

“One with
New York Times Best Seller
branded into the bread.”

Roan stared at her for a moment then let out a roar of laughter. “Oh Sophie! I'm going to enjoy working with you. And we have to figure out how to make that sandwich for my cousin! Come on, let's go buy a panini press. No, let's get three of them.” Smiling, they left the restaurant.

For several minutes,
Reede stood where he was in the hospital corridor, unable to move. He hadn't been asleep for a day and a half and he should go home to bed. But the thought of that dark apartment without Sophie was more than he could bear.