Sweet Liar (12 page)

Mike wasn't like the two men she had known, for he didn't seem to have rules. Except maybe something on the order of, If it feels good, do it. When he saw Samantha pick up two of his shirts where he'd tossed them across a chair and without thinking about what she was doing slip them onto hangers, he snatched the third shirt out of her hands and threw it on the back of the couch. “I have a maid,” he said.

Embarrassed at having performed such a wifely little chore Samantha went to the boxes in the corner of the room and opened them. Pulling the flaps back, she inhaled what has come to be a heavenly smell to modern people: new vinyl. Mike laughed at the look on her face, which made Samantha feel embarrassed again, but she'd already discovered that Mike could take teasing as well as dish it out, unlike her ex-husband who considered himself sacrosanct.

“The smell of new electronic equipment is certainly better than the cheap perfume that you seem to prefer,” she snapped at him, making him laugh.

She had an idea that he meant to sit back and watch her hook up the computer, but she told him she wanted his help. Of course he had no idea how different this was for her. Her father and Richard believed that there was woman's work and men's work and that the two of them should not mingle. In the house she shared with her husband in Santa Fe, she had been in charge of computers, and it wasn't unusual for her to come home from her second, evening job and find Richard in bed asleep, the computer left on, ready for her to save the material he had written that day and turn the machine off.

Now, it didn't take Samantha long to hook up the computer and screen and attach the laser printer. It took a little more time to install the word-processing software, make an autoexec.bat, and set up a few other batch files.

Once the computer was set up, she told Mike she was ready to teach him the basics of how to use it. In the past four years she had taught many people how to use a computer, and she'd dealt with some bizarre problems. There was the woman who had stapled floppies to her printouts and the man who had broken the plastic case off the floppy and tried to insert the thin inner membrane into the disk drive.

But not in four years had she encountered anyone as difficult to teach as Mike, for he couldn't seem to remember anything she told him. In teaching, she'd learned that patience was everything, but after two hours with him, she was losing her composure.

She found herself beginning to shout. “
F
seven, not the number seven,” she said to him, but Mike once again hit the number seven key, then looked at her with wide eyes.

Ten minutes later Samantha lost it. Clutching his neck with her hands, she began to choke him. “The F seven key! Do you hear me? The F seven key!”

Laughing, Mike pulled her into his arms, and they went tumbling to the floor together. It was then that she realized he had been pretending to be stupid, and she understood that he'd wanted to know how far she'd go before she lost her composure.

As she rolled away from him, she was extremely annoyed. Why was he always trying to drive her to the point where she was angry?

“Come on, Sam,” he said. “Don't give me that look. Don't turn back into little miss goody two shoes.”

What she
should
do, she thought, was go upstairs and read a book. Instead, turning, she looked at him sitting there on the living room rug and, in spite of herself, she smiled. “You can really be a pain, you know that?”

Before she could move, he kissed her neck. “Why don't I give you some research cards and you type what I've written into your machine?” he asked.

“I see, I do all the work and you get the credit.”

“I'll share anything I have with you,” he said softly with great meaning to his words.

Samantha pushed him away. “Let me load the data base, and I'll start putting your information into the computer.”

As he smiled at her complacently, she knew he had attained his objective: a secretary.

An hour later, Samantha didn't mind because what Mike was giving her to type was interesting. He had written out what looked to be a hundred pages of information on various gangsters who'd had something to do with Tony Barrett. She read the names of Nails and Hop Toad and Mad Dog and the Waiter and Half Hand Joe and Gyp the Blood with interest.

The more she read, the more she wondered about Tony Barrett, who might or might not be her biological grandfather. But there was very little information about him in the notes Mike gave her to type. When she asked Mike why there was so little on Barrett, who was to be the subject of the biography, Mike didn't really answer but gave her notes on what Samantha soon realized was the slaughter of May the twelfth, 1928.

She didn't like typing about that day in 1928. The leading gangster of New York had been afraid of Barrett's growing power and had decided to kill him and all his men. It didn't seem to matter that during his failed attempt to kill Barrett, Barrett had been in a speakeasy and that many innocent people were killed along with the gangsters in the blasts of machine gun fire.

With growing distaste, Samantha read about the bloodshed of that night. “I don't like this,” she said, pushing the notes away.

Mike raised an eyebrow. “Maxie disappeared that night. Aren't you curious as to why?”

She looked at him in disbelief. “It seems simple enough to understand why she left. Even if she did love Barrett, she wouldn't want to be part of something as horrifying as that bloodbath.”

Mike looked at her for a moment, then asked if she wanted something to eat. When her answer was positive, he called a deli and ordered tuna salad sandwiches. After they arrived, they took them into the garden to eat.

“How did your mother die?” Mike asked abruptly, as soon as they were seated at the picnic table.

“I killed her,” Samantha said before she thought, then blushed and looked away. She was annoyed with him for making her tell things that she didn't want to tell and annoyed with herself for confiding in him. “I don't mean that, of course. It's just what I felt at the time. A child's fantasy.” She tried to make light of the fear that had plagued her for most of her life.

Mike was looking at her in silence, waiting for her to continue.

“I was twelve and I'd been invited to Janie Miles's birthday party. It was a very important party because Janie was the most popular girl in school and she was going to have
boys
at her party, but Mother didn't want me to go. When she said I was too young for boys, I got very angry and said she didn't want me to grow up. Mother said I was right, that if it were up to her I'd stay twelve years old forever.” Samantha tried her best to make her story sound amusing, for she didn't want Mike to know what she had felt—and still felt now—about her mother's death. Actually, she didn't want anyone to know the full extent of how her life, her world, had changed after that fateful afternoon.

Samantha took a deep breath. “Anyway, when Mother was late picking me up from school to take me to Janie's party I was livid. I was pacing the school yard vowing to never again speak to her when the principal came to take me home.”

Mike was looking at Samantha's hand as she had gripped the tuna sandwich so hard that it was oozing through her fingers. When she noticed where he was looking, she glanced down and saw the mutilated sandwich, then dropped it and used a napkin to clean her hand.

“Mother had been rushing so hard to get me to the party she'd run in front of a car. She was killed instantly.”

“Sam—” Reaching out to her, Mike tried to touch her, but she pulled away.

“Mother had been rushing so fast that somewhere along the way she'd fallen against a radiator and burned her arms and legs. But a little thing like third-degree burns didn't make her stop to go to a doctor. Her only thought was to get her daughter to a party.” Pausing, Samantha's mouth twisted bitterly. “A very important party.”

“Was it a hit-and-run?” Mike asked quickly, not wanting her to dwell on her memories, but he needed to know what she was telling him.

“Heavens no.” Looking across the picnic table at him, she tried to smile. “The man who hit her lived in Ohio, and he was very upset about the accident. He stayed in Louisville for two weeks after Mother…died and visited Dad and me, even showing me pictures of his own children.”

“Samantha,” Mike whispered, “I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, thanks,” she murmured. “It was a long time ago and I got over it. People can survive a great deal.”

“Even husbands?” he asked, trying to make a joke.

She didn't smile. “One can survive husbands who betray them and mothers who die and fathers who die and grandmothers who desert them. One can even survive a father who has so little confidence in his daughter that he attaches strings to her inheritance. I find that one can survive almost anything.” Getting up from the table, she started back into the house, but not before Mike caught her.

“Sam,” he said, his hands on her shoulders as he turned her to face him. “If you ever want someone to talk to, I'm here.”

She forced herself to smile at him. “There's really nothing to talk about. Nothing more than the ordinary person has to say, that is. I've had an extraordinary number of deaths in my life and one divorce and it'll take me a while to recover, but I will.” She moved away from him. “Why don't I type more of your notes?”

Frowning, Mike watched her walk back to the library. No matter what he did, he couldn't seem to penetrate the shell that surrounded her, yet sometimes he glimpsed a Samantha that lay under the surface of the cool, calm, always-in-control person she presented to the world. When he had kissed her, he had seen a woman of passion. When she laughed, he saw a woman with a sense of humor. When she drank too much wine, he saw a woman who could tease and make bawdy jokes. But she never let her guard down for long. After each and every lapse, she drew herself back under control again. She was like a turtle that was being attacked and kept inside its shell, but now and then it stuck its vulnerable head out and looked around and soon retracted again.

Her father had said that when Samantha was a child she had been very different from the young lady she had grown into. Smiling, Dave had said that when she was a child, Sam had been a handful, that she had tangled herself into scrapes that had nearly driven her mother crazy. Samantha had been such a tree-climbing, sassy-mouthed, fearless little hellion—called Sam by one and all—that her mother said it took all her brains just trying to stay ahead of her rambunctious daughter.

Sometimes Mike caught glimpses of that little girl, but most of the time it was next to impossible. He wanted to do his best to get under her skin so he could see the imp her father had described. Smiling, Mike remembered the way Sam had tried to choke him when he refused to remember her lessons with the computer. He had no intention of learning to use a computer, because if he did, he'd have one less excuse to spend time with Samantha. Right now, his major goal in life was to get to know her, for being around her was like watching a rosebud unfold. Daily she seemed to change and blossom more. Now all he had to do was make sure that she didn't leave his house after their meeting with Barrett. That was two days away, and if she left him in a mere two days, he knew he'd never see her again. The thought of not seeing Sam again was not something he wanted to contemplate.

“Sam,” he yelled, following her into the library. “Did you know Maxie was a singer? She sang the blues.”

“I
have a date tonight,” Mike announced to Samantha. He was watching her with such intensity that she knew she was supposed to make some response, but she wasn't sure what.

“How nice. One of the young women I met with Daphne?”

“No, she's no one you know.” His dark eyes never so much as blinked as he stared at her. “A chorus girl actually. A dancer. Legs, that sort of thing.”

“I'm glad to hear that she has legs. Especially if she's a dancer.”

From the look on Mike's face, she knew she had disappointed him. “What will you do while I'm gone? Sleep?”

“You may persist in your fantasy that I am on the verge of psychosis without your constant presence, but it doesn't happen to be true. I will probably wash my hair and watch TV. If that meets my guardian's approval,” she said snidely. She was laughing at him because she realized that he wanted her to be jealous of his date. The truth was, Samantha was actually a teeny tiny bit curious about this leggy date of his. Not jealous, by any means, but curious. She knew he didn't like the women who'd arrived with Daphne, but what kind of woman
did
Mike like? Probably tall bimbos with big bosoms, she thought. Big bosoms, long legs, and no brains.

“Yeah fine,” he half mumbled. “I don't think you should go out at night though.”

“Of course not. And I won't allow any strangers in, no matter how much candy they offer me—unless of course it's a box of really good chocolate-covered caramels. I belong to the man who offers me caramels.”

It was obvious from his expression that he didn't find her levity humorous—and he did want her to be jealous.

“Mike,” she said, smiling, feeling a little flattered by his concern and his seeming to want her to be as possessive as he was. “Go on, go on your date. I'll be fine. Nothing will happen to me, and I won't do anything strange, so you don't have to worry about me. Go. Have a good time.”

He hesitated, for he didn't trust her at all. If this appointment weren't so important, he wouldn't leave. “All right, I'm going, but lock the door behind me.”

She shook her head at him, but when he was gone, she bolted the door, and when she turned back, the house seemed enormous and a little creepy with Mike gone. After drawing the curtains, she jumped when a siren screamed down Lexington Avenue. When the doorbell rang, she nearly came out of her skin, then laughed at herself. Waiting a moment for her heart to settle down before she went to the door, she opened the little panel and looked out.

A man was standing there, a tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, extremely handsome man. “Yes?” she said through the grill.

“Is Mike home?” he asked.

“Yes, but he's busy at the moment,” she answered cautiously. If this man was a criminal, she could understand the high rate of crime in New York.

“Would you tell him that Raine wants to see him?” When Samantha made no response, he said, “Raine Montgomery. His cousin.”

“Oh. Do you have any identification?” She watched him remove his wallet from inside his suit jacket and hold his driver's license up to the grill. Raine Montgomery. Thirty years old. Six foot one. Black hair, blue eyes. He looked authentic to her—authentically gorgeous. She unlocked the door.

“Actually, Mike isn't here,” she said, opening the door. “He had a date and went out a few minutes ago.”

The man smiled at her and she smiled back. He was very different from Mike, and all they seemed to share as cousins was dark hair. Mike was all fire and movement, whereas this man was quiet and mysterious.

“Actually, I came to meet you. That is, if you're Samantha.”

“I am, but how…?”

He smiled again and she smiled broader in response. “Mike's mother called me from Colorado and asked me to have a look at you. Mike has mentioned you, and Aunt Pat wanted me to make sure you weren't a gold digger.”

She found his honesty disarming. “Won't you come in?” she said, sweeping her arm toward the living room.

“I'd better not. It wouldn't be…”

“Proper?” she asked. Mike had said his Montgomery cousins had manners and here was proof. Here was a man in the twentieth century who was concerned about what was proper and what wasn't. Propriety was not something that seemed to concern Michael Taggert, for half of his day seemed to be spent lounging on Sam's bed—uninvited, unwanted.

“I think I'll return when Mike is here, but I shall call Aunt Pat this evening and tell her that she can rest her fears, that you are an eminently respectable and extremely pretty young woman.”

Blushing under his praise, she followed him to the door. “I'm sure Mike will be sorry he missed you.”

As he stepped onto the porch, the man laughed in a way that let her know he was fully aware of Mike's antagonism toward his cousin. He turned back to her. “You said Mike is on a date. I thought…I mean, I understood that you and he had moved in together.”

Wanting to make herself clear from the start, she said, “I'm sure Mike gave his mother that impression, but actually I'm merely his tenant. I rent the top two floors.”

At this information, Raine's eyes brightened. “In that case, would you like to go out with me tomorrow? Maybe in the afternoon? We could go to the park and eat ice cream and watch the kids play.”

Samantha was sure she'd never heard such a romantic invitation in her life. So different from Mike's, let's-go-to-bed-and-screw-our-brains-out-honey type of invitation. “I would love to go out with you,” she said sincerely.

Looking at her as though nothing in his life had ever pleased him as much as her acceptance, he smiled. “Tomorrow at two, then,” he said and walked down the stairs to the sidewalk.

She was still standing in the doorway, watching him walk away when he turned back to her. “What color of balloons do you like best?” he asked.

“Pink,” she answered, smiling.

Still smiling, he waved and kept walking down the block.

Going into the house, Samantha shut the door behind her. What a delightful man, she thought. What an utterly lovely, sweet man. Smiling, humming, she went upstairs to wash her hair.

“A Montgomery!” Mike shouted when Samantha mentioned her approaching date to him. “A goddamn nose-in-the-air Montgomery. You're going out with a mother—”

“Stop it,” she yelled back. “I've told you a thousand times that what I do is none of your business. I am your tenant, nothing more than that. Your
tenant
! Your renter and that's
all.
You don't own me or have any right to tell me what to do.”

“But a Montgomery! You can't—”

She turned on him. “As far as I can tell, Raine Montgomery is a very nice man. He—”

“You don't know anything about him,” he snapped, as though he knew something dreadful about his cousin.

“I know that he has manners, which is more than I can say for you.” She stopped shouting and drew a deep breath. “Can you honestly tell me anything bad about the man? Is he a criminal of any kind? Already married? Does he even have any bad habits?”

“He's perfect,” Mike said with a curl of his upper lip. He was so angry he was shaking. Never before in his life had he felt so betrayed. In the last few days he'd put out five times the effort with Samantha that he'd ever expended on any other female, yet she'd given him less in return than any woman he'd ever met. The girl at the corner grocery was more obliging than Samantha was!

Seeing his anger, which had no justification whatever, she threw up her hands in frustration. “This is the strangest situation anyone has ever been in. Last night you went out on a date. Why is it all right for you and not for me?”

Leaning toward her, he put his nose close to hers. “Because my ‘date' was eighty-six years old and in a nursing home. I'd been told that she once worked in the nightclub where Maxie sang. Maxie, remember her?
Your
grandmother. I was out on a Saturday night interviewing some old woman who couldn't remember who she was, much less what happened in 1928, while you were in
my
house flirting and heaven only knows what else with one of those goddamn Montgomerys.”

She glared at him. “You're sick, you know that? You should see a doctor.” Turning away from him, she started toward the stairs. “I have a feeling Raine is punctual. I will be down at exactly two.”

In spite of her telling Mike that this was none of his business, his rage had upset her. Didn't it ever cross a man's mind to wonder if he had the right to be angry? Never in her adult life had she been angry that she hadn't asked herself if she
should
be angry. By any logic in the world Mike shouldn't be upset because she was going out with another man. She was an adult; she was unattached; there was nothing romantic between her and Mike. So
why
was he furious?

She gritted her teeth. Just once in her life she'd like to understand, really, truly understand, what went on inside a man's head.

Suddenly, she stopped ranting at Mike. How very odd, she thought, to be this angry at a man who meant so little to her. She hadn't been this angry after she'd found out what her husband had done, nor had she been this angry after she'd heard her father's will. She remembered wanting to throw something through a window when she'd heard the terms of her father's will, yet she'd been able to control herself.

But Mike could make her throw things. Michael Taggert made her want to tear telephone books in half with her bare hands.

Jerking the closet door open, she looked inside at the heavenly clothes hanging there and touched the sleeve of a soft, peach-colored jacket and remembered how nice Mike had been when they'd bought the clothes. He was half the most pleasant, easiest person she'd ever been around in her life and half the most infuriating, exasperating person she'd ever met. Sometimes she wanted to climb in his lap and tell him things she'd never told another person, and sometimes she wanted to hit him in the head with an axe—sharp side down.

All in all, she thought as she reached for a pair of linen trousers, it would be better for both of them if she left immediately after they saw Barrett. There had been too much turmoil in Samantha's life already for her to live in a house where she fought with her landlord.