The Thrill of It All Read online

  Everything’s going to be all right. He continued trying to believe it.

  The usual gossip was passed along, too. Who was planning to tackle what climb, who would never tackle any climb rated higher than 5.10, who was likely to be too hungover the next morning to show up at the designated meeting place to go bouldering.

  “Did you hear about Linc?” someone asked Peter.

  He put a face to the name. Young kid, he’d carded him the first few times he’d come into the Bivy, checking over his ID carefully. Skinny and blond, he looked a lot like Ashley’s brother Ben. “What about him?” he said, sliding the mug of beer across the bar.

  “Got himself beat up.”

  “What? You mean he took a fall?”

  “Nope. Took a few fists. It was a group of slick, city-looking guys. Three of ’em. He came out of that bar right outside Joshua Tree. They called him over and then slugged him a few times in the parking lot. Demanded money. Said he owed them.”

  Peter froze. “Does he? Owe them money?”

  The guy telling the story shook his head. “Nope. They grabbed his wallet, took a look at it, then stopped whaling on him. Case of mistaken identity, they said. Gave him a hundred bucks and said they were sorry.”

  “Very polite,” he murmured, remembering what Gwen had said about the men who’d come into the Wild Side. Telling himself it was just a coincidence, he still searched for Ashley among the tables. Everything’s going to be all right.

  When his gaze settled on her, her head whipped toward him as if she felt it. Then just as quickly it whipped away.

  Everything’s going to be all right.

  Magee wasn’t going to touch Felicity again.

  Ashley wasn’t going to let what happened at the casino get in the way of their friendship.

  Ben wasn’t in any kind of real trouble.

  The floor of the trade show was open until seven P.M., but the crowds didn’t clear out until after seven-thirty. When Magee managed to end his conversation with a buyer for a chain of sporting goods stores in Colorado, he turned to find Felicity sunk in one of the cushioned chairs the Mountain Logic people used during deal-making. Her head was tilted against its back and she flicked him a glance as he half-sat against its thick arm.

  With her chin, she gestured to the massive wall hanging that was the focal point of the booth. “Very impressive.”

  He didn’t bother looking at it. “I have six more months on my endorsement contract. They gotta make me look good.” It was a photo of him climbing Half Dome in Yosemite, with him in Mountain Logic wear, using Mountain Logic gear.

  For a moment, he let himself remember the day. He’d been in a flow state, what other athletes might call “the zone,” where the difficult had seemed easy, the impossible just a handhold away. Tuned in to himself and in to the environment, he’d felt powerful, focused, unconquerable.

  “Speaking of looking good,” Felicity said, flicking him another glance, “you clean up well.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Apparently she thought his wardrobe consisted of jeans and questionable T-shirts, which, of course, mostly it did. But his mother had raised him right. He knew when to put on pleated slacks, polished shoes, a dress shirt. “I even remembered to brush my teeth and comb my hair. Now if only my table manners won’t embarrass you in front of your Boy Scout boss at dinner tonight.”

  She waved a hand. “No dinner.”

  “For God’s sake,” he bit out, insulted all over again. “I may not be a stuffed shirt like your pretty boy Drool, but I do happen to be aware I shouldn’t eat my peas with a knife.”

  “His name is Drew, not Drool, as you very well know. And he’s gone back to L.A. Thank God.”

  “Why gone back?” And why “thank God”?

  Her eyes drifted shut. “Didn’t you hear? He cut a deal with Mountain Logic. Some of their products will be part of our Spring Spotlight. We think the jackets and especially the rock shoes will be hot sellers. He needed to get back to work his end.”

  Magee wondered what kind of work her boss did on Felicity. Right now it appeared as if she needed help getting out of that chair, though she looked properly Charm-ing in a champagne-colored suit that had a tight, knee-length skirt ending in a girlie ruffle. On her feet were a pair of matching needle-heeled shoes that looked sexy as hell as well as hellishly uncomfortable.

  Somewhere under the high-necked blouse she wore were the hickeys he’d given her.

  Though he shoved the thought from his mind, he couldn’t stop himself from running his fingertips over the feathery ends of her hair. “When are you going back to L.A.? You look too tired to drive, dollface.”

  She gave another little wave of her hand. “Not tonight.”

  “Good.” He played with her hair again. “So…where shall I take you to dinner?”

  Her eyes opened. “You don’t need to take me to dinner.”

  Of course he didn’t. Maybe he shouldn’t, but then she’d guess he’d only extended the invitation so he could tweak her in front of Drool. That petty last memory didn’t sit well with him. So he’d take her to dinner to smooth things out between them, and to smoothly say goodbye.

  But just to get her goat, he leered down at her. “You’re wearing my hickeys, aren’t you? The least I can do is buy you a meal.”

  That woke her up. Her eyes sparked and she straightened. “You shouldn’t remind me of the hickeys,” she said through her teeth, her fingers going to the high collar of her blouse. “But now that you have, it’s going to cost you. I haven’t eaten all day. I want Italian food. Lots of expensive Italian food.”

  He grinned. “Italian food’s my favorite.” He’d take her out for a nice dinner, give her a goodbye kiss on the cheek, and then smoothly erase her out of his mind. He’d promised Peter that everything was going to be all right, and it was. It was all going to proceed as planned. New job. New wife. New life.

  Friday night meant there was a line out the door of Il Calore just to put a name on the list for a table. But even from the sidewalk the smells of garlic and herbs had Felicity swooning, and they decided to wait. He used his shoulders to wedge them a place inside the packed bar, so crowded that when he tilted his bottle of beer to take a swallow, it clipped her forehead.

  “Sorry.” Grimacing, he stroked his thumb over the spot. “Guess I should’ve fed you last night before I boffed you. Thursdays aren’t so crowded.”

  Her jaw dropped. There was a moment of offended silence, then she squinted her eyes at him. “You do that on purpose, don’t you? You’re deliberately crude to annoy me.”

  He couldn’t bite back his grin. By the end of the trade show he’d been tired, too, but three minutes in Felicity’s company gave him the energy of a schoolboy intent upon pulling a certain little girl’s pigtails. “You’re reading me like a book, dollface.”

  Which was okay. He knew her, too. Standing this close to her made him half-hard—he’d been expecting too much to imagine that a few explosive orgasms could neuter him or neutralize her sex appeal—but his lust for her was under control. Last night he’d plumbed her physical depths, and this morning, outside OLPP and then again when Drool had appeared on the scene, he’d discovered how truly shallow she was.

  She’d be easy enough to forget.

  It was as if that very thought turned a spotlight on her. A thirtyish woman at Felicity’s elbow jostled her and while making an automatic apology, the stranger’s eyes widened. “Felicity!” the person said. “Felicity Charm!”

  Magee saw her stiffen, but then she beamed over a relaxed and friendly smile. “Hello,” she said. “How are you tonight?”

  As if they’d known each other since childhood, the woman smiled back. “I’m better, now that my fiancé’s mother-in-law flew home to Minnesota.” Then she leaned closer to Felicity, peering into her wine glass. “Is that Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio?”

  The crowd shuffled a bit when a name was called out and Magee saw the exact moment when Felicity was recognized again. A man with a
touch of gray at the temples nudged his very pretty, very young wife. She turned and then almost hopped in excitement. “Felicity!”

  Felicity didn’t bat an eyelash. She smiled, she chatted, she admired how pretty the bracelet looked on the woman—the bracelet the woman claimed Felicity had sold to her. It was clear she felt that Felicity had personally selected it just for her.

  As the older man drew his wife away, Magee caught the little sigh that washed out of Felicity. “Are you all right?” he murmured into her ear.

  But there was already another stranger edging nearer. “I’m lovely,” she said cheerfully, turning toward the newcomer. “And how are you?”

  By the time they made it to their table, it took more than two hands to count the number of times she’d been spoken to or at least obviously recognized. She breezed through it all like a pro—until the moment the hostess pulled out Felicity’s chair at their table.

  “What’s new with Aunt Vi?” the young woman asked.

  The name acted on Felicity like a doctor’s mallet to a knee. Her body jerked, one hand flying out to knock over her empty wineglass. Magee caught it as it rolled off the edge of the tiny table.

  Felicity had recovered and was giving away that pretty smile again. “Aunt Vi’s her usual self.”

  “How did her charity luncheon turn out?”

  “Perfect. A viewer in Louisiana called in with her mother’s iced tea punch recipe that tasted delicious. Thanks for asking.”

  The hostess handed Magee the wine list, but spoke again to Felicity. “I just love hearing about your life and family.”

  Magee watched Felicity’s smile thin, though the wattage remained high. “Thanks, I appreciate that.”

  Then the hostess left them alone and Felicity slumped back against her chair. “I’d almost forgotten what it’s like.”

  Now that her public wasn’t clamoring for her attention, he could see how her performances had rubbed away some of her usual sparkle. “What do you mean?”

  But his question got lost as the sommelier dropped by their table. Apparently his college-age niece was another of Felicity’s fans. Without losing a beat, she revived the twinkle and then wasn’t able to relax again until the entrees were served.

  “Jesus, Felicity, how can you possibly get a charge out of all that?” he said, as their waiter walked off. He sounded critical, he knew it, but the interruptions had annoyed him. He wanted a quiet dinner as their final goodbye.

  She looked up from her pasta. “I like the people. I like it that they like me. Talking to them is what I’m good at.”

  “Lying to them, you mean,” he muttered. “Aunt Vi and her charity luncheon. Please.”

  She straightened in her chair, bristling, then slumped back again. “Okay, fine. I admit that the Aunt Vi part has had me on edge all day. We’re too close to Half Palm. During the trade show, I kept imagining someone walking up and blowing my cover in front of Drew.”

  Magee stared at her, anger sparking again. “So the lies themselves aren’t bothering you, huh? Just that Drool’s image of you might shatter.”

  A flush rushed onto her cheeks—of temper, not shame, he was sure.

  “You don’t know anything about it.”

  “I know you’re full of shit.”

  “Just a min—” Stopping herself, she set down her fork and folded her hands in her lap. “Tell me about your family, Magee. Who they are. What they do.”

  “What does that have to do with—”

  “Just tell me,” she insisted.

  She was out to make some point, but he couldn’t figure the angle he should take to deflect it. “Dad’s a professor at Washington State University. My mother works in the alumni office there part-time—she’s a fundraiser. I have an older brother.”

  Felicity laughed. “I couldn’t have invented anything more sitcom suburban if I’d tried.”

  “Why is that sounding like an insult?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not meant to be. Your family is one I would have chosen myself. Stable, un-complicated, people to be proud of.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not as simple as you think.”

  She shrugged. “I’ll have to take your word for it. But when I started at OLPP, what I wanted seemed very simple. Nobody knew me, so nobody knew differently when I spun a harmless little fantasy about who I wanted the Charms to be. I didn’t pretend to be a sheikh’s daughter—though two were my classmates. I didn’t co-op the past of the Beverly Hills junior high dropout that was my first roommate. I merely took Aunt Vi and Uncle Billy and made them…”

  Fake. He nearly said it out loud. “And then you took your harmless little fantasy to TV.”

  “I didn’t intend to.” She picked up her fork and fiddled with her food, making designs in the sauce. “My first week on GetTV, we had Reese Witherspoon as a celebrity guest. One minute we were talking about her line of luxury pet carriers and the next, she asked me about my family. The past I’d made up for myself when I was eleven years old just popped out.”

  He stared. “Luxury pet carriers?” It was hard to get past that.

  She made a face at him. “What I’m trying to say is that it was an accident. It just…happened.”

  As she’d just happened to remake the Charms.

  He still didn’t get it. He still didn’t get her. But, damn it, every time he thought he had her pegged, she twisted on him.

  She picked up her fork and held it, staring down at her plate, her eyelashes casting feathery shadows on her cheeks. Her voice was tired. “But don’t you worry. I pay for it. Every day I’m afraid that someone will see through it. I’m afraid someone will see through me.”

  Oh, hell. Every time he thought he had her pegged, she twisted his heart. He wanted to remember her as a shallow sham of a woman.

  “It’s a good thing you’re leaving in the morning,” he muttered. Because his smooth goodbye was already in jeopardy.

  She glanced up. “Leaving?”

  “In the morning.”

  An expression crossed her face. An expression that made him uneasy, that made him remember every painful piece of ill luck that he’d had in the last year and a half and that he was paying for every good piece he’d had in all the years before that.

  “You don’t know?”

  He shook his head. “What?”

  She lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “I thought maybe those Mountain Logic people would have mentioned it to you. We’re doing a live shoot from this area next week and taping some teaser segments to run during the spring. I’ll be hanging around until then, scouting locations.”

  She let a beat go by, then smiled a smile so full of sweet innocence that it sent a shudder worming down his spine. “So this isn’t goodbye after all.”

  Twelve

  Magee was staring at her from across the table as if she’d gone mad. Felicity let her smile widen, enjoying the idea that she’d dropped the news into his unsuspecting lap. She’d agreed to dinner because…because she was hungry, not realizing it presented such a prime opportunity to get the upper hand with him.

  She liked unbalancing him for once. Last night…But she wasn’t going to think about last night. If she couldn’t regret her lapse in clear thinking, then she refused to remember it.

  Magee finally found his voice. “But you said you were leaving.”

  She noted the muscle ticking beneath the dark stubble developing along his jawline. “What can I say? I’m the proverbial bad penny.”

  His frown deepened. “Bad pennies keep turning up. You won’t go away.”

  As if it was her fault. “C’mon, Magee—”

  A couple—more fans of GetTV—paused by their table, interrupting her point. Even though she felt Magee fuming over his plate of fettucine, she drew out her conversation with them. Darling man, his frustration only increased her confidence. She could handle him.

  The instant the two people wandered off, he leaned across the table. “Look, we have to talk,” he said, his v
oice tight. “I need to tell you something.”

  “You’re getting Alfredo sauce on your shirtfront,” she pointed out.

  “I don’t ca—”

  But the restaurant hostess was back, with a helper from the kitchen in tow. Felicity turned her attention to the shy young man, chatting with him in her halting Spanish, leaving Magee to dip his napkin into his water glass and dab gingerly at his shirt.

  With an inward smile, she managed to signal his predicament to their hostess, and they finished the meal with frequent visits from the young woman, their waiter, and the restaurant manager, all checking in on either Felicity, their food, or the status of the stain the hostess herself had doctored with a fresh napkin and club soda.

  Magee’s steely fingertips didn’t leave the small of Felicity’s back as they left Il Calore to the tune of the dark-eyed hostess’s gushing, “Arrivederci.”

  “It appears you made a new conquest,” Felicity said as he prodded her in the direction of his car.

  He didn’t glance back. “We have to talk,” he repeated. “I need to tell you something.”

  “So talk.”

  His head swiveled, taking in the crowded sidewalk. “When we’re alone.”

  Once they were both sitting inside his Jeep, he gripped the steering wheel without looking at her. Tension radiated off him like heat and she half-expected the car’s interior to melt. Her thin blouse and silk suit started to itch like woolly tweed.

  What could be so difficult to tell her? Her fingers fumbled a little as they moved to unfasten the first few buttons of her blouse. But she was under perfect control, she reminded herself. He was the one whose equilibrium was upset.

  “You don’t have a weird communicable disease or something, do you?” she finally ventured.

  “No. It’s that…” He glanced over. “Jesus! Do up your shirt, will you?”

  She looked down, light from the nearby streetlamp confirming there wasn’t anything uncovered that warranted his reaction. “What’s your problem?”