“Find someone for me?”
“What do you think she did with all those other men who were dazzled by her?” Lori tossed back. “Oh, she’d try to talk herself into being in love, and thinking they loved her back, and the whole time she’d listen to their problems like some den mother. Then she’d steer them in the direction of some woman she’d decided was perfect for them. She was usually right.”
“She was going to marry—”
“She was never going to marry anyone. Whenever she said yes, it was because she couldn’t bear to hurt anyone’s feelings. And, okay, because she always wanted to have someone she could count on. But however loyal, however sensitive, she is to other people’s feelings, she’s not stupid. She’d tell herself she was going to get married, then she’d go into overdrive finding the guy a substitute.”
“Substitute? Why—?” But Lori wasn’t ready to let him get a word in.
“Not that she ever calculated it that way. But after you watched it happen a couple of times, you saw the pattern. But you...” She whirled back to him. “You broke the pattern. She needed you. You made her cry.” Angry tears glazed Lori’s own eyes. “Not once did I ever see her cry over any man. She’d just slip seamlessly into the my-pal-Bess category, and everyone was happy. But she’s cried buckets over you.”
He felt sick, and small, and he was beginning to understand a great deal about groveling. “Tell me where she is. Please.”
“Why the hell should I?”
“I love her.”
She wanted to snarl at him for daring to say so, but she recognized the same misery in his eyes she’d seen in her friend’s. “Charlie was—”
“No.” He shook his head quickly. “It doesn’t matter.” What did matter was trust, and it was time he gave it. “I don’t need to know. I just need her.”
With a sigh, Lori fingered the square-cut diamond on her left hand. Bess had pushed her into taking the right step with Steven. She could only hope she was doing the same in return. “If you hurt her again, Alex—”
“I won’t.” Then he sighed. “I don’t want to hurt her again, but I probably will.”
She weakened, because it was exactly the thing a man in love would say. “I sent her home. She wasn’t in any shape to work.”
“Dyakuyu.”
“What?”
“Thanks.”
She hated feeling this way. The only way Bess could get from one day to the next was by telling herself it would get better. It had to get better.
But she didn’t believe it.
She hadn’t had the heart to throw out the lilacs. She’d tried to. She’d even stood holding them over the trash can, weeping like a fool. But the thought of parting with them had been too much. Now she tormented herself with the fragile scent whenever she came downstairs.
She thought about taking a trip—anywhere. She certainly had the vacation time coming, but it didn’t seem fair to leave Lori in the lurch, especially since Lori had added wedding plans to her work load.
A lot of good she was doing Lori, or the show, this way, she thought. But the problems of the people in Millbrook seemed terribly petty when compared to hers. Too bad she couldn’t write herself out of this one, she thought, as she stood in the kitchen, trying to talk herself into fixing something to eat.
Well, she’d certainly made the grade, Bess told herself, and pressed her fingers against her swollen eyes. She’d fallen in love and had her heart broken. Great research for the next troubled relationship she invented for the television audience.
The hell with food. She was going to go up to bed and will herself to sleep. Tomorrow she would find some way to put her life back together.
When she stepped out of the kitchen, what was left of her life shattered at her feet.
He was standing by the table, one hand brushing over the lilacs. All he did was look at her, turn his head and look, and she nearly crumpled to her knees.
“What are you doing here?” The pain made her voice razor-sharp.
“I still have my key.” He lowered his hand slowly. Her eyes were still puffy from her last bout of tears, and there were smudges of fatigue under them. Nothing that had been said to him, nothing he’d said to himself, had lashed more sharply.
“You didn’t have to bring it by.” If composure was all she had left, she would cling to it. “You could have dropped it in the mail. But thanks.” Her smile was so cold it hurt her jaw. “If that’s all, I’m in a hurry. I was just on my way up to change before I go out.”
“You can’t look at me when you lie.” He said it half to himself, remembering how her eyes had drifted away from his face when she said she didn’t love him.
