flair. “National? It’s spread that far? That sounds serious!”
She shook her head and sighed, gustily patient. “I believe we need to talk.”
He smiled. “Anytime. I’ll be glad to instruct you on the woman’s place in the overall scheme of world affairs. And yours in particular. I have a car, may I take you home?”
“Now what is the great-granddaughter of a captive Chinese girl supposed to reply to a descendant of a Viking under such circumstances?” She laughed as if it was cocktail chatter.
He replied easily, “Chance is a great determining factor in our lives. Each thing that happens nudges people into actions they wouldn’t have taken. Like my being here. It’s exactly the reason Simon Quint named his magazine Adam’s Roots.”
“You believe in fate?”
“You can call it fate, or kismet, or destiny or revenge.”
“I can’t believe you read horoscopes.”
“My life is self-determined. I do as I choose. I follow the paths I want to follow. May I take you home? I must leave now.”
“That’s a rash offer in this area. I could live fifty miles cross town. But you’re lucky—you don’t have to back down from your offer. I live just west of here in the Canyons.” She gave the address.
He said, “I’m staying at a house in that area. I believe you’re just on my way. Let’s go.” His smile was rather strange, and it did give her some pause, but she shrugged it off and they left.
As they walked from the room, he removed his tie and put it in his suit pocket. Then, using both hands, he ruffled his hair before he unbuttoned his shirt several buttons. He took off his suit jacket, unbuttoned and folded up his shirtsleeves, and slung the jacket over his shoulder very casually.
The photographer was there just outside the entrance to the hotel, and the pair looked up blankly as the pictures were snapped.
Amabel asked Tris, “Why us?”
“They may know who you are.”
“I’m not newsworthy,” she scoffed.
“Your article created quite a stir. You’re probably doomed to a life as a camera-dodging celebrity.”
“Don’t be silly,” she replied easily.
“It happens to the best of us.”
Three
With perfectly ordinary courtesy, Tris drove her home. Their conversation was pleasant. He drove well. Her body watched his. She had never been so intensely aware of a man as being male to her female.
Almost shyly she asked him in for coffee. He declined with a fairly standard semblance of regret. He saw her to her door, said goodbye and left her standing there, rather pensively, as he drove away.
She was disappointed. She went inside the little house, which perched recklessly overlooking the gully below, and she prowled through her few rooms wondering why she would be just a little irritated with Tris Roald for being smart enough not to prolong the day’s visit.
He was wiser than she. Anything can be overdone. Much longer and they might find themselves wearing on one another.
But she really hadn’t had enough of him, and she felt a puzzling lack or vacuum with him not there. She didn’t encourage her brain to examine any reason for that feeling.
It would have been nice if they’d sat on her small terrace, looking out over the gully as they watched the sun setting on beyond the hills.
The problem was, he hadn’t mentioned the possibility of seeing her again. What if he went back to Indiana and never gave her another thought? And she remembered the misguided photographer who had taken their picture. She wondered who it was. She would like to have had a copy of it.
* * *
It was Wally who brought the advance copy of US magazine into Amabel’s office within the week. On the cover was the picture of Sean Morant and Amabel Clayton exiting what was obviously a hotel.
Their pose was the requisite one. He was on the left, casually dressed, his hair designer mussed, his face to the camera and his eyes blank. Next to him, on the right, was Amabel, her damp dress soft on her nice bosom, her face equally blank as she looked at the camera.
The tag line read, “Who’s next? It’s Amabel Clayton!”
At first glance, she thought it was a trick perpetrated by the staff there in L.A. on the order of a Harvard Lampoon. So it took a little while for her to realize it was an actual cover and one that was going to be on the stands for everyone to see.
While she remembered the cameraman outside the Hilton, she became vividly aware of the fact that Tris was Sean Morant. He’d deliberately set it up. She remembered the way he’d ruffled his hair, taken off his tie and shrugged out of his suit coat. And she remembered his talk about appearances being deceiving, and honor—and revenge.
Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord. But this time Sean had helped.
He had his revenge. It was too bad he wasn’t there to witness it. All the kinds of comments and smiles sent Amabel’s way that weren’t particularly nice.
Jealous women smiled and their eyes were sly. But the men! It was as if Sean’s revenge gave each of them a little triumph over her.
He’d been so charming. So attentive...as he’d set her up for his revenge. She remembered her body’s reaction to his and how aware even her skin had been of him. It hadn’t been attraction; it had been a warning!
* * *
She endured. The magazine was distributed, and she had more copies of that picture than she’d ever dreamed when she’d wished for just one. They couldn’t just have the glee of the sassy cover and a poke at Adam’s Roots. No, there was a story.
Their interviews were with people on the street. Instead of replying to the interviewer’s question, most asked, “Who’s she?” And one said, “Not up to his usual standards.”
That hurt. Jamie was quoted as saying, “They’re just good friends.” Of all people, he knew she didn’t even know Sean Morant, whose real name was Tristan Roald.
So it was days before she even considered the courage it had required for Tris to walk into that maelstrom of publicists and reporters just to meet her and set up the photograph.
That had to have been the telephone call he’d made, and he’d timed it, saying he had to leave right then.
How could he have done that to her? What difference did the multipicture cover make to him? Why was he so angry with her that he would take such calculated revenge?
He’d actually been in all those pictures. She had interviewed all those tiresome women.
No one gave her any sympathy. More than one woman ignored the implied relationship, of the pair leaving a hotel, and expressed envy for her having met Sean—however and whatever.
Mab didn’t blab his real name. Although sorely tempted, she considered that sort of backlash as beneath her professionally. But she felt noble about not doing it. And she hated him.
* * *
Tris didn’t feel the satisfaction he’d expected and his conscience twinged. He’d wanted to teach her a lesson but he hadn’t expected such a reaction for her, to her, about her. He suspected he’d been too rough. He could have... Well, it was done.
As with any exposure to public consideration, the incident quickly passed. In a few days it had faded. It was overlaid with all the other things about other people which went on in the rest of the world.
But it festered in Amabel. She spent a lot of time as she argued with a phantom