Silent Masquerade. Molly Rice

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СКАЧАТЬ if all that’s true, it doesn’t keep us from enjoying the beauty,” she said, and turned away from the view. “It must be nearly time to head back,” she added quietly.

      He fell into step beside her, and they remained silent, both lost in their own thoughts, on the walk back.

      The silence continued, almost by mutual consent, for the next leg of their journey. When they stopped for lunch, Cara pleaded a headache as an excuse for not joining Bill in the café.

      “Just bring me back some coffee, please,” she said, handing him a dollar bill.

      He gave her a skeptical look, but didn’t argue. He just took her money and nodded.

      Cara laid her head against the window and let her eyes close against the noon sunshine. Something about Bill Hamlin’s carefully guarded pain had struck a chord in Cara and made the reality of her situation all the more frightening. It wasn’t that she wasn’t capable of fending for herself or being alone. After all, she was an only child, whose parents had been loving and giving, but also very involved with one another.

      Her father had become ill when she graduated from high school, and despite his protests, she’d put off going to college in order to spend as much time with him as his illness would allow. The shared nursing duties, plus the feeling of pending doom in the house, had brought Cara and her mother closer.

      But after her father’s death, her mother had shut Cara out while she mourned the loss of her husband. And Cara had gone off to start her college years, feeling orphaned and lonely, so that even though she was a couple of years older than the other freshmen, she seemed younger, shier. It had taken her a full year to get past her own grief and begin to make friends and enjoy the campus ambience.

      By the time Cara’s mother came out of mourning, Cara had already been in her last year of graduate school. A few months later, Doug had come into their lives.

      No, the problem wasn’t encroaching loneliness—that was an emotion she’d lived with most of her life. It was more the reminder that she was leaving everything she’d considered safe and familiar and was about to enter a strange world without access to any of the comforts of her past, and where she couldn’t even use her given name. Could she carve out a niche for herself while living like an illegal alien? And was the sacrifice she was making worthwhile?

      Because of her parents’ obvious closeness, she’d grown up believing that the biggest event in her life was going to be falling in love and becoming a wife and mother. Only in her case, she’d planned to love her husband and her children equally, so that none of them ever felt left out.

      Was such a future possible for her now? Could she be legally married under an assumed name? And where would she meet the ideal man, if she was forced to take odd jobs that didn’t require references or close scrutiny of her qualifications?

      Her reverie was interrupted by Bill’s return. He handed her a bag that obviously contained something more than the cup of coffee she’d asked for.

      “You’ll feel hungry later,” he said, shrugging off her protest. “Did you take some aspirin for that headache?”

      Cara nodded, avoiding his eyes so that he couldn’t see the lie. She was sure she could have told him the truth, that she had just wanted to be alone, but then he might have asked questions she wasn’t prepared to answer.

      What would a man who was as obviously worldly as Bill Hamlin think of her sordid story? Would he believe she was an innocent victim, or would he think she’d come on to her mother’s boyfriend and invited his attentions?

      “Better drink that coffee before it gets cold,” Bill said as he adjusted his seat to a reclining position.

      Cara nodded and opened the bag to find it contained a sandwich and a banana, as well as a cup of coffee.

      “You missed your calling, Bill.” She grinned over at him. “You should have been a nutritionist.”

      He didn’t smile in response. His face was set in a hostile mask, and his voice held a quiet threat as he asked, “What makes you think I’m not? And what do you know about my calling?”

      Cara might have snapped back at him, if just at that moment the bus hadn’t lurched to the side and then come to an abrupt halt with a terrible screeching of the brakes.

      Chapter Three

      The driver used his radiophone to call in the broken axle. Within thirty minutes, the motel in Mount View, the town they had just come from, sent out its minivan to start hauling passengers back. The local garage sent a tow truck. The driver announced that a replacement bus would arrive in the morning, and in the meantime the motel would put up the passengers at the bus company’s expense.

      Cara was on the first trek the van made, and she waited in the motel lobby with the others until the entire busload had arrived and were assigned rooms.

      She passed the time looking over the postcard rack in the lobby, looking for a card to send her mother, just to let her know that she was safe. After all, it wasn’t as if they were staying in Mount View. They’d be long gone before Beth Dunlap ever received the card.

      She chose one with a picture of the mountains and wrote a brief message, saying not to worry, that she was fine and enjoying traveling around the country.

      She then curled up in the corner of one of the couches with her journal and a cup of coffee and a doughnut and wrote down everything she was feeling in a sort of letter to her mother.

      She had just tucked the journal back into her gym bag when the last of her fellow passengers arrived, with Bill in their midst.

      There were a few questions and some grumbling from the other passengers, but most took the news in stride, enjoying the diversion of a little adventure and the prospect of a night’s sleep in a real bed. They lined up at the desk to get their keys in orderly fashion. Cara found herself beside Bill.

      “How about a swim before dinner?” Bill suggested.

      Cara’s face brightened, then fell. “I didn’t bring a suit.”

      Bill nodded and looked away as the line moved.

      “But if that’s an invitation to dinner, I accept,” Cara said, putting a hand on his arm to get his attention. She jumped back when something like a wave of electricity jolted up her arm. Bill seemed similarly afflicted.

      “Sorry,” she muttered, “must be the carp—”

      Simultaneously they glanced down at the red tile floor and then lifted their eyes, meeting query with confusion.

      “I do like a woman with spark,” Bill said, in a near whisper. His eyes gleamed, and a little muscle twitched along his jaw as he gave his full attention to her face.

      Cara could feel his roving gaze, like a warm hand lightly caressing her skin. Her own eyes were drawn to the angles and planes of his face, to the full curve of his lips, the hard edge of his cheekbones. When she tried to swallow, her throat felt dry.

      The bus driver called out, “Keep moving, folks,” and Cara and Bill returned to the present.

      Cara soon found herself at the СКАЧАТЬ