Man In A Million. Muriel Jensen

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      “That’s it,” Randy replied. “Coffee’s on you.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      PARIS HAD NOTICED HER wallet was missing when she dropped off old Mr. Kubik at the senior center. He paid his fare with exact change and gave her a quarter tip—a routine he’d followed every week for eight months. She had a standing order to pick him up every Tuesday afternoon. She went to slip the money in the wallet always tucked under her right leg on the seat, but it wasn’t there.

      She felt a moment’s panic. It had been a good day. She’d had that trip to Springfield, the generous Shriners on a tour of New England after their conference in Boston, and a lot of short hops from the nursing home that helped her make up in volume what the seniors couldn’t pay in tips.

      She struggled to remember where she’d been, then concluded she had to have lost it at the fire station. She’d changed a twenty for Starla McAffrey and she’d had it then. Her next stop had been the fire station. Then she’d picked up Mr. Kubik.

      Well. She wasn’t going back there. Prue, who drove whenever Paris needed a break, had promised to drive a few hours for her tonight while she made some phone calls. When her sister, Prue, had first returned home, she’d driven a full shift, but business was slow at night, and she’d taken a job at a dress shop instead. Paris would charm her into stopping to pick up the wallet.

      Paris then remembered she was supposed to pick up her sister at the library in—she glanced at her watch—ten minutes. She would have to brace herself as she always did to deal with the misnamed Prudence. It was easier when their mother was home. Prudence took after Camille Malone with her bright beauty and her mercurial personality. They always had a lot to talk about, which left the quieter Paris to attend to the practical side of their existence. She did the grocery shopping, paid bills, kept up the checkbook.

      She’d never minded that her mother and sister were beautiful and that she was simply passably pretty with a talent for steadiness and responsibility. It meant she took after her father, Jasper O’Hara, a kind and practical man who’d kept their lives together while Camille acted in New York or modeled in L.A. He’d been an accountant and he’d died of a coronary five years before.

      Then that comforting sense of who she was exploded a year ago when she was taking an investigations class that involved blood testing and blood typing. She’d tested her own blood and discovered she was type A, scientifically impossible when both her parents were type O. Several years ago, her parents had given blood at a Red Cross blood drive and her father had come home joking that they were “Oh, oh,” giving it the inflection that suggested trouble. He’d said that that exclamation usually applied to everything they did.

      It certainly applied at that moment when she tested her blood a second and then a third time. She couldn’t be Jasper O’Hara’s daughter.

      She’d rushed home that weekend to confront her mother about it and watched the color drain from her face. Her mother had sat her on the sofa and explained that she was the result of an affair she’d had with a bit actor just before she met Jasper O’Hara.

      “Why didn’t you tell me?” she’d demanded.

      “Because I married Jasper before you were born and he’s truly been your father. There was no need. We were happy. You were happy. It was…irrelevant.”

      Irrelevant? Paris had wanted to argue but had been too shocked to find the right words, the right questions.

      “You are who you are,” her mother had insisted, “and it doesn’t matter a damn who your father was. Besides,” she’d added, almost as an afterthought, “he’s dead. He was killed in a car accident right after you were born.”

      Paris had insisted on a name.

      “Jeffrey St. John,” her mother had finally revealed. “He’s dead, Paris. It doesn’t matter. Jasper O’Hara was your father.”

      Paris had gone back to school but found herself unable to focus on her studies. She felt as though the very foundation of her life was cracked and unable to support the future she’d planned.

      She’d come home, needing a dose of the stability of her old life before she could decide what to do about her future. She knew that didn’t make sense because her old life was based on her mother’s fabrication. But even though Jasper O’Hara hadn’t been her biological father, he’d been her biggest fan, and there was comfort in being where he’d been.

      It saddened her to think that the steadiness that she’d always thought had come from him hadn’t. So where had it come from? A bit actor? Somehow, that seemed unlikely.

      She reached instinctively for the chocolate stash in her wallet, forgetting that it was at the fire station. Great. Broke and without chocolate. Life was a cruel master.

      With no pickups pending, Paris pulled into a parking spot across from the Common to wait for Prue.

      The sight of the Maple Hill Square, or Common, had a grounding effect on her. Life here went on very much as it had two hundred years ago, though the Maple Hill Mirror had up-to-the-minute equipment instead of the old labor-intensive printing method that required inking by hand and rolling one sheet at a time. The early residents of the town had never heard of the mochaccinos produced at the Perk Avenue Tea Room down the way, and would have been horrified by the lengths of the skirts in the dress shop window.

      Otherwise, the restored colonial buildings that framed the square looked the same, a colonial flag flew, and Caleb and Elizabeth Drake, who’d once fought the redcoats, still stood on the green, their images bronzed to remind Maple Hill of its heritage.

      This was part of what she’d come home for, Paris thought. The eternity of life here, roots in the deep past, finger on the pulse of the future. To someone who felt lost, it provided a handhold on permanence.

      Prue probably never felt lost. She had the temperament of an artist, but seemed always so sure of herself.

      Now she was part of a committee headed by Mariah Trent to raise funds for an addition to the library and more books.

      Prue met Mariah while volunteering at the Maple Hill Manor School outside of town. Mariah had once been a dorm mother there, but now had a husband and two adopted children, and was the backbone of community fund-raising.

      When Prue had been living in New York with her senator husband, she’d apprenticed with Shirza Bell, a famous couturier. Prue’s life long dream had been to design clothes, and though she now helped to make a living for the three of them as Paris and their mother did, she still sketched at night and designed in her dreams.

      Paris was jealous of her passion—and her face, and her body, and her wonderful ease with people.

      She could see her coming from across the street. Late afternoon traffic was light, but Prue Hale stood out like a flame in the cool sunlight of late September. She was several inches shorter than Paris and attractively round without looking plump. Her hair was long and golden and always flying around her in appealing disarray. She had a penchant for long skirts and sweaters, and always looked like a social butterfly on her way home from afternoon tea.

      Today, her skirt was a slim gray houndstooth, and she wore a dusty-rose sweater and a brightly colored shawl with a black-and-bright-pink pattern, which hung loosely on her shoulders. She had on black leather shoes with a small heel, a matching pouch purse, and a smile Paris СКАЧАТЬ