Jayne Castle - After Glow

"Morning, Mel."

Melanie looked up from the tabloid she was perusing. She was an attractive, dark-haired woman with lively eyes and what could only be called a very fashion-forward sense of style. Lydia sometimes wondered if she shopped for all her clothes in the lingerie departments of the stores. Melanie had an extensive collection of sheer blouses, very short skirts, and daring little dresses that resembled nightgowns and slips.

"About time you got here," Melanie said. "How was the meeting with Hepscott?"

"Fine. He gave me a budget that is several times what I get to spend here in a year. I can't wait to start buying."

She went into her office and set her portfolio case against the shelves holding her extensive collection of the Journal of Para-archaeology .

She was stuffing her purse into the bottom drawer of her desk when Melanie appeared in the doorway, rattling the copy of the tabloid.

"Have you seen the papers?"

"Hard to miss the headlines. The news that someone tried to murder Mercer Wyatt is above the fold of every newspaper in town. I also caught the report about it on Good Morning, Cadence on the rez-screen before I left my apartment."

"How can you sound so calm and casual?" Melanie sashayed into the office and propped one well-rounded hip on the corner of the desk. "For goodness sake, woman, you're dating the new boss of the Cadence Guild."

" Acting boss."

Melanie winked. "The job could become permanent if Wyatt doesn't make it."

"Got a hunch Wyatt will survive. He's a tough old specter-cat."

Melanie held up the tabloid. "You never told me all the juicy details about Emmett London's connections to the Wyatts. How could you keep that kind of gossip from your very best friend? I'm crushed, crushed I tell you."

Lydia glanced at the cover of the Cadence Tattler and froze. A large, grainy photo of Tamara Wyatt and Emmett going into the main entrance of Cadence Memorial Hospital together filled most of the available space.

The headlines screamed New Guild Boss Involved in Lovers' Triangle ? The type had to be at least an inch high.

"Let me see that." Lydia snatched the tabloid out of Melanie's hand.

"Be my guest," Melanie replied.

Lydia raced through the article, her stomach growing colder by the second.

Emmett London, newly appointed chief of the Cadence Guild, was formerly engaged to wed Tamara McIntyre (now Mrs. Mercer Wyatt) in a Covenant Marriage in Resonance City. According to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, the wedding was called off abruptly after the bride-to-be was introduced to the boss of the Cadence Guild, Mercer Wyatt, at the engagement ball.

In a magazine interview last month, Mrs. Wyatt maintained that she had been "swept off her feet" by the dynamic Wyatt and that the two intended to convert their current Marriage of Convenience into a full Covenant Marriage in the near future.

A spokesperson for the Resonance Guild assured this reporter that the engagement between London and Tamara Wyatt had ended amicably. But other sources, speaking off the record, hinted that London was furious about the breakup and vowed revenge.

"Revenge?" Lydia reread the last line of the story, appalled. "This idiot reporter is implying that Emmett wanted revenge because Mercer Wyatt stole his fiancée."

"Yes, indeed."

"Oh, jeez." Lydia sat down hard on her desk chair. "This is terrible."

"You'll notice that the article stops short of actually suggesting that London may have been the one who shot Wyatt," Melanie said dryly. "But the implication is a little hard to miss."

"It's impossible to miss." The chill in Lydia's stomach turned into an even more unpleasant sensation of hollowness. "This could turn into a disaster."

"Forget that. Let's get to the interesting stuff. Any of it true? Was the lovely Mrs. Tamara Wyatt London's fiancée at one time?"

Lydia cleared her throat. "Well, yes."

Melanie's eyes rounded. "Oh, my."

"But the engagement didn't end because Tamara got swept off her feet by Mercer Wyatt." Lydia thumped the cover of the tabloid in disgust. "Good grief, he's forty years older than she is."

"Still in great shape though, I hear," Melanie said cheerfully. "At least he was until yesterday. Why did the engagement end?"

"Emmett informed her just before the engagement party that he had accomplished his objectives for the reorganization of the Resonance Guild and planned to step down. He wanted to go into private consulting. That did not suit Tamara. She had other goals."

"Wanted to be Mrs. Guild Boss, huh?"

"She sure did. As it happened good old Mercer Wyatt had recently been widowed and was apparently in the market for a new bride." Lydia turned one hand, palm up. "Tamara ended the engagement."

Melanie drew up one bare knee and clasped her hands around it. The motion hiked her lacy skirt dangerously high on her thighs. "How did Emmett feel about being dumped?"

"He had a very narrow escape and he knows it."

"It says in the paper that they were planning a Covenant Marriage. It would have been a legal and financial nightmare to get out of it once the vows had been spoken." Melanie shook her head. "Wonder why they didn't go for a standard Marriage of Convenience, first?"

Lydia cranked back in the squeaky desk chair and swiveled slightly from side to side. "Emmett is a long-term planner, one of those types who sets goals and then does whatever it takes to accomplish them. He probably applied that management approach when he set out to marry Tamara."

"Well, you've got to admit, she does seem to be the perfect Guild boss wife. She's not only beautiful, she's stylish and smart. Heck, she's an executive in her own right. Look how active she's been on the boards of all those charities and social clubs this past year. She's done more to promote a more modern, mainstream image for the Cadence Guild in the past year than anyone else has done since Jerrett Knox defeated Vincent Lee Vance."

"I know." Lydia drummed her fingers on the top of her desk. She did not need to be reminded of the long list of Tamara Wyatt's personal assets and accomplishments. "I've met her. She's impressive but she would have been the wrong woman for Emmett. I'm pretty sure he knows that now."

"Of course he does," Melanie said loyally. "It's obvious that you are the right woman for him."

They both thought about that for a while.

Melanie cleared her throat. "So, where was Emmett London in the early morning hours when Mercer Wyatt was getting shot in the back?"

"The leader of Zane Hoyt's Hunter-Scout troop asked him to help supervise the boys on a camping trip. They got back around two in the morning. By the time Emmett dropped the kids off at their various homes and got to his place it was three. Wyatt had just arrived in the emergency room."

"The paper says that Wyatt was shot sometime between two and three," Melanie pointed out.

"Uh-huh."

"Sounds like Emmett might have a little trouble accounting for the time between dropping off the last Hunter-Scout and answering the phone call from the hospital."

Lydia leveled a finger at her. "Don't even think of going there, Mel. At the most, we're talking twenty minutes."

Melanie pursed her lips but refrained from pointing out that twenty minutes was long enough to murder someone.

Lydia sighed. "Luckily, Detective Martinez seemed satisfied that Emmett was not a suspect. After all, it was Wyatt himself who appointed Emmett to take over on an interim basis. He wouldn't have done that if he thought that Emmett had tried to murder him."

Melanie rocked back and forth on the desk a couple of times. "But Wyatt was shot in the back, according to the papers, and never saw the person who tried to kill him. Plus, I'll bet that Martinez didn't know about this lovers' triangle thing when she questioned you and Emmett. Her view of the situation may change when she finds out those three had a tangled past."