Judith Bowen - Zoey Phillips

“Here. Let me take that.” Cameron reached for the trolley.

“I’m fine! I can bring down my stuff,” Zoey protested.

“I’ll give you a hand.” He strode down the hall beside her and they got into the elevator with the trolley. It made for close quarters. Frowning, he watched the lights on the ancient elevator as it laboriously ground its way up to the third floor.

Zoey eyed him sideways, wondering if she was making the right decision. Several weeks on a remote ranch with a high-school crush who hadn’t even remembered her at first, a surly brother with matchmaking on his mind, a widowed aunt who was probably going to talk her ear off and a kid she knew nothing about.

She must be insane.

She unlocked the door to her room, relieved that Cameron didn’t try to take the key and open it for her. On the third try, it meshed.

“That’s all you have?” Cameron surveyed the room quickly. She had the distinct impression that he was trying very hard not to glance at the fly-spotted mirror on the ceiling. So was she.

“Yes. I travel light.” She reached for the blue case that held the Chinchilla manuscript and her laptop. She’d carry that herself.

Cameron loaded her three bags onto the trolley, and as soon as they arrived back in the lobby, he strode ahead of her to the hotel doors. He hadn’t said a word in the elevator. Yesterday must have been a real stretch for him, convincing her to cooperate with his plan.

Maybe his talents—like hers, she sometimes thought—ran more to scheming than talking.

Well, how could she help it? Much of her working life was spent trying to figure out plot twists and tangles in Jamie Chinchilla mystery-thrillers. So far, she’d never thought of this as a particular talent that she could apply to life, but this Romancing Ryan plot of Cameron’s had definitely fired her imagination.

“Cameron?” she called when they reached the parking lot.

“Yes?” He was about to toss her bags into the back of his dark green pickup.

“I’ve got my own car,” she reminded him, indicating the white rental Toyota sedan a few spaces away from his truck. “I’ll follow you, okay?”

He nodded and carried her bags to the car and stood patiently while she fiddled with her keys, trying to open the trunk. Eventually it sprang open and he loaded her bags.

She closed the trunk, then turned to him. “Look, is there something I should know?”

He seemed startled. “Like what?”

“Well, you’re awfully quiet today. I get the impression you’re not as happy about this plan today as you were yesterday but you’re too polite to say so. Don’t feel obliged. We can drop the whole thing if you like—”

“Is that what you want to do?”

Did she? She dug in her handbag for her sunglasses, mulling over the difficulties of going to the Nugents for a few days and still having to look for a more suitable place. “No, I’m game. I’ve got quite a bit of work and I need a place to do it in.”

“Let’s go then.”

Cameron started his engine and immediately re versed. Zoey started the Toyota and decided to give it a minute or two to warm up. She never drove in Toronto, although she’d maintained her driver’s license over the years, and couldn’t remember if you were supposed to warm up a car or not. It couldn’t hurt. Plus, it wouldn’t kill Cameron Donnelly to wait.

Which he did. He was waiting for her at the en trance to the parking lot. She rigorously observed the speed limit as they set out in tandem. When she dropped behind, he slowed. Zoey suspected he’d prefer to go faster. But that was okay, too, she told herself, smiling just a little.

It was clear that Cameron Donnelly was used to taking charge. He ran his ranch and organized his own life and his child’s life and probably Marty’s life. Now he was shopping for a romance for his brother. Well, he couldn’t find out any earlier that she wasn’t all that manageable. In fact, she knew she could be ornery as hell at times, something she wasn’t exactly proud of.

But she was her own woman, with her own ideas and her own agenda. If she hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have gotten as far as she had in life.

And that she was proud of.

THE TRIPLE OARLOCK was about fifteen miles west of town, not far as distances went in this country. It was snugged up against the rolling hills of the Fullerton Range. A rambling one-story ranch house, seventies style, was nestled against a windbreak of trees to the west, and the ranch buildings, most of them, were to the south and southwest. The sturdy pole fences weren’t painted and had weathered to a soft silver. The barns and outbuildings had been painted a traditional barn red; the lawns were tidy, the bare hedges clipped. Everything looked in good repair.

The apartment she was to occupy over the three-car garage stood about seventy-five feet southwest of the house. There was another parking spot, an open carport, attached to the house, probably a more convenient location for unloading groceries and passengers in inclement weather.

They parked by the garage and Cameron took Zoey straight up to the ranch house to meet his aunt.

“Marty? This is Zoey Phillips, you remember Harvey Phillips, used to be at the cement plant? This is his daughter.” He turned to Zoey. “My aunt, Marty Hainsworth.”

“How do you do?” Zoey said formally, extending her hand. The older woman she’d glimpsed at the firefighters’ dance shook it briefly, her grip firm and hard as a man’s. She was slight, thin-lipped, and had a pink chiffon scarf tied over her head. Zoey spotted old-fashioned hair rollers under the scarf.

“How d’ye do? I’m glad to meet you. Cameron’s been telling me about you.”

“He has?” She glanced at Cameron with a smile. He seemed faintly embarrassed.

“Oh, yes, and all of it favorable.” The aunt, who looked to be in her mid-sixties, put her hands on narrow, jean-clad hips. A toothpick bobbed in one side of her mouth. “Ryan, too. Matter of fact, he’s talked nonstop since Sunday about you and Mary Ellen Owen being back in town. You want a cup of tea or anything? You sure you want to stay out in that drafty old suite? I don’t like the idea. We got plenty of room up here in the house.”

“No to the tea, thank you very much. And, yes, I prefer to stay in the apartment by myself. I’m not a guest, you know, Mrs. Hainsworth—”

“Just call me Marty.”

“Marty.” Zoey smiled. She had decided that she was going to get along very well with the Donnellys’ aunt. “I have lots to do over the next few weeks—”

“What kind of work d’ye do, if you don’t mind me askin’?” Marty’s bright blue eyes, which reminded Zoey of Ryan’s, were curious.

“I edit books. Mainly, I edit Jamie Chinchilla’s novels and—”

“Oh, my! He’s one of my favorites. My sister Robin in Kelowna always sends me his books, when she’s finished with ’em. Or is this Chinchilla a she?”

The reading public had never seen a picture of the author, nor did most people know whether Jamie Chinchilla was male or female. For purposes of publicity, the author and publisher had decided to maintain the mystery.

“I’ve never met the author,” Zoey said truthfully. All her contact had been over the telephone. But she knew very well that Jamie Chinchilla was an elderly widow named Ruth Ohlmstad, who lived in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and who had never been farther away from home than Halifax and St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, New Brunswick. Well, she’d been to Boston once, when she was twenty, she’d told Zoey. But that was it. Unlike her characters, Ruth Ohlmstad had never had a hair-raising adventure in her life. Her stories were complete products of an amazingly fertile and inventive imagination. Even her neighbors thought she was just good old Ruthie, stalwart of the Women’s League, co-president of the Lunenburg Historical Society and envied grower of prize-winning sweet peas.