Terry McLaughlin - A Perfect Stranger

For Mom, a fellow tour survivor

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

SYDNEY GORDON stared at the engagement ring glittering in the candlelight and wondered what to say. What to do.

What to feel.

One thing she shouldn’t be feeling was panic. No woman in her right mind would have this lung-squeezing, temple-throbbing reaction to a proposal from sweet, stable, handsome Henry Barlow, an attorney with a beautiful new home, a solid investment portfolio and an excellent chance of earning a partnership with a law firm in Truckee, California, before the end of the year.

Which meant she must be going crazy.

Even now the proof was bubbling through her, right along with the champagne in her nearly empty flute—those same fizzy, self-destructive impulses that had driven her from one disaster to another after her father had died four years ago and left her an unexpected insurance benefit and the means to go down in well-financed flames. Dropping out of her postgrad work in Education to dabble in Theater Arts. Leaping into an affair with an actor and dashing off to a regional Shakespeare festival. Playing an infamous seductress onstage and getting her heart stomped to pieces behind the scenes. Adding several more strands of gray to her mother’s carefully coiffed hair. Getting duped, dumped, ditched, disillusioned and nearly disowned, though not necessarily in that order.

“Do you like it?” asked Henry.

“The ring?” Sydney gulped the rest of her champagne and gave him a brilliant smile. “It’s beautiful. Absolutely perfect.”

Henry would never disillusion her. Just look how carefully he’d staged this moment: the sunset view of Lake Tahoe from the restaurant window, the champagne tilting in an ice bucket, the jazz trio playing his sentimental request.

And that fabulous ring—the one-carat emerald-cut diamond with four baguettes set in a platinum band. She knew all this because Henry had just finished explaining it in great detail, along with a brief lecture on the importance of cut, clarity and something else she’d forgotten already.

She bit her lip, trying to remember. No good. Whatever he’d said, it was gone now.

“I’d like you to wear it while you’re gone,” he said.

“Gone?” She blinked. “Oh—the tour. Um…”

He reached for her hand, his grip as warm and steady as always. She hoped hers wouldn’t seem clammy and limp by comparison.

“I’m going to miss you,” he said.

“I’ll only be in Europe a couple of weeks.”

Two weeks—not much time to erase any lingering unease over those minor glitches during her substitute teaching stint and replace them with the image of an organized, responsible educator. Two weeks to chaperone a group of high school students on an early-summer tour through England and France, to make an excellent impression on the North Sierra school administration and secure that full-time position in the English department. To make a success of herself, at last.

Henry gave her fingers a gentle squeeze, and she realized she’d been drifting. She smiled again and reminded herself to be grateful she’d found a man like this, a man who cared enough to arrange every detail of this romantic setting. A man who would help her smother her impulses to be…well, impulsive.

There certainly was nothing impulsive about Henry. Witness his smooth wind-up: a minor adjustment of his stylish silk tie, that perfectly confident smile as he refilled her flute with champagne. Henry was so…so…

Perfect.

Not that perfection was a problem. Her mother, for instance, approved of Henry and reminded Sydney of that fact repeatedly—when she wasn’t reminding Sydney of her rapidly approaching thirtieth birthday. Lately her mother was fixated on the concept that Sydney’s birthday, Henry’s suitability and the state of matrimony were in some sort of cosmic alignment.

Poor Meredith Gordon. Sydney’s mother had spent most of her adult life bandaging the family financial situation after each of her husband’s inventions and subsequent development schemes had drained away most of their savings. She probably viewed Henry as the perfect match for a daughter who seemed to display a tendency to follow her father’s eccentric, erratic example.

No, the problem wasn’t Henry’s perfection. The problem was that Henry was…well, that he…the thing was, Henry was so…

Persistent.

That was it: he was persistent. And lately his persistence about setting a wedding date had been scraping at her ambivalence like fingernails on a chalkboard. She glanced down at the fingers of the hand Henry wasn’t holding as they drummed on the linen, and she curled them into a silent, polite fist.

However, Henry’s persistence could be considered an admirable quality, even one point in his favor. She snatched up her wine to take another sip, relieved to have found something to stick in Henry’s plus column.

Point two: timing. Henry’s was excellent. Look how cleverly he’d timed this proposal for the evening before she left on the tour. And it was sweet of him to give her this ring to wear so she’d think of him while she was thousands of miles away.

Now, if she could just round up a few more items for her Reasons To Marry Henry list before he finished his lecture—er, his proposal…

The proposal. Oh, dear. Drifting again. She’d almost missed his pitch: perfectly beautiful words spilling from perfectly bowed lips above a perfectly square jaw. She smiled so hard, appreciating him so much that one of her eyes began to twitch.

They’d discussed marriage before, but never with anything approaching this degree of formality. Of finality.

Of inevitability.

And it was inevitable that she’d say yes, of course. Marrying Henry made perfect sense. They complemented each other surprisingly well—a perfect match, in so many ways.

The spasm in her eyelid intensified, and she hoped Henry couldn’t see it and guess at the panic-driven insanity bubbling up inside her.

No, no, she told herself as she struggled with her ambivalence. No, no, she thought as she held her breath to strangle a particularly sneaky and senseless impulse, right up until the moment she opened her mouth and, riding a gust of pent-up air, out popped the one word neither of them wanted to hear: “No.”

“No?”

“No! I mean…not no.” Sydney jabbed a finger against the corner of her eye and tried to shovel her way out of the muck of her latest impulse. “What I mean is…”

Henry gave her hand a comforting pat before withdrawing his. “That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me what you mean.”

“I don’t?”

“We both know what we want,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”

“You’re right.” She sighed with relief. Henry was nearly always right.

He snapped the lid over the ring and slid the little velvet box back into his pocket. “This will be here waiting for you when you get back,” he said with a reassuring smile. “Just like me.”