Kathleen O'Brien - The Stranger

WOW. TYLER PAUSED in the half-open doorway. Three years hadn’t softened Mallory Rackham’s heart much, had they?

The hall in front of him was dim, but the afternoon light behind him streamed in over his shoulders in two bright bands, one of which caught Mallory’s face and illuminated it. The venom with which she eyed him now was just as potent and undiluted as it had been the day she read his first story about the Heyday Eight and saw her husband’s name.

At least she wasn’t holding a plate of greasy French fries this time. He glanced at the book in her hand. A small paperback. Good. He probably wouldn’t even bruise if she decided to chuck it at him.

He guessed he had at least a few seconds before that happened. For the moment she seemed paralyzed with shock and the slow awakening of long-buried anger. So he slung his suit bag over his shoulder and moved carefully toward the apartment that would be his temporary lodgings, all the while fingering his keys, trying to locate the right one.

When he reached the door, which was only about four feet from her own, she finally spoke. “What the hell are you doing here, Tyler?”

Okay, that was a start. She had used profanity, which he knew she rarely did, and her voice was pointed and frosty, like a dagger of ice, but at least she hadn’t tossed the book. And she’d used his first name.

About a six, he figured, on the hostility scale. Nothing he couldn’t handle. He’d once investigated a senator who’d been taking bribes, and though that guy had been hostile enough to consult a hit man, Tyler had still managed to get the story.

He’d get this one, too, including her part of it. He couldn’t leave her out, even if he wanted to. She’d owned the café. She’d been married to one of the johns. Her little sister had gone to school with the Eight. He needed her in the book, and he’d get her.

At first, Tyler had wondered if moving into the apartment next to her was the best plan. He’d been afraid she might feel crowded. But now he saw that his instincts had been right. He was going to need the proximity, the frequent meetings, to break down long-entrenched barriers like these.

“Well?” She was gripping her book so tightly the pages curled into a circle. “Tell me. Why are you back?”

“I’m going to be staying here for a while.” He held up his key. “I inherited the building, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“Yes.” She still clenched her jaw, which distorted her normally musical voice. “But I also heard you were trying to sell it.”

He smiled. “Did you want to make me an offer?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I just want to know why you’re back in Heyday. God. Haven’t you done enough damage already?”

“Damage?” He looked her straight in the eye. “Are you sure you don’t have me confused with someone else?”

The light in the hallway wasn’t great, but he could tell she flushed. Deep inside, she must know he was right. She must know that Tyler hadn’t caused her husband’s infidelity. He’d just exposed it.

But clearly she wasn’t planning to admit it.

“Don’t pull that crusading white knight routine with me,” she said, her voice a shade too loud in the empty hall. “You didn’t write your series to rescue the sad little girls of the Heyday Eight. You wrote it to make yourself famous. And you have absolutely no idea what kind of wreckage you left behind. You were too busy scurrying out of town to collect your Pulitzer.”

Man, she really was furious. Tension crackled off her like electricity. He wondered what fed it, kept it throbbing and vital all these years. Surely she wasn’t still breaking her heart over that no-good bastard ex-husband of hers.

The guy hadn’t ever deserved her, but Tyler was well aware that love was illogical and unpredictable.

Which was why he always steered his own life a hundred miles in the other direction.

“I know you got divorced,” he said. “And I know that, however embarrassing it must have been to discover he’d cheated on you, you’re smart enough to realize you’re better off without that scum bucket.”

She didn’t respond at first, though her flush deepened. Maybe the word had been too harsh. But Dan Platt was a scum bucket. What kind of sleazy moron paid for kinky thrills with a silly teenage hooker while a woman like Mallory waited for him at home?

Mallory was one of the few natural beauties Tyler had ever known. Even better, she was—or had been—lighthearted and full of life. She had smiled a lot, and laughed a lot, and let her short blond hair tumble all over itself in a way that was somehow ten times sexier than anything he’d seen at a White House ball or a Kennedy Center gala.

Some of that vibrant energy had been dampened, he saw now. It wasn’t that she looked older, for the three years had hardly touched her in that way. The difference was more subtle. She looked subdued, as if her colors had faded. This face was still lovely, but it had new shadows.

He felt an odd prick of guilt, knowing that his series had helped to put some of those shadows there.

Finally she found her voice. “I am not going to discuss Dan with you. But if you think my divorce was the worst thing that happened around here in the wake of the great Tyler Balfour, you’re very wrong.”

He gave her a half smile. “You underestimate me, Mallory,” he said. “I’m a journalist. I know all about the developments of the past few years. I know that eighty students pulled out, and the college almost closed. I know there were six divorces, including yours, one suicide attempt, one illegitimate baby and two county commissioners ousted in the next election.”

He paused, in case she wanted to break in, but she didn’t speak. She just looked at him, as if she were hypnotized by his litany of misery.

“I know that Sander Jacobson’s loony wife set fire to the Ringmaster Café, illogically blaming your family for her husband’s sins. And I know that, after the fire, your mother had a stroke. A stroke from which she hasn’t yet recovered.”

Again he paused.

Mallory’s eyes were bright, but her chin was high. “Is that all?”

He thought about Dilday Merle and the mysterious blackmailer. But he wasn’t free to talk about that. “Seems like enough, doesn’t it?”

Was it his imagination, or did she seem relieved? She certainly took a deep breath, and when she spoke, her voice was steadier.

“Impressive,” she said. “I knew you spied on us when you were in Heyday. I had no idea you had continued to do so from Washington, D.C.”

“I just followed the story. I follow all my stories. And this one is particularly important to me.”

She laughed harshly. “Why? I hope you aren’t going to say it’s because of me, because we were ‘friends.’ I quit believing in that fairy tale three years ago. Although I have to admit you had me fooled pretty thoroughly for a while there.”

Again that slight sting of conscience. Had he gone too far back then, while he was digging for the story he suspected was buried in her innocent little café? Had he played the role of friend and confidant so convincingly that he had actually hurt her?

He hadn’t meant to. Ordinarily he knew just where the ethical lines were drawn. Sometimes, though, he had forgotten it was a role. Sometimes, while he sat at the counter late at night and ate her amazing blueberry pie, he had forgotten that he was a reporter. Sometimes, when she had hinted at how unhappy her home life was, he had been forced to fight the urge to take her hand across the counter.

Sometimes he had almost forgotten to take notes.

Almost.

But he’d done plenty of soul-searching back when it happened. And he’d decided that, though he might have touched the line with his toe once or twice, he hadn’t ever actually crossed it.