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He lifted an eyebrow.
Her cheeks took on color as he watched.
“Your advice to that girl was so good. It’s the kind of thing a lot of women need to hear.”
“Thanks,” said Graham. This was unprecedented. And a little strange.
“And I wanted to do you a—or ask you for—”
She stumbled around incoherently.
Graham said, “What do you want?”
“I wanted to offer to set you up with Cameron.”
“Your cousin,” he clarified.
“Yes. She’s really nice and she directs the women’s resource center, which I’m sure you know. She’s had some counseling training, and I thought the two of you might get along.”
Graham scratched his head. This was all so strange. “You think I can’t get a date?” he asked.
“No.” She actually stamped her foot. A small stamp of frustration, but a stamp nonetheless. “I just thought you’d like each other. I thought you could go to Jonathan’s party together.”
Things were getting more and more weird. “Did she put you up to this?”
“Of course not. Cameron’s not like that. She doesn’t need male attention. She gets plenty of that without help. But she does think you’re nice, and I thought the two of you might hit it off.”
He squinted. “Cameron…What’s her last name?”
“McAllister. Our mothers are sisters. Cameron is really great. I know you’d like her.”
Strangely, Mary Anne seemed every bit as desperate in her quest to unite him and her cousin as she was to earn Hale’s approval. Graham decided to forgo the “whys.” Did he want to go out with Cameron McAllister?
He was selective in choosing dates. He sometimes had trouble getting rid of women after he’d taken them out a few times. One or two had even taken to dropping by the radio station, finding excuses to walk past his house—which wasn’t even in town but out in Middleburg, near Mary Anne’s grandmother’s house. It made him uneasy. He was a public figure. Like it or not, his voice and his radio show, his appearances on television and more, had made him a public figure.
“I really don’t know her, Mary Anne,” he said. Then, added impulsively, “I have an idea. Why don’t I take you to Jonathan’s party?”
Mary Anne appeared to be considering some serious dilemma in her mind. He could hear the wheels turning and wished he could read her thoughts.
“I—I’d rather you took Cameron,” she said.
“And I’d rather take you. Besides—” he lowered his voice, unable to resist “—think of the effect it will have on Hale, seeing us together. For all you know, he might decide you are more of a prize than little Angie.” Graham didn’t believe this. Hale had no interest in Mary Anne Drew, except as a source of food for his massive ego. Graham simply had to tease Mary Anne, whose face grew distinctly red at his words.
She expected him to rise to the bait and spit back at him.
Instead, she said, “Oh, I just don’t know,” in a way that suggested global warming or world peace might hang on the answer to her inner conflict. She said, again almost desperately, “I’m trying to do something nice for you!”
“So go out with me.”
“I don’t like you!” she replied. “Cameron does. Why don’t you go out with her?”
Her behavior was incomprehensible. Graham pushed aside the little sting of that “I don’t like you!” He said, “Well, you tried. But to be perfectly honest, it reminds me of the Christmas when I wanted a red ten-speed Bianchi bike and found a five-speed Schwinn under the tree.”
She made a startled little noise that might have been the word Oh, and looked crestfallen.
He said, “I’ll tell you what. You bring Cameron to the party, and we’ll see what happens. I’ve never really talked with her. All I know is she broke Carl Moosegow’s wrist.”
“He grabbed her in a bar!” Mary Anne exclaimed. “And not on the arm, either. She’s studied martial arts. It was a case of ‘no mind,’ like Bruce Lee used to talk about. She just reacted as she’d been trained to do.”
“I’ll be careful where my hands stray,” said Graham, who had counseled female clients on maintaining boundaries—and dealing with men who did not observe them. “By the way, are you trained in martial arts?”
Without a word, she spun away, grabbed her purse and left the office.
Graham grinned as he watched her go…and exchanged a look with the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, who grinned right back.
HE HADN’T LET HER do something nice for him, and Mary Anne was unsure whether “It’s the thought that counts” applied to good deeds required to activate love potions. A simple solution would have been to agree to go to the party with him, but Mary Anne didn’t like him, so how could that have been doing him a good deed? She couldn’t have gone with him, though. Because of Cameron. Cameron liked him, and Mary Anne didn’t want to hurt Cameron.
Objecting to the idea of putting more effort into the love potion project, yet unwilling to simply abandon it, she took a gift certificate for Pizza Hut pizza that she’d won at the high school’s kickoff carnival and slipped it into Graham’s In tray. After that, the only thing to do was mildly discourage Cameron’s interest in Graham, play down any possibility that Graham actually liked Mary Anne herself and prepare to slip Jonathan Hale a love potion.
“DO I LOOK OKAY?” she asked Cameron on the night of the engagement party. “Do these jeans make my butt look big?”
“You have an excellent butt,” Cameron replied matter-of-factly. Blessed with a figure that Mary Anne, for one, believed was the answer to every man’s fantasies, Cameron had absolutely no interest in discussing Mary Anne’s figure flaws. “And your clothes are cool. You look like a model.”
Low-rise flare jeans, baby T-shirt and her favorite hat. She also wore her favorite moss-green wrap sweater coat.
In her handbag was the precious vial she’d bought from Clare Cureux.
Tonight was the night.
Taking her turn in front of the mirror, Cameron babbled, “Jonathan asked Paul to play for the party but I told Paul he couldn’t, because if he’s there I have to pretend we’re together.”
It was a situation Mary Anne still couldn’t get her head around, but all she said was, “And so he turned down the gig?”
“Oh, sure. That’s not usually part of our agreement, but he knows how badly I want to go out with Graham.” After a moment, she said, “Besides, he knew he could get a different gig tonight. He just told Jonathan he was booked, and then he got a gig—so he was.” She changed the subject. “Do I look okay?”
Mary Anne scrutinized her cousin. Cameron was dressed up, for her. She wore a low-backed brown dress and clunky platform shoes. She looked sexy and great and had probably spent a total of six dollars on the ensemble. “You’re an eleven,” Mary Anne told her, blowing her a kiss. “He’s lucky you’re coming, but you’ll get to see for yourself what he’s really like.”
Cameron gave a mischievous grin that showed her chipped front tooth, an anomaly in her otherwise perfect bite. “Graham Corbett, here I come!”
Mary Anne decided that if Graham tried to flirt with her tonight instead of her cousin, she would pour a drink on him.
THE PARTY TOOK PLACE in the Embassy Ballroom, which occupied the entire floor above the radio station in the Embassy Building. Mary Anne had learned that the landlord was letting the engaged couple use it as a gift to Jonathan Hale, a tribute for his work for WLGN.
Before they headed upstairs, Mary Anne said, “Want to use the ladies’ room?”
“Sure.”
Mary Anne opened the radio station’s glass door. The recording booth was occupied by two indie kids prerecording a music program. She gave them a wave as she and Cameron headed past the rows of desks and computers to the restrooms.
“There’s Flossy!”
“Yes.” Mary Anne didn’t even steal a glance at the desk Graham claimed as his at the station—or the white rabbit sitting on top of it. “Let’s not talk about it.” Cameron, of course, was privy to the steps Mary Anne had taken to activate the love potion. Well, except all the details of her failure to set him up with Cameron. She’d confessed to her cousin only that the Pizza Hut gift certificate had been “simpler.”
Cameron remarked, “If you didn’t hate him so much, I’d think you liked him.” She wasn’t talking about Flossy, now.
“Ha-ha,” said Mary Anne, without interest or humor as she marched into the ladies’ room.
Angie Workman stood alone before the sinks, leaning forward on tiptoe in her stiletto heels to apply red lipstick to her wide mouth. “Oh, hi. It’s Mary Anne, right?”
Besides being impossibly tiny, with a figure to die for, Angie had wonderful hair. It was very thick, very curly and platinum-blond…true blond. In contrast, her eyebrows and eyelashes were so dark they looked fake. Regrettably, she held her hair back with barrettes in a style that showed zero imagination. Her dress was a synthetic blend, white with autumn leaves, and her stilettos were also white. A part of Mary Anne, which she acknowledged as mean-spirited and extremely jealous, thought, Hello, it’s October! You don’t wear white shoes in October.
If Angie knew nothing about fashion, the fact had obviously made no impact on Jonathan Hale. With a lurch of her heart, Mary Anne saw the diamond on Angie’s delicate left hand.
Mary Anne held out her own hand. “Yes, and you’re Angie. It’s nice to meet you. This is Cameron McAllister.”
“I so admire your radio essays,” Angie told Mary Anne with obvious sincerity. “I wish I could write something like the things you say. I listen to you every week. My favorite one was the one about the Civil War cemetery—about the brothers who fought on different sides of the conflict.”
“Thank you.” Mary Anne’s emotions were mixed. She felt proud and happy because of Angie’s words. And yet she planned to steal Angie’s fiancе. She could tell that Angie was obviously a nice person, one of those deeply genteel people that the West Virginia mountains sometimes produced. A twinge of shame ran through Mary Anne, and she remembered Clare Cureux’s warnings. How would Jonathan’s falling in love with Mary Anne impact Angie? What if being jilted was the kind of thing Angie couldn’t get over?
Now Angie turned to Cameron. “And everyone says such good things about your work at the women’s center. My friend Rhonda says you’re an angel to those women.”
All delivered in a West Virginia twang that seemed the pinnacle of charm.
Cameron smiled politely. As Jonathan’s fiancеe excused herself to return to the party, Cameron glanced at Mary Anne.
“I know,” Mary Anne said. “She’s sweet and adorable.”
Cameron said, “Maybe. But I’m not an angel.”
JONATHAN WAS DRINKING a Frog’s Leap cabernet. Mary Anne discovered this in a brief moment of conversation with him as she sipped her own merlot. She managed to tell him how nice she thought Angie was and ask what he thought of her idea for next week’s essay—October celebrations—all while watching the level of wine in his wineglass and praying for a moment of opportunity.
Jonathan, however, was engaged in a distracted conversation with one of the female disc jockeys who was also the friend and future bridesmaid of Angie Workman. Her name was Elinor Sweet.
Jonathan said, “What color dress you wear is between you and Angie. I couldn’t care less.”
“But you could intervene. I mean, orange? Me, in orange?”
Elinor had honey-toned skin, which would probably look great in anything.
Jonathan looked over at Graham and said, “Graham, please explain to Elinor why it would be a mistake for me to try to choose the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses.”
Mary Anne watched Graham Corbett and Cameron join the group.
Cameron said, “I’m sure Angie would want to know how you feel about wearing orange, Elinor. If it were my wedding, I would want to know.”
Mary Anne met Cameron’s eyes briefly and knew her cousin was dying to add, And you wouldn’t be in it.
Graham said, “I think etiquette dictates that the bride’s wishes carry the day.”
“But who wants a wedding color that will look bad on bridesmaids?” Mary Anne asked. “Tell Angie how you feel, Elinor. Though I’m sure anything would look great on you.”
“But the question is,” Jonathan said, “if I should step in. Obviously, I shouldn’t.”
“Obviously,” Graham echoed.
Mary Anne wanted to scream that obviously the bride should choose colors and clothes that would look good on her friends, and whoever heard of bridesmaids dressed in orange? She asked Graham, “What makes you the expert on weddings?”
“He’s the WLGN relationship expert,” Jonathan said.
Mary Anne rolled her eyes. “A man.”
“What’s wrong with men?” Graham asked.
“It’s just a bit one-sided. That’s all.”
Jonathan’s eyes lit up, as if what she’d said had struck home with him. “That gives me an idea…” He glanced at his nearly empty glass.
Mary Anne was vigilant.
As he took the last sip, she drained half of her own glass in one long gulp and lifted Jonathan’s glass airily from his hand. “Another for you, groom-to-be?”
Distracted, he glanced at her. “Oh. Thank you, Mary Anne. When you come back—”
But she was already walking away, leaving the crowd behind.
This was the moment. She carried both glasses to the refreshment table, which was unattended. She found the cabernet and carefully poured another glass, holding the uncapped vial of potion against her palm, and letting it run into his glass with the wine.
It couldn’t work, but what the hell?
Frowning slightly, she spotted Angie again. Far from spending every moment on her fiancе’s arm, Angie was speaking intently to Max Harold, the Embassy Building’s custodian. Max used to work in the mines and could talk for hours. Mary Anne had to admit the old man was interesting, but clearly Angie was a good listener.
There was, Mary Anne told herself, nothing wrong with what she planned to do. All was fair in love and war.
She poured herself another glass of merlot and took a sip to steady her nerves.
“Ah, thank you, Mary Anne.”
A masculine hand took Jonathan’s glass from her hand.
Mary Anne did not release it. “No, that’s for—” She could not let the glass go.
Appalled, she felt the stem break, the base coming off in her hand.
Graham Corbett looked in astonishment from the piece she held to the glass he held.
She reached for his part of the glass just as he lifted it to his lips and drank deeply.
Mary Anne could not breathe. Her mouth was open, she was half-panting, her hand still reaching, reaching…
