there had to be a woman who was willing to give a man the benefit of the doubt.
He was just drifting off, when his cell phone rang.
“Hello?” he asked, sitting up, happy to put thoughts of Prue out of his mind.
“Gideon? It’s Dean.”
“Hi. I tried to call you earlier.”
“Did you? Oh. Sorry.” Dean’s usually cheerful voice was grim and hesitant. “There’s been a lot going on here.”
Gideon could hear a commotion in the background, people shouting. Then he heard a wail—like a siren. He sat up a little straighter. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Dean replied. “But there’s been a fire at the lodge.”
“A fire,” Gideon repeated, a sense of foreboding bumping along his spine.
“Yeah,” Dean confirmed. “The kitchen and the whole guest wing burned to the ground.”
CHAPTER TWO
“I CAN’T BELIEVE I named you Prudence,” Camille O’Hara said.
Prue stared at her mother, a woman in her late forties who was a model and an actress. She’d had her two daughters very young and was still gorgeous. She wore her expertly colored platinum hair in trendy spikes and had an artistic flair for line and color in her clothes. The fact that she was small and slender contributed to her youthful appearance. Prue knew that she got her creative talent from her.
Unfortunately, she’d inherited other things as well. Camille was charming and vivacious with a tendency toward theatrics—a quality probably well suited to her career. But those same qualities made Prue seem like the princess Gideon had often called her.
“Camille, don’t be so hard on her.” Jeffrey St. John, an actor, musician and old friend of her mother’s who was recently rediscovered, had been visiting for a week and showed no signs of going home to Florida. He’d been a calming influence in the household. “She’s had a shock, and strong feelings are involved. What would be right for you isn’t necessarily right for her.”
“How can a strong, dynamic man who loves her not be right for her?” Camille demanded.
“He said he didn’t want me back,” Prue reminded her. Now that the initial shock of seeing Gideon in Maple Hill had passed, Prue was dealing with a sort of posttraumatic depression. The need to be cool and disdainful in the face of his pathetic explanation had disintegrated and now all she felt was loss for the magic they’d known. “Neither one of us wants to be married again. And that ridiculous explanation of what happened was enough to make the most trusting woman laugh.”
“Sometimes,” her mother suggested more quietly after Jeffrey’s reprimand, “truth is stranger than fiction. Remember when you and Paris were little and the dog stole the cookie dough and I thought you’d done it?”
It was a terrible time to confess to a twenty-year-old crime, but it did make Prue’s point. “We did do it, Mom. That’s what I mean. If you lie well enough, you can get away with murder—or infidelity.”
“You did eat the cookie dough?” Camille asked in genuine surprise. She seemed to have missed the point.
“My point, Mom,” Prue said patiently, “is that I once loved him very much. He cheated on me while I spent night after lonely night alone believing he was working, giving up my life so he could fulfill his noble calling. Now I don’t give a rip about him. He’s moving to Alaska to be a partner in a fishing lodge, and I’m going to see a lawyer and file for divorce so I can look for a new partnership. Someday. Right now I have too much to do.”
“Okay,” Camille said. Prue was prepared for more argument. Her mother never gave up on anything. “But I think you’re making a big mistake. It isn’t easy for women like us to find the right man. They feel overwhelmed by us, even intimidated. We attract them all right, but holding them is harder because sometimes…we’re just too much.”
“The right kind of man,” Prue repeated her words with a roll of her eyes, “wouldn’t be found in a compromising position with a stripper.”
“I understand he had his clothes on,” Jeffrey said.
Both women turned to him in surprise.
“Well, Paris and Randy sat with us this morning while the two of you were in the cab, and she and your mother talked about it.” He shrugged. “I just think if a man’s as eager as all that to make love to a woman, he’s going to get naked, too.”
Feeling besieged, Prue needed to get away. She snatched her jacket and purse off the arm of the sofa and drew a steadying breath. “I’m going to the studio,” she said politely, though her emotions were hot and turbulent. Anger and pain and bitter disappointment gave her a heartburn that had nothing to do with digestion. “I have a lot of orders to fill and I have to make a plan, try to hire some help.”
Jeffrey stood. “Prue, I’m sorry if I…”
She came back to give him a quick hug. “You didn’t do anything, Jeffrey. I just need to get to work and think about other things.” She went to her mother, who sat curled up in an overstuffed chair, and hugged her, too. “I know you have my best interests at heart, Mom. Don’t worry if I’m late. I have a lot to do.”
Camille patted her cheek. “I’m so happy for you that the fashion show went well. Soon the whole world’s going to know you’re a brilliant designer.”
That was a nice thought.
Jeffrey tossed her his car keys. She tossed them back. “Thanks, but it’s a beautiful day and I’m going to walk.” She’d sold her Porsche when she’d moved back home to help contribute to the household. The fact that her sister owned a cab company had helped her get around, but after Paris and Randy were reconciled this morning, she imagined Paris would have better things to do than drive her to her studio.
She blew a kiss into the room and walked out the door, breathing in the sharp, clear air. She set a steady pace and headed off toward town, thinking that the two-mile jaunt would probably take her half an hour or better.
It was just after noon when she reached town. Colonial homes and small businesses stood in the sun-dappled early afternoon, Halloween decorations on the windows, a black cat–shaped windsock puffed out in front of the hardware store.
Traffic picked up as she reached the square, groups of women and men from City Hall or businesses downtown hurrying to lunch appointments. The trees on the common caught the sunlight that also glossed the curved lines on the statue of Caleb and Elizabeth Drake, a couple who’d fought off redcoats. Prettily painted two-hundred-year-old buildings framed the square.
She tried hard to concentrate on her surroundings rather than think about Gideon and his sudden appearance this morning. Though everyone else seemed to think his visit was noble to try to clarify what had happened and an indicator that he still cared, she thought of it as just another attempt to convince her of a fiction she just couldn’t swallow.
She didn’t think she was being difficult. She simply needed to hold on to her self-respect. What woman in her right mind would have believed him?
She’d
