was frowning as he watched her go on. Her eyes actually lit up as she talked about a man she’d never even met. Until now. Maybe.
“I guess I should say thank you,” he said. “And, uh, maybe apologize for never writing back.”
She shrugged. “Don’t be silly. What celebrity answers his own fan mail?”
He shrugged. “A recluse can’t, by definition, be a celebrity, can he?”
“Of course he can.”
“Well, celebrity or not, it seems rude as hell to me.”
She smiled a little. “If you are him, you can apologize to me later.”
He was beginning to hope he was, so her doubt jabbed at him a little. “You’re not sure I’m him, then?”
“I’m fairly certain,” she said. “It’s just that Westhaven is so reclusive. No public appearances, no known photographs, even—”
“Damn,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“What?”
“Aaron Westhaven is an asshole, that’s what.”
Her eyes widened, and she’d risen from her chair before he’d stopped speaking. “He is—you are not!”
“If I’m him, I am. I mean, who do I think I am? Shakespeare? Where do I get off, anyway?”
“You are not an…an asshole,” she said, stumbling a bit over a word he was certain she’d never uttered in her life. “If you’ll let me finish my story, you’ll begin to see that.”
“Fine. Finish the story.”
She smoothed her hands over the seat of her skirt, forcing his eyes to follow, and sat down the way he imagined royalty would.
“All right. So, despite…your…understandable reluctance to answer what must have seemed like fan mail, I decided to write again, asking you to come and speak at the annual summer fundraiser lecture series for the English department. To my surprise, I received a response this time. An acceptance.”
“I said yes?” Then he rolled his eyes at his own question. “I guess I must have. I’m here.” Then he thought about it a bit further, because her explanation didn’t make a lot of sense. He wondered what reason she might have to lie to him, then wondered what reason anyone would have to execute him. And then he wondered if the two things were related.
He looked her up and down slowly. No. She really wasn’t the type.
“So if I’m famous and I agreed to come to town to speak, why didn’t anyone know who I was?”
“Your terms were explicit and a little extreme,” she said, averting her eyes. “We were only allowed to advertise a secret special guest speaker and had to promise not to tell anyone it was you. We had to make the event by invitation only, and we were told to invite only the top one hundred most generous contributors among our alumni. No more. So there’s been no press announcement or publicity around this at all. With it being limited to invited guests only, advertising wasn’t necessary.”
He was watching her, and it occurred to him that he was looking for signs she was lying and not finding any. And that was an odd thing to catch himself doing, wasn’t it? As if he was accustomed to being lied to, as if he knew what it looked like. “So I’m famous enough to get away with those kinds of bullshit demands?”
She shrugged. “The university agreed to all of it.”
“So that’s a yes, then.”
“I sent you my business card, with my unlisted number and home address handwritten on the back,” she said, pulling the card from her pocket and handing it to him.
“So you have my home address?” he asked quickly, a gusher of hope rising in his chest.
“No, I sent it to the P.O. box. That was the only return address on your reply to me. Sorry.”
He felt the disappointment but tried not to let it show by focusing on the card she’d handed him, turning it over as he checked it out. “Did they find any prints on it?”
“How did you know that was fingerprint dust?”
He shrugged, handing the card back to her. “Isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but I didn’t know that. Neither did Dr. Overton.”
“The redhead?”
“Yes, the redhead,” she said.
She sounded a little exasperated with him, and he found that mildly amusing. She was so staid and tucked in, he found he enjoyed ruffling her a little bit.
But she was staring at him, awaiting an answer. He sighed. “I don’t know how I knew. I don’t know anything. Remember?”
She nodded, taking the card from him and setting it on the table beside his bed. Then she snatched a few tissues from the box there and used them to wipe the black smudges from her fingertips.
“So you’re sure that’s the card you sent me.”
“I certainly haven’t sent anyone else that information,” she replied.
That caught his attention, because it was such an adamant reply. As if it were ludicrous to think she might have given her personal info to anyone else.
Maybe it was. There was more to this woman than had been apparent at first, he thought.
She seemed to try to pull her focus back to the matter at hand. “To get back to the subject, Mr. Westhaven was due to arrive today.”
“Arrive where?” he asked.
“My house. He—you—were going to use my guest room. But he never arrived. And my card, the one I sent to him, was on you when the boys found you.”
“Along with the pocket watch and key ring they found on me, it’s the sum total of my worldly possessions at the moment.”
“Still, that’s why it’s fairly obvious that you’re him.”
He nodded. “If I am him, I still say I sound like a pompous prima donna. Making you people jump through all those hoops just to get me to visit for an afternoon.”
She shrugged, but her puzzled frown was genuine, he thought. “It seems clear that you have reasons to guard your privacy. Big reasons. Reasons that go way beyond just being a prima donna, Aaron.”
It was odd, being called by a name that didn’t feel like his own. It felt odder still, that her point sounded right on target.
“Most people who’ve heard of it probably think your reclusiveness is about privacy or shyness, or that it’s just a publicity stunt, a big-time author being eccentric and arrogant and getting away with it.”
She’d given this a lot of thought, he mused. She’d probably been justifying
