A Kiss of Lies (41 page)

*  *  *

Eleanor awoke in a cold sweat, her throat aching and her scream echoing off the walls around her. It took a moment to realize she was at Harry’s, not back in her locked room at Enderby’s. The wick still burned low in the lamp, and she could see the pale-green oriental wallpaper and delicate furnishings of the room she’d been given. It was much finer than anything at Enderby’s house. Rising from the bed on shaky legs, she stumbled to the window, opening it wide. She took a deep breath of the rather fetid London air. It smelled like heaven, like freedom at last. Closing her eyes she took inventory of her self and her surroundings. Her belly was full, her clothes clean and sweet smelling, and the window was wide open. No thundering voice yelling invectives as Enderby charged from his room at the interruption of his sleep. She smiled, and she knew it wasn’t pretty. It was an angry, determined smile. Just then there was a knock at the door.

“Eleanor,” Harry called out sounding rather frantic. “Are you all right?” She knocked again. “Eleanor?”

“Eleanor, open the door.” It was Roger.

She hadn’t realized the door was closed. Of course. That’s what woke her up. She’d opened it before she’d gone to sleep. The maid must have closed it. God, she hated closed doors. “Come in,” she called out, dragging her borrowed wrapper from the chair by the bed with
shaking hands and pulling it on.

The door flew open and Roger charged in, Harry right behind him. Both were barefoot and obviously wearing hastily donned wraps. Suddenly Eleanor heard the cries of her young nephew from the floor above. “I’ve woken Mercy,” she said apologetically. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Roger said disbelievingly. “My heart is still palpitating from your scream. What happened?”

“Just a silly nightmare, I suppose,” she said, avoiding the truth. She wrapped her arms around her middle so they wouldn’t see her shaking. She didn’t want them to know how foolish she was about it all. This was Harry’s, not Enderby’s. They weren’t going to lock her in. She could leave whenever she wanted.

“Ellie, you must tell us,” Harry pleaded. “How can we help?”

That caught Eleanor’s attention. She brushed aside the last remnants of the dream and focused on Harry and Roger. She’d need their help if she was to escape Enderby for good. No time like the present to discuss that. She certainly wasn’t going back to sleep right away. “I have a plan,” she declared. “One that will disgrace Enderby and gain me my freedom. But I have to remain lost for some time more. I need Enderby to be so convinced I’m dead that he remarries.”

Harry looked stupefied. “But that could take years!”

“That’s what woke you up, screaming?” Roger asked, clearly bewildered. He still looked half-asleep.

“No, Roger,” Eleanor said patiently. “But Harry asked how you could help. And the greatest thing you can do for me is to help me gain my freedom from Enderby, once and for all.

“Is everything all right, sir?” A tall, older man stood at the door. The butler, if Eleanor remembered correctly.

“Yes, Mandrake. Mrs. Enderby simply had a nightmare.”

The butler never even glanced in her direction. “Very good, sir,” he said. He turned and shooed the gathered servants away before he closed her door.

“All right,” Roger said, rubbing his hands over his face. “And how are we to do that? As Harry said, it can take years to have someone declared dead.”

“It won’t take him years,” Eleanor drawled, as she walked over and sat down in the chair by the open window. “Quite frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t kill me long ago so he could remarry. He’s sired several illegitimate children in the last few years, and his desire for a
legitimate heir has grown. It has been the main cause of his discontent for some time. As soon as he can have me legally declared dead, he will do so and he will remarry with haste. Mark my words. In a few months, I shall be the late, first Mrs. Enderby, and the second one shall have taken my place.”

“And then?” Harry asked.

“And then I will miraculously return from the dead,” she said. “Enderby will be forced to choose: admit I’m still alive and take me back, which would mean casting aside his blushing, most likely pregnant bride, or leave me alone and keep her and his heir. I think I know him well enough to know which he will choose. And I will make it even more difficult for him to find me. Because I will not be Eleanor Enderby anymore. I’ll assume another identity. Surely he will leave me alone then. If he does find me, Enderby will not only have to renounce his claim that I am dead, but prove that I am not who I say I am.”

“It won’t work,” Roger said flatly. “I know the law, Eleanor. I’m a barrister. It will be very difficult to have you declared dead, and even more difficult to create a believable identity for you.”

Eleanor’s heart rose into her throat at his words. “It will work. He has most of the county in his pocket. They’ll do as he tells them, including declaring me dead.”

Harry looked unconvinced. “You’ve left out option three,” she said. “Make sure your fake death becomes a very real one.”

Yes, Eleanor had thought of that. “He won’t,” she said with false bravado. “He won’t want to be bothered after he has a new wife and a new life. I shall be free at last.”

Roger looked skeptical. “Perhaps we should just start with a good night’s sleep and tomorrow we’ll find some place to hide you until we can figure this all out.” He turned to usher Harry out of the room.

Harry turned back with a worried expression. “Are you sure there’s nothing we can do tonight?”

Eleanor tried unsuccessfully to quell the uncertainty assailing her. She bit her lip for a moment and then gave in, blurting out, “Could you leave the door open when you leave, please?”

Read on for an excerpt from

Juliet Rosetti’s

Crazy for You

Rhonda Cromwell was the kind of woman that gives cougars a bad name.

She broke up marriages, seduced door-to-door missionaries, and sunbathed nude in her front yard, causing neighborhood guys to run their lawn mowers up trees, neighborhood mothers to lock their teenaged sons in their rooms, and the local camping-goods store to stock more binoculars. Botoxed, liposuctioned, and siliconed to whatever bodily perfection is possible at age forty-five, she trolled campuses for fraternity boys, hung out at singles bars, and hooked up with hot, young hunks she met on Internet dating sites.

She carried on her predations at the office, too, slinking around in bustiers under blazers, screw-me heels, and miniskirts so mini that when she put her feet up on her desk, you could read the brand label on her thong. Young, male employees were afraid to bend over the water fountain. Female employees fantasized about strangling Rhonda with her own Spanx fanny-lifting leggings.

Rhonda was smart, hardworking, and ambitious.

She was also vain, greedy, and malicious.

She was my boss.

She was the owner and CEO of Cromwell Research Services, which sounds like the kind of business that crunches numbers, runs rats through mazes, or test-markets new brands of cheese spread. But its name is misleading. CRS is a spying operation. It sends mystery shoppers out into America’s malls and mini-marts to rat out rude employees, crummy food, and toilet paper stacked in towering piles ready to fall on your head when you squeeze the Charmin.

I’m one of those spies. My name is Mazie Maguire. I’m still pretty much the same insecure twelve-year-old who worried about kissing, except now my acne has cleared up, I’ve
achieved a B-cup bra size, and I’ve kissed quite a few males. My real name is Margarita, a legacy from my Italian grandmother, who also handed down her dark-brown hair and ability to sing on key. My blue eyes, freckles, and small frame are from the Maguires, an Irish clan rumored to be descended from leprechauns.

I spent the last four years of my life in prison, convicted of murdering my husband.

I didn’t do it.

Of course, all felons claim they’re innocent, but in my case it’s true. When a tornado tossed me over the prison fence, I ran for my life, pursued by a federal marshal, a couple of nasty hit men, and squads of gun-toting citizens salivating over the reward on my head. Along the way I managed to solve my husband’s murder, expose a dirty senator, and royally piss off my loony-tunes ex-mother-in-law. A judge looked at the new evidence, declared me not guilty, and ordered me set free.

But people believe what they want to believe, and in their eyes I’ll always be the woman who got away with murder. When I tried to return to my old job teaching high school music, the school board refused to hire me back. Nobody wanted an ex-convict teaching their kids. Guilty or innocent, it made no difference. I still wore an invisible barbed-wire tattoo.

It’s now been seven weeks since I walked out of prison, and there are days I want to go back. In the can, you don’t have to worry about making your rent, filling your gas tank, or buying groceries. I’d been released at the exact moment the American economy was tanking. I was fighting for burger-flipping jobs with PhDs in physics.

So I was grateful to have found the job with CRS. True, I despised my boss, the salary was laughable, and I had to taste-test tons of greasy, calorie-laden fast food—but at least I was earning a paycheck. If Rhonda ever got around to paying me, that is.

I live in Milwaukee, a terrific city with not-so-terrific weather. Our unofficial motto is “Yeah, but have you ever
felt
a witch’s tit?” I rent a two-room flat at the rear of Magenta’s, a boutique that caters to drag queens. It’s the first time I’ve been on my own in years, and the freedom is dizzying. I can take a shower without Mona the Monobrow sidling over and offering to lather up my back. I can read in bed without someone yelling at me to turn off the damn lights. I can eat Pop-Tarts for breakfast and popcorn for supper. After you’ve lived cheek by jowl with twelve hundred people for four years, solitude is the sweetest thing in the world.

Except when it isn’t. Except when you’re missing someone so much it’s an actual
physical ache and you want to clamp a giant band-aid over your heart.

Tough it out, my horrible brothers would have said.

Plenty of fish in the sea, my dad would have said.

Stop moping and get on with things, my mom would have said.

Getting on with things on this Friday morning meant heaving myself out of bed and going to work. I had mystery-shopping to do, restaurants to rate, salons to scrutinize. The consumers of the greater Milwaukee area were depending on me.

I skipped breakfast. Sack time wins out over cereal every time. I snapped a leash on Muffin, my shih tzu, and took him out for a walk, both of us exhaling frosty puffs of breath like speech balloons. It was sunny and chilly, typical mid-November weather for Wisconsin. The trees were bare, the ground was frozen, and Thanksgiving decorations were fighting a losing battle against the oncoming steamroller of Christmas.

I dropped Muffin off at doggie day care and hiked the five blocks to where I’d parked my car. I live on Milwaukee’s east side, close to the megalithic University of Wisconsin campus, which means that every day I have to compete with thirty thousand students for about sixteen available parking spaces.

My car is a twelve year old Ford Escort in an end-of-season clearance-sale color—sort of kidney bean red. It has a jones for oil, its tires are bald enough to require a comb-over, its glove compartment harbors a family of mice, and its engine makes odd grunting noises, as though a pig is curled around the carburetor. Still, it was as much car as I could expect for what I’d paid.

I’d sold my wedding ring for this car. I’d been wearing the ring the day I was processed into prison and was forced to turn it over to the prison staff, who locked it away in the property safe. Since I’d been sentenced to life, I’d never expected to see the ring again.

But what the penal system taketh, the penal system sometimes giveth back. When it spat me out, it handed back my ring. The man who’d set this ring on my finger had cheated on me, announced he wanted a divorce by sticking the papers on our refrigerator with a Scooby-Doo magnet, and tried to kick me out of my own home. As a symbol of faithfulness, this ring ranked with purple plastic secret-decoder rings that came free inside boxes of Cap’n Crunch.

When I slid the wedding ring back on my finger, I waited to see if it would set off sentimental vibes. Nope. Not a single vibe. The thing was just a shiny chunk of metal.

A shiny chunk of metal worth a goodly chunk of change, as it turned out when I took it to
a jewelry dealer. I walked out of the shop with naked fingers, but with enough cash to pay my first month’s rent and buy the Escort.

I scraped the glacier off the windshield and got in. Crossing my fingers, I turned the ignition and the engine grumbled sullenly to life. I aimed the pig out into traffic and we sputtered and oinked our way toward downtown. My first secret-shopper call of the day was to a brand-new business rumored to be way too over-the-top for Milwaukee’s conservative sensibilities. A talk show host had called it smutty, risqué, and indecent. A church group was picketing it. Nearby high schools were forbidding their students to enter the premises.

I could hardly wait to review it.

Love stories you’ll never forget

by authors you’ll always remember

eOriginal Romance from Random House

www.readloveswept.com

Follow us online for the latest new

releases, giveaways, exclusive sneak

peeks, and more!

readloveswept

readloveswept