Nobody's Business (Nobody Romances) (23 page)

"Three hours later," Ace went on, "a hundred reporters are
in town, all looking for the Raine sisters."

The groaning grew into a keening wail.

In an attempt to placate her, Doug squeezed her fingers
with gentle pressure. "I'm sure Michael didn't mean for this to
happen."

She yanked away as if his hand were on fire and curled up
against the SUV's passenger door. "Of course he didn't mean it.
I'm not blaming him. I don't even blame April, though I warned
her she shouldn't come here with so much media attention focused on her and Jeff." Once again, she turned her attention
to Ace. "Are they okay? April, Jeff, and the kids?"

"Headed back home. Slipped out with some help from Mrs.
Bascomb and her son."

"Well, thank God for that, at least," she said with a sigh.

"But there are reporters camped outside Mount Elsie, outside your inn, and all over the village. It's a free-for-all."

She covered her face with her hands and rocked. "I need to
think. I can't think. I don't know what to do. Richie will know.
Just get me to Richie's. I can't think."

Doug refused to simply sit and watch her fall apart before his
eyes. Particularly since he didn't understand what had set her
off in the first place. "Wait. I don't get it. What's the big deal? I
mean, yeah, I admit that whole scene in the Winter Wonderland
was a little intense. But nothing you can't handle, right? Come
on. You were a media darling for years. You're used to this. You
know how it goes. By next week, there'll be a new story, new
players, and the press will flock to some other spot."

She flashed him poisonous eyes, meant to drop him into an
open grave on his next breath.

"What?" Squirming away from her lethal gaze, he leaned
toward the front seat. At least the sane ones were still in the
majority here. "Tell her, Ace. You know what I'm talking about.
This is just a speed bump. Or in your case, I guess, a mogul run.
Tell her how you do it. If anyone knows how to handle the
press, it's you. You've usually got the media eating out of your
hand."

Ace jammed on the brakes. The tires squealed. The rear
end fishtailed as he swerved the vehicle to the shoulder of the
highway. Doug's right arm collided with the tinted passenger
window. If that side of his body had been flesh instead of a
lifelike polymer, he might have wound up with a sleeve of
bruises or a possible hairline fracture. But he felt nothing except a slight jarring.

Wasn't he the lucky guy?

In the driver's seat, Ace shifted the gear in the center console
into park. Wrapping an arm around the headrest, he thrust his head into the backseat. "The price of fame, right? Suck it up
and deal. That's what you think, isn't it, Doug?"

"That's what everybody thinks, Ace," he replied. "And it's
not like you have it so bad. You've got money, fame, all the
girls you want falling at your feet. Even the reporters fall at
your feet. Only Akers hates you, and that's because you broke
his nose in that scuffle at JFK."

"Yeah, right." Ace's eyes narrowed to dashes in his suddenly florid face. "And thanks to that scuffle, I've gotta bend
and scrape to every peon with a camera or microphone so my
butt doesn't wind up in jail again. Some yahoo asks me about
my mom's breast cancer treatments or if I'd been drinking the
night before I wiped out at Aspen, and I have to smile and
entertain the crowds like an idiotic court jester. And as much
as all that sucks wind, women celebrities have it ten times worse.
Every extra pound, every bad hair day, every man they're seen
with is cause for speculation and an excuse to splash photos
all over television and magazines. So don't sit back there and
tell me how to `handle' my fame. Because you don't know squat,
dude."

Lyn smiled grimly. "Well done, Ace. Thank you."

Ace set the Escalade in drive again. "It needed to be said."

"I meant for breaking Lorenzo Akers' nose. I don't think I
ever properly thanked you for that."

"Oh, hey, no charge." He swerved to grin over his shoulder,
index and middle fingers forming the international victory symbol. "Score one for us, eh?"

Lyn's shaky laughter pierced the air. When Ace added his
own goofy chuckles, Doug became the minority in their trio.
The only sane one.

When they pulled up in the circular driveway of Richie's
A-frame cedar chalet, fat, wet snowflakes were falling from
cloudy skies. Amber light glowed in the three-story triangular
windows. Warmth seeped into Lyn's chilled flesh. Next to
Snowed Inn, the Armstrong house represented her only sanctuary in the whole state.

Sure enough, she'd barely stepped out of the SUV when the
chalet's front door opened. Phyllis Armstrong, clad in gray
sweats, with her bottle-black hair wrapped in pink foam rollers,
appeared on the stoop. "Hurry." She waved a hand above her
lumpy hair. "Richie's in the den with the television on, monitoring the situation."

"How bad?" Lyn asked.

Even in the dark night, Lyn saw Phyllis hesitate. "Umm ...
I'll let Richie tell you."

That bad, huh? She started forward, but her legs shook so
violently, she stumbled on the edge of a mound of shoveled
snow. Doug wrapped his arm around her, a stabilizing force
that kept her upright. Clinging to his support, she offered a
drained but grateful nod. "Thank you."

She didn't fault him for what he'd said on the ride here. Well,
not entirely. Those who had never lived under the microscope
couldn't truly understand the enormous burden the world's
eyes created. They saw the money, the glamour, and found the
idea exciting. They never saw the downside: the loss of freedom, the invasion of privacy.

Marc's last photo, his cancer-ravaged face against a pristine
satin pillow, popped into her head. Lorenzo Akers. Buzzard
Beak, as Ace so aptly nicknamed him, had somehow managed
to either bribe or slink his way into the funeral parlor outside
the standard visiting hours. Alone with Marc's body for God
knew how long, Akers had snapped photo after vile photo, then
splashed his ill-gotten booty all over the print media. The next
day, before she said her final good-bye to her husband, she saw
the horrible image of Marc in his casket on the front page of
her morning paper. Add that offense to the pictures Akers had
printed of her leaving her father's funeral a few months earlier, and Lyn had plenty of reason to despise the members of
the Fourth Estate.

She shuddered.

Doug must have misinterpreted the reason behind her reaction, because he pulled her closer and ran his hand briskly
down her arm. "Come on." He hustled her over the slate stepping stone walkway. "Let's get you inside and warmed up."

Her brain still firmly lodged on the heartless Akers, she
nodded.

"Looks like they were waiting for you," Ace remarked from
behind them.

"Plan B," she murmured. "Plan A if they accost me at the
mountain; Plan B for anywhere else in town."

"Covered all your bases, huh?" Doug asked.

"Had to." She reached the series of hand-hewn wooden stairs
and the matching railing, but Phyllis didn't wait any longer.

With a shriek of "Oh, my poor girl!" the older woman
swooped down, arms spread wide like a giant pink-and-blackplumed mother hen. Pulling her away from Doug, Phyllis enveloped Lyn in a fierce hug. "It's all right, Lynnie. It's going to
be okay."

Beneath Phyllis' viselike embrace, Lyn allowed herself to
believe the comforting words. She even managed to climb the
stairs and step inside the house. Ace and Doug followed behind.

A roaring fire crackled in the living room's stone hearth.
While Ace introduced Doug to Phyllis, Lyn stepped closer to
the blaze, hoping to pull the chill from her bones.

On the mantel, a dozen framed photographs smiled at her:
Richie and Phyllis at their daughter's wedding a few years
ago, Richie and Phyllis with their first grandchild last Christmas, Richie and Phyllis with the whole family on a summer
outing, Richie and Phyllis at a VFW dinner party. Always together. Richie and Phyllis.

Loneliness pinched her heart.

"Lyn?" Richie called from another room. "Is that you?"

"Of course it's Lyn," Phyllis said with an exaggerated edge.
"I told you I saw the car pull up."

"You didn't drive, did you, Lyn?" Richie asked.

"No," she said, turning away from the wall of family togetherness. "Ace drove."

"There ya go, Phyllis," Richie retorted. "You had no way of
knowing if the car that pulled into the driveway was Lyn's or
a bunch of those bloodsucking vampires from the press. I told
you not to go running out there till you knew for sure."

Phyllis shot her hands to her hips. "But it was her. So no harm
done." Under her breath, she added, "Stubborn old coot." She
nudged Lyn forward. "Go on, sweetie. He's gonna wanna see for
himself that you're okay."

Okay? Hardly. Breathing, sure. Heart beating? Yeah. A little
too fast, but yeah. Still, she was miles away from the clinical
definition of "okay." And she didn't think she had the energy to
walk across the house under her own waning power.

"Lyn?" Doug's voice whispered in her ear. "You need help?"

She barely nodded, but somehow, he knew. He always seemed
to know. Taking her elbow, he led her forward at a slow, easy
pace. "Where to?"

"Straight back," she murmured. "It's a sunken den, but there's
a ramp from the dining room."

They walked together past the dining room with its knotty
pine furnishings and the overhead light fixture made of deer
antlers. Lyn averted her eyes from the wall filled with a dozen
more family photographs, the timeline of a couple happily
married for more than three decades. At last they descended
the short ramp and stopped in a room filled with deep blue
modular furniture. The far wall, covered by a ginormous television and surround system, commanded the attention of the
room's lone occupant.

"Richie?" Lyn asked.

The steely-haired man in the wheelchair turned, eyes narrowed with tender concern. "Ah, sweetheart, are you okay?" His
gaze swept over Doug. "Sawyer. Didn't expect you here."

"We were together when the press accosted us," she replied.

Beside her, Doug stiffened. Why? She turned to look at him
and noticed how his eyes narrowed in Richie's direction. A
minute or two passed, but then realization woke in her brain.
"You didn't know Richie was an amputee, did you?"

"Doug's only seen me with my stems," Richie replied and
rolled himself closer. "Isn't that right?"

On a quick exhale, Doug's posture relaxed. "Yes, sir. Excuse
me for asking, but I'm just curious. Were you the first Ski-Hab
student?"

Richie laughed. "Nah. I lost my legs a long time before Ski Hab. But I participated in a ski rehab program in Europe years
ago. Brought the idea back here. Lyn had wanted to do something to honor her husband's memory, and Ski-Hab was the result." He picked up a remote control and beckoned Lyn closer
with a crooked finger. "Now, let's get to the problem at hand.
I've been recording the news reports. Take off your coats, have
a seat, and we'll see what we've got."

Lyn managed to make it to the bolstered sofa under her own
steam, but she left her coat zipped around her. Regardless of
the heat in the house, her shivers hadn't completely disappeared. When she sank onto the cushions, Doug sat beside her
and cupped her hand. Heat sizzled from his fingertips to hers.
Either he had a fever, or she was more chilled than she thought.

"Hey, Richie," Ace said as he loped into the room. "How's
it rolling?"

"All uphill," Richie retorted.

Ace grinned. "I hear that." He plopped down on the sofa
next to Lyn, sandwiching her.

Ordinarily, she'd shove him away, but right now, with her
dam walls about to crumble, she'd take all the shoring up she
could get.

"Everybody ready?" Richie held the remote above his head,
pointed toward the massive screen.

One shaky breath first, then Lyn said, "Go."

Richie had recorded at least a dozen different news reports from various television stations, both local and national. Every one of them ran with the same angle: "Did you
know that April Raine of Taking Sides fame has an equally
famous sister?"

Videos flashed in a blur. Brooklyn Raine accepting her gold
medal at the Winter Olympics. Brooklyn Raine crossing the
finish line in record time at the World Cup. Brooklyn Raine
and Marc Cheviot waving from a Matterhorn float at the Disney World Electric Parade. Brooklyn Raine, swathed in white
tulle, and Marc Cheviot in a white tuxedo, beaming at each
other outside St. Patrick's Cathedral. Brooklyn Raine walking
out of the funeral parlor where her father's services were held.
Brooklyn Raine walking out of another funeral parlor where her husband's services were held. And finally, Brooklyn Raine
walking hand-in-hand with Doug outside the Winter Wonderland ice sculpture park. On that last scene, the screen split with
Doug and Lyn smiling at each other on the left. Meanwhile, a
clip of April, Jeff, and the kids pushing their way out of a crowd
at the base lodge of Mount Elsie popped up on the right.

Whatever the talking heads said didn't register, couldn't
compete with the high-pitched buzz in her ears. Nausea roiled
her stomach. Her skin hardened to battle armor, cold and steely.

At last, the torture ended. But, based on the grim faces around
her, Lyn knew the nightmare had only begun.

Richie spoke first. "We gotta get you outta here, sweetheart.
Someplace where they can't find you."

She looked from one stern expression to the other. No one
gainsaid Richie's suggestion. "I-I could go to Summer's-"

"The last place you can go is to family," Richie shot back.
"If the press has copped to you and April being related, Summer will be next. You want that?"

God, no. Lyn sighed. Poor Summer. Already, her marriage
showed cracks. How much of the paparazzi microscope would
it take to completely destroy whatever wedded bliss she and
Brad still clung to?