Cheating at Solitaire (Cheating at Solitaire 1)

Julia was taken aback by the thought of him watching her nightly insomnia ritual. "I'm good at cheating," she said, growing defensive. "Cheating is what I do."

He grinned. "You should write a book."

"Maybe I'll do that," she said and smiled despite her best efforts otherwise. She thought that might put an end to the conversation, but instead he crossed his arms and asked softly, "Are you okay, Julia? You had me scared for a minute there."

Suddenly, Julia wasn't sitting on her bed playing solitaire;

she was standing on a busy street, feeling the rain in the wind as Lance Collins stood behind her; she was in a taxi, rolling down the window, offering him a ride. Seeds planted that day at Stella's were growing wild, out of control, and far beyond her normal borders. She stared back down at the cards, searching for her next move. But instead of finding a way to change the cards to suit her situation, Julia found herself saying, "If I can't stop Richard Stone, I'll lose everything." It was something that until then, she hadn't even admitted to herself.

"No you won't," Lance said simply. "But we'll stop it anyway." As he turned to leave, he looked back at her and said, "You should try milk and honey."

"Excuse me?"

"To help you sleep." He stepped closer. "My mom's an insomniac, too, but when she's up, she doesn't like to be alone, so I'd keep her company. I was the only kid in the fourth grade who operated on less than three hours of sleep a night. But I was also the only ten-year-old who knew all the Shakespearean soliloquies, so it was probably a pretty fair trade. Plus"—he cocked his head—"I could build stuff. Anyway, she always drank milk and honey. It helped."

As she watched Lance, she realized that part of him was still that little boy, acting his way through the night to entertain his tired mother.

"You should call her," Julia said finally. "If she's like me, she's up. You should let her know what's going on."

He nodded, then slipped his hand under his T-shirt to

scratch his chest. "I'll go do that," he said. Then he reached down and massaged the base of Julia's neck with one hand while he leaned over her, studying her cards. It felt too darn wonderful to make him stop. "You're under too much stress," he said and headed for the door. At the threshold, he stopped and turned toward her. "I'll bring you some warm milk, if you want."

"Whole milk?" she questioned.

"What other kind is there?"

Chapter Seventeen

WAY #90: Don't hide from your past.

Embrace your personal history. It has made you what you are. P —from 101 Ways to Cheat at Solitaire

ey," Caroline said early the next morning when she called Julia on her cell phone. "Why don't you guys come over?"

"It's Ro-Ro, isn't it?" Julia asked. "You finally snapped, and now you need my brains and Lance's muscles to help you dispose of the body."

"Very funny," Caroline quipped. "No, actually, I. . . why don't you come over?"

"Caroline, there are reporters staking out my property. I can't exactly go cruising around the countryside with a hot man."

"So you admit he's hot?" Caroline exclaimed.

"No. I mean hot as in stolen, as in I'm not supposed to have him. One more picture of us together and my career is over, or have you forgotten?"

"I thought you'd say that, so I called Nina," Caroline stated. "She's got a plan."

***

Lance looked out the back window at Nina's VW and said, "You've got to be kidding me." Then he looked at Nina in her tightly belted trench coat, floppy hat, and dark glasses, and realized just how serious she probably was.

"It won't be for long," Nina said. "We can let you out as soon as we ditch them."

"Ditch them?" Lance exclaimed. "These are professional paparazzi! They're not exactly easy to ditch."

"My father was a used-car dealer in Oklahoma," Nina said, ripping off her Jackie O shades as if her virtue had been questioned. "I've been driving since I was twelve years old. I assure you, I can ditch anyone."

"Nina," Julia said, looking at the tiny trunk that her best friend had just suggested Lance crawl into. "Don't all interior decorators own vans?"

"Julia, the van is for company business only. This," Nina said, gesturing up and down at Lance, "is personal."

"Okay," Julia conceded, "then we'll take my car."

"Um," Lance interjected. "Believe me, no one is a bigger fan of finding another vehicle than I am, but your car is in front of the house. I can't go out the front door. And you can't exactly pull around here without making it look like something's up."

Julia thought about her driveway, which was almost a half mile long and full of twists and turns. Normal people could barely see her house from the road, but the vultures that were camped in the ditches weren't exactly normal. "Fine then," Julia said. "We just won't go."

"Jules," Nina said, "we've got to go."

"Why?"

Nina didn't answer. She shifted her gaze between Lance and Julia and bit her lip, weighing some unspecified options.

"Nina ..." Julia said, a threat in her voice.

"Caroline wouldn't say!" Nina blurted. "She just said that I had to get both of you to her house and not to waste a minute about it. So, see, we've got to go!"

Julia turned and started upstairs. "I'm going to go get blankets. Lance can lay down in the backseat. We'll cover him up." She looked at Lance. "Is that okay with you?"

He nodded. "That's fine."

Twenty dirt roads, nine illegal U-turns, and one mad dash in front of a train later, Nina turned into Caroline's seemingly uninhabited development.

My very own bat cave, Julia mused as Nina pulled into the garage space where Steve parked his Camry on the rare occasions when he was actually home. Caroline hit the button and the door started down, blocking out the sunlight, proving it was safe to pull Lance from beneath the pile of blankets. One look at him made Julia wonder who had had the worst of it—Julia, who could see the road, or Lance, whose trip was left up to the imagination.

"Okay, Caroline, I'm here. Spill it," Julia said.

But Caroline obviously didn't share Julia's sense of urgency. Instead, she led her guests into the kitchen and asked, "Can I get anyone a drink? Some fruit? Juice maybe?"

"I don't want juice, Caroline," Julia snapped. "I want to know what the ..." her voice trailed off as she noticed Nina, who had taken off her hat and was slipping out of her trench coat, revealing her brand-new GIVE LANCE A CHANCE T-shirt.

"Nina!" Julia cried.

Nina looked down at her shirt as if she'd forgotten what she was wearing. A broad grin stretched across her face. "I got you one, too."

"Nina, this is so not—"

"Julia, I took the wrong box!" Caroline cried, the words exploding from her lips. Every eye turned toward Caroline, who looked down at her hands, spinning the wedding band on her finger.

Julia looked around and asked, "What box? What are you talking about?"

"Yesterday. The junk we cleaned out of Lance's room." "Lance's room?!" Julia questioned.

"—one of the boxes was old manuscripts. I took it by mistake. I'm sorry."

Julia exhaled. She hadn't known she'd been holding her breath. She eased onto a barstool as the tension slipped away and she realized her sister's "crime" had been minor.

Then, worry was replaced by annoyance. "We had to sneak over here because you wanted to give me my box back?"

"No," Caroline hurried to say. "Steve put it out with the trash this morning."

"Oh," Julia said, surprised. An odd sense of grief came over her as she realized what that meant. "Everything I ever wrote was in that box. Short stories, essays, drafts of my books." The weight of loss settled down on her. "Now they're gone. ..."

Caroline eased onto a stool beside her sister. She pulled Julia's hand into her own and patted it. "That's the problem. They're not exactly gone.''''

Lance said, "Maybe it's vertigo from the car ride talking, but you've lost me."

"We all know that Myrtle's crazy," Caroline said slowly. "She wears a housecoat all day long, and she drinks in the mornings, and . . . she likes to go through the trash. Julia, honey, I saw her take your box."

"Oh, no!"

Lance had heard about spontaneous combustion, but until that moment, he didn't believe it was really possible. Julia flew out of the kitchen, her long, red hair waving behind her like flames. She reached the family room, then turned and began to hyperventilate. She kept yelling, "Oh, no! Oh, no! Ob, no!" and waving her hands in front of her face as if trying to make her fingernails dry was a matter of life and death.

Caroline and Nina stood by, looking as useless as Lance felt. Finally, he stepped closer to Julia and said, "So she's got early drafts of your books. What's she gonna do, sell them on eBay?"

"Oh my god!" Julia yelled. Lance seriously thought she was going to pass out. He couldn't believe he'd actually made things worse.

"There are more than Julia James manuscripts in that box," Caroline said as she rubbed her sister's back while Julia sat on an ottoman, holding her head between her knees, trying to slow her breathing.

"There are Veronicas in that box?" Nina yelled, amazed, finally catching on to what Lance was missing. "You didn't burn the Veronicas?"

Julia's head popped up. The color had drained from her face, and crazy, static-empowered hairs circled around her head. "Not the first one." She sniffed. "It was the first thing I ever got published—ever. When Table for One made the bestseller lists, I knew there could be a scandal, but I couldn't... I should have, I know. And now ..."

Her head disappeared between her knees again, and Caroline kept rubbing her back in slow circles. Caroline was patient as she explained. "When Julia first moved to New York, she wasn't making very much money, and you know how proud she is. She wasn't going to ask for help so . . . well, for a while she was.

‘i . . ." Her voice trailed off. Lance expected her to say stripper or telemarketer, but then Julia straightened and finished. "Romance novelist."

"She could write at night and still work in the industry during the day," Caroline explained. "She used a pen name. The three of us are the only people in the whole state who know about it. Not even Mom and Dad know."

"Especially not Mom and Dad." Julia's voice came from between her knees.

"And the IRS," Caroline added, ever the tax attorney's wife. "Of course the IRS knew."

"Well, that's about to change," Nina said. "Crazy Myrtle is about to go pilfering through that box, and it won't take her long to figure it out."

The four of them stared at one another. Then Nina said, "We have to get it back. We've got to break in." Then she continued: "Lance is a man. He can help"—setting the women's movement back twenty-five years, at least to the days before Charlie's Angels.