“Talk? You’re going to talk to me? Talk to the woman you profess to love? You couldn’t be going to tell me what everyone else in the world seems to know about you, could you? Your…wife, your children, your brother, even my own brother—they all know. Don’t look at me like that. For all that you seem to think that I’m stupid, I’m not. ’Ring wouldn’t have taken to you last night as he did if he hadn’t known something about you.”
Josh pulled her to stretch out beside him on a pile of straw, his arm under her shoulders. “Where should I begin?”
“Why ask me? I don’t know enough to tell you where you should begin. Besides, are you sure you have time to talk to me? Won’t your adorable, mysterious, overweight wife want you to go searching for the divorce paper? Not that you’ll need much encouragement. Perhaps we could tie the rope we rescued Tem with around your waist and you can go diving for the papers. All I ask is that I be allowed to tie the knots.”
Josh put his hand over his mouth so she wouldn’t see his smile. “Nora is busy with Eric. You didn’t see him, did you? Six foot. Blond. Adoring. Ten years her junior.”
“She’s older than you, isn’t she?” It was the happiest thought Carrie’d had since Nora had entered the bedroom.
“Much,” Josh said. “Now, do you want me to tell you about myself or do you want to continue being catty about Nora?”
Carrie had to take a moment to decide. “Listen,” she said.
“My parents were two-bit actors, not very good, although I think my father would have been better if he hadn’t drunk half a gallon of anything with alcohol in it every day of his adult life. Anyway, I was raised in dressing rooms and in dingy hotel rooms until I was eight. Then my father died and—”
“How? How did your father die?”
“Fell off a boardwalk into the street and was run over by a beer wagon. It was the way he would have wanted to go.”
Carrie could hear that there was no love in Josh’s voice for his father.
“My mother was past her prime as an actress or as anything else by then—she had a heavy hand with the whisky too. She tried to make it in the theater as an actress, but she couldn’t even get bit parts. So, when I was ten, she answered an ad in the newspaper and traveled to Eternity, Colorado, and married a lonely widower, Mr. Elliot Greene, who had a little house in town and a grown son.”
“Hiram?”
“The one and only.” Josh’s mouth tightened. “Hiram was always an overbearing, pompous ass, but he’d had all his father’s attention for years and he resented me greatly.”
Pausing, Josh smiled. “I came to love Mr. Greene. He was a kind and gentle man, and he continued to take care of me after my mother died two years after their marriage. But he died when I was sixteen and that self-important son of his inherited everything. Immediately after the funeral, Hiram told me that if I didn’t obey him, he’d throw me out on my ear. I saved him the trouble. I left the house about four hours later.”
“And what did you do?”
“The only thing I knew how to do: I went on the stage.”
He paused as though Carrie were supposed to figure out more of the story on her own. It was then that she remembered something that Nora had said. “The Great Templeton,” Carrie said.
Looking at Josh, she saw the little smile on his face. “Joshua Templeton,” she said. “I’ve heard of you.”
“Oh?” Josh said, one eyebrow raised. It was a smug look as though to say, Of course you’ve heard of me, the whole world has. She didn’t like that look.
“An actor?” she said as she looked down her nose at him.
“A Shakespearian actor. The best actor in the world. The greatest—”
At his bragging, Carrie started to get up, but he pulled her back down beside him.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” he said.
She took a deep breath. “All this time I thought you’d done something dreadful. I thought you’d been in jail for robbing people. I couldn’t believe you were a murderer. And all it was, was that you’re an actor.” She said the last word the way she’d say, bug.
“Not just any actor.” Josh sounded hurt and disbelieving. “I’m Joshua Templeton. THE Joshua Templeton.”
“I am Carrie Montgomery. THE Carrie Montgomery.”
Josh laughed.
“Would you mind telling me why you’ve felt the need to keep this from me? Why have you lied to me about your name and about what you’ve done in your past?”
“I thought it might make a difference.”