Moonlight Masquerade (Edilean 8)

Reede sat down across from his friend, sipped his whiskey, and was silent. He knew from painful experience that what a person in this much agony needed most was someone to listen to them.

“Seems she and the partner in my practice have been having an affair for the last two years.” Tyler downed another shot. “The bastard! He gave me a sob story about how perfect my life was while his was so empty. If we had a late patient or an emergency I was the one who went. He used to beg me to give him time to try to find a woman half as good as my Amy.”

Tyler looked up with red eyes full of his misery. “He didn’t want a copy of my wife, he wanted the original.”

Reede was beginning to see where this was leading. Tyler was one of the many people he’d called and offered the job in Edilean to. He’d told of his situation in the most glowing terms he could come up with. Edilean was practically a paradise on earth. Great for families; great for single men looking for a family. Reede had also talked of how he wanted . . . no, needed . . . to go back to being an itinerant doctor, traveling around the world setting up clinics. Some doctors had politely listened; some had nearly hung up on him. But all of them had said no. Tyler’s reaction had been laughter. He’d said that everything in his life was so great he couldn’t think of changing anything.

Reede leaned back in his chair and listened to Tyler tell about his current horrible situation.

“I was ready to start a family. Babies. I was talking to Amy about it but she kept putting me off, saying she wasn’t ready yet. Her job as a receptionist was too ‘important’ for her to think about having a baby. What woman doesn’t want a home?! Answer me that. Walls, roses over fences, kids running around? But my wife—”

Reede’s mind went to Sophie. Not long ago she’d been about to marry Carter Treeborne. She would have had a huge wedding and a home that was a mansion. All that would have happened if Carter hadn’t been such a coward.

But now Carter was growing a backbone. Every day Reede had to listen to Sophie tell him of ideas Carter had, of plans he was making. For all that Treeborne told Sophie that all he wanted from her was her forgiveness, Ree

de thought the guy was working hard to win her. He wasn’t blatant, but was subtle with his jokes and talks of a future line of baked goods for Treeborne Foods.

Each day it was getting more difficult for Reede to compete with Carter. If he were to accept what Tyler was leading up to asking, if Reede were to go back on the road, he knew he’d lose Sophie forever.

“And then I thought of your call,” Tyler said. “Six weeks ago the idea of leaving my practice was a laugh, but now—”

“The salary is abysmal,” Reede said. “I can hardly feed myself, much less support a wife and kids.”

“That’s all right. My brother is a lawyer, and he said that by the time I get through with the . . . ” Tyler swallowed. “With dissolving the partnership I’ll have enough to live on for ten years. Right now I just need somewhere quiet to live and work, and your little town looks to be as quiet as it gets in this country.”

“Yeah,” Reede said, “but we’re far away from everything.”

“Are you kidding? Williamsburg is just next door. And there are some great places here in this town. And of course there’s year-round sports in the preserve. This place is paradise.”

Last night Sophie had said almost exactly the same thing, that Edilean was a little paradise.

“So when do you want to leave?” Tyler asked.

“Later,” Reede said. “Now I . . . ”

“Right. I get it. After the new year. I’ve got a lot to do before then.” Tyler stood up and held out his hand to Reede. “Do we have a deal?”

“I don’t know,” Reede said.

Tyler dropped his hand. “I understand. My whole life is upside down. How about if we talk again on the fifteenth of January?”

That was the date Roan said Sophie was planning to leave, Reede thought. “That’s a good idea,” he said, and the two men shook hands. Reede asked him to have dinner with him and Sophie but Tyler said no. He knew some people in the area and they’d invited him out.

Tyler stopped at the door and looked back. “I feel good about this,” he said, then left.

“That makes one of us,” Reede murmured as he collapsed onto his desk chair.

Twenty-one

“What are you doing for Christmas?” Henry asked Sophie.

They were in his big garage working on a three-foot-wide sculpture of the Battle of Bunker Hill. The two of them had found a way to work that consisted of Henry trying to form the clay to look like some photo he’d found on the Internet, then he’d step back and Sophie would redo it for him.

In the last weeks she’d come to know Henry well. For all that he was a quiet man, he was a powerhouse. She could see how he’d been able to rule a couple of very big businesses.

He surrendered only to his small, round wife.

“Henry! If you don’t get that mess out of my garage you’re going to find yourself living alone,” she’d said one day.