Moonlight Masquerade (Edilean 8)

“It’s late and you probably want to sleep.”

She’d spent the day scrubbing his dark, dingy apartment and was exhausted, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. Maybe hearing someone else’s problems would make What Carter Did to Me stop screaming in her head. “I’d like to hear of someone else’s misery,” she said.

“I know the feeling.” Reede stretched out on the couch, his cell phone to his ear. “Okay, so Once Upon a Time,” he said and began telling about him and Laura. Maybe his need to talk was from his frustration that day at not being able to get anyone to take over for him, or maybe it was because he was sick of keeping everything inside him. He could complain to his male friends about his patient load, but he couldn’t tell them about how he hated being compared to Tristan. Nor could he tell the truth about him and Laura. For one thing, everyone in town was waiting to say “I told you so.” They’d all known he and Laura were incompatible.

But Sophie hadn’t been there. She wasn’t a patient or even someone who knew him. She was a stranger, it was night—he could see the moon through the window—and he’d had too much wine. When he began to talk, the story flowed out of him. It took a while to tell.

“From what I’ve heard you’ve always liked to rescue people,” Sophie said about Laura’s shyness.

“I do, rather,” he said. She was making him feel better.

“Kim is such an achiever and that’s what she values in others. Sometimes I was intimidated by her.”

“Yeah?” Reede asked. “I’ve sometimes thought that I liked Laura because she was the polar opposite of my mother and sister. It was relaxing to be around Laura, as she didn’t order me around or give me her opinion on everything.”

“What about now?” Sophie asked.

“I think I’ve learned to stand up to them, although that isn’t always good. Mom wanted to send food over and get cleaners for me. I told her I was a grown man and could do it myself. You see how that turned out.”

“No,” Sophie said. “I meant, what if you had married Laura and stayed in Edilean? You’d be working where you do now. But it wouldn’t be for two more years. It would be forever.”

“Wow!” Reede said. “I never thought of it that way. I think . . . ”

“What?”

“This summer Jecca and Kim made me face Laura, and they said that she may have done me a favor.” He told Sophie how his childhood bedroom had been covered in travel posters. “I told Mom that Laura would go with me and that we’d . . . It wouldn’t have worked, would it?”

“I guess not,” Sophie said. “From what I’ve heard of you, you’re needed by the world, not just Edilean.”

“You know how to make a man feel good, don’t you?”

“That’s just what . . . ” She didn’t want to say Carter’s real name. “Earl said right before he dropped me flat. He also said—” She broke off.

“He said what?” Reede asked softly.

“It’s too new for me to repeat all that.” She glanced at the cookbook on the bed. What she needed more

than anything in the world was to talk to someone about what she’d done. A lawyer maybe? But she knew that a lawyer would advise her to give herself up. Tomorrow, she thought, she’d return the book. She’d send it from another state so the postmark wouldn’t be Virginia. She’d—

“Are you still there?” Reede asked.

“Yes. I was just thinking about what you told me.”

“And how to get revenge on Earl?”

“I . . . ” She hesitated. How much could she trust this man? She took a breath. “I came away with something that belongs to him and I’d like to return it, but I don’t want him to see that it was sent from Virginia.”

“Where do you want it sent from? I have friends all over the world. We’ll package it, send it overseas, and my friends will send it back to the U.S. They won’t even look at it. How does that sound?”

“Won’t that take a long time?”

“Express shipping goes everywhere.”

Sophie had to blink back tears of relief. Except for the jerk who nearly ran over her, everyone in Edilean had been so very nice. She wanted to help make Reede’s life easier. “There are some unpaid bills on your kitchen counter. Mind if I pay them? You could sign some blank checks for me—if you can trust me, that is. How’s your online banking?”

Reede grinned. “Sophie, I’ve never set up online banking, but I hear it’s very handy. How about if tomorrow I meet you at the office at nine and we set it up together?”

“I’d like that,” she said, smiling.