Too Rich and Too Dead (27 page)

Despite her reluctance to admit it, Mallory thought Trevor was charming. She was also eternally grateful to him for having faith in her at a time when she had virtually none of her own. The fact that he'd made certain assumptions about her abilities, not only as a writer but also as someone centered enough to handle whatever came up on a press trip, had prompted her to find the inner strength required to keep from disappointing him.

That didn't mean he liked the idea of her sticking her nose into criminal investigations. As she rode down in the elevator, Mallory promised herself that tonight she wouldn't say a word about her involvement in Carly's murder.

Like the rest of the hotel, the J-Bar embodied the spirit of the days when Aspen was known for its silver mines, rather than as a gold mine for anyone in the ski business. The cozy hideaway was tucked into
a front corner of the hotel, facing the street to increase its accessibility. While a few tables were crammed into the compact space, the focus was the wooden bar. Given its rustic look, it was hard to imagine approaching it any way besides bellying up to it.

Tonight, however, Mallory opted for one of the small tables. She'd barely had a chance to sit down before Trevor appeared in the doorway. His dark hair was slightly disheveled and there was a distracted look in his hazel eyes. The white shirt he wore with a pair of jeans looked so wrinkled that Mallory could picture the heap it had undoubtedly been lying in before he'd grabbed it off a chair five minutes earlier and pulled it on.

“You're looking good,” he commented as he sat down opposite her.

“I wish I could say the same for you,” she replied with amusement. “You look like somebody who was fast asleep ten minutes ago.”

“Don't forget, I'm still on East Coast time,” he replied, clearly doing his best to look more alert. “I have a very good excuse for not being the life of the party.”

Frowning, he added, “Besides, I might have been in bed, but that doesn't mean I wasn't tossing and turning.”

Mallory was relieved that the bartender chose that moment to slide a couple of cocktail napkins in front of them and cheerfully ask, “What'll you folks have?”

“I'll try the house drink,” Mallory told him. “The Aspen Crud.”

“Always doing research, huh?” Trevor teased.

Mallory laughed. “Drinking a milkshake that's spiked with bourbon isn't exactly hard duty.”

“Whoa. Who came up with that combination?”

Flippantly she replied, “You'll just have to read my article to find out.”

After he ordered his own drink, Trevor turned back to Mallory. Frowning, he said, “I'm glad the terrible thing that happened to your high school friend didn't put a damper on your enthusiasm for this trip. Or for Aspen.”

“I won't say it hasn't affected me,” Mallory admitted. “But I like to think I'm a professional. No matter what, I have to get the job done.”

“Even if the job involves throwing down a couple of those?” Trevor joked as the bartender plopped what looked like a normal milkshake in front of her.

“No one appreciates how demanding this job is.” She took a sip. “Wow. Now this is what I call dangerous.”

“As long as drinking milkshakes is the worst thing you get involved in,” Trevor commented, picking up his drink, “I'll be able to sleep nights.”

“Talking to a few of the people who were close to Carly isn't much more dangerous than sucking up a zillion calories,” she mumbled.

As soon as she saw the look on Trevor's face, Mallory kicked herself.

No sooner do I have two sips of this deceptive drink, she thought, and I'm spilling the beans, telling
him the one thing I was determined not to let slip out.

“What did you say?” he demanded.

“Nothing!” she insisted. “I just meant that in the course of getting in touch with her again, naturally I've run into some of the people who—”

Trevor banged his drink down on the table. “You've launched a murder investigation of your own, haven't you?”

Mallory was silent for a few seconds. “It's complicated, Trevor,” she finally said, staring into her milkshake. “Someone I met my first day here, a woman I was convinced was innocent, asked me for help. It all started when the police called her in—”

“The police!” Trevor exclaimed. “Mallory, have you lost your mind? Why on earth would you get involved in something like this?”

As she tried to come up with a short answer, she realized this wasn't something that was easy to explain. So she simply told him, “Like I said, it's complicated.”

He sighed. “Mallory, you can't blame me for being worried. After what happened in Florida… and now this…”

“Trevor, I can take care of myself,” she told him gently. “I appreciate that you're worried. I really do. But this is something I have to do.”

“Look, the last thing I want is to sound heavy-handed,” he said. “I'm just concerned.” He hesitated before he thoughtfully added, “In fact, I find myself worrying about you—and just generally thinking
about you—a lot more than just about anybody else in my life right now.”

As she looked into his eyes, only inches away across the small table, she saw an intensity in them that she hadn't seen before. She was also aware of a spark of electricity flying between them that set her heart pounding.

And then he leaned over and kissed her.

Almost as quickly and unexpectedly as it happened, he jerked away.

“Oh, my God!” he cried. “Mallory, I—I don't know what came over me! I'm so sorry!”

I'm not, she thought, surprised by her own reaction.

But since Trevor seemed to regret what had just happened, she wasn't about to admit to her true feelings. In fact, he was suddenly so flustered that she actually felt sorry for him.

“I—I don't know what to say!” he said, unable to make eye contact. “Believe me, that's the
last
thing I ever intended to happen. I mean, I don't want you to think that I'm sexually harassing you. Or doing anything at all to make you uncomfortable or put you in an awkward position—oh, wait. That didn't come out the way I meant it to. What I mean is—”

“I know what you mean, Trevor,” she assured him. “You're my boss and we're on a business trip together.”

Even though your being here wasn't part of the original plan, she thought. Which brings me back to the question of what you're even doing here in the first place.

“But honestly,” she continued, “I promise that whatever happens in Aspen stays in Aspen.”

“Thank you,” he said, his facial muscles still tense. “I appreciate that you're being so under standing.”

Even though the creases in his forehead had yet to disappear, he looked relieved. Still, she hoped the uncertainty on his face meant that he was at least a little disappointed that she hadn't—well, ripped off her clothes or pushed him to the ground and thrown herself at him or declared that she felt the same attraction he did…

But she didn't feel it.

Or did she?

Oh, my, she thought, suddenly even more flustered than Trevor had been. Am I attracted to Trevor? Have I felt that way all along?

It was possible that she'd simply been reluctant to admit it to herself—or even that her perceptions had been clouded by the fact that he was her boss. Then again, she couldn't deny that the teasing banter that had become their normal way of talking to each other wasn't exactly the kind of interaction she would have expected to have with someone who was purely her employer.

And what about all those e-mails and the way they'd moved way beyond matter-of-fact exchanges of information long ago? She couldn't deny that they'd taken on a flirtatious tone shortly after she'd started writing for
The Good Life.

While she'd told herself all along that the fact that he believed in her was all that was behind the en gaging tone of his constant communications, she
couldn't deny that the two of them clearly liked each other. Somehow, they seemed to have been on the same wavelength since the very start. Or maybe it was just that he seemed so comfortable with himself that she, in turn, found herself feeling just as comfortable with herself.

“If you don't mind, Mallory,” Trevor finally said with an air of resignation, “I'm going to bed. Uh, to my room, I mean. Alone. Of course alone. I didn't mean to imply that you thought that I thought—”

“Good night, Trevor,” she told him calmly, amused to see that for once in his life, Trevor Pierce had lost his cool. And struck by the fact that
she
was responsible.

A few minutes later, as she slid into her own bed, relishing the sensation of slipping between cool, silky smooth sheets, Mallory suddenly started to giggle.

Wow, she thought, suddenly overcome by a crazy, wonderful giddiness. Two kisses in one night. From two different men.

The only other time that had happened, according to her recollection, was when she was fifteen.

Somehow, it seemed even sweeter the second time around.

T
he next morning, Mallory lay in bed for a long time, savoring the delicious groggy state that always enveloped her as she awakened. Her brain was still so firmly encased in cotton batting that she didn't know whether the feelings waiting for her on the other side of semiconsciousness would be good or bad.

But as the cotton batting began to fall away, she gradually remembered that both feelings were lurking in the wings.

The good feelings, of course, were the result of having been kissed by two different men the night before. Two
divine
men, if she dared use a word that sounded like something out of Sandra Dee's vocabulary.

But as she grew even more awake, she remembered
that her luscious role as femme fatale was also clouded by negativity. While Gordon Swig elicited plenty of good feelings, at the same time he elicited some bad ones. After all, she still wasn't completely convinced that he wasn't Carly Berman's killer.

Impossible!
Mallory thought, finally opening her eyes to a room that positively glowed, thanks to the bright early morning sunlight streaming in through the windows. As she replayed the night before in her head, she found that she couldn't believe Gordon capable of any crime—that is, aside from stealing someone's heart.

Then, of course, there was Trevor. Sweet, shy, down-to-earth Trevor, she thought, unable to keep from smiling. She and her boss had both been jolted into recognizing that they had feelings for each other, and as a result she was glowing with the same intensity as the early morning sun.

After weighing the pluses and minuses, she decided that on balance she deserved to be happy about what had happened. What
is
happening, she corrected herself. Yesterday was just the beginning.

She finally dragged herself out of bed and busied herself with her first task of the day: calling room service and ordering breakfast. Doing so signified that she was now officially awake, which meant it was time to stop lolling about like the heroine in a romance novel and get busy with the day's To Do list.

So while she waited for breakfast to arrive, she grabbed the small pad of paper printed with the hotel's logo and did some quick calculations. Then she
turned on her laptop and went on-line to look up the number of the state of Pennsylvania's government offices.

By the time Mallory had worked her way through half a pot of coffee, she was ready to get serious. After checking her watch to make sure it was late enough on the East Coast, she dialed the phone number for the Office of Vital Records. She was pleased that an actual government employee answered, instead of a machine.

“I'm wondering if you can help me with kind of an unusual problem,” Mallory began, hoping the woman on the other end of the line would turn out to be as friendly and helpful as her greeting had made her sound. “I'm going to my high school reunion next month, and for the life of me I can't remember the name of the guy my best friend from back then ended up marrying. I know I'll run into both of them there, and I'm going to be really embarrassed if I don't know what to call her husband when she and I start reminiscing about gym class and prom night!”

“Have you tried looking through your yearbook?” the woman suggested. “That might jar your memory.”

“My friend and her husband didn't meet until later,” Mallory explained. “That's why it's so hard to remember what the heck his name was. Is there any way you could look it up for me?”

“What year did your friend get married?”

Mallory's heartbeat sped up. This was looking promising… She glanced at the pad of paper on
which she'd figured out the year Carly had most likely married her first husband. Based on what Gordon had said, she'd figured Carly had probably been around twenty.

After telling the woman the year she'd targeted, she added, “I'm not positive that's the correct year. It's close, but it could actually have been a year or two before or after that.”

“Give me the exact spelling of her name and I'll see what I can find,” the woman said kindly. “Do you mind if I put you on hold for a few minutes?”

“Not at all. Her name is Carly—that's C-A-R…”