The Importance of Being Alice Read online

  He had just finished booking a flight that left in three hours, summoned Gunner to his cabin, and quickly explained the situation by the time Alice emerged from the bathroom.

  “Now, about my thighs and their desperate need for your thighs—,” Alice started to say, coming to an abrupt halt when she caught sight of not only Gunner standing in the middle of the cabin but Elliott packing his laptop into its bag. “Um?”

  Elliott exchanged glances with Gunner, who murmured something about checking with the captain about when they’d be docking at Nuremberg.

  “What’s going on?” Alice asked, watching Gunner leave. She was clad in a towel and little else, but even the sight of all that smooth, enticing flesh couldn’t distract him from his purpose.

  “Alice, something’s come up, a situation that requires my attention immediately. I can’t give you any details about it just yet—I will, as soon as I can—but I’m going to have to leave as soon as we get to Nuremberg.” He took her arms in his hands, caressing the soft flesh with a need that was almost painful. “I don’t want to go, but I must. I know you’re thinking the very worst things possible about me, but I assure you that I will make it up to you just as soon as I can.”

  To his surprise, she was silent, her eyes searching his for the count of seven before she finally said, “I don’t think anything bad about you, Elliott. This whole business—” She waved her hand. “It’s part of you. It’s part of who you are, and I know that. I accept that about you. I just don’t—I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I don’t deserve you,” he said, pulling her close until he could kiss her face, her cheeks, her eyelids, and her adorable little nose. “I truly don’t, but I’ll be thankful to the day I die that I found you.”

  “Just so long as that day isn’t any time in the near future,” she said into his collar. She hugged him with a ferocity that surprised him. They stood there for a few minutes, just holding each other, him breathing in her scent, wishing like hell he didn’t have to be the responsible one, and that he could shirk it all just to remain in her arms.

  “Promise me you won’t do anything dangerous,” she said once she released him.

  He smiled down at her, every bit of him warmed in the knowledge that she loved him, she truly loved him. “I won’t do anything stupid, I assure you. I have a wedding night to look forward to.”

  “Damn straight. How long is this . . . mission . . . going to take?”

  He stuffed the few remaining notes on his book into the laptop case, and glanced around the cabin, looking for anything he’d left behind. If they arrived in Nuremberg in the next hour, he could get a cab to the airport, and be in London by dawn. Two hours by train and he’d be in Ainston. . . . “Hmm? Oh, there won’t be time to come back to the ship, I’m afraid. Can you come to England once the tour is over, or do you have to return to the States first?”

  “You expect me to stay on the tour?” she said, toying with the edge of her towel. Her worried expression made it clear she wasn’t doing so to entice him.

  “There’s no reason for you to leave it now. There’s still six days left. . . . If you can come to me after that, I’ll have the situation in hand. At least, I hope I will. I’ll call or text you if I don’t, but I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t be able to receive you by then.”

  “All right.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and watched him shake out his jacket. “It won’t be much fun without you, but . . . well, as I said, I know you have a job to do.”

  There was a tap on the door. He opened it to find Gunner.

  “We’re coming in to Nuremberg early,” Gunner said, his expression grim. “We should dock in the next few minutes. I told them that you have to leave. Did you get a flight?”

  “Yes.” Elliott shoved his suitcase at his brother, slinging the strap of his laptop case across his chest before returning to Alice. He knelt, his hands on her bare knees. “You are one in a million, Alice Wood.”

  “Ainslie,” she said sadly, trying to give him a smile, but failing.

  He felt bad about the way he was running out on her, but didn’t feel it was fair to drag her into the mess before he knew just how bad it was. Once he had evaluated the situation, and dealt with the worst of it, he’d be ready to bring her home, to introduce her to the family, and to her new life.

  “Lady Ainslie.” He kissed her hands, wanting to do more, but knowing if he did, he wouldn’t be able to stop. “My lady. I do love you, Alice. More than I can express at this moment, and not nearly as much as you deserve, but I want you around every day of my life.”

  “Except for situations like this,” she said with a forlorn smile, brushing a strand of hair back off his forehead. “Stop looking like you’ve just been asked to do something heinous to a baby seal, and go do it so that we can get back to the Earl of Erogenous, and his wife’s needy thighs.”

  He kissed her hands again and, without another word, left the cabin. Already his mind was racing ahead to what needed to be done. He’d pick up his passport from Tiffany, then head straight to the airport. En route to England, he’d place calls to the Ainston Hospital, his solicitor, the insurance man, and Richardson. By the time he landed, he hoped to at least understand exactly what he had to deal with. . . .

  Chapter 12

  Diary of Alice Wood

  Day Five or something. Six? No, Five.

  “Where’s comrade Elliott?” Anthony asked the following morning, when we both stood at the breakfast buffet waiting our turn at the fruit compote. He leaned close to speak, catching a good look down my sleeveless tunic in the process. “Dare one make a comment about wedding-night activities, and grooms too exhausted to get out of bed the following morning?”

  “Why do you pretend you’re gay?” I asked him in an equally hushed tone.

  His jaw sagged for a minute before the edges of his mouth curled. “What do you mean? Dahl is quite clearly my partner. We live together in London. We share a bed here on this ship. We have excellent fashion sense.”

  “Stereotype much?”

  “It seemed called for.” He gave a little shrug. “Perhaps what you are interpreting as heterosexuality is merely curiosity. Perhaps in you I’ve found a woman who makes me question my life choices. Perhaps I wish to see what it is I’m missing and simply want to know if in you I might find someone who shares a desire to learn all there is to learn, to try all that is available, to experience all that—”

  “Bullshit,” I interrupted rudely. “You and Dahl may live together, you may even share a bed. For all I know, you even have sex. But if so, you’re not exclusively gay, because I’ve seen you look down four different women’s shirts, one of which was an underage schoolgirl. So you can just stop the ‘why don’t you have sex with me so I can see if I’m not gay anymore’ strategy, because it’s not going to fly with me.”

  “Comrade,” he said, drawing away from me with a wounded look. “You misunderstand my motives. Grossly misunderstand them. I am an equal opportunity lover. So if you are, in fact, less than fulfilled by comrade Elliott, I will be happy to entertain you. I take it he’s recovering from the nuptials?”

  “As a matter of fact, he’s not. He had an emergency at home, and he had to return there immediately.” I had decided on that explanation as being suitably vague, which would cover all bases with the fellow passengers without blowing Elliott’s cover.

  Anthony’s eyebrows rose. “I hope it is nothing serious.”

  “Not at all. Elliott’s very responsible, though, and he felt he had to be home to help his family.” I eyed Anthony for a few seconds. He seemed oddly disconcerted by the news that Elliott was gone, almost distracted. “You’re not going to tell me that you have the hots for him, too?”

  Anthony looked amused, and for a tiny fraction of a second, I felt like I was seeing a different Anthony. That sensation was gone almost instantly when he leered at m
e and said, “Your husband? Would that turn you off if I was? I know some ladies enjoy a little man-on-man action.” He gave me a roguish wink. “Don’t tell me you’re interested in a threesome so soon in married life?”

  “We’re back to that, huh? No, I’m not interested in having sex with anyone but Elliott, and while we’re on the subject, I’d advise you to keep away from those schoolgirls. No one likes a lecher, but especially when they ogle kids.”

  “Indeed.” He gave me a little bow. “Such advice is worth its weight in gold. If you will excuse me, I believe Dahl wishes to speak with me about interviewing some tourists in Nuremberg.”

  He moved off, leaving me to scoop up some fruit, toss a fresh croissant onto my plate, and take a seat at Deidre and Laura’s table, which was pleasantly Deidre-free at the moment.

  “I’m going to make absolutely no comment about how happy you look this morning, lest it turn ribald,” Laura told me around a mouthful of toast. There was a wicked glint in her eye, nonetheless. “I will simply say that you look well, and assume that means that married life agrees with you.”

  I sighed, and stuffed one of the croissant’s arms into my mouth. Around it, I said, “Any ribald comment would be welcome if it was grounded in fact, but alas, married life at this moment is rather lonely.”

  “Lonely?” A spoon of yogurt wavered in front of her face. “Why lonely?”

  “Elliott left as soon as we docked in Nuremberg last night.” I took a quick look around, but no one was paying us any attention. “He had business to attend to.”

  “What sort of business . . . oh!” She raised her eyebrows in mute question.

  I nodded. “Some sort of an emergency, I gather. And he took Gunner with him. I think. I know they both left at the same time. I told you about Gunner, right?”

  “About his being in the same business? Yes. I wonder what took them so urgently? I listened to BBC radio this morning, and didn’t hear anything about a foreign crisis. You don’t have any idea where he went?”

  “I didn’t think it was right to ask him. You know, he probably swore to keep that sort of thing secret.”

  “No doubt that’s so. You’re going to stay on the cruise until he returns? We only have six days left.”

  “I know, hence the sigh a minute ago.” I tore off the second croissant arm, considered whether to slather it with orange marmalade, and, deciding that would be a minor travesty of food-dom, popped it into my mouth. “I’m not going to be one of those needy women who have to have a man at her side in order to have fun, however. There are lots of fun cities coming up, and of course Vienna, which I’m really looking forward to.”

  “We will see the sights together,” she said, patting my arm. “So long as you don’t mind Deidre, that is.”

  “Where is the she-wolf of the Danube?”

  “Ah, that is a very good question. She said last night that she was going to have a drink with Patrick—this is after we docked, mind you—and she didn’t come back to our cabin.”

  “Really,” I drawled, wanting to say so much more, but being (for perhaps the first time in my life) circumspect. “Well, now. That’s interesting.”

  “Mmhmm. I thought you’d like that. So, what would you like to do today? According to the schedule, we can take the tour to see the Zeppelin Field.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Too Nazi for me.”

  “Yeah, I think I could miss that. How about the Palace of Justice? That’s where they held the Nuremberg Trials, so it won’t be a happy fun site, but still interesting.”

  “Eh.” I tried to jolly myself out of the self-pity that was threatening to swamp me. I meant what I had said—I didn’t need Elliott to have fun. He just made things that much more enjoyable.

  “There’s the Documentation Center Museum.” She looked at me, and shook her head. “How about a ramble through the Old Town area?”

  “Don’t let me dampen your fun, Laura. I’m just being a big ole pouty-pants today. Why don’t you go do whatever you want to do, and I’ll wander around a bit, and then maybe curl up with a book.”

  “If that’s what you want.” She gave me a searching look. “Just let me know if you suddenly get too down with the loss of Elliott. And do tell me if you hear from him. I can’t help but wonder where he’s gone to in such a hurry, and if we’ll hear about an international incident.”

  “One would suppose that if he was doing his job right, we wouldn’t hear anything,” I said absently. A thought had struck me at her words, and I wanted to think about it. I finished breakfast in a hurry and ran back to the cabin, pulling out the journal that did duty as my diary. I flipped back through the pages, rereading select passages. Should I be writing things down about Elliott being a spy? What if someone found my diary? It took an hour (I may have gotten sidetracked with the descriptions of our sexual activities), but at last I reassured myself that I hadn’t given anything away about what he was doing, other than the bit about meeting Gunner in Cologne. I ripped out those pages, then walked around the cabin with them in my hand, looking for a safe way to dispose of them.

  “Great, I don’t smoke, so I don’t have a lighter. I can’t tear them to shreds and throw them into the river, because someone could tape them back together. Likewise with the toilet. I could eat it, I suppose.” I looked at the pages, covered with my loping handwriting. They didn’t look in the least bit appetizing. In the end, I folded them up very small, and stuffed them into a tampon package. “That ought to keep anyone from finding them,” I said, satisfied.

  The remainder of the day passed. It wasn’t quick, not that I blamed the town of Nuremberg. I took a solitary walk, and found the Old Town section was sufficiently cute and interesting. I took lots of pictures, but every single one was taken with the view of sharing it with Elliott.

  “Damn the man, I’m always thinking about him,” I told Laura later that night, as we sailed toward Regensburg.

  She laughed. “You’ve been married a day—obsessing about your new husband is de rigueur, I believe.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve worked hard to quell my compulsive tendencies, and I don’t need to stir them all up by being so focused on him.”

  “Maybe you just need to talk to him. Why don’t you call him?”

  “Holy Moses, I never thought of that. Should I? I mean, what if he’s out . . . you know . . . spying.” The last word was spoken in a whisper, since others were enjoying the nighttime spectacle of floating down the river in the dark. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt him at a vital time.”

  “He’s a professional. I’m sure he knows enough to turn off his phone if he’s going to be . . . I don’t know, creeping around a warehouse, or interrogating a captured baddie, or sneaking into an embassy, or whatever it is that he’s doing. Surely they must teach them things like that.”

  “You’d think,” I agreed, pulling out my phone.

  That’s when the horrible truth hit me. “Oh no! I don’t have his number.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I never got it. There . . . er . . . wasn’t time. Hell’s bells.”

  “Is there someone you can call who has it?”

  “Yes, Patrick probably does, but he changed his number after we broke up. Something about too many annoying calls.” Briefly, I smiled at the memory. “I don’t have his new number, but I bet I know who does.”

  I looked pointedly at where Deidre sat on the other side of the deck, chatting with Anthony.

  “Most likely. I should warn you that you’ll likely have to grovel for it. I’d ask her for it, but she’s sure to know it’s for you, and quite frankly, she’s a bit sore about what she calls you spiriting Elliott away.”

  “Deidre can just bite me,” I said under my breath, and slapped a friendly smile onto my face, preparing to do what it took to get Patrick’s number out of her.

  It took fifteen minutes of pleading (
and forty euros), but at last I had Patrick’s cell number. I waved the slip of paper upon which I’d written it at Laura, and dashed down to my cabin to make my calls.

  “I need Elliott’s cell number,” I told Patrick a few minutes later.

  “You what, now?”

  “Don’t play games, Patrick, please don’t. I’m tired, cranky, and possibly hormonal, so if you could keep the arch comments to yourself and just give me the phone number, I’d be very grateful.”

  “Why can’t you just ask him for it?”

  “He had to leave suddenly.” I waited for it. It came right as I expected. I waited until he was done laughing and said, with no little amount of acid in my voice, “Got that worked out of your system? Good. Now, can I have the number, please.”

  “You may, but on one condition.”

  “I am not going to sleep with you—”

  “Such a mind you have! It shows quite clearly that you’re not over me as you insist you are, but far be it from me t’point that out. I wasn’t going t’demand sex, love. I simply reserve the right t’call Elliott myself and find out what happened.”

  “I don’t care what you do, so long as you give me the number.”

  He rattled off a number so quickly, I had to have him repeat it. I wrote it down on a page in my diary, then thanked him.

  “I can’t say that I’ll be available long, but if you come t’your senses before Jane realizes what a mistake she made, then feel free t’call me. I’d be very happy t’console you about the breakup of your one-day-old marriage.”

  I hung up, quickly saving the phone number into my contacts. I stared at it for a moment, then took a deep breath and dialed the number, my fingers crossed that I wasn’t disturbing Elliott at a dangerous time.

  It rang and rang and rang, and just when I was expecting Elliott’s voice mail to kick in, someone said hello.