“Rain check,” he said, seeming content to stand there and watch her leave. A few more paces, and she’d made it past the corner of the house. Lucas was gone from her sight.
Why, then, did she experience a small pang, as if she wished he would have followed her?
2
Lucas drove back to Flagstaff with the top down, letting the warm wind blow through his hair and wash over him. It was a beautiful mild mid-September day. The only thing that would have made it better would be to have Margot sitting in the passenger seat, less than a foot away from him. He could almost picture her there, a patterned scarf tied around her hair, sunglasses concealing her dark eyes. Very glamorous, very Audrey Hepburn.
Too bad there was probably a greater chance of the late Ms. Hepburn rising from the grave to ride with him than of Margot Emory ever condescending to do so.
The other times he had seen her, she’d been dressed conservatively and somewhat formally, in sheath dresses that complemented her slender frame but didn’t exactly ooze sex appeal. Today, though, in those jeans, with the scoop neck of her T-shirt showing more cleavage than he’d expected and her pretty bare feet in those sandals?
In a word, damn.
Obviously Angela’s determined glasnost policy of late hadn’t done much to change Margot’s opinion of any and all Wilcoxes, including himself. True, some walls took a long time to break down, but Ms. Emory’s were obviously very thick. And high. And reinforced with steel, apparently.
Had she agreed to dance with him simply as a subtle way to torture him? Lure him into thinking she might be unbending a bit, just so she could go back to shooting him down unmercifully?
It might have been easier to think that, but for some reason Lucas didn’t think it was precisely what was going on. More like…he’d caught her in an unguarded moment last night, and now she was doing whatever she could to recover the ground she thought she’d lost.
And it wasn’t that she was seeing anyone else. Even before the reception, he’d gone back and forth as to whether he should just ask Angela about Margot, but when he’d actually worked up the nerve to call and do so, Angela wasn’t home, and he didn’t want to bother her by calling her cell when she was out and about…most likely occupied with some detail or other associated with planning the wedding, since that seemed to be her main reason for leaving the house, aside from her unending doctor’s appointments. Of course, asking such questions of any of the other McAllisters was out of the question, so after some more hemming and hawing, he’d asked his friend Lester, the private investigator, to poke around a bit. Not a lot, not about anything that would be intrusive. Just to make sure Margot didn’t have a boyfriend that she was keeping on the down-low.
There wasn’t a lot to dig up, as it turned out. She’d been born at Verde Valley Medical Center, as were most of the McAllisters (those who weren’t delivered by the clan healer back in the day, anyway), had gone to school in Clarkdale and Cottonwood. No record of any marriages. Mother lived down the hill in Clarkdale, father listed on the birth certificate as one Paolo Cantu but nowhere in evidence after that. Her name was on the deed to the house she lived in, a deed that had been updated about a year ago, when the mother relocated from Jerome to a senior community.
“Nothing besides that,” Lester said, giving his report as the two of them shared a beer at the Beaver Street Brewery in downtown Flagstaff. “Not even a speeding ticket. Anyway, I hung around in Jerome for a few days, playing tourist, saw her come and go a bit. She had dinner with a couple of what looked like women friends one night. Drove down to Cottonwood to go to the grocery store. Spent a lot of time watering her roses. Sat in the garden and read a book, and then was writing in a notebook or something for a while.” Lester shook his head, although his expression was amused, and took a swallow of beer. “A real pistol, that one.”
Lucas had shot Lester a pained glance at that comment but decided to let it go.
Anyway, because of that bit of investigating, Lucas knew Margot was just as unattached as he. In a way, it would’ve been easier if she’d been seeing someone. Then he could blame her indifference on her unavailability, instead of her intractable inability to see that not every Wilcox was a black magic–wielding would-be kidnapper.
All right, Damon actually had been, but that was beside the point.
He didn’t want to think about Damon, though. Right then he wished he didn’t have to think about anything at all. It would be easier that way.
Forcing himself to focus on his surroundings, he saw that the scrub junipers flashing by had now given way to tall ponderosa pines. It still shocked him, the alteration in the landscape. How it happened so fast. A change in the elevation, he supposed.