Moonlight Masquerade Read online

  “I cooked for three days, and along with the other guests I invited eight very pretty, young, single women. Betsy and I made a list, then filled it: tall, short, skinny, plump.”

  “Never married, been married with a child, even a young widow.”

  “Betsy and I made sure Dr. Reede talked to each of them, but he wasn’t interested.”

  “So what’s his sex life like?” Heather asked.

  “I have no idea,” Betsy said somewhat stiffly.

  “And we certainly don’t ask,” Alice added.

  “It seems to me that the only thing that’s going to make Reede Aldredge happy is to get out of Edilean,” Heather said.

  “That’s the conclusion we came to.”

  “Maybe we can get another doctor to come here.”

  Alice pulled a thick file folder out of the cabinets. “These are the letters we’ve sent.”

  “And the replies.”

  As Heather flipped through them and noted the refusals, she said, “There has to be a way. I need this job. It’s a good salary and good benefits. If I could just figure out what he needs I’d give it to him.”

  “You’re welcome to try,” Betsy said.

  “We’re open to suggestions,” Alice said.

  “And we’ll help you,” Betsy said, and they all three nodded.

  They didn’t know it, but a bond had been formed by the women. They were united in a single purpose: to find out what Dr. Reede Aldredge wanted and to give it to him.

  One

  Sophie tried to control her anger, but it wasn’t easy. She could feel it rising in her like bile, traveling upward from her stomach.

  She was driving her old car and she was about twenty miles from Edilean, Virginia. The scenery was beautiful, with trees sheltering the road, the fading sunlight playing on the leaves. She’d heard about Edilean from her college roommate Kim Aldredge. The two of them, with their other roommate, Jecca, had laughed at Kim’s portrayal of the little town as a cross between heaven and . . . well, heaven. “Everyone knows everybody!” Kim said with enthusiasm.

  It was Jecca who’d asked for a further explanation of that concept. Kim told them of the seven founding families who came to America in the 1700s and created the town.

  “And they’re all still there?” Jecca asked in disbelief.

  “Enough of us are descendants of those seven families that we’re related to one another and yes, we still live there.” There was so much caution in Kim’s voice that Jecca pounced. They were told there were “others” in town and they were called “Newcomers.” Even if the family had moved there in the 1800s, they were still “Newcomers.”

  When these lively discussions about the merits—or lack of them—of small town living took place, Sophie stayed out of them. She covered her silence by taking too big a mouthful of food and saying she couldn’t speak. Or she would suddenly remember that she had to be somewhere else. Whatever she needed to do so she didn’t have to participate in a discussion about growing up, she did it.

  The truth was that Sophie had been embarrassed. Kim and Jecca had such normal childhoods. Oh, they complained about a parent or sibling, but they’d grown up loved and protected. Sophie hadn’t. Her mother had gone from one man to another. And then there was the little Texas town. Ruled by Treeborne Foods and riddled with poverty.

  Sophie wasn’t sure how it started, but when the first person asked her where she was from she named a pretty little Texas town with country clubs and golf courses. So many people had fond memories of the town that she never corrected her lie.

  But then Jecca and Kim didn’t notice, for they had always been so very trouble free, with few worries. It was a state of being that Sophie had tried to imagine, but she hadn’t succeeded. It seemed that her life had always consisted of running toward something or trying to get away from a lot of things.

  She glanced at the big envelope on the passenger seat of the car, and the Treeborne logo seemed to leap out at her. It was like a flashing neon light going off and on.

  The sharp sound of a horn brought her back to reality. Her distraction had caused her to wander across the line and into the left lane. As she jerked to the right, she saw what looked to be a gravel road disappearing into the trees and she took it. She only went a few yards before stopping, her car hidden from the road. She turned off the engine and for a moment bent her head against the steering wheel as her mind filled with images of the last five years.

  The death of her mother had changed everything. There’d been a job offer when Sophie graduated from college, but she’d had to turn it down. Taking it would have meant relocating from her little Texas hometown, and since her sister couldn’t leave, Sophie had to go to her. Oh how noble she’d felt on that day! She’d called the nice, older man who’d asked her to work for him. “It’s not much to begin with,” he’d told her, “but it’s a start. You’re talented, Sophie, and you have ambition. I think you’ll go far.” When she called him to turn the job down she’d felt like a saint. She was sacrificing herself for others, giving up what she wanted to help her sweet, innocent, vulnerable twelve-year-old sister.

  The man had made an attempt to change her mind. “Sophie, you’re too young to do this. Isn’t there someone else your little sister could live with? An aunt, a grandparent? Someone?”

  “There’s no one and besides, there are extenuating circumstances. Lisa needs—”

  “What do you need?” the man had half shouted.

  But nothing he said dissuaded Sophie from putting her life on hold so she could spend the next five years protecting her sister. Protecting, providing for her, trying to teach her about the world. But somewhere in there Sophie had begun to want things for herself, like love and family. At that she had failed.

  Sophie got out of the car and looked around. Through the trees she could see the highway. There wasn’t much traffic, just a few pickups, some of them towing boats.

  She leaned back against the car, closed her eyes, and held her face up to the light. It was warm out but she could feel autumn in the air. Other people were at home raking leaves and ordering cords of firewood. Maybe they were thinking about Thanksgiving and what candy to give out this weekend at Halloween. But Sophie was on the road.

  Would Carter spend the holidays with his fiancée? she wondered. What would he buy her for Christmas? A perfect little diamond tennis bracelet for her perfect little blue-blood wrist?

  Would they go sledding in the snow?

  Yet again, Sophie felt anger surge through her.

  Carter had a right to his own . . . Sophie put her hand over her mouth, as she had an almost uncontrollable urge to scream. He’d said, “You must know that you’re the kind of girl a man—”

  No! She was never again going to let herself remember the things he’d said to her on that last night. But then, it was the way he’d said it all that had hurt as much as the words. He’d acted surprised that she didn’t know what to him was a given. His face—that she’d thought she loved—looked at her in innocence, as though no blame could be attached to him. According to him, it was all Sophie’s fault because she hadn’t understood from the beginning. “But I thought you knew,” he said, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. “It was just for the summer. Aren’t there books written about summer romances? That’s what we had. And the good part is that someday we’ll both look back on this with fondness.”

  His words were so sincere sounding that Sophie began to doubt herself. Had she known but not let herself admit it? Whatever the truth was, she’d felt crushed, defeated. She’d truly believed that she loved Carter—and that he felt the same way about her. He’d made her feel good about herself. He’d listened to her complaints about her jobs, about how she often felt that she’d missed out on life, then he’d kissed her until she quit talking.

  It had taken Sophie nearly a year after graduation to figure out that putting her own life on hold to help someone else was easier said than done. She’d gone from being a laughing college student