High Tide Read online

  When neither of the people on the bed answered her, Suzie leaned over them. “Do your friends think the world of you?” she asked loudly.

  At that Ace lay back on the bed and opened his mouth to tell Suzie what he thought of her. But Fiona didn’t want to hear it. Yes, she wanted to make love with Ace, wanted to very much, but there was something holding her back from giving herself to him fully. She didn’t know what it was, but there was something between them that hadn’t been resolved. Maybe it was that she didn’t think they had a future, what with his being in love with Lisa and the fact that they had been together only under horrible circumstances, but, yet, there was something else too.

  So she rolled off the bed and stood. “Yes, my friends think a great deal of me.”

  It was obvious that Suzie had wanted to break Ace and Fiona apart. But why? Fiona wondered. In fact, when she looked back on it, Suzie’s many timely interruptions couldn’t have been by chance. Every time that she and Ace touched each other, there was Suzie asking some inane question or doing things like insisting that she sleep between the two of them.

  Whatever Suzie was doing, it was certainly intentional, and it was very personal.

  “There’s hot coffee downstairs,” Suzie said cheerfully as though she were unaware of what she had deliberately interrupted; then she got off the bed and turned her back on them.

  Fiona almost giggled as Ace stood up, made his hands into claws, and went for the back of Suzie’s neck. But Suzie turned in the doorway. “Ace, dear, your clothes are in the other bedroom, aren’t they?” she said and seemed determined to wait until he followed her. She was not going to leave the two of them in the room alone together.

  To Fiona, it was funny. Yes, she wanted to make love with Ace, but there was something old world and chivalrous about Suzie’s attitude, as though she were protecting Fiona from something. She smiled when Ace left the room.

  After Fiona had dressed, she went downstairs, and there she saw Ace in a towering rage pulling Suzie out the back door. Fiona followed them outside.

  “Look what you’ve done!” he was saying in a low voice that had undercurrents of murder in it.

  “I’m sorry,” Suzie was saying. “It was an accident, I can assure you. I didn’t mean to do it.”

  “So what happened?” Fiona asked, yawning. It wasn’t full daylight outside yet, and she’d had very little sleep.

  “This woman,” Ace spoke with contempt, “just destroyed the papers your friends sent us.”

  “No!” Fiona breathed, then looked at the sodden mess that Ace was holding.

  “She dropped the glass coffeepot on top of the papers, then tried to clean the mess up with the wet papers.”

  “I just forgot, okay?” Suzie said, sounding as though she was on the verge of tears. “I put the papers down on the counter, then dropped the pot on top of them. It was a reaction to start scrubbing with the papers.”

  “Do you have any idea what those papers could have cost those women?” Ace said angrily. “I don’t know how they got into Fiona’s apartment, but it had to be by illegal means. Then they stayed up all night doing whatever they had to to transcribe them so they could fax them to us. If they’d been caught, those women would be prosecuted.”

  Fiona didn’t like to think about what he was saying, and she didn’t like the way Suzie was shaking. Fiona didn’t know what it was, but there was something about Suzie that she liked. Maybe it was the way she played chaperone to her and Ace.

  Whatever it was, Fiona put her arm around the shorter woman’s shoulders and drew her head against her chest. “It was an accident, so let up, will you?”

  “Accident?” Ace said, scowling. “You know what? I think she did it on purpose. In fact I think her whole act is just that, an act. I don’t think she’s who she says she is or that she’s as innocent as she pretends to be.” He was advancing on her.

  “Me innocent?” Suzie said, sniffing, and clinging to Fiona. “You’re the one who’s a liar. Why did you allow Fiona’s friends to risk their lives to get these papers? Why didn’t your family just buy their way into her apartment? In fact, why don’t you just buy your way out of this whole thing? What would it cost you? A few million? What’s that to someone as rich as you?”

  By the time she finished, Suzie was hiding behind Fiona, her hands on the younger woman’s waist, and Ace was going for her throat.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Ace whispered.

  Fiona drew herself up and kept her place between the two of them. “What is she talking about?” she asked softly.

  “Nothing important,” Ace said, still trying to get to Suzie.

  Fiona put out her arm, barring his way. She was looking hard at Ace and with great intensity. “Is this why we don’t look at newspapers and TV?” she asked softly. “You didn’t want me to find out that you were … rich?” She said the last word so quietly he could barely hear her.

  Stepping back, Ace looked at her. “It wasn’t a secret,” he began. “I …”

  Fiona turned to Suzie, pulling her hands away from her body. “How rich?”

  In answer, Suzie made a sound in her throat. “Kings have run countries on less money than he has.”

  Fiona sat down on a barstool. “So everything you’ve told me has been a lie,” she said softly.

  “Fee,” Ace said, reaching out his hands to touch her.

  But Fiona put her hand up to halt him. “From the very beginning, everything has been a lie. You told me that you had worked for years to earn the money to buy the plastic alligator, but that was a lie. You could have bought it out of the cash you had in your wallet.”

  “I’ve never spent a penny of my inheritance,” Ace said, his face twisted with emotion. “I’ve tried to make it on my own.”

  “I think it was Henry Ford who said ‘Nothing kills ambition like an inheritance,’ right?” she said. Her voice was flat and her eyes were even flatter. “Do you own the hotel where we stayed?”

  “No,” Ace murmured.

  “But I bet his family does,” Suzie said. “At least one of his relatives is a billionaire.”

  “Oh, my,” Fiona said. “Not merely millions, but billions.”

  “Fiona,” he said, his hands outstretched in pleading. “It hasn’t been like that. I never meant—”

  “To lie to me? Why not? Who am I to you? Tell me, is your beloved Lisa from a wealthy family?”

  Ace didn’t answer her, but just stood there with his lips tight.

  Fiona turned to Suzie.

  “You really haven’t been reading the papers, have you? Miss Lisa Rene Honeycutt’s family is almost as wealthy as the Montgomerys. Not quite, but nearly. According to the papers, his family, throughout history, has married money.”

  “Well,” Fiona said, turning back to Ace. “In this case only I was available, so I guess you take what you can get.” It was a nasty comment, but she wanted to hurt him for lying to her.

  She waited for Ace to answer, but he didn’t. He just stood there glaring at her. Part of her wanted to scream at him to tell her that the thoughts inside her head weren’t true. But another part wanted to hold on to her anger and hurt. When a man has lied to you as completely as this man had, you couldn’t be dumb enough to fall in love with him.

  Fiona turned her back on both of them. “Is everyone ready to go? The sooner we get started, the faster we can get this over with.”

  “I’m ready,” Suzie said, moving away from the protection of Fiona. “Just a trip inside to the little girls’ room and I’m all set.”

  When Ace and Fiona were alone in the backyard, he moved to stand close to her. “I think we ought to talk about this. I never meant—”

  Turning, she smiled at him coldly. “What you have in your bank account is none of my concern,” she said with as little emotion as she could manage. “You don’t owe me anything, and I don’t owe anything to you. What has happened to us hasn’t been exactly a party. We were thrown together under extraordinary circumstanc