The Heir's Proposal. Raye Morgan

come face to face with them, things looked a bit different. If she’d succeed, she needed to be smart about it. She was going to have to stay strong. Reality had a way of cancelling out fantasy every time.

      They were just people. That didn’t mean they weren’t guilty of some ugly things. But they were still proving to be only human—for now.

      First there had been Marge, Marc’s mother. When she and Carl had come up the front walk and climbed the steps to the wide porch and the huge front door, her heart had been pounding so hard, she’d thought she might faint. And then the door had swung open and there was this short, redheaded woman in a simple pants suit, welcoming them to Shangri-La with a warm smile. She didn’t look much like the Cruella de Vil monster Torie had been remembering her as all these years. In fact, she looked more like a Brownie den mother. Sort of a letdown.

      Marc’s older sister Shayla had shown them to their rooms. She was a little closer to the mark. She’d always been snooty and full of herself, and things hadn’t changed. But Torie had to admit, even she didn’t seem like a fiend close up.

      There had been two boys in the family, Marc and his older brother Ricky. Torie had assumed, as she and Carl had first arrived, that both young men were off living their own lives somewhere by now. The surprise had been to find Marc here.

      Of course, the one most to blame for what happened, Marc’s father, Tim Huntington, usually called Hunt, wasn’t here at all. He’d drowned when his sailboat capsized in the bay years before. She would never be able to confront him. There would always be a hole in her soul for that.

      In her dreams, she came charging up to Shangri-La and found the evidence to clear her father, presented it to Marge and Shayla with a flourish, and had them dissolving into tears of regret and apology. She would demand they write up a complete retraction and send it to the Alegre Beacon, the local paper. The little town of Alegre would be thrown into an uproar. The mayor would name a special celebration and present Torie with a plaque commemorating the day.

      And Torie would take the plaque back down to Los Angeles and present it to her mother. That was her dream.

      At least, it had been for years. She’d recently discovered evidence that cast a shadow on those hopes. Was there more to all this than she’d ever known? Possibly. And that was the main reason she was here today.

      The downpour was almost over. The noise on the roof had faded to a dull drumbeat. Marc turned and looked at her, his blue eyes full of skepticism.

      “So tell me about Carl,” he said without preamble.

      Her eyes widened. She hadn’t really expected that. “What about him?”

      “How long have you and Carl been married?” he asked her.

      She frowned. She hated questions like this. She really didn’t want to lie. But what could she do? Try to avoid it, she supposed. Just dance around the facts any way she could.

      “Not long,” she said brightly.

      “Newlyweds, huh?”

      She gave him a vague smile. She couldn’t imagine Carl as a newlywed—not to anyone. He was a fairly cold, unemotional person. Business deals were all he cared about. Her accompanying him here was all part of a bargain to him. He needed to pretend to have a wife—she needed a way to get onto Shangri-La without letting the Huntingtons know who she was. They’d struck a deal.

      “Any kids?”

      “No. Oh no.”

      “I guess not if you always ask for separate bedrooms.”

      She flushed and her eyes flashed, but she held her temper. “Carl snores,” she said, reciting the excuse they’d given when they made their reservations. That had been her one demand when Carl had asked her to come along. It had to be separate bedrooms, no matter how strange that looked.

      Marc’s eyes narrowed. “Carl’s a bit older than you are, isn’t he?”

      She wasn’t going to dignify that with an answer. Suddenly the bag of gravel felt hard and uncomfortable, and she got up to stretch her legs a bit. There wasn’t much room for pacing, but she did her best.

      “Where did you two meet?”

      She glanced at him. The question flustered her. Her fingers were trembling. He was going to figure this whole charade out, wasn’t he? He wanted to catch hold of a string and begin to pull it all apart. She could see it coming. But she had to make an attempt—keep her finger in the dike, so to speak.

      “I…uh…he hired me to plan some cocktail parties for his business clients.”

      “You’re a party planner?”

      “And a caterer.” She nodded, brightening to a theme she knew well and something she didn’t have to skate around. “Yes. Any event, large or small. I can make it magical.”

      “I’ll bet you can.” His smile was ironic. “So you partied and you fell in love?”

      She frowned, not trusting him at all. “You might say that.”

      Okay, it was time she got a little tougher. She couldn’t let him think he had the upper hand. Turning, she glared at him.

      “Listen, Marc. What’s with the third degree? What is this intense interest in my private life?”

      His wide mouth twisted. Maybe he was coming on a bit too strong.

      There was no doubt he was suspicious—suspicious of every one of the visitors they were stuck with for the weekend. The last time they’d had an influx of strangers like this had been shortly after his father had died, drowned just outside the bay when his small sailboat had capsized. Once the word had spread that he’d taken the Don Carlos Treasure down with him, fortune hunters had come crawling all over the place. None of them believed that the old Spanish fortune that had been in the Huntington family for over a hundred years had really gone down into the sea. Everyone thought if he just looked hard enough, he would find the hiding place.

      And the place searched most often were the caves. Of course. The caves had been where the treasure was first found. And the caves had been where the treasure had been hidden the first time it had disappeared.

      But not this last time. Experts had gone over the place with a fine-tooth comb. There was no treasure, not anymore. It was pretty obvious his father’s suicide note had said it all. The Don Carlos Treasure had gone back to the sea, from whence it had come.

      Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and Spanish doubloons back to Neptune.

      So was that what this pretty young woman had been looking for in the caves? Of course it was. Why else would she hurry right out there? She even had the look of a treasure hunter—always hopeful.

      His gaze held hers for a long moment. There was a spark of humor in his eyes, but that didn’t make her feel any better about this air of tension between them. Finally, he actually smiled.

      “No big deal,” he said. “Just making conversation. Passing the time.” He slid off his bag as well and faced her in the small space. “I think the rain has stopped. Let’s go.”

      She took a deep breath and watched as he left the shed, then hurried to catch up with him. He started across the dunes, striding quickly in the wet sand, and she had to run to keep up. His legs were much longer than hers.

      About halfway to the cliff, he stopped, turning to watch her arrive at his position.

      “Rest a minute,” he said.

      “I wouldn’t need to if you wouldn’t go so fast,” she said testily.

      “Sorry.” But his gaze was restless. He looked toward the large white house up on the cliff. “I can’t help but wonder what they’re doing up there,” he said, mostly to himself. He shook his head. “What is she thinking?”

      “Who?” Torie asked, though she was pretty sure he meant Marge. “What’s wrong?”