Genuine Lies

DON’T MAKE A RIGHT.

Paul set the bottle and glass aside so quickly that the champagne frothed over the lip. When he put both hands on Julia’s shoulders to ease her into a chair, she folded into it as if the bones had melted out of her legs. The only sound in the room was the hum from the heater and the splat of sleet on the glass. He crouched beside her, but she didn’t look at him, only continued to stare at the paper she held in one tensed hand, while her other pressed low on her stomach.
    “Let it out,” he ordered as his fingers began to rub at her shoulders. “You’re holding your breath, Jules. Let it out.”
    The air escaped in a long, shaky stream. Feeling as though she’d just fought her way above a dragging current, she gulped another breath and forced herself to expel this one slowly.
    “Nice going. Now, what is it?”
    After a quick, helpless shake of her head, she handed the slip to him.
    “Two wrongs don’t make a right?” Curious, he glanced up again to study her. She was no longer white to the lips, which was some relief to him, but her hands had grippedtogether in her lap. “Do trite sayings usually send you into shock?”
    “When they follow me six thousand miles, they do.” “Are you going to explain?”
    They rose together, he to stand, she to pace. “Someone’s trying to frighten me,” she said, half to herself. “And it infuriates me that it’s working. That’s not the first little homily I’ve received. I got one a few days after we’d been in California. It was left on the stoop in front of the house. Brandon picked it up.”
    “The first afternoon I was there?”
    “Yes.” Her hair swung around her shoulders as she turned back to him. “How did you know?”
    “Because you had that same baffled, panicky look in your eyes. I didn’t like seeing it then. I like it less now.” He ran the note through his fingers. “Did that note say the same thing?”
    “No. ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’ It was like this one, a slip of paper inside an envelope.” The initial sting of fear was fading rapidly into anger. It showed in her voice, in the way she walked off the emotion, her fisted hands jammed into the pockets of the robe, her strides lengthening. “I found another in my purse the night after the benefit, and a third one stuck in the pages of my draft right after the first break-in.”
    He handed her a glass of wine as she walked past him. If it couldn’t be used for celebration or romance, he figured it might calm her nerves. “Now I have to ask why you didn’t tell me.”
    She drank and kept on moving. “I didn’t tell you because it seemed more appropriate for me to tell Eve. In the beginning I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know you, and then—”
    “You didn’t trust me.”
    The look she sent him was caught somewhere between embarrassment and righteousness. “You were against the book.”
    “I still am.” He pulled a cigar out of the jacket he’d discarded earlier. “What was Eve’s reaction?”
    “She was upset—very, I think. But she hid it quickly and well.”
    “She would.” He kept his thoughts on that to himself for the moment. Idly he picked up his own glass of champagne and studied the bubbles. They rushed crazily to the brim, full of verve and energy. Like Eve, he thought. And oddly, like Julia. “I don’t have to ask your reaction. Why don’t I ask what you think the notes mean?”
    “I think they’re a threat, of course.” Impatience shimmered in her voice, but he merely lifted a brow and drank. “Vague, even foolish, but even worn-out phrases become sinister when they’re anonymous and pop out of nowhere.” When he remained silent, she pushed the tumbled hair away from her face. The move was sharp and impatient, and, he realized, the gesture would have come just as naturally to Eve. “I don’t like the fact that someone’s trying to gaslight me— don’t laugh at me.”
    “Sorry, it was the expression. So apropos really.”
    She snatched the slip off the room service cart where Paul had laid it. “Getting this here, six thousand miles away from where the others were delivered means someone must have followed me to London.”
    He drank again, watching her. “Someone other than me?”
    “It’s obvious …” The words had come out in a rush, an angry rush, she realized. Now she trailed off, then let out a long breath. The room was between them again. Had she put the distance there, or had he? “Paul, I