Grand Passion

Cleo suggested dryly.
    “Money had nothing to do with it,” he said with righteous indignation. “It was your character that attracted me. Hell, I even know for a fact that you don't sleep around. The only thing that bothered me a bit was your friendship with those weird women at Cosmic Harmony.”
    “My friends are not weird.” Anger flared inside Cleo. “You think I've got a pristine past? What about my parents?”
    “What about them? I know they're dead.”
    “But you don't know how they died, do you? I never told you that.”
    Nolan scowled. “I got the impression they were in a car accident.”
    “That's the impression I've let most of the people around here have. It's easier to explain than the truth.”
    Nolan looked wary. “What the hell's the truth?”
    Cleo lifted her chin. “They say my father shot my mother and then killed himself. How's that for a skeleton in the closet? Do you think the media would have ignored a juicy tidbit like that?”
    Nolan's shock was obvious. “Are you serious? You should have told me.”
    “Why? I have a right to my privacy. Besides, it's hardly the sort of thing one discusses over dinner at the Crab Pot Restaurant.” Cleo pushed her glasses higher up on her nose and took a steadying breath.
    She was furious with herself for having allowed Nolan to goad her into telling him the painful facts of her parent's death. It was something she rarely talked about with anyone.
    “We might have been able to finesse the stuff about your parents, although it would have been difficult. But we'd never have been able to explain that damn book you wrote.” Nolan's gaze turned bitter. “You really had me fooled.”
    “Sorry about that. I didn't know you were considering me for a position as a politician's wife. You might have mentioned it earlier. I would have told you all the lurid details of my past right up front.”
    “Is that right?”
    “Damn right.” She widened her eyes in mocking derision. “You don't think I'd actually want to be a politician's wife, do you?”
    Nolan's face reddened. “Look, I'm sorry about this, Cleo. And about your folks. About everything. Hell, I know I'm not handling this very well. It's just that the business with that damned book came as a shock.”
    “I can see that.”
    “Look at it from my point of view,” Nolan pleaded. “I didn't know you'd actually published anything, let alone a book like that .” He looked at the paper sack she was holding as if it contained a snake.
    “I didn't tell you about The Mirror because I didn't want anyone outside the family to know that I'd written it.”
    He snorted. “I'm not surprised.”
    “I'm not ashamed of it,” she stormed. “It's just that this book was a very personal thing for me. I knew no one around here would understand. I didn't want the kid who works at Bennington's Drug Store leering at me every time I went in to buy shampoo. I didn't need the attendant at the gas station making snide remarks. I didn't want to have to explain it to Patty Loftins down at the beauty shop.”
    “I can sure as hell understand that.” Nolan turned away to gaze out over the choppy ocean. “Patty's got a mouth the size of the Grand Canyon.”
    Cleo looked down at the brown paper sack she was clutching. It was impossible to explain The Mirror to anyone. It was too intimate. Too much a part of her most secret self. She had poured all her most private fantasies into the book, baring her deeply sensual soul.
    The passion that was trapped inside her had combined with the aching loneliness to form a searing account of a woman on a quest for emotional intimacy and physical release. The tale had literally cascaded out of her a year and a half earlier. The book had been published a month ago.
    The critics had, generally speaking, responded very favorably to The Mirror . Only Cleo knew that none of them had really understood it. They had thought the book was a work of autoeroticism; that the female narrator was locked in a fantasy of startling intimacy with the masculine elements of her own nature.
    They did not comprehend the significance of the man in the mirror.
    Writing The Mirror had been a cathartic experience for Cleo. It had also taught her that she wanted to keep on writing, although she knew she would never again need to write a book like The Mirror .
    “I wish I could explain this to you,” she said quietly. “ The Mirror was a one-of-a-kind thing for me.”
    “I should hope so. I read some