Private Scandals

for a while. Then the other woman said, ‘I could kill you, Angela. But maybe I’ll do something even better than that.’ Then I heard the door slam, and Miss Perkins was laughing again. I finished up real quick and went out in the hall.”
    “You know, Mrs. Mendez, I think you should try my line of work.” She preened and tugged on her hem again. “You’re very observant,” he added.
    “It comes natural, I guess. You see a lot of funny things working in a hotel.”
    “I’m sure you do. I wonder . . . Did you see the woman who’d left?”
    “No. There wasn’t anybody out there, but it took me a couple of minutes to finish stacking fresh towels, so she could have gotten on the elevator. That was my last room, so I went home after that. The next morning I heard that Miss Perkins had been killed. At first I thought maybe that woman had come back and killed her right there in my suite. But I found out it didn’t happen in the hotel at all. It happened at the TV station where Deanna Reynolds has her show. I like her show better,” she added guilelessly. “She has such a nice smile.”
     
    Deanna tried to use that smile as Finn hesitated at the front door of the cabin. “I’m fine,” she told him. She’d told him that repeatedly since she’d been released from the hospital three days before. “Finn, you’re going to pick up a few things at the store; you’re not leaving me to defend the fort against marauding hostiles. Besides”—she bent downto scratch the dog’s ears—“I have a champion.”
    “Champion wimp.” He cupped Deanna’s face in his hands. “Let me worry, okay? It’s still a new experience for me to fret.” He grinned. “I like fretting over you, Deanna.”
    “As long as you’re not fretting so much you forget to buy me that candy bar.”
    “Hershey’s Big Block, no almonds.” He kissed her, relieved when her lips curved gently, sweetly under his. The day he’d had her to himself at the cabin had dulled the edge of her horror, he knew, but she still slept poorly and jolted at unexpected sounds. “Why don’t you take a nap, Kansas?”
    “Why don’t you go get me that candy bar?” She drew back, her smile securely in place. “Then you can take a nap with me.”
    “Sounds like a pretty good deal. I won’t be long.”
    No, she thought as she watched him walk to the car. He wouldn’t be long. He hated leaving her alone. Though what he expected her to do was beyond her. Collapse in a hysterical heap? she wondered, lifting her hand in a wave as he headed down the lane. Run screaming from the house?
    With a sigh, she crouched down again to rub the dog while he whined and scratched at the door. He loved to go for rides, she thought now. But Finn had left him behind, a canine sentry.
    Not that she could blame Finn for being overprotective at this point. She’d been alone with a murderer, after all. A murderer who could have taken her life as quickly, as cruelly as he had taken Angela’s. Everyone was worried about poor Deanna, she thought. Her parents, Fran. Simon, Jeff, Margaret, Cassie. Roger and Joe and plenty of others from the newsroom. Even Loren and Barlow had called to express concern, to offer help.
    “Take all the time you need,” Loren had told her, without a single mention of ratings or expenses. “Don’t even think about coming back until you’re stronger.”
    But she wasn’t weak, Deanna decided. She was alive.
    No one had tried to kill her. Surely everyone mustunderstand that one simple point. Yes, she had been alone with a murderer, but she was alive.
    Straightening, she wandered around the cabin, tidying what was already competently neat. She brewed some tea she didn’t want, then wandered more with the cup warming her hands. She poked at the cheerfully blazing fire.
    She stared out the window. She sat on the couch.
    She needed, desperately needed, to work.
    This wasn’t one of their stolen weekends filled to the brim with laughter and lovemaking and arguments over newspaper editorials. There wasn’t a newspaper in the house, she thought in frustration. And Finn said there was some trouble with the cable, so television was out as well.
    He was doing his best to keep the outside world at bay, she knew. To put her in a protective bubble, where nothing and no one could cause her distress.
    And she’d let him, because what had happened in Chicago had seemed too horrible to think about; she’d let Finn push it all to the side for her.
    But