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She frowned with exasperation. “Please. Give me some credit. I see through his practiced charm, and I’ve told him so.” She moistened the tip of her finger and used it to collect the remaining crumbs on her plate, then licked them off, the action giving her time to formulate an opinion.
As she moved aside the empty plate, she said, “I think the basics of the childhood he described are probably true, but he might have embellished them for dramatic effect.”
“That’s what bothers me. Why would he want to create an effect?”
“For his own amusement?” she said, raising a shoulder. “Or, as you said, to make his biography more colorful and adventuresome, a marketable background a publisher would jump at.”
“I hope that’s all his evasiveness amounts to.”
She crossed her arms on the edge of the table and leaned forward. “So what if he stretches the truth a bit? Why does that concern you so much?”
“I’m amazed that it doesn’t concern you.” He gestured toward the garage apartment. “Without notice, a stranger moves in next door. He’s unknown even to the Arnotts, yet he’s living practically in the shadow of our home. The day we met, he told me he’d come to the area to soak up color and soul for his novel. Doesn’t that imply that he would be out and about, observing and experiencing the culture? Instead, he rarely leaves the apartment.”
“He’s absorbed in the writing.”
“Is he? Perhaps. But I get the feeling that he’s not as devil-may-care as he wants us to believe.”
She looked down and studied the wood grain in the tabletop. “In all honesty, I get that impression, too.”
“Then we’d be wise not to believe everything he tells us and to be guarded about what we tell him. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes.” Then, lifting her gaze back to his, she said, “On the other hand, we could be overanalyzing and becoming paranoid when there’s no cause to be. Maybe Drex was merely testing his storytelling ability last night. He wanted to see if he could weave an engaging history for himself and make me believe it.”
“Possibly. After all, when you boil it down, fiction writers are glorified liars, aren’t they?”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”
He didn’t ask how she would put it. Seeming to have closed the discussion to his satisfaction, he got up and carried his dirty dishes to the sink. It rather irked her to be dismissed, but she let the subject drop. She didn’t want to engage in an argument where she would be placed in the position of defending Drex, whom she didn’t know and who was possibly the blatant liar Jasper suspected him of being.
However, as Drex had described to her that period of his life, he had appeared to be telling the truth. There had been no teasing glint in his eyes or devilish smile to suggest either a white lie or a whopper.
My mother never set foot in Alaska. When he’d said that, his eyes, his whole demeanor, had conveyed stark, heartbreaking reality. “He grew up without his mother.”
“Pardon?”
Caught musing out loud, she repeated, “He grew up without his mother.”
“She died?”
“I don’t know. That’s when you barged in. I’m left with a cliffhanger.”
“Regrettable. The unknown facets of Drex Easton are the ones I wish I knew.”
He folded the dishtowel he’d used and draped it over the edge of the sink, then lifted his gym bag off the floor and slid the strap onto his shoulder. “All right with you if I hang around the club after my workout? I may stay and have lunch there.”
“I could meet you.”
“I thought you planned to work on the African trip for your client.”
“Those plans are flexible.”
“Better to leave them in place. I’m not sure when I’ll want to eat.” Her expression must have revealed her letdown. In a crisp voice, he asked, “Is that a problem, Talia?”
It was a problem that she must be made to print out an itinerary to leave with him whenever she went out of town, but that he got piqued if she asked about his plans for an afternoon.
She replied with comparable curtness. “No problem.”
He moved to stand behind her chair, placed his hands on her shoulders, leaned down, and whispered in her ear. “Instead of lunch, how about I take my favorite girl out for dinner tonight?”
