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“How are you feeling, Ms. Tremont?”
Feeling? Gad, does he know that my blood is running warm and cold all over my body? Can he tell from the temperature of my skin?
But of course, he’s asking about the accident.
I laugh. It sounds a little too shrill for my liking. “Much better, thanks to Jeffrey.”
“So I heard,” he says, not taking his eyes off me. Do I dare say it, but there’s a hunger in his gaze. A rapaciousness, as if the sight of me is an oasis after his long trek through the desert.
He goes to the back of my chair and pulls it out for me. “Please, sit. I’m glad you’re able to join me for dinner tonight.”
I’m amazed that his manners are impeccable. I sit, warmth suffusing my cheeks. I wonder if I’m blushing.
He has even dressed up for dinner, as though he’s trying to impress me. He wears a cashmere jacket over a grey silk shirt. His clothes are tailor-made and expensive. They fit him like a glove.
Jeffrey serves whatever it is on his tray. I barely register what I’m eating. Oh, did I mention Jeffrey’s cooking is excellent? I’m certainly not doing it justice tonight. My head is too busy whirling in the kaleidoscope of current events. And I believe I’ve completely forgotten to play damsel in post-traumatic head wound distress.
I have to be very careful not to let Ethan Greene know I’m a reporter . . . or that I know who he used to be. There’s a time and place for everything, and if I play my cards too soon, he will recede. But I must say that I’m having trouble reconciling this polite, sophisticated man with the tortured scribblings I found in his journal.
Then again, the night is still young.
“So what brings you out here to Kelowna?” he asks, digging a spoon into his appetizer. I think it’s, um, some prawn thing. I look down at mine and am mildly surprised to find that it’s the same.
“I have an aunt who owns . . . or used to own some property around here.” Got to get the facts straight. “She has always asked me to check it out one day.”
“She doesn’t live here anymore?”
“She’s dead,” I say flatly. “Aneurysm.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It happened a long time ago. She was my favorite aunt. She used to play gin rummy with me when I was little.” I don’t know who I’m channeling, but it’s certainly no aunt of mine.
“Where do you come from?”
“Pittsburgh.”
He raises his eyebrows. “That far?”
“It’s my vacation.”
“If I were on vacation, I wouldn’t be having it in Kelowna,” he says wryly.
Oh good. So he still retains his sense of humor, the one that was so evident in China Noon – in which he played a priest tempted by a hooker who wants to be reformed.
“Why are you here, Mr. Greene? You don’t strike me as a true blood resident of Kelowna.” It’s actually quite difficult to talk to him over the large expanse of table. I have to raise my voice and enunciate my sentences loudly.
Jeffrey comes in with a chilled bottle of wine. I take this opportunity to get up.
“What are you doing?” Ethan says, startled. I don’t know whether to call him Ethan or David, but since he’s going by his official name, I’ll call him Ethan. He even has had it legalized.
I carry my prawn bowl and wine glass and scoot to the right side of the table, next to him. “Jeffrey, would you mind getting my chair? And my place setting? It’s so difficult to talk when we’re so far away from each other.”
Ethan appears alarmed, but I don’t let that faze me. Jeffrey obediently does as I bid, and soon, I’m sitting on the right side of Ethan. Like a partner. Or a wife.
Ethan is extremely ill at ease, but his good manners forbid him to betray this. I’m enjoying his discomfiture. I take it that he does not often entertain female guests in his dining room, and so my proximity must be extremely unsettling for him.
Then again, it might be something else. After all, what do I know about Ethan Greene?
“So why are you here?” I repeat. The investigative journalist part of me is roused again.
He’s silent.
Then he says, “That’s a question for philosophers, wouldn’t you say?”
He’s trying to deflect me, and he’s doing it in a charming way.
“You know what I mean. You stand out like a sore thumb in this small town.”
“I hardly go into town.”
“Then why live here?” I persist.
He is stunned for a moment, and then he laughs. “Do you always ask such personal questions of people you just meet?”
“Oh, I wasn’t aware I was asking anything personal. I just thought I was making small talk.”
