Indiana: Stargazer Alien Mail Order Brides #6 (Intergalactic Dating Agency) Page 11

  “She waited a long time, but the husband didn’t come.

  “At last, she snuck out of the room and heard voices coming from outside. So she tiptoed to the window and looked out, and there on the front porch was her new husband, with her younger sister under the light of the moon.”

  By the way his dad said with and the way the teenagers giggled, little Wade had known he must mean kissing.

  “In disbelief, the older sister spun around the room,” his dad continued. “And that was when she noticed a dead mouse in the wastepaper basket, with biscuit crumbs all over it.

  “Then she realized what had happened. Her husband had wanted to marry her younger sister after all. He had married her instead, but planned to murder her by poison, leaving her younger sister eligible to marry.

  “Furious, the older sister grabbed the rifle from over the front door, burst outside and shot the husband dead.

  “Her younger sister screamed and then went silent. She was frozen in place before her sister, naked and shocked.”

  Wade had wondered why the little sister would have been naked. But his father continued the story before he could ask.

  “The older sister didn’t have the heart to murder her sibling. Instead, she walked to the far side of the island and threw herself off the rock face. Women didn’t swim in those days. She drowned almost immediately.

  “The younger sister never married. Instead, she spent the rest of her life caring for her heartbroken parents, who were never the same.”

  That was a terrible story. Little Wade had been very sad. He was not a good swimmer either. He did not like the idea of jumping off the cliff on the island and into the cold, dirty lake.

  But then his dad put the cherry on top.

  “They say,” his dad whispered, “that their ghosts still haunt the island. If you go out there after dark, you might hear the gunshot, the scream and the splash of the older daughter throwing herself into the lake.”

  Mr. Travers had leaned back in his lawn chair, a smug look of satisfaction on his face.

  And little Wade had gazed across at the island and seen the moonlight flash against the upstairs window of the cottage.

  The one he was looking out of right now.

  His entire body convulsed with fear, and Wade wanted out right now. There was no time for a clever plan. He needed to take action now.

  He grabbed the phone again and pulled up Honey’s contact info.

  Wade:

  Honey, Nikki Fortune isn’t who she says she is. She’s a journalist undercover, writing a story about the aliens. I just thought I would give you a heads up.

  There, that ought to do it. Honey wasn’t that sharp anyway. Better to be obvious and straightforward.

  He waited for Honey to text him back, to thank him for saving her from her lying friend.

  Nothing.

  He texted again.

  Wade:

  Just Google her name and Vanderbilt, and you can see what she majored in. And when she graduated. She’s not even a student anymore, Honey. You got duped.

  Satisfied, he put the phone down again and hummed a brave little tune to drown out the sounds he was sure were just the house settling.

  Nikki

  Nikki walked up the hillside to the cabin.

  It was so late that she was sure the others would be asleep.

  The whole resort was silent. Only the hoot of the night owls and the lush scent of wild jasmine kept her company on her walk.

  She couldn’t understand why Indiana hadn’t called her to tell her what happened. Maybe he was still at the Crow’s Nest, though that seemed unlikely.

  As she came up the path, she was surprised to see the glow of warm light through the trees. Someone must still be up.

  She opened the screen door and stepped inside.

  Both Honey and Addy were sitting on the sectional sofa.

  Kitt and Remington were nowhere to be seen.

  “Hey guys,” she said. “You’re up late.”

  Addy shook her head, a disgusted look on her face.

  “We trusted you,” Honey said, sounding heartbroken.

  Oh, god.

  “What are you talking about?” Nikki asked, hating herself for using the insincere question as a way to buy some time.

  She had known this conversation was going to happen eventually.

  But she had convinced herself it could be on her terms, a voluntary admission- maybe one with the hope of reconciliation. Nikki thought of these women as her friends now.

  “Don’t bother,” Addy said. “She’s a liar. She’s not our friend, she never has been. She was only here to get a story.”

  “That’s not true,” Nikki said, though most of it was true, or at least it had been true. “I mean… I was here to get a story, at first, but… I care about you. I care about you now.”

  “I can’t believe you could do such a thing,” Honey said, her voice cracking a little at the end.

  Funny, Nikki was thinking the same about Indiana.

  How could he blow her cover like this, knowing that it would hurt her, and her friends too? What did he possibly have to gain? He had been helping her.

  “Where are—” she began.

  “They went back to their own cabin,” Addy said briskly.

  “Oh,” Nikki said.

  “Honey and I are going to be moving back down to the women’s staff cabin with everyone else,” Addy said.

  Oh god, they didn’t even want to live with her anymore.

  “No,” Nikki said immediately. “I’ll go. You guys earned this place.”

  Addy didn’t argue.

  Nikki scrambled to her room and began shoving stuff in her bag, willing herself not to cry.

  You can cry when you get to your new place.

  At last her clothing and sundries were all in her big duffel. She went back out to the living room.

  Honey studied her with mournful eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Nikki whispered.

  Addy pointed to the door.

  Nikki put her chin down and left.

  The call of the owls sounded mournful on her way down the hillside.

  She snuck in the back door of the women’s staff cabin, hoping there would be a free bed in plain sight. It would be awful to have someone wake up and have them ask her what was going on.

  Moonlight filtered in through the screened windows, caressing the faces of the sleeping staff.

  There was a free bed all the way in the back corner.

  Nikki went to it gratefully, put her stuff at the foot of it, and climbed in.

  She expected to dissolve instantly into tears, but for a long time she only lay on her back looking at the shadow of the trees blowing on the ceiling.

  She was beyond sadness. She was alone - as alone as she had ever been. More so now, because she had known what it was like to have friends, to have a man she loved.

  It was only when she allowed herself to picture the happy future she wouldn’t be part of, the jokes she would miss, the sparkle of the sunset over the water from up on the hillside, that the tears finally came.

  Indiana

  Indiana waited outside the women’s staff cabin.

  He knew Nikki was inside, but there were so many women in there, it didn’t seem right to knock on the door and wake them.

  Instead, he paced between the door and the woods.

  It was so early the sounds of the communal shower hadn’t begun yet. Normally, the big staff cabins were alive with laughter and voices. But now it was eerily quiet.

  To stay calm, Indiana ran through the complete works of William Shakespeare in his head while he paced.

  The first time Indy had read the complete works of William Shakespeare he had been more worried about content than tone. This time he found himself trying to understand the details.

  What made The Merchant of Venice a comedy and Romeo and Juliet a tragedy? This was not a question he had posed to himself on first reading.

  But now that
his human sensibilities were heightened, Indiana realized that the tone of the plays did not define them.

  Merchant with its heavy speeches was called a comedy.

  And Romeo and Juliet, in spite of the giddy hilarity of characters like Juliet’s nurse, was a tragedy.

  And so, perhaps it should not be quite so unthinkable that in spite of their light-hearted summer, Indiana and Nikki’s romance could be a tragedy after all.

  Indiana’s chest was hollow and sore, as if he had wrenched his own heart from its place.

  She was betraying him, and his brothers, and their brothers and benefactors back in Stargazer.

  He had seen the evidence back at the pavilion.

  Yet he hadn’t fully accepted it. He couldn’t really believe that she would do anything to harm him.

  And even now that he knew it for sure, some part of him was already forgiving her.

  She was a journalist, and he was beginning to understand that digging for the truth was part of who she was. It had been chillingly naive of him not to realize her real purpose the moment she had revealed her career.

  And besides, her betrayal was nothing compared to his own treachery.

  Because he wasn’t there to accuse her.

  Indiana had come to declare his love for Nikki. To beg for her hand, in spite of all she had done.

  Surely it was worse for him to betray his own brothers than it was for her to betray them.

  But this logic was getting him nowhere, so he returned to Coriolanus, hoping she would come out soon.

  “Oh, hey there,” said a soft voice. “You surprised me.”

  He turned to see Denise, one of the lifeguards.

  “Hi,” he said, with what he hoped was a normal smile, and not the grimace of a desperate man. “I’m just waiting for Nikki.”

  “Isn’t she up in the senior cabin?” Denise asked.

  “No, I think she’s here now,” he said. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that Nikki had been kicked out of the other cabin by her roommates.

  “Let me go look,” she said, and went back in before he could stop her.

  A moment later Nikki emerged, looking exhausted but hopeful.

  His mind instantly memorized each facet of her appearance. One side of her curls was pressed flat against her cheek. The other side was as springy as usual. There were lavender circles under each of her eyes and she wore the same clothes she’d had on yesterday.

  She was exquisite.

  “Nikki,” he said.

  But as soon as she saw it was him her expression turned woebegone.

  “Leave me alone,” she said, her voice as dry as sand. “Haven’t you done enough?”

  “Nikki, listen,” he began, unsure what it was he was supposed to have done, but certain he could get to the bottom of the misunderstanding through careful conversation. This was not one of Shakespeare’s many plays. People didn’t just make grand declarations and then storm off without an explanation.

  “I don’t ever want to see you again,” she said.

  Before he could process her words she had already gone back inside, the door closing firmly behind her.

  Indiana stood there a bit longer. Maybe Mr. Shakespeare had a better handle on the human way of things than Indy after all.

  Resolved, he headed to the check-in desk of the lodge for a pen and paper.

  Nikki

  Nikki leaned against the wall of the communal showers and covered her face with her hands, trying not to cry.

  Thank goodness it was so early that no one else was showering. There was absolutely no privacy in this place.

  Nikki thought she had no tears left after last night, but the sight of Indiana had the waterworks threatening all over again.

  She loved him.

  She loved him and he had betrayed her trust.

  There was no amount of chemistry that could ever get them past it, no explanation that could justify the fact that he had lost her the best friends she’d ever had.

  She let the tears flow, invisible in the warm spray from the shower.

  “Are you okay?” Denise’s voice came from the entrance to the showers.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Nikki replied, straightening up and trying to smile.

  Denise must think she was crazy. When the lifeguard had roused her to tell her someone was outside for her she’d allowed herself to hope it was Honey or Addy.

  Denise had watched her blow hot and cold twice already and they’d only been roommates for seven hours. And they’d spent six and a half of them asleep. Well, Denise had, anyway.

  “He left something for you,” Denise said. “Well, he came back and brought it, while you were in here… showering.”

  Crying.

  “Oh, thanks,” Nikki managed.

  “I put it on your bed,” Denise said.

  “Thanks,” Nikki replied.

  She forced herself to finish her shower and towel off slowly. She should not be in a rush to find out what he had left her. Whatever it was it was from the kind of man who would play with her heart and destroy her friendships.

  Back at her bunk, a Maxwell’s envelope sat on her pillow.

  A letter. Oh boy.

  She sat down to open it.

  Nikki slipped the paper from the envelope, surprised to see that it was several pages long.

  She looked at the top sheet, and at first she didn’t understand.

  The letter wasn’t made of words.

  It was just a bunch of initials and numbers and dates.

  And it wasn’t just a few. It was whole lines of them, strings of them, some with references to meeting minutes and what looked like last names.

  The names were somehow familiar…

  And then it hit her.

  This was Travers’s trading ledger.

  She clutched it to her chest, in a wild embrace, her mind racing with the possibilities.

  “Wow, I could tell he was passionate,” Denise said as she came out of the showers in her bright yellow bathrobe. “He was writing so fast.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “I never saw anyone write that fast before,” Denise said. “It was like he didn’t even have to think about what he was writing.”

  “Wow,” Nikki said, looking back at the papers, a new thought occurring to her.

  “That’s love,” Denise said, shaking her head.

  But it wasn’t love.

  It was basically a super power.

  Indiana had told Nikki that he was good at remembering things. It hadn’t hit her that he meant he was good at remembering like Kitt was quick and like Remington liked the water.

  Indiana had a photographic memory.

  And although she couldn’t use the memorized ledger as proof in and of itself, there was enough evidence about the transactions here to research, hand in, and take Travers down.

  She absent-mindedly pulled one of her curls down and let it spring back up as she thought.

  Why would Indiana still help her?

  Or, if he wanted to help her, why would he rat her out to her friends?

  She thought about it, and thought about the evidence she had for her article.

  As time passed, the women around her began to wake up. The large room was soon filled with the fragrant steam of the showers and the chatter of the other women as they dressed and greeted the day.

  Get up, Nikki told herself. You’re not going to make sense of Indiana’s behavior, because it doesn’t make sense.

  She got up, dressed, and grabbed her bag.

  By the time she got to the pavilion to meet her students, Nikki had decided she was going to keep her head down, teach the rest of the week, and finish her piece on Travers.

  When it was done she would head back to New York City.

  It was going to be hard to avoid Honey, Addy and the boys, but it would only be for a few days. And once she was back in the city, it would be easier to put all of this in her rearview mirror.

  Though it seemed impossible now to t
hink of a day when she wouldn’t miss her friends and long for Indiana, she was a resilient person. She would get through it somehow. She had to. There was no other choice.

  Nikki

  A few days later, Nikki sat at a picnic table in the staff commons cabin and looked down at the water of the lake sparkling between the lush trees.

  The summer breeze carried the scent of jasmine and the earthier note of the rich soil in the woods.

  She told herself she’d better soak in the sights and scents of nature now. Today was her last day at Maxwell’s. By this time tomorrow, she’d be back in the city. And the smells of New York this time of year were more pungent than fragrant.

  The last few days had been a blur of sleepless nights and multiple drafts of her piece on Travers and his insider trading ring.

  Now it was time to find out if the result of her summer’s work was good enough.

  Nikki sighed and picked up the phone to call her mentor.

  Though she had done her best to write an insightful article, Nikki had still been nervous hitting “send” on that email last night to Nala.

  “Nikola,” Nala trumpeted her full name so loudly Nikki nearly jumped out of her seat. “I read your article.”

  Nikki yanked one of her curls out straight and let it bounce back up, the tension getting the best of her as she waited for the verdict.

  “Nikki, are you there?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m here.” She was almost breathless with anticipation.

  “I’m blown away,” Nala said. “I’m so proud of you. Your work is exceptional.”

  Nikki hugged herself, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt.

  “Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” she said. “I’m so glad you like it.”

  “Like it?” Nala sounded amused. “This is beautifully done.”

  “Well, I had a lot of help getting the data,” Nikki said.

  “I’m not talking about just the data, honey,” Nala replied. “I’m talking about the way you wrote this article. You’re drawing the readers in, making them care about insider trading. This can be a topic that’s hard for readers to identify with.”