Unmasking Love: A Holiday for Romance Read online

  Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  * * *

  Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

  Unmasking Love

  Peggy Bird

  Avon, Massachusetts

  Copyright © 2014 by Peggy Bird.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

  Published by

  Crimson Romance

  an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  57 Littlefield Street

  Avon, MA 02322

  www.crimsonromance.com

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-7040-X

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7040-7

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-7041-8

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7041-4

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art © iStockphoto.com/hannamonika and iStockphoto.com/PhotoEuphoria

  Acknowledgments

  To a long line of actual visits to the lovely town of Ashland, Oregon, I can now add months of fictional visits as I wrote this story. It’s been almost as much fun as being there in person.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  More from This Author

  Also Available

  Chapter 1

  “Do you have a minute, Greer?”

  Greer Payne looked up from the boring deposition she was reviewing for a fellow deputy D.A. and smiled hopefully at Multnomah County District Attorney Jeff Wyatt, her boss. “I always have time for you, Jeff. Especially if you have something juicy for me to work on.”

  Her smile faded when he carefully closed the door without responding or smiling back. “The FBI report came back on the Dreier matter and I wanted to talk to you about it.”

  The few traces of hope that remained in her soul disappeared. “Have a seat. Can I get you coffee or something? Oh, wait, you’ve probably already had your coffee, haven’t you? Or have you?” She knew she was babbling but couldn’t seem to shut up.

  “I’m fine, thanks. Don’t bother. I won’t be here long.” He dropped a file folder on her desk. “I’ve excerpted the pieces of the report and the grand jury indictments I thought relevant for you to see. In a nutshell, the FBI and the grand jury concluded you didn’t do anything illegal and weren’t responsible for the leaks about the interagency task force. Dreier and the Russian mobsters he was working with got their information from another source.”

  “Can you tell me who the source was?”

  “I don’t think that’s relevant. Suffice it to say, they determined it wasn’t you.”

  What little pride Greer still had bubbled to the surface. “Of course it wasn’t me. I might have dated the guy, but I wasn’t stupid or careless enough to give him information about what was going on in this office.”

  “You weren’t stupid—aren’t stupid. But your judgment in continuing to be associated with someone everyone in the legal community knew skated close to the edge of the law …”

  She waved off the end of the sentence she had heard—and read—too many times in the past four months since her former lover had been arrested on charges of industrial espionage, kidnapping of a deputy D.A., and accessory to several murders. “I’ll regret that lapse in judgment to the end of my life, believe me.” She picked up the file folder he’d left on her desk. “Thank you for bringing this to me personally.”

  “Of course.” Jeff turned to leave, then stopped and faced her again. “One more thing. For the time being, and for I’m not sure how long, what happened is going to be, shall we say, career-limiting for you. I’ll be keeping you under wraps so some journalist doesn’t revive what happened a few months ago when you’re prosecuting a case and contaminate it with bad press. That means you’re going to be stuck in the office doing some pretty low-key tasks. Do you think you can handle that?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not if you want to continue working here, you don’t.”

  “Then that’s the answer, isn’t it?”

  He stared at her intently. “I don’t understand what you mean by that, exactly, but I’m sure you’ll let me know.” He left, quietly closing the door behind him.

  Greer sat stunned, not moving for what seemed like an hour but was probably only five minutes. In spite of her hopes, her exile to the Siberia of dull and unrewarding paperwork while she waited to have her name cleared wasn’t going to end any time soon. It apparently didn’t help that she was innocent. The downward slide of her reputation as one of the best legal minds in the D.A.’s office wasn’t going to be reversed any time soon. All that was left was to answer the question Jeff asked: could she handle being pushed to the sidelines professionally for an unknown period of time because of a bad decision in her personal life?

  And if she couldn’t, what were her other choices? Quit the D.A.’s office for a private practice in Portland? That wasn’t likely to work out. Her association with her discredited boyfriend would follow her. So … what, then? Leave Portland? That might not be a bad idea. Maybe she would be better off someplace where no one had ever heard of Paul Dreier, the Russian mob, or her taste in men. She had friends and family in California. Perhaps it was time to head south, back where she came from, to lick her wounds and regroup. Maybe, in fact, it was time for Greer Payne to simply disappear.

  Because she sure as hell wasn’t going to be happy sitting meekly in her office day after day watching everyone else get the good cases while she was assigned as pooper-scooper for the prize ponies in the parade.

  She rummaged through her messenger bag for the business card the real estate agent had left when she’d come to see if Greer was interested in selling her condo. She picked up the phone, punched in the number and, when the call was answered, said, “Hi, this is Greer Payne. About that offer on my condo …”

  • • •

  A month later, Greer was roaring south on I-5 at a speed that would guarantee her one hell of a ticket if she was pulled over. But she didn’t care. She was headed for California, and the faster she put this wretched state in her rearview mirror the happier she’d be. The landscape whizzed past her as, gradually, the green farms and forests of Oregon’s Willamette Valley and Siskiyou Mountains began to turn to the yellow-brown hills more like the Golden State’s scenery. She was almost there. She swore she could even smell California, it was that close. Excitement began to replace the tension and anger she’d been carrying around for months.r />
  But less than thirty miles from the border, she heard a peculiar noise. It wasn’t like any road noise she’d ever heard. It sounded more like it came from someplace inside the car. Panicked at first, she calmed down as it seemed to disappear when a new song started on her iPod. Relieved, she kept going. It had probably just been some odd instrumentation in the R & B she had blasting at decibel levels likely to make her deaf before the trip was over.

  However, ten miles later she heard the noise again as she pulled away from a pit stop near Ashland, where she’d gotten one last tank of gas someone else had to pump. It was definitely the car, not her music.

  Unwilling to believe her beloved Lexus would abandon her as most of her colleagues in Portland had, she ignored what she heard and turned toward the I-5 entrance ramp. But as she accelerated to get onto the freeway there was another weird noise, the car refused to shift into a higher gear, and the check engine light went on. She pulled over to the side of the on ramp and stopped. All she could think to do was what she did with a balky computer—she turned the ignition off, waited a few seconds, and turned it back on. The engine revved but the car didn’t move. No matter what she tried, it refused to budge from its new home on the side of the road.

  Fuck. One more desertion.

  The tow truck arrived half an hour later, but the man from the garage couldn’t get the car going either. The best he could do was offer her a ride into town after he loaded her car onto his truck. She was stuck for what he warned might be several days until they could figure out what was wrong.

  She wanted to scream. So close to escaping, yet so far from succeeding. Although she shouldn’t have been surprised. Being stranded in Ashland with a broken-down car went along with everything else that had gone wrong lately. There was no point in being disappointed. She just had to suck it up and live with it.

  Yeah. Right. If she could convince herself to be calm about this, she’d be eligible for sainthood.

  • • •

  The room the woman at the visitor’s center found for her was in a remodeled fifties motel that had been turned into a comfortable and beautifully appointed place to stay. The owners lived on site and had been alerted to her situation before she arrived.

  “You poor thing,” the woman at the front desk said as Greer filled out the registration information. “Car trouble is such a pain.” She looked down at the paperwork in front of her. “Oops. Sorry. With your last name, I guess we don’t make pain jokes.”

  Greer smiled for the first time in quite a few hours. “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”

  “Well, the bright side of this is you’ll have a chance to see Ashland. Ever been here before?”

  “Yeah. Came up from California to the Shakespeare Festival every summer for years.”

  The woman looked at the registration form again. “You gave an Oregon address.”

  “I’ve been living in Portland for a few years, but I’m moving back to California. The visits were when I was a kid. Came here with my mother and sisters.”

  “If you haven’t been here in a while, you might find a few things have changed. Why don’t you take a walk around while we get your room ready? You can leave your luggage here. It’ll be safe.”

  With nothing better to do until she could hole up in her motel room for the night, Greer wandered back toward town. The woman at the motel was right—some things had changed. Her mother’s favorite French restaurant was gone, replaced by a newer, trendier eating establishment. The store where her older sister had always found clothes she liked was now a convenience store. And there was a new indoor theater added to the outdoor Elizabethan theater and the Bowmer indoor space.

  But the bones of the town were the same. Ashland still had the comfortable feel of a small town that just happened to have at its core a world-class theater company.

  It was also very much Oregon, as Greer found out when she ordered a late lunch at a restaurant near Lithia Park. In a manner usually reserved for explaining the provenance of a valuable painting or a special bottle of wine, her server assured her that the chicken salad on field greens she ordered was local and free-range.

  After lunch she cruised through a few clothing stores where there were end-of-season sales going on. She hadn’t planned on spending money on clothes, as she faced the probability of a large car repair bill and had no job waiting for her in California. But when one shop owner lowered the price of a green dress that matched the color of Greer’s eyes and that the woman said was meant for her, Greer had given in. How could she resist when the owner had been so accommodating

  A couple more pleasant encounters with the shop owners and residents of Ashland later, Greer realized, as she walked back to her motel, that for the first time in months she was beginning to feel relaxed—in spite of the car breakdown, the unknown cost of repairs, and the forced change of plans. Her good mood might be a reaction to the beautiful autumn day—she was walking ankle-deep in colorful fallen leaves past shop windows that were beginning to be dressed for Halloween. The air was crisp and clean, the sun warm on her face.

  Or maybe it wasn’t the warmth of the sun that had relaxed her, but the warmth of the people she’d met. For a town overrun with tourists for most of the year, Ashland was remarkably friendly. Maybe, she thought, it wouldn’t be so bad to be stuck here for a few days. I can hang out, relax, get my car repaired, and be back on the road in a day or two feeling a little less stressed and ready to face whatever’s next.

  That thought held until the next morning when she called the garage. The conversation started with the mechanic saying, “We’ve discovered what’s wrong with your car, Ms. Payne.”

  “Great. How much will it cost, and how long will it take to fix it?”

  “Minimum cost is a couple thousand dollars. And it’ll take four or five days, maybe longer, to get it repaired.”

  “Ouch. What costs that much and takes so long?”

  “Your transmission’s shot. And, unless we can find one in a shop nearby, we have to order a new one. It’ll take a few days to get here. I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you.”

  “How’s it shipped, slow boat from Tokyo?”

  The mechanic snorted. “If we need to order it, it’ll be FedEx from Canada, actually. We’ll start tracking a tranny down as soon as you come in and sign a work order.”

  With no other choice, Greer signed the papers, extended her stay at the motel, and began what felt like a hospital vigil waiting for her sick car to come through surgery.

  By day five, with no end to her stay in sight, Greer was about out of patience. She was also out of things to divert her from worrying about the cost of this forced “vacation.” The charm of having the Starbucks barista know what she would order as soon as she walked in every morning had worn off. As had the welcome she got from the employees at Bloomsbury Books, all of whom greeted her by name each time she picked up the morning paper.

  Then just when she thought nothing good could possibly happen to her ever again, her luck turned.

  She was settled at a table with her paper in Brothers’, her favorite breakfast place, when she overhead a conversation between two men she’d often seen in Starbucks and around town. She’d figured out they were attorneys from the conversations she’d heard before and had often eavesdropped just to hear the professional chitchat they engaged in—the kind of banter between legal colleagues she missed. Today, however, it was more than just chitchat.

  “Did you see in the paper that Wilson Montgomery’s moving to Arizona?” the younger man asked.

  “No, that’s a surprise. I thought he’d be in the legislature until he was wheeled out of the House chamber on a gurney.” His companion laughed.

  “Apparently not. He’s closing his law practice, selling his house, and leaving town. Wants to be in a warmer climate, I guess.”

  “Sorry to lose him. I don’t always agree with his politics, but he knows more about consumer fraud than any other lawyer for three counties. No one else h
as his expertise. We’ll miss that.”

  Consumer fraud? They were talking about her area of expertise. She’d prosecuted more cases like that than all the rest of the deputies in Jeff’s office combined. She leaned over and interrupted them. “Excuse me for eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help hearing your conversation. Are you saying there might be a need in town for a lawyer with consumer fraud experience?”

  “Yeah, you know one?” the younger man asked.

  “I may,” she replied.

  “If you do, there’s a law practice just begging to be taken over.”

  “Who would I contact? I mean, if I knew someone, a friend maybe, who was interested.”

  The older man cocked his head and smirked. “If you’re seriously interested—or your friend is—call Wilson Montgomery.” He pulled a business card out of his jacket pocket and wrote something on the back of it. “Here’s the phone number.” He started to hand it to her then pulled it back. “You a lawyer?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Member of the Oregon bar?”

  “Yup.”

  “Interesting. Never recruited an attorney in a restaurant before.”

  “You may still not have.”

  He barked out a laugh. “Yeah, right.” Handing her the business card he said, “I’m Jim Foster. This is George Ross. And you’re …?”

  “Julie Payne.”

  She’d replied without thinking and was so stunned at her response that she was sure she looked relieved when the man merely said, “Nice to meet you, Julie Payne. Hope we see you again.” She said nothing more as the two of them rose from their table and left after a brief conversation with the restaurant owner.

  Julie Payne? Where the hell had that come from? Well, okay. She knew where it had come from. But she sure didn’t know why it had come out in the course of that particular conversation. On the drive from Portland, she’d toyed with the idea of killing off Greer Payne and resurrecting her childhood name, but she hadn’t thought more about it since she’d been in town.