The Fiance Thief Read Free Page A

realized he didn’t know if it were true. Finding out about her friendship with Miranda Craig madehim realize he didn’t know anything about Claire. Nothing except that until a few minutes ago, she had shaken like a leaf every time he spoke to her. He missed that reaction already.
    “You’re not going to lunch, too, are you?” he asked Lissa.
    “People eat, Alec. They don’t all live on venom like you do.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me about Claire before? If you knew about the book?”
    Lissa shrugged. “Until I read…umm…”
    “Until the contents of that letter were accidentally revealed to you,” Alec supplied.
    “Yes, exactly,” Lissa said. “Until then, I didn’t have any idea it was the same Claire Morgan. I didn’t even know Claire was from here.”
    “You wouldn’t still have your copy, would you?”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” Lissa said, heading out the door for the elevator. “I think I may have left it around here somewhere.”
    As the doors swished shut behind her, Alec stepped into the hallway and watched the numbers track the elevator’s movement, waiting until Lissa had landed safely in the lobby before making a mad dash for her desk.
    S O M ICK THOUGHT she’d get spunk someday, huh? As if spunk were something you could throw into your grocery cart with your yogurt and peanut butter. As though it were a muscle you could develop with exercise, like power abs in ten minutes a day.
    She knew it was wrong to be annoyed with Mick. He was basically harmless, famously tactless and spent his days in an ineffectual muddle. But as Alec and Hank often pointed out, somewhere in his brain were the long-buried secrets of a great newspaperman. Lissa had told Claire that Mick had spent years living off stories from his journalisticheyday, but when he’d inherited some money, he’d had enough of the old newsman’s fever to buy the equipment from a sinking paper and crank out his own weekly. Making it almost profitable was something else. That was Alec’s doing.
    Alec. Claire stabbed at a piece of lettuce in her salad, picturing his face. His regrettably handsome face. When he called to offer her the job with the paper, she’d had a clear vision of him, almost like someone was beaming his photograph to her. She’d imagined his thin, ashy hair, his unassuming build, his Adam’s apple constantly bobbing up and down. He could have been straight out of central casting, an actor who plays the peevishly sensible fiancé in a romantic comedy, destined to get thrown over by the last scene.
    Two days after his phone call, she’d stumbled into the real thing. More specifically, she’d tripped him as he got on the elevator, and she caused him to shut his tie in the door. He was nice enough about it as she blundered through her apologies, but throughout the elevator ride, she’d prayed that she’d never see this man again. There was something about him—his curly black hair, fabulous blue eyes, the way his lean body seemed to fill the whole elevator with his presence. It was the kind of chemistry they posted warning signs about in laboratories. When they’d gotten off the elevator together, she’d hoped he was just a visiting salesman. When she’d asked for Alec Mason and heard him say “I’m Alec,” she saw in his eyes that he was as disappointed as she was. Since that first fateful stumble, their nonrelationship had only gotten worse.
    She slipped the paperback mystery out of her purse and opened it, noting with pleasure, that the first victim had many of Alec’s traits. Arrogance. Looks to kill for.
    “Drowning your sorrows in ranch dressing?” Claire looked up to see Lissa take a seat across from her.
    “Low-cal buttermilk, actually,” she said, closing her book. She liked Lissa in spite of herself, especially since in many ways the other reporter reminded her of Missy. Or Miranda, as she might as well get used to thinking of her. They were both a little shallow, and neither could hold a