So Pretty It Hurts

feeling had suddenly snuck up on me, and I couldn’t define it. Yes, there was a twinge of guilt over the dishwasher hoax, and the melancholy from knowing I’d be on my own for Christmas, but something about the conversation I’d just had was nudging me slightly, like a breeze you see rustling the leaves of a tree far across the yard but don’t feel yourself.

I knew I had to distract myself, because only then would it come to me. So I trudged to my desk and looked online at the route I needed to take to Pine Grove the next day. After familiarizing myself, I laid out the disguise I planned to wear—baseball cap, an old black ski parka, and hiking boots.

And then I took a deep breath and called Beau. It was torturing me not to talk to him, to not know what was going to happen with us. He picked up right away, sounding as if he was on foot someplace on the streets of Manhattan.

“Hi,” I said. “I was hoping we could talk.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” he said. A part of me relaxed a little. I’d been fearful of hearing a comment like “I don’t think we have anything to discuss, Bailey.”

“I can tell you’re out, so probably right now isn’t good. I’m going to Pennsylvania tomorrow—to Devon’s funeral—but I should be back late in the day.”

“Actually,” he said after a moment’s hesitation, “I’m not far from you at the moment. Just off Washington Square Park. Want me to come by?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll see you in a few minutes then.”

I hadn’t glanced in a mirror since my return from seeing Richard, and when I did, I discovered that I looked like hell. I had a wicked case of hat hair from the wool cloche I’d worn, and my makeup had vanished, exposing the dark circles under my eyes. Quickly I brushed my hair back into a ponytail, applied concealer, lipstick, and mascara. The buzzer rang just as I was tugging on a fresh sweater.

When I swung open the door and set eyes on Beau, with those deep brown eyes of his and his hair tucked sexily back behind his ears, the jitteriness I’d felt in anticipation of his arrival ballooned into something bigger: fear about where our discussion would lead. And then came a heart-squeezing sadness over the fact that our relationship might be doomed. Beau shrugged off his coat, letting it drop on a chair; I was surprised to see he was wearing a jacket and tie.

“Do you want a beer?” I asked.

“Yeah, thanks.”

When I returned with two bottles, Beau was sitting on the couch. He cocked his head toward my composition book and a pile of folders on the dining table.

“Have you figured anything out yet?”

“No, not yet. But I’m not giving up.”

“How’s the situation at Buzz, by the way? Have they accepted your version of things?”

“Not even close,” I said. “That’s why I’m going to the funeral. I need to figure out who’s tight enough with Devon’s mother to have put her up to this.”

“But the person wouldn’t be stupid enough to tip his hand in front of you.”

I offered a grim smile.

“I’m not going to let anyone know I’m there,” I said. “I’m going to spy, watch everything from a distance.”

“And if you don’t learn anything tomorrow?”

“I have no clue what I’ll do next. I like to think that the cops will determine Devon was murdered, and it will become clear that the killer wanted to sully my reputation. But the cops upstate don’t seem to buy my theory. So if I can’t prove to Nash that I’m innocent, I’ll be out of a job. And it might affect me getting work elsewhere.”

Beau shook his head in concern and tugged the knot of his tie away from his neck, loosening it.

“You’re all dressed up,” I said. “What were you doing tonight?”

I didn’t mean it as any kind of accusation—it was curiosity plain and simple—but when the words emerged from my mouth, there was a definite edge to them.

“Jeez, Bailey. I can’t make a move, it seems, without you wondering if I’ve been up to something totally clandestine and sinister. What is it? Do you think I’m really 007? Or just your garden-variety cheater?”

“I wasn’t wondering anything just now,” I said. “You said you were in my neighborhood, and I was simply curious about what you’d been doing.”

He sighed.

“Okay, maybe this time it was innocent enough,” he said. “But we’ve got a problem. You don’t trust me, and when you fester enough about it, you feel you have to pay me back somehow. Is this always going to be our pattern? I end up needing to go out of town or don’t tell you every detail about my past, and then you feel obligated to pour your heart out to some actor who plays a mortician on TV?”

“As I explained to you,” I said, “he was helping me with the Devon Barr case and nothing more.”

I was tempted to add, “And for your information, he plays a forensic detective with the medical examiner’s office, not a freakin’ mortician,” but I had the surprising good sense not to.

“You’re missing the point, Bailey,” Beau said. “It’s going to be some kind of payback. You feel a need for it because you don’t trust me.”

I’d perched on the edge of an armchair, directly across from Beau, but I rose now, crossed my arms against my chest, and paced a few feet in one direction and then a few feet in the other.

“On the one hand it seems I—I should trust you,” I said. “You say all the right things. And believe it or not, I’m not one of those maniacal women who rummage through a guy’s drawers or hack into his computer. But sometimes you just seem oddly vague about your actions. Take Sedona, for instance. You suddenly announce you have to see this guy, and yet you don’t want to give away much in the way of details about him. Like—God, I don’t know . . .”

“Like I was just making him up?”

“You said it, not me.”

“I’ll give you his cell phone number, and you can call him. The bottom line is that you should know me well enough by now to realize that I’m not a fan of the unessential. I needed to include the guy in the film, but frankly he’s too boring to get into a discussion about.”

“What about that British girl in Turkey? Was that really unessential information?”

“You and I weren’t in a relationship at that time.”

“But when you came back to the States, you implied to me that Turkey was a bore socially—it was just you and the dust and a lot of ancient stones.”

“It was a bore. If you really want the truth, yes, Abigail and I were having sex, lots of sex, but it was not a particularly satisfying experience for me. I was beginning to realize that I really wanted to be with you—and only you. When I got back I made a commitment to you, so what good would it have been to share the gory details?”

Try as I could, I was unable to chase away an image of Beau and Abigail naked in the sack. Abigail was bouncing up and down on him, the spitting image of Pippa Middleton.

I felt suddenly tongue-tied.

“Look, I’m sorry for being so blunt,” Beau said. “But I am at my wits’ end here.”

“No, I appreciate the truth. As you say, we hadn’t made any commitment before you went to Turkey. And I see now that there was nothing to be concerned about in Sedona. But—” I halted a moment, trying to pull my thoughts together. “I think deep down what’s really bothering me is that your vagueness when you tell me something shows a kind of hesitation on your part. I worry that I’ve pushed you into making a commitment, and you’re really not ready for it.”

Ouch. I couldn’t believe I’d said it. Beau set down his beer bottle on the coffee table and tapped his finger gently on his lips a few times. I could tell by his eyes that he was deciding exactly how to respond. Finally he let out a big sigh.

“Bailey, I know there are guys out there who don’t know their own minds, but I’ve never considered myself to be one of them. I said I was ready, and I am. But it seems more and more to me that