“Tell us about that gorgeous Terence Walker,” someone demanded. It was a woman who looked to be in her fifties, but the very mention of Terry had her giggling like a schoolgirl.
Thankfully, the question broke Callie’s train of thought. She grinned. “Want to know just how sexy he is?” she asked in a seductive whisper, playing the game.
“Oooh, yes,” several women shouted back.
Callie dropped her voice to an even lower, even huskier pitch. “He is every bit as handsome, every bit as dangerous and every bit as desirable as he appears on-screen.”
“When are you two finally going to be married?” one girl, barely out of her teens, asked, proving that Terry’s appeal crossed generational lines.
“They haven’t told me that yet.”
“Do you see each other off-screen, too?”
“All the time,” Callie said honestly.
“Oh, my God,” one woman moaned. “It’s true, then. You two are having an affair in real life?”
This was tricky turf. The publicity people had warned her to let people cling to their illusions, within reason. Claiming to be involved with Terry off-screen seemed to be a little extreme.
“No,” she said, as if she wished it were otherwise. “We’re just friends.”
One of her old schoolmates, class brain Wanda Harris, waved her hand. “I heard you were living together. Is that wrong?”
Wanda glanced pointedly toward the edge of the crowd when she said it. Callie followed her gaze and spotted Eunice, who blushed furiously and avoided looking directly at her. Dear heaven, what had Eunice been telling the neighbors?
“Actually, we live in the same building,” Callie responded. “I knew Terry before I joined the cast. He got me the bit part that led to my being hired.”
“Will you and Terry end up together on the show, I mean, forever?” another woman called out. Either she’d missed the earlier question about marriage or she didn’t want to believe that Callie didn’t really know the answer to that.
“This is daytime TV,” Callie reminded her, drawing laughs. “Nothing is forever.”
“Just like real life,” some male cynic in the crowd muttered loudly enough to be overheard.
It went on like that for another fifteen minutes before Callie called a halt and offered to sign autographs. The line snaked past for over an hour, allowing little time to catch up with the women she’d once gone to school with. At the end, Eunice was waiting—alone, Callie noted with relief—her expression stiff and unhappy.
“You had to put me down, didn’t you?” she said by way of a hello.
Callie stared at her. “Excuse me?”
“You had to make me look like I’d lied about you and Terry living together.”
“If that’s what you told people, then you were lying,” Callie reminded her.
“Just stretching the truth a little,” she said defensively. “What was the big deal? Would it have hurt you to play along?”
“It was a big deal to me, and it would be an even bigger deal to Terry. We’re both seeing other people. I’m sorry if you thought I was telling the truth to deliberately hurt your credibility.”
Eunice remained stonily silent. Callie drew in a deep breath and tried to make peace. She looked around to see if there was any sign of her brother-in-law.
“Isn’t Tom with you?”
“No, he was too busy to leave the farm.”
“That’s too bad,” Callie said without much sincerity. “Look, I have an hour before I have to go back to the airport. Don’t you want to go somewhere and have a nice lunch?”
Her sister shrugged indifferently. “If you’re sure you can spare the time.”
Callie bit back a sharp retort. It was one hour of her life. Surely she could force herself to be pleasant for that long. There had been a time when her sister had been the closest thing she’d had to a best friend. It was way past time they tried to recapture that closeness.
When they were settled into the mall’s only non-fast-food restaurant, she studied her sister. Eunice’s thick brown hair, which she had once envied, had been scooped into an unbecoming ponytail. She’d applied too much blush to her cheeks and done nothing to accent her lovely dark eyes. Callie’s fingers itched to take her makeup case from her purse and do the job right. Eunice would only have resented her for it, though.
“You look good,” she said instead.
Eunice’s lips almost curved into a smile at that. “Now who’s lying,” she said. “I look like the devil. I meant to take more time getting myself together, but Tom needed help in the fields this morning. I almost didn’t get here at all.”
Callie thought about what it must be like being chained to a man and a lifestyle that demanded so much unrewarded attention. Compassion stole through her. Eunice might have chosen this life for herself, but she didn’t deserve to be so miserable.
“I’m glad you made it,” she said.
Eunice looked as if she didn’t quite believe her, but she did begin to visibly relax at last.
“How’s Mother?” she asked eventually.
“Doing surprisingly well. She’s doing some work for Terry and me, answering our fan mail. I asked her if she wanted to come on this trip with me, but she said she’d be fine in New York.”
“Of course. Why would she want to see me?” Eunice said with startling bitterness. “Why would she want to see the daughter who stayed behind and took care of her?”
“She misses you,” Callie said. “I know she does.”
“Oh, really? She hardly ever calls.”
“She probably worries about it being too expensive,” Callie improvised in an attempt to soothe Eunice’s ruffled feathers. “You should see the way she grumbles over the price of groceries. She pinches pennies like an old miser.”
Eunice didn’t seem inclined to buy the excuse, but she let it drop. “Do you think she’ll come back here?”
“She hasn’t mentioned it
