Sweet Liar Read online

  “Is this the young woman who’s living in your house with you?”

  Mike grimaced. His mother was in Chandler, Colorado, over two thousand miles away, yet she knew what he was doing in New York. “I don’t even want to know how you know who’s rented the apartment,” he said.

  Pat laughed. “Tammy cleans for your cousin Raine, too. Remember?”

  Mike rolled his eyes. The big mouth of one of his Montgomery cousins. He should have known. “Mom, you want to answer my question or find out every tiny detail of my life secondhand from other people?”

  “I would love to hear directly from you.”

  “She’s never been to New York, and the place terrifies her. Where can I take her to make her like the city?”

  Pat’s mind raced. Why was the young woman living in New York if she hated the place? To be near her son? And if she and Mike were in love, what was she like?

  “I mean, Mom, should I take her to the top of the Empire State Building? Rockefeller Center? What about the Statue of Liberty? How about Ellis Island?”

  Pat drew in her breath, for she knew that Mike hated tourist attractions. Unfortunately, her son was much more at home in a smoke-filled bar than in a group of gawking sightseers, but he must be serious if he was willing to brave the Statue of Liberty for her. “Is she a normal girl?”

  “No,” Mike said. “She has three arms, practices several bizarre religions, and talks to her black cat. What do you mean, is she a normal girl?”

  “You know exactly what I mean,” Pat snapped. “Is she like that stripper who visits you, or is she one of those muscle girls from your gym? Knowing you, Mike, she could be a down-on-her-luck prostitute.”

  Mike smiled at the phone. “And what would you say if I said she was one of those and that I was going to marry her?”

  Pat didn’t hesitate. “I’d ask what you wanted for a wedding gift.”

  Mike laughed. “Okay, she’s normal. Very normal, if by that you mean prim and proper. Sam could marry a preacher.”

  Pat put her hand over the phone, rolled her eyes skyward, and whispered, “Thank you.” “Take her shopping,” Pat said with enthusiasm. “Show her the stores on Fifth. Take her to Saks. Your cousin Vicky is a buyer at Saks.”

  “Oh?” Mike said without much interest. He had too many relatives to remember half of them. “And which one is she?”

  “You know very well that she’s J.T. and Aria’s youngest. If your young lady still doesn’t like New York after she’s seen Saks, take her walking on Madison. Start at Sixty-first, walk up to the Eighties, and look in all the store windows.”

  Mike was laughing. “Especially in the jewelry store windows? Maybe buy her a diamond or two? The kind of diamonds in engagement rings? Tell me, Mom, how many women have you mentally married me off to in my short life?”

  “At least six,” Pat said, laughing in return.

  Mike’s voice changed to serious. “Mom, you and Dad are happily married, aren’t you?”

  At the tone of his voice, Pat thought her heart skipped a beat, for something was troubling her child. “Of course we are, darling.”

  “Samantha—that’s her name—said that any woman who has been married for longer than two years to the same man has a very high pain tolerance. You don’t think that’s true, do you?”

  After a futile attempt at controlling her laughter, Pat released it. Even when Mike kept saying, “Mom! Mom!” she kept laughing. Even when she knew he put the phone down in disgust, she still couldn’t stop laughing.

  Mike put down the telephone, more than a little annoyed at his mother, actually, annoyed at all women. If they thought marriage to a man was so horrible, why were they all trying to get married? All of them except Samantha, that is, he thought. Or maybe her reluctance was merely an act.

  Smiling, he went to the bedroom to dress. For Samantha he would put on a suit and tie. Maybe he’d even wear that Italian number his sister had picked out for him.

  Forty-five minutes later, he emerged from the bedroom, showered, shaved, and dressed, then checked the hall mirror and straightened his tie. Not bad, he thought. Not bad at all.

  “Sam!” he yelled up the stairs. “You ready to go?”

  He had to wait a few minutes before she came down the stairs, but when he saw her, he smiled at her and offered her his arm.

  When Samantha saw the way Mike was dressed, she wanted to die. Just plain sit down and die. She’d had dreams of embarrassing him, of making him say that he wasn’t going to be seen with her dressed as she was—that’s what her ex-husband would have said if she had appeared wearing her workout clothes—so she’d dragged an ancient pink sweat suit, worn bare in places, discolored in others, from the closet. Across the chest of the sweat shirt was emblazoned “At first he put me on a pedestal and now he wants me to dust it.”

  As Samantha stood at the head of the stairs, looking down at Mike in his beautiful dark suit, she knew she had never seen a better-looking man in her life. At least this time when her father had chosen a man for her, he had picked one who looked good. She hadn’t been as fortunate with Richard.

  After one look at Mike’s eyes, she knew he wasn’t going to be embarrassed by her. In fact, she wasn’t sure he was aware that what she had on was inappropriate. Smiling at her as though he was looking forward to going out with her, he held up his arm for her to take.

  “I can’t—” Samantha began. “I have to—”

  “Samantha, it’s eleven o’clock. If you take any longer to get dressed, the stores will be closed.”

  “Stores,” she said, horror in her voice as she tried to pull away from him, but he held her firmly.

  “I cannot go to a store looking like this,” she said.

  Mike looked her up and down and read her shirt. “You look fine to me. I like pink on you. Besides, we can buy you new clothes if you want.”

  Pulling at her arm didn’t gain her release. “I have to change.”

  Giving her a look of frustration, one of those count-to-ten looks, he said with exaggerated patience, “If you didn’t like what you had on, why did you wear it?”

  Samantha wouldn’t answer that, since she couldn’t very well tell him that it had been her intention to make him refuse to be seen with her, especially not since he didn’t seem to notice what she had on.

  Feeling like a child who was being punished, her chin down, she followed him out of the house and into the streets. So far, her total experience of New York had been Lexington Avenue. Now she walked with Mike toward Madison Avenue, then to Fifth, and the closer they got to Fifth Avenue, the more Samantha became aware of her atrocious clothing. In magazines one saw models wearing gorgeous designer clothing, and a person in the real world of Middle America sometimes wondered who in the world wore those things. Most Americans wear bright-colored sportswear, looking as though they spend their lives climbing mountains or running marathons. But in New York the men and women—especially the women—looked to Samantha as though they had stepped from designer showrooms.

  As she walked with Mike, her hand held firmly in his arm, Samantha was painfully aware of the women around her. They were so fantastically well groomed. Their hair looked as though they shampooed it with fairy nectar, their nails were perfectly trimmed and polished, as though they never used their hands, and their clothes were nothing less than divine.

  Of course one drawback to New York women was their snobbery. Many of the women gave Samantha looks of pity when they saw the way she was dressed, and some of them even smiled at her in a way that made Samantha move closer to Mike, as though for protection. Turning, he looked down at her, patted her hand, and smiled when she moved closer to him, seeming to have no idea what was going on between the woman who clung to him and the women on the street. Samantha thought it must be wonderful to be able to be oblivious.

  By the time they reached Fifth Avenue, Samantha wanted to crawl in a hole. Mike seemed to have a place he wanted to go so they hurried past store after store with beautiful c
lothing in the windows. They passed Tiffany’s, Gucci, Christian Dior, Mark Cross. After a while Samantha stopped looking at the clothes because the more she saw, the worse she felt.

  At Fiftieth Street, they came to a large store with dark blue awnings, and to her horrified amazement, Mike started toward the revolving doors. Samantha pulled away from him. In the first place, revolving doors puzzled her; she couldn’t seem to get the hang of when she was to enter and when she was to exit. Once, she had gone around one of the things three times before she was able to get out. In the second place, she saw that this was Saks Fifth Avenue. She could not, absolutely could not, enter a world-renowned store dressed in a worn-out, faded pink sweat suit.

  Mike went round the revolving doors, saw Samantha wasn’t with him, then went round again, this time stretching out his hand and grabbing her arm. After wedging her into the pie-shaped door area with him, he pulled her out of the door into the store at the appropriate time.

  When they entered the store, Samantha stood still for a moment, dazzled by what she saw before her. To anyone who had spent four years in a town like Santa Fe, Saks was heaven come to earth. Here were consumer goods that did not have howling coyotes on them. Here was clothing that was not made from Pendleton blankets. She saw saleswomen who wore something other than Mexican cotton and acres of turquoise and silver jewelry. She saw people who moved faster than sun-warmed lizards, and people were wearing shoes that in no way resembled the footwear of cowboys. Best of all, there was not one single solitary piece of leather fringe in sight.

  “Like it?” Mike asked, watching her face, which showed her awe as she looked at the sparkling Judith Leiber purses in the case before her.

  Samantha could only look at him, much too stunned to speak.

  “Want to do a little shopping?” He was on the verge of laughing at her as he asked the rhetorical question. “I think the escalator is back there.”

  As Samantha came out of her trance, she became aware of the women in the store looking her over, knowing full well that she failed on every count. Maybe she could go back to the house, she thought, change her clothes, and come back here. With the money she had saved, she could afford a new dress. But the truth was, Samantha knew she didn’t own a garment that was up to the fashion standards of the women she saw in this beautiful store.

  “I can’t go shopping wearing this,” she whispered to Mike.

  From the look on his face she could see that he didn’t understand what she was saying. Sometimes it seemed that the language difference between men and women was as great as that between Chinese and English. How could she explain to a man that saleswomen would have nothing to do with a woman who looked as though she needed their goods?

  “You look great,” Mike said, then began pushing Samantha toward the back of the store.

  There were tall, beautiful young women offering other customers samples of perfume, but they took one look at Samantha with her pulled-back hair and repulsive old sweat suit and didn’t offer her the perfume. One woman after another glanced at Mike, then at Samantha, then back at Mike, with an expression that asked, How could a great-looking guy like you be seen with a frump like her?

  As Mike practically pushed her into an elevator, Samantha almost hid behind him, trying to keep anyone from seeing her.

  Pulling Samantha along, Mike got out on the ninth floor, then led her through the children’s department.

  “Where are you dragging me?” she asked, trying to pull out of his grasp, but it was like trying to break free of a tow truck.

  “I’m taking you to see a friend of mine. Not really a friend, more like a cousin.”

  Pulling her through offices, he didn’t stop until he came to one glassed enclosure. Behind a desk sat a young woman who was not beautiful exactly, but very striking. Her hair looked as though it were incapable of being out of place, and her clothes had obviously been made for her body alone. The sight of her made Samantha look about for a hiding place where she wouldn’t be seen by this elegant young woman.

  As soon as the woman saw Mike, she smiled and stood up, but Mike did not smile. Drawing himself into a military at-attention stance, he clicked his heels together, took her fingertips in his hand, and kissed them. “Your royal highness,” he said in a voice of an official courtier.

  Looking about the office at her co-workers nervously, the woman said, “Mike, stop that.”

  Grinning, Mike grabbed her into his arms, bent with her like something out of a Fred Astaire movie, and kissed her neck enthusiastically. “Better?” he asked as he lifted her to stand straight again.

  “Much,” she said, blushing, trying to act annoyed but obviously charmed by him as she moved out of his grasp.

  “So how’s the palace and the folks?” Mike asked, smiling as though very pleased with himself.

  “Everyone is fine—as you’d know if you bothered to visit. Mike, as honored as I am by your visit, I have work to do. What can I do for you?”

  “Help us shop.” Pulling Samantha from the hiding place she was trying to make for herself between the door and a filing cabinet, he presented her as though she were something he wanted repaired, like a watch or, actually, more like a squirrel-eatin’, rifle-totin’ hillbilly.

  Seeing the way the woman looked from her to Mike in question, considering the proprietary way Mike was holding her arm, Samantha tried to explain. “It’s not like it looks. He’s my guardian.” As soon as she said it, she realized how dumb the words sounded, how she was making things worse by speaking.

  “Rather like Tinkerbell,” Mike said, still grinning.

  “More like Captain Hook,” Samantha retaliated quickly.

  At that the young woman laughed and walked toward Samantha with her hand extended. “It sounds as though you understand him. My name is Victoria Montgomery and Mike and I are cousins of sorts.” Looking Samantha up and down with a professional eye, she appraised her face, her figure, and the dreadful clothes. “What can I do for you?”

  Giving the young woman a crooked smile, doing what she could to redeem herself, Samantha said, “Make me look like one of those women on the street.”

  With a smile of complete understanding, Vicky said, “I think we can manage something.” She turned to Mike. “Why don’t you meet us in about three hours?”

  “Not on your life,” Mike answered. “I’m staying through all of it. If she’s left on her own, she dresses like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Can you fix her up?”

  He made Samantha sound like a car whose transmission had fallen out and it was questionable whether the car was repairable or not. After one sympathetic look at Samantha’s face, now the same color as her deplorable sweatsuit, Vicky turned to her cousin. “Mike, you’ve been using your muscles too much and your brains not enough. Mind your manners!” Her voice carried authority as well as much affection for her handsome cousin.

  After a smile filled with gratitude directed toward Vicky, Samantha turned toward the elevators and started walking, feeling better already.

  “How much?” Vicky whispered to Mike when Samantha was a few feet away.

  “Whatever,” Mike answered, shrugging.

  Vicky lifted one perfectly plucked eyebrow at him. “Are we talking Christian Dior or Liz Claiborne?”

  “I guess that means expensive or cheap. I want her to have both. Everything. But don’t let her see the prices on the clothes and send the bill to me.” He paused a moment in thought. “And I want shoes and whatever else women wear.”

  “What about hair?” Vicky was studying her cousin. She knew very well that he could afford what he wanted to buy, but she also knew that he didn’t spend his money frivolously.

  Mike was looking at Vicky with eyes that nearly begged for her help. He was so tired of seeing Samantha with her beautiful hair scraped back into a tight, ugly bun. “You know,” he said wistfully, “I think her hair just may be curly when it’s down.”

  “You don’t know for sure?” Vicky asked archly, doing her best to figur
e out what this woman meant to him.

  “Not yet,” Mike said with confidence and a wink at his pretty cousin. “Not yet.”

  Samantha knew she had never spent such a heavenly day in her life as the one she spent at Saks with Vicky and Mike. When Samantha was a child she had often gone on shopping expeditions with her mother, and they had been an enormous amount of fun, but after her mother had died, she hadn’t seemed to have much time or even the inclination to adorn herself. After she was married and had moved to Santa Fe, she had had neither money nor time nor the desire to shop.

  But even when she’d been with her mother, she’d not had as good a time as she had on this day. Vicky’s taste in clothing and corresponding accessories was irreproachable, and her diplomacy in guiding Samantha toward the correct garments was something that had to be experienced to be believed. At first Samantha haphazardly and hesitantly chose a few outfits from the racks and tried them on, but when she looked in the triple mirrors, she found that she looked as she always did: boring. Then Vicky very sweetly, casually, tactfully, asked if she might be allowed to choose a few things for Samantha, and of course Samantha agreed. What woman hadn’t yearned for an elegant, regal-looking woman like Victoria to help her dress?

  Within twenty minutes after Vicky handed Samantha the first garment, she began to see a completely different version of herself. Stepping back in the large, luxurious dressing room on the third floor, she looked at herself in the perfect-fitting suit by St. John and saw a person she did not recognize: elegant but maybe a little sexy, comfortable but refined, fashionable but classic.

  “May I?” Vicky asked as she removed the rubber band from Samantha’s hair and let her blonde hair float about her shoulders.

  Looking at herself in the mirror, Samantha remembered that she had started pulling her hair back to get it out of her way when she was working on computers, but she’d also found that she was taken more seriously when she didn’t have a couple of feet of blonde hair falling in her face.

  Stepping back in the dressing room, Vicky studied Samantha, looking at her as an artist would look at a painting, first one way then the other. “Could we cut your hair? Perhaps style it and shape it so it falls properly? Would you mind?”