She stared down through the polished glass at a display of elegantly packaged face creams. Her pulse was beating too rapidly. Her stomach was doing weird things.
What gives you the right to play games with other people’s lives, Lillian Harte? You can’t get away with treating folks like lab rats.
She could not blame this queasy, slightly panicky feeling entirely on the scene with Campbell Witley, as unpleasant as it had been. She had been getting little foretastes of this nasty sensation for several weeks. It was one of the reasons why she knew she had to shut down Private Arrangements.
“Can I help you?” a solicitous voice asked from the other side of the counter.
Lillian looked up and saw immediately that the sales-woman was not offering to summon medical assistance. She was looking to make a sale.
“Uh, no.” Lillian pulled herself together with an effort. “No thanks. Just browsing.”
The clerk’s smile slipped a little the way clerks’ smiles always did when you used the magic words.
“Let me know if I can be of service,” she said and moved off toward another potential customer.
“Yes. Thanks. I’ll do that.”
Lillian turned away. She wove a path through the remaining cosmetic counters, angled across accessories and shoes and exited the store through the doors on the cross street.
Outside on the sidewalk she glanced uneasily in both directions. Campbell Witley was gone.
But he had followed her home the other night. He knew where she lived.
This was scary stuff.
She took a steadying breath and walked purposefully toward her office building. She had definitely made the right decision when she had made up her mind to close down Private Arrangements.
A short while later she stepped off the elevator. Halfway down the hall she saw a familiar figure waiting for her in front of the door marked Private Arrangements. J. Anderson Flint.
She was immediately hit with a full-color flashback to the scene in Anderson’s office on Friday afternoon. Every lurid detail was there, including the red bikini briefs. One of the drawbacks to having an artist’s eye, she thought. You sometimes remembered things that you would just as soon forget.
It was all she could do to resist the urge to leap back into the elevator before the doors closed.
She made herself continue moving forward. There were things that had to be done before she left town. She could not avoid Anderson. Running away was not going to solve anything. Sooner or later she had to deal with the man.
Anderson did not notice her immediately. He was too busy checking the time on his very elegant black and gold wristwatch.
“Good morning, Anderson.”
He turned slightly at the sound of her voice and smiled. It struck her, not for the first time, that he could have played the part of the wise, understanding, all-knowing therapist in a soap opera. He certainly had the cheekbones and the jaw for television. He also had the eyes. They were very, very blue and filled with what looked like insight. He was in his late thirties but he projected an image of wisdom and maturity far beyond his years. His thick, precision-cut, prematurely silver hair and the precision-trimmed goatee added to the impression.
Anderson was dressed more conventionally this morning than he had been the last time she had seen him. He wore a gray chunky-weave turtleneck sweater, dark tailored trousers, and loafers. He had explained to her once over coffee that a formal business suit and tie made patients tense and uncomfortable. She tried not to think about whether he had on the red bikini briefs.
“Lillian.” He looked relieved to see her. “I was getting a little worried. It’s nearly eleven o’clock. I called your office several times this morning. When there was no response I thought I’d come up here and see what was going on.”
“Good morning, Anderson.” She jammed the keys in the lock and opened the door with a single twist of her hand. “I didn’t have any appointments today so I used the time to take care of some personal business.”
“Of course.”
She flipped on the lights and went toward her desk. “Was there something you wanted?”
Anderson followed her into the office. “I thought we might have dinner tonight.”
“Thanks, but I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” She gave him an apologetic smile and put the laptop down on her desk. “I’m going to be busy all day and I have a lot to do tonight.”
“You just said you didn’t have any appointments.”
“I’m getting ready to leave town for a while.”
“You never said anything about planning a trip.”
“I’m not going on vacation. I’m changing careers.”
“Changing-?” he asked with concern. “What’s going on here? You’re not making any sense, Lillian. You seem tense. Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Anderson. I’m going to stay at my family’s place in Eclipse Bay for a while, that’s all.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“A month.”
He stared at her. She doubted that he could have looked any more dumbfounded if she had just told him that she intended to join a cloistered order of nuns.
“I see.” He pulled himself together with a visible effort. “I hadn’t realized. Can you take that much time off from Private Arrangements?”
“I can take all the time I want, Anderson. Private Arrangements went out of business Friday afternoon.”
His jaw dropped a second time.
“I don’t understand,” he said, looking genuinely baffled. “What do you mean?”
“You heard me. I’ve closed my doors.”
“But that’s impossible,” he sputtered. “You can’t just walk away from Private Arrangements.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, you’ve got too much invested in it.” He swept out his hand to indicate their surroundings. “Your office. Your program. Your client list.”
“My lease is up next month. I made back my investment in the program several times over a long time ago. And I’ve whittled my client list down to one.” She waved one hand. “I admit I’m having a small problem getting rid of him, but I’m sure that situation will soon be resolved.”
“What about our book project?”
“That’s another thing, Anderson. I’m sorry, but I’ve decided not to get involved in helping you with your book.”
He went very still. “Something is wrong here. This isn’t like you. Your behavior is very abnormal. It’s obvious that you’ve got some issues.”
She propped herself on the edge of the desk and looked at him. “Anderson, a very unpleasant thing happened to me this morning. A man named Campbell Witley stopped me on the street. He used to date one of my clients. You know what? Mr. Witley was really, really mad at me because I’d helped his girlfriend find someone else to date.”
“What does this Witley have to do with your decision to shut down your business?”
“He pointed out in no uncertain terms that I had no right to use my computer program to meddle in other people’s lives.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“As it happens, I tend to agree with him.”
Anderson stared at her, clearly appalled.
“What do you mean?” he asked sharply. “Why do you say that?”
She eyed the closed laptop and wondered how to explain things to him. He probably wouldn’t believe her if she told him that the program only worked in conjunction with her intuition and a dose of common sense. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, herself.
She needed a more technical-sounding excuse with which to fob him off.
“The program is flawed,” she said finally. In a way, that wasn’t really far from the truth, she thought.
“Flawed. Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. You’ve been so successful. You’ve attracted so many high-end clients.”