Kitabı oku: «His Innocent Temptress», sayfa 2
“Dinner?” Hannah’s head flew up so quickly, and she was standing so close to Alex—actually, he was standing so close to her—that she nearly clipped his chin with her head. Stepping back quickly, stumbling for a moment, of course, she looked up at him. “Dinner? Tonight?”
Alex smiled, shook his head. “But no sharp knives,” he teased, taking the medical bag from her hand and walking out of the stable with her, back to her SUV. “I’ll pick you up around six or so, okay?”
She slid onto the seat, praying the keys were still in the ignition, because otherwise she’d be damned if she knew where they could be, and she wouldn’t be able to stick them into the ignition anyway. Her hands were shaking badly, too badly to blame on the damp, biting weather outside the warm stable. “At six. Sounds…sounds fine.”
“Good,” Alex said, slamming the door, then stepping away, probably to make sure she didn’t back up over his toes. Hannah felt his gaze on her until she’d made the turn that would cut off his sight of her, then stopped the SUV, gripped the steering wheel with both hands and tried to get her breathing under control.
He had asked her out! Not a date. Nobody in their right mind could call it a date. It was a thank-you offer. Maybe even a pity offer. But he’d made it, and she’d accepted, and he still wanted to do something else for her. “Anything,” he’d said. “Anything at all.”
Oh, brother. Would she ever get a chance like this again?
ALEX SPENT ANOTHER HOUR in the stable, just leaning over the top of the bottom half of the stall door, watching Khalahari and Khalid.
They would lose Jabbar soon, it was inevitable. He’d had a long, good life, and enriched their lives as much with his presence as with the foals he provided that made up the bedrock of The Desert Rose, the growing legend of The Desert Rose as a premier Arabian stud.
Jabbar. The last legacy of his parents, the only thing besides his two brothers and the golden ring he wore on his right hand, left to remind him of Sorajhee.
There were so few memories, clouded by the passage of time and the fact that he’d only been four-and-a-half years old when he was suddenly ripped from his mother’s arms and put on a plane, traveling halfway across the world to a new land, a new family.
He could remember his father, but only vaguely. A tall man, who never hesitated to bend down to speak to a small child. A man whose face Alex believed he saw in his own mirror as he shaved each morning, now that he was thirty-two, already a year older than his father had been when he was murdered.
Flashes of a long white robe. A bright white smile in a swarthy, sun-kissed face. Big hands, hands that gently held those so much smaller. The soft musical murmur of Arabic, a language Alex once knew but now had almost totally forgotten.
That was a sin, and a shame. But Uncle Randy had seen no need to keep up the boys’ Arabic lessons, or so he’d said, right up until the day he’d sat the three of them down and told them otherwise.
Hiding. They’d been in hiding for twenty-seven years, all of them. Hiding from their Uncle Azzam, who still ruled in Sorajhee. Alex kept up on the news about his homeland, although he didn’t say anything to his brothers, his aunt or his uncle. There was no need to worry them, make them think that he might plan to one day go back, claim his rightful throne.
It was too late for that. Years and years too late. All that was in Sorajhee were the graves of his parents. He didn’t know the people, didn’t even know much of the language. His life, his memories, and those of his brothers, were here in Texas.
Alex knew his father had died trying to make Sorajhee strong, safe from invasion, and that his mother had died to avenge their father and reclaim the throne for her sons. Now, with the passage of years, and the borders still firmly closed, Azzam’s rule was keeping Sorajhee out of the mainstream, keeping open only the ports that were the main income-making industry in the small country. Nobody save the natives of Sorajhee were allowed outside the ports, inside the country that was nearly an island, with only one strip of well-defended border touching the mainland. It was as if Azzam had built a high fence on three sides of the country and marked it “No Trespassing.”
Sorajhee was the past, both because of the time Alex had spent away from the land, and because his Uncle Azzam had decreed it to be so. But Azzam had been lucky so far. Keeping his ports open had kept the greedy eyes of the Middle East turned away from him for years, concentrating them instead on oil-rich countries like the neighboring Balahar.
But nothing stands still, and Alex, from his reading, felt sure that Sorajhee and Balahar would soon have to unite, as his father had prophesied, or they would both be overrun.
No. This was no place for a son of Ibrahim Bin Habib El Jeved. Enough Jeved blood had already been spilled, enough Jeved lives had been altered forever. Let his Uncle Azzam realize his brother had been right, or let him perish. Alex sometimes wondered if he was fatalistic or if what he felt inside him was the age-old Arab belief in fate. Either way, the fate of Sorajhee was not his. That he did know.
Alex had a job, a sacred trust his mother had given him that last day. He was to take care of his brothers, of Jabbar. He was to help his uncle Randy. And that is what he’d done. He was at peace with his past and with his future.
“I just heard,” Cade said, leaning on the wood beside Alex. “I got back from town a little while ago, and Mickey stopped me to give the good news. He’s a beaut, Alex. A true son of his sire. He’ll be black as Jabbar, too. Glorious and proud. But that will take a while.”
Alex smiled at his brother. “First he has to learn to control all four legs at one time,” he said. His brother, youngest of the twins by a few very important minutes as far as the succession went, was the Coleman who had chosen running the business end of The Desert Rose as his life’s work. Both Cade and Mac resembled Alex, but there was something softer, more human, about their dark handsomeness. More of Rose lived in her twins.
Alex flicked at Cade’s lapel. “A suit? You’re wearing a suit? Where did you say you went? And what’s her name?”
“Business, big brother, I went into Austin on business,” Cade corrected him, then shook his head. “Okay, and a girl.”
“There’s always a girl, isn’t there, Cade?” Alex said, turning to walk away from the stall. He was filthy, a little bloody, and suddenly he wanted a hot shower and clean clothes. “If you weren’t so damn good at your job, I’d have to call you a playboy, you know.”
“Well, now I’m insulted. I’d like to be considered a playboy. Has a certain ring to it, you know,” Cade said, obviously joking. “Not that anyone could call you a playboy, big brother. When was the last time you were out on a date? Your Bridle High School senior prom?” They walked across the stable yard together, Cade careful of his dress shoes, heading for the main house.
“Just because I don’t see one girl for drinks at seven, and another at ten for a late dinner, and call that a double date, doesn’t mean I don’t have a social life. As a matter of fact,” he said, knowing he was about to put his foot in his mouth, “I have a date tonight.”
Cade stopped dead outside the front door of the house. “Excuse me? I couldn’t have heard that right. You have a date? Has anyone notified the newspapers? Who is it?”
“Hannah Clark,” Alex muttered under his breath as he opened the front door, gestured for Cade to enter the house ahead of him.
“Oh, Hannah Clark,” Cade said, wiping his feet on the mat, his attention momentarily distracted, as he knew his Aunt Vi didn’t think he was too old to be scolded for tracing stable yard dirt into her house. “Whoa! Wait a minute. Did I just say Hannah Clark?”
“Actually, I said it.” Alex hung his hat on one of the hooks just inside the foyer. “She delivered the foal, a breech, and I wanted to thank her.”
“Uh-huh,” Cade said, watching as Alex stripped off his jacket and hung it on another peg. “Aunt Vi hates when you do that, you know. She says the rack is just for show. You weren’t even supposed to come in the front door in your boots. But, then, having a date with the Hannah Slip-on-a-banana Clark has probably scrambled your brains. Hannah Clark, Alex? Really?”
“Oh, shut up,” Alex said, stomping off to the wing of the house where he and his brothers all had their own rooms.
Chapter Two
Half of Hannah’s wardrobe now resided on her bed, on a small chair in the corner and draped over the desk in front of the windows. And still she didn’t know what she would wear.
Fourteen pairs of jeans. How had she ever accumulated fourteen pairs of jeans? Granted, some of them dated back to her high school days, as she hadn’t grown as much as a quarter inch since the tenth grade. She’d lived in jeans then, as she pretty much lived in jeans now. Jeans, and flannel shirts, or tank tops in the summer.
The only dresses in her closet were the prom gown she’d worn the night Bobby Taylor stood her up for the sophomore Sweetheart dance and the navy-blue suit she’d worn on college interviews. Even the suit had slacks instead of a skirt.
Every penny she’d ever earned at summer jobs had gone toward veterinary school, and every penny she’d earn working with her father—for her father—would go to pay down the student loans she’d taken out when her father refused to help her. She didn’t have “casual” money, go-out-and-shop money.
And she had no reason to buy dresses. Working two part-time jobs all through school had limited her social life, not that anyone had ever asked her out more than once. Shy, tongue-tied, unsure of herself, she hadn’t been any young college guy’s dream of a hot date, and she’d known it. Soon the whole school knew it, and Hannah had plenty of time to keep her grades at a constant 4.0.
“Project at hand, Hannah,” she told herself out loud. “Ancient history is ancient history. Concentrate on the project at hand.” She jammed her fingers into her hair, put her other hand on her hip and glared at her wardrobe. She had no choice. It was the blue suit or jeans, as the pink organza would definitely be too much.
Dropping the large white towel she’d wrapped around herself after her shower, she stepped into panties, located a bra that didn’t have a strap held together with a safety pin, and spent ten minutes trying to remember where she’d stuffed her only pair of panty hose—bottom left desk drawer, under a copy of Common Parasites and Their Animal Hosts.
She couldn’t face the idea of the high-necked white blouse she’d bought to go with the navy suit. It was too virginal, just like everything else about her. Virginal to the hilt. Mold had more of a sex life. Deer ticks. Any one of those common parasites. Anything had more of a sex life than did Hannah Clark.
“Therefore, you don’t have to advertise that fact,” she said, returning the white blouse to the closet. Which left her with a blue suit, and no blouse.
Hannah bit at her bottom lip, shifted her eyes right, as if considering something naughty. And it would be naughty. Definitely.
Still, it beat the hell out of her white blouse.
“You’re twenty-eight years old, so what are you waiting for? Go for it,” she told her reflection as she pushed back her blond hair and leaned toward her reflection in the old, clouded mirror above her dresser. “Lipstick, eye shadow, the perfume sample you ripped out of the magazine in the waiting room downstairs. The whole nine yards. Knock the man off his feet. But not literally,” she added, pointing to her reflection.
Fifteen minutes later, she’d done it. She’d decided against the eye shadow, however, because she couldn’t seem to apply it so that she didn’t end up looking like a raccoon. But her freshly washed hair hung bright and clean almost to her shoulders, rather than in its usual no-nonsense ponytail. Her legs were shaved and encased in silky panty hose. Her legs felt good when she walked, when the lining of her suit slacks slid against her, but not as good as the lining of her jacket felt as it caressed her from the waist up.
All the way up to the top button, which was somewhere south of the beginnings of her cleavage.
Now, if she could keep from slamming her hands against her chest every three seconds just to be sure the top button hadn’t opened, she might be able to carry this off.
She slid back her left sleeve, looked at the utilitarian watch on her wrist. Six o’clock. Alex hadn’t told her exactly what time he’d pick her up—just some time around six—so she wanted to be ready and waiting when he arrived.
He would arrive, wouldn’t he? Hannah’s stomach hit the floor as she considered the fact that the man could phone at any minute to cancel. After all, it wasn’t as if this was some big hot date. He was just thanking her for her work this afternoon. He could have done that with flowers, or just the thank-you she’d already received.
No. He’d asked her to dinner, and Alex Coleman wasn’t the sort who backed out of a commitment. Was he? How the heck would she know? Worshiping a guy from afar like some lovestruck teenager wasn’t the same as knowing the guy. He could be a real louse with great eyes and a bone-melting smile. She may have given him every attribute possible in her fantasies, but that didn’t mean he could live up to any of them.
“You’re driving yourself nuts, you know,” she said as she bent down and fluffed the ancient pillows on the sturdy but relentlessly ugly brown couch in the living room of the small apartment above the office.
“Hannah? Talking to yourself again? I can think of something more productive, like making my dinner.”
“Dad!” Hannah exclaimed, whirling to face her father and forgetting that she was wearing her only pair of heels. Her ankle twisted beneath her and she sat down on the couch with an inelegant thump. “I—I didn’t think you’d be home this early.”
Dr. Hugo Clark was a big man in every way. Six feet tall, he weighed over three hundred pounds, all of which had once been composed of very impressive muscle. That muscle had gone soft a few years ago, but Hannah didn’t see that. To her, Hugo Clark was still the great big man with the disapproving eyes and disappointed expression—at least it was disappointed every time he looked at Hannah, measured Hannah and found her wanting.
“Obviously not,” he said, throwing his fleece-lined plaid jacket on a chair. He never hung up his coat, or anything else. That was woman’s work. “What the hell is that on your mouth?”
Hannah raised a hand to her lips. “Lipstick?”
“You look like a tart. Just like your mother before you. All those years of school, just to make a dead set at some man. Total waste, educating a female, and I always said so. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? That war paint couldn’t be for the animals downstairs. And for God’s sake, put something on. I can damn near see your breasts.”
Hannah squeezed her eyes shut even as she instinctively pressed her hands to her chest, hiding herself from her father’s condemning eyes and blunt speech. Twenty-eight, she reminded herself silently. You’re twenty-eight. You’re a trained, licensed vet. You’re not little Hannah anymore. Don’t let him do this to you.
It didn’t work. Pep talks weren’t Hannah’s forte, and her father had mastered the art of the cutting remark, the insulting put-down. Ever since her mother had run away when she was a child, Hugo Clark had worked on making sure his daughter wouldn’t turn into the same flighty creature Ellen Clark had been.
Twenty-eight years also meant twenty-eight years of being told she was worth nothing, would never be worth anything; told she was stupid and clumsy and unattractive, and probably immoral thanks to her mother’s blood running in her veins.
Worse, she was small like Ellen, and blond like Ellen. If Hugo Clark wanted a whipping boy to take his frustration and hate out on, he’d found it in his daughter, in spades.
Hannah stood up, one hand still pressed to her breast. “I really thought you wouldn’t be home until very late, or even tomorrow. There are…there are some cold cuts in the refrigerator,” she said, heading for the kitchen. “And soup. I made soup yesterday. Let me heat it up for you, make you a sandwich.”
“A sandwich? You call that a meal? Never mind, I’ll go out. I should have known I couldn’t count on you. Never could, never will. Just thank God I called my service and there were no emergencies while I was gone, or you would have screwed that up, too. I can’t understand it. I’ve taught you and taught you to remember your responsibilities, and what do I get? A cold supper and my own daughter tarted up to go out barhopping.”
“There was an emergency,” Hannah said, hoping to stop Hugo before he could launch into another of his long harangues about how much she reminded him of her worthless mother. “Out at The Desert Star. Jabbar’s last foal, a breech birth. Alex Coleman phoned up here on our private line, so the service didn’t know about it.”
“Damn!” Hugo exploded, slamming one beefy fist into his palm. “Lost them both, I’ll bet.”
“No, sir,” Hannah said. At times like these, it was always better to address her father as “sir.”
Her father looked at her curiously. “They handled it on their own?”
“No, sir. I did it. Alex Coleman phoned and I went out, delivered the foal. A beautiful little animal, and probably the next Desert Rose stud.”
“You…you handled it?” Hugo’s black-bean eyes widened in disbelief.
She hadn’t pleased him. Hannah could tell by the look in his eyes, by the set of his body as he stood in front of her, that she had done the very opposite of pleasing him. “I’ll get the soup started,” she said, turning for the kitchen once more.
“The hell you will. I’m going out,” he said, grabbing his jacket and heading for the door. “And you’d better be home by midnight, girlie-girl, or I’m throwing the dead bolt. You hear me?”
“I hear you, sir,” Hannah said, subsiding onto the couch once more, flinching only slightly as the door slammed and she could hear her father’s heavy tread on the stairs.
She shouldn’t have come back. She should have graduated and taken one of the dozen positions offered her, from Texas to Maine. She’d graduated at the top of her class; her options had been almost limitless.
Yet she had come home to work with her father, to help him. To prove to her father that she wasn’t worthless, that she was a good veterinarian, a competent doctor. To face him as an adult, maybe even as an equal, and prove to him—and to herself—that his lifelong assessment of her had been wrong.
“I could probably give a shrink enough ammunition to have me on the couch for the next five years,” she told herself as she stood up, sighed and walked back to her bedroom to put on the white blouse.
ALEX PARKED HIS four-wheel drive next to the SUV Hannah had driven out to The Desert Rose, noticing that she’d had it washed since that afternoon. An odd thing to do, considering it wasn’t quite spring yet, and cold, complete with rainy weather and muddy roads. His own vehicle had a crust of mud nearly up to the bottom of the windows, and he doubted he would do much more about it for the next few weeks than let nature give it an occasional bath.
Then again, Hannah was Hugo Clark’s daughter, and the man was a stickler for some things. Obviously a clean vehicle was one of them, although the man’s personal appearance wasn’t exactly out of GQ. Big and strong had softened to large and sloppy the past seven to ten years, about the same length of time Hannah had been away at school and he’d been left alone, his wife having taken off many years before that, heading for brighter lights and a bigger city.
“And away from Hugo,” Alex added out loud, shaking his head. Hugo Clark was one hell of a vet, the best around, but he had all the personality of a bear with a thorn in his paw.
Alex had never thought about it before, but now he found himself wondering what it must have been like for Hannah to grow up, motherless, with Hugo Clark for a father. It couldn’t have been much fun.
He knew that he and his brothers had been lucky. Uncle Randy and Aunt Vi had raised them as if they were their own, and even as they all missed their biological parents, none of them could ever say they were neglected or left hungry for love.
Alex looked at the dark two-story building in front of him; the boxlike veterinary office and the small apartment on the second floor. Quite a difference from The Desert Rose. Cheerless, with no grass, no flowers or trees. Just a cement area for parking and a double string of animal pens running the length of the cemented rear yard. Banded by streets at the front and on one side, there was a vacant gas station across the side street, while the other side of the building lined up closely with a small manufacturing plant, and the rear butted up against a small tire yard and automobile graveyard.
Hugo Clark served as vet for large animals for the most part, servicing his clients and patients on ranches more often than in his own office, which he reserved for treating dogs and cats and rabbits and, probably, the occasional armadillo. It wasn’t as if he needed a fancy office.
He certainly could afford a separate home for himself and his daughter, though, that was for sure, as he was the most prominent vet in the Bridle area. Alex wondered, just for a moment, why Hugo hadn’t taken more care about where he raised his daughter, then forgot about it as he remembered that he was here to take that daughter out to dinner.
Cade had teased the hell out of him before he left the ranch, warning him to wear steel-tipped shoes if he planned to take Hannah dancing, and reminding him of the day Hannah had come to the ranch with her father and fallen headfirst into a pile of manure.
Poor kid. She sure was a nervous sort. High-strung, like a young filly. Awkward, like a foal just finding its legs. Raw, unschooled, and yet with an air of promise about her, as if, with the right trainer, she could be a real champion.
Not that he would be volunteering for the job. He was here to thank her for the splendid job she’d done that afternoon. She’d saved the mare, he was sure of that, and probably the foal, as well. She’d been calm, focused, secure in her knowledge and not at all afraid to give him orders, take charge, take action.
And then, once the foal had been delivered, she’d reverted to type, turning back into Hannah Slip-on-a-banana, tripping over her own feet, stumbling over her own words, and generally reverting to the klutz he’d known and mostly ignored ever since he could remember.
But did he know her at all, beneath the shy, almost nerdy outside that she showed the world while trying to hide herself from it? Obviously not, because he hadn’t believed she could handle the mare, hadn’t even suspected the strength in her slim body, the calm purpose she could exhibit, the self-confidence that had practically oozed from her pores as she did the job she had been trained to do.
Hannah Clark wasn’t quite Jekyll and Hyde, but it was rather like there were two of her—the competent doctor, and the insecure, stumbling girl who’d always stood very much in her father’s shadow.
Not that Alex planned to look any more deeply into Hannah’s life, the hows and the whys of it. He was here to take her out to dinner, thank her again and then forget about her until the next time they needed a vet at The Desert Rose.
He’d knocked on the door twice, with no answer, and finally tried the knob, which turned easily, opening onto a set of narrow, steep wooden steps. No wonder she didn’t hear his knock. He’d thought there might be one or two rooms downstairs, and the bedrooms upstairs, but it would seem that the entire first floor had been turned into offices, leaving the second floor for all of their living purposes.
Talk about your cramped quarters. Alex already could tell, from looking at the building, that there couldn’t be more than four rooms upstairs, none of them very large. Hugo Clark probably filled up each of them every time he entered a room, leaving very little space for his shy, easily spooked, motherless child.
Damn, now he was getting melodramatic. Alex smiled, blaming his more imaginative and passionate side on his Arab roots, but also pleased to know that he was, even in Texas, very much his father’s son.
He climbed the steps in the dark, having checked the light switch and finding the bulb burned out at the top of the stairs, and knocked on the door, which opened almost immediately.
He blinked twice, adjusting to the light spilling out into the stairway, then smiled at Hannah, who seemed to be blocking his way into the apartment.
“I’ll get my purse and be right with you,” she said without preamble, turning away from the door. Alex stepped back just in time, as the door closed in his face. He grinned, shook his head and headed back down the stairs, figuring it safer than standing on the top step to wait for Hannah to come barreling through the doorway and knock him down those same steps.
He stood in the small dark hallway, listening as at least three locks were turned, then looked up when Hannah, holding tightly to the railing, came toward him. Her legs were long, for such a petite woman, and her slacks were slim, allowing him to imagine how straight her legs could be underneath them.
But that was about all he could imagine. She wore a dark jacket, fully buttoned, and a white blouse that, by all rights, should have been cutting off circulation to her brain. The entire effect, minus the slacks and her sweep of blond hair, was like one big No Trespassing sign.
Not that the woman had anything to worry about on that head. It wasn’t as if Alex had a death wish, and trying to get close enough to clumsy, nervous, klutzy Hannah Clark to kiss her wasn’t something a guy would think about without first reviewing his health insurance. The only other time Alex could remember kissing as a sport not without potential mishap was the time he’d kissed Melody Pritchert when they’d both had teeth braces, and they’d gotten their hardware stuck together.
Kissing Hannah Clark would probably start with him putting his arm out to hold her and having her react like a startled mare, rearing up, and end with his arm in a cast.
“You look very nice tonight,” he said almost automatically as Hannah hesitated on the bottom step, looking at him as if she had no idea what came next and hoped to hell he had a clue or they were both in big trouble.
“Thank you,” she said formally, then pressed her lips together as if she didn’t trust herself to say anything more without giving away nuclear secrets or some such thing.
“You’re welcome,” he said, taking her hand so that she’d come with him out of this dark, confining hallway. Otherwise, he believed they might end up standing there all night. “I made reservations for six-thirty, so we’d better get a move on, all right?”
After a false start that called a halt until Hannah bent down to replace her left shoe, they actually made it out the door and into Alex’s vehicle without further mishap. He sighed as he closed the passenger door, hoping Hannah would put on her seat belt without incident, and wondered if he should be offering up the rest of the evening for some poor souls somewhere.
NERVOUS WAS SUCH A LAME WORD for the feeling that had invaded Hannah when she’d heard Alex’s knock. There should be a bigger word, one that sounded the way it felt—a real bam of a word. A ka-pow-ee sort of word that gave true meaning to the slam-in-the-gut sort of terror Hannah had felt, was still reeling from as she sat across the table from the man of her dreams and wondered, not for the first time, what had possessed her to order linguine with clam sauce.
With garlic.
But the garlic wasn’t the worst of it, especially since she certainly wasn’t counting on a good-night kiss.
It was the linguine that had proved a challenge too great for her and her trembling hands. Linguine twirling, to Hannah’s mind, could qualify as an Olympic sport, with degree-of-difficulty scores for picking the right amount to put on the fork, for twirling, for getting the slippery noodles into your mouth without dribbling the ends onto your chin.
She’d seen the grin twitching at the corners of Alex’s mouth when she’d finally figuratively thrown in the towel and cut the linguine into pieces. But anything was better than having to rescue another forkful of the stuff from her lap.
“So,” Alex said as the waiter cleared the plates, “what made you decide to come back to Bridle after veterinary school? I would have thought you’d get as far from here as possible.” As he said the words, he winced, adding, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You’re talking about my father,” Hannah said, believing she knew what he meant. “Dad’s getting on, and I thought he needed me. He married late in life, you understand, and I was born when he was nearly forty. Besides, I want to work with horses, and this is horse country with a vengeance. Your stables alone keep us pretty busy.”
“True enough,” Alex said, picking two slices of chocolate cake from the serving cart the waiter had pushed up to the table and handing one to Hannah. “Coffee?”
She nodded and the waiter poured cups for each of them.
“You know, Hannah, I stood in front of your apartment tonight and realized that you might have had it pretty tough, growing up there without a mother.”
“And with my father,” Hannah said, feeling disloyal, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Something about the look in Alex’s eye had kept her talking all through dinner, and telling the truth more often than not. In fact, the only flat-out lie she’d told was to say that college had been a lot of “fun.” College had been work, which she had liked, but it certainly hadn’t been fun.
