Truthseeker

Four

Kirwen hailed a taxi outside Lord Matthew’s, and the driver’s gaze locked on him as they climbed in. Almost before the door closed, the cabbie launched into a diatribe about the weather in general and David’s inability to correctly predict it specifically, and ended with a plea for a sunny weekend, because his daughter’s thirteenth birthday party was Saturday and he would go crazy if locked in the house with a dozen teenage girls all day. Lara exited the taxi wide-eyed and bemused to see Kirwen give the man a handsome tip. “Does that happen to you a lot?”

“Only on days I leave the house.” The delivery was wry but honest. “I get blamed for the weather but rarely praised for it.”

“And occasionally asked to intercede, like he just did?” Lara scurried for the door, throwing a rueful glance toward the sky. “I had no idea being a weatherman was so much responsibility.”

“Neither did I, when I started. But it sends me interesting places at times. I covered the hurricanes last year.” Kirwen reached over her head to push the door open, its weight coloring his fingertips white. Lara slipped under his arm and pushed the hood of her coat back, trying to shake off the rain.

“I remember. I remember thinking a job that sent you to Florida would be wonderful, except I’d want to go when the weather was good.”

Kirwen grinned. “So would I, but the station doesn’t seem to think sunshine and Disney World make for exciting weather stories. All right, if we’re lucky Dickon’s here before us …” He trotted up the stairs ahead of Lara, coat flapping dramatically, then waved and turned back to Lara with a bright expression. “And we’ve got the best seats in the house. Now, aren’t you glad you agreed to come out with us?”

Dickon waved a greeting from a table beside enormous picture windows overlooking the Common. Even with the gray skies and rain, the polished wood floors reflected light, making the narrow room comfortable, and Lara smiled. “I think I am. I’ve never been here. Is being a famous weatherman enough to get you the best table on short notice on a Friday night, or does it just work midweek?”

“I’ve never tried on a Friday.” Kirwen gestured Lara toward his cameraman’s table, admitting, “I doubt it’s enough. Dickon, this is Lara Jansen. Miss Jansen, Dickon Collins, my cameraman and the only one with sense enough to come out of the rain.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Jansen,” Dickon said over Lara’s murmured “Lara is fine,” then corrected himself: “Lara.” He stood up to offer his hand. Lara nearly took a step back, astonished at the man’s height and breadth, though he wasn’t fat, only barrel-chested.

Rue crossed his face. “I have that effect, sorry. I look smaller sitting down. There’s a reason they put David in front of the camera, not me.”

“I was just thinking you’d look—” Lara put her fingers over her mouth, and he cocked an eyebrow curiously. “I’m sorry. I tend to redress people mentally as soon as I meet them. It can come across as rude, but I don’t mean to be. I just like imagining people at their best.” She flattened her fingers further over her lips. “I’m not making this better, am I?”

Kirwen, less reassuringly than Lara might have liked, said “It’s all right” to Collins as he pulled Lara’s chair out and invited her to sit. “She was dismayed at my clothes, too. You’re in good company.”

“I’m in your company, anyway.” Dickon sat back down, grinning at Lara. “Probably giving you a hard time isn’t the best way to make a good first impression, is it? But I figure we’re safe, because everybody knows who David is, anyway. It’s too late for a first impression.”

That, at least, was true, if not for the reasons Dickon outlined. Lara glanced at David, who shed his raincoat and sat down beside her. “I wasn’t dismayed. I just forgot you weren’t a client for a moment. You have the kind of build clothing designers dream of. And,” she added to Dickon, “I was only going to say, you’d be very imposing in a well-made suit.”

“I’m imposing out of one.” Collins pursed his lips. “That came out wrong. Maybe I better shut up now.”

“I think that’s probably one of your better ideas,” David agreed. “We’re not really rapscallions, Miss Jansen.”

“Rapscallion,” Lara murmured. The word sent shivers over her skin, not precisely mistruth, but a waiting on tunefulness. “A sort of rascal, a dishonest or unscrupulous person, though that’s a darker definition than people usually mean. Popularly it’s more like youthful wickedness. Mischievous. So I’d say you are that, Mr. Kirwen, but no harm meant.”

Both men gawked at her, Dickon’s smile coming to the fore more quickly than David’s. “Wow, what are you, a walking dictionary? That was kind of cool.”

Lara shrugged, embarrassed and pleased all at once. “I like to be precise with word choice. I have a pile of dictionaries and thesauruses at home so I can compare synonym definitions for precision.” Color climbed her cheeks before she’d finished speaking, and she wished for a glass of water to hide behind until the heat faded. “It’s more interesting than it sounds.”

David Kirwen watched her with interest, though amusement played on his lips. “Actually, it sounds interesting. Whatever made you start doing that?”

“People don’t use language very carefully, and it bothers me. Trying to change them is futile, but at least I can say exactly what I mean.” It was an explanation she’d given before, all true without being all the truth. Lara smiled. “Besides, once in a while I can use it to tease handsome men who take me out to dinner.”

“Handsome,” Kirwen said with satisfaction. “Not well dressed, maybe, but handsome. It’s a start. Is your friend as pedantic as you?”

“Kelly?” Lara glanced toward the stairs, as though Kelly’s name might summon her. “No, but she doesn’t get impatient with me, which is probably better. I wonder if I should call her.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to.” Dickon spoke with a new degree of admiration, and got to his feet as Lara turned to look toward the stairway again.

Kelly waved a greeting, thigh-length trench coat already unbuttoned over a figure-hugging green knit dress Lara was certain she hadn’t owned an hour ago. She swept down on them, shook both men’s hands, then seized Lara’s upper arm with bright-eyed anticipation. “You know how it is, a woman can’t go to the restroom alone. Come with me, Lar, please?”

A protest faltered on Lara’s lips as the men laughed, Dickon asking, “What is it about women and bathrooms?” in a mutter he clearly intended to be overheard.

“It allows us to talk about you while pretending we’re attending to nature’s call. Pretending we’re attending, that rhymed. C’mon, Lara. It’s a feminine duty. Please?” Kelly dropped her coat over the back of a free chair and caught Lara’s hand, tugging her toward the restrooms.

“Duty calls.” Careful word choice, made easier by Kelly’s laughing description of what duty was. Lara shook her head and, smiling, followed Kelly. “You look fantastic, Kel. The dress is great. Where’d you buy it?”

“I should’ve known I couldn’t trick you into thinking I’d run home and changed clothes. You know my wardrobe better than I do.” Kelly stopped inside the restroom door and turned to the mirrors, smoothing a hand over her hips nervously. “It’s not too tight? I thought, wow, I look hot, but now I’m kind of all, wow, maybe I’m just fat.”

“Not from the way Dickon stood to attention when you came in,” Lara said drily, then smiled at their reflections. They were each other’s opposites, Kelly tall and lush, Lara petite and conservative. “You don’t look at all fat, Kel. You’re beautiful. The dress is fantastic on you.”

“God, one of the best things about being friends with you is I know you’re not bullshitting when you say that. And Dickon did stand up, didn’t he? I mean, I know you mean that literally, because you’re you, but can I take it figuratively, too? He’s cute, isn’t he? In a big-redheaded-lug kind of way? Lara!” Kelly caught Lara in a hug, then set her back with equal enthusiasm. “Lara, you have a date! You have seized the bull’s horns! Congratulations!”

Lara laughed. “I haven’t seized anything. I just knew you would never stop harassing me if I said no, especially after he actually showed up at Lord Matthew’s.”

“You could have not told me.”

“Except you would have eventually asked if I’d ever heard from that weatherman, and I would’ve had to tell the truth.”

Impishness crossed Kelly’s face. “That’s true. You know, your weird truth-telling thing is handier for me than you.”

“I do know. Did you have to pee, or were you just hauling me off to talk about the men?”

“Oh, I just wanted to talk about them,” Kelly said blithely. “See, Lara, he liked you. He went to the trouble of finding you! Has he said anything that makes you go”—she clawed her hands and bared her teeth, physical action replacing words—“yet? So he’s from Wales? I never met a Welsh guy before. What’s he doing here? W—”

“Kelly!” Lara held her hands up. “I don’t know. We’ve only been here five minutes. And if you don’t have to go to the bathroom, I bet you’d find out a lot more answers by talking to him instead of me.”

“Oh no. You talk to him. I’ll keep Dickon distracted. And if he turns out to be a pathological liar you can knock your water glass on me so we can make an escape.”

“If David does, or if Dickon does?”

“Ooh, she’s graduated to calling him David,” Kelly announced to their reflections. “That’s a good sign. And either of them.” She ran her hands over her hips again, then nodded. “Okay. We’re ready to go now.”

“We are?”

“I am,” Kelly amended with a sniff.

“I don’t understand why you’re nervous, when you’re the one who all but shanghaied me into going on this date.” Lara nudged Kelly out of the restroom to the sound of mumbled excuses.

David stood again as they returned to the table, Dickon a beat behind him. “Someday,” Kirwen said to his cameraman. “Someday I’ll have you well enough trained that you won’t need reminding to stand when women enter the room.”

“At which time a woman will happily take him off your hands.” Kelly moved Lara’s coat from the back of her chair and took the seat herself, then smiled merrily at Lara. “You can sit across from David.”

Dickon’s eyebrows rose as Lara came around the table to sit by him. “I bet she’s deadly at weddings, huh? Rearranges seating arrangements and shi—stuff?”

“As a matter of fact, she does. We know two couples who met at weddings because Kelly is a busybody.”

“I am not!”

Lara smiled. “Yes, you are, but you mean well.” She nodded thanks as a waitress offered menus and poured water, and for a few moments let herself become engrossed in nominally studying the choices, and actually peeking over its edge at David Kirwen.

He had a knack, like Kelly did, for putting people at ease. A more useful talent than her own, certainly; knowing the truth had never talked someone into joining her for dinner. The idea made her hide a smile behind her menu. Kelly would no doubt find a way to use the truth to get a dinner date.

Lara shook her head. It was easy to compare herself unfavorably to her boisterous friend, to envy Kelly’s quick way with words and willingness to risk embarrassment in pursuit of the things that interested her.

Things like David Kirwen. Well, no: Kelly had gone after David purely for Lara’s benefit, which she was certain of for two reasons. One, she’d have heard the lie if Kelly had been interested in Kirwen for herself, and two, the slender weatherman genuinely wasn’t Kelly’s type. His broad-built cameraman, though …

Lara hid another smile in her menu. Kelly would call it instant karmic feedback, trying to set Lara up for a date and finding a hunk of her own by doing so.

“You must have gotten a much more entertaining menu than I did.” David Kirwen tipped Lara’s menu toward him so he could peer down it. “It looks the same …”

Lara clapped the menu shut, then, flustered, opened it again. “Oh. No. No, I was just thinking. I hadn’t even looked at it.”

Kirwen flourished his fingers, coming up with a shining coin. “Penny for your thoughts, then?”

“Oh!” Lara reached out, startled, to catch the penny from his fingertips. “How did you do that!”

“You’d have me give away all my secrets on the first date?” Kirwen tsked. “You’ve taken the penny, so you owe me a thought now, don’t you?”

“Ooh,” Kelly said loudly enough to be heard, though her innocent expression suggested she didn’t intend to be, “that implies there’ll be a second date. That’s promising.”

Lara aimed a kick at her under the table and instead crashed her booted toes into the pedestal with a thonk. Kelly burst out laughing as Lara sank into her seat, face buried in her hands. “Way to be subtuhl, Lar. She was thinking a second date had better not be a double,” Kelly told David. “Better not ask her while Dickon’s around. He’ll horn in on it.”

“Only if my barbecue is rained out!”

Lara risked peeking through her fingers in time to see Kelly give Dickon a frankly lascivious once-over and lean in to purr, “Honey, I’ll make sure your barbecue never goes out.”

Dickon, brightly, said, “Check, please!” and beneath their laughter Lara murmured, “I was thinking it would be easier to be like you and Kelly. She makes friends in a heartbeat, and you seem to expect that, too. I’m not that outgoing.” She held up the penny, smile turning wistful. “Was that worth a penny?”

“It was.” David reached out to fold the coin into her palm, briefly cupping his hand over hers. “And if we were all as forthright as Kelly, then we would miss the delight of coaxing the shy out of their shells. Some things, Miss Jansen, are worth the wait.”

“Good,” Kelly broke in cheerfully. “Wait until Saturday.”

David released Lara’s hand, sending a rush of disappointment through her. She quashed it, feeling absurd, and frowned at Kelly. “We’re helping Rachel move on Saturday.”

“Exactly! David can spend the whole day coaxing you, and we’ll have a couple of big strong handsome men around to help.”

David turned to his cameraman solemnly. “I believe we’ve been hornswoggled, Dickon.”

“I believe we have,” Dickon said just as solemnly, then squinted at Lara. “Hornswoggled means tricked, right?”

“Oh no.” Kelly looked dismayed. “You haven’t already done your walking dictionary trick, have you? I swear, Lara, I leave you alone for five minutes … !”

Lara lifted her chin and sniffed, trying to dismiss Kelly playfully, and shook her head at Dickon. “It’s like rapscallion. The real meaning is darker than the way it’s used now. You have an old-fashioned vocabulary, Mr. Kirwen. Is that a Welsh thing?”

“It’s certainly the way of my people,” Kirwen replied lightly. “What time will you need us to help move your friend?”

“Us?” Dickon’s voice rose. “Who said anything about us?”

“You wouldn’t leave a fair lady in distress, would you, Dickon?” David gestured to Kelly, who fluttered her eyelashes and put on an unconvincing expression of helplessness. Dickon laughed and raised his hands in defeat. Lara smiled at the banter, listening as plans were made, and watched David Kirwen quietly, thoughtfully.

“It’s the way of my people” was a very careful phrase. Lara thought even she might have overlooked it had it not highlighted something he’d said earlier, that his name was Welsh “by most accounts.” He laid no claim to that account himself.

Curiosity blossomed in Lara’s chest, stealing her breath. Handsome, witty, and not only mysterious, but cautiously mysterious. Very few people she knew could disguise the truth in such a way as to not trigger her sixth sense. Even fewer would have any reason to.

Disarmed by her own interest, Lara sat forward to rejoin the conversation and enjoy the prospect of dinner with a man who could keep a secret from her.