Envy(126)

Her duties and responsibilities at Matherly Press were enough to keep an overachiever like her stretched thin. Normally her daily grind would prevent her from becoming personally involved with one author and one book, even if she were so inclined to invest that much of herself, which she never had been before.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that the allure wasn’t strictly the book, but the author Parker Evans, a.k.a. Mackensie Roone.

Oh, yes. He had discovered the name of Maris’s elusive author, as well as his successful pen name. Years earlier, when the Deck Cayton mystery series had started appearing routinely on the bestseller lists, he had tried to flatter, coax, blackmail, and threaten the author’s real name out of his agent, in the hope of luring the writer to Matherly Press.

She, however, would not be intimidated, even by the venerable Daniel Matherly. “If I told you, Daniel, I’d have to kill you.” She had steadfastly protected her client’s identity against disclosure, and Daniel had grudgingly admired her for it.

But he knew it now.

For several weeks, he’d had a private investigator on retainer. Hoping that his misgivings about Noah were proved wrong, he had hired the investigator to probe into his son-in-law’s past, including his life prior to the publication of The Vanquished.

The whole idea of a covert investigation had been distasteful to him. His approach had always been bold and forthright, and he despised the furtiveness associated with a private investigator. He had envisioned having to consort with a sleazy B-movie type with a stained necktie and a leering yellow grin.

But when William Sutherland arrived for their discreet appointment, he contradicted the stereotype. Sutherland was the founder of an elite and expensive agency, a retired Secret Service agent wearing a well-tailored dark suit. He had a firm handshake, an authoritative bearing, and a distinguished service record.

Within five minutes of that first handshake, Daniel was outlining his requests. The last thing Daniel had expected to learn from Sutherland’s initial report was novelist Mackensie Roone’s true identity. That’s not what he’d been looking for. Unexpectedly, one of publishing’s best-kept secrets had landed in his lap in a sealed manila folder.

But the staggering revelation was yet to come: Parker Evans and Noah Reed had a history.

They had been roommates at a university in Tennessee, and then after graduation they had lived together in Key West. There, they’d had some sort of falling out, the particulars of which were still unknown. Sutherland was presently investigating further, and Daniel was certain that soon all the facts would be disclosed.

In the meantime, he had pieced together the facts he knew, and they would have made an engrossing novel. Maris was presently residing in a plantation house on a remote island belonging to Parker Evans, her estranged husband’s former friend with whom he’d parted antagonistically. The synopsis alone brimmed with the ingredients of a juicy novel—friendship, love, hate, deception, revenge. Envy? Possibly.

The only thing lacking in this scenario was a motive for the main character, Parker Evans.

He had lured Maris with his book for a specific purpose. He hadn’t selected her at random. What had motivated him to become involved with Maris, even professionally, when he must know that she was Noah’s wife?

Daniel wondered if she was aware of their connection. Considering Noah’s unfaithfulness, she would feel justified to play tit for tat with his former fraternity brother. But a childish retaliation wasn’t like her.

Daniel doubted she knew. If she knew, she would have been reluctant to fall in love with Parker Evans. And she was in love. That became clearer by the day.

Daniel wanted to celebrate her newfound happiness, but he would be wary of the budding romance until he knew why Parker Evans had engineered this chain of events. He had been tempted to confront the man, either in person or through Sutherland, and demand to know just what kind of story he was plotting. But he couldn’t do that without tipping his hand to both Maris and Noah, and he wasn’t quite prepared to do that. Close, but not quite.

So he’d been forced to bide his time while Sutherland delved deeper.

It was possible that Evans’s motivation would come to light in another form—his manuscript. Having read the latest installment that Maris had shared with him, Daniel was convinced the writer was chronicling his rocky friendship with Noah. Depending on how long it took him to commit the story to paper, it might be told through the pages of his personal record before Sutherland could wade through the official one.

During the wait, Daniel’s primary concern was Maris. He’d known about Parker Evans before she returned to St. Anne. He could have stopped her. He didn’t. For one thing, it was clear to him that she yearned to go. He was also comforted by the fact that Parker Evans was spoken well of by the people who lived on St. Anne, who ordinarily resented the intrusion of outsiders, as Sutherland had discovered when he sent a man down there to ask questions.

Daniel had gambled that Maris, and her heart, would be safe with the writer. If his friendship with Noah had ended over a matter of honor, then Daniel must assume that Parker Evans was an honorable man.

Indisputably Noah Reed was not. Regardless of what else transpired, Noah’s affiliation with the Matherlys was about to come to an end. He thought he had smiled and cajoled himself into Daniel’s good graces with this male-bonding-weekend malarkey. Daniel had gone along for his own curiosity and amusement, secretly appalled by the extent of Noah’s deceit.