Gracie didn’t do giddy, but she was close to getting there tonight. Kerra couldn’t help but feel a little giddy herself.
“I can’t believe you pulled it off,” Gracie enthused. “How did you manage?”
The reminder of Trapper brought Kerra down from her near-high. She would have succeeded without his help, she supposed. But it wouldn’t have been as…interesting. However, she saw no reason to tell Gracie about him. He was a story for another day. Or better yet, never.
In reply to the producer’s question, she said simply, “I kept on keeping on.”
“Or waved a magic wand.”
Identifying herself in the photograph had worked as a magic wand to break down The Major’s barriers. He had held himself together. There’d been no tears of joy or even a drawn-out hug. But his voice had become unsteady with emotion.
Gracie, however, would go off like a skyrocket when she was told, which is why Kerra had decided not to break it to her until the final few hours before the interview. The production crew would need some advance notice so they could set up their camera angles for maximum impact when it was televised, but they would learn her secret only shortly before a vast viewing audience did.
“What’s the name of the motel?” Gracie followed the question by mumbling, “I can’t believe that word is even in my vocabulary, much less that I said it out loud.”
Kerra laughed. “It’s not The Mansion, but not too bad.”
“Indoor plumbing?”
“Only in the executive suites,” Kerra teased.
“I’ll start assembling a crew tonight,” Gracie said, “but when I tell the news director what I want them for, he’ll green-light every request. That is, he will after his heart attack, which he’s sure to have. I’ll try to have us up there by tomorrow night. Thursday midday at the latest.”
Kerra said, “In the meantime I’ll be busy. The Major—” A knock on the door interrupted her. “Oh, hold on, Gracie. My pizza’s here.” She pressed the phone against her chest and pulled open the door.
It wasn’t her pizza.
She’d never had a pizza delivery man standing with his hands braced high on the jamb, leaning in, filling up the entire opening and looking ready to go to war.
“I’ll call you back.” Before Gracie could object, she disconnected and silenced her phone. “I thought you were the pizza man.”
Trapper’s frown grew sterner. “You opened the door without checking?”
“I wasn’t expecting anybody but him. I certainly wasn’t expecting you.”
“Bad things happen when you least expect them.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I called your apartment building to see if you were back yet.”
“They wouldn’t tell you that.”
“The concierge would if you’d flirted with her and confided that you and I had a thing going.”
“We don’t have a thing going.”
“Right, but she’d seen us this morning sitting together in my car for—what? Half an hour? When we said goodbye, she hadn’t heard you tell me to go to hell.”
“Which you deserved.”
“You’re right. I did. I said the thing about kissing only to provoke you.”
“It worked.”
At that, his stern expression relaxed. He almost smiled.
But still provoked, Kerra placed her hand on her hip, as if that stance would block him from entering the room if he was of a mind to. “What happened to you?” she asked. “You disappeared.”
“How long did it take you to notice?”
“I didn’t,” she lied. “The Major did,” she lied again.
Trapper seemed to know it. He gave a cynical snuffle. “Whatever. It didn’t look like you were returning to Fort Worth tonight, and choices of places to stay in Lodal are limited. This was the second place I checked, spotted your car in the parking lot, and had the desk clerk confirm that you had checked in.”
“He gave you my room number?”
“I’m a licensed PI, don’t forget.”
“That got you my room number?”
“That and a five-dollar bill.”
“Does anyone ever say no to you?”
He looked rueful and amused at the same time. “Yes. The people who really count.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that.
He looked beyond her, his gaze lighting on her open suitcase on the bed, her laptop being charged on the table, her personal belongings already on the dresser. “You came prepared to stay.”
“I was optimistic enough to pack a bag and bring it with me.”
“Must’ve gone well with The Major,” he said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here and all…” His eyes scaled downward from her messy topknot all the way to her fuzzy slippers, taking in the flannel pajamas in between. “Settled in.”
She told herself that his languid survey had nothing to do with her folding her arms across her chest. “It went exceptionally well. That was my producer I was talking to on the phone. We do the interview live on Sunday evening from The Major’s house.”
“Can’t get any chummier than that. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
Then for several moments they just looked at each other. Finally, she said, “If you’ll excuse me, cold air is getting in.”
“Sorry.” But rather than let her close the door on him as she’d intended, he shouldered past her and came into the room.
“Trapper—”
“Is he looking forward to it?”
Her mind had to backtrack to pick up the thread of their conversation. “The Major? Yes. He is. Surprisingly.” She told him about the preliminary meetings they’d scheduled. “He promised to cook me his famous chili.”
“That alone ought to send you back to Dallas.”
She laughed, asking, “Is it that bad?”
He nodded, but she wasn’t sure he was paying attention. Since coming into the room, he’d been prowling it. He’d peeked into the bathroom, slid the closet door open and shut, looked down into the rumpled contents of her open suitcase. Some articles she’d rather him not see, and those were the ones he seemed most interested in. She went over and flipped down the top of the suitcase.
“I need to finish unpacking, and my food will be here any minute, so—”
She was about to evict him, but the words got stoppered when he went over to the table near the window and opened her laptop. He looked at the screen, then over at her, then turned the laptop around where she could see what was on it, although she already knew: a newspaper article about him with an accompanying picture.
He cocked his eyebrow.
She said, “I was doing research for the interview.”
“You’re not interviewing me.”
“But you’re part of—”
“Nothing. Leave me out of it.”
“Relax, Trapper. You don’t have anything to worry about. The Major stipulated that his family is off limits. I was doing that”—she motioned toward the laptop—“strictly for background.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me what you wanted to know?”
“Because you wouldn’t tell me.”
“Depends on what you ask. Give it a shot.”
“All right. Tell me about your mother.”
“Name, Debra Jane. Date of birth—”
“I already know all that. Tell me what she was like.”
“Didn’t The Major cover that with you?”