Nightlife by Thomas Perry Page A

back. When he answered, she said, “You certainly know how to keep a girl’s attention, don’t you?”
    A week later David was in San Francisco again. He called her from the airport, then picked her up at her house and drove to a hotel in Carmel that consisted of a group of luxurious cabins on a wooded cliff above the ocean. They had dinner in the restaurant in the central building, watching the waves crash against the rocks below, then walked along the path through the pines to their cabin, and sat on the couch before the stone fireplace, listening to the crackling of the wood fire.
    After a time, he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about you.”
    “Good,” she said. She leaned close and kissed him softly.
    “I’ve even been trying to find ways to help you get your magazine started.”
    “You’re sweet.” She kissed him again.
    “While I was doing it I found out a couple of things that made me curious.”
    “What kind of things?” She turned her body on the couch to face him. She could feel the hairs on her scalp rising. It wasn’t exactly fear, but an intense anticipation.
    “Well, you said you had never been married.”
    “That’s right.”
    “I’m wondering if you changed your name at some point.”
    She kept her eyes on his face. “You’ve hired somebody to investigate me?”
    He smiled. “Now, please don’t get mad at me. It’s a normal thing to do if you’re thinking of making an investment in a start-up. I have a standing account at the Averill Agency in Dallas. Whenever I’m about to make a seed-money investment, they routinely do a quick rundown on the principal players, just to be sure none of them has a tail and a pitchfork. It’s no different from asking your mechanic to take a look at a car you’re buying.”
    Rachel leaned forward, her eyes searching his. “And?”
    “As you know, they didn’t find any problems, because there are no problems. But they did have trouble finding out much else about you. They said that either you’d had a marriage at some point that you forgot to mention, or maybe had petitioned for a name change.”
    She stared at him coldly, sensing the urge to make him suffer. “Rachel Sturbridge isn’t the name I was born with. My family was well-off and respected, but it looked good only from the outside. From the inside, it wasn’t a group you would want to belong to. There wasn’t a lot of love.” She paused, as though bravely controlling her emotions. “What there was, was a lot of cruelty. After I grew up I spent years trying to get over it, and on the advice of my therapist, I severed the connection completely. Being really free of them meant using a different name, so I do. You’re the only person I’ve ever had to explain this to.”
    He was embarrassed at his mistake. “Rachel, I’m sorry. I just cared so much about you that I couldn’t know enough.”
    She stood up.
    He looked horrified. “Please. I never imagined that talking to you about it would bring back bad memories. Stay with me.”
    “I’m tired, and I’m going to sleep now. We can talk in the morning.” David had carried both of their suitcases into one of the bedrooms when he’d unloaded the car. Now she went into that room, took hers into the other bedroom, and quietly closed the door.
    When she awoke in the morning she knew that two things were going to happen. One was that David Larson was going to buy her a big present. The other was that she was going back to San Francisco. She went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, and began to pull herself together. “I’m heartbroken,” she told the girl in the mirror. It was well said. She would use it.
    During the time while he was in Austin she had allowed herself to grow overconfident. She had formed plans that carried them both years into the future. She had pictured them spending time in Europe together—maybe in the Greek islands, which looked beautiful and warm in the magazines, or Provence, which sounded