Page 97 of The Alibi Club

“You conned us!” Jamie retorted, feeling her emotions rise.

Lorna quickly stalked back to stand right in front of Jamie and Cliff with a steely glare. “Exactly how did I con you?”

“The group blind date was a lie,” Cliff interjected. “We all unwittingly had a role in your scheme. You only put us together to use us!”

“Is that so?” Lorna tapped the side of her temple. “Excuse me, but how are Kyle and Shannon getting along?”

“They’re together at the moment, but—” Jamie offered.

“Rick and Holly?” Lorna asked. “The liar and the truthteller? How are they doing?”

“They’re in love,” Cliff admitted.

“And how about you two?”

Jamie gave Cliff a sidelong glance. Cliff’s jaw dropped slightly.

Lorna sighed, and with a confident, knowing gaze, she offered, “Exactly as I thought.” Lorna pointed her attention at Cliff, whose eyes were locked on Jamie, and said, “You’re in love with her, Weston. Your Achilles’ heel is believing you cannot change. Famously stubborn with no idea how to get out of your own way, I put you in a situation in which you could prove to yourself—and to her—that you, in fact, can change. That you are more than your past. You just needed a reason to change.”

Jamie was thrown off balance by Lorna’s assertion that Cliff was in love with her. Love doesn’t happen like this, her brain protested, but it was silenced by a whisper from her heart. Or does it?

“As for you, dear Jamie,” Lorna began, “when I first met you, it was obvious you would never let yourself be happy. Not consciously, anyway. You wouldn’t trust real love unless it was a terrible struggle that ended in a self-made tragedy. That thinking, by the way, is an emotional fungus you can thank your mother for. It’s a hard lesson to unlearn. So, I may have created a situation where you didn’t realize what you had until it was locked away, and by your own hand. You only believe in love if you’re suffering. You’re welcome.”

Jamie’s mouth fell open.

“So,” Cliff retorted, “you got us to meet at the Petal Café? And then again at the Arthur J?”

Lorna squinted at him. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me you both met, like in the wild? Before I set you up at the dinner?”

Jamie and Cliff both looked at each other and then back at her. They replied in unison, “Yes.”

Lorna chuckled and then said, “Then I’m better than I thought.” She gazed at both of them, her eyes steely though edged with the slightest hint of mirth. Jamie couldn’t help but think that everything she told them was true. “You can say a lot of things about me,” Lorna said as she checked her watch, “but you can’t say I conned you.”

Jamie turned wordlessly to Cliff, who stood there gazing at her, his eyes burning bright and insistent. He was biting the inside of his right cheek, as if he was weighing his next move. Jamie felt the beginning of a thaw around her heart. In spite of her internal warning system, again, something truer was coming to the surface, something full of hope and promise.

Lorna interrupted with a brisk declaration, “All right, time’s up, love birds. I’ve got to hit it.”

Lorna ushered them both off her plane like thunderstruck children, closed the pocket door, and in moments, began taxiing down the runway, leaving Cliff and Jamie speechless on the tarmac among the jet fuel fumes.

Cliff turned and instantly pulled her into him, away from the disturbed air coming from the plane’s engines. She threw her arms around him and they stood like that for a moment just the two of them, as if the rest of the world outside their bubble had stopped turning. Cliff pulled back and touched her cheek with one hand, eyes ablaze, he murmured. “It’s true. I don’t know how or why. But when I am with you I feel less lost, more myself, more like the man I want to be. Can be. Will be. Want to be. For you.”

She let the words reach hang in the air. A tear fell. “I’ve looked for you in everyone. I just didn’t know how I’d know.”

“Do you know how now?” he asked quietly.

She nodded. “I do. Somehow, I do.”

Cliff delivered the slowest, softest, longest kiss of her life and in it, she finally felt safe. And in that moment, she began to understand that love isn’t in the drama, but in the calm.

Jamie and Cliff realized that Lorna had masterminded the perfect crime, framed an innocent man, and exacted revenge on her awful ex. All over the course of one dinner.

Lorna Gray may have been a wicked, lying, scheming, love-scorned mastermind.

But she was a damn good matchmaker.

Perhaps the only true justice was letting her go.

EPILOGUE