The Spiral Path

by Mary Jo Putney

  She immediately dropped into her role. Expression sultry, she lifted a carved ivory fan from a table and waved it languidly. "I vow, my lord, that you quite outshine me, as the glorious peacock outshines his drab peahen."

  "My plumage has but one purpose, and that is to attract the most desirable female in the land." On impulse, he pressed his lips to the slender nape exposed by her upswept hair. Her skin was warm and silky firm.

  She shivered and caught her breath, yearning and vulnerability apparent on her face. When he stepped back, their gazes caught as wordless messages hummed between them. Messages, and promises.

  A poster of a similar kiss was used to illustrate the movie. It embodied such tender, erotic power that it ended up in the bedrooms of hundreds of thousands of schoolgirls. Critics raved that the onscreen chemistry between the Pimpernel leads threatened to melt the film stock.

  But that was later. At the time, Kenzie had known only that Raine Marlowe was like a spun glass butterfly--delicate, strong, and utterly captivating.

  He rounded a tight curve and found a straight, empty stretch of road ahead. He accelerated the Ferrari in a long, smooth surge of power, wishing he had the time to drive to the Mojave. There was something deeply purifying about the desert. But for now, the Santa Monica Mountains would do.

  Flashing lights appeared in his rearview mirror. Bloody hell. Swearing at himself, he pulled onto the shoulder.

  Behind him a motorcycle cop braked in a shower of gravel. After checking Kenzie's license tag in his computer, he swung from his bike and swaggered to the car. No doubt he was enjoying the prospect of proving that a badge was more powerful than an Italian sports car. Kenzie opened the driver's window and resigned himself to receiving a richly deserved speeding ticket.

  "Do you know how fast you were going, sir?" The patrolman loomed over the low car, his tone less polite than his words. His name tag read SANDOVAL.

  "Not exactly, but certainly far too fast."

  Officer Sandoval, rather young under his helmet, looked nonplussed at such ready agreement. "Your record is pretty clean for someone who drives as if he's looking for a runway to land on."

  "Usually I only do this in rather remote places." Kenzie handed over his license and registration. Sandoval looked down at the documents, then his head snapped up and he stared. "My God, you're Kenzie Scott!"

  Since the fact wasn't news to him, Kenzie merely nodded.

  "I love your movies, sir," the young man said, his bravado replaced by bashfulness.

  "I'm glad you enjoy them, Officer Sandoval."

  "Especially that one where you played a cop whose partner was killed." His face darkened. "The way you kicked in the wall after his death--it's exactly like that."

  "Have you had a partner killed?" Kenzie asked quietly.

  "Yeah." The patrolman looked away. "You made it so ... real."

  "Movie deaths should never be presented as without consequences. It's important to remember the tragedy and pain involved." Many movies forgot that, but Kenzie didn't. He'd never taken on a role that had him killing people as if they were only targets in a shooting gallery, with no dignity or value.

  "Anyone who's ever pulled a burning body from a car knows how painful and messy death really is." Sandoval lowered his ticket pad. "Would you mind giving me your autograph, sir? Not for me, but for my wife. She's a big fan of yours, too."

  "Of course." Kenzie pulled a small notebook from his glove box. "What's her name?"

  "Annie Sandoval."

  Kenzie scribbled a note to her. "Here you are. My regards to Annie."

  "Thanks, Mr. Scott." The officer reverently folded the page and tucked it inside his jacket. "It's been a real pleasure to meet you, sir."

  As he turned to leave, Kenzie asked, "What about the ticket?"

  Sandoval grinned. "I'm letting you off with a warning. Have a good day, Mr. Scott."

  "You do the same, Officer." Kenzie waited until the patrolman roared off, then pulled the Ferrari onto the road, his mouth twisted.

  He never asked for special treatment.

  He didn't have to.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 5

  Val scowled as she hung up the phone. As if Rainey didn't have enough troubles at the moment. She hit a button on her autodialer. A few seconds later, the phone was picked up in California. "Hello, this is the office of Raine Marlowe."

  Recognizing the voice, Val said, "Hi, Rainey. I thought your faithful minion would answer. You must have a zillion things this close to the start of production."

  "Emmy had a doctor's appointment, so I'm answering the phone myself. The production designer and English location manager and I are trading frantic calls to find a new manor house for the Randalls, since the one we were going to use fell through."

  "Surely England is rife with photogenic manor houses."

  "Yes, but we need one close to base camp since it would add time and money to move to a new location for those scenes."

  Reminding herself that she hadn't called to talk about the movie, Val said, "There's some bad news here in Baltimore, Rainey."

  "Oh, no! Has something happened to Kate or Rachel or Laurel?"

  Val should have realized that Rainey would immediately think of their old gang, the "Circle of Friends" forged during their school days. "We're fine, but your grandfather was in a bad car accident. I gather the prognosis isn't good. I thought you should know."

  After a long silence, Rainey said, "Yes, I suppose I should. Did my grandmother ask you to call?"

  "Hardly. I run into her occasionally at the supermarket, and she looks as forbidding as ever. It was a friend who works at GBMC Hospital who saw that your grandfather had come in and let me know so I could call you. Apparently your grandmother hasn't left his side."

  "After fifty-plus years of marriage, even someone as stoic as Gram is bound to be upset when threatened with losing her husband." There was another silence. "You think I should come back to Baltimore, don't you?"

  "That's your decision. I just didn't want you not to hear he was ill until ... until it was too late."

  Rainey sighed. "It was always too late for me and my grandparents. They think I'm the bad seed. In two days, I have to be in New Mexico to begin shooting, and I'm up to my ears in last-minute crises. What would be the point of visiting? Will I have a touching deathbed reconciliation with my grandfather?"

  "Not likely. That sort of thing is more Hollywood than real life. But ... I think you should probably come, because if you don't and he dies, you'll almost certainly regret not doing it. Your grandparents had all of the warmth of frozen cod, but they weren't evil. In their way, they did the best they knew how."

  "Damn you, Val," Rainey said, voice unsteady. "I'll bet you're lethal when you argue a case in court. Very well, I'll come--I can work on the trip so it won't cost me too much time. But you have to let me stay with you. I'm going to need a friendly face if I'm visiting the grandparents."

  "You know you're always welcome here, Rainey. I'll pick you up at the airport."

  "No need--I'll call a car service." Rainey's voice lightened. "At least I'll be able to see you and Kate and maybe Rachel, so there are compensations."

  "See you soon, then." Val hung up the phone. It would be nice to have her friend in Baltimore, but this was the wrong reason.

  Rainey should have been working on her laptop computer as the hired town car carried her directly to the suburban hospital where her grandfather was being treated, but her concentration evaporated as soon as her plane landed. Her mind kept going to the first time she'd flown into Baltimore, when she was six years old.

  After Clementine's spectacular rise and tragic death, it was the Marlowes who'd inherited her illegitimate daughter, father unknown and legal name Rainbow. Rainey had been put on the plane in Los Angeles as an unescorted child, and a warm-voiced flight attendant looked after her during the long flight.

  The trip took her from summer to winter both physically and metaphorically. Icy Februar
y winds shook the jetway as the attendant led her into the terminal, but far colder were the expressions of the Marlowes as they collected the granddaughter they'd never met. Clutching a white teddy bear, Rainey stared at her grandparents, not quite believing that she now belonged to these people. Both were lean and erect, with lines of permanent disapproval marking their faces.

  "She has red hair, like her mother," William said with a frown.

  "Not quite as red. That's something," his wife replied. "She doesn't look much like Clementine. Such a skinny little thing. I wonder who her father was."

  Rainey's eyes filled with tears as she hugged her bear tighter. A sign of affection from one of the Marlowes would have won her heart forever, but all she got was a terse, "Come along, child. We'll take you home now." Virginia glanced at her husband. "I can't call her by that outlandish name her mother gave her."

  And she hadn't. For as long as she lived with them, Rainey had been you or her to her grandparents. Her first weeks in Baltimore, she cried herself to sleep every night.

  As an adult, she'd come to respect their fairness. They wanted her no more than she wanted them, but they had been conscientious. She'd been well-fed and well-clothed and never physically abused even when she was in her rebellious high school years. And luckily, they'd enrolled her in the local Quaker school, where she would get a good education with the moral grounding they thought she needed.

  At Friends' School Rainey met the girls who had become her true family. She spent more of her waking hours with Val and Kate and Rachel and Laurel than she did with her grandparents. Slowly she'd learned to play, to laugh with her friends, and to confide in Julia Corsi, Kate's unflappable mother, when she needed womanly advice.

  Like Clementine, she'd flown far and fast as soon as she was old enough. Her grandparents had undoubtedly been relieved. She occasionally sent brief notes with changes of address and phone numbers so they could contact her if they wished, but they hadn't wished. Nor had they sent felicitations on her marriage. Prescient, perhaps.

  The only time she'd seen them since moving to California was the year before when she'd come to Baltimore for Kate's second wedding. Feeling that she should make an effort, she'd visited her grandparents. They greeted her with stiff surprise and no sign of pleasure. She left after a polite but uncomfortable half hour, wondering why she had bothered to come.

  It was almost dark when the town car pulled up in front of the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, a sprawling complex of buildings surrounded by hills and trees. Rainey remembered it well. She'd visited the emergency room regularly after falling from trees, being whacked by a lacrosse stick, and similar misadventures. She'd been a sore trial to grandparents who'd planned on a peaceful retirement.

  The hospital was a maze, but Rainey found her way to her grandfather's room with only a few missteps. She paused in the doorway. William Marlowe lay still as a waxwork, only the beeping monitors showing signs of life. Virginia sat next to him, eyes closed and face drawn with fatigue, but still erect in her chair.

  How had William and Virginia Marlowe created a daughter as vital and flamboyant as Clementine? Once when Rainey was eleven and exploring the attic on a wet day, she found an old photo of her mother singing in a church choir as a teenager. Even in a choir robe, Clementine's red hair and voluptuous body had made her more sinner than saint. Rainey took the photo and hid it in her treasure box. She had it still.

  "Gram?" Rainey asked quietly.

  Virginia opened her eyes, startled. "What are you doing here?"

  "My friend Val Covington called when she heard about Grandfather's accident." Rainey studied his long face, almost as white as the pillows. Even sleeping, his expression was inflexible. "How is he doing?"

  Her grandmother shrugged. "He's still alive." Her flat tone couldn't quite disguise her despair.

  Rainey felt an unexpected pang of sympathy. Her grandparents' relationship had been so deeply private that she'd half assumed they stayed together from propriety and habit, but there was real grief in Virginia's eyes. "Does he know where he is?"

  "He knows I'm here, but not much more, I think." Virginia twisted her hands together with uncharacteristic nervousness.

  "Then come down to the cafeteria with me. I just landed and need a meal, and I'll bet you haven't been eating much since his accident."

  Virginia glanced at her husband, on the verge of protest. Then she sighed. "I suppose you're right. I must keep up my strength."

  She stood, inches taller than her granddaughter. Together they walked out of the room and down the hall. Word must have spread that Raine Marlowe had arrived because a cluster of nurses and aides had gathered at the departmental desk, but no one approached or asked for an autograph. Rainey was grateful for their tact.

  All she could face eating was vegetable soup and crackers, but she was glad that her grandmother got a hearty plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes. The woman looked far too thin. Though they'd never been close, their relationship had been less strained than the one between Rainey and her grandfather. Seeing Virginia so vulnerable brought out an unexpected protective streak

  She waited until her grandmother pushed away her meal half uneaten before asking, "What happened, exactly? And what do the doctors have to say?"

  Virginia's mouth twisted bitterly. "He was on his way to play golf when his car was hit by a drunk driver. At nine o'clock in the morning!"

  "How bad were his injuries?"

  "He has lacerations and broken bones, with a collapsed lung and a head injury."

  "Is the head injury serious?"

  "A concussion. Not too bad." Virginia's hands locked around her cup of tea. "But when they gave him a CAT scan to look at the skull injuries, they found an inoperable brain aneurysm that could rupture at any tine."

  "I ... see. But an aneurysm could also hold for a long time, couldn't it? Years?"

  "William's doctor seems to consider it unlikely in this case. His attitude is that I should prepare myself for the worst."

  Rainey frowned. It might not be a doctor's place to offer false hope, but neither should he make patents feel doomed. Life was uncertain, and hope could be healing. "Have you gotten a second opinion?"

  "There hasn't been time to think of such things."

  Rainey thought of a New York surgeon friend. He owed her a favor. "Would you mind if I called in a neurosurgeon that I know?"

  Virginia shrugged, not agreeing, but not denying.

  "I'll call him then."

  "I hear you're getting divorced from that movie star husband of yours."

  Rainey winced. "Yes. It's uncontested, so there won't be any lurid headlines."

  "Hollywood actors shouldn't be allowed to marry. Especially not to each other. Drinking, drugs, orgies." Virginia shook her head grimly. "Though I suppose that's what you're used to."

  Biting back anger, Rainey said, "Kenzie is British, and they tend to be less crazy than American stars. Neither of us do drugs or drink more than socially. Once at a party I stumbled into what would probably be considered an orgy. I left." On that subject, she couldn't speak for Kenzie, though if she had to guess, she'd say that orgies weren't his style. "We're people, not stereotypes."

  "No drugs?" Her grandmother looked disbelieving.

  "My mother died of an overdose. I've never so much as smoked marijuana."

  "If that's true, you're wise." Virginia swallowed the last of her tea. "I have to get back to William."

  "Is there anything I can do, Gram?"

  Her grandmother shrugged again. "We've gotten along without you very well. We don't need anything now."

  Stung, Rainey blurted out, "Why do you both dislike me so much? I tried so hard not to be a burden. To ... to make you proud of me for my grades and school activities. But no matter how well I did, I still knew you didn't want me. Was it because you thought the sins of the mother should be visited on the child?"

  For the first time, her grandmother's gaze focused on her. "We didn't dislike you, and it ce
rtainly wouldn't be fair to blame you for Clementine's behavior. But it's true we didn't want you with us. We both felt too old to cope with a child." She hesitated, then added painfully, "You were a reminder of the worst failure of our lives."

  Startled by the candid answer, Rainey asked hesitantly, "Clementine?"

  Virginia nodded. "She was born late, after we'd given up hope of having a child. She ... she was like a flame, all burning life, and just as impossible to handle. We tried so hard to raise her as she needed, but we failed. When she left college to join a rock band, I knew she was doomed. Maybe not right away, but eventually."

  Rainey swallowed, her throat tight. "That self-destructive streak was part of her, I think. I doubt anyone could have cured it."

  "It's the duty of parents to raise their children right!" Anguish showed in the faded blue eyes. "But we didn't, and she died not even thirty years old."

  Rainey had never seen such powerful emotion in her grandmother. On the verge of tears, she asked, "Why didn't you show me how much you cared about her? She was my mother. We ... we could have mourned together."

  "You looked just enough like Clementine to be painful, yet you were also a little stranger, with traits that were totally alien. And so we failed again."

  Painful though the conversation was, for the first time ever they were actually talking to each other. "You didn't fail entirely. I'm not self-destructive like my mother."

  "But you're still a stranger."

  Rainey was unable to control her bitterness. "Whose fault was that?"

  "Ours." Virginia's face was bleak in the harsh cafeteria light. "By the time you arrived in Baltimore, we had nothing left to give."

  "What about today? Are you sorry I came here?"

  "No, you're William's only grandchild. It was right for you to come." She stood, pushing her chair back from the table. "I must go back to him now. You might as well leave. The nurse said he won't wake up for hours."

  A hint that heavy was impossible to overlook. Suppressing a sigh, Rainey got to her feet. "I'll stop by in the morning before I go."