Bombshell
Page 1
Table of Contents
Bombshell
Copyright
Praise for Phyllis DeMarco’s
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Epilogue
A word about the author...
Thank you for purchasing this Wild Rose Press publication.
Bombshell
by
Phyllis DeMarco
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Bombshell
COPYRIGHT 2012 by Phyllis DeMarco
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com
Cover Art by Tina Lynn Stout
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
PO Box 708
Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708
Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com
Publishing History
First Vintage Rose Edition, 2012
Digital ISBN 978-1-61217-242-2
Published in the United States of America
Praise for Phyllis DeMarco’s
PASSAGE TO NOVEMBER
“…a strong historical feel and a real sense of adventure. The characters are well drawn and consistent in their actions and motivations. I could believe these were men who fought the elements on a daily basis in their shipboard lives, yet nothing was stereotypical.
“This story has a strong beating heart…a lot of emotion and sexual tension going on with a strong-minded, softhearted heroine and a tough, alpha male with a heart of gold. The sense of history is strong.
“For those seeking a different setting for a historical romance and a return to sweet romance that is not cloying, PASSAGE TO NOVEMBER could very well be the refreshing change of pace you are looking for.”
~Amaryllis, Long and Short Reviews
Dedication
For Mary Carlisle,
last of the classic bombshells
Prologue
Annalee Harrison gave her audience one last appreciative smile and closed her eyes. Glenn Dougherty’s orchestra was in fine form this evening, and as they began their final number of the night, she felt the music swell in her soul. “Temptation,” her signature song, began quietly, sensuously, and she began to sway her hips in time to the slow tango rhythm.
Her voice was soft, melodic, and in her mind she saw a dark-haired handsome man. A man who loved her. A man who existed only in the mists of her imagination. “You came... I was alone... I should have known... You were temptation...”
The audience stirred, murmured its approval. Several men whistled. Annalee heard none of it. Her lover, the unknown man of her imagination, took her into his arms as she sang to him, ran his fingers through her hair, gazed into her eyes with dark-eyed passion.
“You smiled... luring me on... My heart was gone... You were temptation...”
Annalee touched the microphone as if to touch this phantom lover, and smiled dreamily, coaxing him into her arms with only the power of her sweet voice. “For you were... born to be kissed... I can’t resist...”
Her cheeks heated with fervor as she sang. Her heart pounded madly in her chest, and the audience responded with growing excitement, until the musical lovemaking swelled to a feverish pitch and finally burst forth in ecstasy. “You are temptation and I am yours! Here is my heart... take it and say we’ll never part... I’m just a slave, only a slave... to you, temptation...”
She gave half a bow as the song ended, as if falling at last into her pretend lover’s arms, and as she sauntered off the stage, the audience’s delighted applause rang loud in her ears. Stopping just past the curtain, she glanced back at the bandleader, hoping to see him turn and wink at her as he had done every night for the past six months. If only he would wink, she reasoned, all would be well.
“All will be well and he won’t hold you against me, Kiddo,” she said quietly to the child growing inside her.
Glenn Dougherty led his orchestra into a final instrumental number and did not look her way.
Annalee grinned to herself, the sort of tight-lipped grin that was as much a self-inflicted kick in the pants as anything, and made her way to her small dressing room.
Sully was already there, manically pacing a path into the carpet. He was her friend, her mentor, her manager...and he was a little high-strung.
“You told him, didn’t you?” he demanded.
“Of course I told him,” she snapped. “I’m not going to be able to hide this much longer, you know.”
“How could you do this to us?” he wailed. “How could you let this happen?”
She sat down at her dressing table and took a deep breath. Not four months along in her troubles and her clothes already felt tight against her belly. She feared another deep breath might have burst the seams of her satin gown.
Annalee glanced at an envelope on the table and let out a loud sigh. “Are you going to start that again?”
“Yes,” he spat. “Yes I am going to start that again. If you don’t find a way to get back into his good goddamn graces, you’re finished. We’re finished! Do you understand that? You were the biggest up-and-comer I had, Toots—and you blew it!”
She glanced up into the mirror lined with its bright Hollywood lights and caught sight of Sully running his skeletal fingers through his oiled hair. The veins in his forehead protruded madly. Spittle shot forth as he went on and on about her little problem. Annalee was certain that some of it landed on her expensive gown, but she was not about to protest.
“I blew it,” she quietly agreed, and was immediately horrified as a fit of giggles welled deep inside her. Sully, when he went into hysterics, was a sight to behold. Always a nervous Nellie, the skinny man sputtered into a quivering froth at the mere thought of disaster. Now that disaster had reared its ugly mug, he was apoplectic.
He paced the floor to and fro, back and forth, then slammed his hand down on the dressing table and looked up to the ceiling with bulging eyes. The vein in his forehead throbbed. Annalee was sure his brain was about to explode.
The giggles raced north from her expanding belly, past her pounding heart and straight to the root of her tongue. She swallowed hard, cleared her throat, and prayed for the moment to pass. She glanced again at the envelope on her dressing table and noticed that her name was typed, not handwritten, and thought it a little odd.
“I didn’t work this hard for you to ruin everything with your stupidity.”
He worked hard? She struggled to contain the sudden anger that flashed in her heart, but his ranting was starting to become tiresome. He never sat on a film set for twenty hours a day. He never sang or danced for leering drunks or was fondled by dirty old men posing as movie producers...
“Look, I’ll take you to Mexico,” Sully said in a voice that was a little calmer now. His feverish mind was working up some darkness. Annalee could almost make out the cogs turning inside his head, and she didn’t like where his thoughts were headed.
“You know I don’t like Mexico.” She tried to fluff off the suggestion with a wave of her hand, as if all he were proposing was a beach getaway, but she knew better. Annalee Harrison knew too many Hollywood girls who’d found themselves in trouble thinking a trip to Mexico would solve their problems. But Sully was persistent.
Annalee looked up and finally turned to glare at her manager. “Absolutely not.”
Sully yanked at his hair and cried out in frustration. “No one wants a used-up floozy with a bastard kid in tow singing love songs!”
Annalee’s voice was soft, as cool as the blue of her eyes. “It was a mistake.”
“You’re goddamn right it was a mistake,” Sully raved. “I warned you about that son of a bitch, didn’t I? You could have had it all. You sang with Crosby. You danced with Astaire. I had two pictures lined up for you—goddamn it, the Dorseys were fighting with Goodman to get you. Jack Warner was going to spend a fortune teaching you how to act. And you blew it. Knocked up by a bandleader on his way down...and all you can say is, ‘It was a mistake’?”
Annalee turned her back to him once more and glanced again at the envelope. As Sully ranted and raved, she shut his words out of her mind and opened the envelope.
The body of the letter was typed. A small brass key fell out of the envelope and gave a soft clink as it hit the table.
Miss Annalee Harrison:
Pursuant to your conversation this afternoon, my client respectfully requests a severance of all ties, and a termination of your professional contract effective immediately. In return for maintaining the strictest confidentiality concerning the matter previously discussed, Mr. Dougherty is prepared to offer a settlement, the terms of which can be found in deposit box 112413 at the First National Bank of Los Angeles.
My client and I trust that the settlement will be to your satisfaction and no further contact will be attempted. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
Very Truly Yours,
Irving Maxwell, Esq.
Sully paused but did not take in a breath. Instead, he stared at Annalee with wide, exasperated eyes. “Did you hear a word I just said?”
“Beyond your suggesting I murder my baby and then calling me a washed-up floozy, no.” She thrust the letter into his shaking hands and unconsciously started to twist her faux diamond necklace into knots.
Sully scanned the contents of the letter and finally looked up. “That son of a bitch. We didn’t work this hard for him to dump you just like that. Forget him, Toots. Trust me, he needed you more than you ever needed him—you think he’s ever gonna find another singer who could do to an audience what you do? One look from those blue eyes of yours and they are putty in your hands. The way you sing, you might as well be making love to ’em.”
Annalee looked away. Her eyes remained free from tears, but if Sully even thought she was about to cry, she knew he would go into his caring father routine...and she would break down for sure.
“He had his lawyer write the letter,” she muttered. “He wasn’t even man enough to do it himself.”
“To hell with Glenn Dougherty and his shyster of a lawyer!” Sully cried. “You weren’t under the illusion that he was in love with you, were you? Or that he’d leave his wife for you? If you did, you’re dumber than I thought.”
She paused for a moment and tried to collect her thoughts. Annalee Harrison was nothing if not honest with herself, and the truth was, she’d never thought much of Glenn Dougherty. He may have raised her profile in show business, but she was already well on her way when they met. He liked young blondes, and Annalee liked good times with rich men. There wasn’t much more to it than that.
“And now there’s you, Kiddo,” she murmured.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”
Sully read the contents of the letter again and shook his head. “We’re not gonna let him destroy all our hard work,” he told her. “We can still salvage this...”
“Not in Mexico,” she insisted.
“No.” Sully began to pace the floor again, deep in thought, then suddenly looked up. “You’re going away for a while. You got any relatives you can stay with until this blows over?”
“Mother was my only relation. You know that.”
“Thank Christ she didn’t live to see this day,” he shot. “She put everything into making you a star—if the cancer hadn’t killed her, this would have.”
“Do you always have to be so mean?”
Sully paused, his bug eyes wide and incredulous. “Ever think maybe sometimes I have to be? Somebody’s got to toughen you up—you see where being nice has gotten you.” He ran his hands through his oiled hair and tried to calm down. “Look, there’s a Depression going on. Half the country is out of work and on the bread line. And you are going to adopt a poor little baby whose momma can’t afford to keep him.”
Annalee shook her head. “I don’t mind lying about the little things, Sully, but that’s going a little too far.”
“We ought to thank that smarmy bastard for dumping you,” he said with terrible delight. “You’re free, Toots. Free to turn this around—and by the time I’m done having my way with the press, they’re gonna canonize you a saint.”
“I don’t know, Sully. I don’t even know where I’m supposed to go.”
“Get a map and pick a town—any town,” he cried. “Just keep your head down until I can turn this around for us.”
Chapter One
A tall, terrifying, steel-girder bridge loomed over the rushing waters of the Mississippi River. Annalee swallowed hard and said a prayer that she was certain would go unheard by the Almighty as she negotiated the narrowing roadway and approached the bridge to Illinois.
The child in her belly, barely four months formed, tickled her insides, as if he or she felt the same dread concerning bridges.
“It’s all right, Kiddo,” Annalee whispered. “We’ll stop soon and get something to eat. Maybe stay the night...”
Chicago could not come along soon enough. There were orchestras and ballrooms in Chicago that could use someone with her talent, at least until Kiddo started to show...and when that happened, she could simply disappear into the crowd. After all, nobody cared about anyone else in the big city. A lifetime in Hollywood had taught her that much.
She supposed she could have flown at least part of the way across the country, but the terror she felt concerning bridges extended to airplanes. A ten-hour flight from Los Angeles to Chicago became a ten-day trek along Route 66 in the Ford Roadster given to her as part of what she’d decided to call her “going-away present” from the man who had so enthusiastically helped create the new life inside her.
She thought of Glenn Dougherty and gave a quiet sigh. He was tall, handsome for a man in his forties, a flashy dresser and a smooth talker who led what had once been the finest orchestra on the West Coast. A married man who didn’t mind breaking his vows every now and then when it came to lovely young blondes.
A married man who didn’t mind parting with fifty thousand dollars and a fancy car to get rid of young blondes when they became a problem.
Annalee wished she could cry at her predicament, but the truth was she’d made her bed and now she had to lie in it. When it came to men like Glenn Dougherty, she was under no illusion she was loved. No, to men like Glenn, she was a diversion, a notch on the bedpost and nothing more. Men like Glenn abounded in Hollywood. She was simply relieved she’d happened to come across one who took care of his problems with such generosity.
Kiddo tickled her insides again, and Annalee thought she felt the baby cringe as she guided the Roadster onto the bridge.
The river rushed beneath them, its beauty lost to Annalee’s sheer terror as she slowed the car to a crawl lest the tires lose traction and they careen headlong into oblivion. She gripped the wheel so tightly her knuckles threatened to burst through the skin, and she prayed once more that the structure would hold.
The bridge swayed beneath her. Annalee’s heart leaped into her throat. Kiddo gave her kidney a swift kick with his tiny leg—and the air was filled with a horrible choking sound that somehow managed to rise above the di
n of the rushing river below.
The Roadster lurched forward suddenly, gave a few throaty chugs, and finally sputtered to a halt halfway across the bridge.
The fuel gauge fell past empty.
She turned the ignition key once, then twice, but the engine did nothing but scream its disapproval.
Annalee gave a deep, quiet sigh and tried to mentally calculate the distance from the middle of the bridge to the nearest service station, but her mind would not conjure up an answer. Instead, she felt the bridge sway gently once more and listened with growing fear as the water roared beneath her and the golden eagles shrieked above...and tried to put out of her mind the vision of those hateful beasts pecking at her eyes.
Finally, mumbling fearful petitions to the Lord under her breath, she grabbed the satchel burdened with fifty thousand dollars and a few diamond trinkets, climbed out of the convertible, and started the long walk into town.
****
John Calaway sat in his squad car and watched as his deputies nailed an eviction notice to Earl Brown’s ramshackle front door. It wasn’t the first foreclosure of the day, and it wasn’t going to be the last, but something about Earl Brown made him uneasy. The farm had been in the Brown family for well nigh a hundred years, but Earl was a drunk and a gambler who had taken too many poker rides on the Delta Queen to stay solvent.
It wasn’t the gambler part of Earl’s personality that caused Sheriff Calaway to ease his shotgun out of its place under his seat. No, Earl was a feisty drunk who hated anyone who stepped onto his land without an engraved invitation. He especially hated the men who comprised the Pike County Sheriff’s Department.
To make matters worse, Earl Brown was a brute: a six-foot-five wall of brawn with an empty space where his brain should have been. And that beast was about to get rough with Deputy Calvin Stamp.
Calaway stepped from his vehicle, shotgun at his side, and approached the big man. “Come on, Earl, you don’t want to be givin’ us no problems. Not today.”
“And you don’t want to be nailin’ no foreclosure notices on my door,” the big man snarled.