The Signature (A Perfect Forever Novel)

by Ward, Susan

  And Morgan. Morgan, who never drifted out willingly into public, was in the courtroom as well. She had hoped that these proceedings were just a formality, another posturing and flexing of muscle by the judicial system. But the presence of that ominous collection of figures told her it was serious.

  How long had this been going on in Los Angeles? Both sides were dug in for war.

  Krystal’s insides quivered in terror when Devon lifted his face before the cameras again. She knew that look on his face. He wasn’t going to tell them anything. It was more than a matter of principle to him, though that would have been enough for Devon to defy the courts.

  He had given her his word, and no power on Earth could make him break it, not even the threat of prison, even though there was no need for him to keep his word.

  She was gone from Coos Bay. She was safely tucked back into the Network. Devon knew that. Why wouldn’t he just answer the questions! It didn’t matter now. None of it mattered any longer.

  She heard the judge, the very judge who had issued the warrant for her arrest two years ago, repeat his question.

  The judge said, “Are you prepared to answer the questions, Mr. Howard, or is there no purpose in prolonging these proceedings any further? We have been at this four hours today. Both this court and your counsel have made thorough arguments. It is the opinion of this court that the first amendment does not give the press free license to harbor known criminals.

  “There is the safety and well-being of child at stake in these proceedings. Whatever rights are granted to the press by the Constitution are secondary, in this court’s opinion, to the rights of the child.

  “It is in this court’s opinion that it is not in the best interest of all children to tolerate this defiance of our judicial system. Mrs. Stafford is wanted before this court on the charges of kidnapping. A crime. It is your duty, legal and moral, to assist this court with any information you may have about Mrs. Stafford’s location.

  “Are you prepared to answer the questions of this court at this time?”

  Devon answered him with silence. His eyes, however, screamed: Go to hell.

  “Sir, kidnapping is a crime. Anyone who withholds knowledge that could lead to the arrest of any person committing such an act is in violation of the law. I order you confined for a period of one year or until such time as this investigation is concluded by the arrest and appearance before this court of Mrs. Stafford.”

  The sound of his gavel slamming made Krystal jump. The deputy came forward and put cuffs around Devon’s wrists.

  The reporters were going insane with their questions, the cameras flashing. Every face looked grim and shocked, except Devon’s. He was led from the crowded courtroom with the look of man who accepted the verdict without a single regret.

  The press and TV reporters swarmed all around Devon as he was escorted from the courtroom. He was almost out before the deputy stopped to let him bite off a single answer to the rapidly shouted inquiries.

  His face looked directly into the camera, his bright eyes steady, his soft, thick layers of golden hair tousled by the frenzy, his beautiful cheek bones relaxed. He said, “I don’t regret the verdict. Stay put, kiddo. This is something I’m doing for me.”

  There was no longer any question in her mind what she would do. She would take Katie back to Fritz, keep her hidden there until she could test the waters in Los Angeles. And she would go home, face the courts, face Nick, face whatever there was to face. She wasn’t certain how she would do any of this; how one actually went about turning themselves over federal authorities.

  She only knew that she had to. That it was time to settle the tangle of her past. She couldn’t leave Devon in prison for a year. Not for him. Not for herself.

  Krystal stayed in the Network two more weeks. Devon was in prison when the final installment of her story was printed. It came out the day before Morgan was to do a concert in San Francisco.

  She reread the column over and over again as she anxiously waited until it was time to take the first step in returning home. The unicorn has no vanity. God cursed its beauty with a horn. Krystal Palmer Stafford has no vanity. God cursed her with Nick Stafford. Her body had been given to her in flawless beauty. It is still beautiful, but the lines carry the legacy of Nick Stafford. She sees only the scars inflicted by her ex-husband and none of her beauty, like the unicorn, staring into the distorting mirror of a pond, never seeing its image complete. She will live with that forever...

  The first step in her journey home was to find Morgan.

  It was not a difficult thing for her to do. She had lived for three years as his lover. She knew his tastes, his habits, and the very predictable side of this man who was hailed as anything but predictable.

  Searching through her memories, she knew where she could find Morgan in San Francisco, after his concert.

  Nine hours of travel later, Krystal walked into a familiar hotel in an older section of the city. She pulled her hood more securely over her face, her instincts warning her that the man sitting too nonchalantly in the foyer was tabloid press.

  Yes, she recognized him. Jenkins. That terrible tabloid reporter who had dogged her during the days of her affair with Morgan.

  If the desk clerk at the counter thought anything strange in finding a nearly obscured figure in an unstylish green jacket from army surplus, waiting for his assistance, it didn’t show on his face. He knew better than to make surface judgments about their guests.

  It was that kind of hotel; it catered to the eccentric, the bizarre, and the wealthy. The lobby had the shabby charm and timeworn elegance of a long-past era, when heavy burgundy velvet, dark carved wood, and brass fixtures had been the style of the day. But the cheapest room rate was over five hundred dollars per night, because upstairs were rooms of undeniable elegance, the restaurant served five-star food, and the concierge of twenty years was well known for his discretion.

  It was that last benefit that earned Morgan patronage when he was in town. Discretion was everything to him, and his lifestyle at times required that.

  Her own affair with Morgan had existed in privacy here many times. Whatever happened within the scarred walls of this grand lady would remain in silence among the staff.

  “I need a room,” Krystal said, without preamble or removing her hood to make eye contact with the man.

  “I’m sorry, we haven’t any vacancies, ma’am,” came the stiff reply.

  Krystal knew better. It was the kind of place that always had rooms tucked away for its special cross section of clientele, who dropped in on a moment’s notice.

  She didn’t move. “Get the key to the east bay suite on the seventh floor from Janos, and have him bring me a bottle of Tokaji Aszú with my dinner. Anything that Simon prepares will be more than adequate.”

  Silence. The clerk tried to get a better look at her. Janos Vilmos did not turn away friends, and whoever this mysterious woman was, she knew that. If she had at some time shared a bottle of Tokaji Aszú from Janos’ prized stock, it could only mean…

  Her stunning pair of blue eyes met his for the briefest of moments and then drifted hurriedly away.

  “Perhaps you would like to sit down, ma’am. I could have the concierge bring you something while you wait. It will take me a moment to go to the office for a key.”

  “No, I’ll stay here. That man sitting over there is tabloid press. Janos wouldn’t be happy to find him there.”

  Stunned, the clerk tried again to get a clear look at her face and then, failing, rushed from behind the desk and disappeared down the hallway.

  Alone, Krystal slipped behind the counter and did a frantic search of the neat wooden rows of keys. Keys, a lingering sentimentality to the past. It was a relief to her that they hadn’t updated this out-of-date tradition with the more modern coded electronic cards.

  Her fingers followed her eye line up and down the rows until she found a block with only a single key missing on an entire floor.

  Morgan. He had
rented out the floor for privacy and seclusion. He hated having people near him through the long hours following a concert, after the suffocating crowds that surrounded him onstage.

  Committing the number to memory, she slipped from behind the counter and went to the elevator, smiling sadly with memories flashing quickly through her head. The operator closed the heavy iron gate to take her to Morgan’s floor.

  Janos Vilmos sat behind his forty-year-old mahogany desk in an office that boasted no high tech conveniences, except for the line of monitors for the sophisticated security system that had been carefully installed throughout his hotel.

  He was Hungarian. He was large. He was gruff on the exterior, all heart within, and even his heavily accented voice raised in anger could not mask the gentleness of this mountain of a man. His staff adored him and were fiercely loyal.

  Janos looked up beneath heavy black brows to find his chief desk clerk standing above him.

  “I want that man out of the lobby,” he stated, shaking a thick finger toward the monitor. “He is tabloid...” He said it with the same acid threading through his words as when he spoke of Hungary and the Bolsheviks. “...I don’t care how you do it, Spencer. You get him out and see that he doesn’t return.”

  Spencer nodded quickly. “I will. There is a lady at the desk. She knew he was tabloid also. She asked for the keys to the east bay suite on the seventh floor and a bottle of Tokaji Aszú.”

  Janos laughed. “Ten years you’ve worked for me and you still say it wrong. It’s Aszú! Say it with gusto, with heart. It was the favorite vintage of Louis the Fourteenth and Frederick the Great...” He was rambling again. “Who is this woman, Spencer?”

  “Pretty. Blond. I don’t know who she is.”

  Pretty. Blond. Any of a hundred women that Janos knew.

  “Let me have a look at her, then,” Janos said, laboring to rise from his chair. With a hearty laugh, he added, “If I know her, we will give her the key and the Aszú, and I will have a pretty blond to share dinner with tonight!”

  Spencer followed Janos from the office.

  “There was something about her eyes. Familiar. I’ve seen them before. They were very blue...” Spencer laughed nervously. “I can’t describe them any better than that except that they were unique, unique in how blue they were. Unique and familiar.”

  Janos stopped in mid-step. Morgan Katz was staying for the night and now there was a mysterious woman with very blue eyes, who had the instincts to know that that man in the lobby was tabloid.

  His face had a sudden seriousness to it. “Get that tabloid out of the lobby. Now! If this woman is who I think she is...”

  He rambled off in anxious Hungarian, punctuated with words he was pleased Spencer couldn’t translate.

  “No one is to talk. You understand. Tell the concierge that the first one of them who says a word will be unemployed by morning. I don’t want the media catching even a hint that she’s here. The press, the authorities...” Another Hungarian expletive. “...It will be like when the Russians marched on Budapest! I will not let this happen in my hotel!”

  There was a sudden quickness to Janos’ stride. He left Spencer to deal with the reporter and went to the desk, key in hand.

  But the woman was gone, and in a moment he realized his thoughts had been foolish worrying. After all, the woman he was thinking of had vanished long ago.

  Krystal was sitting on the floor outside Morgan’s room. It was after three a.m. before she heard the elevator door open with the rusty grind of the metal gate, and the sound of too loudly raised voices discussing a post mortem of tonight’s performance.

  Red hot energy seemed to roll down the hall in sudden, crashing waves. She picked out each voice and identified it with the cherished image of a face she had tucked away in her heart for two years.

  The heavily accented British of Colin. The grave tone of Kevin, Morgan’s drummer. The heated, vulgarity-punctuated conversation of Lenny, who had always been—in her opinion—the best bass player in the world, despite the fact she couldn’t stand him personally. Jimmy’s soft lilt.

  And Morgan’s voice, low and raspy, heavily graveled because he had spent long hours singing tonight.

  She didn’t rise to her feet, even though she knew the band were near enough to have seen her crouching before Morgan’s door.

  “Shit, I don’t need this tonight,” Morgan swore, seeing her figure perched on the ground, and being sharply reminded of the headache which had developed during lengthy hours at a party he had gone to after the show.

  He came here for peace and quiet. If he had wanted a woman, he could have brought back any of six dozen from the party. There was only one woman he wanted with him. Krystal.

  Where was she? Why had she chosen to run again, when Devon Howard had explained to her the option of returning? He had waited two years to have her back. Why hadn’t she come?

  Because she’d chosen not to come to him, his obsession had returned, as powerful as it had been those early days after her departure from LA, a shadow that blocked out pleasure.

  He’d been unable to touch another woman from the first moment he’d grasped the unicorn tied to his bike. Lenny had a number of vulgar theories about that. Morgan didn’t have the tolerance at present to examine any of them.

  Even tonight, as offers surrounded him, his interest hadn’t awakened, even though he knew Krystal had chosen not to come to him.

  “Get her out of here, Colin,” he said dismissively, reaching for the door.

  Krystal avoided Colin’s outstretched hands and rose to her feet, forcing herself in front of Morgan. She pushed back her hood. It was clear that, in the little interest within their quick looks, none of them recognized her.

  “Have I changed so much in two years, Manny, that you don’t recognize me?” she asked behind an overly bright voice that masked her tension.

  Morgan froze in the open door. No one called him Manny. No one ever did, not since his boyhood, except for...He gave her another, more thorough look.

  “Jesus Christ,” he hissed on a low whisper. So much flew across his face. “Kryssie?”

  Krystal didn’t have time to answer. Morgan’s arms closed so tightly around her that the words were trapped inside her chest. Against that familiar hard body, she was slowly lifted from the floor.

  He was half laughing, half kissing her, half stumbling as he carried her into his suite. Her tears dribbled with her words into his chest.

  He kicked the door closed behind them, leaving Colin and the band in stunned silence in the hall.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “As far as reunions go, this has been pretty ho-hum.”

  Morgan looked up. Krystal was standing in the bathroom doorway, his robe long and loose on her lithe body, her sun brightened hair tousled about her shoulders.

  Thirty-one, and she looked like a little girl, with a little girl’s nervousness in her eyes and tension etched on her delicate features. Very different than the image of her he carried in his memory. Different, yet she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  Poor, little love. How lost she looks.

  Morgan couldn’t imagine what thoughts were in her head to cause such a guarded look, one of ill ease, and he wondered exactly what she was expecting him to do that made her hang back in the door, uncertain.

  Perhaps his emotions over seeing her had surged upward too strongly. Years as Nick’s wife had left her uncomfortable with heated, extreme passion. He’d forgotten, and he’d reacted too strongly.

  But that wasn’t all that stood between them. With sweet movements, she had pulled back shyly from his arms, and it was then that he had seen it: sadness tinting the happy glow in her eyes, the isolation she held that told him that it was not that old flashback terror, but another person who stood between them.

  “If I thought you were up for anything but ho-hum, you’d be busier than you’d know what to do with.” His voice, low and quiet, had a gentle quality to it. “Come here.”
When she still held back at the door, his black eyes sharpened. “Don’t stand there like you’re waiting for me to jump you, Kryssie. My ego has had enough blows for one day.”

  His words were spiced with self-mockery and his smile, sad at the edges, seemed to calm her. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  Krystal shook her head, her eyes never lifting to his face. She sank down on her knees beside him. For a long time, they sat there silently, watching the muted rerun of a fifties comedy on TV.

  “Do you love him?”

  The question, quietly put, almost escaped her. If it had been anyone other than Morgan, she would have wondered how he had known, would have wondered at the strangeness of having this question put openly between them. But Morgan could still read her heart with that ease he had always done.

  Tears welled in her eyes, followed quickly by embarrassment and guilt.

  “I suppose there weren’t exactly fireworks between us when I came through that door. You must have realized then that things were not going to be the same.”

  “No fireworks. No sparks. Not even a flicker. At least not on your end, love,” Morgan assured her with a soft laugh that was warm and endearing. “Not what I expected. It wasn’t what it should have been and we both know it. Two years is a long time, Kryssie. Perhaps it was because I didn’t have a choice two years ago but to let you go, and I wanted to believe it would all be the same. The same for me. The same for you.”

  Half-right. Only the same for me, he thought, but he didn’t say it. His hands moved up her arms, and with fingers that were gentle and sure, he worked the stiff muscles of her neck.

  “Do you want to tell me everything?”

  Her surprise was a thing felt rather than seen.

  “Everything?”

  Morgan’s laughter was rich and full. “Let’s not get carried away, Kryssie. I’ve had all of ten minutes to adjust to the fact that we’re not going to end together. We can start with why you’re sad, and if I can do well with that, we can work up slowly to the rest of it.”