Seduced and Betrayed

by Candace Schuler

  Well, he was wasn't going to do anything to assuage that wounded pride, he told himself sternly. No, sir. He wasn't some raw, cocky kid anymore, hell-bent on proving his manhood. He was a responsible adult, a father, and he was going to behave. He wasn't going to stir up trouble by trying to charm his ex-wife back into his bed just to prove to them both that he still could.

  With that thought firmly in mind, he glanced at his watch then reached for the telephone again. He had time to make a few calls, he thought, tie up a couple of loose ends on his current project, get the ball rolling a little faster on his next one. Immersing himself in his work had always been his way of staying out of trouble. Or, more usually, avoiding more trouble. Trouble that invariably involved a woman somewhere along the line.

  Two days after his farce of a wedding to Ariel, he'd started work on his second picture for Universal Studios. The movie had premiered the same week he received the Oscar nomination as Best Actor for Wild Hearts, imprinting his reputation as a hot young stud in the public consciousness and cementing his career as an actor. He'd taken his first shot at directing when his second marriage—to a brilliant and beautiful entertainment lawyer—started to fall apart, less than two years after the wedding. He'd bitten the bullet and started his own production company three weeks after the actress he'd been living with on and off for six months sued him for palimony. A thriving career didn't exactly make up for a tangled love life, but it helped. Some.

  It was also about to make him late. Again.

  It was a quarter to five when he finally concluded his business and hung up the phone. With a muffled curse, he dashed to the bathroom, showered, shaved and dressed in record time, racing out of the apartment like a schoolboy who'd already missed the first bell. He hurried through the small front lobby, pushing open the door without looking, and almost knocked down the woman who was just coming in.

  "Excuse me," he muttered, automatically catching her by the elbows to steady her without really seeing her. He was going to be late and Ariel was going to give him one of those censorious, well-bred looks that could make a man feel as if he were a scruffy little boy who'd tracked mud all over her spotless pastel carpets. "I'm sorry. I—"

  "Ezekiel?" The woman held onto his forearms when he would have politely put her away from him. "Ezekiel Blackstone?"

  Zeke couldn't believe his ears. Only one person besides his mother had ever called him that. Her hair was snowy white, her soft, pale skin was lined with age, her full gypsy skirts, high-necked antique-lace blouse and fringed paisley shawl were from another time, but her sparkling green eyes were still as clear and bright as a young girl's. It was amazing; she'd looked exactly the same the last time he'd seen her, nearly twenty-five years ago.

  His politely distracted smile changed to one of real pleasure. He'd always had a soft spot for the eccentric little woman. "Madame Markova."

  "My stars, it is you," she said, her faint Russian accent still discernible after who knew how many years in the United States. "You are the mysterious new tenant in 1-G? The one Superintendent Mueller would say nothing about?"

  "Temporarily. Until the repairs on my house are finished."

  "How very strange. You know that young Jack Shannon and his lovely wife have just moved out of that apartment?" she asked, her eyes bright with curiosity.

  "I know. Quite a coincidence, isn't it?"

  "It is destiny," she said firmly, with an emphatic nod of her head. "Kismet. You were meant to come back."

  He shrugged that away and took her hands in his. "I can't believe you're still here after all these years."

  She lifted one shoulder in an eloquent shrug. "You thought such an old lady would be dead by now, hmm? Part of the legend of the Wilshire Arms, maybe?"

  Zeke laughed and raised her hands to his lips. "Not old, Madame," he said, and kissed each one in turn. "Ageless."

  Irina Markova glowed. "You were always the most charming of the boys. He was a devil with the ladies, this one," she said, turning to the young woman Zeke only just now noticed standing behind her. "He is still a devil, I think," she added, her green eyes twinkling flirtatiously. "A swashbuckler like my Errol."

  "I'm honored to be in such exalted company," Zeke said, knowing she was referring the late Errol Flynn. Rumor had it that Madame Markova, once a makeup artist to the biggest Hollywood stars, and the famous movie actor had been quite an item back in the late forties. It was a rumor Zeke had no trouble believing; judging by the pictures he'd seen, Irina Markova had been a spectacularly beautiful woman in her prime. She still was, as far as Zeke was concerned.

  "If I was forty years younger, I might be tempted to tame myself a devil, just once more." She flashed another glance over her shoulder at the young woman behind her. "To show these young girls how it is done," she teased, and then laughed softly and shook her head. "But I am an old woman now, so I will leave all these silly modern girls to figure it out on their own." She turned and motioned the young woman forward. "This is my young friend Sammie-Jo Sheppard," she said, introducing her to Zeke. "She is a very good actress. You would be wise to put her in one of your films."

  Zeke reached out to shake the young woman's hand, pretending not to notice her embarrassment at the old woman's bluntness. "I was wondering where I'd seen you before," he said. "You had a small part in that miniseries on TV last Fall. Bitter Harvest, wasn't it?"

  "A very small part," Sammie-Jo said, obviously both amazed and pleased that he'd recognized her.

  "But very effective." Zeke's eyes narrowed a bit as he studied her. She was young and beautiful, with soft blond hair and big blue eyes that managed to be both sweet and cynical at the same time. He made one of his lightning-quick business decisions. "I'm in the middle of casting a new movie." He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket as he spoke and pulled out a business card and a plain gold pen. Quickly, he scribbled something on the back of the card. "That's my casting director's name and number," he said, as he handed it to her. The pen disappeared back into his pocket. "Have your agent call and set up an appointment. I'd like you to read for the part of Kimberly."

  Sammie-Jo's big blue eyes got even bigger. "Mr. Blackstone," she breathed, looking back and forth between him and the card in her hand. "I don't know what to say. I—" She struggled to get hold of herself. "Thank you."

  "It's just a reading," he said, feeling compelled to warn her. "It may not lead to anything."

  "Yes, of course. I realize that," she said. "But thank you for the opportunity just the same."

  Irina Markova was almost as delighted as Sammie-Jo at the turn of events. Her soft, lined old face beamed her approval. "I have invited Sammie-Jo to have supper in my apartment and look at my scrapbooks of old Hollywood, when it was still glamorous. We would be pleased if you would join us. We are having my special pirozhki and cabbage soup," she added, as if to entice him.

  "I'd love to," Zeke said, meaning it. "But I'm afraid I'll have to take a rain check. I'm already late for an appointment."

  * * *

  Both of Michael's parents were doctors. His father was in private practice in La Jolla. His mother was a research scientist at the Scripps Institute in San Diego. They were both thrilled with their son's prospective bride—and a little nervous about meeting her two famous parents. But Zeke's good-natured, I'm-just-one-of-the-guys grin, combined with Ariel's unparalleled abilities as a hostess, put them immediately at ease. Soon they were sitting around the dinner table, talking like old friends.

  "Michael told us how you two met," Sondra Everett said to Cameron as they lingered over coffee and after-dinner liqueurs. "I thought it sounded like the perfect way for a doctor to meet his future wife. Very romantic."

  Cameron smiled across the table at her future mother-in-law. "Well, I don't know how romantic it was. One of the secretaries at the office almost sliced her thumb off with an X-Acto knife and I took her to the emergency room for stitches. Michael was on duty." She transferred her smile to her fiancé, looking at him as if
he was Sir Lancelot and young Dr. Kildare rolled into one. "He asked me for a date while he was stitching her up. I was so flustered and impressed I said yes before I stopped to think about it."

  Michael's father slapped his son on the shoulder. "Quick work, son," he said with a wink.

  "Well, I had to ask her out," Michael said, adding his own two cents to the story. "She stood there with blood all over the front of her blouse, cool as a seasoned surgical nurse, while I stitched that girl's thumb." His easy grin flashed and he reached out to cover Cameron's hand where it lay on the table between them. "I knew if I didn't ask her out quick, one of those other clowns in the ER would." He shook his head. "You have no idea how hard it is to find a date who doesn't get all squeamish and queasy at the sight of blood and needles. Especially one who looks like Cami."

  "Talk about squeamish," Sondra Everett said with a soft laugh. "You should have seen your father the first time he had to cut into a cadaver."

  "Now, Sondra," Dan Everett objected mildly. "Mike's heard that story a dozen times."

  "His eyes rolled back in his head." Sondra shot her husband a teasing look. "And he just sank to the floor like a stone."

  "Is that how you met?" Cameron asked.

  Sondra shook her head. "We were assigned to each other as lab partners in our very first biology class at med school."

  "And we've been partners ever since," her husband added fondly, in what was obviously an often-voiced sentiment.

  Now that's true love, Zeke thought, watching the exchange between his daughter's future in-laws. There was no apparent strife in their relationship, no histrionics or hysterics. Just deep, calm, abiding love, the way love was supposed to be. He'd never had that with Ariel. Their relationship had been fraught with problems from the very first. His problems. Her problems. Their problems.

  They hadn't come together in any natural sort of way, meeting and then getting to know each other gradually. They'd been thrown together, literally, becoming unnaturally intimate before they barely knew each other well enough to say hello. That very situation regularly wrecked havoc in the lives of any number of adult actors—and he and Ariel had just been a couple of kids with over-stimulated hormones. It had been a classic case of opposites attracting—the streetwise young actor from New York, fresh from a successful off-Broadway play and the sheltered young television star with a list of credits as long as her arm. He'd been cocky and full of himself, using bravado to hide his insecurities. She'd been sweet, shy and curious. When you added the Romeo and Juliet angle provided by her over-protective dragon of a mother... Hell, was it any wonder they'd thought they were in love? And had anybody but the two of them been surprised when it fell apart once the last roll of film was in the can?

  "How did you two first meet?" Dan asked, looking back and forth between Zeke and Ariel.

  Zeke looked up from his contemplation of his brandy glass in time to see the other man bend down and reach under the table. Probably to rub the ankle his wife had just kicked, Zeke thought. But the question had been asked and it was hanging in the air, waiting to be answered. Zeke looked down the length of the beautifully set table, to where his ex-wife sat at the other end, silently ceding the privilege of answering it to her. Would she remember their first meeting the same way he did?

  "We met at work," Ariel said, making it sound as normal and uneventful as a day at the office. "On a soundstage at Universal."

  "They were filming Wild Hearts," Cameron added, when it appeared that neither Zeke nor Ariel was going to elaborate further. "It was the first movie either of them ever did. Dad got his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor."

  "Wild Hearts?" Sondra Everett said, apparently forgetting discretion at the prospect of hearing more about the seemingly magical business of making movies. "My goodness, I saw that just last week on American Movie Classics on TV. It's always been one of my favorites. So romantic. And such a romantic way to meet."

  "I hate to disillusion you but the romance was all on the screen," Ariel said with an elegant little shrug. "Making it look that way wasn't the least bit romantic at all."

  "Oh, come on now, Ariel," Zeke disagreed, irked at her deliberately casual dismissal of what had been between them. "It was a little bit romantic." He flashed his million dollar bad-boy grin at their guests. "Remember the scene in the movie where Laura and Judd first kiss? The one where she comes out of the convenience store and he's sitting outside on his Harley, waiting for her?" The questions were addressed to Sondra Everett but the words were aimed, point blank, at his ex-wife. "It was the very first scene we filmed for the movie. We barely knew each other but Hans—our director, Hans Ostfield, he won an Oscar a couple of years ago for The Promise?"

  Sondra nodded. "With Tara Channing and Pierce Kingston. I have the video."

  "Hans thought shooting that scene first, before we really got to know each other, would give it more authenticity. Capture the nervousness of a first kiss and all. Well, we were nervous, all right. Remember, Ariel?" He shifted his hot, dark-eyed gaze down the length of the table, locking it with that of his ex-wife, staring into her eyes as if they were all alone at the candlelit table. "Things got so... romantic—" he said softly, hesitating just long enough for his audience to know that "romantic" wasn't the half of it "—that Ariel muffed her lines. And I... well..." He shrugged and transferred his gaze back to that of his fascinated listeners. "What happened to me probably isn't fit to talk about in mixed company," he confided with a roguish grin.

  Ariel's chair legs squeaked against the tiled marble floor as she pushed back from the table. "It looks like a beautiful night," she said as she rose to her feet. "Shall we finish our drinks out by the pool?"

  Her voice was perfectly pleasant, her smile was graciousness itself but the look she shot down the table at her ex-husband could have frozen molten lava.

  "Actually, it's time we were going," Sondra Everett said into the small silence that followed her hostess's words. "We have quite a long drive ahead of us, don't we, Dan?"

  "Two and a half, three hours, depending on traffic." Dan Everett made a show of looking at his watch. "I had no idea it was so late already."

  "I'm afraid I have to be on my way, too." Michael pushed his chair away from the table and stood. "I need to stop by my apartment and change before I head on over to the hospital," he explained with a charming smile. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to drag Cami away, too. We drove over in her car."

  There was a general flurry of napkins being laid down and chairs being pushed back and, minutes later, they found themselves at the wide front door of Ariel's Beverly Hills mansion, exchanging the usual round of thank-yous and good-nights.

  "It was a great dinner, Mom," Cameron said as she kissed her mother on the cheek. "Tell Eleanor she outdid herself, as usual."

  "It's been a lovely evening," Sondra Everett said. "It'll be our turn next time."

  "Thank you for coming," Ariel said as she stood in the open doorway, bidding her guests good-night, a gracious hostess to the end. "Drive safely, everyone."

  She shut the front door, softly, quietly, one hand on the knob and the other pressed flat against the smooth wood, and then rested her forehead against it for a moment, gathering strength.

  She'd thought the evening would never end! And there was still the rehearsal dinner to get through, and the wedding itself, and then the reception, with all its attendant traditions of familial togetherness and cooperation. Thank God, it would all be over soon. In a little less than a month, Cameron and Michael would be married and on their honeymoon, and she could go back to pretending her ex-husband didn't exist. Until then, she'd just have to find a way to deal with his overwhelming, unsettling, unnerving presence the best way she could.

  Pushing away from the door, she turned and walked back through the house, automatically turning off lights as she went, through the foyer and the front parlor, down the hallway to the small informal dining room overlooking the pool area.

  She'd intended to clear the t
able and put the dishes to soak, maybe have herself another helping of the delicious crème caramel Eleanor had made for dessert, and then do a few dozen laps in the pool before she went to bed. She had taken, lately, to doing her laps at night instead of in the morning. It helped her sleep.

  Sometimes.

  Other times—most times—she ended up reading until she finally dropped off. Scripts, mostly, in hopes of finding a screenplay where the woman wasn't cast as the victim or used as mere set decoration. She'd discovered the scripts made a good soporific, far superior to either liquor or pills and without the unpleasant side effects.

  She heard the soft clatter of cutlery against china as she approached the door to the dining room and quickened her steps, the silk faille of her wide-legged evening pajamas swishing against her legs with the quick movement, the heels of her shoes clicking sharply against the hardwood floor.

  There was one more hurdle to be faced before she could be alone with her thoughts and the night, one more obstacle to be overcome and conquered. Squaring her shoulders for the battle ahead, she lifted her chin and stepped into the dining room. "Just what do you think you're doing?" she demanded of her ex-husband.

  Chapter 6

  Zeke looked up at his ex-wife and then down at the precariously balanced stack of cups and saucers he was holding as if the answer should be obvious. "Clearing the table."

  "I can see that," Ariel said, her voice tight with exhaustion and controlled fury. "Why?"

  "Well..." He shrugged innocently, as if he had no idea why she was upset. "I heard you tell Eleanor you wouldn't need her anymore tonight after she served dessert, so I thought I'd give you a hand with the cleaning up. It seemed the least I could do since you hosted the dinner."