Crown Jewel

by Fern Michaels

  Also by Fern Michaels

  TRADING PLACES

  LATE BLOOMER

  NO PLACE LIKE HOME

  THE DELTA LADIES

  WILD HONEY

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2003 by First Draft, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-9648-3

  ISBN-10: 0-7434-9648-5

  First Atria Books hardcover edition December 2003

  ATRIABOOKS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  http://www.SimonSays.com

  Prologue

  Hollywood, California

  1984

  He was a tall man, immaculately dressed. At any time of the day or evening, he could have passed for a Wall Street banker or a Madison Avenue type. His hair had just the right amount of gray at the temples, his skin was burnished just enough to make him look distinguished. His Savile Row suit added the last touch. At the moment, he looked angry.

  “It’s not negotiable, Ricky. Either you agree, or I’m out of here, and you’re on your own.”

  Hollywood’s Platinum Boy stared across the room at his brother. He wasn’t so stoned that he didn’t feel the chill racing up and down his arms. He did his best to focus, to look contrite, and knew he was failing miserably. This was where the rubber was going to meet the road. Not trusting himself to speak, he reached out for the arm of the leather sofa to sit down. Instead, he fell forward. Shit!

  Philip Lam, older by two years, felt sadness and disgust when he looked across at his handsome movie star brother. On other occasions, he would have rushed to his brother’s aid, but not today. Today, yesterday, and the day before yesterday were what had brought him to this point in time.

  The Platinum Boy struggled to speak. “You promised Mom…”

  “Don’t go there, Ricky. You screwed that up, too. You couldn’t be bothered with going to see her, so don’t bring up ‘promises’ to me. You’ve used up all your markers. Either you check into the clinic, or I’ll dissolve the partnership. I’m not just talking to hear my own voice this time. You will pack your stuff, and you will get to the clinic on your own. All the arrangements have been made. They’re expecting you by ten this evening. One second past ten, and you’re down the tubes. You have finally brought me to the end of my rope. I won’t be here to pick up the pieces. Make sure you understand that, little brother.”

  “Roxy’s making you do this, isn’t she?” Ricky said, finally coming up with something he could use to stall his brother.

  “You would be wise not to go there either, Ricky. Roxy has nothing to do with this.”

  “She has everything to do with it. She settled for you because I didn’t want her and her baggage. You got my seconds. She’s been trying to get back at me ever since. Eat shit, Philly!” When the expression in his brother’s eyes turned even colder, he quickly added, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I didn’t mean that. I just got up, I’m not thinking straight. I swear, Philly, I didn’t mean that.”

  Philip Lam stared at his brother. After another year of drugs and booze, he’d either be dead or living in a ditch somewhere. Makeup could do just so much. Eventually, his brain would go, and he wouldn’t be able to memorize a script. Looking pretty, even with nips and tucks, wouldn’t cut it.

  Ricky Lam, Hollywood’s Platinum Boy, was tall and rugged, with unruly, sandy-colored hair that some hairstylist had highlighted for the cameras. His eyes were an incredible brown—bedroom eyes, the gossip columnists called them. His teeth were perfect, pearly white, thanks to one of Hollywood’s finest dentists. Handsome. Gorgeous. A ladies’ man. A man’s man.

  The truth was, Ricky Lam was all those things. He was also a drug addict and a boozer.

  “Yes, you did mean it. Don’t add lying on top of everything else. What you said about Roxy is a lie. You stalked her, Ricky. You were so strung out, you probably don’t even remember it. Go to the library and look it up. It made the headlines. The headline was, ‘Platinum Boy Stalks Makeup Artist!’ I refuse to have a brother I’m ashamed of. Make no mistake, I am ashamed of you. Remember what I told you about being at the end of my rope.”

  “I made you rich, Philly. Really, really rich,” Ricky whined.

  Philip sighed. He’d been down this road so many times he’d lost count. “Get yourself a new business manager and agent, Ricky. Every cent I made off you I damn well earned. If I hadn’t invested your money, you would have stuck it all up your nose. Keep doing what you’re doing, and it will be gone in two years. Do you even remember how many paternity suits I settled for you? Do you have any idea of how many times I paid out astronomical sums of money to keep your scandals out of the papers? Well, do you?”

  “No,” Ricky mumbled. Suddenly he felt like shit, like he was something Philly had stepped in. He had to pay attention to what his brother was saying. He wished he could remember what he’d done the night before. It must be Sunday. Yeah, it was Sunday, or he’d be at the studio.

  “When I give you your final accounting, you’ll know. Now, what’s it going to be?”

  “How long?” Ricky mumbled again.

  “As long as it takes to straighten yourself out. Considering the condition you’re in, I wouldn’t opt for anything under ninety days. Maybe longer. If they call me tonight and tell me you bailed, I will dissolve our business arrangement the first thing in the morning. Personally, I don’t give a damn if you go or not. I don’t think you have the guts. You walk the walk, talk the talk, but then you fizzle like a bad Roman candle.

  “I left all the information on your desk in the study. There’s a one-way plane ticket in a folder. I squared everything with the studio for six months. It was either that, or they were going to cancel your contract. The rest is up to you.”

  Ricky shook his head to clear it. “Am I supposed to call you? Are you going to be checking on me? What’s the drill here? I want to know what I’m getting into.”

  “I told you. You’re on your own. But if you need clarification, no, I am not going to call you, and no, I will not accept calls from you. The main reason is that I won’t be here. I’m going to the islands to check on the resorts.”

  “It’s always about you, Philly,” Ricky whined again. “It’s always what you want, when you want it, and if you want it. You’re like some screwed-up ringmaster. Mom must be spinning in her grave at the way you’re treating me.”

  Philip Lam balled his hands into tight fists. He walked over to the chair where his brother was sitting. He unclenched his hands to grasp both arms of the chair and leaned over until he was a hair away from his brother’s face. “Look in my eyes and watch my lips, Ricky. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you are Hollywood’s Platinum Boy. I no longer care if you drink your nights away and snort your days into oblivion. I no longer care, do you understand? I’m sick and tired of being called in the middle of the night by the police and by the studio during the day. If and when you come back clean and sober, we will have another talk. That’s when I’ll decide if I still want to be in business with you. Or if I even want to be your brother. I don’t have one iota of confidence that you can cut it, so I’m going to put all the wheels into motion starting tomorrow. If you screw up this time, all you have to do is sign on the dotted line, and our business relationship is over. I will disown you as my brot
her. You can pump gas for all I care.”

  “Just like that,” Ricky said, rubbing his dripping nose.

  “Yeah. Just like that,” Philly said quietly.

  Philip looked around at the pigsty of a house his brother lived in. “You really should clean this place up. It smells just the way you smell. Like a sewer. Good-bye, Ricky.”

  Outside, in the early-morning air, Roxy Lam rushed up to her husband. “What did he say? Is he all right? Are you all right, Philip?” she asked, with just the right amount of concern in her voice.

  “Yes, I’m fine. I don’t know if he’s going to go or not. And before you can ask, yes, he tried to pull the same old crap. We’ll just have to wait and see how it plays out.”

  “The best thing I ever did was go to you when your brother started stalking me. It’s up to Ricky now. You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty. We both need to walk away from this. I have an idea. Let’s you and I have breakfast at that greasy spoon we used to go to when we first met. My treat. Reba’s in school, and my whole day is wide open.” Her voice was pleading, her eyes full of hope.

  “That’s probably the best offer I’m going to get today. Let’s go.” His voice was so cold, so controlled, Roxy shivered in the warm sunshine. She just knew it wasn’t going to be a pleasant breakfast. She wished that she could just go home.

  Ricky Lam watched his brother and his brother’s wife from the window. He started to count. Philly always came back by the time he counted to sixty. When he reached 360 he knew his brother wasn’t coming back. For the first time in his life, he felt all-consuming fear.

  “I hate your guts, you prick! And I hate your wife, too!” he screamed to the silence surrounding him. Startled at the venom in his voice, he slumped against the wall.

  1

  Hollywood, California

  Fifteen Years Later

  Ricky Lam, idol to millions of fans, jammed his hands into his pockets as he strolled the grounds of his palatial Hollywood estate. He looked around, appreciating the beauty of the well-pruned shrubs, the brilliant flowers, and the brick paths that led to a gazebo at the far end of the grounds. All thanks to his acting skills and his brother’s wise investment strategies. He picked a delicate, crimson flower, his fingers caressing its silky petals. He shouldn’t have picked it. It would die soon. He wished he had left it on the bush. He hurried into the house and stuck it into a glass of water.

  The house was state-of-the-art, befitting his star power in the movie industry. At forty-three, he was in top form. With two mini face-lifts under his belt, he could still hold his own with the young studs arriving in Hollywood in droves. He had a tinge of gray at his temples these days, but the studio expertly covered it up. He still had the same dark brown bedroom eyes, the same lean muscular body that had helped make him famous. He was still a hunk.

  Variety said he was still the Platinum Boy. They said he had it all. If they only knew. He was probably the loneliest man in all of California. He had one close friend, his stuntman, Ted Lymen. And, of course, Philly. He could never discount Philly. He was where he was today because of his brother. But Philly was not his friend. Philly wasn’t even his mentor. Philly was his warden.

  His relationship with Philly had never been the same after he’d returned from the exclusive addiction clinic fifteen years earlier. Instead of treating him as a brother, Philly had reduced their relationship to that of business manager and client, sometimes even warden and prisoner. Oh, they still met for dinner once or twice a year, usually at some out-of-the-way restaurant. Conversation was always strained as Philly smoked and drank, and Ricky did neither. They still went to an occasional ball game together, and Philly even came on the set and watched him work when he was in town. But it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same again, and they both knew it. It was an accept-it-or-reject-it relationship. Ricky chose to accept it.

  No matter what he did, no matter what he said, he hadn’t been able to recapture the old relationship. Secretly, he thought Philly was waiting for him to screw up. And, like the stupid ass he was, Ricky wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He never wanted to see that look of disgust in his brother’s face again. Never, ever.

  In the beginning, when he had first returned from the clinic, Ricky had blamed Roxy because he needed someone to blame. Fifteen years later, he laid the blame right where it belonged, on his own shoulders.

  In the dark, late at night, when no one was around, he prayed that Philly would forgive him and throw his arms around his shoulders, and say, “Let’s let bygones be bygones.” It hadn’t happened, and it wasn’t going to happen. He knew that now. Fifteen years of being a straight arrow wasn’t enough to satisfy Philly.

  Ricky flopped down on a custom-crafted chair in the living room, his favorite, and picked up a script. It was untitled. What kind of scriptwriter doesn’t give his work a title? He was supposed to read it, decide if it was worthy of his talent, then let his agent and the front office know if he was willing to negotiate. He tossed the script back onto the table.

  Tomorrow was the final wrap for the movie he was working on, Seven Hours Till Sundown. An hour at the most, maybe two, depending on how many takes the director wanted. The wrap party was tonight, though, because once they wound up the film tomorrow, the crew was heading off to Washington, D.C., to start a new film titled Inside the Beltway. It was all about a politician’s rage on the Beltway. He was glad he had passed on that piece of crap.

  Ricky looked at the phone on the table next to him, willing it to ring. Philly was in town for the wrap party and to cart his check off to the bank, at which point he would head back to the islands to manage their two resorts.

  Resorts for the rich and famous. All you needed to visit one of them was a bucketful of money and a reservation made two years in advance. It had been Philly’s idea to build the resorts, pointing out that Ricky wasn’t going to be able to work in Hollywood forever. Leading men had a tendency to get old, and after a while face-lifts left you looking haggard. “You need something to fall back on when that happens, Ricky,” Philly had said. “You’ll never be happy playing character parts. Get out when you’re on top and hobnob with the new elite where you call the shots.” It had made sense. As long as he didn’t allow himself to get pissed off at his brother’s financial prowess, Ricky realized that everything his older brother said made sense.

  He looked down at the phone. He supposed he could initiate the call, but to what end? Ricky had never stepped over the boundaries Philly had erected when Ricky had returned from the clinic. Why start now?

  He, too, was heading for the islands after the last shoot tomorrow. Thirty days of doing nothing but relaxing in his very own star suite. Philly hated it when he showed up at the resort. Ricky wasn’t sure why. The attention he got from the staff? Roxy’s strange attitude toward him even though he stayed out of her way?

  Ricky continued to stare at the phone. Christ, how he hated tiptoeing around his brother.

  He bounded off the chair and loped over to the mantel to pick up two small pictures. His sons. Children he provided for but had never seen. No, that wasn’t true, he had seen them once.

  It was one of two demands he’d made when he’d signed off on the deals Philly had negotiated with the boys’ mothers, young girls he’d had one-night stands with during that wild time in his youth when he was Hollywood’s number one hell-raiser. “Try explaining that to your studio and all those young adoring fans,” Philly had said.

  In exchange for signing a confidentiality agreement, each girl received the princely sum of ten grand a month until her son finished college and the assurance that Ricky would never attempt to interfere in her son’s life. One breach on her part and the money stopped cold. Philly had used the word lawsuit a lot when he’d talked to the frightened girls. Even to this day, both women honored the agreements. Ricky recalled the excitement he’d felt when he’d laid eyes on his sons for the first time. They’d been three then, little blond-haired boys all dressed up a
nd hating every minute of it. They’d looked at him suspiciously and hung on to their mothers’ skirts. He’d just stared at them, committing their faces to memory. It was all he could do.

  The boys, born three months apart, were twenty-three now and had never met each other. In fact, neither of them knew he had a half brother. Tyler had lived with his maternal grandparents until he’d left for college because his mother was off singing with a country western band. Max had also lived with his grandparents after his mother married a real estate developer because he didn’t get along with her husband. Both boys had finished college and were working. He’d been tempted to call them, invite them to Hollywood, but Philly had made him swear not to seek them out, saying he should let sleeping dogs lie. “And don’t try to do it on the sly, either, Ricky, because you’ll be recognized, and I’m not pulling any more of your chestnuts out of the fire.” That had been the end of that, which didn’t say much for him as a father. It was always Philly’s way or the highway.

  He wondered what his sons would think of him as a person if they knew he was their father. Anonymously, he’d bought the boys their first cars, paid for their college educations and all medical and dental bills. They had both gone to exclusive summer camps and attended the best private schools in their areas. At least that’s what Philly told him. Most of what Philly had told him about Tyler was a lie, according to the private detective he’d hired to report on his sons. A report he’d never showed Philly. Tyler had been booted out of the prestigious summer camps, usually three days after arrival. Incorrigible, the counselors said. He’d been suspended eight times while in high school and how he’d graduated was still a mystery. What was even more of a mystery was how he’d gotten into college and managed to graduate in the lowest percentile in the class. But he had graduated. Add up all the arrest charges for speeding while under the influence, loss of driving privileges, and his bad-ass attitude, car wrecks, drug experimentation, and he could have posed for a portrait of his father in his early twenties. A chip off the old block.