“Grandfather! Stop discussing me as if I weren’t here!” Tracy snapped, outraged—and humiliated all over again by the easy way these two were talking about her life.
She saw her stepfather’s eyes. He had always understood—so much better than those who should have. “Really, both of you,” Ted said smoothly. “That was all so long ago.”
“Yes, it was.” Leif stood. “Sorry, Arthur. I didn’t mean to upset you—I was curious.”
“Leave the past alone, why don’t you, Leif?” Arthur demanded.
Leif shrugged and started around the table. Tracy was astounded that her grandfather actually appeared to flinch.
Leif paused, arching a brow. “More coffee, Arthur?”
“No, no!” Arthur Kingsley rose, too, a tall man, still robust for his age. “Excuse me, I’ve some calls to make. May I use your office, Leif?”
“Of course.”
Arthur hurried toward the house. Leif stared at Tracy with his puzzling, wary scrutiny, then started after him. He paused.
Tracy sank back into her chair—exhausted. “What is he after?” she whispered, unaware she had asked her stepfather the question.
Ted reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Honey, you should know. I mean—sorry—never mind.” He stood then, too. “I think I’m going to take the car out for a spin. Want to come?”
She smiled up at him. “Sounds heavenly! Let’s go!” They avoided the others and slipped out of the house. Tracy hoped grimly that Leif would worry over whether or not she had really deserted him. But even as she laughed and chatted with her stepfather, she knew that he wouldn’t worry in the least. He would know that she would be back.
They stopped at a little country inn for lunch, and Ted showed Tracy all the pictures of her little baby half brother. She enjoyed them and vowed that she would spend more time with Anthony. She loved him—he’d been a darling, darling baby. It was just that she couldn’t spend too much time near any of them. They were incapable of loving her without smothering her.
Tracy and Ted didn’t get back to the house until three in the afternoon. Katie let them in and informed them that two Mrs. Kugers were in the parlor—Jamie’s mother, Carol, and Jesse’s widow, Lauren.
Tracy wished she could run up the stairs and ignore them both. She sighed, aware that she couldn’t be so rude, especially because of Jamie. He’d been very polite to her mother—she owed him the same courtesy.
“Let’s go say hello, shall we?” she suggested cheerfully to Ted.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” he said. He seemed amused.
Tracy poked him in the ribs. “And what are you grinning about?” she demanded.
He lowered his voice. “All the cats are here. I’m willing to bet that there will be all kinds of hissing and clawing before this little party of Leif’s comes to an end!”
“With two Mrs. Kugers, I guess so,” Tracy agreed.
“Two Mrs. Kugers, and your mother,” Ted said softly.
She glanced at him sharply and saw that his expression was a little sad. Tracy suddenly hoped fervently that he didn’t know his wife of twenty-six years had cheated on him through many of those years with the father of her illegitimate child.
They were at the foyer entrance to the parlor. Tracy saw only Tiger and Sam, Jamie, and Lauren and Carol in the room. There was no sign of her mother—or Leif, for that matter. A little flutter touched her heart, and to her vast dismay, she realized that she was upset that Leif wasn’t there, ready to rush over to her and demand to know in breathless tones where she had been.
“Tracy! There you are. Mum—didn’t I tell you that she grew up to be absolutely gorgeous!” Jamie walked over to her.
Tracy stepped into the room, accepting Carol Kuger’s hand as Carol stood to greet her, her smile only slightly stiff.
“Tracy, dear, how are you? I’m so glad that you and Jamie have gotten together. How nice, for you both.”
Carol was a pretty woman, very tall and slim. She hadn’t Audrey’s startling allure, but she was nevertheless very attractive, and at the moment she sounded sincere. Maybe that was because Jesse was gone. Perhaps to Carol’s way of seeing things there was no longer any reason to resent Tracy.
“Carol, it’s nice to see you. And yes, I think that it’s been wonderful to get to know Jamie!”
Carol smiled deeply at the praise.
Tracy turned around quickly to greet her father’s widow, Lauren. Lauren was only a few years older than she was. They knew each other very little, because once she had grown up, Tracy had met Jesse away from his home life when they had seen one another. But once she’d had dinner at their house, and once Lauren had come along to lunch.
She was very slim and very nervous, with pansy blue, nearly violet eyes. She’d been a high-fashion model when she met Jesse. She had been totally dependent on Jesse— jealous even of his music.
But then, she had very little to worry about now. Jesse’s death had left her rather incredibly well off.
“Lauren, how are you.”
“Well enough, thanks, Tracy.” She smiled uneasily, sat again, and hastily lit a cigarette taken from an ivory box on the table.
Jamie was quick to offer her a light, then quick to introduce Ted to Lauren.
“We met. At Jesse’s funeral,” Ted said, but he smiled at Lauren and sat beside her, and Tracy was somewhat bemused, because her stepfather’s easy manner seemed to have a settling affect on even Lauren.
“How strange that we’re all here!” Lauren said, studying the smoke from her cigarette. “Frankly, I was glad of Leif’s invitation.” She smiled again, and Tracy thought with a little unease that she was dazzling when she chose to be. “I’ve been so utterly disoriented and lost and lonely since Jesse that—well, even though I thought that a house party was a strange prelude to a memorial service, I was just thrilled. To see Tiger and Sam again, and of course, Leif. It really is so nice for us all to get together. Nice to see each other, nice to talk, nice to remember Jesse. But leave it to Leif.” She offered Tracy a strange smile. “Leif is always so—thoughtful.”
Thoughtful, hmm, Tracy thought. Yes, Lauren was young and Lauren was beautiful. And with that fragile-lovely-helplessly-feminine smile she was making a definite statement to Tracy.
Lauren was on the prowl again. And she was after Leif.
“Where is Leif?” Tracy tried to ask casually.
“Oh, he took your mother for a ride out to a new restaurant that just opened—she wanted to see the decor. It had been written up in one of those architectural magazines she’s always been so crazy about,” Tiger told Tracy.
He sounded cheerful. It seemed that even Tiger was looking at her strangely, though. Pityingly. Was she becoming absurdly paranoid?
Maybe, maybe not. But though Ted kept smiling, too, Tracy thought that he wasn’t terribly happy about the situation either.
“I imagine they’ll be back shortly. Leif said something about dressing for drinks at seven and dinner at eight,” Carol told her.
“He was looking for you,” Jamie said suddenly.
Tracy glanced across the room at her brother. He was staring at her hard, trying to tell her something. She smiled, because Jamie could be so darn loyal. He was trying to tell her with his blue eyes, so like her father’s, so like her own, that Leif hadn’t walked away from her— that he’d wanted to see her, that whatever he was doing with her mother, it was entirely innocent.
Oh, Jamie! she thought wistfully. You are wrong! There is nothing innocent about that man whatsoever! He is more dangerous than a cage full of lions.
She didn’t say anything, of course. She smiled.
Then she sat back, because the “cats,” as Ted had termed the two Mrs. Kugers, were at it. Subtly, of course. Talking about Jesse. Remembering him. Lauren claiming to have known him best, sweetly, of course. Carol smiling just as sweetly and saying, “But, Lauren, dear, we all heard that you were planning a divorce!”
“Who told you that!” L
auren demanded, flushing.
“Why, Jesse did, of course,” Carol said, plucking her olive from her martini and smiling with a guise of understanding. “Well, he had to call me now and then, dear. We had Jamie’s future to discuss, you know.”
Tracy decided that she had listened to all that she could. She excused herself, saying that the drive had made her sleepy and that she was about to take a shower and a nap.
Lauren stopped her before she could leave. “I hear that you and Leif are a twosome, Tracy. How extraordinary! Are any congratulations in order?”
“I beg your pardon?” Tracy said, narrowing her eyes with a frown.
Lauren gave her a throaty laugh. “Are you going to run off and elope or anything like that? Or, better yet, plan a huge wedding?”
“At the moment, Lauren, we haven’t planned anything,” Tracy managed to say evenly.
“Good,” Lauren said, waiting just a second too long to add, “I wouldn’t want to have missed anything.” She grinned at Tracy, then very quickly lowered her exquisite violet eyes. She inhaled and exhaled, then looked at Tracy again. “He’s such a striking man. The two of you must be beautiful together. If you were only a bit taller, Tracy, they could vote you one of the ten handsomest couples in the world.”
“Umm. Thanks, Lauren.” Taller, Lauren? As tall as you are?
She tried to smile, but all she could do was wonder with a horrible ache how she had ever wound up in all of this—in the tangle of Jesse’s life, her mother’s life—even her grandfather’s life. She, with all her simple dreams of one love, one commitment. Partnership to last forever.
Leif is not like my father! she cried inwardly. No, a voice replied. Jesse was never merciless, never brutal. Never so determined, never so implacable.
Tracy waved to all of them and walked away. Upstairs, she sighed, hating herself as she hesitated with her hand on Leif’s door. Jealous of her mother, jealous of Lauren. She wasn’t doing well at all. She wanted to strangle Leif, but…
But she didn’t want Lauren to have him, or her mother —or any other woman. She swallowed hard and leaned her forehead against the cool wood of the door.
There was nothing going on between Leif and her mother. Yes, there was.
But not sexual! Tracy swore to herself. Really!
And Lauren? Lauren had just gotten here. Lauren had been married to Jesse. Lauren was not going to remain a grieving widow all her life. She liked action and excitement and publicity, and she might very well be here simply because…
Well, there were three surviving members of the Limelights. Apparently, Lauren had missed them all.
Especially Leif?
She closed her eyes tightly and decided she wasn’t going to think about it anymore. Not now.
Tracy pushed open the door. She took a long shower. She found aspirin in Leif’s medicine chest and took two. With her towel still wrapped around her, she came out into the bedroom and stared at his bed.
I should leave, she told herself. Carry through and leave—now. Let him grill the people that I love all by himself. She came over and sat on the bed, telling herself that she shouldn’t be there—conveniently—for him when he returned. Her head was aching; she lay down. She stared up at the ceiling and she knew she wasn’t going to leave. She didn’t trust Leif, and yet she did trust him. She believed that he cared.
Then why had he gone out for a four-hour lunch with her mother?
She knew him; she had to believe in him. Un-unh. She didn’t really know him at all. How much of Leif had she ever really had? A month, once, years ago. And now— just a matter of days.
Tracy sighed and curled up, hugging a pillow as she closed her eyes and willed the thunder in her temple to cease.
Maybe she should leave, but she wasn’t going to. She would be there to stand against him in this raging battle that he had going against her mother and her grandfather.
And she would be there, too, because she simply couldn’t let him go. Not without learning if what they shared could be forever. If it could really be love.
CHAPTER NINE
It wasn’t that he didn’t desperately want to know which of the “loving” survivors had hated Jesse so coldly that he or she had hired a killer to take him out. He did. It was a fever inside of him; the last thing that he owed a friend of a quarter of a century.
There was just another obsession driving his life, too. A personal obsession—and he had to know the truth. Strangely, he felt, too, that if he solved the one mystery, he would solve the other also.
And Audrey was simply the easiest prey.
It hadn’t been at all difficult to get her to go out with him; he had expected a struggle. But just as she was an excellent seductress, she made an easy mark for a seducer. And another point stood in his favor—they had known one another for years. Sporadically, as enemies, as friends—as two people very closely involved with Jesse.
He’d found her alone in the parlor, leaning against the window and holding back the drape—and staring outside, where Blake played in the paved circle behind the driveway on his bike.
“Audrey.”
Startled, she turned back to him, nervously smiling, allowing the drapes to fall back into place.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I. We shouldn’t fight. We’ve been friends a long, long time.”
“Friends,” she murmured. “I doubt if you thought that I was much of a friend once.”
He grinned and lifted his hands, palms upward. “That was the past, Audrey. We should let it lie. It’s over.”
“I don’t think we can ever escape the past, Leif.”
“Not escape it, Audrey. Just live with it.”
She stood very still, gazing at him again. And even if she didn’t really trust him, it just wasn’t in Audrey to leave a man alone. Not that she was really promiscuous; she just liked to flirt.
She came over to him, skinny heels against the tile of the floor. “Leif, you look good enough to eat. Oh—that sounded, uh, indecent, didn’t it?” She ran her fingers over his tie, making an unnecessary adjustment. Then she stepped back and sighed softly. “I swear, Leif,” she sighed softly, “Leif, you are a striking man. As striking as—”
She paused, and he didn’t fill in the name for her. They both knew she was thinking of Jesse, and despite himself, Leif felt a tenderness for her creep over him. Audrey had really loved Jesse. She’d just never had the strength to fight her father.
“Jesse’s gone, Audrey,” he said very softly.
“Yes, he is.” She looked sadly up at Leif. “I sound terrible, don’t I? Ted is a wonderful husband. Still, I can’t quite accept a world without Jesse in it.”
“Neither can I.”
He reached out a hand to her. She came against his chest, and he smoothed back her hair. They both broke away.
“Thanks, Leif.”
“I’ve got an idea, Audrey. Let’s both escape this for a little while. There’s a wonderful new place that opened. Are you still heavily into those design magazines? This one was featured on last month’s cover. It’s a wonderful place.”
“I would like to get out of here…”
And so he had found Liz, to tell her where he was going and to ask her to see that his other guests were taken care of. And on the way out, he had called Blake over, giving him a big hug and promising to play ball with him later. And he had watched Audrey waiting for him while he talked to his son.
At the restaurant he had ordered wine right away. He’d seen to it that they consumed quite a bit before ordering. They laughed and talked about silly things in the past. And only when she was completely at ease and their meal completed did he lean back and smile, sadly, bitterly.
“How can you do it, Audrey?”
“What—what are you talking about?” she asked, moistening her lips, instantly on the defensive.
He leaned toward her, casually resting his elbows on the table, but capturing her gaze as if his own eyes were spears.
�
�Ignore your own grandson. Lie.” He sat back, lifting his palms in an irritated and baffled manner. “Why did you do it?”
Her eyes lowered. She tossed her napkin on the table.
“Really, Leif—”
“Yes, really, Audrey. It took me years to be suspicious. But here I am, married to Celia. And you knew why Celia had left me, because when she came back, I told Jesse, and Jesse told you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do, Audrey. You could come into my house with Jesse and your father because Katie would never have thought to stop you. You had the law behind you— and my own sense of guilt!—when you immobilized me and spirited Tracy away. But you had no right—none!— to keep from me the fact that Tracy was pregnant.” Audrey wouldn’t meet his eyes. She was breathing too quickly, grasping at her wineglass and sipping quickly.
“Let me go on. Celia walked out on me because she knew about her heart—she knew she could never have children. I told her that I loved her, not her procreation capabilities. And the next thing I know, old Arthur Kingsley is calling me with an apology for the way things went, telling me that Tracy is in the west going to school and never wants to see my face again, and he’s really sorry about trying to cave my head in. He’s heard about Celia, and he’s real sorry, but you know, money talks, maybe he can help. The next thing I know, Celia and I are both thrilled to death because, thanks to Arthur, we won’t have to wait on a list for years and years to adopt an infant—Arthur knows of a young Swiss girl who wants to give her baby up for adoption.”
Audrey was shaking her head. “You’re crazy!” she told him.
He found her hand on the table. He wound his fingers tightly around hers, drawing her eyes to his again.
“Tracy was pregnant, wasn’t she, Audrey? I adopted my own son!”
“No!”
“Audrey!”
“No!”
“There’s a little grave in a cemetery just outside of Zurich, isn’t there, Audrey. It reads, ‘J. Kingsley.’ But if I went there, Audrey, the grave would be empty, wouldn’t it?”
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