by JoAnn Ross
“No.” Her face closed up. “You don’t understand. I don’t go out socially.”
He lifted a brow. “Not at all?”
It was better, Lily told herself, to set the ground rules right off the bat. “Not at all. Not now.” She turned around and rang the doorbell to summon the housekeeper. Inside the house a medley of chimes sounded. “Not later. Not ever.”
Connor was definitely not accustomed to being turned down. Especially by a woman who, let’s face it, he told himself, although she might be lovely, in an old-fashioned, renaissance Madonna sort of way, probably didn’t receive a whole lot of offers.
“But—
“I really am sorry.” Her soft smile was sincere, echoing her words. “I’m sure you’re a very nice man. And you did save my life. But I’m really not going to change my mind.”
The front door opened. “Besides, it’s obvious that you’re rich. And I have a hard-and-fast rule about getting involved with rich men.”
Connor could only stare at her as she turned away and disappeared into the house. It was the first time in his thirty-one years that any woman had claimed to object to his money and even sensing that her ridiculous rule had everything to do with that dead jerk she’d been married to, he still couldn’t quite believe she meant it.
The carved oak door closed, effectively shutting Connor out.
It was just as well, he told himself as the actor-cum-cab driver returned him to where he’d left his rental car.
He had enough on his plate right now. He certainly didn’t need to get mixed up with Junior Van Cortlandt’s very pregnant widow.
Even if the lady did have world-class legs.
2
AFTER ASSURING BLYTHE that she all was right, albeit a bit sandy, Lily went upstairs, took another shower and tried to tell herself that she wasn’t regretting, even a little bit, sending Mac Sullivan on his way.
And even as she knew that was a lie, Lily reminded herself that the next two months were going to be difficult enough without allowing herself to get distracted. And Mac Sullivan, she feared, could be a very powerful distraction.
She found Blythe in the sunroom, sitting at a white wicker table, staring outside the floor-to-ceiling windows at the rose garden, which was in full bloom. She appeared far away, lost in contemplation and from the frown on her face, Lily hoped she was not thinking about her upcoming wedding.
“Feeling better?” Blythe’s smile—which had been known to make men in theaters all over America hot—was warm and sincere. Her dark eyes were laced with friendly concern as they moved over Lily’s face.
“I wasn’t feeling that bad,” Lily lied. “Just wet.” Having viewed the shadows beneath her eyes in the bathroom mirror this morning and sensing Blythe was about to challenge the obvious prevarication, she attempted to change the subject. “How about you? Any prenuptial jitters?”
“Of course not,” Blythe answered quickly. A bit too quickly, Lily thought. “Why would you ask?” Despite the denial, Blythe’s tone was lacking in its usual assertiveness.
Lily shrugged. “No reason. I was just making conversation.”
Seeming no more eager than Lily to have her statements challenged this morning, Blythe held out a cup. “I made you a cup of herbal tea. I seem to recall reading it’s best to watch caffeine during pregnancy, but if you’d rather have coffee—”
“Tea’s perfect,” Lily assured her.
Blythe had always been an expert on so many things. The fact that this intelligent woman who’d graduated with a degree in economics from Brown was invariably cast as a luscious sex goddess was definite proof that Hollywood was a land of images and illusion.
Lily sat down at the table and glanced at the faded newspaper photos spread across the glass top of the wicker table.
One portrayed a stunningly beautiful woman, posed in the glamour style of the 1930s lying on a satin chaise. She was wearing a clingy white silk negligee trimmed in marabou feathers that hugged her body like a lover’s caress. Her hair was a thick sable cloud around her face, her lips were full and dark.
Although those voluptuous lips were curved in a staged, provocative smile, Lily imagined she viewed sorrow in the gypsy dark eyes. The caption beneath the photo revealed that the sultry love scenes in Alexandra Romanov’s latest film, Lady Reckless, had earned Xanadu Studios yet another fine from the Hays commission.
A second clipping, from Motion Picture News, showed Alexandra on the dance floor, in the arms of a ruggedly handsome man clad in a white dinner jacket. They made a stunning couple. They were also obviously very much in love. The emotion in the woman’s eyes, as she smiled up at the man, was not the sadness of the earlier photo, but uncensored desire. This time the caption proclaimed Alexandra Romanov and Western writer Patrick Reardon to be the most fascinating newlyweds on the planet.
“They look so much in love,” Lily mused out loud.
“Don’t they?” Blythe sighed. “That was taken shortly after they eloped. I’ve often thought if I ever found a man who looked at me the way Patrick is looking at Alexandra, I’d marry him on the spot.”
Since Blythe actually was getting married tomorrow, Lily couldn’t help wondering if Alan Sturgess, Blythe’s intended husband, fitted the profile.
Yet a third newspaper clipping, which, along with the accompanying story, took up the entire front page above the fold, depicted Patrick Reardon alone. His eyes were as dark and bleak as a tomb. The banner headline running across the top of the newspaper copy was brief and to the point: “Reardon Executed.”
“So, how’s the project coming?”
Lily knew, from shared telephone conversations over the past few months, that Blythe had formed her own production company and parlayed her box office fame into a multipicture deal with Xanadu Studios. The tragic, star-crossed story of Alexandra Romanov and Patrick Reardon was to be the company’s first feature film.
The brutal death of the glamorous, tempestuous 1930s sex symbol at the hands of her tough-talking, hard-drinking, hot-tempered husband had been the scandal of the decade. More than sixty years later, it remained Hollywood’s most infamous murder.
“Not as well as I’d like.” For the next ten minutes, Blythe filled Lily in on the frustrating lack of information about the actress in the studio archives.
“After all,” Blythe complained, “Alexandra Romanov’s films were the primary source of income for Xanadu Studios in those days. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the woman was a Russian spy and the CIA has classified her files.”
For a business reputed to be built on creativity, Lily knew, from all the stories Blythe and Cait told about Hollywood, that it was money that kept the magical, mystical Dream Machine oiled and running.
“Considering the box office gate during Alexandra’s heyday, you’d think Xanadu would have erected a shrine to her,” she mused.
“You would, wouldn’t you? But things are looking up,” Blythe revealed with a burst of the characteristic can-do attitude Lily had always admired and sometimes envied. “I hired a private investigator to dig into the story and he managed to find the makeup artist who worked on all of Alexandra’s films when she was under contract to Xanadu.”
“How will that help?”
“Most performers tell their makeup people everything.”
“Like women and their hairdressers.”
“Exactly. Anyway, I really thought Gage—Gage Remington, he’s the detective—had solved our problems, but it turned out that the woman’s away on a cruise. She’s due to return next week.”
“While you’re in Hawaii. On your honeymoon.” Lily knew Blythe didn’t believe Patrick was guilty of killing his wife. She also figured that after sixty years, the murder mystery could wait a few more weeks.
“That won’t be a problem. Gage has promised to call me as soon as he talks with her.”
“Won’t Alan object to having his honeymoon interrupted for business?” she asked carefully. After meeting the bridegroom for the first ti
me last night, Lily had the impression that the renowned Beverly Hills plastic surgeon didn’t much approve of anything concerning the film industry.
“He probably won’t be thrilled,” Blythe admitted with obvious reluctance. “But he understands that my work is important to me.”
Her words were one thing, the way the light in her eyes had dimmed suggested another.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Blythe said on a hesitant tone that told Lily she was treading carefully into dangerous conversation territory.
“What’s that?”
“I realize that you have a lovely home in Connecticut, but I was thinking...” She dragged her hands through her hair. “Lord, I’ve been practicing this scene for the past two weeks, you’d think I’d have it down pat.”
“What scene?”
Blythe took a deep breath. “Okay, here goes. Every time we’ve talked on the phone lately, you’ve seemed depressed, which of course, is understandable, what with Junior’s death and all...”
When her voice drifted off again, Lily wondered what Blythe would say if she knew that when she’d first heard of her husband’s fatal accident, her first reaction had been one of pure relief.
“It’s been difficult.” That much was definitely true.
“Of course it has.” Blythe reached out and covered Lily’s hand with her own. “Which is why I want you to consider moving in here.”
“Here?” Lily glanced around the cheery sunroom. “With you and Alan?” When Lily had expressed surprise that Blythe and her fiancé were not currently living together, Blythe had explained that Alan, always conscious of appearances, worried that cohabitating with an actress known for her sexy roles would cast him in a bad light with the powerful hospital governing board.
Blythe had gone on to reveal that after a great deal of negotiation, Alan had reluctantly agreed to sell his own home in Pacific Palisades and move in here after the wedding.
“It’s an enormous house. We’d hardly know you were here.”
“What about after the baby’s born?”
“We can turn the dressing room adjoining your guest bedroom into a nursery. Unless you think it’s too small, then—”
“It’s certainly not too small.”
Indeed, the two rooms together were larger than most of the cramped apartments Lily had been looking at. Lily tried to imagine changing diapers on the exquisite Louis Quinze dresser in her guest room and failed.
“It’s just that I hadn’t given any thought to moving.”
Now that was a lie. Ever since being served those horrid papers by her in-laws, she’d considered running away on an almost daily basis.
But not to Los Angeles. Rio de Janeiro, perhaps. Or some remote tropical island where the Van Cortlandts would never find her. Or, more importantly, where they’d never find her child.
“Cait and I both feel you should be close to friends at this difficult time in your life,” Blythe said, pressing her case.
The idea, as out of the blue as it was, proved wonderfully tempting. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” Blythe nodded her satisfaction, seeming as if the matter had already been settled.
The next day, the wedding began as yet another sun-spangled California in paradise. The scent from the brightly colored, blossom-laden bushes drifted upward on the warm air, filling the bedroom of Blythe’s home with their sweet perfume.
Exhausted from another restless night, during which she’d suffered vivid nightmares reenacting her near drowning, Lily stood in the open doorway leading out onto the second floor bedroom balcony and gazed down at the scene below.
A formally dressed harpist was entertaining the small gathering of family and guests seated on rented white satin-seated chairs. Beneath a white arbor emblazoned with scarlet roses, the groom waited for his bride.
Lily sighed and tamped down a twinge of envy. Despite Beverly Hills being a long way—both geographically and socially—from Iowa, her best friend’s ceremony was remarkably like the one she’d wanted for herself.
Although she definitely would have left out the helicopters, which, hired by reporters from the tabloid press, were hovering noisily overhead.
When James Carter Van Cortlandt Jr. had proposed Lily had been ecstatic, looking forward to the wedding she’d dreamed of since childhood.
She’d be married in Hastings, Iowa, in the Methodist church where she’d attended Sunday school, and where her parents still sang in the choir every Sunday morning. Guests would be the same friends and family who always gathered together to celebrate the good times and help each other survive the bad.
People like Jake Iverson, down at Iverson’s Feed and Grain, who never complained when the bill got a little high or the payment came a little late. Or Iris Brown, who, when Lily’s mother was confined to bed with pneumonia during the long hard winter Lily turned ten, dropped by every night with a casserole.
Or Shelley Mosley and Julie Havir, librarians from the county bookmobile, who had, over the years, not only supplied Lily with books to feed her hungry mind, but had helped her fill out the mountain of paperwork that had earned her a work-study scholarship to the prestigious Ivy League college.
Her attendants would, of course, be her best friends—Caitlin Carrigan and Blythe Fielding.
Frustrated by what he considered Lily’s outdated insistence on going to her marriage bed a virgin, Junior hadn’t cared where they were married, or who was in attendance when they exchanged their vows. The only thing he was interested in was getting the legal paperwork signed.
Lily’s wedding plans were immediately overruled by her future in-laws.
“My dear Lily,” Madeline Van Cortlandt had sniffed, “although I have no wish to interfere in what should be the bride’s family’s role, I feel obliged to point out that there is no way our friends and Mr. Van Cortlandt’s numerous business acquaintances could possibly attend such a distant, rural event.”
Although tempted to point out that this was supposed to be a marriage, not a merger, loyalty toward her fiancé had Lily holding her tongue. He couldn’t help it, Lily had told herself, if Madeline was a snob. Only too late would she learn that Junior was even worse than his mother.
Lily had caved in. It was better this way, she’d assured Cait and Blythe, who’d counseled her to have the wedding she wanted. There was no way her parents could afford the elaborate ceremony the Van Cortlandts were expecting.
And although she’d always considered herself an imaginative person, Lily could not envision Junior’s patrician parents toasting the wedding couple with Mrs. Warner’s cranberry-ginger ale punch in a town grange hall festooned with white crepe paper and silver cardboard bells for the occasion.
Which was why she and Junior had ended up exchanging vows to a packed crowd in the Gothic Revival style St. Thomas Episcopal church on Fifth Avenue.
Her subsequent marriage—beginning with her husband getting drunk at the reception and ending with Junior’s violent death in a car crash six months ago—had proven a disaster.
“You’re so lucky,” Lily murmured to Blythe who’d come to stand beside her and was looking down into the garden.
“Lucky?”
“My Grandmother Padgett always said, ‘Happy is the bride the sun shines on.’”
Her words reminded the three friends that it had been raining cats and dogs the day she’d married the scion to all those banking millions.
“As nice a thought as that is, Lily,” Cait drawled, “I’m not sure it counts out here. Since the sun shines just about every day. And Lord knows, California’s divorce rate isn’t anything to brag about.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Lily ran her palms down the front of her pleated maternity dress and felt her baby turn yet another somersault.
Only two more months and she’d be able to hold her child in her arms. The thought, which she clung to like a drowning woman might cling to a piece of driftwood, had been all that had kept her from falling a
part since she’d been served those hateful papers drawn up by the Van Cortlandts’ attorneys.
“It’s just a saying, after all,” Lily murmured, trying to shake off the suffocating cloud that settled over her whenever she thought of those cold legal words.
“But a nice thought,” Blythe said in an attempt to bring a smile to Lily’s pale lips.
Lily knew Cait and Blythe were worried about her. She’d seen the looks they had exchanged when they first viewed her coming off the plane from New York.
Determined not to ruin Blythe’s wedding with her own looming problems, Lily had shrugged off their concern, blaming jet lag and the overly active gymnast who’d taken up residence inside her body for her depression.
But she was so worried—strike that, she corrected—she was so frightened, it was all she could do not to break into tears. Or scream. She suspected either response would be better than continuing this lie she’d been living for so long.
Lily frowned up at the circling helicopters that were drowning out the harpist. Unsurprisingly, the secret had gotten out. Lily had the sinking feeling that they were all her fault.
Although she didn’t believe Mac Sullivan would have called the tabloids, she would certainly not put such behavior past their taxi driver.
Cait was glaring at the copters as well. “I should get my shotgun out of my patrol car and shoot those damn things down.”
“Terrific,” Blythe said dryly. “All this city needs is a news story about a vigilante cop. Complete with video.” She frowned as she watched the wind from the rotors whip the scarlet roses from the trellis. “Not that it isn’t tempting,” she admitted.
“You are looking,” Cait muttered darkly, “at one more reason I try to avoid this business.” Helicopters had disrupted her actress mother’s last two weddings.
As Blythe and Cait continued to observe the scene, Lily left the doorway and crossed the lush carpeting to the dresser, where she checked her reflection in the mirror.
Never having been a vain person, Lily had never compared her appearance to that of the two women who’d started out as her roommates their freshman year at college and had become her closest friends.
