by JoAnn Ross
He heard a voice in the background and suspected Lily was protesting Cait’s pointed inquiries.
“No, I’m not married. Or anything.”
“How interesting.”
Connor wished she’d just talk her friend into taking his call. “Look, why don’t I come by the hospital?”
“That’s not a good idea,” she said quickly. “I’ll tell her you called. Do you have a number where you can be reached? In case she wants to get back to you?”
Not at all happy with the suggestion—he was certain it would be a very cold day in Los Angeles before Lily returned his call—Connor nevertheless gave her the number for the cellular phone he was using in the rental car.
“I’ll pass it on,” Cait assured him, as if reading his own negative thoughts. “But I can’t promise anything.”
That said, she hung up.
Connor cursed and was trying to decide what the hell to do next when the phone rang.
“Lily?”
“It’s Cait. Look, I’m going to have to make this quick, because I’m using a pay phone down the hall and I already misused my badge to cut into a very long line. Do you have a piece of paper and pen handy?”
“Sure.”
“Write this down.” She gave him an address he recognized as being in the Wilshire district. “Cait’s going to be moving into my apartment building now that Blythe’s house is wrecked. Do you think you could drop by tomorrow?”
“What time?”
“Afternoon? Around two or three?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Good.” He heard the raised voices of complaint in the background and sensed her preparing to hang up.
“How is Lily?” he asked quickly. “Really?”
“She’s had a rough time lately. But I think you may be just what the doctor ordered.”
Her laugh, right before she broke off the connection, was rich and warm and utterly feminine. But as appealing as he found it, Connor realized that it did not affect him nearly as strongly as Lily Van Cortlandt’s soft smile.
“Tomorrow,” Connor promised.
That matter settled, he turned his attention to his other reason for being in Los Angeles.
Xanadu Studios, located in the San Fernando Valley, between Warner Brothers and the larger studio-theme park acreage of Universal, had once been ranch land. Intending to use the sprawling property solely to film westerns, Walter Stern had bought the land more than sixty years ago.
When commuting between the valley and downtown became a hassle, his son, Walter Stern II sold off the land that housed the downtown Hollywood studio and moved the entire operation to the San Fernando Valley.
Only two days ago, Connor had made the drive from LAX to Xanadu in thirty minutes; today, forced onto surface streets along with millions of other drivers, it took two hours to make the one-way trip.
By the time he exited Ventura Boulevard, turning onto Xanadu Drive, Connor was hot and frustrated and rethinking his decision of having bought a damn movie studio in the first place.
But then the elaborate wrought iron gates—which were, he saw with a rush of cooling relief, still standing—came into view and he experienced an adolescent rush of excitement. This legendary dream factory actually belonged to him.
As requested, Walter Stern III, grandson of the studio’s founder, was waiting for him in his office. Despite the fact that he’d been the one to initiate the sale of the longtime family-held studio, Stern did not appear at all pleased to see the new owner.
“You didn’t have to fly all the way down here,” he said with a patently false smile that didn’t begin to touch his cold blue eyes. “I had everything under control.”
Although under normal conditions he preferred keeping the original management team in place, especially during the initial takeover, Connor couldn’t discount the fact that the problems Xanadu was facing had been largely brought about by Stern’s mismanagement in the first place.
Connor’s answering smile was as feigned as Stern’s as he shook hands. “As it turns out, I had to come to town, anyway.”
Steely blue eyes narrowed. “I thought we’d agreed we wouldn’t make the announcement for a month.”
“We did.” Hell. This wasn’t going to work, Connor thought with an inward sigh. At first he’d tried to discount his unease regarding the movie mogul. But today, the vibes were proving stronger than ever. Although Stern had never actually done anything to precipitate such intuitive feelings, for some reason Connor had yet to discern, he didn’t like the man.
“My initial reason for coming back to L.A. had nothing to do with Xanadu. But after what’s happened, I thought I should stop by and survey the damage.”
“Remarkably, given the severity of the quake, it’s not that bad,” Stern assured him. “Mostly some flooding from burst water pipes. Oh, and we lost the backdrops for the Paladin western, but they’re easily replaced.”
“That’s good news.” Connor certainly hadn’t been looking forward to starting out his newest venture in a flood of red ink. “I was hoping you’d have time to give me a tour.”
It was an order. Softly spoken, but couched in stone. A muscle clenched in Stern’s cheek, but he managed an obliging smile. “That’s precisely what I was going to suggest.”
As he walked back down the hallway, lined with photos of the studio’s stars, and cases displaying the studio’s myriad Oscars, it crossed Connor’s mind that as vast as Xanadu was, there would never be room for both him and Stern.
And since he had no intention of leaving, his only choice was to ease the former owner out. Hopefully, the parting would be amiable. If not, Connor reminded himself that he’d never been one to back down from a fight.
After examining the studio property and buildings, Connor was on his way to his suite in the tower at the Century Plaza when he realized the detour had put him in Cait Carrigan’s neighborhood.
Struck with a sudden urge to drive by the property, as he pulled up in front of the Mediterranean pink apartment house, a For Rent sign immediately caught his eye.
He cut the engine and spent a long time studying the building that had obviously once been a single-family dwelling. The apartment house boasted turquoise trim and lacy iron grillwork on the windows and balconies on the upper floors. A turret, while not in keeping with its Spanish style, somehow seemed to fit.
The hotel suite waiting for him in Century City boasted a private balcony, wet bar and refrigerator, three phones and an all-marble bathroom with a separate tub and shower, oversize bath towels and terry robe. There were plants, including a live tree in the living room, and most appealing was the marble Jacuzzi, which, on one memorable occasion, he’d shared with a sexy Bank of America vice president.
The hotel was the height of luxury, the service unsurpassed. It was also, he admitted, far beyond the grasp of a common, ordinary man. Suddenly mindful of the bet that the earthquake had temporarily expunged from his mind, Connor studied the building for another long moment.
Then, acting on impulse as he so often did, he climbed out of the car and walked up the sidewalk.
The plaque on the outside wall by the arched front doorway read Bachelor Arms. Below the plaque, someone had scratched Believe the legend.
Connor found the manager’s apartment and rang the bell. Once. Twice. A third time. Frustrated, he turned to leave just as a young woman exited the next-door apartment.
“Hi! Are you looking for Ken?” she asked with a friendly smile.
“I am if he’s the manager.”
“He had to go out of town for a couple weeks. Great timing, isn’t it? What with the earthquake? Luckily we didn’t have any major damage.
“Anyway, he claimed to have some kind of family emergency.” She ran a hand through thick brown, naturally highlighted hair. “Personally, I think he’s off rendezvousing with the mother ship.”
“The mother ship?”
Brown eyes danced with humor. “Ken’s nice enough, but he’s a little
spooky.” She glanced around as if seeking out spies. “I believe that there’s a very good chance he’s a pod person. But Bobbie-Sue—she’s my very best friend?—says I’m just overreacting from preparing for my audition.
“I’m up for a supporting role in a remake of I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” she confided. “Xanadu’s making it. My agent says I’m a shoo-in. Next week I’m actually reading for Walter Stern himself. Can you believe it?”
“I didn’t realize studio heads conducted auditions personally,” he said with studied casualness.
“To tell you the truth, neither did I.” She flashed him a dazzling smile. “But Roger—that’s my agent, Roger Kendall, he used to be with William Morris, before he opened his own agency?—assures me that it’s not that unusual. For Xanadu.”
Rosy lips designed to inspire masculine fantasies turned downward. “Bobbie-Sue says Mister Stern’s just trying to get into my pants. So does Eddie.
“Eddie has a script under consideration at Xanadu and says that Stern’s a lecherous rat, but of course he hasn’t been treated very well there, so he’s probably prejudiced.”
She leaned back against the wall, crossed her arms over her bouncy, cheerleader breasts and eyed Connor with good-natured interest. “What do you think?”
What did he think? Connor thought that if this perky southern belle routine wasn’t a contrived act, the lady was too naive to survive long in Tinseltown. He also thought he’d better keep an eye on Stern until the takeover was concluded.
“I think it never hurts to be careful,” he said.
She sighed and dragged her pink-tipped fingers through her long straight hair again. “You’re probably right. Cait warned me of that same thing, and since she’s a cop, not to mention both her parents being in the business, well, she knows how ugly this town can be, beneath the glitter. If you get my drift.”
Connor managed a nod, opened his mouth to agree, but she was off and running again. “But Mister Stern seemed so nice when I met him at that party last week.”
“I’m sure he’s sincerely interested in your talent,” Connor assured her, saying what he suspected she wanted to hear.
Brenda Muir rewarded him with a dazzling smile designed to bring the average man to his knees. Having never considered himself an average man, Connor had no interest in getting involved with this perky steel magnolia.
Experience had taught him that actresses were riddled with insecurities that tended to also make them frighteningly egocentric. Connor preferred to keep his relationships with the opposite sex light and uncomplicated.
Which made him wonder why it was he was suddenly interested in a woman who could only complicate his life.
“I told Bobbie-Sue that Mister Stern was only interested in my acting ability,” Brenda revealed. “After all, I did graduate from Yale Drama School. I’ve even played Nora, in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House?”
“I’ll bet you brought the house down,” Connor answered obligingly.
She laughed. “Lord, you are good for a girl’s ego.” Those merry brown eyes took another, slower, tour of him, obviously approving of what they saw. “I’m Brenda, by the way. And I do hope you’re planning to move in.”
“I’m thinking about it.” He slipped his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “So, if the pod person’s out of town, who’s showing the apartment?”
“That’d be Jill.”
“Terrific. Where can I find her?”
“You can’t.” Her lips curved into a self-deprecating grimace. “I forgot, she’s in San Diego, attending a design show. She’s an interior decorator. You should see what she did for my apartment. She gave the key to Bobbie-Sue, who at the moment is working next door.”
“Next door?” He glanced at the neighboring apartment door.
“At Flynn’s, on the corner. It’s a neighborhood bar, kind of like ‘Cheers’?” As it had before, her voice went up a little on the end of the sentence, turning it into a question. “It’s where people in the neighborhood all hang out. Eddie’s the bartender. And Bobbie-Sue works there part-time while she looks for a job.”
“Acting?”
Her grin was quick and bright and appealing. “What else? In this town?”
What else indeed? Connor thought. He wondered what would happen if Brenda, Bobbie-Sue and Eddie the bartending screenwriter knew that the new owner of Xanadu Studios was considering moving into their midst.
Actually, Connor considered as he walked beside Brenda, who’d insisted on showing him the way personally, the idea, which had begun as a spur-of-the-moment impulse, wasn’t all that bad.
Both Brenda and Eddie were involved in dealings with Xanadu.
What better way to find out exactly how Xanadu’s executives treated the people they worked with than to actually live among them, listening to them report their personal experiences?
Connor decided he was experiencing yet another stroke of the famed Mackay luck.
If he hadn’t been stopped by the beach yesterday, if he hadn’t met Lily Van Cortlandt, he’d never have spoken with Cait Carrigan, which meant that he’d never have known Bachelor Arms—and its eclectic mix of tenants—even existed.
As he entered Flynn’s, Connor decided that fate was indeed a wonderful thing.
* * *
“FATE,” Gage said with a slow shake of his head, “can be a damned fickle thing.”
Standing beside him, dressed in the green scrubs she’d borrowed from the hospital to replace the torn, muddied and bloodstained wedding dress, Blythe stared at the empty slip where the sloop that served as Gage Remington’s home-office had been docked only yesterday. Amazingly, and unluckily for Gage, the sleek yachts on either side of his sloop appeared undamaged.
“I can’t believe it’s gone,” she said.
Although Gage had wanted to take Blythe directly back to her home, she’d insisted on having the limousine driver take them out to Marina del Rey first. In truth, she was not all that eager to face what she feared would be waiting for her at home.
“Sunk.” Gage swore and dragged his hand down his face. When he took it away, he cast his eyes skyward. “I know I haven’t exactly been an altar boy, but if you’d wanted to get my attention, Lord, couldn’t you have just knocked down a mast or something?”
Blythe thought it said something about Gage’s character that he could find grim humor in a situation like this. Although some inner voice told her that touching this man could lead to trouble, she placed a hand on his arm.
“Surely it was insured?” She felt the muscle tense beneath her fingers.
“I think earthquakes are covered under my boat policy. But even if it is, a check from the insurance company isn’t going to recover the files from the bottom of the harbor.”
Blythe’s heart sank even lower than Gage’s lovely boat. “Including the files on Alexandra?”
“Including those.” Then he laughed, because crying over what he couldn’t do anything about was not Gage Remington’s style. “But don’t worry. It’ll take some time, but they can be duplicated.”
He watched the relief flood into her remarkable dark eyes and although he knew it was dangerous, he thought about kissing her, of pressing his mouth hard against hers, of holding her lush curves against him until they both were burning with the need for more.
Unaware of his heated thoughts, Blythe was thinking about their situations. It looked as if they’d both been relegated to the ranks of the newly homeless. From the destruction she’d witnessed before leaving for the hospital, there was a very good chance her lovely house would be condemned. It would be months before it was inhabitable again.
“What are you going to do in the meantime?” she asked.
Unaware that he was even doing it, Gage reached out and twisted a sable curl around his finger. Beneath the antiseptic smell of the hospital lingering in her hair, he detected the sensual scent of tropical flowers. “About what?”
Did he know what he could do to her? Blythe wonder
ed. With only a look? An innocent touch? Her mouth was dry, her heart was beating rapidly. She licked her suddenly parched lips and realized she’d made a big mistake as she watched flames rise in his intense gaze.
“About where you’re going to live.” She managed to sound coherent but Blythe knew she was in big, big trouble when it took no effort at all to imagine his mouth seizing her lips.
Forgetting caution, forgetting that she belonged to another man, forgetting everything but the need to touch, Gage could not resist tangling his hands in her hair. “I’ll do what you’re probably going to do. Move into a hotel. Or maybe an apartment.”
The wooden dock, reacting to yet another tremor, swayed beneath their feet. When she instinctively lifted her hands to his shoulders to brace herself, his free hand, just as instinctively, settled on her hip to steady her.
“It’s just a small aftershock,” he assured her on a voice roughened not with fear but desire. “There’s no need to worry.”
“I’m not.” Her voice, soft and hesitant, sounded unfamiliar to her own ears. She wasn’t worried, Blythe assured herself. Not about any earthquakes, anyway. “Not really.”
His fingers tightened. “You’re trembling.”
“I know.”
“Do you always tremble when a man touches you?”
She swallowed and forced herself not to drag her eyes away from his steady, unnerving gaze. “No.” There was no point in lying. “I think this is a first.”
The dock stopped swaying. But Blythe’s heart was still thrumming painfully as she stood there, looking up at him, knowing she and Gage were both remembering how, as she’d walked down the aisle, their minds had inexplicably tangled, exchanging words neither of them had even known they’d been thinking.
You can’t do this, his stormy eyes had told her.
I have to, hers had answered back.
You don’t have to do anything, his countered on a flare of passion. But leave with me. Now.
I can’t.
You can. He’d held her wary gaze to his with the sheer strength of his will. I’ll help you.
They hadn’t said a word out loud. But it hadn’t been necessary. And although they’d never exchanged a single personal word since the day she’d hired him to unearth information about Alexandra Romanov and Patrick Reardon, Blythe had found herself unreasonably tempted to take Gage up on his outrageous demand.
