by Nora Roberts
“Oh.” Margo stared down at the phone her mother put in her hand. “Thanks. Um . . . Kate, hi.”
“Something wrong? You sound—”
“No, no, nothing at all,” Margo interrupted brightly. “And how are you?”
“It’s coming on to tax time, pal, how do you think an accountant is? Which is why I just can’t get away to come over there. I really want to talk to you, Margo. Can you get over here to my office this afternoon? I can give you some time between three and three-thirty.”
“Sure. I suppose. If you—”
“Great. See you.”
Margo clicked off the phone. “She’s always been one of the champion communicators.”
“It’s nearly April fifteen. Crunch time.”
Margo lifted a brow. He seemed perfectly at ease, she noted. All that tension, all that . . . anticipation must have been her imagination. “That’s about what she said. I have to get over to her office. I’d better see if Laura can lend me a car.”
“Take mine. It’s out front. Keys are in it.” He gave her dubious expression a quick, charming smile. “Hell, Margo, who taught you to drive in the first place?”
“You did.” Her eyes warmed. “And with uncharacteristic patience.”
“That’s because I was terrified. Enjoy the drive. And if you put a scratch on her, I’ll toss you over Seraphina’s cliff.”
When she sailed off, he sat down again, calculating that not only would he get her share of cake but he would now have the opportunity to pry out whatever was troubling his sister.
Chapter Five
Kate Powell was consistent, focused, and often inflexible. As Margo strode down the corridor of the second-floor offices of Bittle and Associates with their buzz of activity, ringing phones, and clattering keyboards, she realized this was exactly what Kate had had in mind for herself since childhood. She had, without detour, worked steadily toward it all of her life.
There had been the advanced math courses in high school, which of course she’d aced. Her three terms as class treasurer. The summers and holidays she’d worked in bookkeeping at Templeton Resort to advance her training and on-the-job experience. From there the scholarship to Harvard, her MBA, followed by her refusal, gracious but firm, to take a position in any of the Templeton offices.
No, Margo thought, eyeing the discreet carpet and walls, feeling the jittery tension in the tax-time air. Kate had chosen Bittle, taken an entry-level position. Her salary would have been higher at a firm in Los Angeles or New York. But she wouldn’t have been able to stay close to home.
In that, Kate was also consistent.
So, she’d worked her way up in the firm. Margo didn’t know a great deal about accountants other than they were always whining about taxes and shelters and projected earnings, but she understood that Kate was now responsible for several important clients in the old, respected, and—in Margo’s opinion—musty firm of Bittle and Associates.
At least all those years of effort had earned her a decent office, Margo mused as she peeked into Kate’s door. Though how anyone stood being cooped up in four walls, facing away from the window all day was beyond her. Kate, however, looked contented enough.
Her desk was neat, and that was to be expected. No tchotchkes, no fancy paperweights, no frivolous doodads cluttered its surface. To Kate, Margo knew, clutter was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, along with impulse, disloyalty, and a disorganized checkbook.
A few files were arranged in an orderly stack on the edge of the plain, boxy desk. Dozens of lethally sharp pencils stood in a Lucite holder. A jazzy little computer hummed as Kate rattled the keys.
She’d taken off her navy jacket and hung it over the back of her swivel chair. The sleeves of her crisp white shirt were rolled up in businesslike fashion. She was frowning, a concentration line dug between her brows above the studious horn-rim reading glasses. Though her phone rang busily, it didn’t earn a blink of response.
Even as Margo stepped in, Kate held up a single finger, continuing to work the keys one-handed. Then with a grunt she nodded and looked up.
“You’re on time for a change. Close the door, will you? Do you know how many people wait until April’s knocking to hunt up their receipts?”
“No.”
“Everybody. Have a seat.” As Margo took the dung-brown chair across from the desk, Kate rose. She rolled her shoulders, circled her head, murmuring what sounded like “relax.” After slipping off her glasses, she tucked the temple into the breast pocket of her shirt so that the glasses hung there like a medal. Then she turned, chose two plain white mugs from a shelf, and reached for the pot on her coffeemaker. “Annie said Josh was home.”
“Yeah, he just got in, looking tanned and terrific.”
“When did he ever look anything else?” Noting that she’d neglected to open her blinds again, she did so now and let natural light slant into the room to war with the glow of florescents. “I hope he plans to stay a while. I’m not going to have any free time until after the fifteenth.” From her desk drawer she took a bottle of Mylanta, uncapped it, and guzzled like a veteran wino with a bottle of Crackling Rose.
“Christ, Kate, how can you do that? It’s hideous.”
Kate only lifted a brow. “How many cigarettes have you had today, champ?” she said blandly.
“That’s hardly the point.” Grimacing, Margo watched Kate tuck the bottle back into the drawer. “At least I know I’m slowly killing myself. You should see a doctor, for God’s sake. If you’d just learn to relax, try those yoga exercises I told you about—”
“Save it.” Kate cut off the lecture in midsentence and checked her practical Timex. She didn’t have the time or the inclination to worry about a nervous stomach, certainly not until she finished calculating the realized capital gain and loss summary currently on her screen. “I’ve got a client due in twenty minutes, and I don’t have time to debate our varying addictions.” She handed Margo a mug, slid a hip onto the edge of her desk. “Has Peter shown up?”
“I haven’t seen him.” Margo struggled for a moment, but lecturing Kate had always been a study in frustration. Better, she decided, to concentrate on one friend’s problems at a time. “Laura doesn’t have much to say about it. Kate, is he living at the hotel?”
“Not officially.” Kate started to bite her nails before she studiously stopped herself. Just a matter of willpower, she remembered, and drank coffee instead. “But from the buzz I get, he spends more time there than he does at home.”
She moved her shoulders, still working out kinks. Her head was throbbing nastily. Between tax time and the mess her closest friends were in, she welcomed each day with a tension headache.
“Of course, it’s a busy time of year for him, too.”
Margo smirked. “You never liked him.”
Kate smirked right back. “Neither did you.”
“Well, if there’s trouble in paradise, maybe I can help Laura through it. But if he’s just staying away because I’m there, I should leave. I could stay at the resort.”
“He missed plenty of bed checks before you rolled back into town. I don’t know what to do about it, Margo.” She rubbed tired eyes with unpainted fingertips. “She won’t really talk about it, and I’m lousy at giving advice on relationships anyway.”
“Still seeing that stud CPA down the hall?”
“No.” Kate shut her mouth firmly on that. Closed book, she reminded herself. Even if it did still burn. “I don’t have time to date. The fact is, as tied up as I am for the next week or so, I’m really glad you’re there, with Laura and the kids.”
“I’ll stay unless it looks like it’s complicating things for her.” Absently Margo tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair, lovely shell-pink nails bumping against the chair’s dull brown. “She’s awfully happy to have Josh back. I don’t think I realized she was so unhappy until I saw her with him today. Which reminds me . . .” She set the coffee aside. Kate brewed it strong enough to pump iron. “Weren’t you worr
ied about risking a haunting by mocking Seraphina’s ghost?”
Kate’s face went blank. “What?”
“Huddling on a ledge and moaning in bad Spanish about your dowry. Laura and I weren’t fooled for a minute.”
“What are you. . . Oh. Oh!” As memory flooded back, Kate roared with laughter. It was not the laugh of a thin, serious-minded woman; it boomed straight from the gut, grew deeper in the throat, and tickled Margo into grinning back. “God, I’d forgotten that. Oh, I was so jealous, so pissed that you and Laura were dating and Uncle Tommy and Aunt Susan were making me wait another year. I didn’t even want to date, but I hated you getting ahead of me.” As she spoke, she got up to top off her coffee. “Christ, Josh always had the best and wildest ideas,” she added, as she perched on the desk again.
“You’re lucky you didn’t slip off the ledge and get to meet Seraphina face to face.”
“We had ropes.” She chuckled into her coffee. “I was scared boneless at first, but I didn’t want Josh to think I was lame. You know how he is about a dare.”
“Mmm.” Margo knew very well. A Templeton never refused a challenge. “Both of you would have been grounded for weeks.”
“Yeah, those were the days,” Kate said with a wistful smile. “Anyway, I got caught up in the whole thing. Playing Seraphina and listening to the two of you calling out to her was one of the highlights of my life. I can’t believe he ratted on me.”
“He probably thinks I’m too mature now to pull out your hair.” Margo tilted her head and smiled. “I’m not, but you have so little of it to begin with.” Then she clasped her hands around her knee. “Well, I know you, and you didn’t ask me to come into such professional surroundings to have a giggle over old times. You might as well give it to me.”
“All right.” It was cowardly, Kate knew, to wish she could postpone the moment. “We can say there’s good news and bad news.”
“I can use some good.”
“You still have your health.” At Margo’s nervous laugh, Kate set her own mug aside. She wished she had a better way to do this, wished she’d been smart enough or clever enough to find an escape clause for Margo. “Sorry, bad accountant joke. You have to have a pretty good idea that you don’t have a hell of a lot else, Margo. Financially, you’re fucked.”
Margo pressed her lips together, nodded. “Don’t soft-pedal it, Kate. I can take it.”
Appreciating her, Kate slid off the desk, sat on the arm of Margo’s chair, and hugged her. “I put everything in a computer program and printed out a hard copy.” And got less than three hours’ sleep, thanks to the extra workload. “But I thought you’d get more out of the whole picture if I boiled it down. You’ve got some choices.”
“I don’t . . .” She had to pause to level her voice. “I don’t want to file bankruptcy. Only as a last resort, Kate. I know it’s pride, but—”
Pride Kate understood, enormously well. “I think we can avoid that. But, honey, you’re going to have to seriously consider liquidating, and you’re going to have to be prepared to take a loss on some of your assets.”
“I have assets?” Margo asked hollowly.
“You have the flat in Milan. There isn’t a lot of equity, as you only bought it five years ago and your down payment was low. But you can get out what you put in, and with luck, a little more.” Because it was personal, Kate didn’t need her notes, or the file. She remembered all the details. “You have the Lamborghini, and it’s almost paid for. We arrange to sell it, quickly, and you’ll save on those exorbitant garage and maintenance fees.”
“Okay.” She tried not to regret her beautiful flat, lovingly furnished, or the glamorous car she’d adored driving fast in the countryside. There were a great many things she couldn’t afford, Margo reminded herself. Top of the list was self-pity. “I’ll put them on the market. I suppose I’ll have to go over and pack everything up and . . .”
Saying nothing, Kate rose to open a file, not to refresh her memory but to give herself something to do with her hands. She perched her glasses back on her nose. “There’s the dead animals.”
Sunk in depression, Margo shook her head. “What?”
“Your furs.”
“That’s such an American attitude,” Margo grumbled. “Anyway, I didn’t kill those stupid minks.”
“Or the sables,” Kate said dryly, peering over the tops of her horn-rims. “Sell them and that also saves you cold storage fees. Now your jewelry.”
It was an arrow straight to the heart. “Oh, Kate, not my jewelry.”
“Toughen up. It’s just rocks and minerals.” With her free hand she picked up her coffee again, ignoring the faint burning under her breastbone. “The insurance premiums on it are killing you. You can’t afford it. And you need the cash to meet your debts. Dressmakers’ bills, salon bills. Taxes. Italian taxes are stiff, and you didn’t exactly save for a rainy day.”
“I had some savings. Alain had been siphoning them off.” She realized her fingers were aching and made herself untwist them. “I didn’t even know it until last week.”
Bastard, Kate thought. But that was then and this was now. “You can prosecute.”
“What’s the point?” Margo said wearily. “It would just feed the press.” Pride again, she thought. It was useless to ask Kate if she could afford a few miserly spoonfuls of pride. “So, basically I have to give up everything. Everything I have, everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve wanted.”
“Okay.” Miserable, Kate put the file aside. “I’m not going to tell you they’re just things, Margo. I know they’re not. But this is a way out. There are others. You could sell your story to the tabloids, pick up some quick, ready cash.”
“Why don’t I just go down to Hollywood and Vine and sell my body? It would be less humiliating.”
“You could go to the Templetons.”
Margo shut her eyes. It shamed her that for a moment, just a moment, she was tempted.
“They’d bail you out,” Kate said gently. “Float you until you were on your feet again.”
“I know. I can’t do that. After all they’ve done for me and been to me. Added to that is how it would make my mother feel. I’ve upset her enough without going begging.”
“I can lend you ten thousand right away. That’s what I have liquid,” Kate said briskly. “It would put a finger in the dike, and I know that Laura and Josh would plug the other leaks. It wouldn’t be begging, and it would be nothing to be ashamed of. Just a loan between friends.”
Margo said nothing for a moment. Touched and ashamed, she stared down at the sapphires and diamonds winking on her hands. “So I can keep my pride and my furs and diamonds.” Slowly, Margo shook her head. “No, I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep any of it. But thanks.”
“You’ll want to consider this, weigh your options. The offer stays open.” Kate took the file, proffered it, wished there was more. “The figures are all there. I calculated the fair market value of the jewelry from the insurance appraisals. I’ve got the sale value of your car, the flat, and so forth calculated with a ten percent leeway, deducted all the expected fees and taxes. If you decide to liquidate, you’ll earn some breathing space. Not a lot, but enough to keep your head above water for a while.”
And then what? Margo thought, but she didn’t dare ask. “Okay. I appreciate you wading through all the mess.”
“That’s what I do best.” Just at that moment, it seemed pitifully little. “Margo, take a couple of days. Mull it over.”
“I will.” She rose, then laughed weakly when her knees shivered. “Christ, I’m shaky.”
“Sit down. I’ll get you some water.”
“No.” Margo held up a hand. “I really need some air.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No. Thanks, but I need a minute.”
Gently, Kate brushed a hand over Margo’s hair. “Want to kill the messenger?”
“Not right now.” Instead, she gave Kate a hard, fierce hug. “I’l
l be in touch,” she said and rushed out of the office.
She wanted to be brave. All of her life Margo had yearned for adventure, the glamour and romance of it. She wanted to be one of those carelessly daring women who don’t simply follow trends but create them. She had, most of her life, quite deliberately exploited her sense of style, her looks, her sexuality to gain her own ends. Her education had been no more than a necessary phase, something to get through. Unlike Laura or Kate, she had merely put in time in the classroom. What would she need with algebraic formulas or historical facts in her life? It was much more important what they were wearing this season in New York or who the up-and-coming designers were in Milan.
It was, Margo thought as she stood on the windswept cliffs above the sea, pathetic. Her life was pathetic.
Even a month before, she had thought it perfect. Of course, then everything had been streaming along exactly as she wanted. She had a flat in the right part of the city, was recognized and catered to in the right restaurants and boutiques. She had a circle of friends that included the wealthy, the well known, and the wild. She attended fashionable parties, was thrillingly dogged by the press and pursued by men. And, of course, she feigned weariness and ennui over the articles that speculated about her private life.
She had a career that had put her precisely where she had always wanted to be. In the limelight.
Then there was her lover of the moment. The suave, gorgeous older man, as she preferred. French. Married, of course, but that was merely a technicality. An obstacle, again fashionable, that would eventually be overcome. The very fact that they had been forced to keep their affair secret had added a thrill. A thrill that, she realized now, she had so easily mistaken for passion.
Now it was all over.
She hadn’t believed she could be any more shocked or frightened than in those first hours after she had been taken into Athens for questioning. The terror of being so alone, so exposed, had bounced her roughly from a privileged world into a dangerous one. And when no one from that carefully selected circle of friends had come to her aid or her defense, she had been forced to stand on her own and reevaluate Margo Sullivan.
