Never Too Rich

by Judith Gould

  "A romp...a smash success!" - N.Y. DAILY NEWS

  "Beautiful, stylish, glossy and gripping!" - CHICAGO TRIBUNE

  "Exuberant...gorgeous people, sex, malice and mayhem." - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  Novels by Judith Gould

  Sins

  The Love-Makers Trilogy:

  Texas Born

  Love-Makers

  Second Love

  Dazzle

  Never Too Rich*

  Forever

  Too Damn Rich

  Till the End of Time

  Rhapsody

  Time to Say Good-Bye

  A Movement in Time

  The Best is Yet to Come

  The Greek Villa

  The Parisian Affair

  Dreamboat*

  The Secret Heiress*

  Greek Winds of Fury

  *Available as an e-book

  www.judithgould.com

  * * * * *

  Everything. Love, money, power. That's what gorgeous, exciting Edwina Robinson and Billie Dawn want and have - everything Manhattan has to offer. Even more.

  But the glittering facades of their success hide darker realities. Edwina is the target of bitter rivalry and betrayed by the wife of a declining fashion "king" as she strikes out on her own to build an international high fashion empire. And even the love and support of Wall Street wizard Leo Flood can't fill the void left by dashing R.L. Shackleford, a man she rejected years before but never forgot. Exquisite Billie has the style and presence to be the world's hottest fashion model. Her image graces the covers of Elle, Vogue, and Cosmo, but she, too, is haunted by the man she left behind when she rocketed to modeling stardom - a man who'll do anything to get her back. And over both of them hangs the terrifying specter of a serial killer who has made Manhattan his hunting ground, and the city's most stunning beauties his victims. Edwina and Billie are on his list...and on their way to a scalding Southampton showdown that sizzles with suspense, sexuality, and style.

  Everything. Never-tingling sensuality, heart-tugging romance, blood-racing intrigue. Everything we expect in an unputdownable story set amid the wealth, power, glitz, and sophistication of New York. Once again Judith Gould, bestselling author of Sins, triumphantly proves that a novel can never be too sexy, too suspenseful, too spellbinding...or too wonderfully involving.

  And do drop in and visit "Judith" at

  www.judithgould.com

  * * * * *

  Never Too Rich

  By Judith Gould

  * * * * *

  Published by Malden Bridge Press at Smashwords

  Never Too Rich

  Copyright © 1990 by Judith Gould

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used ficticiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, livind or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  * * * * *

  THREE IRRESISTIBLE WOMEN IN A HIGH-STAKES GAME OF WEALTH, POWER, AND PASSION

  A glittering trio destined for success in Manhattan’s cut-throat world of haute couture. Three women who are

  NEVER TOO RICH:

  Edwina G. Robinson - raised by two gay men who taught her everything about designer fashion, she’s now ready to take the showrooms of the rich by storm.

  Billie Dawn - the most exquisite girl ever to grace a magazine cover, her breathtaking beauty sets men ablaze with desire. But there is violence in her past — a violence which now threatens to catch up with her…

  Anouk de Riscal — living testament to the plastic surgeon’s arts, she’s the queen of Fifth Avenue society — and determined to keep her couturier husband ruling the world of high fashion.

  But glamour has its dark side, and a twisted human monster stalks Manhattan, driven by an insatiable need to mutilate beautiful women — women he sees on the covers of the world’s top fashion magazines…

  ENTER THE WORLD OF JUDITH GOULD —

  Where powerful and beautiful women build dynasties, amass fortunes, and fulfill their every desire. From the boardrooms of the elite and influential to the bedrooms of the rich and famous, Judith Gould will take you to the heights of passion and the lurking dangers of being

  NEVER TOO RICH

  * * * * *

  To Lucy Gaston

  * * * * *

  Acknowledgment

  New York is a city of mouths and ears. There are no secrets. Unfortunately, loose tongues sink ships and silence must be golden. Which is why the truly, truly deserving can’t be thanked

  * * * * *

  Prologue

  The girl had just moments to live.

  The springs of her bed in the third-floor town-house apartment off Lexington Avenue shook and rattled and squeaked.

  She was ready to climb the walls. With every thrust she absorbed, her hips rose greedily up off the mattress to meet the man halfway.

  The man’s eyes were alight and blazed like two tiny mirrors. Sweat oiled his naked body with a glossy sheen. She was captured, held down to the bed by his loins, impaled by his penis. The power of life and death pounded mightily in his head as a crazed kind of blindness rolled over him. Without breaking the rhythm of his thrusts, he reached back and felt for the cool of the metal.

  A massive surge of power jolted through his body.

  Blood, blood, blood—below him, where she twisted like a stuck pig, where she was joined to him by the thick shaft of blood-engorged flesh and her life was his.

  “You’re a whore!” he snarled, pumping with new fury.

  She let out a moan and writhed.

  “Say it!” he demanded harshly.

  “Yes!” she gasped. “Yes, I’m a whore! Fuck me! Oh, yes, that’s right, fuck me, lover! Fuck me!”

  With a snap the hidden switchblade jumped and flashed silver and seemed to take on a life of its own. At that instant her eyes flew wide and luminous. The sudden revelation froze her tongue.

  Before she could cry out, the knife flashed and plunged into her throat, cleanly severing her vocal cords.

  “Aggggh! “ she gurgled.

  A geyser of blood slashed the walls.

  She almost levitated.

  The blade sliced across her face, slashed across her nose, neatly lobbing off the tip.

  Her body arched, and the lattice of her ribs stood out in sculptured relief. Her fingers clawed and fought. Her bony hips bucked.

  He slashed. Slashed.

  Then the juices of life roared from his swollen testes and burst forth in the moment of her death.

  Under him, her body twitched in its last throes, and when he pulled out, a last surge of seed spilled onto her pubic hairs.

  Minutes later, his body numb with relief, he strolled casually to the nearest subway station and went down into its anonymity.

  Part One

  One Day in Oz

  December 1988

  Ch
apter 1

  Thanks to the Jetstream, American Airlines’ Flight 18 enjoyed a tailwind all the way from San Francisco. ETA New York was 6:15 A.M., but the red-eye sailed down to Kennedy almost twenty glorious minutes early.

  Except for a little turbulence over the Great Lakes, it had been an uneventful flight. The skies were practically empty in those hours between midnight and dawn, and so was the 767.

  Edwina G. Robinson, seasoned traveler, worldly businesswoman, and no fan of congealed cold-cut platters, no matter how prettily served, had downed three glasses of passable champagne and one and a half Dalmanes; then, the moment the seat-belt sign had pinged off, she had abandoned her first-class seat somewhere between the Valley and Tahoe and had spent the next four and a half hours stretched out in economy, where, by simply lifting the armrests of the three center seats, she had created a cozy if narrow bed for herself. Instead of relying on pancake-thin postage-stamp pillows sheathed in papery cases, and tiny squares of blankets, she had stuffed her capacious shoulder bag with one traveling essential: an honest-to-goodness queen-size goose-down pillow. That, in conjunction with her geometrically sheared electric-blue-dyed mink cape, which she had designed herself and pressed into duty as a luxurious blanket, made her feel right at home. Edwina believed in traveling in comfort. She wore her usual traveling clothes, a Spandex exercise outfit (this one violet) paired with green velvet Manolo Blahnik boots liberally studded with giant glass jewels. She’d fallen asleep immediately and hadn’t awakened until the plane’s shaking and rattling marked its descent. Just before a stewardess was about to wake her, she awoke on her own, stuffed her pillow back into her bag, gathered up her mink, and sprang up from her makeshift bed to reclaim her strategic first-row B seat, chosen expressly for its location at the forward exit.

  By the time the plane had taxied to the terminal, Edwina looked totally rejuvenated. She had repaired her brilliant makeup, combed out her long mane of disturbingly real bright orange tresses, which were to the eye delightfully frizzy and curly and very Botticelli but to the touch as soft as goose down, and was wide-awake, her silver-gray eyes gleaming with anticipation at the prospect of a brand-new day.

  The moment the door opened, she rushed out, head raised and nostrils flaring as she breathed hungrily the crisp air in the accordion tunnel: it was good, dry, honest winter weather.

  “Home again, home again, jiggety-jig!” she sang breathlessly to herself as she made an unerring swift beeline through the vast empty terminal down to the baggage carousels on the street-level floor. “I’m back, Manhattan, whether you’re ready or not! Back to your dirt and grime and crime and life! Ah! The notion of clear brittle winter does these bones good!”

  Edwina felt like dancing; she was always euphoric whenever she returned home from out of town. New York was a riotous carnival, shrill and dazzling and electrifying, and she was a New York woman through and through. And it showed. How it showed. Her careless elegance and unstudied style, her brisk swift stride, as though she always had a destination clearly in mind, and her glossy head-to-toenail grooming—in no other city except Paris or London did she look like she even remotely belonged.

  Everything about her was challengingly cosmopolitan and Gotham to the core: her slender frame and coltish long legs, her self-assured movements, that imperfect beauty—swan neck too long, cheekbones too high and striking, mouth too wide and too large, nose aquiline and assertively noble. In and of itself each feature was wrong and a tad too aggressive, but as a whole they dazzled, and not only from the standpoint of physical beauty. Her indefinable radiance and joie de vivre blazed from within, and beside her, far more perfect beauties were relegated to the hinterlands of wallflowerdom.

  “Winnie!” she called out, and waved as she strode into the baggage-claim area.

  Despite the flight’s early arrival, there he was. Winston, her devoted airport fixture, waiting unerringly at the correct baggage carousel—even though the monitors didn’t yet show which one would disgorge the luggage. Somehow Winston, with his big ungainly body, Irish coloring, and wild wisps of white hair, always knew; she would have laid bets on him.

  Sailing toward him, she favored him with her most dazzling smile. She, better than anyone else, knew a jewel without equal when she had one. No matter how delayed a flight might be, or how early it happened to come in, there he was, faithfully waiting. For Winston, one-man car service extraordinaire, such ordinary occurrences as traffic jams, illness, accidents, adverse weather, and mechanical breakdowns were no excuse: nothing short of death itself could have kept him from showing up at the correct time at the correct place, and she often wondered how he managed it. Every time she arrived from the out-of-town fashion shows, with the four colossal metal steamer trunks chock-full of the one hundred and seventy or so samples of Antonio de Riscal’s latest collection with which she staged shows in the department stores of major cities, Winston would be there—at Kennedy, at La Guardia, or at Newark—with the stretch-base Mercedes limousine that had been specially converted into an enormous station wagon capable of handling the oversize trunks with ease.

  On this morning, as always, Winston looked at her adoringly and reached for the thermos of coffee in the pocket of his baggy coat. Without her asking, he poured a plastic cupful and shyly handed it to her. She smiled gratefully, and holding it with both hands, sipped it slowly. It was just the way she liked it: piping hot, strong, syrupy, and black.

  They did not speak. Winston could hear perfectly well, though he was mute, and she kept one-sided conversations to a minimum. Somehow, through facial expressions they usually managed to make themselves understood.

  Waiting for the luggage carousel to start up, Edwina made a mouth of bored impatience. Just as she knew her airline seats backwards and forwards, she was all too familiar with the luggage procedures too. After being coddled with steaming hot towels and plied with champagne, she had come rudely back down to earth. First-class service started and stopped at the doors of the airliner. And unlike the seats, which she could choose, baggage claim was something she had no control over, and baggage handlers the world over were a stubbornly egalitarian lot. Whether she liked it or not, Edwina was realistic enough to know when things were beyond even her control.

  On Seventh Avenue, where she worked, however, there were those who would have sworn that there was nothing on earth that could possibly be beyond her control. There, she had the reputation of being magically capable of moving mountains and accomplishing major miracles, and she was viewed as that most male-threatening creature of them all—a woman in command of herself and the world around her.

  “Eds, you are indispensable, my darling!” was only one of Antonio de Riscal’s constant encomiums. “What would I do without you, darling!” was another. And that sentiment was shared by the great designer’s customers. For when she wasn’t on one of Antonio de Riscal’s trunk tours, Edwina sold his designer clothes to store buyers out of the big showroom at 550 Seventh Avenue. Generally, it was two weeks of trunk shows followed by two weeks of showroom duties, a schedule which she alternated with Klas Claussen, a rather disdainful and exceedingly smug young man who was full of his own importance. For this supposed indispensability she earned a princely $120,000 a year, enjoyed generous expense accounts and an all-inclusive benefits package, and could obtain couture clothes (Antonio de Riscal, what else?) at cost. Her life-style exceeded her salary’s limits, thanks to Dr. Duncan Cooper, her ex. With her divorce from him five years earlier, after which she had resumed using her maiden name, Robinson, she had gotten custody of their daughter, Hallelujah, who was now a precocious twelve, and although Edwina had refused alimony payments, Duncan had insisted that she take child support and had signed over the deed to the big one-and-a-half-million-dollar co-op duplex in the southern tower of the San Remo.

  It had been an unfashionably friendly divorce, surprisingly free from recriminations, and instead of tearing them apart as the marriage had done, the divorce, astonishingly enough, had made them cl
ose friends. Even Hallelujah took shuttling between the San Remo and her second home across town without acrimony, and usually with good humor.

  To top it all off, when Edwina was away on Antonio’s trunk tours, Ruby, her cherished live-in housekeeper, stepped in as a surrogate mother for Hallelujah.

  What more could anyone want? Edwina often asked herself. At the still relatively young age of thirty-two she had her looks, her health, and was living in a dream apartment in the undisputed glittering center of the universe. She was success personified with her vice-presidency in a major fashion empire, an ex-husband she could count as a friend, and a daughter who astounded her more with every passing day. What more indeed?

  Two things. Just two little things. But she might as well have yearned for a round-trip ticket to Saturn.

  Edwina had always wanted to be a fashion designer herself, and being the salaried employee of one—no matter how grand the salary— was a poor substitute for her real ambition. Ever since she could remember, she had been fascinated by design. By the tender age of seven she not only dressed her dolls but also copied grown-ups’ clothes for them from Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar out of every scrap of fabric she could get her eager hands on, and her dolls had been the only ones she knew of who wore miniature copies of Chanel, Valentino, and Yves St. Laurent. By the age of twelve she was designing and sewing many of her own clothes. She’d worn them so proudly, topping them off with huge-brimmed Dior 1950’s-style hats.