Any Given Moment (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 3)

by Laura Van Wormer

  And so Monty had abandoned any hopes of there being anyone else who could handle this situation adequately, and so he had gone to see the private investigators his lawyers had recommended, and he had set them to work to keep an eye on the Hillings & Hillings offices.

  Monty had literally had to run across midtown after that­—nearly killing himself with the effort, huffing and puffing—because traffic was gridlocked. People who saw him and recognized him kept yelling, "Hey Big Mont! How are ya? Kudos from Connect­icut!" and the like. He had made it to the network studio with only about two minutes before he had to go on the air at noon.

  And nothing was ready for him. This was supposed to be the network's headquarters; the best-equipped studios in the country, yet everybody was futzing around as if he were putting on a Punch ­and Judy show or something. Monty's faxes weren't there; the com­puter link home to Chicago wasn't set up; his notes for the day and his newspaper clippings were nowhere to be found; and after liter­ally begging for black coffee, the young assistant brought him some kind of weirdo herbal tea.

  When the show was over at three he charged out of there, announcing, "If this network cannot learn how to put on the most popular radio talk show in America by Monday, perhaps another network will have to!" He hailed a cab and went to see Josh La­fayette, the Hillingses' lawyer. The meeting was very productive and Monty didn't leave Lafayette's office until well after six. Ex­hausted, Monty took a cab uptown to the Regency Hotel where he was staying.

  He was crossing the lobby, cursing the fact that his feet hurt in his fifteen-hundred-dollar alligator loafers, when he glanced over at a woman and did a double take, jerking his head back so hard he nearly pulled a muscle in his neck.

  Her face looked a bit swollen on one side, but Monty had no doubt that it was Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres. Blond, about five foot five, with large blue eyes, she was what Monty would have called an intelligent beauty. In other words, she was very pretty, with a smash­ing body and a confident detachment from anything that could be construed as bimbo glamour. He had seen all of her movies and he had always wanted to meet her.

  On the other hand, Monty prided himself on being able to spot a feminist a mile off, and he was sure she and he would never see eye to eye. Still, the man in him was excited, and he had the best entree in the world. He was pretty certain she was here to attend the meeting about the Hillingses tomorrow, too. So maybe everything that had happened today had been for a reason. This reason.

  "Excuse me, Ms. Hamilton-Ayres," Monty said, walking over to her.

  "Yes?" Her expression was pleasant, but guarded.

  "Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Montgomery Grant Smith," he said.

  "Yes?" Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres said again.

  "I know why you're in town." He looked around and then took her arm to move her away from the people who might overhear them, but as soon as he touched her, she threw his hand off and stepped back, slightly alarmed.

  "I'm sorry," she said, "but I don't believe I know you." She was looking around for assistance when the concierge noticed her dis­tress and began to walk toward them.

  "I'm here to support the Hillingses," Monty quickly whispered.

  She looked up at him and blinked those big blue eyes. "Who are you?" she asked him.

  "I told you!" he whispered, embarrassed and annoyed. "Mont­gomery Grant Smith! Only the most popular radio talk-show host in America!"

  She looked at him a moment longer and then her eyes widened in recognition. "Oh, Lord, you're that bloody right-wing fanatic." Miss Hamilton-Ayres turned to tell the concierge she did not need him after all. “I'm sorry," she said, returning to Monty, smiling, "I didn't really mean that you're a fanatic. Although, you know, it is rather fanatical, that act you do.”

  Monty sucked in his stomach and threw out his chest. "Madam, what do you take me for?" he said in his deepest, darkest radio voice, though he actually didn't mind what she had said, since most professional women said it to him all the time anyway.

  "I won't be taking you for anything, Mr. Smith, I assure you," she said. "It was nice to meet you, and I guess I'll see you tomorrow. If you'll excuse me now, I must check in."

  The manager who had been waiting for her told the desk clerk, "Please see that Ms. Hamilton-Ayres gets comfortably settled in the blue suite."

  "Will you have a drink with me?" Monty asked, following her.

  "I'm sorry," Georgiana said, signing the register, "but I already have plans for this evening."

  "You have a message, Ms. Hamilton-Ayres," the clerk said, handing her an envelope.

  She opened it, obviously disappointed by the contents. "Damn," she murmured.

  "Is everything all right?" Monty asked. "Is there anything I can do?"

  "Hmmm?" she said, glancing over at him. "No—no thank you, everything's fine."

  "Maybe there's been a change in your plans and you can have a drink with me after all? I can fill you in on everything that's been going on. I saw Henry today, and Millicent Parks, and Elizabeth Robinson, and the lawyers, and a private eye. I'd say I have a pretty good overview."

  "Well, why not?" she said, more to herself than to him. "My plans seem to be on a plane to the Middle East anyway."

  "Really?" he said. "You mean you'll have a drink with me?"

  "Here at the hotel, though, all right?" she said.

  "Great!"

  She smiled. "Let me freshen up, and I'll be right down."

  Just how Georgiana had managed to get herself into this situ­ation, she had no idea. Montgomery Grant Smith was one of those men so utterly awful that she found something oddly attractive about him. He was almost a cartoon version of masculinity. Every­thing was too much. He had nice hair and a nice face, but he needed to lose at least twenty pounds, if not thirty. He had enormous hands, talked too loudly, and was surely the biggest, most pompous ass she had ever met. He was also one of the most insecure men she had ever met and she had little doubt that he was a mama's boy.

  They had a drink. And then, foolishly, she had another. She was drinking martinis as if to show Montgomery Grant Smith that she was capable of handling herself. Although she also felt she needed this surge of alcohol to blot out her disappointment that Alexandra Waring was off tracking some Arab terrorist instead of having din­ner with her as they had planned. After the second martini, Geor­giana wondered how she would feel if Alexandra were killed this weekend, and she decided that she would feel bad but probably not as bad as she did right now, having to sit here listening to Mont­gomery Grant Smith.

  He talked about his life. His family's farm in central Florida. His father's career as a sales director, and his death due to lightning on the golf course. Monty had put himself through school, but had dropped out his junior year. He moved with his mother to Atlanta and got a job as a radio copywriter. The Hillingses met him through a mutual friend and read his self-published political journal. Henry encouraged him to write and got him a column where Monty be­came a young conservative voice. Through that job he was offered a national radio spot and got married. He had been a big hit ever since. But the marriage had lasted only a year. She got what she wanted: a lot of money. She had never wanted him and he was not sure why he had fallen into her trap.

  By the time he had gotten to this part of the story, Georgiana's interest had picked up.

  "I suppose," he said sadly, "that it was the case of the fat kid being presented with a beautiful woman any man would die for. I couldn't believe she loved me, and I shouldn't have. She was in love with security, that's what she was in love with, and as soon as she knew she could get good money from a divorce, she was out of there." He winced as he looked at Georgiana. "If you can believe it, I thought I deserved her, a gorgeous woman like that." He shook his head and sat back in his chair. "That's it, that's my life story."

  They were supposed to be talking about the Hillingses, not about trophy wives, but Georgiana felt touched by what he had shared with her. Deeply insecure men were taken advantage
of by women like that all the time, but rarely had Georgiana heard of one who had learned anything from it, or had broken through the self­ deception that a remarkably beautiful woman had been drawn to them for any reason other than the security they offered.

  They were now on their third drink and getting potted, but Georgiana had begun to enjoy herself. For one thing, she found the looks they were getting as a couple in the Regency bar very amus­ing. Although she hadn't recognized Montgomery Grant Smith, clearly a lot of other people did. ("Hi, Big Mont," the new waiter who came on duty said, "kudos from New Jersey.") Montgomery told her—about five times—that this attention was due to his raging best-seller, Visions for America, which to Georgiana sounded some­thing like a watered-down version of Mein Kampf

  "The Hillingses represented your book?" There was doubt in her voice, even she could hear it.

  "Yes, why not?" he said in his deep, beautifully modulated voice.

  "Oh, I don't know," Georgiana said politely.

  "Their job is publishing, not censorship," he told her. "They're smart, decent people who may vote incorrectly once in. a while, but who are still the best Americans I know. Besides," he added, leaning forward, "my book is better than Mickey Monster Moose or whatever the hell that book was you wrote when you were a kid."

  Georgiana laughed. "It was called Bunny on the Run and I wrote it when I was eight years old. I would hope your book is better than mine. Oh, never mind, that was a very long, long time ago."

  Monty knew she was getting drunk. He knew he should push her to eat something, but he didn't want to stop what felt like a roll. In the beginning, being seen with Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres was kick enough, but then she had begun to like him, or at least he had begun to interest her, and he liked that. A challenge.

  Besides, she was a very beautiful woman and he liked sitting there, drinking with her, fantasizing about what it would be like to go to bed with her. He did worry that he might somehow hurt her; she was so fragile looking and her face still looked tender from the accident she told him about. He wondered if he could manage not to touch her there. The one thing he did not worry about, here fantasizing about her, was hurting her with his dick, because he knew from experience that with insecure women, like all ac­tresses were, the bigger the better and they wanted it all.

  "So why are you here?" Montgomery Grant Smith asked, mov­ing into the chair next to her. "You haven't had anything to do with Hillings & Hillings since you were eight."

  Georgiana nodded, sipping the wine she had unwisely chosen to continue drinking after the martinis. She was getting smashed and it felt good. It had been a long time. She wished, however, that she would stop noticing the enormous erection America's most popular radio talk-show host was sporting next to her. It was most distracting.

  "Um," she said, trying to remember the question. "Oh, yes, my relationship with the Hillingses. They've been wonderful to me, you have no idea."

  "How so?" he asked, letting his arm rest lightly against hers.

  "At one point in my life, I lived with them. For two years. They took me in because my mother was having a lot of problems and my father was in Scotland. I suppose in some ways they view me as a child of theirs," she said. "Neither of their own children has ever been interested in anything to do with the arts."

  He nodded and smiled. "I'd adopt you," he told her.

  For some bizarre reason, this sounded sexy to Georgiana. Or maybe it was because she realized that Montgomery was smashed, too. Vulnerable. She used to love that in men in the old days; the bigger the better; the more prone to vulnerability, the greater the turn-on in rendering them helpless with desire.

  He reminded her a bit of Duane, her ex-husband. She had disliked Duane at first, too, and then, for a period of time, had come to find seducing him enormously erotic. Soon enough, however, the dislike heartily outweighed the sex. Oh, what a wonderful relation­ship that had turned out to be, a marriage of pretense and play-act­ing, making everyone happy but themselves. Duane had begun drinking and snorting coke in earnest, and she had turned an in­nocent friendship into a torrid affair.

  It was ghastly to think back to those days. Yes, she had been young—twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five—but still, that wasn’t much of an excuse. And yet, in those days, living so despicably (she thought now, cringing at the memory), her approval rating from friends, family, and publicists had never been higher.

  "Excuse me, Montgomery, but I need to visit the ladies' room." She smiled to herself as he stood, holding a napkin in front of his crotch.

  The ladies' room attendant was looking at her oddly.

  Well, of course she was, Georgiana was bombed. Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres was tottering around loaded in the attendant's im­maculate domain and the woman was probably worried that she'd get sick or something. How was she to know that Georgiana didn't do that sort of thing? "I had an accident," she said, talking to the attendant in the mirror, pointing to her cheek. "A pest-control truck hit me."

  "Oh no," the attendant said. "Today?"

  "No, some weeks ago. I had to have surgery. He broke my cheek." She pointed this out. "He smashed my nose." She pointed again. "He broke my tooth." She pointed once more. "Do you know who Alexandra Waring is?"

  The attendant nodded. "The anchor lady. I've seen her here."

  "Really? What do you think of her?"

  "I think she is a great role model for young women."

  Georgiana didn't like that response, but she wasn't sure why. "You have a daughter?"

  "Yes," she said. "Fourteen. She would like to be a TV news journalist. "

  "I see," Georgiana said. "Do you know who I am?"

  The attendant smiled and nodded. "Miss Hamilton-Ayres."

  "I'm not a good role model," she said.

  "Oh, yes, of course you are." Lowering her voice, the attendant added, "I would ask you for your autograph for my daughter, but we're not supposed to."

  "Then I guess I'll just have to give it to you," Georgiana said, thinking how loaded she must be to be having this conversation. She also was aware of the effect bringing up Alexandra's name was having on her, while, at the same time, she was experiencing a very strange and strong desire to seduce Montgomery Grant Smith. Was a man's erection like the applause of an audience?

  If it was, then America's most popular radio talk-show host was giving her a standing ovation.

  Oh, she was drunk all right. She had to be.

  He was waiting for her outside the ladies' room. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine," she said, "I was chatting with the attendant." She smiled and slung her arm through his. "Well, where to?"

  He turned to her, clasping his hand over hers. "I'm not clear what our relationship is."

  She burst out laughing, falling against him. He staggered, but caught them both. She knew they were a sight, but who cared? This was fun.

  "Do you want to come up to my suite?" he whispered. "For something to eat or drink—or something?"

  "For something," she said, giving him a look that she was pretty sure would send him to heaven. And if that were not enough to get the message across, she made a slow and rather elaborate process of moistening her lips with her tongue.

  They went up to his suite and he held open the door for her. "I'd like to shower, would you mind?" she asked matter-of-factly, turning around. "I've been traveling all day."

  He gestured to the bedroom. "There are clean towels in the bathroom."

  "Thank you," she said, walking in and making herself at home.

  "Uh," he called from the living room, "what do you want me to do?"

  She peeked around the door. "Get very, very excited," she said.

  "No, I meant," he stammered, "do you want something to drink? To eat? Room service?"

  She put her hand on her hip. "Why would I want anything to eat when I have you to eat, Montgomery Grant Smith?" she said, and closed the door.

  The water felt wonderful, but it also had the distinct effect of bringing
her to her senses. What are you doing? she asked herself, toweling her hair dry in front of the mirror. The terry-cloth robe she found felt heavenly.

  "I am demonstrating my womanhood," she told her reflection, and then she laughed, feeling a delicious anticipation between her legs. Were they hereditary? These drunken urges?

  She expected to see him in the bedroom, waiting, but he wasn't. He was sitting obediently in the living room, still fully dressed, legs crossed to conceal his crotch, waiting, she supposed, for instruc­tions.

  "We have to talk," she said, walking across the room and sliding down next to him on the couch. "What I said before about eating you."

  His face was bright red. She was dying to look down, but she didn't. Instead she kissed him lightly on the mouth and said, "I'm afraid I don't know you and I can't afford to risk trusting you—no offense, but I have no way of knowing what you've been up to for the past ten years."

  He was startled and blinked several times. "Me? I—you mean, you think I might have AIDS or something? ME?"

  "You could have anything," she said, "and I told you not to take it personally. So now," she added, "I have to ask you—do you have any condoms? If you don't, we'll have to rely on things that don't involve my mouth or my... well, you know."

  He swallowed. "Like what?"

  She shrugged. "You could come between my breasts, maybe," and she took his hand and slid it inside her robe to hold her right breast. He responded with a groan, closing his eyes.

  She looked down. She was right. A standing ovation. He was cocksure because he was cock-sure and it was exciting. This was like being a teenager again.

  "How long has it been?" she murmured, kissing his ear.

  "Not as long as you think," he said, massaging her breast.

  She reached down and rubbed the tremendous bulge in his pants, measuring, and then sighing, feeling herself responding in a way that was about as subtle as the opening of a garage door. "I really think I want us to find a condom," she whispered.

  "I really think so, too," he said. "And I've got some."