Never a Bride

by JoAnn Ross

  “No problem,” Cait agreed readily. The vehicles were usually towed, but what the hell. If she owned a sixty-thousand dollar car, she wouldn’t want it locked away in some police impound lot, either.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked Cait.

  “Officer Caitlin Carrigan,” she said, expecting a complaint call to her division commander from the guy’s Century City attorney. Knowing that it was a clean bust, she also volunteered her shield number.

  But he didn’t seem to be all that angry. If fact, if anything, the guy actually seemed more interested in her than ever. His blue eyes took a long judicious review of her.

  “You’re not a bad actress,” he said.

  Cait liked it when johns remained polite when busted. It made things easier for everyone. “Thanks.”

  “And you’re really quite lovely. You remind me of a young Maureen O’Hara.” Cait exchanged a quick glance with her partners, who rolled their eyes.

  “That’s nice of you to say,” she murmured. Although parading around in public, dressed up like what her grandfather Carrigan would have called a floozie, hadn’t bothered her, Cait was beginning to get decidedly uncomfortable with this conversation.

  “It’s the truth. I’ve always prided myself on having an excellent eye for beauty.”

  After four years as a cop, working the mean Los Angeles streets, Cait did not think there was anything left that could surprise her. She was about to be proven wrong.

  “Do you have an agent?” Walter Stern III, owner of Xanadu Studios, asked with another of those dazzling, toothpaste commercial smiles. “I’m always looking for new talent.”

  * * *

  BY THE END of her shift, Cait was not in the best of moods. She’d been working the Sunset Strip all afternoon and evening, and had even had to run back to the station to change into her other undercover outfit when the word got out that the lady in red was neither a lady nor a hooker, but a dreaded vice cop.

  She had a pounding headache, her feet hurt, and if that wasn’t bad enough, while she’d been out trying to make the streets safe, her mother—one of the few people in Hollywood who could still be considered an old-style movie star—had called the station, insisting on speaking with her.

  “I tried telling her you were out on vice patrol,” the dispatcher—a cigar-smoking, jaded thirty-year veteran who’d been assigned to desk duty after a heart attack—informed Cait. “But the lady doesn’t take no for an answer all that easily.”

  “Tell me about it,” Cait muttered. One of the few things she’d inherited from her mother—other than her looks—was a steely tenacity that had served her well as a cop. “I’ll call her after I change.”

  “No need,” he said. Cait didn’t quite trust the sergeant’s devilish grin. “I talked her into leaving a message.” The grin had moved up to his eyes and Cait noticed that half the squad room had stopped to listen.

  “I don’t suppose you wrote it down?” she asked hopefully.

  “Didn’t have to,” he said. “It wasn’t that hard to remember.” His grin widened ominously. “I was instructed to remind you that you’re expected at noon on Sunday. For the Pet Parade Brunch.”

  The brunch was her mother’s annual fundraiser for the local humane society and Cait had, admittedly, forgotten all about it. The eavesdropping cops burst into laughter. Brunch in Bel Air was not the way most cops spent their Sunday afternoons.

  “Hey, Carrigan,” her captain called out, “if you’d like, I can dye my wife’s poodle pink. So you’ll have something appropriate to take with you to this celebrity shebang.”

  That remark drew even more laughter which Cait answered with a pungent curse that even the most jaded street cops among them admired. Then she stomped downstairs to change into the jeans and T-shirt she’d worn to the station that morning.

  The scene that greeted her did nothing to improve her mood. A man clad in the khaki uniform of the maintenance department was mopping the floor. The nearly full five-gallon bucket beside him revealed that the locker room had flooded.

  “What happened?”

  “Electrical problems,” he explained laconically as he squeezed out the string mop.

  “It looks more like plumbing problems to me.”

  “There was a short in the ancient electrical system that set off the overhead sprinkler system.”

  “Terrific.” Cait made her way across the floor to her locker by stepping on dry patches. “If we don’t get some money for improvements around here, the place is going to fall down around our ears.”

  “Every department’s hurting,” he said. “I haven’t had a raise in two years, which doesn’t much impress my kid’s orthodontist when he expects me to pay for the braces that just bought his new boat.”

  Only half listening—everyone complained about the lack of public funding these days—Cait opened her locker. “Oh, hell!”

  Her regular clothes were hanging next to her uniform and dripping water onto the metal floor of the locker.

  “At least we know the sprinklers work,” the man said.

  “You’ve no idea how that relieves me,” Cait said dryly as she realized that she had no choice but to drive home in her hooker outfit.

  “No one held a gun to your head and forced you to be a cop,” she reminded herself as she was subjected to a series of wolf whistles when she retrieved her red Mustang from the police lot.

  Actually, most of the time, she loved her job. She loved the camaraderie of the squad, she loved the idea she was helping keep the city safe for innocent citizens, loved the fact that she never knew what was going to happen from one minute to the next and, most of all, she loved the sound of handcuffs clicking around the wrists of the bad guys.

  But there were days, and this was one of them, when she wondered if just maybe she should have taken her high school counselor’s advice and gone into nursing.

  * * *

  IT HAD BEEN SWELTERING in the dusty village of San Miguel for weeks. Tempers had flared and more than one fistfight had broken out. There had already been two brawls in the cantina just this morning, resulting in a stabbing incident that had sent one unlucky participant to the medical clinic. In a far corner, a man and a woman sat at a table, drinking tequila. Words were exchanged. The woman slapped the man’s ruggedly handsome face, then stormed out of the cantina on a swirl of gauze skirts. Cursing violently, the man followed.

  The air was pregnant with moisture. Thunder rumbled from fat gray clouds overhead. Because of the unrelenting heat and the impending storm, the street was deserted.

  He caught up with her easily. When he grabbed hold of her arm, she furiously shook him off and continued walking.

  His temper obviously at the breaking point, he gripped her by the shoulders and shoved her hard against the crumbling pink adobe wall of a deserted building.

  “It’s not what you think, dammit!” he shouted into her face.

  “Isn’t it?” She tossed her dark head. Her eyes glittered with barely repressed fury. “You promised me,” she insisted. “You agreed it was the only way we could be together! Now that I’ve slept with you, now that you’ve gotten what you wanted, you’re backing out on the deal.”

  “That’s not true.” He ran his broad hands over her shoulders. Her breasts. “I’ll never get enough of you, baby.” His flash fire anger metamorphosing into something just as hot, just as dangerous, he forced his knee between her legs.

  “Dammit, Hunter—” Even as she complained, she began to rotate her hips.

  “Shh.” He bent his head and pressed his lips against her frowning mouth. The kiss was hot and long and deep. When it finally ended they were both breathing heavily.

  “I told you,” he rasped, his hands tangling in her hair, holding her gaze to his, “I’ve every intention of going through with the plan, Jillian. But it’s not that easy.”

  “I know.” Her hand moved between them and pressed against the placket of his jeans. “But nothing worth having is ever easy.”r />
  His body was straining against her hand. “He’s an FBI agent, for chrissakes!”

  “So are you,” Jillian Peters reminded him silkily.

  Sensing his surrender, she knelt and pressed her wet glossy lips against the faded denim. Giving in, as he’d known he would, Hunter Roberts closed his eyes and moaned as she drove him closer and closer to the brink.

  The rain that had been threatening all day finally arrived on a deafening clash of thunderheads. It streamed over them, turning the red dust Jillian was kneeling in to mud.

  When she began to unzip the jeans, Hunter grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to her feet again. The drenching cloudburst had rendered the sheer gauze dress nearly transparent. Her long legs were clearly visible, as were her nipples, which had pebbled from the sudden chill of the rain.

  He pushed her back against the wall again, shoving her skirt up with one hand and unfastening his jeans with the other. Then, as the lightning flashed and the thunder boomed and the rain poured down, FBI Special Agent Hunter Roberts took her, standing up, in an alley of the sleepy border town where they’d first concocted the plan to murder her husband.

  * * *

  “CUT!” a voice shouted.

  “Cut,” the assistant director echoed.

  On cue, on the back lot of Xanadu Studios, the rain abruptly ceased, the thunder silenced and the couple separated. A wardrobe woman rushed forward with thick terry robes and towels.

  “That one had better be a take,” Blythe Fielding muttered. “Much more of this and I’ll get pneumonia.”

  “Much more and I won’t be able to walk for a week,” her costar, Drew Montgomery, complained.

  She laughed at that as she rubbed her wet hair dry. “You’re a newlywed, Drew. I’m amazed you have any energy at all.”

  He grinned. “I may be married, but a man would have to be dead not to respond to you, Blythe.”

  “You’re still incorrigible.” Her smile took the sting from her words.

  “And you’re still every bit as delectable as you were at seventeen.”

  They’d become teenage sweethearts while making a sophomoric summer camp slasher movie. Their brief romance had ended when the cameras had stopped rolling, but miraculously—in this town where lasting relationships were rare—they’d stayed friends.

  “Sorry, Blythe, Drew,” the director interrupted. “But we’ll have to do it again.”

  “Dammit, Martin,” Blythe protested, “I told you I have an important meeting this evening.”

  “I know.” Martin Griffith’s tone held as much irritation as hers. “But there was a damn boom in the shot. The clock’s ticking down on this one, kids, and Stern is about ready to pull the plug.”

  “No great loss there,” Blythe said beneath her breath.

  Although the deal she’d recently cut with Xanadu studios required her to star in two films of the studio’s choice for every one her own newly established independent production company made, Walter Stern III invariably insisted on casting her in these oversexed, underdressed femme fatale roles.

  “I heard that, Blythe,” Martin said without rancor. “And for your information, this film is going to put my kid through Harvard—if we can get it in the can before he graduates from high school.” Since Tyler Griffith was all of three years old, Blythe figured that even with all the bad luck they’d been having with the production, they might be able to—just barely—make that deadline.

  “I have to make a telephone call,” she said.

  “Make it short. Candy’s expecting you in makeup in five. With any luck, we can get this damn scene wrapped up before midnight.”

  Blythe entered the motor home that served as her dressing room. Sinking down on the flowered sofa, she dialed the now familiar number for Sloan Wyndham, the writer-director she was hoping to talk into writing the screenplay for her first independent project. When she got his answering machine, Blythe had no choice but to leave a message on the recorder. “Hello, Sloan? This is Blythe. Blythe Fielding,” she tacked on unnecessarily.

  This was the third time she’d had to change their scheduled appointment in the past week and each time she was afraid that Sloan, who wasn’t exactly known throughout the movie community for his patience, was going to call the meeting off entirely.

  “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid we’ve run into a slight delay.” Frustration, worry, contrition. Her tone radiated with all three as she dragged her hand through her thick dark hair. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to make our six o’clock meeting. Would it be all right with you if we moved it to seven?”

  Hoping for the best, but half expecting the worst, she said, “I’ll ask my housekeeper to stay a little later to let you into the house, in case I’m not there when you arrive. Unfotunately, I think she’s going deaf because she doesn’t always hear the intercom, so let me give you the number of the gate alarm.” She repeated the five-digit code three times.

  She paused, as if waiting for an answer. “Once again, I apologize,” she said, when none was forthcoming. “I’m usually irritatingly prompt. But things have been absolutely crazy here on the set. It’s almost as if the film is jinxed.” She desperately hoped he’d experienced similar problems on at least one of his own projects.

  “Well, see you soon.” She forced a bright note into her voice, as if to ensure his cooperation.

  Hoping he’d think to call his machine before arriving at her house for their appointment, she replaced the receiver in the cradle, then made the mistake of glancing up at the mirror, where she’d taped an old black-and-white publicity still of Alexandra Romanov.

  Posed in the glamour style of the times, the actress was 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 exquisite face, her lips were full and dark.

  Although those voluptuous lips were curved in a staged, provocative smile, Blythe imagined she viewed sorrow in Alexandra’s gypsy dark eyes.

  The photo had been taken a mere week before her death. A week before her very public argument with her husband, novelist Patrick Reardon.

  “What was it?” Blythe asked out loud. “What secret were you hiding that made you so sad?”

  Blythe had given up questioning why she needed to know the answer. She only knew that for some reason beyond her understanding, it had become imperative for her to learn the truth.

  She was still staring at the photograph ten minutes later when the beleaguered production assistant knocked on the motor home door, reminding her that they were waiting for her in makeup.

  * * *

  IN NO MOOD TO FACE all the boxes yet to be unpacked from her recent move to her new apartment in Bachelor Arms, Cait decided to drop by her best friend’s for some pizza and girl talk.

  Although Blythe Fielding’s Beverly Hills neighborhood was a carbon copy of the one she’d grown up in, Cait enjoyed going to Blythe’s home.

  In contrast, whenever she was visited her mother’s southern Colonial mansion in next door Bel Air, she always felt like a gangly, too skinny six-year-old with wild red hair and no front teeth.

  The hills were definitely a peaceful respite from the bustling, grimy Hollywood district where she’d spent a long tiring day pacing the star-studded pavement. The trees were wearing new spring coats of bright green, the gardeners had planted more petunias and pansies and snapdragons than one could find at Disneyland, and miracle of miracles, you could almost breathe the air up here.

  Cait rolled down her window as she passed a black Porsche Targa parked on the street. Automatically checking out the car’s plate and tags, she took a deep breath of the evening air that carried a faint, bracing scent of the salt water drifting in on westerly winds from where Sunset ended at the ocean, and felt herself beginning to relax.

  2

  SLOAN WYNDHAM couldn’t believe it. He dug deeper into his pocket and pulled out two gum wrappers, a library car
d that had nearly disintegrated after inadvertently going through a wash cycle, and some lint. But no slip of paper with the combination for Blythe Fielding’s damn wrought iron gate.

  That’s when he remembered that he’d changed jeans after his afternoon run on the beach.

  “Hell, all you have to do is think,” he assured himself. “You wrote the damn number down. And checked it when she repeated it. So, try a little creative visualization.”

  He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and wished he’d paid more attention to Melissa Golden’s constant attempts to get him more in touch with his subconscious.

  The actress—and former lover—who’d starred in Between Heaven And Hell, the Oscar nominated film he’d written and directed about an idealistic nun and a burned-out cop tracking down a serial killer in downtown L.A., was every bit as intelligent as she was beautiful.

  But not only was Melissa a method actress, which was bad enough in Sloan’s opinion, she’d also never met a New Age philosophy she didn’t embrace.

  During the three months they’d been together, he’d witnessed her forays into the Daughters of Lemuria—female believers in a pre-Atlantean civilization allegedly located on the lost subcontinent in the Pacific, The Enlightenment of The Divine Mind, the Odyssey of the Inner Child, and the Universal Selfhood, just to name a few of the more esoteric disciplines. She’d also tried, unsuccessfully, to make him a believer.

  “Okay. Here we go.” He closed his eyes and concentrated. A moment later, he punched four numbers that seemed familiar.

  Nothing.

  “If at first you don’t succeed...” He tried again.

  Again, nothing.

  Being familiar with Blythe Fielding’s system—he’d had an identical one installed at his own Pacific Palisades house—Sloan knew that if he didn’t hit the right combination of numbers on the third attempt, he’d trigger a series of ear-splitting alarms, which would also result in guards from a private security firm, as well as the Beverly Hills police, descending on him.