by Janet Dailey
Riley’s mouth twisted into a grim line of disgust, and Delaney knew he had heard Susan’s last remark. And like Riley, she knew it meant Susan had something on some banker.
“In some circles, that’s called politics,” Riley murmured under his breath. “In others, blackmail.”
Nodding, Delaney recalled her first meeting with Susan and the remark she’d made that Delaney must learn a lot of secrets about her clients in the course of her work, implying that such secrets could be detrimental to the client if they became public. At the time, Delaney had shrugged off the remark as idle curiosity. Now she suspected that secrets were part of Susan’s stock-in-trade.
Riley added softly, “What were you saying about a killer instinct?”
No answer was required and Delaney offered none. She wished Lucas and Susan were out of earshot. She didn’t want to hear anymore. It would only make her angry—and to what purpose? There was nothing she could do. This was life—the side of it nobody liked.
Lucas spoke. “You realize you’re talking about a lot of money, Susan. A lot of debt.”
“I’m talking about your future, Luke. Yours and Toby’s,” she added. “I know how anxious you are to ensure that Toby will always be financially secure. You know how fickle Hollywood is. Your acting career could be over tomorrow. But this painting will be a tremendous investment.”
Toby. The instant Susan said his name, Delaney knew that Susan was one of the handful who knew Toby was Lucas Wayne’s brother. Which meant she also knew how anxious Lucas was to protect Toby from a grasping, gawking public. She knew, and she was using that knowledge—that secret—to force Lucas into buying this painting.
“You can bet she’ll make a bundle of money out of the sale,” Riley muttered under his breath. “Something tells me that half a million of that three and a half price tag goes to Miss St. Jacque. Maybe more.”
“That’s enough, Riley,” Delaney murmured.
“Sorry. My disgust is showing, isn’t it?”
“It’s written all over your face.”
“Yours, too.”
Delaney tried to do something about that as Lucas and Susan wandered toward them. “Let me make an offer on the painting in your name, Luke. Just to keep him from selling it to anyone else.”
“Arthur is flying in this afternoon. I want to talk to him, see what kind of tax ramifications this might have.”
“But that’s the beauty of it, darling. Borrowing the money, there won’t be any tax ramifications to worry about.”
“I need time to think about this, Susan.”
“What is there to think about? There is only one smart decision and that’s to buy it. Believe me, the value of the painting is easily five million. At an auction, it could even bring more. The owner wants a quick sale.”
“Give me a few days. A week at the maximum.”
“Very well, a week.” But the delay plainly irritated her.
As they neared the archway, Riley turned to them. “Ready to leave?”
“Yes.” Lucas immediately angled away from Susan to head toward the front doors.
Susan walked them outside. Riley took the ignition keys out of his pocket and walked around to the driver’s side while Delaney opened the rear passenger door for Lucas.
“I’ll see you at the reception on Friday,” Susan said in parting. “Don’t forget, you promised to introduce me to Kyle Baines.”
“How could I forget? You aren’t going to let me,” Lucas replied with a rare sarcasm that his quick smile failed to disguise.
“Be sure and say hello to Toby for me, Luke,” Susan added.
To Delaney, the innocent-sounding words masked a threat of exposure. Lucas didn’t respond. Delaney pushed the door shut behind him, nodded curtly to Susan, and climbed in the front seat beside Riley.
Not surprisingly, Lucas had little to say during the ride back to the house. Riley turned the radio on, covering most of the silence with music and filling the rest with comments on his favorite songs, comments that required responses from Delaney.
SEVENTEEN
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, THEY walked into the air-conditioned cool of the house. Riley immediately switched off the alarm system while Delaney slipped her sunglasses to the top of her head and gave the foyer a cursory glance. The heavy stillness seemed as weighted as the silence coming from Lucas. Without a word, he took the day’s mail from the table and proceeded directly into the cavernous white living room.
Riley’s gaze followed him. “I’ve never seen him this quiet, not even on the set.” He absently twirled the key ring hooked on his forefinger, the car keys rattling together. “It makes me think she might have something on him.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Delaney murmured.
“I might as well head for the airport. It’s early yet, but I can pick up our tuxedos for Friday’s formal bash on my way.”
“Good idea. It will save a trip later.”
“That’s what I thought.” Riley headed for the door. “If Arthur’s flight arrives on time, I shouldn’t be gone more than an hour.”
She acknowledged that with a wave of her hand and crossed to the telephone extension in the foyer as Riley went out the door. Picking up the receiver, she dialed the number for the command center, informed Vance she was back at the house with Lucas, then checked for messages—all the while conscious of faint stirrings of movement coming from the living room.
By the time she hung up, the house was silent once again. She hesitated, then crossed to the arched entrance to the living room. The mail lay unopened on a plump ivory sofa cushion. Lucas stood at the expanse of glass that soared from the floor to the peak of the thirty-foot ceiling. There was something brooding in his stance, his feet braced slightly apart, one hand buried in the side pocket of his pleated slacks, his shoulders slumped.
The stillness was broken by the sudden and distinctive rattle of ice cubes against the sides of a glass. Lucas looked down, then lifted a drink to his mouth and bolted down a hefty swallow. With more loud clinking of ice, he turned from the view and saw Delaney in the archway.
“Would you like lunch?” she asked, identifying at a glance the Bloody Mary in his hand, complete with a celery stalk in place of a swizzle stick. “There’s still some fresh snow crab left in the refrigerator.”
“No. This will hold me ’til Arthur gets here,” he said, lifting his drink.
“Okay.”
As she started to turn away, his voice stopped her. “Where are you going?”
She didn’t answer immediately, her glance skimming the faint creases in his forehead and the banked anger in his eyes. “I thought you might like to be alone.”
“Alone.” His short laugh held no humor. “That’s a good one, Delaney. Hell, I’m always alone…even when I’m with someone.” Again she started to leave. “Don’t go. Stay with me?”
She heard the faint throb in his voice that subtly turned the request into a plea. “If you want.” She deliberately injected a casual note and reversed her course to join him in the living room.
For her, the situation was an awkward one. Long ago she’d learned that few clients wanted to know she’d overheard their conversations. On the contrary, they preferred to pretend she hadn’t. Therefore, professionally she had to act as if she wasn’t aware anything was troubling a client even when privately she knew better—as in this case, where she strongly suspected that Susan St. Jacque was threatening to expose that Toby was his brother in order to pressure him into buying the painting.
Lucas again rattled the cubes in his glass, then swung around to face the window and the mountain vista beyond it. “I used to dream about making it,” he said in a grim, flat voice. “But I never imagined it like this.” He paused an instant and lifted his glass in her direction. “Take it from me, Delaney, success doesn’t change people. Not really. But it sure as hell changes the way other people look at you. I hate to think of the number of friends I’ve lost because of it.”
“Why?” S
he frowned at that curious statement. “If they were your friends—”
“—then they should be happy for me, is that what you think?” he mocked. “So did I. They wanted to be. Some of them even tried. But for them, my success emphasized their failure. Every time I was around them, hadn’t—at least, in their eyes. The friendship becomes too painful after that and eventually dies.”
“That’s sad.”
“Very sad,” Lucas agreed. “But you can’t change it, any more than you can change the attitudes of others, especially the ones who look at you and assume you must be different from them. You have to be; you’re a star and they’re not. It isn’t that they think you’re too good for them. No, it’s much more subtle than that. They think they’re not good enough.” He hooked a finger around the celery stalk, holding it out of the way while he tossed down a swallow of the vodka-laced tomato juice. “Then there’s all the rest—the users. The ones who want the money and the favors you can get for them.”
Like Susan, Delaney thought, but she didn’t say it.
“Then the day finally comes when you find yourself alone in your ivory tower with a drink in your hand. And you raise your glass to the emptiness and echo the words of that famous television detective: ‘Who loves ya, baby?’” With bitter mockery, he acted out his scenario and drank down the rest of the Bloody Mary.
Compassion surged, and with it came the urge to soothe and comfort. But how? What could she say? Nothing would change the way things were.
“Lucas,” she said softly. “It doesn’t do any good to feel sorry for yourself.”
“Doesn’t it?” He turned on her, his hot temper surfacing in a blaze, his tight grip on the empty glass showing the white of his knuckles. “What the hell do you know about any of this? You don’t know what it’s like to be alone—to have a pack of vultures out there circling, waiting for the chance to pick your bones. You don’t know what it’s like to be hated because you’re a success. Oh, the public roots for you on the way up, but once you get there, they want to tear you down. They want to see you crash and burn. The press would love to write about it. One hint of a scandal and they’d be all over it, twisting it into something ugly and sordid so they could sell more papers.”
But the angry words failed to satisfy the violence within. Spinning around, Lucas hurled the empty glass at the fireplace, juice-stained cubes arcing to the floor, crystal shattering against the marble in an explosion of tinkling shards. He took two quick steps away from her, then stopped and raked his fingers through his dark hair. Delaney suspected that if there’d been a wall close by, he would have rammed a fist into it.
Without turning, he declared, “You have absolutely no idea how vindictive people can be.”
“Yes, I do. It’s my job.”
He turned back to her, his anger dissolving in a rush. “How could I have forgotten that?”
“We tend to forget a lot of things in the pressure—the frustration—of the moment.”
His mouth curved with a sudden, engaging touch of wry humor. “Do you often play mother confessor to your clients and listen while they pour out their troubles to you?”
She smiled back. “Very, very rarely.”
“That’s their loss.” His eyes made a slow and thoughtful inspection of her face. “Instinctively I must have known you’d understand. Looking back, I think the biggest reason I was drawn to Rina was because she’d gone through it herself—old friends falling away, the users grabbing at you, the media hounding you, everybody out to get you, to use you, to take advantage of any weakness they can find—”
“Not everybody, Lucas.”
He paused. “No, not everybody. Not you.”
With one step, he reached out and drew her into his arms. Delaney didn’t resist, recognizing that he needed the assurance of physical contact and wanting to give it to him.
He rubbed his chin against the side of her hair. “You have no idea how much it means to me to know you’re here to watch out for me, not to use me. I guess that’s why I feel safe with you, because I know you’ll be there for me.”
Listening to the low rumble of his voice, catching the quiet fervency in it, Delaney suddenly realized no one had ever been there for him—not his parents, not his friends. She was the first to attempt to protect him from harm. For an emotionally charged instant, she let her arms tighten around him, holding him closer. When she felt the brush of his lips against her hair, she drew back and attempted to reassert a professional position.
“Don’t forget, Lucas, it’s our job to make sure nothing happens to you.”
He disputed that. “Maybe it’s a job to Riley and the others. But not to you, Delaney. You care.”
It was true. Somewhere along the line, she had begun to care about Lucas as a person, not just as a client. She liked him.
“I do care,” she admitted in a deliberately light voice. “That’s why I’m going to pick up the glass you broke before you get hurt.”
“I did make a mess, didn’t I?” he said with a touch of chagrin.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Then it’s only fair I help clean it up.”
“If you think I’m going to turn down the offer, you’re wrong,” Delaney retorted with a curious lightheartedness that lasted all the way through the time it took to pick up the broken pieces and blot the puddles left by melting ice cubes.
By then Riley had returned from the airport with Arthur Golden. His glance made contact with hers. Delaney responded with a small, barely perceptible nod of her head, answering his unspoken question that all was well.
“It’s good to see you again, Lucas.” Arthur Golden walked over to shake his hand.
“Same here. How was your flight?”
“Turbulent,” Arthur replied with a faint grimace. “That plane was like a flying earthquake. I thought I was back in L.A.” His gaze narrowed on Lucas in quick scrutiny. “How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
“Good. I have a stack of scripts for you to read.” Arthur turned to Riley. “Bring me that black bag.” Taking it for granted that he would, Arthur swung back to Lucas. “I had lunch at Morton’s on Monday with Dave from Creative Artists. They are putting a movie package together and, naturally, they want you to star in it. I brought the script for you to read. They would like an answer as soon as possible on it.”
“I’ll take a look at it.” Lucas strolled over to the mahogany bar. “Would you like something to drink? Lime and soda, maybe?”
“A cup of hot tea would be nice.”
“I’ll fix one for you,” Delaney offered.
“There should be some Earl Grey in the kitchen,” Arthur told her. “Lucas always keeps some here for me.”
“I’ll find it.” Delaney moved toward the archway.
“Don’t let the water come to a boil or—” Arthur began, then broke it off. “I’d better come with you. When it comes to tea, I’m as particular as the English.”
With smooth, long strides, he hurried to join her. In the foyer, they bumped into Riley carrying a black canvas tote that bulged at the sides.
“Take that into Lucas. Tell him the script from Creative Artists should be on top.” He waved Riley toward the living room, then slipped a hand on Delaney’s elbow and steered her toward the kitchen. “Tell me the truth, Delaney. What’s been going on here? Lucas looked a little edgy to me. Has Rina caused more problems?”
“No.”
“She will,” he said, much too positive.
“Have you found out something we should know?” Delaney asked as they entered the kitchen.
“I bumped into Sid Graves at LAX.” He followed Delaney to the sink, watching while she filled the teakettle with water from the tap.
“Who is Sid Graves?” She frowned at the name and set the kettle on the range, then turned on the burner beneath it.
“Her manager. He was on his way to New York to meet with her attorneys there. Sid and I have known each other for years. He had some time before
his flight left—I had some time. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to clear up this trouble—behind the scenes, so to speak.”
“And?” Delaney prompted when Arthur paused.
“And—I cornered him. Which is why I wanted to speak to you alone.” He lifted the lid to the sugar bowl, gave it a quarter turn, and set it back down, his smooth forehead puckering in a frown. “Sid told me that he met with Rina the morning after the shooting—after she had been released. According to him, she was her usual belligerent self at first, ranting and raving about what she was going to do to Lucas. Sid got mad. He told her she was in some damned serious trouble, reminded her that she was facing a felony charge—that it could mean prison.”
A canister of the imported English tea blend was in the spice cupboard. Delaney set it out on the counter by the range, then automatically searched for the porcelain teapot.
“Sid said that she turned to him and said, with tears in her eyes, ‘But it was an accident. I never intended to shoot him. I love him. Why would I try to kill him? It’s true, I had a gun. Lucas gave it to me. I did take it to the hotel, but I only wanted to scare him with it—that’s all. It went off while we were struggling. It was an accident,’ she said. ‘A horrible, frightening accident.’ Then she broke out crying. When Sid went to comfort her, she looked up and he saw the gleam in her eyes.” Arthur paused and dragged in a deep, steeling breath. “Sid described it as cold and calculating. After that she taunted him, saying, ‘I have nothing to worry about, Sid. No jury will convict me once I tell my story. I can get away with it. Wait and see.’”
The kettle whistled shrilly, startling both of them. Delaney grabbed the teakettle and lifted it off the burner.
“According to Sid, everyone around her is scared she will carry out her threat. And no one knows how to stop her. Sid has tried everything to get her out of Aspen—claiming urgent meetings, offers for new recording contracts, movie deals. But she hasn’t fallen for any of them.” He popped the lid off the tea canister. “If he said it to me once, he said it to me a dozen times—‘Whatever you do, Arthur, don’t let her get to Lucas.’” He looked at Delaney. “Now I’m telling you—don’t let her get to Lucas.”
