Illusions

by Janet Dailey

  “Don’t worry. We won’t.”

  “What about this party on Friday?” Arthur took a couple of pinches of loose-leaf tea from the canister and dropped them into the blue porcelain teapot. “What if Rina shows up there?”

  “It’s possible.” With a steady show of calm, Delaney poured the water from the kettle into the pot. Steam rose in a vaporous cloud. “But the reception is by invitation only and her name isn’t on the guest list.”

  “Don’t underestimate her,” Arthur warned. “She got into his suite in New York. If she needs an invitation, she’ll find a way to get one.”

  “I have a meeting with Sam Blake tonight. He’s in charge of security at the reception. I’ll make certain the invitations can be used only by the guest on the list. By the way, should I have your name added?”

  “I should go, but I have a couple of conference calls set for Friday night. I’ll have to pass.” He sighed heavily. “You know, I could cope with all of this if it was some deranged fan out there. But for it to be someone like Rina Cole…” He shook his head. “Why couldn’t she have a normal breakdown like any other star? Why did she have to pick Lucas? It isn’t fair.”

  “What is fair?” Delaney countered.

  His mouth twisted wryly at that. “I’ll tell you the truth, Delaney—I wish Lucas had never agreed to go to the party Friday. And I am going to do my damnedest to talk him out of it.”

  It was nearly nine o’clock by the time Delaney concluded her meeting with Sam Blake and returned to the detail’s command center at the condo. Two express packets from her office waited for her. One held checks for payroll and accounts payable, requiring her signature. She relieved Vance from his watch and sent him off for a late dinner, then dealt with the checks.

  The second packet was fatter and heavier, filled with correspondence to be answered, plus various billing and invoices that required her approval. Delaney fixed a pot of coffee in the small kitchen, then tackled the stack of paperwork.

  Halfway through it, the phone rang. She picked up the receiver and cradled it to her ear. “Nine-two-one-one.” She absently glanced at the VCR’s digital clock atop the television, noting that Riley was making his check-in call five minutes early.

  But it wasn’t Riley’s voice that came over the line. “Is that you, Delaney? It’s Jared.”

  “Jared.” She smiled without being conscious of it. “This is a coincidence. I just came across your name tonight in the most unexpected place.”

  “Let me guess,” he said, his voice warm with amusement. “Was it the RSVP list for Friday’s reception?”

  “On the nose.” Delaney reached for the alphabetized list of names Sam Blake had supplied to her. Jared was fourth from the top. “It never occurred to me you went to such things.”

  “Usually I don’t. But when I heard Lucas Wayne would be there, I knew you would be, too. So instead of throwing the invitation in the trash, I accepted, knowing I’d see you.”

  “I’ll be working,” she reminded him.

  “No problem. I’ll just stand beside you and breathe in the fragrance of your perfume.” After a slight pause, he added, “I miss you.”

  Finding it impossible to respond directly to that, she murmured, “I wish I had more free time.”

  “What about Sunday? I can trailer in a couple horses from the ranch and we can ride up to Maroon Lake for a picnic.”

  “That sounds wonderful, but…I’m not sure—”

  “Delaney, you can’t keep working eighteen hours a day. Mentally you need to give yourself a break.”

  “Probably.”

  “Good. I’ll pick you up Sunday at noon.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I’ll expect a more definitive answer on Friday.”

  “Friday,” she agreed, then remembered, “Jared, you do know it’s black tie?”

  “I know.”

  After he hung up, Delaney tried and failed to picture Jared in a tuxedo.

  EIGHTEEN

  OUTSIDE THE EXCLUSIVE STARWOOD estate, a string of Mercedes, Bentleys, and Rolls-Royces vied for parking space with Colorado-chic Jeep Wagoneers and Range Rovers, while inside guests clad in Givenchy and Chanel mixed and mingled. Conversation bubbled into every corner. Delaney drifted along the fringes, her dark hair swept up in a soft French roll, neither overdressed nor underdressed in her midnight blue evening jumpsuit, chosen not for its classically simple lines, but rather for the unhampered movement it provided—like the flat dress shoes on her feet.

  She paused along the inner wall adorned with a collection of work by Twombly and Sultan. As she sipped at the ginger ale in her fluted glass, her eyes were constantly moving, scanning the throng of guests in the mammoth living room of polished mahogany and marble. Beyond the acres of glass that maximized the home’s view of the Rockies, dark figures moved on its deck, silhouetted against a magenta sky that slowly gave way to the purple of twilight. She had a moment’s unease, then brought her attention back inside the room, softly illuminated by indirect lighting.

  Black-coated waiters—bronze hearties who could have come straight from central casting—circulated among the guests, dispensing glasses of Haut Brion from their trays or ice-cold Stolichnaya for those who preferred the more traditional accompaniment to the miniature beluga-topped potato pancakes on the hors d’oeuvre trays. A waiter stopped to offer her a sample, but she shook her head in silent refusal and moved on again.

  Snatches of conversation came to her, topics ranging from acid rain and the greenhouse effect to discussions of who had the best masseuse. The guests in attendance represented a cross-section of the elite, including those from the ranks of the intellectuals and the artsy types, the social doyennes, the politically savvy, and Forbes’s 400, plus many who had fallen below its two-hundred-seventy-five-million-dollar cutoff point, and, of course, celebrities such as Lucas Wayne.

  Delaney lost sight of him in her peripheral vision and stopped to locate him. She spotted Riley and John first. Both ranged several feet on either side of Lucas, giving him the space to mingle and chat with other guests without being obtrusive or intimidating. Even with a half a room between them, the bright green of their lapel pins stood out sharply against the black of their tuxedo jackets, the W-shaped pin identical to the one Delaney wore.

  She momentarily shifted her glance back to Riley. With the soft light gleaming on his dark hair and bronzing the line of his jaw, he looked like a lethally handsome model in a men’s formal wear advertisement. She tended to forget what a good-looking man Riley was. Tonight she was reminded of it.

  Briefly Riley caught her eye and nodded, a small smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. Then his attention was redirected to the throng of guests.

  Delaney made her own visual sweep of them before locating Lucas again. Briefly she watched as he worked his charm on the bejeweled wife of a media mogul. There was no trace of the anxiety he’d exhibited on the way to the reception, bombarding her with questions that she knew had originated from Arthur—Do you think Rina will show up? What if she does? Could she have gotten a gun? What will you do if she has? Although he had tried to sound merely curious, she had known otherwise.

  Patiently she had explained the layers of protection that would be in place—the guard at the front gate, the security at the door, her own point position between Lucas and the door, Riley and John Wyatt at his side, and lastly Vance in the car parked at the rear of the house, ready to whisk him away should a threat materialize. And she had reminded Lucas again to keep to the far end of the room, close to the rear exit.

  Lucas tilted his head back and laughed at something the woman said, then made a remark to her husband. Seeing that, Delaney smiled at the thought: “No matter what, the show must go on.”

  Turning, she skimmed the crowd again with her glance, absently noting the other bodyguards in attendance, some burly and obvious, some nondescript and not. Their presence was accepted, almost taken for granted by the guests, as if they were an ordinary accessory,
like cufflinks. Whatever the case, they were definitely a sign of the times.

  A man walked toward her. She started to look past him, then stopped, her attention caught by smiling gray-blue eyes, the contrast of burnished gold hair and black tuxedo. It was Jared.

  He stopped before her, his gaze moving warmly over her face. “I didn’t think you’d be here yet.”

  “Why would you think that?” She frowned in curious amusement. “The reception started forty-five minutes ago.”

  “I know, but usually celebrities prefer to make their entrances after their audience has arrived.” The dry rustle of his voice echoed the cynical look in his eyes. “You look as elegant as the rest of them.”

  “Coming from you, I don’t think that’s a compliment,” Delaney replied with humor, by now used to his thinly disguised prejudice toward so-called “important” people.

  He smiled, lowering his head in silent concession. “Then let me put it another way—you look beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” She took a sip of her ginger ale and automatically scanned the area near the room’s entrance.

  A waiter came by with a tray of drinks. Jared took a glass of wine, then shifted to stand beside her and idly survey the scene. “This is going to be awkward, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “Standing here—with you. I thought I’d be content just to be with you. Now I find I want your undivided attention, and I can’t have that.”

  “No, you can’t.” She felt Riley’s gaze on her even before she encountered it. He lifted an eyebrow, his glance flicking from Jared to her. His eyes were cool, with a hint of suppressed anger tightening the line of his mouth.

  “The pin you’re wearing,” Jared said, “am I mistaken or does Riley have one on just like yours?”

  “He does. In fact, we all do—everyone in my detail. You could call it our badge of identity,” she replied. “In emergency situations, it lets the police know we’re the good guys. That can be very important if weapons come into play.”

  “Do you think there’s a chance that could happen?”

  “If there wasn’t a chance, we wouldn’t have been called in in the first place.” She gave him her standard answer while privately recalling the concerns—the fear—Rina Cole’s manager had expressed to Arthur.

  “I guess not.”

  She noticed Susan St. Jacque skillfully working the crowd, looking very smart in a white ensemble with chunky ropes of pearls draped around her neck. She spotted Delaney and sailed over.

  “Delaney, have you seen—” She broke off the question when she noticed Jared. She stiffened briefly, then smiled Cheshire-cat fashion. “Jared, what a surprise to see you here.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  She slid a curious look at Delaney. “Do you two know each other?”

  “We’ve met, yes.” Jared seemed unusually cool and aloof with her.

  “Let me offer a word of warning, Delaney,” Susan murmured in a confiding tone. “Jared is terribly old-fashioned in his thinking. He doesn’t like women who are aggressive and ambitious.”

  “It isn’t a sin for a woman to be aggressive and ambitious, Susan,” Jared stated. “The sin is usually in the way she goes about it.”

  To Susan’s credit, she laughed quite convincingly, then turned to Delaney. “As you can see, Jared and I are the best of enemies.”

  When Jared failed to respond to her last remark, Susan glanced at him slyly. “Always the gentleman, aren’t you, Jared? If you can’t say anything nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.”

  A hand touched the back of her arm. Delaney half turned, catching a glimpse of the man behind her, part of the reception’s security detail. “She’s here,” the man said in a quick, low voice.

  Delaney nodded curtly, then caught Riley’s eye and held up a forefinger, advising him of the situation with the previously agreed signal. She murmured a hasty “Excuse me, I have a call” to Jared and Susan, then moved off, swift, long strides carrying her to the front entrance.

  A security checkpoint to screen arriving guests had been set up outside the front door beneath a modern version of a stone-pillared and heavy-beamed porte cochere. Recessed lighting concealed within the roof timbers fully illuminated both the drive in front of the house and the entrance. The flaming torches were purely decoration.

  When Delaney stepped outside, she spotted Rina Cole immediately. She was dressed somewhat tamely—for Rina—in a black strapless dress and a black bolero jacket with rose ribbon appliqués blanketing the shoulders. Her blonde hair was swept atop her head in a mass of curls à la Betty Grable’s forties look. But there was no mistaking it was Rina.

  The pop-star-turned-actress faced the two security men at the table with an icy hauteur that Leona Helmsley would have admired. “I demand to see the person in charge. This is an outrage, an invasion of my privacy. We are invited guests. Timothy, show them the invitation again.”

  She snapped her fingers at the bearded man standing beside her. Looking flushed and obviously embarrassed by the scene she was creating, the man obediently fumbled through his pockets to locate the invitation. His face was vaguely familiar to Delaney, but it wasn’t until he took a pair of horn-rimmed glasses from his pocket and slipped them on that she recognized Timothy Collins-Jones, a renowned lecturer and scholar. And he was with Rina Cole? Delaney couldn’t think of a more unlikely pairing.

  At last, Timothy Collins-Jones produced the invitation to the impatient tap-tap-tapping of Rina’s stiletto heels. “That isn’t necessary, Professor Collins-Jones,” one of the guards protested. “We’ve already seen it.”

  “Then let us in!” Rina snapped.

  “I’m sorry, but until you let us check the contents of your purse—”

  “Why should I? Timothy, do something. You can’t let them treat me like this.”

  The philosopher nervously cleared his throat. “I must say, your actions are discriminatory. You have yet to request to inspect the contents of my pockets.”

  The two guards exchanged quick glances, then the second one—an off-duty officer moonlighting as part of the security detail—spoke up. “Our procedure is to check the ladies’ purses, then the men’s pockets. We can reverse it, if you like, and ask you to empty your pockets.”

  “No!” Rina protested with sudden and open anger. “Don’t you do it, Timothy. They have no damned right—they have no goddamned right—” She saw Delaney and stopped, her lip, her face curling into an expression of intense loathing. “Well, if it isn’t the bitch-dog Cerberus. This is your doing, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Miss Cole.” Delaney calmly walked forward to make sure Rina didn’t advance past the two guards. “I merely came out for some fresh air.”

  “I suppose you called the police first—like you did the last time,” she jeered.

  “Is it necessary, Miss Cole?” Delaney caught the sweep of headlight beams along the drive. Wyatt was at the wheel. Somewhere in the shadows of the rear seat was Lucas.

  “You’re a real smartass, aren’t you? Someday you’re going to find out you’re not so smart after all.”

  Riley walked out of the evening shadows into the full light of the porte cochere. “What seems to be the problem here?” When Rina swung to face him, Riley practically beamed at her. “Miss Cole, this is an unexpected treat. I happen to be one of your biggest fans.”

  “Then do something about these—these people!”

  “These people?” He raised an eyebrow in feigned confusion, then glanced at Delaney, the barest hint of a twinkle in his blue eyes. “What would you have me do about them?”

  “Make them let us in!”

  “Do you have an invitation?”

  “Of course we have an invitation,” she snapped angrily.

  “Then I don’t understand.” Riley turned to the two security guards.

  “Miss Cole has refused to show us the contents of her purse,” the off-duty officer explained.

&nbs
p; “And I have no intention of doing so.” Rina glared at the pair of them.

  “Why not?” Riley looked more amused than curious. “What exactly do you have in there?”

  Rina didn’t immediately respond. She paused as if trying to decide whether he was friend or foe. “The usual things every woman carries. Lipstick, compact, mascara…” One rose-weighted shoulder lifted in a dismissing shrug.

  “Is that all?”

  “There might be one or two other—shall we say?—intimate items that I wouldn’t want to embarrass Timothy by mentioning.” She deliberately looked down at Riley’s crotch to make sure he understood she meant condoms.

  Somehow Delaney managed to choke back a laugh. Riley turned his face and rubbed at the side of his neck. “That could be a tad awkward, couldn’t it?”

  “Very,” Rina replied smugly.

  “Under the circumstances, I think we can forego a search of your purse,” he said. “The party inside could use some livening up and you’re just the one who could do that, Miss Cole…especially now that Mr. Wayne has left.”

  “What?” Shock and anger warred for control.

  “Mr. Wayne had to leave early,” Riley repeated blandly. “Something about a previous engagement, I think.”

  “A previous engagement?” Rina sent an angry look in Delaney’s direction. “He was probably subjected to the same rude treatment we’ve received.” She grabbed her escort’s arm. “Let’s get out of here, Timothy. We don’t need this.”

  She towed the poor confused man back to the dark-colored sedan parked beneath the porte cochere. Riley sidled over to Delaney.

  “She lost interest in the party awfully quick, didn’t she?” he murmured.

  “Awfully quick,” the off-duty policeman inserted. “I’ll tell you one thing—I got a feel of that purse before she jerked it away—and if that was a tube of lipstick and a compact I felt, then Smith and Wesson have started a cosmetic line.”