by Anne Stuart
“Then give up. Sell him the place, cut your losses and get away.”
“I’d rather die.”
“Then don’t just lie there,” Susan recommended. “Be ready to fight.”
“You’re the only one who can see me,” Laura grumbled. “You’re allowed to know I’m not Superwoman.”
“Surprise, surprise. But I’m not the only one who can see you. Someone just got off the elevator.”
Laura’s response was short, succinct and obscene. She rolled off the couch, landing on her spiked heels, and tossed back her head. The shiny black hair fell into place, the leather mini settled around her narrow hips, and her mouth curved in a cool smile. “Bring on the lions,” she muttered. “I’m ready for the games to begin.”
Susan looked up at her. “Lions, nothing,” she muttered. “Bring on the Christians. And for heaven’s sake, show some mercy.”
“Mercy?” Laura echoed. “What’s that?” And lifting her head, she met the mild eyes of Zach Armstrong as he walked through her beveled glass doors.
Mary Ellen Murphy stumbled off the bus at the Port Authority building in the heart of New York City and stared around her in numbed surprise. She’d been traveling nonstop for the last fourteen hours, and she was amazed that her long, slender legs still held her upright. The narrow, tile-lined hallway stank of diesel oil and stale sweat, and no one even spared her a glance as they rushed past her. This was the New York she’d always heard about, but it still surprised her. Mary Ellen Murphy wasn’t used to being ignored. Six feet tall, with rippling blond hair hanging to her tiny waist and eyes as big and blue as a Montana sky, she was used to stopping traffic, to fending off ardent admirers, to receiving homage and admiration as her just reward for having been born an extraordinary beauty.
For once no one noticed. Her mother had warned her of all the criminals who flocked to meet buses in the heart of wicked New York. If her mother was to be believed, several dozen pimps and white slavers would be there, just to run off with Mary Ellen Murphy.
Her mother was a stupid fool. Mary Ellen had always known that. And Jeff wasn’t much better. She was heartily glad she’d left them behind. Of course she’d call them. She’d make sweet, reassuring phone calls to tell them she was fine, that everything was all right, that she was doing well. She’d say she was sorry she’d taken everything from the savings account her mother had foolishly opened in both their names, and she’d be paying it back as soon as she got a job. She’d put just the right catch into her voice, and her mother would melt.
She still had the card tucked in her white plastic purse. The photographer, the one who had taken those artistic photos of her wearing nothing more than an old curtain, had told her that if she ever came to New York, she could find work as a model. Mary Ellen had read enough about people being paid a small fortune for doing nothing more than standing there, looking beautiful. That was something at which Mary Ellen had a great deal of practice. She didn’t need to check the card; she remembered the address. East Sixty-sixth Street, and the signs in the bus terminal told her she was already at Fortieth Street. She could walk. It was only midday on a Friday, and she’d been sitting for fourteen hours. She could certainly walk.
Chapter Two
When it came to women, Michael Dubrovnik was a careful man. Not that he was frightened. Nasty, terminal diseases were no more of a threat to him than palimony suits. He considered himself invincible, his borders defended on all sides. He’d been stabbed in the back too many times to give his trust easily, and if he took the time to think about it, which he usually didn’t, he realized that at that moment there was no woman on earth he trusted. And there were damned few men.
One of those trusted men stood before him, his lined face creased into impassivity. Zach Armstrong had been with Michael for the last eighteen years, and he was everything Michael wasn’t. Twenty-three years older than his boss, Zach was a devoted family man, with a wife and two daughters who were almost more important than business. He came from the gentlemanly South, while Michael had fought his way out of the ethnic slums of the big, rough, northeastern city of New York. Zach was patient, compassionate, yet with his own ruthless streak, and together he and Michael made a good team. Zach could dispense the softer qualities when Michael closed in for the kill. And if sometimes Michael went too far, then Zach could clean up the mess, leaving everything tidy and neat.
He wasn’t having much success with the current mess. “I warned you,” Zach said amiably enough. “Ms. Winston is as stubborn as a mule in labor. I could have made her an offer five times bigger and she wouldn’t have budged. She sent you a message, too.”
“Well?” Michael’s limited patience had reached its end.
“She said to tell you you can flirt with her mother, marry her mother for all she cares. But you aren’t putting your filthy hands on the Glass House.”
“Oh, really?”
Zach grinned. He’d known what his old friend’s reaction to that challenge would be, and he was already looking forward to the fireworks. “She said to tell you she’d turn it over to the ASPCA as a home for orphan cats before she let you touch it.”
“It sounds to me as if the lady needs to be taught a lesson,” Michael said, his tone even.
“I don’t know, Mischa. In this case you might be the one to end up with your tail between your legs.”
Michael’s icy-blue eyes frosted over for a moment. “Are you suggesting there’s a chance I won’t get what I want, Zach? Fortune 500 companies have collapsed with a single word from me. There’s never been anything, anything that I’ve wanted that I haven’t been able to get. Do you really think for one moment I’m going to let some little Park Avenue blue blood beat me?”
Zach grinned. He knew perfectly well how Michael, whose sense of humor was definitely at a low ebb, would respond to that grin, and he gauged it carefully. “You haven’t met Laura Winston yet.”
“I’ve met her mother. A useless, overbred parasite. Is the daughter any different?”
“You’ll see.”
Michael sank back into his chair with a weary sigh, and a belated, rueful grin played around his thin mouth. “I suppose I’ll have to. If you can’t get me what I want, there’s nothing left but face-to-face negotiation.”
“I knew you’d see it that way. But don’t count on instant surrender. Laura Winston will give you a run for your money.”
“You think I won’t win?” Michael was more curious than affronted.
“Of course you’ll win. They don’t call you the Whirlwind for nothing. But it won’t be easy.”
“I don’t like things that are easy.”
“I know that. And in that case, you’re going to like Laura Winston.”
“I doubt it,” Michael said. “This delay is costing me tens of thousands of dollars every day. I sincerely doubt I’m going to like the woman at all.” He tapped the slender platinum pen against the alabaster-topped table. “Get me the car.”
“Now? It’s after six. You’re due at the mayor’s in forty-five minutes.”
Michael shrugged his wiry shoulders. “The mayor will have to wait. Have my secretary call me the Bentley.”
“Your secretary is gone. Amid tears and lamentations, I’m afraid.”
“Thank God,” Michael said devoutly. “I’d forgotten. Anyone to take her place?”
“I’ve given you my Ms. Anthony. Don’t have her fall in love with you, please. She’s too good to lose.”
“It’s not my fault. I don’t go out of my way to be charming.”
“I don’t think you know how to be charming. Besides, Ms. Anthony is a grandmother. Maybe she’ll be able to resist you.”
Michael stood up and stretched, energy still humming through his lean, muscled body. He’d been up since four that morning and wouldn’t be going to bed till well after midnight, when the pace all over again. And not for a moment was he going to feel even a moment of weariness. “As long as Ms. Winston doesn’t.”
“D
on’t tell me you think you’re going to charm the Glass House out of her!” Zach protested. “Haven’t I told you you don’t have any charm?”
Michael grinned. “If I did, it sounds as if Ms. Winston would be impervious to it. I’m going to be sweetly reasonable. I’ve read the reports on Laura de Kelsey Winston. She lives high. That modeling agency she runs is very trendy but not what you’d call a blue-chip investment. I think I can make her see reason.”
Zach shook his head. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“Susan, darling, when are you going to get me another TV spot?” Frank Buckley’s beautiful face settled into mocking, discontented lines. “I think we agree that I don’t do my best work in print, and you keep coming up with magazine layouts. I need animation, mobility, to come across.”
“You’re a little too animated, Frank,” Susan said, stifling the unconscious yearning that swept through her every time she looked up into Frank’s haunted, turquoise eyes. She knew better than anyone that Frank wasn’t really haunted, that it was merely an astonishing combination of bones and coloring that gave him the look of a troubled prince.
A man shouldn’t have cheekbones like Frank’s, Susan thought wistfully. A man shouldn’t have eyes that color, with their totally mendacious hint of sadness. Nor should he have an impossibly sensual mouth that curved into a mocking, teasing smile that told a woman she was irresistible. A man shouldn’t have tawny-blond hair hanging to his broad, well-muscled shoulders; he shouldn’t have a body that, if it wasn’t absolutely perfect, was the closest a thirty-three-year-old could come. And a man shouldn’t hang around someone like Susan, flirting, teasing, when he had a woman of unsurpassed beauty waiting at home.
“I’m going broke, Susan,” Frank said, throwing his graceful body into the pink leather sling chair and grimacing. Unlike Emelia, Frank didn’t worry about wrinkles. He knew that each added line only enhanced his almost unearthly beauty. And he knew, as Susan did, that worrying did little good. “Do you have any idea what the rent on a loft comes to nowadays? Not to mention taxis, food, theater...”
“You could always take the subway. Eat at McDonald’s. You could even lower yourself to go to the movies instead of the opera.”
“I’d rather dig ditches,” he said with dignity. “We all have our standards, Susan, my pet. Even if you like traveling with the great unwashed and eating fast food, I don’t.”
“What about Tracey? She made two covers last month—she must be earning enough to pay for you a while.” Susan couldn’t think of the astonishingly gorgeous Tracey Michaels without picturing her in Frank’s arms, and the little knife twist of pain in her stomach was an old friend.
“She does indeed. Unfortunately she moved out last month.”
“Frank, I’m so sorry,” she said, trying to stifle her pleased grin.
He grinned back. “I know, you never liked her. Some day I’ll find someone worthy of me, I promise. But right now I’ve got the full rent on the loft, plus bills up to my eyebrows.”
“But such nice eyebrows, Frank.”
“I can’t make any money if they throw me in debtors’ prison.”
“There is no such thing as debtors’ prison any more. That went out with Charles Dickens. I’ve got Laura working on it, Frank. Something will turn up, I promise. In the meantime, if you’re really serious about earning some money there’s some catalog work available.”
Frank just looked at her, and once more Susan marveled at the fact that all that wonderful, haughty beauty, that expressive, gorgeous face just didn’t make the leap beyond the camera lens. In person Frank Buckley was beguiling, enchanting, impossibly sexual. But seen through the medium of glossy print, he was nothing more than passably attractive. Film and video weren’t much of an improvement. Frank needed the eye contact, the physical presence to come across. He used that presence to talk his way into job after job. But the mediocre results were becoming well-known, and the jobs were getting scarcer and scarcer.
“No catalogs,” he said, and there was just the faintest trace of his native Kentucky filtering through the deep, rich voice that was a perfect match for his face. “I’m not that desperate.” He moved out of the chair, coming to the glass-topped table and placing his strong, beautiful hands on it as he leaned forward, his face only inches from Susan’s deliberately uncommunicative expression. “Find me something, Susan. Please.”
“I’ll put the thumbscrews on Laura. She’ll come up with something.”
“Laura doesn’t like me.”
“Of course she does. She doesn’t have any clients she doesn’t like,” said Susan, knowing perfectly well what Laura resented about Frank. “And even if she didn’t like you, she’d still work her tail off for you. Laura’s like that.”
“God bless us, everyone,” Frank said faintly. He was still only inches away from her, and his perfect mouth brushed hers. “Do what you can for me, angel. I’ll be sitting by the phone.”
He moved away, and Susan, her expression as impassive as always, nodded. “You mean you’ll deign to check your messages. I’ll get something for you, Frank. I promise.”
He always kissed her. There were times when Susan wondered whether Frank knew of the deep, illogical passion that lurked in her maternal breast, but then she dismissed the idea. To be sure, he never kissed Laura. But Laura would probably knock him back onto his beautiful buns if he tried it. And he certainly kissed everyone else. No, the kisses meant nothing to Frank. They meant everything to Susan.
“Was that Frank?” Laura strode through the glass doors at her usual headlong pace, stopping only long enough to kick off her impossibly high-heeled shoes.
“It was.”
“Desperate for money, I suppose. It’s a good thing he doesn’t do drugs. He’d be even more impoverished.”
“Indeed. You don’t keep clients who do drugs, and no one else would be able to find as much work for him,” Susan said.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s my fault Frank isn’t working much. Maybe he just hasn’t found the right photographer.”
“We both know it isn’t that. Frank knows it, too.”
Laura grimaced, wiggling her toes in the thick, gray carpeting. “I’ll say one thing for Frank. He has more brains than most of my other clients put together. Even if he doesn’t bother to use them.” As she peered at Susan, her brown eyes were far too observant beneath her oversize glasses. “How’s his love life?”
“How should I know?”
“Don’t waste my time, Susan.” Laura dropped into the leather sling chair that Frank had deserted.
“Tracey’s moved out. I gather he’s temporarily alone.”
“Then now’s your big chance, lady. Go for it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Frank sees me as a mother figure. Or at least an older sister. Someone to pat him on the back and listen to his troubles and tell him he’s wonderful,” Susan said, a bitter edge creeping into her voice.
“Mother figure? Older sister? You’re five years younger than he is,” Laura protested.
“Maybe in years. Frank’s a charming little boy. I’m a woman.”
“So what are you mooning over him for?”
Susan shook her head. “Midlife crisis?”
“Forget it. I’m having mine first. But at least something good has happened today. Remember the girl Davelli told me about? The one from Kansas?”
“Vaguely.”
“She turned up today when you were out. And she’s every bit as good as he said she was. Maybe better. I think we’ve got something here, Susan. Something really big.”
“We could use it. We haven’t had a major talent since Emelia hit twenty-eight.”
“Wait till you see her! I’ve put her up at the W for now, but I’ll need you to find her a classy sublet. Talk someone into it for as little money as possible, at least until we see how industry response to her is. I think she’s going to be dynamite.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mary Ellen Murphy.
We’re going to change that. Something exotic, I think. Just one name. What do you think of Marita?”
“Pretentious.”
Laura stuck out her tongue at her assistant. “She likes it. If I can just get her pulling in some reasonable money, I can get a decent-size loan. This place is expensive.”
“And you’re not giving it up.”
“Haven’t we had this discussion once already?” Laura said wearily.
“You’re about to have it again.”
“Spare me.”
“I would if I could. But it’s not up to me. Michael Dubrovnik is on his way up to see you.”
“You’re kidding!”
“The mountain is coming to Mohammed. Are you still going to tell him no?”
“With great pleasure.”
“This I want to see.”
“It might not be a pretty sight.”
“Who says I’m into pretty sights?”
“Your passion for Frank says so.”
“Right now I’m in the mood for a little blood and mayhem. Do you want me to stall him? Long enough for you to get your battle dress in place?”
Laura looked down at her spare body. The red leather mini was barely decent, the black silk shirt was open, the spiky red heels lay on the floor beside her small, narrow feet. She slipped on her shoes and stood up, squaring her shoulders. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. This should be interesting. I’ve never met a whirlwind before.”
Michael Dubrovnik slid out of the classic Bentley, one of the few toys he indulged himself with, and stared up at the Glass House. He’d passed it often enough, of course, and he even had a full color photograph of it sitting in a file that had been pending for far too long. He looked at it, at its graceful, almost art deco lines, the deep bronze trusses, the smoky glass that came from another era and was probably an enormous safety hazard. He recognized its singularity, its beauty, a fitting tribute to the genius of Laura Winston’s grandfather, and his reaction was admiration mixed with exasperation. It was going to cost a fortune to tear the damned thing down.
