Chances

by Jackie Collins

  It was all a game. But there were rules to follow. One day she would find that out.

  The ping of balls hitting tennis rackets. The sharp call of the score. Gino strolled to the side of the court and watched.

  Betty Richmond was playing her son, Craven, and the way Gino saw it, beating the shit out of the poor kid. It wasn’t bad enough they had hung a name like Craven on him, they also had to trounce him at every sport going.

  Betty waved, hardly interrupting her strong forward swing. Craven leaped to hit the shot, missed, and sprawled miserably on the ground.

  “Game!” Betty sang; then, ignoring her son’s fall, she skipped brightly over to greet Gino. Kiss, kiss. One sharp peck on each cheek.

  She was a handsome woman. Tall and strong with piercing brown eyes and hair like muddy cotton candy. She wore tennis whites, springy gym shoes, and her hair was caught in two girlish bunches. At forty-one she just about got away with it.

  “And how are we today?” she inquired. “Ready for a game?”

  Gino laughed. “Ready for a drink.”

  Betty frowned. “Exercise, everybody needs it.”

  “I know. You tell me every time I see you.”

  “And every time you promise me you’re going to take something up.”

  “I will, I will.”

  She took his arm and squeezed.

  He winced. The broad didn’t know her own strength.

  “One quiet game,” she wheedled.

  “No way. Your idea of a quiet game an’ mine are two different things.”

  Craven loped over then. He was twenty-one, six feet four inches tall, and skinny as a board. Not unpleasant-looking, he would certainly never win any prizes as the world’s most dynamic man. “Hi, Gino,” he said.

  “Hello, kid. How’s it going?”

  “Rather good, actually. I’ve been offered this job. Nothing very special, but—”

  “Later, Cray,” snapped Betty. “Put the balls away before the dogs get them.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Betty linked her arm through Gino’s. “I’m so glad you could come,” she said, walking him toward the house. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for simply ages…. ”

  Not a woman to waste time, Mrs. Richmond. She would make a wonderful First Lady. Active. Sportive. Direct. What more could America want?

  Later that night, Gino lay in the guest room staring unseeingly at the ceiling. His newly acquired ulcer was giving him trouble. Rich food… shouldn’t touch it. But who could resist fresh oysters with a squeeze of lemon, succulent roast beef, and newly picked raspberries steeped in a Grand Marnier sauce?

  Betty Richmond gave great table. The dinner party had been nice. Just twelve people. The Richmonds, their son Craven, three couples, and two spare women for Gino to look over. What made the Richmonds think he was in the market? He, who could have his pick of Hollywood starlets, New York models, Las Vegas showgirls?

  He was fifty-nine years old. Maria would have been thirty-seven. He celebrated her birthday every year with a solitary dinner at the pool of the East Hampton house, Yes, he had kept the house. Surrounded it with an electrified fence and allowed the garden to grow back to its former wilderness.

  Maria was buried in the garden underneath the tree where they had first made love. The inside of the house was left exactly as it had been on the day of her death. Nobody was allowed to go there except himself. He went on her birthday. Every year. He looked forward to it. What other woman could possibly live up to Maria and her memory?

  A knock on the door surprised him. He glanced at his watch. Two-thirty in the morning. “Who is it?” he called out.

  The door slid open. Betty Richmond stood in the doorway. She wore a peach satin robe, tightly wrapped; her cotton-candy hair was loose and frizzy around her shoulders. “Come to tuck you in,” she said firmly, so firmly that he almost missed the slight slurring of her words.

  He relaxed the grip on his gun prudently placed beneath the pillow. “I’m very comfortable, thank you, Betty,” he said slowly.

  “Sure you are,” she drawled, shutting the door behind her and approaching the bed. “But I’m not.”

  Before he had time to consider what to do, she had shucked the peach robe from her broad shoulders and stood naked in front of him. “I would like you, Mr. Santangelo—friend of the family, friend of the whole goddamn world—I would like you to fuck me.”

  He was momentarily shocked. The woman was a whore.

  He kept his voice very low. “Put on your robe. Go back to Peter.”

  “Why? Don’t you want me?”

  Tread carefully. A woman scorned… “I didn’t say that. But the situation—”

  “The situation is that Peter has gone to visit a girl friend and is probably jamming his inadequate cock into her dumb mouth this very minute. I don’t intend to sit here and wait.”

  “And I don’t intend to find myself in the middle.”

  She shrugged. Muscles everywhere you looked. Small sharp breasts, wide hips, strong thighs.

  “I thought you found me attractive—” she began.

  “I do,” he interrupted quickly.

  She climbed into the bed without an invitation. “I won’t tell Peter,” she said huskily. “I promise.”

  There followed the most athletic fucking he had ever known. She squeezed his cock in and out like an elongated tennis ball. In. Out. Around. About. Up. Down. Off center. On center. Game!

  A second round. The same exquisite workout. Then she left, and he slept. And in the morning he thought maybe it had been some wild dream.

  Lucky

  1966

  Olympia drove as if she was the only person on the road. Fast and furious and everyone had better get out of her way or else. The journey to the south of France took twenty-two hours, with five stops for gas, countless sandwiches, and numerous cans of Coke.

  “You got a driver’s license?” Lucky asked after one grueling four-hour session on winding country roads at breakneck speed.

  “Driver’s license? What’s that?” Olympia replied cheerfully.

  Lucky didn’t question further. She sat back, closed her eyes, and hoped for the best.

  Between them they had a princely ninety-four dollars, and that was being rapidly depleted every time they stopped. Tempting little pensions and hotels had to be ignored.

  “When we get to Cannes we’ll go to my aunt’s villa,” Olympia decided. “She never goes there—well, only for a week in September. It’s a great place—probably all locked up, but I know a way in. I used to spend the summers there with my nanny when the parents didn’t have time for me.” She laughed ruefully. “Not that anything’s changed much—but it ain’t so easy to bundle me off now that I can talk!”

  Lucky knew the feeling. Dining with Gino in his New York apartment, she had had the distinct impression that he would have been a lot happier elsewhere. She made him uncomfortable; she sensed it. And he rendered her speechless—a shadow of her normal self. Why, she hadn’t even had the nerve to ask him where Marco was.

  She wondered what Big Daddy would do when he learned of her defection. He’d be steamed, but so what? There was nothing he could do about it except send her to another school. And she would just keep on skipping out until he got the message.

  What was so wrong anyway about wanting to learn about his business? She had no intention of following the route he had planned for her. School. College. Marriage. No way. She wanted to be like him. Rich. Powerful. Respected. She wanted people to jump when she gave the orders—just the way they always had for him.

  “We’re in good shape,” sang Olympia, belting full speed down a narrow freeway hewn out of rock. “We just passed the Saint-Trop turn-off. Another hour and we’re there.”

  Lucky wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. It was only May, but the noon sun was exceptionally hot, and they were exceptionally exposed in the small open car. “I bet we stink!” She laughed. “Two little st
inking virgins!”

  Olympia said, “Correct that statement.”

  “Huh?”

  “I was going to tell you when we arrived. Y’know, like lying by the pool sipping dry white wine. All that bit.”

  “You mean you… did it?”

  A smile hovered on Olympia’s luscious lips. “Yup.”

  Lucky sat eagerly forward. “When? Who? How was it?”

  Olympia swerved to avoid a boulder that had rolled down onto the highway. “Horrible!” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Stick to Almost. It’s much more fun!”

  Just as Olympia had expected, her aunt’s villa was shuttered and closed to all intruders. Set high in the hills above Cannes, the house rested in magnificent gardens of mimosa and jasmine.

  Olympia jumped from the car, opened up the huge wrought-iron gates, and drove through the grounds to the door of the pale pink villa. “Nice, ain’t it,” she stated.

  “Fabulous.” Lucky sighed. “Are you sure she’s not going to mind us breaking in and taking over?”

  “She’s not going to know, is she?” replied Olympia wisely. “And anyway—the only thing she’d mind is if Balenciaga or Balmain went out of business. She’s a clothes zombie.”

  They parked the car and Olympia demonstrated her own special way of gaining entry. She shinned up a peach tree, flicked the still-broken catch on an upstairs shutter, forced the window and climbed in.

  Lucky waited patiently by the front door. Within minutes Olympia was using the spare set of keys kept inside and opening up. “Welcome to Casa Good Times!” She giggled.

  The house was decorated with French good taste and Greek money. Most of the furniture was covered with dust sheets, but some of these had slipped, leaving a glimpse of a chintz couch here, a polished leather table there. Cobwebs abounded.

  “I told you she only uses the place for one week a year,” Olympia explained. “The work force arrives a few days before she does and clears up. Do you realize we could probably stay for months? Nobody would think of looking for us here.”

  Lucky hadn’t exactly thought in terms of being on the missing list for months. Weeks maybe, but months? Gino would worry, not to mention Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Costa, and of course Dario. She must write to him. She had been meaning to, but something always got in the way. “Who did you go All the Way with?” she asked eagerly.

  “A positively foul little French commie bastard. Kept on telling me my father should be shot and that I didn’t know anything about life. I smuggled him into the house one night, and he pinched a silver ashtray and refused to settle for Almost. It was too awful. I bled all over the leather couch in daddy’s study. I can’t bear to think about it. Thank God you called the next day. I certainly couldn’t have gone back to that awful Russian course and faced him.”

  By nightfall they had the villa as they wanted it. “We’ll just use one room,” Olympia decided. “That way it will be easy to clear up when we leave.”

  Lucky thought a large room on the ground floor next to the kitchen would be best. It had two convertible couches, a green baize card table, and three big comfortable chairs.

  “Maid’s quarters,” Olympia announced disparagingly.

  “It’ll do,” insisted Lucky.

  They had two small bags between them containing makeup and a few light clothes. It took them no time at all to unpack.

  In the kitchen they found the refrigerator stacked with wine, beer, and Seven-Up. And a cupboard contained caterer’s boxes of potato chips, tins of nuts, and twenty-four cans of tuna fish. “We can have a feast!” Lucky exclaimed.

  “Oh, no,” said Olympia, “not tonight. Tonight we tootle on down to town and get us a real meal. I fancy a great big bowl of bouillabaisse or maybe some fresh lobster with mayonnaise…. Um…. Delicious, huh?”

  “But we’ve got no money.”

  Olympia grinned. “Lucky, for a smart girl you can sometimes be soooo dumb. Who needs money when we’ve got our fine young bodies?”

  The famous Cannes Film Festival was coming to an end. Only the stragglers were left. Unlucky hustlers still trying desperately to lock up a deal. Unlucky producers with nothing on their current agenda to shoot. Unlucky would-be actresses with big tits and false smiles.

  Warris Charters was in the unlucky producers category. He had come to Cannes with what he thought were two hot properties. He had been wrong on both counts.

  Hot property number one: Pippa Sanchez. A foxy Mexican actress who had starred in a couple of very successful Spanish productions way back in the fifties. She was forty if she was a day—although she insisted she was only thirty-five—and indeed she only looked thirty-five. But Warris knew. He had done his homework on Miss Sanchez when she had first approached him in Madrid, a month earlier.

  She had come after him at a party. “Mr. Charters, I saw Kiss and Kill—loved it. And I have a script I just know you will adore.”

  Kiss and Kill. His one claim to fame. Made in Paris in 1959 for seven hundred thousand dollars, it had so far grossed sixteen million. A fluke. Everything else he touched turned to pure unadulterated shit.

  Property number two: Pippa Sanchez’s script. A fast-paced violent period piece called Kill Shot. A story of a gangster in the twenties and thirties. A killer with a heart of gold.

  Warris thought it was wonderful stuff. Pure hokum. But after twenty-three years in the business he felt that he knew a winner when it came his way.

  “Whose script is it?” he asked her.

  “Mine,” she said fiercely. “I commissioned it. I own it. I have a contract with the writer gives me everything.”

  “So what do you want to do, sell it?” Warris asked carefully, frightened to show too much enthusiasm.

  “No,” said Pippa firmly. “I want to star in it. The woman’s part was written for me.”

  Sure, twenty years ago, Warris thought cynically. But still, if she was prepared to let him go with the script for nothing… if he could get a deal together… that was the time to tell her that no way was she right for the part.

  So they went to Cannes, Warris Charters and his two hot properties…. And the only interest they had raised was the night they fought publicly on the Hotel Carlton Terrace.

  Warris clutched a Pernod and Malvern water as he sat in the Blue Bar restaurant on the Croisette in Cannes and thought about his bad luck. He was thirty-two years old, a former child movie star who had fled from Hollywood at the age of thirteen when his voice broke. At twenty-five he had produced Kiss and Kill and gone back to Hollywood as a boy wonder. Two flops later, he was wandering Europe, cruising the film capitals and trying to get something together. In desperation, flat broke and on drugs, he had married a rich seventy-two-year-old Spanish widow. When she died a year after the marriage, her family had thrown him out of the house without so much as a bar of soap. So much for marrying money.

  Warris whistled softly between his fine white teeth. He did not believe the sight he was seeing. Two chickies, delicious little morsels of jail bait, were alighting from a sleek white Mercedes. The blonde took his eye immediately. Tits that came at you like machine guns. Golden hair literally falling down her back. And hot pants so short that chunks of delectable ass were exposed for all to see. Her companion—at first glance—was not such a looker. Tight faded jeans and a T-shirt on a tall rangy body. A jumble of jet black hair obscured her face.

  Yes. It was definitely the blonde for Warris. He deserved a treat.

  He watched the girls leave their car and stroll casually toward the restaurant. Instinct told him they were looking to get picked up.

  As they approached his table he quickly stood and inquired in schoolboy French if they would care to join him.

  The dark one replied in fluent French. Something about they were meeting someone, but maybe while they were waiting….

  Then the blonde said something in English, and Warris exclaimed, “American? So am I.”

  He ordered Pernod all round and wondered if they had any money. He was d
own to his last fifty bucks, but he did have some very good grass burning a hole in his pocket. Maybe he could tempt them to buy….

  Hmmm, Lucky thought. Not bad. Not good. Not my type. Which was fortunate, because he was obviously turned on by Olympia. Weren’t they all? Maybe it was true about gentlemen preferring blondes. Who wanted a gentleman anyway?

  She studied Warris Charters through slitted eyes as he did his number on Olympia. Slim, slight, very good-looking if you liked men with corn-colored hair, mean green eyes, and pale eyelashes. Frankly, she didn’t. She liked them dark… very dark… the darker the better.

  Like Marco. Gorgeous sinister Marco with the brooding dark looks and macho style.

  She sipped her Pernod, decided it tasted like some sort of vile medicine, and wondered when food was going to get mentioned. Olympia seemed to have forgotten all about dishes of bouillabaisse and fresh lobster mayonnaise.

  “Hey,” she said, “I’m starved. Can we eat?”

  “Yes,” agreed Olympia. “I must say I’m a tiny bit hungry myself. What’s good here, Warris?”

  He glared at Lucky. Why did she have to open up her mouth about food? Who needed it? Who could afford it?

  He leaned confidentially close to Olympia. “I got something a lot better than food in my pocket,” he whispered.

  Her small eyes lit up. “You have?”

  “Grade A stuff. Now why don’t you and I—”

  “And Lucky.”

  “Oh, sure, and Lucky. Why don’t we find us a nice quiet spot and have us a little fun?”

  Olympia nearly clapped her hands with delight. Here was a man after her own heart. “Where?”

  Warris thought quickly. He had moved from the Hotel Martinez two days earlier to save money, and his small room in a back-street pension was hardly suitable. And the beach wasn’t the greatest idea in the world. “Where are you staying?”

  Olympia hesitated for only a moment. Lucky could hardly believe it when she said, “We have a villa in the hills. If you like we could go there.”

  What had happened to secrecy? “We won’t tell anyone where we’re living,” Olympia had said on the drive down to town. Now, half an hour later, she was inviting Warris Charters back. Too much.