Soft Focus

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “But never boring,” she said softly.

  She untied the sash of her robe and let the garment fall from her shoulders. When the cold air wrapped itself around her bare skin she sucked in her breath and quickly slipped into the hot water.

  Jack smiled slowly as she sat down beside him on the submerged bench. “You’ve given up wearing swimsuits in hot tubs, I see.”

  She put a hand on his bare thigh. “I wouldn’t want to become too predictable.”

  She traced a slow, circular pattern slowly up the inside of his leg.

  He captured her hand and raised it above the surface to his mouth. He watched her through half-closed eyes as he kissed her wet fingers. She saw the dark hunger in him, and her insides were suddenly hotter than the water in the tub.

  He bit gently down on her thumb, then nibbled a bit on her knuckles. She sighed softly and settled closer against him. Very deliberately he drew her palm back beneath the churning water and curved her fingers around him.

  He was fully aroused, taut and hard. Gently she tightened her grasp. A shudder went through him.

  “The most predictable thing around here is my response to you,” he whispered against her lips. “Just like the sunrise.”

  She opened her mouth for him. He drank deep. After a time she decided to try his own tactic against him. She sank her teeth into his lower lip. He endured the gentle assault for a moment and then groaned, muttered something unintelligible, and pulled her across his legs. He kissed her deeply, with a thoroughness that sent delicious little shock waves through her.

  She twisted against him and stroked him slowly, digging her nails gently into his damp shoulders. Beneath her hip she could feel his fierce reaction to her touch. He was straining against her thigh.

  His hand slid down her spine to the cleft of her buttocks, and then his fingers were between her legs. When he prodded her gently open with his thumb and forefinger, a surge of exultant energy zapped through her. The liquid heat welled up inside. Irresistible. Unstoppable. Too late she realized the climax had taken her by surprise.

  “Jack.”

  “Don’t fight it.” He kissed her throat and forged deeper. “There’s plenty more where it’s coming from.”

  The strident jangle of an alarm bell cut into a dream of endless hallways and crisscrossing corridors that ended in blank walls.

  The alarm was unnecessary, an annoying distraction that only made everything worse.

  She did not need the shrill ringing to warn her of the danger. She was all too well aware that they were both in jeopardy. She had to concentrate. She had to think clearly, logically. How was she supposed to do that with that bloody bell going off in her ear?

  Elizabeth came awake abruptly, blinked at the dull sheen of a cloudy sky visible through the windows. She groped for the telephone, found it, got it to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “My, my, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Louise said cheerfully.

  “Save the cutesy stuff, Louise. I’m not in the mood.” She felt Jack slide one leg between her calves and tighten his arm around her. Get a grip. It was just a dream. “What have you got for me?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Louise admitted. “Probably nothing. But I talked to a couple of people who know some people who have covered the film festival circuit for years. There are film festivals everywhere these days. Used to be just places like Cannes and Santa Fe, but now every town that’s got a theater holds a festival.”

  “Could you get to the point, Louise?”

  “Sure. Point is Dawson Holland has hung on the fringes of the film crowd for years. Likes to sleep with aspiring actresses. Still does, even though he’s married again.”

  “What?” Elizabeth sat up very quickly against the pillows. “He sleeps around, even though he’s married to Vicky Bellamy?”

  “Yep. But no one special. Different woman every time. What can I say? The guy likes to get laid. But he doesn’t seem to get serious about any of the ladies who engage his affections for an evening of fun and frolic. Faithful in his fashion, you could say.”

  “To Vicky?”

  “For the past eighteen months, at any rate,” Louise agreed.

  “They’ve only been married for a year and a half?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Hmm.” Elizabeth wondered if Vicky knew or cared about the other women. “Anything else on Holland?”

  “Uh-huh.” Louise paused for effect. “He was married twice before he met Vicky Bellamy.”

  “I know that much. Not all that unusual, especially in his crowd.”

  “Ah, but do you know that he’s a widower twice over?” Louise said softly.

  Elizabeth saw that Jack was watching her intently. He had caught the drift of the conversation.

  “Natural causes?” Elizabeth asked carefully.

  “Nope. Car accidents. The first wife was killed nearly twenty years ago. The second one went off a cliff eight years ago. And here’s the really interesting part. Holland inherited a lot of money both times. The first wife left him several thousand shares of high-tech stock that coincidentally took a huge jump in the months just before she died.”

  “What about the second wife?”

  “Oddly enough,” Louise said dryly, “he had taken out a very large insurance policy on her shortly before her death.”

  Elizabeth tightened her grip on the phone. “Was there an investigation?”

  “Sure. According to my source, the insurance company sent out an investigator, but he couldn’t prove anything. The company paid off.”

  Elizabeth went cold. “Is Vicky rich in her own right?”

  “Nope. I checked. No family money. Seems to have lived by her wits, as they used to say in the old days, for most of her life. I couldn’t dig up too much on her, but there was no indication that she had money of her own.” Louise shuffled through some more notes. “But it might be interesting to see whether or not Dawson Holland has taken out an insurance policy on her.”

  “Creepy thought,” Elizabeth said.

  “Dawson Holland appears to be a professional creep.”

  “And maybe something worse, if you’re right about the two dead wives.”

  “Like I said, there was no proof in either case. But my source tells me that there’s probably more than coincidence involved.” Louise paused. “I think that’s all I’ve got for now. Want me to keep digging?”

  “Yes.” Elizabeth drummed her fingers absently against Jack’s shoulder. “Call me right away if you find anything else.”

  “Will do.” Louise paused. “So how’s it going with the egg-sucking son of a bitch?”

  Elizabeth felt herself turn very warm. She stared intently out the window, avoiding Jack’s eyes. “Fine. Just fine.”

  “He’s there, isn’t he? Right there in bed with you.”

  “I’ve got to run, Louise.”

  “I hesitate to inquire, but my old journalistic instincts demand to know.” Louise cleared her throat. “Is there anything extra special about doing it with an experienced egg-sucker?”

  Elizabeth hastily slammed down the phone.

  Jack gave her a politely inquiring look. “Well?”

  “Do you think Larry could use his computer to find out whether or not Dawson Holland has taken out an insurance policy on Vicky Bellamy?”

  “Probably.” He propped himself on his elbow. “What have you got?”

  “A very nasty feeling.”

  TWO AND A half hours later, Jack put down the phone and looked at her. There was a cool, calculating expression on his hard face.

  Elizabeth picked up her coffee. “What did Larry say?”

  “He said that your hunch was right.” Jack walked behind the counter and helped himself to coffee. “Dawson Holland took out a very large policy on Vicky about four months ago.”

  A shiver ran through her. “Did he confirm that the deaths of Holland’s first two wives were suspicious?”

  “There’s
nothing in the records to indicate that the first death was anything other than an accident.” Jack took a swallow of coffee. “And the insurance company did pay off on the second death. Officially there’s no indication of foul play, but . . .”

  “I’m listening.”

  “But in the months before each death,” Jack continued softly, “Holland had experienced severe financial losses. The first time he was able to recover because of the stock he inherited from his wife. The insurance policy on Mrs. Holland Number Two pulled him out of the red the second time.”

  Elizabeth met his eyes. “The last time Larry called he said that Holland had experienced some serious money problems in the past few months, didn’t he? Something about taking a big hit in a hedge fund?”

  “Yes.” Jack’s brows rose. “What are you thinking?”

  She paused a moment longer to contemplate the idea that had just occurred to her.

  “I’m thinking,” she said, “that one good warning deserves another.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  VICKY WATCHED DAWSON IN THE MIRROR AS he walked out of the bathroom. The effects of his last face-lift were wearing off, she noticed. He was getting soft around the jawline. He was still slender, but no amount of time spent with his personal trainer could give him the hard, fit body of a younger man again. The slackness of age was overtaking him rapidly.

  She wondered what the other women saw in him. After all, he was never with any of them long enough for them to get their hands on his money. Did they really fall for his vague promises? Were they silly enough to believe that he could get them into films?

  She couldn’t blame them. She had believed him for a while back at the beginning, but she knew the truth now. When she had first met him, Dawson had had the money to make himself a player, but he’d had no real interest in the Hollywood game. He stayed strictly on the fringes of the film business because it gave him access to starlets and pretty little wannabes who could make him feel young. But she knew now that he would never risk serious money on a major film.

  And lately there wasn’t as much serious money to risk. She did not know all the details. Dawson was very secretive about his assets, but she was no fool. She knew that he was in trouble. She was fairly certain he would recover. He seemed to have the Midas touch, after all. But in the meantime, she suspected that he was getting by on his charm and his track record.

  But even after he had recouped his finances, she knew there would be nothing more for her than a series of small-time roles in low-budget films like Fast Company. Perhaps she had known the truth all along. She usually prided herself on her realistic approach to life, but she had to admit she was guilty of deluding herself when it came to her desire to act.

  What the hell, everyone was entitled to a weakness.

  Dawson’s was pretty, brainless women. She was amused by the great lengths he took to conceal his meaningless affairs from her. She found it oddly touching in a perverse sort of way. He was no doubt afraid that she would leave him if she found out about the others.

  She could hardly assure him that he had nothing to fear on that front. To do so would be to give up much of her power over him. And power was the only true currency in a relationship. She had learned that lesson long ago.

  “Tomorrow night’s the big night, my dear.” Dawson adjusted the collar of his black silk shirt in front of the other mirror. “Excited?”

  “A little.”

  He smiled at her. “Relax. I know you’re going to win.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “No question about it.” He chuckled as he turned away from the mirror. “I’m afraid that Fast Company won’t win Best Neo Noir Festival Film, but the judges can’t possibly overlook your performance in it. You were fantastic.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  She rose from the dressing-table chair and went to the closet. It gave her an excuse not to have to look at his soft, smiling face.

  She hated it when he smiled the way he was smiling now. It struck her as a paternal smile. The sort of smile her father had given her on the mornings after the nights he had come to her bedroom. A smile founded on lies and secrets that could not stand the light of day. It was a smile that had long ago frozen her to the bone. She knew that she would never thaw.

  She took down an ice-pale blouse and a pair of pale blue trousers, concentrating very hard so that the image of her father’s smiling face was no longer superimposed on Dawson’s blandly handsome features. It took an effort, but she managed.

  “What are your plans for the day?” Dawson asked with idle, husbandly interest.

  “I thought I’d go to the spa. I feel like a massage and a soak in one of the pools.” She turned around and gave him her brightest smile. “Dawson, about tomorrow night—”

  “There is no doubt but that you’ll win, my dear.”

  She gave him an amused glance. “Don’t tell me that you’ve bribed the judges.”

  “There was no need,” he said gallantly. “They would have to be incredibly dense not to see how good you are in Fast Company. Going to wear the white and silver gown?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent. You look wonderful in it.”

  She hesitated. “Dawson, you did tell Ollie that the stalker stunts are finished, didn’t you? I don’t want him splashing paint on me tomorrow night, of all nights.”

  “Of course I told him, my dear.” Dawson smiled. “Publicity is all well and good, but I certainly wouldn’t allow him to ruin your big night.”

  “I appreciate that.” She relaxed, went to him, and kissed him lightly, provocatively on the mouth.

  She was a good actress, she thought. Too bad no one else knew just how very good she was.

  She was good enough, for example, to conceal the fact that she sometimes saw the ghost of her father’s features on Dawson’s face when they had sex. It was the reason why she always went out of her way to be the seducer rather than the seduced. As long as she was in control of the game, she held the power.

  And power was everything—the only thing that guaranteed survival.

  JACK STUDIED THE neatly organized items on Dawson Holland’s desk. A plump pen trimmed with tiny bands of gold was positioned to the side of an old-fashioned, leather-bound writing pad. A laptop computer and a two-line telephone completed the simple work scene.

  He had kept his plans to search the Holland home to himself. He’d had a feeling that Elizabeth would have fretted if she’d known what he intended to do. He didn’t have any great hopes of turning up a fabulous clue, especially now that he had discovered that he couldn’t get anything off the computer, but he was short on options. He had no intention of cooling his heels until Tyler Page chose to conduct the auction.

  He eyed the laptop in frustration. He had already attempted to download at least a portion of the contents onto a floppy disk, but he’d quickly discovered that the machine was password protected. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to bring Larry along to deal with little snags like that.

  He was reaching for one of the desk-drawer pulls when he heard the car in the drive.

  Fifteen minutes ago he had watched from the depths of the nearby woods as Vicky and Dawson had both left the house in separate vehicles. Perhaps one of them had forgotten something and turned around to get it.

  He heard the vehicle stop.

  Not good. He was pretty sure he could deal with the cops, but he did not relish the prospect of trying to explain to Elizabeth how he’d come to get arrested for breaking and entering.

  He crossed to the bank of windows that formed the south wall of the bedroom and looked down through a crack in the blinds. A well-worn pickup stood in the driveway. Not Vicky’s white Porsche or Holland’s high-end SUV.

  As he watched, a middle-aged woman got out of the truck. She hurried toward the side door, keys in her hand. The housekeeper, Jack thought.

  He breathed a small sigh of relief.

&nb
sp; Then he heard her enter the too-quiet house. A moment later, she was on the stairs.

  Damn.

  He swept the room with a quick glance. None of the obvious hiding places appealed. The closets and the bathroom were too risky. There wasn’t enough space under the bed.

  It would have to be the deck. There was no way down to the ground, but he had noticed a storage locker under the eaves. With luck the housekeeper was not coming upstairs to retrieve an item from the locker.

  He grasped the handle of the glass slider and pulled the door open. Cautiously he stepped out onto the deck and shut the door again.

  He went to the storage locker. The door was latched but not padlocked. He opened it cautiously and peered inside. A hose lay coiled on the floor. Next to it was a folded chaise longue and a watering can. There was room enough for him.

  He slid into the locker and closed the door. The shadows closed around him. He stood listening intently.

  The housekeeper did not stay long. A short time later, the pickup trundled off down the drive.

  He opened the locker door and started to move out onto the deck. The edge of his running shoe brushed up against an object.

  He glanced down and saw three small cans of paint stacked neatly next to the hose.

  Red paint.

  ELIZABETH PAUSED BESIDE the padded lounger. “Mind if I join you?”

  Vicky Bellamy, fresh from a massage and swathed in a turban and a thick, white robe, opened her eyes. If she was surprised to see Elizabeth standing over her, she did not show it.

  “Be my guest.”

  “Thanks.” Elizabeth set down the fruit smoothie she had bought from the spa’s refreshment bar and took the lounger next to Vicky’s.

  She glanced quickly around to make certain that no one else was within hearing distance. Fortunately, the array of tiled, hot spring-fed pools were quiet at this hour. There was only a handful of people in the elegantly restored spa. Most were wrapped in robes, as she and Vicky were. A few were seated on the steps in the deep tubs. Attendants in white uniforms bustled back and forth between the various therapy rooms, offering several kinds of massage, mud wraps, and facials.