by Nora Roberts
“I’m here for good.” The moment he finished his last swallow of bourbon, Phoebe was up to refill his glass. This time she poured a glass for herself. Larry only lifted a brow. The Phoebe he remembered had never sipped at anything harder than wine.
“What about the sheikh?”
“I’ve filed for divorce.” She wet her lips, glancing around as though someone might strike her down for the statement. “I can’t live with him anymore.” She drank, afraid she wouldn’t be able to live without him either. “He changed, Larry. I can’t begin to tell you how much. If he comes after me—”
“You’re in the U. S. of A. now, sweetheart.” He drew her close, once more skimming his glance down her body. She was well into her thirties, he calculated. Older than his usual choice. But she was vulnerable. He preferred his women, and his clients, vulnerable. “Haven’t I always taken care of you?”
“Yes.” She held on, ready to weep with relief. She knew her looks had begun to fade. It didn’t matter, she told herself as Larry stroked her back. He was going to take care of her. “I want a part, Larry. Anything to start. I have Adrianne to think of. She needs things, deserves things.”
“Leave it all to me. We’ll start off with an interview before you go to the West Coast. ‘The queen’ is back, that kind of thing.” He gave her breast a quick, casual squeeze before reaching for his drink. “Make sure they get a picture of you with the little princess. Kids make great copy. I’ll start paving the way, do some talking, some dealing. Trust me. We’ll have them in the palm of our hand inside of six weeks.”
“I hope so.” She squeezed her eyes tight. “I’ve been away for so long, so much has changed.”
“Pack your bags and head out by the end of the week. I’ll take it from there.” Her name alone would make the deals, he decided. If she bombed, he’d still make a bundle. Then, there was the kid. He had a feeling the kid was going to come in handy.
“I don’t have a lot of money.” She set her jaw, determined to brazen out the shame. “I’ve sold some jewelry, and it’s enough to keep us for a while, but I need most of it to pay for a good school for Adrianne. I know how expensive it is to live in L.A.”
Yeah, the kid was going to come in handy. As long as she was in the picture, Phoebe would be willing to do anything. “Didn’t I say I’d take care of you?” He drew down the zipper at the back of her dress.
“Larry—”
“Come on, sweetheart. Show me you trust me. I’ll get you a part, a house, a nice school for the kid. The best. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I want Addy to have the best.”
“And you too. I’ll put you right back in the spotlight. As long as you cooperate.”
What difference did it make, she asked herself as he stripped her. Abdu had taken her body whenever he had liked and given nothing back, not to her, not to Adrianne. With Larry there was a promise of protection, and maybe a little affection.
“You’ve still got great tits, honey.”
Phoebe closed her eyes and let him do what he wanted.
Chapter Eight
Philip Chamberlain listened to the swish and thud of tennis balls and sipped his long gin and tonic. He looked especially good in tennis whites since he’d developed a smooth tan in the three weeks he’d been in California. Crossing his ankles, he looked onto the courts through mirrored sunglasses.
Making friends with Eddie Treewalter, III, hadn’t been all that pleasant for Philip, but it had paid off with invitations to Eddie’s country club. Philip had come to Beverly Hills on business, but it never hurt to enjoy a little sun. Because he had let Eddie trounce him in the last two games of their match, the young American was in a very expansive mood.
“Sure you won’t have lunch, old man?”
To Philip’s credit, he didn’t wince at the “old man,” which clearly Eddie believed to be the height of camaraderie among the English.
“Wish I could. But I’m going to have to run in a moment if I’m to make my appointment.”
“Hell of a day to think of business.” Eddie pushed up his amber-tinted sunglasses, a thick gold watch glinting on his wrist. Teeth that had given up their braces only two years before flashed as he smiled. He had a nickel bag of prime Colombian pot in his monogrammed leather tennis bag.
As the son of one of the most successful plastic surgeons in California, he hadn’t had to work a day in his life. Treewalter, II, nipped and tucked the stars while his son yawned his way through college, dealt drugs as a hobby, and scored at the country club.
“You’ll be at the party tonight at Stoneway’s?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
Eddie downed his vodka on the rocks and signaled for another. “The man makes lousy pictures but knows how to throw a party. There’ll be enough snow and grass for an army.” He grinned. “I forgot. You don’t indulge, do you?”
“I prefer to indulge in other things.”
“Suit yourself, but Stoneway serves coke on silver platters. Very chic.” His glance passed over a thin blonde in tight tennis shorts. “You could always indulge in that. Give little Marci some nose candy and she’ll fuck anything.”
“She’s a teenager.” Philip used the gin to wash the taste of disgust at Eddie’s youthful arrogance and stupidity out of his mouth.
“No one in this town’s a teenager. And speaking of easy lays.” He nodded toward a lush redhead in a sundress. “Old reliable Phoebe.” He snickered. “The name’s not Spring for nothing. I think even my old man’s bounced on her. A little shopworn, but great tits.”
Perhaps, Philip thought, exploiting Eddie’s companionship wasn’t worth the price. “I’d better be off.”
“Sure. Hey, she’s got her daughter with her.” Eddie ran his tongue over his lips. “Now, there’s a kid who’s going to be a prime piece of ass, old man. Pure and sweet. She’ll be ready for plowing soon. Mama won’t let her come to the party tonight, but she can’t keep her locked up forever.”
Concealing annoyance, Philip glanced over. And felt the punch. He caught only a glimpse of the young, fine-boned face. But there was a mass of straight, glorious black hair. And legs. Despite himself, Philip stared at them. Truly gorgeous legs. He snorted in self-disgust. The girl was so young, she made Marci look middle-aged. He stood abruptly and turned his back.
“A bit young for my taste … old man. See you tonight.”
Bastard, Philip thought of Eddie as he moved away from the tables. In a day or two he wouldn’t have to be his “pal” any longer and could go home. Back to London. It would be cool and green in London, and he could wash the smog of Los Angeles out of his eyes. He’d have to pick up some souvenirs for his mother. He knew Mary would adore a map of the stars’ homes.
Let her have her romance with Hollywood. There was no need to tell her that under the glitter was an ugly layer of scum. Drugs, sex, and betrayal. Not all of it, certainly, but enough to make him glad his mother had never pursued her dream of being an actress. Still, he should bring her here one day. Take her to lunch at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, let her slip her feet into Marilyn Monroe’s, footprints. He’d get a bang out of the town if his mother were along to be awed and excited.
A tennis ball rolled in front of him and he bent down to retrieve it. The girl with great legs had put on huge concealing sunglasses. She smiled beneath them and he felt the same punch as he tossed the ball back to her.
“Thanks.”
“Sure.” Dipping his hands in his pockets, Philip relegated Phoebe Spring’s very young daughter to the back of his mind. He had a job to do.
Twenty minutes later he was cruising into Bel Air in a white paneled van. The legend on the side boasted KARPETS KLEANED. Eddie’s mother was going to be very unhappy when she discovered her jewelry was going to be cleaned as well. For free.
A brown wig covering his now sunstreaked hair, a natty mustache above his thin lips, Philip hopped out of the van. He still wore white, but it was overalls now, padded a bit to give
the illusion of bulk. It had taken him two weeks to case the Treewalters’ house and learn the routines of family and servants. He had twenty-five minutes to get in and out before the housekeeper returned from her weekly trip to the market.
It was almost too easy. A week before, he’d taken an impression of Eddie’s keys when Eddie had been too stoned to walk through his own front door. Once in, Philip turned off the alarm, then broke a window in the patio door to give the job the look of forced entry.
Moving quickly, he went up to the master bedroom to go to work on the safe. It pleased him that it was the same model as the Mezzenis’ in Venice. It had taken him only twelve minutes to crack that and relieve the amorous Italian matron of one of the hottest suites of emeralds in Europe. But that had been six months before. Philip wasn’t a man to rest on his laurels.
Concentration was everything. Though Philip was just shy of twenty-one, he knew how to concentrate fully, on a safe, on an alarm, on a woman. Each held its own fascination for cracking.
He heard the first tumblers fall into place.
He was as smooth here as he was over cocktails or between the sheets. He’d taught himself well. How to dress, how to speak, how to seduce a woman. His talents had opened doors for him, society’s as well as vaults’. He’d managed to move his mother into a spacious flat. She spent her afternoons now shopping or playing bridge rather than shivering or sweating in the ticket booth at Faraday’s. He was going to see that she continued to do so. There were other women in his life, but she was still his first love.
He heard the tumblers fall into place through the stethoscope.
He’d done just as well for himself, and intended to do even better. He had a small, elegant town house in London. Soon, very soon, he was going to start scouting the outlying districts for that home in the country. With a garden. He had a weakness for small, beautiful things that needed to be nurtured.
He stood, one hand moving delicately on the dial, eyes half closed, like a man listening to soothing music, or appreciating the touch of a clever woman.
The safe opened, smooth as butter.
He unrolled the velvet pouch he found inside and took the time to examine the gems with his loupe. All that glittered, he knew, was not gold. Or diamonds. These were the real thing. Grade D, undoubtedly Russian. He studied the largest sapphire. Its center drop was slightly flawed as expected in a gem that size. It was a pretty, and valuable, cornflower blue. Like a patient doctor giving an exam, he studied each bracelet, each ring and bauble. He found the ruby earrings particularly ugly—and as a man who considered himself an artist, he judged it a crime to create something so aesthetically displeasing out of such a passionate stone. Judging the jewels to be worth about thirty-five thousand American, he took them out. Artist or not, he was a businessman first.
Satisfied, he set everything in the center of the Aubusson carpet and rolled up the rug.
Twenty minutes after entering, Philip shouldered the rug into the van. Whistling between his teeth, he got behind the wheel and cruised off, passing the Treewalters’ housekeeper as she rounded the corner.
Eddie was right, Phil thought as he turned up the radio. It was a hell of a day for business.
Nothing was exactly as it seemed in Hollywood. Adrianne’s first impression had been of wonder. This America was far different from the America of New York. The people were sleeker, in less of a hurry, and everyone seemed to know everyone else. Adrianne thought it was like a small village, yet the natives weren’t as friendly as they pretended to be.
By the time she was fourteen she had learned that attitudes were often as false as the storefronts on a movie lot. She also knew that Phoebe’s comeback was a failure.
They had a house, she had school, but Phoebe’s career had moved steadily in reverse. More than her looks had begun to fade in Jaquir; her talent had eroded as rapidly as her self-esteem.
“Aren’t you ready yet?” Phoebe hurried into Adrianne’s room. The overbright eyes and overexcited voice told Adrianne that her mother had gotten a new supply of amphetamines. She struggled to subdue a feeling of helplessness and managed to smile. She couldn’t bear another fight tonight, or her mother’s tears and useless promises.
“Nearly.” Adrianne fastened the cummerbund on her tuxedo-style suit. She wanted to tell her mother that she looked beautiful, but Phoebe’s evening dress made her cringe. It was cut embarrassingly low and fit like a skin of gold sequins. Larry’s doing, Adrianne thought. Larry Curtis was still her mother’s agent, her sometime lover, and constant manipulator.
“We still have plenty of time,” she said instead.
“Oh, I know.” Phoebe moved around the room, glittering, fueled by the manic energy of the pills and her own unpredictable mood swings. “But premieres are so exciting. The people, the cameras.” She stopped by Adrianne’s mirror and saw herself as she once had been, without the marks of her illness and her disappointments. “Everyone’s going to be there. It’ll be just like the old days.”
Faced with her reflection, she fell to dreaming, as she too often did. She saw herself in the center spotlight, surrounded by admiring fans and associates. They all loved her, all wanted to be near her, to talk to her, to listen, to touch.
“Mama.” Uneasy with Phoebe’s abrupt silence, Adrianne laid a hand on her shoulder. There were days when she lost touch like this and didn’t come out again for hours. “Mama,” she repeated, tightening her grip, afraid that Phoebe was traveling down that long tunnel into her own fantasies.
“What?” Phoebe surfaced, blinking, then smiled as she focused on Adrianne’s face. “My own little princess. You’re so grown-up.”
“I love you, Mama.” Fighting back tears, Adrianne wrapped her arms tight around her mother. In the past year Phoebe’s moods had become more and more like the roller coaster they had once ridden in Disneyland. A confusion of streaking highs and bottomless lows. She could never be sure whether Phoebe would be full of laughter and wild promises or tears and regrets.
“I love you, Addy.” She stroked her daughter’s hair, wishing the color and texture didn’t remind her of Abdu. “We’re making something of ourselves, aren’t we?” She drew away and began circling the room, pacing, prowling, but never making progress. “In a few months we’ll be going to my premiere. Oh, I know it’s not as big a movie as this one, but these low-budget films are very popular. It’s like Larry says, I have to keep myself available. And with the publicity he’s planning …” She thought of the nude layout she’d posed for the week before. It wasn’t the time to tell Adrianne about it. It was business, she reminded herself as she twisted her fingers together. Just business.
“I’m sure it’s going to be a wonderful movie.” But the others hadn’t been, Adrianne reflected. The reviews had been insulting. She’d hated watching her mother embarrass herself on the screen, using her body instead of talent. Even now, after five years in California, Adrianne was aware that Phoebe had traded one kind of bondage for another.
“When the picture is a success, a big success, we’ll have that house on the beach I promised you.”
“We have a nice house.”
“This little place …” Phoebe glanced out the window at the struggling garden separating them from the street. There was no grand stone wall, no pretty gates, no lush lawn. They were on the fringes of Beverly Hills, on the fringes of success. Phoebe’s name had dropped to the B list of Hollywood’s important hostesses. Major producers no longer sent her scripts.
She thought of the palace she had whisked Adrianne away from and all its luxuries. It became easier as time went by to forget the limitations of Jaquir and remember the opulence.
“It’s not what I want for you, not nearly what you deserve, but rebuilding a career takes time.”
“I know.” They’d had this talk too many times before. “School’s out in a couple of weeks. I thought we might go to New York to visit Celeste. You could relax.”
“Hmm? Oh, we’ll have to see. Larry’s negot
iating for a part for me.”
Adrianne felt her spirits sink. She didn’t have to be told that the part would be mediocre, or that her mother would spend hours away from home being manipulated by the men who’d chosen to exploit her body. The harder Phoebe tried to prove she could climb back on top, the faster she slipped toward the very bottom.
Phoebe wanted her house on the ocean and her name up in lights. Adrianne could have resented Phoebe’s ambition, maybe even have fought it if the motives had been selfish. But what she did, she did out of love and a need to give. There was no way for Adrianne to make her see that she was building a cage as strong as the one she had escaped from.
“Mama, you haven’t had any real time off in months. We could see Celeste’s new play, visit some museums. It would do you good.”
“It’ll do me more good to watch everyone fuss over Princess Adrianne tonight. You look beautiful, sweetheart.” She put an arm around Adrianne’s shoulders as the two started for the door. “I bet the boys just break their hearts over you.”
Adrianne shrugged. She wasn’t interested in boys or their hearts.
“Well, tonight’s our night. It’s a shame Larry’s out of town so we don’t have a handsome man to escort us.”
“We don’t need anyone but each other.”
* * *
Adrianne was used to the crowds, the flash of lights, and the cameras. Phoebe often worried that her daughter was too serious, but she never had cause to worry about Adrianne’s poise. Young as she was, she handled the press like royalty, smiling when a smile was required, answering questions without ever giving too much away, and fading into the background when she had reached the limit of her tolerance. As a result, the press adored her. It was common knowledge that the columns were kinder to Phoebe Spring than they had to be because they had a love affair going with her daughter. Adrianne knew it, and with the skill of someone twice her age, used it.