by Nora Roberts
She made certain that Phoebe stepped out of the car they had hired first, and that they stood arm in arm when the lights flashed. Any picture printed would be of both of them.
Phoebe came alive. Adrianne had seen it happen before. Whenever it did, the fervor of her wish that her mother would divorce herself from the movie business diminished. There was happiness on Phoebe’s face, the kind of simple joy Adrianne saw there so rarely. She didn’t need pills now, or a bottle, or her daydreams.
The crowd roared around her, the lights and music swelled. For an instant she was a star again.
Pressed against the barricades, onlookers waited for a glimpse of their favorite celebrities and settled for lesser lights. Good-humored, they cheered for everyone while a few pockets were picked and a large number of packets of drugs casually changed hands.
Seeing only the smiles, Phoebe stopped to wave, then bask in the sound of applause as she glided toward the theater. Unobtrusively, Adrianne guided her inside to the lobby that was already sprinkled with men and women of the film world. There was plenty of sparkle, plenty of cleavage, and plenty of gossip.
“Darling, how delightful to see you.” Althea Gray, a streamlined actress who had made her mark in series television, strolled over to kiss the air an inch from Phoebe’s cheek. She gave Adrianne a neutral smile and an annoying pat on the head. “Just as pretty as ever, aren’t you? A tuxedo—what a cute idea.” She wondered how quickly she could have one designed for herself.
Phoebe blinked at the friendly greeting. The last time she had seen the actress, Althea had given her the most pointed of snubs. “You look wonderful, Althea.”
“Why, thank you, dear.” She waited until one of the cameramen who’d been allowed inside focused, then gave Phoebe’s cheek a chummy pat. “I’m so glad to see a couple of friendly faces at this circus.” She flicked a lighter at the end of a long cigarette so that the emerald on her finger glinted in the overhead lights. “I was going to skip tonight, but my publicist had a fit. What are you doing these days, sweetheart? I haven’t seen you for ages.”
“I’ve just finished a movie.” Grateful for the interest, Phoebe smiled and ignored the smoke burning her eyes. “A thriller,” she said, elevating the low-budget slash and gash. “It should be released this winter.”
“Wonderful. I’m about to make a film, now that I’m free of the mire of television. It’s a Dan Bitterman screenplay. You might have heard about it. Torment?” She gave Phoebe a lazy, knowing look. “I just signed to play Melanie.” Pausing only long enough to be sure she’d hit home, Althea smiled again. “I must go back to my date before he gets restless. Wonderful seeing you, darling. Let’s have lunch soon.”
“Mama, what’s wrong?” Adrianne asked.
“Nothing.” Phoebe fixed a smile to her face as someone called her name. Melanie. Larry had promised the part was hers. It had been only a matter of tying up a few loose ends in the negotiations, he’d said, promising that the movie would finally bring her back to where she had been.
“Do you want to go home?”
“Home?” Phoebe turned up the voltage of her smile until it crackled. “Of course not, but I’d love a drink before we go in. Oh, there’s Michael.”
She waved and caught the attention of the actor who’d been her first leading man, Michael Adams. There was a little gray at his temples that he didn’t bother to touch up, a few lines in his face he didn’t choose to have pulled taut or plumped up. He’d often thought his success had come as much from knowing who he was as from any acting skill. He was still playing leading men even as he cruised toward fifty with an expanded waistline.
“Phoebe.” With affection, and a trace of pity, he bent down to kiss her. “And who is this beautiful young lady?” He smiled at Adrianne, apparently without recognition.
“Hello, Michael.” Adrianne rose to her toes to kiss his cheek, a gesture she usually performed with reluctance. With Michael, it was done with pleasure. He was the only man she knew with whom she felt truly comfortable.
“This can’t be our little Addy. You put all our fledgling starlets to shame.” Then he laughed and pinched her chin, making her smile again. “The best work you ever did is right here, Phoebe.”
“I know.” She caught her lip between her teeth before it trembled, and managed another smile.
Problems, he thought, sharp enough to interpret Phoebe’s overbright eyes. Then again, there were always problems with Phoebe. “Don’t tell me you two are unescorted.”
“Larry’s out of town.”
“Uh-huh.” It wasn’t the time to lecture Phoebe again about Larry Curtis. “I don’t suppose I could talk you into keeping a lonely man company through this.”
“You’re never lonely,” Adrianne said. “I read just last week where you were romancing Ginger Frye in Aspen.”
“Precocious child. Actually, it was a skiing weekend and I was lucky to get away without broken bones. Ginger was along in case I needed medical attention.”
Adrianne grinned. “Did you?”
“Here.” Michael pulled a bill from his money clip. “Go buy yourself a soda like a good girl.”
Chuckling, she wandered off.
Michael watched her, admiring the way she maneuvered through the crowd. In a year or two she would have the men of this town, of any town, falling at her feet. “She’s a treasure, Phoebe. My daughter Marjorie’s seventeen. I haven’t seen her in anything but ripped blue jeans in three years, and she does whatever she can to make my life miserable. I envy you.”
“Addy’s never given me a moment’s trouble. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“She’s devoted to you.” He lowered his voice. “Have you thought any more about seeing the doctor I suggested?”
“I haven’t had time,” she hedged, wishing he’d leave her alone long enough for her to slip into the ladies’ room and swallow another pill. “And to tell you the truth, I’ve been feeling a lot better. Analysis is overrated, Michael. At times I think the movie industry was formed to support psychiatrists and plastic surgeons.”
He bit back a sigh. She was high on something and falling fast. “It never hurts to talk to someone.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Adrianne took her time, knowing that if he had the opportunity, Michael would speak to her mother about therapy. He’d already discussed it with Adrianne when he had found her nearly hysterical at not being able to get Phoebe to respond one afternoon after school. Phoebe had simply sat there, mute, staring out the window of her room.
There had been excuses when she had come around. Fatigue, overwork, tranquilizers. Michael had talked to them both about getting help, but Phoebe was dragging her feet. It was for that reason Adrianne desperately wanted to get her mother back to New York, away from Larry Curtis and his abundantly supplied drugs.
She didn’t have to be an adult to know it was snowing in southern California. Cocaine had become the drug of choice in the movie industry. Too often it was served as casually as a catered lunch on the sets. So far Phoebe had refused it, preferring the hell of her pills to the hell of the powder, but Adrianne knew sooner or later the day would come. She had to get Phoebe away before that last line was crossed.
Adrianne sipped her Pepsi and took a slow circle around the room. She couldn’t say she disliked all the people in the world her mother had chosen. Many of them were like Michael Adams, genuinely talented, loyal to friends, dedicated to a business that often called for grinding schedules with only flickers of glamour.
And she enjoyed the glamour, the meals in elegant restaurants, the wonderful clothes. She understood herself well enough to know she would find it hard to be satisfied with the ordinary. But she didn’t want the extraordinary at the cost of her mother’s sanity.
“God, did you see the dress?” Althea Gray took a drag on a cigarette and nodded in Phoebe’s direction. Adrianne stopped behind her. “You’d think she needed to let everyone know she still has those breasts.�
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“After her last couple of movies,” her companion commented, “no one should have any doubt. They should have gotten twin billing.”
Althea laughed. “Looks like an Amazon beyond her prime. You know, she actually believed she was going to be offered the part of Melanie. Everyone knows she’ll never get a decent part again. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it might be funny.”
“She had something once,” the man beside Althea said softly. “There’s never been anyone quite like her.”
“Really, darling.” Althea crushed out her cigarette. “Cruises down memory lane are so frigging boring.”
“Not as boring as hearing a second-rate actress whine.” Adrianne spoke clearly, and didn’t flinch when heads turned in her direction.
“Oh, dear.” Althea tapped her bottom lip with a fingertip. “Little pitchers have big ears.”
Adrianne faced her, woman to woman. “Small talents have large egos.”
When her companion chuckled, Althea sent him a fulminating look, then tossed back her hair. “Run along, dear. This is an adult conversation.”
“Really?” Adrianne controlled the urge to toss her soda in Althea’s face, and sipped from it instead. “It sounded remarkably immature to me. Dear.”
“Rude little brat.” Althea shrugged off her companion’s restraining arm and took a step forward. “Someone ought to teach you some manners.”
“I don’t need lessons in manners from a woman like you.” She flicked her glance over Althea, then scanned the group surrounding her. It was a long, steady look, cold enough and adult enough to make them squirm. “I don’t see anyone here who can teach me anything except hypocrisy.”
“Little bitch,” Althea muttered when Adrianne turned and left them.
“Shut up, Althea,” her escort advised. “You’ve been outclassed.”
* * *
“Baby, I wish you’d tell me if something’s wrong.”
Adrianne pushed open the side door that led to their tiny garden. There was very little that had endeared her to California, but she’d learned to appreciate the sun. “Nothing’s wrong. I’ve had a lot of homework.” It was the best way to keep to herself and think through the things she had heard since the night of the premiere. She’d already dealt with the rumor that Phoebe had posed for a nude layout for a men’s magazine. Two hundred thousand dollars had been the price tag on her mother’s self-respect.
It was hard, so very hard to justify the shame through love. Adrianne had spent years struggling to learn a new way of life. She had come to embrace wholeheartedly a woman’s equality, her freedom to choose, her right to be her own person rather than a mere symbol of fragility or desire. She wanted to believe, needed to believe. Yet her mother had stripped, selling her body so that any man could open the pages of a magazine and own her.
The school was too expensive. Adrianne watched the overblown roses drop their petals and thought of the tuition her mother paid to keep her in the exclusive private school. Phoebe was selling her pride for her daughter’s education.
Then there were the clothes, the clothes her mother insisted Adrianne needed. And the driver—the combination driver and bodyguard Phoebe felt was necessary to keep her daughter safe from terrorism … and Abdu. The Middle East was perpetually plagued now by ugly violence, and whether Abdu acknowledged her or not, Adrianne was still the daughter of Jaquir’s king.
“Mama, I was wondering about going to a public high school next year.”
“Public school?” Phoebe checked her purse to be certain she’d included her credit card. Until Larry came back, she was a little short of cash. “Don’t be ridiculous, Addy. I want you to have the best education.” She paused, at a loss for a moment. What had she been looking for in her purse? She stared at the plastic credit card, shook her head, then slipped it back into her wallet. “Aren’t you happy there? Your instructors are always telling me how bright you are, but if the other girls are a problem, we can look for another school.”
“No, the other girls aren’t a problem.” Adrianne privately thought most of them snotty and self-absorbed, but harmless. “It just seems like a waste of money when I could learn the same things somewhere else.”
“Is that all?” Laughing, Phoebe crossed the room to kiss her. “Money’s the last thing you have to worry about. It’s important to me, so important, Addy, that I give you the best. Without that … well, it doesn’t matter.” She kissed her again. “You are going to have the best, and next year you’re going to be looking out the window at the ocean.”
“I already have the best,” Adrianne told her. “I have you.”
“You’re good for me. Now, are you sure you don’t want to come with me, get a manicure?”
“No, I have a Spanish test on Monday. I need to study.”
“You work too hard.”
This time Adrianne smiled. “So does my mother.”
“Then we both deserve a treat.” Phoebe opened her bag again. Did she have her credit card? “We’ll go to the Italian place you like so much and eat spaghetti until they have to roll us out the door.”
“With extra garlic?”
“Enough so no one will come near us. We’ll go to the movies after. See that Star Wars everyone’s talking about. I’ll be back around five.”
“I’ll be ready.”
It was going to be all right, Adrianne decided when she was alone. Phoebe was fine—they were both fine as long as they had each other. She turned on the radio, fiddling with the dial until she found a rock station. American music. Adrianne grinned and sang a few lines along with Linda Ronstadt.
She liked American music, American cars, American clothes. Phoebe had seen to it that Adrianne was given citizenship, but Adrianne couldn’t see herself as an American teenager.
She was wary of boys, while the girls her age pursued them relentlessly. They giggled and talked about open-mouth kissing and petting. It was doubtful any one of those girls had ever seen her mother raped. Even her closest friends seemed to make rebellion their highest priority. How could Adrianne rebel against the woman who had risked her life to keep her safe?
Some of them smuggled pot into school, smoking it in the bathroom. They accepted drugs so casually while she was terrified of them.
There was the title that separated her from her companions. More than a word, it was in her blood, a tie with the world she had lived in for the first eight years of her life. A world none of the privileged American girls would understand.
She shared their culture with them, grateful for many things they took for granted. But there were still moments, private moments, when she missed the harem and the comfort of family.
She thought of Duja, who had married a rich American oilman, but was as far removed from her life as Jiddah or Fahid or the brother and sister who had been born since she had left Jaquir.
Then she pushed the past behind and opened her books at a table near the garden window.
She passed the afternoon pleasantly enough, with the music louder than Phoebe liked, and the bag of barbecued potato chips for lunch. School was a joy to her, another thing that baffled her friends. But they thought of education as a right, even a boring necessity, not a privilege. Nine years of Adrianne’s life had passed before she had learned to read, but she had made up for lost time, pleasing and astonishing Phoebe by becoming an honor student. Learning was as much a fascination to Adrianne as the bouncy rock and roll pouring out of the radio.
She had dreams. At fourteen they focused on becoming an engineer. Math was like a language to her, and she was already fluent in algebra. With the help of an interested teacher, she was tackling calculus. She was also intrigued by computers and by electronics.
Adrianne was trying to solve a difficult equation when she heard the door open.
“You’re back early.” Her smile of greeting faded when she looked up at Larry Curtis.
“Did you miss me, honeybunch?” He tossed his flight bag aside and grinned at her. He’d done a line
of coke in the lavatory of the plane just before touchdown. He was feeling fine. “How about a kiss for Uncle Larry?”
“My mother isn’t here.” Adrianne stopped swinging her legs and straightened in her seat. He made her conscious of her brief shorts and the small breasts under her T-shirt. With him, she wished for the protection of the abaaya and veil.
“She leave you all alone?” It was a rare thing for him to come across Adrianne unattended. Making himself at home, he went to a cabinet and took out a bottle of bourbon. Adrianne watched in disapproving silence.
“She wasn’t expecting you.”
“Tied things up early.” He drank, then turned to study her slim brown legs under the table. He’d wanted to get his hands between those pretty thighs for months. “Congratulate me, sweetie. I just made a deal that’s going to keep me on top for the next five years.”
“Congratulations,” she said politely, then began to stack her books. She would escape to her room, locking the door behind her.
“Is this what you do on a great Saturday afternoon?” Larry put a hand over hers on her Spanish book. Adrianne went still, waiting for the hammering at the base of her skull to slow. She knew when a man wanted. She’d been raised on it. Her stomach turned sour as she looked up at him.
He had changed little since the first time she’d seen him. His hair was trimmed a bit shorter, and the pastel shirts and chains had given way to Izod sportswear and jogging shoes. But underneath he was exactly what he had always been. Celeste had once called him slick. As she looked at him, the word made Adrianne think of slime.
“I want to put my books away.” She kept her eyes steady, but nerves jumped in her voice. Hearing them, Larry smiled.
“You look pretty with all your books stacked around. Studious.” He finished off his drink but kept his hand over hers. She was excited, he thought as he felt her pulse bounce under his fingers. Scared and excited. Just the way he liked them. “You’ve grown up on me, honeybunch.” Definitely, he thought. Her hair fell to her waist, black and straight as an arrow. Her skin was fresh, dewy, the color of gold dust, and her eyes, as dark as her hair, were wide with fear. She knew just what he was thinking. It aroused him, the same way her firm, underripe body aroused him.