Seduced and Betrayed

by Candace Schuler

  Zeke smiled his approval at Michael's quick uptake, flashing the lazy good-natured grin that made men think they might like to share a beer with him—and women think of sharing something more intimate. "See there?" he said to his daughter. "Michael didn't mean to insult your feminist principles." His dark eyes twinkled wickedly. "And neither did—"

  "You remember Susan, don't you, Dad?" Cameron said pointedly, discreetly tugging on her father's arm to move him along. "She's going to be my maid of honor, so I wanted her to be in on the planning right from the first." Cameron flashed a quick smile at her best friend. "I promised her I wouldn't even consider a bridesmaid dress she didn't absolutely love, too."

  "Yes, of course, I remember Susan. Vividly," Zeke said, disengaging his arm from his daughter's as he leaned down to kiss the young woman's cheek. "Playing chaperon while the two of you ran amok up and down the Cote d'Azur last summer is the reason for all these gray hairs." He ran a hand through the silver-flecked hair at his temple. "It put 'Til Death Do Us Part seriously over budget, too, if I remember rightly."

  "That was three summers ago, Dad," Cameron corrected him.

  "Three? Are you sure?"

  "Between my junior and senior year at UCLA," she assured him. "And 'Til Death Do Us Part went over budget because your leading man had a problem with the bottle. He ended up at the Betty Ford Clinic after the movie wrapped, if I remember rightly," she said, giving him the same innocent look he'd bestowed on her just a minute ago. "And you had those gray hairs way before then, too."

  Zeke winced in mock pain. "The child doesn't understand the concept of dramatic license," he said dolefully. "And she has no respect for her old man. I hope you're more respectful to your father, Susan."

  Susan didn't even try to hide her smile. "I do my best," she said.

  "Good. That's good," Zeke said, absently patting his daughter's hand when she slipped it back into the crook of his elbow. "Maybe you could give Cam—"

  He turned his head sharply, reacting to the tug on his arm, and met his daughter's gaze. There was a split second of heat from both of them—her at him for dragging his feet, him at her for forcing him to face something he'd rather not. Their gazes cooled almost instantly, softening into understanding and appeal on her part, melting into grudging acceptance and resignation on his. Stalling wouldn't change a thing, and he knew it. His only child had asked this one simple thing of him and he was going to give it to her. Even if it killed him.

  "Dad, this is Alan Wescott, one of our wedding consultants."

  "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Blackstone," Alan Wescott said as they shook hands. "A real pleasure."

  "My pleasure, as well," Zeke said graciously.

  "And his partner, Leslie Fine."

  "Ms. Fine," Zeke said, unconsciously adding an appreciative twinkle to his gracious smile.

  "Leslie, please," the woman said. "We're all going to get to know each pretty well before the wedding day arrives."

  "Leslie," Zeke said with a polite nod.

  And then there was only one person left in the room he hadn't greeted. His gut tightened. His heartbeat quickened. His nerves began to scrape against the inside of his skin, in a way they hadn't done since his earliest days in Hollywood. He did what he had done back then, taking a brief second to center himself. You can do this, Blackstone, he told himself. You can do anything you put your mind to. It isn't really going to kill you. And then he turned, and faced the mother of his only child.

  She was still heartbreakingly beautiful but, then, he had known she would be. Like everyone else who owned a television set, he'd watched her career progress from the beautiful daughter on Family Fortune, to the beautiful young career woman in On My Own, to the beautiful wife on Maggie and Me. For the past two years, her beautiful face had been plastered all over the advertising landscape as Gavino Cosmetics' symbol of Ageless Beauty.

  And ageless she was.

  Her eyes hadn't lost any of their sparkle over the years; they were the same vividly intense shade of blue they had been when she was eighteen. Her hair, though no longer cascading down her back like Alice in Wonderland, was still the same pale, gleaming golden blond. Her lips, even under a coating of precisely applied peach lipstick, were still deliciously kissable. But it was the planes and angles of her small, fine-boned face that made her truly ageless. Truly beautiful. Her always exquisite bone structure had been refined and sharpened by the passing years, adding elegance to what had once been a kind of fragile coltishness.

  Standing there, staring at her, Zeke could vividly remember running his fingertips over the delicate bones in her face, tracing the lush shape of her lips and the arch of her brows, telling her how beautiful she was. And she had looked back at him with wonder in those incredible blue eyes of hers.

  There was no wonder in them now. Far from it. Her expression was guarded and wary. Suspicious, even, as if she expected him to do or say something that would cause a scene or start a scandal.

  He was almost tempted to live down to her expectations. It was what he would have done before, when he was a neophyte actor with a James Dean attitude. It was what he might still do, if she kept looking at him like that. Except for Cameron, he reminded himself. He was doing this for Cameron and it had to be perfect for his adored daughter. With that thought foremost in his mind, he fought down the urge to haul his ex-wife up against him by the lapels of her stylish Carolina Herrera jacket and shake her—or kiss her—senseless.

  "Hello, Ariel," he said pleasantly and offered his hand. "Long time, no see."

  As opening lines went, it was pretty lame but he'd made the first move and now the ball was in her court.

  "Hello, Zeke," she said, and put her hand into his.

  It was a mistake.

  She knew it the minute their palms touched.

  The heat was still there, as strong, as vital, as tempting as it had been the first time he'd ever touched her. It sizzled up her arm like wildfire, heading straight to the hidden core of her. Thank God, there was no chance she would succumb to its lure this time, she thought, belatedly steeling her nerve endings against him. This time she would be strong. Invulnerable. Invincible. Immune. Because this time she wasn't a breathless, wide-eyed ingenue, eager to taste life and oh-so-ripe for the plucking. This time, she knew that heat and sizzle was all there was to Zeke Blackstone.

  All right, not all, she amended grudgingly. In the years since they'd last seen each other, he'd matured into a brilliant actor and then into an even more brilliant director. And he was a good and loving father to their daughter. But he'd been a lousy husband. And not just to her. There had been another ex-wife between then and now, as well as a live-in lover or two... or three. If one could believe even half of what was printed in the tabloids, he'd also indulged himself in an uncounted number of brief flings, one-night stands, and sizzling location romances over the years as well.

  Zeke's legendary bad boy charm and sizzling sexuality attracted women like moths to the proverbial flame but it burned them up and burned them out in short order. And she should know. She had the scars to prove it. Not that anyone had ever seen—or would ever be allowed to see—those scars, least of all the man who had inflicted the wounds that caused them.

  She forced her lips into an empty little smile. "It's good to see you, Zeke," she said, feigning a credible and convincing coolness as she withdrew her hand from his.

  Without conscious thought, Zeke tightened his fingers on hers, holding her captive for a scant moment longer, silently demanding that she look at him—really look at him, dammit!—before he would let her go. He tried to tell himself it was just a test of wills, a power play, a game of one-upmanship. And, on one level, it was.

  It was also a need.

  An urgent, burning, utterly inexplicable need.

  Loath to let him gain the upper hand, Ariel reluctantly lifted her gaze to his. Wide blue eyes met smoldering brown for the first time in years.

  They both felt the pull.

  It
was primal.

  Visceral.

  Frighteningly real.

  "Is it really good to see me?" Zeke murmured, his voice low and disturbingly intimate. It shivered along her nerve endings, as real and tactile as a touch.

  "Yes," Ariel said, aghast to realize she meant it. Oh, God, I don't want to mean it! "Yes, of course it is," she added, managing to make the words sound offhand and casual, like a polite social lie one didn't really care if the hearer believed or not.

  "It's good to see you again, too, Ariel," he said softly, surprised at just how much he meant it. And how much he wanted her to mean it, too.

  And then he let go of her hand and turned to smile down at his anxiously hovering daughter. "What do you say we get this show on the road?" he said jovially, as if he hadn't just been shaken to his very soul. "I had my secretary make reservations for us at Le Dome at one-thirty."

  "Then we'd definitely better get started," Alan Wescott said, inviting everyone to sit down with a wave of his hand. "We've got a lot to cover in this first meeting."

  "Where do we start?" Cameron asked, her eyes bright with eagerness.

  "We usually find it's best to decide on the type of wedding you want first," Leslie Fine told her. "Formal or casual. Traditional or something more unconventional. We've found that everything else flows from that."

  "Definitely a traditional church wedding," Cameron said decisively. "We've already talked to the minister and booked the church for the last Saturday in September."

  The two wedding consultants exchanged a startled glance. "Not this September, surely?" Wescott asked.

  "Yes, this September. I know it's kind of short notice but once we decided to get married, well..." Cameron turned her head and smiled at her fiancé. "There just didn't seem to be any point in waiting. And the end of September was the soonest we could get the church."

  "But that leaves us with less than six weeks to plan an entire wedding," Wescott pointed out.

  "That isn't going to be a problem, is it?" Zeke asked, subtly letting the two consultants know that it had better not be, not if they wanted their company to orchestrate the Blackstone-Everett wedding—and collect the fat check that would go with it.

  "No. No, problem," Leslie Fine rushed to assure him. "We'll have to adjust the usual timetable a bit but I'm certain we can accommodate your wishes." She flipped open a three-ring binder covered in smooth cream-colored leather and already stamped with the names of the happy couple. "Have you decided on a time of day, as well?"

  "Well, we thought maybe ten o'clock for the actual ceremony?" Cameron suggested. "And then the reception at home afterward," she added, referring to the Beverly Hills mansion where she'd grown up, and not the Brentwood condo she'd been renting for the past two years. She glanced across the table for confirmation. "Mom? Is that okay with you?"

  "Of course, darling. Whatever you want." Ariel smiled at her daughter, trying not to let her memories of another wedding spoil her joy in this one. It didn't help that the man who'd stood beside her then was sitting beside her now, bringing it all back in every painful detail. "It's your wedding, Cameron, and your decision. I want you to have exactly what you want."

  She'd made no decisions, voiced no opinions concerning her own wedding to Cameron's father, not about the place or the time, not the guest list or the food or the bridesmaids. She hadn't even seen her wedding dress until it was time to put it on.

  "Then ten o'clock," Cameron said. "With a sit-down champagne brunch and dancing on the patio after. How does that sound, Mom?"

  "Perfectly lovely."

  "Dad?"

  "Sounds like a plan," Zeke said decisively, as if his whole attention were riveted on the discussion of his daughter's upcoming wedding. A part of him was. His daughter's wedding day was, after all, one of the most important days in her life and, thus, in his.

  But another part of him was in utter shock, reeling from discovery that he was still apparently ass-end-over-teakettle in love with a woman he hadn't seen since their own wedding day, nearly twenty-five years ago.

  Chapter 2

  "Oh, come on, Mom. It'll be fun," Cameron coaxed. "Le Dome is one of your favorite restaurants. We can talk about the wedding some more."

  "I'd love to, darling—you know that," Ariel said, lying just as graciously as she did everything else. "But I can't today. I have a meeting with the Gavino Cosmetics people this afternoon about renewing my contract for the Ageless Beauty campaign."

  "Call them and reschedule it," Zeke suggested.

  Ariel ignored him, pretending to herself that he didn't exist. It was a useful skill. One she'd had twenty-five years to perfect. "Why don't you and Susan come over to the house for lunch tomorrow?" she said to her daughter. "I'll have Eleanor make chicken salad sandwiches and iced tea and we can look through the bridal magazines Leslie gave you and try to find a style of bridesmaid's dress you both love." She smiled at her future son-in-law. "Michael can come and look at bridesmaid dresses, too, if he'd like."

  "No, thanks." Michael gave a mock shudder. "I think I'll pass on that. Talking about fashion gives me hives."

  "Well, if you change your mind, lunch will be served at twelve sharp," she informed him as she turned away to give her daughter a quick hug. "Have a nice lunch, darling. I'll see you tomorrow. You, too, I hope," she said to her daughter's maid of honor. Then, with a gracious smile and a regal little wave, she turned and left—without having either directly spoken to or acknowledged her ex-husband beyond their first few words of greeting.

  Which was just like her, Zeke thought, feeling a strange mixture of admiration and irritation. Ariel had always had the maddening ability to ignore anything she didn't want to see, just like a queen stepping over peasants in the street. She'd always had exquisite manners, too, but twenty-five years ago they'd been the rather grave good manners of an extremely well-behaved little girl. Now, she used them like a double-bladed rapier, cutting him cold without drawing a single drop of blood.

  * * *

  "You're sure the Malibu house is uninhabitable?" Zeke said, speaking to his secretary as he exited the Le Dome parking lot and turned his rented Jag onto Sunset Boulevard. "Hell, Patsy, the contractor's had his crew out there—what? nearly a year now?—and you're telling me it still isn't finished? Just how much damage was there from the quake?"

  "It's not the structural repairs that are taking so long, it's the bathrooms," Patsy said drily. "Remember all that imported Italian marble you decided you needed? Well, apparently, the guys who mine it or quarry it or whatever it is one does to marble, are on strike. I've booked you into a suite at the Regent Beverly Wilshire but I can find you a house to rent if you think you're going to be in L. A. for a while this time."

  "No, don't bother. Cameron's wedding is only six weeks away. I guess I can survive at the Regent for that long."

  "It's a tough life," Patsy said drily. "But somebody's gotta live it."

  * * *

  Zeke was forced to make two detours due to construction crews and road repair, ending up farther west on Wilshire than he wanted to be. To get to the Regent Beverly Wilshire hotel, he had to turn around and go back the other way. Grumbling under his breath, he turned right onto a side street, and then right again, into an empty driveway. He glanced into the rearview mirror and pushed in the clutch, ready to shift the Jag into reverse—and then stopped and stared. Something about the three-story apartment building reflected in the rearview mirror looked oddly familiar.

  Like so many older buildings in Southern California, this one was primarily Spanish in design, with arched windows and wrought iron railings. The stucco walls were faded, sun-washed pink. The eaves were trimmed in equally faded turquoise blue. There was a turret jutting up on one side of the building, vaguely Moorish in design, and a leafy banana tree in front.

  "Well, I'll be damned," Zeke said, finally recognizing the Wilshire Arms apartment building. "It's my past, come back to haunt me."

  He'd lived there, once upon a time. He
and Ethan Roberts and Eric Shannon and Eric's younger brother... What was his name? Jack, that was it. Jack Shannon. God, they'd had some great times in the old Wilshire Arms. And some terrible ones, too.

  He'd made love to Ariel for the very first time one perfect summer afternoon in the small front bedroom of apartment 1-G. And then he'd lost her, less than two months later, in that very same bedroom. Other people had lost things there, too.

  Jack Shannon had lost his older brother.

  Eric Shannon had lost his life.

  And, yet, for all that, it was the good times Zeke remembered most as he sat in the rented Jag, staring at the legendary old building in his rearview mirror. The hopes and dreams they'd all had. The plans they'd made. The sense of limitless possibilities spread out in front of them like a sumptuous banquet. The innocent belief that the whole world was theirs for the taking. It had been a heady time. Exciting and terrifying. Full of passion and promise.

  And it was over.

  Finis.

  Dead as the proverbial doornail.

  Zeke sighed, feeling nostalgic and just a little melancholy as he shifted the Jag into reverse. He backed out of the driveway and shifted into first, checking the side mirror for oncoming traffic. A movement in front of the Wilshire Arms caught his eye. A man was standing at the wrought iron gate that stretched across the entrance to the courtyard, trying to slide a rectangular piece of shiny white signboard into the metal frame affixed to the decorative bars.

  Zeke could hardly believe his eyes. "Mueller," he said, instantly recognizing the building superintendent despite the nearly twenty-five years that had passed since the last time he'd seen him. The strange little man had hardly changed a bit. He was still small and wiry, and still as bald as an egg.

  He stepped back from the gate as Zeke sat there watching, his shining bald head tilted as he surveyed his handiwork. Zeke had no trouble reading the neatly hand-lettered sign from where he was. Apartment for rent, it said. Inquire Manager's Office.