by Brenda Joyce
They had made love on and off for most of the night, mostly on. He had always been proud of his stamina but hadn’t known it was quite this good.
Where was she? Just thinking about her was making him throb deliciously, demandingly. What hadn’t they done?
He had a sudden desire to give Belinda a bath. He smiled, visualizing how he would soap her entire body. He stood and walked into the bathroom.
She wasn’t there.
He walked back into the bedroom, hitting the lights. Scowling now. Her clothes—the gold top, the cowboy boots, the leather pants—were no longer on his floor.
No way. It wasn’t possible.
No woman walked out on him until he told her to leave.
Impossible.
His gaze settled on a note propped up on the bedside table, and he pounced on it:
Thanks, Jack. It was fun.
Belinda
He crumpled it in his hand, hurling it at the floor.
Fun? It was fun?
Who the hell was that little no-name screenwriter to leave him in the middle of the night and call their evening fun!
He couldn’t believe she had just gotten up and left!
The no-good cunt.
It was then that he heard a crash in the living room and a hushed curse. Like a shot he was through the door.
64
Belinda cursed again, this time to herself, carefully picking up the lamp and placing it on the side table she had knocked over. She couldn’t see a fucking thing. Then suddenly the entire room was illuminated—someone had hit the switch. She jumped a foot into the air.
“What a nice note,” Jack said. She had her boots in hand, and she looked guilty and furtive.
Belinda straightened, trying not to act like a crook, not to feel like one. After all, it was her right to leave whenever she damn well pleased. “I thought it was a nice note. What was I supposed to do, just leave without a good-bye?”
“You weren’t supposed to leave at all,” Jack snapped.
“The night is over,” Belinda said. “It was nice. Now it’s over. Look, I don’t have time for this.”
“You are one cold lady,” Jack said rigidly.
Belinda grabbed the door and swung it open. “Good-bye, Jack.”
He grabbed it, and his strength won. The door closed. “Let’s talk.”
Just who did he think he was? She wanted to go, and that was that. “I don’t want to talk, Jack. I want to go home, take a shower, have some coffee, and get dressed to go skiing.”
Jack’s scowl deepened.
Belinda shrugged.
“It’s insulting that you’re trying to leave like this.”
“I’m sure it is. All those mindless bimbos you fuck wouldn’t dare leave until you told them to, would they?”
“So now you want to fight?”
“I don’t know you well enough to fight with you,” Belinda said, wishing his eyes weren’t so expressive and beautiful. Wishing she had made it out the door without his catching her, then wishing he would make her stay.
“If those weren’t fighting words, then I don’t know what you’d call them.”
“Maybe it’s just that the truth is hard to take?”
“Don’t try and tell me again that you’re not trying to provoke me,” Jack said.
Belinda turned abruptly on her heel. Damn him, but he was right. She was angry, angry at herself and at him, but mostly at herself, for her feelings, and she was taking it out on him. She did want to fight.
Jack was suddenly there, suddenly had her in his arms, his breath against her cheek. “You’re not going,” he said in that silky tone of his. “You’re not going and we’re not fighting, Belinda. You can’t possibly walk away now. Not from me.”
She pushed him away so she could really look at him. The trouble was, she was melting under his charisma, and she didn’t want to go. But she had to.
“I want you to stay, Belinda. Just you and me. We’ll stay through the holiday, a whole week, just the two of us.” His tone was husky, seductive, urgent. It was his smile that decided her, so ripe with cocky promise. Imagine a week of this! But then what? To get thrown out on her ass and replaced by his next bimbo? “No, thanks.”
He was incredulous. “You’re refusing me? Leaving? Walking out on me?”
“Sorry.”
“Fine.” He stomped to the door of the bedroom and turned. “Just fine, Belinda, just fine!”
She stared, unsmiling.
“You do know what you’re missing?”
“I believe so,” she said.
“I won’t chase after you again,” Jack stated, eyes flashing angrily. “I never chase a broad.”
“And I never chase a stud,” Belinda said, opening the door.
“You’re the coldest bitch I’ve ever met.”
“You have an incredible head,” she said and then smiled coolly. “Meant both ways.”
“I’ve got millions of broads chasing me,” Jack shouted.
“Good! Go after them! I’m not your type anyway.”
“No. That you most certainly aren’t.”
It hurt. It really hurt. “You truly are nothing but a prick.”
“And you are nothing but a cunt,” Jack snarled. “Shit, I must have been crazy! I got pussy coming out of my ears! And I chase this?” He disappeared into his bedroom, stiff and volatile.
“Like I said,” Belinda called sweetly after him, “it really was fun.”
Jack slammed the door behind him.
Belinda stepped out into the frigid dawn and felt like crying.
I will not shed one damn tear over that son of a bitch, she vowed. I absolutely did the right thing.
She did not feel better.
65
January 15,1988
Mary was livid.
That bastard had lied. He had used her and lied.
Worse, after not having seen him since that one night they had spent together, she had gone running when he had called this morning and told her he was in town for the day, before heading back to New York. She had met him at his condo in Westwood, and without ceremony he had stripped her and spent a few hours fucking her. She had moaned and climaxed again and again. Really getting off on the fact that she was fucking Abe Glassman now, today, while her bastard husband had been fucking his daughter last night.
Mary was no fool. Vince hadn’t even bothered to come home last night. She knew where he had been, the shit. After sex, she had asked Abe what he was doing about it.
And he had laughed. “Nothing,” he had said.
“What?”
“Nothing. The timing’s not right now, doll, but what does it matter? You have me.”
With a scream, Mary had risen to smack him across the face. Abe caught her hand, his eyes becoming black and deadly. He almost broke her wrist. “Don’t you dare,” he said, and he threw her back on the bed, hard, so hard that her head hit the headboard, and she was frightened. Then she saw his stiff, straining prick—they were both naked—and when she saw him climb on the bed, all kinds of jolts of desire surged through her. She hated him. He had lied, used her. But when he rammed that long, thick dick into her, she forgot everything. Everything.
Well, she was remembering now.
Remembering and steaming as she did line after line, guzzling white wine on the rocks, on the side.
When she had first been married, when Vince had loved and cherished her, he had insisted she learn to use a gun. Just an average, twenty-two caliber revolver. Now she pulled open the drawer where he kept it, in his nightstand, and she picked it up. It was black and cold and gleaming in her hand.
She shuddered and reached back into the drawer for the bullets.
It was long and black, and it gleamed in the moonlight.
The man holding the revolver grinned, raising it.
Will Hayward gasped. “No, please,” he cried, unable to take his eyes off of the instrument of his death.
“It’s too late for you, motherfuc
ker,” the big man said.
Will managed to take one desperate look around him, but Central Park was empty at this time of night—as he had known it would be. His gaze flickered back to the man about to murder him, and he backed up a step. “Please, please!”
“There ain’t nowhere for you to go to, fool.”
He was right. Sweat streamed down Will’s face in the frigid winter night. The gun loomed larger than life in his vision, a blow up, and he could see that trigger finger beginning to squeeze …
Will screamed, backpedaling.
And just as he pulled the trigger, the giant slipped on the icy footing and went down hard, all three hundred pounds of him. The shot echoed harmlessly in the night.
Will ran.
Panting, his breath condensing into thick puffs in the freezing air, he ran for his life. The ground was slick with snow and ice, but Will didn’t fall. He knew the giant was behind him. He could hear him. He hit Fifth Avenue, gasping and doubled over. He threw a glance over his shoulder and saw him. This time there would be no escape …
The yellow cab had stopped for the light. Will lunged for it, screaming as another shot sounded. It wasn’t until he was inside and huddled against the backseat, the driver accelerating wildly away, yelling in a mixture of Spanish and English at him to get the fuck out of his cab, that Will could even begin to think again, ignoring the cabbie’s furious, frightened ravings.
One coherent thought formed.
That bastard was trying to kill him.
For he did not have a single doubt.
Abe Glassman, his oldest friend, was trying to kill him.
Just when things were going so well.
Never had a raid been smoother.
Abe smiled. Belinda was more gullible than he’d have thought, to have swallowed the crap he’d handed her. Didn’t she understand that there was no way, no way, that he could allow her success? Didn’t she understand that he absolutely willed it that she come to heel, marry Adam Gordon, and give him his heir? His patience was finally paying off. She and Gordon were close. And her career was not going toc interfere with his plans for her and Adam much longer. There was only one thing left—the coup de grace, as he saw it. And it wasn’t up to him. “Get her pregnant,” he had told Gordon last night.
As for that prick Ford?
Abe chuckled, more than pleased.
He had seen the newsclip on the local Aspen TV station of Ford’s arrival and his shock at the news of the takeover and Berenger’s cancellation. Abe’s smile grew. He had a coup for Ford too. If Ford had been shocked by that little turn of events, how would he greet Abe’s next step in his campaign of destruction?
Because destruction it would be.
Total destruction.
Abe couldn’t wait. Couldn’t wait for Ford to find out that the production of Outrage was cancelled. The only question was one of timing—when to let this cat out of the bag?
Jack was in such a foul, rotten mood, he couldn’t even read the words on the script in front of him. He shoved it away. He thought of the long-legged redhead he had spent last night with, and he felt angry. He had had trouble getting aroused. Him, Jack Ford, cocksman without peer, was having trouble getting it up. He slammed his fist on his desk and paced to the window.
It had been like that for four weeks—four fucking weeks—ever since that uppity cunt had walked out on him. First there had been the lack of desire, not really caring about getting laid. Unless he thought of her. Then he’d get hard in a second—all revved up with nowhere to go. Damn the bitch.
He had skied all day every day with Melody right through New Year’s Day. Biting Mel’s head off half the time, the other half brooding. Once or twice when he was perched high in the air on the chair lift, he had thought he was seeing her—Belinda. The same hair, sticking out of those ridiculous woolen hats, but in bulky ski clothes it was impossible to tell. Each time he had been wrong.
But the third time he saw her he knew it was her.
It was a warm day. The chair lift had stopped momentarily. Melody had her face tilted to the sun. Jack watched a skier coming down Red’s Run, a vast mogul field, the moguls three and four feet high, really cut up, hence the fact that there was only one skier attempting it.
Wearing skintight stretch skipants, bib-style, a sweater tucked into them, a black men’s cap on her head, black sunglasses. Her figure was striking and strong: broad-shouldered, full-breasted, small-waisted, long, strong legs. He knew it was her without seeing her hair or her face.
She could ski. Perfect style, seemingly slow, cutting into and hanging over those moguls, as graceful as a ballet dancer. Her legs had to be unbelievably strong. He knew how strong they were—he remembered vividly, tactilely, how strong they were when she had wrapped them around his waist. She skied beneath his chair without looking up, every ounce of concentration on the difficult terrain in front of her, and even as the lift started moving again, he twisted his head to watch her until he could see her no longer.
And he had a hard-on.
An angry one. The bitch. No one walked out on him. No one. Especially not some piece of ass. It wasn’t that fine.
Now he stared down at Wilshire Boulevard with clenched fists. Obsessed. He was obsessed. He couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t enjoy fucking. If only he were working, but there had been a temporary postponement in production, more shit for him to worry about. Of course, if he were working, he’d be seeing her. He didn’t know whether that thought thrilled him or infuriated him. Damn. He had to know. He strode to the door and yanked it open. He had to know where she was. He had to see her tonight. “Melody!”
“Yes?” She looked up.
“Where’s the phone book? Do you know if that broad, Belinda Carlisle, the screenwriter, lives in L.A.?”
Melody stared at him.
He actually flushed.
“I can tell you where she lives, Jack.”
“How in hell would you know?”
“She’s a celebrity in her own right,” Melody said. “I read a piece about her once in one of the rags. She’s got a place in Laguna Beach.”
“What?”
“She’s got a—”
“What the hell do you mean, she’s a celebrity in her own right?”
“Don’t you know?” Melody smiled. “Her real name is Belinda Glassman. She’s Abe Glassman’s daughter.”
Restless.
Bored.
Disgruntled. A good word. Poised, almost waiting, feeling an empty space inside, almost able to grasp what she needed, what she was missing—yet it was elusive, intangible.
Oh, bullshit, Belinda thought. Elusive, intangible? There was nothing elusive or intangible about Jackson Ford.
She had a crush on the biggest prick in Hollywood. Then she laughed. Probably true, but she hadn’t meant it literally. Besides, he knew who she was. Had he called? Or tried to coax her into another night? No, he’d given up without a fight, as she had known he would. Spoiled. Spoiled and arrogant. Right now he was probably with one of his eighteen-year-old bimbos.
Red-hot jealousy.
Jesus, I’m in a bad way! she thought.
Outrage was in a temporary hiatus. Belinda couldn’t help it, her skin prickled whenever she thought about it. But she’d talked to Mascione, who was unperturbed, saying this kind of thing was the norm after a big takeover and not to worry, they’d be back in production by February—he’d been promised. Fallout from Abe. Unintentional, just fallout, but … He was screwing with her career, even if it was inadvertently, and Belinda wished, not for the first time, that he could just be a normal father. In which case she would be on the set right now, working. With him.
Eventually they would be working together again. Eventually? February was two weeks away, and that wasn’t eventually. Out of the frying pan, she thought grimly, and into the fire. How could someone both dread something and anticipate it at the same time? Somehow, she was going to have to stay away from him.
And, of course, staying away from him made her think of being with him, that night at the Kellers’. It made her think of the incredible passion. And her incredible stupidity.
She hadn’t used her diaphragm.
She hadn’t even thought about it.
Belinda knew herself: She wasn’t stupid and she wasn’t forgetful. But she really had forgotten. Except, there was no way she could have forgotten unless it was deliberately. For some perverse reason, her inner self was defying all reason and sanity. For some reason deep within herself she wanted to get pregnant with his child.
Maybe it hadn’t happened.
Oh, what have I done?
She, a liberated woman of the eighties, reverting unconsciously to a ploy as ancient as time?
Tomorrow, she thought with dread and disbelief, I’ll get a pregnancy test. And when I go back to Tucson, I am staying the hell away from him. He is one dangerous man.
She was going to stick to the Vinces of this world.
Last night had been a disaster. She hadn’t been laid since Ford, not in the entire time she had spent in Aspen nor the two weeks following; and last night she had had to fantasize about Ford in order to come while Vince was making love to her. Christ. Poor Vince. The doorbell rang.
Belinda knew with an uncanny instinct that it was Vince. Sighing, she opened the door.
Mary Spazzio smiled and raised a glinting black revolver at her. “You fucking bitch,” she said.
PART THREE
LIARS
January 1988
66
She hated him.
How could he?
And, God, the noises—they had kept her up all night.
And that laugh. His laugh. Low, unbearably sensual, unbearably aroused. He had never laughed that way with her. The bastard.
Melody didn’t know if she wanted to quit or die or kill Jack.
“Mel!” he shouted from his office.
“Fuck off,” she murmured and felt pleased with her boldness.