For Richer or Poorer

by JoAnn Ross

  After all, Cait’s exquisite beauty was a fortunate genetic inheritance from her famous actress mother and screenwriter father. No mortal woman could possibly hope to compete with Cait Carrigan’s mass of fiery hair, flawless complexion and wide, expressive emerald eyes. As for Blythe, Lily had witnessed grown men run into walls while staring at her friend’s lushly curved body.

  Lacking Cait’s flamboyant coloring and Blythe’s sultry dark looks, Lily had always relied on her personality. She’d always possessed an enormous energy that had belied the fragility of her pale blond looks. An energy more than a few young men back home in Iowa, and during those house mixers at college, had found appealing.

  But now, frowning at her image in the beveled glass, she decided that Mac Sullivan’s interest yesterday had undoubtedly been nothing more than an act of pity on his part.

  No man could possibly find her the slightest bit attractive. Even discounting the weight she’d gained during the seven months of her pregnancy, her pallor and the dark circles below her tired, listless eyes revealed her recent lack of sleep. Her depression was etched into brackets on either side of her full pale lips, making her look older than her twenty-five years.

  “I look like something the cat dragged in,” she complained, tucking in a few loose hairs that had escaped the French braid.

  “You look lovely,” Blythe insisted. “Have you thought any more about what I suggested yesterday?”

  “About staying here with you and Alan?”

  “It would be wonderful having you close by,” Cait weighed in. “I hate the idea of you having your baby all alone, with just those snooty old Van Cortlandts standing by.”

  “I’m thinking about it,” Lily said.

  Before her two best friends could pressure her further, the anniversary clock on Blythe’s dresser chimed the hour, signaling it was time for the trio to go downstairs.

  The moment brought back a jolting sense of déjà vu. Lily’s blood turned cold as she remembered, in vivid detail, that last instant—stilled like a freeze frame forever in her mind—before she walked down the aisle, when she’d experienced a foreboding so strong it had made her knees weak.

  She watched Blythe take a deep breath meant to calm.

  “There’s still time to change your mind,” Cait advised.

  “Don’t be silly.” Blythe threw back her bare shoulders. “I’m not going to disappoint all those people down there.”

  Lily exchanged a puzzled, concerned look with Cait, whose bleak expression told her that they were thinking the same thing.

  Ever since Lily’s arrival Cait had been hinting that the upcoming wedding was not exactly a match made in heaven. And although Lily had admittedly been too wrapped up in her own worries to pay close attention, now, seeing Blythe appear less than ecstatic about the upcoming ceremony made her share Cait’s concerns.

  “Better to disappoint a few friends than spend the rest of your life regretting what you did,” Lily advised.

  It was the same thing her father had told her before she’d walked down that long aisle in St. Thomas’s. How many times since that fateful day had she wished she’d taken his advice!

  But then, Lily amended with that strong sense of midwestern practicality that had always served her well, if she hadn’t married Junior, she wouldn’t be about to have his baby. A child she had absolutely no intention of giving up.

  Blythe shook her head and managed a weak laugh that drew Lily’s wandering mind back to their conversation. “The two of you are overreacting to a simple case of prewedding jitters.” She scooped up her bouquet from the bed and marched out the door.

  Exchanging a worried look, Cait and Lily followed.

  3

  FEELING LESS than graceful and certain that she was waddling like some pregnant duck, Lily slowly walked down the white satin runner that was a twin of the one used at her own wedding and felt as if every eye in the garden was focused on her swollen belly.

  Although her obviously pregnant condition drew a few murmurs—and a faint, disapproving frown from the groom—most of the people gathered for Blythe’s wedding smiled.

  When she reached the rose-covered arbor, Lily turned and watched as Cait took her turn. Lily knew that the dark-haired man, seated in the front row between Blythe’s parents and Natalie Landis, Cait’s movie star mother, was Sloan Wyndham, the man Cait was currently involved with. It was also the man Blythe had hired to write the screenplay for her Alexandra Romanov project.

  Cait had pointed him out from the upstairs balcony and now, as she watched Sloan watching Cait approach on her confident, long-legged stride, the love emblazoned across his handsome face assured Lily that one of them, anyway, had chosen well.

  When the harpist viewed Blythe’s appearance in the arbor, she broke into the wedding march. The assembled guests all turned to view the bride. Blythe’s dress was elegant, yet simple by Beverly Hills standards—a sleek, off-the-shoulder, short-sleeved ivory crepe tunic over a long slender skirt.

  To Lily’s surprise, Blythe stopped midway down the runner. Seemingly oblivious to the gathered guests, she looked straight into the face of a dark-haired man who was staring at her.

  A curious murmur drifted over the garden. Although she felt like a voyeur, intruding on some private moment, Lily could not drag her own eyes away from Blythe and the stranger,

  “Lord,” Cait, who was standing beside Lily, murmured, “Gage and Blythe. Who would have thunk it?” Her low tone was laced with both surprise and pleasure.

  “Gage?” Lily murmured back. “That’s the detective who’s supposed to prove that Patrick Reardon didn’t kill his wife?” When Blythe had mentioned him yesterday, Lily’s imagination had conjured up a cigar-smoking former cop in a rumpled trench coat.

  “That’s him,” Cait confirmed. “And whether Reardon turns out to be guilty or innocent, it looks as if Gage could be Blythe’s Mr. Right.”

  Cait’s surprising answer had Lily glancing toward the groom. Dr. Alan Sturgess had gone rigid. His eyes, directed toward his bride, who still hadn’t moved, were icy lasers.

  “Are you saying Blythe’s really in love with this detective?”

  “She hasn’t said a thing about it,” Cait admitted. “But hope springs eternal. Remember the scene in The Graduate, where Dustin Hoffman runs off with Katherine Ross?”

  “Of course, but...” Lily turned and stared at Cait. “Surely you don’t think Blythe would actually run away from her own wedding and leave her groom standing at the altar?”

  “We can only hope.”

  “She’d never do it.” Lily knew Blythe was incapable of such behavior. “She doesn’t have it in her to publicly embarrass anyone that way.”

  “You’re probably right.” This time Cait lifted her eyes toward the delphinium blue sky. “What we need now is a little divine intervention.” Her words were cut off by a low, deepening rumble, like an approaching freight train.

  “Oh, hell,” Cait muttered. “Talk about your direct response.”

  A moment later, a massive, upward jolt beneath her feet knocked Lily to her knees. The violently shaking ground disoriented her, making her feel as if she’d suddenly dived back beneath the sea. The horrible, grinding noise of earth and stone reminded her of those giant pneumatic drills that broke up sidewalks.

  Closing her eyes tightly, Lily began desperately reciting prayers learned in childhood. All around her, pandemonium broke loose in a thunderous cacophony. The white satin-seated chairs bucked wedding guests in all directions, causing them to land on top of one another, their screams of alarm unable to be heard over the deafening roar of the bucking, trembling, grinding earth.

  Having grown up in tornado alley, Lily knew firsthand how violent nature could be. Yet nothing had prepared her for the enormity of a California earthquake. She pressed her palms tight against her stomach where her baby was behaving as violently as the trembling earth beneath her.

  Making things even more terrifying was the way it seemed as if the
earth would never top shaking. Time took on an eerie, slow-motion feel. Shattered glass from the windows was raining down like an Iowa ice storm.

  Finally, the swaying and rocking began to diminish. The ear-splitting sound of the earth’s crust being broken quieted. Miraculously, Death released its grip.

  Still shaken, Lily opened her eyes and cringed, viewing destruction all around her.

  She saw Blythe, lying beneath Gage Remington amidst a pile of broken chairs. Nearby, Alan Sturgess, who’d been thrown against the arbor, appeared hopelessly tangled amidst the thorny rose bush.

  The swimming pool, which only seconds earlier had been a tranquil lagoon set like a jewel surrounded by fragrant flowers, had slid down the steep hillside.

  Amazingly, Cait had landed nearly ten feet away. She was lying beneath a pair of white-framed French doors that had burst out of the house. Sloan was attempting to make his way toward her when he was knocked down by a second aftershock.

  Refusing to believe that she could have survived yesterday’s near drowning only to die in an earthquake hours later, Lily curled up in a ball and desperately waited for the terror to end.

  * * *

  San Francisco, California

  * * *

  IT WAS RAINING. Since that was not an unusual occasion for the Bay area, the inclement weather failed to darken Connor’s mood. After all, he had a great deal to celebrate. Not only was he the proud new owner of one of America’s oldest and most revered movie studios, he had just destroyed his lawyer on the handball court.

  After leaving the racquet club, the two men were sitting at the bar in the San Francisco Brewery Company—where Jack Dempsey once worked as a bouncer—drinking Scotch and toasting the recent successes of the man that the Wall Street Journal had recently called a financial wunderkind with a Midas touch who didn’t realize the go-go eighties were over.

  After six months of intense, secret negotiations, the papers had been signed yesterday. Xanadu Studios had been purchased, lock, stock and sound stage, by C. S. Mackay Enterprises.

  “By the way,” Connor said, “I want you to drop the lawsuit against the Van Cortlandt estate.”

  “Why the hell would you want to do that? Have you forgotten the man’s unethical activities cost you nearly a million dollars?”

  Connor’s jaw hardened at the memory. “I never forget anything.”

  “Then why—”

  “Let’s just say it’s personal, and let it go at that.”

  His lawyer gave him a long look, but receiving only a steady, implacable one in return, finally shrugged. “It’s your money.” Knowing that there was no point in arguing when Connor Mackay had made up his mind, he changed the subject.

  “So, how does it feel to join the ranks of Sam Goldwyn and Darryl Zanuck? You are going to set your friends up with some of those gorgeous Hollywood actresses, aren’t you?”

  “I bought a studio, not a brothel,” Connor pointed out good-naturedly. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to struggle along, winning women with your good looks, money and charm. As for how it feels, it’s not half bad.”

  Connor grinned like a fraternity boy who’d just pulled off a major prank. “Not bad at all. In fact, I’ve been thinking about moving to Tinseltown and becoming a hands-on movie mogul. Maybe I’ll even start with Blythe Fielding’s new project.”

  The mention of the sultry actress had him thinking again of her friend, Lily Van Cortlandt. As he’d been doing a lot since their dramatic meeting yesterday morning.

  “Although I can definitely understand the appeal of working with the delectable Ms. Fielding, as your attorney, I’d advise against that idea,” Aaron drawled. “Failure tends to drive investors back into the woodwork.”

  “What makes you think I’d be a failure?” Although his statement had been made in jest, Connor took his friend’s warning as a challenge. From the time he was five years old and his cousin Dylan had double-dog-dared him to swallow a night crawler, Connor had never been able to back away from a challenge. “It just so happens that I like movies.”

  That was definitely an understatement. The truth was, he loved the medium. Connor’s taste in films, like everything else about him, could not be pinned down. A regular patron at the kind of small art theaters specializing in obscure foreign films with subtitles, he was just as likely to be seen working his way through a jumbo box of popcorn while watching an action-adventure thriller at the mall multiplex.

  As for movies made in what had become known as the Glory Days of Hollywood, his private collection of 1930s films had recently been donated to Berkeley’s film library. Indeed, before buying the studio, Connor had been meeting with a syndicated group of theater owners thinking to establish a national chain. The day that deal had fallen through, Walter Stern III providentially arrived at his office, metaphorical hat in hand.

  “A great many people like movies,” the attorney said. “But that doesn’t mean they’re capable of running a studio.”

  “I didn’t know all that much about race horses before I bought one, either.”

  “The difference is that where that horse—and the subsequent breeding farm—were concerned, you were smart enough to leave the training to an expert. The same way you did with that rafting company.”

  After a twenty-one-day trip riding the Colorado rapids in the Grand Canyon, Connor had purchased half interest in the rafting company run by two former Chicago litigators, allowing them to expand their venture into Idaho, Oregon and Wyoming.

  “Your problem, Connor,” Aaron Morrison alleged, “is that the entire idea of movies is to appeal to the masses.”

  “So?”

  “So, in order to make successful movies it’s necessary to understand middle-class values and interests. Which would be extremely difficult for you to do, having been born with a silver spoon in your mouth, a platinum American Express card in one hand and a fistful of stock coupons in the other.”

  Although he’d been hearing similar allegations all his life, for some reason, coming from a man who was not only his lawyer, but his best friend, the insinuation stung. Especially since it reminded him all too clearly of what Lily had said about never getting involved with rich men.

  “In the first place, the project Blythe Fielding is trying to get off the ground is a story about Alexandra Romanov. Who was definitely not the girl next door,” he said. “Neither was Patrick Reardon the boy next door. From what I’ve read, during that brief time they were married—”

  “Before he murdered her,” Aaron broke in.

  Something about the accusation irked Connor. “During that brief time they were married,” he repeated firmly, “Alexandra and Patrick were Hollywood’s most glamorous couple. So, if the studio does end up producing their story, it won’t exactly be a treatise on middle-class values.

  “And may I also take this opportunity to point out that just because I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth doesn’t mean that I haven’t learned to feed myself.” Although his voice was calm, his dark brown eyes were not.

  “Really, Con,” Aaron complained as he signaled the bartender for another Scotch, “there’s no crime in being rich, so don’t be so damn sensitive.”

  Having descended from one of San Francisco’s Irish Big Four families—known as The Silver Kings—the Mackays had always prided themselves in living up to the generously philanthropic standards set by their ancestors.

  Unlike the city’s other Big Four—the so-called Railroad Barons, who defined the unsavory robber baron category of the era—the Silver Kings were not so much unscrupulous as they were lucky.

  From the time their famed bonanza, The Comstock Lode, was discovered in 1859, to the mine’s closure ten years later, the vein of shiny ore poured 500 million worth of silver into the pockets of partners James C. Flood, William S. O’Brian, James Graham Fair and John William Mackay.

  Unwilling to rest on some distant ancestor’s laurels, most members of succeeding generations worked hard, contributed greatly to the fa
mily fortune and continued their generosity to a variety of social causes.

  “I could give up all my money,” Connor claimed recklessly. “Right now and never miss it.”

  “That’s easy to say. Since it’s a moot point.”

  Connor could not believe that this man he’d known all his life, the same man who’d been his best friend for thirty-one years, could actually think him so shallow that he couldn’t separate his money from his character.

  “I’ll make you a little wager,” he said as the impulsive idea suddenly occurred to him. “I have thirty days before I’m scheduled to show up at the studio to announce takeover plans. I’ll bet, during that month, I can successfully pass myself off as a common, ordinary working man.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Aaron said on a laugh.

  “Not at all.” The more he thought about the idea, the more Con liked it.

  “What are the terms?”

  “If I lose, I’ll throw a party at the studio. And invite you and ten people of your choice, along with every actor and actress who’s ever been under contract to Xanadu.”

  “Including Blythe Fielding?” The attorney’s tone suggested that he expected Connor to lose the wager. It also suggested that he found the idea of meeting the sultry, dark sex symbol more than a little appealing.

  “She’ll be at the top of my list,” Connor promised. He folded his arms across the front of his chest. “So, how about it?”

  “What about if you win? What will you want me to put up?”

  “I intend to win,” Connor said matter-of-factly. “And when I do, I’ll expect you to write a five-thousand dollar check to a charity of my choice.”

  Aaron Morrison only hesitated for a moment. A smug look settled on his face. “You’re on. But we need to set down some ground rules.”

  Ten minutes later, they had compiled a detailed list when the bartender turned up the volume on the television. Glancing up, Connor asked, “What’s up?”