A Dangerous Dance

by Pauline Baird Jones

  “The...bargain I'd like to propose is a bit more complicated that that.”

  She let the silence draw out for a moment as she studied him. What could he have in mind? She leaned forward, gesturing to the tall pitcher of lemonade and two crystal glasses waiting on a low table protected from marring the antique surface by a silver tray. Remy had never been a heavy drinker. His personal discipline was one of the things she'd admired about him.

  He hesitated, watching her pour him a glass. As she handed it to him, he said, “Lemonade? You do remember me.”

  “I'm afraid it's far more sordid and uninteresting than that. Magus kept dossiers on everyone. When I found it, it made me wonder...”

  “Wonder what?” Remy leaned toward her, quick interest in his face.

  “If he felt death coming. He certainly had his affairs in order.” More than in order, actually. He'd left detailed instructions for her, enabling her to look almost prescient during that rocky transition from his control of business to hers. By the time his instructions ran out, she knew what to do.

  “Knowing Magus, it wouldn't surprise me,” Remy said.

  Or he'd planned for her to manage his affairs while he was governor, which made him merely arrogant. Either way, she'd had much cause to feel grateful for his foresight, all the while feeling like a puppet on strings that lead to a grave.

  There was a short silence, one that allowed the tension to return and begin to build again. Dorothy sipped her lemonade, enjoying the sour bite and the chill of it as it slid down her throat. More than anything she needed to keep her cool.

  She felt him watching her, gathered her defenses and turned her body so that she faced him. She had to fight the urge to fill the silence with something, anything, but what she wanted him to want. Their gazes connected and this time, she realized, he wasn't going to play until she asked. He didn't know that she wanted him to win this one.

  “What complicated bargain did you have in mind, Remy Mistral?”

  She set her glass back on the tray, then faced him with her hands clasped in her lap, her back finishing school straight. She'd never been “finished,” but she was fast study.

  He leaned back, his legs thrust out and crossed at the ankles. The folds of his expensive pants fell in perfects lines, as if they obeyed Remy. He was almost too much like Magus.

  “There are going to be several candidates claiming Magus's legacy. Your endorsement would help a lot, no question, but...”

  Where was he going? Dorothy only kept a frown off her face with an effort. “But...?”

  “You're Magus's heir.”

  “But I don't want to run,” Dorothy pointed out. “All I can do is endorse—”

  “There is another way to confer Magus's power.” He stopped, holding her gaze with his for a long moment before saying, “Marriage would.”

  The glass Dorothy held slipped from her hand, shattering into pieces against the hardwood floor.

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  * * *

  THREE

  * * * *

  No question that Remy had given Dorothy's dangerous dance some surprising new steps. What startled her was the fact that it didn't seem that alien. Magus would have liked the boldness of it. What shocked her is that she did, too.

  She crossed to the antique vanity table and sank onto the padded seat, facing her own gaze in the aged, mottled mirror. Behind her she could see her four poster bed with its vintage mosquito netting pulled to each side. Everything about the room was to period, though the fabrics were copies, not originals, thank goodness. Vintage was good to a point, that point being when they stopped being comfortable or easy to care for. Probably because of her less-than-vintage upbringing, she thought.

  In a distant sort of way, she wondered who had decorated the room. It had been like this when she arrived in Oz and when she left it wearing mourning black. The colors were good, with her favorite green dominant. Had Magus known or was it just luck?

  There was so much she didn't know and wouldn't ever know. It would have been easy to recreate him as the perfect father, to set him on a high pedestal and imbue him with any trait or motive she wanted. She could even make up her own reasons for why he didn't come near her for eighteen years. He wasn't around to dispute anything. Fantasy father would have been a much more comfortable ghost to deal with the past ten years. Unfortunately, or fortunately, her mother had taught her to keep her feet firmly on the ground, to keep her fairy tales in the pages of childhood books and out of her life.

  Those feet had come off the ground a bit when Remy revealed his plan. Even now, fantasy thoughts, straight out of the pages of a romance novel, whirled in her head. She stared at herself, then slowly and carefully began to debunk each one.

  Remy didn't love her. He wanted Magus's power and access to the money to fuel his campaign. It wasn't personal. How could it be when he didn't know her?

  She didn't know him either. There was a huge difference between the infatuation of a seventeen year old and the real, grown-up love she was capable of now.

  Attraction wasn't love either.

  If she wasn't careful, she could screw up both their lives. She had to keep her mind on her goal, which was to expose the man who contracted Magus's murder and quit living in Magus's shadow. She wanted her life, not Magus's life. Remy wanted Magus's life, or at least what Magus had wanted. That meant they were on different paths, moving toward different things. And if she looked into the future, she couldn't see Remy giving up what he wanted for a life of obscurity. Nor could she see herself ever being happy in the limelight. Opposites might attract, but they were both grownups and didn't have to act on that attraction.

  She almost felt the thump as her feet connected with the wooden floor under the vanity. Only then did she allow herself to consider Remy's proposal. Even without the rosy glow of fantasy, it had merit, or was that despite it? Being attracted to him was a definite complication, but was it insurmountable?

  In some ways, it would be like dancing on the head of a pin. She'd have to pretend she liked him, while not letting on she actually did like him. A single misstep in one direction and the plan failed, possibly fatally. A misstep in the other and she got her heart broken.

  Okay, those were the risks.

  On the other hand, Remy's plan had more potential for a successful outcome, even weighted with all those emotional components. If she was able to be cool and logical, which she granted, she wasn't in a position to know for sure, it had the potential to apply the most pressure—if Magus had been killed for political reasons. And if he hadn't?

  Dorothy considered that possibility again, though she'd done it thousands of times before—and come to the same conclusion. It had to be political. Or why choose that time? Why wait until Magus was rising in the polls? Why wait until pundits were beginning to call him unstoppable?

  She'd gone through his businesses with the proverbial fine tooth comb, looking for another motive and had come up empty. Magus, despite his ruthlessness, had pursued his businesses with an almost fanatical sense of ethics. Maybe he's always known he'd go into politics and didn't want to give anyone any fuel for scandal. After the breakup of his marriage, he'd lived the life of an esthete as far as she could tell. There'd been no bimbo eruptions on his entry into the political field or after his death.

  Within his businesses, he'd treated his employees better than his only daughter. He'd believed that good treatment and good benefits paid off in spades. Only the unethical and dishonest had problems with him. Once she'd assured people she didn't intend to change things, the loyalty he'd built flowed to her. There'd been some jockeying for position after his death, but not as much as she'd expected. Magus had chosen to surround himself with people who were bright and intelligent, and top notch at what they did, ambitious to excel, but not into power for power's sake.

  Maybe it was because of his years in Australia, that down-under Oz, that he was both colorful and down-to-earth. Somehow he'd managed to be both mysteri
ous and accessible to those he worked with. Like her, they fell under his spell and were happy to be there.

  When he began his campaign, he'd managed to connect in the same way with the voters he met as he traveled around the state. People loved him. It was as simple as that. And now Remy was willing to bet his freedom that they'd love her, too.

  She looked down at her hands, spreading her bare-of-adornment fingers and studying them as if they belonged to someone else. Gone were the cracked and broken nails of the wait and the dry skin of too much immersion in harsh chemicals. The skin was smooth and soft, the nails manicured, meticulously cared for. She ran a finger along the fourth finger on her left hand, trying to imagine it with a gold band. She didn't have to try hard.

  She looked up again, speaking aloud to her reflection, “Who are you fooling, Dorothy? You knew you were going to agree the moment he said it. You should run as far and as fast as you can. This could really hurt, but you've been hurt before and it didn't kill you.”

  Of course, in the past she hadn't been baiting a killer.

  * * * *

  Remy suggested they do the interview from Oz. The atmosphere was great and it would seem more a part of the mystique that Magus had so enjoyed creating.

  Dorothy was happy to agree. For her it meant putting off the moment when she'd have to emerge from seclusion and once again face the howl of a press corps on the hunt. For a short time after Magus's death, as new heir to his empire, she'd been a target of the press, but by being rigorously uninteresting, they'd faded away. For several years now, she'd only been covered by the business inclined press. Now she was preparing to not only be interesting, but to give the press beehive a giant whack with a stick. Smart. Real smart.

  At least she'd know real fast, if Magus was still interesting, and by default, her.

  “I don't understand why you're doing this,” Titus said, during a rare moment alone with Dorothy. “You hate the press.”

  Poor Titus. He liked his world straightforward and above board.

  “How did you ever get mixed up with Magus and Oz?” she asked, before she could stop herself. Because she was so private herself, she was careful of the privacy of those around her.

  He looked startled for a moment. “Your mother offered me the job. We went to the same high school.”

  She couldn't have been more surprised if he'd announced his parents were bugs. “I didn't know.”

  He shrugged. “I expect it's all in the file Magus kept on me.”

  “I expect it is,” she said, tacitly letting him know she'd never read it. The real truth was, she'd never thought of reading it. Titus was just there, like Magus's ghost. But now that was changed. He'd been in high school. With her mother. He'd been a teenager. Amazing. “Your parents...”

  She let the question trail off, in case it wasn't welcome.

  “They died just after I graduated. So I went into the Navy.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  That wasn't what she meant, but she let it stand. She knew what it was like to have wounds poked at. “Do you know why...?”

  Again she hesitated, as his brows lifted in polite inquiry.

  “...my parents separated. Why he never tried to contact me?”

  His cool, closed gaze softened. “I was his bodyguard, not his confessor.”

  “Did he have one? A confessor?” She kept hoping that she could get some of her questions answered, but he shook his head.

  “Not that I ever saw.”

  “I guess my parents had that in common,” she said, unable to stop the hint of bitterness that colored her voice. It seemed that her parents’ secrets would always stand between her and her memories of them.

  Titus looked like he was going to say something, but was diverted by a discreet beep from his cell phone. He looked at the message, then at her. “We have more company.”

  “Who?”

  “Bubba Joe Henry.”

  “Really?”

  Bubba wasn't his real name, of course. That was Robert Joe, but half the men in the South were Bubbas, Dorothy had found. The trick was keeping them all separate, hence the “Joe” add-on. What made this particular Bubba's arrival interesting was his position of her list of possible suspects.

  “Do I have time to see him before the interview starts?” She looked at her watch, trying to do the math in concert with her racing thoughts.

  Titus nodded. “You still have something over half an hour.”

  “Let him in, then. I'll see him in the sitting room.” Pity the library was taken. She'd liked to have seen him with Magus's face in the background. She resisted going to the long windows that overlooked the drive where he'd arrive and instead seated herself on an elegant velvet couch. In the past, this had been the room where the ladies of the house received their guests, so it was an overtly feminine room, while still managing to be quite impersonal. Dorothy knew she'd never taken possession of it, during her short time here and it appeared her mother hadn't either. Or her presence had been swept away when she left. It would have been nice to have something of her mother here, something that would help her build a bridge between the past and the present that included her mother. Sometimes it felt as if she'd not just died, but been erased from Dorothy's life without a trace. Other than some old snapshots, she had nothing. Anything of value had been sold to pay medical bills.

  She heard footsteps in the hall and straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. As Bubba Joe entered, she rose to her feet, her head tilted as she waited to see how he intended to play the scene.

  He stopped in the doorway, his gaze drifting around the room before settling on her. He was a tall man, with a ruddy face and light, wavy hair that some women seemed to find attractive. Dorothy had never seen the appeal, finding his ready smile a bit too practiced for her taste and too much calculation behind his light, blue eyes. She'd heard he had charm, but she appeared to have been born armored against it. She'd also heard that he saw the governor's mansion as a path to the White House. He wouldn't have liked Magus forging ahead of him, using up his window of opportunity to power.

  He'd come alone, thank goodness. His wife was the coldest fish Dorothy had ever met. Thin and pale and ruthlessly determined as any man around, Suzanne Henry was also rumored to be charming and intelligent. Not to mention AC/DC in the bedroom. There was the stink of scandal about them both, but nothing ever seemed to stick to them, not unlike another famous presidential couple.

  Bubba Joe and Magus had maintained the appearance of a friendship, but he'd disappeared pretty quickly from Dorothy's life after the funeral. She knew from the file, Magus didn't trust him and would have done what he could to block him from ever running for office. She also knew Bubba Joe didn't like being thwarted. Oddly enough, he hadn't moved to fill Magus's position ten years ago. Ten years was a long time to put ambition on hold. He hadn't wasted the time, though. He'd held a couple of offices in the state house and senate, avoiding any national service so he could run as an outsider when the time came.

  An outsider. A man who'd never held a job and been on the public payroll his whole life. It was a crazy business, she decided for the millionth time.

  “Little Dorothy, all grown up,” he said, his tone as warm as if they'd parted yesterday as dearest friends. “You look amazing.”

  Dorothy figured he'd play the hypocrite. At least he was going to spare them both a fake explanation of why he hadn't called. He strode forward, grasped both her hands and raised them toward his mouth for an almost kiss, and then planted a real kiss on either cheek, leaving her feeling like she needed another shower. She stepped back just enough to forestall any of the groping she'd heard he was famous for, and then gestured toward the seating, the movement general enough to let him pick his own chair.

  “Please.”

  No surprise when he picked a wing-backed, throne-like one.

  “You look wonderful.” He made the compliment sound vaguely lewd. He rested his ham-like
hands on the delicate sides of the chair and gave her a reproachful look. “Back in town three days and you didn't call.”

  Nothing like going on the attack to prevent having to explain. He was good, but she'd been tutored by Magus.

  “No.” She smiled at him, before adding with facile friendliness, “I'm afraid I haven't much time. I'm doing an interview in twenty minutes.”

  A slight, quick frown drew his brows together and an ugly look flashed in his eyes before he reapplied his genial mask. The smile kept its edge, however. “So the rumors are true. You are considering a run for governor.”

  “I'm afraid I promised Remy Mistral an exclusive on that question.”

  This time his smile didn't crack, but Dorothy felt an aura of menace filter into the room. That he didn't like to be thwarted was, apparently, an understatement.

  “I backed off before, Dorothy, but I'm not this time. Magus was...well, the Wizard. But you're no wizard. You'd do better to throw your support behind someone who can win. It's...safer.”

  “Magus didn't teach me to play it safe.” Dorothy hesitated. “I'm surprised you waited so long to run. I rather expected you to already be moving on from the governor's mansion.”

  “Suzanne felt the time wasn't right,” Bubba Joe said. “As you know, there is an ebb and flow in politics. Or perhaps, you don't.” He tried to leer and sneer and failed at both.

  The hair on her arms rose in warning. This was not a man to underestimate. Dorothy forced a smile. “How is Suzanne?”

  “She's fine.” He hesitated, shifting in the chair. “You went up to Angola, I hear.”

  “You have good sources.”

  “Naturally.” He licked his thick lips. “And now Vance is dead. Doesn't that tell you something?”

  “It tells me that the past isn't dead. That there are still secrets to find and expose.”

  “You should let the past...and Magus...rest in peace.”

  “Neither seems willing to oblige. Can't you feel him here? I know I do.” She'd poked the tiger. Now maybe she could spook him.

  “You're a wealthy young woman. You could walk away.” He sounded firm and almost kind, but spoiled it by looking around uneasily. “There's the whole world to spend it in. He can't make you—”