Pleasure Seekers

by Rochelle Alers

  Derrick glanced around at the tasteful furnishings as he moved from the entryway into the living room. The dominant color of a soft apricot pink was the perfect contrast to shades of brown ranging from ecru and fawn, to mahogany. Wall-to-wall drapes were open to reveal spectacular views of Central Park.

  His footfalls were muffled in the pile of a chocolate-brown and shrimp-pink area rug as he walked over to the window. Light from the windows of towering apartment buildings on the other side of the park dotted the darkened landscape.

  “I would’ve paid you twice what you asked for a view like this,” he said reverently.

  Alana, having slipped out of her heels, padded barefoot across the living room to stand beside Derrick. “I wasn’t out to cheat you, D. If I’d listed it with a Realtor, I probably wouldn’t have gotten my price or sold it so quickly.”

  He gave her a soulful look. “I don’t need another home, but this place is perfect if I want to stay over in the city after a heavy night of partying.”

  “Do you really party that much?”

  Derrick smiled, the expression deepening the folds around his eyes. “More than I actually want to. I suppose it goes along with the business. Work hard and party even harder.”

  Reaching for his hand, Alana threaded her fingers through his. What surprised her was that his hand was as soft as hers. “How did you get into the music business?”

  “Do you want to interview me?”

  Alana shook her head. “No. I’m just a little curious about the man who’s going to become godfather to my son or daughter.”

  “Do you have a couple of hours?”

  “I have all night.”

  Derrick stared at Alana. He was only a couple of years older than she was yet felt much older. And despite her lush body and exotic face, Alana Gardner projected an innocence that made him want to take care of her as one would a child. Underneath her sophistication was a woman who loved and trusted with her heart instead of her head.

  Releasing her hand, he shrugged out of his suit jacket. “I’ll answer all of your questions, but first I’m going to need some coffee.” He was still feeling the effects of the champagne and brandy he’d drunk the night before, a night that ended at six in the morning.

  “Caffeine, decaffeinated, flavored or plain?”

  Derrick stared at Alana, complete surprise on his face. “Damn, woman. I didn’t know you had it like that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Most girls I know will break out the instant, and that’s it.”

  Rising on tiptoe, Alana kissed his cheek. “That’s because they are girls, Derrick. It’s time you start dealing with a full-grown woman.”

  “Sure you right,” he drawled.

  Alana snapped her fingers. “You better recognize. Make yourself at home while I put up the coffee. Then I’m going to take this makeup off my face before I slip into something more comfortable.”

  “I prefer the caffeinated,” he said as Alana turned on her heel and walked in the direction of her bedroom.

  Derrick placed his suit jacket over the back of a tan leather club chair with a matching ottoman, then made his way over to a desk in the corner. Built-in shelves were crowded with books and sleeves packed with magazines. He scanned the titles of the books. It was apparent Alana was blessed with beauty and brains. Many of the titles were required reading in high school and college.

  His gaze shifted from the books to a large stack of paper sitting next to a computer. He picked up the first page. It was a manuscript. Alana was writing a novel.

  Derrick picked up the unbound pages and sat down on the sofa. Reaching over, he turned on the lamp sitting on a massive square of rosewood that doubled as a table and began reading. The aroma of brewing coffee filled the air as he turned page after page. He’d completed the first two chapters when Alana reappeared in a pair of cotton pajama pants and an oversize T-shirt. He glanced up at her and smiled. Her fresh-scrubbed face and the curls she’d brushed off her forehead and secured in an elastic band on top of her head served to enhance her natural beauty.

  “What are you doing?” She wasn’t able to conceal her annoyance.

  Derrick ran a hand over his shaved head before putting the manuscript on the cushion beside him. He stood up. “I was reading your masterpiece. Is it completed?”

  Some of the fight went out of Alana. She didn’t know whether Derrick had referred to her novel as a masterpiece to placate her or if he truly liked what she’d written.

  “You like it?”

  “I love what I’ve read so far. Have you finished it?” he asked again.

  Alana nodded slowly. “It’s done. But I still have to go over it and do some line editing and probably some tightening here and there.”

  “From what I read I don’t think you should change anything.”

  “That’s because I rewrote the first hundred pages three times before I felt comfortable with it.”

  “Do you mind if I read it?”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “You want to read the book tonight?”

  Derrick smiled. “Yes, I do.”

  Alana’s body stiffened in shock. “I can’t let you take the manuscript with you. It’s my only copy.”

  Derrick met her gaze. “Then I’ll stay here and read it.”

  “It will take you all night to read more than seven hundred pages.”

  Shrugging a shoulder under his custom-made white shirt, Derrick moved closer to Alana. Cradling her face between his hands, he dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “I have all night.”

  Wrapping her arms around his trim waist, Alana leaned into his warmth and strength. “I’ll sit up with you for a while. Then I’m going to bed.” Pulling back, she stared up at the man who unknowingly had become her friend and knight in shining armor. “The coffee’s finished brewing.” Hand in hand, they walked out of the living room and into the kitchen.

  Derrick called his driver and informed him that he would call him the following day to let him know when to pick him up. He sat in the large eat-in kitchen with Alana, drinking coffee and telling her of his childhood. Alana cleaned up the kitchen and went to bed, while he returned to the living room to read. The hands on his watch moved slowly as he found himself pulled into a world of power, glamour and fame with larger-than-life characters that leaped off the page.

  Alana had written a bestseller. And he knew a movie producer who’d been looking for something for the small screen. He’d wait until Monday before making the telephone call, a call he was certain would change her life—forever.

  CHAPTER 93

  Faye lay on a deck chair, her face and eyes shielded from the strong Mediterranean sun with a wide-brimmed straw hat and sunglasses. She sat on the sundeck of Bart’s mega yacht that had been their floating hotel for the past two and a half weeks.

  The gleaming sailing vessel, custom-built by the Burger Boat Company with steel hulls and fiberglass for speed was considered the Rolls-Royce of yachts; a crew of ten had catered to their every request. The captain, two chefs, steward, first officer, engineer, his assistant and three other crew members moved about the two-hundred-foot-long, thirty-five-foot-wide boat with a top speed of twenty knots almost sight unseen.

  She felt movement and opened her eyes. Bart had come on deck, sitting down on the chair next to hers. She’d gotten up early to watch the sun come up, leaving him sleeping soundly in bed. It was to be their last full day at sea before the Kay-Ann docked at Marseille, where they would board a jet for the return flight to the States.

  Faye offered Bart a warm smile. “Bonjour, mon chéri.”

  Bart returned her smile. He’d been tutoring Faye in French, and he found her a quick study. “Bonjour, mon amour. Est-ce que tu as mangé le petit-déjeuner?”

  She sat up. “Slow it down, big daddy. You know I—”

  “Is that how you see me, Faye, as a father figure?” he asked, scowling and interrupting her.

  Fa
ye moved off her chair, straddled Bart’s lap and looped her arms around his neck. She kissed his forehead. “No, I don’t. Even though I initially had issues about your age, I’ve never thought of you that way.”

  His frown vanished. “And I’ve never thought of you as a daughter.”

  “Are you into younger women?”

  “No. I’ve always dated women within my age group.”

  “What about your wife?”

  Bart’s expression did not change with her query. “What about her?”

  “How old was she when she passed away?”

  “Forty.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “We’d just celebrated our eleventh anniversary.”

  “What happened, Bart?”

  He’d wanted to wait to return to the States before telling Faye about Deidre but knew what he’d had with his wife had to be resolved with his fiancée’s query.

  “The short story is I married the boss’s daughter.”

  Easing back, Faye gave him a long, penetrating stare. “What’s the long story?”

  “One of my professors at Yale got me an apprentice position with a Boston-based architectural firm. I was there for less than year before I sent my résumé to Dunn Management Sales Group because I felt stymied.”

  Faye moved off his lap and stretched out on her chair. “Had you given them a chance? After all, you weren’t there a year.”

  Bart shook his head slowly. “The firm was very small and I felt at that time there wasn’t much room for growth. They liked my designs but weren’t so enthused that they used them. Most times I assisted on projects with other more experienced architects.

  “Whenever I read architectural or design magazines, the name Edmund Dunn captured my attention. Believing I had nothing to lose, I forwarded my résumé and one of my drawings to his company. A week later I got a phone call from the boss himself. He sent his personal driver from New York to pick me up, and as they say, the rest is history.

  “I was hired on the spot, given an outrageous salary, and three weeks after I’d come face-to-face with the infamous Edmund Dunn I moved into an apartment in one of his buildings. He’d asked me what I wanted and I told him that I wanted to go to Columbia’s School of Business. He made it happen with one telephone call.

  “I worked hard, Faye, attending classes and working long hours for Edmund Dunn. It didn’t take me long to realize the man was a tyrant and somewhat of a Svengali. Once he did anything for you he owned you body and soul. If he set aside an apartment in one of his buildings for a judge’s son or the police commissioner’s daughter, then they owed him. And whenever he called in a favor they acquiesced. It wasn’t until after I’d married his daughter that I became privy to his under-the-table deals.

  “He thought nothing of sending his goons after the elderly to frighten them so much that they were afraid to stay in their rent-controlled apartments. Once the building was vacant, he razed it and put up high-rise co-ops.”

  Bart was unable to ignore what he thought was a reproachful look from Faye. He’d seen the look and overheard the whispered insinuations whenever he’d disclosed that he’d married the boss’s daughter.

  “You’d become family, so why would he not trust you? How did you meet his daughter?”

  “Edmund hosted a party for me at his summer place along the Jersey shore when I graduated from Columbia, and I met Deidre for the first time. She’d been raised by her maternal grandmother who’d become her guardian the year Deidre celebrated her eighth birthday.”

  “What happened to her mother?”

  “She died in an automobile accident. To say Deidre was spoiled was an understatement. Whatever she wanted she got.”

  “And she wanted you.”

  Bart stared up at the cloudless sky. “Yes.”

  Faye’s gaze narrowed as she removed her sunglasses. “Did you want her?”

  He lowered his head, meeting her quizzical stare. “At first I tried to stay as far away from Deidre Dunn as I could because she was the daughter of the man who not only signed my paycheck, but at that time held my future within his grasp. A few of my designs had won several awards and I later discovered Edmund had been a major player in those final decisions.

  “My relationship with Deidre began with invitations to dinner and segued to spending time at her family’s summer home. Once I let down my guard I found out that she wasn’t a snob. She had a wicked sense of humor that I found charming and refreshing. Once we began dating seriously I discovered that she was a frightened, insecure young woman who was always seeking approval. If it wasn’t from her father, then it was from her peers. A week after her grandmother passed away I proposed marriage because she’d cried nonstop about not wanting to be alone. Edmund wasn’t what one would call a hands-on father. There were times when I believe he even forgot that he had a child.”

  “Were you in love with her, Bart?”

  There was a beat of silence before he said, “Not when I married her. But within the first six months of our marriage I couldn’t remember when I hadn’t. We decided not to wait to start a family and the day Deidre told me she was pregnant was the happiest day of my life. Three months later, she’d miscarried.

  “We waited two years and tried again. This time she made it past the first trimester before she lost our second child. The doctor cautioned Deidre about trying again, but she refused to listen.

  “She begged me to try one more time, promising to stay in bed for the duration of her pregnancy. I gave in and it happened again. She’d suffered three miscarriages in nine years, and with each one she’d become more mentally unstable. I thought about a vasectomy, but before I could schedule the procedure, Deidre told me she was pregnant again. She’d waited until she was three months along before telling me.”

  Bart closed his eyes. “I lost it, Faye. I went off on my wife for the first time in eleven years. I told her that she was thoughtless and selfish because she’d been willing to risk her life and our future together to bring a child into the world when there were thousands of children waiting for adoption.” He opened his eyes. “I told her that I’d planned to have a vasectomy and she threw a tantrum. She told me that she hated me and ordered me to get out.”

  “Did you?”

  He nodded. “Whenever Deidre became hysterical it was impossible to reason with her.”

  Faye lifted her eyebrows. “It wasn’t her first tantrum?”

  A wry smiled parted Bart’s lips. “No. I packed a bag and checked in to a hotel.”

  “What did your father-in-law say?”

  “I never involved Edmund in my marriage. He’d made me an equal partner and Dunn Management Sales Group became the Dunn-Houghton Group. I’d been out of the apartment two days when the housekeeper called to tell me that she’d found Deidre in the bathroom, hemorrhaging. I got to the hospital minutes after she’d been taken into surgery. Her doctor informed me that she’d undergone a hysterectomy because they couldn’t stop the bleeding.

  “She lapsed into a deep depression when she realized she would never have children, and I took her to Oahu because we’d honeymooned there. Two days after we returned to the mainland, Deidre swallowed a bottle of painkillers. By the time I found her, her heart had stopped. The EMTs were able to revive her, and she was placed on a respirator.

  “I had her examined by one of the country’s leading neurosurgeons and his prognosis was that she’d suffered irreversible brain damage. Legally she was brain dead.”

  Leaning over, Faye rested her hand on Bart’s fisted one. “How long was she on the respirator before she died?”

  His fist tightened as he exhaled a long sigh. “She’s still on the respirator.”

  Faye placed a hand over her mouth. Eyes wild, she stared at him, unable to believe he’d planned to marry her when he still had a wife. A wife who was alive!

  “You lying bastard! How can you ask me to marry you when you’re still married?” She jumped up as if propelled by a powerful force
.

  Bart stood up, seemingly in slow motion, and caught her upper arm. “Come with me, Faye.”

  She tried pulling away, but he’d tightened his hold. “Where? In case you haven’t noticed we’re in the middle of the ocean.”

  Lowering his head and his voice, he said quietly, “I don’t want to fight with you. Not here.”

  “Why?” she spat out. “You don’t want your crew to think ill of their boss?”

  The blood darkened Bart’s face under his deep tan, making his eyes appear lighter than they actually were. “I really don’t give a fuck what they think of me,” he ground out between his teeth.

  Faye was stunned. The curse had slipped off his tongue as naturally as taking a breath. She’d forgotten that under the tailored clothes and acquired refinement Bartholomew Houghton had clawed and scratched his way out of poverty to change his life. And that he could revert to his humble beginnings in the blink of an eye.

  “Okay,” she conceded. “Downstairs.” It was her turn to talk between her teeth.

  CHAPTER 94

  Faye followed Bart down the narrow staircase to their stateroom. The door stood open and a crew member busied herself making the bed. The woman glanced up, meeting Bart’s thunderous gaze.

  “Out!” She put down the pillow and rushed out of the stateroom, closing the door behind her.

  Resting her hands on her hips, Faye glared at the man to whom she’d pledged her future. “Not only are you duplicitous but you’re also a bully.”

  Bart threw up a hand. “Don’t start, Faye. Please don’t start a war you have no chance of winning.”

  Her temper exploded. “Is this how it’s going to be once we’re married? You give the orders and I lockstep and salute you!”

  He took two long steps, reaching out and pulling her to his chest. “No! That’s not the way it’s going to be,” he countered, his voice considerably softer, almost conciliatory. “All I want is for you to hear me out. Please, baby.”