Any Given Moment (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 3)

by Laura Van Wormer

  "Kissing," she said, her full, soft lips pressing against Georgi­ana's. "Kissing," she repeated, nuzzling the side of Georgiana's face, her ear, her neck, coming back up to her mouth. Georgiana felt herself surrender, but then she began to worry that Alexandra would come to her senses and leave.

  But Alexandra only continued to kiss her steadily, gently, as if she were trying not to frighten Georgiana. Frighten her, she who had done everything—or so she had thought.

  Alexandra's mouth had a sense of urgency about it now, and Georgiana was acutely aware of the hand slipping from her shoul­der and down into the folds of her robe, lying flat for a moment on her collarbone, as if to make sure it was really Georgiana there underneath it, in fact, and then Alexandra cupped her hand over one warm, soft breast.

  Georgiana's reaction was an involuntary groan, and then bliss­fully she fell into the movement of her touch. After a while, Georgiana kissed her face and whispered, "I love being touched by you," and Alexandra did something to her nipple.

  With another groan, her face fell forward into Alexandra's neck. "I think you might have done this before," she whispered, smiling, but then abruptly sucked in her breath as Alexandra did something to her breast again.

  "It's never felt this way before," Alexandra murmured, kissing Georgiana deeply, pulling her tight against her.

  Their kisses were getting incredibly long.

  "This has to come off," Georgiana managed to say, reaching to unhook Alexandra's bra. "Oh, yes," she murmured, feeling her­ and feeling her respond, "you are a gorgeous creature." She took Alexandra's breast in her mouth and thrilled as her body went very hard again, her sighs and muscle twinges telling Georgiana every­thing she needed to know.

  No doubt about it, Alexandra Waring was a woman who loved making love with a woman.

  Alexandra was looking at her through half-closed eyes. She pulled Georgiana's robe open and her eyes traveled down and stayed there. She swallowed. She gently let a hand follow the curve of Georgiana's friend's hip, and then brought her eyes back up. "I'll never be able to climb out of this, you know," she said, breath unsteady.

  "Good God, I hope not," Georgiana said. "Because I'm in love with you."

  Alexandra pulled her close, their breasts softly colliding.

  Everything inside of Georgiana started to rock then, and before long they were all over each other, and Alexandra was pushing her down on the pillows, sliding a smooth thigh up between Georgi­ana's legs, and Georgiana knew she was going to come soon, but she did not want to.

  At least not yet.

  There was ever so much to do first.

  Part IV

  47

  When the alarm went off at seven Friday morning, Elizabeth could barely drag herself out of bed. She threw on her robe and stumbled to the kitchen, where she found that Patty had not only started making coffee, but was on the phone ordering in croissants and muffins.

  "I think I'm getting into the swing of this New York living," she said with a laugh. She was dressed for work, and Elizabeth noticed, once again, how wonderful she looked as a blonde.

  Elizabeth went back to her room, halfheartedly tried to do some I exercises, but quickly gave up in favor of a shower. When she returned to the kitchen, she found that David had arrived.

  "Mornin', Bets," he said.

  Elizabeth gave him a kiss on the cheek, noticed immediately that his eyes would not meet hers, and wondered what was going on with him.

  The doorman rang to announce that Monty was on his way up. "He's promised to behave," Elizabeth assured David.

  "Where are we going to do the conference call?" he asked, accepting coffee from Patty. "Thanks, this smells great."

  "In the study, I guess, there's a speaker phone," Elizabeth said.

  Patty let Monty in, and when she led him back to the kitchen, he stopped in the doorway, looking baffled.

  "What's the matter?" Elizabeth asked him.

  "What's Alexandra Waring doing here?" he asked, pointing his thumb back at the hall.

  "Alexander Waring?" David said.

  "I just passed her in the foyer," Monty said.

  "She stopped by this morning to give Georgiana some advice," Elizabeth said matter-of-factly.

  She noticed that Patty was trying not to look at her. Patty knew full well when Alexandra Waring had arrived last night.

  "What kind of advice?" Monty said.

  "On how to handle Creighton, I think," Elizabeth said. "Now where could those muffins be? I'm starving," she said, changing the subject. "Why haven't they arrived yet?"

  Georgiana appeared in the study promptly at eight, looking, Elizabeth thought, wonderfully flushed and happy and healthy for someone whose career was about to be undermined by her own agent. "Good morning, everyone," she said, smiling, "are we all set?"

  "I'm calling now," Elizabeth said, picking up the phone. "Oh, by the way, everybody, now that we're all here, Monty has some­thing he wants to say."

  Monty looked a bit startled as he stood beside Elizabeth's chair, but he cleared his throat. "I want to apologize. To you, David, and to you, Georgiana," he said, looking at her, "and to you, too, Patty. I was out of line last night."

  Nobody said anything.

  "And, I have to admit," Monty said, "I said some things I don't necessarily believe, but I said them anyway to rile you folks up."

  "Well, for God's sake, don't anyone ask him which things he meant and which he didn't, or he'll start in all over again," Geor­giana said, and everyone laughed, breaking the tension.

  When they connected with the Hillingses in Water Mill, who were on a speakerphone in the upstairs study, everyone shouted greetings and get well wishes to Dorothy. Then Elizabeth quickly led the conversation around to the topic they were so anxious to find out about.

  "Dorothy," Elizabeth said, "David is going to tell you a story, and we want you to tell us if it sounds at all familiar to you."

  "All right."

  David proceeded, referring to his notes. "It takes place in the year 3000 and it's about a teenager named Mathew Soaring. Earth is living under the threat of invasion by the Wolfen planet, which claims earth is rightfully theirs. The Planetary Council meets and decides the Wolfen have no business taking over Earth. When the Wolfen actually invade anyway, all the other planets are afraid to interfere. Encouraged, the Wolfen go after other planets. Mathew, head of the Space Force, goes through the universe, creating trou­ble for the Wolfen. When the Wolfen are forced to spread their forces all over the universe to deal with the uprisings Mathew has started, he leads the Planetary Council forces to victory, first taking back Earth and then, one by one, each of the other planets. At the end, instead of destroying the Wolfen planet, the Council replaces their leaders with teachers who show them how to live peacefully. And the universe is saved."

  It was so quiet they could hear the ticking of the clock.

  "Doesn't ring a bell, huh?" Monty finally said.

  "Well, of course it does, Montgomery dear," Dorothy Hillings said, "it's a metaphoric tale of World War Two."

  "Oh!" Elizabeth cried. "Of course it is! No wonder it sounded so familiar. And Earth is Poland?"

  "Figuratively speaking," Dorothy said. "But this is also, I be­lieve, a version of a children's book, published around 1941—not very widely, of course, not with the war. In fact, if I recall correctly, it was originally printed by hand on brown paper."

  "Published where, Doe?" they heard Henry ask.

  "England," Mrs. Hillings replied. "It was called Mathew and the Allied Planets," she said. "Do you remember? By Stephen Collins? It was a large, hand-printed paperback. They hoped to publish it in the United States, but it never worked out."

  "Why don't I remember this?" Henry said.

  "I'm not sure we ever laid eyes on it until 1956 or so, when Helen Hollard passed away."

  "Who's that?" Monty asked, trying to follow this.

  "Helen was the last partner of Hollard & Borrs," Dorothy ex­plained, "one of the
first literary agencies in England. We pur­chased their list in 1956, when the firm was being dissolved. Henry, darling, don't feel badly—there were so many titles, quite frankly, I don't think you ever even saw this one. I remember it because it was such a labor of love, trying to publish a children's book in the middle of the war—and because the author, Stephen Collins, was a pilot with the RAF, and was shot down over Germany and taken to a concentration camp. He survived to see liberation, but died a few years later from complications connected with his incarceration—­tuberculosis, I think it was. It was all very sad, you see, because he had written the book for his little boy—named, in fact, Mathew, I think—who never really got a chance to know his father."

  "When did you say Collins died?" Henry asked her.

  "I'm not absolutely sure," she said, "I'd have to look in the files."

  "The files!" Monty cried.

  "Files in storage?" Elizabeth asked.

  "When, Doe, when did he die?" Henry said urgently, ignoring the New York crew.

  "My guess would be 1947 or 1948."

  "Doe," Henry said quickly, "this is very important—you say the book was never published in the United States?"

  "They filed for copyright, I know, but we never—" Dorothy said. There was a pause and then a sharp intake of breath. "Oh, my word, Henry! You don't think all this started with—that they're trying to—? Oh, they wouldn't dare!"

  "David," Henry barked, "what did you say the budget was on that movie?"

  "It was eighty million and escalated to over a hundred twenty," David said.

  "And it's Metropolis Pictures, isn't it?" Mrs. Hillings said, add­ing, in a deeply sarcastic voice, "as if I have to ask."

  "Yes, it is," David said.

  Silence.

  "Well, Doe," they heard Henry sigh, "there it is."

  "Yes," she said. "Really quite extraordinary. And what an arro­gant, stupid, blundering idiot that young man has been to let it escalate to this. He is truly a fool."

  Everyone at the Gramercy Park apartment was looking at ev­eryone else, utterly confused. "Henry, Dorothy," Elizabeth said, "I'm sorry, but you've lost us."

  "And it's just as well, dear, until we know for sure," Dorothy said. "On top of everything else, we don't need a libel suit right now—not until we know for sure."

  "Know what for sure?" Monty cried in frustration.

  "You'll know very soon, I promise," Dorothy said.

  "Elizabeth," Henry said, "I want you to go out to the warehouse and find the files labeled Hollard & Borrs and bring them back to the apartment immediately. Monty, I want you to go with her."

  "But—" he started to say. "Okay," he said instead.

  "David," Henry said.

  "Yes, sir?"

  I don't care what you have to do, but we must have a copy of the script to that movie."

  "Okay," David said. "I'll try."

  "You'll get it," Henry told him, "you have to. And I want it today."

  Immediately after hanging up, Henry got Josh Lafayette on the phone and talked to him at length. "When he was through, he hung up and walked back to their bedroom, where he found Dorothy packing her bags.

  "I don't give a damn about your silly doctors," Dorothy told him. "We are going back to the city and straightening this out."

  "No, Doe, you can't," he said, grabbing the sweater out of her hand and throwing it on the bed next to the suitcase.

  "Mrs. Hillings, really," Bernadette said, "I don't think you should go."

  "Oh, pooh, Bernadette, what do you know?" Dorothy said, irritated. "You've got your whole life ahead of you!"

  "Now, Doe," Henry said.

  "Henry, I could strangle you!" she told her husband, putting her hand on her hip. "You've got Georgiana mixed up with this—­with someone like Creighton Berns—and you know damn well what that could mean!"

  "Doe—"

  "And it's absolutely beyond my comprehension how you could allow them to drag Patty Kleczak into this! The poor lamb never did a thing except slave to write her book while trying to raise a family, and now you've got her spying at the very agency that's supposed to be selling her book! Honestly!"

  "I had nothing to do with it," he cried.

  "And to tell David to get that script. You know what will happen to him if Creighton Berns gets wind of it."

  "I know," he said. He leaned over and picked up Doe's sweater and folded it. "And you're right." He put it in the suitcase.

  "We're going?" she asked him.

  "We're going," he told her, turning. "Bernadette, please help Mrs. Hillings pack while I arrange for a car."

  48

  Creighton Berns's new conference room at ICA was already infamous around town, inasmuch as people were fairly sure it was the first one to be constructed of four walls of bulletproof glass. His staff referred to it as the "square fishbowl," but Creighton liked to explain to visitors, "We have nothing to hide at ICA."

  Creighton didn't mention his private conference room on the tenth floor, which he preferred to use because he almost always did want to hide who came to his meetings.

  In any event, Creighton was holding a meeting in "the fish­bowl" with one of ICA's directors and the possible producers of the movie ICA wished to package. During the director's impassioned recitation of his vision, Creighton's assistant suddenly appeared behind the director, on the other side of the glass wall, making urgent hand signals at Creighton.

  When the director stopped speaking, Creighton murmured his apologies and went to the door.

  "Your old friend is on the phone," Joseph whispered.

  "Find out what's up," Creighton told him. "I can't leave right now. Come back if it's urgent."

  In less than a minute, a wild-eyed Joseph appeared on the other side of the glass. One look at his face prompted Creighton to excuse himself and leave.

  Joseph whispered something to him and Creighton strode down the hall to his office. He slammed the door, went over to his desk, and pressed an automatic dial number on his phone. "Where the hell is she?" he said. "Then go fucking get her—I want her on this phone within sixty seconds." He slammed the receiver down. He stood there, body taut, waiting. In less than half a minute, his private line rang and he snapped the phone up.

  "Don't 'Hi, how are you?' me, you stupid cunt," he said. "Do you know what's going on in your goddamn fucking office? Do you? NO? Well then let me tell you, Marion—you've got one of the Hillingses' goddamn fucking clients working there!"

  At Creighton Berns's hideaway house up the hill from Ham­burger Hamlet, the houseboy was receiving instructions over the telephone in the kitchen. When he hung up the phone, he walked through the house to the guest room and knocked on the door. "Miss Pratt?" he said.

  "Just a sec!" came the answer. In a full minute, the door opened to reveal a very attractive dark-haired woman of about forty. The hyper gleam of her eyes belied the otherwise exhausted-looking consonance of her face. "Yes?" she said.

  "Excuse me," the houseboy said, eyes flicking quickly from the telltale smudge of white powder under her nose, "but Mr. Berns called. He wants to forewarn you that he may need you to attend a meeting this evening."

  "Did he say where the meeting's going to be?" the woman asked.

  "No, ma'am," the houseboy said, "only that it would be with a journalist and that he wanted you to wear the outfit he picked out. Mr. Colum, his assistant, will be contacting you later."

  "Okay, thanks," the woman said, and she shut the door. A mo­ment later it opened again. "Hey," she said, "you wouldn't have any sinus stuff around here, would you?"

  "Oh, yes, ma'am, we certainly would," he said.

  Monty called the studio and told Mike he couldn't make it in today; he should run one of the "Best-of" shows again.

  "What the hell is going on?" his producer screamed. "We're stuck here in New York, you've canceled all your speaking engage­ments, and this is the second time in a week you haven't shown up for your friggin' show, Monty!"

  "I've
got family trouble," Monty said, and hung up. Then he and Elizabeth and David jumped into the limo and headed for the Queens warehouse. David made phone calls to the West Coast on the way, trying to find someone who would sneak him a copy of the Race in Space script. He found a likely source, promised all kinds of favors in return, and could do nothing more than wait for a call back from his contact. When they arrived at U-File-With-Us, Monty told the driver to come in and get them if anyone called on the car phone.

  Elizabeth unlocked the door to the storage room, turned on the lights, outlined three areas of search, one for each, and forced the men to don surgical masks before diving into their assigned boxes. They had been searching for almost an hour and a half before Monty cried, "Bingo!" and dragged a box down from a shelf.

  Eliz­abeth and David dashed over to help him, and they found three more Holland & Borrs boxes. Inside one they found an ancient, crumbling copy of the children's book Mathew and the Allied Planets. They looked at one another and seemed to collectively hold their breaths as they opened the book. They gingerly turned the brittle pages and David skimmed them. "Sounds like it, sounds like it," he said, excited.

  They carried the file boxes out to the car, stored them in the trunk, and piled back into the limo. David called his source again. Somebody on the other end said the man was expected back mo­mentarily. Five minutes into the drive back to Manhattan, the phone rang and David snapped it up, listening. He covered the phone and said, "I need a fax number."

  "I have a fax machine in here," Monty said, opening a cabinet. Within two minutes, pages of the script for Race in Space were coming through.

  "Georgiana," the voice said over the phone, "what luck to find you on the other end. Imagine that. I place a call to Dorothy and Henry Hillings and you answer the phone. Surprise, surprise."

  "Creighton," Georgiana said, struggling to keep her voice calm.

  They had all gone barreling off this morning, leaving her to man the phones.