He looked at the final shot. Bliss at the open doors to her room. Her eyes held fear. Sebastian frowned and looked more closely, and checked the date. It had been taken the night she dashed away from him—the first night they spent together. He touched her face on the print. What he felt for her wasn't going away.
"For God's sake, Sebby," Maryan said. "Stop mooning over that colorless little nothing. She's nothing, absolutely nothing. We've got important things to do."
"Shut up," he said wearily and stood up. "I'm going to bed."
"We need to talk," Zoya said. "You can't put it off any longer. We've got a company to run."
"I've got a company to run," Sebastian told her, meeting her gaze. "And I'm running it."
He began to push the photos back into the envelope but stopped. He took a closer look at the photo of Bliss on the threshold to the deck outside her bedroom. On the wall behind her—it would be the wall on the opposite side of her bed—was a large mirror with an old-fashioned gilt frame. He brought the shot closer and studied the mirror.
Faint but unmistakable was a dark silhouette. Not the substance, but the shadow of someone looking toward Bliss, someone inside her room, probably just inside the bathroom door, watching her.
Fifteen
Zoya sat in the chair Maryan had vacated in favor of the couch. "You know where he's going, don't you?" she said of Sebastian. Damn him. She'd get more of his attention if she was his dog.
Maryan dumped gin to the top of a highball glass, slopping booze on the table in the process. She made several stabs before zeroing in on the top of the ice bucket and lifting it off. It fell through her fingers.
"Ron," Zoya said, leaning forward. "Do something with her, will you? We've got to move our plans along or Sebastian baby's going to scuttle us."
"I thought we'd agreed that things were coming along quite nicely," Ron said. "Bliss Winters isn't going to be a problem for long."
"We need to move faster," Zoya said. "Much faster. And Sebastian's tacky private eye could turn into a handicap."
Maryan held Ron's attention. He said, "Maybe he's served his purpose for us. He's already done us a favor we didn't expect."
"We'll have to be very careful." Coming out of this clean, and smiling all the way to the bank, was the only scenario Zoya was prepared to consider.
Swaying, blinking in slow motion, Maryan chased ice cubes floating in water until she trapped one against the side of the bucket. She scooped it out and managed to hit her target. More gin splattered.
Ron sat beside her and massaged her neck.
If Maryan noticed, she gave no sign. Bending almost double, she captured her glass in both hands and raised it high enough to suck almost half the contents in one swallow.
"She's going to pass out," Zoya said, resigned, but angry. Without these two she'd manage Sebastian just fine. "Maryan, Sebastian's got to be diverted. Do you understand me? We've got to get him out of the way until we've finished what we've got to do."
"Diverted," Maryan said, pointing at Zoya with a long fingernail. "Sebastian's mine. I'll divert him."
Zoya frowned at Ron who shrugged. "Luvvy, Sebastian's gone to the Winters woman again."
"Y'don't know that," Maryan said. "He likes to drive when he's uptight. Moore upset him. Without that old bastard, Crystal wouldn't have cost us so much."
"We aren't here to discuss Crystal," Ron said, avoiding Zoya's eyes.
"Crystal was his wife, wasn't she?" Zoya asked
"We don't talk about that," Ron said "Maryan, love, concentrate. Remember I told you Zoya's as worried as we are about what could happen here in Seattle."
Maryan looked sideways at him. She raised a hand and slapped his cheek repeatedly, each time with more force, and she laughed.
Ronnie flinched, but he let her hit him.
"I'm the only one who deals with Sebastian's business," she said, punctuating her words with flat-handed blows. "Do you understand that, lover boy? You keep that bitch, Zoya, away from me. And keep her away from Sebastian. She wants inside his pants. She's washed up. If the Bellevue project goes down, she goes down with it."
Zoya pushed to her feet and paced. Maryan's attitude toward her fluctuated. "Shut her up." But she was right—only the Bellevue project wasn't going to fail. "We've got to move and we've got to be sure Bliss Winters can't do any damage we can't fix."
"When exactly did it become 'we'?" Ron asked, neatly shifting his allegiance back to his mistress. He had a great body
and, given what Zoya had already surmised about his predilections, Maryan's slaps had produced exactly the expected result. Ron was sexually excited.
"Do you want me to remind you about that now?" she asked Ron, tilting her head to study his crotch. "About how we became a partnership."
Ron glanced at Maryan.
"Doesn't look as if it would matter if we fucked on the coffee table, does it?" Zoya asked.
"For God's sake." Ron shot to his feet. "Watch your mouth."
"You watch my mouth," she said, and laughed, and ran her tongue over her lips. "Why don't I help you get poor Maryan into bed?"
"I don't need any help." He bent over Maryan who let the now empty glass fall through her fingers and clatter across the table. "Come on, sweets. Bedtime for us." He pulled her to her feet.
Zoya came to the woman's other side and put an arm around her, using the opportunity to squeeze Ron's very nice ass.
"Knock it off," he said, glaring at her over Maryan's head. "Go home. The show's over here."
"Uh-uh"—she pulled one of Maryan's arms around her neck—"show's only beginning, and it's going to be a doozie."
Maryan contrived to grab the gin bottle and bear it with her as they half-guided, half-dragged her toward the stairs.
"I can do this, I tell you," Ron hissed, reaching to try to push Zoya. "Our suite's in the basement. Go home."
She caught his hand and delivered a sharp bite to his palm.
He yowled, and jerked away. For seconds they stared at each other, then he looked ahead and started maneuvering Maryan down the two flights of steps that led to an airy basement.
"She's passing out," Zoya commented. "Take the bottle."
Ron took it as it began to slip from Maryan's hand. He swept her up and carried her the rest of the way to a large, starkly minimalist suite. Centrally placed, a huge brass, four-poster seemed cast adrift on a sea of blond oak flooring. Diaphanous
lengths of creamy muslin wound about the bedframe and floated gently in a breeze through white jalousies.
With Maryan deposited atop the impossibly high, eyelet-covered mattress and pillows, Ron swung to give Zoya his entire attention. "Get out," he said, baring his teeth. "Get out and don't think you can blackmail me with your little stories."
She walked slowly past him to the side of the bed and undid the belt on Maryan's robe.
"I told you to get out."
"Help me. And while you help me, listen. We sink or swim together. Do you understand me?"
"No, I don't understand you. Leave her alone."
Very deliberately, Zoya pulled the belt free of the robe and rolled it up.
"Bellevue's just one operation for us," Ron said. "It'll hurt if it loses money, but it won't be fatal—except to you."
She studied him sharply. "What exactly do you mean when you say that?"
He grinned, a grin that made him boyishly handsome—as long as you didn't look into his vapid eyes. "You talked Sebastian into letting you buy a big piece of the action for yourself."
"How do you know that?"
"Maryan found out. You gambled big, baby. Desperate move, we figured. All or nothing, right?"
"I decided it was time to own something I worked to make. If we encounter a fatal hitch, it'll sting—it won't finish me."
"Not what we heard." Ron shook a knowing finger. "Not what we heard at all. We heard you were in deep in a lot of pies and trying to dig your way out."
This was not the time to lose her nerve.
"Then you heard wrong. And Maryan's been keeping you in the dark. She's the one who's scared to death." Zoya drew herself up. This boy wouldn't recognize the kind of gamble she was prepared to take if it smacked him flat. "She can't afford to have Sebastian bring another woman into his life—anymore than we can."
Ron wasn't saying anything.
"Okay. Play dumb. But help me get her undressed/'
"Shit, no!"
Zoya flipped open the robe. Mary an wore a beige lace teddy and cream hose. "Help me," Zoya repeated, reaching to pull the covers down beneath the other woman. "If you want to come out of this with something, do as I tell you. We need her on our side and she'll never agree unless she's got no out."
"You're mad."
"Maybe. You'd better hope not because we're in this together."
"I haven't agreed to anything."
"You don't have to. Either you do this my way and trust me to pull off a big win for you and me, or you lose. Simple as that."
He came toward her. "What if I throw you out on that sexy rear of yours?"
"Then I scream assault, call the cops, and turn you in."
"They'd never believe you."
"Wouldn't they?" She stripped off one of Maryan's stockings. "Sebastian hates your guts. He likes mine. All I've got to do is tell him you attacked me, and you're dead meat." Undressing a deadweight wasn't easy.
"You'd do it, wouldn't you?" Ron said.
She pulled the straps of the teddy from Maryan's shoulders. "You bet your life I would."
"What's in this for me?"
Zoya stopped and gave him her full attention. "We split everything."
"Split everything?"
"Everything Maryan will have to get her hands on to stop us from telling her brother exactly how sick she is. We know what she really wants. And we know Sebastian wouldn't keep her around if he knew what she wanted—or what's going to happen here tonight."
He came to her side slowly. "You really mean it."
Her answer was to pull Maryan's teddy to her waist and free her arms. "Sit her up."
"I don't like this."
"Sit her up."
A second later Maryan's head draped backward over Ron's arms. Her breasts were Playboy material, Zoya decided, big, with saucer-sized nipples. Watching Ron's face, she fingered them and laughed. He looked away.
"Some apples," she commented. "Mixing business and pleasure is going to be a real turn on."
"Zoya—"
"Lift her," she snapped, and pulled the teddy all the way off when he did so. "Now it's your turn. Show time."
"Forget it." He raised his palms and backed away. "I've had it with this scene."
"Don't tell me you've never done a threesome before."
"Not this way." He realized what he'd said and whispered, "Shit!"
"Always a first time. Come on," she wheedled. "Or are you shy?" Hoisting herself to sit beside Maryan's flaccid form, she rested one elbow on the mattress and teased tight swirls of dark pubic hair.
"You're sick." York walked away and rested his fists on a wall. He dropped his head forward. "Messing with a woman who can't defend herself."
Keeping him in sight, Zoya felt for the trigger point between Maryan's legs. "Let's see if we can get her attention."
"Stop it!" Ron demanded, pushing away from the wall and approaching. "If she comes to she'll blame me for this."
"Get naked."
"The hell I will."
She fondled one of Maryan's heavy breasts. "Do it, Ronnie. Or I'll strip and tell Maryan you forced me." In one swift move she sat astride Maryan's hips.
Ron rammed a hand into his hair. "Oh, my God." He pulled his tank over his head and threw it aside.
Zoya began stimulating Maryan.
The blue shorts met their mate and Ron stood, naked, muscular, and bronzed all over—and erect.
She laughed. "None of this is a turn on, huh?" She pointed at him. "And that's a mirage."
"You've had your fun, now go."
"I've hardly begun having fun. Get over here."
With obvious reluctance, he let her take his hand and pull him close. "Relax," she told him. "All I want you to do is lie down with your keeper."
Anger twisted his features, but he did as she instructed and climbed past her to lie beside Maryan.
It was all going to work. Zoya grinned her triumph. After weeks of terror, of watching everything she'd worked for dwindle away, she was seeing sunshine on her future.
Abandoning Maryan, she hopped to the floor and wriggled quickly out of her swimsuit.
"What the hell?—"
"Hush"—with a finger to her lips, she skirted the bed until she could kneel on the mattress beside him—"this is our lucky night, Ron. After tonight we're on our way to the big leagues."
"Maryan's going to chew you up, baby."
He didn't as much as look at her body—but what else could she expect? She'd enjoy using him anyway. "Don't worry about Maryan." Bending, she filled her mouth with him and bit hard enough to bring him jackknifing over her back.
Laughing, she wrestled with him, grabbing, as she knew so well how to grab, and screaming when he fought her off with slaps. He took her breasts in his big hands and squeezed them as if they were oranges and he was a man thirsty for juice.
She waited for the right moment and threw a leg over him. He was deep inside her before she fully caught his attention.
"Bitch!" he said through his teeth. He arched his chest off the bed. "Bitch!"
Two thrusts and he ejaculated, and Zoya bounced off him, glancing at Maryan to gauge the depth of her stupor.
"Hurry up," she told Ron. "Get up and do as I tell you."
"Let me be," he mumbled.
"You got more out of that than I did." She leaned to retrieve
the robe belt and shoved it into Ron's hand. "I always get my full share. Tie my wrists to the bed."
"Fuck off."
Pressure, applied behind a trapezius muscle, got his full, yelping attention. Zoya kept her sharp fingers digging into his shoulder until he slid to the floor, moaning.
"Up," she told him. "I'm it, Ronnie, your salvation, or your destruction. Take your pick."
He staggered to his feet.
Gripping a vertical bar in the brass bed head, Zoya stretched out on her back. "Do it."
"No."
"Okay. Let's make this clearer. It's you or her. Tie me up and I'll swear you did it because she insisted. Refuse and I'll tell her you raped me while she was unconscious. Take your pick."
His chest rose and fell. "My God, you're evil."
"And you're a choirboy?"
He tied her wrists to the bed, yanking the belt hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. "What now?" he asked.
"Now we make a lovely threesome in this bed until Maryan comes to and starts screaming. Then I cry, and you protest, and I back you up. We did what she insisted we do. And I tell her I know all her little secrets. End result? We make very sure Bliss Winters isn't a problem, and Maryan becomes our golden goose. Sound good."
He chewed his bottom lip. "I don't like it."
"You don't have any choices, so let's enjoy it. Come to me, baby. Once more for the hell of it." She parted her legs and raised her hips. "What d'you say, Ronnie?"
Without taking his eyes from hers, he climbed onto the bed. "I say, fuck yourself, baby." He lay on his side and pinched her nipples, and spread a heavy leg over her thighs.
Zoya writhed. "Oh, yes. Oooh, yes. Now. I want it now!"
"Sometimes we don't get what we want," Ron said, rolling until she looked at his back. "See you in the morning."
Sixteen
Sleep wasn't an option.
Bliss stared at the Delft clock. Late and getting later.
Fabiola and Polly's mother had brought the kitchen clock back from a trip she'd made to Holland with her belly dancing class.
Lots of freshly laundered shirts smelled of starch. All freshly laundered shirts probably smelled of starch.
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Sebastian wouldn't deliberately frighten her.
Would he?
Why would he?
Why would he frighten her, tell her to stay away from him, then make love to her?
She'd never felt before what she'd felt with Sebastian tonight.
But trust had to be built, to be earned. He'd given her more reasons to distrust than to trust him.
But they'd made such love.
Seated in a chair at the kitchen table, she folded her hands behind her head and gazed at the ceiling. She felt his hands on her, felt his body pressed to hers, inside hers, his mouth . . .
From outside, Spike's bark sounded an instant before someone hammered at the door.
Bliss got up and went to shoot the bolt open.
"You didn't even ask who was out here," Fab said, charging in, her face flushed. "You're too trusting, Bliss. It isn't safe."
Barely getting out of Spike's gambolling way, Bliss leaned
against the nearest counter. "What is it? Did you forget your key to the bungalow?"
Bursts of whispers came from the terrace.
Fabiola put a finger to her lips. "This is probably dumb, but how long have you been back?"
"Maybe an hour?" Bliss shrugged. "I'm not sure to the minute."
With Liberty clutching his bare arm, Vic entered the kitchen. His gray hair streamed down his oiled back. Bobby—in his pajamas—ran ahead of Polly, and Venus Crow put in one of her rare appearances.
"Mom's spending a few days with us," Polly said, sounding uncomfortable. "Hope you don't mind."
"You know I don't mind," Bliss said truthfully. Venus never failed to amuse and entertain her. The twins' mother had permanently adopted the traditional belly dancing garb she wore tonight—including a veiled headdress that all but masked her round face.
Naked to the waist of his black leather jeans, Vic closed the door and peered through a window into the darkness. "Quiet everyone." He turned out the lights and shone a small flashlight beam at the floor. "No one talks but me. Listen closely because I'm going to whisper."
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