Shattered

by Olga Bicos

  Praise for the novels of OLGA BICOS

  “Bicos has definitely found her niche…a sizzling summer read!”

  —Romantic Times on Perfect Timing

  “A terrific writer who knows how to keep the reader turning the pages.”

  —Jayne Ann Krentz

  “Wonderful characters and a riveting plot make this a humdinger of a book. Stunning.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Wrapped in Wishes

  “Intelligent and appealing…sprinkled with just enough magic to be believable.”

  —Library Journal on More Than Magic

  “The emotion is intense, the sensuality powerful…creates both thrills and chills.”

  —(Long Beach) Press-Telegram on Wrapped in Wishes

  “Romantic suspense fans can rejoice as superb author Olga Bicos adds her voice to this spellbinding genre. Risky Games reaches out and ensnares readers from the first page!”

  —Romantic Times

  “Olga Bicos is a genius!”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “Amusing and highly emotional…True romance.”

  —Los Angeles Daily News on More Than Magic

  Shattered

  OLGA BICOS

  For Andrew, Leila and Jonathan, my reasons for everything.

  And for my mother and father, whose continued faith is always a revelation.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am incredibly thankful to my three fairy godmothers at MIRA Books, Dianne Moggy, Amy Moore-Benson and Martha Keenan, for all their faith and hard work on my behalf. In particular, I would like to thank Martha, my editor, for making this book possible.

  Every once in a while, an author gets lucky. My agent, Dominick Abel, is a big part of any luck that comes my way. Thank you, Dominick, for making it all seem so effortless. We high-strung folk appreciate the calm.

  I could never have brought Shattered to life without the expertise of Ciji Ware and Lisa Sawyer. Thanks, guys, for taking all my calls and e-mails. The mistakes, of course, are all mine.

  Inspiration comes from many sources; here are a few of mine. My plot group—Meryl Sawyer, Lou Kaku, Jill Marie Landis, Lori Herter and Suzanne Forster. You all keep me going. My muses—Jill Hunter and Barbara Benedict. I couldn’t do this career without you. I wouldn’t even want to try. To the chief operating officer at Club Bicos, Lu Campos, thanks for keeping our heads above water. And to the ladies who opened the door, Debbie Macomber and Stella Cameron, I am eternally grateful!

  Finally, I want to thank my guides to the vine, John Hustlebee of Thorton Winery, Elizabeth Campbell of Callaway Coastal Winery and Mike Calabro of Wilson Creek, and acknowledge the beautiful book, Sparkling Harvest: the Seasons of the Vine, by Jamie and Jack Davies of Shramsberg Vineyards, that brought Napa Valley to my doorstep and gave insights into one family’s experience introducing sparkling wines to California. But most of all, I am grateful to Don Frangiapani of Churon Winery, winemaker extraordinaire, who inspired each and every scene about his craft.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Grand Design

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Trompe L’oeil

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Composition

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Flying Buttress

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Prologue

  “Did you kill her?”

  The voice from the tape recorder crackled and popped in the overheated room, the words almost lost in static. Two men and a woman sat bellied up to a table long enough to crowd the cracker-box space. The youngest, a lanky nineteen-year-old seated at the corner—black hair, shocking blue eyes—studied the Rorschach test of coffee stains and cigarette burns as he listened, the tips of his fingers reading the tabletop like Braille.

  “No, of course not.” On the table, the recorded voice sounded a galaxy away. “Jesus. I can’t believe this is happening.” The taped voice dropped an octave. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “But it’s your fault, right? That she’s dead?”

  “Yeah…maybe.”

  The woman, a homicide inspector with salt-and-pepper hair and a young face, punched off the tape. Last night at the hospital, struggling with shock, the suspect couldn’t stop talking, his words coming just shy of a confession. Now, with counsel at his side, mum was the word.

  Just goes to show what a little legal advice could do for a guy. They had zero on the kid, and even the wet-behind-the-ears attorney sitting next to him could pass along that bit of good cheer.

  Sergeant Amy Garten shuffled the papers in front of her, wondering how hard to push. “Things happen, Ryan. We can lose control of a situation. It’s not what we mean or want to happen.” She gave a sympathetic lift of her shoulders. “If we could take it back, just press Rewind…But a man steps up. Takes responsibility.”

  “As in confession is good for the soul?” The look the kid gave her wasn’t exactly cocky, but he wasn’t scared anymore, either.

  The attorney placed a hand on his arm. “Do you want to get to the point, Sergeant?”

  “I thought that was obvious.” God, she hated defense attorneys. “A woman is dead.”

  “My client has been more than cooperative. There is absolutely no evidence that his—” the attorney stumbled over the words, a verbal hit-and-run “—fiancée’s death was anything other than a tragic accident.” The guy sounded fresh out of law school, all passion and no finesse. “Do you have any idea how difficult this is for Ryan?”

  “And he’s being a peach, coming in, answering questions. Really.”

  The kid said he’d been tailing the girl’s Mercedes in his convertible when the victim lost control and plunged to her death. He’d called 911.

  He admitted they’d been drinking. With a little prompting, it came out they’d had a fight. They’d ended up in separate cars, him chasing her. But not to hurt her. No way.

  The problem was, she’d died at the hospital. Suddenly, he gets vague about the details of their argument. Intelligent minds might think he had something to hide.

  On tape, he’d practically admitted he’d wanted the girl dead, he’d been in such a rage.

  Amy saw it all the time. Young men of privilege getting away with just about anything. The family turned a blind eye to the bad seed they’d spawned until the situation flared like kudzu. Drugs, date rape—even murder. Only, by the time it all went bad, the clan was used to circling the wagons, making excuses about how Johnny really wasn’t such a bad kid. He deserved a fair shake—and the best lawyers money could buy.

  Which is where the Cutty case fell off that well-beaten path…no helpful Mommy and Daddy. Strangely, the opposite. Just when Amy thought there was no way she was getting her hands on San Francisco royalty, the suspect’s own father gives a jingle to point the finger at his flesh and blood. There were problems…I overheard a fight. Earlier that morning, there’d been an anonymous phone call to the police, a husky woman’s voice saying, “Ryan ran her off the road. He killed her.”
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  The attorney who showed up this morning didn’t seem much older than his client, but more like some friend’s older brother doing a favor. And certainly nowhere near what the Cutty money could pull in.

  She glanced across the table at Ryan. Good looks and a pedigree. He could easily fit the bill of sinner or saint. The kind of man who just might get away with murder…

  Only, she wasn’t so sure.

  Which almost made the point. These guys, the Kennedy clones, they could fool you.

  “That’s your voice on the tape, Ryan, admitting that last night you thought this was all your fault.” Dead debutantes, suspicious fathers, anonymous tips. Despite pressure from the brass to wind things up—the autopsy results sure to confirm the victim’s intoxicated state—Sergeant Garten thought a case like this was worth a little persistence. “Why don’t we talk about that?”

  “Forget it, Sergeant. Unless you’re ready to arrest Ryan, I’m pulling the plug on this fishing expedition of yours.” His attorney stood, ready to jet out before she could see him sweat. “I’m sure that, with proper perspective, you’ll come to understand my client did nothing wrong.”

  But the kid took a moment to lean in close over the table. She could see he had something to say, that finally she’d triggered a reaction.

  “Ryan,” the attorney warned.

  “You think I’m getting away with something,” he told her, ignoring his attorney, zooming in with those too-blue eyes. There was a rough quality to his voice. Maybe emotion. “But I’ll be paying for this the rest of my life.”

  “A guilty conscience can do that.”

  For the first time he smiled. But before he could say anything else, his attorney had him by the arm, giving a tug.

  “If you have anything you want to add to your statement—” she slid her card across the desk “—you give me a call.”

  Oh, yeah, Amy Garten thought, watching Cutty leave the room. There was something there, something that made him almost sympathetic. A hardness that could hide the deepest sort of loss.

  Just goes to show, Sergeant Garten told herself, shutting the case file that most likely would remain unsolved. Even a seasoned professional could be fooled.

  GRAND DESIGN

  1

  Never jam something in to try and make it fit…finesse, not force. Holly Fairfield considered these words to live by.

  Which made the next three hours an interesting proposition.

  Armored in designer clothes, torture-me shoes and enough hairpins for satellite reception, her appearance tonight felt all veneer. She, the proverbial square peg, loomed over the round hole of the evening’s society gala, waiting for the sledgehammer to drive her home. In the world of the bejeweled, the moneyed, the nipped and the tucked, Holly Fairfield didn’t exactly blend.

  But she was the guest of honor.

  “Stop fidgeting. You’re acting like a twelve-year-old.”

  “Easy for you to say, Mr. Tall, Dark and Self-confident,” she told her brother, standing beside her in the foyer of Cutty House. The Beaux Arts building lay nestled near the pinnacle of San Francisco’s Nob Hill and had already been christened by her brother as Holly’s personal Moby Dick.

  Harris preened. “I do look good in Armani.”

  “Everybody looks good in Armani. Just remember, you turn into a pumpkin at twelve. And don’t spill on the tux.”

  Though she’d stick ten thousand needles in her eye before she’d admit it, her brother did have a certain panache. It startled people, how those same dark, masculine features could somehow transform into her own sweet looks. But Holly had come to see their resemblance as nothing more than a variation on a theme. In architecture, context was everything.

  She caught herself tapping her finger against the crystal flute, a nervous woodpecker. She tried to remind herself that tonight was a high point and that high points came with a price, schmoozing being a very small one. For a moment, she actually missed Drew, wishing she could channel some of that radioactive ego that defined her ex-husband, ex-business partner and ex-traordinary pain in the butt. That’s the past, Holly. Forgive…

  Drew would never have hidden behind a Corinthian column where she stood planted like an anemic fern. He’d be working the money crowd, a game-show host of personality, ingratiating himself to all until he became the inevitable center of attention.

  Of course, those same qualities had resulted in the crash and burn of their marriage three years ago when she’d walked in on him and the caterer at the opening of what was to be their first and final new building together. The bankruptcy of their architecture firm soon followed, a loss she felt even more deeply than the divorce. She’d always suspected that, romantically, Drew had the attention span of a Tic Tac.

  Her brother trapped her fingers against the glass. “Stop thinking about Drew,” Harris finished with his weird we’re-not-twins-but-I-can-read-your-mind way. “You don’t need him, Hol. Never did. Besides, you have me, right? And unlike Drew, you won’t find me banging some Betty in the hall closet come dawn.”

  “You have no idea what I’m thinking, Spiderman,” she said, taking a drink of champagne as she tried valiantly not to catch anyone’s eyes. I’m not here…I am invisible.

  “Tell you what. Let’s practice one of those affirmation exercises you were talking about last week. Close your eyes and visualize The Druid back in Seattle, pondering how on earth he is going to get a piece of this job. But, oh darn—” he tsked softly “—those nasty divorce papers, all final-like,” he said in a mock-Drew voice.

  That made her smile, a silver lining to braving the crowd. “Maybe.”

  The Druid was her brother’s nickname for Drew Manticore, the man who’d coaxed Holly, a rising star, to leave her berth at one of Seattle’s top architecture firms where he’d been a partner. Together they were going to set the architecture world on fire. And they did for a while. Until it all went up in flames.

  Drew Manticore—the man-lion-scorpion beast thing. Like heaven had flashed this neon marquee of warning. Maybe that’s what happened when you broke the rules, she thought. Marrying her business partner might have been like breaking some law of physics. The mushroom cloud of divorce and bankruptcy was sure to ensue, in her case, devastating everything she’d worked for for the last ten years.

  Only, tonight, she was all about breaking the rules. Even the shiny sacred ones she’d clung to through the disaster of divorce and financial ruin.

  “I can’t believe you’re not just a little amped by all of this,” her brother insisted.

  “Do the words ‘painfully shy’ ring a bell?”

  Harris gestured at the mingling beautiful people of San Francisco. “Come on. They’re all here for you, Princess Leia.”

  “Let me just toss back this champagne and throw the Waterford at the hearth. Give a big shout, Opa!”

  “Damn straight,” he said, taking her arm. “Come on. Let’s get something to eat before the clock strikes and I turn into a pumpkin or a rat or something.”

  Cinderella was a little too close to the truth. This night of glitz and glamour came courtesy of a fairy godmother of sorts. And she, once dubbed Seattle’s designer to the dotcom world, was infinitely more comfortable behind a drafting table. Tonight, she felt out of her league. The last time she’d drunk champagne and eaten caviar…well, that was the point. What last time?

  Holly navigated through the sea of the opera set, tugging nervously at her sleeves. She had donned the black Donna Karan suit and paired it with Jimmy Choo heels because she’d heard some style magazine fashion czar declare that Jimmy Choo heels were practically a cliché, everyone wore them. Tonight, she wanted to be the cliché.

  “Holly.”

  Hearing her name, she turned and smiled at the man who had, in just a few short months, changed her life. She’d come to think of Daniel East by all those corny titles: a prince among men; her knight in shining armor…

  “The guy who saved your cookies from the fire makes an appearance.
” Harris didn’t bother to lower his voice. “Has he hit on you yet?”

  She gave him a look. “Lest you forget, my cookies and yours, Spiderman.”

  Daniel East was an intrinsically beautiful man, reminding Holly of a piece of art. Brown hair with blond highlights that didn’t even pretend to be natural. Tall, with a quarterback’s physique. Tonight, funky eyeglasses complemented his dark eyes. Like Cutty House, he was a work in progress. Whatever was new, edgy, impossible, Daniel East already had three pairs. His sense of style did nothing to diminish his masculinity, and he looked sleek in an indigo tuxedo that would have made Robert Downey Jr. proud.

  “Don’t be frightened, little one.” Taking her arm, he guided her toward the crowd ahead. “It’s time to come out and play. You don’t mind, do you, Harris?”

  She telegraphed a silent, please, please, please! But Harris wasn’t up for the rescue, lifting his glass in salute as Daniel pressed a hand at the small of her back.

  With a tight smile, she sallied forth as passersby paid homage. Daniel, so wonderful to have Cutty House back…when do you think you’ll open? Is this your secret weapon, then? She’s delightful.

  Slipping into the main dining hall alongside Daniel, she held tight to her drink and her nerve as the sound of Blondie pulsed off the walls. Tables crowded the room, their pale tablecloths cloaked in bloodred rose petals and candles flickering from votive candleholders. Martinis in a rainbow of colors sprouted from the hands of young tight bodies wearing still tighter clothes.

  But even in the gypsy’s den of light, she found herself searching out the damage—missing floorboards that opened like a wound, the shadow of a medallion where a chandelier once hung. Cutty House was a treasure trove of work to be done.

  As Daniel entertained, she remained the silent sentinel, knowing she’d hit the jackpot with this job. Certainly nothing in her résumé warranted Daniel’s faith. She’d had only a few published pieces, the latest one in Architectural Digest, for a Japanese restaurant in Seattle that had been critiqued by the local paper as “overblown modernism.”