Three Grooms and a Wedding

by JoAnn Ross

  “He does dote on them.” The memory of the sexy multimillionaire inexpertly changing a pink polka-dot diaper made her smile. “After all Lily’s been through, she deserves to be happy.”

  “Amen.” Cait lifted her glass of orange juice in a toast of agreement. “You know,” she said, carefully testing the waters, “Connor isn’t the only man who thinks Lily walks on water. You should hear the way Gage talks about her.”

  Gage Remington was Cait’s former partner and the private detective Blythe had hired to dig up information on Alexandra’s life. And although she’d tried to deny it, even to herself, he was also the man responsible for her ambivalence toward her fiancé.

  From the first moment they’d met, on the deck of the sloop he used as an office—before it sank in the earthquake—she’d experienced a shock of recognition so strong, it was as if she’d been struck by a bolt of lightning.

  “I know Gage thinks Lily’s invaluable,” Blythe agreed blandly, sidestepping Cait’s artful probe regarding her relationship with the detective. “And I think it’s marvelous that they’ve gone into partnership together.”

  “Our Lily, a P. I.” Cait laughed. “Who would have ever guessed?” Cait was nothing if not tenacious. She leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, gave Blythe a long look and said, “Gage told me you two are going to Greece together.”

  “That’s right. Tomorrow morning. We’re trying to track down Natasha.”

  Natasha Kuryan had been Alexandra’s former makeup artist at Xanadu. A resident of Cait’s apartment building, Bachelor Arms, Natasha had jumped ship during a recent tour of the Greek Islands and had reportedly become romantically involved with a local author of her own generation. That she had to be in her eighties did not seem to have slowed down Natasha’s love life.

  In her four years on the L.A. police force, Cait had come to read faces well. Watching the storm of emotions move across Blythe’s face, she suspected she knew the cause of much of her best friend’s uncharacteristic behavior.

  “You’re falling in love with him, aren’t you?”

  “Alan?” Blythe asked with feigned innocence. She was not an actress for nothing.

  “Don’t try to blow me off, kiddo,” Cait warned. “In the first place, I’m a dynamite interrogator, so you don’t stand a chance. In the second place, I’ve known you forever. I’m talking about Gage.”

  Blythe shook her head. “It would be a horrendous mistake.”

  She did not, Cait noticed, answer the question. “Why?” Close to both Gage and Blythe, Cait found the match ideal.

  Blythe sighed. How could she explain that her emotions toward Gage were confusing and complex? How could she make Cait understand that her feelings were, at the same time, both familiar and foreign? “I’m engaged,” she hedged, choosing her words with care.

  “Engagements can be broken.” And if she’d ever seen one that should be, Cait considered, Blythe’s engagement to the stuffy, self-important surgeon was it.

  “It would create a scandal.”

  “Probably.” Blythe was, after all, a star. The breakup would garner even more tabloid attention than when Julia Roberts had called off her fairy-tale wedding. “But it’d blow over. It always does.”

  Since Cait’s own parents had set the Hollywood record for matrimonial musical beds, Blythe knew the remark came from firsthand experience. Experience that had once had Cait swearing off men altogether. Until she met Sloan Wyndham, a stubborn, independent, extremely talented screenwriter who refused to take no for an answer.

  “The problem is, in the meantime, until the tabloids find some other victim to smear all over their front pages, I could ruin Alan’s chances for becoming chief of staff.”

  “I don’t believe this!” Cait’s bright brows drew together. “Are you saying you’re willing to marry a man you don’t love, just to keep from damaging his chances for career advancement?”

  Blythe looked away again. “When you put it like that, I suppose it does sound a little silly.”

  “How about downright ridiculous?” She reached across the table and grasped Blythe’s hand. “I’m sure Alan is a brilliant surgeon. He’s also undoubtedly honest and dependable and as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. But he’s not the man for you, Blythe.”

  Cait had been saying that from the beginning. And from the beginning Blythe had been refusing to listen.

  Blythe looked down at their joined hands and stifled a weary sigh. She was so tired. So confused.

  “I told you,” she insisted quietly, “my reasons for marrying Alan go beyond some fleeting passion that won’t last past the first anniversary.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” Cait waved her words away with an impatient left hand. An emerald as bright as her eyes and surrounded by diamonds splintered the morning light. “Alan Sturgess will make a good father to your children and he’s not in the movie business.” She’d heard it innumerable times before. And she still wasn’t buying it.

  “That’s important,” Blythe insisted. She retrieved her hand and dragged it through her thick sable hair. A lifetime of Hollywood experience had taught her that most actors tended to be too egocentric and immature to make long-term marriages.

  “You know I swore never to get involved with anyone in the business,” Cait reminded her. “Until I fell in love with the man who’s currently spending nearly every waking minute writing your screenplay.”

  In spite of the all too familiar argument regarding her fiancé, Blythe smiled. “Sloan’s special.”

  “You can say that again.” Cait sat back in her chair once more and enjoyed the flow of warmth that thinking about Sloan Wyndham could bring. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

  “Not really,” Blythe answered. What she and Gage had experienced was a long way from love. Lust. Desire. Hunger. Even need. Unfortunately, knowing the jolt of emotion that had forked through her wasn’t really love, hadn’t made it any less potent.

  “I never did, either.” Cait’s eyes took on a faraway, misty look Blythe envied. “But you know, I think I fell in love with Sloan from the moment I saw him.”

  “If memory serves, the moment you saw him, you pulled a 9 mm Glock, told him to freeze, then handcuffed him to my driveway gate.”

  Cait shrugged. Her grin was wide and unabashed. “So I thought I was falling in love with a burglar. It happens.”

  “In the movies,” Blythe argued mildly.

  “Sometimes, if you’re lucky, real life is even better than the movies.” Cait’s smile faded, her expression sobered. “You know, Gage is special, too.”

  “I know.” Blythe’s voice was so atypically faint, so uncharacteristically unsure, Cait felt a surge of sympathy.

  “Let me say just one last thing,” she said, “and I promise, I’ll drop the subject for today.”

  Her relief evident, Blythe nodded her assent.

  Cait’s warm candid gaze settled on Blythe’s face as she reached across the table again and gave her friend’s hand a quick, reassuring squeeze.

  “You can run, Blythe. But only so far. And so long.”

  And that, Blythe thought miserably, was exactly what she was afraid of. As she left the restaurant, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that her life was about to change. In ways she couldn’t even begin to imagine.

  Although she’d grown up in the business, Blythe experienced a rush of excitement each time she drove through the ornate, wrought iron gates of Xanadu Studios. It was, in the truest sense of the words, a Dream Factory. For seventy-five years the studio had been supplying an eager audience with fantasy. And although she, more than most, understood that moviemaking was actually a business, complete with corporate concerns, internal power struggles and bottom-line budgetary requirements, there would always be a vast difference between selling dreams and selling soap.

  She’d come here today for a meeting with Walter Stern III, grandson of the studio founder and current president. Although, she mused, as she walked down the hallway lined with phot
os of the studio’s stars and cases displaying the studio’s myriad Oscars, now that Connor Mackay was the new owner and CEO of Xanadu, Walter’s position was more than a little tenuous.

  Having known the studio executive all her life, Blythe was well aware that he was not a man accustomed to sharing power. As for taking orders...

  She shook her head, unable to imagine Connor and Walter working together.

  His secretary, who’d guarded access to Stern’s inner sanctum for the past twenty-five years, greeted Blythe warmly. “He said to send you right in,” Margaret Nelson said. Although her smile was as friendly as ever, Blythe viewed the worry in the woman’s gray eyes.

  “Thanks.” She paused. “How’s the takeover going?”

  “As well as can be expected.” Margaret sighed and dragged her hand through her graying auburn hair. “Mr. Mackay seems terribly nice. But it’s obvious that he intends to take a hands-on approach to running the studio and...” She glanced at the thick rosewood door leading into her boss’s office and shrugged.

  “I know,” Blythe commiserated. Although she did not feel any loyalty toward Stern, who’d made her life difficult on more than one occasion, she hated seeing a woman with Margaret’s talent and tenure laid off through no fault of her own. “I can’t see a partnership working out, either.”

  They shared a grim look. Then, wishing the secretary luck, Blythe opened the office door.

  “Blythe.” Walter’s wide smile did not reveal a scintilla of trouble. He rose from behind his enormous Chinese lacquered desk to greet her. “Thank you for coming in.”

  As she felt herself being enfolded in his arms, Blythe had to fight against stiffening in response. When he appeared prepared to hold her just a bit too long for a casual hug, she pressed her hands against his shoulders and extricated herself.

  “It’s no problem,” she lied. The meeting, called at the last minute yesterday, was a definite inconvenience.

  “Can I have Margaret get you anything? Tea? Coffee? Pelligrino?”

  “Actually, I wasn’t planning to stay that long, Walter. I still have a great many last minute things to get out of the way today.”

  “Before your trip to Greece.” His expression was smooth as glass, but she thought she detected a hint of tension in his voice.

  “Yes.” She sat down in one of the suede chairs on the visitor’s side of the desk. The desk itself, and the executive chair behind it, was on a three-inch high platform, requiring anyone doing business with Stern to look up at him.

  “Do you really have time for this trip?” he asked solicitously. “What with your own project and Expose to begin shooting this winter?”

  Expose was yet one more of the movies she’d agreed to do for Xanadu in order to get the studio’s cooperation in releasing films made by her fledgling production company. Although the story was in its eighth—or ninth, she couldn’t keep track—rewrite, the last script she’d seen had something to do with a high-priced call girl entering into a partnership with a reporter to expose political corruption that went all the way to the presidency.

  She would, of course, play the call girl, and although Tom Cruise had originally been mentioned for the part of the reporter, the latest word was that Stern was negotiating with Keanu Reeves, who was currently the hottest property in town.

  The film would not, Blythe knew, earn her an Oscar nomination. But it would make a great deal of money. And most importantly, it would allow her to make movies she could be proud of.

  “The timing’s going to be tight,” she admitted. “But I need to talk to Natasha Kuryan. And since she’s currently in Greece, I don’t have any choice but to go there.”

  “Natasha Kuryan.” He leaned back, braced his elbows on the arms of his chair and made a tent of his fingers. “I can’t believe the woman’s still alive.”

  “Very much so, if the stories can be believed,” Blythe said dryly, thinking about what Gage had told her about Natasha’s current romantic relationship with a Greek author. “Did you know her?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “She was, of course, before my time. She was gone before I began working here, but I do remember my grandfather mentioning her. He called her the Rembrandt of the makeup artists.”

  “Or the Mary Cassatt.” At his blank look, she elaborated, “Since Natasha’s a woman, it probably makes more sense to compare her to a woman artist.”

  “There you go, getting politically correct on me again,” he said with a flash of bonded teeth. “Honestly, Blythe, if you don’t tone down your feminist rhetoric, you’ll end up losing your audience.”

  “Speaking her mind certainly hasn’t seemed to hurt Susan Sarandon’s box office appeal,” Blythe returned mildly.

  “Touché,” he said with what she recognized as false cheer.

  Blythe didn’t have time to rehash old arguments. “Is there some special reason you called me here today, Walter?” She cast a significant glance at her watch. “Because I really am pressed for time.”

  “That’s precisely my point.” He leaned forward and looked down at her. His jaw was set in a way that reminded her of a bulldog. “I want to warn you about Natasha.”

  “Warn me?”

  “Although I understand how frustrating it’s been for you, trying to get your first project off the ground, you’re making a mistake thinking that Natasha Kuryan can help you.”

  “She knew Alexandra intimately,” Blythe argued. “She also knew Patrick.”

  Blythe had even heard rumors that the writer and the makeup artist had an adulterous fling. Believing that whatever their problems, there had never been any other woman for Patrick Reardon besides Alexandra, after their first meeting at that Xanadu Christmas party, Blythe had discounted the stories.

  “That may be. But her memory is not to be trusted.”

  Blythe arched an argumentative brow. She never seemed to be able to have a conversation with this man without getting into an argument. “Just because she’s elderly?”

  “No. Because she’s a liar. Or crazy.” Brackets formed on either side of his mouth; his scowl created deep furrows in his tanned forehead. “Hell, probably both.” He leaned back again and seemed to be struggling to relax. “My father had to fire her, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  “She was telling dangerous lies about things that had happened at the studio. Things about my grandfather.”

  “I didn’t know anything about that.” Blythe felt the tension in the room, like the threat of a thunderstorm on the horizon.

  “Well, now you do.” His expression cleared. “Of course you’re free to do whatever you wish, Blythe. I just didn’t want you to be disappointed.”

  “Thank you, Walter.” Annoyed that she’d driven all the way to the Valley just to hear something he could have told her over the phone, something she was not going to allow to stop her from tracking Natasha Kuryan down, Blythe rose from her chair. “I appreciate your concern.”

  He stood up as well. And this time he was forestalled from hugging her by her outstretched hand.

  “I know we’ve crossed swords from time to time, Blythe.” His fingers clasped hers with a force that almost made her flinch. “But I’ve always had your best interests at heart.”

  “I appreciate that as well.” He wasn’t the only one who could lie. “Goodbye, Walter. I’ll call you when I get back.”

  “I’ll be looking forward to it.” He released her hand and, as he walked her to the door, placed his palm lightly, possessively, on her hip. “Perhaps you can tell me all about your adventures over dinner. I have a new cook who does wonders with swordfish.”

  A seductive note had crept into his voice. One Blythe had heard too many times before. They’d be having snowball fights on Rodeo Drive before she allowed herself to be alone with this man at his Bel Air mansion. Stories of his sexual conquests—some not entirely consensual—were common knowledge in Hollywood. Blythe knew it continued to irritate him that she refused to allow herself to become just another no
tch on the man’s headboard.

  She was on her way back down the hallway when a familiar voice called out her name. Turning, she grinned at Lily’s new fiancé.

  This man’s hug she welcomed. “Hello, Connor.” She hugged him back.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you and Gage were on your way to Greece.”

  “Tomorrow.” Blythe knew she was in trouble the way even hearing Gage Remington’s name could make her heart skip a beat. “I dropped by because Walter wanted to see me.”

  “Oh?” Although his smile didn’t fade, Blythe, who was watching him carefully, did not miss the way his dark eyes suddenly shuttered. “May I ask what he wanted?”

  “He tried to talk me out of going to Greece to meet with Natasha Kuryan about Alexandra and Patrick.”

  “Do you have a minute?” he asked suddenly.

  She didn’t. Not really. But for this man who’d brought so much joy into Lily’s life, Blythe would make time. “Sure.”

  “Let’s go into my office.”

  Unlike Walter Stern’s status office, Connor’s was as comfortable and accessible as the man himself. The furniture, while expensive, had been built for comfort, not to impress. Antique movie posters, some she knew to be almost priceless, adorned white walls.

  Rather than take the power position behind his rosewood desk, Connor led her to the couch, then sat in a facing suede chair. “There’s something you should know,” he said. “But I’m going to ask you to keep it to yourself until Friday.”

  “Of course.” Blythe had a feeling she knew what was coming.

  “Walter’s on his way out.”

  “I’m not surprised,” she murmured. “May I ask why?”

  “Several reasons.” He leaned forward and linked his fingers between his knees. His expression sobered. “In the first place, since he’s the one who ran the company into near bankruptcy, I don’t have a great deal of confidence in his financial abilities.”

  “All Xanadu’s films make money,” Blythe felt obliged to point out.