by JoAnn Ross
“But she informed me she’d much rather be behind a desk instead of in front of the camera.”
Lily folded her arms across her chest. “She actually told you that?”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t realize infants could talk,” Blythe said, enjoying the sight of the obviously happy family group.
“Most can’t,” Connor agreed easily. “But Katie is her mother’s child. A genius. Aren’t you, sweetheart?” He ran his hand over the top of the pale fuzz and was rewarded with happy baby gurgling. “See? She’s telling you that she made me promise to begin grooming her to take over from her old man some day.”
“Well, I’ll certainly go along with that,” Blythe said. “This town could use a lot more women heading up studios.”
“Katie is going to grow up to be whatever she wants,” Lily said firmly.
“Of course she will,” Connor answered without missing a beat. “She can be a doctor, lawyer or a candlestick maker—”
“Don’t forget mother.”
“A mother?” Connor frowned as he gazed down into the round pink face, as if seeking the baby’s future in her wide blue eyes. “That would mean letting some guy get his grubby hands on her.”
“That’s how it usually works,” Blythe agreed, enjoying the way Connor had so effortlessly stepped into the role of father to Lily’s child. From the moment he’d helped bring Katie into the world, it had been obvious that Connor could not have loved this baby more if she was his natural daughter.
“I don’t suppose,” he asked Lily, “that you’d be open to locking our Katie in a closet right now, then letting her out when she’s thirty?”
“Not on a bet.” The love and laughter in Lily’s eyes belied her stern tone.
“I was afraid of that.” Connor ran his knuckles down the infant’s satiny cheek and sighed. “I suppose there’s only one thing to do.”
“I’m afraid to ask,” Lily said, exchanging a look with Blythe.
The thirty-one-year-old millionaire that the Wall Street Journal had recently called a financial wunderkind with a Midas touch was brilliant, sexy, and as Lily had learned, incredibly generous and loving.
Growing up on a Kansas farm, with parents who’d instilled deep-seated, solid middle-class values into her, Lily also found Connor unnervingly impulsive. Not that the trait so different from her own serious approach to life had kept her from falling in love with him.
On the contrary, Lily thought now, although it was his kindness that had overcome the pain of her disastrous marriage, it had been Connor’s dizzying freedom of spirit that had taught her exactly how high, and how far, she could fly.
“We’ll just have to provide Katie with some brothers,” Connor said. “The sooner the better.”
“I don’t understand—”
“It’s really quite simple.” Connor grinned, looking more than a little pleased with himself for having solved yet another of life’s dilemmas. “I’ll teach the boys to beat up any male that dares even look at Katie with lust in his beady little eyes.”
Blythe laughed, remembering all the times when Lily had been steadfastly refusing his advances, that Connor’s overtly hungry gaze had practically devoured the pregnant young woman.
“Don’t knock lust, darling.” Lily went up on her toes and brushed her lips against his again. “Especially if you want Katie to have all those brothers.”
As their lips clung, Blythe felt another fleeting surge of envy and wished she was on that plane to Oregon with Gage.
How much her life had changed in the past three months, she mused. How much all their lives had changed!
As if reading her mind, Lily announced, “Blythe is moving in with Gage.”
Connor grinned his approval. “It’s about time.”
Blythe rolled her eyes. “Why is it everyone refuses to acknowledge that I was engaged until just a few days ago?”
“Because no one believed you and the doc had one of those ever-after type of things going for you,” Connor answered.
“Like you and Gage do,” Lily tacked on. “All anyone had to do was see the two of you together to know that you were destined to be together.”
Blythe thought back to something Kyriako Papakosta had said during their lunch. About the Greeks believing that character was destiny. “I don’t know about destiny,” she said. “But I do know I’m awfully glad he’s in my life.”
“Gage Remington is your fate,” Lily insisted. “The same way Connor is mine.” The couple exchanged a warm, intimate glance.
“Now, all we have to do is make it legal,” Connor pointed out. “Which you keep putting off, I might add.”
“I want to lose weight so I can fit into a wedding dress,” Lily complained. “I want everything to be perfect.”
“You’re already perfect. Katie’s perfect. I’m not, but fortunately, the two of you make up for it. Besides, we’re also all perfect together, aren’t we, Blythe?”
“Absolutely.”
“So.” He put his arm around her and drew her closer, embracing mother and daughter. “When the hell are you going to let me make an honest woman of you?”
“You’re so busy right now,” Lily demurred. “With the takeover at the studio, and—”
“When, Lily?” His friendly tone was laced with that same determination that had allowed him to overcome Lily’s initial refusal, after her disastrous marriage, to have anything to do with any man. Especially a wealthy one.
Her answering laughter revealed that she knew she was about to give in. Again. “We’ll talk about it tonight,” she promised. “After I get home.”
“I thought you’d come home with us.”
“Actually, Cait and I are taking Blythe out to dinner.”
“You are?” It was the first Blythe had heard of such plans.
“We both want to hear all about your trip,” Lily said.
“What you’re really interested in is what happened to make me break my engagement with Alan. And move in with Gage.”
“That, too,” Lily agreed cheerfully. “It’s only fair, Blythe. Cait told me how you wouldn’t rest until she ended up with Sloan and you certainly did your best to get Connor and me together. Now it’s our turn to gang up on you.”
Unable to argue with that reasoning, Blythe threw up her hands and caved in.
Lily and Cait had arranged to meet at Flynn’s, the convivial bar next to Bachelor Arms. Flynn’s served as a community watering hole—a place to sit and talk and share what had happened that day with neighbors.
“I saved your favorite booth,” Bobbie-Sue O’Hara greeted Lily with a smile and a hug.
Although Lily hadn’t known the waitress and part-time actress very well when they’d both been living at Bachelor Arms—before Lily had moved into the luxurious Malibu beach house Connor had bought for his new family—lately, as she’d continued to spend her days at the apartment building working with Gage, the two women had grown closer.
Often, when tracking down a deadbeat dad or runaway teenager, Lily needed to run downtown to some government agency who refused to hand over documentation without proper paperwork. On more than one such occasion, Bobbie-Sue had volunteered to baby-sit Katie.
And although a more cynical person might suggest that the actress was currying favor by helping out the fiancée of the new owner of Xanadu Studios, Lily knew that Bobbie-Sue was merely being a good neighbor.
“How was your trip?” Bobbie-Sue as Blythe as the women sat across from each other in the booth against the wall.
“It was lovely.” Having heard that Bobbie-Sue liked to know everything that went on in the building, and not wanting to add grist to the gossip mill, Blythe did not go into either the blossoming of her relationship with Gage, or what she’d learned about Alexandra. “The weather was lovely, the sun shone the entire time and I ate too much.”
“I visited Greece with my parents, during a tour of Europe when I was in high school,” Bobbie-Sue said. “I have to admit, I
got an enormous crush on this drop-dead gorgeous waiter.”
Blythe laughed. “That seems to be a common teenage reaction to the country.”
“I had a crush when I was in high school,” Lily revealed. “On a painter. In Florence.”
“A painter,” Bobbie-Sue’s blue eyes turned a little dreamy at the idea. “I think an Italian painter beats a Greek waiter.”
“Actually, this was in Florence, Kansas.” Lily’s quick grin showed no trace of envy that unlike Bobbie-Sue or Blythe, the farthest she’d ever gotten from home before college was a weekend at the fair in Kansas City. Although she’d never lacked for the essentials, her parents had neither the time nor the funds for lengthy vacations.
Lily had been poor and she’d been rich. Then, as if life was some giant roller coaster, she’d lost all her money and soon, once she married Connor, she figured she’d be richer than ever. But, having been miserable as the wife of a lying, cheating scion to an old New York money family, and having fallen in love with Connor when she’d believed him to be just another struggling tenant of Bachelor Arms, Lily knew that love and loyalty were more important than wealth.
“Matt Stewart was a student at Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia,” she continued. “The summer between his junior and senior years, he painted my Daddy’s barn.” She braced her elbows on the table, rested her chin in her linked fingers and grinned wickedly. “I’ve probably exaggerated in my mind over the years how handsome he was, but I’d just finished reading a book on art history, and I remember thinking that Matt’s bare chest made Michelangelo’s David look downright puny.”
Blythe and Bobbie-Sue both laughed.
“Now I wish my parents had taken us to Kansas,” Bobbie-Sue complained on the soft drawl that often led people to mistakenly believe she was just another cheerleader-pretty Southern belle.
Blythe recalled Cait mentioning that although Bobbie-Sue’s family was well-off, determined to make it on her own, she was working as a waitress at Flynn’s while waiting for her “big break.”
She handed Lily and Blythe each a menu. “So,” she said to Blythe, returning to her original topic, “did you manage to track down Natasha?”
“Finally.”
“Did she have any details to tell you about Alexandra and Patrick?”
“She filled in a few blanks.”
“Does that mean the project’s still on?”
“Definitely.” Blythe waited for the inevitable sales pitch and audition request.
“Well, I’m happy for you. Cait told me how important this project is to you.” Bobbie-Sue’s smile appeared absolutely genuine, making Blythe feel rather guilty when the girl left without lobbying for a part in the film.
“Bobbie-Sue is awfully nice,” Lily said. “But you know, I get the impression she’s a lot tougher than she looks.”
“Aren’t we all,” Blythe murmured. “Have you ever seen her act?”
“No. But her credentials are certainly impressive.” Connor told me she’s played Laura, in The Glass Menagerie at Yale. And the Elizabeth Taylor role in Suddenly Last Summer.”
“I suppose Tennessee Williams makes sense,” Blythe decided. “With that accent.”
“I suppose so. But she also did a lot of Neil Simon during summer stock.”
Blythe looked at her Lily with renewed interest. “Sounds as if you’re taking up agenting in your spare time.” Not that Lily could have all that many extra hours in her day, Blythe considered, what with a new baby, a new home, a wedding to plan and having gone into partnership with Gage.
Lily’s grin was quick and as filled with life as it had once been. Before she’d married that adulterous, thieving rat, J. Carter Van Cortlandt. “Connor’s agreed to test her. And Brenda, too,” she said, naming Bobbie-Sue’s best friend. “But not because I suggested it,” she said quickly.
“Of course not,” Blythe agreed, knowing that there was nothing Connor Mackay would not do for Lily.
“Really,” Lily insisted.
“Speaking of Connor, when are you two going to get married?”
“I don’t know.” Lily sighed and dragged her hand through her long corn silk blond hair. “If it were just the two of us, I’d marry him tomorrow.”
“Last time I checked the wedding vows, only two people were involved.”
“True. But Connor’s not just anybody.”
“No. He’s the man you love.”
“The rich man I love,” Lily stressed, strain etching a line across her smooth forehead.
“I thought you’d moved past having problems with Connor’s money.”
“I have. And, I’ll even admit that after worrying about how I was even going to buy baby food, it’s kind of nice knowing that I’m not going to run out of money at the end of the month.”
“Not unless you decide to buy Trump Tower and the Taj Mahal in the same month,” Blythe agreed. “So, if it’s not the fact that your husband-to-be is a gazillionaire, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is the wedding itself. I’ve already been through one three-ring circus of a ceremony. I was hoping, if I ever got married again, I could keep it simple. With just a few family and friends. But, now that I’m marrying Connor—”
“I can’t see him not going along with anything you want,” Blythe broke in. “Have you discussed this with him?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“And, he says I should have whatever wedding I want.”
“I still don’t get it. If you want a small, intimate ceremony, and Connor agrees that whatever you want is all right with him, then what’s the big problem?”
“A small wedding was all right when I thought he was Mac Sullivan. But he isn’t Mac. He’s C. S. Mackay.”
“Whatever his name, he’s the same man you fell in love with, Lily.” They’d been over this ground before, as well. When Lily had first discovered Connor’s deception and broken things off. “The same man who loves you to distraction.”
“I know.” She sighed again. “But Connor is an important man. My God, Blythe, he was Time’s Man of the Year when he was only twenty-five and they’re always quoting him in the Wall Street Journal. He’s famous, which means that we should probably have a wedding that lives up to his status.”
Blythe stared at Lily. “I can’t believe I’d ever hear you parroting Madeline Van Cortlandt’s snobby words. You do realize, of course, that’s the same argument your former mother-in-law used to make you give up your dream wedding when you married Junior?”
“I know.” Lily’s expression was bleak. “And Connor keeps telling me that he wants a marriage, not a merger, but—”
“Connor’s a smart man. And a good man. My advice is to marry the guy quick, before he gets away.”
“Connor would never leave.” On this, Lily’s belief was absolute.
Blythe smiled, pleased to see the return of Lily’s confidence. “I know. It’s been obvious from the start that he’s the kind of man who sticks around, like in the vows, for better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health.”
“Like Gage.”
“Like Gage,” Blythe agreed with a soft smile.
“So, perhaps we should start planning your wedding.”
“Clever how you so deftly managed to change the focus,” Blythe said dryly. The bar was suddenly flooded with bright California sunlight as the door opened. “There’s Cait,” Blythe said, relieved that the conversation would be forestalled.
Even dressed in the properly sedate navy suit she’d worn to testify at a trial this afternoon, Caitlin Carrigan still garnered the attention of every male in the bar. Heads turned, as if on swivels, as she crossed the bar on her long, purposeful stride.
“Welcome back,” she said, exchanging a hug and kiss with her childhood friend.
“It’s good to be home,” Blythe said. “How did things go in court?”
“The entire case was thrown out of court because the coroner’s office misplaced the damn la
b results. So, thanks to a monumental bureaucratic screwup, the judge had no choice but to grant the defense’s motion for a dismissal.” Storm clouds billowed in her green eyes. “Which means, that in another hour or so, we’re going to have another rapist walking the streets.”
“I’m sorry,” Blythe said.
“The hardest thing was explaining to the victim of date rape how the system let her down. Especially since it took me hours to talk her into prosecuting the bastard in the first place.”
“What happens now?” Lily asked.
Cait cursed and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. The emerald engagement ring Sloan had given her flashed like green fire in the muted bar light. “I made a couple of calls and it looks as if the feds may take her case. Since the creep in question was her supervisor, we’re hoping we can at least nail him on a sexual harassment charge.”
“That’s better than nothing,” Blythe said encouragingly.
“That’s what I keep telling myself,” Cait agreed glumly. Struggling for the professional detachment that she’d always found the most difficult part of police work, she shook off her frustration, both mentally and physically.
“Changing the subject to yet another heinous crime, Sloan tells me you’ve got some good stuff on Alexandra’s murder.”
“I think so.” Blythe had already decided to tell Lily and Cait about the dreams. She was hoping they’d be able to convince her of what Gage had not—that the nightmares were merely the project of an overactive imagination, stimulated by her obsession with Alexandra.
For the next ten minutes she shared what she’d learned about the problems in Alexandra and Patrick’s marriage, including their argument the night of the New Year’s Eve party. She also told them about having dreamed that Alexandra was pregnant.
“Did the autopsy reveal a pregnancy?” Cait asked.
“No. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
“Are you saying you think there may have been a cover-up?” This from Lily.
Blythe shrugged. “That’s possible, I suppose. But conspiracies are hard to pull off because all it takes is one person talking and the entire thing unravels. Besides, in this town, secrets are harder to keep than marriage partners.