by Wendy Leigh
He ends his telephone conversation, but just as I am about to speak, the phone rings again, and, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I’m sitting here waiting, he launches into another conversation.
“Sell the eight million shares now, Cooper, then hold fire. And decide who we are going to send along to London to bid for the Modigliani in person,” he instructs.
Eight million shares? A Modigliani?
Of course! The Hartwell Galleries—one in Manhattan, one in Chicago, and one in Beverly Hills, each housing segments of the priceless Hartwell art collection, all available for the public to see without paying an entrance fee. His gift to the nation, and Lady Georgiana’s, although commentators usually sniped that with her exquisite taste, she, not Robert Hartwell, assembled it.
On a personal level, the list of what Robert Hartwell owns (apart from the jewel in his crown, the world’s most expensive yacht, the Lady Georgiana) is never-ending, an avalanche of luxury cars, and planes, and residences: the Santa Barbara ranch, the Geneva château, the Monte Carlo penthouse, the St. Moritz chalet, the Mayfair mansion, the Capri villa, the Fifth Avenue triplex with the helipad on the roof, plus permanent eight-room suites at all three Ritz hotels: London, Paris, and Madrid.
Finally, he ends his conversation with Mr. Cooper and fixes his heat-seeking-missile eyes on me again.
I tense all over.
He’s going to demand I start reading my manuscript to him here and now, this minute, but no way I’m going to unless he agrees to give it back to me first.
“I intend to return your manuscript to you, Miss Stone,” he says, infiltrating my thoughts so thoroughly that I feel utterly powerless against him.
Then he scribbles a deal memo guaranteeing that he won’t disclose the true identity of the author of Unraveled to anyone, and signs it with a flourish.
I reach across the table to take the deal memo, only for him to imprison my hand in his so that I can’t.
“Your turn, Miss Stone,” he says, and passes me the manuscript, instead of the memo.
Don’t let Robert Hartwell intimidate you, Miranda, I hear Grandpa saying, and pluck up my courage.
“Mr. Hartwell, at the very least, please give me the courtesy of explaining why you insist on tormenting me with your outrageous demand,” I say.
“Tormenting you, Miss Stone? I hardly think I am tormenting you. At least, not much,” he says.
“Quite enough for me, Mr. Hartwell. And I’d just like to understand why you want to put me through this . . . this . . .” And words fail me.
“In time, Miss Stone, in time,” he says, and I bite my lip, then rally.
“And the possibility of me ghosting your autobiography, Mr. Hartwell?” I say in as strong a voice as I can muster.
“After you have fulfilled your side of your bargain, Miss Stone. First, though, I’d like you to tell me a little about yourself,” he says.
“What exactly would you like to know about me, Mr. Hartwell?”
“Start by telling me about your father,” he says, and I nearly faint.
How can he know that that’s the first question I ask every celebrity I interview, so as to coax them to open up to me and tell me their secrets? But here is this world-famous billionaire turning the tables on me and asking me the same thing.
Tell Robert Hartwell about my father?
Not if I can help it.
My father. The first man I ever loved, but who never loved me back. At least, not in the way I yearned to be loved. And now Robert Hartwell wants me to expose my deepest vulnerabilities to him by talking about the man who caused me more anguish than any other man in my life?
Yet at the same time, I am flattered to the tips of my Louboutins that the all-powerful Robert Hartwell is interested in me as a person.
Or perhaps he is just doing what Lady Georgiana always did, or so legend had it: focused on each person she met as if they were the only human being in the universe, and enchant them, lock, stock, and barrel.
But I’m not someone Robert Hartwell needs to enchant. Quite the opposite. Because if I want to persuade Robert Hartwell to let me ghost his autobiography, I need to enchant him, at least a little.
Which is why, although every fiber of my being cries out against it, I decide to answer his overly personal question after all.
“My father? Divorced from my mother. Shrewd, ruthless, charming, and very dead,” I say.
Robert Hartwell takes my hand in his, this time softly, gently. And the tenderness behind his gesture suddenly and inexplicably makes me feel like bursting into tears.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I know at once that he doesn’t mean he’s sorry about my father, but about my reaction to the unexpected tenderness he has just shown me.
Clearly nothing escapes his eagle eyes. And for a moment, I have the uncomfortable sensation that he has the power to see right through me.
I tell myself I’m being ridiculous, because the thought of being transparent to Robert Hartwell is ultradisturbing to me. So is his feeling sorry for me. Unless, of course, the fact that I’ve aroused his sympathy means that he won’t insist on my fulfilling my side of the bargain after all . . .
Then I feel guilty that I’m considering using my father’s death for my own benefit. At that thought, I suddenly experience an inexplicable desire to do what Robert Hartwell asks, to please him, just as I always wanted to please my father but never could.
“Shall I tell you about the last time I ever saw my father?” I say.
He nods in assent.
I glance out of the window at the rose garden below. My father loved flowers, and at the thought, I am suddenly nostalgic and sad.
“All right, Mr. Hartwell. Three years ago, my father was in Mount Sinai, suffering from tongue cancer, and despite everything that had passed between us, and everything that had not, I hated to see him suffering. He was wafer thin, but his eyes were large and round. And the disease had deprived him of speech.
“So—because I knew he was dying, that this was probably the last time I would ever see him, and he knew it, too—I handed him a yellow legal pad and asked him if he wanted to write something for me.
“He took it from me and began to write. I couldn’t bear the suspense, the hope within me that this, finally, was it; my father, for the first time in my life and his, was going to give me the emotional security I had always craved.
“So I went downstairs to the coffee shop, had a cup of green tea and a Hershey bar, terrified of what he’d write, but praying that it would be something tender, something that I could keep forever, something that would make me feel loved by him at last.”
Robert Hartwell raises an eyebrow.
“You never did?” he says.
I shake my head.
“Never. But this was our last meeting and I knew it. After I decided I’d given him enough time, I went back up to his room again.
“From the door, I could see that he had written five or six lines on the yellow pad.
“My father’s last words to me. I promised myself that however emotional they were, I wouldn’t break down in front of him. I didn’t want that to be his last image of me, his last memory, you see.
“I took the pad from him. This is what my father wrote to me: ‘Call Bangkok 23075 and ask for Arissa Peng. Tell her that Luke can’t talk anymore, that he is dying, that he loves her, always will, and wherever he is, he will watch over her forever.”
“He wrote that on his deathbed? And asked you, his daughter, to read it to his girlfriend?” Robert Hartwell says, a look of amazement on his handsome face.
I nod.
Then, although I can feel a lump starting to form in my throat, I go on.
“So I took the pad on which my father had written a message for his seventeen-year-old Thai girlfriend, telling her everything I always long
ed for him to tell me but never did. And I went downstairs to the call box, called Bangkok, and, just as my father had asked me to, I told Arissa Peng all of it.
“So that’s the story,” I say, and flash Robert Hartwell what I hope is a brilliant smile.
“Let me take you on a tour of the estate,” he says, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
A stay of execution . . .
With Robert Hartwell as my guide, I tour Hartwell Castle’s luxurious interior. And while he fails to show me the private rooms, he does take me to see the high-tech gym jammed full of the latest equipment (where, according to the tabloids, he does three-hour workouts every day, come rain or shine), the casino, the twenty-seat movie theater, and the heated indoor swimming pool, in which, reports claimed, Lady Georgiana swam fifty lengths every morning.
I can’t even swim one. No matter how hard and how often Grandpa tried to teach me to swim over the years, even in a shallow pool, I always suffered the harrowing sensation of losing control and—however much I hate admitting defeat—I gave up every time.
Fortunately, though, Robert Hartwell doesn’t invite me for a swim. In fact, throughout the tour of the staterooms, he hardly talks to me at all. Most of the time, he has a faraway look in his eyes and I guess he is thinking about Lady Georgiana: Lady Georgiana swimming in the pool, Lady Georgiana famously hitting the bull’s-eye each and every time they played darts together, Lady Georgiana entwined with him as they watched romantic movies together in their screening room.
For a moment I wonder whether he has home movies of her; Lady Georgiana surfing off Bondi Beach, Lady Georgiana galloping through Central Park on her famous white Arabian mare (named Viola, of course), Lady Georgiana on the beach in Barbados, her toned and tanned body displayed to its best advantage in a minuscule violet bikini.
As the various images I saw of Lady Georgiana during my research flit through my mind, along with the reams of glowing tributes to her which I read last night, an unexpected pang of jealousy at her perfection cuts through me.
Luckily, at that moment Robert Hartwell takes my arm and with an unexpected forcefulness propels me out of the castle and into the front of a waiting golf cart. So I push those thoughts out of my mind.
When he takes the wheel, I am once more assailed by the heat of his body and have to tense all my muscles so as not to betray my physical reaction to him.
As we tour the estate together, his thigh is pressed close to mine, and although I move as far away from him as I can, it takes all my willpower for me to concentrate on my surroundings: the Chinese pagoda (where Lady Georgiana used to meditate on a daily basis), the Blue Grotto (the site of countless glamorous dinner parties at which Lady Georgiana always made sure that every guest was comfortable, happy, and content), the outdoor swimming pool (where she swam all those lengths in good weather), and the rose Garden (where the priceless Lady Georgiana rose continues to grow in abundance).
Fortunately, I remember all that from my research, because Robert Hartwell doesn’t bother to elaborate on any of it. Nor does he ever utter Lady Georgiana’s name. And in a strange way, I’m glad.
The golf cart rounds a bend and suddenly, Hartwell Lake shimmers in front of us, and in the middle, Hartwell Island with its purple marble mausoleum, which a heartbroken Robert Hartwell commissioned, and where Lady Georgiana will remain for all eternity.
The cart grinds to a halt by the edge of Hartwell Lake. I flash back to all the reports of Robert and Lady Georgiana’s ten-million-dollar wedding reception, here by the lake, where all the fountains were infused with Georgiana Royale, and clouds of the sultry fragrance filled the air with the heady scent of violets.
Robert Hartwell takes my hand to help me out of the golf cart. I shrink a little, not just because I feel as if he is about to crush my hand, but because I want to mask the earthquake of emotions he ignites within me; sexual arousal, light-headedness, and an intoxicating flash of fear.
He grips my elbow and steers me toward a lakeside bench, facing the island.
We sit there, together, in silence.
“You must have loved her very much,” I say after a while.
His eyes cloud over.
“I did. I really did,” he says. I’m primed for him to add, “And I still do.”
Instead, without any warning, he turns and faces me, his hypnotic eyes dark and unfathomable.
“Now, Miss Stone,” he says, “I am not a patient man. Time for you to live up to our bargain at last.”
I have no choice, and no escape.
Or perhaps I do . . .
“Shall we toss for it, Mr. Hartwell?” I say.
“Trying to beat me at my own game, Miss Stone?” he says, with a low chuckle.
“And why not, Mr. Hartwell? I’m willing to trust my fate to chance.”
“Of course you are, Miss Stone. After all, you are a woman who believes in the stars . . . a beautiful woman, at that.”
Robert Hartwell has just called me beautiful!
I blush scarlet.
“Shall we, Miss Stone?” he says, and, as if by magic, produces a gold coin.
I take a look at it and gulp.
Because it isn’t just any gold coin, but the 1933 Double Eagle!
The Double Eagle, which, I recall from the headlines trumpeting its sale to an anonymous bidder, is worth over $8 million.
“May I look at it before the toss, Mr. Hartwell?” I say.
“Ah, so you don’t trust me, Miss Stone?” he says, then gives me a slight smile and hands the coin over to me.
“Trusting a man isn’t one of my strong points, Mr. Hartwell,” I say, then regret it.
“I’m well aware of that, Miss Stone,” he says, and fixes me with his laser-beam stare.
Flustered, I examine the coin even more closely. “Lady Liberty on one side, the American eagle on the other,” I say.
“And the only Double Eagle, out of thirteen still in existence, in private ownership. Until I arranged for it to be purchased anonymously on my behalf, it was watched over night and day by three security guards,” he says.
“But you’re just carrying it around in your pocket!”
“And why not?” he says, and flings the coin straight at me.
By some miracle, I catch it.
“Good catch, Miss Stone, I didn’t peg you for a sporty girl,” he says.
“No, just one who writes lurid erotica,” I shoot back.
“And who won’t be forced to read part of it to me out loud if she wins the toss,” he says with a seductive smile.
“And if I lose?” I say, a slight break in my voice.
“And if you lose, I shall have no mercy. But I think you already know that, Miss Stone,” he says.
Instinctively, I close my fist around the Double Eagle.
Very gently, Robert Hartwell reaches forward, unclenches my fist, and takes the coin back from me.
“Elegant hands, Miss Stone. If I were an artist, I would paint them,” he says.
“You’re very kind, Mr. Hartwell. Of course you would be even kinder if you showed me some mercy.”
“No chance. Your toss, or mine?” he says.
I hesitate.
“Mine, Mr. Hartwell,” I say finally.
“Very well, Miss Stone, so be it. Heads or tails?”
“Lady Liberty, of course, Mr. Hartwell.”
“Naturally,” he says, and tosses the Double Eagle coin high in the air, while I cross my fingers that Lady Liberty will triumph over the American eagle.
“Tails, Miss Stone. I win,” he says, and, quick as a flash, pockets his $8 million coin.
I wanted to win the toss, I needed to win the toss, but when I don’t, I inwardly surrender to the fact that Robert Hartwell has beaten me—because somewhere deep in a secret part of my psyche that I generally keep tightly under control,
I am aroused that he has.
“Now, Mr. Hartwell?”
“Now, Miss Stone.”
“Right here, Mr. Hartwell?”
This time, he doesn’t dignify my question with an answer, but nods curtly and passes me the manuscript of Unraveled.
I face him, pull myself up to my full height (not difficult when you are only five foot two), and look up into his eyes.
“Do you really and truly want to put me through this, Mr. Hartwell?”
“You know I do, Miss Stone,” he says.
“And I really can’t appeal to your chivalrous nature?”
“On hiatus right now, Miss Stone,” he says with a slight smile.
“You win then, Mr. Hartwell,” I say, then grit my teeth and prepare to start reading Unraveled to him.
Suddenly, as fate would have it, there is a clap of thunder, a flash of lightning, and the sky opens up with rain.
“It seems that you do have Lady Luck on your side after all, Miss Stone,” Robert Hartwell declares, then vaults into the golf cart, pulls me in after him, and drives back to the castle at breakneck speed.
In the forecourt, a maroon Rolls with the number plate RH1 is waiting. The liveried chauffeur steps forward and hands Robert Hartwell an envelope with my name on it. He passes it over to me.
Inside is his signed deal memo promising never to disclose that I’m the author of Unraveled.
“Lunch at one tomorrow, the Hartwell Gallery, Madison Avenue. And bring your manuscript with you,” Robert Hartwell says, and it is an order, not a question.
Then he waves away the chauffeur and opens the Rolls door for me himself.
“Take Miss Stone wherever she wants to go, James,” he instructs.
I suppress the urge to say “Honolulu” throw Robert Hartwell a smile, and settle into the backseat of the Rolls.
Then the Rolls glides away, with me in it.
I look out the rear window as Robert Hartwell recedes from view, tall, dark, brooding, handsome, yet a complete and utter enigma to me.
Chapter Three
At ten sharp in the morning, the maroon Rolls-Royce pulls up outside my building. Luckily, most of my neighbors are at work, otherwise I’d never live it down.