All That Glitters

by Diana Palmer

  “I’ve been paying all my life,” came the reply. “Emotionally and then financially.”

  Marlene looked away. “You owe me!”

  “No, I don’t,” Ivory said quietly. “It’s the other way around. Someday, the truth will come out, you know. And not everybody believes the lies you’ve told about me. What will you do if they ever dig deep enough to find out what sort of childhood I had? Or about that last night when your boyfriend came to the house and I ran screaming out the back door?”

  Marlene actually went pale. She pushed back her hair nervously. “You asked for that!”

  “I did not! I never did! You were both too drunk to care about my feelings, and I got away in the nick of time! Wouldn’t that be a sweet story to tell back home?”

  Marlene glared at her. For a minute, she almost looked ashamed as she averted her eyes.

  Ivory had won one battle, for the moment. Marlene had always been her enemy; but for the first time, Ivory had weapons of her own to fight back with. She wasn’t the downtrodden child she’d been when she left home.

  Ivory went to work half-heartedly for the rest of the week. Marlene was rude to her neighbors, and she complained nonstop about the apartment and the lack of money to spend. Ivory had already gone to the limit of her budget and refused to spend any more on her greedy parent, but Marlene wasn’t one to give up easily. Unfortunately for Ivory, she stayed up late one night and dipped into Ivory’s purse for the corporate credit card. While Ivory was at work the next day, she practiced until she could forge Ivory’s name. Now, if the silly girl just didn’t miss the card, Marlene could get the things she really wanted, without her daughter’s interference.

  Ivory didn’t discover that the card was missing. She used it only to entertain buyers, and she wasn’t in the habit of checking to make sure it was in her purse—a mistake that was to cost her dearly.

  “You haven’t brought your mother over to see us again,” Dee remarked Thursday afternoon. “Why?”

  “You wouldn’t enjoy the visit,” Ivory replied quietly. She looked up at Dee from her desk, worn and wan-looking. “And I don’t think I could stand having to work here if she’d seen my office.”

  “You have a real phobia about her,” Dee said. “Don’t you?”

  “Yes.” She clasped her hands in her lap and looked at her friend levelly. “The truth is, I had a pretty rough childhood. We were poor and I was scarcely literate. My father was a sharecropper. He worked until he dropped, and he finally died of it. After that, Marlene made life hell. She had one man after another, playing them for all she was worth to get things she wanted. She’s not pretty enough or young enough to get men anymore, so now she’s using me to get what she wants.”

  “Using you how?”

  “We share a dark secret,” Ivory laughed coolly. “Doesn’t that sound melodramatic? It’s true. She could cause me a lot of trouble if she wanted to, and I’m not certain I could get myself out of it unless I was really well-to-do.”

  “You mean she’s blackmailing you?”

  Ivory hesitated. “In a sense, I suppose she is,” she replied. “She’s greedy, Dee. I didn’t want her to know how successful I was becoming, but she found out anyway. When she came to the office and Curry saw her, he knew that everything I’d told him about my past was a lie. He raked me over the coals for being so ungrateful to my mother. He hasn’t the slightest idea what sort of person she really is. It’s the old story, I guess. Marlene always could make people believe that she was the victim and I was the villain. She’s good at it.”

  “I can’t believe that Curry could be taken in that easily! Do you want me to talk to him?”

  She shook her head. “He wouldn’t believe you any more than he believed me when I tried to explain. It would only make him put more stock in Marlene’s lies if you interfered. He’d be sure that I put you up to it, you see.”

  Dee grimaced. She folded her arms over her chest and paced. “There must be some way. How long is your mother staying?”

  “She leaves tomorrow, thank God,” she said. She shivered. “But I don’t think she’ll stay away. Now that she knows what a good job I really have, she’ll want more and more of my salary. She’ll go home and tell everyone that I’m living it up in the big city while I let her starve back home in Texas.”

  “That isn’t true.”

  “That’s what she’ll say, and they’ll believe her. They always have, even when I was little. Nobody ever believed I was being ill-treated, except one neighbor, a policewoman. She moved, though, and I have no idea where she went. She’s the only person who saw through Marlene.”

  “Pity you couldn’t track her down.”

  “I hope I never have to,” Ivory said. Her insides were clenched tight. “Dee, it’s like a nightmare ever since my mother showed up. I thought I was safe from her here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, so am I. But that doesn’t help me. Even if I give up this job and move, she’ll keep coming. I’ll never get her off my back until I die...”

  Dee had her by the arm. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  Ivory looked hunted, but she composed herself rapidly. “No, I won’t do that,” she said heavily. “I’m not suicidal. I’m just tired. I’m so tired.”

  Dee could imagine that she was. Poor Ivory, with a career that was just starting to take off and a blackmailer for a mother. It wasn’t fair.

  “I’ve got to get back to work,” Ivory said. “When I draw, I can block her out. I used to do it when I was little. It still works, but it’s more profitable now.”

  “Yes, it is, for all of us. The latest sales figures are super. You’ve put us over the top.”

  “I’m glad. I hope I can keep doing it.”

  “Your kind of creativity doesn’t wear out,” Dee assured her.

  But it wasn’t creativity that worried Ivory. It was her unpredictable parent.

  She got home just after dark. Marlene’s bag was packed and she looked a little too pleased with herself for comfort. Still she seemed to be without malice for once as Ivory treated her to supper at a steak house downtown in Manhattan.

  It was a restaurant frequented by the executives of Kells-Meredith, and Ivory wasn’t sparing her boss’s pocket one bit. He’d told her to take Marlene out on the town, and she was doing it—at his expense.

  “Isn’t this nice,” Marlene remarked, looking around. She was wearing a black silk sheath that Ivory didn’t remember her mother bringing. It looked expensive, too.

  “I don’t remember that dress,” Ivory began.

  “It was under my night things. I’ve had it for ages,” Marlene said dismissively, looking around her. “Do you come here often?”

  “No.” Ivory started to add to that statement when her eyes caught and held on a familiar tall figure in evening clothes. Curry! And on his arm was one of the new models, a striking brunette named Gaby, dressed in one of Ivory’s signature gowns. She felt the pain all the way up and down her body. How could he!

  Marlene saw where her daughter was staring and followed the stricken gaze. “It’s your boss. Handsome devil, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Ivory said through her teeth.

  Marlene smiled at him and lifted a hand. He saw her, turning to his companion and leading her over to the table occupied by the two women.

  “What a pleasant surprise,” Curry said suavely, without mentioning that he’d tricked Dee into telling him about Ivory’s plans to bring her mother here tonight. “So we meet again, Mrs. Keene,” he said with a gentle smile.

  “Mrs. Costello,” she corrected. “Ivory was so ashamed of me that she had her last name legally changed when she left home.”

  Curry was stunned. He glanced at Ivory, who met his eyes bravely and without speaking. It was the truth, but Marlene twisted it.

  “Keene is my mother’s maiden na
me,” Marlene continued.

  Ivory remained quiet, although it cost her some effort.

  “Won’t you join us?” Marlene added quickly, certain that if she could cajole him into it, Ivory wouldn’t miss the corporate card that Marlene still had tucked in her purse. “It’s my last night in New York, you know.”

  Curry glanced at Ivory and then at his companion. “Do you mind, Gaby?” he asked the other woman.

  “Not if you don’t, Curry, dear,” she purred.

  He stiffened, but he didn’t correct the assumption that they were more than just companions. Ivory seemed frozen in place and, in Curry’s view, her mother was very obviously hurting from her daughter’s treatment. He was surprised at Ivory’s lack of compassion for her mother. It gave his suspicions even more substance.

  “Sit down, then,” Marlene coaxed again. “The more the merrier.”

  Curry seated his companion and then himself. “How do you like New York?” he asked pleasantly.

  “It’s just so exciting,” Marlene enthused. “All these lovely stores...a little old country girl like me could go crazy. Of course, it’s very lonely when you have to spend your holiday by yourself. Ivory’s been too busy to come home for years...”

  She let her voice trail off. Ivory’s jaw clenched and Curry glanced at her accusingly.

  “I gave her tomorrow off,” he volunteered, “so that she’ll have some free time to spend with you.”

  “And I appreciate it, really I do,” Marlene said with a sigh, “but I’ve arranged to change my ticket so that I leave first thing in the morning. I know I’m a burden to Ivory. She’ll be so much happier when I’m gone. She doesn’t like remembering the past, you see. We were dirt-poor and she hated school, poor child. She could hardly spell her name when she went off to design school, and she talked Southern talk, just like her mama! And here she is speaking so well, knowing which of these fancy forks to use. Remember how you tucked your napkin right under your chin the first time we went out to eat?” she added with just the right touch of motherly affection.

  Curry was learning things he didn’t want to know about Ivory. Illiterate and unsophisticated and dirt-poor, that was the description her mother gave of her background. He wondered what else she’d kept from him, and if she’d really only used him to get where she was. Everyone from Harry Lambert to his own mother had warned him that she was climbing up his body to fame and fortune, but he hadn’t listened. Now he was sorry. He’d been badly hurt to find out the truth about Ivory, just when they seemed destined for a future together. But how could he live with a woman whose whole identity was a lie?

  “Please, Mother,” Ivory said under her breath.

  “Now, dear, you mustn’t worry. I’m sure Curry won’t think less of you. After all, he’s a man of the world. She had so many boyfriends,” Marlene added on a laugh. “Why, after I was widowed, she even stole away some of mine!”

  Curry’s expression was suddenly explosive. He wasn’t thinking straight at all, Ivory saw, and she wondered if he’d think she had pretended to be innocent that first time. But how could he, when all the signs were there for him to see? she thought, panicking.

  More sophisticated than Ivory, Curry knew that innocence could be faked, and how. His good eye narrowed as he stared at her, and she could see the wheels turning.

  She flushed, lowering her eyes. It looked to the man beside her like an admission of guilt.

  “She wouldn’t ever get serious about a boy, though,” Marlene continued gaily, after the waiter had taken their order and departed. “She said she was going to get rich, no matter what it took or how far she had to go. And it looks as if she has, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Curry said tightly. “It does.”

  “Fame and glamour, that’s all she ever wanted. My goodness, isn’t it a long way from the farm, Ivory?” She laughed again. “Can you see Ivory barefooted, slopping hogs? She did hate those pigs!”

  Ivory felt her carefully constructed actions falling around her like paper walls. Marlene was stripping her soul naked and insinuating things that weren’t true. There was no defense, though. If she denied it, she’d look even more guilty. And Curry was sitting there, angering his glass, drinking in every word.

  “Well, she won’t have to feed the pigs ever again. Now she can ride around in limousines and eat at the best restaurants and afford designer clothes, can’t she?”

  “Excuse me,” Ivory said huskily, getting up. “I have to go to the ladies’ room.”

  “Certainly, dear. Are you ill?” Marlene asked with assumed concern.

  “I’ll be fine in a minute, Mother.”

  Marlene watched her retreating back with a tiny smile before she turned back to Curry. “Such a kind girl,” she said with a sigh. “And so generous! Why, would you look at this dress? She bought it for me at Neiman Marcus, and these shoes to go with it! And a fur coat...oh, I just feel like Cinderella! I had no idea that she was that well-to-do, and I did try to stop her, you know, but she insisted that I have the very best. Isn’t she a kind child?”

  Curry’s brow furrowed. He knew the designer of the dress Marlene was wearing by the lines; it was Chanel. That was a model, and worth thousands. The shoes weren’t as expensive, but she’d mentioned a fur. He knew what he paid Ivory, and even with her bonus she couldn’t afford such things. He’d have to ask her how she managed it. Perhaps in time. But why would she spend those amounts on a mother she admitted that she didn’t like?

  Ivory rejoined them a few minutes later, still sick to her stomach but feeling more able to cope. She’d thought she was all grown up, but her mother had a way of making her feel gauche and inferior. It wouldn’t have worked, except that Curry was sitting there, weakening her defenses. She looked at him and ached all over for his arms around her, but he wasn’t feeling anything similar; she could tell by that thunderous expression. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of making any sort of defense now. If he wanted to believe Marlene’s lies, let him. But it didn’t help her feelings when he slid an arm around the back of the chair his companion was occupying and let his long, lean fingers trace her shoulder affectionately.

  Ivory ate exquisite cuisine that tasted like wax paper and refused dessert. Marlene held sway, talking about the little town of Harmony where she kept up such a brave front when her daughter never came to visit, never wrote except to send a check. She sounded so pathetic that even Ivory wanted to weep for her. It was useless trying to protest. No one would listen. Marlene even managed two tears. They rolled down her cheeks and she wiped them away quickly, with the precision of a skilled actress.

  “You must forgive me,” she said huskily, glancing at Ivory, who was sitting like a stone woman. “Sometimes it hurts very badly that my only child doesn’t want me in her life.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Curry said firmly. He looked at Ivory, too. “And that things will change for the better, very soon.”

  “I do hope so,” she sighed.

  Curry glanced at his watch. “I have to leave. I have to be up early to take my mother in for her chemotherapy.”

  “Is your mother ill?” Marlene asked.

  “She has cancer,” he replied, glancing curiously at Ivory, whom he would have expected to tell her mother about his circumstances. “They’ve increased the chemotherapy in one last effort to stop the spread.”

  “I do hope it’s successful. Do give her my best,” Marlene said.

  “Thank you.” He stood up, helping his companion back into her expensive fur stole. His hands lingered on her shoulders as he looked down at Ivory. “You’ll take your mother to the airport, I’m sure.”

  “Of course,” she said. She averted her eyes. It hurt to see him handle the other woman.

  He knew it. It gave him a bitter pleasure. She’d kept things from him, deceived him, and she had no feeling at all for her own mother. He was hurt
ing, and he’d convinced himself that she felt nothing for him. Gaby was a very casual date, nothing more, but Ivory wouldn’t know that. He despised himself for caring that he was hurting her.

  “I’ll say good night, then. I hope you have a pleasant trip home, Marlene,” he added with a smile.

  “Thank you, Curry. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Same here. Don’t worry about the check,” he added, as Marlene had known he would. “I’ll sign for everything before I leave. My treat.” He nodded curtly at Ivory and, sliding his hand into the brunette’s, led her away. She almost ran to keep up with his long strides, laughing up at him as if she loved him to distraction.

  “What a lovely man.” Marlene sighed. “You know, I’m sure he was attracted to me. If only I were pretty, like I used to be.” She turned her attention back to Ivory. “Well, it’s obvious that he has no use for you, isn’t it?”

  “Thanks to you,” she choked.

  “I didn’t do anything. He had the other woman in tow first, didn’t he? I’ll bet they’re sleeping together. She has that well-loved look. I’ll bet he’s great in bed...”

  “Shall we go?” Ivory snapped, rising.

  Marlene got up lazily and smoothed down her dress. “If we must. I do want to get an early start tomorrow.”

  It didn’t occur to Ivory to ask why her mother was in such a hurry to go home. She was too preoccupied with remembering how Curry had looked at her, and how easily he’d fallen for all her mother’s lies. He’d never believe anything she told him again. He’d made that clear without a single word.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IVORY WENT WITH her mother to the airport in the limousine. The other woman still had only the one bag with its matching cosmetic case, but she looked smug somehow. It wasn’t anything Ivory could put her finger on, but something wasn’t right.

  “Have a good trip home,” Ivory said stiffly.

  “Oh, I will,” Marlene said sweetly. Her eyes narrowed on her daughter. “I’ll have a very good trip home. You just make sure you keep those checks coming, dear. I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to come back again, would you? I mean, your friends obviously believe me more than they trust you.”