In a bland voice, he remarked, "I think we need to do something now."
Kate picked up a slim, gold-tipped pen and held it between her fingers. "I have to admit the new scent you've developed is good." The praise seemed to require effort. "But you know as well as I do that two thirds of new launches fail."
Diana leaned forward in her seat. "Not the launches Coldwell Advertising has worked on. Their track record is significantly better."
Kate ignored Diana. She kept her eyes on Chess. Her gaze was unwavering, and it held the same cold wall it always did when she looked at her oldest son. "My vote stays the same. I'm against taking out a loan to finance an advertising launch for your new perfume."
As Chess regarded his mother, he wondered if he'd actually ever done anything to merit the cold dislike he saw in her eyes. Or was she seeing someone else? His father, perhaps, the man who'd gotten her pregnant and abandoned her. He must have been one lousy son-of-a-bitch.
Or perhaps Chess was simply missing something, whatever it took to gain her love.
"Well, Diana," he observed. "I guess Kate has made her views clear."
His mother picked up a pair of half-frame glasses and installed them over her nose. She turned her attention to a stack of payroll sheets. Chess was already forgotten.
She thought she could get rid of him that easily.
Irritation burned inside Chess, initiated perhaps by his earlier failure with Cookie. Dammit, he was going to make his mother care—at least about something. "Diana, would you wait for me outside?"
Hesitating only briefly, Diana gathered her pad and slipped from the room.
At the same time, Kate looked up, faintly frowning.
Chess waited until the door had fully closed after Diana. "I have some news for you, of a personal nature."
"Oh?" Something sparked briefly behind her eyes, but it was gone too quickly for Chess to assess its nature. Surely it could not have been interest, however. The last time Kate had shown personal interest in Chess must have been over twenty years ago, when they were deciding where he should go to college.
"What is it?" Kate asked.
Chess clasped his hands behind his back. "I'm thinking of getting married."
Kate's composed features froze. "Married?"
"People do that, you know. Even me."
Her eyes searched his face quickly, closely. "What kind of a game are you playing?"
He was baiting her, but it hurt just the same. He'd shown her nothing but loyalty all these years. Couldn't his own mother believe him capable of love?
Dimly, it occurred to Chess that if he did marry Rebecca Thibideaux, it wouldn't be for love.
"Oh, no," Kate said. Her expression thawed as she began to catch on. "Not Cookie."
Chess raised a shoulder. "Who else?"
Kate stared at him in horror. "You wouldn't. Not even you would—would—"
"Stoop so low?" Chess pursed his lips. "I don't know why not. After all, I have the shining example of my own mother to follow. Marrying in order to save the business didn't sit so poorly with you." You even got a son out of it, Chess nearly added. The son he couldn't be, the one she could love with a normal mother's love.
Kate lifted her chin. "Cookie would never agree to it."
Right on the money there, Chess silently conceded. Aloud, he claimed, "I'm handing her an offer she can't refuse."
Kate actually smiled at that. They both knew that with Cookie there was no such thing. Kate pushed her half glasses back up her nose, relaxed again. "You send me an invitation."
"I'll do that." Chess smiled while silently gnashing his teeth. His mother's complacency was well founded. It would be a bloody miracle if she ever got that invitation.
Diana was waiting outside the door. "So?"
Chess simply shook his head.
Stepping forward, Diana put a hand on his jacket sleeve. "It's maddening. Your new scent is...amazing."
Chess frowned at the pale hand on his dark wool sleeve while still steaming about his mother. "It's more the advertising than the actual scent that has to sell. And Kate is right: the vast majority of new fragrance launches fail. Ours could, too."
Brooding, he started toward the elevator.
Diana linked her hand around his arm and kept pace.
Her hand was around his arm. Too preoccupied to think much about it, Chess pressed the button for the elevator.
The doors opened, and the two of them walked into the cab. Chess pressed the button for the ground floor.
"It's hopeless, Chess," Diana sighed. "She'll never agree to the loan."
Chess closed his eyes. Diana was right. Kate never would agree with him solely on his own merits.
"Listen." Diana's voice was a little breathless. "It's after five. Why don't we take a break? Go—brainstorm."
The elevator doors opened.
"Mr. Bradshaw." Henry, the head lab tech, stood before them. His normally dour expression looked even more dour than usual.
Hastily, Diana lowered her hand from Chess's sleeve.
"What's up, Henry?" But Chess could feel his jaw tighten, already guessing what Henry was going to say. He stepped out of the elevator.
"It's about the production schedule," Henry groused. Though he wore a clean white lab coat, the older man managed to look hangdog. "It can't be right."
Chess didn't dare glance back toward Diana, still in the elevator cab. "We'll brainstorm later, Diana. Let me talk to Henry here."
"Oh." Diana paused and then added brightly, "Sure." She must have pressed the button for her own floor because Chess heard the elevator doors close.
"Production is way down," Henry complained.
"Temporary," Chess claimed.
Henry shot him a disbelieving look.
Another emotion added to the unpleasant mix already inside Chess. Guilt. More people than his immediate family would be hurt if Scents Allure went under.
"Production of the new perfume is going to be off the charts," Chess claimed. Taking a step forward, he opened the door into the central processing area where the last summer sun still beamed through the skylights far above.
"But when is that gonna start?" Henry followed Chess. "'Cause we're already slowing down on producing the regular formulas."
"Yes, yes. I just have to..." Convince an airhead goodtime girl to marry me. "...square away a few details. Then we'll start making perfume with a vengeance."
Henry's glum expression did not lighten. If anything, his suspicion deepened.
For a moment, Chess thought the lab tech was going to call him out on his wild exaggeration. For a moment, Chess wondered if he shouldn't come clean with Henry and give him the choice to stay or go find a different, more financially secure, job. He knew Henry was laboring to pay off a stiff home mortgage.
But he could not possibly find a lab tech of Henry's quality. If he did manage to get that loan, Chess was going to need the gifted technician.
With his eyes narrowed, Henry shook his head at Chess. "I hope so, Mr. Bradshaw. For all our sakes, I surely do hope you know what you're doing."
Chess hoped so, too. He let out a deep breath as Henry turned and shambled away.
Frowning, then, Chess turned and pushed open the glass door that led to his own office, a far more primitive laboratory than the one in the atrium. He made for the old easy chair behind his ancient desk. On the fourth floor, he had a showcase room where he met important people. But this was his real office, the thinking one.
From the desktop, Chess picked up a pencil and tapped it against his teeth. What to do? What to do? Diana, Henry—all of them. Yes, even Alex and Kate. They were all depending on him because he was the only one who knew the truth...
And his brain was stalled. Damn it, he'd tried everything.
Suppressing a groan, Chess closed his eyes.
Stop. Relax. Empty.
He must have really emptied his mind because the image that rose into it was that of Cookie Thibideaux—specifically her eyes
. Soft and brown, they were the color of chocolate. He recalled the surprise he'd seen in them when she'd looked up at him from over David's grave.
Chess wondered if Kate even remembered it was the anniversary of her late husband's death.
Meanwhile, in his office deep in the heart of the perfume plant, Chess recalled what had happened next at the cemetery. She'd ended up in his arms.
He frowned and opened his eyes. It had been a strange moment. But nothing terribly unexpected given the venue and the occasion. After all, he'd orchestrated the whole thing, hadn't he, showing up there, knowing she'd be alone and vulnerable? But he'd still been shocked. Her coffee-colored hair, upswept, had been just under his nose. Her body had been as giving as sugar candy against his front. It had been like embracing a—a kitten, something soft and delicate. But the part that had been really difficult to take was that she'd sought comfort—from him, of all people.
A momentary lapse, Chess told himself, setting his pencil down with care. That's all it had been. Just a brief mistake. Cookie hadn't meant to ask him for comfort. If she'd been thinking straight she would have remembered that she didn't like Chess; nobody did. She would have kept her distance and he—well, he wouldn't be sitting here remembering the way she'd smelled, for God's sake.
Scattering the papers on his desk with a sudden gesture, Chess jumped to his feet. Enough! This woolgathering wasn't getting him anywhere. He paced the office and forced his mind back to essentials. The only way out of this was with Cookie's shares, and the only way to her shares was through her marriage.
There had to be a way to convince her to take the step. Ammunition. A key.
With his hand in a tight fist, he tapped softly on the top of his lab bench. Yes, there had to be a key.
CHAPTER THREE
"Ooh, I love you, I love you, I love you!" Cookie cradled the baby in her arms.
The four-month-old son of her fellow actress was unutterably soft and weighed just the right amount to rouse every maternal instinct Cookie owned. Judging by the tightness in her chest and the moisture in her eyes, she owned quite a lot of them.
Rina had brought little Johnny out of desperation, but Cookie didn't mind cuddling him in between scenes. Mind? After every one of her scenes tonight playing Theodora Scampi, the scheming slut of the murder mystery, she had rushed back to the dressing room in order to get a chance to hold the baby.
Acting and a baby. Could the evening get any more perfect?
"He's a good, good boy, isn't he?" She smoothed a finger down the child's peach-fuzz cheek. She'd always loved babies, one of those ironic games God seemed to like playing. A yearning for one of her own had crept up on her over the years. That biological clock had a tick that was only getting louder. Predictably, the volume had sharply increased after her father's death. It was a natural reaction, the desire to fill an emotional hole.
Too bad there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it.
Still rubbing the baby's cheek, Cookie's brows drew down. If she couldn't even have sex—? Well, the idea of marriage was obviously also out of the question. Even in pretend. Just thinking about such things made her stomach tense up.
All the same, she hadn't been able to forget the brief expression she'd caught on Chess's face, the look of desperation. Cookie laid her cheek on the baby's forehead. What kind of trouble could Chess be in?
Her frown deepened.
"Don't even think it," a familiar voice warned.
A smile jumped onto Cookie's face. She spun around in delight. "Alex! How long have you been standing there?"
Her half-brother stepped forward from the outside door. "Not too long, but you didn't notice me come in because you were so entranced by the charms of junior there."
He stepped past a rack of costumes as Cookie hurried toward him.
"Not as charming as you," she claimed, gently squishing the baby between them as she gave Alex a hearty kiss.
Her little half-brother could be charming when he wanted. His blond hair was naturally streaked with a darker blond, colors that accentuated the blue of his eyes, a color he shared with their common father. It made Cookie ache with pride sometimes, looking at him.
"It doesn't seem so long ago I was holding you like this," she observed.
"Stop." Alex winced as he stepped back from her embrace. "I'd thought at least one person around here was letting me grow up."
Cookie wrinkled her nose. "Sorry. Occupational hazard of being female. Did you have a good time in Reno?"
An odd look crossed his face. "Sure. Say, you didn't tell my mom, did you?"
Cookie frowned as she rocked the baby. "No, but I still don't know why it was such a big secret."
He turned, hiding his face. "She'd have thrown a fit if she'd known where I was going. She's gotten so damn over-protective."
Cookie looked down at Johnny, whose eyes had now closed in sleep. It wouldn't do to admit she could see Kate's point of view. "She's just feeling vulnerable now. You know, with Dad gone."
"Yeah," Alex reluctantly agreed. "She seems to be terrified something is going to happen to me, too. It's spooky, I tell you."
Cookie didn't say anything. She'd been having her own encounters with spooky. For the past few months, she'd had a growing sense of being haunted. Now, she didn't believe in ghosts. She wasn't that far out there. But there was no denying the chill that would run up her back sometimes when walking down the alley behind the theater at night or when she was at home alone.
Glancing into the dressing room mirror, Cookie saw she hadn't quite removed the last of the blood from her face. Dramatizing her own death five nights a week probably didn't help. At least Alex would take her home tonight. She wouldn't have to brave the back alley by herself.
"So, you still haven't told me about Reno." Cookie put the sleeping Johnny in his travelling crib. She tried desperately to sound merely curious and not as though she were checking up on him. Alex had only just graduated high school, turned eighteen, and was obviously testing the limits of his adulthood. What with their father's death and Kate's solicitude, he seemed to feel the need to rebel more than made Cookie comfortable. What made her even more uncomfortable was his increasing reluctance to confide in her.
Now, for example, he quietly ignored her question as she sat down to remove the rest of her makeup as Theodora Scampi. He leaned against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest.
"I'm sorry I didn't go to the cemetery with you. It's just—well, I hate to think about it being a whole year already." He shifted his gaze from her image in the mirror.
"I know. Same here." Lowering her own eyes, Cookie shook out more mascara remover. Theodora, femme fatale, wore an awful lot of makeup. "But time isn't going to move backwards for either one of us." No, no matter how badly she needed time to move back, so she could do it all over again and treat her father differently.
"Next time you go," Alex decided, straightening, "I'll go with you. I don't want you to be alone."
Cookie kept her eyes down on her fingers. "Actually, I wasn't alone." She paused, and then decided to admit it. "Chess showed up."
Alex stared at her. "My God. Why?"
Cookie struggled to come up with something. They both knew that Chess never did anything without a reason. "Dad was his best friend, you know."
Alex released an expressive breath. "Chess sentimental? Tell me another one. He wanted something from you." Her half-brother's face clouded with suspicion. "What was it?"
"Nothing." The denial came out lightly, and Cookie smiled to give it more credence. What Chess had wanted truly was nothing, she assured herself, since she wasn't going to give it to him. "You haven't told me how much you lost in Reno," she added. He was too young to gamble legally, but Cookie knew kids figured out their own ways to participate.
Alex stared at her again and then laughed.
Cookie observed his grin carefully, checking for sincerity. It looked real enough.
"Is it that obvious I lost?" Alex wanted to know.
"You would have been crowing if you'd won."
With his smile still going, Alex leaned against the dressing room wall and crossed his arms over his chest. "I'll live."
"Hm." Sensing that was as much as she was going to get, Cookie turned back to face the mirror.
"Now you fess up about Chess."
Her hands stopped on her cheeks. For a moment she wondered why she didn't simply tell him. Normally, she would have. 'Oh, you'll never believe the stunt Chess tried to pull this time...' Then she and Alex would commiserate about Chess's evil ways and probably end up laughing at him.
This evening she couldn't bring herself to laugh at Chess. He'd shown her vulnerability yesterday. She couldn't laugh at that. No, not even if she didn't understand it.
She swiveled her chair to look directly at her half-brother. "Tell me, why do we always think the worst of Chess? Is that fair?"
Alex's fading smile died completely. "It's fair."
Well, that was definite. "Fine," Cookie agreed. "He's a little bit bossy."
Alex snorted.
"All right. Very bossy." Cookie pressed her lips together. "But wasn't that only because Daddy asked him to?"
Alex's face tightened. "Yeah? Well, Dad's gone now and Chess is still butting into my life."
Cookie raised her brows. "Really?"
Alex straightened. "Mom was all set to buy me this used Alfa Romeo last month until Chess talked her out of it."
Cookie had to bite her lip. Alex's driving was reckless, to say the least. A sports car would certainly not have improved it. Maybe she did owe Chess, a little.
"Besides, he treats me like some kind of mental midget," Alex went on. "It's not exactly endearing."
"No, endearing is not a word to describe Chess," Cookie mused. And yet...and yet he'd taken her into his arms yesterday afternoon at the cemetery. Cookie knew she shouldn't place too much significance in the gesture. He'd probably only done it to soften her up and weaken her defenses. All the same, his embrace had felt kind and comforting. Very odd, too, that it had been free of the usual panic or distaste a man's touch could produce. Chess was a man, after all and, based on what Cookie knew of him, one of the more sexually predatory of the species.
Call it Love Page 3