by Nora Roberts
of rice was thrown, she would make a quick and quiet exit. She carried the hat she'd brought down from her room to the mirror, instinctively arranging the wide blue brim to the most flattering advantage.
There's my fame, she thought, studying her face. And my fortune. By God, she would make it work. Lifting her chin, she met her own eyes and willed it to begin.
Chapter Two
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Ten years later
On the wild, wild cliffs above the restless Pacific, Margo watched the storm build. Black clouds boiled in a black sky, crushing every hint of starlight with their weight and temper. The wind howled like a feral wolf hunting for blood. Needle-bright spears of lightning slashed and snapped and shot the jagged rocks and spewing surf into sharp relief. The witchy scent of ozone stung the air before thunder exploded.
It seemed that her welcome home, even from nature, was not to be a gentle one.
An omen? she wondered, jamming her hands into her jacket pockets to protect them from the biting wind. She could hardly expect anyone at Templeton House to greet her with open arms and joyous smiles. The fatted calf, she thought with a wry smile, will not be served for this prodigal.
She had no right to expect it.
Wearily, she reached up and pulled the pins out of the smooth twist to let her pale blond hair fly free. It felt good, that small liberation, and she tossed the pins over the edge. She remembered quite suddenly that when she'd been a young girl she and her two best friends had thrown flowers over that same ledge.
Flowers for Seraphina, she thought, and nearly smiled. How romantic it had seemed then, the legend of that young girl hurling herself over the edge in grief and despair.
She remembered that Laura had always cried a little and that Kate would solemnly watch the flowers dance toward the sea. But she herself had always felt the thrill of that final flight, the defiance of the gesture, the bold recklessness of it.
Margo was just low enough, just tired enough to admit that looking for thrills, being defiant and embracing recklessness were what had brought her to this miserable point in her life.
Her eyes, a brilliant cornflower blue that the camera loved, were shadowed. She'd retouched her makeup carefully after her plane had landed in Monterey and had checked it again in the back of the cab she'd taken out to Big Sur. Christ knew she was skilled in painting on any image required. Only she would be aware that beneath the expensive cosmetics her cheeks were pale. They were, perhaps, a bit more hollow than they should be, but it was those slashing cheekbones that had boosted her onto the cover of so many magazines.
A good face started with bones, she thought and shivered as the next flash of lightning bolted across the sky. She was fortunate in her bone structure, in the smooth, poreless skin of her Irish ancestors. The Kerry blue eyes, the pale blond hair had undoubtedly been passed on by some ancient Viking conqueror.
Oh, she had a face all right, she mused. It wasn't a matter of vanity to admit it. After all, it and a body built for sinning had been her meal tickets, her pathways to fame and fortune. Full, romantic lips, a small, straight nose, a firm, rounded chin and expressive brows that needed only the slightest bit of darkening and shaping.
She would still have a good face when she was eighty, if she lived that long. It didn't matter that she was washed up, used up, embroiled in a scandal, and bitterly ashamed. She would still turn heads.
A pity she no longer gave a damn.
Turning away from the cliff edge, she peered through the gloom. Across the road and on the crest of the hill she could see the lights of Templeton House, the house that had held so much of her laughter, and so many of her tears. There was only one place to go when you were lost, only one place to run when you had no bridges left to burn.
Margo picked up her flight bag and headed home.
Ann Sullivan had served at Templeton for twenty-four years. One year less than she'd been a widow. She had come, her four-year-old daughter in tow, from Cork to take a position as maid. In those days, Thomas and Susan Templeton had run the house as they ran their hotels. In grand style. Hardly a week would go by without the rooms overflowing with guests and music. There had been a staff of eighteen, to ensure that every detail of the house and grounds was seen to perfectly.
Perfection was a trademark of Templeton, as was luxury, as was warmth. Ann had been taught, and taught well, that fine accommodations were nothing without gracious welcome.
The children, Master Joshua and Missy Laura, had had a nanny who in turn had boasted an assistant. Yet they had been raised by their parents. Ann had always admired the devotion, the discipline, and the care with which the Templetons had reared their family. Although she knew it could, wealth had never outdistanced love in this house.
It had been Mrs. Templeton's suggestion that the girls play together. They were, after all, the same age, and Joshua, being a boy and four years their senior, had little time for them.
Ann would forever be grateful for Mrs. Templeton, not only for the position and the simple kindnesses but for the advantages she had offered Ann's daughter. Margo had never been treated like a servant. Instead, she was treated as the cherished friend of the daughter of the house.
In ten years, Ann had become housekeeper. It was a position she knew she had earned and one she took great pride in. There was no corner of the house she hadn't cleaned with her own hands, no scrap of linen she hadn't washed. Her love for Templeton House was deep and abiding. Perhaps deeper and more abiding than for anything else in her life.
She had stayed on after the Templetons moved to Cannes, after Miss Laura married—too quickly and too rashly, to Ann's mind. She'd stayed after her own daughter ran off to Hollywood, and then to Europe, chasing glitter and glory.
She had never remarried, never considered it. Templeton House was her mate. It stood year after year, solid as the rock on which it was built. It never disappointed her, defied her, questioned her. It never hurt her or asked more than she could give.
As a daughter could, she thought.
Now, as the storm raged outside and rain began to lash like whips against the wide, arching windows, she walked into the kitchen. The slate-blue counters were spotless, earning a nod of approval for the new young maid she had hired. The girl had gone home now, and couldn't see it, but Ann would remember to tell her she'd done well.
How much easier it was, she mused, to earn the affection and respect of staff than it was to earn that of your own child.
Often she thought she'd lost Margo the day the girl had been born. Been born too beautiful, too restless, too bold.
As worried as she was about Margo, after the news had broken, she went about her duties. There was nothing she could do for the girl. She was bitterly aware that there had never been anything she could do for, or about, Margo.
Love hadn't been enough. Though, Ann thought, perhaps she had held too much love back from Margo. It was only because she'd been afraid to give the girl too much, for to give her too much might have made her reach even farther than she had seemed to need to.
And she simply wasn't very demonstrative, Ann told herself with a little shrug. Servants couldn't afford to be, no matter how kind the employer. She understood her place. Why hadn't Margo ever understood hers?
For a moment she leaned on the counter in a rare show of self-indulgence, her eyes squeezed tight against threatening tears. She simply couldn't think of Margo now. The girl was out of her hands, and the house required a final check.
She straightened, breathing deep to balance herself. The floor had been freshly mopped, and the same slate-blue as the counters gleamed in the light. The stove, an aging six-burner, showed no remnants of the dinner it had cooked. And young Jenny had remembered to put fresh water in the daffodils that stood sunnily on the table.
Pleased that her instincts for the new maid had been on target, Ann wandered to the pots of herbs sitting on the windowsill above the sink. A press of her thumb showed her the soil was dry. W
atering the window herbs wasn't Jenny's responsibility, she thought, clucking her tongue as she saw to it herself. The cook needed to care for her own. But then, Mrs. Williamson was getting up in years and becoming slightly absentminded with it. Ann often made excuses to remain in the kitchen during meal preparation, just to be certain that Mrs. Williamson didn't chop off anything important, or start a fire.
Anyone but Miss Laura would have pensioned the woman off by now, Ann mused. But Miss Laura understood that the need to be needed didn't diminish with age. Miss Laura understood Templeton House, and tradition.
It was after ten, and the house was quiet. Her duties for the day were done. Giving the kitchen one last scan, she thought of going into her quarters, brewing some tea in her own little kitchen. Perhaps putting her feet up and watching some foolishness on TV.
Something, anything to keep her mind off her worries.
Wind rattled the windows and made her shudder, made her grateful for the warmth and security of the house. Then the back door opened, letting in rain and wind and biting air. Letting in so much more. Ann felt her heart jolt and stutter in her breast.
"Hello, Mum." The bright, sassy smile was second nature, and nearly reached her eyes as Margo combed a hand through the hair that dripped like wet gold to her waist. "I saw the light—literally," she added with a nervous laugh. "And figuratively."
"You're letting in the wet." It wasn't the first thing that came to Ann's mind, but it was the only practical one. "Close the door, Margo, and hang up that wet jacket."
"I didn't quite beat the rain." Keeping her voice light, Margo shut the storm outside. "I'd forgotten how cold and wet March can be on the central coast." She set her flight bag aside, hung her jacket on the hook by the door, then rubbed her chilled hands together to keep them busy. "You look wonderful. You've changed your hair."
Ann didn't lift a hand to fuss with it in a gesture that might have been natural for another woman. She had no vanity and had often wondered where Margo had come by hers. Margo's father had been a humble man.
"Really, it suits you." Margo tried another smile. Her mother had always been an attractive woman. Her light hair had hardly darkened over the years, and there was little sign of gray in the short, neat wave of it. Her face was lined, true, but not deeply. And though her solemn, unsmiling mouth was unpainted, it was as full and lush as her daughter's.
"We weren't expecting you," Ann said and was sorry her voice was so stiff. But her heart was too full of joy and worry to allow for more.
"No. I thought of calling or sending a wire. Then I… I didn't." She took a long breath, wondering why neither of them could cross that short space of tile and touch the other. "You'd have heard."
"We heard things." Off-balance, Ann moved to the stove, put the kettle on to boil. "I'll make tea. You'll be chilled."
"I've seen some of the reports in the paper and on the news." Margo lifted a hand, but her mother's back was so rigid, she let it drop again without making contact. "They're not all true, Mum."
Ann reached for the everyday teapot, heated it with hot water. Inside she was shaking with hurt, with shock. With love. "Not all?"
It was only one more humiliation, Margo told herself. But this was her mother, after all. And she so desperately needed someone to stand by her. "I didn't know what Alain was doing, Mum. He'd managed my career for the past four years, and I never, never knew he was dealing drugs. He never used them, at least not around me. When we were arrested… when it all came out…" She stopped, sighed as her mother continued to measure out tea. "I've been cleared of all charges. It won't stop the press from speculating, but at least Alain had the decency to tell the authorities I was innocent."
Though even that had been humiliating. Proof of innocence had equaled proof of stupidity.
"You slept with a married man."
Margo opened her mouth, shut it again. No excuse, no explanation would matter, not to her mother. "Yes."
"A married man, with children."
"Guilty," Margo said bitterly. "I'll probably go to hell for it, and I'm paying in this life as well. He embezzled a great deal of my money, destroyed my career, made me an object of pity and ridicule in the tabloid press."
Sorrow stirred inside Ann, but she shut it off. Margo had made her choices. "So you've come back here to hide."
To heal, Margo thought, but hiding wasn't so very far from the truth. "I wanted a few days someplace where I wouldn't be hounded. If you'd rather I go, then—"
Before she could finish, the kitchen door swung open. "What a wild night. Annie, you should—' Laura stopped short. Her quiet gray eyes lighted on Margo's face. She didn't hesitate, didn't merely cross that short span of tile. She leaped across it. "Margo! Oh, Margo, you're home!"
And in that one moment, in that welcoming embrace, she was home.
"She doesn't mean to be so hard on you, Margo," Laura soothed. Calming troubled waters was instinctive to her. She had seen the hurt on the faces of mother and daughter that they seemed blind to. At Margo's shrug, Laura poured the tea that Ann had brewed and Laura had carried up to her own sitting room. "She's been so worried."
"Has she?" Smoking in shallow puffs, Margo brooded. Out the window, there was a garden, she remembered, arbors that dripped with wisteria. And beyond the flowers, the lawns, the neat stone walls, were the cliffs. She listened to Laura's voice, the calming balm of it, and remembered how they had peeked into this room as children, when it had been Mrs. Templeton's domain. How they had dreamed of being fine ladies.
Turning, she studied her friend. So quietly lovely, Margo thought. A face meant for drawing rooms, garden parties, and society balls. And that, apparently, had been Laura's destiny.
The curling spill of hair was the color of old gold, styled with studied care to swing at her fragile jaw. The eyes were so clear, so true, everything she felt mirrored in them. Now they were filled with concern, and there was a flush on her cheeks. From excitement, Margo mused, and worry. Emotion always brought either quick color to Laura's cheeks, or drained it.
"Come sit," Laura ordered. "Have some tea. Your hair's damp."
Absently Margo pushed it back so that it cleared her shoulders. "I was down at the cliffs."
Laura glanced toward the windows, where the rain whipped. "In this?"
"I had to build some courage."
But she did sit, took the cup. Margo recognized the everyday Doulton her mother had used. How many times had she nagged Ann into teaching her the names, the patterns, of the china and crystal and silver of Templeton House? And how many times had she dreamed about having pretty things of her own?
Now the cup warmed her chilly hands, and that was enough.
"You look wonderful," she told Laura. "I can't believe it's been nearly a year since I saw you in Rome."
They'd had lunch on the terrace of the owner's suite at Templeton Rome, the city spread beneath them lush with spring. And her life, Margo thought, had been as full of promise as the air, as glittery as the sun.
"I've missed you." Laura reached out, gave Margo's hand a quick squeeze. "We all did."
"How are the girls?"
"Wonderful. Growing. Ali loved the dress you sent her for her birthday from Milan."
"I got her thank-you note, and the pictures. They're beautiful children, Laura. They look so much like you. Ali's got your smile, Kayla has your eyes." She drank tea to wash away the lump in her throat. "Sitting here, the way we used to imagine we would, I can't believe it's not all just a dream." She shook her head quickly before Laura could speak, tapped out the cigarette. "How's Peter?"
"He's fine." A shadow flickered into Laura's eyes, but she lowered her lashes. "He had work to finish up, so he's still at the office. I imagine he'll just stay in town because of the storm." Or because he preferred another bed to the one he shared with his wife. "Did Josh find you in Athens?"
Margo tilted her head. "Josh? Was he in Greece?"
"No, I tracked him down in Italy after we heard—when the
news started coming through. He was going to try to clear his schedule and fly out to help."
Margo smiled thinly. "Sending big brother to the rescue, Laura?"
"He's an excellent attorney. When he wants to be. Didn't he find you?"
"I never saw him." Weary, Margo rested her head against the high back of the chair. That dreamlike state remained. It had been barely a week since her life had tilted and poured out all of her dreams. "It all happened so fast. The Greek authorities boarding Alain's yacht, searching it." She winced as she remembered the shock of being roused out of sleep to find a dozen uniformed Greeks on deck, being ordered to dress, being questioned. "They found all that heroin in the hold."
"The papers said they'd had him under observation for over a year."
"That's one of the facts that saved my idiotic ass. All the surveillance, the evidence they'd gathered, indicated that I was clean." Her nerves still grinding, she tapped another cigarette out of her enameled case, lighted it. "He used me, Laura, finagling a booking here where he could pick up the drugs, another there where he could drop them off. I'd just had a shoot in Turkey. Five miserable days. He was rewarding me with a little cruise of the Greek Isles. A pre-honeymoon. That's what he called it," she added, sending out smoke in a stream. "He was smoothing out all the little hitches on his amicable divorce, and we'd be able to come out in the open with our relationship."
She took a steady breath then as Laura patiently listened. Studying the smoke twisting toward the ceiling, she continued. "Of course, there was never going to be a divorce. His wife was perfectly willing to have him sleep with me as long as I was useful and the money kept coming in."
"I'm sorry, Margo."
"I fell for it, that's the worst of it." She shrugged her shoulders, took one last, deep drag, and crushed the cigarette out. "All the most ridiculous cliches." She couldn't hate Alain for that nearly as much as she hated herself. "We had to keep our affair and our plans out of the press until all the details of his divorce settlement could be worked out. On the outside we would be colleagues, business partners, friends. He would manage my career, use all of his contacts to increase the bookings and my fees. And why not? He'd nailed me some solid commercials in France and Italy. He'd finalized the deal with Bella Donna that shot me to the top of the heap."
"I don't suppose your talent or your looks had anything to do with your being chosen as spokeswoman for the Bella Donna line."
Margo smiled. "I might have gotten it on my own. But I'll never know. I wanted that contract so badly. Not just the money, though I certainly wanted that. But the exposure. Christ, Laura, seeing my own face on billboards, having people stop me on the street for my autograph. Knowing I was doing a really good job for a really good product."
"The Bella Donna Woman," Laura murmured, wanting Margo to smile and mean it. "Beautiful. Confident. Dangerous. I was so thrilled when I saw the ad in Vogue. That's Margo, I thought, my Margo, stretched out on that glossy page looking so stunning in white satin."
"Selling face cream."
"Selling beauty," Laura corrected firmly. "And confidence."
"And danger?"
"Dreams. You should be proud of it."
"I was." She let out a long breath. "I was so caught up in it all, so thrilled with myself when we started to hit the American market. And so caught up in Alain, all the promises and plans."
"You believed in him."
"No." At the very least she had that. He had been only one more in the line of men she'd enjoyed, flirted with. And, yes, used. "I wanted to believe everything he told me. Enough that I let him string me along with that shopworn line about his wife holding up his divorce." She smiled thinly. "Of course, that was fine with me. As long as he was married, he was safe. I wouldn't have married him, Laura, and I've begun to realize it wasn't that I was in love with him so much as I was in love with the life I imagined. Gradually he took over everything, because it was easier for me not to have to bother with details. And while I was dreaming of this glorious future where the two of us would bop around Europe like royalty, he was siphoning off my money, using it to finance his drug operation, using my minor celebrity over there to clear the way, lying to me about his wife."
She pressed her fingers against her eyes. "So the upshot is that my reputation is in tatters, my career is a joke, Bella Donna's dropped me as their spokeswoman, and I'm damned near broke."
"Everyone who knows you understands you were a victim, Margo."
"That doesn't make it better, Laura. Being a victim isn't one of the faces I'm comfortable wearing. I just don't have the energy to change it."
"You'll get past this. You just need time. And right now you need a long, hot bath and a good night's sleep. Let's get you settled in the guest room." Laura rose, extended a hand. "Where's your luggage?"
"I'm having it held. I didn't know if I'd be welcome."
For a moment Laura said nothing, merely stared down until Margo's gaze faltered. "I'm going to forget you said that, because you're tired and feeling beat-up." After tucking an arm around Margo's waist, Laura led her from the room. "You haven't asked about Kate."
Margo blew out a breath. "She's just going to be pissed at me."
"At the circumstances," Laura corrected. "Give her some credit. Is your luggage at the airport?"
"Mmm." She was suddenly so tired it was as if she was walking through water.
"I'll take care of it. Get some sleep. We'll talk more tomorrow when you're feeling better."
"Thanks, Laura." She stopped at the threshold of the guest room, leaned against the jamb. "You're always there."