Blind Love (2 page)

He made eye contact with several women, but the one that interested him was a tall blonde playing pool with another woman. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and leaned over the table, her tight jeans cupping her behind. She walked around the table, where he got a good look at the rest of her. “
Oh, yeah,”
he said under his breath. He wondered if she’d come with a guy or if she was here alone. He didn’t date women who were attached.

A cute little brunette sat at the stool beside him and eyed his body. Throwing a come-on smile his way, she ordered a drink. She obviously wanted company, but he didn’t want to tie up his evening with the brunette if the blonde was available. He’d always preferred blondes, especially tall ones.

He wore a tight black T-shirt that hugged his chest and arms, worn jeans that fit like a second skin, and boots that added another inch to his six-foot-two-inch frame. He knew he looked good, and as he wandered toward the pool table, he was aware of several sets of eyes following him.

“Hey, Tony,” a man called from across the room. It was one of the men on Tony’s construction crew. He was with another guy and two women. Tony waved and kept walking toward the pool table. The two women at the table stopped playing and looked up. The blonde holding the cue stick gazed directly into his eyes, but she didn’t smile.

“Mind if I watch?”

“Are you Tony Donatelli?” asked the blonde.

“Yeah. And you are...”

“Not interested.” She turned back to the table and sank another ball.

Her companion said, “A woman was in here a few minutes ago looking for you.”

“Oh, yeah? Did this woman leave a name?”

“Melissa Juno. She said you’d had a fight and you’d probably try to hit on another woman tonight.” She cocked her head. “How many months along is she?”

“If she’s pregnant it sure as hell ain’t mine.” Melissa was a gorgeous brown-eyed blonde, but there was something important missing in that pretty head. He’d taken her out to dinner once, but when she invited him into her apartment for an after-dinner drink, something told him to back off. So he did. She’d insisted on making him dinner a week later, and all through dinner, she talked about having his babies. He got out of there in a hurry. Two lousy dinner dates and she was knitting little booties? She was out of her ever-loving mind!

Tony’s mother kept pushing him to find a nice girl, settle down, and give her more grandbabies to love. He loved women, but he was a long way from happily ever after. Besides, he had enough responsibility without taking on a wife, especially a crazy one like Melissa Juno.

He glanced back at the bar to see the brunette hot and heavy with another guy. No woman in her right mind would date him now, not after Melissa spread her lies. Damn! What would it take to get that woman off his back?

Feeling the need to hit something, Tony finished his beer and went to the gym.

<>

Catherine spent the rest of the week reviewing the files of men who’d been considered for previous shows. Most of them had stable jobs and their own homes, or at least their own apartments. None of them lived at home or owed back child support or had any of the other negatives that could be a surprise at some point in the show. Some were just too young. She didn’t want to put a twenty-year-old male model looking for a way to ease himself into an acting career on this kind of show.

There was a thirty-year-old firefighter who looked good. He was Mr. July on a calendar last year, and he shared an apartment with his divorced and unemployed brother. It wasn’t quite the same as living at home with Mama, but he might do in a pinch. At least he didn’t live alone.

She found three possibilities in the women rejected by other shows. They were all tall, slender, poised, and beautiful. One was a former model, retired at the age of twenty-five. Another was a former Miss Florida. She was thirty-three. Half a lifetime ago, she’d gone to boarding school with the third one. Jenny was now a twenty-nine-year-old single mom.

She was still plowing through applicants for the new show when she received a phone call from Santa Barbara. “Catherine, this is Fawn, your father’s fiancée.”

Fiancée?
She had to be kidding.

“I tried to call you last night after the paramedics took Walt to the hospital. He had a dizzy spell and fell down the stairs.”

Catherine’s relationship with her father had been strained the past three years, but she didn’t want him hurt. “Did he break something?”

“His leg and hip,” said Fawn. “They put an artificial joint in his hip this morning. I don’t know how he’ll climb these stairs when he gets home.”

Catherine swallowed a groan. As much as she wanted to handle this project herself, it was out of the question now. Henry had preliminary approval from the network, and it looked like
Blind Love
would be filmed this summer. It was already March, and nobody had been interviewed except the fireman. There was still a lot of work to do, but she wouldn’t be here to do it.

Someone would have to take care of her father, and there was no one else. Catherine’s parents were divorced, her mother lived in San Diego, and her aunt had moved to France with her new husband. Fawn didn’t sound like the caregiver type, and Father wouldn’t listen to any of the household staff. As if they’d dare say anything to him. He was a tyrant, and keeping the house staffed had always been a problem.

Catherine tapped on Henry’s open office door. “I hate to bail out on you, but my father had a bad fall. I’ll have to stay with him until he’s able to bellow at the staff without ending up in the hospital again.”

“How serious is it?”

“His girlfriend of the month said they had to put in an artificial hip. His leg is broken, too. She wasn’t too clear on the details.” Her father had always managed to pick brainless bimbos, but this one was over the top. She thought they were getting married.

“Keep in touch, and we’ll expect you back as soon as the crisis is over.”

She handed him the folder with her notes. “I haven’t interviewed any of the girls yet, but I did interview the fireman. He’s handsome and personable. He doesn’t live with his mother, but she lives down the street, and he’s supporting his unemployed, divorced brother. I’d planned to look for other candidates, but I ran out of time.”

Henry scanned her notes. “Looks like you’ve gotten quite a bit accomplished. What about the location?”

“I thought I’d ask Cara Andrews if we could use her estate.”

“That would bring in viewers, but if it doesn’t work out, we’ll find another place.”

She pointed to the sticky note on the inside of the folder, where she’d listed her email address and cell phone number. “I’ll have my laptop with me, and my cell phone.”

Catherine walked out of the office wondering who would be put in charge of the project. Probably Mitzi. She was the only one who could screw up a simple concept, and if she messed this up, they could both be out the door.

Days like this she wondered what she was trying to prove, living in a place she hated and working around the clock with a bunch of people she didn’t like. Mitzi looked down her nose at her, and Scooter acted as though Catherine were a brainless twit. The only one who treated her with any respect was Henry, and that was probably because he knew she was Catherine Anne Timmons, of the Timmons Hotels family. If her father hadn’t sold the hotel business, she wouldn’t be working for Henry.

Her co-workers didn’t know that she’d someday inherit enough to buy her own production company, and she wasn’t about to tell them. At work, she was simply Cat.

<>

Catherine heard her father’s voice before she reached his room. He was complaining about something, as usual. “Hello, Father.” She plopped her bag on the wide windowsill and stood beside his bed. “Fawn called me. Where is she?”

“At the house. It’s been weeks since I’ve heard from you.” There it was, the disapproval she’d come to expect. She’d only been home four or five times since he’d sold the hotel business, and she’d never invited him to LA. It was impossible to have a civil conversation about anything with the hotel business hovering between them like a giant over-inflated balloon that could burst at any second. “How are you feeling?”

“Crappy. This bed is a torture device.”

It wasn’t just the bed. His eyes reflected pain.

“I’m glad you’re here, Catherine. I don’t like Fawn staying in the house alone. She’s been talking about redecorating. Says the house lacks color.”

“Uh oh.” Her father’s style was understated elegance, and nobody dared change a thing without his approval. He liked a peaceful place where he could enjoy his sculptures and watch the clouds roll in over the blue Pacific. Someday the Timmons estate would be hers, if he didn’t sell it like he’d sold the hotels.

The nurse came in with a pain shot and soon Father’s eyes closed and his breathing deepened. While he slept, Catherine drove home. Fawn was right about one thing. He’d never get up and down the stairs at home. Either they had to find him a convalescent facility or she had to figure out a way to put a bedroom and bathroom downstairs for him. Even then, he’d need full-time nurses until he recovered.

The big iron gates swung open, and Catherine drove up and around the hill to the top, to Father’s elegant two-story Spanish style mansion, part of the Timmons family estate.

Fawn was a bleached blonde with perfect features and a figure to die for. She resembled countless other women who’d been in and out of this house since Catherine’s mother left.

After introducing herself, Fawn held out a paint chart and pointed to chrome yellow and Chinese red. “What do you think about using this in the foyer, Catherine? I learned how to do that faux finish, and this is the perfect place for it. What about a yellow background with a little red sponged on top?”

She had to be kidding.
“Listen to me, Fawn—”

She pointed to a patch of hot pink. “I picked out this color for the dining room.”

Catherine held up her hand in the universal signal for stop. “Whose house is this?”

“Walt’s, of course, but when we marry—”

“Did he ask you to marry him?”

Fawn’s perfect chin lifted a little. “Not yet, but he will. Every man I’ve ever been with has proposed to me.”

Sure they had.
The woman may be beautiful, but her two brain cells rattled around in an otherwise empty skull. “Don’t touch anything,” Catherine said slowly.

Fawn’s chin came up. “Walt will let me do anything I want. He loves me.”

Sure he did.
“What happened? How did he fall?”

“We...uh...were on our way upstairs and he had a dizzy spell.”

Catherine cocked her head and stared her down. “Why did he have a dizzy spell? Had he been drinking?”

“No, he took... The Viagra was his idea, not mine,” she said quickly. “I didn’t know it would make him dizzy or I wouldn’t have given it to him.”

Given it to him?
She gave him a prescription drug? “Did he know?”

“Of course he did,” said Fawn, but her eyes shifted. The bimbo was lying, and Catherine was livid. Fawn had caused the fall as surely as if she’d pushed him down the stairs. Father was in the hospital, in pain, and Catherine had walked out on an important project, all because of this stupid woman. If she’d wanted a young, virile man, she should have looked elsewhere instead of giving a sixty-eight-year-old man a drug that wasn’t prescribed for him.

Catherine carried her bag upstairs, and as she walked past her father’s bedroom, she glanced inside. Fawn had rearranged Father’s bedroom furniture. Pointing to the room, Catherine said, “Put everything back the way you found it, and I mean
everything
. I’ll go speak with the cook about dinner, and then we’re going to have a nice long talk.”

“The cook quit yesterday and the maid the day before. The only one left is Sanchez.”

With a deep sigh, Catherine asked, “Can you cook?”

“Me?” squeaked Fawn.

“Never mind.
I’ll
cook. You move furniture and clean up in here.”

Fawn crossed her arms. “I don’t clean.”

“If you think I’m going to clean up after you, think again. Listen to me.” Catherine couldn’t deal with this now, and she didn’t want this idiot in the house. “Put everything back the way it was and pack your things. You’re leaving.”

Fawn stared her down, and what little patience Catherine had left melted away. She grabbed the phone and called the security company. “I need help evicting a woman from the estate.” Father could deal with her when he recovered.

“I’m not leaving.”

“Oh, yes you are. Pack your things and go back where you came from. Call in a couple months or so, after my father recovers. If he’ll even speak with you after what you did to him, you can ask if he wants you back.”