The Arrangement (3 page)

Her first reaction had been to deny it. Andrew hadn’t been undermining her. He was protecting her. He’d saved her life. But eventually, she’d had to admit the truth. She had no idea how many times he might have slipped in without her knowing, no idea what he might have done while he was there—and just the thought had made her want to take another pill. She would probably become an addict before she figured out how to regain some control of her life.

Her walk-in closet was the size of a small bedroom. She could have been shopping in a boutique, there were so many choices of what to wear. She grabbed the same outfit she’d worn yesterday, a pair of white shorts and a black tank top. Hard to go wrong with shorts on a July morning at the beach. If the clothes were a little roomy, it was because she hadn’t yet gained back the weight she’d lost during her ordeal.

Her hair was still wet from the shower and would curl into flyaway waves if she let it dry naturally. What she
had
decided to let go natural was the color. In defiance of Andrew’s wishes, she’d let the blond grow out until it had begun to look ratty, and then she’d dyed it. Now it was almost completely grown out to a rich doeskin brown, and it was the one thing that made her feel like her own woman.

She clicked her blow-dryer up to High. This was the part of her morning ritual she liked least—blow-drying, styling, makeup. None of that had any appeal for her—and who was she going to see, anyway? She lived in the same house with a man she hadn’t seen a trace of in over a week. The odds of an encounter were slim. Maybe she would just grab an apple from the refrigerator and go for a walk on the beach.

She turned off the dryer without using it and slipped it back in the wall holder. Her husband’s apparent surveillance didn’t make sense. He was the one who’d insisted they live separate lives, except for their social obligations. They’d both agreed there would be no physical intimacy, so it wasn’t her fidelity that concerned him. And yet he seemed to feel the need to keep tabs.

She should have challenged him, but that was a battle for another day. She couldn’t expend the energy now. Nor could she make this trip to Mirage Bay. She needed more time. She hadn’t even been able to master the piano lessons he’d insisted she take. She was supposed to have been a good player once, but the lines and notes were a foreign language now.

Still, mixed in with her suspicions and the strange brew of emotions she felt toward Andrew was some gratitude. He had saved her life and for that she owed him, but he was asking too much. And she had already decided how to handle it.

“Andrew, are you there? What am I supposed to do about all these open concert dates?”

The frustrated voice of his trusted assistant, Stacy, yanked Andrew’s attention away from the graph paper on his drafting table. He turned his head to the speakerphone, where he could hear her sharp sigh.

“Once you have McGraw, Crow and Alvarado confirmed,” he told her, “you can lock in the remainder of the U.S. dates. Be sure you tell their people we’re not taking special orders.
All
the proceeds are going to charity. The performers get carrot sticks and tap water.”

“Seriously?
Tap water?
”

“Seriously.” Andrew rubbed the graph paper with his thumb, as if he could massage away any resistance. He’d awakened with the impulse to create something, and that hadn’t happened in a while. He assumed it would have a hull and a sail and move through water. Sailboats were all he’d ever designed, and all he sketched now, but so far, this one was eluding him.

“Andrew, are you still there? Christina Alvarado’s people won’t talk to me. They want to deal with you directly—or she won’t do the gig.”

“In that case, she’s going to be the only world-class American pop artist missing from this benefit. Tell her people that Rock Rescue will be bigger than We Are the World. If she wants to blow that off, it’s her choice.”

“I can’t call Christina Alvarado a
pop
artist!”

“Stacy, you’re losing sight of the bigger picture. This is for charity. The stars are invited. Their egos aren’t.”

He advised her to breathe and then he gave her his usual pep talk about megastars in need of tough love. He finished by reminding her that he’d hired her because of her moxie. What he got back was another sharp sigh, to which he responded, “Whatever you do you have my complete support,” and hung up the phone.

He pushed back from his drafting table. Stacy could handle the Alvarado camp with both hands tied behind her back. She just didn’t know it yet. You couldn’t always accommodate. Sometimes you had to push back. Sudden fame and wealth turned too many young celebs into brats and bullies, and their publicity flacks followed suit. When that happened, nothing worked except an ice bath of reality. Everyone was expendable. It was a sad by-product of the American Dream.

Andrew’s home office had a wall of louvered windows that looked out on the white sands and cresting surf of the Atlantic. He crossed the room, cranked open every one of the panels and felt the balmy sea breezes feather his eyelashes and lift his hair. He breathed in salt and the fresh scent coming off the dune’s green-and-gold grasses.

As the summer heat permeated the room, and the blue endlessness of the ocean blinded him to all but its brilliant sparkle, he wished that he were out on the water. The yearning was almost palpable. He needed to sail. He hadn’t done that since Alison’s accident six months ago.

The
Bladerunner
had already been in Mirage Bay when they had gone back last February. Andrew had sent her out there for some modifications to the hull, and then after the accident he’d left her there, dry-docked for repairs. Now, he realized it was just as well that he hadn’t brought her back. He wanted the sloop there when he and Alison returned, even if he decided against taking her out.

Sailing wasn’t the same now. A darkness shadowed even the thought. He’d become almost as insular as she had—the strange, silent woman in the other wing of the house. For some time now, he’d been backing away from his business, turning more and more responsibility over to Stacy, but that was intentional. He’d also largely withdrawn from the social circuit. It was awkward going out alone. There were always the questions about Alison.

Interesting how all roads led back to her. He couldn’t seem to get her out of his thoughts, but maybe that was to be expected. She was at the core of the mystery that dominated his days. Possibly, she
was
the mystery.

His stomach rumbled and he glanced over at the plate he’d left on the built-in counter and cabinets he used for work space. It was an array of summer fruit and a whole-grain croissant that he’d forgotten in his quest to be creative.

He went to the refrigerator that he stocked with juices, fruits and raw vegetables. He’d naturally gravitated toward healthier food since quitting booze after Regine died. He’d never been a falling-down drunk, but every day it had seemed to take more and more to lubricate his inane conversations with the celebrity crowd and their entourages. He’d drunk his way through too many lunches, bullshitted through too many dinners and award show parties.

Garbage in, garbage out. It all sounded the same. One day he’d lost track of his messages and called the wrong hot new rock star. He’d congratulated her on an award that she’d lost to a feuding competitor. She’d filled Andrew’s ear with obscenities, which had struck him as funny. He’d dropped the phone and laughed until he cried, and when he’d gotten up to freshen his drink, the liquor bottle was empty.

It had seemed like a sign.

Now, Andrew’s goal was to hand over as much as he could of the concert promotion business to Stacy. They were reorganizing so that the bulk of it could be handled out of his Manhattan office, and the rest he could deal with from wherever he happened to be, including here in Oyster Bay. Stacy would have to hire more staff, which would raise the overhead, but that was fine. It was time he needed now, not money.

He grabbed a bottle of carrot-and-pineapple juice and walked over to his drafting table, still thinking about his new sketch. That’s where it seemed to start and end these days, with the sketches. He never got to the building, never even got to the design, though that was his first love.

The walls of his office were lined with photographs and paintings of classic boats, most of them crafted of wood, and to his mind, works of art. Today’s serious racing yachts were built with man-made materials, and though their lines were beautiful and their speed breathtaking, they lacked the soul of their graceful forebears.

He set down the juice unopened, picked up his pencil and drew in the hull with a couple of strokes. It was coming now. She would be small, fast and graceful, a sloop. Like
her.

Once again, his mind went directly to Alison, like a car heading into a curve and driving off the road. How could you not think about a woman who slept naked in a cool dark room, shades drawn, even during the day?

He’d gone there to talk at various times, but she hadn’t answered the door, not even when he pounded. He’d let himself in and found her in bed, entwined with the sheets and stretched out like a nude in a painting.

At times he could have sworn she was sleeping with her eyes open, like a sphinx. He never quite knew what to make of the strange creature he’d fished out of the sea, but he could not make the mistake of falling under her spell and wrecking himself on the rocks.

Someone had tried to frame him by making his wife’s accident look like murder. Posing as him, they’d taken out a two-million-dollar insurance policy on Alison a month before her accident. All the arrangements, including the results of her annual medical exam, had been handled by fax and phone, and it could just as easily have been Alison herself doing it. Voices were easily disguised on the phone.

Just days before the accident, he’d told her he wanted a divorce. Their prenuptial gave her a million dollars for every year of marriage if he initiated a divorce, and nothing if she did. Without blinking an eye she’d asked for the money. He’d had it wired to the account she indicated, and forty-eight hours later, she’d disappeared off his boat.

It was enough to make a guy think. The wife he’s about to divorce vanishes with a nice chunk of change and he’s prosecuted for her murder? It was a tidy bit of revenge, if that’s what the wife had in mind. Of course, it had backfired.

“Andrew?”

Her voice always startled him. It wasn’t Alison’s. But then, how could it be, he reminded himself, after all those operations?

He looked up to see her standing in the doorway of his study, lithe and tan in her white shorts and flowing, slightly wild, dark hair. She held a note in her hand. Good, he thought, she’d found it.

She was up, walking and talking.

She wasn’t sleeping like the sphinx.

Good.

S
he glanced down to see if her breasts were properly exposed in the plunging wrap top. Her fringed skirt hit midthigh, which was baby stuff on this street corner. Most of the girls’ fannies were falling out of their clothes, and some of the flesh was disgustingly jiggly. Not a pretty sight in broad daylight. At least
she
was toned. And she’d known enough to wear a skirt, the working girl’s uniform. Short skirts weren’t just sexually suggestive, they were efficient.

A sleek silver Porsche pulled to the curb. Not very discreet of the silly bastard, she thought as she walked over to the passenger door. The window zipped down and the baby-faced thirty-something driver checked her out.

“I was looking for a blonde, younger and stacked,” he said.

“Aren’t you lucky.” She gave him a flirty wink and pulled off her silk scarf, exposing platinum-blond curls that would have done Gwen Stefani proud. It was a wig, but this guy wouldn’t care. He just wanted to get his apples picked, and that meant serving up as much of his particular fantasy as she could manage.

Young wasn’t an option. Stacked, she could do something about. She cupped her breasts and pushed them up, bending toward the car window.
Silly bastard,
she thought as she saw his salacious grin.

“Get in,” he told her.

She barely had the door shut when he peeled out, leaving a streak of smoking rubber behind them.

“The perfect place,” he announced as he turned onto a deserted side street a couple blocks up, and parked. The grin reappeared as he unzipped his pants and made himself readily available.

“Knock yourself out,” he said.

Cheeky little SOB was going to pay for that remark, she promised herself.

He continued to laugh and joke as she worked him over, pleasuring him with her hands and her mouth until suddenly, he wasn’t laughing anymore. He was begging her to stop. Of course, she redoubled her efforts, and within seconds he was squealing like a baby pig.

“Damn, woman, let me at you,” he gasped.

He reached for her in his apparent ecstasy, and she shoved him away. “No intercourse! We agreed.”

“Yeah, but I need to get off again. That’s how freaking hot you are, Julia.”

“Don’t call me by my name!”

“Oops, sorry.” He pointed past her nose, gesturing toward the badly maintained public park they’d pulled up next to. “There’s a park bench. Let’s check it out.”

“You’re not sorry.”

“You won’t be either, sugar. Get your sweet ass on that park bench. I’ll make a cushion out of my coat like the hell of a guy I am.”

Moments later, Julia was sitting on the bench, spread-eagled. She tried not to scream with pleasure as he mounted her with the agility of a gymnast. He could have been doing push-ups. His hands were braced on the back of the bench as he leaned over her and pumped ferociously.

Moans of ecstasy gurgled up in her throat, but she didn’t want him to know he was giving her the most intense sex she’d ever experienced, the little bastard. She’d refused to let him penetrate until he put on a condom, but that’s where her common sense had ended. Here she was, in a public park on a bench under a tree, and she probably wouldn’t have cared if the park patrol had driven up.

“Say I’m the man,” he sputtered, “tell me I’m the man! Say it!”

She got the words out, and his face contorted. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “Oh, Jesus!”

Julia gasped as he pulled out abruptly and ejaculated all over her breasts, soaking her wrap top as well as her skin. That, she wasn’t so thrilled about. He could have waited for her, like a damn gentleman. But that thing he’d told her to say might come in handy.

She managed to clean up the mess he’d made with a hanky she’d tucked in her bra. In her mind the perfect square of fine lace separated her from the role she had to play in order to get what she’d come for, so to speak. She realized how sordid the situation would look to anyone who didn’t understand what was at stake, but she knew the truth, clung to it. This wasn’t an illicit afternoon tryst for her. It was a quest, and he had what she sought, the holy grail.

As soon as she had her feet on the ground and her skirt back where it belonged, she made her pitch. “Okay, we did your damn fantasy. You got what you wanted. Now, when do I get what
I
want?”

He was still engrossed in putting himself back together. “You’re pretty good, but not
that
good. I’m going to need another session or two, or three.”

“Jack Furlinghetti, you dirty rotten liar.”

“Hey, I’m an attorney, aren’t I?” He laughed uproariously and then reached over and caressed her lips with the pad of his thumb. The sound he made was the hiss of escaping steam. “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he said.

Julia was steaming, too, and not just from the sex. She damn well better not have anything to worry about. She’d specifically requested him because she thought he was young, gullible and would do her bidding. She didn’t want to be wrong about that.

“I’m not going.” Alison stood in front of Andrew and ripped the envelope into shreds, letting it fall to the floor like blue snow. “I’m not ready to deal with this yet, and you know it.”

He could hear the force in her low, shaking voice. She was putting on a good show, lots of bravado, but underneath it all she was afraid. He’d counted on that.

He set down his pencil, unscrewed the juice bottle top and took a drink. “Don’t be dramatic. No one’s forcing you to go back to Mirage Bay.”

“Your note said we
had
to go. We couldn’t put it off any longer.” Her stare accused him, and that was no small thing from this woman. Her eyes were a deceptive baby-blue that turned into blazing fire opals when she got upset.

“Alison, don’t be ridiculous.” He rose from the stool. “It’s your family.”

“Exactly. It’s my family. They eat their young.” Her bracelet jingled as she caught the battered copper charm in her fingers. “I’m not ready.”

“We’re never ready for some things—marriage, children, major surgery. But we screw up our courage and get them done. And afterward, we’re glad we did.”

“Andrew, please, you know them. They’ll crucify me.”

“It’s your mother, your brother.”

“And they both hate me. My mother’s been furious with me since I walked away from the trust fund my grandmother left me—and married you. What she can control she hates. What she
can’t
control she hates more.”

“And your brother?”

“Bret’s had it in for me since birth. I was the oldest and the favorite, and he was desperate to dethrone me.”

He gave her an encouraging nod. “Congratulations. That’s you and Bret to a tee. You remembered it perfectly.”

Her headshake was suddenly weary. “I can’t remember anything, especially when I’m frightened. My mind goes blank. I may not know what silverware to use. What if I make mistakes at the dinner table? I’ll be humiliated.”

She was still rubbing the copper loop between her fingers. It was a dead giveaway of her nerves, and as she brought the loop to her lips, he spoke up. “I’ve asked you to take that thing off the bracelet. It isn’t one of the charms I gave you, and it’s sure to be noticed.”

Her head came up, defiant. “So what if it’s noticed? I added it myself, and it’s brought me luck. I’m not removing it.”

The desire to exert his will was strong, but he told himself to let it go for now. He had bigger battles to fight. “No one in Mirage Bay is going to humiliate you,” he said. “I’ll handle that.”

“Really?” Sarcasm invaded her tone. “How?”

“Leave it to me. I’ve held your family off until now. You’ll be fine. I’ll be there with you.”

He’d blocked Julia’s attempts to see Alison when she was in the hospital, explaining that her presence would be too much for her fragile, recovering daughter. Julia had backed off, seeming to understand, but she’d also become more insistent with every passing month, and she wasn’t going to be put off any longer.

Andrew made it a point not to look at the cabinets behind Alison, specifically at the locked drawer where he’d put the missive he’d received earlier that week. “I accepted your mother’s invitation,” he said, his tone harsh. “It’s been six months. It’s time.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.” Tears welled, glittering like fire. “You had no right.”

He turned away from her, not wanting to be swayed by the agony swimming in her gaze. Her eyes got to him when nothing else could. Except for the dark hair, she looked uncannily like the Alison he’d known before the accident. But that woman he could resist. This one was different. Her fears were real, persuasive. Hell, they were heartrending. And somehow, on rare occasions like this when she broke down, she managed to get to him, no matter how expertly he steeled himself against her.

That was why he stayed the hell away from her.

As he waited for her to compose herself, he realized that she was up to something else. The plate with the breakfast he hadn’t eaten sat on the counter just behind her. In his peripheral vision, he could see her pilfering pieces of the fruit and stuffing them in her mouth like a starving child. He wasn’t sure she even realized what she was doing.

He turned, catching her as she crammed three of the orange sections into her mouth at once. She froze at the sight of him. Her knees seemed to buckle. Heat flushed her cheeks and she gulped hard, apparently swallowing the entire mouthful.

“Alison? If you’re hungry—”

“No, it’s not that. Sometimes I panic and forget myself.” Her eyes took on that anguish again. “Do you see?” she said. “Do you see now? I’m not ready.”

He did see, but there wasn’t much he could do. They had to go. Julia was extending an olive branch after four years of silence. Alison’s accident had been the catalyst for Julia’s change of heart. She’d wanted to see her only daughter, the child she nearly lost, but this was much more. She’d invited them to stay at Sea Clouds, the Fairmonts’ compound on the cliffs near Mirage Bay.

The three-story Mediterranean mansion had been in the family for generations, but had been used primarily as a vacation home to escape the harsh East Coast winters. When Julia’s husband, Grant, died, she’d begun spending more of her time at Sea Clouds, and now it was her permanent residence.

Andrew needed this opportunity. If Julia rescinded the invitation, he might not get another chance to enter that house, up close and personal with the Fairmonts—one of whom he suspected had set him up for a fall.

Andrew used the smallest key on his chain to unlock the drawer. Inside was the six-month-old edition of the Mirage Bay newspaper he’d found in his P.O. box yesterday, rolled up and bagged in plastic. He’d been having the Mirage Bay paper mailed to him since Alison’s accident, but this edition wasn’t courtesy of the newspaper’s subscription service. This was personal. Someone was calling him out.

He unrolled the paper and laid it on the counter. Alison had just left in a huff and he didn’t expect her back, but he’d locked his office door all the same. If she saw this, he would never get her on the plane to southern California. The paper’s date was February third, and the lead story was about her disappearance from
Bladerunner.
But the article had been marked up by whoever sent it. Words had been circled with a permanent marker to create an ominous message, clearly intended for him.

I know what you did. Soon the police will, too.

You won’t get away with it this time.

How much are your secrets worth?

It smacked of a blackmail attempt, but the sender hadn’t given him any contact information. Andrew couldn’t risk dismissing it as a bluff. He had plenty to hide and too much at stake, and the sender seemed to know that.

He picked up the plastic casing the paper had come in and examined the mailing label. It didn’t have the newspaper’s logo, which added to his theory that a private party had sent the paper, and if not for the blackmail aspect, Andrew would have said it was Julia Fairmont. He didn’t think it a coincidence that her invitation had arrived within days of the newspaper message, and she had more reasons than most to want him out of the way.

He’d come between her and her only daughter, and even if Julia didn’t buy the media hype about the Villard curse, she undoubtedly had some concerns about Alison’s safety. She might also think he was trying to use Alison to get his hands on the fifty-milliion dollar trust fund.

How much are your secrets worth?
The clumsy attempt at blackmail brought Bret Fairmont to mind. There’d be no other reason for Bret to expose him, certainly not to protect his sister. There was no love lost there. Unfortunately, the blackmail aspect opened the field up to suspects Andrew might not even know. Anyone could have seen something, heard something, although why would they wait all this time? And the second line must refer to Regine, which meant the sender knew something about his past. But then, who didn’t?

He put the paper back in the drawer and locked it, but he was still mentally embroiled in the quandary. What
were
his secrets worth? Christ, there wasn’t enough money.