Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (92 page)

His mouth was moist and soft and filled with a thousand
warm promises. The last ragged bite of anger and frustration
seeped out of her. She was suddenly weak. She could feel the
moist beginnings of passion starting up between her thighs.
She wanted him to kiss her forever, to take her right on this
spot.

But she finally pulled away from him. 'That's enough . . . for now,' she whispered hoarsely with a low laugh. 'There's
no telling what I might do if we don't stop.'

'We'll come back . . . often.'

'Yes.'

They walked silently along the dry creekbed to the car, holding hands like teenage lovers. Tamara felt a warm glow
of satisfaction. They were always more like young lovers after
they'd had a disagreement and made up, as though through
some mysterious alchemy, anger became passion.

'What's the next step?' she asked as soon as they reached
the car.

He leaned back against the warm hood of the Duesenberg.
'You mean, about the house?'

She nodded.

'Well, it wouldn't hurt to consolidate our finances. The way things are set up, our pay cheques are automatically deposited into our respective accounts. As far as the house goes, it would
make things a lot easier if we paid everything out of one joint
account.'

'That makes sense to me.'

He smiled slightly. 'Only you're my wife, and I don't like
the idea of having to use my wife's money for anything.'

'Why, for heaven's sake? What's wrong with my money?'

He took a deep breath. 'It's the way I was brought up. The
man is supposed to be the provider.'

'That's silly!' she scolded him. Then she looked at him
closely. 'You're serious, aren't you?'

He nodded. 'Like I said, it's something that I'm just not
comfortable with. I'm sure it'll pass.'

She looked exasperated. 'I should hope so.'

'At any rate, what it boils down to now is cold hard cash. I
paid for the property and the architect out of my own account,
but I don't have nearly enough to pay for the house as well.
A joint account would simplify a lot of things. If you don't like
the idea, and frankly
I
don't, I filled out a power of attorney for you. It's only temporary, and all you have to do is sign it.
Then, until it's cancelled, I can get to your money without any
problem. This way I'll be able to divert funds from both our
accounts into one separate account just for payments involving
the house, but in essence we'll still have separate accounts.'

'Couldn't I just sign cheques as we need them?'

'I thought of that, but what if I need to get at money in a
hurry and you're on a publicity tour?'

'I see your point.' She thought for a moment. 'How much
will the house run, do you think?'

He watched her steadily. 'Two hundred thousand dollars.'

'Two hundred thousand!' she sputtered. A disbelieving look
clouded her face. 'What are we building here? Versailles?'

'Only a reasonable facsimile,' he joked weakly. 'Actually, it's not all that bad when you consider the overall picture. I looked around, and an average seven-room stucco house in
Beverly Hills runs five thousand.'

'A fortieth of what you're proposing.'

'I know that. But you have to take into account that we
need something better than average. Also, this property is
totally unimproved. There are no roads. There's no electricity.
We'll need to dig for water. Arrange for sewage. Wall the
property in.'

'How much was this property, anyway?' she asked.

'Twelve thousand.'

She let out a gasp. 'That's . . . that's pretty steep.'

He gestured around the hill. 'It's also twelve and a half
prime
acres. That's not exactly chickenfeed.'

She looked up at him. 'No, I suppose it isn't,' she said
hoarsely.

He looked at her with concern. 'Now what's the matter?
You look like you've seen a ghost?'

'The spectre of poverty's more like it,' she said grimly.

'Princess! Get hold of yourself. We're talking about a house,
not some plaything like a yacht or a car. Houses are bought
and sold every day.'

'They get repossessed every day too. You have only to read
the statistics in the papers.'

He shook his head. 'Sometimes I don't understand you.
You're intent on harbouring this notion that a house is going to bankrupt us. How many people do you know that that's
happened to? Name one.'

'King Ludwig of Bavaria.'

He burst into rich peals of laughter. 'That you know person
ally,' he spluttered. 'Be serious.'

'I am being serious,' she said anxiously. 'Louie, if we go
ahead with a two-hundred-thousand-dollar house, we'll end
up broke!'

He laughed. 'No we won't. Besides, it's not like it's got to be paid for all at once. Hell, nobody does that.'

Her face was still pinched. 'But can we really afford it? I
mean, we'll have more money going out than coming in . . .'

'With my three hundred a week and your thousand, we're
raking in over fifty-six hundred every month! Of course we
can afford it.'

'It's not as easy as it sounds, and you know it,' she protested,
calculating swiftly. 'We'll be skating on very thin ice. There
are taxes to consider.'

'Granted.'

'And our expenses are astronomical. Louie, we can't just build a house and let it sit there empty; we'll have to furnish
it. Where's all the money going to come from?'

'Oh, for God's sake, Princess,' he said in exasperation,
'we're rich.
Rich.
R-i-c-h rich. Can't you get that through your
head? You're still thinking of yourself as the girl I met in the
coffee shop.'

'Maybe,' she admitted. 'But I never want to go back to that
ever again.'

'Trust me, you won't. Another five years and your contract's
up for renegotiation. You'll be able to write your own ticket.
The money'll just keep rolling in.'

'Like magic, huh?'

'Well, close to it.'

'Then why aren't we saving more than eight hundred dollars
a month? Sometimes it's even less. I feel like we're on a per
petual treadmill.'

'To make more, you have to spend more,' he said equably.
'We
can't
cut down on expenses. It's part of what keeps the
public intrigued. They don't want their stars to be just like the
girl next door.'

'And what if,' she said earnestly, her expression clouding, 'something should happen to either one of us and the money
doesn't
keep rolling in?'

'Trust me,' he said softly. 'Would I steer you wrong?'

She looked up at him and saw the earnest expression in his
eyes. 'Of course you wouldn't,' she said softly. 'You know I
trust you completely.' She took a massive breath. 'You said
you've got the power of attorney on you?'

'Right here.' He fished it out of his pocket with a flourish.

'Got a pen?' she asked, holding her hand out, palm up.

Grinning, he produced a fountain pen, unscrewed the cap,
and handed it over.

As impassively as possible, she placed the paper on the
hood of the car and scrawled her famous autograph across the
document. She frowned down at her name. Her signature was
not smooth, self-assured, and fluid, but rather shaky, crimped,
and hesitant. Like a miser's signature, she thought. Or at least
the signature of someone who had signed against her better
judgment.

Chapter 16

When the final figures were tallied a little over two years later,
the total cost of the house had climbed to a staggering
$440,000. They didn't own it. The bank did. Two weeks after
it was completed, there was a second mortgage on it.

Much later, when she would reminisce upon the past,
Tamara would pinpoint the moment she had scrawled her
signature on the power of attorney as the precise point in time
when the wheel of fortune stopped spinning in their favour,
when their problems would start to mount, when the good life
they enjoyed would begin to go bad.

In the meantime, there was the house. The publicity it gen
erated made it worth every cent. The trouble was, she and
Louis had to pay for it, not IA. It wasn't Versailles, but there was nothing humble about it. Members of the press trouped
through it, dutifully 'oohed' and 'aahed', and went away
impressed and anxious to enlighten their readers. And why
shouldn't they have been impressed? Tamara asked herself
wearily. Hell, she was impressed. After all, how many people
ever really lost their fairy-tale fantasies completely? And that was what the house really was—a dream castle, a spun-sugar
confection.

But she had never felt less comfortable in any other house
she could remember. It wasn't a home. It was a daunting
monstrosity.

For months she couldn't pick up a newspaper or magazine
without running across some mention of the house Louis
named
'
Tamahawk' in Tamara's honour.

Screen Story
magazine devoted an entire eight-page spread
to the house, complete with seven photographs. The acid-
tinged article, written by the much-feared columnist Marilee
Rice, was appropriately titled 'Home Is Where the Castle Is.'
A smaller, catty subtitle read: 'Eat and drink, Tamara we die,'
which set the tone for the article which followed.

'Cut and . . .
print!'
Louis' voice boomed out through the
megaphone.