Forster, Suzanne (23 page)

She lifted the shaking Bloody Mary to her lips, realized she wasn't going to make it, and passed the glass off to the stewardess, who was still hovering as if Gus needed her own personal attendant. She did. She'd been trying since the beverage service, but hadn't managed to take a single sip of the thing. So much for a relaxing drink.

"White-knuckle flier?" the stewardess asked.

No, murderess, Gus wanted to say. She nodded instead.

By the time the airport taxi reached the Flintridge neighborhood where the Featherstone compound was located, Gus had accomplished something of a miracle. She'd convinced herself that she had done the right thing in drowning Jack Culhane, perhaps even the noble thing. The way she saw it, the man had hardly left her any choice. He'd kidnapped her, blackmailed her, and compromised her future dreams. Poor, misguided soul that he was, he'd virtually forced her into the desperate act. His tragedy was that he'd picked the wrong woman to mess with, because Gus Featherstone's dreams were bigger than both of them.

This was no easy rationalization, even for Gus, who was used to defending her actions and her opinions. She'd had to work her conscience until it was as pliable as a piece of Bridget's Play-Doh before she could get it into the shape she wanted it. Fortunately, she was motivated. She had, after all, broken the Fifth Commandment. But she hadn't meant to kill him, she told herself, at least not in any calculated, premeditated way. The drowning was more an unfortunate by-product of her desperate need to escape him. She certainly regretted it now. Deeply. She felt almost sick when she thought of him that way... lying at the bottom of the sea, all the dark, thrilling magnetism and tortured strength gone out of him. But what else could she have done?

It was one of those "greater good" situations, an impossible moral dilemma. A bad apple had to be thrown out to save the barrel. And in this case, the apple was a man who stood in the way of everything she was trying to accomplish, a dream that could touch millions.

She'd tried to get help for him. Admittedly, it was an afterthought, but she had tried. She'd thrown on her clothes, rushed out of the villa to the Jeep, thinking to drive herself to the airstrip, and then, in a fit of conscience, she'd run to the caretaker's cottage and alerted him to the disaster. "There's a man drowning in the bay, " she'd told him, hoping there might still be time to save him. But by then it was too late. The caretaker hadn't found any sign of him.

Now the taxi driver's voice broke into Gus's thoughts as he drove up to the Featherstone guard gate and spoke with the man on duty. "I'll get out here, " she told the driver.

Her travels around the world had taught her to keep an American Express card sewn into a little compartment in the band of her panties, but she had no cash on her at all, so she arranged with the guard to pay the taxi driver, then waited until the cab was gone.

"Everything okay, Ms. Featherstone?" the guard asked Gus as the car pulled away. "We weren't expecting you back so soon. "

"Good morning, Howard." She was grateful it was him on duty. Howard was an easygoing sort, the most congenial of the security staff, and by far her favorite. "Everything's fine, but I need a little favor, " she told him conspitatorially. "Don't mention to anyone that I'm back, okay? I want it to be a surprise. "

Howard tipped his hat. "Sure, ma'am, anything you say. "

Gus smiled wearily as she turned and walked up the bricked road that led to the house. Fortunately it was still early. No one would be up yet, and Frances would be busy in the kitchen with breakfast, so Gus wasn't worried about being seen.

Howard had tipped his hat. Wasn't that sweet?

She was actually glad to see the spires and towers of the Featherstone mansion through the massive oaks that lined the road. The neighbor kids called the soaring Queen Anne Victorian Dracula's Castle, and Gus had always been frightened of the place when she was a kid. She'd been told by Frances that the mansion had secret rooms and passageways, but she herself had never found them, and she'd privately suspected the housekeeper of trying to frighten her. It wouldn't have been the first time.

Now she just wanted to escape inside its hoary edifice to her cozy room on the third floor and hide out for a while. She couldn't deal with anyone yet, not even Rob. She knew he must be worried sick about her, but she was going to need more time to sort things through before she saw anyone.

It was little Bridget she was aching to get a hold of. She wanted to tousle her niece's blond curls and bear-hug her until they were both breathless, but even that would have to wait. Her first step would be a ritual of mental, physical, and emotional restoration. She was going to take a scalding shower, a tiny lavender pill, and sleep around the clock. When she woke up and was sane again, she would deal with all of this.

Gus's favorite "hang" outfit was a pair of men's boxer shorts and a white ribbed cotton tank with the words AMERICAN MADE printed across the chest. And that was what she was wearing when she awoke the next morning and discovered that she'd drifted off in one of the overstuffed chairs that flanked the fireplace. According to the clock on the mantel, she'd slept nearly twenty-four hours, but despite her restoration ritual, a persistent tickle of fear remained in the pit of her stomach. Or was it dread?

She had resolved not to let herself think about what happened in Scorpion Bay, though it was still weighing on her terribly. She couldn't change what had happened, no matter how much she might want to, and it was vitally important that she go ahead with her plans. But would her family and the media take her seriously when she tried to explain the situation? Only Rob knew what had actually happened at the WomenPride fashion show, and even he didn't know it all.

"Bridget must be up by now, " she thought aloud, rolling her shoulders and neck to work out the stiffness. She wasn't ready to spring herself on the family quite yet, but she did want to see her niece. Nothing could restore sanity to her life the way a visit with Bridget could. The five-year-old had more chutzpah than a deli clerk at Canter's.

Moments later in the shower Gus planned her morning. The rich, coconutty smell of her piña colada bath gel saturated the stall as she soaped herself. She was sure her stepsister, Lily, would have found it vulgar and overpowering. Lily was delicate that way, preferring to accessorize her life with subtle scents and herringbone prints. But Gus found it invigorating, especially since it had been a birthday gift from Rob.

Once she'd seen her niece, she would call Rob at his home in the Hollywood hills, tell him what happened, and the two of them would put their heads together and figure out their next move. Rob had been acting as her manager and handling all her booking and public relations for nearly two years. She could never have managed the kidnapping scheme without his help. He was also an expert at damage control, which was exactly what she needed right now. The Jack Culhane "problem" could make or break her credibility with the public, and the way it was handled was crucial.

Moments later, toweled off and wrapped in a huge, fluffy carnation-pink bath sheet, she crossed her impossibly ruffly bedroom, headed for her white diary chest. The entire room was done in the flounces and swirls of a Barbie dollhouse. Gus loved and hated it. She'd chosen the cabbage rose chintz pattern herself, years ago when she was only a few years older than Bridget was now, and in all that time, she'd never been able to bring herself to change it.

"Someone will have to wrestle me to the ground and hold me down while they ransack the place, " she vowed, riffling through her underwear drawer in search of fresh panties. Frilly sachets scented with lilac and rose flew this way and that, their competing perfumes making her sneeze. "That's the only way it will ever get redecorated. "

To make matters worse, she was an obsessive collector of froo-froo girly stuff. Antique dolls, teddy bears, and fringed pillows were piled on the bed, chairs, and floor, but the most precious bit of paraphernalia was her Cinderella music box. The much-adored, much-abused ceramic box had the fairy-tale heroine perched atop it, twirling rapturously to the tune of "Some Day My Prince Will Come. " Gus had been six when she'd found the kitschy treasure at a white elephant sale at her school, and she'd pleaded with her mother until Rita had bought it for her.

If a room could be a haven, this one was. But it was also an embarrassment to her now, at twenty-seven. She'd been profiled by
Marie Claire
last year, and they'd wanted to shoot her at home in the mansion. She'd accommodated them in every way, except granting them access to this room. She took some pride in her bratdom, and this decor contradicted it profoundly. Even her few friends from the modeling agency were not admitted to Gus Featherstone's frilly sanctum sanctorum.

She'd gone to a shrink once, determined to get over her fear of snakes, as well as the stammer that lay ever in wait. The good doctor had told her the ruffles and chintz represented tender parts of herself that even her tough exterior couldn't protect. If that was true, her insides were mush.

Irony tilted her smile as she picked a pair of panties whose chintz pattern matched the room's decor. She'd be ruined if people ever found out the truth about her, that her bedroom was a shrine to the sweetest,
wimpiest
heroine of all time. Still, it had been her salvation, that fairy tale. It had kept her company when she was alone at night, and it had given her something to dream about when she was huddled on dirty carpets in dingy efficiency apartments, playing with her paper dolls and creating endless scenarios of romance to the rescue. It had also helped her to survive the ghastly situation right here in this house with her two stepsiblings. That was why this was Cindy's room. And why Gus couldn't change it.

"I do not look like Rita." She told herself that firmly as she sat at her vanity moments later. Frowning at her reflection, she applied a light application of mascara to thick soot-black eyelashes. But she did look like Rita. She had the same exotic coloring and angular bones, the same smoky violet eyes, which never failed to draw compliments, but which had never impressed her, because they weren't blue like Cindy's.

Her mother had met Lake Featherstone, Sr., while waitressing a catered affair at the manse. Rita Walsh had spilled champagne in the great man's lap, then breathlessly attempted to blot it up with her apron, taking a great deal more time than necessary. It was lust at first touch.

The aging patriarch had married Rita not six weeks later, over the family's vehement protests, of course. From that point on, Gus's life had become a darkness that could not be lightened by romantic fairy tales, or by anything else that she knew of, except her own ferocious will to prevail. Nevertheless, those stories had been her only real comfort, and when she and her mother moved into the mansion, she begged Rita for a canopy bed and a room worthy of a fairytale princess. Money was no object, and Rita had eventually hired it done. But her mother hadn't stuck around to see the finished room. She'd been too preoccupied with her own goal—stealing her new husband blind and running off to the West Indies with her deep muscle massage therapist.

Pain welled as Gus thought about how hard she'd tried to please her mother all those years ago, how desperate she'd been, and how certain she was that Rita couldn't stand the sight of her own overeager, fumbling klutz of a kid. Did mothers find their own children repugnant? Gus was bone-certain that hers had.

She slapped down the mascara, sighed heavily, and plucked a lipstick from the row of tubes in her makeup tray. She really would have to grow up one of these days. Turning your bedroom into a security blanket was worse than embarrassing when you were an adult woman. It was pathetic. Maybe she would call a decorator today and get it over with, she thought, glowering at the blush-pink lipstick color she'd chosen. The first thing to go would be that silly music box.

The hallway was empty when at last Gus let herself out of the room, wearing a fresh pair of boxers and a gray cropped-top workout Tee. She and Bridget were at opposite ends of the mansion from each other, Gus's room being on the top floor of the east wing in one of the house's many turrets, and Bridget's being in the west wing, overlooking the tea garden, and next to Frances's. Gus would have preferred the little girl nearer her, but Gus's modeling career had demanded a great deal of travel until recently, and it had made more sense to have Bridget where Frances could keep an eye on her.

The huge house was unusually quiet as Gus stole down the mahogany staircase that descended to the Grand Hall. Rather a lofty name for a foyer, Gus had always thought, but the room was lovely with its mirrorlike black and white floor tiles and elegant chandelier. If Gus hadn't known that both Lake and Lily were in town, she would have guessed they were away somewhere, and quite likely together. The bond they shared as twins included their love of traveling, opera, and fine art. They regularly went to London for the summer and fall seasons, when Sotheby's and Christie's held their masters auctions.

No one had been more surprised than Gus when they'd shown up for her charity fashion show. Of course, it would have looked tacky in the society pages if they hadn't, considering their younger stepsibling was being feted for her heroism. Ward McHenry, the Featherstone's trust officer, had also attended, which boded extremely well for what Gus was trying to accomplish. More than anyone else's, it was McHenry's confidence and support she needed to win.

Faint sounds of conversation came to her as she hesitated on the steps. There was a small television in the kitchen, and Frances sometimes kept it on, but the noise seemed to be drifting up from the gallery, an enormous ballroom at the end of the hall that the Featherstones had converted into a showroom for their art collection.

As Gus crept closer, she heard snippets of an exchange between two men, but all she could make out was the occasional word. They seemed to be talking about security systems, which wasn't that unusual given the value of the collection. She heard references to microwave intrusion detectors, proximity sensors, and silent alarm systems.