Microsoft Word - Rogers, Rosemary - The Crowd Pleasers (41 page)

Ria stood there with her hand on the light switch-face and hair blending into different shades of gold under the light she'd turned on. No makeup except for lip gloss. A thin slip of a dress-pale beige accented by gold satin ribbon with spaghetti straps barely caressing her shoulders. She was dressed for dinner, and her surprise and embarrassment seemed genuine.

"I'm sorry! Truly I am. I didn't realize .. ."

Only Webb caught the quickly veiled flicker in her eyes that might have been anger-or spite. To Anne, the voice was familiar-warm honey overlaying arrogance and an obvious assumption of familiarity.

So this was Anna-Maria-Ietting herself into Webb's room with easy assurance because she was "worried" about him. Oh God, how humiliating! How many times did she have to be taught how casually Webb used women?

And now, while he kept her body pinned unwillingly under his in spite of her attempts to extricate herself, he was looking straight at the other woman, with the strangest smile-not showing any signs of perturbation.

"Hi, Ria. You do turn up at the most unexpected times, don't you? What time is it?"

Just like that. Easy conversation with a drop-in guest. They knew each other very well, too, from the wary way they eyed each other.

"It is almost dinnertime. And when I left you this afternoon, you said you were feeling very sleepy. I didn't know you had company."

"Well, Annie and I decided to talk things over, didn't we, love? Have you two met yet?"

Giving up the silent physical struggle against his strength Anne said, trying to emulate his careless attitude, "I don't think so. But you must be Senor Espinoza's friend."

"I am Anna-Maria de Leone. You're Anne Mallory? I apologize for intruding, hut I did not know ..." She cast a flickering glance at Webb and went on smoothly: "Webb and I are very old friends, you see, or I would not have come in without knocking first.

Perhaps I should go now."

Anne surprised herself by saying sweetly, "Oh, please don't! Since it's so late, I must be going myself. I hope Harris hasn't been sending out search parties for me. It was very thoughtless of me not to have left a note or something."

"Oh shit!" Webb said with unexpected violence. Just as unexpectedly he set her free-yanking the covers back up to her neck as he swung his feet off the side of the bed, standing up like a naked satyr-just as uncaring. "If I guess right, you're a search party of one, aren't you, Ria sweet? So now you've been properly introduced, why don't you be a good little girl scout and call up to the house for something Anne can wear?"

He picked his pants up off the floor where he had dropped them, smiling wickedly into Anne's startled, angry face.

"You weren't wearing much when you came in here, Annie love. I could lend you something of mine to wear, but it might cause a lot of speculation if you walked into the house like that. So why don't you two girls decide on something while I go take a shower ... unless you'd care to join me?"

SHE HAD ONLY HERSELF to blame, Anne told herself stonily afterwards. She had let him drug her senses, just as she had so many times before. Even after he had threatened her and insulted her. Oh, but Webb was consummate at the kind of cruel games he played! Perhaps he'd planned to make the woman he called "Ria" so familiarly jealous. Perhaps-but why torture herself with suppositions? She hated herself even more than she despised him. Especially when she remembered how he'd extricated himself from an awkward situation-just by walking away from it, and leaving her and Anna-Maria staring at each other, sizing each other up for the first few seconds, before Anna-Maria shrugged expressively.

"I am sorry. He can be very cruel, can't he? Me, I should know. When we met again I had thought myself armed against him, and then ... but it doesn't matter. He is only cruel when he is angry, and it was me he was angry with just now."

"Why?" Anne asked bluntly. She felt ridiculous, lying naked in the bed she'd shared with Webb all afternoon and talking calmly with one of his other lovers, who obviously understood him much better than she did.

"Why? It is a very long story. Forgive me, but I don't know if I am ready to speak of it yet-or if I should." And then her voice turning brisk. "But if you don't mind, I think perhaps I should call Harris? He has been worried about you, it's true."

Harris sent one of his discreet servants down with a pair of jeans and a shirt for her, while Webb took his time in the shower. And Anna-Maria stayed, while Anne, feeling ridiculously guilty, had to face Harris himself Soon afterwards. She felt even more guilty when he didn't reproach her-merely looked at her searchingly. "Are you all right, Anne?" Color suffused her anger-pale cheeks, and she dropped her eyes.

"Yes. And I'm sorry-I didn't mean to ..."

"Anne, remember when I told you you were free? I meant that, love." He sighed then.

"I just don't want you hurt. Webb Carnahan-but you know what he's like, don't you? I suppose you felt guilty, although you shouldn't have." He was making excuses for her, and his understanding made her squirm inside.

"I suppose I had to get him out of my system!" she said lightly. "And besides, that shot Dr. Brightman gave me must have been stronger than I thought-I hardly knew what I was doing for a while, and then I fell asleep ..." She wanted to ask him about Anna-Maria, but didn't dare.

He left her in her room after asking her solicitously if she felt up to joining them for dinner-or after dinner, if she preferred. He could have a tray sent up to her room.

Pride and stubbornness made Anne insist that, though she was not particularly hungry, she would enjoy joining everyone soon after dinner, which mustn't be held up on her account.

In the end, it all went off much more easily than she could have imagined. Anne went downstairs and mingled. And no one asked questions-no one mentioned the stabbing. They were all relaxed-laughing, gossiping, planning to make an early night before tomorrow's shooting. There was no sign of either Webb or Anna-Maria (and Anne had to catch back the thought -Is she still with him? Didn't she mind?), but Karim kept casting her dark looks, which she tried to ignore. Yves was smiling, obviously pleased with himself. He was being patronizingly nice to Claudia, who was pouting as usual. Sarah wore jewels again-diamonds; and she sparkled just like the jewels. Jean Benedict was back to wearing levis again, this time with a red silk shirt that made her look like a gypsy. And Sal Espinoza was

as charmingly urbane as usual, seemingly unconcerned that his mistress was nowhere in evidence. Hadn't he said they had an "understanding"? And if he didn't care, why should she? Let Webb play his games. The next time they met, Anne thought fiercely, she would be completely indifferent. She wouldn't let him use her again, or ask her pointless questions, or listen to his bland, lying explanations. She took the drink Espinoza handed her and smiled up at him.

Ria had stayed in Webb's room, listening to the sounds of him taking a shower, and wondering how much she could make him tell her. He had changed from the ardent, tenderly protective lover she remembered-but hadn't she been prepared for that?

She had changed, too, but found that the new Webb excited and challenged her much more. She had learned to enjoy playing with danger, and her senses told her he could be a dangerous adversary-which made this game much more exciting.

And as for Anne Mallory, who had shared his bed ... she had seen the videotape, before they sent her down here to find out what she could. Anne Mallory was stupid, even if she was Reardon's daughter. And she was easily manipulated. Perhaps Webb, too, was out for revenge-wouldn't that be ironic? Also, he made love beautifully, especially when he let the savage in him escape. Like the other night ...

Webb came out of the bathroom, slinging the towel he'd been using carelessly over his shoulder. He looked at her without expression.

"Aren't you going to be late for dinner?"

"I am persistent, you see. And a little jealous. Why did you send me away this afternoon, and then go to her?"

"How do you know I went to her? She might have come here on her own, you know."

He thought her face changed slightly, but the next moment whatever expression he'd surprised was wiped out as she shook her head doubtfully.

"Oh no-she stabbed you, didn't she? I was watching, there was hate, and the real urge to kill. That's why it surprised me to find her here-and it's not like you to make yourself foolish over a woman, unless she made herself a challenge to you. Be careful, querido. If she's jealous, she might try again; you two have many scenes to play together, have you not?"

Suddenly, as if he were tired of the subject, he shrugged. "And you're trying to make me believe you're jealous? Isn't it a little late for that, Ria? Suppose you come to the point and tell me what brought you back, and what you want from me."

She changed tactics as easily as the wind changes direction, he thought cynically, watching the way her hands clasped each other in her lap as her eyes widened at him. "Would you believe anything I told you? You wouldn't listen before."

"Maybe I'm ready now." He sounded reasonable, but his eyes were unreadable. She did not know quite how to handle him, or what to say. And when he stood there naked, looking at her, there were other things to be contended with. Like desire. She would like for him to make love to her for a long, long time, without the aid of pills or coke or any of the other aids that even she, on occasion, had enjoyed.

"Webb," she said softly, "do you remember when we met? How it was then?" Of all the things she might have said it was the one thing he hadn't expected. Caught off guard, Webb felt the hammer blow of memory break open the tight lock he'd kept on those particular memories.

He first noticed Maria de Leone because she alone of all the girls on the beach wore a severely cut one-piece bathing suit. She seemed to stay by herself, discouraging all attempts at conversation-or to be content in the company of a black-clad older woman. And he thought at first, so what? The Florida beaches swarmed with brightly bikinied butterflies-long-legged, tanned beauties who used makeup cleverly and knew how to handle themselves.

"She's one of them refugees. Shit-she ain't that much when you get up close, and she acts scared if anyone as much as says 'hi' to her. Like it's some kind of sin to talk to a guy. Why waste your time, buddy? There's enough action to be had here so we don't have to spend any night alone!" Mel Gillis was a tall, handsome Louisianan who happened to be black-not that that ever stopped Mel from getting more than .his share of the action he talked about, even in Florida. He ended up being their best man a month later-but that was after Webb had met Maria de Leone, discovering to his jubilant surprise that she was supposed to tutor him in Cuban Spanish.

It was part of a special training program. Although as it happened in the end, he wasn't the one to be sent to Cuba, but Ria herself...

Maria de Leone. He used to tease her about her name, which meant "lionlike."

"You're not a lioness-more like a baby lion cub or a golden kitten." Her skin was light gold all over, and all the time he knew her she never used any makeup. Her hair was long, with enough natural curl in it to make it unruly.

Light brown, streaked gold from the sun. Enormous hazel eyes.

And innocence- oh Christ, wasn't that what had intrigued him so in the first place?

Webb Carnahan, cynic. It had shaken him, and bound him more closely to her to discover how untutored and shy she was. That and her shame at not being a virgin, because she'd been raped. Ria never did see the suspicious, skeptical side of him; nor the hardness and harshness that had been part of his nature until then. She was too easily hurt-too naive, too vulnerable.

Her parents had been killed in the revolution while she was away at school. And after the revolutionaries from the hills had come and gone, she had been, one of the lucky ones to be smuggled out of Cuba by the nuns. The old woman who kept her so strictly at her side was a distant relative, a courtesy "aunt" who looked on the girl as an unwelcome duty, and kept reminding her dolefully that she must work hard; no man would want to marry a girl who wasn't a virgin. The woman was relieved to have the girl taken off her hands; and Webb, knowing only that he wanted her, didn't bother to ask permission of anyone when they got married.

If it came down to facts, he married her because she wouldn't sleep with him otherwise. He had no illusions about the kind of work he was engaged in at the time, and he might be dead in a month. But then he ended up loving Ria, and with the loving he developed a sense of responsibility for her-worrying about her, taking precautions he hadn't bothered with before because he didn't know what might happen to Ria, who was too honest and too trusting.

When he lost her as suddenly as she'd entered his life, there was nothing he cared about after that-least of all himself. That was when his crazy plan to kill Reardon was born, and he would have carried it out if they hadn't been one step ahead of him all the way. They should have had him killed-there was a time when he'd wished that.

But instead they sent him, forcibly, to one of their experimental think tanks. For debriefing, they said. For weeks psychiatrists played games with his mind and his reflexes. Later, because he'd made it tough for them, the CIA offered him a job, playing up the revenge motive. They could get him into Cuba, with the perfect cover.

His purpose-assassination. And they even promised him the name and whereabouts of the man who had been directly responsible for killing his wife. But by then he'd had enough. He turned them down-played it cool and close to the cuff. No more threats against Reardon. And no more patriotic crap, no more risking his life for shit. He

"retired" with an excellent service record-they did him that much of a favor-and when he got tired of digging ditches and supervising recreation activities at a Los Angeles park, he'd drifted into acting, and his affair with Carol. The past was a write-off. Each year that passed was busier and more successful than the last, and dammit, he had managed to forget, until his bad-chance meeting with Reardon's daughter had got him entangled in all this-and Ria.