Passion and Scandal (19 page)

He was profligate with his kisses, sprinkling them from her forehead to her toes, lavishing special attention on the sides of her neck, and her aching nipples, and the backs of her knees, and the petaled, tumescent flesh between her thighs.

She lost count of the number of times he brought her to climax before she could stand no more and finally demanded equal time by pushing his hands away and rising to her knees beside him.

He lay back, as generous with his body as he had been demanding of hers, making himself vulnerable to her more inexperienced explorations, showing her the motions and caresses that gave him pleasure, then leaving her to experiment and expand them on her own. She was soon drunk on her power over his strong, hard-muscled body.
This
made him quiver. And
this
made him moan. And
this
made him shake with uncontrollable need.

And, then, finally, he, too, had had all he could stand. He rolled onto his side, reaching once again into the drawer of the bedside table. He put the foil packet in her hands this time, letting her open it and unroll it onto his turgid length with eager, shaking fingers. And when it was done, he pulled her astride him, holding himself for her while she lowered her sweetness onto him, enveloping his penis in the exquisite tightness of her feminine sheath.

Her first movements were awkward and uncertain but he put his hands on her hips, showing her the motion. She caught the rhythm and rode him hard, her head thrown back, her breasts thrust out, taking everything he had to give and demanding more. Their climax was explosive and nearly simultaneous, each coming so close upon the other that there was no telling who came first and who followed. He dug his fingers into her hips, holding her tight against his loins, his back rigid and bowed as the last of his body's energy pumped into her. She curled her fingers into the heavy muscles of his chest, leaving scratches in her wake, as her whole body tightened in delicious, agonizing, exquisite ecstasy.

When it was over, she collapsed on his chest in utter exhaustion and he gathered her close, cradling her to him as he rolled over onto his side. She murmured his name, softly, lifting her arm to drape it around his neck and pull herself even closer. Steve smiled and closed his eyes, falling into a deep, contented sleep.

* * *

"Do you think my mother's accident and the hit-and-run yesterday have anything to do with each other?" Willow asked, looking at Steve over the froth of bubbles that separated them. They were sitting in the hot tub tucked in the corner of the deck in his backyard, with tall glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice close at hand, soaking away the excesses of a passionate night in bed and a long, lazy Sunday morning spent making love all over the house.

Steve looked over at her and shook his head, wondering why he was even surprised. "Not much gets by you, does it?"

"A speeding car bearing down on you is kind of hard to miss."

His quick grin acknowledged her point, and then he sobered. "How much do you know about what happened to your mother?"

"Just what I told you the other day. She was hit by a car while crossing Hollywood Boulevard. Sharon got a letter from the police department. Or maybe it was someone from the... the morgue where they took her body."

Steve moved over, so that they were sitting side by side instead of across from each other, and slid his arm around her shoulders.

"I guess it took them that long to locate her next of kin," she went on, comforted by his touch, "because we were out of state."

"This letter you got—did it give you any details? Say anything about the accident? Was she jaywalking? Was it a drunk driver? Someone running a red light? A hit-and-run?"

"I don't know." She looked at him, her eyes wide and vulnerable, sure he would know. "Was it a hit-and-run?"

"We'll know tomorrow," he promised her. "I called my contact at the LAPD last night while you were in the shower. He's going to look into it for me."

"If it was, then somebody killed her, didn't they?" She said it matter-of-factly, calmly, as if she were talking about a stranger. "And somebody tried to kill me."

"If,"
he emphasized. "But, yes, if all that's true, then it's beginning to look that way."

Willow was silent a moment, coming to terms with that. "Ethan Roberts?"

"We don't know that for sure."

"No, not for sure," she agreed. "But you think it was him." It wasn't a question, but a statement of fact.

"If
your mother's accident turns out to be a hit-and-run, then, yes, on the basis of what I found out yesterday, I think it very well might be him. Or someone hired by him."

"Tell me," she demanded. "Everything."

"It isn't a pretty story."

"Tell me."

Steve sighed, and told her.

"Roberts first surfaced in Hollywood in the late sixties. He did a couple of commercials, snagged a few spots as a bit player in a couple of the weekly series on TV at the time. He got his big break in 1970, playing a doctor on 'As Time Goes By.' That's where he met your mother. He told the truth about that as far as it went. The studio did arrange the dates, at least the first one, but it was at Roberts' insistence. According to one of the grips I talked to who still works on the show, it was the only way he could get her to go out with him. That may be sour grapes," Steve cautioned her. "The guy admitted he didn't like Roberts much, said he was on a star trip in a big way and treated the crew as if they were some kind of subhuman species who'd been put on earth for his convenience."

"The way he treats his maid," Willow said.

Steve nodded. "This grip, though, he liked your mother. Said she was a real sweetheart, always friendly toward the crew, always prepared and professional. He said he was real sorry when she left the show. Everyone thought she had a lot of potential."

Willow reached up and squeezed the hand that curved over her bare shoulder, silently thanking him.

"Anyway, Roberts quit the show in '72 after hitting it big as the the upright, clean-cut hero in a couple of low-budget Westerns that were a surprise hit at the box office."

"I remember those," Willow said. "They play on TV every now and then. On the Family Channel."

"He married his costar from one of those movies in 1977, a young actress named Heather Blaine. She had their first son, Peter, seven months later. Edward was born in 1979 and they were divorced before he was a year old. Roberts continued to make movies, becoming more and more successful without ever actually achieving the status of a really big star, like, say, Nicholson or Eastwood. It was enough to make him very, very wealthy, though. Meanwhile—" Steve's jaw clenched with anger "—his ex-wife and kids were living in a two-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood and struggling to make ends meet."

Willow's hand tightened on Steve's, reflecting his feelings, telegraphing her own. Without lifting his palm from her shoulder, he spread his fingers, linking them through hers.

"By '82, his star looked like it was beginning to fade," he went on. "He hadn't made a movie in a while and was doing cameos and guest appearances on television. Then, in 1984, he met Joanna Hudson, the daughter of local political bigwig, Blake Hudson, at some local charity thing. The three of them apparently hit it off. With Hudson's backing, Roberts ran for his first political office in '85 and won a seat on the L.A. city board by a wide margin. He and Joanna married the following year and, by all accounts, his father-in-law started grooming him for bigger and better things. In 1986, before he announced his campaign for a seat in the California House of Representatives, Roberts began a custody battle for his two sons. It was very nasty. His ex-wife didn't have a chance. Roberts' high-priced team of lawyers produced witnesses who claimed she was a junkie who had traded sex for drugs, sometimes in front of the boys. It was believable because Heather had a history of drug problems, back before her first son was born. And she admitted to accepting gifts of money from men to help make ends meet, but she swore that she'd never brought them into the apartment. She had friends who testified to that in court, who said she was a good mother, doing the best she could for her kids, with no help from their father. The local press ate it up, of course, making Roberts out to be this avenging angel swooping down to save his kids from their drug-addicted slut of a mother. When the judge gave full custody of the boys to Roberts, Heather apparently went berserk, screaming about how she wasn't going to let him get away with it, how she was going to expose him for what he really was and get her boys back if it was the last thing she did. It took two bailiffs to drag her out of the courtroom. The day after the boys were taken away, Heather was found dead of an overdose in the bathroom of her apartment."

"Suicide?" Willow whispered.

"Maybe." Steve reached for his glass of orange juice with his free hand and took a long drink, trying to wash the bitter taste out of his mouth. "Or maybe she was just an impediment to be gotten rid of."

"Like my mother," Willow said softly, horror making her voice barely audible. She shuddered. "Like me."

Steve put his glass of orange juice down on the edge of the tub and reached for her, dragging her onto his lap and into his arms. "We don't know that for sure," he said, lifting his hand to tuck a strand of wet hair behind her ear. "Your mother's death may have been an accident."

"And yesterday, was that an accident, too? Was that little boy wrong in thinking the driver tried to run me down?"

"No." Steve shook his head, wishing he could reassure her, knowing he couldn't. The minute he'd seen the car bearing down on her, he'd somehow
felt
the intent of the driver. The kid's words just confirmed what he already knew. "Whoever was driving that car was trying to kill you," he said.

Willow closed her eyes for a moment, fighting tears and panic. "What if he's my father?"

"He might not be. Odds are, he isn't," Steve said, trying to wipe that stark, horrified look out of her eyes. "We could find something in that box of Jack Shannon's that proves he isn't, and Eric Shannon is. Or maybe it'll turn out to be Blackstone. Or maybe it's someone else entirely. Someone we don't even know about. It doesn't have to be Ethan Roberts."

"But you think it is. And you think he tried to kill me because I could be an impediment to his career, too."

Steve was silent, unable to give her the answer she wanted, unable to lie.

Willow's control broke. She dropped her head to his shoulder and started to cry.

Chapter 11

Steve wrapped his arms tightly around her and held her close, stroking her hair, cradling her like a beloved and grieving child. He didn't offer mindless platitudes or soothing words; there were none to offer. He simply held her while she cried, slowly rocking her back and forth while the warm, bubbly water swirled around them. She stopped after a few minutes, sniffling into his neck as she struggled to control herself. And then, even that soft noise stopped and she fell silent, her body limp against him. He thought she'd fallen asleep, like a child exhausted by the passion of her tears, but she sighed raggedly, drawing in the breath to speak.

"When I was a little girl," she said, the words so softly spoken that he had to strain to hear them, "I used to make up all these wild, improbable stories to explain to myself why I didn't have a father. The details changed over the years but the one constant was that he hadn't abandoned my mother and me by choice, that something beyond his control had taken him away, and that he really had loved us. I knew I wasn't going to find that tragic fairy-tale hero when I finally came looking for him," she admitted. "And maybe that's why I waited so long to begin the search. But I thought..." Her shoulders lifted in a little shrug. "I don't know, I guess I thought I'd find some regular kind of guy, somebody who'd once been in love with a beautiful young woman but it didn't work out. Someone who might even be glad to know he had a daughter." She lifted her head to look at him, the expression in her eyes piteous and vulnerable, asking for reassurance. "I didn't think I'd find a monster."

Steve cupped her face in his hands. "It doesn't make any difference, one way or the other, whether Ethan Roberts is your father or not," he said softly, brushing at the remnants of her tears with his thumbs. "He didn't have anything to do with who you are and what you've become. That pleasure belongs to your aunt Sharon and uncle Dan, and the rest of the people who raised you. You are who you are because of them. Not because of some guy who may or may not have donated a sperm cell."

"I know that," Willow said. "I really do. Finding out who my father is—even if it is Ethan Roberts—isn't going to change my life, or who I am. I didn't expect it to. It's just..."

She shrugged and sat up in his lap, smiling crookedly, embarrassed by her tears, dismayed by the loss of her childhood dreams, frightened by the ugly possibilities looming in the future, determined to face what came with her head up and her back straight.