The Cottage (12 page)

When Coop got to the Schwartzes' enormous mansion on Brooklawn Drive, there were a hundred people already standing in the front hall, drinking champagne and paying homage to the Schwartzes. She looked stylish in a dark blue gown, and was wearing a fabulous collection of sapphires. And all around her, Coop saw the usual suspects, ex-presidents and first ladies, politicians, art dealers, producers, directors, internationally known lawyers, and the usual smattering of movie stars, some more current than Coop, but none as famous. He was instantly surrounded by a flock of adoring admirers of both sexes. And an hour later, they went in to dinner, as Coop followed the herd.

He was seated at the same table as another well-known actor of a similar vintage, and there were two famous writers at their table, and an important Hollywood agent. The head of one of the major studios was also seated there, and Coop made a mental note to speak to him after dinner. He had heard they were making a feature that was perfect for him. He knew the woman on his right, she was one of the better-known Hollywood matrons, whose parties tried to rival Louise Schwartz's but didn't. And on his left was
a young woman he had never met before. She had a delicate, aristocratic face, big brown eyes, ivory skin, and dark hair pulled back in a bun, like a Degas ballerina.

“Good evening,” he said pleasantly. He noticed that she was small and lithe, and he wondered if she actually was a dancer. And as a brigade of waiters served the first course, he asked her, and she laughed. It wasn't the first time someone had asked her that, and she claimed she was flattered. She knew who he was, and had been excited to find him sitting next to her. Her place card said Alexandra Madison, which meant nothing to him.

“Actually, I'm a resident,” she said, as though that explained everything, but to him, it didn't mean a thing.

“A resident of where?” he said, with a look of amusement. She was not his usual profile, but she was strikingly pretty, and he saw that she had lovely hands, with short nails, and no polish on them. She was wearing a white satin gown, and had a young girl's face and figure.

“At a hospital. I'm a physician.”

“How interesting,” he said, looking momentarily impressed. “What kind? Anything useful?”

“Not unless you have children. I'm a pediatrician, a neonatologist to be exact.”

“I detest children. I eat them for dinner,” he said with a wide smile that showed off the perfect white teeth he was known for.

“I don't believe you,” she said with a giggle.

“Truly. And children hate me. They know I eat
them. I only like them when they turn into grown-ups. Particularly women.” At least he was honest. He had had a lifelong distrust of children, and an aversion to them. He generally tried to choose women who didn't have them. They complicated everything, and had spoiled many an evening for him. Women without children were much more fun to be with, from his standpoint. You didn't have to rush home to pay babysitters. They weren't sick at the last minute. They didn't spill their juice all over you, or tell you they hated you. It was one of the many reasons why he preferred younger women. Over thirty, most women seemed to have kids. “Why couldn't you be something more entertaining? Like a lion tamer. Or actually, being a ballerina would suit you. I think you should consider a career change now, before you get in any deeper.” Alexandra was having fun sitting next to him. She was impressed with him, but she was enjoying playing with him, and in spite of her unfortunate choice of jobs, and severe hairdo, according to Coop, he liked her.

“I'll have to give it some thought. What about being a veterinarian? Would that be better?” Alexandra asked innocently.

“I don't like dogs either. They're filthy. They get hair all over your trousers, they bite, snap, and smell. Almost as bad as children. Not quite, but a close second. We'll have to think of an entirely different career for you. What about acting?”

“I don't think so,” she laughed, as a waiter spooned caviar onto her blini. Coop loved the food at the
Schwartzes' dinners, and Alexandra looked comfortable there too. She had an aura of ease and grace about her, as though she had grown up in dining rooms like this one. It was written all over her, despite the fact that she wasn't wearing important jewels. Just a string of pearls, and a pair of pearl and diamond earrings. But something about her spelled money. “What about you?” She turned the tables on him. She was above all intelligent, and he liked that about her too. At the dinner table at least, it provided a challenge. “Why are you an actor?”

“I find it amusing. Don't you? Imagine being able to play pretend every day, and wear beautiful clothes. It's actually very pleasant. Far nicer than what you do. You wear an ugly wrinkled white coat and children throw up all over you, and scream the minute they see you.”

“That's true. But the ones I deal with are too small to do much damage. I work in the neonatal ICU, mostly with preemies.”

“Ghastly,” he said, pretending to be horrified. “They're probably the size of mice. You could get rabies. This is much worse than I suspected.” He was having a delightful time with her, and a man across the table glanced at him with a look of amusement. It was like watching fine art as Coop turned the charm full force on a woman. But Alexandra was a good match for him. She was sensible, and smart enough not to let Coop lure her or make her feel ill at ease. “What else do you do?” Coop continued to quiz her.

“I fly my own plane, and have since I was eighteen. I love to go hang gliding. I've parachuted out of an airplane,
but I promised my mother I wouldn't, so I no longer do. I play tennis, ski. I used to race motorcycles, but I promised my father I wouldn't. And I spent a year doing health care work in Kenya before med school.”

“You sound relatively suicidal. And your parents seem to interfere a great deal in your athletic pursuits. Do you still see them?”

“When I have to,” she said honestly, and he saw in her eyes that she was telling the truth. She was a girl with an amazing amount of poise and spirit. He was fascinated by her.

“Where do they live?” he asked with interest.

“Palm Beach in the winter. Newport in the summer. It's very boring and predictable, and I'm something of a rebel.”

“Are you married?” He had seen that she wasn't wearing a ring, and he didn't expect a positive answer. She didn't feel married to him. He had excellent radar for these things.

“No.” She hesitated for a moment before she answered. “I almost was,” she volunteered. She didn't usually say that, but he was so outrageous, it was fun being honest with him. He was easy to talk to, and very quick.

“And? What happened?”

The ivory face turned icy, although she continued smiling. But her eyes were full of sorrow suddenly. No one but Coop would have seen it. “I was jilted at the altar. The night before actually.”

“How tasteless. I hate people who do rude things like that, don't you?” He was stalling for time. He
could see that saying it had hurt her, and for an instant he was sorry that he had asked. She had been so bluntly truthful with her answer. He hadn't expected her to do that. “I hope he fell into a pit of snakes after that, or a moat full of alligators. He deserved it.”

“He did, more or less. The moat full of alligators, I mean. He married my sister.” It was heavy stuff for a first meeting. But she assumed she'd never see him again, so it didn't matter what she said to him.

“That is rude. And do you still speak to her?”

“Only when I have to. That's when I went to Kenya. It was a very interesting year. I enjoyed it.” That was her signal to him that she didn't want to discuss the matter further, and Coop didn't blame her. She had been painfully honest with him, far more than he would have dared with a stranger. And he admired her for it. He told her about his last safari after that, which had been fraught with miseries and discomforts. He had been invited to a game preserve, as their guest, and by his estimation, they had tortured him with every horror they could think of. He had hated every minute of it, but listening to him tell it, he made it sound funny, and he had her roaring with laughter at his description of the scene.

They had a wonderful time sitting beside each other, and they both ignored their other neighbors. She was still laughing at him when the meal came to an end, and he was sorry when she got up and went to talk to some old friends she had spotted at another table. They were friends of her parents, and she thought she should speak to them, but she told Coop
how much she had enjoyed meeting him, and she meant it. He had made it a memorable evening for her.

“I don't have time to go out much. And Mrs. Schwartz was sweet to invite me. She's a friend of my parents. I only came because I was able to get the night off, but most of the time, I'm stuck at the hospital. I'm glad I did come.” She shook his hand firmly, and a moment later, Louise Schwartz was tittering beside him.

“Watch out, Coop,” she warned him. “She's a handful. And if you take her out, her father will kill you.”

“Why? Is he in the Mafia or something? She looks perfectly respectable to me.”

“She is. That's why he'd kill you. Arthur Madison.” It was a name that anyone would have recognized. It was the oldest steel fortune in the country, and the biggest. And she was a doctor. An interesting combination. Abe Braunstein's words rang in his ears as Louise said it. She was not only a rich woman, but possibly one of the richest. And totally simple and unassuming, and one of the brightest girls he'd ever met. Better than that, she had a lot of spirit. It would have been difficult not to be attracted to her, or amused, or challenged at least. Coop watched her with interest as she spoke to a number of people. She had scored a hit with Cooper. He ran into her again as he was leaving. He had timed his exit perfectly to match hers, and pointed to the waiting Bentley

“Can I give you a lift?” He sounded friendly, and harmless. He had calculated that she was roughly thirty, and had been correct in his estimation. He was exactly forty years older than she was, but at least he didn't look it, or feel it. And the funny thing was that
he wasn't drawn to her because of who she was. He actually liked her. She was clearly a woman who would not tolerate any nonsense. Better yet, or worse, she'd been hurt, and he could see that she was cautious. And who she was, or who her father was, only added depth and color to the picture. She appealed to him immensely, and would have, with or without her father, or his money. Odd as it was, Coop mused as he watched her, he liked Alexandra for herself.

“I've got my car, but thank you,” she said politely, smiling at him. And as she said it, one of the valet parkers brought up her old beat-up Volkswagen, and she smiled at him.

“I'm impressed. Very humble. I admire your discretion,” he teased her about her car.

“I just don't like wasting money on cars. I hardly ever drive it. I never go anywhere. I'm always working.”

“I know, with those dreadful mouse babies. What about beauty school? Have you ever thought about that?”

“It was actually my first career choice, but I couldn't pass the exams. I kept flunking crimping.” She was as quick and as irreverent as he.

“I enjoyed meeting you, Alexandra,” he said, looking her in the eye with the blue eyes and the cleft chin that made him a legend, and irresistible to women.

“Call me Alex. I enjoyed meeting you too, Mr. Winslow.”

“Maybe I should call you Dr. Madison. Would you prefer that?”

“Absolutely.” She grinned at him, as she slid into
her battered car. It didn't bother her in the least to have come to the Schwartzes' in a car that looked like it should have been abandoned by the side of a highway somewhere, or perhaps had been. “Goodnight,” she called to him with a wave as she drove away, and he called after her.

“Goodnight, Doctor! Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” He could see that she was laughing as she drove down the driveway, and he was smiling as he got into the back of the Bentley He reminded himself to send Louise flowers in the morning. A lot of them. He was so glad that he had decided not to see Charlene that night. He had had a wonderful evening with Alex Madison. She was a most unusual girl indeed, and a very interesting prospect for him.

The morning after the
dinner party, Coop sent Louise Schwartz an enormous arrangement of flowers. He thought of calling her secretary for Alex Madison's phone number, but decided to call the hospital directly to see if he could locate her on his own. He asked for the neonatal ICU, and they went down a list of residents before giving him her pager number. He paged her, but she didn't respond. They said she was on duty, but couldn't be called to the phone. He was surprised to find he was disappointed when he didn't hear back from her.

And two days later, he was out in black tie again. He was invited to the Golden Globes as usual, although he hadn't been nominated for anything in more than twenty years. But like all the other major stars, he added excitement and color to the event. He was going with Rita Waverly, one of the biggest stars Hollywood had seen in the past three decades. He liked going to major events with her. The attention they got from the press was staggering, and they had been linked romantically from time to time over the years. His press agent had leaked that they were getting
married once, and she got annoyed with him. But they had been seen together too often now for anyone to believe the rumor again. But just being seen with her made him look good. She was an incredible-looking woman, in spite of her age. Her press kit said she was forty-nine, but Coop knew for a fact she was fifty-eight.

He picked her up at her apartment in Beverly Hills, and she emerged wearing a white satin bias-cut gown that was wallpapered to a figure that had not only been starved in recent years, but had experienced every possible kind of surgery except for prostate and open heart. She had been nipped and tucked and pulled and yanked and chopped with staggeringly good results. And resting on her considerable cleavage, which had also been enhanced surgically, was a three-million-dollar diamond necklace, borrowed from Van Cleef. And as she walked out of her building, she was trailing a floor-length white mink coat. She was the epitome of a Hollywood star, just like Coop. They made a handsome couple, and when the press saw them at the Golden Globes, they went wild. You would have thought they were both twenty-five years old and had won the Oscar that year. The press ate them up, as they always did.