Birthday Girls (2 page)

Abigail tucked her chin-length blonde hair behind her five-carat, diamond-studded ears. “The coffee is cold,” she said. “Again.”

He let out a sigh that sounded too deep for his short, frail frame. Except for the gray that shot through his dark
hair and the lines that burrowed into his brow, Larry could have been mistaken for twenty, not thirty-seven. Right now, the burrow deepened. “They must have unplugged the pot to hook up the cables.”

She took another drag on her cigarette. “Our
own
crew knows better. These details should have been resolved
before
we began shooting.”

“I’ll check it out.” He made a quick note.

“Cranberries.” She scanned the set and shuddered. “How did we get roped into this?” Not that it mattered. If it wasn’t cranberries it would have been tofu or broccoli. Any food from any industry willing to pay big bucks to the network to have Abigail Hardy showcase their product and make it look delectable beyond the viewers’ most imaginative dreams. “I hope the supermarkets are prepared for the onslaught,” she said with a snort.

“And the bookstores,” Larry added. “By the way, the proofs came in today.”

“A hundred ways to cook with cranberries. How infinitely droll.”

“It’ll be a bestseller. Your picture’s on the cover.”

There was no need to doubt that Larry was right. There was also no need to admit that until the taping of this special, Abigail Hardy had never touched a cranberry in her life. But the audience would think otherwise, thanks to her well-spun aura, the illusion she’d spent a decade creating.
Illusion
, she thought now, inhaling again and wondering if any day of her life had been anything
but
illusion—if she ever, in fact, had spent just one day, one hour, one moment being the person she really was. Whoever that was.

“Anything else?”

She shook her head and stubbed out the cigarette. “Just get everyone out of my house before Edmund comes home. You know how he hates all these … 
union
people crawling around the estate.”

Larry nodded as if he knew it was Abigail—not
Edmund—who resented the intrusion of the blue-collar crew of network strangers. Ten years as her assistant apparently left very few secrets.

As he started toward the corner where two technicians stood, Abigail stared at his small butt squeezed into too-tight, black jeans. “Larry?” The small butt stopped moving, but the face did not turn around. “Tell Louisa to meet me in the master bath. I need my makeup redone. And make sure the coffee is hot when I return.”

There was a slight pause, then the head nodded. Abigail rubbed the back of her neck, silently grateful for Larry, the man-boy who kept her life together. She really must remember to send him something—perhaps a cypress tub filled with loofah sponges and musky oils and trinkets from Tiffany’s; it would please him to share it with his materialistic, young lover named Grady, and would be less committal than another raise.

The master
bath was a sharp contrast from the original claw-footed tub and brass water closet, pinnacles of luxury in 1921 when the mansion was constructed. Today it was a five-room suite that would have curled a permanent smile on the handlebar mustache of Abigail’s great-grandfather: each of the two gold-fauceted baths—his and hers—had an eight-headed shower for total body cleansing, and the baths were connected by a glass-encased steam room.

Off the steam room a deep hot tub bubbled beneath a domed stained-glass ceiling. Beyond that was the vanity area, where a sweeping counter stretched along a bank of windows and was accented by a wide, magnifying mirror that Abigail had installed sometime around her fortieth birthday, when the closer she’d looked, the fuzzier everything had become.

It was practical in an opulent sort of way. She liked to think Great-Grandfather would have approved.

She flopped onto the white satin chaise beside the vanity now and wondered why she was so tired, why she was always so damn tired these days and so damn edgy. The monthly magazine
Entertaining with Abigail
practically produced itself without her. She had a staff of sixteen who sifted through recipes in search of those worthy of her seal of elegance. Plus, a half-dozen designers were responsible for her trademark fresh flower arrangements, custom created to complement the table and each food presentation.

No, the magazine wasn’t the problem. Neither was her syndicated TV show: the producers did all the work. All Abigail had to do was give final approval and endure a two-day-a-week upheaval of the kitchen and dining rooms in her home.

Now, of course, there was also the pending deal with Rupert’s Department Stores, the deal that would catapult her image into hundreds of retail outlets around the world. It was a huge deal, but just one more deal on the fast track to immense success. And Larry was taking care of it. It was one more duty to justify his 15 percent of her business.

She rubbed the back of her neck and thought about her accomplishment: her once-cottage industry that had erupted into a larger-than-life media hit with an even larger-than-life star—
her
. It was a dream come true. A life of her own, a name of her own, with millions of fans who tried to mimic her style, mimic her. Little did they know that to Abigail Hardy nothing seemed right anymore, nothing seemed worth it, as if somewhere along the way the star had been hopelessly derailed.

Closing her eyes, she decided that things might be tolerable if only she weren’t so damn hot all the time. If only she could get a decent night’s sleep.

“Menopause,” the doctor had warned. “Get ready. It’s coming.”

“Absurd,” she said now, swinging her legs over the chaise and standing up. “I’m only forty-eight. I’m not a
freaking dinosaur.” She stalked to the vanity and sat on a stool, pushing from her mind the reality that in six weeks she would turn forty-nine.

Studying the mirror, Abigail confirmed that she looked as good as chef Paula Padderson. Not as young, of course, but surely as good. Better. More mature. Her eyes were naturally green—no false contacts for her—and the last little tucks at the corners had taken another decade off the calendar. Still, it was better to have a man standing beside her on camera. A good-looking, sexy man—
any
good-looking, sexy man—who would pump up the ratings by making her eyes sparkle if not her loins tingle. At her age, thank God, she was beyond that.

A soft rap sounded on the door.

“Hurry up, Louisa,” Abigail called. “And do something about the sweat all over my face.”

Silence was followed by a low, throaty voice. “It’s not Louisa. It’s Sondra.”

Abigail closed her eyes. The words “go away” formed on her lips but did not have the courage to come out.

Sondra
Desauliers Boynton was the twenty-four-year-old thorn in Abigail’s sleep-deprived side. It was a position the young woman had assumed twenty-one years earlier when Abigail married Edmund, Sondra’s father; over the years the thorn had probed more deeply, and become more hurtful with each twist on the nerve. In the beginning, Abigail had thought she could handle it—a motherless child, so like she herself had been, desperately needing to be rescued, desperately needing attention. But Abigail soon found she didn’t know how.

As each week had come and gone, she’d vowed to try harder. But the days and weeks had passed into months, then years, and their relationship never quite gelled.

When Sondra had the measles, Abigail sat stiffly beside her reading from a book the child did not understand. When a fall from her pony left Sondra frightened and crying, Abigail clumsily tried to tuck the little girl into bed, but it was Edmund who wiped her tears. And when the first blush of puppy love left Sondra with a badly bruised heart, Abigail merely watched from a doorway as Edmund held her and rocked her as if she were a child, not fourteen, not nearly a woman.

The truth was, it was not Sondra so much that eluded Abigail but the girl’s show of
feelings
—tears, laughter, a hunger to simply be hugged. It was an open vulnerability that brought a lump to Abigail’s throat—a lump too stuck, too stoically rooted, to rise past her fear and allow her to … love.

Instead, Abigail did for Sondra what Grandfather had done for her: she bought her things, attempting to fill the child’s emotional needs with dolls and teddy bears and tea sets and clothes, and, later, with trips and cars and 10 percent of the
Entertaining with Abigail
empire.

She had not, however, bought (much less selected) her stepdaughter’s choice of a mate—the man for whom Sondra had abruptly halted her Radcliffe education and fled to Paris for two years until the money ran out.

“We’re taping today,” Abigail said now as Sondra entered the room. “This is not a good time.”

“I only stopped by to say hello.” The distorted image of Sondra’s tall, lanky body moved closer in the mirror, revealing a disturbing sparkle in her blue-gray eyes, eyes that Abigail had been told were identical to those of the young woman’s mother.

“Well,” Abigail replied, swiping a cotton ball across her chin with more vigor than necessary, “that’s nice. Is Craig with you?” She tried to say “Craig” as if she fully accepted Sondra’s husband, the struggling, practically penniless “artist.”

“No.” Her stepdaughter perched on the counter and crossed her long, Newport-tanned legs, a product of the forty-two-foot, wedding gift sailboat from Abigail.

“What happened to Newport?” She leaned into the mirror and carefully dabbed her eyelids, refusing to look at the chestnut-maned, motherless child or feel the never-ending guilt that she had not tried hard enough.

“Craig thinks we should go somewhere less pretentious, maybe somewhere tropical.”

“That hardly describes the breeze off the Hudson.”

“He’s thinking maybe the Caribbean.”

“How appropriate,” Abigail commented, “now that it’s hurricane season.” She sucked in her lip and wished she could bite off her tongue. Despite his economic failings, Craig was not a bad man, and he seemed to have accomplished what Abigail had not: he seemed to genuinely make Sondra happy.

Sondra slid off the counter and examined the bottles and jars that lined the top. She lifted the lid off a ceramic powder crock, sniffed the contents, then dabbed her neck with the puff. “The truth is,” she said, “I’ve been getting seasick.”

“You always loved the water. You always hounded your father to take you sailing.”

Placing the puff back in the crock, Sondra smiled. “I know. But that was before we were pregnant.”

Another hot flash crawled around the back of Abigail’s neck. She stopped short of fanning herself. “Pregnant?” she asked. “Who’s
we
?”

“
We
. Craig. And me.”

“That’s Craig and
I
. And I think
you
would be the one who is pregnant. Not your husband.”

Sondra laughed that deep, emotion-filled laugh that Abigail did not understand. “Oh, Abigail, you’re so provincial. But I think Daddy is going to be thrilled.”

“Daddy would be thrilled to hear Craig had a job.”

Sliding off the counter, Sondra knitted her fingers together. The sparkle in her eyes was quickly replaced by a thin veil of tears. “I know our timing may be off, Abigail, but can’t you try to be happy for us?”

“Sondra, please,” Abigail said quietly. “I was only being realistic …”

“Craig is a brilliant artist, Abigail. All he needs is a break. And until then, I’m going to support him. And we are going to have a family.” Her voice cracked. “And I don’t care what you say; Daddy is going to be thrilled. Because Daddy understands.”

She swept from the room as quickly as she’d swept in, leaving Abigail staring into the mirror, blood pumping into her face, heat surging through her.

Daddy understands
. She dropped the cotton ball and gulped back the familiar sting of unshed tears. Because
Daddy
, Abigail knew, was the only one who mattered. No matter how hard she’d tried, no matter how much she gave, Sondra simply didn’t care.

No longer, she suspected, did
Daddy
.

Why?
she cried into the glass. Why didn’t anyone ever try to understand
her
?

Her hand moved to the bracelet on her wrist, and Abigail wondered—for the ten thousandth time—how different life would have been if her parents had not died when she was eight, if they’d not left her alone to fight for her life.

Then she looked back to the mirror, stared at the forty-eight, almost forty-nine-year-old face, and wondered if it was too late to get out.

Suddenly Louisa appeared at the door. Abigail straightened, cleared her throat, and turned sharply. “Get Kaminski up here,” she demanded, a tremor in her voice. Network or no network, baby or no baby, there were some things Abigail Hardy could still control. Getting rid of the beauty-queen pastry chef was a place to begin.

• • •

“So you won’t
be going to Brussels with me.” Edmund’s tone was businesslike, as though Abigail were just another art dealer, another negotiation.

She stood at the carved rosewood mantle in the library, holding a snifter of Courvoisier and gazing across the book-lined room, out the tall windows. In the distance a long, lazy barge carved a path up the Hudson. She turned to her husband, who sat on one of the two sofas and was dressed in the same type of casual-elegant clothes he’d worn twenty-two years ago when Grandfather told her they’d make a perfect match. “The network has to find a replacement for Paula.”

Edmund shook his head. The lines on his face told Abigail he was tired: tired from jet lag, tired of arguing, and, most probably, as tired of her as she was of him. Despite his still-handsome face and sleek silver hair, at fifty-two it was difficult, even for Edmund, to look dashing when he was tired. She flicked her eyes back to the cold fireplace and wondered what had happened to the magic, when the fire of romance had dwindled to a flicker, then an occasional spark, then had been snuffed out altogether. She wondered if that early magic had only been part of the illusion of her life, the illusion created to please Grandfather Hardy.