Butterfly (29 page)

“I’m sure I’ll see you around,” Debrah said confidently.

She watched Seneca walk across the room and put her arm around Eliot’s waist. His hand slid down her back to her hips. It had been a while since the man who’d put her face back together after a jealous boyfriend beat her until she was unrecognizable had shown an interest in a woman. He’d hit the jackpot, because Seneca Houston was the antithesis of the bad-tempered diva who made everyone’s life around her a living hell.

Seneca pressed her mouth to Eliot’s ear. “Let’s go home. I have something to tell you.”

Hans let the tape run until he realized Seneca had finished. “What did you tell Eliot?”

“Turn off the recorder.” Seneca waited until he pushed the button, stopped the tape. “I told Eliot that I suspected I was carrying his baby.”

“Were you?”

Seneca nodded. “Yes. We had a City Hall wedding, with his partner and a nurse as our witnesses. It took more than seven months for the FBI to audit BGM’s books. There was such a backlash from the agency’s clients when they couldn’t get their money that the government was forced to lift the liens.”

“Did they indict Gordon?”

“No. He worked out a deal where he rolled over on his cousin, who in turn gave up the drug lord. Booth sold the agency and left the country for parts unknown; his cousin testified against the Russian, and a year later his body was found on the beach off Long Island Sound, minus the tongue. I still own the condo in Manhattan. My children love staying there whenever we visit New York.”

“How is your sister?” Hans asked.

“She’s great. Robbie went back to school to get a master’s and doctorate. She’s teaching political science at Georgetown. She and her husband decided not to have children, but they treat their two dogs as if they were kids. I saw my brother’s children for the first time in years. His oldest, my godson, graduated from high school last year, and I wanted to be on hand to see him walk across the stage to get his diploma. Maya started with the apology and the tears, but I told her to dry it up. By the time we left D.C. everyone was one big happy family unit.”

Hans sat up straighter. “I hear a car.”

“That must be my husband and children.”

Minutes later Dr. Eliot Rollins, his son and daughter walked into the kitchen, stopping when they saw the strange man sitting at the cooking island. Seneca walked over to Eliot, raising her face for his kiss. She then bent down to kiss her four-year-old son and toddler daughter.

“Russell, please take your sister into the bathroom and make certain she washes her hands.”

“She always wants to stand on the stool,” Russell mumbled.

Seneca ran her fingers through his curly hair. She’d told Eliot to get the boy’s hair cut. He was beginning to look like the wolf man. “She has to stand on the stool because she can’t reach the sink.”

“That’s because she’s a baby.”

“I’m not a baby,” Abigail shouted while stomping her little foot.

Eliot bent down and swung his daughter up in his arms when Hans came over to meet him. “I’m Eliot. You must be Hans.”

“I’m honored to meet you, Dr. Rollins. Your wife just finished telling me about her very exciting life.”

Eliot lifted his eyebrows. “Please, call me Eliot. And, yes my wife has had quite a life for someone who has yet to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Are you going to hang around until tomorrow?” he asked.

“I hadn’t planned to.”

“You don’t have to run off. The weather’s nice, so we’ll cook and eat outdoors. We don’t get many visitors up here, so when we do we like to drag it out a bit.”

Hans found the plastic surgeon as open and friendly as his wife. They were living a fairy-tale life with two homes in California, one in New York and the fourth on a Caribbean island. They had two beautiful, bright children, and the former supermodel seemed to be enjoying her life as wife and mother.

He’d spent more time with her than with the other models who would grace the pages of his coffee-table book. Perhaps, he thought, if he was persuasive enough, he could get Seneca Houston to agree to his devoting the entire volume to her. It wasn’t often that a model started out electrifying the runway and thirteen years later still hadn’t lost her spark or edge.

It is said that beauty has a price. Butterfly had sold it to the highest bidder, and in the end had reaped more than she’d sown: love.