Judith McNaught (2 page)

look like you could handle the heavy lifting easy enough," he said, casting a quick, appraising eye over

Benedict's tall, well-muscled body. "You been working out with weights or something?"

"I used to box at— I used to box," he amended shortly.
At college,
Charlie finished mentally, and maybe it was because Benedict somehow reminded him of his own boys when they were his age and trying to tough things out or maybe it was because he sensed that Zack Benedict's problems were pretty desperate, but he decided to give him some work.

Having reached that decision, Charlie held out his hand. "My name's Murdock, Charlie Murdock. I can't pay you much, but at least you'll get a chance to

see an honest-to-God movie lot when we get to L.A.

This truck's loaded with props that belong to Empire Studios. I got a contract to do some of their hauling, and that's where we're going."

Benedict's grim indifference to that information somehow added to Charlie's conviction that his passenger was not only broke but probably had no idea of how to rectify the problem in the near future.

"If you do a good job for me, maybe I could put in a word for you at Empire's hiring office—that is, if you don't mind pushing a broom or using your back?"

His passenger turned his face to the side window, staring out into the darkness again. Just when Charlie

had reversed his earlier opinion and decided that Benedict actually thought he was too good to do menial

labor, the young man spoke in a voice that was hoarse with relief and embarrassed gratitude.

"Thanks.

I'd appreciate that."

"
I
'm Mrs. Borowski from the LaSalle Foster Care facility," the middle-aged woman announced as she marched across the Oriental carpet toward the receptionist, a shopping bag from Woolworth's over her

arm. Gesturing toward the petite eleven-year-old who trailed along behind her, she added coldly, "And this is Julie Smith. She's here to see Dr. Theresa Wilmer. I'll come back for her after I finish my shopping."

The receptionist smiled at the youngster. "Dr.

Wilmer will be with you in a little while, Julie. In the meantime, you can sit over there and fill out as much of this card as you can. I forgot to give it to you when you were here before."

Self-consciously aware of her shabby jeans and grubby jacket, Julie glanced uneasily at the elegant waiting room where fragile porcelain figurines reposed on an antique coffee table and valuable bronze

sculptures were displayed on marble stands. Giving the table with its fragile knickknacks a wide berth, she headed for a chair beside a huge aquarium where exotic goldfish with flowing fins swam leisurely
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among lacy greenery. Behind her, Mrs. Borowski poked her head back into the room and warned the receptionist, "Julie will steal anything that isn't nailed down. She's sneaky and quick, so you better watch

her like a hawk."

Drowning in humiliated anger, Julie slumped down in the chair, then she stretched her legs straight out in

front of her in a deliberate attempt to appear utterly bored and unaffected by Mrs. Borowski's horrible remarks, but her effect was spoiled by the bright red flags of embarrassed color that stained her cheeks and the fact that her legs couldn't reach the floor.

After a moment she wriggled up from the

uncomfortable position and looked with dread at the card the

receptionist had given her to complete. Knowing she'd not be able to figure out the words, she gave it a

try anyway. Her tongue clenched between her teeth, she concentrated fiercely on the printing on the card.

The first word began with an
N
like the word
NO
on the NO PARKING signs that lined the streets—she knew what those signs said because one of her friends had told her. The next letter on the card was an
a,

like the one in
cat,
but the word wasn't
cat.
Her hand tightened on the yellow pencil as she fought back the familiar feelings of frustration and angry despair that swamped her whenever she was expected to read something. She'd learned the word
cat
in first grade, but nobody ever wrote that word anywhere!

Glowering at the incomprehensible words on the card, she wondered furiously why teachers taught kids

to read dumb words like
cat
when nobody ever wrote
cat
anywhere except in stupid books for first graders.

But the books weren't stupid, Julie reminded herself, and neither were the teachers. Other kids her age could probably have read this dumb card in a blink!

She was the one who couldn't read a word on it,
she
was the one who was stupid.

On the other hand, Julie told herself, she knew a whole lot about things that other kids knew nothing about, because she made a point of
noticing
things.

And one of the things she'd noticed was that when people handed you something to fill out, they almost always expected you to write your name on it…

With painstaking neatness, she printed J-u-l-i-e-S-m-i-t-h across the top half of the card, then she stopped, unable to fill out any more of the spaces.

She felt herself getting angry again and rather than feeling bad about this silly piece of paper, she decided to think of something nice, like the feeling of wind

on her face in springtime. She was conjuring a vision of herself stretched out beneath a big leafy tree,

watching squirrels scampering in the branches overhead, when the receptionist's pleasant voice made her

head snap up in guilty alarm.

"Is something wrong with your pencil, Julie?"

Julie dug the lead point against her jeans and snapped it off. "The lead's broken."

"Here's another—"

"My hand is sore today," she lied, lurching to her feet. "I don't feel like writing. And I have to go to the bathroom. Where is it?"

"Right beside the elevators. Dr. Wilmer will be ready to see you pretty soon. Don't be gone too long."

"I won't," Julie dutifully replied. After closing the office door behind her, she turned to look up at the name on it and carefully studied the first few letters so she'd be able to recognize this particular door when she came back.
"P,"
she whispered aloud so she wouldn't forget,
"S. Y."
Satisfied, she headed down the long, carpeted hall, turned left at the end of it, and made a right by the water fountain, but when
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she finally came to the elevators, she discovered there were two doors there with words on them. She was almost positive these were the bathrooms because, among the bits of knowledge she'd carefully

stored away was the fact that bathroom doors in big buildings usually had a different kind of handle than ordinary office doors. The problem was that neither of these doors said BOYS or GIRLS—two words she could recognize, nor did they have those nice stick figures of a man and woman that told people like

her which bathroom to use. Very cautiously, Julie put her hand on one of the doors, eased it open a crack, and peeked inside. She backed up in a hurry when she spotted those funny-looking toilets on the wall because there were two other things she knew that she doubted other girls knew: Men used weird-looking toilets. And they went a little crazy if a girl opened the door while they were doing it. Julie opened the other door and trooped into the right bathroom.

Conscious of time passing, she left the bathroom and hurriedly retraced her steps until she neared the part of the corridor where Dr. Wilmer's office should have been, then she began laboriously studying the names on the doors. Dr. Wilmer's name began with a P-S-Y. She spied a P-E-T on the next door, decided she'd remembered the letters wrong, and quickly shoved it open. An unfamiliar, gray-haired woman looked up from her typewriter. "Yes?"

"Sorry, wrong room," Julie mumbled, flushing. "Do you know where Dr. Wilmer's office is?"

"Dr. Wilmer?"

"Yes, you know—Wilmer—it starts with a P-S-Y!"

"P-S-Y… Oh, you must mean Psychological Associates! That's suite twenty-five-sixteen, down the

hall."

Normally, Julie would have pretended to understand and continued going into offices until she found the right one, but she was too worried about being late now to pretend. "Would you spell that out for me?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"The numbers!" she said desperately. "Spell them out like this: three—six—nine—four—two. Say it that

way."

The woman looked at her like she was an idiot, which Julie knew she was, but she hated it when other

people noticed. After an irritated sigh, the, woman said, "Dr. Wilmer is in suite two—five—one—six."

"Two—five—one—six," Julie repeated.

"That's the fourth door on the left," she added.

"Well!" Julie cried in frustration. "Why didn't you just say that in the first place!"

Dr. Wilmer's receptionist looked up when Julie walked in. "Did you get lost, Julie?"

"Me? No way!" Julie lied with an emphatic shake of her curly head as she returned to her chair.

Unaware that she was being observed through what looked like an ordinary mirror, she turned her attention to the aquarium beside her chair. The first thing she noticed was that one of the beautiful fish had

died and that two others were swimming around it as if contemplating eating it. Automatically, she tapped her finger on the glass to scare them away, but a moment later they returned. "There's a dead fish in there," she told the receptionist, trying to sound only slightly concerned. "I could take it out for you."

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"The cleaning people will remove it tonight, but thank you for offering."

Julie swallowed an irate protest at what she felt was needless cruelty to the dead fish. It wasn't right for anything so wonderfully beautiful and so helpless to be left in there like that. Picking up a magazine from the coffee table, she pretended to look at it, but from the corner of her eye she kept up her surveillance of the two predatory fish. Each time they returned to prod and poke their deceased comrade, she stole a glance at the receptionist to make sure she wasn't watching, then Julie reached out as casually as possible

and tapped the glass to scare them off.

A few feet away, in her office on the other side of the two-way mirror, Dr. Theresa Wilmer watched the entire little scenario, her eyes alight with a knowing smile as she watched Julie's gallant attempt to protect

a dead fish while maintaining a facade of indifference for the sake of the receptionist.

Glancing at the man

beside her, another psychiatrist who'd recently begun donating some of his time to her special project, Dr. Wilmer said wryly, "There she is, 'Julie the terrible,' the adolescent terror who some foster care officials have judged to be not only 'learning-disabled,' but unmanageable, a bad influence on her peers,

and also 'a troublemaker bound for juvenile delinquency.' Did you know," she continued, her voice taking

on a shade of amused admiration, "that she actually organized a hunger strike at LaSalle? She talked forty-five children, most of whom were older than she, into going along with her to demand better food."

Dr. John Frazier peered through the two-way mirror at the little girl. "I suppose she did that because she had an underlying need to challenge authority?"

"No," Dr. Wilmer replied dryly, "she did it because she had an underlying need for better food. The food at LaSalle is nutritious but tasteless. I sampled some."

Frazier flashed a startled look at his associate. "What about her thefts? You can't ignore that problem so easily." Leaning her shoulder against the wall, Terry tipped her head to the child in the waiting room and said with a smile, "Have you ever heard of Robin Hood?"

"Of course. Why?"

"Because you're looking at a modern-day adolescent version of Robin Hood out there. Julie can filch the gold right out of your teeth without your knowing it, she's that quick."

"I hardly think
that's
a recommendation for sending her to live with your unsuspecting Texas cousins, which is what I understand you intend to do."

Dr. Wilmer shrugged. "Julie steals food or clothing or playthings, but she doesn't keep anything. She gives her booty to the younger kids at LaSalle."

"You're certain?"

"Positive. I've checked it out."

A reluctant smile tugged at John Frazier's lips as he studied the little girl. "She looks more like a Peter Pan than a Robin Hood. She's not at all what I expected, based on her file."

"She surprised me, too," Dr. Wilmer admitted.

According to Julie's file, the director of the LaSalle Foster Care Facility, where she now resided, had deemed her to be "a discipline problem with a predilection for truancy, troublemaking, theft, and banging around with unsavory male companions."

After

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all the unfavorable comments in Julie's file, Dr.

Wilmer had fully expected Julie Smith to be a belligerent,

hardened girl whose constant association with young males probably indicated early physical

development and even sexual activity. For that reason, she'd nearly gaped at Julie when the child sauntered into her office two months ago, looking like a grubby little pixie in jeans and a tattered sweatshirt, with short-cropped dark, curly hair.

Instead of the budding femme fatale Dr. Wilmer had expected, Julie Smith had a beguiling gamin face that was dominated by an enormous pair of thick-lashed

eyes the startling color of dark blue pansies. In contrast to that piquant little face and innocently beguiling

eyes, there was a boyish bravado in the way she'd stood in front of Dr. Wilmer's desk that first day with her small chin thrust out and her hands jammed into the back pockets of her jeans.

Theresa had been captivated at that first meeting, but her fascination with Julie had begun even before that—almost from the moment she'd opened her file at home one night and began reading her responses to the battery of tests that was part of the evaluating process that Theresa herself had recently developed.