Just Another Pretty Face (HT 459) (16 page)

"Lawyers?" Gage asked as he exchanged a significant look with his wife and sister. Pierce had never threatened legal action over a news story before, no matter how outrageous. Usually, the more outrageous the story, the more it amused him.

"That article is a blatant invasion of privacy," Pierce fumed.

"A dance floor is hardly what I'd call private," Claire began dryly, only to be silenced by a look from Gage.

"At least they spelled your name right," he said, watching Pierce carefully as he paraphrased the old Hollywood maxim that said any publicity was good publicity as long as they spelled your name right. It was a platitude Pierce had repeated more than once himself, usually when some other member of the family was fuming over some scandalous bit of tabloid gossip. "And it will all blow over in a week or two, anyway, so what's the fuss?" Gage continued. That, too, was something Pierce had been heard to say.

Pierce looked at his brother as if he'd lost his mind. "And in the meantime, the whole damn world is speculating about my—" he looked at Nikki "—about
our
private life."

Gage grinned. "It's never bothered you before."

Pierce just glared at him.

"I don't understand," Nikki said then, staring at him as if he were the one who'd lost his mind. "Publicity was the whole point, wasn't it? It was the reason we went out last night and why you kissed me and... everything," she said euphemistically, coloring slightly as she remembered that his whole family was listening to their exchange. "So everyone would think we were— " she shrugged "—involved."

Pierce stopped her with a look. "I thought we settled that last night," he said sternly. "I did not kiss you to make anyone think anything. I kissed you and... everything," he imitated her hesitation perfectly, "because I wanted to. Desperately," he added, not the least bit embarrassed by the presence of his family. "Is that absolutely clear?"

"But you can't deny that that's why we went out in the first pl—"

He reached out and caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger. "Is that clear?"

Nikki stared into his eyes for a long moment. "Clear," she said softly, warmed by the look in his eyes. "You kissed me because you wanted to."

"Don't forget it," Pierce ordered, and leaned forward in his chair to kiss her again—hard and emphatically—before he let her go.

"But you still can't deny we went out in the first place to stir up just this kind of speculation," she said when he released her. "The whole idea was to draw out the writer of the fan letters."

Pierce sighed. "And we drew out every scandalmonger in Hollywood instead."

"Not necessarily," Nikki said slowly as an idea that had been fermenting in the back of her mind pushed its way to the front. "Maybe we did both."

"The fire was an accident, pure and simple," Pierce said, knowing where she was going before she got there. "You heard the firemen last night. A log rolled out of the fireplace."

Nikki shot him a challenging look. "And what if it didn't?"

Pierce shook his head. "That's crazy."

"No, it's not crazy," Nikki insisted, her conviction growing stronger in the face of his knee-jerk opposition. "It's not crazy at all. Think about it for a minute. How easy would it be for a log to roll out of that fireplace? The andirons are huge. And you put the screen back in place after you lit the fire last night. I remember watching you do it."

"So what are you saying?" Pierce asked. "That this mysterious letter writer tiptoed into the bedroom in the middle of the night and deliberately started the fire by dragging a log out of the fireplace?"

"It's possible."

"It's ridiculous," Pierce scoffed.

"Why is it ridiculous?" Nikki wanted to know. "Because you want it to be?" She shook her head. "Whoever wrote those letters said she couldn't stand the thought of another betrayal," she said, reminding them all of the threat implicit in the wording of the last letter. "She said she'd do anything she had to to prevent it, even if it meant losing you."

"Are you listening to yourself?" Pierce asked. "Do you hear what you're suggesting?"

"She's suggesting that some jealous, and quite possibly insane, fan tried to make good on her threat last night," Claire said tartly. "She's suggesting that someone might have tried to kill you."

"By setting fire to a room I wasn't even in?"

"It was dark," Nikki reminded him. "Even with the fire in the fireplace, all anyone would have seen was a lump under the covers. It was your room," she pointed out. "The logical assumption would have been that it was you in the bed."

"Oh, jeez." Pierce yanked his napkin off his lap and threw it onto the table with enough force to make the silverware jump. "I don't believe this."

Little Beau jerked in surprise, startled by his uncle's action, and began to cry.

"It's okay, son," Gage said, reaching to lift the baby out of his high chair. "Nobody's yelling at you."

Tara stood up and pushed her chair back. "Give him to me," she said, holding out her arms for her baby. "I'll take him inside and get him cleaned up. It's okay, Beau," she crooned gently, cuddling the baby to her. "Uncle Pierce didn't mean to scare you... did you, Uncle Pierce?"

"Hell, no, kid," Pierce said contritely, smiling broadly as he reached up to tickle the baby under his peach-smeared chin. "I was trying to scare some sense into someone else entirely."

Beau chuckled in delight and blew a bubbly raspberry.

"That means you're forgiven," Tara interpreted with a smile. "Come on, sweetie." She patted the baby's diapered bottom. "Let's go get you changed."

"Nikki's right, you know," Gage said after Tara and Beau had disappeared inside the house. "Someone might very well have tried to kill you last night. Or, at the very least, been issuing a strong warning."

"Warning?"

"She did say she'd do anything she had to do to stop you from betraying her again."

"Well, there you go," Pierce said, thinking he'd just had his point made for him. "Whoever she is, she couldn't have known about my so-called betrayal last night—" he motioned toward the stack of tabloids on the table "—because it wasn't public knowledge until today."

"She could have seen us at Spago," Nikki said. "Or the club. She could have..." She bit her lower lip, hesitating to say it out loud because of how he'd reacted the last time she'd suggested the culprit might be someone he knew.

"She could have what?" Gage demanded quietly, his amber eyes watchful as he looked back and forth between the stern, set faces of his brother and his brother's bodyguard.

"She could have seen us here, after we got back," Nikki said, still staring intently at Pierce. "Or she could have been here all along. Waiting."

There was a long tense silence as her listeners digested her statement.

"I never thought of that," Claire said finally.

"Because the idea is completely ludicrous," Pierce said. "That's why you never thought of it."

"No," Claire said thoughtfully. "No, I think it's because I've been too close to the situation." She looked at both of her brothers in turn. "We've all been too close to the situation. But Nikki could be right. It could be-"

"Oh, come on, Claire. It could be Lisbeth, is that what you're saying? It could be Kathy? Or how about Mrs. Gilmore? Or the gardener?"

Claire frowned. "When you put it that way, it does sound ridiculous, but damn it all—" she struck her fist lightly on the table "—it still makes a strange kind of sense."

"In what way?"

"As I said before, whoever wrote those letters knows an awful lot about your movements. More," she said, anticipating his objections, "than anyone would know just by reading the tabloids. That's bothered me from the beginning. And yet, to let myself even consider the possibility that it might be someone we know... someone who might even live here..." She shook her head. "I don't know what to think."

"It doesn't have to be someone who actually lives here," Nikki said. "It could be someone who has access. Like the gardener. I've seen her watching Pierce when she thinks nobody's looking," she explained, answering their unasked questions. "She stares at him as if he were some kind of god."

"Oh, jeez..."

"Yes, I've noticed, too," Claire said thoughtfully. "I hadn't thought anything of it before, but—"

"Because there's nothing
to
think of it," Pierce said.

"And she's here—what?—once or twice a week?" Claire went on, ignoring her brother's outburst. "She has access to the whole house, too."

"There are lots of other people who have access to the house," Nikki reminded them. "Or to the grounds, at least. Pool maintenance, deliveries, the cleaning service people who come in to help Mrs. Gilmore." She shrugged. "Any number of people, really. As far as I can tell, the gates out front are never closed, let alone locked. And they should be. Especially now."

"Yes," Claire agreed, with a sidelong glance at her brother to see how he was taking it. "They should be."

He wasn't taking it well. "Damn it, Claire," he said. "I've never let strangers influence how I live my life and I'm not about to start now. I refuse to live in some kind of armed camp with barricades and alarms and—"

"Excuse me," Kathy Frye said. "I don't like to interrupt a family lunch, but I thought you'd want to see this right away."

Pierce looked up at his secretary with a smile. Everyone else looked away guiltily, afraid Kathy would see that they'd considered her among their list of suspects. "What is it?" Pierce asked.

"The mail came a few minutes ago. This was with it." She laid an envelope beside Pierce's plate. It was plain white, like that which could be found in any stationery store, addressed to Mr. Pierce Kingston in aqua ink. There was a "love" stamp in the corner but it hadn't, Nikki noticed, been canceled by the post office. It could have been an oversight—such things did occasionally happen—or it could mean that the letter had been placed in the mailbox by someone other than the mail carrier.

"I opened it before I realized what it was," Kathy said, explaining the condition of the envelope. "I hope I didn't destroy any clues or anything."

"That's fine, Kathy," Claire said, her tone politely but quite clearly dismissing the secretary. "Thank you."

Kathy glanced at Pierce, her expression questioning, but he was staring at the letter lying beside his plate. She nodded at Claire and went back in the house.

"Do you want me to read it?" Claire asked when Pierce continued to stare at the letter.

He shook his head and picked the envelope up, carefully, as if it might bite him. Slipping two fingers into the open slit, he extracted the single sheet of lined pastel blue paper inside and unfolded it. There was only one sentence on the paper.

"
I warned you about the other women
," Pierce read aloud.

10

NIKKI SAT SILENTLY, staring into the snifter of Armagnac between her hands as if the words she needed were hidden somewhere in the golden depths of the fifty-year-old brandy. She'd been trying to think of a way to say what had to be said ever since the fan letter had been delivered at lunch. Trying, too, to find the proper time and place to say it.

The house had been full of people all day: Pierce's family and staff; the insurance investigators; the cleanup crew; salesclerks from the most ritzy men's stores on Rodeo Drive, salivating at the chance to completely replenish Pierce Kingston's wardrobe; an interior decorator who kept trying to get Pierce to look at wallpaper books and fabric samples when he'd already made it clear he wanted his bedroom restored to exactly what it had been before the fire; reporters showing up unannounced, trying to wheedle an interview with anyone who would talk to them. Now—except for Mrs. Gilmore, who'd disappeared into her suite of rooms off the kitchen as soon as dinner had been cleared away—they were alone.

It was just coming on dusk. The faint glow of sunset still colored the sky, sending slanting rays of rose-colored light through the windows of the garden room. In a few minutes it would be full dark. There was music playing in the background, something soft and soothing that Nikki thought she recognized. The faint scent of sandalwood potpourri gently scented the air. It was all so romantic.

Nikki sighed.

"Tired?" Pierce said, sitting down on the sofa beside her. He lifted his bare feet to the glass-and-cypress coffee table, crossing them at the ankles, and leaned back against the plump chintz cushions with a heartfelt sigh of his own. "Personally, I'm beat," he said, inhaling the fumes of the Armagnac in his glass before taking a sip. "It's been way too hectic around here today to suit me." He stretched one arm out along the sofa back behind Nikki's head and, very lightly, stroked the hair behind her ear with one long finger. "I'm glad everyone's gone."

Nikki looked up with a quick, nervous smile, like a tongue-tied schoolgirl too shy to say anything, and then ducked her head to take a tiny sip of her drink.
Now,
she told herself.
Right now, before he finishes his drink and decides to ta ke up where we left off this m orning in the shower.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Pierce said.

Nikki took a breath and told herself to simply say it. "I was just wondering what the name of that song is," she said, without looking at him. "It sounds familiar."

"That particular piece is by Debussy.
Claire de Lune."

Nikki nodded her head as if his answer had meant something to her. "It's nice."

"Yes," Pierce said, staring at her averted face. "It is." He ran his finger down the curve of her cheek. "Why don't you try telling me what's really on your mind?"

Nikki continued to stare into the snifter between her hands. "We have to talk."

"About what?"

"About..." Why was it so hard to say? "About us."

"What about us?" he asked carefully, sensing danger.

Nikki took another sip of her drink, a larger one this time, and set the snifter on the coffee table in front of her. "We can't continue like this."

"Could you be a bit more specific?"