Keepsake (42 page)

“That is impossible!” Armand said. He made a sudden move toward Daisy, and one of the cops grabbed him.
“C’est incroyable!
You tell a lie! Sabrina was never unfaithful. She would never have dared!”

“It is possible, and she did dare,” Daisy said. “I am the one who has been the coward… I am the one who could not face up
to the truth about my own nature.” She looked toward Blackthorn. “I knew about Rina’s autobiography, of course. I thought
that if it was found, it might help to reveal the truth about their marriage. I didn’t know that he had killed her, but I
did know that she was going to leave him.”

“Why didn’t you come forward sooner?” April asked.

“I was afraid. I knew that if it came out, it would destroy my candidacy. I preferred to deny what I knew in my heart to be
true—about that, about a lot of things.” She cast a quick glance at Christian. “I tried to make myself believe that Rina had
been murdered by one of her clients. Or by anybody else
except
Armand. I tried to convince myself that I was not involved in any way. But I did attempt to help the investigation. I called
her office and pretended I was her editor. I inquired about her autobiography. I hoped this would be enough to start a search,
and to find it if it hadn’t already been destroyed.”

“Oh, wow,” April said. “The mysterious editor—it was you. Charlie didn’t make it up, after all.”

Daisy looked puzzled. It obviously hadn’t occurred to her that anyone would have thought that Charlie had made it up. “That
was me. It wasn’t much, I know. But it was all I was capable of at the time.”

“This is nonsense,” said Armand. “I do not understand what
any
of you are talking about.” He muttered something in French that April didn’t catch, then added, with dignity, “I have nothing
more to say. I wish to speak to my lawyer.”

“You can speak to him from the slammer,” Blackthorn said, as one of the cops read Armand de Sevigny his rights.

April called the meeting in her office at Power Perspectives exactly two weeks after the arrest of Armand de Sevigny for the
murder of his wife.

Isobelle was there, of course, and Charlie. Christian came down from upstairs, where he was struggling to revamp the company
that his father had brought to the brink of ruin. And Rob Blackthorn was lurking at the back of the room, and Kate had come
also, at April’s special invitation.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately,” April told them all. “In particular, I’ve been thinking about seizing my own power,
and what that means to me.”

She paused, looking at each of them in turn. “It’s been wonderful for me, working here. I’ve discovered new talents and abilities
that I didn’t realize I had. But, ultimately, Power Perspectives is not for me. It was my mother’s life… but her life is not
mine.

“I’ve decided to resign my position here. I hope Isobelle
will replace me. I sincerely believe that she is much better suited to run Power Perspectives than I.”

Isobelle grinned. She looked outrageous as ever, clad in a short leather skirt and a demure white blouse, and there was an
easiness and warmth about her that April hadn’t seen until recently. She’d heard rumors that she had a new lover, a dominant
this time. Apparently the shift in roles agreed with her.

“Charlie assures me that he would like to stay on,” April continued, “but that will be up to Isobelle as chief executive officer.
Since you both have so much experience with the company, I hope you’ll find a way to work things out.”

“I don’t expect that to be a problem,” Isobelle said.

April glanced at Charlie, who was seated in a chair that was pulled quite close to that of Delores, the secretary. Charlie
seemed to catch Delores’s eye for a significant look before nodding and saying, “No problem at all.”

Charlie and Delores? April thought. The man was incorrigible.

“As for me,” she added, “I’m going to return to doing what I love most—selling books. But since I’ve come to feel so at home
in New York—” she paused and flashed a smile towards Rob “—I’ve decided to stay and sell them here. There’s a shop for rent
in Greenwich Village that looks as if it would be perfect for a mystery bookstore. I’ll be signing a lease next week and starting
a Poison Pen Two right here in New York.” She smiled. “After that, who knows? Maybe I’ll take my mother’s advice and dream
big dreams. I can imagine a chain of mystery bookstores, spreading all over the Northeast.” She smiled. “We own our own lives,”
she added softly. “By believing in ourselves, we can make our fantasies come true.”

“Well, I’m going to be a famous writer someday,” Kate
chimed in. “And you’re going to sell my books in your stores!”

“Hey, can I be the famous detective whose adventures you write about?” Rob asked with a grin.

“Nah,” said Kate. “She’s going to be a woman. Nobody wants to read about male detectives anymore.” She raised her fist in
the air. “Women rule the world!”

“You’ve got the right idea, kid,” Isobelle said.

“Right on!” April agreed.

“Right on?” Blackthorn whispered. They were together in his apartment at the end of the day. “You were reliving your days
as a flower child?”

“Mmm, maybe.” They were in bed. She was naked, except for his silver necklace clasped tightly around her throat.

“Women rule the world, huh?” He touched her in a way that suggested that at the moment, at least, he was very much in control.

“Well, maybe not all the time,” she conceded.

“I’m thinking of taking you to one of Isobelle’s parties, now that you and she are suddenly such good friends.”

“That would be… interesting,” she said, laughing.

“Liven up our sex life a little.”

“As if it needs livening up!”

He grinned and kissed her gently. “I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you, too, Rob. And I trust you completely. With my life.”

“So you don’t mind having a full-time, live-in bodyguard?”

She smiled archly. “My body requires a lot of heavy-duty guarding.”

“I’ve noticed!”

Again they kissed. She held him close, enjoying his warmth, his heartbeat, the regularity of his breathing. “And Jessie?”
she asked, carefully.

“I dreamed about her last night. In the dream she was standing down at the bottom of our bed.”

“Um, I’m not sure I—”

“No, listen. She was smiling and she looked as if she—I don’t know—approved. She blew me a kiss, and then she turned her back
and walked away.” He paused. “I used to dream about her a lot. But somehow it felt as if that was her farewell… as if she
was releasing me.”

“And you were releasing her.”

“Exactly. Before she died she made me promise that I wouldn’t grieve forever. That I’d find someone to love and get on with
my life. It’s just that I wasn’t interested in doing that, until I met you.”

She nodded. “I understand. It’s the same for me, with Rina. Now that I know about her life—about her struggles and her dreams
and so many of her feelings—it’s as if I can finally let go of that driving need to know why it all happened the way it did.
Now, at last, I can see her as a real person. And I’ve come to understand that she was a human being, with flaws and weaknesses,
just like the rest of us. She was in an impossible situation. But she did her best. And that’s the most we can expect of anybody.”

“So you’ve forgiven her, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I guess I have.”

And that night she had a dream. Rina, young and blonde and beautiful, climbing into a helicopter to fly off with a famous
man. As the aircraft rose, she looked out a small window, and there was panic in her eyes, a fear that April, at ten, had
been too young to see.

Then, in the dream, April looked in a mirror and saw
that her own eyes were free of fear, of anger, of confusion, of mistrust and self-doubt.

Nestling closer to her lover, she slipped into a peaceful sleep.

APRIL HARRINGTON—The daughter of a beautiful, famous woman who abandoned her as a child, April is living a divided life, successful
on the outside, deeply hurt within. When her mother’s sudden death makes her the sole heir to a fabulous, multimillion-dollar
business empire, she is swept into the dan gerous emotional currents beneath the surface of her mother’s other family.

RINA DE SEVIGNY—An international expert on achieving personal power, the once-young mother left an inconvenient daughter behind
when she married into wealth. Now she is about to publish a tell-all biography about her love affairs, her celebrity clients,
and her husband’s twisted, tormented family…. and put her life in danger.

ROB BLACKTHORN—The California security expert whose wife’s tragic accident has left him a shattered man, haunted by memories,
and ready to run from his blazing desire for April. Afraid to love again, he is also afraid his hunt for an assassin can’t
save her from a world of obsession, greed, and murder. ARMAND DE SEVIGNY—Still handsome, virile, and intimidating, Rina’s
French industrialist husband introduced his American wife to a life of privilege, unparalleled ambition, and sinister liaisons.
Soon he will open up the same doors for April, Rina’s long-rejected daughter…doors that hide a truth that can destroy her.