Larger than Life (2 page)

Shifting his weight restlessly in an unconscious movement, Travis frowned, not noticing the thoughtful gaze of the other man. “I’ll talk her into it. There isn’t enough material for a single chapter in that scanty bio you release to the press; I haven’t been able to build a profile on her.” His frowning eyes returned to the manager’s expressionless face. “One thing I have been able to find out: Saber Duncan was born just about two years ago. The bio that Mosaic—or you, or she—concocted is just that. Concocted.”

Philip Saunders was silent for a long moment, his level hazel eyes weighing, considering. Then he sighed. Softly he quoted, “‘You would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass.’”

It was Travis’s turn to blink. “Shakespeare.
Hamlet.”
He identified the quote easily, then the words sank in. Before he could comment, Saunders was explaining.

“That’s something Saber quoted to me about a year ago, when I signed on to manage her career. When—not to put too fine a point on it—I was
asking a few questions about her life before I entered it.”

Travis was more than a little surprised, and slightly suspicious. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re no better informed about her than the public?”

Saunders was unoffended. “That’s what I’m telling you. Oh, if you want to write that high-quality stuff, like what she eats for dinner or what her favorite colors are, I could probably oblige. But if you want the sordid details of her shady past—”

Travis cut him off with an impatient gesture. “I don’t want to write a damned ‘Meet the Latest Superstar’ book, whether you believe that or not.”

“Oh, I believe it.” Saunders’s voice was abruptly sober. “I’ve read some of your stuff, Mr. Foxx. You write exceptionally strong fiction and stunning nonfictional exposés. Your books hit the bestseller lists as soon as they land in the bookstores.”

Travis’s green eyes sharpened. “But you don’t want me probing into your client’s background?”

“She
doesn’t want it. And that’s good enough for me. Look, Foxx, there’s almost a year missing
from Saber’s professional life. And, as you pointed out, that professional life covers only a scant two years. She cut two quick singles, vanished for months, then reappeared and, virtually overnight, became a star.” He folded his arms across his chest and stared broodingly at the other man. “Now I don’t know where she was during those missing months, but I’m reasonably certain she went through hell; I’ve seen the studio pics and heard the ‘forgettable’ songs, too, you see.”

“And you aren’t curious?”

“That’s a mild word. Let’s set my ‘curiosity’ aside for the moment, shall we? The facts and obligations are clear. Saber’s my client; I handle her professional commitments and try to protect her from harm. Tonight marks the tenth city of a twelve-city tour, and I’m going to see to it that my client takes a nice long rest just as soon as this tour’s over. Saber’s also my friend: she’s tired—and I worry about her. I worry because that incredible energy she manifests onstage is an illusion at best and a shield at worst. Offstage she cages that jungle-cat wildness you mentioned and hides behind the bars.
She’s no hothouse flower, but she’s vulnerable. And I won’t have her hurt.”

“You’re so sure I’d hurt her?”

“If you dig up a past she wants—for whatever reason—to remain buried, yes, you’ll hurt her.”

Travis turned his gaze back to the stage, where Saber Duncan was winding up her performance. “I want to talk to her,” he said.

“I’ll introduce you.” Saunders responded noncommittally.

Thunderous applause followed her as Saber left the stage. She handed her microphone to a grinning stagehand and turned to the two men waiting in the wings.

Saunders stepped forward. “Saber, this is Travis Foxx,” he said.

“Miss Duncan.” He was momentarily surprised by the firm strength of her slender fingers as they shook hands; then she looked at him, and the fascination of her odd silver eyes drove all else from his mind.

“Hi,” she said softly.

Travis plunged in headfirst. “I’d like to talk to
you, Miss Duncan, whenever it’s convenient.” She was a tiny woman, he realized bemusedly; oddly, she’d looked so much larger onstage.

The silver eyes were gazing up at him without expression. “Sorry, Mr. Foxx, but I’m leaving the city tomorrow morning.”

“My travel plans are flexible,” he said.

“I don’t like interviews.” Her voice was still soft.

“I’m not a reporter, Miss Duncan. I want to write a book—”

“I know. I’m not interested, Mr. Foxx.”

“How can you be sure until you hear what I’ve got to say?”

“I am sure. Sorry. Phil, there are some things we have to go over before I leave. How about a late dinner?”

“You’re on.”

She looked back at Travis. “Mr. Foxx, I
am
sorry. It’s a shame you had to come all this way for nothing. Please try to understand. I just don’t want a book written about me.” She smiled, a shadow of the blinding onstage grin, but curiously more real
and infinitely sweeter. “It was nice meeting you.” Then she took her manager’s arm and vanished down the corridor to the dressing rooms.

Travis stood still for a long moment, listening without really hearing the muted roar of the departing audience. He wasn’t particularly disappointed by Saber’s refusal; in fact, he had expected her to refuse. But he’d hardly become known as a brilliant journalistic writer by giving up whenever a subject refused to confide in him.

So rather than wasting energy in being irritated, he thought carefully instead. He thought about where Saber and her manager would likely go for a late dinner. Then he turned on his heel and hurried toward the stage door.

As he’d expected, his subject returned to her hotel to dine, where the late night quiet and relative dimness of the restaurant lessened the odds of her being recognized. Watching them from across the room as he finished his own meal, Travis noted that she’d changed into slacks and a silk blouse but had
not chosen to sport sunglasses, a hat, or any of the other traditional—and usually ridiculous—trappings of disguise.

His chance came when the pair he watched had reached the coffee stage of their meal and Saunders left the table with an audible request to his client to please get some rest before her morning flight. Grabbing his opportunity, Travis rose quickly and crossed to her table, where she was going over sheet music.

“May I join you?” he asked, sliding into a chair.

She gazed at him for a long moment, a look of irony in her silver-gray eyes. “Oh, please do,” she invited gently.

“I hate rudeness in strangers, don’t you?” he said conversationally.

“It’s trying,” she agreed.

“And it’s so hard to get rid of the determined ones, I find.”

She sighed. “Mr. Foxx—”

“Travis, please.”

Giving him another of those direct, ironic looks, she sighed again. “Travis, you have what I can see
is a well-deserved reputation for tenacity. I can admire that. In fact, I’m that way myself. But to even the most tenacious eventually comes something that’s … out of reach.”

“In your experience?” he inquired politely.

“A truth of life, let’s say.”

“Saber—You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?”

“Strangers do,” she murmured.

He couldn’t help but smile at her left-handed acceptance. “Saber, I adhere to another truth of life.”

“I’m going to hate myself for asking, but what’s that?”

“‘He can who believes he can.’ I learned that at my father’s knee.”

Saber sat back, smiling a little. “From what I’ve read, your father nearly invented that philosophy. He was a self-made man, wasn’t he? Built a knowledge of electronics into a world-renowned firm?”

“He did indeed.”

“You chose not to follow in his footsteps?”

“I prefer writing. My brother runs the firm.”

“I didn’t realize you had a brother. Other siblings?”

“Two sisters …”

Later, Travis realized with something between shock and amusement that he’d allowed himself to become the interviewee rather than the interviewer. And the amusement in those silvery eyes revealed that she had deliberately planned to turn the tables on him. She now knew far more about his life and past than he knew about hers.

“Very good,” he noted dryly with a small salute.

“Thank you.”

“I don’t suppose you’d consider a fair trade of information?”

“I don’t think so.”

Travis’s hunting instincts were now fully roused. He studied her keenly across the table. “Mind if I make a few guesses?”

“Go right ahead.”

He sat back, mentally processing what very few observations and impressions he’d been able to acquire. “And just out of a sense of fair play, you understand, would you correct me if I go too far off
base?” He was banking on her lack of concern over what he might guess, trusting in the inevitable human leaning toward complacency.

After a moment, she nodded slowly. “All right, Travis. If any of your guesses is glaringly wrong, I’ll point that out.”

Mere recognition of wrongness rather than correction was not quite what he’d hoped for, but he settled for it. Gathering his thoughts, he began.

“Saber Duncan is not the name you were born with. You’ve led—up until two years ago, at any rate—a very sheltered life. You’re very well educated, partly outside this country, I think. And two years ago, shortly after you cut your first two records, something happened to you, something that changed your voice, your style … even your life. Right so far?”

She was smiling faintly. “Not glaringly wrong.”

He took a deep breath and began calling forth more personal observations and perceptions. “I don’t know what happened to you during those missing months, Saber, but I’m sure it was devastating in some way. Because the lovely, fragile hot-house
flower with the sweet, passionless voice became something—someone—far more complicated. I think you walked through fire.”

There was something now behind the serenity of her eyes, a glimpse of that part of her she kept caged offstage. But she was still smiling. “‘I am ashes where once I was fire’?” she murmured.

He shook his head, staring into her eyes as he tried to find and catch that elusive wildness behind the silvery curtain. “No. You’re fire now … where once you were something cool and dry.”

“And that’s what interests you, isn’t it?” Abruptly, she was distant, matter-of-fact. “What happened to the girl who became a woman? What happened to a hothouse flower to make it grow in the harsh outdoors? That’s why you’re hell-bent to write a book about me. Not because of who and what I’ve become, but because you don’t know how that happened, and you hate unsolved mysteries.”

Travis gazed at her for a long moment. He could hardly deny the quiet accusation, because it was true. But he realized now that the man was as
intrigued by her as the writer. “Will you answer one question honestly?” he asked at last.

“I’ll have to hear it first.”

He nodded, expecting nothing else. “Are you the Saber Duncan who recorded two records two years ago?”

“Yes.”

“If you’d answered no,” he said quietly, “I would have lost the desire to write about you. Because you’re quite right: what fascinates me isn’t that you’re a ‘star’ or even that now you have the most incredible voice I’ve ever heard. It’s that two years ago you were a girl with a sweet, bland voice, and now you’re a woman whose larger-than-life stage presence is matched by something I sense in you offstage. Something equally larger than life.”

“That’s honest, anyway.” Her voice was curiously husky.

He leaned forward intently. “I write about
people
, Saber. Fictional characters or factual lives—but always people. What motivates them, what drives them.
How
they’ve become what they are. In a way, it’s like that song of yours. There are so
few larger-than-life people, so few heroes and heroines. I write about the people who become heroic.”

“I’m not heroic.”

“One of the definitions of
heroic
is
larger than life.”
he said softly. “And you are that, Saber.”

She shook her head, denying the words or any reference to herself in them.

After a moment, he said, “I can promise that you will have final approval of the manuscript. I won’t allow anything to get into print that you don’t want in print.”

“Then you’d have no book,” she said quietly. “Because what I don’t want in print … is most of my life.”

T
HE SILENCE STRETCHED
between them for long moments. Then Travis spoke slowly and thoughtfully.

“The past—anyone’s past—is important only in that it shaped the present. Can you accept that I need to know about your past in order to understand your present?”

“I certainly can. I just can’t accept the necessity of seeing my past in print.”

“It doesn’t have to be seen in print. As long as
I
understand what’s gone before, I can put the present into perspective.”

“No. Not my present.”

“Because without your past, there isn’t a present?”

She smiled slightly and gently shook her head. “Travis, try to understand how I feel about this. Certain … events in my life over which I had little or no control shaped me into who and what I am. We could get into a long discussion over the importance of pasts, but right now, in this moment of my present, I’m very tired. And my past doesn’t seem important to
me
, much less to the world.”

“You avoided answering my question,” he said softly.

She sighed. “I suppose I did. I’m not quite up to your weight tonight, I’m afraid. So I think I’d better go up to my room; I have an early plane tomorrow.”

He rose to his feet as she did. “I’m not giving up.”

“I wonder why that doesn’t surprise me,” she said dryly.