Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game (19 page)

Lexi might be deaf but she wasn’t blind. She saw what Max was up to and it incensed her. She also saw, much as it pained her to admit it, that her cousin had grown into an incredibly good-looking young man. Black-haired and even blacker-eyed, Max had an irresistible air of danger and wildness about him, like Heathcliff or a young Lord Byron. Most boys Lexi’s age were gauche and immature. Even the jocks at Exeter seemed to have a built-in geekiness that surfaced in the presence of attractive girls like Lexi. But not Max Webster.

Max looked through Lexi as if she didn’t exist.

So why does he hang around me all the time? If I’m so goddamn invisible, so beneath his royal notice, why doesn’t he get a life of his own?

Lexi began scratching out names with a pen, rearranging the seating chart.

Lisa Babbington could sit next to Grady Jones.

If Max didn’t have enough friends to fill his table, it wasn’t her problem.

“Do you like it? I know it’s not your official birthday yet, but Rachel thought you might want to wear it for the party.”

Lexi’s interpreter, Rachel, was her more or less constant companion. Peter Templeton had relied heavily on Rachel’s advice when it came to choosing Lexi’s birthday present. Watching Lexi’s face light up now, he was glad he had.

“Daddy, I
love
it. Oh my goodness.”

“Really?” He beamed with pleasure.

“Really.”

Lexi ran her fingertips in wonder over the gossamer beaded silk dress. It was Chanel, from the new season’s collection. The delicate fabric was the exact same shade of champagne blond as Lexi’s hair. The cut was exquisite, plunging and clinging in all the right places, but too much of a work of art to look slutty. It was, without question, the most beautiful item of clothing in existence.

“A beautiful dress for my beautiful girl. You’ll look like a princess, my angel.”

Lexi smiled. “Thank you, Daddy.”
He still thinks I’m six years old.
“It’s an amazing present.”

And it’s gonna help me get the birthday present I
really
want
:

Christian Harle.

Lexi learned early that her deafness was a double-edged sword when it came to dating.

Going to school with an interpreter who rarely left her side was a definite minus. Lexi’s lip-reading was excellent and her speech by no means poor, but she was self-conscious about her imagined slurring and preferred to sign whenever possible and have Rachel speak for her.

She was lucky to have had the same interpreter for almost eight
years now, since her early days in the hospital. Peter knew that consistency of caregivers would be crucial to his daughter’s recovery. Consequently he had thrown money and perks at the then twenty-year-old Rachel, upping the ante every year to make sure she wasn’t tempted to leave. Now twenty-eight, Rachel was considerably chubbier than she had been back then, but just as hardworking and sunny-natured. Lexi herself had long since passed the point where she actively noticed her interpreter’s presence. To her, Rachel was like her shadow: always there, yet somehow almost invisible.

Unfortunately, boys didn’t see it that way.

“Can’t you lose Chubby Checker for half an hour after school?”

Pete Harris, a rebel with floppy blond hair, skater tattoos on his chest, and a reputation as the biggest player in tenth grade, leaned over in math class and whispered in Lexi’s ear.

His warm breath on her earlobe felt nice. Lexi could pretty much get the gist of his intentions from pheremones alone. But of course, without being able to see his lips, the words themselves meant nothing.

She signed to Rachel. “Ask him to say it again. Tell him to look at me when he speaks.”

Rachel duly did as she was asked. Suddenly the whole class had turned around to stare at Pete Harris. He didn’t feel so cool anymore.

“Harris, you moron! Don’t you know she needs to see your lips to read them?”

“Yeah, c’mon, Pete. Share with the class, man. What’d you say?”

“You guys should definitely date. Deaf and Dumb, what a couple!”

“I…I’m sorry,” Pete Harris blurted, blushing to the roots of his blond hair. “You’re cute, but I…I can’t do this.”

Lexi was philosophical about Pete Harris. He was hot, but he
was
kind of a moron. Besides, she had her sights set on a much bigger fish: Christian Harle.

Lexi had begun Operation Christian in the eighth grade. At fourteen, she was still far too lowly a minnow in the Exeter High School pond for a guy like Christian Harle to notice. Two years her senior, with the body of an Olympic athlete and a face that could make Brad Pitt cry, Christian Harle dated only cheerleaders or models. The fact that he was astronomically out of Lexi’s league didn’t faze her in the least. On the contrary, it made this the perfect time for her to lay the groundwork of her operation.

Her plan was simple. She would find out what Christian looked for in a woman. (Big tits, pretty face, ditzy manner, IQ of dung beetle.) She would then transform herself into his ideal mate.

Lexi checked off the points on Christian’s wish list one by one.

My tits are nonexistent, but they’ll grow.

My face is already pretty, or it will be once the braces come off.

I’m smart enough to pretend to be stupid. So what’s left?

Ah yes. Ditzy and helpless.

If having Rachel around was a dating minus, Lexi’s deafness also provided some unique dating pluses. Because of her disability, boys tended to think of her as sweet and vulnerable—the poor little deaf heiress who needed their protection. Lexi quickly learned how to turn this misconception to her advantage. By ninth grade, she had her phony damsel-in-distress shtick down to a fine art.

“Rachel? Would you ask Johnny to help me with my books? I’m
so
tired this morning, I really couldn’t walk another step.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Thomas, but I’m afraid I couldn’t finish my assignment this week. I’ve been having terrible nightmares. Flashbacks about my ordeal.”

Lexi’s big gray eyes welled with tears. Rachel thought:
She’s a fine little actress, this one. She’s got them all fooled.

Christian liked ditzy? Lexi would give him ditzy.

Right along with this stupid-ass virginity burning a hole in my panties.

Lexi was convinced she must be the oldest virgin at Exeter, if not in the whole of America. It was conceivable she was the oldest virgin in the world. Apart from nuns, obviously. And really ugly people like her aunt Eve.

Deep down she was afraid that what happened to her as a child might have spoiled her for sex. She still had nightmares about the pig.
Is that the real reason I’ve been saving myself for Christian? Did I pick someone I knew was unobtainable because I was too scared to “do it”?

Whatever her true motivations, the wait was now officially over. Tonight was the night.

As the party drew nearer, Lexi’s nerves started to get the better of her.

What if he only likes girls with experience? I guess I’ll have to fake that, too.

Sometimes Lexi worried that she pretended so much she’d forgotten who she really was inside.

Maybe I want to forget?

“Oh, Max. Max! Don’t stop! Please don’t stop! I’m coming!”

Max Webster looked down at the girl writhing beneath him and felt ineffably bored. Her name was Sasha Harvey-Newton. Her father owned shipyards. Her mother’s father owned oil fields. She was eighteen years old, stunningly beautiful and sickeningly rich. She was widely considered to be one of New York’s most eligible young heiresses.

She was also a nymphomaniac.

“Harder, baby! Harder!”

Sasha Harvey-Newton arched her eligible, $20-million back for Max’s benefit and let out a whoop of ecstasy.

“Shut up.” Max put his hand over her mouth. She started sucking his fingers, and he fought back a powerful urge to ram them down her stupid, vacuous throat. Instead he forced her head down onto the pillow, muting her moans.

“Hey. What’d you do that for?”

Sasha looked up at him, her face flushed an unattractive strawberry red.

“You were making too much noise. What if your mom heard us?”

“What if she did? You know how many times I’ve had to listen to her and the tennis coach going at it? My mom’s a whore.”

Max watched Sasha get dressed, pulling on a pair of skintight jeans with no panties, and without bothering to wash first.

Like mother, like daughter.

Sasha smiled. “So. Does this mean I’m your date for your birthday party next weekend? I’ve always wanted to see Cedar Hill House.”

Max wrinkled his nose in distaste.

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?” The smile was gone.

“I mean
no
. I realize it’s probably not a word you hear very often. But we’re already at maximum capacity for the party, I’m afraid. Our security people have insisted, no more guests.”

“Your security people?” Sasha snarled. “Who do you think you are? The president? It’s a sixteenth birthday party, not a U.N. Security Council meeting. Uninvite someone if you have to.”

“Ah, but I don’t have to,” said Max. “You got what you wanted, Sasha. I’ll see myself out.”

Walking back to Park Avenue, Max reflected on his afternoon’s activities. He had not enjoyed the sex with Sasha Harvey-Newton, and he wondered why he’d agreed to go to bed with her in the first place. So he could boast about it? She was considered a good catch, after all. But to whom would he boast? It wasn’t as if he had a bunch of male buddies whom he tried to impress. Max Webster needed approval from one person and one person only. His mother wouldn’t give a damn that he’d wasted half a day balling some half-witted rich bitch who didn’t even turn him on.

That’s the problem. None of them turn me on. None of them can hold a candle to Eve.

Max loathed parties. He had only agreed to the joint birthday with Lexi because his mother asked him.

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, my darling.” That was Eve’s motto, at least where Lexi was concerned. She was always pushing the two of them together. “There will be a lot of important people at Cedar Hill House that weekend. Kruger-Brent board members, all the major shareholders and business heads. You can’t afford to let Lexi look like the star of the show.”

There wasn’t much danger of that. No one at Kruger-Brent took Lexi seriously. Not anymore. But, technically speaking, under the terms of Kate Blackwell’s will, she still stood a chance of being appointed chairman when she turned twenty-five. Until he, Max, was safely sitting in the chairman’s seat, he couldn’t afford to get complacent.

Max’s old familiar hatred of his cousin had taken a disturbing twist recently. Overnight, it seemed, Lexi had transformed into a sensuous, desirable woman. What made it worse, and more confusing, was that she was starting to look more and more like a young version of Eve. Lexi’s mother, Alexandra, had been Eve’s identical twin, after all, so perhaps it was inevitable that the likeness would be striking. Still, Max found this genetic irony upsetting. In fact, he found everything about his cousin Lexi upsetting.

The paparazzi had always loved her: the brave, beautiful Blackwell baby, the plucky kidnapping survivor. Eve had once contemptuously described her niece as “America’s favorite cripple” and she wasn’t far wrong. Now, thanks to Lexi’s butterflylike emergence as a society belle, media interest in her life seemed to have quintupled. She was no longer
the Blackwell Baby, but the Blackwell Bombshell. Everyone wanted a piece of her.

She loves every second of it, too,
Max thought bitterly. Last Christmas, when they’d briefly worked together at Kruger-Brent, he had sensed Lexi silently watching him. As if she were trying to catch him lusting after her, the way that everybody else seemed to.

Forget it. Not me.

Why can’t you just disappear? Go to deaf school, marry some other special-ed retard and get the hell out of my life?

Sasha Harvey-Newton didn’t know how lucky she was to be missing Max’s birthday party. He heartily wished he could have missed it himself.

“Quite a spread, isn’t it?”

Tristram Harwood, head of Kruger-Brent’s oil and gas division, was talking to Logan Marshall, who ran the mining businesses.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

Neither of them had been to the Blackwells’ Dark Harbor compound since Kate Blackwell’s funeral almost seventeen years ago. It was wonderful to see the old house bursting with life and vitality again. Everywhere you turned, America’s impossibly beautiful, privileged youth were laughing and talking and dancing with one another while their parents looked on, the mothers dripping diamonds while they gossiped, the fathers grumbling about the latest plunge in the Dow Jones and the new fortunes to be made on the Internet.

Cedar Hill House itself had barely changed since Kate’s day. The same Vlaminck floral canvas hung over the fireplace in the living room. Even the rose-and-green-chintz sofas remained, providing a lingering touch of femininity to what was now a man’s home. Peter Templeton had inherited the estate upon Alexandra’s death, but for years he had found the house too full of painful memories and rarely visited it. After Lexi’s ordeal, however, he’d brought her to Maine to recuperate. Slowly, summer by summer, Cedar Hill House had been allowed to live again.

“Ah, there he is. The birthday boy. I suppose we should go and tug our forelocks, get it over and done with?”

Logan Marshall followed Tristram Harwood’s gaze. Max was on the veranda, surrounded by a gaggle of admiring teenage girls. In a Ralph Lauren suit and Choate tie, on the surface he looked the epitome of a
preppy young gentleman. But neither the clothes nor the old-money, East Coast setting could completely conceal Max’s feral nature. He reminded Tristram Harwood of a jungle savage whom some misguided anthropologist had “rescued” and dragged, kicking and screaming, into the civilized world. As if he might at any moment start tearing off his Brooks Brothers shirt with his teeth.