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Praise for Jackie Collins
‘Sex, power and intrigue – no one does it better than Jackie’ heat
‘A tantalising novel packed with power struggles, greed and sex. This is Collins at her finest’ Closer
‘Bold, brash, whiplash fast – with a cast of venal rich kids, this is classic Jackie Collins’ Marie Claire
‘Sex, money, power, murder, betrayal, true love – it’s all here in vintage Collins style. Collins’s plots are always a fabulously involved, intricate affair, and this does not disappoint’ Daily Mail
‘Her style is pure escapism, her heroine’s strong and ambitious and her men, well, like the book, they’ll keep you up all night!’ Company
‘A generation of women have learnt more about how to handle their men from Jackie’s books than from any kind of manual . . . Jackie is very much her own person: a total one off’ Daily Mail
‘Jackie is still the queen of sexy stories. Perfect’ OK!
‘Cancel all engagements, take the phone off the hook and indulge yourself’ Mirror
Also by Jackie Collins
The Power Trip
Married Lovers
Lovers & Players
Deadly Embrace
Hollywood Wives – The New Generation
Lethal Seduction
Thrill!
L.A. Connections – Power, Obsession, Murder, Revenge
Hollywood Kids
American Star
Rock Star
Hollywood Husbands
Lovers & Gamblers
Hollywood Wives
The World Is Full Of Divorced Women
The Love Killers
Sinners
The Bitch
The Stud
The World Is Full Of Married Men
Hollywood Divorces
THE SANTANGELO NOVELS
Goddess of Vengeance
Poor Little Bitch Girl
Drop Dead Beautiful
Vendetta: Lucky’s Revenge
Lady Boss
Lucky
Chances
First published in Great Britain by Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 1999
This edition published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Chances, Inc. 1999
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Jackie Collins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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London WCIX 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-84983-631-9
eBook ISBN 978-1-84983-632-6
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CIP Group (UK) Ltd,
Croydon, CR0 4YY
Dangerous Kiss
Contents
Book One: Los Angeles
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Book Two: Six Weeks Later
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Book Three: Two Months Later
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Book Four: Six Weeks Later
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
Chapter Eighty-Three
Chapter Eighty-Four
Chapter Eighty-Five
Chapter Eighty-Six
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Chapter Ninety
Chapter Ninety-One
Chapter Ninety-Two
Chapter Ninety-Three
Chapter Ninety-Four
Epilogue
Book One
*
Los Angeles
Chapter One
‘Take it!’ the young white girl urged, thrusting the gun at the sixteen-year-old black youth, who immediately backed away.
‘No!’ he said fervently. ‘My old man would bust my ass.’
The girl, clad in a mini-skirt and tight tank top, had long legs, a big bosom, a pointed face, hazel eyes heavily outlined in black, and unevenly cropped dark hair. She stared at the boy scornfully. ‘Chicken!’ she jeered, in a scathing voice. ‘Daddy’
s little baby chickee boy.’
‘No way!’ he grumbled, pissed that she would talk to him that way. He was tall and gangly with large ears that stuck out, and big brown eyes.
‘Oh, yes,’ she taunted. ‘Way!’
On impulse he snatched the gun out of her hands, sticking it down the front of his pants with a macho grunt. ‘Satisfied?’
The girl nodded, hazel eyes gleaming. She was eighteen, but looked older. ‘Let’s go,’ she said authoritatively. It was obvious who was in charge.
‘Go like where?’ he asked, wishing she could be a bit nicer. She was always so short with him.
‘To have a blast,’ she answered airily. ‘Y’know, cruise around, get shit-faced. We’ll take your car.’
His father had recently bought him a black jeep for his sixteenth birthday. It was also a present to celebrate their return to LA after a year and a half of living in New York.
‘I dunno . . .’ he said hesitantly, remembering that tonight he was supposed to have an early dinner with his dad, but thinking that the idea of getting shit-faced with her seemed much more appealing. ‘An’ why we need a gun?’ he added.
The girl didn’t answer, she simply made chicken noises as she sauntered towards the door.
The boy followed, his eyes glued to her legs. He had a hard-on, and he knew that if he played it right, tonight might be the night he scored.
Chapter Two
Lucky Santangelo Golden stood up behind her enormous art-deco desk in her office at Panther Studios, then she stretched and yawned. It had been a long hard day, and she was beyond tired. However, the day was not over yet because tonight she was being honoured at the Beverly Hilton Hotel for her work towards raising money for AIDS research.
As owner and head of Panther Studios, Lucky was in an extremely high-profile position, so she had no choice but to accept the limelight gracefully.
The problem was that she was not looking forward to being the centre of attention. It wasn’t as if she’d asked to be honoured – the evening had been thrust upon her, making it impossible to refuse.
She reached for a candy bar, nibbled hungrily on the sweet chocolate. Nothing like a sugar rush to get me through the next few hours, she thought ruefully. Michael Caine’s famous Hollywood quote kept running through her head: ‘In a town with no honour, how come everyone’s always being honoured?’ Yeah, right on, Michael! she thought, with a wry grin. But how does one avoid it?
Lucky was a slender, long-limbed woman with an abundance of shoulder-length jet curls, dangerous black-opal eyes, full, sensual lips and a deep olive skin. Hers was an exotic beauty mixed with a fierce intelligence. A brilliant businesswoman, she’d been running Panther Studios for eight years, making it one of the most respected and successful studios in Hollywood. Lucky had a knack for greenlighting all the right movies and picking up others for distribution, which always did well. ‘You’re Lucky in more ways than one,’ Lennie was forever telling her. ‘You can do anything.’
Lennie Golden, her husband. Whenever she thought about him her face brightened. Lennie was the love of her life. Tall, sexy, funny – yet, most of all, he was her soulmate, and she planned on staying with him for ever, because they were truly destined to be together and after two previous marriages she was finally totally happy. Lennie and their children – seven-year-old Gino, named after her father, and adorable eight-year-old Maria – satisfied her completely.
And then there was her fifteen-year-old son Bobby from her marriage to the late shipping magnate Dimitri Stanislopoulos. Bobby was so handsome and adult-looking – over six feet tall and extremely athletic. And there was Bobby’s niece, Brigette, whom Lucky considered her godchild. Brigette lived in New York where she was a supermodel. Not that she needed the money because she was one of the richest young women in the world, having inherited a Greek shipping fortune from her grandfather, Dimitri, and her mother, Olympia, who’d died tragically of a drug overdose.
Tonight, Steven Berkeley, Lucky’s half-brother, was picking Lucky up, because Lennie was on location downtown, directing Steven’s wife, Mary Lou, in a romantic comedy. Lennie had once been an extremely successful comedian and movie star, but since his kidnapping ordeal several years ago he’d given up performing in front of the camera. Now he concentrated solely on writing and directing.
The movie he was shooting with Mary Lou – a talented and successful actress – was not for Panther. Both he and Lucky had decided not to provide any opportunity for snide rumours of nepotism. ‘If I’m doing this, I’ll do it on my own,’ he’d said. And, of course, he’d succeeded, just as she’d known he would.
Tonight she was going to make an announcement at the end of her speech – an announcement that would blow everyone away. She hadn’t even told Lennie about it – he would be as surprised as everyone else and, she hoped, pleased. Only her father, Gino, knew what she was planning to say. Feisty old Gino, eighty-seven now, but still a man to be looked up to and admired.
Lucky adored Gino with a fierce passion; they’d been through so much together – including many years when they hadn’t spoken at all. Now their closeness was legendary, and Lucky always went to him first when it came to making decisions. Gino was the smartest man she knew, although she hadn’t always felt that way about him.
Oh, God! What a chequered past they shared – from the time he’d married her off to a senator’s son when she was barely sixteen, to the years they hadn’t spoken while he was out of America as a tax exile and she’d taken over his Las Vegas hotel empire.
Gino Santangelo was a self-made man who had power, charisma, and quite a way with women. Women adored Gino, they always had. Even now he still knew how to charm and fltter. Lucky remembered her adopted uncle, Costa, telling her all about the infamous Gino when he was a young man. ‘His nickname was Gino the Ram,’ Costa had confided, with an envious chuckle. ‘That’s ’cause he could have any woman he wanted, an’ did. That is, until he met your dear mother, God rest her soul.’
Maria. Her mother. So beautiful and pure. Taken from her when she was a child. Brutally murdered by the Bonnatti family.
Lucky would never forget the day she’d run downstairs to find her mother floating on a raft in the family swimming-pool. She was five years old, and the memory had stayed with her for ever – as vivid as the day it happened. She’d sat by the side of the pool staring at her exquisite mother, spreadeagled on the raft in the centre of the pool. ‘Mama,’ she’d murmured quietly. And then her voice had risen to a scream, as she’d realized her mother was no longer with her. ‘MAMA! MAMA! MAMA!’
Discovering her mother’s body at such a young age had coloured her entire life. After the tragedy, Gino had become so protective of her and her brother, Dario, that living at home in Bel Air was like being shut away in a maximum security prison. When she’d finally been sent abroad to a boarding-school in Switzerland, she’d immediately rebelled and turned into a wild child, running away with her best friend, Olympia Stanislopoulos, to a villa in the South of France where they’d wreaked havoc and partied non-stop. Oh, yes, those were crazy times. Her first taste of freedom, and she’d lived every minute of it, until a sour-faced Gino had tracked her down. Shortly after that he’d decided she would be better off married than careening around on the loose. So he’d made a deal with Senator Peter Richmond to marry her off to his son, the extraordinarily unsexy Craven. What a trap that had turned out to be.
When she thought about it, Lucky realized that her life had been a series of incredible highs and lows. The highs were so utterly amazing: her three beautiful, healthy children; her marriage to Lennie; the success of running a major Hollywood studio; not to mention her earlier achievements in Vegas and Atlantic City where she’d built hotels.
The lows were too dreadful to contemplate. First, the murder of her mother, then the brutal killing of her brother, Dario, and her beloved Marco getting shot in Las Vegas. Three devastating tragedies, for which she’d extracted her own form of revenge.
B
ut she had survived. Gino had taught her that survival was everything, and she’d learned the lesson well.
The intercom on her desk buzzed, and her assistant informed her that Venus Maria was on the line. She hurried to pick up. Not only was Venus Maria an adored and controversial superstar, she was also Lucky’s best girlfriend.
‘What’s up?’ Lucky asked, flopping down in the leather chair behind her desk.
‘Good question,’ Venus replied. ‘Here’s the major problem – I have nothing to wear tonight.’
‘Boring.’
‘I know you’re not into fashion like I am, but I’ll be photographed from here to Puerto Rico, and you know I can’t look ordinary.’
Lucky laughed: Venus was such a drama queen. ‘You? Ordinary? Never!’
‘Nobody understands,’ Venus grumbled. ‘The expectations are enormous.’
‘What expectations?’ Lucky asked, picking up a pen and doodling on a pad.
‘I’m a superstar, dear,’ Venus announced, tongue in cheek. ‘A superstar who’s supposed to alter her look daily. I mean – for Chrissake – how many times can I change the colour of my hair?’
‘What colour is it now?’
‘Platinum.’
‘Then wear a black wig. Clone me – we can go as twins.’
‘You’re no help,’ Venus wailed. ‘I need assistance.’
The last thing Venus needed was assistance. She was one of the most together and talented women Lucky had ever met. At thirty-three, Venus was not only a major movie star, she was also a video and recording superstar, with legions of fans who worshipped her every move. Everything she did still made headlines, even though she’d been doing it for over a decade.
Several years ago she’d married Cooper Turner, the ageing but still extremely attractive movie star. After a shaky start, their marriage had taken, and they now had a five-year-old daughter named Chyna. In addition to the joy of a daughter, Venus Maria’s career was going great. Ever since being Oscar-nominated for her cameo role in Alex Woods’s Gangsters, she’d been able to pick and choose her roles.
‘It’s not that simple,’ Lucky had replied. ‘You have to keep trying. Pick a goal and go for it.’
‘I guess that’s what you did,’ Venus had said. ‘I mean, considering you started off with a father who hated you and—’