“Can I get you another drink, Mrs. McMahon?” A chiseled but extraordinarily camp waiter had skipped over to her table for the third time in as many minutes, no doubt hoping that Duke would be putting in an appearance.
“No. Thank you,” said Minnie, her lips pursed disdainfully as she took another sip of mineral water. But her face lit up when she saw a harassed-looking Pete making his way through the celebrity-crammed tables toward her.
“Hello, Mother.” He kissed her cheek apologetically. “I know I’m late and I’m really sorry, but I got stuck in a meeting with Gerry and I just couldn’t get away.” Slipping his Armani jacket onto the back of his chair, he sat down and wearily unfolded his napkin. Minnie noticed that his suit pants were horribly wrinkled and his paunch was getting more pronounced. “Evian, big bottle, ice,” he barked at the disappointed waiter.
“Yes, well, never mind,” said Minnie graciously, her previous irritation melting away in the glow of her son’s presence. “You’re here now. So what’s this ‘big news’ you wanted to talk about? And why couldn’t you tell me at home?”
“Jeez, Mother, what, do I need an excuse to take a beautiful woman out to lunch these days?” Pete reached across the table for her hand and kissed it. “You’re far too beautiful to spend your life shut up on the estate, you know. You should go out more often.”
Minnie blushed happily and started to fiddle with her pearls, a sure sign of embarrassment. She never had been able to take a compliment. Living with Duke, of course, meant that she was rarely called upon to do so.
“Anyway,” said Pete, slathering butter onto a large hunk of the Ivy’s specially baked, sweet brown bread, “I wanted a chance to talk to you privately. Walls have ears, you know, especially at home. And I’m still at the earliest stages with this, right? I don’t have any proof.”
“Proof of what?” asked Minnie. “I assume we’re talking about Caroline, are we?”
Pete nodded with a mouthful of bread.
“So she’s definitely having an affair?” Minnie leaned forward excitedly. Could this finally be the break they had all been looking for? “Is it Charles?”
Pete shook his head and swallowed. “Not definitely. And try to keep your voice down. Like I told you, I don’t have proof. I’m just hearing a lot of rumors. And my guess is that Dad must be hearing ’em too.”
Minnie summoned the waiter and ordered her usual stone-crab claws. Pete opted for fried chicken but made a small concession to his arteries by going for the spinach instead of his favorite garlic mashed potatoes.
It was hard to believe that Caroline had hung on to her position as Duke’s consort and lived like a viper among them all at Hancock Park for fifteen years now. In that time, Minnie had managed to cocoon herself fairly successfully from her husband’s second resident family. She spent much of her day in her own private suite of rooms, usually taking her meals in the dining room with Laurie. Minnie found it odd that someone who purported to be aristocratic could prefer to eat in the kitchen with Seamus and the nannies, but at least this enabled her to ignore Caroline almost completely. And Minnie had her own friends, of course, and her bridge club in Beverly Hills, and the Church of the Good Shepherd on Santa Monica, where she did the flowers twice a week. Between her charities and her children, she had developed a reasonably fulfilling independent life. So much so that a casual observer might well have thought that she had not only accepted her husband’s domestic arrangements but practically forgotten about their existence altogether.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Her silent resentment of Caroline Berkeley and her son had built over the last fifteen years into a violently repressed hatred. Minnie chose never to lash out—at least not until she could be certain that any strike made against her hated rival could be ensured of success. For years she had watched Caroline like a hawk, hunting for irrefutable proof of an affair, or anything else that would bring Duke to his senses. Perhaps, she thought as the waiter refilled her water glass, she had finally found it?
But her adversary was not a fool. Caroline was fully aware how vulnerable her position was as Duke’s unmarried mistress. Just one slip could prove fatal to her security and end her pampered lifestyle, and in the past she had always gone to great lengths to maintain the appearance of fidelity and devotion to Minnie’s aged husband. Even Hunter’s existence did not guarantee her a legal share in the McMahon wealth.
Minnie watched disapprovingly as her son gobbled down his lunch at a rate that was bound to exacerbate his heartburn.
She reflected on how much it would have surprised Caroline, and probably Pete too, to discover that she and Duke still talked on a regular basis, about subjects as diverse as their children or his latest business deal. For all of the floods of betrayal, cruelty, and neglect that had flown under the bridge of Duke and Minnie’s marriage, there remained a bizarrely unbreakable connection between the two of them.
“Has he said anything to you?” asked Pete between mouthfuls of his meltingly tender chicken.
“Your father? No,” said Minnie. “No, he hasn’t. But I’m sure I would be the very last person he’d talk to if he did suspect Caroline of anything.”
“Except Caroline herself, of course.” Pete raised one eyebrow enigmatically.
“What do you mean?” asked Minnie.
“Only that if he does know something—and let’s just say he does—well, it wouldn’t be Dad’s style to confront her with it.” Pete leaned back in his chair and stretched noisily, a habit he had unconsciously picked up from Duke. “I don’t know, Mother. But I’m pretty sure she is doing Charlie. And if Dad’s heard so much as a whisper of it, then for one thing, he’ll be having her followed, and for another, when he finds out the truth, he’s going to be ruthless.”
Minnie nodded silently.
“I think he knows,” said Pete. “And I think he’s planning something.”
The restaurant was full to bursting now, and a low hum of Hollywood gossip filled the terrace. On the other side of the white picket fence, harassed-looking valets were fighting their way through a group of paparazzi who had gathered to scoop some shots of Sly Stallone. He sat two tables away from Minnie and Pete with his very beautiful redheaded manager. Some of the press had mistaken her for a new love interest, and the “paps,” as they were called, had descended on the Ivy like locusts.
“So?” asked Minnie as she polished off the last of her crab in one dainty bite, ignoring the undignified scrum of the hoi polloi around her. “What do we do about it?”
“Nothing,” said Pete. “Not yet, anyway. We sit tight. But if either of us hears anything”—he signaled to the waiter for the check—“we let each other know right away. Okay?”
“Of course, darling, that goes without saying.” Minnie smiled at her only son, always so tense, always in a rush. He and Duke were more alike than either of them cared to admit. “Won’t you stay and have a coffee with me, Petey?”
“Truly, Mother, I’d love to, but I just can’t.” He rose from his seat and handed Minnie a sheaf of twenty-dollar bills. “This could be it, you know.” He smiled, the first genuine smile she had seen on his face in months, and blew her a parting kiss. “I think we might finally have her.”
“Oh, please, Charlie, don’t! Don’t stop yet, I’m so close!”
Charles Murray felt Caroline’s marvelously taut thighs tightening around his ears till he could hear his own blood thumping through his brain. He had been licking and nibbling at her swollen clit for the best part of fifteen minutes, and although he always found it exciting watching her writhe with pleasure at his expert ministrations, he was beginning to get impatient for some pleasure of his own. He was also very aware of how dangerous it was to be doing this in the office. He forcibly pulled his head from her viselike grip and reached for the water bottle on his desk. “Baby, I’m sorry, but I need some air. It’s hot down there, you know?”
Caroline was sitting on the desk in Charlie’s corner office on the fifth floo
r of the Beverly Hills attorneys Carter & Rowe. Her demure fifties-style skirt was rucked up around her hips and her Trashy Lingerie panties had been yanked conveniently to one side. Charlie was kneeling on the carpet at eye level with her dripping crotch. His boyishly handsome face was so flushed, he looked like he’d just scored a touchdown.
“Well, all right.” She smiled down at him indulgently while absentmindedly inserting two fingers into her pussy and rubbing at herself gently with the ball of her thumb. “You can take a time-out. That’s what you call it, right, you football-playing types?”
“Right,” said Charlie between gulps of water.
“But I really need to come, darling.” Caroline looked at him beseechingly. “Please?” With her free hand, she stroked his blond hair, rather as she might a Labrador.
Charlie grinned as he stood up, his six-foot-four frame towering over Caroline like a linebacker. His perfectly toned torso was visible through his tight white shirt, now clinging to the sweat trickling down between his pecs, and his huge, ramrod-straight erection jutted out at an almost perpendicular angle through the open fly of his pin-striped suit pants. My God, he’s a fine figure of a man, thought Caroline longingly. He pushed her back onto the desk, sending notes and papers flying as he clambered on top of her, supporting himself on his forearms, with his face less than an inch above her own. She felt his quickening breath on her forehead while the tip of his penis nudged teasingly against her labia.
“You really need to come?” he laughed. “How the hell do you think I feel?”
With one swift, delicious motion, he slipped inside her, so deep that she could feel his tightened balls pushing up against her bottom with each thrust. For Caroline, at forty-five, to be able to inspire that degree of lust in such an exquisitely beautiful thirty-year-old man was the biggest aphrodisiac of all.
“Ahhh, lovely,” she sighed as yet another rush of pleasure engulfed her. Within sixty seconds, she found herself erupting into a glorious orgasm, tension and frustration flooding joyously out of her body. Charlie closed his eyes and focused on his own pleasure. Caroline gazed up at him, lost in some erotic fantasy, and felt his cock twitching involuntarily inside her before he finally came, moaning loudly and biting down on her shoulder, so intense was his own release.
“You really are lovely,” she said as they lay motionless in each other’s arms afterward, amid the wreck of Charlie’s office.
He kissed her. “So are you.”
Her relationship with Charles Murray was probably the closest thing to love that Caroline had ever experienced. She wasn’t stupid. She knew it was insanely risky, and that it had no future. Charlie was an up-and-coming young litigator at Carter’s, whose senior partner, David Rowe, was Duke’s personal attorney. The affair was complete madness. But despite herself, Caroline found herself unwilling, or unable, to give him up.
Charlie made her laugh and he made her come, two qualities that Duke had certainly possessed when the two of them first met, but which seemed to have withered with his increasing age. Statistically, Caroline realized, it was a miracle that a man of almost eighty should be able to make love to her at all. But while she still felt desired by Duke, the thrill of being dominated by such a powerful man had started to wane as the years inevitably caught up with him, and she no longer felt any excitement in his bed. In fact, since the first day she had surrendered to her growing attraction for the young lawyer who had accompanied David Rowe on his trips to the McMahon estate, she had begun to find Duke’s sexual attentions actively repellent. Lying beneath him, it was impossible not to compare the sagging skin on his back to Charlie’s broad and powerful shoulders, or his liver-spotted, sinewy arms to Charlie’s tanned and rounded biceps.
As the months went by, Caroline found herself more and more greedy for both her lover’s body and his company. And as the affair developed, she was becoming increasingly reckless.
“We have to start being more careful,” said Charlie as he hastily tucked in his shirt and smoothed down his hair, checking his reflection in the window. Caroline hated the way he could sound so businesslike and brisk almost immediately after they had made love. “Did David see you come in?”
“No.” Caroline sighed. “His door was closed. Only Marlene knows I’m here.” Marlene was the litigation department’s angel of a receptionist, a skilled keeper of secrets and turner of blind eyes. She had a particular soft spot for Charlie and would be the last person to breathe a word about their dangerous liaison to anyone. “Besides”—Caroline walked up behind him, pressing her breasts hard against his back and reaching around, brushed the back of her hand lightly against his crotch—“doesn’t it excite you just a little bit? Knowing we might get caught?”
Charlie turned and kissed her on the forehead while gently disengaging himself from her embrace. Of course the secrecy of it all turned him on. The truth was, just about everything about Caroline and their affair excited him. Charlie had always been drawn to strong, ballsy women, and Caro was the strongest and ballsiest of them all. It killed him to think of her being pawed over by that revolting old lech McMahon.
But he also understood her. Duke was Caroline’s financial security. Charlie’s career was his. And both of them were too selfish and hardheaded to contemplate throwing all that away for the sake of a few snatched hours of sex, however mind-blowing it might be. Charlie respected Caroline and he liked her—but nothing was worth losing his career over.
Moving away from her, he started tidying the piles of paper and files that littered his desk. This was no time to play games. Without warning, he hit the speakerphone. “Marlene? Charlie. Tell Mr. Levy I’ll see him in two minutes, I’m just finishing up a call here.”
A pouting Caroline picked up her purse and strode to the door.
“Aw, c’mon, honey,” said Charlie, grabbing her shoulders. “Don’t put this all on me. You don’t want to get found out any more than I do, right? Right?”
She nodded grudgingly, but didn’t trust herself to turn and look at him.
“I’m not saying it’s over.” His voice was softer now, more loving. “Just that we have to be more careful. The office is too risky, all right? So no more ‘dropping by.’” Caroline laughed. She loved being teased by Charlie. “Lovely as it was to see you, David’s not stupid. And neither is Duke, so no more long lunches up at your place either.” He walked back to his desk and flipped open a brown folder labeled “Levy.”
Caroline unlocked the door of the office and looked up and down the corridor to make sure the coast was clear before slipping on her dark glasses. “Trust me,” she whispered to an anxious-looking Charlie. “We’re fine. Duke knows nothing.”
And with that, she closed the door noiselessly behind her.
A few blocks away on one of the wide tree-lined avenues known collectively as “the flats,” Claire sat behind the wheel of her kingfisher-blue Saab, keeping the engine running in case she needed to make a quick getaway from the traffic cops who always hung around the school gates, hoping to catch some poor mother as she dashed in to collect her offspring. Parking in Beverly Hills was always a nightmare, but once the schools got out, it was outright war.
She looked at her watch, tapping her manicured fingers impatiently on the tan leather steering wheel. Five after three. The bell should have rung by now.
Normally, Leila would pick up both of the children after school, although Claire occasionally did one or two of the early-morning runs. But Hunter was going over to Max’s today and would be dropped off at home later, so she thought it might be nice for her to collect Siena herself, maybe take her for an ice cream or something on the ride home. It was a long time since the two of them had any fun time alone together.
Claire loved her daughter dearly but was acutely aware that the two of them had very little in common. Where Claire was thoughtful, patient, and calm, Siena was short-tempered, feisty, and loud. Although she had inherited her mother’s intelligence, it was the McMahon street smarts and ambition that form
ed the basis and core of her emergent personality.
From the day she was born, it was perfectly apparent that Siena was not destined to be a girls’ girl. She hated pretty dresses, dolls, or any sort of quiet creative play, always preferring to be outside climbing trees, shouting, or—best of all—playing war with Hunter, shooting at any animal, vegetable, or mineral that dared to cross her path with the cap gun Duke had insisted on buying for her. Claire never begrudged her these games, but she did begin to feel excluded. And as Siena grew ever closer to Hunter and Duke, that sense of exclusion and sadness grew.
It didn’t upset her in the same way that it upset Pete when people commented on how alike Siena was to Duke. What was the point about getting upset about something that was quite plainly and simply a fact? Siena was like him, frighteningly like him, in so many ways.
But there were also differences. Siena could be thoughtless, selfish even, and dreadfully spoiled at times. But Claire knew that her daughter was not a cruel child, not vindictive like Duke.
In his own pain at what he perceived as his daughter’s rejection of him in favor of his hated father, Pete often lost sight of that crucial distinction. But Claire never did. She wished that she and Siena had a closer relationship, of course she did. But she never blamed the child for loving her grandfather, or for being herself. Besides, hopefully as Siena got older she would develop more of an interest in the feminine things in life that Claire would be able to share with her—simple things like shopping together or getting their hair done. She was really, really looking forward to that.
Suddenly, the school doors opened and a scrum of tired, sweaty-looking boys and girls surged out into the school yard. Siena was instantly recognizable as the scruffiest of the lot, hair escaping in corkscrew ringlets from her loosened hair tie, her blue sweater torn at the neck (not again, thought Claire), and her battered old Snoopy bag being dragged along the concrete like a sack of coal.