Clearly, she had her sights set a lot higher than porno—although the money Brad was talking about was definitely enough to make your head spin—but she knew a well-connected guy when she saw one. She moved into his apartment immediately, as a stopgap measure while she hunted for a place of her own.
Six weeks, a lot of coke, and some mediocre sex later, Brad had introduced her to Duke McMahon. The rest, she felt sure, was about to become history.
On the face of it, Duke was not Caroline’s ideal catch.
For one thing, he had made it clear that he would not contemplate a divorce from his wife, Minnie, although the marriage was well known in Hollywood to be a complete sham. Duke had had countless mistresses and affairs before her, and his marriage had weathered them all, which was not a good sign.
For another, he was seriously old, even by Caroline’s standards. Though he was by no means the least attractive of the many men she had slept with, he was already sixty-four, and physically things could only go downhill from there.
Despite her calculated approach to relationships, Caroline still enjoyed good sex. Brad’s ineptly enthusiastic efforts over the past few weeks had been absolute torture. If she were going to devote years of her life to a man, which financially she knew she must, then it had to be someone she could at least tolerate in bed. Duke was a more than adequate lover now, but in five years’ time his ancient balls might be flapping against his bony, arthritic knees, and frankly she doubted if she could stomach that.
On the other hand, Duke was rich beyond even Caroline’s wildest dreams. On their very first date, he had picked her up in his exquisite blue 1956 Ferrari and driven her down to his private cove in Malibu.
“Close your eyes,” he said as he led her, trembling with excitement, down the sandy track that wound from the road to the beach. She could feel the silky dryness of the sand between her toes as she stumbled blindly along in her open-toed stilettos. “Okay. You can open them now. Take a look.”
Caroline gasped with delight. The white sand of the beach was illuminated by a combination of pale blue-white moonlight and the warmer, rich orange glow of hundreds of candles, some flickering softly in the sand at her feet, others hanging from the boughs of the cedars that grew along the shore.
An oversize midnight-blue blanket had been spread out at the water’s edge. It was laid with brilliantly polished antique silver and shimmering crystal glasses, as well as a picnic of such delicious-looking food—whole cooked lobsters, tomato and basil salad, peaches in Armagnac, perfect little individual chocolate soufflés—she felt her mouth literally begin watering at the sight of it. Beside the picnic were two large ice buckets half submerged in the sand, each containing two bottles of champagne.
Duke’s right-hand man, Seamus, looking half decent for once in a crisp white linen suit, stood at a respectful distance, ready to wait on the two of them hand and foot.
“Do you like it?” asked Duke.
“Do I like it?” Caroline looked at him incredulously. “Duke, I have never seen anything quite so beautiful, and quite so romantic, in my entire life.”
She meant it, too. She felt like a queen, adored and indulged, and she hadn’t so much as kissed him yet. At that moment, she was quite sure that she could love Duke McMahon, should she ever find herself called upon to do so.
“Well, I’m glad,” he said, helping her down onto the blanket and signaling to his old friend to crack open the champagne. “A beautiful girl like you deserves nothing less. In fact”—he fumbled in his inside jacket pocket and produced a long black box—“I bought you a little something that I thought might complement your beauty this evening. It’s just a token. But I hope you like it.”
It was a struggle for her to maintain her composure, to slowly take and open the box rather than snatching it out of his hand like an overexcited kid at Christmas. Inside was an obscenely large diamond and platinum necklace.
Caroline, who knew a thing or two about diamonds, could see in a glance that it must be worth upwards of fifteen thousand dollars. Tentatively, lovingly, she stroked the largest of the stones. “Oh, Duke,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion. “Oh my God.”
He lifted the necklace, fastening it gently around her neck. “You like it?”
Caroline kissed him quickly on the mouth. “I love it.”
“Good. Now take off your dress.”
“I’m sorry?” She’d been so mesmerized by the incredible diamonds, she wondered if she could have heard him correctly.
“No need to be sorry,” said Duke. “I want you naked. Please undress. You can keep the necklace on.”
Caroline’s eyes narrowed. She was not used to being spoken to like that, and she wasn’t at all sure she liked it. Who the hell did he think he was? She wasn’t some prostitute, paid to be at his beck and call. Her face flushed with anger and embarrassment. She noticed that Seamus had not moved but stood just a few feet away, impassively watching her reaction.
“How dare you speak to me like that?” she demanded, fumbling angrily at the clasp at her neck and standing up to leave. “I don’t care how fucking famous you are, or how many necklaces you can afford, nobody speaks to—”
“Oh, don’t you?” Duke interrupted her midflow. “Don’t you care?”
He had grabbed her arm quite forcefully, but Caroline saw with surprise that he was smiling, his eyes full of warmth and mischief. All of a sudden she felt confused. Why was he laughing at her? Was this some kind of joke?
“Well excuse me, Ms. Berkeley, but I happen to think that’s a crock of shit.”
“I beg your pardon?” She was doing her best to sound shocked.
“I think you care very much how many necklaces I can afford. In fact, Caroline my darling, I think we both know that’s exactly why you’re sitting here, about to have dinner with an old man like me.”
“No it isn’t. Of course it isn’t,” said Caroline.
But she sat back down.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” continued Duke. “But I also don’t intend to be played for a fool. I thought I could save us both a lot of time by laying a few cards on the table right now—so that we can both enjoy the first of what I hope will be many, many pleasant evenings together.”
She looked at him warily. “Go on.”
“I bought you that necklace because I thought you would look beautiful in it, and you do. And because I knew you would like it.”
“I do like it.” Caroline couldn’t resist touching the exquisite stones again as she listened to him. “Very much.”
“I know you do. And I know there are a lot of other things you would like. Things that I can give you. That I would like to give you.” She smiled at him encouragingly. “But there is also something that you can give me. Something that I want very badly.”
Caroline’s face fell. She drew her cashmere stole more tightly around her shoulders.
“Now, don’t you look at me like that,” said Duke. “You aren’t Pollyanna, and you sure as hell aren’t some innocent little virgin either.”
Despite herself, Caroline gave him a conspiratorial smile.
“That’s better,” said Duke. “You’re a smart girl, Caroline. You know what you want, and I like that. I like it a lot. We both know I can give you what you want. But I’m not a young man anymore, kiddo, and I don’t like wasting my time. I didn’t bring you here tonight for conversation.”
Without breaking eye contact, he reached out and touched her breast through the cotton of her dress, gently rolling the nipple between his thumb and forefinger.
Caroline thought about it for a split second but did not protest. Seamus had tactfully withdrawn to the other side of the cedar trees, but Caroline knew he was probably watching them, the dirty old sod. This thought, combined with Duke’s practiced touch, sent a sudden jolt of lust right through her body.
“Now, please,” he resumed, “if it isn’t too much to ask, I’d like you to take off your dress.”
A couple of wee
ks later, he had made her a proposal that was too good to refuse, even if it didn’t involve matrimony. She was to become his exclusive consort for the rest of his life, in return for which he would not only bankroll her lifestyle but make her a generous provision in his will. That meant a worst-case scenario of a lifetime of financial security as his mistress. Plus, she realized, it would give her ample time to work on undermining Minnie.
After all, if there was one thing Caroline felt secure in, it was her ability to manipulate a besotted old man.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Hey, mama, what’s goin’ on?”
Minnie did a double take. Good God! Perhaps the light was playing tricks on her, but there appeared to be a large semi-naked Negro sprawled out on her antique Italian chaise longue. Other than his state of undress, the young man was remarkable for a huge springy halo of black hair that bobbed up and down as he spoke, and for the long, fat, and disintegrating marijuana cigarette that he was holding perilously close to her Chinese silk cushions. But worse even than that, this dreadful, uncouth apparition seemed to be trying to enter into conversation with her.
“Beautiful place you got here, know what I’m sayin’?” he continued, littering ash across the furniture and carpet as he attempted an appreciative sweeping gesture with his huge black arm.
“Thank you,” said Minnie icily. “We like it. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to tell me who you are, young man, and what you’re doing in my drawing room?”
“He’s with me.”
A very well-spoken young Englishman had appeared in the doorway and strode confidently over to Minnie, taking her hand and kissing it before she had a moment to protest. “Edward Lyle, at your service.”
He couldn’t have been much over twenty-one, thought Minnie, but he dressed with an impeccable, gentlemanly English grace that made him seem older. He also had the self-assurance, bordering on arrogance, that so many public-school-educated young people from his country seemed to possess. Minnie hated this in Caroline, but found herself quite prepared to be charmed by it in the case of this handsome young fellow.
“This is Skinny.” He gestured to his friend. “Stand up, man, show Mrs. McMahon some respect.” Skinny looked at him incredulously but obligingly lifted his massive frame up off the chaise longue. Edward continued. “We’re both old friends of Caroline’s. She said it wouldn’t be a problem for us to hang out at the pool today, which was damn decent of her.”
Minnie’s interested smile evaporated. Any friend of Caroline’s was an enemy of hers.
“Please don’t worry, Mrs. McMahon,” Edward tried to reassure her. “We’re very self-sufficient, aren’t we, Skin? We won’t get under your feet.”
At that moment two strikingly beautiful girls in matching minuscule red Dior bikinis came skipping into the room, their bare feet still wet from the swimming pool. One of them headed straight to Duke’s wet bar, where she proceeded to empty the entire fridge of olives and potato chips, cramming the food in her mouth as though she hadn’t eaten for weeks.
“Munchies,” she mumbled at Minnie through a mouthful of chips, before collapsing into a wet heap of giggles all over a pink suede armchair. Meanwhile, her friend had flung herself at Skinny, who collapsed back onto the chaise longue so hard that it gave an ominously audible crack.
“Oh, no,” said Minnie, flapping her arms frantically in a vain attempt to persuade him to move. “Get up! You’re going to break it!”
But before a disorientated Skinny had a chance to move, there was more sickening splintering. Minnie could only look on in horror as one of the legs gave way completely. Surveying the wreckage, she wanted to scream, but a lifetime of self-control prevented her from doing so. Instead, she addressed herself as calmly as she could to Edward, who seemed to be the only member of the group in something like full command of his senses.
“Well, Mr. Lyle, I think it might be better if you and your friends went outside to play, don’t you? I’m sure Mr. McMahon would appreciate it if at least some of his furniture were still intact by the time he got home.”
“Yes, yes, of course, I’m . . . we’re all terribly sorry, aren’t we?”
Skinny looked slightly shamefaced, but both girls had given in to the uncontrollable laughter of the irreparably stoned. None of them looked terribly sorry to Minnie.
“Just go, please,” she said.
Mercifully, they did.
Once the group had shuffled back out to the pool, she sank down wearily to her knees and examined the mahogany shards that were all that was left of the leg. Honestly, this really was the last straw. She would tackle Duke about it tonight, once and for all. Having that dreadful girl here was surely bad enough, without allowing her appalling, insolent, platform-shoe-wearing, drug-taking, long-haired hippie friends to treat the estate like a hotel.
Caroline’s first year at Hancock Park had been a living nightmare for Minnie. It was not her husband’s infidelity that bothered her so much as Caroline’s attempted assumption of the role of lady of the house. Only last week, Minnie had caught her haranguing Conchita in a most unladylike manner over some trifling offense or other. (She was sure that Duke must be wrong about Caroline’s aristocratic lineage. Minnie had come across hobos in Connecticut with better language.) Day after day, Caroline filled the house with her brash, braying English friends, who thought nothing of eating Minnie out of house and home, or lounging all around the house in their frightful bell-bottoms, smoking marijuana. And they didn’t restrict their shocking behavior to the public rooms either. Heavens alone knew what went on up in the south-wing bedrooms, between her beautifully laundered linen sheets!
So far, whenever Minnie had complained to Duke about these riff-raff, he had been noncommittal. He had held back from openly supporting his girlfriend over his wife, but neither would he reprimand Caroline, or do anything to ease the almost unbearable tension caused by her increasingly insensitive and tactless behavior. Minnie suspected, accurately, that he derived a powerful sense of pleasure from watching the friction between the two of them.
Nevertheless, she thought as she grimly swept up the splinters of wood, she would tackle him again about it this evening. It was her fifty-fifth birthday tomorrow and a celebration dinner had been planned for tonight, a long-standing McMahon tradition. Perhaps, on her birthday, he would be in a slightly more receptive mood.
Duke returned home earlier than usual and was relieved to find the house free of hangers-on. He had taken to spending increasing amounts of time away from home recently, either at the country club in Bel Air or at mysterious “meetings.” He found Caroline’s parasitic social set every bit as grating as his wife did, and intensely disliked returning to a houseful of strangers—although he was damned if he was going to give Minnie the satisfaction of admitting as much to her. Despite his lack of solidarity with her over Caroline’s friends, his absences nevertheless encouraged Minnie, who hoped he might be beginning a new affair. The sooner he tired of Caroline, the better for all of them.
Strolling into his study, he poured himself three fingers of bourbon and sank into his leather armchair, eyes closed, savoring this rare moment of peace. It was soon to be shattered, however, by the unwelcome arrival of an apoplectic Pete.
“I suppose it’s too much to expect that you actually remembered Mother’s birthday?” Pete himself was laden with ostentatiously wrapped packages, a walking tower of bright metallic paper and bows.
Duke found few things in life more objectionable than his son’s belligerent, whining voice, so full of hatred and yet its owner so utterly lacking the courage to act upon it. He opened one eye momentarily, then closed it again before speaking. “Well, good evening to you, too, Peter.”
“You forgot again, didn’t you?”
“I did not forget.” Duke looked his son in the eye. “I never forget your mother’s birthday. I sometimes choose not to celebrate it, which is a different thing.”
A vein in Pete’s jaw had begun to twitch, as though his body were ba
rely able to contain the bile and rage within. He only just managed to control himself sufficiently to set down his presents gently on the desk, rather than hurling them all violently at the old man’s face.
“This year, however, I have brought a little something for my dear wife.”
Reaching into his jacket pocket, Duke produced a ring box. Pete caught the distinctive Cambridge-blue flash of Tiffany and watched his father open it to reveal a subtle, delicately crafted band of diamonds and white gold. It was elegant, conservative—exactly to his mother’s taste.
“It’s an eternity ring. To symbolize the permanence of our joyous union.” Duke snorted mirthlessly. “For better or worse, kiddo, in sickness and in health. Whaddaya think? Will Mrs. McMahon approve?”
What the hell was he playing at? Pete couldn’t quite figure out if it was an act of gross insensitivity or more calculated spite. It didn’t occur to him that beneath his father’s cynicism and bitterness, he might still harbor any feelings of love toward his mother. As far as Pete was concerned, Duke was a monster. Even on Minnie’s birthday, he couldn’t resist trying to hurt her.
Later that evening, the birthday supper had begun unusually calmly, with everyone making an effort to suspend hostilities. Duke was oddly quiet and had even asked Minnie quite politely about her birthday plans, much to the astonishment of his children. None of them could remember the last time they had spent so civilized an evening together, and hope that Caroline might finally be on her way out was running high.
Minnie decided to wait until the main course (her favorite, rare roast beef with Yorkshire pudding) before broaching the subject of the chaise longue with Duke. After the best part of four decades together, she knew him well enough to realize that he was far more likely to be responsive to her complaints after a couple of glasses of wine.