Lovers and Liars (6 page)

The man looked up, and their eyes met.

Belinda had run.

6

E
meralds went so well with red.

Abe would certainly prefer the emeralds.

Yes, she would wear the emeralds with the red Oscar de la Renta. Satisfied with her decision, Nancy Glassman paused in front of a full-length mirror in the master suite of
her Trump Tower penthouse apartment to study her reflection. Everyone told her she was a stunning woman, that she looked ten years younger than her forty-eight years. When Nancy looked at her reflection, she saw the beginnings of faint wrinkles around her eyes and on her forehead instead of the perfectly sculpted oval face framed by shoulder-length dark blond hair. For the hundredth time, she wondered if it was time to have her eyes done.

“Mrs. Glassman,” a uniformed maid said, standing in the doorway. “Phone call, ma’am.”

It was Belinda.

“Oh, hello, darling. This is a surprise.” As always, her pulse started to race. Her brow gathered dampness. She felt warm. She put one hand over the mouth of the receiver. “Ingrid, would you get me a glass of wine, please, and turn up the air conditioner.” The maid left. “What were you saying, dear? I missed that.”

“I have some really good news,” Belinda said.

It was nearly impossible to hear her daughter. There was loud, raucous background music at Belinda’s end. Unmistakably, she was calling from a bar. And Nancy felt a sinking feeling—after all, her daughter never called.

“I sold a screenplay. In fact, I just put my John Hancock on the dotted line this morning.”

“How wonderful,” Nancy said, her tone gushing too much, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. She never could, not with Belinda. “How very, very wonderful, dear.” Frantically she tried to think of something else to say.

There was a pause. “Lester sold it for three hundred and fifty grand, Mom.”

Money was one thing Nancy understood very well, and this gave her and her daughter a common ground on which to meet. She seized the opening. “Oh, my! So much for a movie?”

“It’s the going rate, pretty much,” Belinda said. “The news gets even bet—”

“Thank you, Ingrid. What, dear?”

“The news gets even better …”

Ingrid was pointing at her watch. “You have to get dressed for the party, Mrs. Glassman.”

Nancy nodded, feeling guilty relief. She tuned in once more to her daughter, who was now saying something about production. “That’s very nice, dear.” She sipped her wine, not really understanding what Belinda was talking about—but why should she? When she didn’t understand her daughter at all. Maybe the diamonds would go better with the taffeta. Everyone was wearing emeralds this season.

“And Jackson Ford is going to star in it, Mom. He’s one of the hottest properties right now.”

Her heart actually skipped a beat. Then it began pounding very hard, so hard that Nancy could feel the reverberations throughout her entire body. She didn’t know how she managed to speak at all, much less in a normal tone. “That’s very nice, Belinda.”

“I called Abe.” It was a flat statement.

Now Nancy was truly perspiring. Jackson Ford. With supreme effort, she thrust him from her foremost thoughts. She could just imagine what the conversation between her daughter and her husband had been like—and she couldn’t handle it, not now. She took a long sip of wine. “Dear, I’m running late. I have to get dressed for a charity cocktail party that your father and I are going to.”

“Right,” Belinda said. “But just for the record, do you know he couldn’t say one fucking nice thing to me?”

“He’s very proud of you,” Nancy managed.

“Right. Look, Mom, forget it, I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not fair for me to put you between us. Go to your party and have a good time.”

“Call me tomorrow,” Nancy told her, sweat gathering between her breasts. “Belinda, I am proud of you. I—”

“Yeah.” The phone went dead.

Nancy hung up and wiped the dampness from her brow. She noticed her hand was trembling slightly. She was having a distinctly bad feeling, like an aftertaste, but this time it wasn’t because her daughter made her anxious or because constant the battle of wills between her daughter
and husband made her even more anxious. She took another sip of wine in an attempt to calm down.

She didn’t understand her daughter. Her daughter was twenty-eight, incredibly beautiful, with a figure to match—and unmarried. With no interest in the institution, and no interest in children. She spent her days writing her screenplays and running, cycling, and swimming. What kind of life was that? She should never have moved to California. It was such a waste. With her background and the wealth that would one day be hers, she could make a truly good marriage. She could have her choice of rich men, sons of Abe’s friends. What was wrong with Belinda?

It was terrible, but she didn’t know her own daughter. No one did. She was so independent, such a loner, and to Nancy it seemed that she led a very lonely life. Yet it didn’t seem to bother her. If she had any friends, Nancy had never met them and Belinda didn’t talk about them. Even as a child she had been reclusive, self-sufficient, and introverted.

Nancy didn’t even know if there were men in her daughter’s life now, boyfriends. She didn’t really want to know. Not until one of them became her fiancé. Then Nancy would be overjoyed and so would Abe, who wanted nothing more than a grandson—and soon.

It was hard to believe that Abe had let her move away. But Belinda was one of the few people Abe had never been able to control. Not outwardly anyway. When Abe and Belinda clashed, it was head-on, like two battering rams. At least since Belinda had moved west, things seemed to have calmed down. Abe, surprisingly, didn’t seem to worry. He had said, “She’ll be back. Odds are a million to one she’ll make it as a screenwriter. She’ll be back.”

As if he wanted her to fail.

Nancy didn’t want Belinda to fail, but she would have loved her to move back to New York. As the saying went, it was never too late; she had a desperate need to get to know her daughter. But every time she was around her she was so afraid Belinda would reject her that she couldn’t think straight. She couldn’t seem to say the right things and always had the feeling that Belinda looked down on her.

Once, a long time ago, Belinda had been very, very angry with her—as only a young child whose illusions are shattered can be. Nancy hoped that incident was too far in the past to affect their relationship now—but if she dared to think about it, things really had never been the same since.

Which made her think about
him
.

She absolutely would not think about Jack Ford and everything that went along with him.

He had ruined her life.

Nancy was not a vindictive woman, but if Jackson Ford were dead, it would be completely just.

7

A
be glared at his wife when she opened the door to his library, a vision in red taffeta and glittering emeralds that he was oblivious to.

“Abe?”

He slammed down the phone. “What is it, Nancy? Dammit, I’m trying to get through on an important call!”

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to tell you I’m ready,” she murmured, backing out and closing the door behind her.

Abe picked up the receiver again. Where the fuck was Majoriis? He had been trying to reach him all day—ever since he had spoken with his daughter on the phone. He was furious, coldly and ruthlessly furious.

But it wasn’t too late.

It was never too late.

There was no way that
Outrage
deal would reach culmination. One way or another he’d stop it.

It was hard to get a handle on which disturbed him more, which disaster was the priority to prevent. Did that fucking son of a bitch Ford think he had forgotten him? If
that little prick thought he was going to get the better of him, he had another fucking think coming. “Pick up, damn you!” Abe shouted into the ringing phone.

And if Belinda thought she was about to become some Hollywood dingbat writer, she had another think coming, too.

He hadn’t spent his entire lifetime building up Glassman Enterprises into the billion-dollar empire it was, just for Uncle Sam to take it all when he died—nor did he intend to give it away to charities. Damn Belinda anyway, for being the most stubborn broad he’d ever encountered. But there was one thing Abe truly relished, and that was a good fight.

Ford would be easy.

Belinda was another story.

But she was his daughter, right? If he’d ever had any doubts—and seventeen years ago, learning the truth about his wife had given him more than a few of those—they’d long since been laid to rest. She was his daughter, all right. There was no mistaking that. She obviously intended to defy him, out of sheer perversity, until the day he died. Abe knew that was why she was living in that shack in California, trying to make it as a writer,
under a different name
. Just to shove it to him. But—and Abe had to smile—little did she know she was already on the path he had chosen for her. He was going to get his grandson yet.

He toyed with the invitation on his desk in front of him. He’d been to hundreds, no, thousands, of parties. Rosalie had already RSVPed his regrets. Abe smiled. Tomorrow she would call and change that. He was going. Not only was he going to go to this North-Star affair, he was going to bring his wife.

He dialed again.

“Hello?”

“Ted?”

“Yeah.”

“This is Abe.”

“Abe! This is a surprise. Wait—what’s wrong?” A note of anxiety had entered the North-Star executive’s voice.

“I just heard North-Star picked up a new screenplay for Ford.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck the deal, Ted.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Fuck that deal. I don’t want Ford doing
Outrage
. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.”

“Abe, the contract’s been signed.”

“Has there been any financial transaction?”

“The check was handed over at the signing, with a partial holdback, conditional upon revisions.”

“Shit,” Abe said, but there were other ways to accomplish what he wanted, so he changed focus. “Just when the hell did Ford sign with North-Star?”