Passion and Scandal (20 page)

"The whole thing's kind of knocked me for a loop," she said, trying for a semblance of her usual light-hearted flippancy.

Steve was unbearably moved by her courage. Emotion swelled in his chest, threatening to choke him. "I love you," he said, wanting to give her something to replace what she'd lost.

Willow's eyes widened until they threatened to fill up her whole face. Of all the things he could have said to her, that was the last thing she had expected. Coming on top of all the other shocks she'd had in the last few days, it was almost too much to take in. "I don't know what to say," she murmured, finally, unable to give him anything but the truth.

"You don't have to say anything," he said. "I just wanted you to know."

He stood then, and set her on her feet in the tub. "We'd better go in and get dressed," he said, as casually as if he hadn't just made one of the most incredible declarations she'd ever heard. "Zeke Blackstone is expecting us at four and we have to stop by your hotel first and get you checked out."

* * *

Zeke Blackstone was something of a Hollywood legend. He'd come to California from off Off Broadway in New York at the age of twenty-two, lured by promises of fame and fortune on the silver screen. His sizzling performance in his very first movie had fulfilled that dream, catapulting him into the movie star stratosphere, and he'd resided there ever since. Now, at age forty-seven, he was in his prime, both professionally and personally, directing and producing as well as playing romantic leads opposite women less than half his age.

He lived with his wife, television star Ariel Cameron, in a house just off of the Pacific Coast Highway in a private and very exclusive beach community formally known as the Malibu Beach Colony but called, simply, The Colony, by those in the know.

Expecting breathtaking views of the ocean, fabulous shopping arcades where the rich and famous bought their Armani, Evian, and imported goat cheese, and million-dollar estates, Willow was disappointed in the actuality. The only views of the Pacific were those that could be glimpsed between buildings and foliage, the shopping was mostly ordinary strip malls, and the estates—if they were there at all—were hidden behind security gates and tall, weathered fences.

"Are you sure this is it?" Willow asked as they turned down a narrow road that supposedly led to Zeke Blackstone's beachfront home.

Steve gave her a knowing glance. "Trust me," he said as he nosed the Mustang into a wide blacktop driveway in front of what looked like a simple suburban garage. Tall overgrown hedges that appeared not to have seen a pair of gardener's shears in months rose up on both sides of the driveway, blocking the view of the beach and partially obscuring the walkway to the narrow set of steep wooden steps leading up to the front door—which was weathered and blue and badly in need of paint.

Ariel Cameron answered the door herself, looking as cool and elegant as she did on television. Her hair was as pale and golden as it appeared on TV, worn sleek and smooth with the ends turning under just before they reached her shoulders. Her eyes were big and blue, her slender figure was stunning.

She was barefoot, wearing a pair of slim white jeans, a white cotton tunic sweater and tiny pearl studs in her ears. A diamond the size of a small ice cube glittered on her left hand.

"Zeke's out on the deck," she said when they had introduced themselves. "Please, come in."

They followed her through a house that lived up to every expectation Willow had ever had about the way movie stars lived. The foyer was larger than her Portland living room, triangular in shape, with an abstract metal chandelier hanging from the apex of the canted cathedral ceiling and a three-panel Andy Warhol silk screen of Ariel Cameron's fabulous face on the wall.

The living room was two steps down, the textured pale gray slate floor of the foyer giving way to smooth bleached wood. The furniture was overstuffed and oversize, big cushy sofas and chairs upholstered in white, cream, and ivory with dozens of fat pillows in delicate, dusty shades of the palest pinks, blues, yellows, and greens. Large Turkish carpets echoed the color scheme while defining the separate conversational areas. The coffee tables were large, square and low, made of pale wood and squares of beveled glass. There was a huge fieldstone fireplace at one end of the room and a grand piano at the other, which still left enough room for a hundred people to have a party. The entire wall on the west side of the house, facing the beach, was glass.

Through it, they could see a man leaning against the railing of the wooden deck, talking on a cell phone. Ariel rapped on the glass to get his attention. He looked up and smiled, holding up one finger to indicate he'd be a moment longer, and went back to his conversation.

"Sit down, please," Ariel said, indicating the nearest conversational grouping. "I'm going to run out to the kitchen and get us all something to drink. Is wine all right or would you prefer something else?"

"Wine's fine," Steve said.

"Can I help you with anything?" Willow asked automatically, because that's the way she'd been raised.

Ariel smiled. "No, thank you. I can manage." She glanced toward the glass door as it slid open. "Here comes Zeke now."

Zeke Blackstone was as gorgeous as his wife; tall and broad shouldered, nearly as dark as Ariel was blond, with coffee brown eyes and a thick shaggy mane of hair that was just barely touched with gray at the temples. His jeans were faded and blue, his shirt was rumpled white linen and he wore battered Sperry Top-Sider deck shoes on his sockless feet. Where his wife was all cool elegance and understated sex appeal, he radiated roguish bad-boy charm and heated sexuality. He was the kind of man women lost their heads over, and Willow could easily believe every scandalous word ever written about him in the tabloids.

"Zeke Blackstone," he said, offering his hand as if he were just like plain folks. "Sit down, please." He motioned them toward the sofa, perching himself on the arm of one of the oversize chairs. "Jack Shannon left me a rather cryptic message on my answering machine yesterday about making sure I talked to you when you called," he said. "But when I called him back, he wouldn't tell me what it was about. Said it would be better if I was surprised. Writers," he said with good-natured disgust. "Always so dramatic."

He popped up from his perch as his wife came back into the room, reaching out to take the tray she carried and place it on the coffee table. "All I know is that this has something to do with a young woman who used to live at the Wilshire Arms back in
'70
."
He handed them each a glass of chilled white wine, took one for himself, and sat down next to his wife. "How can I help you?" he asked.

Willow hesitated and glanced at Ariel Cameron.

"You can ask him about old girlfriends in front of me," Ariel said with a smile. "I'm shockproof."

"Well..." The best way, Willow had found, was just to ask. Hemming and hawing wouldn't make it easier for any of them. "I was wondering if you might be my father."

Ariel Cameron might have been shockproof but her husband wasn't. He nearly spilled his wine all over himself. His wife reached out and rescued it, leaning forward to place it on the table. "Could you elaborate on that statement?" she asked calmly.

* * *

Zeke Blackstone sat staring down at the pictures Willow had handed him. "I never dated your mother," he said. "And that's God's honest truth. If it would put your mind at ease, I'd be happy to take a blood test."

"No, that would be—"

"Maybe at a later date," Steve interrupted before Willow could let the other man off the hook completely.

Willow shot him a chastising look out of the corner of her eye; to her way of thinking, the very fact that Zeke Blackstone had offered to take a blood test indicated the truth of what he'd said.

"Do you recall anything about Donna Ryan?" Steve asked. "Who she might have dated, that sort of thing?"

"She was Eric's girlfriend."

Steve and Willow looked at each other. "Eric's, not Ethan's?" Steve said, just to be sure.

"Actually..." He frowned, thinking, then shrugged. "That whole situation was a little weird. She dated Ethan a couple of times right after she moved into the Wilshire Arms, maybe even three or four times. And then she and Eric got involved. Pretty seriously, I thought."

"Do you know if they were intimate?"

"I thought so at the time but..." He shrugged. "Who really knows what goes on between two people? Later, after Eric died, I wondered about it."

"Why was that?"

"Ethan was annoyed when she started dating Eric. They almost got into a knock-down-drag-out over it. The two guys, I mean. Apparently, Ethan thought that since he'd been the one who had brought her to the Wilshire Arms, as it were, she should be his exclusive property. He wasn't happy about sharing."

"Were they?" Steve asked, elaborating when Zeke looked at him. "Sharing?"

"I don't know." He glanced at Willow, his gaze apologetic. "Maybe. It was a pretty volatile situation. And then, after Eric committed suicide, she seemed to turn to Ethan for comfort. It was like she felt guilty and Ethan was the only one who would understand. Now, you've got to take into account that I was pretty much in a blue funk myself at the time—that night changed things for everyone in 1-G—but I seem to remember them talking a lot about the lady in the mirror and how it had affected their lives and what her appearance really meant. They were very intense about it. It gave me the creeps."

"Don't tell me," Steve said dryly. "They'd both thought they'd seen her, right?"

"Oh, yeah," Zeke said easily. "Ethan did at least twice that I know of. The first time was just before he got the part on 'As Time Goes By.' The second was the night Eric died. He was—maybe still is for all I know—completely convinced that the legend is true."

Steve snorted. "No wonder our political system is going down the toilet."

Zeke laughed. "It wasn't only Ethan," he said. "Apparently, lots of people have seen her over the years. It's one of those things I'd normally discount as a product of the overactive imaginations of people who should know better, but Jack Shannon swears he and his wife saw her, too."

"Yes, he did." Steve grinned. "And that sweet-faced wife of his nearly took my head off for me when I doubted him."

Zeke laughed. "That sweet face fools a lot of people," he said. "Little Faith is a tiger where Jack is concerned."

"Have you seen the woman in the mirror?" Willow asked.

Zeke shook his head. "Not that I recall."

"I have," Ariel said.

Her husband turned to look at her. "You have? When?"

She gave him an intimate, wifely smile. "That first time we went back there together after we started 'dating' again."

"Why didn't you say anything before now?"

"It was just a fleeting glance, and I wasn't really sure I'd seen anything, so I kind of forgot about it. Hearing you talk about it now reminded me of it."

"Do you think it changed your life?" Willow asked.

Ariel shrugged. "Zeke and I are back together. If you'd asked me if I thought that would ever have happened before that day in the apartment when I saw her, I'd've said there wasn't a chance in a million. And yet—"she smiled at her husband "—here we are, happier than we've ever been."

"And you think that's due to some ghost in a mirror?" Steve scoffed.

"I don't know. Maybe. There's something almost..." Ariel waved her hand gracefully "...otherworldly about that apartment. It affects people in strange ways."

"Jack is convinced something in it brought us all back to the Wilshire Arms... to the scene of the crime, as it were," Zeke said. "Him first, so he could come to terms with his brother's suicide, and then me and Ariel." He pursed his lips, giving them a look from under his brows. "And now you. It makes a person wonder."

* * *

"It makes a person wonder about other people's sanity," Steve groused, as he paid the vendor for their ice cream. They'd stopped for dinner at a chi-chi little outdoor cafe with a view of the ocean. Afterward, instead of lingering over coffee and dessert, they opted for ice-cream cones and a walk on the beach. "How grown people can believe that kind of mystical mumbo-jumbo nonsense is beyond me."

Willow laughed at him. "What was it Jack Shannon said the other night? 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of? Or something like that." She tilted her head, licking at her ice cream where it threatened to drip down over her thumb. "Don't you believe there's more to this world than things we can hear and see and touch?"

"No," Steve said bluntly, watching her little pink tongue dart in and out, swirling around the frozen confection, lapping it up before the melting rivulets of ice cream dripped over her fingers. He knew she wasn't being intentionally provocative but... damn, she was turning him on. He passed a quick, furtive hand over the front of his jeans, giving them a quick tug to ease the pressure. "The real world is more than enough for me to deal with," he said in a strangled voice.

"Who's to say what's real and what isn't?" Willow asked, her attention focused on her melting ice cream. "Philosophers have been arguing that question for centur—Oh, your ice cream!" she exclaimed, as his double scoop of Strawberry Delight, cone and all, plopped into the sand at their feet. "Well, that's all right," she said soothingly, as if he were about five years old, "you can have some of mi—" She stopped, caught by the look in his blue eyes. It took her a moment to catch her breath. "You aren't the least bit interested in sharing my ice cream, are you?"

"Sure I am." He reached out and caught her wrist in his, holding it still while the ice cream melted. Then, his hot-eyed gaze holding hers, he brought her hand to his mouth and slowly, oh-so-slowly, licked the cool, sticky confection from her fingers.

Willow gasped and dropped her cone.

"Do you want another one?" Steve murmured, already knowing what her answer would be.

Speechless, Willow shook her head.

"Then let's go home." He grinned wickedly. "But let's get a quart of this stuff to take with us." He sucked her index finger into his mouth and drew it out slowly. "It tastes real good on you."