Adored (13 page)

Wood, rope, and nails flew everywhere as the three children tumbled through the branches of the huge sycamore. Instinctively, Hunter and Max managed to grab hold of the slippery branches as they fell. But Siena seemed to have lost all coordination, flailing wildly for support as branch after branch cracked against her fragile limbs. The two boys watched in horror as she tumbled helplessly to the ground below. Her head hit the earth with a sturdy but muffled thud. She wasn’t moving.

For some reason, Hunter found himself rooted to the spot. His brain was telling his body to move, but his body didn’t seem to be getting the message. It was like one of those dreams where the murderer was chasing you, but every time you tried to run, your legs seemed to be knee-deep in cement. He stared in horror at Siena’s limp little body.

Oh Jesus, was she dead? How could he have let this happen?

It seemed to Hunter that Max was on the ground in an instant, swinging and jumping from branch to branch like Tarzan, his lithe torso twisting to avoid the worst of the twigs and debris as he made his way down to Siena.

“Siena, wake up,” he said urgently. “It’s me, it’s Max. Can you hear me?”

He had bent low over her and was stroking her forehead with his right hand while his left felt gingerly around her neck and the top of her spine for any breakages. They had done some basic first-aid training with the Santa Monica lifeguard cadets, and he knew he must be careful not to move her. There didn’t seem to be any serious damage.

“Siena!” he shouted at her sharply, his mouth an inch from her ear.

The suddenness of his voice seemed to jolt her into consciousness. She gave an involuntary kick with her legs and opened her eyes blearily.

“Well, hello there.” Max grinned, relief and happiness flooding his face. Thank God she was okay. “You’re alive, then?”

Groggily, Siena tried to focus. Little by little, his face settled into view. She saw his thin lips splitting into the most enormous smile, revealing two rows of perfectly even white teeth. His eyes had disappeared into tiny twinkling crinkles, and his slightly floppy blond hair had fallen forward over his mud-streaked forehead. Next to Hunter, he had always looked so plain. But just for that moment, their enmity temporarily forgotten, she thought he looked . . . nice.

“Yes, Max, I’m alive,” she said hoarsely. “No thanks to you.”

But she completely forgot to scowl at him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Minnie’s brow furrowed as she perused the menu a second time. She was sitting at her favorite table at the Ivy on Robertson, a strategically placed parasol protecting her eyes and delicate skin from the glare of the midday sun.

It was a Thursday in June, three years after Siena’s fall from the tree house, and Minnie had arranged to meet Pete for lunch. He was late, as usual. She knew that her son was working particularly hard at the moment, and had a slew of new movie projects in the pipeline. Only yesterday she and Claire had had a long conference on the subject of Pete’s crazy working hours, and what could be done to persuade him to spend a little more time at home. But as far as Minnie was concerned, there was never any excuse for tardiness.

“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 floor 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.