Adored (54 page)

“You’re not fucking worth it,” he spat, standing up and turning to Muffy, who was shaking with shock by the sink. “You okay?”

She nodded mutely. She’d been peeling the potatoes and crying when Gary had wandered in and surprised her. At first he’d seemed to be genuinely offering comfort, saying how it must have been a huge shock for her, them all arriving like this and having to deal with it all on her own. But then, almost before she knew what was happening, he had started pressing himself against her till she could feel his hot, excited breath on her neck and his fat, rubbery hands reaching for her bottom. Eeeugh. Thinking about it again now made her shudder.

“That wasn’t a very smart fing to do.” Gary had staggered to his feet and was wiping away a small trickle of blood from his lip with a handkerchief. You could already see the swelling beginning to form around his mouth and chin where Henry’s punch had hit home. He was going to look terrible in the morning. “I could sue you for assault.”

“Not before I sue you for indecent assault, you little toe rag.” Henry’s eyes had narrowed to small, murderous slits. Instinctively, Gary took a step backward. But he was still smiling that smug confident smile—the smile of a man who knows he holds all the cards.

“It’s only assault if she didn’t like it. Isn’t that right, darlin’?” he leered at Muffy.

Very slowly, Henry bent down and picked up his gun, which he proceeded to point at Gary. For one brief but glorious moment, the smile withered on the fat man’s lips.

“Get out of my house.”

“Now now, ’Enry,” said Gary, still eyeing the gun warily. He didn’t think Henry would have the balls to actually use it, but you could never be 100 percent sure. “Is that any way to talk to your new landlord?”

“GET OUT!” Henry roared.

This time Gary didn’t hang around but bolted straight out the door, leaving his jacket and cell phone on the table in his ignominious haste. Henry put down the gun and shut and bolted the door behind him. He was surprised to find that his own hands were shaking.

“Oh, Henry,” said Muffy, giving way to tears at last. “What if he does sue? We haven’t got a bean to fight him with.”

Henry walked over and hugged her tightly to his chest. “He won’t,” he said. “He wouldn’t dare, not after trying it on with you like that.”

She held on to him for a moment or two, allowing herself to be comforted, pleased that he was home, that they were in this together. Then she dried her tears and, pulling away from him, said what they had both been thinking. “This is it, though, isn’t it? This is what life’s going to be like. You can punch him as much as you like. But he
is
our landlord. And nothing we say or do can ever change that.”

Henry frowned but didn’t contradict her.

“We’re stuck with him, aren’t we?” she said. “We’re stuck with him forever.”

By the time Max got back home it was almost midnight, and Henry and Muffy had long since gone to bed. His walk to the village had led him, inevitably, to the Kings Arms, where he’d been persuaded to stay for a great many more pints than was probably advisable. By closing time he was rather unsteady on his feet, and if it hadn’t been for his trusty canine companions Boris and Titus, he doubted he would have found his way home at all.

After two minutes of abortive and increasingly noisy fumbling at the front door with his keys, Freddie had finally let him in with a face like fury.

Oh fuck. The memory dawned on him through his alcoholic haze. He had promised yesterday that he would take her out to dinner in Stroud this evening. He’d just stood the poor girl up.

“Where the ’ell ’ave you been?” she demanded. “We were supposed to go out hours ago.”

Instead of apologizing, as he should have, he flew completely off the handle, his anger fueled by guilt about his own behavior as well as almost half a bottle of Scotch. “Mind your own damn business,” he bellowed at her.

Freddie, however, was not about to be bullied into silence. “Well, I’m sorry, but I theenk it ees my business, when you stand me up and you can’t even be bozzeured to call.”

Max stepped inside, and she closed the door behind him. Only her concern not to wake the entire household after their harrowing day prevented her from slamming it violently.

“It wasn’t a question of not being bothered,” he snapped back unsympathetically. “I forgot, okay?”

“Oh really?” she scoffed. “And that’s supposed to make eet okay, ees it?”

She was looking particularly foxy tonight in a tight black cashmere sweater that must have cost her a whole month’s wages, teamed with her favorite red suede miniskirt and boots. She had obviously made an effort to look her best for the date.

The red of the skirt clashed adorably with her auburn hair and with her cheeks, now flushed and rosy with anger. But Max was too guilt-blinded to be distracted by her beauty.

“I had more important things on my mind,” he said savagely, staggering into the hallway and collapsing against the wall. He noticed his name on a bright pink Post-it on the message pad by the phone and bent down to read the note. His agent in L.A. had called three more times, and could Max please call him back as soon as possible. It was urgent.

Not to me it isn’t, thought Max bitterly, crumpling up the note and dropping it in the bin.

He knew why the agent was calling. Miramax had apparently shown some interest in buying the film rights to
Dark Hearts.
Max had been in the game long enough to realize that “shown some interest” almost never translated into “paid good money for,” and he wasn’t about to get his hopes up this time. He’d ridden the hope-and-despair roller coaster for three painful years in L.A. as studios sniffed agonizingly around one after another of his projects but never came through in the end. Hollywood was an all-or-nothing town, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that meant you longed for it all but got nothing.

For all his cynicism, though, he knew that six months ago he would have been excited about the big-studio interest and rushed to return his agent’s call. But now? He didn’t know what was wrong with him. Nothing seemed urgent, or even important anymore.

He knew he was behaving appallingly toward Freddie. He had not, in fact, completely forgotten about their plans. The truth was that, subconsciously, he had known he couldn’t face sitting through an overtly romantic evening with her and had been glad of the chance to run away to the pub and escape.

“You ’ad more important things on your mind, did you? Like what?” she challenged him. Max could hear the despair and bitterness in her voice. He didn’t look up at her. “Just what were zose ozzer things, Max? ’Enry’s troubles? All zees people at the farm? Or Siena McMahon?”

Max winced.

“You can’t forget ’er, can you?” Her fear was making her spiteful. “Which is funny. Because she seems to ’ave no trouble forgetting about you.”

Max felt his heart fall into his stomach like a medicine ball and his head began to throb. He swayed unsteadily as he tried to move away from the wall. It was as if all the suppressed grief and longing of the past year were about to burst physically free from his body. The hall had started to spin.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” he shouted at Freddie. Pushing past her, he pulled open the front door again and fled into the garden, clutching his head and running for all he was worth.

“Max!” she called after him. “Max! I’m sorry. Come back!”

But he had already disappeared into the gloom.

He ran through the darkness, across the dew-wet lawn until he reached the cold concrete ground of the old farmyard. There, he sank to his knees and, pressing his palms down hard on the ground for support, began throwing up, retching and retching until it felt like not just his stomach but his soul was empty.

Then he started to cry.

Oh God.

What was he going to do? What the hell was he going to do?

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Melissa didn’t think she had ever seen anyone so angry.

When Randall arrived in Nantucket to discover that Siena had packed her things and left, he turned on the nurse in a blind fury, face flushed, eyes bulging, and demanded to know what had happened.

“Please, Mr. Stein, there’s no need for that sort of language,” she muttered, blushing as one obscenity after another tumbled from his thin lips. “Annie took her back to Los Angeles on Wednesday, just as you instructed.”

“Instructed?” He was apoplectic, and his cheeks had gone such an intense shade of puce that Melissa started to worry that he might be about to have a heart attack. “I never instructed anything! And who the fuck is Annie?”

It took almost twenty minutes for him to rein in his temper sufficiently to allow a gibbering Melissa to fill him in on what had actually happened. Frankly, it defied belief, how easily the stupid woman had been duped, allowing a complete stranger into the house after everything he’d told her about security, on the strength of a few forged papers.

Glancing through the false résumé and the letter of employment a few minutes later though, he was impressed by how much this mystery woman had managed to find out about him: She had not just known about the Nantucket house but also had access to all sorts of other information about his employees in L.A., his business trip to Asia, and, most worryingly of all, his relationship with Dr. Daniel Sanford. His initial assumption—that Annie was an undercover journalist—had been wide of the mark. This was not the work of some amateurish, snoopy hack. It was a meticulously planned sting, presumably orchestrated by someone close to Siena.

A woman.

He thought for a moment of Ines but dismissed the idea almost immediately. She wouldn’t have had the time or the money for such a thing, and as she hadn’t heard a word from Siena in months, he doubted she would have had the inclination either. Besides, Melissa had told him that Annie was blond and older. No amount of disguising could make Ines look fifty.

That was when it came to him.

“Would you recognize her?” he asked Melissa. “Annie, I mean. If I showed you a picture?”

The nurse nodded furiously, relieved to be able to give him at least one of the answers he wanted. She scurried after him into the study and watched him boot up his computer, tapping impatiently on the desk with his fat fingers until he could bring up the Google home page, then finally clicking on “image search” and typing in just two words.

Claire McMahon.

“Oh yes, there she is,” trilled Melissa happily as an image of Claire, looking awkward and formal in a blue suit at a cancer-research gala, filled the screen. “That’s her, all right. That’s Annie.”

Dr. Daniel Sanford was out in the backyard playing baseball with his two young sons when his wife called him in to take the phone call.

“It’s Randall Stein calling from the East Coast,” she yelled out at him through the patio doors that led from the palatial living room of their Beverly Hills home out onto the rolling, manicured lawn.

Frowning, he dropped the Wiffle ball and stomped back into the house. He was flying out to Nantucket tomorrow to check up on Siena, and he didn’t appreciate Randall bugging him on a weekend.

“Yeah, this is Dan,” he said grumpily, picking up the call in the relative privacy of his home office and closing the door behind him. “What’s up?”

“She’s gone.” Randall’s voice was controlled, but the fear was still unmistakable. “Her mother came here, pretending to be a nurse or something, and took her back to L.A. You know anything about this?”

“Of course not,” Sanford snapped, although his heart sank as he immediately thought of the letter he’d received last month about that relief nurse for Melissa. He’d thought it was a bit odd at the time, but he found dealing with Randall so unpleasant, and the whole business with Siena so troubling to his conscience, that he hadn’t bothered to call and double-check.

Shit. This wasn’t good news.

“We need to talk,” said Randall. “Figure out what we’re gonna do. If she goes to the press . . .”

The doctor could hear his client’s teeth grinding with stress on the other end of the line and tried to marshal his own thoughts. His wife, Cora, knew nothing about his “work” with Randall. He badly wanted to keep it that way, but that might not be possible now. He wondered how hard it would be to wash his hands of Stein, even at this late stage?

“It could get very bad,” said Randall. “We need to work out our stories, make sure there are no loose ends. I’ve got Dean Reid, my attorney, flying out here as we speak.”

“Good,” said Daniel, deciding on his strategy on the spur of the moment. “You’re gonna need him.”

“What do you mean,
I’m
gonna need him?” asked Randall, his nerves coming out in barely controlled spleen. “You’re in this up to your neck, my friend, and don’t you forget it. You treated her and you didn’t report it. And I don’t need to remind you that this wasn’t the first favor you’ve done me in return for a nice fat check. You could be struck off for gross misconduct.”

He hissed out each word like venom. Daniel’s heart was pounding—he knew there was some truth in what Randall was saying, but his only hope was to bluff it out and stand his ground.

“Bullshit,” he whispered, cupping his hand around the receiver. He didn’t want his wife listening in. “Siena gave me permission to operate. She signed the consent form. It’s up to her if she wants to go to the police, not me. I’m just the doctor. You’ve got nothing on me, Randall.”

“Listen, you piece of shit.” The cool facade had completely crumbled. Like most bullies, Randall seemed thrown to find himself being stood up to for once. “I’m nine million dollars in the red on this fucking movie. If Siena goes to the press, if she pins this on me, I’m gonna lose my financing.”

“How?” Daniel sounded maddeningly unconcerned.

“There’s a morality clause in the contract,” said Randall. “Basically, if I do or say anything that might reflect badly on the movie’s backers, they have the right to pull out. And as exec producer, I’ve underwritten the whole thing.”

“Hmmm.” Daniel paused to take in exactly what Stein was saying. “So you mean if Siena can prove you beat her to a pulp, you’ll have to pay the nine million yourself? Out of your own pocket?”

“Exactly,” said Randall. At last, Sanford seemed to be grasping the seriousness of the situation, the slimy little shit. “So you’d better get your ass on a plane tonight. Because if I go down, you’re going down with me. We need to shut her up, and we need to do it fast. For both our sakes.”

There was a long pause. This last rant smacked of desperation. Empty threats.

Finally, Daniel said: “I don’t think so, Randall. You know what? I hope that young lady
does
go to the press—and frankly, I can’t see how you think you’re going to stop her.”

There was some apoplectic wheezing from Randall’s end, but the doctor showed no mercy.

“With any luck, some of the other girls will come forward as well and show the world what a twisted, arrogant, dangerous little son of a bitch you really are.”

“You’ll regret this,” snarled Randall. “I promise you. Your career will be
over.
”

Daniel ignored him. “And as for losing the nine million dollars . . .” He paused, savoring the moment. Randall had had a hold over him for years. It felt wonderful to finally be free—whatever the ultimate cost turned out to be. “What can I say? It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

He hung up, took a deep, satisfying breath, and opened the study door, running straight into his wife. She had obviously been straining to hear the conversation, and her cheeks flushed red with embarrassment as he caught her in the act.

“Everything okay?” she asked anxiously. “You sounded stressed.”

He smiled and put an arm around her shoulders. “Absolutely,” he said. “Everything’s just fine, honey. Just fine.”

Siena felt her first misgivings the moment her plane took off from Boston.

Not about leaving Randall—she had never made a decision she was more sure of in her entire life—but about the future. Clasping Claire’s hand as the American Airlines jet roared shakily upward, she felt her euphoria about her sight and about breaking free start to dissipate and the precarious reality of her situation begin to reassert itself.

Thanks to her bruises, dark glasses, and a baseball cap, no one had given her a second glance as her mother paid for both of their last-minute first-class tickets and the two of them shuffled onto the plane unnoticed by the other weary passengers.

After living and breathing for public adulation for so long, she was amazed by how liberating it felt not to be stared at. She was also grateful for her mother’s silence.

Having called the hospital and ascertained that Pete’s condition was serious but stable—as the specialist had put it, “He’s not going anywhere, Mrs. McMahon; no need to bust a gut to get here”—Claire had relaxed a little and was able to focus on helping Siena. Sensing that her daughter needed to be alone with her thoughts, and craving her own distraction, she had immersed herself in a novel as soon as they took their seats, leaving Siena to stare out the window and try to make sense of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

She wanted to make the bastard pay.

You can get mad,
Duke used to tell her,
just as long as you get even.

But that wasn’t going to be easy. Randall was a formidable adversary, and he had a lot of power and influence in L.A. Police, lawyers, movie studios, press—they could all be bought, or pressured into taking sides and twisting the truth. He would portray her as unstable, desperate, a liar.

If you go after me, Siena, I will crush you.

He was right about one thing: She would never work again in Hollywood. Not with her ruined face and only partial sight. To that extent, he had already crushed her.

Running her index finger along the groove of her long scar, she felt her resolve hardening. Somehow she would make him pay. But the next few months were going to be tough.

Hatred and rage against Randall gave way to sadness. She leaned her head against the plastic window and quietly began to cry. But her tears were not for her lost beauty, wealth, and fame. Nor were they for all the lost time with the people she loved, her mother, Hunter, Ines. They were not even for her father, lying critically ill in his hospital bed, and the love it was too late for her to find with him.

She was crying for one person only.

And he was thousands of miles away in England, crying for her.

Three weeks later, in Manhattan, Max dragged himself up off the hard hotel bed and wearily began taking off his clothes. Perhaps a nice long bath would help?

He was actually becoming quite worried about himself. It wasn’t normal for a man his age to keep crying. Some days the sadness was so overwhelming, he was frightened to go out in public at all, in case he should suddenly burst into tears. Maybe he needed a shrink?

Lying back while the piping-hot water eased the stress and tension from his muscles, he tried to think positively about the future. After that terrible day when the developers arrived at Batcombe, he had finally realized there was no way he could go on trying to make things work with Freddie.

“You deserve better,” he told her. “You deserve a man who still has his heart to give you.”

Closing his eyes now, he could picture her brave, heartbroken face and almost started crying again. Why did he always have to hurt people?

“I don’t want better,” she said. “I want you.”

But they had both known there was nothing he could do.

After that, he’d had no real choice but to accept the offer to move to New York with the play. He had flown out two days ago to begin looking for an apartment.

He knew now that he’d been kidding himself that Henry and Muff needed him at Manor Farm. The truth was that he had needed them. He couldn’t bear to be alone with his grief and his longing for Siena.

He had thought that Batcombe, the only place other than the beach house where he had ever really been happy, might ease some of the pain. But it hadn’t. And now even that safe haven was being destroyed, turned into a battleground between Henry and Gary Ellis.

He had to get out.

Rising up out of the bath, he dried himself on one of the fluffy white hotel towels, sat down on the bed, and flicked on his cell phone to check the messages. There were two, and despite the absurdity of it, he still felt a sharp pang of hope that perhaps one of them might be from Siena.

The first was from Muffy, just “checking up” on him, as she put it. He knew she and Henry were concerned about him, and he felt guilty about adding to their worries. But he was grateful for her message all the same.

The second message was from Dorian Klein, his agent. Shit. He’d forgotten to call the guy back again. What with the move and the play, and all the shit going on in his personal life, he just hadn’t gotten around to it.

Punching in the number, he hoped Dorian wasn’t going to ask him to fly out to L.A. for some pointless meeting. To have to be that close to Siena and all his memories would be totally unbearable.

“Klein.”

Shit. He was answering his own phone now? Times must be tough.

“Hello, Dorian, it’s Max De Seville. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner.”

“Max! Jesus, man, where the fuck have you been?” He sounded genuinely stressed out, nothing like his usual slick, imperturbable self. “Angus and I have been trying to reach you for weeks.”

Oh Christ, Angus. Now that he thought of it, Max
did
remember getting a couple of calls from
Dark Hearts’
writer back in Batcombe, which he’d failed to return. Angus was on holiday in the Highlands, supposedly working on his new play, and Max had assumed he was calling about that. He liked Angus a lot, but he hadn’t had the energy to provide any sort of artistic encouragement while his own world was caving in.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly to Dorian. “I’ve had a lot going on at home. Anyway, I’m here now. So what’s up?”