Adored (6 page)

William removed a piece of steak and kidney pie from between his teeth and ran his fingers through his thinning sandy hair. God, he was unattractive, a sort of weaker, scrawnier version of George. “I don’t think I really need to spell it out for you, do I?”

“Well actually, William, yes, I think you probably do,” she said. She was getting thoroughly fed up with his mealy-mouthed insinuations. If he had something to say, why didn’t he damn well say it?

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Caroline.” He put down his knife and fork and lowered his voice to what he hoped was a discreet whisper. “You aren’t married. More to the point, he
is
married. Just because you managed to pull the wool over Pa’s eyes doesn’t mean that the rest of the world doesn’t know what you’re up to. I’m sorry, but it’s just not on.”

Caroline let out a short mirthless laugh, loud enough for the two old buffers at the table next to them to turn and give her a filthy look. She ignored them. “Just listen to yourself, would you? ‘It’s just not on.’” William flushed as she loudly mimicked his hectoring tone. “Have you any idea how pompous you sound? You’re ridiculous, William, quite ridiculous, you and George. It’s 1967, in case you haven’t noticed, and I’m hardly the first woman to be having an affair. Besides, this has nothing to do with my morality, does it? You just don’t like Spyros because he’s Greek, and he’s older than me, and because he’s a self-made man.”

“Nouveau riche you mean?” William sneered.

“Well, better nouveau riche than stinking bloody poor, William.” Flinging her napkin down on the table, she got to her feet. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I need some air.”

And with that she strode out of the restaurant, leaving her brother spluttering with outrage, his full, flabby lips opening and closing wordlessly like a stunned mullet.

Outside, the cool afternoon air hit Caroline’s face with a welcome, refreshing blast.

What the hell was wrong with everybody?

Marching down toward the Strand, her face flushed with defiance, blond hair dancing in the wind behind her, she ignored the wolf whistles of the builders and the stares of the businessmen as she passed.

She felt stung, again, by William’s ingratitude. How dare he accept her share of Pa’s money with one hand and then try to slap her down with the other, make her feel guilty for enjoying her life, for making her own way?

As it happened, her brothers didn’t know the half of it. Spyros, in fact, was only one in a long line of lovers whom Caroline used to support a lifestyle that many a wealthy London housewife would have envied. If William thought she was going to give all that up to become somebody’s bloody secretary, and live in some poky flat in Clapham like him and his holier-than-thou friends, he could go to hell.

She never went back to the restaurant in the end, but hailed a cab and took herself shopping in Knightsbridge instead, with a mental two fingers to William.

As things turned out, she wasn’t to see either of her brothers again for a very, very long time.

For six happy years after Sebastian’s death and her acrimonious parting from her brothers, Caroline lived a life devoted solely to the pursuit of her own pleasure.

She appeared at all the exclusive society parties, dressed head to toe in the discarded designer clothes of her rich acquaintances, and often dripping in (borrowed) diamonds. She holidayed on friends’ yachts off Capri, and spent Christmases with an indulgent former lover on Mustique. If people disapproved of her, she neither knew nor cared. She was young, free, beautiful, and having the time of her life. What else mattered?

Her only niggling concern was that she remained utterly bereft of any capital of her own. Sure, she collected the odd gift as she moved like a nomad from one married playboy to the next—Fabien had given her the most
exquisite
Fabergé egg before he broke it off—but ultimately, she knew she needed to actually
marry
money in order to achieve the lasting financial security she craved.

Getting a rich man to fuck you and buy you gifts was a piece of cake. Getting one to marry you, especially if that would embroil him in a costly divorce, was proving altogether more difficult.

At twenty-eight, Caroline still looked fabulous, and every penny she received was spent on maintaining her appearance. But everyone on the scene in London knew her, and knew what her brothers had insisted on calling her “reputation.”

She had heard that Americans were suckers for an upper-class English accent.

Perhaps, she wondered, it was time to move on?

CHAPTER FOUR

Caroline arrived in Los Angeles in November 1974, in the middle of a blazing winter heat wave, with the addresses of two old school friends and one ex-boyfriend in her Chanel shoulder bag, thirteen hundred dollars in the bank, and a pair of the tiniest frayed denim hot pants that the guy at the immigration desk had ever seen.

“How long you stayin’ in the States, sugar?” He leered at her appreciatively from behind his bulletproof plastic screen.

“Well, I’m not too sure,” she replied. “That sort of depends on how nice people are to me.”

“Baby”—he stared down blatantly at her crotch, enticingly shrink-wrapped in denim—“I think there’s a
lot
of people gonna be
very
nice to you here in L.A.”

“Well, I hope so,” said Caroline, smiling.

Every head turned as she strutted through LAX to baggage claim.

“Can I help you with your luggage, miss?” A voice came from behind her. “That suitcase must be heavier than you are.”

She swung around to find herself face-to-face with one of the most handsome men she had ever seen. He was tall, dark, slightly overly tanned, and his white teeth blazed down at her in a wolfish grin as he effortlessly swung her enormous bag off the carousel. He was exactly what she had imagined Californian men to look like: fit, masculine, and well groomed.

It was difficult, Caroline felt, not to admire a man like that.

“Well, thank you so much, how kind.” She smiled gratefully up at this plastic Adonis, thinking how much more impressive he looked than most of the chinless wimps who offered her their gentlemanly services back home in London. “I’m Caroline. Caroline Berkeley.”

She gave him her hand and he crushed it.

“Brad Baxter. It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you.”

Meeting Brad turned out to be an extraordinary piece of luck. Over the next six weeks, he helped to introduce Caroline to the myriad pleasures and vices that Hollywood had to offer, none of which were new to her, as well as to many of the movers and shakers in the business, who were. He was, it emerged, a PR whiz kid from West Hollywood who ran a sideline “talent-spotting” for a soft-porn producer in the Valley and was a regular on the starry, decadent social scene that was to become Caroline’s natural milieu and favored hunting ground.

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 weeks 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.