Adored (9 page)

“You know, Caroline,” he said quite calmly, “if you spent more time giving a shit about your kid, and less time dressing up like some dime-a-dozen hooker”—he ran his eyes insultingly up and down her body, lingering with distaste rather than lust on her barely contained breasts as they struggled for release from her red satin halter top—“then maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t be such a little savage.”

“How dare you speak to me like that!” said Caroline indignantly. It didn’t occur to her to take any offense on Hunter’s behalf. “Duke, did you hear how that bastard just spoke to me?” Everybody looked around for Duke, but he was nowhere to be seen. Hunter started to cry again.

“On the contrary, Caroline,” said Pete, “I think you’ll find it’s
your
child who’s the bastard. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Claire and I would like to get back to the party.”

“You do that,” Caroline snapped, wrenching Hunter’s hand from Claire’s, to the boy’s evident distress. “And perhaps in the future you’ll remember that he
is
my child, not yours.” She looked at Pete evilly. “Poor little Petey, still no luck on the old baby front, eh? What seems to be the problem? Are your swimmers not quite up to it? Or can’t you get it up at all? That’s certainly not your father’s problem, so I don’t think it can be genetic, do you?”

A couple of embarrassed titters rose from the crowd.

“Now, if you’ll excuse
me,
” she addressed herself to Claire, deliberately turning her back on Pete, whose face had turned a livid puce with hatred and was clashing violently with his receding ginger hair, “I think I’ll go and get my son a tetanus shot. God knows what evil disease he may have picked up from your poisonous husband.”

And with that she stalked off in search of Duke, her son jogging along reluctantly beside her.

Pete made an effort to collect himself. If that bitch and her son had blown it for him with Peterson, he wasn’t going to let her forget it.

“Okay, folks, show’s over.” He forced a smile and signaled to the DJ to resume the music. Supertramp came belting out across the lawn as the crowd once again broke off into little groups, all relishing this latest spectacular outburst of the McMahon feud. By Monday the story would be all over the papers. If only old Duke could have been there to witness it.

Standing by his bedroom window, Duke clenched both hands around the model’s enormous breasts as he fucked her from behind, gazing down at the spectacle below. Watching Caroline get the better of Pete had excited him more than all the girl’s frenzied clenching and moaning, and he found himself coming hard as he thought about what he might do to her later, once all these fucking parasites had gone home. Why the hell did she insist on throwing so many parties, filling the house with these goddamn vacuous assholes? Caroline belonged to him—that was their deal—and he was growing increasingly tired of never having her to himself.

Still, he thought complacently as he sent the starlet on her way, he couldn’t really complain. He’d had one hell of an anniversary party.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was a year to the day after Duke and Caroline’s party, and Pete didn’t think he had ever been so happy.

Lying in postcoital bliss with Claire in the honeymoon suite at the Borgo San Felice in Siena, he felt like his life was, at last, starting to come together.

“Mrs. McMahon, when was the last time I told you how beautiful you are?”

Claire sighed happily and rolled over onto her stomach. “Gee, I don’t know, Pete,” she mocked him. “It must have been . . . what? . . . five minutes now?”

He bent his head down and began kissing her spine, his lips brushing each vertebra with infinite tenderness. “Well, that is terrible,” he said between kisses. “I don’t know what I can have been thinking of for those five minutes. Because you really are”—he rolled her over gently and planted another kiss on her left nipple—“incredible.”

Claire was three months pregnant. Just when Pete had begun to despair of ever fathering a child—for all his bluster and hostility toward his wife, he had long suspected that his sperm count might be less than spectacular, and blamed himself for their childlessness—it had finally happened. After so many months, years, of making ovulation charts, quitting smoking, wearing loose pants, after endless humiliating examinations by a stream of sympathetic but bewildered doctors, it had happened. Just like that.

Pete knew he had not been the greatest of husbands to Claire in their six years together. Things had been so different when they met. A mutual friend had introduced them at some horrific party in the hills. Pete, as usual, was surrounded by a huge crowd of starlets and wannabes, all desperate to ingratiate themselves with the son of the one and only Duke McMahon. He had been on the point of making his excuses and heading home when a pale, shy-looking girl in the corner of the room caught his eye. She was being aggressively chatted up by Johnny Wright, a loathsome junior VP at Paramount.

“Who is that?” he asked his friend Adam, nominally the host of the evening’s bash, although in fact he was only house-sitting and had paid for less than half of the booze being greedily consumed all around them.

“Claire Bryant. Gorgeous, isn’t she? But don’t go getting any ideas.” He gave Pete a mock-stern look.

“Why not?” Pete asked, knocking back most of his martini. “Don’t tell me she’s with Johnny. That guy is such an ass.”

Adam shook his head. “No, God no. Look at her, she can’t stand the guy.”

Claire had backed so far away from her admirer that her back was now pressed against the wall. She was trying to look at him, not wishing to seem impolite, but couldn’t help stealing frantic sideways glances, as if looking for some means of escape.

“Well, what then?” said Pete. “Why shouldn’t I get any ideas? Not that I am getting any.”

Adam laughed. “No, of course you aren’t! I just mean that she’s not like us, man. For one thing, she’s smart. She’s in her third year of medical school at UCLA. Two more years and you’re looking at
Dr.
Bryant.”

“What on earth’s she doing here then?” asked Pete. “It’s hardly the sort of party for an academic girl.”

Adam shrugged. “Danny brought her along, I think. Friend of the family or something. You should talk to her, though. I swear, it’s like she’s been living under a rock, she knows
nothing
about the business. Seriously, I don’t think she’d even know who your old man is.” Pete looked incredulous. “All she does is, like, read books and shit like that. She’s not from this planet, man.”

“Yeah, well.” Pete glanced around at all the vacant, silicone-enhanced girls in the room. “I’m not so sure I like the women on this planet.” He downed the remnants of his drink and took his friend’s arm. “Introduce me, will you? She looks like she needs rescuing anyway.”

They made their way over to her, battling through the throng, and Adam inserted himself in front of Johnny, much to Claire’s evident relief. “Claire, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine,” he said. “This is Petey McMahon.”

“How do you do?” said the vision. “I’m Claire Bryant.”

Close up she was even more beautiful. She was tall, almost as tall as Pete in her flat ballet pumps and, despite her air of fragility, quite statuesque. He was struck by her long, lean muscular arms and the womanly curve of her hips. She seemed simultaneously strong and in need of protection.

She smiled at him with such genuine warmth, such femininity, that Pete felt instantly drawn toward her. He shook her hand. “Pete McMahon. A pleasure.”

“He’s Duke McMahon’s son,” interjected the odious Johnny, on name-drop autopilot.

“Oh,” said Claire, obviously baffled. “I’m sorry, do I know your father?”

Adam winked at Pete. “Told you.”

The two of them had hit it off immediately. They talked for hours. Pete had always adored his mother, but Minnie lacked the motherly softness that the lonely, angry little boy had always craved. Even in that very first conversation, Claire had listened to him, comforted him. She invited confidences and inspired total trust in a way that Pete found completely intoxicating.

They began spending more and more time together. He felt he could tell her anything, and found that he became listless and withdrawn whenever he was away from her, as though he had lost his anchor and was suddenly floating out to sea. Importantly, Claire was the first and only woman who Pete knew for certain was not after either his name or his money. And God knew he was no Marlon Brando, so she sure wasn’t with him for his looks. For some inexplicable reason, she actually loved him for himself. He couldn’t believe his luck.

Since their marriage, however, his gratitude for her love had gradually been replaced by a bitterness, a hatred of his father that consumed every ounce of his emotional energy. None of it was Claire’s fault. He knew that and cursed himself for the way he treated her, bullying her just as his father had always bullied his mother. But the rage inside him was like a cancer, and ever since Caroline had moved in, and even more so since Hunter was born, Pete had felt that cancer spread.

Now, though, things would be different. Gazing down at his wife’s naked, already swelling body, he felt almost overwhelmed with love for her and remorse at his own behavior. Now that Claire was pregnant, he could become the husband she had always deserved. And his new partnership with Peterson Studios would finally start to put him on the map as a producer, a success in his own right, not just good ol’ Duke McMahon’s son. Yeah, it was all coming together, all making sense at last.

“Oh, Pete,” Claire murmured softly as he stroked her hair, “I really am so happy. With you, with the baby, with everything. I feel like we’ve been blessed. But don’t you wish we could just hide out in Italy forever, never go back to that house?”

Pete felt the tears stinging the back of his eyes. She was so incredibly forgiving, so easily pleased. After all the pain he’d caused her, she was just happy to be here with him, grateful for one paltry week in Tuscany, their first vacation in over four years.

“I know how you feel, honey.” He stroked her belly lovingly, wondering what he had ever done to deserve such an angel. “There’s something kinda magical about this place.”

“Oh, there is!” said Claire, her eyes alight with enthusiasm. “Siena’s so incredible. The cathedral, the Piazza del Campo, the Palazzo Pubblico—my God, those frescoes, I’ve never seen anything like it. I never dreamed I would actually be here. And that it would all be so perfect, so like I expected, but at the same time even better than I expected. Sorry honey, I’m gushing.” She blushed sweetly. “But do you know what I mean?”

“Absolutely,” said Pete, who had been bored rigid by the frescoes and the turgid tour of Siena’s famous Gothic cathedral, but was content simply to watch his wife blossoming and in her element. “But I’m afraid we really do have to go back. You know that, right?”

She sighed, nestling closer. These few days in Siena had been like a dream, her unborn child the magic talisman that had somehow brought her husband back to her. And yet it had all been so sudden. She couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t going to change back just as suddenly into the withdrawn, aggressive figure she had come to know and dread.

As if reading her thoughts, Pete pulled her close. “I promise you, Claire,” he whispered, “you have nothing to fear.” She gazed up at him, her eyes full of trust and hope. “When we get back home, things are going to be different. Very, very different.”

On December 7, 1981, Claire gave birth to a daughter. Siena McMahon came screaming into the world six days late. Both the screaming and the lateness were rapidly to become two of her trademarks.

“She looks kinda . . . scrunched up,” had been her father’s verdict on being presented with a tiny, tightly wrapped white bundle from which Siena’s bawling head poked out like a sunburned prune. “What’s she so mad about, anyway?”

“Takes after her father,” said an exhausted Claire. “Besides, she’s had a rough day. It’s very traumatic, you know, birth.”

“Yeah, so they tell me. It was pretty hard going out there in the waiting room I can tell you. We almost ran out of cigars.”

Claire halfheartedly hurled a pillow in his direction and grinned, stretching out her arms for the baby. “Here, Pete, give her to me.”

He handed over the bundle with exaggerated care, mingled with a slight sensation of relief, and looked on with pride while his wife unswaddled their daughter and put her to her breast. Instantly the caterwauling stopped and was replaced by a greedy slurping noise. Pete was mesmerized. After about a minute, her sucking slowed and she fell from Claire’s breast, mouth open, like a blood-gorged mosquito, into a deep, contented sleep.

“Well, she’s not gonna starve to death in a hurry,” said Pete. “What an appetite!” They both laughed in wonderment at this tiny, greedy little creature they had created. Even in sleep, Pete noticed, her little fists were clenched, ready for unseen battles ahead.

Siena was not as beautiful a baby as Hunter had been. They had the same coloring—dark hair contrasting dramatically with striking blue eyes—but Siena’s complexion was pure porcelain, rather than her uncle’s tawny olive, and she lacked his immaculately regular features. She was, however, pronounced by everyone to be “adorable,” and reminded her parents of a fallen cherub. Mischievous eyes twinkled in her soft, chubby face, and she had the cute rosebud mouth of a Tiny Tears doll, complete with dimples in her cheeks and chin.

If she and Hunter shared some physical characteristics, Siena was about as far removed from him in temperament as anyone could be. Mischievous, confident, and the possessor of a truly awesome temper even as a tiny baby, she ran the entire household ragged with a cry so piercing it could be heard the length and breadth of Hancock Park. The McMahons’ two nannies, Leila and Suzanna, thought back with longing to Hunter’s peaceful babyhood and wondered how long they could survive on three hours’ sleep a night.

The differences between the two children didn’t end there. While his parents’ neglect had forced Hunter to develop an independent spirit and maturity beyond his years, it had also made him a reserved and withdrawn child. Siena was the opposite, a noisy, happy, rambunctious little girl who gave out her love readily and without question because, for the first few years of her life, anyway, she received nothing but love from everyone around her. Perhaps a little spoiled by so much constant attention, she developed an early taste for getting her own way, and although she could turn on the charm when she chose to, she could also be as stubborn, willful and demanding as Hunter was docile and obedient.

On one occasion, when Siena had just turned two, Leila had had to call in the cavalry after she refused point-blank to wear the new OshKosh sundress that Claire had picked out for the day.

“She’s gone stiff as a board,” the exasperated nanny told Pete. “Absolutely refuses to bend her arms or legs so I can get the dress on. And the more I try, the more she screams. Just listen to her.”

Siena’s yells could clearly be heard from two stories below in Pete’s study, easily outdecibeling the deep, authoritative voice of Suzanna, who had been left in charge while Leila ran down for parental reinforcements.

Pete sighed and put down his paper. “Okay. I’ll come up.”

Upstairs, Siena was in the middle of a textbook demonstration of the terrible twos—as described by Dr. Spock in Chapter Seven of the parenting guide that Claire and all her friends lived by. She was lying facedown on the floor of the nursery, beet-red in the face, simultaneously pummeling the carpet with her fists, yelling, and shaking her head manically from side to side. Suzanna had given up trying to get anywhere near her with the hated dress, and was waiting resignedly for the storm to subside.

“Now, Siena, what’s all this?” Pete shouted over the din. “Why won’t you let Leila and Suzanna help you with your pretty dress?”

The pummeling stopped for a moment, and a tear-sodden, exhausted face looked up at him. “Nooooo dress,” sobbed Siena. “Nooooo!”

“But honey,” said Pete, ignoring all Dr. Spock’s advice and making the classic mistake of reasoning with an overwrought toddler, “you’d look so cute in that dress. That’s why Mommy picked it out, so you’d look just like a princess. Don’t you want to be a princess, Siena?”

With an almighty effort, Siena refilled her lungs and began pummeling again with a vengeance. “No! Siena not dress!” she screamed.

Pete thought longingly of his paper and the peace and quiet of the study. He looked at his daughter, and then at the offending article, a riot of yellow ribbons and lace. You know what, maybe she had a point? It did look kind of frou-frou.

“Just put her in her corduroys,” he said to Suzanna.

“What? But Mr. McMahon,” she remonstrated, “she’s just been told she has to wear the dress. Mrs. McMahon specifically requested it. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to simply give in to her like that.”

“I’m sorry, Suzanna,” said Pete coldly, “but I’m Siena’s father and I think I know what’s best for her.”

Leila saw Siena give a little smirk of triumph from under her damp curls. Sometimes she could strangle that child.