Never Land (10 page)

            “I wanted to talk to you,” announced Roni, sitting down on the sofa imperiously, as if she owned the place.
Which, I guess, she kind of does.
“To establish some limits. Clearly, you don't understand that Danny and I are very close.”

            She got my hackles up, but I refused to let her see me sweat. I smiled as sweetly as I could muster and said, “Well, I can only imagine. Losing a mother is so hard – I'm so glad he's able to see you as another maternal figure.”

            She grimaced. “You know that's not what I'm talking about. Danny's not just my stepson – that, like everything else in my marriage, is just a formality. Danny and I knew each other long before I married Clarence. We were very close, and I enjoyed it.”

            “Until you married his father,” I added, my smile still plastered on my face.

            “Clarence is a – charming man,” she replied smoothly. “I was young. Naïve. And he exposed me to a world I could never have dreamed of...”

            “...filled with money you could have never earned yourself.”

            Veronica shot me a faux-injured look. “It's not about his money, you silly girl. There's nothing wrong with being attracted to a man who is a good provider. Who knows what he wants and how to get it.”  

            “A sugar daddy?” I asked, my voice scathing with disdain.

            “Please, dear,” said Roni. “You're so naïve, looking at things so simplistically. I care greatly for Clarence. But I love Danny. All of Clarence's worldly charm – with certain skills one simply cannot get from an older man. I've never experienced such power, such passion...”

            Her words made me sick to my stomach. Hearing such filth come out of Veronica's mouth made me want to run to the bathroom and vomit all over one of the meticulous Blue Enterprises Jacuzzis.

            “So, what do you want me to do about it?” I asked – pretending to be far braver than I felt.

            Roni didn’t hesitate. “To ensure that neither you – nor anybody else, for that matter – holds Danny back from his bright future. He has great things ahead of him. If he's not distracted.
I
have plans for Danny.”

            “And your plans are the same as your husband's?”

            “Not exactly. I want Danny to take over Blue Enterprises, just as his father does. Only, I want to do it sooner...and I want him.”

            Her eyes sparkled maliciously, and in an instant I understood her plan. Get Danny the President position – along with the position's billions of pounds' worth of perks. Make him financially secure before seducing him and leaving Clarence, getting her hot boy toy and her husband's money in one fell swoop.

            “You're married. You're married to his father, you sick...”

            I never got to finish my sentence. Roni slapped me clear across the face, and my cheek smarted from the blow. “Whatever you think you know or understand, believe me, you don't.” Her doll-like face had vanished – this Veronica was cold, steely, and filled with malice. “I'm not interested in having some child telling me what I can and cannot do.” She stepped close to me, getting into my face. “I'm sure you think you're somebody. But believe me – you're just like every other wannabe celebutante, the daughter of a washed-up rock star and a sagging swimsuit model. You have no idea who you're dealing with. And if you know what's good for you, you'll stay away from Danny. If I see you together again, believe me – there will be consequences. Ta!”

            As she glided serenely out the door, I had to sit down to avoid fainting from sheer shock. What kind of crazy woman would believe that she could actually convince me to stop seeing Danny? The same woman who would turn up in a negligee at her stepson's apartment and beg him to take her back. I swallowed, hard. Roni wasn't just some calculating gold-digger – she was genuinely, earnestly in love with Danny. Obsessed even. And that made her not just threatening, but genuinely dangerous.

            I shuddered. Life with Danny was getting more complicated by the second.

Chapter 12

            For at least ten minutes after Roni left the room, I stood still – unable to move. Shock had flooded through me. I was exhausted – worn out. What had just happened? My face still burned, my cheek stinging from where Veronica's hand had collided with my face. The sound of the slap still rang in my ears. I vaguely heard my cell phone ring, but it seemed like the sound was coming to me underwater – the ringtone a million miles away. I couldn't focus on the ringing of the phone; I couldn't focus on the frequent beeps on the intercom, telling me someone was trying to reach me. I couldn't focus on anything at all except for the enormity of what had just happened. I'd known that Danny's life was a strange one, that life as Clarence Blue's son would make anyone a little eccentric. But now it seemed that Danny's secrets were so much greater than anything I had ever known. I'd always thought my own life must seem bizarre to outsiders – our money, our fame, the way, at the height of my dad's fame, we snuck out through the back door with balaclavas over our faces to avoid the paparazzi whenever we went shopping – but at its core our family life had always been a traditional one. My dad had been kind, if sometimes stern; my mother had always been loving. She'd of course maintained her natural flirtatious personality even after marriage – I knew that she was flattered by the attention that, for example, Kyle paid her, and that she knew full well the extent of my friends' childhood crushes on her – but the idea of her ever cheating on my father, let alone with one of my friends, was utterly alien to me.

            But this woman seemed to be bound by no laws – either of society or of morality. In her eyes I had seen a conviction in her love, in her future with Danny, that bordered on the utterly unhinged. I put my fingers to the place that Veronica had slapped, wincing as I felt the bruised flesh, slightly swollen. Did people even slap one another, anymore? I'd only ever seen such a catty action in the old Hollywood films my dad and I used to watch on AMC when neither of us could sleep – black and white films with women with bleached-blonde hair and dark lipstick who traded barbed witticisms and fell victim to melodrama. But it seemed that Roni, with her natural air for the overly dramatic, believed that people actually did those things in real life. I grimaced, recalling some tabloid gossip from a few months ago about how Roni Taylor had planned to make a transition from modeling to film.
Guess she's practicing for the part
, I thought, trying to cheer myself up. But ridiculous or not, the slap had hurt, and my whole face burned from where her long red fingernails had left tiny marks.

            Still dazed, I walked across the room to the lavatory, soaking a washcloth with warm water and holding it to my face. A champagne bucket filled with ice still waited for me outside the room; I took some ice and wrapped it in the washcloth, wiping my face, wiping away the small traces of blood she'd left with her nails. I looked at myself in the mirror. I was an absolute wreck. My mascara had run down my cheeks from the crying; my eyes were red. I was sweaty, bruised, smeared – utterly beaten down. Was this the face that gorgeous, merciless Roni had seen when she walked through that door in her thousand-dollar camel-colored trenchcoat? I wasn't much of a threat to her right now, I thought bitterly. Even at my best I'd have to struggle to be noticed next to the gazelle-like Roni – and right now I hardly looked anything like my best.  

            I sighed. Was this what Danny saw? After he'd seen Roni in her silk negligee, her legs stretching for what seemed like miles, her hair like a nimbus around her face, golden and shining – would he still want me in this way? Messy, chaotic – still stained with tears?

            Yet as I looked at myself in the mirror, my self-pity gave way to anger as I thought about precisely what Roni had done.
How dare she?
I couldn't believe her audacity – an audacity that surely bordered on madness. “How dare she?” I said again, aloud this time, at my reflection, letting the weight of her actions sink in. Coming over to
my
house, telling me to stay away from my own boyfriend – a boyfriend to whom, incidentally, she not only had no right, but indeed was
her own stepson.
The whole situation was so ridiculous, so utterly sick, that I wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, or scream.

            Yet more anger seeped through me – this time not at Roni but at Danny. Surely Danny must have known how crazy Roni was – even if he no longer had any feelings for her. Surely he must have known how she'd react to the sight of him with a new girlfriend. And instead he'd chosen to try to handle the situation on his own. He hadn't warned me, hadn't prepared me – had allowed me to walk straight into a trap, to be mocked and humiliated by Joanne Waldegrave and Roni Taylor and goodness knew who else – allowed me to be made a fool of by everyone in his crazy, debauched life.

           
How stupid could you be?
I recriminated myself. I'd seen this happen a hundred times among the girls and boys I'd grown up with. Always dating “within the group” - other Beverly Hills celebrities – always surprised when somehow people who grew up among models and strippers and playboys and alcoholics turned out to be functionally incapable of holding down an adult relationship. It was just one of many reasons I'd never dated in high school. I hadn't wanted to get sucked down by the dysfunction of yet another celebrity family. And here I was, dating the biggest celebrity of them all, Clarence Blue's son.

           
But you didn't know he was Clarence Blue's son when you fell for him.
He'd just seemed like a normal guy – a normal, gorgeous, mind-numbingly sexy, talented guy, to be sure, but not the scion of a family of psychopaths. And every step of the way, he'd withheld information. About his identity, about his family, about his past. Letting me get close to him, letting me fall for him, telling me he was “addicted” to me, making me want him – only to push me away when it mattered. The classic bad boy maneuver I'd been warned about from the time I was ten.

            How had I been so stupid? At that moment, all I wanted was to never see Danny again – to go back to where everything was normal, everything was easy, to men like Luc who never let you down.
Luc...
I felt a pang as his face came to mind. Luc would never have sprung his crazy family on me. He would never have set me up to fail the way Danny had...

            I opened the front door, anxious to find Luc, to talk out my rage. But to my surprise, standing  before me was Danny himself, a look of utter anguish on his face.

            “Neve...” he whispered, reaching his hands out to me.

           
Damn it.
Just looking at him, the way his piercing blue eyes met my own, the sad look in his eyes that made me want to comfort him – everything about him made me melt. My anger, my fury vanished. All I wanted was for him to hold me tight. He stepped towards me and I could smell his familiar intoxicating musk – the combination of sweat and aftershave that made him so irresistible to me. Even now, my body wanted his.

            “What happened to you?” He reached out and touched the angry red welt at my cheek. “Neve, are you okay?”

            I looked down, my cheeks flushing crimson. I was too angry, too ashamed to tell him about Roni – would he even believe me if I did?

            “Was it Geoff?” Danny's face clouded with anger.

            “No, not Geoff.” I shook my head. “Why – he's gone, isn't he?”

            “No, Neve,” Danny's eyes darkened. “I wanted to tell you – I put some of my dad's security staff on him. He hasn't gone back to the US like we thought. He's still in London.”

            “In London? Why?”

            “Who knows?” Danny shrugged. “He's not stupid enough to try anything on you again – but just having him in this city makes me nervous...”

            “Drugs aren't known for making someone make rational decisions,” I said icily. “No, it wasn't Geoff. It was – well...” I gritted my teeth, not looking forward to this conversation. “It was your stepmom, Danny.”

            His eyes widened with shock. “What?
Roni
?” His disbelief at first made my heart sink. Would he be so convinced of Roni's innocence that he'd blame me for this feud?

            “Yes, Roni,” I snapped. “She came here to warn me off you. Told me you were hers alone, and to get lost.”

            “Oh, Neve,” Danny sighed, reaching out to touch me on my unbruised side. “Neve, Neve, Neve, I'm so sorry. I knew she was bad, but I didn't think it'll be this bad...” He led me into the suite, sitting me down on the bed, holding my hand tightly. “I should have known – I should have warned you...” He felt my bruise. “Did she hit you?”

            “A slap,” I said.

            “It'll heal,” he said. “It doesn't look too bad...let's get some more ice on that.”

            “She was really aggressive, Danny...”

            “Typical Roni,” Danny smiled grimly. “When she wants something, she'll go all out to get it. Snaring my dad into marrying her – playing all of us like a fiddle...”

            His words were tinged with faint respect, or at least awe, and I couldn't help but feel the familiar jealousy wash over me as I remembered the sultry look in Roni's eyes as she had pushed her lips against Danny's own...Even knowing how crazy she was, I couldn't help but feel insanely jealous of her, of the way she made me feel...

            “She wants
you
, Danny,” I whispered, holding onto his fingers, not wanting to let go.

            “Well, she can't have me,” Danny said. He moved in closer and kissed me – softly at first, and then harder, passionately, making me moan as he sucked on my bottom lip. “I want you, Neve. You're the only woman I want. I'm with you.” He pulled back, looking deep into my eyes.

            I couldn't bear this pain any longer, or this anger. I just wanted to forget. Forget Roni, forget Clarence Blue – I just wanted everything to go back to the way it was before. Pure and simple – easy, passionate sex. I leaned in and kissed him, wrapping my arms around him and pulling him into me.