Power Play (Crimson Romance) (13 page)

“Hello?”

Instead of static silence, dim shuffling sounds signaled an unknown listener on the other end. About to hang up, Lila heard her own name, repeated in a long drawn-out squeal, over and over again.

“Leave me alone!” she shouted before clicking the phone off and throwing it onto the chair beside her.

A new phone, a new number, yet it was the same old problem with a slight twist. The caller taunted her this time, perhaps mocking her need to switch numbers and highlighting the ease with which they had managed to track her down.

Everyone was staring.

“What’s the matter?” Cathy asked in a creditably even tone. “Prank call?”

“Yes,” Lila said.

The other woman moved closer as she reached for a glass on the low center table. “How long has that been going on?”

There seemed to be no harm in saying, “A few weeks.”

“I’ve been getting them, too,” Cathy shocked her by saying. “For the last few days at least. I think they’re from that Victoria woman who came to our meeting two months ago. She … said things.”

Lila’s training at the hands of her bodyguards kicked into high gear. “What kind of things? Did she make any threats?”

Although the blonde woman nibbled on the end of a celery stick, it was obvious that the action was meant to be casual rather than being naturally so.

“Not really. Well, not specifically what you would call a threat. She said that we would be sorry for choosing you over her, that Cahal loved her and not you, and we would see the truth one day.”

Cathy paused to put down the half-eaten crudité. “It’s strange because she never said any names, just you and her and him but I was sure it was Victoria and the way she spoke about choosing one person over the other made it plain.”

“Did you call the police?”

The other woman looked astonished. “The police? What for?”

“Those were threats, Cath, and you have a duty — ”

Cathy Monahan spoke right over Lila. “I have a duty to mind my own business and I suggest you do the same. I’m not saying I wouldn’t contact the police if I were in your shoes but I’m not. I don’t want to antagonize the woman. I just called the phone company and told them to add the call block feature to my line. Next time Victoria calls, I’ll just block her number.”

Nadia was frowning. “The woman can call from anywhere,” she pointed out. “A friend’s phone, a pay phone, it doesn’t matter. Blocking one number won’t accomplish anything.”

Neither would changing her phone number, as Lila could have told them.

Cathy smiled as if she had known it. “We’ve all met Victoria. She doesn’t seem like the dangerous type to me. She’s just a little depressed over losing her boyfriend and who wouldn’t be in those circumstances?”

It was amazing to Lila to see how she could be painted as the home wrecker for reuniting with her own spouse.

“We’ve known Lila for months,” Nadia commented, “and we don’t know Victoria aside from one meeting. If we’re choosing who to listen to and believe, then I’m going with Lila.”

As childish as the statement was, Lila felt a surge of affection for the former gymnast. Her stance was satisfying clear.

“It’s not a question of choosing sides,” Cathy insisted, adding, “Victoria’s father is one of the owners of the Chicago team.”

Nadia nodded. “Oh, now I get it. I suppose if she was the daughter of the Chicago team’s janitor, you would be taking out a restraining order against her.”

This time the other woman didn’t offer a denial. For every hockey player, no matter how rich or famous, the owner of the team pulled the strings and with trades an ever-present possibility, you never knew what team you would be playing for next year.

Lila’s cell phone buzzed again, the sound it made muted by the cushions of the chair it lay upon. The other women stared at it and then at her, waiting to see what she would do.

Unwilling to brand herself a coward, she took up the phone, treating it as if it contained a detonator ready to explode at any time.

Her shoulders relaxed when she saw that it was an incoming email rather than a telephone call. She clicked the phone off, not bothering to check who the message was from. Nothing important ever came through her personal email account.

“It’s nothing,” she told the waiting women. “It’s not her.”

While some members of the group made a determined effort to put matters back on casual footing, Nadia was still stuck on the previous topic.

“How is your husband treating this situation?” she asked of Lila. “I mean, instead of lying low, your faces have been plastered all over the city for the past several weeks. With a security threat such as a stalker to face, now may not be the best time to launch a publicity campaign.”

It was difficult to explain that the publicity and the security issue were interwoven without admitting the truth about her marriage, something Lila found was hard to contemplate.

“I disagree,” Cathy Monahan said. “I think the picture of a happily married couple could go a long way to convince an obsessed fan.”

“It hasn’t so far,” her friend countered.

Nadia was right. Cahal’s idea had failed. Victoria appeared to be spurred on by the publicity, angered by the false images Lila and Cahal presented to the world. Lila was afraid of what would happen once the story went public, as it was sure to do when Cahal’s restraining order was disclosed.

“Well, I don’t see what’s so bad about a few phone calls,” Cathy huffed. “The poor woman.”

“The poor woman has gone to the trouble of getting my unlisted phone number,” Lila informed her in a voice that let some of her anger show. “This is my second number in as many months and she managed to get this one in less than a day. Yes, Victoria Brantford is wealthy and comes from a powerful family. That also gives her unlimited time and resources to harass me.”

Cathy’s face twisted. “And you’re just a poor little librarian from the wrong side of town, right? That’s a lie. I read that you and Cahal Wallace grew up together. You had your claws in him from the minute he started making money and you don’t even know how lucky you are?”

“Lucky how?” One of the other wives wanted to know.

The blonde woman flung the speaker an exasperated glance. “Lila’s known her husband from since before he was rich and famous. She never had to deal with people calling her a gold-digger or a groupie. She never had to put up with the suspicions of family members and agents and even teammates who all wondered why she was with a hockey player — whether it was for the money or the man.”

The speech made a mockery of everything Lila had been through during the course of her marriage, all of the arguments and sacrifices she was once ready to make for the sake of her husband’s career.

“No,” she said, “I only had to contend with my life being turned upside down after my marriage, with a husband who was never there and an empty house surrounding me.”

“We all have to deal with that,” Cathy told her.

Lila carefully got to her feet. “Maybe I’m not as good at dealing with the pressures of being a hockey wife. A teenage romance never prepared me for this life and in the end I couldn’t take it.”

A long silence was broken by Nadia’s cool accented voice.

“But you did go back,” she pointed out. “You decided that you would rather be with the man you love than without him.”

Lila nearly choked on her answer. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

The other woman’s dark eyes were astute. “And now you are regretting your decision?”

Lila smiled. “What decision?”

• • •

She shouldn’t have spoken, of course; she should have kept her mouth shut and taken Cathy Monahan’s criticism. What did it matter anyway? Her marriage wasn’t real and the decisions Cathy seemed to think she had made weren’t permanent.

Shivering, Lila glanced again up and down the deserted street. Leaving the meeting early, she forgot to call for a ride until she was already walking up the driveway and rather than go back into the lionesses’ den, she resigned herself to waiting outside for her bodyguards to pick her up.

The night was fine and clear, milder than the last few days and with no bracing winds to make the already low temperature feel even more frigid. Almost an autumnal night, in fact.

Pacing to keep the blood flowing, Lila reached the shrubbery at the end of the paved driveway for a second time when she saw the movement in the darkness. It was a quick furtive action but in the absence of any wind, she felt as well as heard it. The thick mesh of pine needles made a crisp rustling noise.

A cat, she told herself, or a raccoon. Nothing to panic over. Probably nothing at all.

Her phone buzzed impatiently and she almost screamed at the small sound. A few pounding heartbeats later, she expelled a breathy laugh in a rush. She was getting paranoid.

Fishing the cell phone out of the coat pocket she’d stowed it in after contacting her security guards, she saw that it was yet another email message. Two in one night. She was a popular girl.

Without nothing else to do, she logged into her email account and checked her messages. Both messages were from the same person yet the name was one she didn’t recognize.

Lila knew the antivirus protocols and she was about to erase both messages unopened when she saw that they both contained the same tag line. Lila at the Wives. To most people the message would have made no sense but the use of her name made a strong shiver travel down her back. It couldn’t be …

It was.

Two digital photographs, both taken within the past hour and emailed to her account. The pictures were of her. One taken perhaps a half-hour before through the window of Jennifer Efflin’s living room showed Lila sitting in a group of well-dressed women, her face flushed and animated. Probably taken during the middle of the argument with Cathy.

The second photo showed Lila a bare minute ago, standing on the edge of the Efflins’ driveway.

The rustling became thunderous. Or was that just her imagination?

If it wasn’t her imagination, then it had to be a litter of cats or a gang of raccoons struggling to free themselves from the shrubs, struggling to get near her and …

Lila opened her mouth to scream just as the headlights swept through the cul de sac, illuminating her with a wash of light. A man was out of the vehicle before it slowed down, grabbing Lila and pushing her into the interior of the SUV.

“Who was that behind you?”

It was a foolish question, yet she answered anyway.

“I have no idea. Did you get a look at its face?”

The driver looked grim. “No luck. What about you, Mike?”

The other man had a phone to his ear. “I was busy rescuing the damsel. Could have been anyone from what I could see. Shapeless black clothes. Hood pulled over its head. Hard to say if it was a man or a woman.”

“A tall woman,” the driver suggested, “or a shortish man.”

By this time, his colleague was busy giving a description similar to the one he had just uttered to someone on the other end of the phone. Seeing Lila’s look, the driver explained.

“He’s talking to the cops. We suspected something like this so we stayed in the area.”

Remembering the interminable wait in the cold, Lila’s teeth chattered. “It took you long enough!”

“Sorry. We didn’t think — that is, this is a step up from the old pattern. We were all hoping it wouldn’t escalate, your husband most of all.”

Lila could have given him a few choice words on the subject of her husband but she kept her shivering lips closed. There was no point in railing against the inevitable. Cahal would always be a thousand miles away when she needed him and paid substitutes were not enough.

“Where are we going?” The street they were on didn’t take them to the condominium.

“The police station,” Mike said, snapping off his phone. “We’ll need to give them your cell and you’ll have to make a statement.”

Lila slumped lower in her seat. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Not enough to lay criminal charges, perhaps,” was the response. “But it’s part of a pattern and this type of evidence can be used to get that restraining order. You just have to stay calm and tell the police the truth.”

The first part was a great deal harder than the latter but she got through the interview by answering the questions asked of her and resisting embellishment. When her guards dropped her husband’s name, the service she received could not have been better. The two police officers who took her statement escorted her out the station door with a promise to send her a copy of the typed report the very next day. Even Mike and Brian were impressed.

The bodyguards’ presence in the building didn’t help her sleep that night. The condo was first too cold and then too hot and finally just too creepy. Never home in the first place, the penthouse felt almost hostile and she thought of spending the night across town in the apartment she still rented with her modest salary. Cahal might have bought her services and an expensive cage to put her into but she needed the small bolthole to call her own just in case the condo became unbearable.

After two in the morning, Lila gave up. Shrugging into her robe, she walked toward the living room with the intention of calling her security detail and requesting a ride over to the old apartment, but on the way there she noticed a flash of light coming from beneath the door to Cahal’s bedroom and her bare feet squeaked to a stop.

Lila’s breath rushed from her lungs, yet no sound emerged. With vivid clarity, she recalled exactly where she had left the two-way radio — on the bedside table next to her glass of water. Her feet would never carry her those few steps back to her bedroom.

A split second decision turned into a quicker movement. The knob was hardly in her hand before the door flung open and she confronted … nothing.

A ragged laugh emerged from her lips as she saw the lamp plugged in next to the enormous bed. The old promise. She’d almost forgotten.

Moving with none of her former hesitance, Lila picked up the small lamp glowing white in the dimness of the darkened room. A reluctant smile edged her mouth. For six years, that lamp had stood by her bed, dark and quiet whenever Cahal was home and reassuringly aglow when he was away. He’d given her the lamp as a wedding present. As long as it was lit, he’d told her, she would remember that he was somewhere loving her. Touched, she’d also thought the idea was a little silly — until he left for his first road trip a week later and she found the lamp on when she woke up in the half-empty bed. Then she had cried.