Читать книгу Wicked Wives - Anna-Lou Weatherley - Страница 14

‘Stand back! I said stand back!’ Loretta Hassan’s bodyguard snarled menacingly as he opened the door to the chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce and attempted to navigate his client through the swarm of awaiting journalists and paparazzi that were buzzing like wasps around her, flashes popping like champagne corks.

‘Mrs Hassan!’ A bespectacled man pushed his way to the forefront of the gathering throng. ‘Peter Phillips, LA Daily. Is it true that your husband was responsible for Miranda Muldavey’s botched surgery? Was that why she turned up at his funeral?’

A TV camera zoomed in on Loretta’s face and she half-heartedly attempted to shoo it away.

‘I’m afraid I cannot possibly comment,’ she purred demurely in her thick Italian accent, turning away from the camera for dramatic effect. She couldn’t afford to let the grieving widow act slip. Not with the beady eyes of the nation’s press all over her.

Ramsey’s gloriously A-list funeral had taken place the previous week in Malibu and Loretta, dressed head to toe in black McQueen couture, her creamy breasts spilling out of her tight corseted dress like boiling milk, had made for a tabloid feeding frenzy. Under normal circumstances, she would’ve relished such excessive media attention, but on this occasion she had been seething by such intrusion; she had personally assured her husband’s celebrity mourners of a complete press blackout. After all, Hollywood was all smoke and mirrors. Everyone wanted to give the illusion that their youthful good looks were down to impressive genes alone and not the skilful handiwork of her husband.

However, the journalist had been misinformed: Miranda hadn’t shown up at the funeral. Not even a glimpse. Loretta had thought it odd that the actress had yet made no formal statement to the media. After all, now that Ramsey was in his box what was to stop her from naming and shaming him?

Loretta reached the top of the stone steps towards her attorney’s Bel Air office but just as she was about to disappear inside, her path was blocked by an attractive female journalist.

‘How concerned are you about Miranda Muldavey’s private lawsuit, Mrs Hassan?’ she inquired, displaying an all-American white smile.

Loretta felt her cheeks flush and her heart skip a beat. Lawsuit? What lawsuit?

The astute journalist’s eyes widened. ‘Oh! So, you didn’t know!’ Her glee was almost palpable.

‘That’s enough! Stand back, or one of yous is gonna get a serious clump,’ Loretta’s lump of a bodyguard’s patience had finally run out as he pushed his client through the revolving doors of the imposing gothic building.

*

Loretta threw her studded leather Valentino clutch onto Randy Mumford’s desk with such force that it bounced. ‘If this is a joke, Randy, it is not a very fucking funny one.’ She was incandescent; her cheeks flushed crimson, her ample chest heaving up and down with an influx of adrenalin.

‘Please, won’t you sit down?’ he gestured to the vintage leather Chesterfield opposite. ‘A brandy perhaps?’

‘I don’t want a fucking brandy, Randy,’ she snarled, though in all honesty she could murder a drink. In fact, she could commit murder, if what that bitch journalist had said was true. Randy fixed her one anyway. The word ‘no’ invariably meant ‘yes’ where women like Loretta Hassan were concerned. It was little wonder old Ramsey’s heart had given out in the end. Poor bugger.

As an attorney to some of the Platinum Triangle’s richest and most famous there was little he hadn’t seen and heard when it came to tales of excess and debauchery. In a few years’ time when he retired, Randy planned to write a tell-all book on his years of digging celebrities out of the murky holes they invariably dug for themselves; sell them all out for a fat publishing cheque and then fuck off to Thailand to see the rest of his days out in the sun getting pleasured by ladyboys.

Ramsey and Randy had been golfing buddies, and as genuinely remorseful as he was about his friend’s sudden demise, it had crossed his mind that with him out of the picture he might be in with a shot at this year’s club trophy and a chance to get to know his formidable wife. He wasn’t sure which idea appealed most.

‘You mustn’t let them get to you, Loretta,’ he instructed, pulling at the collar of the new Armani shirt he had worn especially for their meeting, wishing he’d gone up a size now. ‘Those hacks will say anything to get a rise out of you.’ Truth was, he had half hoped she would drop the whole grieving widow façade and they might crack open the bottle of Krug he had chilling on ice in advance of her arrival. He had even indulged in a little fantasy of fucking her over his desk. After all, Ramsey had managed it. And what had Ramsey done that he hadn’t, aside from a handicap of five and last year’s club trophy?

‘I want you to give it to me straight, Randy,’ Loretta demanded, chin raised in defiance.

Randy stifled a lascivious grin. Frankly, he’d like nothing more.

She lit a cigarette without permission.

‘Is it possible for Miranda Muldavey to come after me for compensation, even though my beloved Ramsey,’ she clutched her chest dramatically as smoke billowed from her plump lips, ‘is no longer with us?’

Randy sighed, his ridiculous notion of an afternoon of champagne and sex rapidly diminishing by the second.

‘Well, it’s possible,’ he shrugged, ‘but unlikely. She would need to prove your husband’s negligence beyond reasonable doubt and, as you know, a dead man cannot stand trial. I suppose she could take out a private lawsuit, come after you that way, but again, the chances of her succeeding, in my opinion you understand, would be pretty slim.’

‘Slim you say?’

Randy downed the remainder of his crystal tumbler and pulled his lips over his teeth, before fixing her with an earnest stare.

‘Lady, I’d say they were fucking anorexic.’

Loretta visibly relaxed. Randy was right. These journalists would say anything to provoke a reaction. A reaction made headlines. And headlines sold newspapers. But still, Muldavey’s silence niggled at her.

‘I’ve had my secretary prepare copies of all the documents,’ Randy said, sliding a brown envelope across the oxblood-leather covered desk. ‘And I have the originals here for you to sign.’ He held out a Mont Blanc ink pen, poised, ready for her to take it.

Loretta took the pen from him and began to sign in her florid handwriting.

‘Congratulations, Mrs Hassan,’ Randy said dryly, quickly adding, ‘if that’s the right word to use, given the circumstances.’

Loretta was cross that she didn’t feel as euphoric as she had imagined she would, inheriting a touch over 500 million dollars.

‘There will be nothing left to celebrate if that crazy bitch comes after my money,’ she thumped her ample chest with such a breathtaking sense of self-righteousness that even Randy was a little taken aback, and he’d certainly seen more than his fair share of avarice over the years. ‘You cannot let Muldavey take it away from me.’ Loretta held his gaze from across the desk as she expertly slipped back into her helpless little girl routine, the one men seemed to drink down like a particularly fine vintage Châteaux Margaux.

Randy cleared his throat and watched as Loretta crossed and uncrossed her slim, tanned legs in slow, deliberate movements. The woman was certainly no spring chicken, but then again, neither was he, and she was wearing incredibly well for her age, whatever that might be. It was difficult to tell, given all the work Ramsey had done on her.

‘Well,’ he said softly, enjoying the switch in her demeanour as it dawned upon him that this was probably a woman who would do anything to save her fortune. ‘I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement. Let’s crack open that champagne,’ he grinned, the twitch inside his Armani slacks now a fully-fledged hard-on as he imagined her bent over his desk, skirt above her waist as he went at her like a jackhammer from behind.

Loretta smiled thinly as she surreptitiously opened the top button of her blouse.

‘You know, if you want my advice,’ Randy said, leaning back in his seat and trying to stop himself from imagining his bald head sandwiched between her impressive cleavage, ‘I would spend as much of that money as you possibly can, as quickly as you can. Invest in something; property, a legitimate business … the more you spend, the less there will be for her to take …’ Loretta pulled her chin into her chest, indignant.

‘Take? What do you mean, take?’

‘Not that this will happen, you understand …’ he added quickly, not wanting to spoil the upturn of her mood. ‘I’m just saying that if the worst did come to the worst, there are ways of protecting your assets.’

‘Go on …’ he had her interest now and this pleased him.

‘You could always transfer it all into someone else’s name. Someone you trusted, obviously, a family member, a lover perhaps … if it belonged to someone else, in name at least, then Muldavey could never make a claim on it.’ He paused for a moment to open the bottle of vintage Krug, decanting the amber bubbles into matching Tiffany flutes, adding, ‘I realise it’s far from ideal, but it would be one way of protecting your money.’

Loretta stifled a snort. The man was cazza loca. She would rather cut out her own eyes. Besides, she trusted no one. Sometimes not even herself.

She had made that mistake once before, trusting a man who had managed to peel back her tough outer layers and uncover a softness beneath she had never even known existed; a man who had gone on to shatter her heart and destroy her faith in everything good. A man named Tom Black.

‘If I were you,’ Randy continued, a look of self-serving cheer creeping across his booze-bloated face, ‘I would take myself off somewhere. You know, have a holiday – a long one; I’m sure you deserve it. Why not charter that new jet of yours? Start ridding yourself of some of that cumbersome cash,’ he smirked broadly, displaying a set of yellow teeth. ‘Let me deal with Miranda Muldavey this end.’

Loretta visibly recoiled. She could smell his fetid breath from where she sat; a revolting mix of halitosis and cognac.

‘Do you know, Randy, I think you might be right,’ she smiled, genuinely this time. Randy had just given her a fantastic idea, and in doing so unwittingly blown any chances of her dropping to her hands and knees and pleasuring him under the desk in the process. ‘I will fly off somewhere; somewhere no one will find me. At least not without looking …’

Randy came from behind his desk to join her and she stood. Vertically challenged and about forty pounds overweight, he looked as if his suit had shrunk in the wash and Loretta wondered, incredulously, how anyone could manage to make bespoke Armani look so disgustingly cheap. She lunged forward and kissed him then, caught him clean off-guard, and he struggled to regain his composure as her long hot tongue played with his short wet one. She felt for his erection, only to be met with more disappointment. Pulling away from him sharply, Loretta suddenly snatched up the signed documents from the desk and stuffed them inside her Valentino clutch.

Randy looked at her, crestfallen. ‘But I thought …’

‘You thought what, Randy?’ she raised a dark, arched eyebrow at him that was sharp as a poisonous arrow and made him instantly lose his erection. ‘I would rather join my husband in the grave,’ she hissed, disgust dripping from her lips. ‘If Ramsey could see you now,’ she shook her head, slowly tutting with disapproval as her eyes swept the length of him.

Suitably rejected, Randy bristled.

‘You can save all the grieving widow crap for someone who buys it, lady. I know what an ageing, gold-digging piece of trash you are underneath all the plastic surgery.’

‘Sticks and stones, Randy, as the English say,’ Loretta cackled, checking her lipstick in her diamond-encrusted Dior compact before turning sharply to leave. Though he was right about one thing; she did need a holiday. Somewhere hot, somewhere fabulous and fun, somewhere she could embark upon the most epic shopping spree of her life without the press tracking her every move. She knew just the place.