Читать книгу The Arrangement - Suzanne Forster, Suzanne Forster - Страница 6

1

New York, Six Months Later

Alison Fairmont Villard opened her eyes reluctantly. She was in her own bedroom, but the first moments of consciousness still brought bewilderment. Andrew had insisted she recuperate at his home on Oyster Bay in Long Island, but it wasn’t being on the east coast that confused her. Each day since the accident had started with a realization that felt almost physical, as if she had to grasp her mind and wrench it to this new time and place, to a world she actually knew very little about. And yet more about than she wanted to.

Her amnesia wasn’t as total as the doctors had thought. She remembered nothing about being battered against the reefs and nearly drowning, nothing about the plunge into the raging ocean, but she could remember just enough of what had happened before that to be terrified by it.

Those flashes of memory acted like a spotlight that could blind you to everything except its beam. What she recalled now were the harrowing moments. Everything else was hidden in the surrounding ring of darkness.

Maybe it was the pills. She took them to sleep and to keep the dreams at bay. Whether night or day, when she swallowed a tiny blue pill, she was transported to a cool, safe place, a shaded tropical lagoon, her mind free of clutter and turmoil. She slept in innocence, like Eve before the apple.

Her fingers clasped the small battered loop of copper attached to her charm bracelet. It was an ugly stepsister compared to the other delicate gold charms, but she was relieved to find it still there. She’d reached for it so often it had become a reflex. An embarrassing tic. But the brush with death had made her superstitious, and the old copper penny ring had literally saved her life when it snagged on a piece of driftwood. Its protective powers had been tested.

She rolled to her side and sat up, not bothering to cover her nakedness. There was no one to see her, anyway. She and Andrew didn’t share this beautiful suite where she slept her life away, and as far as she knew they never had. Before the “accident,” which was how they now referred to it, they’d lived in his Manhattan apartment. Here, in his much larger estate on Oyster Bay, their rooms were in different wings. Different rooms. Different lives.

She had almost no interaction with her husband these days, except occasionally to discuss a social or business event that he wanted her to attend with him, and there had been very few of those. In the first weeks after the accident, he’d spent hours with her, filling in the blanks of her life with him, as well as her life before him. He’d shared as much as he knew of her past, but it was what he’d told her about their relationship that made her realize they’d been on the brink of a divorce before the accident—and Andrew didn’t seem to have any desire to reconcile now.

He didn’t even seem to like her, which made her feel strangely empty and resentful, even though she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d felt about him before. He’d refused to go into the intimate details of their relationship, which had left her both curious and suspicious, but mostly, lost. How was she supposed to pick up pieces she didn’t have?

They were together now only because of the agreement they’d made—and that was strictly business. Once she’d recovered enough to lead her own life, such as it was, he’d left her to it. That was how he wanted it. What she wanted didn’t seem to enter into anything, though to be fair, he had asked her about that once.

What do you want to do with your second chance?

Her answer had surprised him. She told him she didn’t remember asking for one.

She rose and stretched, using her arms and feeling the ripple come from the base of her spine. Her listlessness was replaced by a vague sense of guilt as she considered the state of her bedroom and what she could see of her sitting room through the connecting arch. Clothing had been dropped here and there; books and magazines lay about.

Had she always been this sloppy? Maybe she was rebelling against his need for order and organization. He’d called home once when he was away on a trip, and had her search for some papers in his study, which was next to his bedroom. She’d been amazed at the precision of his life.

She didn’t feel precise. She felt messy.

“What you are is a zombie,” she murmured, startled at the husky tone of her own voice. Part of that was from the surgery and the rest was the way she’d always sounded, apparently. “Do something,” she said. “Anything other than sleep.”

She started for the bathroom, thinking she might shower and dress, perhaps go to the kitchen and find something to eat. It was late morning, and she probably should have been hungry, but she rarely had much of an appetite, especially for the organic food that Andrew preferred.

He had someone come in twice a week to clean and do the grocery shopping, but other than that they had no staff. He’d let everyone go shortly after he brought her home from the hospital. He’d had concerns about prying eyes and the tabloid press, but they would have been interested in her only because of him.

He’d made a name for himself in the music business, not just for the high-profile events he organized, but for the talent he’d discovered. And it didn’t hurt that he was the personification of tall, dark and dashing. Years ago he’d been engaged to one of his own finds, a pop princess named Regine, when she’d drowned, apparently rather mysteriously, in their swimming pool.

Another accident. The women in Andrew’s life were prone to them.

The media had tagged it the Villard Curse, but Andrew wouldn’t discuss it, except for a few paltry details that Alison could have read in a newspaper. His mother had been a rising star with the New York Opera when she’d suffered a freak accident during a rehearsal. She and Andrew, who was a teenager at the time, had been living with her mentor, the opera’s artistic director, and Andrew had stayed on with the director after she died, rather than disrupt Andrew’s schooling. His parents had divorced when he was a baby, and his mother had desperately wanted him to have culture in his life. No one had objected, least of all Andrew’s father, who’d moved to the wilds of Wyoming and had a family of his own.

When Alison had pressed for details about Regine, Andrew had startled her by lashing out. Apparently the loss was still too painful, but it had been five years. He’d told her not to ask about Regine again, but he’d alluded to a love triangle, of which she, Alison, had been one of the points. Alison had no recollection of that at all. It was her mother, Julia, who’d come between her relationship with Andrew when Alison was eighteen. As far as Alison knew, Andrew’s association with Regine had been strictly business up to that point, although it did turn romantic after Alison and Andrew parted. Things quickly became serious between he and Regine, but she was dead before they could marry.

A year after that Andrew had secretly married Alison…and now this.

Her spine rippled again, a shiver this time. She lived with a vague sense of dread that never left her, except when she forced it away. Were there men who found it easier to dispose of women than to leave them? They would have to be patholotical in the extreme, and she didn’t want to think about her husband in that way. She was still rattled and disoriented. Right now there was nothing to anchor her, no touchstones, but that would change.

The large sage-green-and-white bathroom soothed her as she stepped barefoot onto its cool limestone tile. The mostly glass-and-steel house had several levels, domed skylights and was built on low, rolling sand dunes. It was one of the few modern structures in Oyster Bay Cove, and Andrew had kept the decor inside as light and natural as the shores and the sea outside.

As she entered the shower stall, the charm bracelet jingled on her wrist. She never removed it these days, even to bathe. Doing so made her feel too vulnerable. A chunk of her life was gone and the details of her past were confused and fuzzy, but she had a sense of herself as an adventurous person before the accident. Some might even say reckless. Now she was in constant search of ways to protect herself. She kept a marble paperweight on the nightstand next to her bed and a kitchen carving knife in the nightstand drawer, just in case.

She turned one of the knobs on a sleek stainless steel panel, and warm water began to mist from above. Possibly her favorite part of the bathroom was the rain forest showerhead. Standing under it, she really did feel as if she’d been caught in a tropical cloudburst.

When she came out of the shower moments later, wrapped in a bath sheet, she sensed that something was different. But as she walked through the room, still dripping, she didn’t notice anything out of place.

As she entered the sitting room, she saw that an envelope and a handwritten note had been left on her writing desk. The embossed envelope was made of pale blue linen as soft and slippery as silk. It was addressed to her, but it had been opened and the contents read. She knew because of the note from Andrew lying next to the envelope. He’d written just two sentences and signed his name with the usual slashing capital A.

Alison, there’s no way out this time. We have to go. Andrew.

Alison pulled the matching blue stationery from the envelope and read the entire page in one gulp, as if it were a single sentence. Nerves, she thought. The kind that made you eat too fast and caused the food to ball up in your stomach.

My darling daughter,

Your silence is breaking my heart. You will be twenty-eight soon, and though no invitation is needed because this is and always will be your home, I’m extending one so that you can understand how desperate I am to see you again.

Please come to Sea Clouds and celebrate the occasion of your birthday with your brother and me. Of course, Andrew is invited, too.

I long to see you.

All my love,

Your mother

Alison’s breath had gone dry in her throat. Invitation? It was a summons from her mother to appear. She’d known this was coming, but that didn’t make it any less a disaster. Andrew had been holding her mother off since the accident. He’d said he was doing it to protect Alison, to give her time to heal and prepare, but Julia Fairmont had extended an olive branch. She wanted to see her one and only daughter, and no one could protect Alison now.

She had visions of putting the pricey stationery through a shredder and grinding it into a pile of slivers. But she didn’t have the nerve, even for a symbolic act of defiance. It felt as if she’d lost control of even the smallest details of her life. She was a chess piece being moved around by master players, one of whom was her husband.

The letter was just one example. It was addressed to her, but Andrew had opened it, read it and told her how they were going to respond, even though the decision had to do with her life, her family—and should have been her choice. He believed it was time to repair her relationship with her mother, and even though it was part of the arrangement Alison had made with him, she hated the thought of going back to Mirage Bay under these circumstances.

She had only agreed because of personal reasons that were deeply important to her. Those reasons were also why she stayed in this house and put up with Andrew’s interference. Unfortunately, she’d had to take him into her confidence, because she would need his help when they got to Mirage Bay. But this wasn’t the right time for her to go.

Her mother’s invitation almost certainly had something to do with the fifty-million-dollar trust that would have come to Alison on her twenty-eighth birthday, if she hadn’t decided to walk away from the family wealth and marry Andrew. Julia Fairmont had been apoplectic. She’d cut off all contact with her daughter for four years, and according to Andrew, it was mutual. Alison had made no attempt to repair the rift.

But last February, in a fit of remorse, Alison had talked him into wintering in Mirage Bay so that she could make amends to her mother. Earlier that year, Andrew had shipped Bladerunner back to the West Coast manufacturer for modifications, so they would have his beloved sloop there as well.

It might have worked if her mother hadn’t brutally rejected Alison’s overtures—and if the weather hadn’t turned nasty, whipping up a storm that had sent Alison into the drink. But now, suddenly, all was forgiven. Her mother wanted her back. Something about that didn’t feel right, and Andrew’s ultimatum only added to the pressure.

It bothered Alison that he’d come into her room while she was showering. Or possibly while she was sleeping. It wasn’t the first time. On at least two other occasions while she slept he’d left evidence of his presence. A door ajar, a note, like today.

It wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d wanted her to know, so that she would never feel totally safe, even when she slept. Her pills took care of that, but he didn’t know about the pills. The doctors and nurses who treated her had quietly refilled her prescriptions and given her samples over the months.

At times she felt like a hostage in this house, which had disturbed her to the point that she’d looked the word up online and learned the dynamics of hostage taking. A captive’s resistance—and her will—could be systematically undermined by randomly invading her privacy. When a person’s most basic boundaries were violated, anxiety levels spiked—and had the paradoxical effect of making the hostage more dependent on the one who had the control.

Her first reaction had been to deny it. Andrew hadn’t been undermining her. He was protecting her. He’d saved her life. But eventually, she’d had to admit the truth. She had no idea how many times he might have slipped in without her knowing, no idea what he might have done while he was there—and just the thought had made her want to take another pill. She would probably become an addict before she figured out how to regain some control of her life.

Her walk-in closet was the size of a small bedroom. She could have been shopping in a boutique, there were so many choices of what to wear. She grabbed the same outfit she’d worn yesterday, a pair of white shorts and a black tank top. Hard to go wrong with shorts on a July morning at the beach. If the clothes were a little roomy, it was because she hadn’t yet gained back the weight she’d lost during her ordeal.

Her hair was still wet from the shower and would curl into flyaway waves if she let it dry naturally. What she had decided to let go natural was the color. In defiance of Andrew’s wishes, she’d let the blond grow out until it had begun to look ratty, and then she’d dyed it. Now it was almost completely grown out to a rich doeskin brown, and it was the one thing that made her feel like her own woman.

She clicked her blow-dryer up to High. This was the part of her morning ritual she liked least—blow-drying, styling, makeup. None of that had any appeal for her—and who was she going to see, anyway? She lived in the same house with a man she hadn’t seen a trace of in over a week. The odds of an encounter were slim. Maybe she would just grab an apple from the refrigerator and go for a walk on the beach.

She turned off the dryer without using it and slipped it back in the wall holder. Her husband’s apparent surveillance didn’t make sense. He was the one who’d insisted they live separate lives, except for their social obligations. They’d both agreed there would be no physical intimacy, so it wasn’t her fidelity that concerned him. And yet he seemed to feel the need to keep tabs.

She should have challenged him, but that was a battle for another day. She couldn’t expend the energy now. Nor could she make this trip to Mirage Bay. She needed more time. She hadn’t even been able to master the piano lessons he’d insisted she take. She was supposed to have been a good player once, but the lines and notes were a foreign language now.

Still, mixed in with her suspicions and the strange brew of emotions she felt toward Andrew was some gratitude. He had saved her life and for that she owed him, but he was asking too much. And she had already decided how to handle it.

“Andrew, are you there? What am I supposed to do about all these open concert dates?”

The frustrated voice of his trusted assistant, Stacy, yanked Andrew’s attention away from the graph paper on his drafting table. He turned his head to the speakerphone, where he could hear her sharp sigh.

“Once you have McGraw, Crow and Alvarado confirmed,” he told her, “you can lock in the remainder of the U.S. dates. Be sure you tell their people we’re not taking special orders. All the proceeds are going to charity. The performers get carrot sticks and tap water.”

“Seriously? Tap water?”

“Seriously.” Andrew rubbed the graph paper with his thumb, as if he could massage away any resistance. He’d awakened with the impulse to create something, and that hadn’t happened in a while. He assumed it would have a hull and a sail and move through water. Sailboats were all he’d ever designed, and all he sketched now, but so far, this one was eluding him.

“Andrew, are you still there? Christina Alvarado’s people won’t talk to me. They want to deal with you directly—or she won’t do the gig.”

“In that case, she’s going to be the only world-class American pop artist missing from this benefit. Tell her people that Rock Rescue will be bigger than We Are the World. If she wants to blow that off, it’s her choice.”

“I can’t call Christina Alvarado a pop artist!”

“Stacy, you’re losing sight of the bigger picture. This is for charity. The stars are invited. Their egos aren’t.”

He advised her to breathe and then he gave her his usual pep talk about megastars in need of tough love. He finished by reminding her that he’d hired her because of her moxie. What he got back was another sharp sigh, to which he responded, “Whatever you do you have my complete support,” and hung up the phone.

He pushed back from his drafting table. Stacy could handle the Alvarado camp with both hands tied behind her back. She just didn’t know it yet. You couldn’t always accommodate. Sometimes you had to push back. Sudden fame and wealth turned too many young celebs into brats and bullies, and their publicity flacks followed suit. When that happened, nothing worked except an ice bath of reality. Everyone was expendable. It was a sad by-product of the American Dream.

Andrew’s home office had a wall of louvered windows that looked out on the white sands and cresting surf of the Atlantic. He crossed the room, cranked open every one of the panels and felt the balmy sea breezes feather his eyelashes and lift his hair. He breathed in salt and the fresh scent coming off the dune’s green-and-gold grasses.

As the summer heat permeated the room, and the blue endlessness of the ocean blinded him to all but its brilliant sparkle, he wished that he were out on the water. The yearning was almost palpable. He needed to sail. He hadn’t done that since Alison’s accident six months ago.

The Bladerunner had already been in Mirage Bay when they had gone back last February. Andrew had sent her out there for some modifications to the hull, and then after the accident he’d left her there, dry-docked for repairs. Now, he realized it was just as well that he hadn’t brought her back. He wanted the sloop there when he and Alison returned, even if he decided against taking her out.

Sailing wasn’t the same now. A darkness shadowed even the thought. He’d become almost as insular as she had—the strange, silent woman in the other wing of the house. For some time now, he’d been backing away from his business, turning more and more responsibility over to Stacy, but that was intentional. He’d also largely withdrawn from the social circuit. It was awkward going out alone. There were always the questions about Alison.

Interesting how all roads led back to her. He couldn’t seem to get her out of his thoughts, but maybe that was to be expected. She was at the core of the mystery that dominated his days. Possibly, she was the mystery.

His stomach rumbled and he glanced over at the plate he’d left on the built-in counter and cabinets he used for work space. It was an array of summer fruit and a whole-grain croissant that he’d forgotten in his quest to be creative.

He went to the refrigerator that he stocked with juices, fruits and raw vegetables. He’d naturally gravitated toward healthier food since quitting booze after Regine died. He’d never been a falling-down drunk, but every day it had seemed to take more and more to lubricate his inane conversations with the celebrity crowd and their entourages. He’d drunk his way through too many lunches, bullshitted through too many dinners and award show parties.

Garbage in, garbage out. It all sounded the same. One day he’d lost track of his messages and called the wrong hot new rock star. He’d congratulated her on an award that she’d lost to a feuding competitor. She’d filled Andrew’s ear with obscenities, which had struck him as funny. He’d dropped the phone and laughed until he cried, and when he’d gotten up to freshen his drink, the liquor bottle was empty.

It had seemed like a sign.

Now, Andrew’s goal was to hand over as much as he could of the concert promotion business to Stacy. They were reorganizing so that the bulk of it could be handled out of his Manhattan office, and the rest he could deal with from wherever he happened to be, including here in Oyster Bay. Stacy would have to hire more staff, which would raise the overhead, but that was fine. It was time he needed now, not money.

He grabbed a bottle of carrot-and-pineapple juice and walked over to his drafting table, still thinking about his new sketch. That’s where it seemed to start and end these days, with the sketches. He never got to the building, never even got to the design, though that was his first love.

The walls of his office were lined with photographs and paintings of classic boats, most of them crafted of wood, and to his mind, works of art. Today’s serious racing yachts were built with man-made materials, and though their lines were beautiful and their speed breathtaking, they lacked the soul of their graceful forebears.

He set down the juice unopened, picked up his pencil and drew in the hull with a couple of strokes. It was coming now. She would be small, fast and graceful, a sloop. Like her.

Once again, his mind went directly to Alison, like a car heading into a curve and driving off the road. How could you not think about a woman who slept naked in a cool dark room, shades drawn, even during the day?

He’d gone there to talk at various times, but she hadn’t answered the door, not even when he pounded. He’d let himself in and found her in bed, entwined with the sheets and stretched out like a nude in a painting.

At times he could have sworn she was sleeping with her eyes open, like a sphinx. He never quite knew what to make of the strange creature he’d fished out of the sea, but he could not make the mistake of falling under her spell and wrecking himself on the rocks.

Someone had tried to frame him by making his wife’s accident look like murder. Posing as him, they’d taken out a two-million-dollar insurance policy on Alison a month before her accident. All the arrangements, including the results of her annual medical exam, had been handled by fax and phone, and it could just as easily have been Alison herself doing it. Voices were easily disguised on the phone.

Just days before the accident, he’d told her he wanted a divorce. Their prenuptial gave her a million dollars for every year of marriage if he initiated a divorce, and nothing if she did. Without blinking an eye she’d asked for the money. He’d had it wired to the account she indicated, and forty-eight hours later, she’d disappeared off his boat.

It was enough to make a guy think. The wife he’s about to divorce vanishes with a nice chunk of change and he’s prosecuted for her murder? It was a tidy bit of revenge, if that’s what the wife had in mind. Of course, it had backfired.

“Andrew?”

Her voice always startled him. It wasn’t Alison’s. But then, how could it be, he reminded himself, after all those operations?

He looked up to see her standing in the doorway of his study, lithe and tan in her white shorts and flowing, slightly wild, dark hair. She held a note in her hand. Good, he thought, she’d found it.

She was up, walking and talking.

She wasn’t sleeping like the sphinx.

Good.