they lived in southern California. The sky was blue, the sun was bright, and the temperature hovered in the gentle seventies.
“Fantastic,” said the tourists outside Disneyland.
“Terrific,” said the roller bladers on Ocean Front Walk.
“Awesome,” agreed the surfers at Redondo Beach.
“Rats,” muttered Eve Palmer as she sat trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Her car had not moved a mile in the past twenty minutes. The only thing moving was her temper, and it was rising as rapidly as the temperature inside the car.
Whatever had happened to simple things, like windows you rolled up and down at will? Her old Chevy had had them; you could let in air with a crank of the wrist. But this car that Charles had insisted on buying for her did not. Eve had not wanted it. She didn’t need a silver car that looked like a Batmobile, she’d told him, but Charles had disagreed.
“The head of Triad must look prosperous,” he’d said, as he’d handed her the keys to a vintage Jaguar.
The car had, at first, won her over with its simple but elegant styling. But it was also a money-eating monster, as she’d discovered last week, when the windows, air-conditioning and engine had all begun to malfunction.
A white-coated technician named Hans, looking more like a surgeon than a mechanic, had poked and prodded at its innards. Finally, in hushed tones, he’d pronounced the patient ill but repairable—to the tune of three thousand dollars and three weeks in the shop.
Fortunately for Eve, he’d misinterpreted her sudden pallor.
“If doing without your automobile will be a hardship, Miss Palmer, we can provide you with a temporary replacement.”
Eve had opened her mouth, ready to tell him that the hardship would be coming up with three thousand bucks in this lifetime, but then she’d remembered the second thing that Charles had taught her.
“Never let ’em see you sweat,” he’d said.
So she’d smiled, shoved her oversize sunglasses off the bridge of her small, straight nose and up into her blond hair and said that it just wouldn’t do, not when she was about to begin filming Hollywood Wedding.
“With Dex Burton,” she’d added, because that was an axiom she’d figured out herself. You got publicity wherever you could, and the fact that she hadn’t yet signed Dex—and probably never would—was no one’s business but her own.
Hans had almost clicked his heels with respect.
“I suppose it sounds silly,” she’d said in a way that made it clear she didn’t think it silly at all, “but the car’s my lucky charm. The repairs will have to wait until we’re done shooting.”
Hans, who’d dealt with Hollywood’s finest for years, knew they were as superstitious as his Gypsy forebears. Still, he’d permitted himself an upraised eyebrow.
“Of course, Miss Palmer. But you understand that the car will not work dependably until repairs are made?”
“Certainly,” Eve had said and driven off jauntily, as if she’d always longed to pilot a motorized sauna.
Now here she sat, the AC barely wheezing, the windows only willing to open an inch, the engine giving an ominous shudder every few minutes. Her hair was damp, her silk suit was plastered to her skin—and that wasn’t the worst of it.
This was the last day of filming The Ghost Stallion, the hideous movie she’d inherited from her predecessor. She ought to be out on location, making certain nothing else went wrong. Instead, she was going to be trapped in her office while Zachary Landon, Charles’s son, peered into cabinets, counted paper clips and tsk-tsked over every dime she’d spent.
It had been shock enough to learn of Charles’s death, but to find out that his son was flying in to check up on her…
His accountant son, the one Charles had mentioned when Eve had tried to explain how East Coast bankers had almost destroyed Triad. She hadn’t been sure a man like Charles would understand, but he had.
“Some money men have no imagination at all,” he’d said.
Eve had sighed with relief. “Exactly. Filmmaking is a unique business, Mr. Landon. Mr. Tolland tried explaining that to the bank’s accountants, but——”
“Call me Charles, please. Yes, I can imagine what you went through with the bean counters. Hell, when I think that my own son is one of them…”
“An accountant?”
“Zachary,” Charles had said, his face darkening, “in with a bunch of effete Boston jackasses instead of taking his rightful place at my side. It’s enough to send my blood pressure through the top of the tube.”
Which was pretty much what it was doing to hers now, Eve thought as she edged the car forward.
Charles had understood instinctively that it would take time, money and a few breathtaking risks to save Triad. His accountant son would not.
“Damn,” she said, and gave the steering wheel a sharp whack with her fist.
Traffic began moving and Eve slipped the car into gear and urged it forward. Somehow, she’d have to make him understand. If only she could get to the office before he began poking his ink-smudged fingertips into things.
The cellular phone in the console rang. Eve snatched it up.
It was her secretary. Eve listened, the expression on her face going from concern to dismay to despair. “Are you sure, Emma? Must I really go out there?”
Yes. She must. Eve grimaced, snapped out a few orders and slammed down the phone.
There was a problem on the set again, a disagreement between the movie’s egotistical male lead and Francis Cranshaw, its equally asinine director. She had no choice but to deal with it before she dealt with Zachary Landon.
Men, she thought in disgust, men and their damned arrogance.
An opening suddenly appeared in the next lane. Eve accelerated hard and swung into it, cutting off a black Porsche that was trying to do the same thing. The Porsche’s brakes squealed as she shot past it.
Eve glanced into her mirror as the Porsche’s horn gave a long, angry blast. She could see nothing of the other driver except mirrored sunglasses above a thinned, angry mouth and an aggressive jaw.
He said something—yelled it, probably. Eve didn’t have to hear the words to know they were not pleasant.
Too bad, she thought. With a little smile of grim pleasure, she stepped down on the gas and left the Porsche and its driver engulfed in a cloud of black smoke.
Zach let out a string of words that should have turned the air blue. It had been a woman driving the silver Jaguar—he’d just had time to see the bright gold hair before she’d left him eating dust.
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel of the Porsche. For one wild moment, he fantasized about speeding up, forcing the silver car onto the shoulder of the road, hauling out the driver
