dead.”
His eyes were cold, steely. “Can’t have it both ways, Lizzie.”
Suddenly, the argument was back in her court. It wasn’t Dani they were arguing about but her again. And she was fighting for her life. “Why? Why can’t I have it both ways? Why can’t I work for Jeremy, be your sister and still have a life of my own? Why can’t Dani have a life of her own?”
For a moment, there had been genuine concern in his eyes before the wall went up again. “Because it doesn’t work that way. Because we’re different. Because things can hurt you out there.”
“I’m thirty-one years old, Anthony. You can’t keep me in bubble wrap forever.”
And then he’d taken the ball out of her court. In typical Anthony fashion, he’d made the decision for her, even though he probably hadn’t realized it at the time. “You want to be free? Fine, be free. Go off on your own, just leave me the hell alone.” The words echoed in his wake as he slammed the door behind him, storming out of their apartment.
At the time, she’d been incensed—and hurt. She ran about, collecting her things and tossing them into the suitcase they used when they went out of town on jobs.
And all the while, she’d filled the spaces in her head with snippets of songs she knew. So that Anthony couldn’t tune in and discover what she was up to.
The wheels had been set in motion. She needed her space.
She’d left.
Once inside her car, she placed a call to Jeremy on her cell phone. To say he was surprised when she told him she was going on a much needed vacation was an understatement, especially since she said she was going alone. She’d lied and added she wasn’t taking her cell along.
“How can I get in contact with you?” he’d wanted to know.
“I’ll call you,” she’d promised.
But she hadn’t. And she wasn’t going to. Not for a while.
When she’d finally let her guard down, she’d discovered that there were no communal thoughts for her to let in. No feeling that something that Anthony was experiencing was touching her.
Like smoke on the wind, Anthony was gone, out of her life, as if he’d never been there.
It felt wonderful to be normal, to be alone with her thoughts.
Wonderful and strange and lonely, she slowly discovered.
So this was what everyone else experienced. After being part of a trio and then a duo for so long, she wasn’t all that sure she liked this change completely.
No, she silently argued with herself as the temptation to call Anthony one more time rose within her. Anthony’s terms were total surrender.
She sank back against a pillow. It was high time she took the training wheels off her life and rode on her own. Maybe not in a straight line, but at least unassisted.
The apartment she’d gotten was a studio. She had enough money in her account—Jeremy had always been generous with their cut—to get any sort of living accommodations, but she wanted to start out small and see how she liked it.
There was always time to get something bigger later. But she wanted to take baby steps because baby steps guaranteed that you didn’t fall flat on your face the way you might if you leaped.
Her attention drifted toward the newspaper she’d picked up earlier. She noticed a large, splashy article about the grand opening of Cole Williams’s new gallery. It promised to be a major event with a great many celebrities there, rubbing elbows with the CEOs of industry.
She smiled.
Just the kind of stomping grounds a newly released sparrow was looking for, she thought.
Beside the article was a rendition of the invitation that had been sent out to legions of people who periodically made the news. The article said that the party was “by invitation only.”
Her smile grew wider as she reached for a sketch pad. “Not a problem.”
Chapter 2
Elizabeth didn’t have to glance in the mirror. She knew. Knew that she was a certified, pull-out-all-the-stops knockout.
But a languid review of the evidence certainly didn’t hurt.
A smile curved her generous mouth as she looked at her reflection in the freestanding oval mirror that allowed her to get an overall view of herself. Satisfaction wrapped itself around her like a warm, velvety blanket as she surveyed her image.
She was loaded for bear and ready to go.
Rather than some prim hairstyle, she wore her hair loose. Coming down just past her shoulders, the midnight-black torrent of swirls and waves seductively brushed against her bare back. Her eye makeup, done to perfection, brought out her hazel-green eyes and accentuated the Gypsy blood that ran through her veins, thanks to her Romanian mother.
But it was the dress that pulled everything together. A flaming-red bit of fabric that nipped in at her small waist, highlighted her subtly rounded hips and, because the hem flirted outrageously with her thighs, allowed anyone with eyes to take in the fact that she had long, shapely legs that seemed to go on forever.
If this didn’t bring the great and near-great moneyed men milling around at the gallery opening to their collective knees, then nothing would, she thought with a toss of her head.
Upon scrutiny, Elizabeth couldn’t have been accused of having a vain bone in her body, but what she did possess was confidence: confidence in her skills, in her abilities to use them. She knew exactly what to do to stir up a reaction, be it from a crowd or an audience of one.
It didn’t take any of her special gifts to bring her to this conclusion; it was instinct, pure and simple. Survival instinct, because once upon a time those same skills had been what had helped her, Anthony and Dani survive on the street after they had run away from their last foster home.
Even after all this time, the memory still sent a shiver sliding down her spine. Living in that house had been surreal. On the outside, they all appeared to be the perfect family, being trotted out to church every Sunday, looking like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. But once behind closed doors, it had been different, completely different.
Amanda Toliver had been little more than a mousy servant to her husband, Wayne. And Wayne, with his large, beaming smile and his even larger hands, had felt that he was entitled to do whatever he wanted within his own residence.
That had included enforcing his will on the three of them.
Taking a hairbrush from the bureau, Elizabeth ran it through her hair one final time. Toliver had been roughest on Anthony, demanding all sorts of things from him, never satisfied with anything Anthony did. She remembered being surprised that Anthony had taken being ordered around for as long as he had, but she’d been aware of her brother making an effort, a really big effort this time, to blend in. They’d wanted so much to fit in, to have a normal life after what they’d gone through, after all the homes they’d been sent to.
But
