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
