had realized in her first days of the music business, when she’d been just another struggling pianist trying to carve out a niche in a field dominated by country and pop artists, that the business was every bit as important as the music.
The challenge, of course, was to try to balance the magic and bliss of the music with insisting on using her own microphones for the auditorium PA systems and having her accountant keep a close eye on her record company royalty statements.
She also understood that too often people made the mistake of thinking that just because she looked soft, she did business that way, too. Over the years she’d acquired an agent, manager, producer and more people than she could easily count working with her and for her. Still, she insisted on making the final decision on even seemingly unimportant details, from what color lipstick she’d wear on stage to the typeface used for the programs.
Was it so wrong to want fans to feel as if they’d gotten their money’s worth? she wondered, even as she reluctantly admitted that her almost obsessive need to govern all aspects of her life had been born that long-ago day when her father had phoned her at her Swiss boarding school to unemotionally inform her that he was divorcing her slut of a mother.
“Besides,” Deke drawled, his deep voice breaking into her introspection, “my Aunt Fayrene had a saying.”
“Was she the one who sang in the Grand Ole Opry?”
Shaking off her uncharacteristic gloomy self-doubts, Gillian wiped the cold cream and heavy stage makeup off with a tissue. She’d given up trying to keep Deke’s countless relatives straight.
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head, took a long swallow of beer, sighed his pleasure, then wiped the foam off his mouth with the back of his hand. “That was Aunt Patsy. Aunt Fayrene’s the one who ran the Rebel’s Roost outside Turkey Gulch.”
“Of course,” Gillian murmured. “However could I forget the infamous madam of Turkey Gulch, Tennessee’s most popular house of ill repute?”
“Laugh all you want, but Fayrene was one smart cookie. She realized that since so many women were more than willing to give sex away, she had to think of herself as bein’ in the entertainment business.”
“Now you’re comparing me to a prostitute?” Amused, Gillian sipped her mineral water and felt her exhaustion begin to slip away.
“Hell, no. But what Aunt Fayrene always said about the hooker who realized she was sitting on the gold mine fits your situation.” He flashed her the grin that she suspected had charmed a great many Southern belles.
“You’ve got a lot of pretty glittery gold to sell, Gilly. The trick is not to let anyone go prospectin’ without first paying for the mineral rights.”
Gillian laughed as she was meant to. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Castle Mountain, Maine
HUNTER ST. JOHN LAY in bed, enjoying the aftermath of passion. The woman snuggled up against him was a biochemist working at the nearby think tank colloquially referred to by the locals as the “brain factory.” Toni Maggione was intelligent, driven, seductive, and what was most appealing to Hunter, she possessed an unrelentingly hedonistic attitude toward sex.
They’d first met three years ago, when, following his release from a Bosnian hospital, he’d arrived on the remote island off the rocky coast of Maine to work on his latest project. After a brief verbal exchange of personal résumés, and even briefer explanations of their works in progress, she’d leaned against a stainless steel table in her laboratory and chewed on a short scarlet fingernail while studying him, as if he were one of the lab animals she was considering using for her cancer research. He’d watched her gaze flick over his scarred and disfigured face, waiting for the expected response of horror, but all he’d read in those coffee-dark eyes had been vague curiosity.
“Three of my rats died this morning,” she’d told him.
“Should I say I’m sorry?”
“That’s not necessary. Since it wouldn’t change the fact that they died. And I was so hoping for a remission.” Her full lips had pouted. “It’s been a horrid morning.”
“Perhaps it’ll get better.”
Her smile had been slow and openly provocative. “You must be a mind reader. Because that’s precisely what I was thinking.” Her hips had swayed enticingly as she’d crossed the white tile laboratory floor in a way that had reminded him of a lioness on the hunt and locked the door. Then, still smiling, she’d turned back toward him and had begun taking off her clothes. Not waiting for a verbal invitation, Hunter had quickly shed his, as well.
They’d continued to get together three or four times a month. Constantly underfunded, suffering frustrating setbacks that were part and parcel of medical research, Dr. Antoinette Maggione used sex to relieve the unrelenting pressure of her work. Possessing a strong sex drive himself, Hunter was more than willing to help her out.
“I almost forgot. I brought you a present,” she said, slipping from his arms.
“A present?”
She laughed at the unmistakable alarm in his voice. “Don’t panic, darling.” Reaching up, she patted his scarred cheek. “You’ve already insisted that I’m not allowed to get you a Christmas present again this year,” she reminded him. “This is just a little something I saw in the video store the other day.” She left the bed, went into the living room and returned with the boxed tape. “I thought at the time that it might add to the mood.”
Hunter pushed himself up into a sitting position. “If you need a porno tape to get in the mood, I must not being doing my job.”
She laughed again. “Darling, if you weren’t a magnificent lover, I wouldn’t have forgotten about the tape two minutes after you opened the door. It isn’t pornography. It’s a music video.”
She turned on the bedroom television and stuck the tape into the VCR, then slipped back into bed.
Piano music filled the room. Hunter had never considered himself even a remotely fanciful man, yet the way it flowed, clean and clear, vaguely reminded him of a sunlit river tumbling over mossy rocks on the way to the sea.
On the screen, a slender woman was seated in a circle of towering stones. Her back was to the camera, her long hair—a blend of red, copper and gold that brought to mind a dazzling sunset—fell in rippling waves to her waist.
“I wonder how the producer got permission to film at Stonehenge,” he wondered out loud.
Toni shrugged her bare shoulders. “Gillian Cassidy’s sales figures probably speak pretty loudly. Factor in her incredible looks and I doubt if there’s a male government bureaucrat anywhere in the world who’d be able to say no to the woman. There are also some incredible scenes set on the Irish coast.”
“Cassidy?”
His nemesis’s surname rang an instant and unpleasant bell. It was, Hunter reminded himself, a not uncommon name. Especially along the eastern seaboard where so many immigrants of Irish extraction had settled.
But didn’t George Cassidy have a daughter? He vaguely remembered a skinny little thing with wild carrot-hued hair that was always escaping her braids, and
