Rivals (12 page)

Why was she letting it bother her? Strange men had stared at her nearly all of her adult life. She forced her attention back as Malcom said, “There's Diedre. If you two will excuse me…”

“Of course.” Flame smiled, still slightly distracted. Just for a moment she let her gaze follow Malcom as he walked away.

“Your agency handles the advertising for his stores, doesn't it?” Chance remarked.

“Yes,” Flame admitted, wondering if he'd heard the rumors about her alleged affair with Malcom. But there was nothing in his expression to indicate that the question was anything other than an idle one. “As a matter of fact, we've been working on the store's holiday ads and commercials for the past month. For us, Christmas starts well before Thanksgiving.”

“That's getting into the Christmas spirit early.”

Mockingly she corrected him. “Ah, but we're dealing with the commercialized version of Christmas—the one that promotes the belief it's more blessed to give than to receive, and inspires the ringing of cash registers instead of silver bells. Our advertisers tend to spell Christmas with dollar signs.”

“Scrooge would be proud of them.” He grinned.

Flame laughed at that and added, “Too bad no bah-humbugs are allowed. He'd fit right in now.”

“What about you? Are you a bah-humbug person?” Chance asked, eyeing her curiously.

“Not really.” She sobered slightly. “Although I admit, without any family left, Christmas has lost much of its meaning for me.”

“You don't have any family?”

She shook her head. “I lost both my parents some years ago. And, since I was an only child…” She shrugged off the rest of the sentence and the twinge of loneliness that came with it, and switched the focus to him. “I suppose you're from a big family.” None of the articles about him had contained any mention of family. In fact, Flame couldn't recall any reference to his background other than the mention of a tour of duty in Vietnam.

“No, like you, I'm an only child with both parents gone. And holidays don't mean much to me either.” A smile curved his mouth, but it was the look of understanding in his eyes that touched Flame.

Sid Barker stood squarely in front of the pay phone and puffed impatiently on his cigarette, his right shoulder twitching in a nervous shrug. His gaze moved constantly, his hazel eyes darting restless glances at the well-heeled guests that passed him.

Uncomfortable among this moneyed crowd with their fancy airs and superior looks, he unconsciously rubbed the top of a brown shoe along the back of his navy trouser leg, trying to give some polish to its scuffed toe. He smoked the cigarette all the way down to the filter, then took a last drag and exhaled the smoke out the long beak of his nose.

As he started to stab the butt into the sand of the ashtray stand, the phone rang. He dropped the cigarette instantly and snatched the receiver from the hook before it could ring again.

“Yeah, it's me,” he said, the roughness of the street in his voice. “What took you so long?…Right, I saw them together not five minutes ago. I think she made me though…. If you say so,” he said, moving his head in disagreement. “But I don't think its going to do much good…. If that's what you want, that's what I'll do. It's your money.”

He hung up, cast a quick look around to see who was about, then turned and slicked a hand over his thinning hair, the twitch back in his shoulder. With another scanning look, he headed back to find the redhead, his mind racing to find a way to get her alone.

For once, luck was on his side. Just when he figured it would be hours before the right moment presented itself, there it was. She was standing to one side, listening but not appearing to take part in the conversation.

Moving as quickly as he dared without drawing undue attention, Sid Barker circled around and approached her from the side. He was two steps away when she finally noticed him, her glance at first startled, then probing. Maybe she hadn't recognized him after all. He stopped close to her and furtively slipped her the note from his pocket.

A frown flickered across her smooth forehead as her green eyes dropped their inspection of him to glance at the paper. Immediately he moved away and plunged into the thick of the elegant crowd.

“
You'd better wise up before it's too late and stay away from him. You'll regret it if you don't
.”

Stunned by the threatening message scrawled across the paper, Flame stared after him, the phrase
stay away from him
echoing in her head. Those were the same words that had been written on the torn piece of paper at the DeBorgs' party last week. As the milling crowd closed in behind him and hid him from her view, she caught a glimpse of his brown shoes. The waiter with the hawklike features, the one she'd caught staring at her so rudely—it was the same man.

But the message made no more sense than it had before. Stay away from whom? From Malcom? From Chance? And who could have sent it? If
him
referred to Malcom, then Diedre was the logical choice. But if it was Chance, then who? Lucianna Colton? Did she consider Chance her private property?

Or could it be…Malcom? He didn't like competition of any sort. The more she thought about it—and remembered the threats he'd made on Tuesday—the more it sounded like him. He wasn't above using intimidation to get what he wanted. Obviously nothing she'd said to him on Tuesday had made any difference. He wanted her. And her feelings, her future, didn't enter into it, no doubt rationalizing it all away with some vague thought of seeing to it that she was well taken care of.

“I think it's time we took our seats.” The suggestion was accompanied by the touch of a hand on her back, both startling her. With a quick turn of her head, she encountered Chance's warm look, a look that immediately sharpened. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” She smiled quickly, perhaps too quickly. “It just occurred to me that you'd probably like to go backstage and wish Miss Colton luck tonight.”

Chance smiled and shook his head. “Lucianna goes into total isolation for at least three hours before a performance. Her hairdresser and the wardrobe lady are the only people she allows in her dressing room.”

“You've known her quite awhile, haven't you?” There was something in the ease of his answer that had made her suspect that.

“Longer than either of us cares to remember.” The hand at the back of her waist increased its pressure slightly, an altogether pleasant sensaton. “Shall we go in?”

Smiling, she lifted her head a little higher, determined to let none of this spoil her evening. “I think that's an excellent suggestion, Mr. Stuart.”

Shortly after they'd taken their seats, the house lights dimmed and the orchestra began the opening strains of the prelude to
Il Trovatore
. There were the last-minute stirrings and whispers as those who had lingered took their seats. Then the curtain lifted on a fifteenth-century setting of a castle and its gardens in Aragon surrounded by the mystery of night.

The captain of the guard, in a resonant bass voice, recounted to the retainers gathered around him the lurid tale of an old Gypsy woman, burned at the stake for the crime of casting an evil spell on one of the Count's two infant sons, and how, to avenge her mother's death, the daughter of the Gypsy steals the other child and, according to the story, throws it into the fire that had killed her mother, thus establishing Verdi's melodramatic plot of a Gypsy's vengeance.

At the end of the guard's tale came the ominous tolling of the midnight hour. Then Lucianna Colton made her entrance in the role of Leonora, a noble lady of the court.

As applause greeted her appearance, Flame stole a glance at the man beside her. In the darkened theater, the lights from the stage cast the angles and planes of his face into sharp relief, highlighting the prominent bones of his cheek and jaw, and hollowing with shadows his lean cheeks. She was conscious of the strength in his smoothly carved profile—and she was conscious, too, that he showed little reaction to Lucianna's appearance. She'd wondered if he would—if he'd had some sort of disagreement with the soprano—if he had invited her tonight in retaliation. Yet she could read nothing into his expression that suggested any of those things. He looked pleased by the applause Lucianna received, but no more than anyone would be when they knew the performer.

A little ruefully, Flame realized that it wasn't going to be so easy to put those obscure warnings out of her mind and simply enjoy the evening. As if sensing her gaze, Chance turned his head slightly to return the look. In that moment, she became conscious of the scant inches that separated them, their shoulders nearly touching. Fleetingly, she wished the opera was ending instead of just beginning, then forced her attention back to the stage as Lucianna Colton, staying in character, waited for the burst of applause to fade, then began her opening aria, a song of love and emotions awakened.

The second-act curtain opened to a dawn scene of the Gypsies' mountain encampment and the famous strains of the Anvil Chorus. When it faded, the Gypsy's daughter, now an old woman, began to sing her impassioned version of her mother's death at the stake.

Chance listened to the Gypsy's hatred and bitterness and the ringing cry to “Avenge Thou Me,” but his attention ultimately strayed from the mezzo-soprano's aria. There was too much in the character that reminded him of Hattie, all twisted with a hatred that seemed to feed on itself.

He could have dealt with that but not the frustration that a week's worth of digging had failed to provide him with the name of Hattie's new heir, the one who would deny him Morgan's Walk. Matt Sawyer had learned the identity of the genealogist in Salt Lake City, a certain Bartholomew T. Whittier. Unfortunately, the man had gone to England to trace the ancestors of one of his clients. Matt had finally located him in some remote village in the north of England, but Whittier hadn't been much help. Yes, he'd remembered compiling the information on the West Coast branch of the Morgan family, but the attorney he'd dealt with in Tulsa had demanded that he forward all his notes along with the information he'd obtained. So, no, he didn't have any records. However, he was quite certain that the only living descendant of that branch had been a woman, although she had married and her name wasn't Morgan any more. No, he couldn't remember what it was—not without his notes. But he could gather all the information again. This time it shouldn't take him so long since he knew many of the sources he'd used previously. Yesterday the genealogist had flown back to Salt Lake City, at Chance's expense, to begin the search for the Morgan descendant all over again.

Originally Chance had hoped that when he flew out here this weekend, he'd have the name of this long-lost Morgan. He didn't, but there was some consolation in knowing that he would be dealing with a woman. The odds were in his favor that a woman in California wouldn't be interested in owning a cattle ranch in Oklahoma, however romantic it might sound to her. Sooner or later the novelty of it would wear off, and he intended to make certain it happened sooner rather than later.

It would mean more trips to San Francisco, but—he glanced sideways at Flame—he had a feeling he'd be making more of them anyway. Why not combine business with what was certain to be pleasure?

8

A
fter
the performance, Flame accompanied Chance backstage and joined the throng of friends and admirers crowding into Lucianna Colton's dressing room to shower her with their plaudits. Flame couldn't disagree with a single one of them. The brilliant shading of the cadenzas, the wonderful coloring of the trills, the breathtaking use of rubato, and the free, liquid quality of her voice convinced Flame that she deserved them all.

She watched as Lucianna Colton, still in heavy stage makeup and gowned in an emerald-green kimono, rushed to embrace Chance. “I was wonderful, wasn't I?” she declared with refreshingly honest arrogance.

“You were more than wonderful. And if fifteen curtain calls don't prove that, nothing will.” Chance straightened from the embrace with a streak of scarlet lipstick on his cheek.

“It was glorious, wasn't it? They just kept applauding and applauding. I thought they'd never stop.” She noticed the lipstick stain on his cheek and made a rueful little moue with her mouth. “Look what I've done. I've left my mark on you, darling.” She reached up to wipe it away with her thumb, but succeeded only in smearing it.

“Don't worry, about it.” Using the handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped at the stain himself.

“I'm not,” she murmured, a faintly smug smile curving her red lips.

“It was a brilliant performance, Miss Colton,” Flame inserted. “Your name deserves to be spoken in the same breath with Callas, Sills, and all the other greats.”

“That's kind of you.” But the very coolness of her gaze made Flame wonder if the diva didn't resent her being with Chance. Immediately, Lucianna swung her attention back to him. “You will be at the party, won't you?”

“Maybe later.”

“Lucianna, darling.” A man burst into the room, throwing his arms open wide in exaggerated adoration. “You were divine, superb, truly nonpareil.”

“Oscar,” Lucianna cried in welcome and rushed to meet him. “You loved me?”

“Loved you? Darling, you made my heart cry,” he exclaimed as Chance took Flame's arm and steered her through the crowd and out the door.

Lucianna's dark eyes watched him leave. Maybe later, he'd said. But she knew him too well. He wouldn't be coming to the party. He'd be with that redhead instead. And the thought turned her cold inside—the hot cold that burned. Why? She'd seen him with other women before. Yet some instinct warned her this one was different. Had she lost him?

No. She wouldn't accept that. They had been lovers—and friends—for too many years. No woman would ever love and understand him as well as she did. He would come back to her.