Книга - Shadows At Sunset

Shadows At Sunset
Anne Stuart


House of ShadowsThe house on Sunset Boulevard has witnessed everything: from the infamous murder-suicide of a ’50s starlet and her lover, to the drug-fueled commune in the ’60s, to the anguish of its present owner, Jilly Meyer, who is struggling to preserve the house and what’s left of her wounded family. Man of Shadows Coltrane is a liar, a con man and a threat to everything Jilly holds dear. He is also her hated father’s right-hand man, a gorgeous, loathsome snake who doesn’t care whom he uses to get what he wants. And he’s made it clear he wants Jilly. But the question is, what does he want her for? Shadows at SunsetSomehow Jilly has to stop Coltrane from destroying everything she cherishes. Including her own vulnerable heart. And the only way to do that is to uncover what Coltrane is really up to, and that could mean upsetting the explosive secrets of the past.









Someone was watching her.


Jilly opened her eyes and blinked, startled by the dimness of the room. It was late, the sky outside the broad expanse of windows was settling into an early autumn night, and the man watching her was blocking the door, consumed in shadows.

The hushed activity of Meyer Enterprises had stilled. It was very late, and she was alone with a stranger. If she had any sense at all she’d be scared to death.

“Are you going to hover there?” she asked in a tart voice, forcing herself to take her time in getting off the sofa.

He flicked on the light, and she blinked, momentarily disoriented after the shadowy dimness of the room. “I’m sorry I kept you so long.”

“I wasn’t waiting to see you. I don’t even know who you are. I was waiting to see Jackson.”

He stepped into the room, and his smile was deprecating, charming and completely false. “Your father asked me to handle it, Jillian. I’m—”

“Coltrane,” she supplied flatly. “I should have guessed.”

“Why?”

“My brother told me all about you.”

“Nothing flattering, I’m sure,” he said lightly.




Shadows at Sunset

Anne Stuart








First, I have to send huge thanks to my Genie sisters, Teresa Hill, Christie Ridgway and Barbara Samuel. They are goddesses extraordinaire, and really helped me jump-start this.

And thanks to Jackson Norton for letting me use his name. He’s the only Jackson I know, and he really is a most excellent young man, nothing at all like the wicked Jackson in this book.

And as always, for Richie and Kate and Timmy, for making me work when I’d rather play with them.




Contents


Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24




Prologue


From: Hollywood Haunts, Hartsfield Books, 1974

One of the most interesting houses in Hollywood is the famous La Casa de Sombras—House of Shadows. Built by the Greene brothers in 1928, La Casa is a perfect example of Spanish Colonial revival mixed with Mediterranean and Muslim influences. The once lavishly landscaped grounds are extensive, though recently the estate has fallen into disrepair and most likely will be razed.

La Casa de Sombras was the site of an infamous murder-suicide pact in the early 1950s. Fading film star Brenda de Lorillard shot her married lover, director Ted Hughes, before turning the gun on herself. Though a trail of blood led through the ornate house, both bodies were found in the lavish master bedroom. In the ensuing decades their ghosts have been spotted, at times arguing, at other times dancing on the terrace by moonlight, and occasionally, to the embarrassment of certain well-known Hollywood Realtors, in flagrante delicto on the large banquet table. Mystery still shrouds the reason for the murder-suicide.

The house was purchased by Meyer Enterprises and remained empty until the mid 1960s, when its grand elegance was tarnished after it was turned into a hippie crash pad for some of Hollywood’s notorious young actors and musicians. In recent years efforts had been made to restore the Grand Old Lady by the present owners, but like much of Hollywood’s architectural history, its days are most likely numbered. One can only wonder where the ghosts will go, once the baroque mansion is demolished.



Brenda de Lorillard, star of stage, screen, tabloids and nightmares, stretched her lithe body with a little catlike gesture, then made a moue at her beloved. “It’s been more than fifteen years since they published that dreadful book, darling. I think they’ve forgotten all about us.”

Ted lowered his newspaper and glanced at her through his wire-rimmed glasses. When he first started wearing them she’d teased him unmercifully. After all, why in heaven’s name should a ghost need reading glasses? They were dead, for heaven’s sake. How could his eyesight possibly deteriorate? And where the hell had he found those glasses, anyway?

But he’d simply given her his usual, indulgent smile, and as always Brenda was lost, as she had been when she first saw him across the bright lights of a movie set, when he was a lowly director of photography and she was a grand star. She’d loved him ever since, no matter how illogical. She’d spent almost her entire life, thirty-three…er…twenty-eight years focused on her career, and she’d put it all at risk for a mad infatuation that never faded, through career disaster, through time, through death itself.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, honeybunch,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “The place is still standing, though just barely, and the house tours still stop by the gates occasionally.”

“It’s the scandal tour,” Brenda said. “The same people who go visit Valentino’s grave and the place where the Black Dahlia was found. Hardly befitting a gorgeous villa like La Casa de Sombras!” she said with a sniff. “And not very flattering to the two of us. I hate thinking our only legacy was our death.”

Ted set his glasses down beside the newspaper, turning to look at her out of those wonderful gray eyes of his. The newspaper was the Los Angeles Times, dated October 27, 1951, the day before they died. It never changed, and Ted read it every morning with the air of a man who was seeing it for the first time. As Brenda suspected he was.

“Honeybunch, anyone who sees your movies will remember you in all your glory. Especially the ones I directed,” he added with a mischievous grin. “Scandals fade, art remains. Ars longa, vita brevis, you know.”

“Stop quoting movie slogans at me,” she snapped. “I never worked for MGM and I’m glad of it.”

“It’s a little older than that….”

“Don’t condescend to me, either, with your Ivy League education,” she interrupted him, glaring at her nails. She filed them every day, searching out little imperfections, and each day she found new ones. There was one major glory in that, though. She never aged. She missed seeing her reflection in the mirrors that filled every room of La Casa, but she knew from the look in Ted’s eyes that she was still just as beautiful as she’d ever been. It was all she needed.

“They’re not going to tear it down,” he said patiently. “It survived the sixties and those repulsive creatures who camped out here. It’s survived years of neglect, and at least now we have someone who loves it as much as we do. She’ll take care of the place. And of us.”

“But what if she doesn’t?” Brenda cried. “What if they tear it down to make office buildings? We’ll be left wandering the earth, lost….”

“Honeybunch,” he said, his voice warm and comforting, and she slid into his arms so naturally, finding the peace that was always there. “We’ll make it through. Don’t we always, you and me together?”

She looked at him, so dear, so sweet, so maddening, so eternal. “Always,” she said in a tremulous voice. She leaned down to press her carmine lips against his firm mouth, and slowly they began their inevitable fade-out.




1


Jilly Meyer never approached her father’s office without some sort of absurd fantasy playing through her mind. The last time she’d come she hadn’t been able to shake the image of a French aristocrat riding in a tumbrel to her untimely doom. The reality of that unpleasant meeting with her father had been about as grim, and she hadn’t exchanged more than a handful of civil words to him in the eighteen months since.

And yet here she was again, only this time she wasn’t the proud but noble martyr heading toward her fate. This time she was a warrior at the gates, ready to do battle with the forces of evil. She just had to persuade Charon to let her cross the river Styx so she could confront Satan himself.

Terrible of her to think of her father as the devil, she thought absently. And steely eyed Mrs. Afton didn’t deserve to be called Charon, even if she guarded her employer with a diligence that was downright supernatural.

“Your father is a very busy man, Jilly,” Mrs. Afton said in her clipped, icy tones that had terrified Jilly when she was a child. “You should know better than to simply show up unannounced and expect he’ll be able to drop everything to make time for you. Let me check his appointment book and see when I can work you in….”

“I’m not leaving until I see him.” Her voice didn’t waver, a small blessing. Mrs. Afton demoralized her, and always had, but her father had ceased to wield any power over her, whatsoever. Jilly just simply hated confrontations, and she was anticipating a major one.

Mrs. Afton’s thin lips compressed into a tight line of disapproval, but Jilly didn’t move. She was still three doors away from the inner sanctum, the holy of holies, and those doors were electronically locked. If she tried to force her way in she’d only wind up looking foolish.

“You can wait in the gray reception room,” Mrs. Afton said finally, in no way a capitulation. “I’ll see if he can spare a moment for you, but I’m not holding out much hope.”

Abandon all hope, ye who enter, Jilly thought absently. “I don’t mind waiting.” After all, it was past three. Ever since her father had married Melba he’d been less of a workaholic. Jilly didn’t know whether it was jealousy or lust that kept Jackson Dean Meyer from abandoning his third wife as he’d done his first two, and she didn’t want to think about it. Suffice it to say, Melba might have mellowed the old bastard a bit. Enough to get him to do what Jilly desperately needed him to do.

The gray sitting room had a tasteful array of magazines, most of them about cigar smoking, something that failed to captivate Jilly. The leather furniture was comfortable enough, and the windows looked out over the city of Los Angeles. On a clear day she could see the Hollywood Hills, perhaps even the spires of the house on Sunset. La Casa de Sombras, the House of Shadows. The decaying mausoleum of a mansion that was her unlikely home.

But today the air was thick with smog from the Valley, and the autumn haze enveloped Century City. She was trapped in a glass cocoon, air-conditioned, lifeless.

She’d dressed appropriately for a paternal confrontation, in black linen with beige accents. Her father was a stickler for neatly dressed women, and for once she’d been willing to play his games. Since the prize would be worth the effort.

However, if he was going to keep her waiting she was going to end up wrinkled. So be it. He’d have to listen to her, wrinkles and all.

She kicked off her shoes and curled up in the corner of the gray leather sofa, tugging her short skirt as far down her thighs as she could manage. She rummaged in her bag for a compact, but it was the Coach bag Melba had given her for Christmas last year, not the usual one she used, and she’d transferred only her wallet and identification. No compact, no makeup, only a rat-tail comb which would be useless with her thick hair. She closed the purse again, leaned back against the sofa and sighed, trying to get rid of some of the tension that was swamping her body.

It was ridiculous. She was almost thirty years old, a strong, independent, well-educated woman, and she was still afraid of her father. Over the last two decades she’d tried everything, from meditation to tranquilizers to psychotherapy to assertiveness training. Every time she thought she’d finally conquered her fear, Jackson Dean Meyer returned it to her on a silver platter. And here she was again, ready for another serving.

Codependency was a bitch. It was relatively easy to break free from her father’s influence. He had little interest or affection for her—he probably didn’t notice when years went by without seeing her. Her father had made his choices and lived life the way he chose. She couldn’t save him, even if he wanted to be saved.

But when it came to her sister and brother things were different. Although Rachel-Ann was probably beyond redemption. All Jilly could do was love her.

And Dean. It was for him that she’d come here, walked into the lion’s den, ready to fight. For her brother or sister she’d do anything, including facing the tyrant who fathered them, though in Rachel-Ann’s case the parenting was adoptive, not biological.

Dean was sitting home sulking, alone in the darkness of his room with his precious computer. Once more Jackson had managed to crush and belittle him; once more Dean had taken it, refusing to fight.

Jackson had removed Dean from his position in charge of legal affairs, replacing him with his new golden boy, a man by the name of Coltrane. Apparently Jackson trusted a stranger more than he trusted his own son. Dean had been given a token raise and no work, a complete humiliation by their ruthless father.

Jilly was ready to do battle in Dean’s place. She couldn’t sit back and watch her brother crawl into a computer, surrendering everything, in particular Jackson’s trust, to an interloper.

To be fair, Dean allowed himself to be victimized by his father. He’d never made any attempt to find other work—the moment he’d passed the bar exam he’d taken a high-paying job with his father’s multimillion-dollar development firm, and he’d been ensconced there ever since, taking Jackson’s abuse, doing his bidding, a perfect yes-man still looking for a father’s approval and love. Jilly had given up on Jackson years ago. Dean had a harder time letting go.

Of course, he hadn’t confronted Meyer about it. Instead he’d come home, drunk too much and wept on his little sister’s shoulder. So here she was, trying to make things right for her brother’s sake, knowing she stood a snowball’s chance in L.A. of doing any such thing.

But for Dean’s sake she had to try.

She leaned her head back against the sofa and closed her eyes. She should have gotten a manicure. Her grandmother always said no woman could feel insecure if she had a terrific manicure. Jilly doubted that plastic nails were much of a defense against her father’s personality, but at this point she could have used all the weapons she could muster. Maybe she could leave, do as that gorgon Mrs. Afton suggested and make a formal appointment to see her father, and come back with a manicure and even a haircut. Meyer hated her long hair. She could return with something short and curly, like Meg Ryan had.

Except that she wasn’t cute and pert, she was tall and strong with unfashionably long, straight, dark-brown hair, and nothing was going to turn her into a bundle of adorable femininity. Even a manicure wouldn’t help.

Deep breaths, she told herself. Calm down—don’t let him get you worked up. Picture yourself going down a flight of stairs, slowly, letting your body relax. Ten, nine, eight…

Someone was watching her. She’d fallen asleep while trying to meditate herself into a calmer state, but suddenly she’d become aware that someone was watching her. Maybe if she kept her eyes closed he’d go away. It couldn’t be her father—he wouldn’t let a little thing like sleep interfere with his agenda.

It couldn’t be Mrs. Afton—she’d have crossed the room and given Jilly a shake.

But hiding behind closed eyes was no way to deal with life.

Jilly opened her eyes and blinked, startled by the dimness of the room. It was late, the sky outside the broad expanse of windows was settling into an early autumn night, and the man watching her was blocking the door, consumed in shadows.

The hushed activity of Meyer Enterprises had stilled. It was very late, and she was alone with a stranger. If she had any sense at all she’d be scared to death.

She was a sensible woman. “Are you going to hover there?” she asked in a tart voice, forcing herself to take her time in getting off the sofa, resisting the impulse to pull her short skirt down over her long thighs. It would only draw his attention to it.

He flicked on the light, and she blinked, momentarily disoriented after the shadowy dimness of the room. “I’m sorry you were kept waiting so long. Mrs. Afton left a note on my desk that you were here to see me, but I didn’t see it until I was ready to leave.”

“I wasn’t waiting to see you. I don’t even know who you are. I was waiting to see Jackson.”

He stepped into the room, and his half smile was deprecating, charming and completely false. “Your father asked me to handle it, Jillian. I’m—”

“Coltrane,” she supplied flatly. “I should have guessed.”

“Why?”

“My brother told me all about you.”

“Nothing flattering, I’m sure,” he said lightly. His voice lacked the California softness—she couldn’t quite place his accent, which meant he was probably from the Midwest. It was the only clue that he didn’t belong in the sharklike environment where Jackson Meyer thrived.

“Depends how you define flattering,” Jilly said, wishing there was a way she could slip into her shoes without him noticing. He was already too tall as it was—she didn’t need the added disadvantage of being barefoot.

What had Dean called him? A pretty boy with the soul of a snake? It seemed accurate. He was pretty, indeed, though he lacked the feminine softness that usually went with such extraordinary good looks. She couldn’t tell whether he was gay or not, and she didn’t particularly want to know. Either way, he was strictly off-limits. Anyone connected with her father was.

Still, he was astonishingly easy on the eyes. Everything about him was perfect: the slightly shaggy, sun-bleached hair, the Armani suit, the Egyptian cotton shirt unbuttoned at the collar, exposing his tanned neck. He had a long, strong-looking body, like a runner. His eyes were hooded, watching her, so she couldn’t see either their color or their expression, but she had little doubt they were bright blue and frankly acquisitive.

She bent down and shoved her feet into her shoes, no longer caring that he was watching her, no longer caring that her silk shell probably showed too much cleavage. He wouldn’t be the type to be excited by cleavage. “I appreciate that you finally got around to me,” she said, “but it’s my father I wanted to see, not one of his minions.”

“I haven’t been called a minion in years,” he said with a drawl.

She straightened to her full height. Still a lot shorter than he was, but her high-heeled shoes made her feel less vulnerable. “Where is he?”

“Gone, I’m afraid.”

“Then I’ll just have to go over to the Bel Air house….”

“Out of the country. He and Melba left for a short vacation in Mexico. I’m sorry but I have no way of getting in touch with him.”

“I can see you’re devastated,” Jilly muttered, not caring if she sounded rude.

He didn’t seem to care, either. His smile was cool, unnerving. “Look, I’m here to help. If you’ve got some sort of legal problem I’ll be happy to look into it. A traffic ticket? Some problem with your ex-husband? The legal department can take care of things….”

“Can the legal department get rid of an interloper who stole my brother’s job?”

His eyes opened at that, and she got a shock. They weren’t blue at all, they were a dazzling emerald green. So green she figured he was probably wearing tinted contact lenses. And they weren’t acquisitive. They were calmly assessing.

“Is that what your brother told you? That I stole his job?” The idea seemed to amuse him, and Jilly’s anger burned even brighter.

“Not just his job. His father,” she said in a voice as cool as his.

“His father? Not yours? Jackson Meyer isn’t a sentimental man. I don’t think he gives a good goddamn about me or your brother. He just wants the job done well. I do it for him.”

“Do you?” she said in a silken voice. “And what else do you do for him?”

“Cold-blooded murder, hiding the bodies, anything he asks,” Coltrane responded offhandedly. “What are you doing for dinner?”

“I believe it,” Jilly muttered, and then his question sank in. “What did you say?”

“I said, what are you doing for dinner? It’s after seven and I’m hungry, and you look like you have at least another hour left in you of berating me for ruining your baby brother’s life. Let me take you to dinner and you can rip me apart in comfort.”

She was speechless at the sheer gall of the man. “I don’t want to go out to dinner with you,” she said, flustered.

“We can order something in, then. Your father keeps a caterer on call twenty-four hours a day.”

“And he’s not my baby brother. He’s only two years younger than I am,” she added inconsequentially.

“Trust me,” Coltrane said, “he’s definitely your baby brother.” There was no missing the faintly mocking admiration in his voice, but it only made Jilly angrier. She’d failed, her father was out of reach. As usual.

“I’ll talk to my father when he gets back,” she said coolly, reaching for her purse. “Thanks for your help, Mr. Coltrane.”

“Coltrane will do,” he said. “And you haven’t finished with my help. You can’t get out of here without me.”

“What do you mean?”

“The place has a top-of-the-line security system. No one can get in or out without the code once it’s past seven. It’s seven-fifteen, and I don’t think you have the code, do you?”

“No.”

“And where did you park your car? In the garage in the building, right? There’s no other place to park around here. You won’t be able to get in there without a different code. If you want to get home tonight you’re going to need my help.”

She would have said this was all some evil plan on the part of fate, but she didn’t tend to think fate had that much interest in one Jilly Meyer. She stared at Coltrane, her eyes narrowed as she considered her alternatives. She could call Dean, but he often ignored the telephone. Besides, he might be too drunk to answer, and she certainly didn’t want him driving to pick her up. God knew where Rachel-Ann was. And it had been so long since Jilly had been to the Meyer building that she no longer knew anyone who worked there who might be able to help her, with the exception of the draconian Mrs. Afton, and even Coltrane was preferable to the gorgon.

“I’d like to leave,” she said in a steady voice. “Now.”

“And you’d like my help? Pretty please?”

“Yes,” she said, hoping there was a special place in hell for men like him.

“My pleasure.” He flicked off the lights, plunging them into unexpected darkness just as she started toward him, and she almost slammed into him in her hurry to get out of there. Some blessed radar stopped her seconds before she did, but she was close enough to brush against his jacket, to feel his body heat in the enclosed area. It was unnerving.

But she had learned years ago not to let her unease show, and she stopped, following him at a more reasonable pace, determined to keep her distance. Trust Jackson to put her at a disadvantage, she thought sourly. Not only did he ignore his daughter, but he sent The Enemy to deal with her. If she hadn’t been pissed off before she was pissed off now.

The place was completely deserted, an astonishing circumstance. Jackson Meyer encouraged his employees to work long and hard, and he usually matched them in overtime. But there didn’t appear to be a soul left in the building as she followed Coltrane past the ghostly forms of neat desks, empty offices, echoing cubicles.

She had no idea what the people who worked at those desks actually did, any more than she knew how her father made his money. Meyer Enterprises had been her grandfather’s company. He’d started out in real estate in the 1940s, buying huge tracts of land, derelict factories and ruined mansions. The place where Jilly lived with her two siblings was one of the old man’s last acquisitions before he died in the early 1960s, the only building that hadn’t been razed and redeveloped to benefit the endless coffers of Meyer Enterprises.

And it never would be if Jilly had anything to say about it. It was one of the few things temporarily beyond her father’s greedy reach. Jackson Dean Meyer and his mother had had a falling out, and while Julia Meyer hadn’t been able to deed La Casa de Sombras to her three grandchildren outright, she’d still managed to keep Jackson away from it. It belonged to the three of them, Jilly, Dean and Rachel-Ann, for as long as even one of them wanted to live there. The moment the last one moved out it would revert to Jackson, and he’d have it torn down.

He’d been trying to get them out for years. Threats, bribery, anger had made Dean and Rachel-Ann waver. But Jilly was made of sterner stuff than that, and she’d kept the others firm.

Coltrane punched in a row of numbers on the security keypad by the door, too fast for Jilly to read them, then pushed the door open, holding it for her. She walked past him, too close again, and gave him her cool, dismissive smile. “Thanks for your help, but I can take it from here.”

“The elevator won’t come without the security code,” he said. “We’re on the thirty-first floor, it’s a hell of a long walk down, and when you get to the basement you’ll find the door is locked and you’ll just have to climb back up again. Besides, there’s the little problem of the parking garage.”

“I’ve got my cell phone—I can call a taxi.”

“You’ll still have to come back here for your car sooner or later. Unless you want to just go buy a new one with Daddy’s money.”

His easygoing contempt startled her, and she glared at him. “I’m surprised you don’t know that I don’t live off my daddy’s money, as you so sweetly put it. Maybe you’re not as involved in his affairs as Dean thought.”

Coltrane simply smiled. “It’s your choice, Jilly. You want to spend the night wandering up and down thirty-one flights of stairs, or do you want my help?”

Being trapped in a stairwell seemed vastly superior to being stuck with Coltrane in one of the bronze, art deco elevators Jackson had brought to the Meyer Building, but she wasn’t about to say so.

“Call the elevator,” she said, resigned. She was back in the tumbrel again, heading toward Madame La Guillotine.

He punched another rapid set of numbers on the keypad, and the doors opened immediately. She had no idea why the elevator would already be on their floor, but she wasn’t about to ask. It was going to be hard enough to step into that bronze cage with her brother’s nemesis.

She didn’t like heights, she didn’t like enclosed spaces, and she certainly didn’t like men like Coltrane. Tall, gorgeous, self-assured men who knew just how intimidating they could be. It was a subtle, sexual intimidation, the worst sort, and Jilly was usually invulnerable to that sort of thing. But for some reason she still didn’t want to get in the enclosed cage with him.

She had no choice. He waited, watching her, and she could no longer see the expression in his eyes. She walked into the elevator, hearing the jeering crowds of the angry peasants. He followed her in, and the doors slid shut with a subtle hiss, as Jilly steeled herself to ride to her doom.




2


Jackson Meyer’s daughter was scared shitless of him. It was a fascinating realization, and Coltrane wished he knew a way to slow the rapid descent of the elevator, to stall it completely, anything to keep her with him for just a little bit longer.

He’d watched her while she slept, absolutely astonished at how far off the mark he’d been about her. He’d let his opinion of Dean influence his expectations about Meyer’s other children; that, and stories he’d heard about Rachel-Ann’s voracious appetite for drugs and sex. He’d assumed Jilly Meyer would be cut from the same self-indulgent, self-destructive cloth. He hadn’t met Rachel-Ann yet but Jilly was as different from Dean Meyer as he could have possibly imagined.

In a land of California blondes she was dark, with an unfashionable mane of thick brown hair, a big, strong body and endless legs. She was no delicate flower—she had a physical presence that was both aggressive and arousing, even as she tried to make herself disappear into the corner of the elevator. He wondered if she was scared of heights or of him.

He wouldn’t have thought she’d have the sense to be frightened of him. He’d done his absolute best to present himself as a laid-back and easygoing, slightly unscrupulous Southern Californian. No one had the faintest idea how dangerous he really could be.

Except for Jilly Meyer, who looked like she wanted the floor of the elevator to swallow her up. Her linen was rumpled, her hair was tangled, and she looked sleepy, wary and hostile. It really was an irresistible combination.

He allowed himself the brief, graphic fantasy of slamming his hand against the emergency stop button, shoving her against the elevator wall and pulling up that too short skirt of hers. Those long, strong legs would wrap around his hips quite nicely, he could brace her against the wall while he fucked her, and she’d stop looking at him like she wondered whether he was a scorpion who’d wandered in from the desert. By then she’d know that was exactly what he was.

The doors slid open on the basement level with an audible sigh, and Coltrane’s fantasy vanished, unfulfilled. He punched in the garage code and the door buzzed. He pushed it open, and she walked through, brushing past him, and he wondered if she was going to take off in a run. He might enjoy stopping her.

But she was too well-bred for that. She held out her slim, strong hand to him. Silver rings, he noticed. Elegant and plain. And he took it, touching her for the first time.

His hand swallowed hers, and he used just enough pressure so that she couldn’t keep ignoring him. She glanced up at him through her thick lashes. “I’m not biologically equipped for a pissing contest, Mr. Coltrane,” she murmured.

He released her hand. “Where are we going for dinner?”

“I have no idea where you’re going. I’m going home.”

“Can you cook?”

“Not for you.”

He was baiting her deliberately, to annoy her. He still wasn’t quite sure why he wanted to—she was easy to get to. Far easier to get on her nerves than to seduce her.

Or maybe not. He intended to find out.

There was only a handful of cars in the deserted garage. He wondered whether she owned the red BMW convertible or the Mercedes. And then he saw the classic Corvette—1966, he guessed, lovingly restored, a piece of art as close to an antique as Los Angeles could boast.

He didn’t make the mistake of touching her again, he simply starting walking toward the car, knowing she was going in that direction. “Nice Corvette,” he said.

She cast a wary glance up at him. “What makes you think it’s mine?”

“It suits you. Are you going to let me drive it?”

He might just as well have suggested they act out his elevator fantasy. “Absolutely not!”

“She’d be safe with me. I know how to drive—I’ve had a lot of experience. I’m good with a stick shift. I’d take it slow, I wouldn’t strip her gears.”

Her expression was priceless. “Mr. Coltrane, if you drove her with the same deftness that you’re using in coming on to me then she’d stall out before you could even put her into gear,” she said. “You’re not driving my car or me. Is that clear?”

“Crystal,” he drawled. A week, he figured. A week before she’d lie down for him, two weeks for the car. “I don’t suppose you’d give me a ride home.”

“Where’s your car?”

“In the shop. I was supposed to take one of the company cars but I got distracted up there and forgot to get the keys.”

“You can go back up and get them.”

He shook his head. “The door has a time lock. Once the last person leaves no one can get in until morning.”

“What the hell does my father keep up there, the Fort Knox gold?” she said irritably.

“Just private files. Your father’s involved in some highly complex, sensitive business arrangements. It wouldn’t do for just anyone to walk in and have access to them.”

“Just anyone like his daughter? Who’s obviously far too simpleminded to understand the great big complexity of his sensitive business affairs,” she mocked him.

He ignored that. “I live near Brentwood. It’s not that far out of your way.”

“How do you know where I’m going?”

“You said you were going home. You live in that old mausoleum on Sunset with your brother and sister. I’m right on your way.”

“Call a taxi.”

“My cell phone’s dead.”

“Use mine.” She was rummaging in her purse now, obviously determined to get rid of him. A moment later she pulled out a phone, holding it out to him.

“Why do I make you so uncomfortable?” he said, making no effort to take it.

“You don’t,” she said. “I have a date.”

Two lies, he thought, and she wasn’t very good at lying. Unlike the rest of her family. Dean Meyer seemed almost oblivious to the truth, whereas his father used it as he saw fit, mostly to manipulate people.

But Jilly Meyer couldn’t lie with a straight face, and that was oddly, stupidly endearing. Coltrane wasn’t about to let that weaken his resolve.

“Then you’ll probably want to go home and change before your big night out, and my apartment’s on your way,” he said in his most reasonable voice.

“Get in the damned car.” She shoved her phone back into her purse and headed around toward the driver’s side. He wondered whether she’d chicken out, try to drive off without unlocking the passenger door to let him in. She wouldn’t get far—the garage doors wouldn’t open without the right code.

But she slid behind the wheel, leaned over and unlocked the door, pulling back when he climbed in beside her. The Corvette was beautifully restored, perfectly maintained, and he had a sudden moment of sheer acquisitiveness. He wanted this car.

He didn’t want a car exactly like this. He could afford to buy what he wanted on the exorbitant salary Jackson Meyer was currently paying him, and in L.A. you could find anything for a price. He didn’t want a 1966 Corvette. He wanted the one that belonged to Jilly Meyer.

She was strapping the metal-buckled seat belt across her lap, and she threw him a pointed look, but he made no effort to find his. “I like to live dangerously,” he said. Her short skirt had hiked up even higher in the low-slung cockpit of the car, but he’d decided the time for ogling was past. She’d gotten the initial message, he could back off now. At least for the time being.

He didn’t even waste a glance at his Range Rover. Sooner or later she’d see it, but he didn’t know whether she’d figure out it was his. Probably not—he was doing far too good a job at rattling her. She wouldn’t notice any details.

She drove like a bat out of hell, another surprise, though he expected the squealing tires and tight corners were a protest against his unwanted presence. The moment the garage doors opened she was off like Mario Andretti, racing into the busy streets of L.A. with a complete disregard for life and limb. He gripped the soft leather seat beneath him surreptitiously, keeping a bland expression on his face.

She knew how to drive the ’Vette, he had to grant her that. She wove in and out of traffic, zip-ping around corners, accelerating when he least expected it, avoiding fender benders and pedestrians and cops with equal élan. It was all he could do to keep himself from reaching for the steering wheel, from voicing a feeble protest. She was out to scare him with her driving, and she was doing a good job of it.

She’d grown up in L.A., learned to drive on the freeways and the boulevards; she knew what she was doing. She was getting back at him for intimidating her.

She didn’t even waste her time glancing at him during her wild ride through the city streets. She didn’t need to. She was focused, concentrating on her driving with an almost gleeful energy, and he simply gripped the seat tighter and said nothing, wishing to hell he’d put on the seat belt.

She pulled up in front of his apartment building with a screech of tires, going from fifty to zero in a matter of seconds, and he had no choice but to put his hand on the dashboard to stop his certain journey through the windshield. She turned and gave him a demure smile, all sweet innocence, the triumph gleaming in her brown eyes. “You’re home.”

He kept his expression bland. “If that was supposed to scare me you’ve made your first mistake. I like living dangerously.”

“Hardly my first mistake,” she muttered. “You’re home,” she said again, pointedly. “Goodbye.”

“And what about your brother?”

“What about him?” she said warily.

“Don’t you want to know what your father has planned for him? Isn’t that why you came to see him?”

“What does my father have planned for him?”

“Tomorrow night. Dinner. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“I’m busy.”

“Cancel it. You know perfectly well your brother comes first. You have that codependent look to you.” He was pushing just a little too far, but he sensed she could take it. He needed to keep her angry, interested, willing to fight.

“I’ll meet you.”

“And miss my chance to see the legendary La Casa de Sombras? I’ll pick you up.”

“If you’re interested in famous Hollywood houses you can always take one of those bus tours. La Casa de Sombras used to be on most of them.”

“Including the one that takes you to all the famous scandal sites? I think I’d rather see it with a guided tour from its owner.”

“Dean’s one of the owners. Treat him well and maybe he’ll invite you over.”

“I’m not exactly Dean’s type,” he said.

“You’re not mine, either.”

“And what is your type? I wouldn’t have thought Alan Dunbar would have been the kind of man you’d marry.”

She’d obviously forgotten he’d have access to all of Meyer’s legal affairs, including her divorce settlement. “I think I’ve had enough of you for now,” she said in a deceptively even tone.

“For now,” he agreed, opening the door and sliding his long legs out. “I’ll be there at seven.”

She gunned the motor, speeding away into the oncoming traffic without looking, the passenger door slamming shut of its own volition. He stood beneath the towering palm tree, watching her go.

Unable to decide whether it was the car or the woman he wanted more. And which one he intended to keep.

He shrugged. Probably neither. After almost a year things were finally moving into high gear, and he was more than ready. Breaking Jilly Meyer’s stubborn, defensive attitude would simply be the icing on the cake.

He’d been planning on working through Rachel-Ann, seducing her first while he worked on bringing down the rest of the Meyer family. She was the most notoriously vulnerable, but in the time he’d been in L.A. she’d been noticeably absent, honeymooning with husband number three, going through a quickie divorce, disappearing on retreats and binges and detox outings. He’d never even seen her from a distance. At thirty-three she was still beautiful, they told him, and she’d be easy prey.

But maybe he wanted the challenge of Jilly. The indefinable treat of Jilly Meyer, the family outcast. Or maybe she’d just be a delicious side dish on the banquet table of truth and revenge.

But first he needed to get close to them. To Meyer’s three disparate children. He glanced up at the expensive, upscale apartment building where he’d lived for the past year, surrounded by upscale wheelers and dealers as soulless as he was.

Maybe it was time for a touch of arson.



It was all Jilly could do to make it through the five-minute drive to La Casa. She sped up the long, overgrown driveway, gravel spurting beneath her tires, and slammed to a stop inside one of the bays of the seven-car garage. Her hands were shaking when she turned off the motor, and she sat there, seat belt still fastened, her eyes closed as she tried to will the tension from her body.

She’d screwed things up royally. It was all fine and good to arm herself for a confrontation with the old man, but she’d let the gorgon slough her off, then reenacted some damned fairy tale by falling asleep, letting her father escape scot-free. She should have known—she’d been awake half the night before, worrying about Dean and how she’d deal with her father. She never did well without enough sleep.

And she’d let that goddamned man rile her. He was everything Dean said he was—smooth, gorgeous, so damned sure of himself she wanted to smack him. And Coltrane was dead wrong—part of the problem was that he was exactly Dean’s type. Unfortunately he didn’t seem to share Dean’s sexual orientation, which would have made things a lot easier. Then he wouldn’t have been coming on to her like she was Julia Roberts. He’d already be involved in a bitch-fest with Dean, and she could have just stayed out of the entire mess.

She leaned forward, resting her head on the leather-covered steering wheel. She didn’t want to deal with this. She was so tired of taking care of everyone, taking care of this house that was falling down around her. The house that she loved with complete abandon.

It was late. Everything was still and silent around the legendary La Casa de Sombras—even the supposed ghosts were quiet. Dean was either off somewhere or lost in the glow of his computer screen, and God only knew what Rachel-Ann might be doing. She’d been back from treatment for three months, and it was usually around that benchmark she began to slip. She’d been out almost every night, coming back early and sober and silent. If she was home tonight there was a good chance she’d want someone to pick on, and Dean had a talent for making himself unavailable.

Jilly climbed out of the car, suppressing a sigh. She could handle this. She was the one who was mercifully free of addictions and needs and runaway emotions. She was strong, a survivor, and she could hold the others together when they needed holding.

She yanked down the heavy wooden door on the garage bay, wondering why she bothered when the locks were too rusted to work and the keys were long gone. If the house itself hadn’t kept demanding so much money she would have invested in an automatic garage door opener. Dean had two cars, neither of which ran terribly well, and Rachel-Ann had her BMW, not to mention the rusting hulk of the Dusenberg that had once belonged to Brenda de Lorillard’s doomed lover, and the cost of equipping the entire building with automatic openers was prohibitive, especially considering that the wood framing was in a state of rot.

Jilly started up the gravel pathway to the house, letting the blessed stillness wash over her. There was something to be said for lack of money. The estate was so overgrown that the palm trees provided soundproofing from the city that surrounded them, making it an oasis of peace and safety—a perfect sanctuary. At least, until Rachel-Ann went off the wagon.

There were only a few lights burning in the house as Jilly climbed up the wide, flagstoned terrace, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She’d have the place to herself, at least for a few hours. That was all she needed, a little time to think through what had happened, to devise a new plan to help Dean.

In the meantime she was starving. She headed straight back to the huge old kitchen. She sat down at the twelve-foot-long wooden table and ate two containers of yogurt with a silver serrated grapefruit spoon from Tiffany’s, then followed it with a peanut butter sandwich on a cracked Limoges dessert plate. She’d have to go food shopping tomorrow—there wasn’t much left. Rachel-Ann seemed to subsist on sweets when she was clean and sober, and Dean was always on some strange diet or other. Which didn’t keep the two of them from suddenly emptying the refrigerator and cupboards of anything remotely interesting when the mood struck them.

Jilly set her plate in the old iron sink, then headed toward the back of the house where her brother kept his separate apartments.

She knocked, but there was no answer. Pushing the door open, she was, as always, assaulted by the room. Dean had claimed the servants’ wing because it was relatively unadorned with the Mediterranean kitsch that flowed through the rest of the house. He’d had the walls knocked down, everything painted white and then buffed into a glaring, glossy sheen. The furniture was sparse and modern, and Dean lay facedown on the bed. The only light in the room came from the computer monitors—Dean always had at least two going at a time.

She moved quietly to his side, looking down at him tenderly. Dean had his air-conditioning unit on high, but she didn’t make the mistake of turning it down, nor would she be fool enough to touch the computers. She simply covered him with a blanket, wishing things were different, even if she wasn’t quite sure what she’d change.

She left him in his sterile, frozen cocoon, moving back into the dark, decaying warmth of La Casa de Sombras. The House of Shadows. Except that it sometimes seemed as if Dean’s stark, white room held the most shadows of all.




3


Zachariah Redemption Coltrane was a child of the sixties, born in the middle of that turbulent decade. His name had been an albatross around his neck until he was thirteen, and yet it had been the least of the various crosses he’d had to bear. At age thirteen and a half he’d been almost six feet tall, everyone he cared about was dead, and he’d taken off into the world he’d already learned was cruel and hostile, changing his name to Zack. That is, when he bothered to use his real name at all.

Odd, how some family histories were straightforward and others seemed like the stuff of legends. From his great-aunt Esther’s bitter-toned stories to his father’s whiskey-soaked reminiscences, he could never tell what was truth and what was fantasy. How his mother had died, or what her real name was. He only knew her as Ananda, and his memories were of light and laughter and the sweet, acrid scent of marijuana floating in the air. They’d lived in a castle, he thought, and there had been dragons and danger and his mother was a lost princess.

But that was before she’d been murdered.

He couldn’t really remember a time when he hadn’t lived in that dreary little house in Indiana with his drunken, defeated father and his tart-tongued great-aunt. Couldn’t really remember the magical place, or the princess who’d been his laughing mother. And no one would ever tell him about her.

Great-Aunt Esther had died first, eaten up by cancer. His father had followed, breaking his neck in a drunken fall. And Coltrane had taken off before Social Services could get their hands on his rebellious, thirteen-year-old hide, bumming his way around the country as he grew into manhood.

He’d ended up with an education despite himself, more a fluke than a plan. Lawyers made money, lawyers manipulated the system, lawyers were the scum of the earth. It seemed a perfect career for him, once he got tired of living life on the edge.

He’d been in New Orleans, working as an assistant district attorney prosecuting the lowest of the low and doing a piss poor job of it, with no knowledge of his real past and no interest. He’d put it behind him, including the vague memories of his long-lost mother. He didn’t know what prompted him to pick up the magazine the first place—he had no interest in Southern California or haunted mansions or the excesses of the young and beautiful.

But for some reason he’d picked up L.A. Life, thumbing through the pictorial on scandal sites of the century, and he’d stopped at an old, grainy newspaper photo, staring at his mother’s face. Back in the 1960s, a ragtag band of Hollywood street people had been arrested for trespassing on the deserted grounds of La Casa de Sombras, and his mother had been one of them. He couldn’t tell if his father was in the photo or remember if he’d ever been in L.A.—it was his mother who’d stood out, young and luminous even in black and white.

No one had bothered to prosecute and the interlopers had simply gone back to make their home in the ruined mansion in true sixties communal brotherhood, thereby hastening the decline of the historic property and sending the wealthy neighbors into apoplexy. And the Ivy League dropout, whose family owned La Casa, joined them.

That was how he’d found Jackson Dean Meyer, the first name he’d come across from that turbulent time that had ended in the loss of his mother. He’d learned early on not to ask questions of his family—his father would start to weep and drink even more heavily, and his Great-Aunt Esther would tell him to shut his mouth, accompanying the admonition with a crack across the face. She had mean, hard hands for such an old lady, and she’d died before he got bigger than she was and could stop her. Before he could find the answers to his questions.

But once he had a name, it had been easy enough to track down the black sheep. Jackson Dean Meyer had mended his ways, gone back to Harvard, acquired a graduate degree, three wives in reasonable succession, three grown children from his first marriage, one of whom was adopted, and two young ones from his third.

And control of a billion-dollar investment and development firm. He’d done well by himself, but then, he’d started off with several advantages, including a wealthy family. The house where he’d once dabbled in communal living now belonged to the children from his first marriage, and the old man lived in modern luxury in an estate in Bel Air.

Coltrane knew he was the man who would hold the answers to his past, to what happened to his mother, and Coltrane had every intention of asking politely.

His father used to tell him that his half-Irish mother had “the sight,” a curse Coltrane wondered if he’d inherited. He’d looked at his father one day and known he was going to die. Unfortunately he hadn’t known how soon it would happen.

That sight had reasserted itself the day he’d bluffed his way into Jackson Dean Meyer’s office, no mean feat given the layers of protection that surrounded the old man. He’d taken one look into his clear, calm eyes and known that this man had murdered his mother.

Of course Meyer had no earthly idea who Coltrane was. Nor did he care. But Coltrane was gifted at giving people what they wanted and getting them to trust him. It had been easy enough to work his way into the inner sanctum of Meyer Enterprises, into a position of power. The old man was a ruthless snake, and he detected a soul mate in Coltrane.

What hadn’t been easy was learning patience over the long years, the great gift of biding his time. He’d been in place for almost a year now, working his way into Jackson Meyer’s confidence to the point where he had total control of the legal department at Meyer Enterprises. Zack Coltrane, with the phony Ivy League degree, the charming smile and the California laid-back ease was poised and ready to take Jackson Dean Meyer down.

But he couldn’t make his move until he had all the answers. It wasn’t going to be enough to destroy Meyer financially. Killing him would be too easy. Coltrane had never killed anyone in his life, though he’d come close a few times. He suspected in the case of Jackson Meyer it wouldn’t require much effort. He hated him that much.

But death ended things. And he wanted an everlasting torment for the man who murdered his mother. Once he had proof. He wanted Meyer to know who destroyed him, and why.

Destroying his business and reputation would be merely a start, and he’d been working on that since he’d come to L.A. Destroying his family would be even better, an eye for an eye. Coltrane had grown up in the grinding, soulless poverty of the icy Midwest, with a father too drunk to even notice him since they’d lost the one thing that mattered to either of them. The least Coltrane could do was return the favor, no matter what that made him.

The problem was, finding someone Jackson Meyer cared about other than his own sleek, artificially tanned, fitness-center-buffed hide was no easy task. He treated his trophy wife like an impatient parent, his two young children like puppies who hadn’t been housebroken. As far as Coltrane could tell he didn’t even remember their names. And his daughter Jilly might as well not exist for all the mention that had been made of her.

But Rachel-Ann was different. Rachel-Ann was Meyer’s one weak spot, and that was who Coltrane intended to work on. He’d already managed to put enough pressure on Dean to get him out of the way—Meyer’s only son had conceded the battle without firing a single shot, retiring to his computers and an impressive case of the sulks. As for Jilly, she was simply a casualty of war—if he had time he’d take her, but she was merely a sideline.

From all reports Rachel-Ann had been hovering on the brink of destruction for most of her life. It seemed only fitting that he’d help push her over the edge, and then stand back and watch while Meyer went flailing after her. And he refused to think about what kind of man that made him.

He poured himself a Scotch, straight up, carrying it out onto the patio as he slowly sipped it. It was the best Scotch he could find, a single malt from a tiny distillery in the Hebrides, and it had become part of a ritual—a silent toast to the father who drank his life away. An arrogant daring of fate to try to do the same to him. After a decade he still hadn’t learned to like the taste of it, but he drank it, anyway, a small spit in the eye of the vengeful gods.

His plan was simple. He’d use Jilly to get to her fragile older sister, then go from there. He was a patient man, but he’d waited long enough. Time to up the ante. It wasn’t that he particularly wanted to harm innocents. But if Dean was anything to go by then Meyer’s grown children were far from innocent.

The Los Angeles night was settling down around him, and he stared out over the city, his back to the perfectly decorated apartment that was nothing more than a stage setting. He could feel the cool tingle of anticipation in his veins, a headier drug than the whiskey. By tomorrow night he’d be in the legendary Casa de Sombras, well on his way to the answers he’d spent years of his life looking for. And if he felt even a faint twinge of regret that Jilly Meyer was going to be one of the casualties of war, he dismissed it with a stray grimace.

He answered the phone on the third ring, just before the answering service would get it, knowing who it was.

“Did you get rid of her?” Jackson Dean Meyer barked into the phone.

“For now. You didn’t tell me you wanted me to do anything permanent,” he said lazily.

There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the line. “Is there something permanent you could do?”

“I suppose I could find a hit man if you think it’s necessary….”

“I don’t find that amusing, Coltrane,” Meyer said icily. “I’m not in the habit of murdering my children.”

No, only your lovers, he thought calmly, eyeing his drink. “Then she’s going to keep after you until you give her what she wants. You know what women can be like.”

“She always was a stubborn bitch. Just like her mother,” Meyer snapped. “What is it exactly that she wants?”

“She wasn’t particularly clear about that, but I imagine it’s something along the lines of you loving your son and me being at the bottom of the ocean.”

Meyer’s dry chuckle sounded faintly asthmatic. “Made a good impression on her, did you? I warned you she could be difficult. What are you planning to do about her?”

“Take her out to dinner tomorrow night.”

“You won’t get her into bed. She’s the prude in the family.”

“Why would I want to get her into bed?” Coltrane took another sip of his Scotch. The ice had melted, watering the drink down slightly, and the sharpness danced against his tongue.

“To keep her occupied. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed she’s a good-looking woman. Can’t hold a candle to Rachel-Ann, of course, but she’s still pretty enough even with that hair of hers. And last I heard you weren’t involved with anyone.”

Coltrane had no doubt that Meyer knew exactly who he’d been sleeping with over the last year and how long each relationship had lasted. His employer’s efforts at surveillance were laughably blatant, and Coltrane always fed him just enough to keep him satisfied.

“You want me to marry her, boss?” he drawled. “Or just shack up with her?”

“Don’t push me, Coltrane,” Meyer said. “I want you to distract her. I’ve got too much on my plate right now. Getting the Cienaga estate shouldn’t be causing these kinds of problems, and I don’t need the Justice Department breathing down my neck. You were supposed to give them stuff to distract them. Send them off on another tack.”

“I took care of it.”

“Goddamned bureaucrats don’t seem to have a realistic idea of how things are done out here. And where the campaign contributions come from. Get them off my back, Coltrane.”

“It’s been done,” Coltrane said soothingly. Indeed, it had. The Justice Department investigations of Jackson Dean Meyer’s covert business practices had gone from one investigator to an entire team. And Meyer hadn’t the faintest idea how little time he had left.

“I don’t want to waste my energies distracted by inconsequentials,” he said.

Inconsequentials like your children, Coltrane thought, but didn’t say it out loud. There was a limit to how much leeway Jackson Meyer would give him. The man was convinced he needed Coltrane for all his little schemes to fall into place, but he needed his sense of omnipotence even more.

Meyer was going to find out that his trust in both Coltrane and in his own invulnerability were sadly misplaced. And while it would be the icing on the cake for him to lose his children at the same time, it hadn’t taken Coltrane long to realize Meyer had really lost them years ago.

“All right, boss,” he drawled. He was the only person who called Meyer “boss,” the only one who could get away with that faintly mocking tone. “I’ll sleep with your daughter. Hell, I’ll sleep with both your daughters, but I draw the line at your son.”

Meyer chuckled humorlessly. “He’d be too easy for you. And you keep away from Rachel-Ann. She’s fragile right now, and I don’t want you interfering with her. She won’t be a problem—she’s never been any trouble to me, unlike the other two. My fault for marrying their mother. You just keep Jilly busy until this deal is finished. Then you can dump her. You know it’ll be worth your while.”

It was a good thing Meyer couldn’t see the slow smile that curved Coltrane’s mouth. “That’s what I like about you, boss. Your sentimental streak.”

“Fuck you, Coltrane.”

“Yes, sir.” But Meyer had already slammed down the phone, certain that he was going to get his own way. Coltrane would sleep with his daughter to keep her occupied while Meyer did his best to deal with the unexpected financial calamity that was bringing his empire down around his ears.

Little did he know he was asking the fox to guard the henhouse.



Jilly never entered her bedroom without making a great deal of noise. It was the master bedroom, the largest, most elegant of the massive rooms in the old mansion, but no one had argued with her when she’d chosen it for her own. Dean preferred his sterile haven, and Rachel-Ann was too superstitious to care.

Not that Jilly believed in ghosts. La Casa had been in the family since before she was born, and she’d spent enough time there to have run across a ghost or two if they’d actually existed. Dean had tried to scare her when they were younger, telling her elaborate stories of the murder-suicide pact and the ghosts who roamed the halls, but for some reason he’d never succeeded. If there were any ghosts in La Casa de Sombras then they were benevolent ones, no matter how harshly they died.

But even so, she didn’t fancy walking in on one, unannounced. Clearing her throat, she rattled the doorknob before pushing it open and flicking on the light switch. No shifting shadows, no dissolving forms. Just the same bizarre room it had always been.

It looked like a cross between a bordello and a Turkish harem, with a totally peculiar touch of chinoiserie. It was whimsical Gothic horror, from the elephant-footed stools to the ornate, gilded, swan-shaped bed, and Jilly loved every tacky inch of it.

She filled the huge marble tub, stripping off her clothes and sliding into the scented water, letting it engulf her as she closed her eyes. It had been a long, miserable day, one for the books, and not only had she not accomplished a damned thing, she might have made things worse. She’d certainly added to her own discomfort. She didn’t want to go out to dinner with Coltrane—she’d done her best to keep her distance from all the sharklike young men her father employed. He was everything she despised—ambitious, aggressive and too damned good-looking. He knew it, too, which was probably why Dean found him irresistible. Dean always had a weakness for smug, clever, pretty boys, especially those who were unattainable.

Rachel-Ann would probably find him just as enticing. He wasn’t as outwardly dangerous as the usual losers her sister surrounded herself with, but he was gorgeous enough to make up for it. They’d make a stunning couple.

The water had grown cold in an astonishingly short amount of time. Jilly pushed herself out of the deep, marble tub, grimacing at her reflection in the mirror. There were too damned many mirrors in this house—everywhere she turned she got an unwanted glimpse of herself. She had no idea who had installed all of them in the first place, the silent movie star who’d built the house or Brenda de Lorillard, who’d died there. As someone singularly devoid of vanity, Jilly found them unnerving.

Particularly when Rachel-Ann was convinced the place was haunted. Every now and then Jilly would catch her reflection in the mirror, but she wouldn’t be looking at herself. She’d be looking for a ghostly image of someone long dead.

It was a cool night, and she pulled on cotton sweats rather than close her windows. She liked the fresh air infusing the house. It swept away the cobwebs and the trace of mildew. Oddly enough it could never rid the house of the smell of fresh tobacco smoke, or the faint note of perfume that lingered, a scent she half recognized from her childhood. It must have been her grandmother’s. Probably Julia Meyer had dropped a bottle and the stuff had penetrated into the woodwork. Jilly rather liked the scent. It made her think her grandmother was watching over her, somehow. Even if Grandmère hadn’t been much more than an adequate guardian in life.

She heard the slam of the door echoing through the vast house. It was odd how certain sounds carried—she always knew when Rachel-Ann came home. She brought a nervous energy with her that spread throughout the place, like the charged air before a thunderstorm.

Jilly held very still, listening vainly for the sounds of voices. Nothing. Rachel-Ann was alone, thank God. Had been alone for the last three months. It was aiding her uncertain temper, but it was a step toward recovery.

A moment later she heard a crash and the sound of running footsteps. By the time Jilly was out in the hall Rachel-Ann was halfway up the stairs, thin and ghostlike, her flame-red hair trailing behind her as she raced up the remaining steps, an expression of pure terror on her pale face.

She went straight into Jilly’s arms with a grateful sob, shivering. She was so slight, so fragile, so small, and Jilly wrapped her strong arms around her, making soothing noises. “What’s wrong, sweetie?” she said. “Did you trip over something? I heard a crash.”

“I don’t know! Something must have broken, but I didn’t see what.” Her voice was soft, panicky, but entirely sober.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jilly said in her calmest voice. There wasn’t much left of value at La Casa to break. “What frightened you?”

Rachel-Ann pulled away, staring at her sister in momentary confusion. Her green eyes were huge, staring, but she didn’t look drugged. Jilly breathed a silent sigh of relief. “I don’t know,” her sister said finally. “They were watching me. I could feel them. They watch me all the time. I know you don’t believe me, but they’re there, I can sense them.”

“Are they?” Jilly had learned from past experience that Rachel-Ann hated to be patronized. “You want to come in and tell me about it?”

“Not in that room,” she said, looking toward the master bedroom with an expression akin to horror. “I don’t know how you can sleep in there, knowing what happened.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Jilly said.

“I do. They were watching me a few minutes ago.” Rachel-Ann’s usually soft voice was high-pitched with strain. She’d lost a lot of weight recently, weight she couldn’t afford to lose, and she looked like a frail, red-haired sparrow, lost and frightened.

“Then we’ll go into your room, and I’ll sit with you until you fall asleep.”

Rachel-Ann’s mouth twisted into a smile that was both bitter and longing. “Always the good sister, Jilly. Don’t you ever get tired of us?”

“Never.”

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’m fine in my room. They never come in there. I’ve seen to that.”

“Rachel-Ann, there are no ghosts—”

“Humor me for once, Jilly! They’re there. The only way I can make them go away is to drink, and I’m not ready to pay that price. Just let me go to bed and I’ll be fine in the morning. They don’t usually bother me in the daylight.” Rachel-Ann grimaced. “Don’t look at me that way. I’m not crazy. This house is haunted.”

“Did you talk to your therapist about the ghosts?” Jilly asked.

“What, and have him think I’m crazy?” Rachel-Ann’s laugh was only slightly hysterical. “The ghosts are in this house, not in my mind. But don’t worry about it. They leave you alone for some reason. Be grateful.”

“Maybe I just don’t have enough imagination.”

“Maybe you’re just too levelheaded,” Rachel-Ann said wearily. She gave Jilly a quick hug, and the tremor in her slender arms was pathetic. “See you in the morning, darling. Not too early.”

“I’ll be glad to sit with you….”

“No need,” she said, suddenly breezy. “I’ll be fine.”

Jilly watched as her sister skirted the hallway, putting as much distance between herself and Jilly’s open bedroom door as possible. A moment later she was in her own suite of rooms, the door shut tightly behind her.

Jilly stayed where she was, wondering whether she should go after her. She hadn’t been inside Rachel-Ann’s rooms since her sister had come back from her most recent hospitalization—it was a matter of honor that she wouldn’t search for empty bottles or pill containers. Rachel-Ann said she had a way of keeping the ghosts out, and Jilly couldn’t even begin to guess what that was. Or whether it would work to keep other, more resourceful demons at bay.

She had no idea what time it was—probably after eleven. It had been a piss-poor day. She’d accomplished nothing and only managed to unnerve herself with her abortive visit to her father’s office.

And she’d met Coltrane. A treat she could have happily done without. She was going to have to find a way to either get rid of him, or get him to help her. And he didn’t look like the kind of man who made an effort to help anyone unless there was something in it for him.

She reached up and pulled the pins out of her thick hair, letting it fall down her back in a heavy mass. She’d figure out what to do about Dean and his problems in the morning. At least for tonight she could rest easy, assured that her sister and brother were safe in their own beds, and that Rachel-Ann’s specious ghosts couldn’t come into hers.



“You scared her,” Brenda said in a cross voice. “Haven’t I told you the girl’s fragile? She always has been, ever since she was a child. She reminds me in many ways of myself when I was that age.”

“Honeybunch, you died before you reached that age,” Ted said with a particular lack of tact. “And you were as fragile as an elephant in labor. The girl’s too easily spooked if you ask me.”

“She can see us.”

“So can a lot of people. They don’t turn into raving drunkards because of it,” Ted said. “Most of them figure it’s a trick of the light or something. That girl’s the only one who’s gone around the bend, and if she wasn’t so busy throwing things at us she’d realize we’re just worried about her. We’re perfectly harmless.”

“Perfectly,” Brenda murmured, leaning over to kiss him. “And besides, she shouldn’t be drinking. If we hadn’t shown up when we did she would have taken that drink instead of throwing it at us.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Ted shrugged. “She’s poured them before and then left them. It doesn’t really matter. We terrify the poor girl, and it’s not as if we can sit down and explain it to her. We’ll just have to be a little more circumspect. We don’t need to feel guilty.”

“Guilty,” Brenda said in a hollow voice. “No, we wouldn’t want that. Let’s go for a walk, darling. We can sit on the terrace and watch the stars.”

He tucked her arm in his, smiling down at her fondly. “It sounds heavenly, darling.”

“Heavenly,” Brenda echoed. A place she was never going to see. “Any place with you is heaven,” she said.

And Ted leaned down and kissed her.




4


By late the next afternoon Jilly was in a thoroughly bad mood. If Wednesday had been bad, Thursday was even worse, and the evening didn’t look like it was going to be any improvement. She’d gotten up early, as always. She’d never needed much sleep, and the ornate, swan-shaped bed was more oppressive than comfortable. For years she’d thought about buying a new mattress and box spring, but the swan bed was custom-made and of no standard size, and she couldn’t justify spending so much money on a mattress when she spent so little time there. And as Dean had callously pointed out, the mattress had to at least date from after 1951. The previous one would have been soaked with blood.

Jilly shivered, rubbing her arms in the warm evening air as she sat on the deserted terrace at La Casa. Would it have been too much to ask, to have a good day for once, just to make the ordeal of this evening easier? But no, her job wasn’t overburdened with good days, and today was one of the worst.

Working as an historic preservationist in Los Angeles was a classic exercise in futility, and she’d known that going into it. Los Angeles was based on money and power, and history and aesthetics were commodities of little value. In the three years Jilly had worked for the Los Angeles Preservation Society she’d watched landmark after landmark be turned into rubble and then transformed into Bauhaus boxes. The best she could preserve were memories.

Today was particularly bad. She’d spent the day scrambling over debris at the Moroccan Theater, snapping pictures with the digital camera, taking notes, taking measurements. In a few more days it would be gone, its last reprieve used up. And at one point Jilly sat in one of the dusty, plush velvet seats and wept, not sure if she was weeping for the building or her own life.

Dean and Rachel-Ann were gone by the time she got home in the middle of the afternoon, and chances were they wouldn’t be back until late. Just as well. Handling Coltrane was difficult enough—she didn’t want to have to worry about her siblings at the same time.

She’d showered the dust and rubble off her body, made herself a tall glass of iced tea and wandered out on the terrace to watch the sun set over the huge expanse of overgrown lawn. She loved the terrace, the old iron furniture, the flagstones, the stone columns weathered and chipped from the years, the towering palms surrounding them. But down in the middle of the lawn, some two hundred yards away, lay the dank, algae-covered pool, and Jilly could never look at it without shuddering.

It was past time to get someone in to drain it again, she thought idly. It hadn’t been used in years. As a child she’d had an unexpected dread of it, even though she spent all her free time in her friends’ pools. Maybe it was the trees looming overhead, or the odd patterns in the tiles, or maybe an excess of teenage imagination. Whatever it was, Jilly had stayed away from the pool most of her life.

When they’d inherited the house she’d had it drained, but each year it would fill again, water seeping in from a crack in the lining. There was no way she could afford to hire heavy machinery to come in and bulldoze it, so it just sat there, dank and malevolent, with only the wild tangle of rosebushes to shield it.

Jilly perched on the wide stone railing, breathing in the scent of roses mixed with the acrid perfume of exhaust from the surrounding city. There was nothing she wanted more than to climb into her huge marble bathtub and stay there until her skin got wrinkled. She didn’t want to see anyone, talk to anyone, save anyone. Not tonight. She most particularly didn’t want to have to deal with Z. R. Coltrane.

At least she’d found out that much about him, even if she couldn’t fathom what Z. R. stood for. It seemed an apt enough name for a Hollywood cutthroat.

Not that she had any particular reason to consider him a cutthroat, apart from her instinctive dislike of all lawyers. She wasn’t particularly trustful of good-looking men, either—years in Los Angeles had taught her to be wary, and Alan had finished the lesson. Of course Coltrane didn’t look the slightest bit like her former husband. Alan was dramatically beautiful, with long, flowing dark hair, a poet’s face, an artist’s hands, a butcher’s soul.

Coltrane, on the other hand, was a shaggy-haired, bleached California blond, a lawyer, not an artist, a businessman, not a poet. Unlike Alan, he made no pretensions to being a gentle, noble soul. And yet he was a phony, a liar, just as much as her husband had been. What you saw was definitely not what you’d get, or so her instincts screamed at her.

Coltrane was the sort of man who could easily figure out what appealed to certain people and tailor his approach accordingly. If anything, he’d seemed determined to annoy her rather than seduce her into thinking he was harmless.

Bad word, seduce. Particularly in connection with him. They’d have a business meeting tonight, a calm, rational discussion of how Dean’s situation could be made more tenable at Meyer Enterprises, and then she’d bow out, gracefully, and never have to see Coltrane again. She never went to her father’s lavish holiday parties—for all she knew she hadn’t even been invited the last couple of years. There was no reason she should ever have to run into one of her father’s employees again.

It was all quite simple once you put it in perspective, she thought, sipping her tea and averting her gaze from the swimming pool. She’d let her imagination get out of hand, which was downright silly of her. She’d learned to change what she could and let go of what she couldn’t fix. There was a good chance she could at least help Dean. And if she couldn’t, she’d simply have to work on backing off and letting him deal with it on his own.

She heard the sound of tires on the overgrown driveway, and her stomach lurched unpleasantly. She didn’t recognize the sound of the car. It was just seven o’clock, and her unwanted date must be arriving.



Coltrane knew exactly where La Casa de Sombras stood behind its curtain of overgrown trees. He’d developed an odd sort of fascination for it, though in truth it probably wasn’t that odd. He knew from the photograph that his mother had spent time there in the sixties, though he had no idea how long or if his father had been there, as well. There’d been no dates on the newspaper photo, and no one to ask. His father had flatly refused to ever discuss his mother. But La Casa de Sombras was part of his family history, a place where some of the answers to his past lay buried, and it had taken a long time to finally get inside. Things were beginning to fall into place.

He’d considered breaking in at some point during his tenure. It would have been a piece of cake—during his hellion youth he’d learned all sorts of skills from the motley group of lowlifes he’d hung around with, and he knew how to break into a house without leaving any mark. He’d chosen not to risk it, relying on his patience. Sooner or later he’d walk in through the front door. He could wait.

But now that the time had come he found he was oddly tense. The last few years of his life, maybe his entire life, were coming down to this night, and all he could think about was Jilly Meyer.

He had to remember that she wasn’t the weak link. If anything, she was the strong one, and he wasn’t particularly interested in a challenge. He’d already been working on her brother, but it was her fragile older sister who was going to provide the key. He knew it by instinct, instinct bred in him by his Irish mother. Rachel-Ann Meyer was the way to Jackson’s heart, and to his destruction.

The ornate gates at the bottom of the overgrown driveway were stuck open, rusty even in a place where it never seemed to rain. He drove slowly up the winding drive, dodging an overhanging tree limb here, a raised hump of grass there. In Los Angeles, one of the most developed areas on earth, there were sport utility vehicles in almost every garage. This was one place where one might actually be needed. He wondered how Jilly managed to avoid the potholes in her gorgeous, low-slung Corvette.

He first caught sight of the huge garage. The slate roof was cracked and damaged—it was a good thing it seldom rained or the place would have been worthless. There were seven garage doors—three of them were closed, three were empty. The Corvette stood in pristine glory in the remaining bay.

He parked directly behind it, blocking her in. There was no sign of anyone around, so he immediately headed over to the red car, letting his hands brush the shining finish like a tender lover’s. He’d always thought his dream car was a Gull Wing Mercedes, or perhaps a classic Jaguar XKE. He’d never realized how deeply American he was, after all.

He reached for the door handle, unable to resist, when he realized he wasn’t alone. He didn’t even jump when he heard her caustic voice.

“I told you, you’re not driving my car.”

He kept his hand on the car, letting his fingertips caress it lightly, knowing Jilly was watching. And then he turned and peered at her from beneath his shaggy hair.

“I’m glad you didn’t put yourself to any trouble on my account,” he said. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and he let his gaze travel up her long legs. She obviously had no idea how very much her long legs turned him on, or she wouldn’t keep exposing them like that. It didn’t matter that the shorts were baggy cargo shorts—it was the legs beneath them that got him going.

Rachel-Ann, he reminded himself. She is the key. Meyer wouldn’t give a damn what happened to this daughter.

“Sorry, I’ve changed my mind. There’s no reason to go out—we can discuss the situation here as well as anywhere. Guess you’ll have to rethink your plans,” she said breezily.

“How about McDonald’s? I wouldn’t have thought fast food was the best arena for negotiations, but I’m game if you are. Especially if we get to eat in the car. That way no one will notice if I accidentally grope you.” He wasn’t quite sure why he’d added that—mainly to get a reaction from her, he supposed.

“Yeah, right,” she said, foolishly unconvinced. There was nothing he’d like better than to grope her, if the time and place were different. But for right now she was simply the means to an end. “Negotiations?”

“Isn’t that what this is about? You convince me to help your baby brother win Daddy’s love and approval? I’m going to be fascinated to hear what I have to gain by doing it, but I’m always open-minded.”

She didn’t bother denying it. “Maybe out of the goodness of your heart?”

“I don’t think there’s much goodness in me. Much less a heart,” he said, giving her his most dulcet smile.

She blinked, a good reaction. He believed in warning people. They seldom believed him—people always tended to downplay his honesty. It was only later when they looked back, battered and bruised, that they realized he’d simply told them the truth.

“You’re not going to convince me with that diffidence crap,” she said.

“Convince you of what? I’m telling you the truth.”

“I’m not sure you’d know the truth if it bit you on the ass.”

“I guess you’ll just have to find out.” He stepped back from the Corvette, hiding his reluctance. “So, are you going to give me a tour of this place? And don’t tell me I can take a bus tour. I want an owner’s perspective. Or at least the temporary owner. Your father’s the one who’ll end up with this place when you finally give it up.”

“That’s not about to happen. You’re awfully conversant with the legal ownership of this place,” she added suspiciously.

“I’m head of legal services, remember? It’s my job to know.” Hell, he didn’t usually make slips like that one. He had to be careful with Jilly—she was a lot more observant than her brother. “Anyway, I like old Hollywood legends,” he said. “I also like old houses. I studied to be an architect before I switched to law.”

Her disbelief should have been scathing, but he wasn’t easily scathed. “I got my degree in architecture from Princeton,” she said, warning him.

“I know.” He smiled at her. “Want to cross-examine me about architectural detail? You seem convinced I’ve got something to hide. What you see is what you get.” He held his arms out.

“Not if I can help it,” she muttered. “I don’t suppose you’ll be willing to leave until I show you the place.”

“As always, you’re very astute. And I’m looking forward to meeting your sister.” He liked how casual it sounded.

“Why?”

“I’m curious. As your father’s lawyer I’ve dealt with everything, including your divorce, Dean’s traffic accidents, and Rachel-Ann’s various…issues.”

“You’ll have to stay curious. She’s not home tonight. Neither is Dean, for that matter.”

“So we’re here alone? Maybe I don’t mind not taking you out, after all.”

She looked completely unflustered. “Depends on how you define alone, and whether you believe in the ghosts. I never see them, but a lot of other people have. I wouldn’t want to irritate them if I were you. Ghosts are notoriously unstable.”

“Fortunately I’m not very irritating,” he said, deliberately setting himself up for her hoot of disbelief. “Tell me about the place. Give me your best tour guide impersonation, and then we’ll talk.”

She wanted to get rid of him, she made that perfectly clear, and he still wasn’t quite sure why. He’d been his charming, unsettling best with her, and most women were reluctantly fascinated by him. She was fascinated, as well, but more along the lines of someone caught in the gaze of a snake. Maybe she was more intuitive than she gave herself credit for, despite her inability to see ghosts.

Coltrane didn’t believe in ghosts. When he was younger he used to try to see his mother, floating over him like some sort of guardian angel. But his mother was no restless spirit—he would have known by now if she were. His mother was at peace, no matter how she’d died. He was the one with the restless spirit, seeking answers, seeking resolution.

“All right,” she said finally. “Follow me.”

It took an effort to keep his eyes off her sexy butt and on the overgrown path leading up to the main house. She was rattling off details in a monotone, and he let them filter into the back of his efficient memory, to dredge up later if and when he needed them. Built by the Greene brothers, site of Hollywood parties, witness to the infamous Hughes-de Lorillard suicide pact, home to a roaming band of dopers in the sixties and seventies. Nothing he hadn’t heard before, though she didn’t seem to realize her father had been part of that pack. He listened with half an ear for any inconsistencies as they turned the corner and reached the edge of the extensive terrace, the house looming over them in the shadows.

He stopped dead, her words no more than a meaningless hum in the back of his head, like an annoying insect.

The stone railing was crumbling. Weeds grew up beneath the flagstones, the stucco on the house was cracked and streaked with water marks. The slate roof was missing several tiles, and the furniture on the terrace was rusting, broken, derelict. The house looked like a grand duchess turned hooker, out on the streets, her finery faded and torn. A magic castle for a lost princess. But suddenly he knew with a certainty his mother wasn’t the only Coltrane who’d lived there, decades ago.

He realized Jilly had stopped talking, and he tore his gaze away from the house to find her staring at him, a curious expression on her face.

“Not what you were expecting?” she said. “There’s been barely enough money to keep it from falling to pieces entirely. I don’t know how much longer I can keep it together.”

“You don’t strike me as someone who admits defeat.” He was amazed at how calm his voice sounded.

“I’m a realist, Mr. Coltrane. Not a fool.”

“Just Coltrane.” And if she was a realist then he was an altar boy. She was as idealistic and starry-eyed as anyone he’d ever met, at least when it came to what she loved. Which was old houses in general, and this old house in particular. “Let’s go inside.”

He was half expecting her to refuse, but after a moment she nodded, leading the way in. It was just as well—he wasn’t about to leave without finally going through the place. Not since that cold wave of shock had washed over him when he first looked up at the house.

He’d lived here. No one had ever told him—as far as he’d known he’d spent the first thirteen years of his life in Indiana. He’d simply assumed that picture had been taken before he was born, before she’d met his father.

Wrong. He’d lived here, and he had no conscious memory of it. Just a weird, certain knowledge that this place had once, long, long ago, been his home.

The smell of the place was so damned familiar, another blow. He was glad Jilly’s back was to him—he wasn’t certain he could manage to keep his expression imperturbable. He knew the hallway, knew the long, curving staircase, and he followed her wordlessly as she cataloged the details of the house in a rapid, bored voice that slowly, reluctantly turned to warmth and fascination. She loved this house, he thought, loved it with a lover’s passion. She would be an easy woman to use—her heart was on her sleeve. She loved the house, her brother and her sister, and all he’d have to do would be to apply a little pressure on one of those three things to get her to do what he wanted.

They wandered through drawing rooms, dining rooms, salons and breakfast nooks. Whoever had built this place had spared no expense, and the thing rambled for what seemed like acres. It was sparsely furnished, the few shabby pieces looking like lost remnants of a once grander time. “Brenda de Lorillard hired a set designer to decorate this place,” Jilly was saying, “and unfortunately she picked someone who’d done a lot of work for Cecil B. DeMille. Some of it looks more like an opera set than a house.”

She was right—it was gloriously tawdry, from the Italianate wallpaper to the gilt-covered furniture. The huge kitchen was a monument to impracticability, with not even a dishwasher in sight. There seemed to be no air-conditioning in the house, but the place was comfortably cool, anyway. He wondered if that was because of the supposed ghosts.

“What about upstairs?” he said, when her chatter had finally wound down.

“Bedrooms,” she said.

“That’s logical. Is that where it happened?”

She looked startled. “Where what happened?”

“The murder-suicide? Or does this place hold other scandals, as well?” He knew the answer to that, but he wasn’t sure whether she did.

“The master bedroom. Trust me, there’s nothing to see. All the blood was cleaned up.”

“Show me, anyway.”

“No. It’s my bedroom now and I don’t like strange men traipsing through it.”

“Why?”

“I like my privacy.”

“And you don’t have any problem sleeping in a murder scene? A haunted one?”

“I told you, I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said.

“Don’t believe in them? Or just don’t see them?”

She glowered at him. She had a very impressive glower. “I’m getting tired of this.”

“And I’m getting hungry. Show me the murder scene and then I’ll ply you with fast food. Unless you’ve changed your mind and want to go someplace better.”

“I told you I don’t want to go anywhere with you,” she snapped.

“But then your brother’s left to sink or swim on his own.”

She didn’t say a word; her expression was withering enough. But Coltrane wasn’t easily cowed—he was getting more reaction out of Jilly Meyer than most people usually got, he was certain of it. And he knew just how much to push, and when to back off.

“All right,” she said. “You can ogle the murder scene, and then we talk.” She turned and headed out into the hallway, and he followed after her, taking the steps two at a time until he caught up with her, walking beside her. Now that he’d regained his equilibrium he was more curious to see her reaction. Did she really sleep in a room where a murder occurred and not mind it? Would he recognize the room himself?

He almost laughed when he saw it. It was absurd, the ultimate in faded kitsch, from the swan-shaped bed with its filmy draperies to the voluptuous, oversize furniture that littered the room. There was a dressing table that looked as if it had seen no use at all. He stepped past her, walking into the room, looking out the French doors, across the wide balcony that ran the length of the house to the overgrown lawn below. He could see the dark rectangle of a lichen-covered swimming pool halfway down the row of trees, and an odd, stray shudder passed over his body.

He turned to glance at Jilly, who still stood in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, a stubborn expression on her face.

“Are you certain they died here? In that bed?”

“It’s common knowledge. Hollywood loves its scandals, and this was one of the best ones.”

“So Brenda de Lorillard killed her married lover and then herself, right? Any reason ever surface?”

Jilly shrugged. “Maybe he was growing tired of her. Men have a habit of doing that, you know.”

“Do they?” He kept the grin from his face, but just barely. Someone needed to teach Jilly Meyer a few more effective defenses. She was as vulnerable as a kitten, spitting and scratching and pathetically easy to manipulate.

“How many other bedrooms?” he asked curiously, changing the subject.

“Seven. Rachel-Ann’s in one, Dean’s got his own apartment behind the kitchen. The rest are closed up.”

So there was plenty of room for him. Assuming he didn’t move right in with Rachel-Ann. He smiled briskly. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s go find some food.”

For a moment she didn’t move, staring at him across the room.

“I don’t like you,” she said abruptly. “And I don’t trust you.”

“I know,” he said with unexpected gentleness.

“Give me a reason why I should.”

“I can’t think of one.”

“Are you going to help me?”

Lying was second nature to him. He didn’t even hesitate. “Yes,” he said.

And for a moment it looked as if she might make the desperate mistake of believing him.




5


The sky over Los Angeles was streaked with lavender and orange, the smog thickening the sunset into iridescent stripes. Jilly sat on the steps leading down into the tangled garden, an icy bottle of beer in her hand, waiting for Coltrane.

She had no idea what he was doing in the house. He said he’d needed to use the bathroom, and she could hardly dispute it. Nor could she wait outside the door of the ornate powder room with its pink swans and gilt faucets for him to reappear. She went back to the kitchen, took two beers and headed out for the terrace.

Not that she wanted to encourage the man. But it had been a long day, and she needed something from him. She was refusing to go out with him—she could at least offer him a beer without compromising her position.

What could he be doing in there, besides the obvious? Surely she was being paranoid—what possible interest could a stately old wreck like La Casa have for a man like him?

Her beer was half gone by the time he appeared. He’d taken off his jacket, his sleeves were rolled up and his tie was off. His streaked blond hair was rumpled, and he looked good enough to eat. Jilly ignored him.

“I don’t suppose you have another beer, do you?” He leaned against the balustrade.

She handed it to him without a word, and he took a long swig of it. She watched the line of his throat, the condensation dripping off the bottle onto his skin, and she turned to concentrate on her own beer.

“So, what are we going to do about your brother?” he asked in a casual tone.

She glanced up at him. “You wouldn’t feel like quitting your job and going back to New Orleans, would you?”

“You’ve been checking up on me.” He sounded faintly pleased, and she could have kicked herself.

“I believe in knowing one’s enemy.”

“I’m not your enemy, Jilly,” he said softly.

“Anyone who threatens my brother is my enemy.”

“That’s going to keep you pretty busy. Your brother threatens easily. Why don’t you let him take care of his own business? If he thinks your father doesn’t appreciate him then he should tell him so.”

“Oh, Jackson would just love that,” she muttered. “He’d probably tell him to stop whining.”

“Dean does whine,” Coltrane observed.

She glared at him. She was at somewhat of a disadvantage sitting at his feet, but she wasn’t about to move. She didn’t want him down on her level, either—she didn’t want him anywhere near her.

“I don’t think you’re going to be able to save him,” Coltrane said. “He’s going to have to pull his head out of his computer and deal with life himself.”

Jilly jerked her head around. “I could help if you’d just stop…stop…”

“Stop what?” He seemed genuinely interested.

“Stop being the paragon. Maybe screw up now and then. It’s hard for Dean to compete with you around as the golden boy.”

Coltrane looked out over the lawn, an odd expression on his face. “I suppose I’ll just have to be less golden.” He glanced down at her. “What do you really want me to do? Short of packing my bags or absconding with the company’s assets, I’m at your disposal. You want me to have your father transfer some of the biggest accounts over to him? I can tell him I’m overloaded and need some help. I can tell him your brother’s the best man for the job. I have no trouble lying.”

“You’re not very nice, are you?”

“Nope. I ordered some pizza. There’s a place near here that delivers New York-style pizza that can make a grown man weep. I got enough in case your sister comes home.”

Again she felt that extra shot of unease wash over her. “Why are you so curious about my sister?”

“I told you, I’ve heard stories.”

“Don’t believe the half of them. And I don’t like pizza.”

“You’re not nearly as good a liar as I am.”

It was true, she’d never been good at lying. “Maybe I don’t need your help. Maybe all Dean has to do is stand up to Jackson.”

Coltrane shrugged. “It’s possible. Did it work for you?”

“What makes you think I stood up to him?”

Coltrane merely smiled, draining his beer and setting the bottle down on the stone railing. “Did it work?” he asked again.

“No. Jackson likes his children docile.”

“Dean’s practically a doormat, and Jackson doesn’t seem any too fond of him,” Coltrane said. “There’s our pizza.”

She hadn’t even noticed the young man coming up the walkway, but the sudden rich aroma of tomato sauce and cheese wafted toward her, and her stomach leapt. She watched as Coltrane traded the pizza for cash, trying to school her wayward stomach.

He came toward her, carrying the box, and Jilly kept a stalwart expression on her face. “Real New York pizza,” he said in a seductive voice. “No sprouts, no broccoli, no goat cheese or tofu. Do you realize how rare this is?”

It took her a moment to find her voice. She could resist a man that gorgeous, she knew she could. Real pizza was another matter.

“I’m not hungry,” she said, her voice wavering slightly.

“Of course not. But then, neither am I. I’m afraid I have to leave.”

She almost dropped her empty beer bottle. “Leave?” she repeated idiotically.

“I know it breaks your heart, but something’s come up. We can talk about your family later. Maybe your sister might have an idea how we can help Dean. In the meantime, why don’t I just leave the pizza here? Even if you don’t like it maybe your ghosts would.”

“I doubt it.”

“Or maybe you’ll consider trying it. Have you ever even had an honest-to-God real Italian pizza in your upscale California life?” His words were gently mocking.

“I went to Princeton,” Jilly said. “They have great pizza in New Jersey.”

“But you don’t like pizza, right?” He set the box down on the step beside her, then moved away. “Think about what I said. Sooner or later your brother will have to fend for himself. Did he even ask you to go to your father?”

“Not in so many words, but…”

“I rest my case. He doesn’t want you interfering. The more you try to fix things for him the worse things will get.”

“Hi, my name is Jilly and I’m a codependent,” she said flippantly.

“If you want my help you know where to find me.”

She waited until he’d disappeared down the pathway beneath the overgrown trees, waited until the sound of his car faded away. Waited until the smell of pepperoni and cheese got too tempting, and then she tore into the box. Much good she was against the forces of darkness, she thought, dreamily shoving the pizza in her mouth. He was right—it was great pizza. She could stand firm against any onslaught and then be seduced by food.

“What are you eating?”

Jilly jumped, startled, and looked up at her sister. Rachel-Ann looked pale, sad and as beautiful as always, with her gorgeous pre-Raphaelite curls and her huge green eyes.

“Pizza,” Jilly replied, her mouth still full. “The best pizza I’ve had in decades. Have some.”

“I’m not hungry.” Despite her words Rachel-Ann sat down on the steps beside Jilly and took the slice she offered. She stared at it for a long moment, as if she’d find the answers to the secrets of the universe in the thick topping. “Besides, I’m a vegetarian.”

“Take the pepperoni off. I’ll eat it for you,” she offered generously.

Slowly, almost automatically Rachel-Ann picked off the circles of pepperoni and dropped them in the box. “Where did you get this? You’re usually too cheap to call for take-out.”

Jilly didn’t even bother to correct her. Due to the complicated terms of Julia Meyer’s will, the three siblings had possession of La Casa on equal terms, with money to support it. Rachel-Ann had gone through her share of the money in a record amount of time, but then, cocaine was an expensive habit. Jilly had no idea how much Dean had left, but she expected it wasn’t much. Certainly neither of them contributed a penny to the massive upkeep of the old place. “It’s my Scots blood,” she said cheerfully. “And I didn’t pay for it. Jackson’s golden boy had it delivered.”

“Really?” Rachel-Ann’s interest perked up, and she took a tentative bite of the pizza. Her eyes closed in a moment of luxuriant bliss. “Is he as gorgeous as they say he is?”

“Yup.”

“Are you sleeping with him?” She seemed no more than idly curious.

“No. I’ve been here every night, alone. You would have noticed if I was having an affair.”

“I don’t pay much attention to those things,” Rachel-Ann said, taking another bite, and Jilly had to concede she was right. Rachel-Ann barely noticed if it was raining or sunny, she was too caught up in the foggy world she was battling to escape. Other people tended to flit through her life unnoticed. “Mmm,” she said. “If he can provide pizza like this maybe I’ll sleep with him.”

For some reason Jilly found the notion deeply disturbing. It wasn’t as if her sister didn’t go through men like a hay-fever sufferer went through Kleenex, and while she’d remained celibate since she’d gotten out of treatment this time, it was unlikely to last. At least Coltrane would be a safer choice than some of the ones Rachel-Ann had made in the past. He wasn’t a drug dealer or an addict, as far as Jilly could tell. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said in a neutral voice. “I think he’s dangerous.”

Wrong words, Jilly thought, when Rachel-Ann’s eyes lit up with a trace of their old spark. “Dangerous, gorgeous and he brings pizza? How irresistible.”

“Resist him,” Jilly said sourly.

At least Rachel-Ann didn’t bother being coy. There was no question that Coltrane would want her—most any man did. And already he’d seemed far too interested in her older sister. It was fairly easy to guess why.

It was common knowledge that Rachel-Ann was Jackson’s favored child. An ambitious man would use that to his advantage. Jackson was clearly disappointed in his own son—maybe he needed a smart and devoted son-in-law to inherit the business. And it didn’t hurt that Rachel-Ann was sweet, beautiful and deeply wounded. She’d be dead easy to manipulate. Jackson was a past master at it, and Jilly had already seen enough of Coltrane to know he had a natural talent for it, as well.





Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Получить полную версию книги.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/anne-stuart/shadows-at-sunset-39929218/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.