keeping her gaze even with his. “Poor Alexi. Maybe sometime I’ll be able to pity you.”
He slammed his hand down on the desk. “Do you feel any remorse for what you did? Any shame for destroying an object of such remarkable beauty?”
“The Bugatti was a work of art, and it’s sad that it no longer exists. But that’s not really what you’re asking, is it? You want to know if I’m sorry.” She pressed her fingers into the beadwork on her skirt. Alexi leaned slightly forward, and she heard the soft creak of leather as he shifted his weight. “Not ever,” she said. “Not for one moment have I ever been sorry.” The beads bit into her fingers. “You declared yourself the emperor of your own private kingdom, a man who’s above the law, just like Belinda’s movie stars. But nobody is above the laws of decency, and people who try to crush others should be punished. What you did to me was horrible, and I punished you. It’s as simple as that. You can threaten Belinda and keep on trying to ruin my business, but you’ll
“I’ll destroy you.”
“I think I’ve grown too strong for that, but if I’ve miscalculated-if you somehow manage to destroy my business-then so be it. I still won’t regret what I did. You don’t have any more power over me.”
The chair screeched as Alexi settled back into its depths. “I said I would destroy your dream,
“You’re bluffing. There’s nothing you can do to hurt me.”
“I never bluff.” He slid a small envelope across the desktop. She looked at it for a moment. A chill passed through her. She reached out to take it. “A keepsake,” he said.
She slit open the envelope, and a battered piece of metal fell into her lap. The letters embossed upon it were still visible: BUGATTI. It was the red metal oval from the front of the Royale.
He pushed something else across the desk. In the dim light, it took a moment before she saw what it was. Her blood froze.
“A dream for a dream,
It was a tabloid newspaper-an American paper with that day’s date-and the headline leaped out at her:
“No.” She shook her head, willing the ugly words to disappear, even as her eyes skimmed the sentences.
Actor/playwright Jake Koranda, best known for playing the renegade cowboy Bird Dog Caliber, suffered a nervous breakdown while serving in the United States Army in Vietnam…Fleur Savagar, the actor’s literary agent and recent companion, revealed in a press release today that Koranda was hospitalized for post-traumatic stress syndrome…
According to Savagar, details of the breakdown will be revealed in the actor’s new autobiography…“Jake has been honest about his emotional and psychological problems,” Savagar said, “and I’m certain the public will respect him for that honesty and look upon his terrible experience with compassion and pity.”
Fleur could read no further. There were photographs-one of Jake as Bird Dog, another of the two of them running in the park, a third of her alone, with a sidebar bearing the headline, GLITTER BABY SCORES BIG AS AGENT FOR THE STARS. She put the tabloid on the desk and slowly stood up. The battered Bugatti oval fell to the carpet.
“I have been patient for seven years,” Alexi whispered from across the desk. “Now the score is settled. Now you, too, have lost what you care about most. It wasn’t your business that was the real dream, was it,
Her heart contracted into a small mass of frozen tissue that would never again pulse with life. All this time she’d thought it was the agency he was after, but Alexi had known better. He’d known from the beginning that Jake was as elemental to her as food and water. Jake was the dream.
But something inside her refused to give Alexi his victory. “Jake will never believe this,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper, but calm, as calm as the center of a storm.
“He’s a man accustomed to the betrayal of women,” Alexi replied. “He’ll believe it.”
“How did you do this? Jake and I destroyed the book together.”
“I’m told there was a man with a special camera watching the house. Such things have been possible for years.”
“You’re lying. The manuscript was never out of Jake’s-” She stopped. It had been. The morning Jake had come running after her…They’d gone for a walk on the beach. “Jake knows I’d never do anything like this.”
“Does he? He’s been betrayed before. And he knows how important your business is to you. You used his name before to gain publicity. He has no reason to believe you wouldn’t do it again.”
Every word he spoke was true, but she couldn’t let him see that. “You’ve lost,” she said. “You’ve underestimated Jake, and you’ve underestimated me.” She reached out quickly-so quickly that he couldn’t have anticipated it-and snapped on the desk lamp.
With a harsh exclamation, he jerked up his arm and sent the lamp smashing to the floor, where it rocked crazily from side to side, casting cruel, moving blades of light over him. He covered the side of his face, but he was too late. By then she’d already seen what he wanted to hide.
The slackness on the left side of his face was so subtle that someone who didn’t know him well might not have noticed. There was an extra fold of skin beneath his eye, a looseness in his cheek, the slightest dip at the corner of his mouth. Another person with the same malady might have given it little thought, but for a proud man obsessed with perfection, even so slight an imperfection was intolerable. She understood-she even felt a flash of pity-but she pushed it aside. “Now your face is as ugly as your soul.”
“
“You’ve made a fatal mistake,” she said. “Jake and I love each other in a way you can never comprehend because you don’t have a heart. All you feel is the need to control. If you understood about love and trust, you’d know that all your schemes and all your plots aren’t worth anything. Jake trusts me with his life, and he’ll never believe this.”
“No!” he cried. “I’ve beaten you!” The weak side of his face began to quiver, as she saw the first flicker of doubt.
“You’ve lost,” she replied. And then she turned her back on him and left the library. She walked down the icy hallway to the front door and stepped out into the cold, clear February night.
Her limousine was gone-Alexi had planned to keep her here-but she wouldn’t reenter the house. She walked down the drive toward the gates that led to the street. Every word she’d spoken to Alexi was a lie. He’d calculated correctly. She could try to explain it to Jake. She would try. He might even believe Alexi was responsible. But he’d still blame her. Exposure was Jake’s deepest fear, and this was something he’d never forgive.
A dream for a dream. Alexi had finally beaten her.
He stood at the library window, the fingers of his right hand clutching the edge of the drapery, and watched her tall, straight figure grow smaller as she disappeared down the drive. It was a cold night, and she wasn’t wearing a coat, but she didn’t huddle into the chill, or hug her arms, or in any way acknowledge the temperature. She was magnificent.
The leafless branches of the old chestnuts formed a skeletal cathedral over her head. He remembered how the trees looked when they were in blossom and how-years before-another woman had disappeared down that same drive into those blossoms. Neither woman had been worthy of him. Both had betrayed him. Yet, even so, he had loved them.
A great sense of desolation filled him. For seven years, he’d been obsessed with Fleur, and now it was over. He no longer knew how he would fill his days. His assistants were well trained to handle his business affairs, and his hideous facial deformity kept him from ever again appearing in public.
A dull ache throbbed in his left shoulder, and he kneaded it with his hand. Her walk was so straight and proud, and tiny fires glittered on her dress as the beads caught the lamplights. The Glitter Baby. She lifted her arm, and something fell to the ground. He was too far away to see what it was, but, even so, he knew. As clearly as if she’d been standing next to him, he knew exactly what she’d thrown away. A white rose.
It was then that the pain hit him.
