A baby.
She couldn’t believe her eyes. Eve stared blankly at the pink test strip in her hands. With a squeak of disbelief she cupped her hands protectively against her toned, flat belly and shook her head.
“Are you really in there?” she whispered. Joy spilled through her. She sank dazedly down on the closed lid of the toilet seat, the folds of her ivory silk robe trailing on the marble floor.
Nico would go wild when she told him. Coming from a family even larger than hers—ten kids—he was always talking about getting started on their own brood as soon as possible.
“But I don’t think he intended it quite this soon,” she reflected wryly, staring at herself in every angle of the mirrored walls. Nico was probably old-fashioned enough to care about what his relatives would whisper when she waddled down the aisle in August.
And the Estée Lauder people, Eve thought, seeing her contract shrivel into a wisp of smoke. What were they going to do with a pregnant spokeswoman? She quickly dismissed her fears. It’s your face they want, Evie B, not your bod. After all, they’ll need only portrait shots, and if my boobs fill out a little more, so much the better.
She danced into the living room and scooped Ragamuffin from her window side perch, spinning the cat in the air while she twirled around the room as if the crystal ballerina sculpture had come to life.
“Listen up, Rags baby, your days as an only child are numbered. You’ve got a brother or sister on the way.”
There’s no hope of reaching Nico at the hotel now, not at four o’clock in the afternoon, Eve thought. She set Ragamuffin down on the sofa and hurried back into the bedroom to dress. How would she be able to wait until after the shower to tell him? Why did he have to be in Italy now? It was going to be torture sitting through an entire bridal shower with fifteen of her closest friends, corked up like a bottle of champagne, ready to burst and overflow with the delicious announcement that she was pregnant.
She wanted to call her mother. And Nana, she thought with quickening excitement.
What would her father say? she wondered, pulling a black and white sweater dress from the closet. Finally she could give him something Margo couldn’t—his first grandchild. When she sent him baby pictures, would he finally value something of hers enough to put it on the living room mantel next to Margo’s mementos?
But there was no way she could make any calls until after she told Nico.
Exhilaration bubbled through her.
How was she ever going to keep a straight face?
An hour later Eve could scarcely nibble at her vegetable frittata and casaba melon wedge served up on her friend Delia’s pale blue handcrafted pottery plates. The coffee mugs steaming with cinnamon-laced cappuccino were of myriad shapes and sizes, collected from galleries and art fairs all over the world. Delia was a pencil-thin French model Eve had met early in her career, a Sorbonne graduate who spoke seven languages fluently and was convinced she had been Josephine Bonaparte in a previous life. They’d worked together on various jobs over the years, becoming even better friends when Delia had relocated to New York and signed on with the D’Arcy agency.
As Eve gazed around Delia’s dining room table at the young women chattering animatedly, all of whom had been invited to the airy penthouse in her honor, she struggled against the temptation to blurt out her secret. After all, it was a rare enough chance to find them all together here in New York. Everyone seemed to have jobs coming up that would take them out of the country until August—that’s why Delia had whipped up plans for a shower so far ahead of the wedding.
We’re all here together, Eve thought. It would be the perfect time to tell them. God, how she wanted to do it.
But Nico would kill her.
Still, she could just picture each of their reactions: Elke Barnes, the vivacious brunette fashion editor of Image magazine, would instantly press her to do an exclusive mother-to-be glamour cover for next year’s Christmas issue; MTV video director Cookie Palter’s giant turtle-shaped silver and amethyst earrings would jingle as she jumped up from the table to wish her an effusive mazel tov and offer to film the birth, and Cynthia LaFond, the bohemian, silver-haired stylist Eve had met on her very first Sports Illustrated assignment, would begin spouting out a list of dozens of eccentric names. Then there was Jenna. Jenna Elliot, a lanky free-lance journalist best known for her pungent pieces in Ebony magazine, would immediately compute the baby’s astrological future and advise Eve on the type of crystal she should wear for optimum health during her pregnancy.
Eve continued her silent game as she looked around the table, savoring the imaginary reaction of each of her friends until at last she came to Monique.
Monique will probably shit in her pants wondering if I’ll be allowed to fly to Maui during my first trimester and worrying that none of the clothes for the shoot will fit me—but all she’ll do is smile serenely, blow me kisses, hint to be godmother, and insist on buying the baby’s entire layette.
Eve grinned to herself as she watched Monique, dramatic as always, holding court at Delia’s elbow. Monique’s heart-shaped diamond necklace glinted at the throat of her turquoise fringed-suede jacket, catching the glimmering rays pouring in from the skylight above her. She’s in top form today, Eve thought. She temporarily forgot her own news as Monique regaled them with details of her run-in with the insolent workman building an enclosure of some sort at her country home.
“And then he had the nerve to say that I should stick to sampling the perfume strips in Perfect Bride and stay the hell off his turf because I didn’t know shit about architecture, landscaping, or carpentry and probably couldn’t tell a plumb line from a molly to save my life. Did you ever? Who the hell does he think designed all those gardens around the house?”
She agitatedly stirred the whipped cream into her cappuccino and leaned toward Delia. “By the way, your father was a builder, you ought to know—what the hell is a molly?”
Cookie nearly choked on her melon, and Eve whooped along with everyone else.
“I’m serious. What is a molly?” Monique demanded.
Elke rolled her eyes.
“I’d have fired the son of a bitch on the spot,” Delia declared, waving her spoon in the air. “Sounds too damn full of himself for my taste.”
“But who the hell would I get to finish a job that’s three-quarters completed?” Monique demanded. She lit a cigarette and watched smoke curl upward through the hazy beams of light.
“Besides, he’s not exactly hard on the eyes,” she added casually.
A little too casually, Eve thought.
Delia lifted one sculpted brow. Cookie and Cynthia exchanged glances, then turned back to stare expectantly at Monique. The others all stopped chewing, stirring, swallowing, or chattering to peer at the dark-haired editor of Perfect Bride. Monique, oblivious, inhaled another long, slow drag on her cigarette before glancing up to find fifteen pairs of mascaraed eyes boring into her from around the room.
“Why are you all staring at me like that?”
“Details, girl, details,” Elke purred.
“Does, ahem, Richard know about this hunky little handyman?” Cynthia drawled with a wink at Eve.
“What the hell is there to know?” Monique shot back. “The guy’s nothing but an infuriating asshole.” She shrugged. “A cute infuriating asshole, but an asshole just the same. So banish the dirty thoughts, ladies. Come on, Eve.” She pushed back her chair and rose, dismissing the matter as only Monique could. “Time to inspect your loot.”
“That silver box is from Rory,” Delia pointed out as Monique led Eve into the living room where presents were piled on a Chinese lacquered table. “She wanted me to tell you how pissed she was that her final run-through for Driving on Shabbos coincided with the shower, but she’s counting on seeing all of us at the opening-night party tomorrow. God, for her sake I hope it’s a success. Until this show came along, she hasn’t even had a callback in the past eight months.”
“Word is it’s a dud,” Jenna said bluntly. “Her Mercury is in retrograde—I told her to try to postpone the opening, but she couldn’t convince the director that next week would be far more auspicious.”
“Cookie,” Monique interrupted as Eve reached for a pink-and-gold foil-wrapped package. “Grab your video camera, I want a permanent record of her face when she opens my gift.”
And so Eve opened the elegantly wrapped boxes from Tiffany’s and Bloomingdale’s and Gucci, exclaiming over champagne flutes, crystal vases, Sevres candy dishes, and personalized luggage. The expression on her face when she unwrapped Monique’s sleek pink-and-gold box was one of shock. Nestled inside the gold tissue paper was a photo of a fourteenth-century Moorish castle, complete with fountains, mosaic-tiled courtyards, and a massive wooden drawbridge. Beneath the photo lay two open-ended first-class tickets to Seville.
“Don’t expect anything else for the wedding, darling. This is it for both. My way of making it up to you and Nico for that time in Milan when I interrupted your secluded weekend to bail me out of that mess.”
“Monique, this is incredible!” Eve gasped.
“Happy honeymooning, darling. You have the castle and a staff of five for a week. Just give them six months’ notice,” Monique said. She kissed Eve and hugged her warmly. “Just go, relax, and make lots of Italian babies.”
It was all Eve could do to keep from blurting out that bambino numero uno was on the way. Only thoughts of Nico’s fury should he ever discover that Monique D’Arcy knew about his baby before he did, kept her quiet. So she only kissed Monique’s cheek and whispered, “You angel. After this, how could we do less than make you a godmother?”
Delia pushed a green envelope into Eve’s hands. “Don’t forget this one—last but maybe not least.”
Eve was still laughing as she glanced down at the paper in her hands. The smile died from her lips, replaced by a look of terror.
“Catch her, Monique, she’s going to faint!” Cookie exclaimed, lowering the video camera as Eve swayed on her feet and the envelope fluttered to the jade carpet.
Monique eased her into the mahogany Queen Anne chair.
“I’m all right,” Eve protested, but her voice was thin and reedy. The buzzing that had erupted in her ears when she saw the envelope began to fade. Suddenly, all she could think about was safeguarding the tiny life cocooned inside her.
Oh, God, my baby. I won’t let him hurt my baby.
“No, I don’t need any water... Elke, I’m fine,” she said in a clearer, stronger tone. “But... no! Don’t touch that envelope,” she ordered, leaping up to intercept Cynthia’s reaching hand.
Everyone gaped at her.
“What is going on with you, darling?” Monique asked slowly.
Eve looked around the room, fighting the impulse to hug her arms protectively across her belly. “Does anyone know how that envelope got here?”
“It was on the table with the rest of the gifts, that’s all I know,” Delia replied with a puzzled and very Gallic shrug. She handed Eve a glass of ice water and eased her back into the chair.
“You’re shaking like aspic. Tell us what this is all about.”
Eve silently regarded one worried face after another, weighing her response. Monique’s penetrating gray eyes would see through any bullshit she might concoct. And suddenly she didn’t want to concoct anything. She wanted to unburden the truth to her friends—and to get Tom Swanson up here as fast as possible.
“There’s a bodyguard downstairs—my bodyguard,” she said wearily. “Someone call the doorman and have him send up the blond guy in the camel-hair coat. His name’s Swanson. I didn’t see any reason to scare you guys, but some creep has been stalking me. That envelope is from him.”
* * *
Monique poured two fingers of Glenlivet into a tumbler and gulped it down like apple juice. “Sure you don’t want some? You look like you could use it.”
Stretched out on the sofa, Ragamuffin curled on her stocking feet, Eve remembered the tiny life growing inside her and shook her bead. “I’m fine. I’ll be damned if Billy Shears is going to drive me to drink.”
“How long has this shit been going on, and why didn’t you tell me?” Monique asked. She plopped into one of the vanilla chairs, kicked off her pumps, and leaned back, downing a refill of scotch.
“No one knows except the security firm. Not even Nico.”
Monique set the tumbler down with a thud. “Why the hell not?”
“I didn’t want him to be distracted when he’s racing. I worry about him enough as it is. Besides, Monique, whoever expected this to drag on so long?”
“Exactly how long has it been?”
“A few months, I don’t know. The problem is”—Eve sat up, pulling the meowing cat on to her lap—“despite the investigation, the bodyguards, everything I’ve done to protect myself, he keeps drawing closer. The letters and snips of clothing keep coming, more frequently than at first, and the messages are getting scarier.”
The phone rang as Monique sucked in her breath. Eve snatched it up, “Maxine—any prints?” she asked eagerly.
Monique watched her expression deflate.
“No, not after I saw it,” Eve continued dejectedly. “Shit, OK, go ahead. I’ve got a pencil.”
Eve’s eyes darkened almost to violet as she listened to Maxine relating the contents of the envelope. She scribbled furiously on a pad. “Sweet,” she sighed. “I can hardly wait.”
Her fingers stroked Ragamuffin’s fur as she replaced the phone and met Monique’s questioning gaze. “Maxine Goodman thinks it’s a good idea that I join Nico in Bologna for the holidays instead of going home to my family. Interpol will be on alert to see if anyone follows me through customs and out of the country. Doesn’t that sound like a fun Christmas?”
“Prints?”
“A partial, blurred. But the letter—now, this one was a real doozy.”
Eve stared into the cat’s green eyes. “In addition to a few strands of red leather fringe from the jacket I wore yesterday, he sent a love note.” She read from her notepad, keeping her voice in a monotone, trying to keep the fear under control as she recited the unnerving words.
“Christmas is right around the corner. So am I. So wrap yourself in a big red bow. Soon I’ll unwrap you, layer by layer. And then we’ll ring in the New Year all alone, just the two of us, covered in red. I love the color red, Eve. It’s warm and velvety—like blood.”
“And then he signed it the way he always does—Billy Shears.”
Monique took a deep breath and regarded Eve through narrowed eyes. “Sounds to me like one fucking psycho. Eve, I can’t believe you’ve been dealing with this all alone. Are you sure you have enough protection?”
Eve bit her lip. “Champion Security is supposed to be the best... but when you’re dealing with someone like this Billy Shears...”
“Do the police have any kind of a handle on this guy?”
“That’s the scary part. He’s a stalker. The psychological profile—as Maxine puts it—indicates that he’s some kind of misfit who’s getting off on terrorizing me. Some of these guys zero in on celebrities, some on their ex-wives or girlfriends, and some on a poor soul they happen to spot on the freeway.” Eve raked a hand through her hair. “We know he’s probably someone nondescript but intelligent. Someone who is obsessed with me, and fantasizes an intimate relationship with me.” Her glorious eyes met Monique’s, but their usual sparkle was dulled by months of living with intermittent apprehension, weeks of going through each day with one eye or the other constantly cast over her shoulder.
There were brief respites from the relentless uneasiness, times when she nearly forgot, but fear lurked low in the pit of her belly, ready to send tiny reminders of adrenaline pumping through her veins at moments she least expected.
She had lost weight. She could feel the difference in the way her clothes fit, in the hollow of her stomach as she lay in bed, peering into the night-light-illuminated hallway. She had lost sleep. She could see the dark shadows deepening beneath her eyes each morning before she covered them with concealer, and tiny new worry lines feathering around her lips.
She looked through Monique, her eyes hazed over with visions of green envelopes and bodyguards, her ears reverberating with the echoed memory of Maxine Goodman’s carefully chosen words that day the security agency director had phoned her with the results of Champion’s initial investigation.
“Monique, do you remember Bobbie Sue Griffin?” she asked abruptly.
“The country singer? The one they found a couple of years ago sliced up in the backwoods of Georgia?” Monique sat frozen, eyes wide, heart pounding. “No, Eve, don’t tell me this,” she groaned.
“Billy Shears.” Eve tossed her pencil on to the coffee table and leaned back into the sofa cushions. “Bobbie Sue Griffin received letters like this too. So did Lianna Caruthers—the tennis star from the eighties.”
“But the papers said she died of a blow to the head during a scuffle with an intruder,” Monique protested.
“The police always keep certain information close to the vest, holding back crime details from the public, the kinds of things only the killer would know. Monique, you’re sworn to silence about all this. Promise me. They know that these two women were killed by a man calling himself Billy Shears. The weird thing is, several years elapsed between Lianna Caruthers’s death and Bobbie Sue Griffin’s murder. Maxine Goodman theorizes that he might have been incarcerated during that time for some unrelated offense... but now he’s out again and... well, lucky me. I guess it’s my turn.”
“God, Eve, you’ve got to tell Nico. He has no damn business running around Europe, leaving you alone, bodyguards or no bodyguards! I can’t believe you stay here all by yourself every night with a cat, no less, for protection. Do you have a gun?”
“No, but Swanson and Tamburelli do and one of them is always around.”
“Around! How around can they be? This lunatic is cutting off pieces of your clothes and Batman and Robin can’t even catch him in the act?”
“Monique, Champion is the best security agency on both coasts. Everybody uses them. You know that.” Eve set the cat on a pillow and stood up. She paced across the living room, twisting the engagement ring on her finger.
“What more can I do? I don’t want this garbage stinking up the newspapers, and I refuse to be held hostage by a fantasizing psychopath. He’s not going to force me to give up my life, or send me into hiding like they did to Salman Rushdie.”
“Tell Nico.”
“I’m going to.” Eve thought again of the baby. For the baby’s sake, for all of their sakes, she had to bring Nico into this. It would be a relief not to have to shoulder it alone any longer, to have Nico nearby—for she knew he would he nearby. As soon as he knew what was going on, he wouldn’t leave her side.
Great, Eve sighed. We’ll be a twosome like Lucy and Ethel, yin and yang, Minneapolis and St. Paul—and pickles and ice cream.
* * *
“Cara mia,” Nico murmured as he rained kisses down her throat and across the lush mounds of her breasts. “Oh, si, carissima, si.”
Taut with excitement, he pulled her close, drowning in her woman scent mingled with the rosewater fragrance of her hair. Her breath was silky warm against his ear as her tongue traced the sensitive lobe. Nico grinned, kissing her even more fiercely. Ah, she was talented—beautiful, brilliant, and skillful as a courtesan.
The brocaded topaz bedspread slid unnoticed to the floor as they writhed, sweaty and single-minded in the tangle of cinnamon sheets. The phone jangling on the marble bedside table intruded like the whine of buzz saws in a primeval forest.
“Fuck,” Nico said.
“I’m trying to, love.”
“Could be Biaggio,” Nico muttered apologetically as he reached across her to yank the receiver to his ear.
“Nico darling.”
Double fuck. Nico rolled away from her and bolted upright to a sitting position.
“Bambina,” he exclaimed. “I was just this moment thinking about you.”
Eve’s voice sounded quavery as it crackled across the Atlantic. He had the instant feeling that something was wrong,
“Nico.” She was hesitating between slices of intermittent static. “I’ve been thinking about you too. I have to tell you something. I’d planned to tell you in person, but it can’t wait another minute. Can you talk now?”
“For you, always, bambina. What is wrong?”
He grimaced as Margo slanted a mischievous smile up at him and reached out one slender hand. Her fingers twirled through the matted black curls on his chest in a sensuous motion, then trailed down his abdomen toward the more thickly matted hair below, deliberately trying to distract him. But Nico was no longer in the mood.
He grasped her wrist and his eyes blazed fire. Not now, the message telegraphed clearly. She slumped back against the pillows, glaring at him, watchful of every expression that crossed his lean, unshaven face.
Steam from the radiator fogged up the stained-glass windows of the stately Via Terranova Hotel, one of the best-kept secrets in Rome. But Nico noticed neither the hissing mist that filled the antique-laden room, nor the sun-splayed prisms dancing off the half-empty green wine bottle resting on the carpet of the sunken parlor, nor the speculative expression Margo wore as she waited naked and sweaty beside him in the canopied Louis XV bed.
He was aware only of Eve’s low-pitched voice, distant, yet unnervingly close, speaking to him so rapidly he could hardy follow the tumbling words.
“Nico, there’s so much to tell you, I don’t even know where to start. Promise me you won’t be angry that I didn’t confide in you sooner.”
“Angry? When was the last time I was angry with you, Eve?”
“The night we went to dinner with Margo and I kept changing my clothes,” she offered with a shaky laugh.
“Ah, yes, Margo,” he murmured, and flicked his gaze to the dottoressa, regarding her with mingled amusement and desire.
Margo shot him the glance the usually reserved for upstart residents posing ignorant questions, and rose naked from the bed. She sauntered across the sun-dappled Aubusson carpet to pour herself another glass of wine, smoothing back her tousled cap of silver blond hair. It took all of her considerable self-control to refrain from snatching the phone out of his hands and disconnecting the call.
Let Eve think it was a transatlantic snafu, she thought spitefully. But Nico would be furious, and Margo wasn’t quite sure she could control him in a fury, Still, she was tempted to try.
Instead, she dipped a chunk of fontina cheese into a dish of caviar, never taking her opal eyes from his face. He was watching her too, she observed with satisfaction. Seductively, she nibbled at the cheese, lolling the caviar luxuriously on her tongue. Allowing the tiny eggs to burst one by one, she savored the salty favor that enhanced the lingering taste of Nico’s semen.
“What?”
Nico’s voice rasped out so abruptly, Margo nearly dropped her wine goblet. His skin had gone pale, and his eyes blazed with a sudden dangerous intensity that was totally centered on Eve.
“What the hell letters are you talking about? Billy Shears? Eve, bambina—slow down. I must hear every word of this. Now, start again from the beginning.”
As Eve told him, he paced, stark naked, magnificent—185 pounds of explosively contained male energy ready to blow. When she told him about the baby, Nico sank down on the edge of the ornately carved bed. He closed his eyes. But the tears trickled out, and his voice was raw with emotion.
“A bambino? Or maybe it’s a bambina? Then I’ll have two bambinas. Oh, Eve. Oh, Dio mio.” Suddenly he laughed out loud, pure joy beaming from the swarthily handsome face. “Are you sure? Have you seen a doctor?” He suddenly surged to his feet. “Listen to me, Eve. You stay right there, I’m coming to New York to get you. Don’t you set one foot out of that apartment until I get there. Promise me. I don’t want you going anywhere, capish? I’m going to call my family and tell them to expect us both in Bologna for Christmas, and then I’m catching the next plane for the States.”
He paused, listening, then continued harshly. “I’ll protect you if I have to kill this Billy Shears with my own bare hands. But, Eve, promise me again you’ll stay put until I get there.”
Listening to him, Margo felt her insides grow cold. So Eve was going to have Nico’s baby. For a moment she couldn’t breathe for the jealousy that raged through her. You’re going to be an aunt, she told herself contemptuously. Big fucking deal.
And who the hell was this Billy Shears? She’d never seen Nico this worked up about anything except sex and race cars.
Margo lifted her silver charmeuse robe from the back of the chair and slipped it on, trying to warm herself against the chill that was growing in her heart like frost feathering a windowpane. Quietly, she studied Nico’s rapt face. Eve had him now. She’d captured his attention—his heart, soul, and body—all while she was several thousand miles away. Damn her.
And damn her baby.
I hope you get stretch marks from here to Beijing.
And gain fifty pounds.
Margo thought of how long it had been since she’d felt men’s gazes following her across a room instead of nailing in on her sister. Not since Eve’s senior year in high school, when the gangly tomboy had suddenly blossomed and totally eclipsed Margo’s own position as the family beauty had any man looked twice at her when Eve was in the room. Always before, Margo and everyone else had taken for granted that she was the smart, pretty one and Eve merely the sweaty, long-limbed jock who crossed the finish line at high school meets smudged and sans makeup, looking as nondescript as a sturdy station wagon in a used car lot. But then, suddenly, just as Mom had always predicted, Eve had become some snazzy top-of-the-line convertible, red hot, polished, and sexy, zooming off at dizzying speed and leaving Margo gasping in the dust.
The worst part of it was that even Daddy thought Eve was prettier. Daddy, who had always called her his little princess, who had bragged that his Margo was the smartest, prettiest girl in the world—even Daddy had turned on her.
Standing there in the Via Terranova, watching Nico’s glowing face, Margo’s eyes stung with unshed tears as she remembered her father’s betrayal. She’d come home from college for Easter vacation and had started downstairs late one night for a glass of juice, when she’d heard her father bragging to his poker buddies.
“I always thought Margo was my prettier daughter, but Eve sure proved me wrong. Good thing Margo’s so smart, or this’d really be hard for her to swallow. Oh, make no mistake, she’ll do all right for herself with her medical career, no doubt about that—Margo’s a real smart girl. But unless she wins a Nobel Prize or something, she’ll never be famous.”
On the stairs she’d frozen in shock, his words more painful than a slap in the face. Gripping the railing and thankful to be hidden by the near darkness, she’d heard with agony the unmistakable pride in her father’s voice, and the murmured agreement of the other men.
“I mean, look at all these magazine covers,” he’d said almost in awe. “Who’d have ever thought my Eve would turn into such a gorgeous girl?”
A gorgeous girl. Well, now his gorgeous girl was going to get fat and hormonal, bloated, and puckered with varicose veins. Her stomach would stretch and her boobs would sag. Evie B was on her way down and out as far as her modeling career was concerned, and as far as Nico was concerned...
I’m not giving up yet, she thought, swallowing the last warm drops of the wine. She studied the magnificently handsome man with the blazing eyes and midnight hair, the man in whose arms she had known such ecstasy only an hour earlier.
No, Margo decided, setting down the goblet. I’m not finished with Nico Caesarone. Not by a long shot.