Julia saw Brandon off to school, grateful he was tucked inside the discreet black Volvo with Lyle behind the wheel. Brandon would be safe with him.

Of course there was nothing to worry about. She’d told herself that over and over through the restless night. A couple of foolish anonymous notes couldn’t hurt her—and certainly couldn’t hurt Brandon. But she’d feel better once she’d gotten to the bottom of the whole business. Which was something she intended to do right away.

Her thoughts veered to how odd she felt watching her little boy drive off to his own world of classrooms and playgrounds where her control didn’t reach.

When the car was out of sight, she shut the door on the early morning chill. Julia could hear CeeCee cheerfully singing along with the radio as she tidied the kitchen. Happy sounds—the rattle of dishes and the young, enthusiastic voice competing with the spice of Janet Jackson’s. Julia didn’t like to admit they bolstered her for the simple reason they meant she wasn’t alone. She carried her half-empty cup into the kitchen for a refill of coffee.

“That was a great breakfast, Ms. Summers.” Her hair scooped back in a bouncy pony tail, CeeCee wiped the counter with a damp cloth while her foot tapped the next top forty hit. “I just can’t imagine someone like you cooking and all.”

Still sleepy-eyed, Julia tipped more coffee in her cup. “Someone like me?”

“Well, famous and everything.”

Julia grinned. It was comfortably easy to shrug off the vague weight of concern. “Almost famous. Or maybe famous by association after last night.”

All big blue eyes and fresh-scrubbed face, CeeCee sighed. “Was it really great?”

Two women in a sunny kitchen, and neither of them were talking about a star-studded benefit. But of a man.

Julia thought of dancing with Paul, of waking up, unbearably stirred, with his mouth hot on hers. And yes, feeling that demand snap from him into her with a beat much more primal than any recorded music. “It was … different.”

“Isn’t Mr. Winthrop just totally gorgeous? Every time I talk to him, my mouth gets dry and my palms get wet.” She closed her eyes as she rinsed the cloth clean. “Too wild.”

“He’s the kind of man it’s difficult not to notice,” Julia said, her voice wry with her own understatement.

“You’re telling me. Women go crazy for him. I don’t think he’s ever brought the same one here twice. Stud city, you know?”

“Hmm.” Julia had her own opinion of a man who would flit so arbitrarily from woman to woman. “He seems devoted to Miss Benedict.”

“Sure. I guess he’d do about anything for her—except settle down and give her the grandchildren she wants.” CeeCee tossed back her wispy bangs. “It’s funny to think of Miss B. as a grandma.”

Funny wasn’t the word that came to Julia’s mind. It was more like incredible. “How long have you worked for her?”

“Technically just a couple years, but I’ve been underfoot as long as I can remember. Aunt Dottie used to let me come over on weekends, and during the summer.”

“Aunt Dottie?”

“Travers.”

“Travers?” Julia nearly choked on her coffee, trying to equate the stern-mouthed, suspicious-eyed housekeeper with the expansive CeeCee. “She’s your aunt?”

“Yeah, my dad’s big sister. Travers is like a stage name. She did some acting back in the fifties, I think. But never really hit. She’s worked for Miss B. forever. Kind of weird when you figure they were married to the same man.”

This time Julia had the sense to lower the coffee cup before attempting to drink. “Excuse me?”

“Anthony Kincade,” CeeCee explained. “You know, the director? Aunt Dottie was married to him first.” A glance at the clock had her straightening from her slouch against the counter. “Wow, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a ten o’clock class.” She bolted toward the living room to gather up books and bags. “I’ll be here tomorrow to change the linens. Is it okay if I bring my little brother? He really wants to meet Brandon.”

Julia nodded, still trying to catch up. “Sure. We’d be glad to have him over.”

CeeCee shot a grin over her shoulder as she raced for the door. “Tell me that after he’s been around for a couple of hours.”

Even as the door slammed, Julia was sharpening her thoughts into calculations. Anthony Kincade. That bitter mountain of flesh had been husband to both the glamorous Eve and the monosyllabic housekeeper. Curiosity sent her bolting through the living room, into her temporary office and to her reference books. For a few minutes she mumbled and swore to herself, trying to locate what never seemed to be in the last place she’d left it.

She would get organized, she would, she swore to whatever saint watched over distracted writers. Right after she satisfied her curiosity, she’d spend an hour—okay, fifteen minutes—putting everything in order. The vow apparently worked. With a crow of triumph she pounced. She found the listing quickly in Who’s Who.

Kincade, Anthony, she read. Born Hackensack, N.J., November 12, 1920 … Julia skipped over his accomplishments, his successes and failures. Married Margaret Brewster, 1942, two children, Anthony Jr. and Louise, divorced 1947. Married Dorothy Travers, 1950, one child, Thomas, deceased. Divorced 1953. Married Eve Benedict, 1954. Divorced 1959.

There were two more marriages, but they didn’t interest Julia; it was too fascinating to speculate about the peculiar triangle. Dorothy Travers—and the name set off a faint bell in Julia’s head—had been married to Kincade for three years, and had bore him a son. Within a year of the divorce, Kincade had married Eve. Now Travers worked as Eve’s housekeeper.

How could two women who had shared the same man share the same house?

It was a question she intended to ask. But first she was going to show the anonymous notes she’d received to Eve, hope for a reaction, and perhaps an explanation. Julia pushed the reference book aside, her bargain with the long-suffering saint already forgotten.

Fifteen minutes later Travers opened the door of the main house. Studying the woman’s set, dissatisfied face and paunchy build, Julia wondered how she could have attracted the same man as the stunning, statuesque Eve.

“In the gym,” Travers muttered.

“Excuse me?”

“In the gym,” she repeated, and led the way in her reluctant style. She turned into the east wing and headed down a corridor with many intricate wall niches, each filled with an Erte statue. To the right was a wide arched window that opened onto the central courtyard, where Julia saw the gardener, Wayfarers and headphones in place, delicately clipping the topiary.

At the end of the hall were thick double doors painted a bold teal. Travers didn’t knock, but swung one open. Immediately the hallway was filled with bright, bouncy music and Eve’s steady curses.

Julia would never have called the room by the lowly name gym. Despite the weight equipment, the slant boards, the mirrored wall and ballet barre, it was elegant. An exercise palace, perhaps, Julia mused, studying the high ceiling painted with streamlined art deco figures. Light broke through a trio of stained glass skylights in refracting, rainbow colors. Not a palace, Julia corrected herself. A temple erected to worship the smug-faced god of sweat.

The floor was a glossily polished parquet, and a gleaming smoked-glass wet bar, complete with refrigerator and microwave, took up another wall. Music cartwheeled out of a high-tech stereo system flanked by potted begonias and towering ficus trees.

Standing beside Eve as she lay on a weight bench doing leg curls was Mr. Muscle. Temporarily mesmerized, Julia let out a long breath as she looked at him. He had to be nearly seven feet—a Nordic god whose bronze body bulged out of an incredibly brief unitard. The single white band stretched low on his gleaming chest, snaked down his hips, rode high and tight over a very muscular set of buns.

His golden blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, his ice-blue eyes smiling approval as Eve’s curses turned the air a deeper, much hotter blue.

“Fuck this, Fritz.”

“Five more, my beautiful flower,” he said in precise, musical English that had images of cool lakes and mountain streams dancing in Julia’s mind.

“You’re killing me.”

“I make you strong.” As she huffed her way through the last of the curls, he laid a huge hand on her thigh and squeezed. “You have the muscle tone of a thirty-year-old.” Then he gave her bottom an intimate little rub.

Dripping sweat, Eve collapsed. “If I ever walk again, I’m going to kick you right in your enormous crotch.”

He laughed, patted her again, then grinned over at Julia. “Hello.”

Barely, she managed to swallow. Eve’s last comment had lured Julia’s gaze down so that she’d seen for herself the adjective hadn’t been an exaggeration. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to interrupt.”

Eve managed to open her eyes. If she’d had the energy, she would have chuckled. Most women got that slack-jawed, dazed look after their first load of Fritz. She was glad Julia wasn’t immune. “Thank God. Travers, pour me something very cold—and put some arsenic in it for my friend here.”

Fritz laughed again, a deep, cheerful sound that bounded easily over Eve’s creative curses. “You drink a little, then we work on your arms. You don’t want the skin hanging down like turkey’s.”

“I can come back,” Julia began as Eve turned over. “No, stay. He’s almost through torturing me. Aren’t you, Fritz?”

“Almost done.” He took the drink Travers offered and downed it in one gulp before she had shuffled out the door. While Eve mopped her face with a towel, he studied Julia. The look in his eyes made her uneasy. Brandon’s took on the same light when he was offered a nice, pliant lump of modeling clay. “You have good legs. You work out?”

“Well, no.” A dastardly admonition in southern California, she realized. People had been hanged for less. She was wondering if she should apologize, when he crossed to her and began to feel her arms. “Hey, look—”

“Skinny arms.” Her mouth fell open when he ran his hands over her stomach. “Good abs. We can fix you up.”

“Thank you.” He had fingers like rods of iron, and she didn’t want to rile him. “But I really don’t have time.”

“You must make time for your body,” he said so seriously, she swallowed the nervous laugh. “You come on Monday, I start you off.”

“I really don’t think—”

“An excellent idea,” Eve put in. “I hate to be tortured alone.” She grimaced as Fritz set the weights on the Nautilus for her arm work. “Have a seat, Julia. You can talk to me and take my mind off my misery.”

“Monday, my ass,” Julia muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”

She smiled as Eve got in the next position for pain. “I said I wonder if the weather will last.”

Eve, who had heard her very well the first time, merely lifted a brow. “That’s what I thought you said.” Once she was settled, Eve took a cleansing breath and began to pull the weights toward the center of her body, and out. “You enjoyed yourself last night?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“So polite.” She shot a grin at Fritz. “She wouldn’t swear at you.”

Julia watched Eve’s muscles bunch and strain. Sweat was popping out again. “Oh yes I would.”

Eve laughed even as the effort slicked wet down her flesh. “You know the trouble with being beautiful, Julia? Everyone notices the least little flaw—they relish finding them. So you have to maintain.” Straining at the tense and flow of her own muscles, she sucked in air and puffed it out. “Like a religion. I’m determined to do the best I can for the body God and the surgeons have given me. And not give anyone the satisfaction of saying she was beautiful—once.” She broke off to swear for a moment while her arms throbbed. “Some people claim to be addicted to this. I can only think they’re very, very sick. How many more?” she asked Fritz.

“Twenty.”

“Bastard.” But she didn’t slacken pace. “What are your impressions from last night?”

“That a very high percentage of the people there cared as much about the charity as they did the publicity. That new Hollywood will never have quite the same class as old Hollywood. And that Anthony Kincade is an unpleasant and potentially dangerous man.”

“I wondered if you’d be easily dazzled. Apparently not. How many more, you son of a bitch?”

“Five.”

Eve swore her way through them, panting like a woman in the last throes of childbirth. The more vicious her oaths, the wider Fritz’s grin. “Wait here,” she ordered Julia, then groaned to her feet and disappeared through a door.

“She is a lovely woman,” Fritz commented. “Strong.”

“Yes.” But when she tried to imagine herself pumping iron as she cruised toward seventy, Julia shuddered. She’d damn well take her flab and like it. “You don’t think all this might be too much, considering her age?”

He lifted a brow as he glanced toward the door where Eve had gone. He knew if she had heard that, she would do a great deal more than swear. “For someone else, yes. Not for Eve. I am a personal trainer. This program is for her body, for her mind. For her spirit. All three are strong.” He moved toward one of the windows. Beside it was a massage table and a shelf cluttered with oils and lotions. “For you I design something different.”

That was a subject she wanted to veer away from. And quickly. “How long have you been her personal trainer?”

“Five years.” After choosing his oils, he used the remote to change the music. Now it was classical, soothing strings. “She has brought me many clients. But if I had only one, I would want Eve.”

He said her name almost reverently. “She inspires loyalty.”

“She is a great lady.” He passed a tiny bottle under his nose and reminded Julia of the bull, Ferdinand, smelling flowers. “You’re writing her book.”

“Yes, I am.”

“You be sure to say she is a great lady.”

Eve came back in, wrapped in a short white robe, her hair damp, her face pink and glowing. Without a word she walked over to the table, stripped as carelessly as a child, and stretched out on her stomach. Fritz draped a sheet modestly over her hips and went to work.

“After hell comes heaven.” Eve sighed. She propped her chin on her fists and her eyes glowed into Julia’s. “You may want to include that I put myself through this hideous business three times a week. And while I hate every minute of it, I know it’s kept my body looking good enough that Nina has to turn down an annual offer from Playboy, and my endurance up so that I can endure a ten- or twelve-hour shoot without collapsing. In fact, I’m stealing Fritz away when I go to Georgia on location. The man has the best hands on five continents.”

He blushed like a boy at the compliment.

While Fritz used those hands to knead and relax Eve’s muscles, Julia centered the conversation on health, exercise, and daily routine. She waited, patient, while Eve slipped back into her robe and exchanged a very warm, very intimate kiss with her trainer. Julia thought of the scene she’d witnessed in the garden and wondered how a woman so obviously in love with one man could flirt so blatantly with another.

“Monday,” he said with a nod at Julia as he tugged on sweats. “I start your program.”

“She’ll be here,” Eve promised before Julia could politely decline. She was grinning as Fritz hefted his gym bag and strode out the door. “Consider it part of your research,” Eve advised. “Well, what did you think of him?”

“Was I drooling?”

“Only a little.” Eve flexed her limbered muscles, then slipped a pack of cigarettes from her robe pocket. “Christ, I’m dying for one of these. I don’t have the heart—or maybe it’s the nerve—to smoke around Fritz. Fix us another drink, will you? Heavy on the champagne in mine.”

While Julia rose to obey, Eve took a deep, hungry drag. “I can’t think of another man in the world I’d give these up for, even for a few hours.” She blew out another stream of smoke as Julia offered a glass. Her laugh was quick and rich, as if at a private joke. “The longer I know you, the easier you are to read, Julia. Right now you’re struggling not to be judgmental, wondering how I justify an affair with a man young enough to be my son.”

“It’s not my job to be judgmental.”

“No, it’s not, and you’re bound and determined to do your job. Just for the record, I wouldn’t attempt to justify it, but merely to enjoy it. As it happens, I’m not having an affair with that fabulous slice of beefcake, because he’s quite obstinately gay.” She laughed and sipped again. “Now you’re shocked and telling yourself not to be.”

Uncomfortable, Julia shifted and sipped her own drink.

“The purpose of this is for me to explore your feelings, not for you to explore mine.”

“It works both ways.” Eve slipped off the table to curl like a cat into a deeply cushioned rattan chair. Every movement was sinuously feminine, seductive. It occurred to Julia that young Betty Berenski had chosen her name well. She was all woman—as ageless and mysterious as the first. “Before this book is finished, you and I will know each other as well as two people are able to. More intimately than lovers, more completely than parent and child. As we come to trust each other, you’ll understand the purpose.”

To put things back on the level she preferred, Julia took out her recorder and pad. “What reason would I have not to trust you?”

Eve smiled through a veil of smoke. Secrets, ripe as plums for picking, glistened in her eyes. “What reason indeed? Go ahead, Julia, ask the questions that are buzzing around in that head of yours. I’m in the mood to answer them.”

“Anthony Kincade. Why don’t you tell me how you came to marry him, and how his second wife went from making B movies to working as your housekeeper?”

Rather than answering, Eve smoked and considered. “You’ve been questioning CeeCee.”

There was a trace of annoyance in the statement, enough to give Julia a tug of satisfaction. Maybe they would reach a level of trust and intimacy, but it would be on equal terms. “Talking to her, certainly. If there was something you didn’t want her to tell me, you neglected to mention it to her.” When Eve remained silent, Julia tapped her pencil on her pad. “She commented this morning that she’d often spent time here as a child, visiting her Aunt Dottie. Naturally, it came out who Aunt Dottie was.”

“And you took it from there.”

“It’s my job to follow up information,” Julia said mildly, not only registering the growing irritation, but relishing it. Petty perhaps, she reflected, but satisfying to know that she’d finally chipped under that glossy guard.

“You had only to ask me.”

“That’s precisely what I’m doing now.” Julia tilted her head, and the angle was as much a challenge as a pair of raised fists. “If you wanted to keep secrets, Eve, you chose the wrong biographer. I don’t work with blinders on.”

“It’s my story.” Eve’s eyes sliced like twin green scythes. Julia felt the keen edge and refused to dodge.

“Yes, it is. And by your own choice, it’s mine too.” She had her teeth into it now, her jaws snapped tight, like a wolf’s over a fleshy bone. Her will rose up to tangle with Eve’s, muscles flexed. Nerves smoldered like bright embers in her stomach. “If you want someone who’ll bow when you pull the strings, we’ll stop this now. I’ll go back to Connecticut and we’ll let our lawyers hash it out.” She started to rise.

“Sit down.” Eve’s voice quivered with temper. “Sit down, dammit. You made your point.”

With an acknowledging nod, Julia settled again. Surreptitiously she slipped a hand into her pocket and thumbed free a Tums from its roll. “I’d prefer to make yours, but that won’t be possible if you block me whenever I touch on something that discomfits you.”

Eve was silent a moment, silent while temper faded into grudging respect. “I’ve lived a long time,” she said at length. “I’m used to doing things my own way. We’ll see, Julia, we’ll see if we can find a way to merge your way with mine.”

“Fair enough.” She slipped the tablet onto her tongue, hoping that it and the small victory would soothe her jittery stomach.

Eve lifted the glass to her lips, sipped, and prepared to open a long-locked and rusted door. “Tell me what you know.”

“It was simple enough to check out the fact that Dorothy Travers was Kincade’s second wife, whom he divorced only months before marrying you. I couldn’t quite place her at first, but I’ve remembered she made a dozen or so Bs in the fifties. Gothics and horror films mostly, until she dropped out of sight. I can only assume now, to work for you.”

“Nothing’s quite as straight-lined as that.” Though it continued to irritate that she hadn’t stated the connection first, Eve shrugged and expanded. “She came to work for me a few months after Tony and I finalized our divorce. That would be, Christ, over thirty years ago. You find that strange?”

“That two women could have a lasting and close relationship for three decades after being in love with the same man?” Tension was crowded aside by interest. “I suppose I do.”

“Love?” Eve smiled as she stretched luxuriously. She always felt luxurious after a session with Fritz. Purged, pumped, and primed. “Oh, Travers may have loved him briefly. But Tony and I married for mutual lust and ambition. An entirely different thing. He was rather gorgeous in those days. A big, strapping man, and more than a little wicked. When he directed me in Separate Lives, his marriage was falling apart.”

“He and Travers had a child who died.”

Eve hesitated, then sipped her drink. Perhaps Julia had pushed her into a corner, but there was only one way to tell the story. Her way. “The loss of the child destroyed the foundation of their marriage. Travers couldn’t, wouldn’t forget. Tony was determined to. He’d always been completely self-absorbed. It was part of his charm. I didn’t know all the details when we began to see each other. It—our affair and resulting marriage—was a minor scandal at the time.”

Julia had already made a note to look up back issues of Photoplay and the Hollywood Reporter.

“Travers wasn’t a big enough star to warrant a lot of sympathy or outrage. You find that arrogant,” Eve observed. “It’s simply truthful. That small triangle took up some space in a few columns, then was forgotten. People took it much more personally when Taylor scooped Eddie Fisher up from under Debbie Reynolds.” Finding that amusing, she tapped out her cigarette. “Actually I may or may not have been the straw that broke the back of their marriage.”

“I’ll ask Travers.”

“I’m sure you will.” She made a fluid gesture with her hands, then settled again. “It’s unlikely she’ll speak to you, but go right ahead. For the moment, it might be helpful if I started at the beginning, my beginning with Tony. As I said, he was a very attractive man, dangerously so. I had a great deal of respect for him as a director.”

“You met when you made Separate Lives?”

“Oh, we’d run into each other before—as people do in this small ship of fools. But a movie set, Julia, is a tiny, intimate world, divorced from reality. No, immune to it.” She smiled to herself. “Fantasy, however difficult the work, is its own addiction. Which is why so many of us delude ourselves into believing we’ve fallen desperately in love with another character in that shiny bubble—for the length of time it takes to create a film.”

“You didn’t fall for your costar,” Julia said. “But your director.”

Her lashes lowered, hooding her eyes as she took herself back. “It was a difficult movie, very dark, very draining. The story of a doomed marriage, betrayal, adultery, and emotional breakdown. We’d spent all day on the scene where my character had finally acknowledged her husband’s infidelity and is contemplating suicide. I was to strip down to a black lace slip, carefully paint my lips, dab on perfume. Turn on the radio to dance, alone. Open a bottle of champagne and drink, in candlelight, while I swallow one sleeping pill after another.”

“I remember the scene,” Julia murmured. In the brightly lit room smelling of sweat and perfumed oils, it played vividly through her mind. “It was terrifying, tragic.”

“Tony wanted excitement, almost an exaltation along with despair. Take after take, he was never satisfied. It felt as though my emotions were being ripped out, raw and bleeding, then ground to dust. Hour after hour, that same scene. After I looked at the rushes, I saw that he’d gotten exactly what he’d wanted from me. The exhaustion, the rage, the misery, and that light that comes in the eyes from hatred.”

She smiled then, in triumph. It had been, and was still, one of her finest moments onscreen. “When we wrapped, I went to my dressing room. My hands were shaking. Shit, my soul was shaking. He came in after me, locked the door. God, I remember how he looked, standing there, his eyes burning into mine. I screamed and wept, spewed out enough venom to kill ten men. When he grabbed me, I struck him. And I drew blood. He ripped my robe. I scratched and bit. He pulled me to the floor, tearing that black lace slip to shreds, still never, never saying a word. Good Jesus, we came together like a pair of wild dogs.”

Julia had to swallow. “He raped you.”

“No. It would be easier to lie and say he did, but by the time we landed on the floor of the dressing room I was more than willing. I was manic. If I hadn’t been willing, he would have raped me. There was something incredibly exciting in knowing that. Perverted,” she added as she lit another cigarette, “but damned arousing. Our relationship was twisted, right from the start. But for the first three years of our marriage, it was the best sex I’ve ever had. It was almost always violent, almost always on the edge of something unspeakable.”

Laughing a little, she rose to fix herself another drink. “Well, after my five years of marriage to Tony, nothing, no one, will shock me again. I had considered myself quite knowledgeable.…” Lips pursed, Eve poured champagne to within a breath of the rim, then poured a glass of the same for Julia. “It’s lowering to admit I went into that marriage as innocent as a lamb. He was a connoisseur of the deviant, of things that weren’t even spoken of back then. Oral sex, anal sex, bondage, S and M, voyeurism. Tony had a closetful of wicked little toys. I found some of them amusing, some of them revolting, and some of them erotic. Then there were the drugs.”

Eve sipped enough of the drink to keep the wine from lapping over the glass as she walked. Julia took the second glass when it was offered. Right here, right now, it didn’t seem so odd to drink champagne before lunch.

“Tony was way ahead of his time on drugs. He enjoyed hallucinogenics. I dabbled in them myself, but they never held much appeal for me. But in all things Tony was a glutton, and he overused. Food, drink, drugs, sex. Wives.”

This memory was ripping at her, Julia realized, and discovered she wanted to protect. They’d had their war of wills, but she disliked when victory caused pain. “Eve, we don’t have to go into all this now.”

Making the effort, Eve shrugged off the tension, lowering herself into a chair as lithely as a cat curling on a rug. “How do you go into a pool of cold water, Julia? Inch by inch or all at once.”

A smile fluttered over her lips, into her eyes. “Headfirst.”

“Good.” Eve took another sip, wanting a clean taste in her throat before she dived. “The beginning of the end was the night he locked me to the bed. Velvet handcuffs. Nothing we hadn’t done before, enjoyed before. Shocked?”

Julia couldn’t image what it would be like—to be that helpless, to put herself totally in the hands of another. Was bondage synonymous with trust? Nor could she imagine a woman like Eve willing to subjugate herself. Still, she shrugged. “I’m not a prude.”

“Of course you are. That’s one of the things I like best about you. Under all that sophistication beats the heart of a puritan. Don’t be annoyed,” Eve said with a dismissive wave. “It’s refreshing.”

“And I thought it was insulting.”

“Not at all. Shall I warn you, young Julia, that when a woman tumbles to a man sexually, really tumbles, she will do things that would make her tremble with shame in the light of day? Even as she pants to do them again.” She sat back regally, cupping the glass in both hands. “But enough womanly wisdom—you’ll find out for yourself. If you’re lucky.”

If she was lucky, Julia thought, her life would go on just as it was. “You were telling me about Anthony Kincade.”

“Yes, I was. He liked, ah, I suppose we’ll call them costumes. That night he wore a black leather loincloth and a silk mask. He was putting on weight by that time, so a bit of the effect was lost. He lit candles, black ones. And incense. Then rubbed oil over my body until it was glistening and throbbing. He did things to me, wonderful things, stopping just short of giving me release. And when I was half mad for him—Christ, for anyone—he got up and opened the door. He let in a young boy.”

Eve paused to drink. When she spoke again, her voice was cold and flat. “He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, seventeen. I remember swearing at Tony, threatening, even pleading while he undressed that child. While he touched him with those wickedly clever hands. I discovered that even after nearly four years of being married to a man like Tony, I was still innocent in some things, still capable of being appalled. Because I couldn’t stand to watch what they were doing to each other, I closed my eyes. Then Tony brought the boy to me and told him to do what he wanted, while he watched. I realized that the boy was far less innocent than I. He used me in every possible way a woman can be used. While the boy was still in me, Tony knelt behind him, and …” Her hand wasn’t steady as she lifted her cigarette, but her voice was curt. “And we had a three-way fuck. It went on for hours, with them endlessly switching positions. I stopped swearing, pleading, crying, and started planning. After the boy left and Tony let me go, I waited until he fell asleep. I went downstairs and got the biggest carving knife I could find. When Tony woke up, I was holding his cock in one hand, the knife in the other. I told him if he ever touched me again, I would castrate him, that we were going to get a quick, quiet divorce and that he was going to agree to give me the house all its contents as well as the Rolls, the Jag, and the little hideaway we’d bought in the mountains. If he didn’t agree, I was going to whack him off right then and there like he’d never been whacked off before.” Remembering the way he’d looked, the way he’d babbled made her smile. Until she glanced over at Julia.

“There’s no need for tears,” she said quietly as they streamed down Julia’s cheeks. “I got my payment.”

“There is no payment for that.” Her voice was husky with a rage she could only imagine. Her eyes shone with it. “There couldn’t be.”

“Maybe not. But seeing it in print, at least there’ll be revenge. I’ve waited for it long enough.”

“Why?” Julia brushed tears away with the back of her hand. “Why did you wait?”

“The truth?” Eve sighed and finished off her drink. Her head was beginning to throb, and she bitterly resented it. “Shame. I was ashamed that I had been used that way, humiliated that way.”

“You’d been used. You had nothing to be ashamed of.”

The long black lashes fluttered down. It was the first time she had spoken of that night—not the first time she’d relived it, but the only time she hadn’t relived it alone. It hurt still; she hadn’t known it could. Nor had she known how cooling, how healing unconditional compassion could be.

“Julia.” The lashes lifted again, and beneath them her eyes were dry. “Do you really believe there’s no shame in being used?”

Faced with that, Julia could only shake her head. She, too, had been used. Not so hideously, not so horribly, but she understood that shame could nip at the heels like a dog for years. And years. “I don’t know how you stopped yourself from using the knife, or using the story.”

“Survival,” Eve said simply. “At that point of my life I didn’t want the story to come out any more than Tony did. Then there was Travers. I went to see her a few weeks after the divorce, after I’d discovered several reels of film Tony had hidden. Not only of him and me in various sexual stunts, but of him and other men, of him and two very young girls. It made me realize that my entire marriage had been a sickness. I think I went to her to prove to myself that someone else had been fooled, taken in, seduced. She was living alone in a little apartment downtown. The money Tony was ordered to pay her every month barely covered the rent after her other expenses. Those other expenses being the institutional care for her son.”

“Her son?”

“The child Tony insisted that the world believe was dead. His name is Tommy. He’s seriously retarded, an imperfection Tony refused to accept. He prefers to consider the child dead.”

“All these years?” A new kind of rage worked in Julia now, had her pushing up out of the chair, striding to one of the windows where the air might be cleaner. “He turned his back on his son, kept it turned all these years?”

“He isn’t the first or last to do that, is he?”

Julia turned back. She recognized the sympathy, the understanding, and automatically closed off. “That choice was mine as well, and I wasn’t married to Brandon’s father. Travers was married to Tommy’s.”

“Yes, she was—and Tony already had two perfectly healthy and perfectly spoiled children by his first wife. He chose not to acknowledge a child with flaws.”

“You should have sliced his balls off.”

“Ah, well.” Eve smiled again, pleased to see anger rather than unhappiness. “My chance for that is lost, at least literally.”

“Tell me about Travers’s son.”

“Tommy’s nearly forty. He’s incontinent, can’t dress himself or feed himself. He wasn’t expected to live to adulthood, but then, it’s his mind, not his body.”

“How could she have said her own son was dead?”

“Don’t condemn her, Julia.” Eve’s voice had gentled. “She suffered. Travers agreed to Tony’s demands because she was afraid of what he might do to the child. And because she blames herself for Tommy’s condition. She’s convinced the, let’s say, unhealthy sexual practices under which the boy was conceived are to blame for his retardation. Nonsense, of course, but she believes it. Maybe she needs to. In any case, she refused what she considered charity, but agreed to work for me. She’s done so for more than three decades, and I’ve kept her secret.”

No, Julia thought, she didn’t condemn her. She understood too well the choices a woman alone had to make. “You’ve kept it until now.”

“Until now.”

“Why do you want this made public?”

Eve settled back in her chair. “There’s nothing Tony can do to the boy, or to Travers. I’ve seen to that. My marriage to him is part of my life, and I’ve decided to share that life—without lies, Julia.”

“If he becomes aware of what you’ve told me, of the possibility of it being published, he’ll try to stop you.”

“I stopped being afraid of Tony a lifetime ago.”

“Is he capable of violence?”

Eve moved her shoulders. “Everyone’s capable of violence.”

Saying nothing, Julia reached into her briefcase and brought out the pair of notes. She handed them to Eve. On reading them, Eve paled a little. Then her eyes darkened and lifted.

“Where did you get these?”

“One was left on the front stoop of the guest house. The other was slipped into my bag sometime last night.”

“I’ll take care of it.” She pushed them into the pocket of her robe. “If you receive more, give them to me.”

Slowly, Julia shook her head. “Not good enough. They were meant for me, Eve, so I’m entitled to some answers. Am I to consider them threats?”

“I’d consider them more pitiful warnings issued by a coward.”

“Who could have left one on the stoop?”

“That’s something I have every intention of finding out.”

“All right.” Julia had to respect the tone, and the gleam in Eve’s eyes. “Tell me this. Is there anyone besides Anthony Kincade who would be unnerved enough about this biography to write these notes?”

Now Eve smiled. “Oh, my dear Julia. There are indeed.”