Rivals Read online

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

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

  8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Maybe later.”

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

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

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

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

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

  She tilted her chin a little higher and turned a bright smile on her own. “I am fabulous, aren’t I, Oscar?”

  Once clear of the adoring crush, Chance said, “I took the liberty of making a late dinner reservation for us. I hope you don’t mind.”

  His announcement caught her off guard. She thought he intended to whisk her home after the comment he’d made to Lucianna about the party. “Not at all.” She smiled quickly, brilliantly.

  But obviously he noticed the split-second hesitation that preceded her answer. “If you prefer to attend one of the parties, I can cancel the reservation.”

  “No. Although I thought you might want to toast Miss Colton’s triumph tonight.”

  “Why would you think that?” He arched a dark eyebrow in her direction, curiosity in his look.

  “The two of you are close.” She attempted to shrug off the answer. “That’s common knowledge.”

  “You’ve been listening to rumors.” He reached in front of her to open the door, then paused with his hand on the latch, his body angled toward her. “You, of all people, should know better than to put much stock in rumors.”

  It was said gently, with a mere hint of a chiding smile. And Flame realized instantly that he’d heard the rumors about her and Malcom Powell. He’d heard them and dismissed them. She smiled, suddenly at ease with both herself and him.

  Those who elected not to attend one of the post-opera parties usually went to Trader Vic’s or L’Etoile or one of the other currently popular gathering spots, assuming, of course, they were well enough connected to get a seat. To Flame’s surprise, Chance had made reservations at none of those. Instead he stopped the Jaguar in front of an intimate little French restaurant with a reputation for serving excellent nouvelle cuisine.

  “Do you approve?” he inquired as he helped her out of the car.

  “Very much.” Her glance skimmed the baroque doors that marked the café’s entrance. “Although I wasn’t aware it stayed open this late.”

  “It doesn’t.” A hint of a smile grooved his cheeks. “They made an exception tonight.”

  There was a flicker of disbelief, then amazement at the implication that he had arranged for the restaurant to open specifically for them. But when they walked through the doors, Flame saw that it was true. The tables beyond the foyer were empty, and lavish sprays of orchids cascaded from every vase in the foyer—Phalaenopsis orchids—the very kind he’d sent her.

  “The florist had a few left over.” His remark was one of those throwaway answers not to be fully believed, and Flame didn’t. Every bit of this had obviously been planned in advance.

  Before she could say anything, a slim man with the thin face and nose of a Frenchman glided forward to greet them. “Monsieur Stuart, Mademoiselle Bennett, welcome to François. The opera, you enjoyed it, yes?”

  “Very much, Louis,” Chance replied, giving his name the French pronunciation.

  “Your table, it is ready. If you would follow me, please.” He led them to a table for two, aglow with flickering candlelight. At Flame’s place setting stood a crystal bud base with a single orchid spray arching from it. After he had seated them, Louis stepped to the silver champagne bucket on its legged stand, removed the bottle being chilled in ice, and held it out to Chance for his inspection. “Carlton’s Pêche, as you ordered, monsieur.”

  “Excellent, thank you, Louis,” he replied, nodding his approval.

  With practiced deftness, he uncorked the bottle of peach champagne and filled their fluted glasses with the effervescent wine, then withdrew. Chance lifted his glass.

  “Shall we drink to the next time?” he suggested.

  “Till next time,” Flame echoed the message that had accompanied the orchids, and touched her glass to his. She took a sip of the refreshingly light yet heady wine, then laughed softly. “I think I’m a little overwhelmed. Orchids, a café to ourselves, imported peach champagne. Do you always go to such lengths to impress a woman?”

  “Only when I consider it important.” Again there was that gleam of amusement in his eyes that was so much more seductive than the lascivious looks some men gave that said they could hardly wait to get her into bed.

  “I’m flattered.” More than that, she was conscious of the bright sparkle of electricity between them, an electricity that gave new life to rare and half-forgotten feelings and evoked a desire to please, to share, to touch, and—to love.

  But there was always the risk that these feelings were onesided. Hadn’t past experiences shown her that? There were any number of reasons Chance sought her company. Although she didn’t think a desire to be seen with a beautiful woman was one of them. And if it was her contacts he was interested in, they woul
dn’t be here in this restaurant. But, he’d known about Malcom. For all she knew this could be some sort of power play. Maybe he wanted to take something he knew Malcom Powell wanted.

  She hated these suspicions, but that wariness had spared her a lot of hurt in the past. Once burned had equaled two hundred times shy in her case.

  “You don’t look flattered,” Chance observed. “If anything, you look troubled about something. What is it?”

  “Nothing,” she denied. “I suppose I was wondering why you did all this. It’s wonderful, but—it wasn’t necessary.”

  “That depends on your definition of necessary,” he replied smoothly. “Take the orchids, for example. By surrounding you with them, I could be certain of having your undivided attention when I called to persuade you to change your plans and come with me tonight.”

  She laughed. “That is an understatement. You had more than my undivided attention; you had my interest totally piqued.”

  “And as for coming here—” He smiled. “—you’ll have to admit that if we’d gone anywhere else, we would have been constantly interrupted by friends and acquaintances. Here, we can dine quietly, just the two of us. So, while all this may seem extravagant on the surface, it’s really very logical.”

  Finding it impossible to argue with him, Flame lifted her glass. “To logic—Stuart style.”

  After that, Flame found it amazingly easy to relax and enjoy the champagne, the meal, and the company. There didn’t seem to be any lack of things to talk about.

  “You saw the new Franco Zeffirelli production of Turandot,” she exclaimed with envy. “I’ve been dying to see it. I’ve heard the stage design is magnificent.”

  “It should be, considering the cost of it reportedly ran upward of a million,” Chance replied dryly. “I’ve often wondered if the money wouldn’t have been better spent getting some of the great name stars to appear at the Met.”

  “That’s true,” she agreed. “Now if you want to see them, you have to go to Europe.”

  “That’s where the money is. They get paid more over there than they do here.”

  “I know, but it’s still a shame,” she said, then sighed wistfully. “I had tickets to see Turandot the last time I was in New York. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go at the last minute and wound up giving them to a friend.”

  “Were you in New York on business—or pleasure?”

  “Business. The agency’s corporate headquarters are in New York and I was there for a meeting.”

  “Do you go there often?”

  “Three or four times a year. What about you?”

  “About twice that…sometimes more.”

  “Where do you stay?” she wondered curiously.

  “At the Plaza.” He tipped his head to one side. “Why do you ask?”

  Smiling faintly, she swirled the champagne in her glass, watching the bubbles breaking at the surface. “I wondered if you stayed at your competitor’s hotel.”

  “My competitor?” His gaze narrowed in puzzlement.

  “Donald Trump.” She grinned teasingly at him over the rim of her glass.

  He smiled at that. “We may be in the same business, but I don’t regard him as a competitor. I’m not interested in any development in Manhattan or Atlantic City. He’s welcome to do whatever he’s big enough to do there. I’ll take the rest of the country for my territory.”

  The glint of amusement in his eyes eliminated any hint of arrogance from his statement and drew a soft laugh from Flame. “I’m surprised you didn’t say the world.”

  “I have to leave room for growth,” he chided, grooves dimpling his lean cheeks.

  “Now why didn’t I think of that?” she declared, feigning a sigh.

  A discreet distance from the table, a waiter stifled a yawn. Flame caught the sudden movement of his hand and quickly looked away, wishing she hadn’t seen it. She didn’t want to be reminded of how very late it must be.

  “What are you doing tomorrow—or perhaps I should say, today?”

  Meeting his gaze, she noticed the quiet, masculine insistence of it. And she noticed a dozen other things at the same time—like the ebony sheen of his hair in the low candlelight and the innate strength of his tanned fingers curved so gently around the bowl of his brandy glass.

  “The Museum of Modern Art has an architectural show by Mario Botta that I’ve been wanting to see. I’m told it’s quite impressive.”

  “Could I persuade you to change your mind and drive down to Carmel with me for lunch?”

  “I hope you don’t intend to accomplish that by inundating me with orchids again,” she declared laughingly. “I don’t know what I’d do with more.”

  “I won’t—if you’ll agree to come with me to Carmel and, in the words of its famous mayor, ‘make my day.’”

  Laughing, she lifted her hands in mock surrender. “I’ll come quietly.”

  “Good.” His smile widened. “I have some calls to make first thing in the morning. I can pick you up—say, around ten-thirty?”

  “Wonderful. We can take the scenic route along the coast highway and still be there in plenty of time for lunch.”

  The waiter returned to their table, trying his best to look alert. “May I bring you anything else? More brandy, perhaps?” he suggested, glancing at Chance’s nearly empty glass.

  “Not for me.” He looked to Flame, but she shook her head, echoing his refusal. “That will be all, I believe.”

  His reply signaled the end of the meal and the evening. Much of the drive back to her Victorian flat was made in silence, an oddly comfortable one. At the front door to her flat, he held out his hand for the keys. “May I?”

  Willingly she surrendered them to him and watched as he unlocked her door. When he turned to give them back to her, she knew—even without the sudden acceleration of her pulse to tell her—that the moment had come. There was a sameness to it, wondering if it would be awkward, if her expectations had been raised too high by the easy intimacy of the evening—if she would like being kissed by him.

  As his hand glided onto the curve of her jaw, she tilted her head back in age-old invitation. His face was there before her, sculptured in bronze, his gaze moving slowly over her features.

  A faint smiled softened the line of his mouth. “Ten-thirty tomorrow.”

  There was a promise in his voice, but not nearly as much as she found in his kiss as he rubbed his mouth lightly over her lips then came back to claim them in a sensual tour de force.

  And the sensations lingered long after he’d gone.

  9

  At quarter past ten, the doorbell rang. Flame hurried to answer it, hastily tying the folded ends of the silk scarf into a knot beneath her hair in the back, and finishing just before she reached the door. When she opened it, there stood Chance. Her heart did a crazy little flip-flop at the sight of him.

  Previously, he’d always been in evening clothes. This was the first time Flame had seen him in casual dress, with his shirt unbuttoned at the throat, revealing a smattering of dark chest hairs, and black denim pants fitting smoothly over slim hips and muscled thighs. A windbreaker in the same shade of blue as his eyes hung over one shoulder, held by the hook of his finger. The result was less smooth sophistication and more rugged virility.

  “I’m early.” His mouth formed that now familiar smile as his gaze made a slow sweep of her. “You look rested and refreshed.”

  “I am.” Although she wasn’t sure how much sleep she’d actually gotten. Not that it mattered, since she’d wakened with the feeling that she owned the world. “Let me get my jacket and I’ll be ready.”

  In the living room, she retrieved the matching jacket to her full skirt of stone beige twill. As she started back to the foyer, the phone rang. More than likely it was Ellery wanting to know how her evening had gone. Shrugging that she could talk to him later, she ignored the ring and walked swiftly back to the foyer.

  Leather-bound tomes lined the bookshelves in the library at Morgan’s Walk,
their weighty presence adding to the room’s somber tone. Behind the Victorian pedestal desk of mahogany, a museum piece itself, Hattie Morgan listened to the unanswered rings and impatiently tapped a finger on the leather arm of her chair.

  “Where is that girl?” Angrily she pushed the receiver back onto its cradle, breaking the connection and stopping the irritating brrings in her ear. Turning, she cast a disgruntled look at the portrait of Kell Morgan hanging above the fireplace mantel. The accumulation of dust and grime over the years had muted the bright copper shade of his hair, but she remembered the oil’s original color—and the number of times she’d wished that color had been her own. But that girl, Margaret, had it.

  “I should have called earlier. I shouldn’t have waited.” She reached for the gold handle of her cane, propped against the desk within easy reach. Gripping it with her gnarled fingers, she pounded it once on the hardwood floor, venting her frustration and anger. “How did he find her so quickly? She’ll see through him. She has to.”

  She struck the cane on the floor again, but the loud thud made the pain in her head worse. The prescription Doc Gibbs had given her would alleviate much of it, but she didn’t like taking it. She didn’t like the dullness that came with it, especially now when she needed to think.

  Tucked among lush Monterey pines with the Pacific Ocean at its feet, Carmel-by-the-Sea had long been a favorite retreat of writers and artists drawn to the site by the simple charm of its village look and the wild beauty of its surroundings. Strolling along the sidewalk crowded with tourists, passing shop after quaint shop, Flame decided its true appeal was its wonderfully eccentric character. Here was a town that turned down its thumb at such things as billboards, neon lights, and large retail signs, and turned its back on such customary amenities as sidewalks and curbs on its side streets, then pointed with pride at its dearth of streetlights and traffic signals.