Molly hadn't seen him look so uncomfortable since their senior year in high school, when he had tried to talk her into telling Kara Swenson that he had already asked Becky Lipinski to the prom.
“Out with it,” she said. “What's this project?”
“Okay,” he said. He put down the cup and stared meaningfully at her. “Two words. Jake Berenger.”
Molly nodded. “And?”
He looked disappointed by her lack of reaction. “You do know who he is,” he said reproachfully. “The hotel mogul? The resort developer? The
billionaire?”
“Of course I know who he is,” Molly said. “I read the papers. But what's so new about this? You told me a year ago that you were doing a profile on him. You said that the
Miami Herald
wanted to run it in their Sunday magazine. Last I remember, you were busy interviewing all of his former girlfriends.”
“Not all of them,” Carter said. “That would have been physically impossible if I wanted to publish in this decade. Anyway, it was getting redundant. They all said some version of the same thing. ‘Jake was always a gentleman, but I could tell that underneath it all, deep emotional wounds were preventing him from ever trusting me with his heart.'” He rolled his eyes. “Yawn. Spare me, please, from the pop psychobabble of a bunch of models.”
“You never showed me the article,” Molly said. “How did it turn out?”
“It didn't. He wouldn't talk to me. Not in person, not on the phone, not even by e-mail. And then I found out that he never gives interviews.”
“Never? But he's always in the papers. There are pictures of him everywhere.”
“Yes,” Carter said. “People take pictures of Jake Berenger. People write stories about Jake Berenger. But he never gives interviews. He may be the world's most publicly private person.”
“How strange,” Molly said. “Doesn't the head of a major corporation have to talk to reporters sometime?”
“Oh, sure, he does the earnings reports,” Carter said. “Very tightly controlled by the Berenger corporate PR office. But he's never done a single personal interview, not that every magazine and newspaper on earth hasn't been trying to get to him. Word on the street is that he hates the press.” He chuckled evilly. “Can't imagine why, when we love him so much.”
“Too bad. I hope you didn't waste a lot of time on him.”
“It wasn't a waste. There's no shortage of market for articles about this guy. The fact that he won't talk only makes people more obsessed with him. But there's only so far you can go with an outside-observer piece. The usual tabloid trash about the girls, the race cars, the wild parties…you know the tune. I think I can do better. A lot better. I'm going to write”—he paused, for dramatic effect—“a book.”
“A
book
?”
“The one and only authorized biography of Jake Berenger. He doesn't know it yet, but he wants to work with me. I can feel it.”
“He sounds like a shallow playboy. Why don't you pick someone more worthy to write about?”
Carter grinned. “He's worth one point one billion dollars, on a good stock day. That's worthy enough for me.”
“You're unbelievable,” Molly said.
“Share the wealth, Molly! This book will sell. It'll get my name into the mainstream. When they write about him, they'll quote me. If I can make this happen, it'll be the coup of the decade.”
“Great. All you'll need to do is get a man who never even gives interviews to agree to help you write a book. Or did you forget about that small detail?”
“No,” Carter said. “I didn't forget.”
“So…” Molly prompted. “How do you plan to succeed where a hundred other hungry journalists have failed?”
“The approach,” Carter said. He nodded. “Yes. I truly believe that it's all in the approach.”
Molly smiled. “Oh, you're going to ask him
nicely?”
“In a sense, yes. When you want to break through someone's armor, you look for the weakest spot, don't you?”
“I guess so.”
“Right,” Carter said. He had a determined look on his face. “Okay. Molly, when we were in college, and your car broke down on our way home from the Dells, who walked eight miles in the snow to get help?”
“You did. You were very brave.”
“And who covered for you when we were sixteen and you were dating Greg Ackerman? You couldn't admit to your father that you had a crush on a football player, so you told him that you were studying at my house every Saturday night. And then you went home slobbering drunk that time, and Stanford was sure that I'd done it to take advantage of you.”
Molly frowned. “I wasn't slobbering.”
“He's hated me ever since,” Carter said. “But most recently, who convinced you to send
Pirate Gold
to my agent in New York, when you were barely willing to let it out of a locked dresser drawer?”
“Carter, I agree that I owe you a favor,” Molly said. “But I don't see how I can help you with this Jake Berenger project. What do you want from me, a letter of recommendation assuring him that you're a decent guy? That you won't do a hatchet job on his life story?”
“You could include that when you talk to him,” Carter said thoughtfully. “It might help.”
Molly stared at him. “Hold it. Talk to him? Are you saying that you want
me
to ask Jake Berenger if he'll do this book?”
“That's the plan,” Carter said. “But first, you'll need to seduce him.”
“J
aaake! Where are you?”
The call came plaintively through the warm Caribbean air, echoing down the hallway of the villa. It was a sweet, girlish voice, and to Jake Berenger, it was every bit as melodic as the evening lockdown bell at San Quentin. He pushed aside the pile of paper on his desk and closed his eyes briefly.
“Darling,” said his mother, who was sitting in a leather armchair nearby, studying fabric samples for the renovation of the Gold Bay lobby, “did I just see you cringe?”
“Yes,” Jake said. “And before the week is out, you may see me snap completely.”
Oliver Arias, Jake's number-two man and Berenger Corporation's Chief Operations Officer, was too discreet to laugh, but a faint smile hovered on the edges of his mouth.
Cora Berenger began to protest, but Jake held up a warning hand as he heard light footsteps approaching the library. The door to his suite of rooms had been closed, which would have suggested to most people that he did not want to be disturbed, but he knew from recent experience that it took more than subtle suggestion to discourage Amanda Harper.
Moments later, she appeared in the doorway. Twenty-one years old, golden-haired, with the face of an angel, the body of a centerfold, and the soul of a pit bull, Amanda was the only daughter of Harry Harper, Jake's longtime friend and mentor. Unfortunately, the same steely determination that had made her father a major player in the oil business had expressed itself in Amanda as one single-minded goal: to have and to hold Jake Berenger.
“I found you,” Amanda said. She was wearing a lime-green bikini under some kind of gauzy white minidress, and she smiled at him, tilting her head so that her hair swung forward in a shining curtain.
“You did, indeed,” Jake said.
“It wasn't very hard. You're always in here. How can you work on such a beautiful day? Why don't you come down to the beach? You're supposed to be on vacation.”
“Funny thing about the world,” Jake said, “it doesn't seem to care that I'm on vacation. And I thought that I was doing well, working only six hours a day instead of ten.”
Amanda laughed uneasily, and Jake could tell that she wasn't sure whether he was joking or not. He wasn't.
You want me, little girl?
he thought.
Be careful what you wish for. This is what you'll get.
She, like everyone else who didn't know him, had bought into the tabloid version of his life. She wanted it for herself, but she didn't know that she was chasing a phantom. If you believed what you read in the papers, his world consisted of glittering parties, jet-set events, and an endless procession of beautiful women. The reality was somewhat different. The parties were choreographed publicity stunts designed to keep the media buzzing about the Berenger hotels; the jet-set events were corporate sponsorships carefully chosen to flash the Berenger logo in the eyes of their most elite customers, and the women were models or actresses who saw the chance to appear on his arm as a useful promotion for their own careers. It was a mutual use situation, and Jake had learned that there was no shortage of available flesh as long as the champagne was flowing and the flashbulbs were popping.
He heard his mother sigh, as if she'd read his thoughts. It had been her idea to invite Amanda to spend the winter holidays at Gold Bay with their family. The official reason given was that Amanda's parents were enjoying a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary trip to Europe, but Jake knew his mother well enough to guess that she had an ulterior motive similar to Amanda's.
“Oliver,” Cora said briskly, and Oliver looked up nervously from his sheaf of papers. He, like everyone else who worked for Berenger, held Cora in a regard that mixed awe, adoration, and terror. Gold Bay was the crown jewel in the company treasury, and it had been Cora's baby from the beginning. She was the managing director of the exclusive resort, and she ran it with an efficiency that would have impressed the U.S. Army. In keeping with that theme, Jake teasingly referred to her as his five-star resort general.
“It seems a shame,” she continued, “to send you back to New York tonight without giving you a little time to enjoy the fresh air and the sun.”
“Oh, no,” Oliver said. “I'm—”
“Oh, yes,” Cora said. “I insist, dear. In fact, I have a wonderful idea. You should take a drive over to the west side of the island and see the site we've marked out for the new golf course. We've only just broken ground, but you'll get a sense of the layout. The views are stunning.” She smiled. “Amanda, would you be a sweetheart and go with Mr. Arias? I'm sure he'd enjoy the company.”
“Now?” Amanda asked with a clear lack of enthusiasm.
“Now,” Cora said firmly. “Oliver needs a break. My son will work us all to death unless someone intervenes.”
Amanda began to pout. “But—”
“Jake and I have a few more things to discuss, but we'll see you this evening, at dinner. All right? Good. Now, go ahead, you two.”
Cora waited until they heard the sound of the hall door closing behind Oliver and Amanda before she spoke again. “Well,” she said in a tone that made Jake wonder if he should have gone with the others, “I've been waiting for a chance to ask what got into you this morning at breakfast. It's the first time I've ever seen you read the newspaper through a meal. You know how I feel about that.”
“Sorry. But it was preferable to the company.”
“Oh? I had no idea that I'd become so tedious, darling.”
“You know I'm not talking about you,” Jake said. “Every time I looked up, there was Amanda, staring at me over the orange juice. Those blue eyes blinking, those glossy lips pouting…I'm sure it works on the boys at school, but I don't want to play.”
“You've hardly given this a chance!”
“Why should I? It would be a waste of my time, and hers. She's a pretty little package, and I'm sure that she'll meet another nice businessman, marry him, and spend the rest of her life shopping and doing token charity work. Frankly, though, if I wanted a pet, I'd buy a collie.”
“Jake!”
“Oh, come on, Ma. You should know me well enough to know that I could never take Amanda seriously. She thinks Watergate was a spa.”
“She's young.”
“Exactly.”
“She'll grow up, get more worldly.”
“I don't give a damn about worldly. I'm talking about character. Amanda has always had everything handed to her on a silver platter. She's never worked or struggled for anything in her life.”
“You're being deliberately difficult,” Cora said. “How can you complain about Amanda's character? What about all of the other women you've dated?”
“What about them?”
“Darling, they've hardly been a lineup of Nobel laureates. I fail to see how Amanda Harper is any more deficient in character than Skye Elliot, or Tamara Thomas, or…or…who was that woman who kept writing to you?”
Jake grinned. “Kristy Kreme?”
“That's the one. She said she was a dancer, but I've never heard of a ballerina with a name like that. I think she was a fraud.”
“I wouldn't know. I never actually met her.”
“My point,” Cora continued, “is that if you insist on running around with shallow women, couldn't you at least pick one from a good family?”
“No. Harry is my friend, and I'm not going to date his daughter. It wouldn't be ethical.”
Cora regarded him with barely controlled frustration. “Why on earth not?”
“Because Amanda—and her daddy—would expect too much from me. I'm not going to settle down, and I'm sure as hell not going to cut back on my work schedule. The women I date don't want Prince Charming, they want a good photo op. That's as committed as I intend to get.”
“How interesting,” Cora said. “I think you may have forgotten to mention that to Skye Elliot, darling.”
Jake exhaled sharply. His mother was the only person on earth who could needle him with impunity, but sometimes she went too far. “I didn't forget,” he said. “Miss Elliot has selective hearing. She knew exactly what she was getting into when she had her publicist call me. But she tried to change the rules in the middle of the game.”
“She fell in love with you. As your mother, I can hardly blame her for that. But what she's doing now is unforgivable.”
Jake's mouth turned up slightly, humorlessly. “Hell hath no fury…” he quoted and shrugged. “I was always completely honest with Skye.”
“I'm sure that you were,” Cora said, and sighed. “My dear, life is not just a series of photo ops. You're forty years old, and I want more for you. I want you to be happy. I want you to fall in love.”
Love?
Jake felt a sourness in his stomach, as if old dreams had fallen there to rot. He remembered being in love. It had been a long time ago.
“I am happy,” he said.
“Not like you were. When you were in school, you were—”