Diva (15 page)

It was nearly two in the morning by the time Gloria arrived at her bedroom. Her feet hurt from hours of dancing at a nearby beachfront club. She wanted nothing more than to sink into her cloud-soft bed. But Gloria knew that everyone else in the house was just as exhausted as she was. And that made it the perfect time to do some snooping.

Gloria hung up her dress and took out her pearl earrings. As she pulled a lacy white nightgown over her head, she heard a knock at the door. She groaned. Didn’t Glitz and Glamour
ever
get tired?

She grabbed a silky blue robe and flung it over her shoulders,
then yanked open the door, ready to dismiss those silly girls. She gasped at who was on the other side.

Not Glitz or Glamour.

It was Jerome.

“Oh my God!” she said, nearly fainting at the sight of him. He was wearing the white shirt, black tie, and white jacket all the servants wore. He had a bruise on one cheek and another near his jaw. And he looked so thin.

But he was
here
. Even handsomer than she remembered, which Gloria hadn’t thought was possible. His brown eyes were nearly copper with the way they lit up at the sight of her. His full lips peeled back into a smile that warmed Gloria all over.

“Oh, Gloria,” he said, his voice breaking.

“Jerome! How did you get in here? What happened to you?”

Gloria couldn’t look at him for a moment longer—she was too busy wrapping her arms around him and pressing her face into his shoulder. His strong arms rose to hug her tightly in return, and his hand combed through her hair over and over.

“God, I missed you,” Jerome murmured into her ear, dotting kisses along her earlobe and down her neck.

Gloria pulled back to give him a fierce, hungry kiss before she burrowed back into his arms. The two of them fit as perfectly together as they always had, as if no time had passed.
His heart pounded against her ear, and she wanted to get even closer.

She walked backward toward the bed without moving out of his arms, and began to unbutton his shirt. She didn’t know where Jerome had been, or what he’d been doing.

But Gloria knew this: She wasn’t letting him go. Not ever again.

CLARA

Clara wished she could’ve spent her Monday the exact same way she’d spent the past seven Mondays—sleeping off her hangover from the night before.

But thanks to Lorraine Dyer and her talent for ruining
everything
, Clara was sitting in a private investigator’s office, not hungover in the least, digging around in her briefcase for her rapidly expanding file on Anastasia Rijn. She found it and withdrew the engagement photograph clipped to the first page of her notes.

Clara reached across Solomon’s desk to hand him the photo. The desk was covered with teetering stacks of folders, old newspapers, and several open notebooks.

Solomon was as sloppy as his dim, cramped office. He was balding, and his black eyebrows were bushy enough to barely
qualify as two separate entities. His checkered bow tie was coming loose, and mustard spots covered his collar and tweed jacket. If her colleagues at the
Manhattanite
hadn’t spent the morning telling her so, Clara never would’ve believed this pudgy mess of a man was the best in the business.

Solomon stared at the photo for only a few seconds before tapping his finger over Anastasia’s pretty face. “She’s cleaned up well,” he remarked. “What name is she going under these days?”

“Anastasia Rijn,” Clara said.

“How’d you find her?”

“She’s engaged to someone I know. A student who goes to school with Anastasia told me she thought there was something fishy about her. So I showed her picture to a few reporters at work, just to see if anyone had any dirt on her.”

“Makes sense,” Solomon replied. “Salacious scandals are the
Manhattanite
’s bread and butter.”

“My thinking exactly. Our features editor didn’t recognize her, but he gave me the number of his contact in the Barnard admissions office. I found out that Anastasia Rijn is a foreign transfer student at Barnard, speaks with a foreign accent. But she’s only taking a
single
class, and I wasn’t able to find anyone who knew about her background. She’s telling people she’s from France, and that she arrived in New York in the spring or early summer, but no one at Ellis Island was able to locate a record of her passage.”

Much as Clara hated to admit it, it seemed Lorraine had
been right. There was definitely more to this girl than met the eye.

“You did all that today?” Solomon asked. Clara nodded. “That’s some fine detective work—better than what a lot of real cops were able to turn up on this particular dame.”

“Thank you. So you do recognize her?” She tugged nervously at the sailor collar of her blue-and-white plaid day dress.

Now that it appeared her sleuthing was going to dig up real answers, Clara almost didn’t want to hear them. As soon as she knew for sure that Anastasia was up to no good, she would have to
do
something about it. It was one thing to long for Marcus from afar—it would be quite another to actually see him face to face.

“Sure I recognize her.” Solomon lit his cigarette and took a drag, filling the tiny room with smoke. “She popped up in a couple of my cases, back when I was still working with the NYPD. This girl’s been into a little of everything—robbing banks, tax fraud, even assault and battery.”

Clara had trouble keeping her breathing even. She hadn’t thought the woman was a bona fide
criminal
.

“But she was never arrested?”

Solomon shook his head. “She’s a slippery one. She went under a different name every time. Deirdre Fitzsimons, Deirdre Dunwoody, Deirdre Jennings … Last time we were chasing her, we pinned down her real name as Deirdre Van Doren. But then she disappeared on us, like she always does.
Looks like she wised up this time and used a totally fake name.”

“You’re sure that’s her?”

He gave the picture another glance. “I wouldn’t bet my life on it. But I’d bet … your life.”

Clara was taken aback. Then Solomon laughed. “That was a joke, sweetheart.”

“Oh, um … okay. Well, ha ha!”

Solomon took a sip of what appeared to be a cup of cold coffee. “This one started early. She’s about twenty-one, I’d say. She’s got a guy who does fake birth certificates and the whole shebang each time she decides to fleece somebody. Could I see that file of yours?” Clara wordlessly handed it over, and he shuffled through the pages. “Sheesh, I would’ve thought a writer would have better handwriting.”

Clara shrugged. “I failed my class in cursive, what can I say?”

Solomon snorted. “You’re feisty. I like that.” He stopped on one of the open pages. “So she’s in college. Must’ve thought she needed to step up her game to get herself hitched to someone who’s really loaded.” He put the file down on his desk. “It’s a little hard not to admire a dame like that, I’ve gotta say. Who’s the fool marrying her?”

“My old b—just, a, um … just a friend.”

Solomon frowned. “Well, if you want to be a real friend to him, you better tell him to run as fast as he can.”

Clara swallowed hard. Solomon was right. The problem was, while Marcus would call Clara a lot of things, a friend definitely wasn’t one of them.

Clara stormed into Hartley Hall looking purposeful.

A few boys in V-neck sweaters and knickers or checkered blazers and trousers sat in cushy chairs in the common area and played poker. Others gathered around a fellow telling an animated story at the bottom of the stairs.

Clara was going to have to send some kind of gift basket to Ricky in Features over at the
Manhattanite
. His Barnard admissions contact had put her in touch with a guy who worked in housing at Columbia. As soon as Clara had gotten hold of Marcus’s dorm and room number, she’d taken the train straight up to Morningside Heights. She needed to warn Marcus about Anastasia right away. Before he made a terrible mistake.

A thick-looking boy at the poker table gave Clara a quick glance before returning his eyes to the cards. “No girls in the dorm.”

One of the boys by the stairs—a particularly handsome fellow with brown hair and light gray eyes—approached Clara. “Don’t be such a flat tire, Aaron.” He gave Clara a dazzling smile. “I’m Thomas. Nice to meet you.”

“Clara.” She let her hand linger in his when he shook it.

“I’m afraid old Aaron’s right, though. You’ll get in huge trouble if someone catches you.”

“Oh no!” Clara said, raising her voice higher than usual and giving Thomas her best doe eyes. “I’m sorry—I go to school across the street, and I was so curious to see what a
real
Columbia dorm looked like.” Clara stepped closer to Thomas and touched his arm lightly. “Now I’ll have to leave without even getting to see a dorm room.”

Thomas’s eyes widened. He took her arm and led her a little away from the others. “Go around back to the second door on the left. From there you can take the back staircase and no one will see you.”

“But won’t the door be locked?”

“Naw, the lock on that door got busted a while ago. None of the RAs have reported it—they sneak girls in as often as we do.” He gave her a smug smile. “My room’s two twenty-five. I’ll see you there in about five minutes?”

Sometimes boys made things so easy. “I’ll see you there.”

Clara walked around the deep-red brick, ivory-trimmed dormitory and found the door. She grinned when the doorknob gave right under her hand. She walked into a deserted, concrete-walled stairwell. She took a deep breath, gripped the iron railing, and began to climb. Once she reached the second floor, she pushed the heavy stair door open and walked into the hall.

It was like stepping out of a dingy cornfield into
The Secret
Garden
. Clara marveled that this was merely a college dormitory. The walls were wood-paneled and masculine. Her heels sank into the plush rug and sconces hung between each of the doors. There were even elegant wooden benches against the walls, in case Columbia’s men decided they couldn’t make it the last five steps to their rooms before they needed to sit down. She knocked hard on 237 when she reached it.

And there he was.

For a split second, Marcus looked the way Clara always remembered him. He wore the half smirk of a man who knew that no matter what he said, it would always be charming and clever. He was dressed casually in a blue silk button-down with rolled-up sleeves and tan trousers. His blond hair was still a little damp from the shower, and Clara could smell his spicy aftershave. His blue eyes were bright and engaging, his lips were full and kissable, and he had those long black lashes any girl would kill for.

Marcus was the kind of handsome that always took Clara’s breath away—not a handy thing when her nervousness was making it hard enough to breathe as it was.

But when Marcus recognized that it was
Clara
standing outside his room, his eyes hardened. Clara noticed his hands shaking a little, and he reddened when he noticed her noticing. He shoved his hands in his pockets and his lip curled. “You’re not allowed to be here.”