Hollywood Wives - the New Generation (2 page)

Adela owned the house they inhabited in Madrid, plus a luxurious
villa in Marbella, both properties left to her by her late husband
who'd suffered a fatal heart attack when Antonio was only ten. Since
that time Adela had drummed it into her handsome son that he was now
the man in the family, and therefore had to look after her. Then she'd
promptly sent him off to a military academy, where he'd had the crap
beaten out of him on a regular basis.

When Antonio had finally got out, he was ready to party, and in
spite of Adela's objections, party he did, winging his way across
Europe bedding a constant procession of sleek women. Along the way he'd
become interested in racing cars. As soon as Adela found out, she'd
thrown a fit. To appease her, Antonio made it a hobby instead of a
career, a move he'd always regretted.

Now he split his time between his mother's two residences, carefully
planning to be wherever she wasn't.

Adela was no push-over - she kept tabs on her son. She considered it
enough that he'd married a cheap American movie star when he'd ventured
out of her range, and she certainly had no intention of allowing that
kind of madness to happen again.

Nicci had a strained relationship with her strict grandmother. Adela
professed to care for her half-American granddaughter, but at the same
time she was forever disapproving of Nicci's behaviour. Nicci soon
learned how to deal with her - whenever the criticism and muttering got
too much to take, she flew back to L.A. and hard-working Lissa, who was
so caught up in her career that she didn't seem to mind
what
Nicci did.

And Nicci did plenty - for she had inherited her mother's passion
for breaking barriers and her father's wild ways. She was into
experimenting, seeing how far she could go without actually doing it.
In spite of her lessons in birth control, she was nervous about going
all the way - that is, until back in Europe she met Carlos, Antonio's
distant cousin.

She was seventeen and ready for the big deal.

Carlos was twenty-five, self-assured and extremely good-looking.

It didn't take him long to break down her inhibitions, and then,
shortly after, to break her heart.

Unfortunately, like his cousin, Carlos was a serial philanderer who
could not resist a pretty face. Furious and hurt by his rejection,
Nicci had travelled the revenge route, jumping into bed with as many
men as possible, while harbouring the vain hope that Carlos would
become hopelessly jealous and beg her to come back to him.

He didn't.

With a great deal of prompting from his mother, Antonio eventually
got on her case, pointing out that if she wasn't careful, people would
start calling her a slut and a whore.

'And what are
you
? she'd yelled at her father - a man who
found it impossible to keep it in his pants. 'A goddamn
virgin
?'

'No. I am a man,' he'd replied, with a small, superior smile. 'And
men can do anything.'

They'd argued bitterly for most of the night, both saying things
they would grow to regret.

The next morning Nicci had boarded a plane to L.A. and had not been
back to Europe since.

That had been almost two years ago, and now she was engaged she
couldn't help wondering if she should call Antonio and tell him. 'Hi,
Daddy,' she'd say sweetly. 'I'm no longer a slut and a whore. Will you
come to my wedding and give me away?'

Mr Double Standard. He should've called her, and he never had. Oh,
well, Lissa had always claimed Antonio was a big disappointment;
perhaps she was right.

Nevertheless, Nicci still loved him, although she certainly did not
respect him, for his casual way with women had coloured her view of all
men, forcing her to adopt the motto
Use them before they use you
.
Until now she'd run her life that way, unlike dear old Mom, who kept
falling in love or lust - depending on how one looked at it.

Nicci admired the professionalism and achievements of her mother.
However, she did not feel particularly close to her. How could she,
when Lissa always seemed to put her career first, love life second, and
trailing a poor third, came Nicci, her only child, to whom she'd given
birth when she was twenty
and on the brink of becoming very famous indeed?

Nicci often considered it a good thing that Lissa had not had more
children: she was hardly mother material.

No, Lissa Roman was a true superstar, destined to be worshipped by
millions.

Lissa Roman worked a camera like nobody else. She had all her moves
down, and enjoyed making love to the lens. Creating dynamic photographs
was one of her strengths, and the camera adored her.

Hard work had never bothered Lissa. In fact, hard work was the way
her parents - a strict, Midwestern couple - had raised her. 'Work hard
and don't expect no thanks,' her father had drilled into her. He was an
austere man incapable of giving affection. She'd worked her brains out
at school, achieving top grades, and getting no words of praise from
her distant parents. Even when she was voted top of her class, they'd
refused to acknowledge that she'd achieved anything. Finally, at
sixteen, after a horrible fight with them, she'd run away to New York
with her high-school boyfriend and never gone back. As far as she knew,
they'd never come looking, and she didn't give a damn.

'Do you need anything, honey-child?' Fabio asked, standing on the
sidelines sipping green tea from a leopard-print mug.

'Put on the Nelly Furtado CD,' she requested. 'Track four, 'Legend'.
I can't get enough of that song.'

She always made sure to bring a selection of favourite CDs to every
session. Today it was Nelly, Sade, and Marc Anthony. She was very into
soul and Latin sounds and was currently planning her own CD which would
incorporate plenty of both. She was also working on a book, sitting
with a ghost writer whenever she had the time to produce a glossy
coffee-table book to be titled
A Week in the Life of Lissa
. .
.

Like Madonna and Cher, she was known by one name.

Apart from the CD and the book, there was also a movie she might do,
a remake of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
. Nothing signed yet, she
was waiting for the right script. And in her immediate future was a one
night stand in Vegas at the opening of an incredibly lavish new hotel,
the Desert Millennium Princess, which would pay her three million
dollars for the pleasure of her company for one night only. Quite an
achievement. And then there was her daughter's upcoming wedding, which
Nicci had assured her she could deal with herself.

So Lissa was extremely busy, but not too busy to contemplate her
fourth divorce. Currently she was married to Gregg Lynch, a
ten-years-younger-than-her singer-songwriter. And thank God her lawyer
had insisted that he sign an ironclad prenuptial agreement, because
lately she'd begun to suspect that Gregg was composing his love songs
elsewhere. And not only that, but over the last six months he'd started
showering her with mental abuse.

His constant nagging about things she supposedly did wrong were
beginning to get her down. There were times he would pick on the
smallest detail and yell at her endlessly. Other times he would berate
her for not recording
his
songs, accusing her manager and
agent of forming a vendetta against him. He'd tried to persuade her to
fire them both. 'Can't you see that they're stealing from you,' he'd
yell, 'and you're too dumb and stupid to notice?'

He distrusted her business manager. Loathed her lawyer. Hated her
yoga teacher. Criticized her friends. In fact, anyone who worked for
her was on his shit list.

She ignored his insults, because she knew that deep down he didn't
mean it. And whenever he indulged in one of his temper tantrums, he
always apologized later. She also understood
why
he was so
super-critical. He was furious that he'd never made it, and because of
that he was forced to take his frustration and anger out on
someone
,
and since she was the closest person to him, that someone was her.

The big problem was that she was never quite sure who she was going
to wake up next to - the good or the bad Gregg. Unfortunately they now
seemed to exist side by side.

She couldn't stand him when he was in one of his bad moods. Loved
him when he was mellow and caring and supportive - qualities that were
fast vanishing.

Lissa was prepared to put up with a lot - she knew from past
experience that there was no such animal as the perfect man - but the
one thing she refused to stand for was infidelity. The moment she
suspected that might be happening, it was time to move on. No Hillary
Clinton was she, and lately she'd been recognizing the signs only too
well. All-night meetings, a renewed interest in his personal
appearance, taking one shower a day too many, and developing a paranoid
attachment to his cellphone.

As soon as Gregg started exhibiting the symptoms, she'd called the
Robbins-Scorsinni Private Investigation Agency and requested
forty-eight-hour surveillance. She'd used the agency on other occasions
and they'd never failed her.

It was so depressing that it had to come to this again. Why was it
that she had yet to marry a man who could keep it in his pants?

Nelly Furtado crooned over the sound system. Lissa licked her
already glossy lips while Fabio fussed with her hair.

'Will we be finished soon?' she asked Max, her publicist, who was
hovering on the sidelines with a group of people from the magazine.

'Any time you want,' Max said, a short, cigar-smoking man who wore
flamboyant suits, and had a different bow-tie for every day of the
month.

'One more roll,' the photographer begged. He was young, in awe, and
excellent at what he did.

Lissa was always open to young and excellent: it kept her career
edgy and fresh.

Throwing her head back, she struck a pose, honouring the camera with
a true-to-form provocative gaze. Parted lips, half-closed diamond blue
eyes, an expression of sexual yearning.

Lissa Roman gave great sex. It always paid off.

Kickboxing class over - a virtual feast of kicking, punching and
sparring - Nicci hurried into the dressing room, took a quick shower
and changed into shorts and a stomach-baring T-shirt: all the better to
show off her killer abs, glowing tan and recent navel piercing. Then
she stared in the mirror for a moment, which reminded her that she'd
certainly inherited Antonio's looks. Rich, dark brown hair cropped like
a gamin, with long bangs falling into her huge brown eyes, which were
fringed with impossibly long, silky, midnight black lashes. Long legs
and a lithe, lean body. Her over-f, sexy lips and high cheekbones
were the only clue that she was Lissa Roman's daughter.

Yes, she decided, she was definitely going to call Antonio. He
had
to come to her wedding. He was her father, after all, and she needed
him beside her on the most important day of her life. It wasn't like
she had any other family - Lissa's parents were forbidden territory,
although she'd always harboured a secret desire to contact them, see if
they were as strict and unloving as Lissa said.

Grabbing her bag, she headed for the car park, where she climbed
behind the wheel of her gleaming silver sports BMW, an engagement
present from her fiance, Evan.

Ah… Evan, she thought fondly. A goer. A doer. A man with a mission.
Thirty years old and already a self-made millionaire
from a string of off-beat comedy movies he'd co-written and co-produced
with his brother, Brian.

So intently was Nicci thinking about Evan, that she did not notice
the dusty brown van pull away from the kerb and fall in behind her car
as she left the parking lot and hit Sunset.

Evan and Brian Richter. A younger, hipper version of the Farrelly
brothers. Their rise to power had been meteoric - six movies in five
years, all of them box-office smashes.

Nicci had met Evan at the dog park on the top of Mulholland. She'd
been walking her then boyfriend's Great Dane, and Evan had been trying
to control a couple of crazed, large German shepherd puppies, who were
intent on running riot and attacking as many other dogs as possible.
Coolly assessing the situation, she'd gone up to him, grabbed the
leashes out of his helpless hand, chased down both puppies and collared
them firmly.

'Here,' she'd said brusquely, delivering the two German shepherds
back to Evan. 'I suggest you hire a trainer.'

'How much?' he'd asked, all spiky brown hair, lanky limbs and
comic-book features.

'How much what?' she'd answered haughtily.

'How much'll
you
charge to do it?'

A disdainful look. 'You can't afford me.'

A crooked grin. 'Wanna bet?'

What the hell? She had no job to speak of and he seemed vaguely
legitimate. 'A thousand a week. Cash,' she'd said, challenging him.

No challenge was too big for Evan Richter. 'When can you start?'
he'd said, admiring her spunky attitude.

And that's how it all began. A casual meeting, with neither of them
knowing anything about each other. He'd only kept the dogs a few weeks
because they were messing up his impeccable house, but by that time
Nicci and he were quite inseparable.

That had been five months ago and now they were due to be married in
six weeks and she had a wedding to organize with no help from Lissa,
whose only suggestion had been to hire a wedding planner.

Nicci sighed. Naturally she loved Evan. Sort of. Well, he made her
laugh, didn't treat her badly and gave great head. He could also handle
the fact that she had a famous mom, which freaked most guys out. That
should be enough to sustain a long and fruitful marriage… shouldn't it?

Yes. Except there was one tiny little drawback. Very small.
Extremely insignificant.