Ocean Beach (2 page)

Millie couldn’t bear to see her husband cry. He really didn’t have the face for it. Or the experience. When you made your living making other people laugh, tears weren’t a part of your repertoire. In all the time she’d known him, she’d only seen Max cry once. And that had been more than fifty years ago.

She, on the other hand, had become an expert at tears. But she’d also become an expert at hiding them.

“You’re too old to cry,” she said. “And I’ve got better things to do than lie here letting you drip tears all over me.”

He smiled, as she’d intended. “What? You’ve got somewhere else you have to be?” He used the beleaguered tone he’d played to the hilt onstage. The one that said,
See what I have to put up with?

She reached up to wipe a tear from his weathered cheek and her eyes closed briefly. Who knew how heavy eyelids could be? “Yes, I do. I’m just waiting for that tunnel of light you hear about. Then I’m out of here.” She tried for a sassy
tone, but even moving her lips took effort. “I’ll finally have the spotlight to myself for once.”

Max smiled again. It was the smile she’d always thought of as his megawatter. A heart could break from that smile.

“You’ve always been the star, Millie,” Max said. “Always. I was just the lucky guy who got to stand next to you.” He swallowed thickly. “I don’t want to be here without you.”

The weight of good-bye hung over them. She cupped his face in her hand, ready to go. Except for one thing.

“Promise me you’ll look for him one more time, Max,” she said. “It’s easier to find people now. Like on TV. That woman was missing for thirty years.”

She stared into his eyes, using the last of her strength to will him to do what he’d refused even to talk about for so long. “Promise.”

Finally he nodded. “I will, Millie.” He took the hand that had fallen to her side and gave it a squeeze just like he had the first—and every—time they’d stepped onto a stage together.

“And get the house fixed up,” she said. “He’ll never recognize it the way it is now. I want you to get it ready. You know, for when he comes home.”

She held on to his hand as long as she could, treasuring its warmth and comfort. Wanting to take it with her. “Do you promise, Max?”

A tear ran down his cheek. She watched it fall. Felt it land on their clasped hands.

“I promise.”

Never let them see you sweat.

Nicole Grant, former dating guru and A-list matchmaker, knew it was a bad sign when the philosophy you were living by came from a deodorant commercial. As words of wisdom went, they were nowhere near as lofty as “Nothing succeeds like success” or quite as motivational as “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” But as she stood in the archway of Bitsy Baynard’s Palm Beach dining room struggling not to wipe her damp palms down the sides of the vintage Valentino cocktail dress, those words were pretty much all she had.

No one in that room knew, or would ever know, that she’d spent a good chunk of her remaining cash on a salon cut and color, or that her makeup had been applied for free at a Saks Fifth Avenue cosmetics counter after she’d made a show of cursing the airlines and pretending abject horror at arriving in Palm Beach without a cosmetics case.

She squared her shoulders and made her way through
the formal dining room to her seat, thanking the goddess of the gene pool that at forty-six she still had an air of command, a graceful neck, and her trademark cheekbones. A lifelong running habit and a recent, if unwelcome, bout of physical labor had prevented her once-speedy metabolism from sputtering to a stop.

Bitsy’s table had been set for twenty. As she’d promised, her guest list had been culled from the appallingly short list of Palm Beach residents who had
not
lost money to Nicole’s brother, Malcolm Dyer, who had recently checked into a medium-security prison for the criminally greedy.

Bitsy had assured her that none of the guests would bring up Malcolm’s Ponzi scheme, which had bankrupted Nicole as completely as it had its hundreds of victims. But as they took their seats Nicole could feel their eyes on her like motorists unable to drive by a car wreck without slowing down to take a look.

Nicole raised her chin and welcomed their glances; every one of them was a potential client or a possible referral source. She smiled her thanks to Bitsy when she saw the seat that she’d been assigned. It was next to Helen Maryn, a divorcée whose first husband had left her for a well-known jockey and whose second had fled to a Tibetan monastery to find himself, a search so consuming that he’d still been looking three years later when Helen had found and divorced him.

Helen Maryn’s face was round and pink and she bore an unfortunate resemblance to Miss Piggy. But while her physical attributes appeared skimpy, her net worth did not.

“So are you like the Millionaire Matchmaker?” Helen asked when the first course had been cleared away.

“Yes,” Nicole replied with a friendly smile. “But without the four-letter words and the funky-haired staff.”

Or the money and fame. All of which her brother had stolen.

“Nicole brought Bertrand and me together,” Bitsy said helpfully with a smile for her husband, who had proved to be far more than a worthwhile investment. “She has a lot of high-profile marriages on her résumé. But she’s very discreet.”

Nicole threw Bitsy a smile of affection and gratitude. Bitsy and Bertrand’s match had been one of Nicole’s most satisfying achievements. Of the hundreds of wealthy and celebrity clients she’d found mates for, only Bitsy had not rolled up her welcome mat once Nicole’s relationship to Malcolm Dyer had become public.

A fine bead of perspiration broke out on Nicole’s upper lip and she reminded herself yet again that she was not to blame for Malcolm’s crime. She was
not
her grown brother’s keeper. The federal government had claimed that job.

She maintained her smile as the trout à la russe was served, and willed herself to enjoy it. She didn’t foresee a meal prepared by a Cordon Bleu chef anywhere in her near future; there was no way she was going to waste it.

“And she’s part of a new television show on Lifetime,” Bitsy continued. “A home renovation program. She and her costars redid Bella Flora, a great Mediterranean Revival home that they own over on the west coast of Florida. And now they’re going to do a place down on South Beach in Miami.” She turned to Nicole. “What’s the show called, Nikki?”

“Do Over.”
Which was what she was hoping the show
would turn into. “The pilot airs July first,” Nicole added, seeing no need to mention that this opportunity would involve another backbreaking summer sweating over a house under the unrelenting eye of a video camera. Or that this time she and Madeline Singer and Avery Lawford would be laboring on a house that didn’t belong to them and that they hadn’t seen so much as a picture of.

Nicole reached for her wineglass. “If the pilot does well, the Miami episodes will air next spring.”

If it didn’t, sweating in front of others would be the least of her problems.

Across the table an eagle-eyed woman followed their conversation. Leaning forward, she offered up what might have been a smile if plastic surgery had left her any control of her facial muscles. “It must be impossible to find clients now,” she said. “I mean, your company doesn’t really exist anymore, does it?” Her tone should have been accompanied by a raised eyebrow, but this method of emphasis was no longer available to her. Both of her eyebrows arched upward in a perpetual state of surprise.

“
I
am Heart, Incorporated,” Nicole said, raising one eyebrow, just to demonstrate that she could. “I’ve closed the New York and L.A. offices, but they’re only addresses. I still offer the same services and set the highest possible standards in safeguarding my clients.” She widened both eyes subtly just to make the woman jealous. “And I still guarantee results.”

After all she’d found an appropriately ripe young woman for the Greek grocery tycoon, Darios T., and delivered a laundry list of attributes from leg length to brain size for others. She’d learned over the years that marriage could be founded on many things as long as the risk–reward ratio appeared equally beneficial.

Nicole kept the conversation with Helen Maryn going over dessert and afterward in the grand salon, a wonderful room lined with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the estate’s beautifully manicured grounds. But even without the frozen-faced woman’s inept smirk, she could tell that she’d lost her.

“I’d be happy to meet with you tomorrow before I drive down to Miami,” Nicole said to Helen, careful to keep the desperation out of her voice. “We could have a late lunch and discuss what you’re looking for.” Even if she had to use her emergency credit card to pay for the meal, it would be worth it to collect a retainer and land a high-profile client. All she needed was one to build from.

Helen’s eyes slid away. The woman with the frozen face nodded and lifted half a lip.

Keeping her own smile in place, Nicole pulled a card from her evening bag and handed it to Helen. For the rest of the evening she pretended that she didn’t have a care or a debt in the world and that her matchmaking days were not over.

“She wiggled off the hook, didn’t she?” Bitsy asked when she’d closed the massive wood door behind the last of her guests.

Nicole nodded and managed an unconcerned shrug. “I appreciate the evening. The meal was wonderful.” She hugged Bitsy. “I won’t forget your efforts on my behalf.”

In the plush guest suite Nicole stepped out of the gray silk dress and hung it carefully on a padded hanger. In the gilt and mirrored bathroom she twisted her hair up in a clip, eyed the spa robe that hung on the back of the door, and opened the expensive jar of bubble bath that sat beside the claw-foot tub. She turned on the tap, and when the tub
was full, she lowered herself into the steaming-hot water and sighed at its buoyant loveliness.

With her eyes closed and her body cocooned in the fragrant warmth, Nicole pushed back her worries, determined to enjoy this last night of luxury. She had no idea what she and Madeline and Avery would find in Miami. Or what conditions they’d be living in. Tomorrow would be soon enough to face those realities; all of their futures hinged on an uncertain television career and the sale of Bella Flora in the worst real estate market since the Great Depression.

Burrowing deeper into the warm water, Nicole reached for the waiting loofah. Tomorrow she’d meet up with the women who’d so unexpectedly become her friends. Together they’d do their best to make
Do Over
a success.

But until they knew they had a hit show and the rewards that that entailed, she couldn’t afford to give up on rebuilding Heart, Incorporated. Even in today’s economy Miami was rife with celebrities and high-net-worth individuals.

If she were lucky she might find someone who’d never heard of her felonious brother. Someone who didn’t read or speak English. Or who had been able to afford a ride on a Soyuz spacecraft and had just returned to earth.

“To us!” Steve Singer’s tone was jubilant as he raised his wineglass to Madeline and smiled across the cloth-draped table of Bacchanalia, one of Atlanta’s finest restaurants. “To twenty-six years as man and wife.”

Madeline clinked her glass to his and took a long sip. The flickering candlelight turned his gray eyes a metallic shade of silver and cast shadows across the planes and angles of his still-handsome face. If she squinted just right she
could almost see Steve as he’d been when they’d first met twenty-seven years ago. Then he’d been tall and trimly built, his manner reassuringly calm and certain. For a moment Madeline could almost feel the too-rapid tattoo of her heart in her chest each time she saw him. And the delicious ache in her jaw that had come from hours of nonstop talk and laughter.

Today, they had crossed the great marital divide; she had now been married to Steve Singer longer than she’d been single. Madeline smiled and raised her glass for another clink. “Happy anniversary,” she said. “To us!”

Steve watched her face as they drained their wineglasses and Maddie pressed play on their joint highlight reel to search for a specifically fabulous memory to drink to.