Fine Madness Page 6

The phone!

  She glanced at the clock on her nightstand. Twenty minutes to nine. Her heart thudded the way it had when she was sixteen and terrified she would be stood up the night of the prom.

  He had second thoughts. He remembered another appointment.

  He bumped into a speech coach down in the lobby and didn't need her any more.

  She popped off her earring and picked up the phone.

  "Kelly? Sweetheart, you don't know how glad I am you're there."

  Her eyes closed against that all-too-familiar voice, dipped in brandy and laced with despair.

  Not now, she thought wildly. Two years now he'd been out of her life. No midnight phone calls. No drunken visits. Just flowers on her birthday and good wishes at Christmas and she had finally convinced herself it was enough.

  A few more hours...couldn't he give her just a few more hours?

  But, no, not Sean Ryan. He'd never given her anything at all, save high cheekbones and blonde hair the color of moonlight.

  Why should tonight be any different?

  "How much?" she asked, her voice tight with anger. "I'll wire it to you from the front desk."

  "Sweetheart, if it were just a question of money you know I wouldn't be bothering you on Thanksgiving night. I've got myself in a wee bit of a jam here..."

  Flight 717 left for the mainland at 9:30 Honolulu time.

  Sorry, Mr. Steel, Kelly thought as the plane angled up into the night sky and banked eastward. It would have been wonderful but now it wouldn't be anything at all.

  She settled back into her seat and closed her eyes, dreaming of the bonfire her red dress would make when she got back home.

  Chapter Eight

  Ryder let Max off at the hotel fifteen minutes after nine.

  Hard to believe with all the extra time they'd built into their schedule that they could be late, but there you were. It didn't take much on some of Maui's one lane highways to create a backup and they'd been unlucky enough to get stuck behind a standoff between a willful Maserati and an equally willful pickup truck.

  They were lucky they got to the hotel at all after the chickens got loose.

  No matter. They were there now and Max hurried through the lobby, ignoring the quizzical looks from an older couple and he wondered if they recognized him from the grainy photo in People.

  He doubted if the beautiful Kelly Madison had ever been kept waiting for a man in her life and he wondered how she would handle it.

  Stopping in the open doorway to the bar, he looked around.

  Apparently she didn't handle it too well, if the empty room was any indication. Only a tired-looking bartender with a lei drooped limply around his neck greeted Max as he walked through the door.

  "I'm looking for a tall blonde young woman," Max said, glancing around.

  "Aren't we all?" muttered the bartender with a good-natured shrug of his shoulders. "Nobody here tonight but me and the Mai Tais." He gave his blender a friendly whirr. "Want one?"

  "Another time."

  Maybe she'd misunderstood and was sitting somewhere in the cavernous lobby, tucked behind a potted palm or hidden by a Chinese screen.

  He checked the lobby, the verandah, the swimming pool. He called her on the house phone with no luck, then marched upstairs and rapped on her door. Finally in desperation he strode over to the Front Desk with the angels of PAX breathing fire and bullets over his shoulder and asked about her.

  "Miss Madison checked out over forty-five minutes ago," a white-haired wahine said, eyeing Max speculatively. "Are you Mr. Steel?"

  Definitely People Magazine, he thought sagely. He'd wondered when someone would recognize him. "Yes," he said, extending his right hand. "Maximilian Steel."

  She turned away and plucked a folded piece of hotel stationery from the pigeonhole marked 832. "Miss Madison left a message for you."

  So much for his growing fame. He unfolded the letter.

  Family problems I can't ignore. My apologies. Perhaps we can continue our conversation in New York.

  Kelly

  PS: Dinner was wonderful.

  "Her father," Ryder said a few minutes later in the parking lot behind the hotel. "He doesn't surface for months and now he goes and picks tonight for his comeback." He pounded the padded steering wheel with his fist in obvious vexation.

  "What's going on?" asked Max "What's the deal with her father?"

  "Her father's Sean Ryan."

  "The Sean Ryan? Captain Blood Sean Ryan? Beverly Hills movie star Sean Ryan?"

  "The one and only."

  Max threw his head back and laughed. "I'll be damned! I grew up on his movies. I was in the balcony of the Rialto with Mary Ann Henning watching Blood on the Sword when I--"

  "Write him a fan letter," Ryder snarled.

  Max ignored the hostility. "PAX going into the movie business?" One thing was certain: Kelly Madison was as movie-star gorgeous as her old man.

  "We're not making a movie."

  "So what do you want with Sean Ryan? He's not one of us, is he?"

  Ryder's laugh was short and bitter. "No, he's not one of us."

  "I don't like the way you said that. He's not...?" He couldn't even say the word--the idea was so ridiculous.

  "Bingo. He's a card-carrying courier for the other side."

  It just didn't wash. You couldn't portray George Washington during the day and be Benedict Arnold at night. That wasn't the way things went in America, was it? That wasn't part of the red-white-and-blue dream that had carried him off into battle.

  "I don't believe it," Max said.

  "Neither did we."

  "You do now?"

  Ryder nodded. "Oh, yeah. No doubt about it."

  "Does she know?"

  "She knows he's a bum," Ryder said bluntly. "She knows he's a drunk, but he's made certain to keep her in the dark on everything else."

  So he hadn't imagined that shield of reserve around her, that almost palpable sense of vulnerability that had tugged at his heart even as her beauty had inflamed his blood. It wasn't hard to imagine what the truth would do to her if she knew. "If she's not involved, then what's her connection with us?"

  "Protection."

  A bead of sweat trickled down his temple as the wet jungle smell closed in on him.

  "She's in danger," Ryder went on. "We need to move her out of town as fast as we can until things cool off."

  "If that's all, why don't you kidnap her and whisk her away someplace safe. I've seen you guys do it before." Max himself was a prime example of what PAX could do when it was in the mood. Don't play games with this one, guys. Don't ask me to be the one...

  "Not everyone can disappear without leaving ripples, Max. She'd be missed."

  "You couldn't come up with some excuse?"

  "She has employees, business contacts. All we'd need is for her secretary to start speculating and we're out of luck before we start. This way is better: a legit business deal with a finite time limit on it. We don't want to scare Captain Blood back to his cohorts."

  "How does Kelly figure in this? Why is she in danger?"

  "You're asking too many questions, friend."

  Max bristled. "After five years, I think I have the right."

  Ryder fiddled with the cellular phone on the dash. The silence in the darkened limousine grew and with it, Max's sense of unease.

  "The less you know, the better off you are," Ryder said finally.

  "Sorry, O'Neal. This time I'm not buying the company line." He'd bought the company line every day of his life and see where it had gotten him: a fake name, a fake career, an existence as false as the waxed fruit on his grandmother's dining room table a thousand years ago. Ryder jabbed the air between them with his forefinger. "I'm giving it to you straight. The more you know, the tougher it's going to get for you to keep the lies straight. You're better off operating within a limited base of information."

  "You still think I'm going to blow it, don't you?"

  Ryder didn't flinch beneath his stare.
"Yes," he said quietly. "I'd give you even money on it."

  There wasn't much Max could say to refute Ryder's bet because there hadn't been much in Max's life to prove he had the guts to stick with much of anything.

  "Cover me, air force...I'm goin' in...

  Failure.

  Cowardice.

  Guilt.

  He lit a cigarette and stared at the pinpoint of red glowing in the darkness, willing himself not to care what happened to Captain Blood's daughter.

  Ryder placed a call on the cellular phone then signed onto the computer system built into the car itself.

  "United Airlines," he said, after a moment. "She lands at two p.m., New York time. We'll put New York on it stat."

  Max could taste his disappointment, bitter against his tongue, as Ryder started the limo. A month with Kelly Madison was one of the better offers he'd had in his life.

  "Hell," he said, putting his cigarette out in the marble ashtray, "it was fun while it lasted."

  "Think you're off the hook?"

  "Seems that way."

  "Sorry to disappoint you, old friend, but PAX isn't through with you yet. We're on our way to New York."

  And when they landed, Kelly Madison's life was going to rest squarely in his hands.

  He wished he remembered how to pray.

  #

  New York City

  He always smelled of bayberry soap and cherry tobacco and to Kelly he seemed the strongest and finest man in the world.

  How her classmates buzzed with envy each time he roared up the curving driveway to the school in his sporty red Ferrari, fresh from another swashbuckling silver screen success and ready to sweep his daughter off on holiday.

  "This is my dad," she had said as her friends gathered around, leaving their stockbroker/doctor/lawyer dads behind. "He's come to take me to Paris on holiday."

  "Greetings, ladies." Sean would bend low over each little jelly-stained hand. "I am enchanted to meet you all."

  Months of loneliness would vanish like the morning mist as Sean ruffled her bangs and buckled her into the front seat right next to him. Her classmates' fathers would watch with envy shining green behind their thick eyeglasses while the little girls wished they could trade their Barbie's Dream Houses and cashmere sweater sets to be in Kelly's place.

  What a wonderful life it was with a father who could charm the headmistress and woo the music teacher and beguile one and all with stories of beautiful ladies and knights-in-shining-armor.

  He was bigger than life, Superman and the Lone Ranger, the Masked Raider and Captain Blood all rolled into one. The one man against whom all other men would someday be judged.

  She just knew that when she grew up she'd marry a man just like him, a strong and handsome man who would keep her safe and secure and be there always when she needed him to hold her and care for her and keep the dragons away from the castle.

  Old dreams, however, die hard.

  The Hotel Morgan fronted the Great White Way. It was a far cry from the days when Sean's name flashed from the marquee of the Winter Garden.

  Congratulations, Daddy. You're back on Broadway.

  How pathetic he looked, sprawled on that narrow bed, whiskey bottle resting on the floor by his hand. How lonely.

  The past two years had not been kind to him.

  His hair was more silver now than blonde; the hairline receding back from the deeply lined forehead. The papery skin of his eyelids looked fragile as ivory parchment and she knew the blazing blue eyes were veined red from whiskey and disillusionment.

  The matinee idol in the evening of his life.

  She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. The stink from decades of cheap colognes and city dirt rose up from the iron-grey carpet and her stomach twisted in rebellion.

  "Oh, Sean," she whispered, as she picked up the whiskey bottle and emptied the contents down the bathroom sink. "What have you done to yourself?"

  If it weren't so pitiful, she'd laugh at the joke the Fates had played on the two of them.

  He'd become the hapless victim while she rode to his rescue like a female Lone Ranger, providing the support and protection and loyalty she'd longed for as a child.

  Don't you know how lonely it was, Daddy? Don't you know how much I missed you?

  But Daddy had been too busy getting married, getting divorced, getting out of debt and into trouble to hear her.

  "Sean." She nudged his shoulder. "I just flew five thousand miles. The least you can do is wake up when you take my money."

  He stirred slightly, eyelids fluttering as if on the verge of awakening, and she hardened her heart against a painful rush of emotion.

  "That you?" Sean mumbled, that incredible voice of his thick with booze and torment. "That you, Kelly?"

  "Yes, Sean," she said, reaching for her purse. "It's me."

  "Good daughter," he muttered, pushing his face into a stained and threadbare pillow,"...good daughter..."

  The good daughter sat down on the edge of the bed, amid the stink of whiskey and broken dreams and wondered how much longer this could go on.

  Chapter Nine

  "I know what you're thinking," Kelly said to Natalie at the office Monday morning, "and I don't want to hear it."

  Natalie's brown eyes went wide with feigned innocence. "How could you possibly know what I'm thinking? We've only worked together for six years."

  "Call it a lucky guess." She took a sip of coffee and grimaced. "Remind me to clean out the coffeemaker one year."

  Natalie settled down in the chair opposite Kelly's desk. "Either that or raise your liability insurance."

  "You realize other assistants make the coffee for the office, don't you?"

  "And you realize picking up after Sean every time he falls apart is a losing battle, don't you?"

  "Be fair, Nat. He hasn't bothered me in a long time."

  "Two years and three months," said Natalie. "Not that I've been counting..."

  "Nat." Kelly's voice was low in warning.

  Seeing Sean in that seedy dive had been bad enough; talking about it was unbearable.

  "He's a grown man, honey," Natalie said, ignoring Kelly's look. "He has a right to his own mistakes."

  "What do you expect me to do, Nat? He's my father--when he calls for help, should I tell him to go to hell?" She loved Natalie but how could she explain this to a woman who understood chocolate chip cookies and a fire in the hearth and gathering around the family dinner table each night? She raked her fingers through her hair and a pair of tortoiseshell combs clattered to her desk. "I'm all he has."

  And he's all I have. If she turned away from him, she turned away from the last vestige of family she had on earth. She may be a fool but so long as Sean Ryan was alive there was still the hope--however slim--that they might find their way clear to understand one another.

  "Give him my number next time," the older woman said. "I'd rather that than see you come home two days early from a Hawaiian vacation."

  "I'll keep it in mind," she said, switching on her computer, "but I don't think there's another Hawaiian holiday in the offing."

  "Who knows?" said Natalie with a wave of her hand. "Maybe that gorgeous stranger you met poolside will show up on our doorstep and sweep you away."

  Kelly laughed out loud. "Have you been reading Danielle Steel again, Natalie? The gorgeous stranger isn't going to show up anywhere."

  Natalie sighed theatrically. "How I wish you'd managed to get his name, honey. We could use some excitement around here."

  "I did get his name," Kelly said, sifting through a pile of billing notices. "Max Steel."

  Quickly she explained about the impromptu Thanksgiving dinner on the balcony.

  "Dinner, candlelight and a Hawaiian sunset," Nat said, shaking her head. "They always said Sean's timing was impeccable. This sure proves it."

  "If it were that important, Steel would have called the office by now, Nat." "Max Steel." Natalie sounded thoughtful. "I know that name from some
place."

  "The Guiding Light, maybe? I know what you do when you sneak off at three o'clock."

  "Try Time Magazine," Natalie countered. "I know I read something about Max Steel while you were away."

  All of this talk about a man she'd never see again was dragging Kelly into a deeper post-vacation depression than she was already in.

  "If you figure out who he is, let me know." She swiveled her chair around to face the computer terminal.

  "I can take a hint," Natalie said, rising and smoothing her pleated skirt.

  Kelly met the woman's eyes. "I'm jetlagged, Nat. Sorry if I snapped at you."

  Natalie patted her shoulder. "Don't worry, honey," she said softly. "I know how it is."

  The older woman closed the office door behind her and Kelly sat still for a long moment before turning back to the computer.

  Natalie was right, of course. Once again, she'd let her father's failures influence her life. Maybe this time, though, it was for the best. Max Steel was out of her league and she'd known it from the first moment he spoke to her poolside. He took what he wanted and, for a second what he'd wanted Kelly. The memory of his gaze sliding across the length of her body made her burn even now in the winter-chill of her office.

  No, for once in her life, her father had done her a favor and she was glad to return to a world she could control, a world minus Hawaiian sunsets and green-eyed men.

  Monday morning was normally the busiest time at Madison Dynamics. Contracted employees were required to check in for updates and new assignments and the steady stream of "What a great tan!" took up a nice chunk of time.

  She might have taken a vacation but, fortunately, the company hadn't and the amount of work piled up for her was daunting.

  By lunch time she'd ordered Natalie to put a hold on all calls and bar the door to her office, if necessary, so she could get some work done.

  Sean's latest problem had put a considerable dent in her bank book and she was relieved to see at least a few new assignments come up on the computer screen. The holiday season was notoriously slow--businessmen were more concerned with corporate Christmas parties, while the actors and diplomats who made up the rest of her clientele made sure to head for home the moment the mistletoe appeared.