The Arrangement. Suzanne Forster

didn’t know how they were going to do it, or whether anyone would be convinced. It would require acting skills beyond either of their ability. Would anyone believe they were the same passionate, overheated couple who couldn’t keep their hands off each other?

      Tears rolled down Julia Driscoll Fairmont’s cheeks as she plucked the downy hairs from above her upper lip. One by one, she extracted the barely visible offenders, leaving an occasional spot of blood. But the sharpest sting came from the errant nose hairs that dared to protrude from her aristocratic nostrils.

      Her esthetician would have been happy to do the honors, with much greater speed and far less pain. But that would have defeated the purpose. It wouldn’t have calmed Julia’s nerves the way plucking did.

      For the last half hour, she’d been sitting at her vanity, balancing a hand mirror and her surgical tweezers—and wincing with every extraction. She was probably adding a wrinkle for every hair. She had heard physical pain caused the brain to produce endorphins that could become addictive, but that wasn’t her problem. She wasn’t a pain junkie. If anything, her obsession with plucking was in large part thanks to her dear departed mother.

      Eleanor Driscoll had been named for Eleanor Roosevelt, and she took that responsibility very much to heart. From her teens, Eleanor Dee, as everyone called her, had been an activist. She’d thought of herself as a modern-day crusader, which included defending society’s downtrodden wherever she found them.

      Eleanor Dee believed in volunteerism and self-sacrifice. She was against self-indulgence in all its forms, including drinking, smoking and, of course, indiscriminate sexual behavior. Sadly, her daughter and only child, Julia, had failed her on nearly all counts, and in the most disgraceful and embarrassing ways.

      “Mea culpa,” Julia muttered. At forty-nine, she was still riddled with guilt and would be until the day she died. Only her mother and devoted husband knew what she’d done all those years ago in her twenties, and they’d taken her secrets to their graves. Julia had tried to atone. She’d lived an exemplary life…well, until very recently. But she had raised her two children and become a pillar of the community, as all the Driscolls and Fairmonts had before her. Still, none of that was sufficient penance for the damage she’d done. Nothing would ever be.

      So, yes, she was guilty. But she was angry, too, and not just at herself. She was still seething at the way she’d been failed back then. That was the reason Julia plucked and winced. There were times when she wanted to yank out every hair on her body. She was ridding herself of the infidels who’d broken her heart when she’d had a heart to break, the ones who’d betrayed her.

      She went after her eyebrows next. This wasn’t plucking. It was cleansing, and if the pain was some kind of penance for her sins, at least she was inflicting it on herself.

      With a sigh, she put down the tweezers and studied her pensive reflection in the hand mirror. Was that spidery thing on her cheek a broken capillary?

      Another wince. Another wrinkle.

      The mirror landed on the granite countertop with a clink. Even her scalp hurt from sitting so long in an unnatural position. She had no time for this. Her daughter and son-in-law were arriving tonight, in a matter of hours, and she wasn’t prepared. Her house was perfect, and her assistant would help serve drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Even Bret was mysteriously cooperative. Everything was as ready as it could possibly be. But she, Julia, wasn’t prepared.

      Her black silk halter dress was displayed on a molded hanger in her dressing room. As she entered the room, she took in the dress’s simple, elegant lines, aware of how it would set off her stunning diamond brooch and drop earrings.

      She should have been looking forward to this evening, but what she felt was foreboding. She knew it wasn’t possible, given what Alison had been through, but that hadn’t stopped Julia from imagining her daughter exactly as she’d looked when she left: lithe and carefree, luminous as summer itself. Alison had a quality greater than mere beauty. She had magic. And if Julia could have put her in a time capsule and kept her the golden debutante forever, she would have.

      It was a mother’s fantasy, and probably a selfish one, but she only wanted to keep her daughter safe—and protected from predators like Andrew Villard. Just because Alison wasn’t dead didn’t mean the man hadn’t tried to kill her. Julia’s suspicions were so strong she’d hired a detective to investigate him—and learned several disturbing things.

      She’d never understood why someone with Alison’s advantages had thrown herself at a man like Villard. She’d had some crazy dream of being a pop idol, but Villard had never intended to help her with that. Julia probably knew more about him than Alison ever would.

      As Julia dressed, she couldn’t help but wonder what her own mother would have thought of this strange homecoming party. It had taken a massive heart attack to bring Eleanor down, but she’d lived to see her granddaughter publicly defy her mother’s wishes and run off with a sideshow impresario.

      Yes, Eleanor had seen it all—and blamed it on Julia’s lack of parenting skills. She’d also threatened to invoke the morals clause on the fifty-million-dollar trust that would have gone to Alison on her twenty-eighth birthday. But Eleanor had never made her wishes known to the family’s estate attorneys, and technically, the money might have gone to Alison, if she hadn’t turned her back on it.

      Julia hadn’t been so lucky. Eleanor had also imposed the morals clause on her, two decades ago, making it impossible for Julia to collect a dime of that same fund when it was supposed to have come to her on her twenty-eighth birthday. And now the money was sitting in a trust account, controlled by lawyers.

      “You were a heartless bitch in so many ways, Mother,” Julia muttered. “And I’m becoming just like you. You must be so proud.”

      Fortunately, Julia had never needed the trust money. Her husband, Grant Fairmont, had made his fortune in the yachting industry and left everything to her when he died. Still, Julia wasn’t content to leave that much family money in the hands of attorneys who were extracting hefty fees for doing what amounted to nothing. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t even American, and Julia had already started taking steps to correct the error of her mother’s ways.

      Eleanor was probably sitting up in her grave and howling.

      Julia snorted and cupped a hand to her ear. “Louder, Mother, I can’t quite hear you.”

      4

      “What have you done to your hair?”

      They were the first words out of Julia Fairmont’s mouth as she flung open the doors of Sea Clouds and gaped at her estranged daughter.

      Alison reached for and found Andrew’s hand, grateful to have him beside her. The woman terrified her and always had. Evidently there were going to be no hellos, no welcome homes, no hugs. Alison wouldn’t have been comfortable with that, anyway, but this was very strange.

      “They shaved my head,” she explained to her mother. “It grew out this way, darker, so I left it.”

      Julia still couldn’t seem to believe it. “But you’ve always been a blonde.”

      Alison touched her dark waves. “Not always. I started lightening it several years ago.”

      “Yes, and I assumed you would go on doing that.”

      Alison felt Andrew’s hand tighten, as if to tell her she was doing fine. But they were outside, flanked by the marble columns of the grand portico, and Alison wasn’t certain her mother was going to let them in the house—or that she wanted to go in. Julia’s black halter dress was stunning, and her long dark bob softened her angular features, but her face was pale and masklike. She had on too much makeup, or maybe it was too much Botox. Something was wrong.

      “Do you dislike the color that much?” Alison asked. She wondered what her mother thought of the blue silk shantung capri outfit that Andrew had helped her choose.

      “It’s just so popstar. Not you at all.” She shot Andrew an icy glance, as if