Coming Attractions (14 page)

And if, as she had previously
concluded, there was no inheritance? Well, nothing would change. Levi could get
his payout from their blockbuster film and sort out whatever financial mess he
had made in his life. And she could get on with… What? Everything felt a bit
empty, a bit pointless now. When had that happened? Her crappy apartment, her
lonely work, her bare life seemed hollow and dull. Maybe she could try the pet
route again. Or a potted plant. Something hardy. A begonia, perhaps. Someone
had told her they were un-killable.

For a moment, her chest tightened
and her eyes heated and stung. How had her life’s ambition been reduced to
maintaining a begonia?

She heard Levi take a breath and
forced her distress aside, blinking away the threat of tears and faking a
cough.

“Note to self, don’t inhale tea,”
she said with a bogus smile and no eye contact.

The future was something for later,
she told herself. Right now, she needed to get the present shipshape, and the
way to do that was by unlocking the past so Levi could get on with the movie.

She was grateful that he let her
small lie slide. The last thing she wanted was sympathy—she would end up in a
howling puddle on the floor. And the last person she wanted it from was the man
before her. He was sensuous, sweet, smokin’—and slippery. She was doing her
best to be cool about his deception and duplicity, after all they were two
adults wheeling and dealing in the fast and fickle film industry. There was
nothing but a movie contract to bind them together. She needed to accept that.
If she wanted to play with the big boys, she’d have to suck it up and play
hardball.

Resolutely and without comment, she
handed him the letter. It looked older and more fragile than its thirteen years
warranted. It felt strange to her that the contents of an innocuous-looking off-white
envelope could pack such a punch.

Levi took the paper from her
gingerly, as though he thought it might bite. He opened the envelope, withdrew
the translucent paper, and began to read. Cara knew the words by heart.

“My
darling Alessandra,

I
have no way of knowing if these letters are reaching you, but I send them
whenever the opportunity arises, just in case.

I
miss you more than words can say. I miss the taste of your lips, the touch of
your hand, and the feel of you naked in my arms. It is only these memories that
keep me breathing. Without them, and the hope (though it may be fruitless) that
we will one day love again, I think I would die of despair.

I
pray every day that at least the Midnight Star keeps you safe while I cannot.
And I wish beyond all other wishes for even one more night loving you.

I
love you, Alessandra.

Styck”

Levi’s face turned pale. His eyes
suddenly burned overbright.

“You know what this means?” he
asked shakily.

“Yes,” she squirmed, irritated that
he seemed to want to force her to spell out her mistake. “She had a lover.”

But to her surprise, he waved his
hand in dismissal.

“Lover. Schlover. It’s more than
that.”

She shook her head, clueless as to
what he was getting at.

“More? I don’t know what you mean.”

His hands were literally trembling
and his voice was strained with emotion.

“What is it, Levi?”

“The fortune, your inheritance. It’s
real.”

The tsunami of emotion caught Cara
off guard. The fortune was real?

From one side, Cara felt a rush of
excitement and validation. Her mother hadn’t been lying. She had cared.

From another direction crashed a
wave of despair. Cara had not been wrong about Levi’s priority. He didn’t give
a toss about her mother’s lover and what it would mean for the film, but he was
visibly moved by the news of the missing fortune. He was shaking, for heaven’s
sake. There was no possible way she could misinterpret his excitement. It
seemed she had been right in her theory that she was nothing more than a means
to an end. He was using her to get his hands on the cash he needed. Nothing
more.

He spoke in a rush of enthusiasm,
barely taking a breath. “The missing fortune,” he continued, stabling at the
flimsy page with his forefinger. “The Midnight Star. It’s only one of the most
famous sapphires in the world. It was all over the news when it was sold back
in the eighties. As an acquisitive young lad, it caught my imagination. It
prompted a little stint speculating in gemstones, but the market wasn’t liquid
enough for my taste.”

He studied the letter again and she
turned his revelation over in her mind, slowly appreciating the implications.

“So, all this time, I’ve been
searching for cash or stocks or deeds and I should really have been looking for
a ginormous freaking sapphire?”

“Looks that way.”

“Sapphires… They’re the blue ones,
right?”

“Yes. Is there a safe or something
at Flinders’ Keep?”

“Yes, but it’s empty.”

“Jewelery?”

“There was some. I’ll have to ask
Mia what happened to it. But surely someone would have noticed a giant
sapphire. How big are we talking?”

He shrugged. “Guessing?” He held
his thumb and forefinger apart the width of a golf ball and she whistled.

“It would be pretty hard to miss,”
he conceded.

Cara sat back in her chair,
perplexed. Something about the conversation just didn’t make sense. Why had he
told her about the clue to the missing fortune if he was going to take it for
himself? Had he inadvertently let slip his knowledge of the Midnight Star in
his excitement? Was he planning to rub salt into her wounds when he found it? Or
was he genuinely including her in his search?

Maybe he thought now that she knew
the nature of the fortune, she would be better placed to provide him with
information leading to its recovery. After all, no matter who found it, if it
turned up at Flinders’ Keep, it was technically his.

“What do you say we spend the
afternoon sapphire hunting?” he suggested.

Her first instinct was to agree.
While her brain was all over his deviousness, the rest of her, from her heart
to her hormones, wanted nothing more than to be near him.

However, both her rational side and
the rest of her concurred that hunting for sapphires would be a mistake. After
all, they might actually find one. Not only would that sideswipe her plans for
getting the movie rolling, also, his betrayal about the treasure would no
longer be hypothetical. Instead, it would be brutally, factually, starkly real.
And as much as she could try denying and ignoring something that was a strong possibility,
the reality of watching him cash in her mother’s jewel would be more than her
heart could take.

If he sold the jewel, she would
need to walk away from him. It was that simple. If she didn’t walk, she would be
giving up her self-worth and morphing into the worst kind of doormat, killing
everything about herself that made her Cara Jane Kelly. And if she did embrace
doormat-ville and stayed with him, it wouldn’t take long for him to figure out
that she hadn’t been true to herself, that the woman he had fallen for had no
integrity and, thus, wasn’t worth sticking around for. And he’d be disillusioned
and she’d get resentful and if the relationship was a horse you would shoot it…

Jeez, the way her miserable little
daydream was playing out, she was a fifty-year-old drunk in fluffy slippers
battling an infomercial addiction, and he was a wraparound baldy with a paunch and
a chronic golf habit, and they were whinging and bitching at each other like a
bad cartoon.

Cara didn’t want that kind of
wretched downward spiral and she didn’t want to leave him. So she didn’t want
them to find the jewel.

She knew avoidance was a juvenile
tactic, but, for the moment at least, it was the card she decided to play.

Besides, how could she forget the
other brand of betrayal on the itinerary for the afternoon?

“Don’t you have, uh, plans?” she
asked him, imagining Selena Simms’ fingernails trailing down his chest. She
shuddered.

“I was thinking of catching up with
Selena, but she can wait.”

She could barely believe Levi’s
gall in admitting to his planned assignation with Selena and that he was simultaneously
brushing it off as no big deal. Maybe that’s how sex worked in Hollywood. If
that was the case, Cara wanted no part of it. She was a one-man woman and, in a
relationship, she expected monogamy in return. Not that she and Levi were in a
relationship, per se. They had spent some time together. They had been
intimate. But there had been no hint of commitment, no mention of the future.
So, why did Selena’s name make Cara want to scream like a banshee?

“Maybe we should spend the
afternoon making script changes and save the sapphire hunting for another day,”
Cara said, suddenly, urgently needing fresh air. “But before we do any of that,
I need to buy Freya a birthday gift for her party tomorrow.”

****

Ocean Ridge was not a big town.
Most of the shops and restaurants clustered around one central square with a
handful of outlining huddles petering out toward the beach. The beachfront
itself sported a strip of surf outlets, a couple of souvenir places, ice cream
parlors, and fish and chips shops, no doubt popular with weekend families and
the crowd from the nearby high school.

Cara made a beeline for Saltwater
Avenue to the north of the main drag where, amid the high end boutiques,
specialty shops were scattered—antiques, gift shops, galleries, and jewelers.
She wasn’t sure what to buy Freya, but she figured if there was something
special to be found, this was the place to stumble on it. It was therapeutic to
switch off her deliberations about sapphires, Selena, and the stinking sex bomb
and focus on shopping for Freya.

She browsed novelty handmade
chocolates, early edition hardbacks, funky tote bags, and popular perfume. She
was weighing up the merits of a silver locket in the jeweler’s window when she
glanced up and noticed the woman behind the counter. Belle Shepherd, née Bradshaw,
had always been all big teeth, big hair, and big baby blues. Nothing much had
changed.

Cara didn’t hesitate to enter the
store.

“Belle!” Cara
greeted her. While they hadn’t been best buddies in high school, they had
worked on a few assignments together with Cara writing the words and Belle
contributing the artwork. If she told the truth, Cara hadn’t really been close
friends with anyone in high school. She’d been content drifting on the fringe
of the fringe, casually friendly with most kids but keeping mainly to herself.

They hugged,
smiled like crazy, and looked each other over appraisingly.

“You’re looking
fabulous!” Cara observed, and meant it. Belle’s natural flair and flamboyance
had coalesced into a brilliantly crafted persona radiating the kind of tempered
ostentation Cara usually identified with celebrities.

“You can talk,
Cara Kelly! You’re still skinny as dental floss and as gorgeous as a buttercup.
What do you use on your skin? I need some of whatever that is. We must catch
up! It’s been forever.”

“Only, what…?”

“Hell, it must be
close on twelve years! What have you been doing since high school?”

Cara gave Belle
the potted version of her screenwriting career to date, not wanting to get too
deeply into the intricacies and dilemmas of her current project. She deftly turned
the subject over to Belle.

“It looks like you’re
doing very well for yourself. Your own store?”

“Yes. While I was
in art school, I found my calling in jewelery making. It was a great career
choice, something I was passionate about plus a practical, portable vocation. I
did a big working holiday to Europe and Africa to learn, hands on, about gems.
Then when I came back and had the boys, I was able to work on my pieces from
home. The Internet meant I could get them out into the global market. I’m
pleased to say I’ve had a fair bit of success and recognition.”

Despite Belle’s
words, her enthusiasm seemed forced. Her brow was furrowed and her mouth
downturned. Cara wasn’t sure whether they were close enough friends for her to
pry, but she hated to see the other woman unhappy.

She probed gently,
“Is it not everything you’d hoped?”

Something sharp
and sad flashed in Belle’s eyes, followed by a wash of gratitude. “I was so
happy. Brian was a great dad and my work was fulfilling and the boys were content.
We have a lovely home just out near Mia’s place, actually. I had everything I had
ever dreamed of.”

“But…?” Cara
prompted.

“I agreed to teach
a short jewelery making course for adults. When I was buying materials, I met a
wholesaler by the name of Umberto. He was dashing and dazzling, smart and
sophisticated, and he seemed to be interested in me and my work. I was
flattered, of course. I was a lowly housewife slash part time jeweler and here
was this expert gemmologist casually mentioning famous jewelers he could
introduce me to and national awards he thought my work could compete in… It was
heady stuff.”