Sandra Brown - Smoke Screen

“Do you know when?”

“That’s a question for the medical examiner. I hope sooner rather than later. I want an explanation for Jay’s death, just as everyone else does.”

“Do the police suspect foul play?”

Before Britt Shelley could respond, her attorney whispered something in her ear, and she nodded at him. “That’s all I have to say at this time.”

“Are the police-”

“Did you and Burgess-”

“What did you drink at The Wheelhouse?”

The reporters continued to shout questions at her and her lawyer as they retreated from the podium.

“Turn it off.”

George did as Miranda asked. In the instant silence, ice cubes rattled in his glass as he took a drink of his Bloody Mary. “How many does that make so far today?” Miranda asked.

“You care?”

“You’re damn right I care!” she fired back. “I care because you’ve been drunk ever since we got the news.”

“Jay was my friend. Drinking is part of my grieving process.”

“It doesn’t look good.”

“To who?”

“To anybody who happens to be interested and is paying attention,” she said, angrily emphasizing each word.

“Everybody is interested and paying attention. Jay’s dying is news. He was a hero.”

“So were you.”

He stared down into his glass for several moments, then shot the last of the drink. “Yeah. A big hero. Which is why you married me.”

She laughed softly. “That’s right, sweetheart. I wanted a hero”-she spread her robe open from the waist down-“and you wanted this.”

There was a time when he would have dropped to his knees, crawled to her, and planted his face in her lap. He would have sent his tongue burrowing into her sex in search of the tiny gold charm that pierced her flesh, a tantalizing trinket that remained hidden until she was aroused. He used to make her crazy doing that.

But then he’d found out who had suggested she get the charm. That had ruined the pleasure for him.

She laughed and covered herself. “Poor George. So upset over Jay’s demise he can’t even make love to his wife.”

“Not when she still reeks of Drake.”

“Oh, please. Don’t take a self-righteous posture with me. You’re in the throes of a ridiculous affair with the teenybopper who hustles drinks at the country club.”

“She’s twenty-six. She only looks eighteen.”

If anything could hurt Miranda-and he had a powerful need to hurt her just now-it was a reminder that she wasn’t getting any younger. Thirty had come and gone. Forty loomed. It was still a long way off, but she was terrified of it.

In her youth, she’d been Miss Charleston County, Miss South Carolina, Miss This and Miss That. She had more tiaras and trophies than the housekeeper could keep polished. Other girls were winning those titles now. Girls with firmer thighs and perkier tits. Girls who didn’t get Botox injections as regularly as pedicures.

Idly, painfully, he wondered if the current Miss Charleston County would have an abortion just to keep her tummy tight.

Miranda’s rich laughter interrupted that dark thought. “Does your tacky little affair explain why you’re popping Viagra these days?” He gave her a sharp look. “Oh, yes. I found it in the medicine cabinet.”

“I’m amazed you could locate it among all the pills you keep in there.” He set his empty glass on the portable bar and considered pouring another shot of vodka but talked himself out of it. He’d kept a buzz going for the last thirty-six hours. Miranda was right; it didn’t look good.

“If you need a pill in order to keep it up for your new, young girlfriend, you’re more pathetic than I thought.”

She was trying her best to rile him, to start something or, rather, continue it. Usually he’d get right into it with her and keep it going until she won. Miranda always won.

But today, he didn’t want to play their game. He had other things on his mind, life-and-death issues that were weightier than their ongoing contest to see who could inflict the most painful wound.

“We’re both pathetic, Miranda.”

He went to the window and moved aside the drape, which had been pulled closed, no doubt to create a more romantic ambience for her and Drake. From this second-story vantage point, George could see down onto the back lawn of the estate, where a crew of men were mowing, weeding, clipping. Separated from the formal lawn by a stone-wall border, the irrigated acreage spread out like a green apron. A white wood fence enclosed a pasture where their racehorses grazed.

He could see the roof of the multicar garage that housed his father-in-law’s collection of classic cars as well as his own fleet of automobiles, kept buffed and polished and gassed up, ready to roll at his whim.

George McGowan had come from the working class. Money, actually the lack of it, had been a constant worry to his folks. In order to provide for his family of seven, his daddy had worked overtime at Conway Concrete and Construction Company. It was hot and dusty work that killed him well before his time. He’d dropped dead one August afternoon while working an extra shift. The doctor said he hadn’t felt a thing.

Who would ever have guessed that his oldest son, George, would wind up marrying Miranda Conway, only child of the owner of the enterprise, the most desired girl around, because she was not only the most beautiful but also the richest. She was a debutante, a beauty queen, and an heiress. She could have had any man she wanted. She had wanted George McGowan.

“I can’t go back and undo it,” he said quietly as he watched the Thoroughbreds graze, taking their life of privilege as their due. As Miranda did. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t. God help me, I couldn’t give all this up.” He let the drape fall back into place and turned toward her. “I couldn’t give you up.”

She tossed back her hair and looked at him with exasperation. “Stop being such a crybaby, George. For crissake. Jay Burgess died in bed with a naked lady beside him. Don’t you think he’d rather go that way than die of cancer?”

“Knowing Jay like I did, yeah, he probably would.”

She gave him her smile, the one that would make a man sell his soul to have her. “That’s my boy. That’s my hero. That’s my strong, handsome George.” She stood up and started walking toward him with a feline gait, slowly untying the belt of her robe and letting it slide off her.

When she reached him, she pressed her lush body against him and boldly began massaging him through his trousers. “Are you sad, baby? Worried? I know how to make you feel better. You’ve never needed Viagra with me, have you?”

She caressed him with a know-how that could only be achieved with practice. Lots of practice. He gritted his teeth and tried to reverse the rush of blood funneling toward her stroking fist, but resisting her was a lost cause. He cursed her to hell and back, but she only laughed and unzipped his trousers.

“Georgie Porgie, puddin’ and pie. Kissed the girls and made them…” Coming up on tiptoe, wrapping one long leg around him, she bit the lobe of his ear, then whispered, “Make me cry.”

His soul was lost already, too far gone to ever hope for redemption. So, what the hell did it matter?

Roughly, he thrust himself into her.

“Mr. Fordyce, they’re replaying it now.”

“Thank you.”

Attorney General Cobb Fordyce’s personal assistant withdrew, leaving him alone in his office. He’d asked her to alert him if Britt Shelley’s press conference was aired a second time.

He swiveled his chair around to face the walnut cabinetry behind his desk and used a remote to switch on the television set, to watch what had been broadcast live during the lunch hour, which he’d missed because of a meeting.