Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [101]
“This is so very kind of you, Mr. Van Dorn,” the woman who’d accompanied them gushed. She was in her twenties, a little plump, and she had a crush on him. She was always fluttering around him when he made his mandatory visits to bestow gifts and smiles on the revolting little patients to further ensure the world knew Harry Van Dorn was a kindhearted philanthropist. She even had the temerity to suggest he might like to have a cup of coffee with her, to discuss the patients, of course. She was some kind of social worker, he remembered, though her name escaped him.
She was still nattering on. “These children get so few treats—I know they’ll love a visit to your estate at Lake Arrowhead for the carnival you’ve arranged. They don’t get out of the hospital, much less out of the city, and I know a day in the mountains will be wonderful for them.”
“The pleasure is mine, Miss…” He deliberately let the sentence hang, just so she’d know how little he’d noticed her. She was expendable goods. But then, in the end, so was everybody.
Her bright smile faltered a bit. “Miss White. Jennifer White.”
He didn’t like the name. Jennifer was too much like Genevieve, and it was hard to keep his charming smile in place when he thought about her.
“I consider it an honor to escort these little tykes around for the day. If things run too late I’ll have my staff see that they’re well taken care of and they’ll be back in the morning.”
Jennifer White’s face creased in sudden worry. “But I thought we were talking about the afternoon only, Mr. Van Dorn?”
“Hell, it takes an hour to get up into the San Bernardino Mountains from here. You needn’t worry about them, Miss White. I have a fully qualified staff to look after them.”
“But I’m coming with—” she said.
“I’m afraid not. You’ve got orders to report back to the hospital—some kind of crisis.” It hadn’t taken much to ensure that. St. Catherine’s Children’s Hospital received a very large sum of money from him, and in the past couple of years they weren’t even forced to turn a blind eye to the damaged children he’d eventually given up to them. His tastes had changed, but one could never tell when he’d want to enjoy a bit of childhood innocence, and he always kept his resources in place.
“Then perhaps I should take the children back and we could do this another day,” she suggested nervously.
“Miss White, do you seriously believe these poor little munchkins aren’t completely safe with me and my fully trained staff?” He used his best aw-shucks grin, and she melted, the silly cow.
“Oh, of course not. I just thought…I mean, it’s too much of an imposition…”
“Not an imposition at all,” he said grandly. “One of my drivers will get you right back to the hospital so you can take care of things, as I know you’re so capable of doing. In the meantime, these poor kids will have the treat of their life up at my place by the lake.”
She was still protesting as one of his men hustled her out the door, and he waited until the sound of her voice died away before turning to the children.
He clicked his fingers to his film crew, and they began rolling. In Los Angeles you could find anything for a price, and the one for having a live-in film crew who could record anything he wanted to preserve and relive, no matter how nasty, was surprisingly cheap. Drugs and whores and elegant surroundings kept them pretty well satisfied, and when that began to pall it was easy enough to dispose of one and replace him. It tended to keep the others more compliant.
“It’s a beautiful spring day here in L.A.,” he said, addressing the camera. “April nineteenth, in fact. You people know I had a lot of plans for today, but for some reason those have all fallen through. I’m not particularly worried about any fallout—suspicions are one thing, proving a damn thing would be just about impossible. Not with my resources backing me up.
“So I accept defeat gracefully.” He bared his teeth in an affable grin. “You managed to put a spoke in my wheels, all without understanding what I was trying to accomplish.