Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [9]
He thought of the report of the Mandarin Lai Tsin’s death he’d read in the San Francisco Examiner earlier that day, and the speculation about the amount of his fortune. “Lai Tsin a Millionaire” it had said, and then naturally they had mentioned the old scandal about Francie and her Chinaman. The Harrison family name had been dragged through the mud one more time and he had wanted to kill her all over again. He thought bitterly that if Lai Tsin had planned to destroy him he couldn’t have chosen a better time to do it, because his death was raking up the old scandal just when Harry needed to stay out of the public eye, at least until he had pulled off this coup with the oil wells.
He walked slowly up the steps, glancing briefly at Greta, the pretty young movie actress waiting in the hallway. She smiled appealingly at him, but he didn’t even break his stride. “Ask Huffkins to get out the car and drive Miss Wolfe back to her hotel,” he told the butler carelessly over his shoulder as he strode past her. She stared blankly after him; they had been together for three passionate weeks and she had a right to expect at least a civil good-bye, but by the time he reached his study and closed his door he had already forgotten her. Greta Wolfe was in the past.
Harry sank into the buttoned leather chair and put his feet up on the mahogany partners’ desk. He was boiling with anger against his sister, Francie, and at Maryanne Brattle Wingate; one because she was a slut who had dragged his name in the dust and the other because she was snooty and unobtainable, and tonight she had let him know she still had the edge on him, despite the liveried footmen, the showy dinner, and the sumptuous flowers. And despite their complex “relationship.”
Harry was a handsome man, tall, broad-shouldered, and bearded like his father. He had piercing light-blue eyes, sleek dark-blond hair that was beginning to recede, and a calculated social charm. He also had a great attraction for the opposite sex, but tonight Maryanne had sat on his right in the place of honor, ignoring the fine wines and toying with the delicious food, condescending to listen every now and again to Hollywood’s most important moviemaker and owner of Magic Studios, Zev Abrams, as he engaged her in conversation.
She had turned her cool green gaze on Harry and said, “Buck and I are cutting back on our entertaining. We are going in for simple little dinners and smaller, more intimate parties. One feels, in our position, it’s just a little bit in bad taste to flaunt one’s wealth with the terrible Depression still so close in all our minds.” And she had smiled that superior little smile. Maryanne had known the flamboyant dinner party was meant to impress her and Buck as well as the monied guests he hoped to persuade to invest in his oil wells, and she wanted to let him know she wasn’t buying it. She knew he was using her and that without her he didn’t stand a chance of getting his investors. And, goddamit, she was right.
Harry poured himself a brandy, swirling the rich amber liquid around the thin Baccarat crystal balloon glass.
He rested his head on the cool leather of the chair, remembering the shock of the stock market crash that had halved what was left of his assets overnight, and decimated them again a few days later. And after that had come the Depression and it had been touch and go whether his bank would survive. Oh, he hadn’t been reduced to hurling himself from a Wall Street window or selling apples for ten cents on the sidewalks, but the Harrison fortune was no more. Some money still flowed in—thanks to a little stroke of luck he’d had a few years ago, and his own cleverness in exploiting it—but it flowed right out again into his various faltering enterprises.