Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [40]
It was Venetia who answered his ring. “Hello, Bill.” She kissed the man who had been considered their family friend as long as she could remember. “I’m glad you’re here. It feels so strange without Jenny.”
“You all right, kitten?” He put his arm around her shoulders as they walked into the spacious room that fronted the ocean. The tide was high today, rippling at the foot of the broad wooden deck where the other two sisters were waiting in the shade of the blue awning.
“I’m okay now. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through it all, but at least the worst is over. Come and sit in the sunshine, it’s such a beautiful day.”
Bill slid off his jacket and tossed it across the back of a chair, bending to kiss first India and then Paris. “Hi, girls, how’re ya doing?”
“I suppose we’re all feeling relieved—and that’s certainly a whole lot better than what we were feeling before.” Paris smiled as she got to her feet. “Can I get you something? A cold beer? Some white wine?”
The beer sounded tempting, but his wife would kill him if he went off his diet—or else the beer would. “Just a Perrier, love—no lime.”
He leaned against the deck rail, tapping his fingers nervously. Stan Reubin should be here any minute and then they’d get on with this farce. He lit his fifth cigarette of the morning. He shouldn’t have and he wondered again if the relief of smoking it were worth the guilt and anxiety he would feel afterward. Goddamn it, what with diet and exercise, no booze and no cigarettes, self-denial had become a way of life; if it weren’t for cocaine and sex, where would Hollywood be?
“There’s no surf today.” India leaned companionably on the rail next to him, gazing at the ocean as it sloped in glassy waves, tumbling in faint, frothy ripples on the sand. A patch of kelp floated darkly, beyond the waves.
“Remember when you taught me to surf all those years ago? I must have been only about seven.” She laughed, remembering herself as a skinny, buck-toothed seven-year-old. “I’ll let you into a secret, Bill. You were quite a hero of mine for a long time when I was a kid. I thought you were more handsome than any of Jenny’s boyfriends and I liked you a whole lot better. I thought you liked me, too, but I figured seven was a bit young for marriage so I decided I’d be noble and unselfish and allow you to marry Jenny—at least then I would have you around forever. But it didn’t work out that way.”
Her amused brown eyes gazed at his battered face inquiringly. With his mane of silver hair, deep-set eyes, and misleadingly benign expression, he was still quite an attractive man.
“Just for the record, Bill, did you ever ask her?”
He ground out his cigarette impatiently. “No, India. I didn’t. Oh, I was in love with her all right—on and off in the beginning and in between the fights, and there were times when we were tempted to take it farther, but thank God common sense prevailed. Your mother and I managed to remain friends for most of our lives, until …”
“Until? What, Bill?”
Stan Reubin’s famous, booming courtroom voice sounded from inside the house and Kaufmann turned from India in relief, ignoring her question.
“Ah, here’s Stan, at last.” Taking her arm he walked back into the sun-filled room. He paused for a minute at the door. “And, India, thanks for the compliment.”
She grinned back at him. “You’re welcome.”
“There you are, Bill.” Stan Reubin glanced at him coldly. It was his view that Bill Kaufmann should have been able to manipulate Jenny better than he had. After all, wasn’t that what he was there for?
“Come and sit down, girls, and let us get on with this. Not that I have much to say, but after I’m done I’m sure you’ll have a million questions.”
He leaned against the mantel of the empty fireplace with the three girls lined