Shadows At Sunset - Anne Stuart [1]
But he’d simply given her his usual, indulgent smile, and as always Brenda was lost, as she had been when she first saw him across the bright lights of a movie set, when he was a lowly director of photography and she was a grand star. She’d loved him ever since, no matter how illogical. She’d spent almost her entire life, thirty-three…er…twenty-eight years focused on her career, and she’d put it all at risk for a mad infatuation that never faded, through career disaster, through time, through death itself.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, honeybunch,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “The place is still standing, though just barely, and the house tours still stop by the gates occasionally.”
“It’s the scandal tour,” Brenda said. “The same people who go visit Valentino’s grave and the place where the Black Dahlia was found. Hardly befitting a gorgeous villa like La Casa de Sombras!” she said with a sniff. “And not very flattering to the two of us. I hate thinking our only legacy was our death.”
Ted set his glasses down beside the newspaper, turning to look at her out of those wonderful gray eyes of his. The newspaper was the Los Angeles Times, dated October 27, 1951, the day before they died. It never changed, and Ted read it every morning with the air of a man who was seeing it for the first time. As Brenda suspected he was.
“Honeybunch, anyone who sees your movies will remember you in all your glory. Especially the ones I directed,” he added with a mischievous grin. “Scandals fade, art remains. Ars longa, vita brevis, you know.”
“Stop quoting movie slogans at me,” she snapped. “I never worked for MGM and I’m glad of it.”
“It’s a little older than that….”
“Don’t condescend to me, either, with your Ivy League education,” she interrupted him, glaring at her nails. She filed them every day, searching out little imperfections, and each day she found new ones. There was one major glory in that, though. She never aged. She missed seeing her reflection in the mirrors that filled every room of La Casa, but she knew from the look in Ted’s eyes that she was still just as beautiful as she’d ever been. It was all she needed.
“They’re not going to tear it down,” he said patiently. “It survived the sixties and those repulsive creatures who camped out here. It’s survived years of neglect, and at least now we have someone who loves it as much as we do. She’ll take care of the place. And of us.”
“But what if she doesn’t?” Brenda cried. “What if they tear it down to make office buildings? We’ll be left wandering the earth, lost….”
“Honeybunch,” he said, his voice warm and comforting, and she slid into his arms so naturally, finding the peace that was always there. “We’ll make it through. Don’t we always, you and me together?”
She looked at him, so dear, so sweet, so maddening, so eternal. “Always,” she said in a tremulous voice. She leaned down to press her carmine lips against his firm mouth, and slowly they began their inevitable fade-out.
1
Jilly Meyer never approached her father’s office without some sort of absurd fantasy playing through her mind. The last time she’d come she hadn’t been able to shake the image of a French aristocrat riding in a tumbrel to her untimely doom. The reality of that unpleasant meeting with her father had been about as grim, and she hadn’t exchanged more than a handful of civil words to him in the eighteen months since.
And yet here she was again, only this time she wasn’t the proud but noble martyr heading toward her fate. This time she was a warrior at the gates, ready to do battle with the forces of evil. She just had to persuade Charon to let her cross the river Styx so she could confront Satan himself.
Terrible of her to think of her father as the devil, she thought absently. And steely eyed Mrs. Afton didn’t deserve to be called Charon, even if she guarded her employer with a diligence that was downright supernatural.
“Your father is a very busy man, Jilly,” Mrs. Afton said in her clipped, icy tones that had terrified Jilly