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“I thought it was probably as important to her as the money.”
Prue grinned. “Even more so at the moment. I’m a dress designer on the side, and she’s going to model for me at a library benefit. I made her promise to cut way back on chocolate.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I thought she looked pretty great.”
“I’ll tell her you said that.” She offered her hand again. “I have to tell you I’m now officially on Addy’s side. Nice to meet you, Randy Sanford.”
“Nice to meet you,” he replied. Though the experience was a little like being mowed down by a runaway train.
He waved her off as she drove away, then went to his car, smiling at the thought that Paris O’Hara had been flustered.
By him.
CHAPTER THREE
“THE MIRANDA POOLE AGENCY.” A slightly bored voice with a pseudo British accent answered the telephone. Paris felt her courage wane. Her mother had often talked about her very first agent, and Paris had looked her up on the Internet, somewhat surprised to see that she was still in business. But would her mother’s agent know about Paris’s father?
She might very well know something, Paris answered herself with a fortifying toss of her hair. One of the few bits of information her mother had given her was that they’d been represented by the same agent. That was how they’d met.
Paris assumed a tone of voice a shade deeper and more authoritative than her usual courteous manner. “May I speak to Ms. Poole, please? This is Paris O’Hara calling.”
There was a momentary pause. “Does Miss Poole represent you?”
“No, but she represented my mother some time ago.”
That was almost a non sequitur, but not quite. The voice didn’t seem to know what to make of it.
“Who was your mother?”
“Camille Malone.”
“Hold on a moment,” she advised.
A cheerful New York voice came on the line almost immediately. “Miranda Poole,” she said. “Camille, is that you?”
“No,” Paris replied, sitting up straight at the kitchen table to sustain her woman-in-charge attitude. It was threatening to bail on her. “This is Camille’s daughter, Paris. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for me.”
“About Camille?”
“About…another actor you represented at the same time. Jeffrey St. John.”
“Ah, yes,” Miranda replied. “He and Camille were in the chorus of Damn Yankees together as I recall.”
“That’s him.” Paris’s heart thudded against her ribs. Now came the tricky part. She had to make her willing to share information without revealing that he’d gotten her mother pregnant, something her mother claimed no one had known. If she could at least confirm where he’d come from, she’d have somewhere to start in an effort to find out what kind of man he’d been. “I understand he was from Florida.”
“That’s right,” Miranda replied. “Still is, last I heard. Got one of those photo cards from him at Christmas. He and his sons have formed a band and they’re working clubs from Daytona to Miami Beach.”
Still is. The words rang over and over in Paris’s ears. For a moment she couldn’t speak.
“Paris?” Miranda asked.
“He’s…” Paris had to clear her throat and try again. “He’s alive?”
“Of course he’s alive. You kids, honestly. A person turns sixty and you think the warranty automatically runs out. I’m eighty-three and still placing the best talent in New York.” Paris heard the sound of paper being shuffled on the other end of the line. “I don’t seem to have kept his number,” Miranda said, “but he shouldn’t be hard to find if he’s working clubs. Performers like privacy off duty, but they can’t make themselves too hard to find or they won’t get work. I think it was a Fort Lauderdale address.”
Paris was still speechless.
“How is your mother?” Miranda asked. “She was such a game girl. Once played a pickle in one of the first commercials for Burger Bungalow. A lot of actors won’t take those roles, but your mother paid her rent with whatever came her way. Not too many actors like that today.”
“She’s fine,” Paris replied, finally regaining a fraction of her composure. “She’s in Africa on a fashion shoot right now.”
“She was a beautiful girl. I suppose she’s matured into a handsome matron.”
“She has,” Paris confirmed, then thanked Miranda for her cooperation. She hung up the phone, thinking that it was a good thing her mother had experience playing a pickle, because she was going to find herself in one the moment Paris got a hold of her.
Paris paced the living room with its unobstructed view of the lake, but failed to notice the setting sun, the ducks sheltering in the reeds, the lone sailboat dawdling across the middle of the lake, its running lights streaking a pattern across the water as it moved. She usually took such pleasure in the beautiful, quiet moments when she was alone in the house without her charming but chattering mother and sister.
Tonight, all she could think about was that her mother had lied to her. Twice! First, she hadn’t bothered to tell her that Jasper O’Hara was not her biological father, then, when confronted with Paris’s evidence to that effect, she’d lied again, and told her her father was dead.
To think Paris had waited a year, trying to respect her mother’s sensitive feelings on the subject. Only the need to pull her life together after a year of floundering had made her desperate for more information.
She couldn’t believe it. What had motivated her mother to do such a thing? It wasn’t as though Jeffrey St. John had been some demented villain. Certainly, the plain-spoken Miranda Poole would have said something about that.
Paris guessed that her mother decided life would be simpler without an ex-lover’s involvement in it, so she’d lied.
Then she paced a little more and realized that probably wasn’t true. While her mother often had the quality of a diva about her, she wasn’t prone to selfish decisions.
Camille Malone O’Hara had been a beauty queen, then a model, then an actress, and a beautiful face and body were still very much a priority with her. She ate only healthy foods, worked out every day at the gym and chose her wardrobe with skill and care. And she was always after Paris and Prue to do the same.
Prue had a natural inclination to fall into step, but for Paris, all her mother’s encouragement had done was remind her that she took after her father and would never be gorgeous.
So, her mother could be…superficial. But, usually, when it came to her daughters, she did everything in her power to be supportive.
Still—she’d lied twice, so maybe in regard to this particular issue, her maternal instincts could not be relied upon.
Angry and exasperated after hours of thinking about her situation and her mother, Paris tried to call her. She stopped first to try to figure out what time it was in Morocco. Five hours ahead of Boston. She glanced at her watch. It was 11:00 p.m. It would be 4:00 a.m. She didn’t care and called anyway.
She sympathized for just a moment with the sleepy sound of the voice that answered the phone. Camille, she was told, had taken off with a photographer and two other models. They would be back in several days. Until then, there was no way to reach them.
“You’re telling me,” she asked, “that in an age of cell phones, e-mail, faxes and global positioning, they’re out of touch?”
The foggy voice sighed. “Is it an emergency?”
Yes, it’s an emergency! she wanted to shout. Who the hell am I? I need to know. But she understood that while it was important to her, it didn’t warrant sending out a search party or otherwise alarming everyone on the shoot.
“No,” she replied finally. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“Shall I have her call you when she comes in?”
“No,” she replied. “Never mind. Thank you.” She could pursue this herself without her mother’s help.
Prue came home an hour later and sympathized while she made tea.
“Why would Mom have lied to me again?” Paris demanded.
Prue took the boiling kettle off the stove and poured water into a fat brown teapot she’d already warmed with hot water and fitted with a loose tea infuser. Had Paris been doing it, she’d have simply poured hot water into two mugs and dunked a tea bag, but Prue was into ritual. She carried the pot to the table, put a calico cozy on it, then went back to the cupboard for china cups and saucers.
“It’s pretty obvious she doesn’t want you to meet him, whoever he is,” Prue said frankly.
“I have a right to know who he is.”
“Not if he’s going to hurt you.”
Paris gasped impatiently. “Prue, life isn’t all about hair and makeup and cups that match the teapot! Sometimes it’s messy, and if that’s my life, I have a right to know.”
Prue frowned at her testy remark. “Yes. I’m not telling you you don’t have a right to know, I’m just speculating on why Mom won’t tell you.”
“Well, I’m going to call him.” Paris whipped the cozy off the pot and poured the weak but steaming tea into Prue’s cup, feeling guilty for snapping at her. Then she poured her own. “First thing in the morning.”
“What if you get his wife, who doesn’t know he fathered a child that isn’t hers? Or one of his boys?”
“I’ll be careful. I won’t talk to anyone but him.”
“Okay.” Prue dipped her spoon into the sugar bowl. “Want me to drive for you in the morning so you can make the call? I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but I know you’ll do what you want to do, anyway.”
“The truth,” Paris said loftily, “is always the right thing.”
“Noble,” Prue acknowledged, “but probably not always right.”
“You can’t pick and choose with it,” Paris countered.
Prue stirred the sugar into her tea. “You should go back to law school. You certainly sound like a lawyer. All black and white, right and wrong.”
“Before I can do anything relating to my future,” Paris insisted, “I have to settle this. Good or bad, I have to know. And then I can go on.”
“What if it’s harder than you think?”
“I can handle it.” At least, that was her plan.
Prue sighed. “Well, you’re a better woman than I am. I’d be happy knowing Jasper loved me like his own.”
“I do love knowing that,” Paris said defensively. “I just also need to know who my biological father is. Then I can reorganize my life and get somewhere with it.”
“I thought you were doing pretty well. You provide a much-needed service in this town.”
Paris sipped at her tea. “I like the work, but anybody could do it.”
“I don’t think so,” Prue argued. “Not everyone would let the old folks run a tab, or keep an eye out for runaways, or take the homeless to the clinic as a service to the community.”
“It’s a custodial world. We’re supposed to take care of one another.”
Prue shook her head at her. “That’s radical thinking in today’s world. Well, maybe not in Maple Hill, but almost anywhere else. You certainly don’t hear that kind of talk in political circles, I assure you. Except for Gideon, and that apparently was just a front.”
Paris decided they’d talked enough about her problems. Prue was doing her best to be supportive, and the least she could do was return the favor. “Do you miss that life?” she asked. “The politics and the power parties?”
“Sometimes.” Prue pushed away from the table and went to the cupboard for a box of thin ginger cookies she claimed were a safe indulgence. Paris thought it a crime to waste valuable calories on something that wasn’t chocolate or cream-filled, but she was determined to be cooperative. She took a cookie when Prue offered her the box.
Prue fell back into her chair. “Then I remember all the nights Gideon came home after midnight, all the plans we had to cancel at the last minute, all the things we planned to do but never got to because something more important had to be taken care of. I accepted it at the time, but now that I don’t have to, I’m happy to live for me.”
“It’s hard to believe,” Paris said quietly, “that Gideon would have done that to you. The intern, I mean.”
Prue grew defensive. She always did when Paris suggested that fooling around with an intern in their summer home in Maine was unlike her brother-in-law’s straight-arrow approach to life and politics. “You always take his side, but I saw it with my own eyes. They were on the sofa, and she was in her underwear. How else would you explain that?”
“I don’t know,” Paris replied, “but I think I’d have asked that he try.”
“He’s a politician.” Prue’s eyes filled with turbulence, and her cheeks with color—other effects Gideon’s name always had on her. “He can explain away anything. I know what I saw, and no one’s going to make me believe that it wasn’t what it looked like.” She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “Washington does that to you. The success of your cause is worth whatever it takes to accomplish it. Men wheel and deal, gain power, make life-and-death decisions for millions of people and finally come to believe that they deserve whatever they want in recompense.”
Again, that didn’t sound like Gideon. Paris remembered him when he was an alderman in Finchbury, a town on the other side of Springfield, and fought big money and the almost rabid historic conservationists who wanted to oust every resident and retailer in a block of old buildings downtown and turn the area into an interpretive center. He’d slaved for a year to get the funding to restore the buildings, maintain the businesses and the residences, and turn a large upstairs room into a sort of miniconvention center. Everyone praised his efforts as the perfect combination of conservation and commerce.
But Paris kept that to herself. Prue’s ignition switch was always hot where her soon-to-be ex-husband was concerned.
“Well, the best revenge is living well, they say.” She reached across the table to pat Prue’s hand. “And you’re about to become a brilliant designer.” She gave her sister a small grin. “And if I’m going to have to eat these ginger things until the fashion show, you’d better move up the date.”
“SAINTS AND SINNERS!” A smooth voice answered the phone just after nine the following morning. Paris had stared at the phone for a full hour before mustering the courage to dial. She’d told Prue she’d make her call at 8:00 a.m.
At eight-fifteen, Prue had anxiously checked with her. “What did he say?”
“I haven’t called yet,” Paris had admitted.
“I’m sorry. I’m not rushing you.”
“It’s all right. I’m calling now.”
Prue checked again at eight-thirty.
“I still haven’t done it. But I’m going to. Now.”
“You’re sure you want to know?”
“I’m sure.”
The voice was younger than Jeffrey St. John would be, Paris felt sure. She tried to sound like a prospective client.
“I’d like to speak to Jeffrey St. John, please,” she said.
“This is Jeffrey St. John,” the voice replied. “Did you want to make a booking?”
“Jeffrey St. John,” she asked carefully, “who was in the chorus of Damn Yankees?”
