The Arrangement. Suzanne Forster

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СКАЧАТЬ he’d left her there, dry-docked for repairs. Now, he realized it was just as well that he hadn’t brought her back. He wanted the sloop there when he and Alison returned, even if he decided against taking her out.

      Sailing wasn’t the same now. A darkness shadowed even the thought. He’d become almost as insular as she had—the strange, silent woman in the other wing of the house. For some time now, he’d been backing away from his business, turning more and more responsibility over to Stacy, but that was intentional. He’d also largely withdrawn from the social circuit. It was awkward going out alone. There were always the questions about Alison.

      Interesting how all roads led back to her. He couldn’t seem to get her out of his thoughts, but maybe that was to be expected. She was at the core of the mystery that dominated his days. Possibly, she was the mystery.

      His stomach rumbled and he glanced over at the plate he’d left on the built-in counter and cabinets he used for work space. It was an array of summer fruit and a whole-grain croissant that he’d forgotten in his quest to be creative.

      He went to the refrigerator that he stocked with juices, fruits and raw vegetables. He’d naturally gravitated toward healthier food since quitting booze after Regine died. He’d never been a falling-down drunk, but every day it had seemed to take more and more to lubricate his inane conversations with the celebrity crowd and their entourages. He’d drunk his way through too many lunches, bullshitted through too many dinners and award show parties.

      Garbage in, garbage out. It all sounded the same. One day he’d lost track of his messages and called the wrong hot new rock star. He’d congratulated her on an award that she’d lost to a feuding competitor. She’d filled Andrew’s ear with obscenities, which had struck him as funny. He’d dropped the phone and laughed until he cried, and when he’d gotten up to freshen his drink, the liquor bottle was empty.

      It had seemed like a sign.

      Now, Andrew’s goal was to hand over as much as he could of the concert promotion business to Stacy. They were reorganizing so that the bulk of it could be handled out of his Manhattan office, and the rest he could deal with from wherever he happened to be, including here in Oyster Bay. Stacy would have to hire more staff, which would raise the overhead, but that was fine. It was time he needed now, not money.

      He grabbed a bottle of carrot-and-pineapple juice and walked over to his drafting table, still thinking about his new sketch. That’s where it seemed to start and end these days, with the sketches. He never got to the building, never even got to the design, though that was his first love.

      The walls of his office were lined with photographs and paintings of classic boats, most of them crafted of wood, and to his mind, works of art. Today’s serious racing yachts were built with man-made materials, and though their lines were beautiful and their speed breathtaking, they lacked the soul of their graceful forebears.

      He set down the juice unopened, picked up his pencil and drew in the hull with a couple of strokes. It was coming now. She would be small, fast and graceful, a sloop. Like her.

      Once again, his mind went directly to Alison, like a car heading into a curve and driving off the road. How could you not think about a woman who slept naked in a cool dark room, shades drawn, even during the day?

      He’d gone there to talk at various times, but she hadn’t answered the door, not even when he pounded. He’d let himself in and found her in bed, entwined with the sheets and stretched out like a nude in a painting.

      At times he could have sworn she was sleeping with her eyes open, like a sphinx. He never quite knew what to make of the strange creature he’d fished out of the sea, but he could not make the mistake of falling under her spell and wrecking himself on the rocks.

      Someone had tried to frame him by making his wife’s accident look like murder. Posing as him, they’d taken out a two-million-dollar insurance policy on Alison a month before her accident. All the arrangements, including the results of her annual medical exam, had been handled by fax and phone, and it could just as easily have been Alison herself doing it. Voices were easily disguised on the phone.

      Just days before the accident, he’d told her he wanted a divorce. Their prenuptial gave her a million dollars for every year of marriage if he initiated a divorce, and nothing if she did. Without blinking an eye she’d asked for the money. He’d had it wired to the account she indicated, and forty-eight hours later, she’d disappeared off his boat.

      It was enough to make a guy think. The wife he’s about to divorce vanishes with a nice chunk of change and he’s prosecuted for her murder? It was a tidy bit of revenge, if that’s what the wife had in mind. Of course, it had backfired.

      “Andrew?”

      Her voice always startled him. It wasn’t Alison’s. But then, how could it be, he reminded himself, after all those operations?

      He looked up to see her standing in the doorway of his study, lithe and tan in her white shorts and flowing, slightly wild, dark hair. She held a note in her hand. Good, he thought, she’d found it.

      She was up, walking and talking.

      She wasn’t sleeping like the sphinx.

      Good.

      2

      She glanced down to see if her breasts were properly exposed in the plunging wrap top. Her fringed skirt hit midthigh, which was baby stuff on this street corner. Most of the girls’ fannies were falling out of their clothes, and some of the flesh was disgustingly jiggly. Not a pretty sight in broad daylight. At least she was toned. And she’d known enough to wear a skirt, the working girl’s uniform. Short skirts weren’t just sexually suggestive, they were efficient.

      A sleek silver Porsche pulled to the curb. Not very discreet of the silly bastard, she thought as she walked over to the passenger door. The window zipped down and the baby-faced thirty-something driver checked her out.

      “I was looking for a blonde, younger and stacked,” he said.

      “Aren’t you lucky.” She gave him a flirty wink and pulled off her silk scarf, exposing platinum-blond curls that would have done Gwen Stefani proud. It was a wig, but this guy wouldn’t care. He just wanted to get his apples picked, and that meant serving up as much of his particular fantasy as she could manage.

      Young wasn’t an option. Stacked, she could do something about. She cupped her breasts and pushed them up, bending toward the car window. Silly bastard, she thought as she saw his salacious grin.

      “Get in,” he told her.

      She barely had the door shut when he peeled out, leaving a streak of smoking rubber behind them.

      “The perfect place,” he announced as he turned onto a deserted side street a couple blocks up, and parked. The grin reappeared as he unzipped his pants and made himself readily available.

      “Knock yourself out,” he said.

      Cheeky little SOB was going to pay for that remark, she promised herself.

      He continued to laugh and joke as she worked him over, pleasuring him with her hands and her mouth until suddenly, he wasn’t laughing anymore. He was begging her to stop. Of course, she redoubled her efforts, and within seconds he was squealing like a baby pig.

      “Damn, woman, let me at you,” СКАЧАТЬ