The Innocents Club. Taylor Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ Gossamer violet feathers shimmered as the bird craned her head this way and that.

      “Where’s your fella, pretty girl?” Mariah murmured.

      Black pearl eyes cast a baleful glance her way. Mourning doves were monogamous, she recalled, mating for life, slow to accept a new partner at the death of a mate. This one’s mate must have fallen prey to some urban catastrophe, dooming her to follow behind the other pairs in the flock, permitted to observe but never join their comfortable circle.

      Mariah felt her own loss thrum like an arrhythmia of the heart, a dull, aching reminder of David’s absence and the permanent empty spaces his death had created inside and around her. The sense of isolation. She felt like someone stuck at the top of a broken Ferris wheel—rocking and waiting, looking at the world from a distance. Half the time, she ached for the wheel to start turning again. The rest of the time, she lived in terror of the next, inevitable downward plunge.

      The melancholy cooing of the doves sounded a counter-point to the hum of traffic moving up and down Santa Monica Boulevard. Long shadows drifted like pale purple gauze across the courtyard walls. She glanced once more at her watch. Six-fifteen. Nine-fifteen, back in Virginia. Lindsay would be up for a while yet. Like most teenagers, she prowled late at the best of times, and it would only get worse now that she was on summer vacation. If she got back to the hotel in the next couple of hours, Mariah calculated, she could still call without disturbing anyone at Carol’s house.

      Then she had another thought. Frank. Before this afternoon, she hadn’t heard his voice in weeks. Now, the prospect of hearing it again brought a smile to her lips.

      She leaned over the balcony’s edge to see if the VIPs were in sight. The solitary dove followed her gaze, peering down at the steady stream of cars still pulling up, disgorging high-powered passengers into the building’s maw. A small crowd had gathered on either side of the entryway. In Los Angeles, apparently, all it took to assemble an audience was to string a barrier, roll out a red carpet and wait for the celebrity-seekers to materialize like ants at a picnic.

      Suddenly, the doves scattered on a flutter of wings as a strong hand gripped Mariah’s elbow. In her ear, a low voice murmured, “Don’t jump!”

      She swung around to find a pair of crystal-blue eyes grinning down at her. “Paul! What are you doing here?”

      Chaney kissed her cheek, as eyes had turned in their direction. Paul tended to have that effect on crowded rooms. So much for blending.

      “Thought I’d surprise you,” he said. “You look gorgeous.”

      “Thank you. I am surprised, but I’m confused, too. How—?”

      “I got an invitation to this shindig weeks ago. I wasn’t going to come until you mentioned yesterday that you were. Decided I’d deliver your keys in person.”

      Based in Washington, Paul had friends everywhere he’d ever stood in front of a camera. The only reason Mariah had called to tell him she’d be in L.A. early was that the beach cottage near Chap Korman’s house where she and Lindsay were planning to spend their vacation belonged to some friend of Paul’s. He’d been making arrangements to get the keys to her that week.

      His appearance always set off mixed reactions in her, but right now, it was mostly dismay Mariah felt. “You shouldn’t have come all this way,” she said, meaning it.

      “I know, but I wanted to. I thought it might be a little tricky for you tonight, what with Renata Hunter Carr being here and all. I came to offer moral support.”

      Oh, Lord, Mariah thought, I am an ungrateful wretch.

      “I was running late, though. Thought I’d miss the whole shebang,” Paul said, glancing around. “I gather Zakharov’s plane was late arriving?”

      Mariah nodded.

      He settled on the low balcony wall, long legs crossing at the ankles. His charcoal suit—Armani, no doubt—draped his athletic body with an elegant ease that most mere mortals could only envy. He had also been blessed with the even, agreeable bone structure camera lenses favored. He was fair-haired, with just a little gray and white intermingling at the temples. His face, classically good-looking, was also slightly weathered, adding a patina of maturity to an appearance that might otherwise have been too boyish to carry the weight of the award-winning television news-magazine he anchored.

      “Have you seen her yet?” he asked.

      “No. Apparently, she’s part of the ribbon-cutting detail, so I imagine she’ll make her entrance with Zakharov and Kidd.”

      “How are you holding up?”

      “Just fine,” she lied. “It was sweet of you to do this, Paul, but it’s really not that big a deal. I’ve seen her picture in the paper dozens of times. I’m hardly going to have a nervous breakdown just because we happen to be in the same room.”

      “What if you have to talk to her?”

      “No reason I should. She doesn’t know me, and I’m obviously not going to go out of my way to introduce myself.”

      Chaney studied her for a moment, then turned back to the crowd. “There’s Nolan,” he said.

      “Nolan?”

      “Nolan Carr, her son. The young Robert Redford clone over there with Mayor Riordan and the senators.”

      Mariah followed his gaze across the courtyard to where an attractive, self-assured young man was locked in close conversation with the three politicians.

      “Looks like he’s lobbying,” Paul said.

      “For what?”

      He shrugged. “Who knows? Rumor has it his mother’s got political ambitions for her only child.”

      Mariah studied the would-be politician. “He looks barely old enough to be out of school.”

      “He’s pushing thirty, I think. As for school, he attended Princeton for a while, his late father’s alma mater. I don’t think he ever graduated from anywhere except Playboy U, though. Like I said, politics seems to be his mother’s idea.”

      “His father was Jacob Carr, the former state attorney general, right?”

      “Mmm…Plus, of course, Mrs. Hunter Carr’s a major contributor in her own right. When the time comes, I’m sure Nolan will have the backing he needs.”

      Mariah gave Paul a curious look. “How do you know all this?”

      “I interviewed Arlen Hunter not long before he died,” Paul said. “I met both Renata and Nolan, though he was just a kid at the time. Pretty rambunctious, at that. I’ve run into the mother once or twice since.”

      “You never told me that,” Mariah said, frowning.

      “Well, I knew it was a touchy subject. Frankly, there’s never really been a time before now when I thought it needed to be mentioned.”

      “Hmm….” Mariah said. How very politically correct of him.

      The director of the Arlen Hunter Museum, who’d been pointed out to Mariah when she’d passed СКАЧАТЬ