The Private Concierge. Suzanne Forster

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СКАЧАТЬ walked to the living room windows, pride swelling as she anticipated the beauty of the wisteria-covered arbor. The smile died on her red-matte lips as she looked out. “What the fuck?”

      The crazy squatter was back and he’d turned her beautiful garden into a tent city! His crude cardboard shelter blighted the wisteria arbor where she’d created the perfect English garden for her outdoor tea. He’d been sneaking onto her property for weeks now, and she’d made the mistake of giving him money to get rid of him. Well, no more payola. She was going to kick his grungy butt off the property herself, not that she had much choice. She didn’t trust the hired help not to rat her out to the tabloids.

      She grabbed her cell phone from the writing desk in the hall and marched to the front door at a military clip. Someone had been giving the tabloids information about her, and she was going to put a stop to that, too. The rags had labeled her Ms. Pris, but now they were questioning whether it should have been Ms. Hissy Fit, simply because she’d taught a reckless teenage tailgater a lesson by letting him pile into the back of her new Mercedes. She’d publicly assailed him for riding her ass all the way to Burbank, and a gathering crowd had cheered her on, which seemed vindication enough. But there’d been no applause the following week when she’d made a waitress cry for serving cold food.

      Okay, Ms. Pris had a temper. She was working on it. But this squatter was different, a clear violation of her rights. The porous greenbelt that ran from the house’s car park to the garden forced her to walk on the tiptoes of her shoes to keep the high heels from sinking in. When she was done with this guy, she would go change into flats and freshen up again. She had time, twenty minutes—and she had another tip for her next book. Never wear high heels at lawn parties!

      As she neared the cardboard tent, she saw a pair of grubby bare feet poking out the bottom and a pile of beer cans and trash next to them. She also saw something that made her blood boil. He’d been using her beautiful lawn for a toilet.

      Another F-bomb rolled off her tongue. “Pack up your things and get out of here,” she demanded.

      He didn’t respond and she kicked at the refrigerator box with the pointed toe of her heels. “Did you hear me?”

      The box lifted off him and as the man roused and rolled toward her, Priscilla saw that he wasn’t the transient she’d been paying off. He was much younger and fitter, with bright blue eyes shining through his shaggy brown hair—and he might not be so easily handled.

      “This is private property.” She brandished the cell phone. “You have two minutes to get your things and leave, or I’ll call 911.”

      “Fuck off,” he muttered, grabbing the box and giving it a shake, as if she’d soiled it. He turned his back to her and collapsed under his cardboard canopy, apparently intending to sleep off the rest of what was probably a liquid breakfast.

      Somewhere in the base of Priscilla’s brain, two wires touched, white hot. A circuit shorted out, sparks erupted and she began to tremble. There was no chance to curb the impulse. It was swift and lethal, animal rage. Her fists clenched, and her upper lip curled back, baring small, sharp incisors. Delicate nostrils flared, and a snarl rattled in her throat, as savage as anything heard in the jungle.

      How dare he turn his mangy freeloading back on her! Counting to ten wasn’t an option when some asshole was about to destroy the opportunity of a lifetime. Her lifetime. She dropped the phone and picked up a sculpture of an iron crane from the garden bed, her only thought to wale on this guy. She didn’t even care if the crew arrived and saw her. He needed to be taught a lesson.

      That snot-nose executive producer wanted edgy? Ha!

      But as she raised the sculpture over her head like a club, a tiny voice of sanity—or maybe it was opportunity—intruded. There might still be some way to salvage this. If she could hit him just hard enough to knock him out, she could roll him onto the cardboard box and drag him out of here, an Indian carry. That way he couldn’t fight her.

      The horrible crunch of iron against skull bone made her wince, and just as quickly as rage had flared, it was gone. Fear flooded her, dropping her to her knees. Whenever she had these insane episodes, she was devastated afterward, shaken, afraid and deeply humiliated at what she’d done. This had to be her worst outburst ever. Had she killed him?

      She pulled off the cardboard to find him slumped and unresponsive but still breathing. He was out cold. If she could get him onto the cardboard, she might still be able to drag him into the bushes where he couldn’t be seen, but she had so little time left.

      Moments later, bent over him and struggling to catch her breath, she realized it was no use. She couldn’t even roll him over. He weighed as much as ten men. She sank onto the ground next to him, sobbing and furious. She should have killed him. Look at what he’d reduced her to.

      Desperate, she searched for the cell and found it in the grass. She speed-dialed her manager, but got voice mail. Her publicist didn’t pick up, either. Didn’t these people ever answer their damn phones? Why the hell was she paying them twenty percent of her hard-earned money?

      Seconds later, she had Lane Chandler on the line, and the sound of her soft, melodious voice worked miracles. It calmed Priscilla like a dip in cool lake water.

      “Priscilla, are you all right?” Lane asked. “How can I help you?”

      Priscilla begged Lane to call the segment producer for the morning show and reschedule the taping. “Please,” she implored, “do it now. Tell them I’ve had an accident.”

      “What kind of accident?”

      Priscilla assured her it wasn’t serious, just horribly embarrassing.

      “I’ll take care of it,” Lane said. “Now, please, take a deep breath and calm down. Are you sure you’re all right? I could call one of our concierge doctors if you need medical care. It’s completely private.”

      “No! No doctors. I’ll be fine. Just call the segment producer and get the taping rescheduled. No one else needs to know about any of this, all right?”

      She clicked off and dropped the phone in horror, unable to believe what had just happened. Everything had been so perfect. It had felt like fate, the stars aligned. She’d never felt more poised or ready for anything. This was supposed to have been her shining moment. And he’d ruined it. This was all his fault.

      She began to sob and swear and beat on the unconscious man, oblivious to the video camera trained on her. It was held by a silent, shrouded figure who was concealed by the same thicket of bushes where she’d been planning to drag the body. Priscilla may have dodged one bullet this morning, but there was another gun aimed straight at her.

      6

      Darwin LeMaster couldn’t remember how to answer his cell phone. It was his own damn phone, too, the one he’d designed, patented and turned into a revolutionary new communications system, according to technology reporters. It came with one-touch concierge access, a GPS system, biometric fingerprint recognition and the ability to make not only secure, but untraceable, calls. The Darwin phone had made him a twenty-eight-year-old man of means and a phenom, whatever that meant, in the field of electronic networking.

      BFD. He still couldn’t answer it.

      Right now, it was playing “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath at high volume, the equivalent of getting kicked in the head by a donkey, which was what it took to get Darwin’s attention most of the time. СКАЧАТЬ