He’d made a name for himself in the music business, not just for the high-profile events he organized, but for the talent he’d discovered. And it didn’t hurt that he was the personification of tall, dark and dashing. Years ago he’d been engaged to one of his own finds, a pop princess named Regine, when she’d drowned, apparently rather mysteriously, in their swimming pool.
Another accident. The women in Andrew’s life were prone to them.
The media had tagged it the Villard Curse, but Andrew wouldn’t discuss it, except for a few paltry details that Alison could have read in a newspaper. His mother had been a rising star with the New York Opera when she’d suffered a freak accident during a rehearsal. She and Andrew, who was a teenager at the time, had been living with her mentor, the opera’s artistic director, and Andrew had stayed on with the director after she died, rather than disrupt Andrew’s schooling. His parents had divorced when he was a baby, and his mother had desperately wanted him to have culture in his life. No one had objected, least of all Andrew’s father, who’d moved to the wilds of Wyoming and had a family of his own.
When Alison had pressed for details about Regine, Andrew had startled her by lashing out. Apparently the loss was still too painful, but it had been five years. He’d told her not to ask about Regine again, but he’d alluded to a love triangle, of which she, Alison, had been one of the points. Alison had no recollection of that at all. It was her mother, Julia, who’d come between her relationship with Andrew when Alison was eighteen. As far as Alison knew, Andrew’s association with Regine had been strictly business up to that point, although it did turn romantic after Alison and Andrew parted. Things quickly became serious between he and Regine, but she was dead before they could marry.
A year after that Andrew had secretly married Alison…and now this.
Her spine rippled again, a shiver this time. She lived with a vague sense of dread that never left her, except when she forced it away. Were there men who found it easier to dispose of women than to leave them? They would have to be patholotical in the extreme, and she didn’t want to think about her husband in that way. She was still rattled and disoriented. Right now there was nothing to anchor her, no touchstones, but that would change.
The large sage-green-and-white bathroom soothed her as she stepped barefoot onto its cool limestone tile. The mostly glass-and-steel house had several levels, domed skylights and was built on low, rolling sand dunes. It was one of the few modern structures in Oyster Bay Cove, and Andrew had kept the decor inside as light and natural as the shores and the sea outside.
As she entered the shower stall, the charm bracelet jingled on her wrist. She never removed it these days, even to bathe. Doing so made her feel too vulnerable. A chunk of her life was gone and the details of her past were confused and fuzzy, but she had a sense of herself as an adventurous person before the accident. Some might even say reckless. Now she was in constant search of ways to protect herself. She kept a marble paperweight on the nightstand next to her bed and a kitchen carving knife in the nightstand drawer, just in case.
She turned one of the knobs on a sleek stainless steel panel, and warm water began to mist from above. Possibly her favorite part of the bathroom was the rain forest showerhead. Standing under it, she really did feel as if she’d been caught in a tropical cloudburst.
When she came out of the shower moments later, wrapped in a bath sheet, she sensed that something was different. But as she walked through the room, still dripping, she didn’t notice anything out of place.
As she entered the sitting room, she saw that an envelope and a handwritten note had been left on her writing desk. The embossed envelope was made of pale blue linen as soft and slippery as silk. It was addressed to her, but it had been opened and the contents read. She knew because of the note from Andrew lying next to the envelope. He’d written just two sentences and signed his name with the usual slashing capital A.
Alison, there’s no way out this time. We have to go. Andrew.
Alison pulled the matching blue stationery from the envelope and read the entire page in one gulp, as if it were a single sentence. Nerves, she thought. The kind that made you eat too fast and caused the food to ball up in your stomach.
My darling daughter,
Your silence is breaking my heart. You will be twenty-eight soon, and though no invitation is needed because this is and always will be your home, I’m extending one so that you can understand how desperate I am to see you again.
Please come to Sea Clouds and celebrate the occasion of your birthday with your brother and me. Of course, Andrew is invited, too.
I long to see you.
All my love,
Your mother
Alison’s breath had gone dry in her throat. Invitation? It was a summons from her mother to appear. She’d known this was coming, but that didn’t make it any less a disaster. Andrew had been holding her mother off since the accident. He’d said he was doing it to protect Alison, to give her time to heal and prepare, but Julia Fairmont had extended an olive branch. She wanted to see her one and only daughter, and no one could protect Alison now.
She had visions of putting the pricey stationery through a shredder and grinding it into a pile of slivers. But she didn’t have the nerve, even for a symbolic act of defiance. It felt as if she’d lost control of even the smallest details of her life. She was a chess piece being moved around by master players, one of whom was her husband.
The letter was just one example. It was addressed to her, but Andrew had opened it, read it and told her how they were going to respond, even though the decision had to do with her life, her family—and should have been her choice. He believed it was time to repair her relationship with her mother, and even though it was part of the arrangement Alison had made with him, she hated the thought of going back to Mirage Bay under these circumstances.
She had only agreed because of personal reasons that were deeply important to her. Those reasons were also why she stayed in this house and put up with Andrew’s interference. Unfortunately, she’d had to take him into her confidence, because she would need his help when they got to Mirage Bay. But this wasn’t the right time for her to go.
Her mother’s invitation almost certainly had something to do with the fifty-million-dollar trust that would have come to Alison on her twenty-eighth birthday, if she hadn’t decided to walk away from the family wealth and marry Andrew. Julia Fairmont had been apoplectic. She’d cut off all contact with her daughter for four years, and according to Andrew, it was mutual. Alison had made no attempt to repair the rift.
But last February, in a fit of remorse, Alison had talked him into wintering in Mirage Bay so that she could make amends to her mother. Earlier that year, Andrew had shipped Bladerunner back to the West Coast manufacturer for modifications, so they would have his beloved sloop there as well.
It might have worked if her mother hadn’t brutally rejected Alison’s overtures—and if the weather hadn’t turned nasty, whipping up a storm that had sent Alison into the drink. But now, suddenly, all was forgiven. Her mother wanted her back. Something about that didn’t feel right, and Andrew’s ultimatum only added to the pressure.
It bothered Alison that he’d come into her room while she was showering. Or possibly while she was sleeping. It wasn’t the first time. On at least two other occasions while she slept he’d left evidence of his presence. A door ajar, a note, like today.
It wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d wanted her to know, so that she would never feel totally safe, even when she slept. Her pills took care of that, but he didn’t know about the pills. The doctors and nurses who treated her had quietly refilled her prescriptions and given her samples over the months.
At times she felt like