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"What's the point?" Margo said wearily. "It would just feed the press." Pride again, she thought. It was useless to ask Kate if she could afford a few miserly spoonfuls of pride. "So, basically I have to give up everything. Everything I have, everything I've worked for, everything I've wanted."
"Okay." Miserable, Kate put the file aside. "I'm not going to tell you they're just things, Margo. I know they're not. But this is a way out. There are others. You could sell your story to the tabloids, pick up some quick, ready cash."
"Why don't I just go down to Hollywood and Vine and sell my body? It would be less humiliating."
"You could go to the Templetons."
Margo shut her eyes. It shamed her that for a moment, just a moment, she was tempted.
"They'd bail you out," Kate said gently. "Float you until you were on your feet again."
"I know. I can't do that. After all they've done for me and been to me. Added to that is how it would make my mother feel. I've upset her enough without going begging."
"I can lend you ten thousand right away. That's what I have liquid," Kate said briskly. "It would put a finger in the dike, and I know that Laura and Josh would plug the other leaks. It wouldn't be begging, and it would be nothing to be ashamed of. Just a loan between friends."
Margo said nothing for a moment. Touched and ashamed, she stared down at the sapphires and diamonds winking on her hands. "So I can keep my pride and my furs and diamonds." Slowly, Margo shook her head. "No, I don't think I'm going to be able to keep any of it. But thanks."
"You'll want to consider this, weigh your options. The offer stays open." Kate took the file, proffered it, wished there was more. "The figures are all there. I calculated the fair market value of the jewelry from the insurance appraisals. I've got the sale value of your car, the flat, and so forth calculated with a ten percent leeway, deducted all the expected fees and taxes. If you decide to liquidate, you'll earn some breathing space. Not a lot, but enough to keep your head above water for a while."
And then what? Margo thought, but she didn't dare ask. "Okay. I appreciate you wading through all the mess."
"That's what I do best." Just at that moment, it seemed pitifully little. "Margo, take a couple of days. Mull it over."
"I will." She rose, then laughed weakly when her knees shivered. "Christ, I'm shaky."
"Sit down. I'll get you some water."
"No." Margo held up a hand. "I really need some air."
"I'll go with you."
"No. Thanks, but I need a minute."
Gently, Kate brushed a hand over Margo's hair. "Want to kill the messenger?"
"Not right now." Instead, she gave Kate a hard, fierce hug. "I'll be in touch," she said and rushed out of the office.
She wanted to be brave. All of her life Margo had yearned for adventure, the glamour and romance of it. She wanted to be one of those carelessly daring women who don't simply follow trends but create them. She had, most of her life, quite deliberately exploited her sense of style, her looks, her sexuality to gain her own ends. Her education had been no more than a necessary phase, something to get through. Unlike Laura or Kate, she had merely put in time in the classroom. What would she need with algebraic formulas or historical facts in her life? It was much more important what they were wearing this season in New York or who the up-and-coming designers were in Milan.
It was, Margo thought as she stood on the windswept cliffs above the sea, pathetic. Her life was pathetic.
Even a month before, she had thought it perfect. Of course, then everything had been streaming along exactly as she wanted. She had a flat in the right part of the city, was recognized and catered to in the right restaurants and boutiques. She had a circle of friends that included the wealthy, the well known, and the wild. She attended fashionable parties, was thrillingly dogged by the press and pursued by men. And, of course, she feigned weariness and ennui over the articles that speculated about her private life.
She had a career that had put her precisely where she had always wanted to be. In the limelight.
Then there was her lover of the moment. The suave, gorgeous older man, as she preferred. French. Married, of course, but that was merely a technicality. An obstacle, again fashionable, that would eventually be overcome. The very fact that they had been forced to keep their affair secret had added a thrill. A thrill that, she realized now, she had so easily mistaken for passion.
Now it was all over.
She hadn't believed she could be any more shocked or frightened than in those first hours after she had been taken into Athens for questioning. The terror of being so alone, so exposed, had bounced her roughly from a privileged world into a dangerous one. And when no one from that carefully selected circle of friends had come to her aid or her defense, she had been forced to stand on her own and reevaluate Margo Sullivan.
But that didn't seem to be enough.
She sat on a rock, absently tugging a woolly white blossom from its slender stem. Laura would know the name of the wildflower, Margo mused. But then, Laura, despite the privileges of birthright, was the wildflower type, whereas Margo was strictly hothouse.
She was ruined.
Somehow it had been easier to handle the possibility of being broke before Kate had put it all in stark black and white.
