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Alana’s voice rasped with her whisper, which wasn’t loud enough for anyone else in the gallery to hear. “You always told me you couldn’t part with the painting that brought us together. Yet here you are, up for another money-grab. Sometimes I ask myself, when will it be enough for him? The Paris apartment, the New York apartment, the house in Tuscany, the home in Beijing.”
Asher’s smile was devilish. “You say it as though you haven’t enjoyed all the fruits of my labor.”
“Labor!” Alana howled, remembering the afternoon when Asher had taken a bucket of green paint and thrown it across a ten-foot by ten-foot canvas. The canvas had sold for five hundred thousand dollars.
“I see you’ve gotten into one of your moods,” Asher muttered. He shoved his hand into his pocket, searching for something. After a moment, he seemed to remember that he’d quit smoking several years before. “You’ll have to excuse me.” He then twirled his finger toward the simmering gallery space as he added, “Make yourself useful. Mingle, for God’s sake.”
Hank, the director, stepped up to fill the gap that Asher left behind. Alana tilted her head back to coat her tongue with red wine.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Alana. But did you not dabble in acting for a little while?” Hank asked.
Alana’s smile was syrupy-sweet. “I did.”
“That’s what I thought.” Hank’s eyes sparkled. “I’d love for you to meet another woman in the arts. May I introduce you to my dear friend, Marcia.”
There before Alana stood a gorgeous blonde woman in her fifties, with sculpted legs and curvaceous breasts and a glistening all-American smile. Alana’s lips parted with surprise.Was she dreaming?
“Marcia Conrad,” the woman said, her voice confident as she drew out her silky-smooth hand for Alana to shake.
“Alana. Alana Tarkin.”
As the women shook hands, a strange look of exhilaration flashed behind Marcia Conrad’s eyes.Was this the same woman who’d been Bernard Copperfield’s protégé all the way back in 1997?
“I don’t know that I’m entirely familiar with your work, Marcia,” Alana began.
“Marcia was a surprise screenwriter and director back in the late nineties,” Hank explained. “Her first feature brought tremendous acclaim and skyrocketed her career through the early 2000s. Remember, back then, women just didn’t do those sorts of things.”
“It was a different time,” Marcia added with a flick of her shoulder.
Was this the woman who’d robbed from Bernard’s dearest friends, thus propelling her career to unimaginable heights?
What were the odds that she would be there at Asher Tarkin’s exhibition?
Obviously, she had no idea Alana was a Copperfield.
Or, she was very, very aware and simply wanted to rub Alana’s nose in it.
“I’ll have to check out your work,” Alana added, her voice high-pitched.
“You really must,” Hank continued.
Alana bit hard on her painted lips, gazing deeply into the impossibly blue eyes of Marcia Conrad. According to Julia, Bernard had confessed that he’d adored Marcia Conrad for her intelligence and her eagerness to become his mentee. Despite an infinite number of whispers, apparently, Bernard and Marcia hadn’t had any kind of romantic affair.Was this to be believed?Julia seemed to accept it.Alana wasn’t so sure.
What could Alana ask this woman, here and now, to find out more about Marcia’s past? How could she probe into this horrible woman’s mind to help Julia on her quest to clear their father’s name?
“Mrs. Tarkin, are you all right?” Hank asked.
Alana nodded, then sipped her wine. She felt like a hunter, poised to shoot. It seemed that everything throughout the past ten years of her diminishing career had led her to this moment. Now, she could metaphorically destroy Marcia and reinstate the Copperfield family as the intellectuals and artists they were. Even she’d done “the acting thing” for a while, just as Greta had wanted. By the time she’d gotten into the industry, however, Greta had been borderline unreachable, solitary, depressed. That was all because of Marcia Conrad. Maybe.
Something out of the corner of Alana’s eye flapped around like a flag in the breeze. She tugged her head forward slightly to catch the sharp outline of Asher’s iconic nose and the pointed toe of his shoes. He was far down the longest hallway in the exhibition, at least twenty feet away from the nearest art collector.What the heck was he doing over there?
A powerful force lifted her foot forward. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to know.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Alana heard herself say to Hank and Marcia.
As Hank and Marcia turned into one another, Alana took several quick steps forward toward her husband. The flapping fabric around him reminded her of butterfly wings. With each step, her heart threatened to explode. But it was too late to turn back. Alana’s gaze landed on a woman, pressed between Asher and the wall behind her. The gorgeous woman’s remarkably long legs shot out from beneath the tight skirt of her avant-garde outfit, the fabric of which had caught Alana’s eye in the first place. Her heels were at least six inches tall, and she wore them with remarkable ease. It was like she’d been born in them. The woman, whom Alana had never seen before, placed her palms across Asher’s chest and peered up at him, her eyes glittering with adoration. Had Alana been forced to guess, she’d have placed her age at twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. A full twenty years younger than Alana, if not more.
This young woman was in love with Asher Tarkin.
