Genuine Lies

disciplined body. He’d made love to his wife when he’d returned home. Sweetly, tenderly. His lovely Teresa now slept the sleep of the cherished.
    God, he did cherish the woman, and hated the fact that while he’d steeped himself in her, he’d fantasied about Eve. Of all the sins he’d committed, this was the only one he repented. Even with what Eve was doing, what she was threatening to do, she couldn’t kill the hunger in him. And that was his penance.
    Fighting to keep his muscles from tensing again, he watched the steam rise to smoke up the slanted windows and block the stars. She had been like that to him, like steam smoking up his senses, blocking his sanity. Didn’t she realize he would have kept her safe, happy, showered her with all the things a woman desired? Instead, she had spurned him, cut him out of her life with a finality and viciousness that had resembled death. And all because of business.
    He forced his hand to relax and waited until the splinter of rage had been worked out of his heart. A man who thought with his heart made mistakes. As he had. It was his own faultthat Eve had found out about some of the more unconventional parts of Delrickio Enterprises. Infatuation had made him careless. Still, he had believed, or made himself believe, that she could be trusted.
    Then she had tossed Damien Priest in his face. She had looked at him, her eyes filled with disgust.
    The former tennis player was a loose end that could easily be snipped at any time. But that would not make things right. It was Eve who could unravel his carefully woven cloak of respectability.
    He would have to settle things, and he regretted it. But even before love came honor.
    Gloria DuBarry cuddled beside her sleeping husband and let the tears stream down her face. She felt sick—too much liquor always upset her system. It was Eve’s fault she’d overindulged and had come so perilously close to humiliating herself.
    It was all Eve’s fault. Hers and that nosy witch from back east.
    They were going to see to it that she lost everything—her reputation, her marriage, maybe even her career. And all because of one mistake. One small mistake.
    Sniffling, she stroked a hand over her husband’s bare shoulder. It was solid, sturdy, like a quarter century of marriage. She loved Marcus so much. He took such good care of her. How often had he said she was his angel, his spotless, untarnished angel?
    How could he understand, how could anyone understand, that the woman who made her career playing freckle-faced virgins had indulged in a torrid, illicit affair with a married man? That she had had an illegal abortion to rid herself of the result of that affair?
    Oh, God, how could she ever have imagined herself in love with Michael Torrent? What was worse, much worse, was that while she’d been meeting him in dingy motels, he had been playing her father onscreen. Her father.
    Having to come face-to-face with him tonight when he was old, half-crippled … frail. It disgusted her to think that she had once held him inside her. Terrified her. She hated him She hated Eve. She wished they were both dead. Wallowing is self-pity, she wept into her pillow.
    Michael Torrent was used to bad nights. His body was so riddled with arthritis that he was rarely free of pain. Age an illness had hulled him out, leaving just enough flesh and nerve in the shell for misery. Tonight it was his mind, not his body, keeping him from the luxury of sleep.
    He could curse the age that had ruined his body, sapped him of energy, robbed him of the comfort of sex. He could weep knowing he’d once been a king, and was now less than a man. All the memories of what he had been jabbed at him like hot needles that gave no peace to tired flesh. But that, all of that, was nothing.
    Now Eve was threatening to take away the little he had left. His pride, and his image.
    Perhaps he could no longer act, but he’d been able to sate that thirst with the legend. He was revered, admired, respected, thought of by fans and associates as a grand old man, the one-time king of the romantic era of Hollywood. Grant and Gable, Power and Flynn were dead. Michael Torrent, who had ended his acting career graciously playing wise old grandfathers, was alive. He was alive and they stood up and cheered for him whenever he granted an audience.
    He hated the fact that Eve would tell the world that he had cheated his best and closest friend, Charlie Gray. For years Michael had used his clout to