Genuine Lies

vice you’re almost ashamed of having. Men are far down on your list of priorities, somewhere, I would think, below folding Brandon’s socks.”
    It took all of Julia’s will to keep her face composed. She could do nothing about the flash of heat in her eyes. “You make me sound very dull.”
    “Admirable.” Eve corrected her, and dipped again into the raspberries. “Though the two are sometimes synonymous. The truth is, I’d hoped to get a rise out of you, to shake that awesome composure of yours.”
    “Why?”
    “I’d like to know I’m baring my soul to a fellow human.” With a shrug, Eve broke off the end of a flaky croissant. “From your little exchange with Paul over dinner the other night, I detected a good healthy temper. I admire temper.”
    “Not all of us are in the position to let ours loose.” But hers was still smoldering in her eyes. “I’m human, Miss Benedict.”
    “Eve.”
    “I’m human, Eve, human enough that being manipulated pisses me off.” Julia opened her briefcase to bring out her pad and recorder. “Did you send him to see me yesterday?”
    Eve was grinning. “Send who?”
    “Paul Winthrop.”
    “No.” Surprise and interest registered clearly, but Julia reminded herself the woman was an actress. “Paul paid you a visit?”
    “Yes. He seems concerned about the book, and the way I’ll write it.”
    “He’s always been protective of me.” Eve’s appetite came and went these days. She bypassed the rest of breakfast for a cigarette. “And I’d imagine he’s intrigued by you.”
    “I doubt it’s personal.”
    “Don’t.” Eve laughed again, but an idea began to brew. “My dear, most women have their tongues hanging out after five minutes with him. He’s spoiled. With his looks, his charm, that underlying shimmer of raw sex, it’s hard to expectotherwise. I know,” she added, drawing in smoke. “I fell for his father.”
    “Tell me about that.” Julia took advantage of the opening and punched record. “About Rory Winthrop.”
    “Ah, Rory … the face of a fallen angel, the soul of a poet, the body of a god, and the mind of a Doberman chasing a bitch in heat.” When she laughed again, there was no malice in it, but ripe good humor. “I’ve always thought it was a pity we couldn’t make a go of it. I liked the son of a bitch. Rory’s problem was that whenever he got an erection, he felt honor bound not to waste it. French maids, Irish cooks, leading ladies, and spangled bimbos. If a look had Rory getting it up, he felt it was his male duty to stick it somewhere.” She grinned, refilling her glass with juice and champagne. “I might have tolerated the infidelity—there was nothing personal about it. Rory’s mistake was that he found it necessary to lie. I couldn’t stay married to a man who thought me stupid enough to believe pitiful fabrications.”
    “His unfaithfulness didn’t bother you?”
    “I didn’t say that. Divorce is much too clean and unimaginative a way to pay a man back for screwing around. I believe in revenge, Julia.” She savored the word as she savored the zip of champagne. “If I had cared more about Rory, less about Paul, well, let’s just say things might have ended more explosively.”
    Again Julia felt that shimmer of understanding. She had cared too much about a child herself to destroy the father. “Though your relationship with Rory ended years ago, you still have a warm relationship with his son.”
    “I love Paul. He’s the closest I’ve come to having a child of my own.” She waved away the sentiment but lighted a cigarette immediately after crushing one out. How difficult it had been for her to make that statement. “Not your average mother figure,” she said with a thin smile. “But I wanted to mother that boy. I was just over forty, right at the point where a woman knows she has virtually no time left to take that turn at the biological bat. And there was this bright, beautiful child—the same age as your Brandon.” She drank again, togive herself time to get control over her emotions. “Paul was my only turn at bat.”
    “And Paul’s mother?”
    “Marion Heart? A stunning actress—a bit of a snob when it came to Hollywood. After all, she was
theater.
She and Rory bounced the child back and forth between New York and L.A. Marion had a kind of detached affection for Paul, as if he were a pet she had bought on impulse and now had to feed and walk.”
    “But that’s horrible.”
    It was the