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Sweet Revenge

Sweet Revenge

Titel: Sweet Revenge Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Nora Roberts
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not gold. Or diamonds. These were the real thing. Grade D, undoubtedly Russian. He studied the largest sapphire. Its center drop was slightly flawed as expected in a gem that size. It was a pretty, and valuable, cornflower blue. Like a patient doctor giving an exam, he studied each bracelet, each ring and bauble. He found the ruby earrings particularly ugly—and as a man who considered himself an artist, he judged it a crime to create something so aesthetically displeasing out of such a passionate stone. Judging the jewels to be worth about thirty-five thousand American, he took them out. Artist or not, he was a businessman first.
    Satisfied, he set everything in the center of the Aubusson carpet and rolled up the rug.
    Twenty minutes after entering, Philip shouldered the rug into the van. Whistling between his teeth, he got behind the wheel and cruised off, passing the Treewalters’ housekeeper as she rounded the corner.
    Eddie was right, Phil thought as he turned up the radio. It was a hell of a day for business.
    Nothing was exactly as it seemed in Hollywood. Adrianne’s first impression had been of wonder. This America was far different from the America of New York. The people were sleeker, in less of a hurry, and everyone seemed to know everyone else. Adrianne thought it was like a small village, yet the natives weren’t as friendly as they pretended to be.
    By the time she was fourteen she had learned that attitudes were often as false as the storefronts on a movie lot. She also knew that Phoebe’s comeback was a failure.
    They had a house, she had school, but Phoebe’s career had moved steadily in reverse. More than her looks had begun to fade in Jaquir; her talent had eroded as rapidly as her self-esteem.
    “Aren’t you ready yet?” Phoebe hurried into Adrianne’s room. The overbright eyes and overexcited voice told Adrianne that her mother had gotten a new supply of amphetamines. She struggled to subdue a feeling of helplessness and managed to smile. She couldn’t bear another fight tonight, or her mother’s tears and useless promises.
    “Nearly.” Adrianne fastened the cummerbund on her tuxedo-style suit. She wanted to tell her mother that she looked beautiful, but Phoebe’s evening dress made her cringe. It was cut embarrassingly low and fit like a skin of gold sequins. Larry’s doing, Adrianne thought. Larry Curtis was still her mother’s agent, her sometime lover, and constant manipulator.
    “We still have plenty of time,” she said instead.
    “Oh, I know.” Phoebe moved around the room, glittering, fueled by the manic energy of the pills and her own unpredictable mood swings. “But premieres are so exciting. The people, the cameras.” She stopped by Adrianne’s mirror and saw herself as she once had been, without the marks of her illness and her disappointments. “Everyone’s going to be there. It’ll be just like the old days.”
    Faced with her reflection, she fell to dreaming, as shetoo often did. She saw herself in the center spotlight, surrounded by admiring fans and associates. They all loved her, all wanted to be near her, to talk to her, to listen, to touch.
    “Mama.” Uneasy with Phoebe’s abrupt silence, Adrianne laid a hand on her shoulder. There were days when she lost touch like this and didn’t come out again for hours. “Mama,” she repeated, tightening her grip, afraid that Phoebe was traveling down that long tunnel into her own fantasies.
    “What?” Phoebe surfaced, blinking, then smiled as she focused on Adrianne’s face. “My own little princess. You’re so grown-up.”
    “I love you, Mama.” Fighting back tears, Adrianne wrapped her arms tight around her mother. In the past year Phoebe’s moods had become more and more like the roller coaster they had once ridden in Disneyland. A confusion of streaking highs and bottomless lows. She could never be sure whether Phoebe would be full of laughter and wild promises or tears and regrets.
    “I love you, Addy.” She stroked her daughter’s hair, wishing the color and texture didn’t remind her of Abdu. “We’re making something of ourselves, aren’t we?” She drew away and began circling the room, pacing, prowling, but never making progress. “In a few months we’ll be going to my premiere. Oh, I know it’s not as big a movie as this one, but these low-budget films are very popular. It’s like Larry says, I have to keep myself available. And with the publicity he’s planning …” She

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