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The Notorious Pagan Jones
Nina Berry


Pagan Jones went from America's sweetheart to fallen angel in one fateful night in 1960: the night a car accident killed her whole family. Pagan was behind the wheel and driving drunk.Nine months later, she's stuck in the Lighthouse Reformatory for Wayward Girls and tortured by her guilt–not to mention the sadistic Miss Edwards, who takes special delight in humiliating the once-great Pagan Jones.But all of that is about to change. Pagan's old agent shows up with a mysterious studio executive, Devin Black, and an offer. Pagan will be released from juvenile detention if she accepts a juicy role in a comedy directed by award-winning director Bennie Wexler. The shoot starts in West Berlin in just three days. If Pagan's going to do it, she has to decide fast–and she has to agree to a court-appointed "guardian," the handsome yet infuriating Devin, who's too young, too smooth and too sophisticated to be some studio flack.The offer's too good to be true, Berlin's in turmoil and Devin Black knows way too much about her–there's definitely something fishy going on. But if anyone can take on a divided city, a scheming guardian and the criticism of a world that once adored her, it's the notorious Pagan Jones. What could go wrong?







Pagan Jones went from America’s sweetheart to fallen angel in one fateful night in 1960: the night a car accident killed her whole family. Pagan was behind the wheel and driving drunk. Nine months later, she’s stuck in the Lighthouse Reformatory for Wayward Girls and tortured by her guilt—not to mention the sadistic Miss Edwards, who takes special delight in humiliating the once-great Pagan Jones.

But all of that is about to change. Pagan’s old agent shows up with a mysterious studio executive, Devin Black, and an offer. Pagan will be released from juvenile detention if she accepts a juicy role in a comedy directed by award-winning director Bennie Wexler. The shoot starts in West Berlin in just three days. If Pagan’s going to do it, she has to decide fast—and she has to agree to a court-appointed “guardian,” the handsome yet infuriating Devin, who’s too young, too smooth and too sophisticated to be some studio flack.

The offer’s too good to be true, Berlin’s in turmoil and Devin Black knows way too much about her—there’s definitely something fishy going on. But if anyone can take on a divided city, a scheming guardian and the criticism of a world that once adored her, it’s the notorious Pagan Jones. What could go wrong?


The Notorious Pagan Jones

Nina Berry






www.miraink.co.uk (http://www.miraink.co.uk)


For Natalie Downing

And for all who struggle with addiction


About the Author

NINA BERRY was born in Honolulu, studied writing and film in Chicago, and now works and writes in Hollywood. She is the author of the Otherkin series. When she’s not writing, Nina does her best to go bodysurfing, explore ancient crypts or head out on tiger safari. But mostly she’s on the couch with her cats reading a good book.


Contents

Cover (#u77e20655-db43-520b-b497-7d645d48a358)

Back Cover Text (#u326599dc-6ca7-580f-98b5-7ecae739700b)

Title Page (#uaf561666-9622-5aab-a19b-dc39ca7feed3)

Dedication (#u201c9a3f-8f23-5ddd-816c-ba0c85ff6adc)

About the Author (#u2e6eccfc-8139-54e0-9519-0f6ec537972d)

Chapter One (#ulink_98a18988-d428-5cda-b080-f810ca4a56e6)

Chapter Two (#ulink_0e6add52-2324-51bf-b46c-e105c013c140)

Chapter Three (#ulink_abad52cd-4550-57ee-8e8b-1fdc75d3dcc6)

Chapter Four (#ulink_8bd934d3-8138-551c-947f-321e94a65918)

Chapter Five (#ulink_75c1573b-4446-5fc8-a569-e8cfc375c1d8)

Chapter Six (#ulink_1d441876-1254-5a34-bb2e-0bd58b5c4bae)

Chapter Seven (#ulink_15ac0ada-f356-5487-bfc1-929ddab84b19)

Chapter Eight (#ulink_d6ac5d50-cfa1-5cae-9655-c35123d1ea08)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

The History Behind Pagan Jones (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


“Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.”

—MARILYN MONROE

“Berlin. What a garrison of spies! What a cabinet full of useless liquid secrets. What a playground for every alchemist, miracle worker, and rat piper that ever took up the cloak.”

—JOHN LE CARRÉ




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Time in solitary goes by with unbearable slowness when you’ve killed every member of your family. With nothing for Pagan Jones to do but pace the five steps back and forth between the walls of a former broom closet, it wasn’t surprising that all she could think about was blood and shattered glass and her baby sister’s final scream.

At Lighthouse Reformatory for Wayward Girls, a summer Saturday night usually offered up a group dinner of canned beef stew followed by a Lawrence Welk rerun. But here in solitary, Pagan had only a hard narrow cot next to a seatless toilet, a sink, and four blank walls reflecting back her darkest thoughts.

Miss Edwards herself came bearing a tray of congealing food in her bony hands. Her heavily starched black uniform rustled as she set the tray down on Pagan’s cot. Waitressing creamed corn and meat loaf would have normally been beneath her. But from the smirk on those narrow lips, Pagan could tell Miss Edwards had made an exception so she could take in every moment of Pagan’s humiliation.

It took every ounce of Pagan’s self-control not to grab the woman’s skeletal upper arms and shake her, but then she’d never know what had happened to her roommate after their aborted escape attempt the night before. She swallowed down her anger and asked, “Could you tell me, please. What happened to Mercedes?”

Miss Edwards lifted her narrow shoulders in a sad little shrug.

Horror threatened to close up Pagan’s throat. Mercedes couldn’t be dead. “You have to tell me if she’s okay, at the very least!” It came out louder, more desperate than she wanted. “What happened?”

The matron’s shark-like smile widened. “What makes you think you deserve to know?”

Pagan fought back a flush of shame. She didn’t deserve anything. She knew that. She’d earned a fate far worse than two years locked up in Lighthouse. But ever since the night she drove her cherry-red Corvette off Mulholland Drive, killing her father and younger sister, a kind of claustrophobia had closed in. It wasn’t a fear of enclosed spaces. More like a need to know she had a way out of any situation. As soon as the judge had sentenced her to reform school, the remorseless itch had taken hold. Any situation she couldn’t extricate herself from felt like the end of the world.

She’d tried to be good her first few months in Lighthouse. She’d stuffed down her anxiety, bitten her nails, and annoyed Mercedes by constantly pacing their tiny room like a lion in the zoo. But inevitably the necessity to get the hell out, to prove she had a choice, had become unbearable.

So she’d started planning her escape, and Mercedes had asked to come along. Their careful, months-long strategizing had soothed Pagan’s anxiety, but their climb over the barbed wire fence had been interrupted by Miss Edwards’s inmate enforcers. By the time those girls had sauntered up, Pagan had made it to the other side of the wire. Mercedes had not.

Mercedes had ordered Pagan to go, but then Susan Mahoney pulled a knife. No way would Pagan have left her best—her only—friend behind to face that alone. She’d climbed back over the fence and dropped into the fray only to be pummeled nearly unconscious by Phyllis Lawson and Grace Lopez.

That didn’t matter. What mattered was that Susan had viciously stabbed Mercedes in the shoulder with her stiletto just before the guard rushed in, gun drawn. Pagan had heard nothing about her friend’s condition since they’d carried her away, trailing blood.

“You’ll be here in solitary for two weeks,” Miss Edwards said, her beady eyes happily taking in Pagan’s shaking hands. “One meal a day. If Mercedes survives, she’ll get the same. I’ve asked the judge to review both your cases. He could decide to extend your sentences past your eighteenth birthdays. I hope you’re both eager to see how they deal with escape attempts from adult prison.”

That was enough to shred Pagan’s attempt at detachment. “They can’t do that! It was my fault, not Mercedes’s—”

Miss Edwards didn’t let her finish. “You may have noticed,” she said, backing toward the door, where a guard waited in case Pagan got any ideas, “I had them take away your shoelaces, your girdle, and your belt.”

Pagan had noticed, and she knew why. “I’d never try to kill myself,” she scoffed.

Miss Edwards’s shiny upper lip curled in disbelief. “Why not? Your mother did it and didn’t even leave a note.”

Pain ripped through Pagan as if Miss Edwards had stabbed her perfectly manicured nails into Pagan’s chest and pulled out her heart. It took all of Pagan’s training as an actor to keep her face blank.

Obviously, the matron of Lighthouse had never lost anyone she cared about to suicide or she would’ve known that, once it happened to you, you would never go down that road yourself. It led only to darkness. Not an expansive velvet black like the sky at night. No, this was a suffocating, heavy dark, a nauseating mass that dragged you down to drown. Once that weight landed on you, all you could do was to keep holding it up, hoping it wouldn’t touch anyone else.

The weight clouded her mind again as the door locked behind Miss Edwards. The matron had taken the single bare lightbulb with her and left Pagan with only the line of light slithering under the door. Pagan fixed her eyes on it as she lay down and clenched her fists against the smothering black, the pain in her head, and her racking worry about Mercedes.

She woke up sometime later knowing only one thing. She was getting out.

Her headache had dimmed, and Miss Edwards had not thought to confiscate Pagan’s bobby pins. There was no time like now, now, now. Remembering how Mercedes had showed her to bend the pins into a tension wrench and pick, she got busy with the lock.

Luckily, because the solitary cells had once been closets, there was a keyhole on her side of the door that she could rake. Once out of this room, she could sneak into the parking lot and maybe crawl into the trunk or backseat of a car. Outside the walls she could find the hospital where they’d taken Mercedes.

She focused on the lock, ear to the door. The tension wrench gave a bit to the right, so she slid the pick in and began tapping the pins in the lock. There. That one. Push that one down and—

A key was shoved in from the other side, pushing her pick out of the cylinder. It dropped to the floor.

No time to be terrified. She felt the floor frantically for the pin and palmed it as the door opened to reveal the rigid form of Miss Edwards, silhouetted against a shaft of morning light.

So. The night had passed.

The narrow crimson lips turned up in a tight smile as the small glittering eyes took in Pagan’s flushed cheeks and the curl of her fingers as her hands slid behind her back. Quick as Pagan had tried to look nonchalant, wreathing her face in habitual resentment, Miss Edwards was no fool.

“Your right hand, please.” She held out French-manicured fingers.

Trying to hide or drop the pins would only delay the inevitable. Pagan all but threw them into Miss Edwards’s palm and braced herself.

The painted mouth curled. Miss Edwards put the pins in her pocket and pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes and her favorite lighter, a silver Zippo engraved with the Ace of Hearts in red. The “students” at Lighthouse weren’t allowed to smoke, and Miss Edwards took pleasure in flaunting her privilege in front of them. She drew out a cigarette, put it between her lips, and formed words around it. “Adult prison’s too good for you.”

“Would you be sad to see me go?” Pagan was pleased at the insouciance in her voice, because her knees were watery, her throat tight. Every fiber in her wanted to demand how Mercedes was doing, but she’d rather die than endure another smug, withholding smile.

Miss Edwards had just had her hair done, the roots retouched to a glowing blond much like the fashionable color Pagan’s had once been. She was wearing eyeliner today, winged out at the corners like Marilyn Monroe. “It’s always a tragedy when a young life takes the wrong turn.” She flicked the Zippo and lit her cigarette. “Which brings me to why I’m here. You have visitors.” She exhaled the smoke into Pagan’s face.

Those last three words turned Pagan’s next smart remark into something like a hiccup. She struggled to keep her face blank. Only immediate family members were allowed to visit “students” at Lighthouse.

“I killed all that was left of my family.” Her voice was thicker than she liked. The smoke smelled like her old life, and she tried not to suck it in with a deep, appreciative breath. “Are you making an exception for second cousins once removed?”

Miss Edwards’s heavy eyelids lowered in a look of self-­satisfaction that made Pagan’s hands curl into fists. “These men have Judge Tennison’s permission to see you,” she said. “I sent my request in to him yesterday to reconsider your sentence. Perhaps this has something to do with that. Come.” She pocketed the Zippo and click-clicked down the hallway without looking back.

Pagan followed slowly through the still-open door into what the students called the Haunted Hallway. Its adobe walls stretched thirty feet down then turned right, but through some trick of acoustics if you stood at this end you could hear the slightest whisper taking place around the corner another thirty feet, where the hallway ended near Miss Edwards’s office and the stairway descended to the first floor. If a girl desperately needed to hear word of the outside world, she’d volunteer to mop this hallway to try and catch a sentence or two as it bounced up the stairs, passed the office, and rebounded around the corner.

Pagan hurried after Miss Edwards, using her fingers to comb her dry, overgrown hair into a semblance of neatness, stuffing down a desire to plead for more information. The hallway stretched on forever. The walls around her were scuffed gray, the barred windows allowing in brief glimpses of azure sky, a dusty green palm frond swaying in the breeze. Nine months here had been an eternity. Prison would be infinitely worse.

She tried to swallow, but it was as if the bent bobby pin had lodged in her throat. She’d figured on a beating, bread and water, some solitary at worst. And she’d gotten exactly that.

But what if that was just the beginning of her punishment? The escape attempt had happened Friday night. This was Sunday morning. Surely judges didn’t come in on the weekends to change the terms of a juvenile’s sentence.

But maybe what was about to happen was justice. Pagan had done far worse things than try to escape a reformatory. Maybe she deserved what she was about to get.

Miss Edwards stopped at her office door, her mouth turning ever downward as she laid one hand on the knob.

“Just because I’m allowing this doesn’t mean you’re special,” Miss Edwards said. Her resentful tone set off further warnings in Pagan’s busy brain. Why was the matron frustrated now instead of triumphant? “You’re thinking that you’re better than me, aren’t you? You still think you’re a movie star. You’re famous. You’re somebody.”

“I killed my father and sister.” Pagan’s voice was flat. “So the last thing I could ever feel is that I’m better than anyone. Even you.”

Miss Edwards’s frown deepened. Effort flickered between her painted eyebrows as she tried to figure out how a statement of such humility could come out sounding like an insult. Pagan was good at ambiguity; it was part of what had made her such a good actress. In the past nine months, that skill had proven vital. That and Mercedes’s friendship.

Miss Edwards turned the knob. Pagan squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, the way she always had before auditions, trips down the red carpet, or courtroom entrances. Her mother would have approved. Even if facing your own execution, best to meet it with a serene smile and excellent posture.

The doorknob under Miss Edwards’s hand jerked back. She lost her grip and grabbed the door frame to stop herself from falling. A fresh cloud of gray-blue cigarette smoke wafted over them from the room beyond.

“Do come in.” The low, masculine voice was not one Pagan recognized. A shaft of sunlight filtered through the smoke, blinding her, until a slender young man in an exquisitely cut black suit and narrow tie moved forward. He was tall and wore no hat, his dark hair slicked back, one unruly lock spiking over his forehead. He stood with one hand on the door, as relaxed as if he were welcoming them into his own home.

Only his eyes were turbulent, a dark blue. They swept over Pagan with speculative calculation and something darker she couldn’t identify. Goose bumps ran up her arms.

She was staring at his mouth and pulled her gaze up, shaking off a sudden blankness in her thoughts. It had been nine months since she’d seen a man other than the gatehouse guard, but she couldn’t let that distract her. The crews on her movie sets had called her One-Take Jones in the early days because of her composure and professionalism. That was before she’d started drinking. Now that she was sober, that girl was still inside her, somewhere.

“The notorious Pagan Jones.” The dark-haired young man held out his hand. “My name is Devin Black.”

She slid her hand into his. It was warm, the grip firm. “I’d say it was a pleasure, Mister Black, but I don’t like lying to strangers.”

Amusement curved one corner of his mouth. He kept hold of her and leaned in, his voice soft. “Lies are best saved for those we love.”

Her heart hammered once, twice. At this range his eyes glittered like shards of stained glass shaded from indigo to azure. They locked on to her, taking her in.

He pulled away. The moment might never have happened but for the electricity still prickling over her skin.

He cast his indifferent gaze at Miss Edwards, who was hovering like a storm cloud. “That will be all. Thank you.”

Dismissed from her own office, Miss Edwards puffed out her narrow chest as if about to spew fire. But Devin Black was already ushering Pagan inside. The door clicked shut behind them.





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“Here’s a familiar face.” Devin Black pulled out a seat for Pagan facing the small well-dressed man with gray, thinning hair who occupied Miss Edwards’s imposing black leather chair. He was the one generating all the smoke, puffing nervously on a cigarette and tapping the ash into a coffee cup.

Pagan stared and didn’t sit. This was no hearing. She had no idea what this was. “Jerry?”

Jerry Allenberg stood, which didn’t add much to his height, and stubbed out the cigarette with agitated little shoves. “Pagan. It’s been a long time. Please, have a seat. I’ve got something important to talk to you about.”

Pagan lifted her chin to stand taller. “So you’ve come to visit me after all. Tell Satan it’s time to put on the cashmere coat and mittens.”

Jerry stroked his fedora, which sat soft and gray as a cat on the desk. “You’re my client.”

“Former client.” Anger surged as Pagan narrowed her eyes at him. “I got the notice of termination from the agency, Jerry. That was one piece of mail they made sure I received while in custody.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for your trial.” Jerry took another cigarette out of a gold case and tapped it on the desk, feeling his pocket for a lighter. “And I’m sorry about that notice. It wasn’t kind.”

“No, but it’s what big Hollywood agents do when their clients kill people, right?” Pagan watched as Devin Black leaned in with a silver lighter to ignite Jerry’s cigarette. He flicked the lid shut on the flame, and Pagan caught a glimpse of red on one side. As he pocketed it, the design became clear—a silver Zippo lighter with the Ace of Hearts engraved in red.

He couldn’t possibly have the same exact lighter as Miss Edwards. Which meant…

Her gaze flew to his face. He caught the movement and locked eyes with her. That corner of his mouth was curving up again, only now he looked like a mischievous boy who’d gotten away with something.

Who was this guy? Pagan hadn’t even seen him come close to Miss Edwards, so how the hell had he gotten ahold of the lighter Pagan had seen her deposit in her skirt pocket just moments before?

“I never meant to hurt you, Pagan,” Jerry was saying. His lips trembled slightly as he drew on the cigarette. “It was the shareholders who insisted on letting you go. Not me.”

Pagan forced herself to look back at her former agent. He was a part of this, too. But somehow she thought he didn’t quite know who he was dealing with in Devin Black. Either way, something about the situation was making him sweat. “You look nervous, Jerry. Don’t worry. I didn’t bring my shiv.”

Jerry exhaled a short laugh in a gust of smoke. “I see they haven’t ironed the smart aleck out of you yet, kid.”

Pagan’s legs were wobblier than they should have been. Something beneath her feet was shifting. She didn’t know what it was yet, but it was big. She slid down into the hard chair facing Jerry. “I’m the bad influence here. The others are just thieves and truants, not killers.”

“What happened to you was an accident.” Jerry took the cigarette out of his mouth with his index finger and thumb, smoke trickling from his nose. “You were a child, a girl who lost her mother in an unimaginable way. We all should have seen it coming a lot sooner.”

Pagan had heard those words before. “Instead you gave me a brand-new Corvette for my sixteenth birthday, and I used it to drive Daddy and Ava off a cliff. Thanks a lot, Jerry.”

Jerry looked up sharply, the veneer of concern falling away. “You can’t blame me for what happened. I didn’t stick the bottle of vodka in your hand–”

“Jerry.” Devin’s low voice was a warning.

Jerry shut his mouth, lips tight. He stubbed out the second cigarette next to the first one like he was smashing a cockroach.

Pagan looked back and forth between the two men. Jerry was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Nobody talked to him that way, yet Devin Black had just gotten away with it.

Pagan cocked her head toward Devin. “Who is this character, Jerry? His suit’s nicer than yours, so he can’t be your new assistant.”

Jerry cast a sideways look at Devin and felt for his cigarette case again. “He works for the studio.”

“Nobody from any studio would interrupt Jerry Allenberg like that and still have a job five minutes later.” When Devin shrugged and didn’t reply, she asked, “What have you got on him?”

Devin shoved himself away from the wall, picked up Jerry’s cigarette case off the desk, took out a cigarette, and offered it to Pagan. “What I have on Jerry, Miss Jones, is a deal for you that’s going to make you both a lot of money. He wants you back as a client, because the studio needs you to star in Bennie Wexler’s new comedy.”

Astonishment bloomed through Pagan, followed by relief. Her fears of someone coming to put her in prison weren’t going to happen. At least not yet. This was some Hollywood scam. But why torment her with an impossible scenario?

She ignored the offered cigarette. “Bennie Wexler hates me. Before that he hated my mother. He kicked her off the set of Anne of Green Gables. The man won a statue for Best Director, but you’re saying he’s going to direct his next movie—” she spread her hands wide, taking in all the beige-walled, barred-windowed dreariness around her “—here? Because, in case you forgot, this is my vacation home for the next year and a half.”

“The movie shoots in West Berlin.” Jerry rested one blunt-fingered hand on a pile of paper in front of him. “The judge has agreed to let you out of here, if you sign this contract to do the film and agree to a court-appointed guardian.”

Pagan lowered her lashes to mask her anger. “Jerry, Jerry. It isn’t nice to tease.”

“It’s no joke.” Jerry exhaled noisily, blowing the smoke upward. “The studio really wants you on this project.” He glanced at Devin Black, who nodded, as if in approval. “You’re still under contract to them. I don’t know who pulled the strings, but if you agree to do the movie under the conditions spelled out here, Judge Tennison will grant your parole. It’s a supporting role, but it’s good. It’s funny, and it suits you. Bennie starts rehearsal in Berlin in three days, so be a good girl and say yes now.”

Nothing he was saying allayed her suspicions, and she hadn’t been a good girl for years. “Three days? What happened—did the original actress get killed or something?”

“Worse. Pregnant.” Jerry reached under the contract to pull out about a hundred pages held together with brass fasteners. “You’ll like the script. Bennie’s usual mixture of farce and heart. You’ll play the teenage daughter of an American businessman living in West Berlin who falls in love with a Communist from East Berlin.”

He laid the script in front of her. The cover read Neither Here Nor There. Written by Benjamin Wexler & I. S. Kopelson. Universal Pictures.

Pagan stared at the familiar logo, not blinking. This was actually happening. It made no sense. But it was real.

Jerry coughed, and she realized a long silence had elapsed. She pursed her lips in cool consideration, even though her blood was beating hard through her veins. “So, you’re saying that after the movie is over, I won’t have to come back to Lighthouse?”

Jerry’s chest rattled with another cough. “After the shoot you’ll have to report weekly to a parole officer until you turn eighteen. But you’ll be free.”

Pagan erupted out of her chair with such force that Jerry flinched back and Devin Black straightened from where he was slouching against the wall. She paced to the door and back and halted, then grabbed on to her chair. She didn’t like that she needed something to steady herself, but after so long in confinement, after worrying about Mercedes, and thinking they were going to put her in a real prison, the prospect of imminent freedom was the most terrifying thing of all.

The last time she’d truly been a part of the real world had been the worst time of her life. It made solitary seem like a cozy nest.

“Judge Tennison called me a menace to society in front of every reporter in town.” Her voice was hoarse. She cleared her throat. “He said Hollywood was a festering pit of sin, and he cast me as lead sinner. Why would he give a damn what the studio wants and let me out?”

Jerry shrugged, casting another sideways look at Devin. “Everyone has a price, even a judge. Or maybe he saw the light. We’ll never know for sure.”

“Beyond that,” she went on, “the whole world knows I’m a disgrace. Tabloids make up lurid stories of my exploits behind bars. Why would a studio risk giving a decent role in an award-winning director’s next big movie to me?”

Jerry shook his head. “A young lady accepts that the men in her life know what’s best for her. I’m the closest thing you have to a father—”

He didn’t get to finish because Devin Black cut in, his voice casual. “Haven’t you heard? Bad publicity sells even more movie tickets than good publicity. People are curious. With you in the movie, it’s a guaranteed blockbuster.”

He wasn’t wrong, but she knew better than to trust him. Pagan gave him a cold smile. “And why is it, I ask myself, that Jerry Allenberg is taking orders from a kid in a Savile Row suit who’s young enough to be in college, maybe even high school? I’m sorry, Mister Black. But I’m not signing anything until my lawyer looks it over.”

Devin Black’s eyes danced over her in a way that made her conscious of the uneven neckline of her uniform, of her sagging stockings and scuffed sneakers. “I hear you’re in solitary confinement for two weeks because you and your roommate nearly escaped.”

At the mention of Mercedes all her assumed coolness fell away. “Do you know how she is?” Her voice shook. “Did she make it?”

“Make it?” Devin asked, his voice sharpening into a crisp, almost-British tone. “You mean they didn’t tell you?” He shot a blazing look at the door, behind which, no doubt, Miss Edwards still waited, then placed a warm hand on Pagan’s upper arm. “Miss Duran is doing well and is out of the hospital. They brought her back to the infirmary here this morning.”

Relief washed over Pagan, so acute, so powerful that she had to blindly find the chair and sit again. “Thank God, thank God,” she said under her breath. It wasn’t really a prayer. Or maybe it was.

“There’s no need to worry about your roommate any longer,” Devin said, stepping closer to her. Was he trying to reassure her some more? Or was he moving in for the kill? The contradictory signals were dizzying. “So, if you take this job, not only will you get out of here forever, but we’ll make sure your friend gets the best of care, spends no time in solitary, and no extra time will be added to her sentence. You can give this to her.” He picked up Jerry’s gold cigarette case and handed it over. Jerry didn’t protest, and it sat heavy in her hand. “If you say no, you’ll go back to solitary and what happens to Miss Duran is anyone’s guess.”

Pagan regarded him steadily. He wanted her dizzy—to keep her off balance, and to get what he wanted. She took his long-fingered hand and pressed the cigarette holder back into his palm. “In that case, my answer is definitely no.”

Devin looked down at the shiny metal, lips curling ruefully. “Definitely no?”

Pagan nodded. “Definitely.” It hurt to refuse. But if he was trying to extort her into cooperating, the whole situation had to be too good to be true. She had a funny feeling she’d be safer getting beaten by Miss Edwards here at Lighthouse. She’d learned that if you gave in to a threat, all you’d done was ensure more threats down the road.

Devin’s eyes were thoughtful. “You’re not the only one to ever make a mistake, you know.”

She studied him. Where was this going? More misdirection? “Believe me, I know,” she said. “I live with a hundred and fifteen mistake-prone teenage girls.”

Devin went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Make a big enough mistake early in life and it can destroy everything,” His words were like Susan Mahoney’s stiletto, slicing into her, conjuring up her own countless errors.

But he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were staring off at some faraway place, somewhere raw, somewhere that made him ache. “Ruin enough lives and you’ll ruin yours.”

It sounded personal. What lives had Devin Black ruined? Or was this another cunning attempt to pull her in?

“But if you’re very lucky, sometimes, someone offers you a second chance.” He turned back to her, smiling. “And if you’re smart enough to take that chance, it’s just possible that the thing you long for most, that thing you crave more than anything, will happen.”

Pagan sat very still, not wanting to give away how his words affected her. She couldn’t put a name to it, but he’d touched a place inside her she hadn’t known was there. “Tell me, Mister Black,” she said. “What do I crave more than anything?”

“Redemption.” His voice pulsed with a passion that echoed in her mind. “This is your chance.”

Redemption. That was so far from possible that it hadn’t even occurred to her. She searched the riotous mess in her brain, the thousand conflicting feelings and thoughts that only alcohol had ever silenced.

In A.A. they called it recovery. That was a much more manageable word. Redemption, with its vaguely religious overtones, promised a slate wiped clean, a complete deliverance that was too much to hope for. She couldn’t hang on to that, because it would never, could never happen, no matter what strange hunger for it the complicated Devin Black seemed to have.

“Sounds more like a chance to be bullied and blackmailed.” She shook her head with finality. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“I see.” Devin swallowed hard. Was that regret in his eyes?

But then he swiveled with sudden grace, scooped up the contract and script on the desk, and dumped them into a sleek briefcase. “Let’s go, Jerry.”

Puzzlement crossed Jerry’s face as Devin snapped the briefcase closed. “But you said—”

“Pagan Jones can’t take a chance,” Devin interrupted, sliding the briefcase off the desk. “After all she’s been through, I understand.” He glanced at Pagan, who was glaring at him. “Wasn’t your mother born in Berlin?”

Her scowl became uncertain. “What? Yes. After my grandfather died, my grandmother moved to California with Mom when she was around two.”

“Berlin’s a strange place these days,” Devin said. “Divided between Communist and capitalist, with thousands of East Germans fleeing across the border to the West every day. The rumors are that the East Germans won’t wait much longer to do something drastic. I thought you might want to see where your mother was born while you’re shooting the movie, find your grandparents’ former home, before everything changes. By the time you get out of this place, it may be too late.”

The knuckles of Pagan’s hands, gripping each other, were white. “You think something big’s going to happen over there?”

Jerry drummed the desk with his fingers. “In June, the leader of East Germany said he has no intention of building a wall.”

Devin gave him a knowing look. “Walter Ulbricht studied politics under Joseph Stalin. Trustworthy he is not. Every other part of East Germany is cut off from the West. And the East Germans have just completed construction of a rail line that completely circumvents Berlin. How long can they continue to allow their best-educated citizens to flee?”

Pagan was only half listening as Jerry asked another question. Whether by accident or design, Devin Black had touched on the only real mystery left in her life. She knew all too well why Daddy and Ava were dead. But when Mama took her own life, she hadn’t left a note. She’d never mentioned suicide and had shown no signs of depression. Up to the end she’d been the same: cheerfully in charge; planning the next move in Pagan’s career; pushing Ava to practice her piano three hours a day; organizing the next fund-raiser for the German-American Heritage League.

So every day since she’d died, Pagan still asked the question: Why? Why had Mama abandoned them? Every day the wound reopened, fresh and painful as the moment it had happened.

After Mama was gone, movies and photo shoots had kept Pagan busy. She had even fallen in love. But only alcohol had closed up the wound. For a little while, at least.

Psychiatrists had told her that her mother’s suicide wasn’t her fault. They said it had nothing to do with her. But how could they know that for sure? They hadn’t spent long hours on a movie set watching Mama, a frustrated actress, act out Pagan’s dialogue for her when she messed up a line. They hadn’t heard Eva and Arthur Jones arguing late into the night about how Pagan’s latest bump in salary might not cover that month’s bills. Everything—the big house in the hills, Ava’s private school, Mama’s designer clothes, Daddy’s cars—they all would continue to exist only so long as Pagan was perfect.

Pagan knew all too well that she was nothing but a collection of flaws, a rich stew of defects, a ratatouille of failings and weakness. And in lieu of another explanation, she couldn’t help thinking that maybe that’s why it had all come crashing down and Mama had died.

Maybe.

Maybe not. The shrinks didn’t understand how the uncertainty about why Mama had wanted to die gnawed at Pagan. If Pagan could find the answer to that question, she might truly come to understand that this one thing, at least, was not her fault.

Maybe that answer lay in the place Mama was born. Berlin.

Now here was a chance, not just to get out of this horrible place, to be free, but to explore an unknown corner of Eva Jones’s life. A chance that would not come again.

“I’ll do it.” The words split open something that had long been closed inside her. She stayed very still, hoping she wouldn’t cry.

The two men, in mid conversation, stopped speaking. Devin Black’s long-lashed eyes held a knowing look that should have bothered her, but didn’t.

He’d succeeded in manipulating her this time. But it didn’t matter, not in the long run. What was important was that soon she’d be able to hunt down the answers she needed, whether they were in Berlin or somewhere else.

“I said, I’ll do it.” She gave them her best I’m practicing patience look.

With a flourish, Devin put the briefcase on the desk and unsnapped the clasps.

Jerry took out the contract and laid it in front of Pagan. “Are you sure?”

Devin Black shot him a suppressing look. “An excellent choice, Miss Jones. One I’m sure you won’t regret.”

She took hold of Miss Edwards’s best fountain pen. “Worry about your own regrets, Mister Black. How soon do I get to see Mercedes?”

Devin peeled back the top pages of the contract to show her the signature line. “Why not immediately? Then we’ll send a car for you at four o’clock this afternoon. You’ll spend the night in your own home. Tomorrow you’ll fly to Berlin.”

“Very well.” Her mother had often used that phrase, and Pagan enjoyed the way it sounded coming from her own lips. She ran her eyes over the last page of the contract. It looked like standard language, except for a clause about her being on parole and having a court-appointed guardian with all the power of a parent on hand during the film shoot and thereafter at the court’s discretion.

“My father’s lawyer is going to be at the film shoot?” she asked. At their confused looks, she added, “He’s my court-appointed guardian, and it says here—”

“A new guardian will be appointed,” Devin said.

She looked back and forth between them. “Who?”

“You’ll be the first—or the second—to know,” Jerry said.

Which probably meant it would be someone the studio approved of, to keep an eye on their investment. That chafed, but given her history it was hard to blame them. She leaned down and signed her name. Devin Black’s eyes followed her hand, watching as the jagged lines of her signature formed.

“Never thought anyone would ask me to sign a contract again,” she said. “The world is a very strange place.”

“You have no idea.” Jerry stuffed the contract into the briefcase. “Go pack your things.”

She went to the door and turned. “What if I’d put on weight?” she asked. “Or sprouted a million pimples? Or cut off all my hair?”

Jerry darted a glance at Devin Black. “Enquiries were made.”

She nodded. Of course. “I imagine Miss Edwards is very bribable.”

“You’ll learn that anyone can be made to do just about anything,” Jerry said, grabbing his hat with an angry swipe.

“You’re walking back into a different world than the one you left nine months ago.” Devin Black slid himself between her and the door so that he could open it for her, as if they were coming to the end of a formal date rather than an exercise in blackmail. “Have you kept up on the news? There’s a new president, a new attitude, and new fears.”

Pagan took a few steps into the hallway, her heart lifting. She’d be leaving this place today. It was really happening.

A shiver overtook her and she wrapped her arms around herself to make it stop. She couldn’t tell if she was thrilled or terrified.

Miss Edwards waited just down the hall, bony arms crossed. Pagan ignored her and tilted her head up at Devin Black. “I keep up on the news that matters, Mister Black, thanks to Ed Sullivan reruns and old copies of Photoplay. Elizabeth Taylor’s going to be Cleopatra, the new Dior suit dresses are divine, and everyone’s twisting again with Chubby Checker.” She flashed him a genuine smile. Warmth was spreading through her, a feeling perilously close to happiness. “Is every hit song getting a sequel now?”

Devin Black loosed the first spontaneous grin she’d seen from him. “Why not? I can’t wait to hear �Cathy’s Clown Gets a Job under the Big Top.’”

Caught by surprise, Pagan laughed. Devin’s smile widened, lighting up his face and the whole dreary hallway, a thousand times more genuine and charming than his earlier studied elegance.

“How about �Fallen Teen Angel’?” Pagan said. “That could be my theme song.”

Devin loosed a hoot of laughter, nodding at her knowingly, as if to say touchГ©.

“I think,” Miss Edwards’s icy voice cut in, “I’d better get you back to solitary, young lady.”

“That won’t be necessary, Miss Edwards.” Devin’s grin soured into something formidable as he turned to her. The playful boy vanished behind the man’s sharp gaze. “Miss Jones will be going to the infirmary immediately to see Miss Duran, where they will be allowed to converse in private for at least an hour.”

The color drained from Miss Edwards’s face. “Oh, I… Is Mercedes back? I hadn’t heard.”

“You know very well she’s been here since last night,” Devin said. “It’s a shame you didn’t bother to inform her worried roommate. I’m sure the judge will find that detail of my visit quite illuminating.”

Miss Edwards’s countenance became positively chalky. “No need for that, Mister Black, I’m sure. I’ve been and will be happy to abide by the judge’s orders, of course. But I’m a busy woman. I can’t be expected to—”

“When Miss Duran is released from the infirmary,” Devin said, in tones that brooked no further discussion, “she is to be allowed all of her normal privileges. Her attackers are being removed to a more appropriate facility as we speak. If we hear of any further injury to or issue with Miss Duran, we will take further action.” He paused. “Action you may not appreciate.”

How could a mere studio executive know these things and wield such power? Still, it did Pagan’s heart good to see fright fill Miss Edwards’s perfectly lined eyes, to watch the lips in their expensive red lipstick press themselves together as if pushing back a desire to plead or to protest. “I understand,” the matron said.

Devin’s smile was chilly. “Meanwhile, Miss Jones will leave this facility for good at four o’clock this afternoon. See to it her things are ready when the car arrives.”

Miss Edwards opened her mouth, but Devin Black simply stared at her, and the woman shut her lips again. It was like magic.

He turned to Pagan and took her hand again to shake it. “The studio will make all the arrangements. Welcome back, Miss Jones.”

She pressed his strong fingers with her own firmly. “Thank you.” She slid her eyes to Miss Edwards. “For everything.”

He held her hand for a long moment. Her heart was hammering, but that didn’t mean anything. She was just out of practice when it came to boys. Well, she’d mend that soon enough. Carefully, maintaining composure, she removed her hand and walked out of the office, into the hallway.

“Wish me luck, Jerry,” Pagan said over her shoulder. “I’ll do the same for you.”

“Good luck, Pagan,” Jerry said, adding under his breath, “We’re both going to need it.”

The hallway. As she moved down it after the erect form of the headmistress, Pagan slowed, remembering how the strange acoustics of the bent corridor sent sounds bouncing from one end to the other. If she hovered in the sweet spot for a moment, she might catch some of Jerry and Devin’s private conversation.

They were speaking now, but she couldn’t distinguish the words over her own footsteps and Miss Edwards’s. Miss Edwards, at least, was in front, her back to Pagan, and pulling away rapidly. Pagan slackened her pace and softened her footfalls.

“You’re not as cool a customer as I thought, Jerry.” That was Devin. He sounded different. More clipped, or something. It was hard to tell from the hallway echo. “Next time, don’t smoke so much.”

“Next time?” Jerry’s voice got louder with alarm. “Why should there be a next time?”

Devin’s voice moved farther away. He must be heading toward the stairs that led down to the first floor. “You never know.”

“Keep up!” Miss Edwards’s command cut through her thoughts. Pagan began walking again, straining to hear more.

Jerry was saying, peeved, “One drink and she could sink the whole thing. And that girl has a lot of reasons to drink.”

Pagan was nearing the next bend in the hallway, after which she wouldn’t be able to hear any more. Miss Edwards had already turned the corner, so Pagan dropped to one knee and slowly tied her sneaker laces.

“Go home, Jerry.” Devin Black’s footsteps trotted lightly down the stairs, nearly out of range. “We got what we wanted.”

His steps faded into nothing. A moment of silence.

“Who,” Jerry asked of the empty echoes, “is we?”





(#ulink_f16c63a0-43d2-5dfb-b18c-9deaf2e42506)

Mercedes was asleep when Pagan got to the infirmary, so she sat down quietly next to the bed and stared at the wad of bandages wrapped around her friend’s shoulder.

That was where Susan Mahoney’s stiletto had slid into Mercedes. It had made a sickeningly slick noise as she’d yanked out the thin, shiny blade. Blood had dripped from the knife’s tip as Susan had poised it over Mercedes’s throat.

Stop thinking about that, stop! The important thing was that Susan hadn’t succeeded in finishing off Mercedes. She was going to be okay.

Pagan focused on her friend’s relaxed left hand, studying the smooth brown skin and clear nails. They were cut short, but not too short. Pagan had begun to keep hers the same length after Mercedes had explained that you needed enough nail to effectively rake your enemy’s face or neck to draw blood. But let the nails grow too long, and they’d bend back or snap during a fight, which not only hurt but might distract you at a crucial moment.

Not exactly something Pagan’s manicurist had chatted about, back in the day. Life in Lighthouse had been horrible, but it had taught her a few things Hollywood couldn’t. Not just how to put your body weight into a punch or how to choke down canned meat for dinner, but things like how to know when someone meant you harm, and how stay in the moment. Mercedes had impressed upon her that if you let too many thoughts of the past or fears of the future cloud your thoughts, you might not survive the present.

All those lessons might come in handy if she was going back into the real world.

If she was going to stay sober.

Mercedes’s eyelids fluttered and snapped open. Like Pagan, she slept lightly and woke all at once. It was one of the many things they’d been surprised to find they had in common.

“Hey,” said Pagan. She wanted to squeeze Mercedes’s hand, but she refrained. M didn’t care for sentimental words or physical demonstrations of affection. “You’re doing great.”

The brown eyes studied her, crinkling a little at the corners. “Thanks,” Mercedes said. Her normally smooth, deep voice was scratchy but calm. “For saving my life.”

Oh, right. Pagan had so thoroughly avoided thinking about how Susan Mahoney had almost succeeded in stabbing Mercedes a second time, how the big redhead had aimed for the throat, that she had also blanked out how she herself had stopped it. Her vision had narrowed down to the freckled hand holding that stiletto, and a strange conviction had taken over.

Not this time.

Somehow, despite her own injuries, Pagan had fought her way to her feet and propelled herself into Susan, tearing her off Mercedes before Pagan had blacked out.

“Thanks for not dying,” Pagan said, her voice hoarse but steady.

Mercedes let out the barest breath of a laugh. “Anytime.” Her gaze traveled over Pagan and the room they were in, empty except for the bed and some medical equipment. “It’s not like the witch to lock us in here together.”

“We’re not locked in,” Pagan said. “We’re free. Well, free of solitary anyway.” As Mercedes listened, frowning, Pagan told her all that had happened that morning, stumbling a little as she tried to convey the bizarre dynamic between Devin Black and Jerry Allenberg.

“I’m hoping I can call you from Berlin,” she said. “So if Miss Edwards tries to retaliate against you at all, you let me know.”

“I’ll be fine.” Mercedes was dismissive. “It’s your situation that’s radioactive, so you better call me.”

“It’s just a movie shoot,” Pagan said, sounding as casual as she could. “It’s not life and death.”

Mercedes slanted her eyes at Pagan in her best who are you kidding look. “First thing, you go to one of those meetings.”

“A.A.” Pagan shifted uneasily on the bed. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” Mercedes raised her eyebrows. “You promise me you’ll go?”

Pagan waved one hand airily. “I’m fine, really.”

Mercedes’s brown eyes took on an implacable look. “Promise me you’ll go to a meeting.”

Pagan looked at her best friend, her only friend, and said reluctantly, “If there’s time, and if they have meetings in Berlin, I’ll go.”

“If, if!” Mercedes made a tsking sound with her tongue. “Just go.”

“Okay, okay!” Pagan threw up her hands. “Can I hang out here with you for a bit longer before I leave, at least?”

Mercedes relaxed. “Who’s going to tell me crazy stories about the guests on Ed Sullivan after you’re gone?”

“You won’t need Ed Sullivan,” Pagan said. “I’m going to send you every single brand-new tabloid magazine I can lay my hands on.”

“Coolsville,” Mercedes said, looking sly. “I can read what they’re saying about you.”

* * *

The tiny windowless room they’d shared felt so empty without Mercedes. Miss Edwards had brought Pagan the suit she’d worn the day she walked into Lighthouse, but it was now too big in the chest and the hips. Prison was apparently an excellent dieting tool.

Now the suit looked like something another girl would wear. Pagan wasn’t sure who that girl was—a spoiled drunk movie star or a sad orphan going off to juvenile detention—but she wasn’t either of those people anymore, and the outfit was all wrong. After they allowed her to shower, she folded up the suit and her old white gloves and left them behind for Mercedes to trade, donning her saggy garters, stockings, and scuffed flat shoes under the scratchy gray Lighthouse uniform for the last time.

She didn’t take anything else with her. As Miss Edwards clomped angrily in front of her toward the front door, Pagan paused to listen to the voices of the girls in the distant classroom, now reciting geometry proofs. Their chant faded behind her as she walked out the double doors and the sunshine hit her face.

All the snappy last words she had prepared to say to Miss Edwards fled her brain the moment she gazed up at the azure sky. Hot, dry August air swept through her hair. After nine long months, she was free.

At the bottom of the steps lurked a long black limousine with fins like a shark. Leaning against it with the passenger door open beside him was Devin Black.

He pulled the door open wider. “Ready to go home?”

Home. Without a family waiting for her, she didn’t know what that meant anymore.

In a blink everything seemed oppressive—the heat; the hard yellow light; the empty, waiting house that still held Ava’s stuffed animals and Daddy’s golf clubs.

And the car. It wasn’t remotely red or a convertible, but the thought of getting in it made her queasy. Nine months since the accident, and the memories were waiting there, circling like vultures.

“What are you waiting for? You can’t stay here.” Miss Edwards’s voice sliced through the dread. “Even if you’re not ready to go.”

Pagan glanced over her shoulder. Something about Miss Edwards’s condescending smirk made the big scary world out there a lot more appealing. “Thanks ever so much for all your kindness.” She bestowed a wide, fake smile on the woman. “I’ll be sure to mention you in my first magazine interview.”

Miss Edwards’s face froze. Knowing that she probably looked more like a war refugee than a movie star in her stained uniform and ponytail, Pagan nonetheless did her best model sashay down the steps. The dark depths of the car swallowed her. She didn’t look back as Devin got in after her and slammed the door.

Inside it was air-conditioned. She sank back into the smooth, deeply cushioned black leather seats as the driver stepped on the accelerator and they glided away. The limo’s velvety bounce was nothing like the low-down rumble of her Corvette, and she began to relax. Low storefronts and empty, fenced yards flashed past as they headed west. She was free.

Or was she? The unreadable expression on Devin Black’s face wasn’t reassuring.

“Does the car bring back bad memories?” he asked, his voice mild.

“The car?” Dang, he was perceptive. She’d have to be careful around him. “It’s no big deal. I’m cool.”

He leaned forward and opened a small cabinet set into the partition between them and the driver. “Something to drink?”

She stared at the tiny refrigerator. The luxury of it being here, inside a car, reminded her of her old life. Limousines, movie premieres, and fridges full of alcohol. She’d never appreciated it, or feared it, the way she did now. “Got a Coke?”

“Sure.” He grabbed a bottle and used an opener to remove the cap. She took it and sipped, her first taste of Coke in months. It was delicious and icy cold.

Devin reached into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out a red-and-white pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

Winston. Her brand. This guy had done his homework. But why? She took the unopened pack, and the plastic wrap crackled in her hand. She could almost taste the smoothly acrid smoke and feel the filter of the cigarette between her index and middle fingers. All she needed was a martini in the other hand. Cigarettes and alcohol went together like drive-in movies and making out. One without the other just didn’t make sense.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll save these for later.”

He nodded and removed his sunglasses. In the cool dark of the limousine interior, his eyes were shadowed. “The plan was to take you directly home. We got permission from Judge Tennison to air out your house. The studio has sent over a designer with some clothes for you to choose from, with a hairdresser and manicurist on standby. Is there anywhere you’d like to go first?”

“You mean, like a record store?” She tucked the cigarettes away in her skirt pocket. Maybe one day she could face them without a drink. “I wouldn’t mind seeing what’s new from Ray Charles.”

“We could do that if you like. Or is there some sort of organizational meeting you should attend?” When she looked at him blankly, he added, “The Friends of Bill W?”

Pagan nearly did a spit take with her Coke. “A.A?”

He regarded her, his face neutral, and said nothing.

Of course, he meant well, and she had promised Mercedes. So she’d go. She really would. But certainly not with Devin Black tagging along. She’d attended exactly two meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous between getting out on bail after her arrest and being sentenced to Lighthouse. Everyone there had been her parents’ age or older. They’d tried so hard not to stare at her that she’d felt both conspicuous and invisible, like a ghost no one wants to admit is haunting their house.

“I’m fine,” she said to Devin Black. It came out sharper than she intended.

“If you say so.” He couldn’t keep a slight tone of skepticism out of his voice. “You should know that the studio has assigned me to make sure you get to Berlin without incident.”

Which meant he’d been assigned to keep her off the bottle. Resentment flared. “What I drink is none of the studio’s—or your—business.”

He didn’t drop his gaze. “We have a considerable investment in you.”

She stared right back. “You knew the risks when you brought me into this.”

Unexpectedly, a slow smile spread over his face, as if he couldn’t help it. “The risks. And the rewards.”

He slid stormy blue eyes over her, and a warm flush stole up her neck to her cheeks. She hadn’t blushed for a boy since the last time she’d seen Nicky, her first and only boyfriend. She’d forgotten how exciting it was to get flustered like that.

“The reward of seeing me look like a fugitive from a chain gang?” She made her voice tart, which helped the flush subside. It wasn’t as if she could truly be attracted to Devin Black. He was a studio minder, her jailer. He might be useful for now, but he was her adversary.

“You’re talented enough to make any role believable.” At her incredulous look, he leaned forward and said, “No, really. I remember seeing that they’d cast you in Leopard Bay as a homeless street girl and I thought, That will never work. But it was an astonishing performance. For once they gave the right person the Golden Globe for most promising newcomer.”

The role in Leopard Bay had been her most challenging, something to be proud of before her career devolved into fluff like The Bashful Debutante and Beach Bound Beverly. By then, she was too busy hanging on Nicky’s arm and getting down to some serious drinking to worry about the quality of her movie roles. If they’d all been as rigorous as Leopard Bay, her drinking problem might have been noticed—by her father, by her fellow actors, by the studio. Maybe things would have been different.

“I was more excited about getting the BAFTA,” she said. “As far as I know the British Academy can’t be bought, unlike the Hollywood Foreign Press.”

He smirked. “As far as you know. What was it like to work with Richard Burton?”

Pagan looked out the window, remembering a brooding, pockmarked face, a warm presence. “He’s even more charismatic in person, but he was sort of sad. He caught me sipping from his hip flask one day, and all he did was take it away from me very gently and shake his head.” Leopard Bay had been shot not long after her mother died. She’d started drinking in secret. “He helped me practice my Welsh accent.”

Pagan shook off the memory. Time to learn more about the mysterious Mister Black. “Where are you from?”

“New York.” He eased back into the leather seat and stretched out his long legs so that they almost touched hers. “Born and raised.”

“You don’t have a New York accent,” she said. “You sound like me.” Pagan had been coached in elocution from an early age. Once her career as a baby model had taken off, her mother had made sure she grew up trained in how to speak, move, sing, and dance. She now spoke with a nondescript American accent, instead of sounding like a California girl.

“Education drills out the quirks,” he said with a shrug. “But I don’t have your gift for mimicking accents.”

After the barest pause, he gave her another smile. It was warm. Deep. But she didn’t blush this time. That pause, that fraction of a second, before he flashed her that smile, opened up a part of her brain she hadn’t used in months, years. The smile was perfect. His eyes even crinkled at the corners exactly the way they should. But Pagan knew it was fake, because she was trained to know.

Devin Black was acting. Behind his seeming spontaneity lay an iron control.

Pagan curved her lips into a shy smile to simulate her own coy response, her mind racing. Liars were a dime a dozen in Hollywood. She herself was one of the best. But Devin Black was more than a liar. He was dangerous.

Strange forces were at work. And for her own sake, she had to unmask them.

Devin Black wasn’t the only one who could flirt to get what he wanted.

“You’re a New Yorker, so you must have been to the Stage Deli over on Houston,” she said.

The Stage Deli was on Seventh Avenue, not Houston. If Devin was indeed from New York, he’d know that. “My dad and I ate there all the time when I was shooting that musical in Manhattan. He had the pastrami sandwich five times in a row.”

Devin’s blue eyes narrowed slightly. “Katz’s Deli is on Houston. The Stage Deli’s on Seventh.”

“Oh, Katz’s!” She lifted one palm to the sky as if asking heaven to return her brain. “That’s what I meant.”

So Devin knew New York. That didn’t mean he wasn’t lying. She scooched an inch closer to him on the leather seat. “We’ll be stopping in New York on the way to Berlin probably, right? What’s the hot new thing on Broadway these days?”

He tilted his head, musing. “I was hoping to see The Happiest Girl in the World, but it closed in June.”

“I was hoping to be The Happiest Girl in the World.” She gave him a rueful smile. “Then my life turned into West Side Story in a hurry.”

“Have you heard from Nicky Raven recently?” he asked, his voice deceptively light.

Nicky. Just the sound of his name squeezed all the blood from Pagan’s heart. Born Niccolo Randazzo, Nicky sang smoother than Sinatra and could swing like Louis Armstrong. Nicky, with his thick brown hair swept back in a wave, those flexible lips that had kissed her so many times, and that slightly crooked nose lending his boyish face a tougher cast. Just the sound of his name sent everything inside her swirling upward like a dust devil.

The first time she’d seen him, he’d been swaggering past Stage 12 on the Universal lot, singing his latest hit, “Sunlight on Her Face.” His dark eyes had lighted upon Pagan as she’d walked past, and he’d stopped dead, taken her hand, and said, “Hey, beautiful. I’m gonna marry you.”

He’d asked her to dinner on the spot, and with her father’s permission, they’d dined that night at The Brown Derby. It was the first of many long, romantic evenings together.

She caught Devin Black’s assessing gaze and stifled the tumult inside her. He’d asked her about Nicky to see how flustered she would get, to test her weak spots. It was cold-blooded…and smart as hell.

Or maybe he wanted to know if she was over Nicky—for himself.

“Not recently.” Her voice was a study in nonchalance. “Has he put out a new album or had a hit single lately?”

“Not that I noticed.” Devin gave her another appreciative look. “Perhaps he’s run out of inspiration.”

She leaned in close, wishing she had a lower neckline to deploy or at least some lipstick. “Perhaps you and I should take in a show when we hit New York.”

He inclined toward her, a smile playing around his mouth. It looked genuine. “There’s only time for dinner, but I know a place…”

He stopped, as if catching himself, and his smile straightened into a resolute blank. “At the airport we can get a decent meal before we get on the plane for Berlin.”

Although his voice was pleasant, the already refrigerated air took on a chill. Without moving a muscle, Devin Black had become as remote as the waning moon.

But she’d gotten to him. Pagan leaned back in her seat, suppressing a smile. He’d warmed to her for a moment, the same way he had when they’d discussed sequels to popular songs. He’d probably pulled back because he was worried about losing his job if she beguiled him too thoroughly. But with a little work, she might transform him from prison warden to adoring acolyte.

“Perhaps once we get to Berlin, you could show me around,” she said, her voice soft. “I’ve never been there.”

He didn’t turn his head to look at her. “Once we get to Berlin you’re going to be very busy trying not to get fired off the first movie set you’ve been on since you quit drinking. Better to concentrate on that.”

Rage flooded her. Had she been completely mistaken, thinking he found her attractive? Or was he the type of jerk who lashed out when he couldn’t have what he wanted? Either way, he was utterly disagreeable.

“I was a better actor drunk than you are now,” she said. It was a stab in the dark. He was performing in some way, and he didn’t have to know she couldn’t figure him out.

He gave her a cold smile. “Think how splendid you’ll be now that you’re sober.”

Sober. What a dismal word.

Uneasy silence settled between them. She sipped her Coke. The car turned north on La Brea and slid past the old Chaplin studios.

A cherry-red convertible overflowing with laughing people zoomed past them, radio blasting a raucous song she didn’t recognize. Pagan suppressed a sigh. A few months ago that had been her. She and Nicky had been drunk on love and success, and other things. He’d driven her down Sunset Boulevard, singing along to his own voice as his number one single played on the radio.

Another car went by, and she was afraid to look out the window to see who was driving it. Nicky could still be in Los Angeles, for all she knew. She tried to picture running into him now, ten months after he’d stopped calling. She imagined a look of pity crossing his face when he saw her, the disgust he’d try to keep from his eyes. The same dark eyes that had once held so much love, so much desire.

She was real gone over Nicky still. Good thing she was going to Berlin, far from anywhere she and Nicky had ever been.

A need to run, to move, to get away from this car, from Devin, from everything, pushed through her like a wave.

As they turned west on Hollywood Boulevard, she pressed the switch for the automatic window to bring it humming down. Warm dry air rushed over her face, and she stuck her head out. So what if Devin thought she was crazy? She needed to breathe.

She closed her eyes as the wind whipped her hair back, pushing against her eyelids. Shadows pulsed over her, dimming the sunlight briefly. She opened her eyes to look at the palm trees towering above, slipping past like signposts.

She turned her head to gaze back east down Hollywood Boulevard. As they rose up an incline and her hair lashed at her face, she caught a glimpse of Grauman Theater’s swooping Chinese roof. She’d hoped to have her hand—and footprints­—added to the greats already enshrined in the concrete there. No way that would happen now.

They crested the slight hill and headed down again. Grauman’s disappeared from sight. Mansions and gardens lined the road. The Hollywood Hills rose, brown from the summer, to her right. Up there, on the narrow curves of Mulholland Drive, was where she’d crashed her Corvette. Where Daddy and Ava had died.

She didn’t want to run or let the air breeze over her anymore. The wind—or something else—had scoured that need out of her. She pulled back into the stillness of the car and shoved her hair back into place. Devin Black sat unmoving, not looking at her as they turned right onto Laurel Canyon.

Not long now. She’d be back home. Where she had nothing but the spirits of the dead to comfort her.





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As Devin Black held Pagan’s own front door open for her and she walked into the high-ceilinged entry, three women with perfectly coifed hair and identical black pumps bustled down the stairs to introduce themselves.

So much for ghosts. The house was full of actual people. Pagan was too overwhelmed to catch their names, but she did hear the words manicure, makeup, and haircut, and that was enough to distract her from the sight of Ava’s grand piano draped in a huge white cloth in the music room, from the gilt-framed photos of her mother, father, and sister on the mantel.

The beautician, who had very shiny red hair, didn’t give her time to dwell on anything, guiding her into the master bedroom, where her father had slept, and stepping into the master bathroom before pausing to look expectantly over her shoulder.

Devin Black was there ahead of them, by the side of her father’s bed, squinting up at the small, brilliantly colored painting of a woman in a garden that her mother had hung in a place of honor on the wall.

“Do you like it?” Pagan asked. That painting was one of her favorite things in the world. The dazzling smudges of scarlet, violet, and orange flowers led to a path strewn with lilac and golden sunlight where the suggestion of a woman in a dark blue dress stood, holding a white parasol.

It reminded Pagan of her grandmother Katie, her father’s mother, and her vibrant garden in Maine the last spring they visited, shortly before she’d died of stomach cancer.

“Exquisite,” Devin said, peering closer at the thick swirls of paint. “It’s a Renoir.”

Pagan was surprised. “That’s what the man who gave it to Mama said.” She paced closer to it. “I figured he had to be lying.”

Devin’s eyes continued to travel over the intricacies of the painting. “Was this man a relative of yours?”

“I don’t think so.” Pagan frowned, trying to remember. She’d been eight years old when the man had come to visit. She’d forgotten about him until just now, but he could be a link to her mother’s past, back in Germany. “Doctor somebody. He was very tall and commanding. But his voice was nasal and whiny. He stayed with us for a couple weeks, so Mama must’ve known him well.”

“Where did he go after he left here?” Devin asked.

“I don’t know. He was waiting here till he caught a boat somewhere,” she said. Devin was staring at the painting again. It was mesmerizing. “I love it, but it’s got to be fake.”

“No.” Devin’s voice was meditative, almost dreamy. “Renoir painted it the summer of 1873 when he was staying with Monet.”

Pagan stared at him. How could a studio publicity hack know so much about art? “Are you an artist?” she asked.

“What? No!” He laughed. “I’ve just been fortunate enough to see a number of works by the great Impressionists up close.”

“Did you work in a museum?” she asked. “Or do you moonlight as an art forger?”

The laughter in his eyes died, replaced with a wariness and something that almost looked like pain. She was about to apologize for she knew not what when he gestured toward the bathroom and the sleek redheaded stylist. “Linda, my dear, do what you can with this creature.”

Devin vanished, and Pagan was left in her parents’ bathroom, made unfamiliar by a large hair dryer set up over a hard chair next to a serving table covered with rollers and twelve different shades of pink nail polish. Linda was already mixing something that smelled like peroxide in a little bowl.

“First we make you blonde, then we do a wet set, and Carol can do your nails while you dry,” Linda said. “How’s that sound to start?”

Pagan caught sight of herself in the mirror—the stiff, bedraggled, ash-colored hair, the unruly eyebrows, the chapped lips and too-big brown eyes that looked lost without mascara. Her mother would never have approved.

“That sounds like heaven,” Pagan said.

Linda, who couldn’t have been much older than Pagan, popped her gum and offered her a pack of Fruit Stripe. “The studio told me to do your hair exactly the way it was in The Bashful Debutante, just so you know. Chin length, curled under and blondest of the blond. Sorry if you were hoping for something else.”

Pagan unwrapped a cherry-striped stick and bit down on it slowly. The sweet, fake-fruit flavor flooded her mouth. She would have killed to have a pack of gum just a few hours ago in Lighthouse, and here it was now, offered to her freely. Funny how reform school made you appreciate things everyone else took for granted. “Anything will be better than how it is now.”

Linda chewed her gum with a casual sassiness that was fun to watch. Maybe Pagan could use the mannerism for her character. “No offense,” Linda said, “but it’s a mess. So you just relax. Magic Linda can fix anything.”

“Oh, so you’re my fairy godmother,” Pagan said. “I’ve been waiting for you to show.”

“Bippity boppity shampoo,” Linda said with a grin, pointing at a tube of Lustre-Crème. “Right after we make you a real blonde again.”

As Linda brushed and sectioned off Pagan’s hair, readying it for the peroxide, Carol came in and lifted Pagan’s right hand to examine her fingernails. “I like to keep them short,” Pagan said. She probably wouldn’t need to scratch anyone’s eyes out on the movie set, but prison habits died hard.

As Carol set her hands to soak and Linda began painting peroxide into her hair, it took her back to being in the makeup chair early in the morning before the day’s shooting began on a film. Makeup artists knew everyone’s secrets—who had acne and who had a toupee, whose red eyes were due to too many uppers and whose were caused by an all-night argument with their spouse. All the best gossip happened there.

“So I’m dying to know what’s hot on the radio now,” Pagan said. “Last new song I heard was �Georgia on My Mind,’ for crying out loud. What’s Ray Charles’s latest?”

Carol shrugged. “Search me, but that Pat Boone is dreamy.”

Linda made a face. “I like that Bobby Lewis song you hear all the time now, �Tossin’ and Turnin’,’ even if he can’t move like Jackie Wilson.”

“Nobody moves like Jackie Wilson,” Pagan said. “Elvis tries, but…”

“Oh, Elvis!” Linda wiggled happily, snapping her gum. “That boy is killer diller. I’d play backseat bingo with him any day of the week.”

“Linda!” Carol admonished with a grin and began filing Pagan’s nails.

“What’s the latest from Nicky Raven?” Pagan asked, her voice bland, her face a study in casual.

Linda inhaled sharply, her hand with the peroxide-loaded brush stopping in midstroke. Carol’s grip on Pagan’s hand tightened.

“Nobody cares about that guy anymore,” Carol said a bit too forcefully, and ducked her head down to keep filing.

“Yeah,” Linda chimed in. “He’s no Elvis.”

So much for any attempt to fish news of Nicky out of them. She had thought they’d be eager to get the “real” story on her famous thwarted romance, but that pesky Devin Black must have given them a gag order. Fine. She could play that game.

Carol gestured at the bottles of nail polish and said into the awkward silence, “I hope you like pink, ’cause that’s what they told me it had to be. But you can pick which one.”

“That one’s pretty.” Pagan pointed to a rosy shade with her free left hand. “So, was it Devin Black who told you how to do my hair and nails?”

“No.” Linda had finished applying the peroxide solution and was folding Pagan’s laden hair into a plastic cap to sit until it lightened. “It was the head of makeup at Universal, Josie McIntyre. She said she’d discussed your look with Bennie Wexler.”

“Oh, of course,” Pagan said. “I remember Josie.” She did, too—a nosy, middle-aged woman with an amazing ability to make your nose look slimmer or your eyes bigger. Pagan had been hoping these girls could give her more insight into the role Devin Black was playing in her life. But it sounded like Neither Here Nor There was being handled like any other movie.

So the evidence continued to support the fact that Devin was just a junior publicity flack charged with ensuring Pagan didn’t make any trouble for the film. But Pagan had met a lot of executives in her time, and Devin Black was from a different planet entirely.

“Oh, my God, have you seen the clothes Helen is laying out for Pagan to try on?” Linda took the cap off Pagan’s hair and prepared to wash out the peroxide and apply the toner. She placed a hand on Pagan’s shoulder and looked at her in the mirror. “The studio got some special designer things for you. I heard Helen telling Devin. Didn’t hear which designer, but he told her to get something specific for you, and the head of costume pulled a lot of strings to get it.”

Carol let out a little squeal. “Oh, can’t wait to see what it is.”

“Oh, me, too!” Pagan widened her eyes to look excited and kept her fingers splayed so as not to mess up her manicure as Linda guided her to stand and go over to the sink.

The next couple hours with Linda and Carol crawled by as Pagan racked her brain, trying to figure out why Devin Black would ask for a particular outfit for her, and what it could be. If it was from a well-known designer, it couldn’t be something too strange or revealing, though her mind went to all sorts of weird places trying to picture what sort of clothes a sleek, well-dressed man like him would have demanded for her. She tried not to tap her fingers and ruin the polish as she sat under the dryer with her newly platinum hair pinned up in big rollers.

Finally, her eyelids were lined with winged black and her eyebrows were darkly penciled high at the arch over her wide brown eyes. Dots of foundation and blush had been blended over her moisturized face, then a quick fuss with the contouring brush, new pink coral lipstick from Lournay, and lots of powder.

Pagan stared at herself in the mirror. It was as if she’d gone back in time. Her cheeks had lost some of their baby roundness in the past year, but they were gently flushed, and once again her hair glowed softly white gold against her pale face, setting off her dark eyes and brows.

It all looked so natural, so real. All the illusion needed now was the right clothes. She thanked Linda and Carol, then let them follow her toward her own bedroom, where Helen waited with a movable rack of clothes on hangers and several things laid out on the bed.

Pagan glanced around the familiar room. She hated its pale lilac walls, the high white canopy bed piled with pillows and stuffed animals, the shelves lined with pretty dolls in frilly dresses, classic children’s books, and official portraits of the family taken over the years.

What if I just painted everything black? she thought, and immediately felt guilty. How disrespectful to wipe away all of Mama’s efforts to showcase the perfect little girl’s life.

Her eye landed on the last family photo Mama had been in. They were all smiling dutifully in front of the Christmas tree. Next to it was a framed shot of Pagan, grinning on Clark Gable’s arm as she held up her Golden Globe award.

Mama had died shortly after that Christmas photo was taken, and Pagan had been so tipsy at the Golden Globe Awards that she’d tripped over her long gown and was hustled into a limousine by her publicist, sent home before the parties were over.

It was all so far away, as if it had happened to someone in a book, not to her. Clark Gable had died of a heart attack last year, and the attorneys had put her Golden Globe and BAFTA in a vault.

The fake glossiness of it all made her a little sick. Then she caught sight of the creation laid out on the foot of her bed and gasped.

Helen, a tall former model type dressed in a sleeveless red shift, clapped her hands together in delight. “Yes! It’s the Dior suit dress Mister Black insisted we get for you. Isn’t it spectacular?”

It was more than spectacular. It was perfection. Somehow Devin Black had obtained a brand-new suit dress from the house of Dior. The rich dark brown wool was sewn to look like two pieces—a full flared skirt that hit around the knee belted wide and tight at the waist, and a body-hugging bolero jacket with a crew neck, two almost invisible chest pockets, and three dark shell buttons down the front. But it was really all one piece, a dress so chic and modern she could barely breathe.

She watched Helen unbutton and unzip the dress for her and remembered now. She’d mentioned the Dior suit dresses offhand to Devin Black when they’d first met. The design was new that year, available only to the very rich and privileged. Soon they’d be copied by the department stores, but for now they had to be special-ordered from Dior at an exorbitant cost. It hadn’t occurred to Pagan to request one for herself. She couldn’t imagine how Devin Black had gotten it here in just a few hours.

As she pulled on the girdle—Lord! How she hated those things—and clipped her stockings to her garters, she couldn’t figure out how to feel about the dress. Was it a kindly gesture, meant to welcome her? Or was it a display of power, a sign that he was paying attention to her every word and could conjure anything he desired at a moment’s notice?

Knowing what little she did of Devin, it was both of those things. And more.

She didn’t look at herself in the mirror until the dress was fully zipped, her feet were slipped into a pair of kitten-heeled Dior pumps, and soft black leather elbow-length gloves were slid on over the dress’s tight sleeves.

The women were shaking their heads in appreciation, eyes wide. She stepped up to see her reflection and stilled. The dress was more than flattering—the warm brown complemented her eyes, the skirt tapered to make her waist look impossibly slender, showing off her calves and knees, and the bolero jacket widened at the bust to give her curves where it counted. This was a dress meant to make things happen, to let her move through the world with confidence and grace.

Her throat tightened. Could she ever be that girl in the mirror again?

Something dark moved in the reflection, and she whirled. Devin Black was leaning against the bedroom doorway, arms crossed, regarding her. One corner of his mouth deepened admiringly. “Glad to see it fits.”

Pagan opened her mouth, not sure what to say, gratitude and resentment battling inside her.

Helen made a tsking noise. “Mister Black, please! Girls only in the bedroom!”

Devin gave her a little bow and faded down the hallway.

Pagan’s eyes filled up, threatening to send mascara dripping down her cheeks.

“Excuse me,” she muttered, and ran into her bathroom, shutting the door and grabbing a tissue. The girl in the mirror looked uncertain now, overwhelmed, and not nearly mature enough for her outfit.

She took another tissue out of the box sitting on top of the toilet tank and had a sudden memory—of sliding a half-empty pint of vodka into that tank, about a year ago. She had concealed bottles all over the house, but that was one of her best hiding places. However much the maid scrubbed the bowl, she never bothered with the tank. No one did.

I’m not going to take it. I’m not going to drink it. I just need to know if it’s still there. That’s all.

Breathing a little harder than she should, Pagan removed her gloves and lifted the top off the toilet’s tank.

Nothing. No bottle of vodka. Just clear water, rods, valves, and the float.

She let the tank lid fall back into place with a clang, then her knees buckled and she sat down on the lilac bath rug.

Someone had found the bottle and taken it away. After the accident and the discovery of her ridiculously high blood alcohol level, her father’s attorney had probably had a team go through the entire house to get rid of any damning evidence.

She wiped her eyes carefully and blotted her wet cheeks with some toilet paper. She looked down at the fluffy lilac rug and a tiny laugh escaped her. How ridiculous she must look.

Get off the floor in that Dior, Mama would’ve ordered, and then would have looked blank when Pagan laughed out loud at the inadvertent rhyme.

She climbed carefully to her feet, smoothing the skirt of her splendid new suit dress. It was unblemished, beautiful.

She looked at her face in the mirror. If she schooled it just right, she almost looked happy.

And she had a job to do. Mama would approve of this refusal to give in to insecurity. Where had Mama gotten that strength, and why had it crumbled so disastrously?

She threw away the tissue and put her shoulders back, chin up. She looked good, strong, thanks to the perfect structure of the dress.

Clothing wasn’t magical. There were no fairy godmothers, and she hadn’t been transformed. But no way was she giving up the Dior suit dress. One day she’d make it fit, inside and out.

In Daddy’s office there was a safe. Once Devin left for the night, Pagan would see what she could find inside. She was on a mission in Berlin. Not only to revive her career, but to learn more about Eva Jones, and maybe, just maybe, feel as happy as she looked.





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The door to Daddy’s study was locked. Pagan rattled the doorknob again, not believing it. Daddy had never locked the office after Mama died; it was she who had kept the girls out, saying she didn’t want them spilling things on her important papers. Daddy had liked having them in there, settling Ava on his lap to act as his secretary or helping Pagan build a fort out of books.

It was late, but Devin Black was unaccountably still here. Pagan found him lounging with rather too much ease on the sofa in the living room, feet up on her mother’s rosewood coffee table, reading the New York Times.

“Can I have the key to my father’s office?” she said. “It’s locked for some reason.”

He didn’t look up from the paper. “I don’t have the key.”

She stared at him. He kept reading. She pressed down the irritation of being kept out of a room in her own house and put on a smile. More flies obtained with honey and all that nonsense.

“Who would lock it?” She arced her voice up to sound puzzled. “Daddy never locked it.”

The paper rustled with his shrug.

She’d changed into the silk pajamas and robe Helen had included in what they called her “trousseau.” For a moment, she imagined herself a frustrated housewife talking to her indifferent husband in a silly Rock Hudson comedy. “I do need to get in there and go through a couple of things. Who do you think would have the key?”

He folded down one side of the paper to look at her. “The trustee to your estate, I imagine.”

“Oh, right.” She sat down on the tasseled ottoman in front of her father’s favorite leather chair. The room still smelled like Daddy, of cigars and leather and citrus trees. She blinked, forcing her thoughts back to her plan. “That’s Daddy’s lawyer, Mister Shevitz. A bit too late to call him tonight, I guess.”

“I guess.” Devin slapped the paper back up and continued reading.

Pagan stared at his Italian leather shoes on the coffee table. “Speaking of it being late, isn’t it time you went back to your own lair?”

“This is my lair, for tonight,” he said from behind the paper. “I’m in the guest room.”

She found herself on her feet, her face flushing against all her efforts at control. “You can’t stay here!”

He laid the paper on his lap and folded his hands over it. “Oh, but I can. I’m your new court-appointed guardian.”

“But…” She didn’t like how this information was agitating her. “You’re a kid! You’re too young to be anybody’s guardian.”

“Not according to Judge Tennison.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” She rounded the edge of the couch, rattled down to her bones. “I just met you today. You’ve got no connection to my family, no history of trust or…of anything!”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “There’s no need to get flustered. I won’t be lurking in your closet all night. Or sharing your bed.”

Heat shot up her spine. He was goading her now, and she wasn’t about to cooperate. She calmed her voice down to a level of rational concern. “What if the tabloid magazines found out that you and I spent the whole night alone in my house?”

He appeared unworried at the prospect. “They won’t.”

“What if Linda, Helen, or Carol sell that information to a journalist?”

That thought seemed to entertain him. “They won’t.”

“What if I sold that information?”

His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t.”

“Why not?” She smiled. “It’s not as if I have a reputation to protect. Think of the delicious headlines—Killer Starlet Shacks Up with Her Blackmailer.”

“I offered you an opportunity—” he began.

“So you’d get an opportunity with me?” she finished.

“Don’t flatter yourself.” He put the paper back up and ran his eyes over the print, but she knew he wasn’t reading a word.

“And in Berlin?” she pressed. “How are you going to keep your court-appointed guardian eye on me there?”

“You’ll have your own room at the Hilton,” he said.

“But you’ll be in the room next door.”

He smiled, confirming her guess. “It’s new, but the Hilton’s already the best hotel in town. They have a restaurant on the roof with a great band that plays on fine summer nights.”

“Good,” she said, and walked decisively toward the door. “The music will cover your scream when I shove you over the edge.”

He laughed as she ran up the stairs to her room. She slammed the door, taking fierce pleasure in the wall-В­shaking crash. Oh, he was irritating. But that would only make her focus more on how to get around him. He had to sleep some time.

She brushed her teeth and got in her fluffy white bed at 10:00 p.m., then turned out the light, wide-awake and determined to stay that way. She rolled from one side of the huge bed to the other, punching the pillows piled around her. Back in Lighthouse, Miss Edwards had confiscated her only pillow, a pathetic, paper-thin affair half filled with feathers from anemic birds. So Pagan had spent the past nine months sleeping without one. She’d dreamed about having all her pillows back. But now their lift and softness crowded oddly around her head. Quietly, she shoved one after the other onto the floor then lay back flat, listening for Devin’s footsteps.

She snapped awake at midnight at the sound of a lock clicking into place. She sat up. It sounded like a lock on her door. But it couldn’t be. She’d already locked her own door, from the inside. Fully awake, she tiptoed over to her door, listening as Devin’s steps faded down the hall and vanished into the guest room. She unlocked her door, turned the knob, and gently tugged.

It didn’t budge.

She pulled harder, fumbling for the key to make sure it was really unlocked. Her fingers met a smooth plate of metal above the doorknob. What the hell was that?

She flicked the light on her bedside table to life and stared at a brass plate she’d never seen before, newly installed over the doorknob. Someone had installed a dead bolt on the exterior of her bedroom door.

Not someone. Devin Black. He’d locked her in.

Towering, head-clearing rage surged from her heart and out of every pore.

She wasn’t a criminal. Well, if she was, she’d served her time. This was her house now, and she had every right to come and go as she pleased. How dare Devin treat her like his own personal prisoner? Guardian or no, he’d gone too far.

He thought he’d boxed her in, giving her no choice. Well, he’d learn soon enough. If you were willing to go far enough, to think hard enough, there was always a choice.

She donned a pair of pants and hoisted up the largest window overlooking the oak tree outside, glad to note the window was still well oiled and silent. She’d used it this way many times over the years, usually to sneak out to see Nicky.

The tree branch looked farther away than she remembered, but she’d been drinking back then. If she could bridge the distance between window and branch after chugging vodka, she could sure as shooting do it sober. She grabbed the house keys, shoved several pins into her hair, and lifted herself onto the sill.

In a blink she was straddling the branch and climbing down the tree, finding all the old handholds like good friends, waiting. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she sped down the side yard and entered the house again through the back door using her own key, careful to lock it again behind her.

Sit on that, Devin Black. She padded through the kitchen and down the hall to Daddy’s office door. Using the bigger bobby pin as a tension wrench, Pagan slid it into the lock the way Mercedes had taught her.

Two minutes later, the last pin clicked into place and Pagan turned the lock. The aroma of her father’s cigars hit her like a blow. It lingered, but Daddy was gone.

She clenched her fists, her newly pink nails biting into her palms. Focus. She had more important things to do here tonight than wallow in self-pity.

She made herself walk right up to her father’s leather chair and sit down in it. Daddy had opened the safe in front of her many times. She pulled aside the fake wainscoting on the lower part of the wall that concealed it and put her fingers on the dial.

Eleven and a turn left, then six, then two turns to the right, then forty-four. Pagan’s birthday. It was a stupid, sentimental number to use for a family safe, but her father had been that kind of man. How he and her hardheaded mother had ever fallen in love remained a mystery to Pagan.

The safe clicked open. She angled the desk lamp to shine into it and began piling file folders onto her lap. After the car crash, life had been too scary and hectic for Pagan to think about going through her father’s papers. Mister Shevitz had handled what needed to be done. But if there was anything to be found on Mama, Daddy would have put it in here.

Her hand hit the metal floor, and she stuck her head down to make sure she’d gotten everything. A lumpy rectangle threw a shadow near the back wall. She leaned in to pull it out.

There were two bundles. The first was wrapped in plastic and secured with rubber bands. Green glinted under the wrapping. A large stack of one hundred dollar bills.

Bless Daddy for keeping an emergency stash of cash.

The second bundle was an envelope full of folded paper, bound together with an older, nearly rotted rubber band. When she slid her index finger under it, the band snapped and flopped away like a dying fish.

The envelope was unsealed and yellowing at the corners. Pagan lifted the flap and carefully pulled out a stack of folded stationery on heavy white paper. Letters. She unfolded the first one with the care of an archaeologist unrolling an ancient papyrus.

Handwriting in black ink slanted across the paper in a jagged scrawl. She didn’t recognize it. Her breathing quickened as she read the first two words: Liebe Eva.

Her mother’s name, Eva, with a casual German greeting in front of it. Pagan understood enough German to know that Liebe was, at the very least, friendly. It didn’t have to be more than that.

But it could be.

Why in creation would her father have kept letters to her mother from someone in Germany? At the top the date was written: 30 Juni 1952. In European fashion, the day came first, then the month and year. June 30, 1952. Pagan had been seven years old. She’d turned eight that November.

She turned the expensive, textured paper over to see the signature. Hochachtungsvoll, Rolf von Albrecht.

Yours truly, Rolf von Albrecht?

Outside the office door, a floorboard creaked.

“Daddy?” she breathed, and caught herself.

Oh, God. For one wild moment she’d thought that sound was her father, coming home late. The urge to tear open the office door and throw her arms around him was almost overwhelming.

Steady, Pagan. No, it had to be Devin Black, patrolling her house in the middle of the night. He must be feeling as restless as she was. Thank goodness she had shut the office door when she came in.

Resentment of him and his control over her movements, her time, her life, bubbled up inside.

Damnable Devin might have all the power of a parent, but she’d sneaked out of the house on her actual parent, Daddy, plenty of times. Years of memorizing scripts had given her an ironclad memory for words on a page and the terms of the contract she’d signed were clear. The court-appointed guardian had to be on hand during the film shoot and thereafter at the court’s discretion.

Well, she wasn’t on the shoot, yet. She could give Devin Black a merry chase and still abide by the contract. She’d arrive in time for the movie, but on her own terms. Maybe by the time Devin caught up to her in Berlin, he’d realize he couldn’t treat her like a child.

Pagan grabbed her father’s empty briefcase, stuffed the files and the bundle of money inside, and closed it with two quiet clicks of the clasps. She’d finish reading the papers later.

She made her way carefully to the door and pressed her ear against the wood. Outside, wooden stairs squeaked. Devin was heading back up to his bedroom.

She let him get farther up before she silently opened the office door, listening. The faint footsteps continued above her, down the hall, back toward his room. His door rasped open. She waited for the soft thud of it closing before she tiptoed up after him. She was prepared to pick the dead bolt to get back into her own room, but there was no keyhole, just a latch she could flip. Moving in silence, she reentered her bedroom and began to pack.

* * *

At 5:00 a.m. she opened her door and looked back at the lilac bedroom. Pillows lay scattered all over the floor, except for the three she’d stuffed under the lacy white coverlet to look like her own sleeping body.

Devin Black would come to wake her up in a few hours. He’d be concerned when she didn’t respond and even more concerned when he saw the door wasn’t locked. He’d probably push his way into the room to throw back the coverlet. Then he’d see how she’d fooled him. He’d see her packed trunks still in the closet, waiting for transport to Berlin. He’d curse her when he saw that her smallest suitcase, the new Chanel purse, and the Dior suit dress were gone.

She was wearing that fabulous outfit now, her purse full of Daddy’s money, his papers in her bag. She was slick and chic and lighter than air. She floated downstairs and out the door. Through the clear air of the summer morning, she glimpsed the cab she had called waiting for her at the end of the drive. Let’s see Devin Black catch her now.





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As the cab drove past the Episcopal Church on Hollywood and Gardner, Pagan swiveled her head to stare at the small group of people smoking outside. So they still had A.A. meetings there early in the morning.

Should she ask the driver to stop? She had promised Mercedes, after all. But then they were half a block, then a full block away and there was no point in turning around.

And she didn’t need a meeting. Dodging Devin Black had given her a high no glass of vodka could compete with, and she didn’t want to miss the early flight from LAX to New York.

Instead she made the driver pull over at a newsstand on Sunset, where she bought every silly tabloid magazine they had—Photoplay and Screenland, Modern Screen, the National Enquirer, and VIP. Plus Life, Time, Seventeen, Vogue, and anything else that looked juicy.

She’d read them on the plane, then mail them special delivery to Mercedes. She’d loved hearing Pagan’s insider stories about the celebrities on the magazine covers. Together they’d read every tattered copy of every old magazine in the reformatory.

The cab swept past the new War of the Worlds–looking Theme Building in front of the airport and up to the terminal by 6:00 a.m. Pagan carried her own bag to the ticket counter and asked about a flight to Berlin with a stopover in New York. Without Devin’s ticket in hand, she’d have to buy her own. Thanks to Daddy’s money stash, that wasn’t going to be a problem.

Devin had told her they were booked on TWA, so she went to the Pan Am counter. Better not to run into him on the plane. But Pan Am’s flight straight to London had already departed, and they confirmed that all the direct flights to New York were sold out, so she settled on a plane change in Chicago. It didn’t get her to New York in time to see a Broadway show, but the agent did help her call ahead to get a room at the Waldorf-Astoria that night, with a flight to Berlin the next morning.

Once on the plane, she settled into first class, happy the seat next to her was empty, until she realized that the stewardesses in their light blue uniforms and flat round hats were serving drinks. Alcoholic drinks.

In her suit dress, Pagan knew she looked much older than sixteen. It would be so easy to wander over to the tiny, exclusive first-class lounge before takeoff and order a Bloody Mary. Later there would be caviar and toast served on bone china, with maybe a glass or two of champagne.

To distract herself, she pulled out the stack of magazines. She made a note to read the article in Time on the Cold War, then scanned the covers of the fun magazines. According to Screen Stories, Liz Taylor’s plans for life were Full Speed Ahead! Movie Teen Illustrated had a Special Elvis Issue, and TV Star Parade featured Annette Funicello’s Tips for Teens: A Miss Should Kiss.

No kidding, Pagan thought. How else are you supposed to have any fun?

Then she caught the names Nicky Raven and Pagan Jones in large print on the next magazine cover, and her heart stopped.

She dropped the other magazines on top to cover it up, and looked around to see if anyone had seen it, or noticed her. But the other first-class passengers were gathered in the lounge, clinking glasses. Adult laughter filtered down the aisle, and a stewardess passed, bearing a tray of canapГ©s.

What was her name doing on a magazine cover? She’d been out of the public eye for months, and Devin had gone to great lengths to keep her release from Lighthouse under wraps. Whatever else he was, Devin Black struck her as someone who could keep a secret.

Which meant she’d have to look at the magazine cover again to see what was going on. One by one, she slid the other magazines aside until she revealed the Star Insider again.

Her heart leaped into her throat when she saw Nicky on the cover. He wore a morning coat and top hat and was running down the steps of a church holding the hand of a pretty blonde girl in a long white dress and veil while people on either side of them threw rice.

That’s me, she thought. That’s us.

But it couldn’t be.

Nicky had stopped calling after the accident. She hadn’t heard from him in nine months. So what the hell…

She looked at the cover again and the words on it came into focus. Nicky Raven Marries Pagan Jones Look-Alike! Exclusive Photos and Interview with Bridesmaid Inside.

Pagan’s heart was running a crazy race inside her chest. Images fought for space in her head. Nicky kissing her naked shoulder. Nicky singing “I love you,” in her ear, soft and low. Nicky shouting “Hey, beautiful! I’m gonna marry you!”

She forced herself to look at the cover, to really see it.

Nicky was married.

To someone who wasn’t Pagan.

To someone who looked like Pagan.

Hands shaking, she picked up the magazine and riffled the pages till she saw a photo of a convertible Rolls-Royce pulling away. Nicky was waving from the backseat with his other arm around the blonde woman in white. The Rolls had a sign on the back that said Just Married, and strings of tin cans fixed to the bumper.

Pagan squeezed her eyes shut, trying to come up with some other explanation. Nicky was starring in a movie where his character got married; Nicky was doing a photo shoot to advertise a particular designer or tailor; Nicky’s new album had a song about getting married, and these were possible photos for the cover.

She forced her eyes open and ran them over the print of the article. The information didn’t register at first, until she saw a phrase in the interview, spoken by the bridesmaid: “People need to stop comparing Donna to Pagan Jones. Donna’s much prettier and sweeter, and she certainly never killed anyone. Nicky loves Donna for who she is, not who she looks like.”

Pagan stared into the accompanying close-up photo of Mrs. Donna Godocik Raven. She was taller than Pagan, as tall as Nicky in her heels. Her eyes were blue instead of brown, her nose more upturned, her face more heart-shaped. But otherwise, she did look like Pagan.

Probably a nondrinking version with no deadly car crashes on her rГ©sumГ©.

According to the chipper magazine copy, Donna was nineteen and an up-and-coming actress, with a few small supporting roles in Paramount films to her credit. She and Nicky had met “thanks to mutual friends.”

Friends. Ha! More likely their mutual publicists.

Nicky’s reputation must have been tarnished by his association with Pagan after her conviction. It could only help him to be seen dating a clean-cut young woman who wasn’t Pagan.

But did he have to marry her? Pagan had last spoken to Nicky a few hours before she’d crashed the Corvette. His last words to her had been, “I love you, Pigeon.”

Pigeon, his pet version of Pagan. She hadn’t liked it at first. But later she’d basked in the way his smooth baritone caressed its vowels. Love could change anything. While she’d been in Lighthouse, she would’ve taken a month in solitary just to have heard him say those words again.

But he’d never called, never visited.

There were no quotes from Nicky in the article. It was mostly fluff about the wedding dress and statements from Donna’s friends and family. Then Pagan caught sight of Nicky’s mother Octavia and his three older brothers clustered in the back of a photo, and the stone in her chest turned into an anvil. The wedding was real. Mrs. Randazzo was a warm, no-nonsense Italian-American widow, and despite Nicky’s success, she still lived in the family’s same small apartment in Brooklyn. Nicky visited her three or four times a year without fail. The family was very close, and Pagan had loved becoming part of it once she’d started dating Nicky.

If Mrs. R and Nicky’s brothers had traveled all the way to the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills to attend this wedding, it was the real deal.

Pagan threw the Star Insider aside and tore through the other gossip magazines, looking for more coverage. She found it in three other places, each with very similar photographs, but no further information other than how well Nicky’s new single was doing on the charts. So he did have a new song out. Finally, in the fourth magazine, she found the date of the wedding­: August 5, 1961.

Just three days ago.

While Pagan and Mercedes were planning their escape from Lighthouse, Nicky had been getting married.

What if she’d escaped one day earlier and called him? Would he have gone through with this marriage?

She shook her head at herself. Don’t be thick. Nicky would never have taken her call. Immediately after the accident, she had called him a hundred times. He’d never answered his phone or called her back. Why would it be any different now?

It was still hard to believe that he hadn’t had the guts to formally break up with her after all they’d been to each other. It was unlike the Nicky she’d thought she knew. She couldn’t help being angry about it, but she always came back to the horror of what she’d done. How could anyone want to see her or speak to her, let alone be her boyfriend, after that?

“Champagne, miss?”

A blue skirt and jacket swayed into her peripheral vision, and a pretty dark-haired young woman bent her knees to lower a tray bearing several flutes buzzing with champagne.

Pagan automatically took one of the flutes and sipped. Bubbles tickled her nose. The faint burn of the alcohol singed her tongue.

So delicious. So familiar.

So…wrong!

She abruptly set the glass back down on the tray so hard, some of the golden liquor sloshed out.

The stewardess caught the edge of the tray to keep it from tipping. “I’m sorry. Can I get you something else?”

“No,” Pagan said. “No, I’m sorry. Thank you.”

See, she still had everything under control. She could find out the boy she loved was married and even accidentally taste alcohol without giving in to temptation.

Further proof A.A. was unnecessary. She was cool.

She tried to smile at the stewardess. The woman turned her own lips up with professional grace, then her gaze ran over Pagan’s face, and the smile faded. Her eyes widened in recognition. Her mouth, professionally lacquered in coral lipstick, parted, then closed, then parted again.

“How about a Coke, honey?” she asked, low and kind. “Or we carry Sprite now, too. It’s like 7Up.”

Pagan swallowed. The pity in the woman’s face came close to undoing her self-control. “A Coke would be great. Thanks.”

This time the stewardess’s smile was small and real. “Coming right up.”

She strode away, and Pagan took a tissue out of the beautiful black patent leather Chanel bag and quietly blew her nose. Very quickly, the stewardess brought the Coke in a bottle with a glass full of ice on the side, as well as some crackers and cheese.

“Eat a little something, too, maybe?” she said. “We won’t be taking off for another ten minutes or so.”

“Thank you.” It came out very low, almost a whisper.

The stewardess patted Pagan’s shoulder. “Just let me know if you need anything, mmkay?”

Pagan nodded, and the woman left her alone. She managed three crackers and a square of cheese before she set the food on the empty seat beside her, got up with studied composure, walked down the aisle, and locked herself in the tiny lavatory to cry.

* * *

By the time she hit Chicago’s Midway Airport, Pagan had full possession of herself again, but she kept her sunglasses on. Her skin was buzzing with the anxiety of being recognized, of how people’s reactions might undo her. She distracted herself by tapping back into her anger over the nerve of Devin Black. Maybe his failure to keep tabs on her would get him fired. Someone else would be assigned to be her minder. Anyone would be better than him, even if he was cuter than Elvis Presley.

She’d devoted far too many thoughts to Devin, so she forced him aside by finding a lonely seat in the first-class lounge at the airport and pulling out the files from Daddy’s safe for another look.

Looking again at the signature on the letters to her mother, Pagan drew a blank on the name Rolf von Albrecht.

She turned the paper over again and saw the date.

1952…

Something jolted from her memory. That had been the year the Renoir-giving German Doctor Someone had visited. Maybe Doctor Someone was Rolf von Albrecht.

The tall, skinny man with the squeaky, nasal voice had stayed with them in the winter of ’52 for a couple of weeks, barely speaking to anyone except for Mama, and then mostly in Daddy’s office with the door locked. He’d departed quietly the morning after a late-night, knock-down fight between her parents, never to be seen again.

Pagan focused on the unfamiliar language in the letter. She’d been pretty fluent in German once upon a time thanks to her early years speaking to Grandmama, but after many years away from it, the German-reading part of her brain stop-started like a rusty engine.

Fortunately, most of it was in simple language, and the more she read, the more German came back to her.

But the letter was weirdly benign and boring. Whole paragraphs consisted of sentences like As summer arrives, I find myself wishing it was November again.

Pagan had been braced for evidence that her mother had somehow betrayed her father with this Rolf von Albrecht guy. Instead, it was nothing but sunny days, back pain, and roast turkey.

All the letters were like that, stilted and dull, filled with memories of anonymous landscapes, walks in the garden, and purchasing tickets to the opera. The relentless banality was oddly chilling. No one would write letters this pointless every week for months.

No one would have kept something so meaningless in a safe.

Unless… The thought was ludicrous. But what if there was more going on, literally, between the lines?

She shoved away the memory of the taste of that champagne by plunging into an attempt to find some sort of cipher in the letters. But two hours later, safely ensconced in first class on the plane to New York, she’d found no obvious code or hidden message. If there was any truth to her instinct, finding proof was going to take a lot more work, and right now her stomach hurt. So she put them and her own boring file away.

She was doing the same with Ava’s folder when a photograph fell out of it into her lap.

Pagan threw her gaze up toward the airplane’s ceiling, not wanting to see her younger sister’s face.

Ava had been twelve when she died, blonder than Pagan, but people said she wasn’t as pretty because she was more serious and smiled less. The truth was that Ava had been beautiful because she didn’t smile when she didn’t feel like it. Pagan could only dream of being as confident as her little sister had been.

Pagan swallowed hard and looked down at the photograph. It lay sideways on her lap—a shot of Ava at age three seated next to seven-year-old Pagan on the piano bench. Pagan had both arms around her sister and was grinning ear to ear as she squeezed her tight. Ava, taking the hug for granted, stared down at the piano keys, chubby fingers already reaching for a chord.

Dang it, she was not going to cry again.

She hastily put the photo back into its folder and continued going through the others. She’d learned how to conjure tears on cue for her movie roles, and she could damn well do it in reverse now.

She came to the last folder, labeled Eva Murnau Jones.

Murnau. That had been her mother’s maiden name. Eva’s mother’s name was Ursula, her father’s was Emil. That was everything Pagan knew about that side of her family.

She opened the folder and paged past bank statements and the dull, posed pictures of Mama with her hair freshly done. Near the back of the file lay a white-bordered photo, smaller, grainier, and very different from the rest. In it a handsome blonde woman around thirty years old stood in front of a worn stone building. She was smiling, holding a swaddled baby in her arms.

Pagan flipped the photo over. In fading script someone had written: Ursula mit Eva, 1924.

Grandmama and Mama had moved to Los Angeles in 1925, so this must have been taken in Berlin when Mama was an infant. Pagan scanned the photo for anything that might identify where it had been taken, but there was no street sign or building number, just a glowering winged griffin carved in stone over the door.

There couldn’t be more than one building with that design in Berlin. Funny how that’s where she was headed now.

Maybe it was nothing. But all of a sudden, more than anything, she wanted to walk the street where her grandmother had held her infant mother, maybe even explore the building where Mama had lived. She didn’t know what going there might tell her, but any tiny glimpse she could get into her mother’s life or her mother’s mind was precious.

All she had now of her family was the past.

As she plunged into reading the script for Neither Here Nor There, two people across the aisle began glancing over at her furtively, whispering. She sank back against the plane’s round window and lifted the script to block her face.

Fortunately, the script was smart and funny, mocking both capitalism and socialism at every turn. Pagan was slated to play Violet, a flirtatious teenage Southern belle who caused havoc wherever she went. She swiftly fell in love with a handsome young Communist and secretly married him, much to the horror of her family, particularly her rabidly capitalist father. Although James Brennan, former star of gangster movies and expert tap dancer, was the star, her role wasn’t far behind his in size. Jerry Allenberg had been right about one thing at least—this was a pip of a role, and she’d better not mess it up.

She let everyone else get off first at Idlewild Airport. She stepped out the door onto the metal bridge under the vast, saucer-shaped overhang, and the warm humid air was enough to make her remove her gloves and unbutton the top of her dress. The metal rungs clattered beneath her heels as she walked toward the gleaming terminal.

It was past eight o’clock at night, and she was hungry again. Time to catch a cab to the Waldorf and order some room service. Maybe a big juicy steak. She could get the concierge to mail the stack of magazines to Mercedes at Lighthouse, with a note to say hi. Maybe it wasn’t too late to call M. She had to tell someone about Nicky and that Donna woman.

Thinking about Nicky being married again literally made her heart ache. As she entered the terminal, Pagan pressed one hand against the painful spot. She was too young to have a heart attack, wasn’t she?

“Hello, Pagan.”

She jerked her head up, hand clutching the fabric at her throat.

A slim figure in a perfectly tailored black suit detached itself from the shadows and stepped into a pool of light.

Devin Black was in New York, waiting for her.





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The maître d’ swept his narrowed gaze over Devin and Pagan. When he looked up, he was smiling. They had passed some unspoken test. “Welcome to the Panorama Room,” he said. “Do you have a reservation?”

“Do we need one?” Devin stepped closer and slid a folded bill into the man’s ready left hand.

“Not at all!” The maître d’ slipped the money into the interior pocket of his suit jacket. “This way, please!”

He led them across the polka-dot carpet around the perimeter of the dimly lit circular lounge, to a table overlooking the restaurant’s sweeping view of the curving interior of the Pan Am Terminal. Taking hold of one of the transparent Lucite chairs, the maître d’ slid it back and bowed a little toward Pagan. “Mademoiselle.”

Pagan sank down on the cushioned seat as Devin sat opposite. Below them the white expanse of the new terminal spread like some adult version of Tomorrowland. On a Tuesday night, the place was quiet, the baggage check-in empty. Ladies in Pan Am blue rested their elbows against the white seat-selection counter, talking in low voices. A few waiting passengers smoked in rows of square padded seats, feet up on coffin-shaped tables. Beyond the outer wall, or rather, a curtain of glass, skycaps waited for arriving passengers on a wide concrete porch.

A white-coated waiter arrived to turn their water glasses over and give them menus. Devin waved him away. “I’ll have a salad with vinaigrette and a flank steak, medium rare.”

Pagan’s simmering frustration and anger at being tracked down nearly boiled over. That was exactly what she wanted to order. She pondered snatching a menu and making them both wait for a good long time while she pretended to decide, but she was hungry. “I’ll have the same,” she said.

The waiter put the menus under his arm with a flourish. “And to drink?”

She looked Devin dead in the eye. “Water.”

Devin smiled. “As the lady said. And please let the cook know we have to catch the flight to Berlin in an hour.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll put your order at the top of the list.” The waiter gave a little bow and hustled off.

Pagan kept staring at Devin. “I know how you did it.”

He stared back. “And I know how you did it.”

That almost threw her, but she plowed on. “Somehow you arranged for every seat on every direct flight to New York to be sold out, which forced me to do a stopover in Chicago. That delayed me long enough to let you get here first.”

His blue eyes narrowed. “Your father had a bunch of cash in his safe, and you knew the combination.”

“And you have your own boatload of cash—enough to buy up every empty seat on every plane to New York,” she said. “The benefits of working for a big movie studio.”

“You know every creaky board in your house,” he said.

She shrugged. “The benefits of a misspent youth.”

He opened his hands as if releasing all control. “Perhaps all this was meant to be.”

“Nicky used to say that all the time, about the two of us,” she said with heat. “We were �meant to be.’ Turns out he was full of baloney, and so are you.”

His expression got serious. “So you heard about Nicky.”

She shot him a poisonous look and said nothing.

He studied her, eyebrows furrowed. “I wanted to break that to you gently.”

She took a sip of water to calm herself. “Nicky told me he would marry me the first day we met. I told him I’d never get married, but he didn’t believe me. Nobody believes me.”

“He’s a romantic.” Devin’s voice was dry. “Romantics believe what they’re saying when they say it. And they believe it just as much when they say the opposite a few days later.”

“He had rheumatic fever when he was a kid, and it damaged his heart.” Pagan took another sip of water, watching Devin’s face closely. He didn’t appear surprised, even though Nicky’s condition wasn’t public knowledge. “It makes him want to live every moment to the fullest. He doesn’t pussyfoot around. He jumps right in.”

“And you think he jumped into the first girl who looked like you and married her.” Devin considered the prospect. “Probably. He’s a fool.”

“I was his girlfriend for nearly a year,” Pagan said, not ready to forgive Devin yet for tracking her down. “What does that make me?”

“Young,” he replied.

“When you are so old and wise.” She eyed him, seated so comfortably across from her in his pricey suit with the sophisticated air of a man twice his age. He was awfully cagey, Devin Black. He must have a lot to hide.

Time to find out more about this so-called legal guardian of hers. She needed leverage if she was ever going to truly escape him. She made a wild guess, based on nothing more than instinct. “Coming from a rich family makes you pretentious, not more mature.”

He smiled skeptically. “Whereas growing up in Hollywood makes you down-to-earth?”

She waved aside this attempt to insult her, intent on wringing some kind of admission from him. “No studio pays press agents enough to have custom-made Savile Row suits,” she said. “Did your mother pick it out for you?”

His smile broadened. “Mother can’t be bothered with my suits. She’s too busy ruling her little kingdom of wealthy socialites.” He shrugged the elegant shoulders of his jacket. “You’re right, of course. I had no idea you were so observant.”

So his mother was still alive, and he referred to her as “Mother” rather than “Mom.” A distant, formal relationship then.

The waiter was approaching with their food. She moved her water glass aside. “And your father? Does he rule that tiny kingdom by her side? Or is he like my dad was—just happy to be on the team?”

Devin’s face went blank. The emptiness there was so profound, a chill ran down the back of her neck.

Then the waiter was at the table, putting down plates of rosy butterflied steak filets and snowy white mashed potatoes dolloped with chunks of golden butter.

Devin picked up his fork and knife, contemplating his food with anticipation, and the moment was gone.

“Looks good, doesn’t it?” He nodded at the waiter. “Thank you.”

He began cutting the steak, and she took up her own utensils, waiting for a response to her question. But he only made a small appreciative sound as he took a bite. “I always eat here if I’m stuck waiting for a flight,” he said. “Better than the Clipper Club.”

The warm rich smell wafting up from her plate was making her mouth water, so she cut into her steak. But she made a mental note: Devin didn’t like discussing his father. That relationship held some kind of secret pain for him, and knowing that, she’d gained a tiny victory. He knew so much about her, it was only fair that she find out more about him, and she resolved to dig further into this whole father issue of his when she could.

The filet melted between her teeth. She groaned involuntarily with pleasure. She hadn’t tasted anything so delicious in months.

“See?” Devin cut himself another neat piece. “Did you want sour cream for your potatoes?”

She had practically forgotten sour cream existed. “Oh, yes please!”

As he signaled the waiter, she realized that for a good five minutes she hadn’t thought about Nicky Raven and his new bride. Maybe that’s just how Devin Black had wanted it.

The Dior suit dress withstood the trip to Berlin without a wrinkle, but by the time they landed Pagan was very much looking forward to getting out of it and into a nice soft bed, faraway from everyone on earth, particularly Devin Black.

While on the plane, and with a showy flourish to demonstrate how she was ignoring him, Pagan had plunged into an article in Time about the Cold War.

She’d found herself caught up in the article in spite of herself. Nothing like the serious threat of nuclear war to grab your attention.

A defeated Germany had been divided into four parts after the Second World War, each part governed by a different Allied nation—the United States, England, France, and the Soviet Union. They’d similarly divided up the German capital, Berlin.

But the alliance soured fast after Soviet leader Joseph Stalin effectively took control of all the countries east of Germany, as well as a big chunk of Germany itself, now known as East Germany.

So the other three powers remained huddled in the three quarters of Berlin that had been given to them, surrounded on all sides by the new country of the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany as Westerners liked to call it.

The man now in charge of that country, Walter Ulbricht, had been tight with Stalin, and even more than the Soviets, maintained rigid control of every aspect of daily life—from the price of bread to what people could read and say.

Well, that was glum, restricting, and oddly familiar. Pagan’s biggest hit, Beach Bound Beverly, would never have been made in East Germany—too frivolous. Also, the East German government spied on its citizens all the time, so even if you managed to get your hands on something “decadent” like a Dior suit dress, you could never wear it out or the government would punish you.

This Walter Ulbricht guy sounded a lot like a balding, grumpy version of Mama.

Pagan giggled, then caught herself guiltily. Mama had been warm as well as firm, and Pagan loved her. The world had seemed to bow to Mama’s control. Pagan had been safe with her around, and Mama had taught her many useful ways in which to navigate the strange world of Hollywood. That was one of many reasons her suicide had cast Pagan so adrift.

But Mama had been a perfectionist—overseeing Pagan’s every word and gesture, grooming her meticulously for success, managing every tiny detail of her career. Pagan had barely been allowed to breathe out of her mother’s sight. As long as Pagan was perfect, the family would get to keep their fine house in the Hollywood Hills, and Mama would be happy. One mistake could ruin them.

All of that effort had paid off. Pagan had become a star. She hadn’t made any mistakes until Mama died. After that it had been the secret stashes of alcohol that soothed her anxieties instead of her mother’s firm hand on her shoulder.

Maybe Ulbricht’s approach was paying off for East Germany, too. Maybe he loved his people the way Mama had loved Pagan. Pagan couldn’t be sure, but she doubted it. You couldn’t mold millions of people the way you could your own child.

It was for the best that Mama hadn’t been in charge of an entire country. Every little girl would have been forced to walk for thirty minutes each day with a book on her head, and every husband would have been lectured regularly on how to fold the morning newspaper just so.

Hours passed, and Devin sat next to her the whole way. He never seemed to sleep. She would nod off, then jerk up her head to find him alert and reading the latest editions of the New York and London newspapers. He was polite; he knew when to speak and when to be quiet, but he was there.

They changed planes in Frankfurt to Air France, one of the airlines with permission to fly into Berlin’s Tegel airport. By then Pagan was so tired and grumpy, the plane could have been a flying palace and she would have found something to complain about. Devin Black just kept reading, taking one of the German language journals from the stewardess with a smile. By the time they reached Berlin, fatigue had smudged dark circles under his eyes, but he seemed alert. Pagan decided he was either a robot or one of the aliens from Invaders from Mars.

Tegel airport had a dreary, military air, and men in French uniforms stamped their passports. A chauffeur was waiting in a large Mercedes-Benz. The sight of the car set off the usual jitters in Pagan, echoes of the accident, but as she had with the cab to LAX, she shoved them into a dark corner of her mind and made herself get in. As they left the airport with the rising sun at their backs, her nerves calmed and she could look around.

The car sped down a tree-lined road with the blue-gray River Spree on the left. The streets were busy with foot traffic, motorcycles, and cars, but Pagan couldn’t help noticing the number of armed men in uniform either walking or stationed on various street corners. A vivid reminder that West Berlin was a lone island surrounded on all sides by the hostile Communist East Germany.

“We’re in the French sector of the city at the moment,” Devin said. “But we’re staying in the American sector at the new Hilton. It’s very close to the Tiergarten, which has grown back nicely since the war—”

“It sounds lovely.” She interrupted him in a repressive tone. “Perhaps after I’ve gotten some rest far away from you, I’ll give a damn.”

“You can rest,” he said, his voice calm in a way that only irritated her more. “But I won’t be far away.”

She turned to look at him. “What does that mean?”

“It means I can’t trust you.” His voice was bland, but his face carried a warning.

“I never promised you anything—” she started to say.

“You signed a contract,” he said, voice getting sharper, “which includes a clause stating that you have a guardian, with all the authority of a parent. Deviate from my orders and you could go back to prison.”

“I’m not your child,” she said, just as sharp. “Or your slave, or your wife.”

“You’re my ward,” he said. “You’re on parole, and it’s very easy for me to make a call to the judge.”

She lapsed into fuming silence, her head abuzz with fatigue and fury. Maybe some of this was her fault. Fine. But why, when boys broke the rules, did they get called “rebels” and “hotheads,” while girls were “bad”? Pagan being a nice little girl hadn’t kept Mama from dying, so she’d done what she wanted after that. She saw no reason to change now.

There had to be a way out from this new Devin-bound prison, an escape. That’s what alcohol had always provided, and without that tool available to her, she had to find a new way to be free.

Devin had too much power over her. But he also had secrets­—there was more to him than just some minor studio executive. If she could decrypt the riddle that was Devin Black, she might find her freedom that way.

They drove past a crowd of people lining up in front of a warehouse-like building. Thousands of men and women in neat summer clothes were carrying suitcases and shepherding children. Pagan remembered what she’d read about the mass exodus of people from East Berlin and craned her neck to see if these were indeed immigrants from East Berlin. No way was she going to ask Devin a question now. She glimpsed a sign: Réfugiés/Flüchtling.

“That’s the French sector processing center for refugees,” Devin said as if she’d asked him aloud. His voice was friendly as ever. “The city gets nearly two thousand a day. The other borders with East Germany are closed, so Berlin’s the last place of escape. For now.”

She didn’t reply as the car entered a wooded area. Up ahead loomed a column that glinted gold on top. She leaned forward to look up at it through the windshield and caught sight of a glittering winged statue with arms outstretched.

“The Victory Column,” Devin said, still in his best tourist guide voice. “But the Berliners call it Goldenelse—Golden Lizzy. The Prussians erected it last century to commemorate their victory over the Danish. But by the time it was done, they’d also defeated Austria and France in other wars, so it covers a lot of victories.”

Pagan said nothing as they circled the monument’s red granite base. A lot of wars had come and gone since then. The Germans sure wouldn’t be erecting a victory column to commemorate the last one.

The parkland gave way to newly constructed buildings, some still with scaffolding. “Still rebuilding,” Devin said. “From the war.”

Pagan stared. Sixteen years later they were still rebuilding?

It was one thing to read about World War II, another to see how people’s lives were still affected by it here. No wonder Berliners were fond of Golden Lizzy, their angel. They needed one.

Pagan could’ve used an angel, too, a few times in her life, but how could her tiny little troubles stack up against what Berlin—what all of Europe—had been through? Hollywood seemed like the center of the universe when you were there, making movies, attending award shows, reading about yourself in the paper. But Berlin was a reminder that in the big-budget epic of the history of the world, Pagan was nothing but an extra.

* * *

The Hilton was sleekly modern and sparkling behind its subdued but gracious facade. Pagan blearily followed the bellboy and her luggage up to her room. When Devin stopped at the door next to hers and let his bellman take his luggage inside, relief overtook her. So she would get time to herself after all. And if she needed to, she could walk quietly past his door and he’d be none the wiser.

The room turned out to be a suite. She gave the bellboy five dollars, apologizing in German that came out better than she expected that she didn’t have any German marks. He replied in perfect English that dollars were better anyway.

Then she was blessedly alone, wandering from the large living area with its low-slung sofa and large curtained windows looking onto the Tiergarten to a set of double doors that led to a room with a queen-size bed and adjoining bathroom.

She kicked off her shoes and began unzipping her dress. Lovely as it was, she couldn’t wait to get it off and crawl into the fluffy red-and-white bed, which, as usual, had way too many pillows. She unsnapped her garters, yanked off her stockings, and walked barefoot over the thick carpet to investigate another set of double doors. They opened up to reveal a second bedroom, complete with its own bed and bathroom.

She stood in that doorway, frowning. Why would they give her two bedrooms? In the distant past her mother would have stayed there, but the studio had no reason to be extra generous with her now.

There came a chunk and a scrape—a key turning in a lock. She turned to see a door she hadn’t noticed before in the opposite wall. It opened, and Devin Black stood framed there. She could see a portion of his unlit room behind him.

She grabbed the gaping hole in the side of her dress, where she’d unzipped it, strongly aware of her bare legs and feet. “Is that how you’re going to keep watch on me, unlocking the adjoining door between our suites?”

“Not at all,” he said, and, picking up his suitcase, he walked a few steps into her suite to set it down. “That room is just for show.”

Her face flushed, scalding hot. “But…but…”

“I left you alone in your bedroom in Los Angeles, and you chose to run away,” he said. “I don’t make the same mistake twice. Thank you for saving the bedroom closest to the exit for me.”

Words failed her. She fled to her bedroom, slammed the door, and turned the lock.

Through the wood she heard his low laugh. “Sleep tight,” he said.





(#ulink_d95c73ab-ff0f-55de-a3d0-7d6fba763d2c)

Breakfast the next morning was of the very silent room service variety. How bizarrely domestic to sit across the tray table from Devin, sipping coffee and eating eggs while he, the picture of ease and elegance in another splendid Savile Row suit, his dark hair combed perfectly back, read the International Herald Tribune. Pagan couldn’t help staring at his deft hands as they poured her coffee. Unbidden, the thought of those skillful hands on her skin flashed into her mind. But that was only because she missed Nicky. Still, her cheeks burned. She needed to refocus on something, anything.

“How old are you?” she asked Devin, not caring how abrupt it sounded.

He set down the paper and looked at her. His eyes were darker today, a stormy blue closer to the navy of his suit, and they took a moment to slide over her, taking in everything from her teased updo to her new green Givenchy dress.

The effrontery of the frank assessment made her flush. What was it about him that made her acutely aware of the brush of her blouse against her collarbone, of the taut line of her garter as it bit into her thigh?




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