Hot Streak

CHAPTER 8

I n Nice, Rutledge greeted Carey at the open door. The surveillance cameras had followed the car from the front gate. “Good evening, Monsieur le Count.” Rutledge was always punctilious in his address, though Carey preferred less formality.

“Evening Rutledge. Good to see you. Is Sylvie here?”

“Yes, sir, in the library.”

Carey's brows rose questioningly. Sylvie was not known for her bookish habits.

“She's having a Cognac, sir,” Rutledge said in answer to the silent question. “This way, please.”

Carey followed him down a corridor of trompe l'oeil landscapes and open-door vistas he'd always considered the villa's best feature. They were very early nineteenth-century work, the villa having been built as a country retreat before the Edwardian influx of aristocracy crowded every square inch of precious sea view with an ornate pile of derivative architecture. Sylvie's villa was pure palladian, its airy rooms open to the Mediterranean sun.

Carey patiently stood back while Rutledge opened the door to the library after one knock and announced in his deep basso, “Count Charles Fersten.”

Sylvie jumped up and ran toward Carey, her silver hair shining in the lamp-lit room, the fuschia silk jumpsuit she wore an incongruous color amid the muted brown tones of old leather-bound books and cherrywood paneling. With dainty sandaled feet flying over the kilim carpet, she crossed the broad expanse of floor, her arms held wide. Carey braced himself for one of her impetuous hugs.

Rutledge discreetly shut the door at her first purring words. “I missed you, dear husband.”

“Ex-husband, Sylvie,” Carey murmured, gently extricating himself from her scented embrace, suspiciously wondering if he'd been lured here on false pretenses. “Where's Egon?”

“You look wonderful, darling,” Sylvie breathed in dulcet tones, her beautifully made-up eyes taking in the full impact of one of the handsomest men on six continents. “I like your new haircut.”

“It's not new.”

“It looks new,” she replied with a wifely intonation.

“Cut it out, Sylvie. I've been hacking my own hair for years and you know it.” Carey's streaked blond hair was spiky and unkempt, as usual.

“Well, I haven't seen you for so long,” she cooed, exuding seduction with practiced skill. “It looks different. Do you like my new Messilina outfit?” she went on, stepping back and holding out her arms so the svelte beauty of her silk-sheathed body was fully visible. “He did it exclusively for me.”

“Sylvie,” Carey said with more patience than he was feeling after an eight-hour flight, “I didn't fly all day to come here and exchange pleasantries. The Messilina's wonderful; he's got a helluva touch. You look marvelous, as always, but Egon better be here, or I'm going to want your throat. Right on the spot.” His hands were jammed into his jacket pockets, and his look bordered on glowering.

“What a suspicious man.” A small, studied moue accompanied the delicate affront.

“Living with you for two years develops the faculty, or one doesn't survive.”

“Not nice, love, but then you always were hard to handle with your evil temper,” she reproached with the tiniest smile.

“Hard to handle… because I won't take your orders twenty-four hours a day? True, Sylvie, I'm harder than hell to handle.”

“Pooh… you're no fun anymore. Can't you take a little teasing?” She looked up at him from under tinted lashes and softly said, “If I remember, you adored teasing in Yugoslavia and in Florence the first six months we were married.”

Carey looked back at her with a dark glance. “If you recall, Yugoslavia and Florence were only blurs; neither of us had a single straight day until we woke up in Rome at Easter. So if I seem serious in contrast to that, it's called living in the real world. Which I'd like to try and help Egon do, if you'd kindly show me which room he's strung out in.”

“No memories, Carey?” Her voice was soft, her violet eyes ardent. Although he was all business, she had other plans for his five-day stay.

He gazed at her and thought, as he had a thousand times over the past three years, how much Sylvie reminded him of Molly. Molly, the woman who loved him, but not enough. Molly, who married her fiancй because she was too frightened to tell her parents two weeks before the wedding-planned down to the last crabmeat canapй for over a year-that she was in love with someone else. It was probably the only reason he'd married Sylvie-that resemblance. Not exactly the memories she had in mind. “We had some good times, Sylvie,” Carey said kindly. “Now what you should do,” he went on with a pleasant smile, “is marry one of those young men hanging around on your yacht. You'd make some banker papa ecstatic.”

“They're boring, love. Everyone's boring, except you.”

“I'm boring now, too. Just work and ride, ride and work. Boring as hell.”

“Boring?” She ran a practiced glance over his body. Her hand, provocatively slow, touched him lightly on the fine wool of his jacket sleeve. “That will be the day.”

He moved back just out of reach in a casual way. “Swear to God, Sylvie. Even my mother is complaining of how dreary I've become. She compared me to my father the other day, and that's the ultimate in disparaging remarks about hermit types.” And yet, it was true. Since his days with Sylvie, Carey's life had altered drastically. He was working hard and doing some of the best filming of his career. He was riding better than ever, with total concentration, and it showed. He and Tarrytown had picked up firsts at Autueil and Liverpool and if the Hunt Cup race next week went well, he had a good chance at the triple crown in steeplechase. It had never been done before. Dickson-Smith had taken the Hunt Cup and Grand National in 1975, but came in second at Autueil. Which reminded him just how little time he had here with Egon before the race. “Now if you'll let me get my hands on Egon, I'll try to talk some sense into his beautiful addled head.”