Glitter Baby (Wynette, Texas #3)(91)

“I like my place. And I’ve told you—moving makes me crazy. I never do it if I don’t have to.”

Fleur gave up. Kissy was so down on herself right now that she didn’t feel as though she deserved anything more than what she had, and no amount of persuasion could convince her otherwise.

Kissy dabbed her mouth with a paper napkin. “Why the mystery? You said you wanted Michel and me here so you could make an announcement. What’s up?”

Fleur gestured toward the wine. “Pour, Michel. We’re going to drink a toast.”

“Beaujolais with Chinese? Really, Fleur.”

“Don’t criticize, just do your job.” He filled their glasses, and Fleur lifted hers, determined to project a confidence she didn’t feel. “Tonight we drink to my two favorite clients, as well as the genius who’s going to put you both on top. Namely me.” She clicked their glasses and took a sip. “Michel, why haven’t you ever had a showing of your designs?”

He shrugged. “I had one my first year, but it cost me a fortune and nobody came. My stuff isn’t like anything else on Seventh Avenue, and I don’t have a name.”

“Right.” She looked at Kissy. “And no one will let you audition for the kind of parts you want because of the way you look.”

Kissy pushed a shrimp around and gave a glum nod.

“What both of you need for your careers to take off is a showcase, and I’ve figured out how we’re going to get one.” Fleur set down her glass. “Of the three of us, which one stands the best shot at getting media attention?”

“Rub it in,” Kissy grumbled.

Michel stated the obvious. “You do. We all know that.”

“I beg to disagree,” Fleur said. “Except for the week or so after the story broke, I’ve been in New York over two years without getting any publicity. Even Adelaide Abrams didn’t care I was back. The newspapers don’t want Fleur Savagar, who’s a total bore. They want the Glitter Baby.” She handed them the evening paper, which she’d folded open to Adelaide’s gossip column.

Kissy read it aloud.

Superstar Jake Koranda was seen wandering the beaches of Quogue Fourth of July weekend with none other than Glitter Baby Fleur Savagar. Koranda, taking a break from the Arizona filming of his newest Caliber picture, was a guest at the vacation home of millionaire pharmaceutical heir Charles Kincannon. According to friends, the GB and Koranda only had eyes for each other. So far, no comment from either Koranda’s West Coast office or the elusive Glitter Baby, who’s been quietly making a name for herself in New York these past few years as a talent agent.



Kissy looked up from the article, her face stricken. “I’m sorry, Fleurinda. I know how you hate having the past dredged up. And once Abrams gets hold of a story, she won’t let it go. I don’t know who talked to her, but—”

“I’m the one who planted the story,” Fleur said.

They stared at her.

“Would you care to let us in on the reason?” her brother asked.

Fleur took a deep breath and lifted her glass. “Drag out those designs you’ve been saving up for me, Michel. The Glitter Baby’s coming back, and she’s taking the two of you with her.”



Pain was harder to bear sober, Belinda had discovered, since she’d forced herself to stop drinking. She slipped a cassette into the tape deck and pressed the button with the tip of her finger. As the room filled with the sounds of Barbra Streisand singing “The Way We Were,” she lay back against the satin bed pillows and let the tears trickle down her cheeks.

All the rebels were dead. First it had been Jimmy on the road to Salinas, and then Sal Mineo in that brutal murder. Finally Natalie Wood. The three leading actors from Rebel Without a Cause had all died before their time, and Belinda was afraid she would be next.

She and Natalie were almost exactly the same age, and Natalie had loved Jimmy, too. He teased her when they were shooting Rebel because she was just a kid to him. Bad Boy Jimmy Dean playing with Natalie’s feelings.

Death terrified Belinda, and yet she kept a secret supply of pills stashed in the bottom of an old jewelry box near the spinning gold charm Errol Flynn had given her. She couldn’t stand living her life like this much longer, but a strain of optimism still ran deep inside her that said things might get better. Alexi might die.

Belinda missed her baby so much. Alexi said he’d put Belinda in a sanitarium if she tried to contact Fleur. A sanitarium for chronic alcoholics, even though she hadn’t let herself touch a drop of liquor for almost two years. Although Alexi never left the house anymore, she hardly ever saw him. He conducted his business from a suite of rooms on the first floor, working through a series of assistants who wore dark suits and somber expressions and passed her in the hallways without speaking. Almost no one spoke to her. Her days and nights blended together, stretching behind and before her in an unending line, each one exactly like the last until she couldn’t find a reason to go on living except the hope that Alexi would die.

In the old days, when she walked into a ball or a restaurant on Alexi’s arm, she became the most important woman in the room. People sought her out to curry favor. They told her how beautiful she was, how amusing. Without Alexi, the invitations had stopped.

She remembered how it had been in California when she was the Glitter Baby’s mother. She’d been charged with energy until she was luminescent. Everything she touched became special. That was the best time of all.