Wicked Burn(46)

When they arrived at the private room at Mina’s, Niall was a little surprised at how crowded it already was. She realized that she knew several people there. Many patrons of the theater were also sponsors for the museum. She was glad that she didn’t have to depend entirely upon contacts that Meg and Ellen had made through Vic’s earlier productions in order to socialize, and could introduce them to some interesting people as well. The overall atmosphere of the party was buoyant and energetic, just as it should have been on the night that symbolized the pinnacle of achievement for a company that knew they had a hit on their hands.

The three of them were chatting with an eclectic group consisting of Caesar Ramirez, Vic’s lighting designer; Marcus Alvion, a CEO for MarketTech, a Chicago-based company that supported the Hesse and who also sat on the fund-raising committee for Niall’s museum; and Mya Shore, a friendly, outgoing young woman who was an entertainment writer for the Chicago Tribune, when Eileen Moore joined them.

Eileen greeted Ellen and Meg with a kiss. She regarded Niall curiously as Meg formally introduced them, but without any of the rancor that she’d shown that evening at The Art. Perhaps she had no time for animosity, as aglow as she was with the evening’s success.

And she deserved it, Niall acknowledged. Her performance had been electrifying, and she told Eileen as much. She and the actress were in the process of feeling each other out, deciding whether or not they liked each other, when Vic entered the room. He received such loud, resounding applause from the partygoers that the regular diners in Mina’s restaurant must have thought a bomb exploded. He grinned slowly, waved, ducked his head, and turned aside to speak to the man who accompanied him into the room. Niall knew instinctively that while he appreciated the crowd’s sentiment, it couldn’t be over quickly enough for him.

She also noticed that Eileen clapped louder than anyone else in their group, and that the expression on her face as she stared at Vic bordered on idolatry.

Eileen stiffened even more than Niall did when Jennifer Atwood suddenly appeared out of the crowd and touched Vic’s elbow. Even from her distance across the crowded room Niall saw the marked change that overcame Vic’s countenance as he looked down at her. Jennifer went up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

“That bitch,” Eileen hissed softly as her clapping slowed to a stop. “She’s got nerve coming here on Vic’s special night after what she did to him.”

“What did she do to him?” Niall asked, not at all sure she really wanted to know.

“Fucked him up good,” Eileen muttered under her breath before she took a long draw on her martini. Her eyes never moved from the sight of Vic staring down at Jennifer Atwood’s beautiful face.

“He’s never told you about her?” Eileen asked bitterly, although she was careful to keep her voice low enough so that only Niall heard her.

Niall’s lips pressed together tightly. If Eileen had asked the question condescendingly, in a way that implied Niall couldn’t possibly mean anything to Vic if he’d never revealed his secrets to her, than Niall probably would have tried to turn the subject. But she hadn’t. Instead, she’d asked like she was totally preoccupied by the situation. Eileen obviously cared deeply about Vic and didn’t want to see him hurt again.

The fact that Jennifer still had the power to wound Vic was becoming uncomfortably obvious to Niall.

“No,” Niall admitted finally. “He hasn’t mentioned her to me.”

Eileen finally ripped her eyes away when Jennifer brushed Vic’s arm with her hand in a lingering caress and turned back into the crowd. “He was supposed to marry her, you know. But she was never happy with him, always scolding him for not living up to his potential, harassing him to move to Los Angeles and compete with the big boys like her slick-ass husband, complaining that his provincialism was bringing her career, as much as his own, to a halt,” Eileen said before she took another long drink, nearly emptying her glass.

Eileen gave a harsh bark of laughter after a few seconds. “I swear she tore him apart from the inside out. Vic wanted to please her, but he never could, you know? It got to the point where he just tuned her out, ignored her. That’s the worst sort of punishment for a woman like Jennifer,” Eileen murmured in that magnificent, deep voice that she used to such stirring effect on the stage.

“So she got back at him by jumping in the sack with ol’ Max over there, staging things just right so that Vic found them going at it full force.”

Niall flinched at the harshness of Eileen’s statement. She hated to think of Vic being subjected to something so painful. She tore him apart from the inside out. From the look that she’d seen on Vic’s face just now Niall had no problem wholeheartedly believing the accuracy of that statement.

All the effervescence and joy Niall had felt earlier that evening seemed to be dissipating as quickly as the bubbles in her untouched champagne.

“But Jennifer ended up being the butt of her nasty tricks,” Eileen continued. “She thought she’d whip Vic into a frenzy of jealousy and rage with her little plot, believed that he’d be even more desperate to keep her at all costs. But instead Vic dropped her faster than a stranger’s germ-ridden snot rag.” Eileen laughed softly, genuinely seeming to enjoy the memory. “She tried to get back in his good graces for months afterward, but the only thing she got from Vic was silence and ice. Finally she gave up and married ol’ Max a year later. I don’t think Vic has given her the opportunity to speak more than two words to him since then.”