Until You

"She made you," he said conversationally.

Breverman's flush deepened. "Yeah, but she almost always does."

Conor nodded and dug his hands deeper into the pockets of his leather flight jacket.

"She's a winner, all right."

"She's a bitch," Breverman said, "and she's all yours, O'Neil."

Conor watched as Breverman strode away. No, he thought, and his gut tightened, she isn't mine.

But God, how he wished she were.

Chapter 14

Miranda had no idea he was watching her.

Conor dogged her footsteps for the rest of the week but he might as well have been invisible.

She never caught a glimpse of him. He was certain of that although a couple of times she'd hesitated as she stepped out the door in the morning, her head lifted, her nostrils delicately flaring. It made him remember a filly he'd seen once, during a stint in Saudi Arabia, and the way she'd come into the stable, tossing her head and seeking the scent of the stallion waiting for her.

It was a fanciful, pointless thought and he'd have laughed at it and at himself if he'd had the time, but he was too busy making sure he kept out of the way so Miranda didn't spot him.

He knew she was wondering what had happened to Bob Breverman. He could tell by the way she glanced around, as if she were a kid playing a game of hide-and-seek. That pissed him off. He wanted to step out of the shadows, grab her and say, Dammit, haven't you figured out that this isn't a game an amateur stands a chance of winning?

Breverman had given him a rundown on her schedule. Out the door at eight; coffee, one slice of dry wheat toast and half a grapefruit at a little place a couple of blocks over, then a brisk walk to the office or a taxi ride to wherever the cameras might be filming that day. She had lunch—yogurt, fruit and a small bottle of Perrier—on the set, if she was being photographed. If she was in the office Eva had assigned her at Papillon, she ate on a bench in the atrium of a skyscraper a couple of blocks away. She never lunched at Papillon itself, where there was an executive dining room.

Eva took that as an indication of her daughter's intransigent behavior.

"My daughter prefers to go her own way," she'd said with a chill smile when Conor paid her a quick visit, told her not to mention his presence in the city to Miranda, and asked her to provide him with Miranda's weekly schedule in advance. "Following her when she's on her own time should prove interesting, Mr. O'Neil. Heaven only knows where she goes or what she does, even on her lunch hour."

Or who she does it with. The unspoken words had seemed to hang in the air between them.

Conor wondered what Eva would say if he told her that so far, Miranda's lunchtime assignations were with a bunch of cooing pigeons that had already figured out she was an easy mark. But he didn't answer; he just kept quiet and nodded wisely, as if he were taking it all in.

In the afternoons, Miranda invariably went out to promote Papillon's new cosmetic line. Eva's people had arranged appearances for her all over Manhattan and in half a dozen other major markets. She taxied to Bloomingdale's and Barney's; she was greeted with glitzy excitement at Saks, Henri Bendel's and the other Fifth Avenue stores.

A week after Conor took over, she began going out of town to tout Chrysalis. She flew to Dallas and Miami, Phoenix and San Francisco; Conor flew with her, in the same plane, folding his long legs into his coach class seat because there was no way he could sit in business class, or first, without her seeing him.

She flew to Los Angeles, too, and scooted off to a handsome house high in the hills for a couple of hours to visit with Jean-Phillipe Moreau. The house was damn near all windows, which made Conor nervous, but at least it gave him an easy view of things, enough to see the easy familiarity between Moreau and Harlan Williams, and to know that you couldn't call the kisses and hugs Miranda shared with the Frenchman anything but brotherly.

In the evenings, she went out. To the clubs, as Thurston had said, and always with a group of people, the women fashion-model gorgeous, the men successful-looking and handsome. She wore outrageous outfits, body-hugging dresses that came to mid-thigh, with her hair hanging loose down her back and a smile he knew was phony painted across her face, and she shimmered like heat-lightning on the dance floor. Watching her turned his body hard and his temper mean; it was all he could do sometimes to keep from marching onto the floor, tossing her over his shoulder and carrying her off.

She had the same effect on every other man who watched her and he could tell that she knew it. She flirted like crazy, damn her, batted her lashes and pouted and purred until half the guys in the place were panting to have her. And then she went home.

Alone.

Conor couldn't figure it out. He'd seen her with Moreau in L.A.; he knew that what Thurston had said about the man's sexuality was true. So, if she wasn't being faithful to the Frenchman, why was she sleeping by herself?

And through it all, she never had a clue that he was watching. Breverman, the poor sap, had slunk around dressed like a G-12 clerk. Conor knew better. He hadn't given a damn about blending into the background in Paris. If anything, he'd worn his Harris tweed jackets, his cords and chinos and sweaters as a not terribly original way of distancing himself from the smarmy fashion scene, but here he knew he had to fade into the woodwork.

He'd moved into a sublet two blocks from Miranda's place, courtesy of his expense account, and the only things he hung in the closet were his Burberry and his tux. Everything else was Manhattan casual: a couple of pair of snug, faded Levi 501's, his ancient denim jacket that had once been a rite of passage, a leather flight jacket he'd cherished, for more than a decade. He took himself over to Ralph Lauren's, bought some cashmere sweaters, a couple of sports jackets, pants and a handful of shirts. Then he thought, what-the-hell, ducked into a nearby shop and picked up a pair of leather boots, although he spent half an hour scuffing the boots with sandpaper so he wouldn't come off looking like some midnight cowboy and end up having to defend his honor. A pair of dark shades, and that was it.

He was in business.

Now he could bide his time, hang back and wait. Sooner or later, something was bound to happen. It was just that when something finally did, it wasn't what he'd expected.

Friday afternoon, Miranda was heading for her apartment. She was walking, taking her time, looking into shop windows, when she suddenly veered into a place called The Milepost. Conor tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans, sauntered to the window, and looked in.