Mistress of the Game

Chapter Twenty-Two

LOS ANGELES. FIVE YEARS LATER

PAOLO COZMICI LOOKED AT THE EXQUISITELY DECORATED Bel Air drawing room and scowled.

"Too many flowers. It looks like somebody died."

Robbie Templeton kissed him indulgently on the top of his bald head. "The flowers are perfect. Everything's perfect. Relax, babe. Have a drink."

Tonight was Robbie's fortieth birthday party. With typical altruism, he had decided to mark the milestone with a charity event that he hoped would raise a million dollars for the Templeton/Cozmici AIDS Foundation. Stars from the worlds of classical and pop music, as well as a smattering of Hollywood movie actors, would soon be pulling up to Robbie and Paolo's wrought-iron gates, where a huddle of eager paparazzi was already gathered. The sprawling Bel Air estate had been home to classical music's happiest couple for the past three years. The real-estate agent described it as "a French Country manor," a turn of phrase that had reduced poor Paolo to paroxysms of laughter.

"'Ave you ever been to France?"

It was in fact a vast, vulgar, wedding cake of a house, smothered in enough climbing roses to make Martha Stewart wince. The gardens came complete with a fake stream powered by a hidden electric pump and a faux-medieval bridge. It was the epitome of tackiness: brash, American, suburban. Disney. But it was also incredibly comfortable, boasted heart-stopping views from almost every room, and - crucially - afforded total privacy. Robbie and Paolo had been blissfully happy there.

"Ah, Lex, there you are. Would you please tell Monsieur le Grinch here that the house looks awesome?"

"The house looks awesome."

It was hard to believe that Lexi Templeton was thirty years old. Skipping down the stairs in a vintage gray Hardy Amies ball gown, with diamonds gleaming at her ears, neck and wrists, her skin still shone like a teenager's. She wore her hair long and loose, another girlish touch that belied the steely businesswoman within.

After Lexi left Kruger-Brent five years ago in a storm of scandal, most business pundits wrote her off. Overnight, her picture stopped appearing on the front covers of magazines. Lexi made no statements, responded to no rumors, approved no messages through "friends" or "insiders." She stopped attending celebrity parties, charity auctions, gallery openings. Word was that she'd left America, but no one knew for sure. As the months went by, people ceased to care.

But those who assumed Lexi had crawled under a rock to lick her wounds had profoundly underestimated the strength of her ambition, not to mention the resilience of her spirit.

Ten days after Max's coup, Lexi awoke to the sound of horns blaring outside her new, rented apartment. The media had driven her out of her old place. The noise was muffled at first, as if everything had been covered with a fresh fall of snow. But during the next few days, the snow slowly started melting. Sounds became sharper, crisper. Lexi delighted in each one like a newborn child. Water gushing from the faucet in her bathroom made her laugh out loud. Vendors cursing on the street below brought a lump to her throat. Strangest of all was her own voice. It didn't seem to belong to her at all.

Dr. Cheung was elated. "Congratulations, my dear. I'm only sorry that so much of what you're hearing at the moment is so unpleasant."

Like everyone else in America, Dr. Cheung had seen the pictures and read the reports. They were hanging the poor girl out to dry.

Lexi, however, seemed unfazed: "Don't worry about me, Doctor. I can hear again. That's all that matters."

And it was. Suddenly Lexi felt invincible. Raising capital against her Kruger-Brent stock - despite the drop in value, Lexi's stake was still worth over $100 million - she quietly started her own real-estate company, Templeton Estates. She began buying up cheap tracts of land in Africa, following the same business plan she'd intended to adopt as chairman of Kruger-Brent. Within two years, the company was outperforming almost all of its African competitors. This year Lexi had finally had the immense satisfaction of watching Templeton's market share in Africa overtake Kruger-Brent's.

Only one company, Gabriel McGregor and Dia Ghali's Cape Town-based Phoenix Group, consistently outperformed them. But then Phoenix had had a five-year head start on Templeton. No one could deny that for a five-year-old business, Templeton Estates had made one hell of a mark.

As her company flourished, so Lexi's own self-esteem started to revive. When Max betrayed her, releasing those awful, degrading pictures, part of her wanted to crawl away and die. Now, with both her hearing and her fortune restored, she found herself taking her first baby steps back into public life. On the spur of the moment, she showed up one night at the opening of a friend's restaurant in her native New York. Wearing a vintage Bill Blass dress, Lexi utterly stole the show, cutting as dazzlingly glamorous and enigmatic a figure as she had in the old days. Soon afterward the floodgates opened. Once again, men flocked to her. And not just any men. Lexi dated musicians, businessmen, movie stars, always moving on within a few weeks, keeping the tabloids guessing. With the dollar at an all-time low and the economy in the doldrums, America craved glamour and excitement like a crack whore craving a fix. What better way to revive the national spirit than to welcome this conquering, beautiful Blackwell daughter back into the collective American fold?

So she had a wild and crazy youth. So what? Who didn't?

She can hear again and she's back on her feet.

Lexi was a star, a fighter, a winner. She had reinvented herself once again. Once again, America was glued to the edge of its seat.

Paolo Cozmici needn't have worried. The party was a terrific success, with just the right amount of scandal to satisfy Hollywood's gossip fiends:

A famous music producer got locked in the bathroom with a beautiful singer who was not his wife.

The singer's name was David.

A movie actress was so wasted climbing into the hot tub that she forgot about the hairpiece she wore to hide her bald spot. When her twenty-year-old boy glanced down and saw what he thought was a dead rat floating between his legs, he passed out. The poor kid nearly drowned.

Michael Schett, this year's "Hollywood's Hottest Hunk" according to People magazine, arrived with Playboy's Miss September, but dumped her like a campaign promise when he laid eyes on Lexi. Unfortunately for Michael Schett, Lexi wasn't interested.

Michael cornered Robbie Templeton by the bar. "You gotta help me. I'm crashing and burning here. You're her brother. Tell me how to impress her."

With his Cary Grant looks, legendary prowess in the sack, and a string of hit movies to his name, Michael Schett was not used to rejection. He hadn't had a girl dismiss him like this since seventh grade.

Robbie grinned. "Lexi likes a challenge. You could always start making out with me. Maybe she'll try to 'turn' you?"

Michael Schett roared with laughter. He'd known Robbie and Paolo for years.

"Nice try, Liberace. She's cute, but no girl is that cute."

"Hey, you know what they say, Michael. You're not a man till you had a man and didn't like it."

In the wee small hours of the morning, once all the guests had gone, Paolo went to bed, leaving Robbie alone with Lexi.

"You know, Michael Schett is really into you."

Lexi rolled her eyes.

"What? He's a nice guy. Most women would bite his hand off. Christ, I'd sleep with him."

"You would not. You and Paolo are fused at the hip and you know it."

"Actually, we're fused at the heart. But I know what you mean."

Robbie was worried about Lexi. On the surface, she seemed to have pulled her life back from the brink. But her continued obsession with Kruger-Brent and their cousin wasn't normal. As for her working hours, Lexi regularly clocked in days that would put most self-respecting Taiwanese sweatshop workers to shame.

"Work isn't everything, you know, Lex. Don't you ever think of settling down?"

Lexi laughed. "With Michael Schett? His movies last longer than his relationships!"

"Okay, fine, forget Michael. But everyone needs love in their life."

"I have love in my life. I have you."

"That's not what I mean. Don't you want to have children one day? A family of your own?"

"No. I don't."

Lexi sighed. How could she explain to Robbie that after Max, she would never love again? He had no idea about her affair with Max - no one did - still less that it was Max who had distributed the pictures that very nearly ruined her. But Lexi knew. She knew love was for fools. Love had blinded her. Because of love, she had lost Kruger-Brent. The only thing that mattered now was destroying Max and taking back her beloved company. As for children, Kruger-Brent was Lexi's child. She had trusted in Max, and he had torn her child from her arms, ripped it from her breast and carried it off into the wilderness.

She had rebuilt her life and her reputation against the odds. Templeton Estates was a huge success. But inside, the longing for Kruger-Brent corroded Lexi's life like acid leaking from a battery. It turned every triumph to ashes.

Seeing she was upset, Robbie changed the subject.

"You're in Cape Town a lot these days. Have you come across a guy called Gabriel McGregor?"

Now he had her attention.

"I have. I've never met him. He co-owns a company called Phoenix. They're competitors of ours."

"Any good?"

"Very good, unfortunately," Lexi admitted. "He's a shrewd businessman."

"But?"

She paused. "I don't know. Like I say, we've never met. But there's something about him I don't entirely trust. You know he claims to be related to us? Says he's a descendant of Jamie McGregor."

"Isn't he?"

"I have no idea. I suppose he could be. How do you know him?"

Walking over to his desk, Robbie pulled out a handwritten letter. He passed it to Lexi.

"He and his wife are heavily involved in AIDS relief over there. He wrote asking me if Paolo and I would be interested in working with his charity. I'm flying out to meet with him next week."

Lexi read the letter, twice. It seemed genuine. But she couldn't quite shake the feeling of foreboding. Who was Gabe McGregor, really? A lot of people wanted to claim a connection to her family. This man was too rich in his own right to be a fortune hunter. But even so...

She found herself saying: "I'm going out there on business next week, as it happens. I can go and meet him with you if you like?"

Robbie's face lit up. He'd been trying for years to get Lexi interested in his charity work.

"That'd be great! I can book us on the same flight. It'll be just like old times. Hey, you remember going to Africa with Dad when we were kids? Those boring old Kruger-Brent tours? Man, Dad never shut up: 'Jamie McGregor had a diamond mine here, Kate Blackwell went to school here,' blah blah blah blah blah." He laughed.