Glass Houses

  Copyright 1998 by Anne Stuart

  Electronic Edition Copyright 2015 by Anne Stuart

  http://anne-stuart.com

  E-book and Cover Formatted by Jessica Lewis

  http://authorslifesaver.com

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  Chapter One

  Laura de Kelsey Winston stepped into the bronze and smoked glass elevator, leaned her narrow back against the rear wall, and shut her eyes, waiting to be carried aloft to the twelfth floor of the Glass House, the famous New York landmark built in the early part of the last century by her grandfather, St. Clair de Kelsey. The building contained only two of its original three elevators—the third now resided in the Museum of Modern Art, having been donated by Laura’s grandmother to the museum which had always enjoyed her patronage—and in its place stood a modern, silent, soulless pale gray Otis. Laura never rode it, even if she was in a hurry, even if the other two elevators were in one of their constant funks. She’d race up or down twelve flights, rather than endure the modern travesty of an elevator that had invaded her building, her legacy, the only thing in this world that she cared about unconditionally. The Glass House was the only thing that had never turned on her. It just sat there in all its 1920’s glory; solid, incontrovertible proof that Laura de Kelsey Winston was loved; even if it was only by her widowed grandmother, it was proof that she was worth something. Even if the elevators were more effective as works of art than as pieces of machinery.

  Today the old elevator ran smoothly, carrying Laura, up, up, away from the blazing heat of late-September pavement, away from the noise and bustle and elegant haste of East Sixty-sixth Street in New York City. As she felt the familiar peace settle around her, the sense of ownership that was to her the most important thing in the world, a smile curved her brightly painted mouth. It wasn’t a huge, amiable grin; it wasn’t even the dangerous little upturning of her lips that her assistant, Susan Richards, and half the people who worked with her knew to beware of. It was the smile of a woman who was taking what pleasure she could in a world that had once more gone awry and shifted on its axis.

  The doors slid open with an elegant whoosh, and the sparse, perfectly appointed reception room of Glass Faces appeared, the exclusive, up-and-coming modeling agency run out of the famous Glass House by Laura de Kelsey Winston herself. Laura made a moue as she stepped off the elevator onto the kilim she’d filched from her mother’s apartment, her stiletto heels sinking into the thick wool. Through the heavy glass doors she could see Susan deep in conversation with Emelia Millhouse. Susan’s curved, deep-bosomed figure was an odd contrast to Emelia’s racehorse leanness. Emelia was gesturing, her long slim hands flying through the air, as Susan simply shook her head and looked calm.

  Susan was good at that, Laura thought, for once not moving with her characteristic haste. Good at calming aging models who were overwrought, good at soothing advertising executives who didn’t know what the hell they wanted, good at convincing Laura that things weren’t quite as desperate as they appeared to be.

  Susan would need to be at the top of her form today, Laura thought with a grim smile. Things were desperate indeed, and even her assistant’s well-known serenity might take a few knocks.

  She wasn’t going to walk into her office looking like a whipped dog, Laura reminded herself, tugging just slightly at the bright red leather micromini that had come directly from St.. Laurent. She didn’t need to check her hair—she paid a fortune to Gregorio to make sure that the midnight-black sheaf was razor-cut into a perfect shingle around her narrow face, that its bangs framed her oversize red glasses with a military precision, and that no matter how she flung her head about in rage, humor, or the sheer zest of living, it would always fall back where it belonged. A cut like that was worth every penny she paid for it, she mused for a moment. And if she just had the sense most people had, she’d give up the one thing that mattered to her—and never have to worry about how she was going to pay for her haircuts and her red leather miniskirts.

  But she wasn’t going to do that, she reminded herself. She wasn’t going to let the bastards win. And she certainly wasn’t going to let Emelia Millhouse see her sweat. Emelia was at the end of her modeling career. At thirty, the lines were starting to show, desperation was shadowing the famous violet eyes, and the generous, sensuous mouth, which had sold more lipstick than any other mouth in the western hemisphere, was beginning to tighten with panic. Emelia didn’t need to see that the invincible Laura could show panic, too.

  If Susan’s warm brown eyes showed relief as Laura breezed through the doorway, her face was, as usual, impassive. She stood by, saying nothing as Laura enveloped Emelia in a scented embrace. As usual Laura was unable to dismiss the chronic sense that she was a young girl hugging her mother. It was hell to be five foot one and a half in a world of six-foot-tall models.

  “There you are, Emelia,” Laura greeted the model, her low, slightly husky voice vibrant with an enthusiasm she could almost believe herself. “I was hoping you’d still be here. I’m sorry I’m late—you know what a pain mothers can be. One would think mine would be an improvement, but I suppose that was too much to hope for. How are the acting classes coming?”

  If Susan could calm Emelia, Laura could charm her, and the tall model preened like the thoroughbred she was. “Well enough. Apparently I have a very unusual quality.”

  “Anyone can see that, darling,” Laura said, craning her neck to look up into the famous eyes. “What about the Spielberg screen test? Any news?”

  “Everyone in New York City is trying for that one.” Emelia frowned, and tiny lines marred her perfect face. “That’s why I’m here. You know everyone who is everyone. Can you pull a few strings?”

  “I’ve called everyone I know.”

  Emelia’s face fell. “Everyone?”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t call them again.” Laura soothed almost as well as Susan. “Go home, go shopping, get your mind off things. We’ve had to wait for good things to happen before, haven’t we? And they’ve always come through. We should be used to waiting by this time.”

  “But before, I wasn’t getting older by the minute.”

  “Emelia, I’m two years older than you are,” Laura pointed out with just a hint of wryness.

  “But in your case it doesn’t matter!” Emelia wailed.

  The twelfth-floor offices of Glass Faces were lined with mirrors, and there was nowhere Laura could look without seeing her reflection. Next to Emelia’s perfection stood a short, brightly dressed gamine, her coal-black hair hanging around her piquant face, her boyish body radiating energy—and none of Emelia’s languid grace.

  “I suppose not,” Laura said with a twinge of regret. But the more you whine, the more it will show on your face.”

  Emelia’s petulant expression immediately vanished, leaving a cool, unruffled exterior, only her famous eyes showing the terror that still haunted her. “Call someone, Laura. For God’s sake, do something!”

  “Everything I can, darling. Everything I can.”

  Susan waited until the glass and gilt elevator doors closed behind Emelia’s figure. “You need coffee,” she said, a statement, not a question.

  “I need a drink.”

  “It’s not even noon.”

  “It feels like midnight. The witching hour, and I’m about to turn into a pumpkin.”

  “What does that make
me?” Susan responded with her usual cheerfulness.

  “Chief rat. We’re in deep trouble. No, we’re beyond that. We’re mired in disaster up to our elbows.”

  “So what else is new?” She handed Laura a cup of coffee, taking one for herself. Laura barely repressed the shudder that ran through her as she took a tentative sip. Susan made the worst coffee in the world, always had, and probably always would.

  “My family.”

  “That’s nothing new. What have they come up with now?” Susan moved over to the spotless steel and glass table that served as her desk and sank into the vintage Breuer chair, the real thing, also filched from Laura’s mother.

  “They haven’t come up with anything this time. Someone’s come up with them.”

  “Someone?”

  “Michael Dubrovnik.”

  “The Whirlwind? Good God,” Susan said faintly.

  “How about good grief?” Laura countered, running a thin, beringed hand through her straight black hair. “That man has never lost anything he’s wanted in the last fifteen years. And he wants the Glass House.”

  “For heaven’s sake, why? It’s not general knowledge, but you and I both know that the building, gorgeous as it is, is on the verge of being dangerously unstable. It would cost a fortune to renovate it, repair it, a fortune even you don’t have. Why would Dubrovnik want to involve himself in something like that?”

  “Why? You ask why? This is a prime piece of real estate, Susan. You can’t get much better than the East Sixties.”

  “I suppose not. And he has enough money to renovate half a dozen Glass Houses and never notice the cost.”

  “Are you suggesting I sell to him?” Laura demanded icily, setting down the oily coffee with a clatter.

  Susan was the one person she couldn’t cow with her temper. “Hardly. You wouldn’t give up the Glass House if you were down to your last nickel. I just think it’s curious that he wants to fix this place up. I’d never heard that he was interested in historic landmarks.”

  “He’s not,” Laura said flatly, throwing herself onto the Italian leather sofa. The crushed pink clashed with her bright red skirt, but she was beyond caring. “He’s bought up everything surrounding us. He wants to tear us down and put up some awful plaza. Some road-show Trump Tower, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let him do it.”

  “I don’t see what you’re getting so worked up about,” Susan said mildly. “Other people have wanted to buy Glass House over the last few years and you’ve always refused.”

  “Other people haven’t had my mother on their side,’’ Laura said morosely, her leather skirt sticking to the sofa as she thrashed about, longing for the cigarettes she’d given up three years ago. “Other people weren’t known as the Whirlwind. He knocks down everything that stands in his way.”

  “Yes,” said Susan. “But he hasn’t come across you yet. I’d back you against a dozen whirlwinds, your mother included.”

  Laura lay facedown on the sofa, thinking about the latest engineers’ reports, thinking about her financial adviser’s long, gloomy face, thinking about a million things that she wasn’t ready to face. “I only hope you’re right,” she muttered, her face against the pale pink leather.

  Michael Dubrovnik, Michael to his women, the Whirlwind to his competitors, Mischa to a very select few, stared at the New York skyline in the direction of the Glass House. He couldn’t see it, of course; its twelve meager stories were dwarfed by the towering skyscrapers around it. But he knew it was there.

  Michael sighed, dropping his pen onto the teak desk and leaning back in the curved leather chair that had been designed and built specifically for him, a chair that fitted his lean, wiry body to such perfection that he seldom even noticed its existence. This whole mess had gone on too long, and for the first time in his life he was being stymied by one lone, stubborn female. Every time he thought of Laura de Kelsey Winston he wanted to kill.

  He wasn’t used to thinking of women as the enemy. He’d been in business long enough to know he should never underestimate anyone, but Laura Winston had done what no one had been able to do in more than a dozen years—stop the Whirlwind cold.

  He considered calling in his secretary and dictating a scathing letter to the Winston female, but thought better of it. His intelligent, ambitious secretary had made the major mistake of falling in love with him, and he didn’t want to look into her soulful blue eyes a moment longer than he had to. The smart ones, he thought, the ambitious ones were always the worst. Appealing as they were, sooner or later their brains went out the window, and they grew more annoying than the most mindless debutante, the most vapid model. Why women couldn’t maintain their intellect while conducting an affair was a mystery to him. He’d never lost control, of his emotions, of his ambition, and least of all of his razor-sharp intelligence. He’d learned long ago to start with someone who was little more than ornamental. That way he wouldn’t be bored and disappointed and dragged down by useless expectations.

  Women, the women he chose nowadays, knew exactly what to expect from him: loyalty and monogamy, for as long as the relationship lasted. Generosity, both during the affair and at its inevitable conclusion. A voracious sexuality that combined a deep, seldom filled hunger with the experience of a man approaching forty. And no emotional involvement whatsoever. No broken hearts, no broken promises, no broken lives.

  Occasionally he wondered whether he was even capable of falling in love anymore. He’d been in love when he was twenty, that mindless, boy’s love that was so intense he’d thought he might die from it. It was the love that had died, not Michael. She’d married someone else, someone richer, and right now he couldn’t even remember what she’d looked like.

  He’d been in love when he was thirty, or at least, he’d supposed he was. Why else would he have married Ilsa, with her perfect body, her glorious face, her wicked smile and her marvelously inventive ways? The fact that she’d been called the face of the decade hadn’t been instrumental, though he’d liked the sense of possessing, of owning the world’s most beautiful woman. But when she’d left, when she’d finally grown as bored with him as he was of her, he’d felt nothing more than faint regret and an overwhelming relief.

  He should have learned his lesson by now. And indeed he had. He knew perfectly well that that kind of breathless, aching love was the province of adolescence. He also knew that he wanted children. As he approached forty he felt the need, the hunger for them in a way he’d never imagined. For the first time he could understand his father’s insistence on family above all things. He’d always dismissed it as old-country gibberish, not belonging to the brave new world to which Feodor Dubrovnik had emigrated. Now he knew his father had been right all along.

  He wondered whether men could feel a biological time clock running out, just as women could. Of course, men could father children well into their seventies and beyond. Nevertheless, the need to experience fatherhood was becoming overwhelming. What was required in his situation, he thought, was the face of a new generation, an undemanding ornament to decorate his life and bring him children, not to interfere with his headlong rush toward immortality. He’d already made and lost several fortunes, and he had no doubt that he’d make and lose several more. He was among the top fifty of the wealthiest men in America. By his fortieth birthday he planned on making it to the top ten.

  But first things first. Dubrovnik Plaza was next on his agenda, just about ready to go. He had the architects’ model in the boardroom, a shiny glass and steel structure that would replace half a city block. Half of East Sixty-sixth Street, he thought. As soon as he could wrest that architectural anachronism from its stubborn owner and start razing it, then he could begin to think of the future. For now he had to spend a few moments in his busy day defeating a stubborn young woman who’d been ignoring his offers for well over two years, though he doubted she’d known those offers had all come from him.

  Enough was enough. Everything was ready to proceed, except for the obstacle of th
e Glass House. Once he’d finished with that minor detail, Dubrovnik Plaza could start to become a reality. He’d waited long enough.

  He pressed a button on the keyboard of the console that looked more like the instrument panel on a space shuttle than a telephone. Zach’s smooth voice answered.

  “Give Laura Winston one last offer,” Michael said. “Make it generous—I want to get through with this as quickly as possible.”

  “When she refuses?”

  “When, not if?”

  “You haven’t talked to the lady, Mischa. The word is when,” Zach said flatly.

  “When she says no, start blasting at the Rinkman building site.”

  “What for? We can’t accomplish anything until the rest of the area is razed.”

  “Just start blasting. As close to the Glass House as you can get away with. Suggest that the contractor make a mistake or two. He knows he’ll be taken care of.”

  “You’re a rat, Mischa. You know that.” Zach’s faintly southern voice was approving.

  “I know it. And Zach. Get me a new secretary. This one’s fallen in love with me. Do it now.”

  “She’s gone.”

  Michael Dubrovnik stared out his window, out over the vast New York skyline. He owned two apartments in Trump Tower, and his view was spectacular. Soon, he promised himself, that view would be obstructed—by the graceful, spear-like towers of Dubrovnik Plaza. And no one, no one on this earth was going to stop him.

  “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” Susan asked. “So the man’s made an offer. So he’s flirting with your mother. Maybe he’s just pretending to be interested in Glass House as a way of getting to Jilly.”

  “Jilly is twelve years older than he is.”

  “So what?”

  “Dubrovnik has bought up everything around me. Every building, Susan. He owns the Rinkman lot, he owns #139 and #145, and besides he owns the two buildings over on East Sixty-seventh. He’s not going to take no for an answer.”