A Tangled Web Read online

  The big man who was coming toward them, half-walking, half-flowing, it looked like, in colorful robes and an equally colorful shock of hair, had her take a step back in surprise.

  “Daaaaarling!” He swooned at Muriel and kissed both her cheeks in the air while he was still a good distance away. “Missed you. Miiiiissed you. And you”—he turned to Tess—“must be Mrs. Blackwell.”

  Tess was afraid he would swoop down on her, too, but he only stood back and scrutinized her. “Yes, yes. Very much so. I”—he pointed to himself with a flourish, his fingernails, Tess saw with surprise, as colorful as the rest of him—“am Juno. Amazingly creative, unequaled genius, and generally lovable.”

  “And a constant pain in the lower backside.” The muttering had Tess turn her gaze to the man who followed the living rainbow. The complete opposite of Juno, the small man wore a chic but conservative white suit, a white shirt, a white tie. His hair was a shining white, too.

  “And that is my ever cranky, loving husband, Hubi,” Juno said with a wave of his hand.

  “Hubert,” the man corrected and rolled his eyes. “I am not cranky. You simply spread around enough headaches for both of us.”

  “Do not,” Juno retorted.

  “Do too.” Hubert sighed.

  “Do . . . Oh, never mind. We have guests!” Juno turned back to Tess, who was watching the two of them with curiosity. She had never anyone like them before.

  “This is Mrs. Blackwell?” Hubert looked at her in surprise. “Really?” He turned to Muriel.

  Muriel nodded her confirmation. “Tess Blackwell, meet Hubert and Juno Glimpse, geniuses extraordinaires,” she made the introduction.

  “I am. He not so much,” Juno whispered in Tess’s direction. Hubert rolled his eyes again and this time Tess couldn’t stifle the smile.

  “I expected her to be more . . . more . . .” Juno tried, “volupu . . . volupto . . . damn word. Vo-lup-tuous. Or modelly. Or both. Airhead. Oops, sorry, that’s not always the case, is it? But those gold digger eyes, whatchamacallit, yes. A Blackwell-oriented chic. Dollar signs in the eyes. Maaany dollar signs.”

  “Juno!” Hubert actually raised his voice.

  “Sorry sorry sorry. Still, you, you’re a real beauty, aren’t you? Let’s see. Slim. Wow. Nicely toned. You work out, don’t you?”

  Tess shrugged. She liked to keep her body in shape. Strong. She needed to, the reminder came, and she forced the unwanted thought away.

  “Those clothes though! Oh my God. Why? Why, why why would a woman looking like that dress like . . . like . . . like thaaat?” Juno gave up his terminology struggles.

  “Not bad color choices though.” Hubert considered her with due seriousness.

  “Yes but those clothes!”

  “Modest, aren't you? Not one to flaunt around what nature has bestowed on you. Nowadays everyone seems to want to show skin, show everything they have. But you, you're a class act, aren't you? I like that.”

  “Yes but those clothes!”

  “Juno!”

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry, yes, classy, we can do classy. Classy do for a classy lady. Don't see much of those. Where have I seen one? Don't think I have. I love the hair. Let it down for me, come on, come on!”

  Hubert rolled his eyes again but stopped when Tess let her hair down. Dark red, it’s richness of color accentuated in the light she stood in. Hubert took several steps further into the floor and motioned her over, and she found herself standing in front of a line of mirrors, under a more complimentary light.

  “It really is dark red,” Hubert said in astonishment. “And naturally red. Look at that. You don’t see that every day, either.” It was thick and full and came down under her shoulders in long waves. Even though she’d had it up, it fell into place immediately, framing her face perfectly.

  “You love your hair,” he said, “don’t you? You take care of it. Look at it, soft, perfect. Very well cut, too. I have the perfect hairdresser for you, don't worry. But we won’t need that today. No. Perfect as it is.” He sighed in content. “Beautiful. And those eyes. And look at that skin, fair, silky. Yes. Perfect.”

  “Easy.” Juno swooned. “This is going to be so easy. Eaaasy. Measurements!” And he moved closer to Tess. She thought he was about to touch her, and her instincts kicked in. She stiffened.

  But he only swirled away, not noticing. Neither did Hubert, who followed Juno with yet another sigh and a carefully controlled step as his partner flowed away. They were still talking about her, making plans. Making plans she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear.

  “They are very gay, very much in love, and you are for them a rare, exquisitely beautiful woman who is very much worthy of their attention. And they don’t think that about just anyone. They choose who they work with.”

  Tess was still looking at the two men walking away.

  “You’re safe with them.”

  At that choice of words, Tess whirled around to face Muriel.

  “I’m not asking. I’m not passing this on, it will stay between us. I’m just letting you know that I saw. And that I’m here if you need me.” The look in Tess’s eyes made Muriel think about what Robert had said, that Tess was as inaccessible as Ian. She thought he was wrong. It was more than that. Tess was untouchable.

  “Look, Tess,” she said. “I’m Robert’s wife. And I’m Ian’s friend. But whatever is said between you and me will remain between us, I promise you that. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. You just need to know that no matter what you say, I won’t betray your confidence. And that even if you choose to say nothing, that’s fine too.” The eyes that looked at Tess were somber.

  Tess considered her. She could use a friend. She was alone here, far from everything and everyone she knew. Alone, and unsure of her footing in her new surroundings. But trust had to be earned, and while she would let Muriel—and Robert—remain close, as her husband’s closest friends, she was not yet ready to make them hers. They both seemed nice, and unthreatening. But by her own account Muriel had led a safe life and was happily married, surrounded by people she loved and trusted. Tess didn’t think she would understand and had no inclination to trust her with herself.

  She had never trusted anyone with herself, and never would.

  Still, she appreciated the honest, and seemingly unconditional, offer of friendship. She acknowledged the gesture with a smile. Then she turned away from Muriel and caught her own image in the full-body mirrors half-surrounding her, saw herself in a pair of jeans, a simple shirt in deep blue shades, comfortable shoes. She sighed inwardly. Right. She had made a deal, and she would stick to it. Muriel was right about that, she had to change her appearance. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know how to do this, she had tried femininity before and knew she had the natural tendency, the tastes that were hers. At least, she thought, this was different, this place was different. As Ian Blackwell’s wife she would be safe.

  She had to believe that.

  She turned around as the two people who would help her determine what she would be wearing from here on returned, prepared for whatever it would take, her mind set on showing herself for the woman she was.

  She ended up enjoying the day. Both she and Muriel did. They spent the entire day at Glimpse, where Juno and Hubert created for Tess a wardrobe from scratch. Once Tess learned that a lot of it involved three-dimensional computer simulations of herself with the various clothing rather than having to submit herself to physical measurements and trying on designs, and once she realized that what the two stylists had in mind for her was nothing like what she had seen in their store, and that it was important for them to understand what she was comfortable with and to know how she felt about their ideas, she relaxed. Later in the day the makeup arrived, some fancy brand she hadn’t heard of, and both Hubert and Juno were elated—and relieved—to see that she knew what to do with the different items, and quite well. She had taken some courses a while back, she said, surprising them. Out of curiosity, she told them. She d
idn’t tell them that it was when she had still thought there might be a chance for things to be different, before she realized there never would be.

  No one was allowed up to the third floor of Glimpse while she was there. Not even the caterer who had come with their lunch, and who saw only Hubert and Jackson. And when Tess and Muriel finally left, it was straight into the Bentley again, with a stern Jackson making sure no one saw them.

  Tess, Muriel decided, was an enigma. But she marveled at her, at the way she had handled herself at Glimpse. At her endless patience, at how Juno and Hubert came to adore her in no time—and Hubert didn’t like anyone. It’s such a shame this extraordinary woman isn’t about to let anyone in, she thought with regret. In the short time she had spent with Tess, she had come to like her.

  But she wondered at the choice Robert had made. Ian always took care to keep a certain type of women around him. The type he could be sure would not remain in his life, the type he chose to satisfy his body, nothing else. Tess was quite obviously very different from that.

  The problem was that she evidently was a lot more different than Robert thought.

  Chapter Eight

  Ian had thought the woman he had married would have more time to settle in, get used to her new surroundings—and to him—before she had to face the world that was lurking outside, waiting to see her. Unfortunately, that was not to be.

  She had already received everything that Glimpse had either made or ordered for her. It arrived gradually in the days following her visit there with Muriel. He had seen it all and was pleased. He was surprised to learn that despite what she had chosen to wear in her life before she had married him, she had a good fashion sense. He knew she had played an active role in putting together her new wardrobe and could now see that her taste leaned toward the fine and the delicate.

  Not only that. As soon as the clothes arrived she began to wear them, putting her own aside, as if determined to step into her new role as she had given her word she would do. And so even casual was no longer jeans and a simple shirt. Every outfit she wore was stylish—no dresses, though, he hadn’t seen her with one yet although he knew she had them—and befitting a woman of means, but not one who tended to flash her wealth around. Tasteful, understated, complimenting, that was his immediate description of the way she was dressed whenever he saw her now. Which only raised the question yet again—why hadn’t she done this until now, dressed this way? She was obviously aware of her looks and her femininity. Why hide them so deliberately?

  He was nowhere near answering this, or any other question he had about her. The mystery that was his wife wasn’t anywhere near being solved. Nor did their relationship, if it could even be called that, thaw. Their time together was limited, by mutual choice. He made an effort to be at home at least part of the time on weekends and on some evenings, as would befit the fact that he was, outwardly, a happily married man, but even then he spent most of the time in his den, his office away from Blackwell Tower. The only time he spent with his wife was in that meal a day together dictated by the terms of their arrangement. Still, at least the clashes ceased, and their conversations—at the dinner table only, of course, and in between long stretches of silence—became, with time, somewhat less strained.

  Although “conversations” was a loose term. They consisted only of him telling her what she needed to know about the business and social milieu he was necessarily a part of and about the media’s place in his life and in his business, all the different facets of it. He spoke, and she mostly just listened, although he supposed she wouldn’t know what to ask. And there was certainly nothing personal about these conversations, about their time together.

  When he had conceived his plan, Ian had known he ran the risk of having to deal with a woman who would try to turn their arrangement into a more personal one, a woman who might only pretend to agree to the strict contract between them, thinking that proximity to Ian Blackwell would win her his heart, or at least his bed and therefore a more permanent place in his life. In fact, he had expected that. What he hadn’t expected was the woman he had ended up marrying.

  She kept strictly to the contract and to the rules it dictated. She did not betray anything of herself to him, and she kept her distance from him, and not just physically. That, he reminded himself, was what he had wanted. It was, in this sense, the perfect outcome of his plan. Except that she was not an open book to him as she was supposed to be. He was supposed to be in control of the situation. To know all there was to know about her, to be able to anticipate her without this being mutual. Instead, Tess Blackwell, his wife, was as much of a mystery to him as she was to all those waiting to meet her. He knew nothing personal about her, barely knew anything about her at all. And he couldn’t begin to figure her out.

  To be fair, they were both using the formality to maintain between them a solid wall meant to keep each other out. And it did the job. Neither of them, he realized, had even gone so far as to refer to the other by their first names. Not once. She never referred to him by anything other than Mr. Blackwell, the words controlled and with no endearment in them. As his were. And as his were, hers were meant to establish a cold fact, a constant reminder of the arrangement they had both agreed to.

  Shaking his head, he stood up and walked over to the view of the city his office afforded, but it was more of a habitual move, born out of restlessness, out of the turmoil of his thoughts, the need to resolve the problem he was facing that had to do with her. Or rather, his current, and rather urgent, problem with her.

  In the time since he had brought his wife to her new home, he had avoided any social functions that would logically have mandated her presence and that might therefore have led to questions had he attended them alone. He had wanted to give her time to get used to her new life, the non-public part of it, and she had spent most of that time in the house. She had met her stylists twice more, and Muriel had visited, befriending her, which Ian was glad about. But otherwise, she had spent her time alone in the house. Walking the grounds, running in the morning, he sometimes saw from his bedroom window. Using the gym, Graham let him know—she never did so when he was in it, of course. And at times, often in fact, she sat by the lake in the gradually warming days, deep in her own thoughts. Graham had told him that, too.

  So far, the fact was that she had been isolated, and he had let it remain that way. Perhaps it was also because this was more convenient for him, because he’d been perfectly content to let them both continue getting used to this situation they were in. Or perhaps, he had to admit, it was simply because he wasn’t at all sure about presenting her to the world, his world.

  Either way, that made his situation on this specific day worse. Less than a month after marrying her, her isolation—or rather, their isolation as a married couple—was about to end. An invitation he had received could not be avoided. The CEO of one of his subsidiaries was retiring and leaving California with his wife to live closer to their daughter. His was one of the first companies Ian had taken over, right there in San Francisco, and he had kept Jonathan Barns as its CEO, never regretting the decision. But his retirement posed a problem. Not a business one, the new CEO was just as good. But the event itself was one that Ian Blackwell was expected to attend, and not alone.

  Damn Robert and the choice he had made. Still, at least this wasn’t a black-tie event, he reasoned, but more of an informal, semi-social, semi-corporate affair, which was why it wouldn’t necessarily be the worst social function to start with—

  Who was he kidding? This wasn’t an office party. It was taking place in a luxury venue, the sort of place he doubted she had ever been in, and the people attending it would be executives of his company and of other San Francisco companies, and socialites the retiring man knew—and he knew quite a few of them. And, he thought ruefully, anyone else who wanted to see the woman he had married would make sure to be there. Informal or not, the event was already widely publicized, to a large extent because of his marriage, and so when they wo
uld arrive at the venue the party would be taking place in, she was bound to be met by the kind of media he wanted to keep away from her. Perhaps, even, by Cecilia Heart, who had since recovered from her shock and was after him with a vengeance, already claiming that the Blackwell marriage was nothing but a business arrangement, a sham.

  It would be far from low-key. Too many people at once would meet his wife. The same wife who was nothing like the woman he needed precisely for this purpose. And he had deferred the decision for too long, which was not at all like him, and that in itself said quite a bit. It also made things worse, since it meant he would have no time at all to prepare her for this.

  Tess stared at the unbelievable amount of jewelry on the table. The woman who had brought it had arrived at the house with an escort of guards. They were outside now, while the woman, a representative of some jeweler Tess didn’t catch the name of, was explaining to her about each of the pieces in their designated holders.

  Tess had never worn jewelry, none but a simple pair of stud earrings she had worn for the Christmas parties at InSyn she had attended for just the polite duration, or for whatever other unwanted mandatory events had come her way. And she had never seen so many jewels in her life. True, they were all quite delicate and very beautiful. Nothing here was too extravagant, everything was something she could wear. But it was all so very much. Too much.

  She let Lina take the woman upstairs to her room, where the jewelry she had no choice but to accept would be placed in the designated drawers set out for them in what she still thought of as her oversized closet. It was unbelievable, the clothes, the jewelry. Lina had been right—her closet was now filled with so many clothes, more than she could imagine she would ever need. Everything she had, everything around her was so different than what she was used to. Every need of hers was catered to almost before she managed to notice it, every request of hers was answered with a frenzy of action. Despite his obvious misgivings about her, it seemed her husband was making sure she was comfortable, and so were Lina and she thought that even Graham, who was still keeping a careful formality, was warming up to her, but it was all so much. Perhaps if it were real, this marriage. But it wasn’t. It was a lie, a play in which she and Ian Blackwell had the lead roles.