False Pretenses Read Free Page A

piano, forgetting Rod, forgetting the awful nightmare that had begun seven months before.
    She sat down, flexed her fingers, and began Bach’s Italian Concerto. She loved the key of F. It was so elegant, much more so than the furnishing of this elaborate mansion. And Bach was so clean and predictable, every chord she played calling for the next and the next, in an even pattern, an even flow.
    She didn’t open her eyes until she reached the second movement. She couldn’t play it. It was slow, haunting, sorrowful. She ached and hurt.
    â€œWould you like something to drink, Elizabeth?”
    She blinked up at Rod, who was standing beside the piano, merely looking at her. What did he think? she wondered. He always looked so cool, so in control, so impenetrable, with those dark eyes of his.
    â€œPerhaps a glass of Chablis.” She saw Kogi fromthe corner of her eye already holding her glass of wine, and smiled.
    â€œI forget how beautifully you play,” Rod said, sipping on his perfect martini. Of course Timothy always demanded the best. In his drinks, in his servants, in his lawyers. In his lawyers who defended his wife against a murder rap. “Won’t you continue, Elizabeth?”
    â€œThe second movement makes me sad,” she said, rose, and smoothed down her dark blue wool skirt.
    He watched her accept the crystal goblet of white wine from Kogi. She had beautiful hands, her fingers long and slender. Strong hands, strong enough to stick a silver skewer . . . He watched her delicately sip the wine. If only Moretti knew that Elizabeth never drank anything other than wine, that she would never touch a daiquiri.
    He wondered what she was thinking. He’d wondered that so many times, not just during the past months, but since he’d met her before she married Timothy. She always eluded him, always escaped to her music or to her blank silences. But she said now, very quietly, “Rod, who is Christian Hunter?”
    He’d expected her to ask him that much sooner. But Elizabeth was different. He’d always despised her, not only for her differentness—for God’s sake, a musician—but also for her serenity, her calmness, her ruthlessness.
    She had been ruthless. Timothy was a goner from the first time he’d met her, from the first time he’d heard her play that haunting Chopin prelude at Carnegie Hall.
    He wasn’t so certain now.
    He wanted to hate her. He wanted to believe her guilty. He wanted . . . He ran his free hand through his gray hair. It wasn’t that she was a sex goddess, for heaven’s sake, or a woman who lured men with blatant offers. She was different, cool, reserved, kept toomuch to herself. He wondered if she’d ever wanted to have sex. It couldn’t have been that way with Timothy, sixty-four-year-old Timothy Carleton, who exuded raw power and arrogant presence. Here Rod was, only fifty-one, a young man compared to Timothy, yet she’d never even hinted that he was anything to her but a friend, a slightly distant friend.
    Old, old Timothy.
    And she’d married him.
    He realized that she was waiting for him to reply, and for a moment he couldn’t remember her question. Oh, yes, who was Christian Hunter? “Don’t you know who he is?” he asked, watching her closely.
    Elizabeth turned to look down at the street from the bow windows. For many moments she was silent. Even her body was completely still. How could such a serene woman be capable of cold-blooded murder? But he’d believed her guilty.
    â€œI never saw him before today in that courtroom,” Elizabeth said, not turning. “But surely you know that, Rod. Where did you find him?”
    â€œIs that true, Elizabeth?”
    He didn’t want to hear the truth, he realized suddenly. He wanted to keep protecting her, as he’d done the past six months. He wanted . . .
    â€œYou must know that I’ve never seen