Night Hunter Read Free

Perhaps she’d go with mahogany highlights this time.
    Matthew came back into the room tying his necktie. At fifty-three, he was a thin man of average height with a perpetual grave expression. His eyes were prominent, giving him a bug-eyed countenance. The top of his head, bald except for a dozen long strands, was shiny and mottled with brown liver spots.
    “ Donna wants me as a guest on her show.” She waved the letter.
    He raised an eyebrow.
    “ The Classic Woman. The beauty contest. She’s doing a follow-up show—two decades later. I was queen, remember?” When he failed to comment, she added, “All right, so I was queen by default. You know as well as I do that I should have won.”
    “ That was a long time ago.” He dropped his keys in his pants pocket and slipped the snakeskin wallet into the inner pocket of his dark blue suit jacket. With his back to her, he asked, “Do you suppose she ever suspected that you slept with one of the judges?”
    “ Really, Matthew,” she said.
    “ I’m teasing,” he said. “Go. Have your hour of renown.” He went to the door, then stopped. “I suppose you’ll want a new dress for this momentous event?”
    “ Oh, darling, you’re so perceptive.”
    Taking out his wallet, he carefully selected a credit card and, moving behind her, dropped it on the vanity top. “Don’t get carried away. Leave the card and the receipt on my desk.”
    “ Thank you, Matthew,” she said sweetly, biting back the bitterness she felt at being treated like his mistress instead of his wife of eighteen years.
    “ Give my best to the illustrious Mrs. Lake,” Matthew said. His hand came around her shoulder and reached inside her kimono to cup a breast.
    Amelia’s voice was tight. “It’s inconceivable to me how that woman ever bagged her own TV show. She’s a mousy little jellyfish—afraid of her own shadow. Her husband, naturally, is the driving force behind her success, and I don’t wonder. She’s incapable of an original thought.”
    “ I found her to be a stimulating conversationalist and quite intelligent.”
    “ When did you have this profound revelation?”
    “ When you placed her next to me at our dinner party for the mayor.”
    “ Is that all you found her to be?”
    Amelia glared at him in the mirror.
    His hand came away. “No need to be jealous. She could never be as sexy as you. Speaking of which, while you’re shopping, pick out something frilly that will please me, hmm?” He smiled, then turned and left the room.
    After he had driven away, Amelia crossed to the dresser, retrieved the fifty, and went to the telephone on the nightstand. She dialed the number on the letterhead, then asked to speak to Donna Lake. As she waited, she thought of Fletcher, her young lover. In one hour she would be in his arms, his solid body pressed to hers. Fletcher adored her and would do anything to please her. Not that Matthew didn’t adore and lust after her, but it wasn’t quite the same.
    She sighed, thinking that if Fletcher had only half of Matthew’s money, he would without a doubt spend it on her freely, not make her grovel and steal. No matter, she and Fletcher together would make all the money they needed. In a month’s time, if everything went well, she would be free of the Honorable Matthew Holstead Corde. The only thing she’d miss would be this magnificent house in Pacific Heights. Not a mansion by California standards, but a long ways from the rat hole trailer she’d grown up in. Well, one occasionally had to compromise.
    Soon she would be in the limelight again and, without a doubt, the fairest of them all. She thought about the others. Donna still looked okay, but in no way extraordinary. Regina seemed to have an aversion to maintaining what looks she had. And Tammy had let herself go all to hell since giving birth to the twins. Corinne couldn’t possibly be a threat. Twenty years ago the woman had been rendered a monster, and no amount of plastic surgery could