THE PRINCESS AND THE P.I. Read online

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  Contents:

  Prologue

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

  © 1998

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  Prologue

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  The only advantage Claire could find in being a skinny ten-year-old was her ability to belly-crawl behind the furniture in Nanny's sitting room. At the moment, she hid behind the sofa and waited for Nanny to rise from her rocking chair, turn off the light and waddle into the kitchenette for her nightly glass of hot milk. She'd be doing so any moment now, Claire knew.

  Sure enough, her plump, age-spotted hand soon reached for the lamp. The light clicked off, throwing the cozy room into darkness. The rocker groaned beneath shifting weight, then footsteps plodded into the adjoining kitchenette.

  Claire remained in her hiding place until the sounds of Nanny pouring milk and warming it in the microwave gave way to footsteps headed through the far doorway.

  Only then did Claire crawl out from behind the sofa and shine her flashlight on the pile of newspapers beside the rocker. With silent, nimble fingers she found what she'd come for. The tabloids. Nanny always buried the tabloids beneath the daily news to hide them from the maids—and, of course, from Claire herself. Uncle Edgar didn't approve of anyone bringing "scandal sheets" into the house.

  Concealing the papers within her pajama top, she tiptoed from Nanny's apartment and threw glances over her shoulder as she walked down the carpeted corridor lined with paintings of her ancestors and other famous people. The shadowy corridors scared Claire when she was alone. She wished her cousin Johnny would have a room closer to hers, but he and his parents lived in the east wing instead of the west. Johnny was two years younger than she—and a pesky boy—but at least he was company.

  She reached her own room with relief. Locking the door, she turned off the overhead light and burrowed beneath the covers of her massive canopied bed, where she unfolded the two tabloids.

  As she shone her flashlight on their front pages, her conscience pricked her. She didn't like to disobey Uncle Edgar. But if she didn't read about herself in the tabloids, how would she ever know what was going on in her life? The adults wouldn't tell her, and Johnny never knew any more about the important things than she did.

  As she suspected, the headlines were about her. One read, Custody Battle Over Valentina Grows Bitter.

  "Valentina" was her first name, the name her mother had used for her whenever they were "in public," which meant at parties or having pictures taken. "Claire" was her middle name, the one her parents had called her at home. That was, of course, before they'd died in the car crash and Uncle Edgar had moved in. Everyone called her "Valentina" now, except Nanny and Johnny, because she'd told them to call her Claire. No one else had listened to her request. Shaking off the sad thoughts, she studied the next headline: Poor Little Perfume Princess.

  This headline confused her. She knew why they were calling her "Perfume Princess"; her grandfather had gotten rich with his perfume business, and her mother had been a movie star who made the perfume famous.

  But why were they calling her "poor" when Nanny had told her she was rich? An heiress, she'd said. That meant that when she turned twenty-five, she would be given the money her father and mother had left for her. She'd read in a tabloid last week that she would get more than a billion dollars. That was quite a bit, wasn't it? So why was this headline calling her poor? She and her mother had always done "charity work" for the poor children. Was she now to be one of them?

  That would be an interesting change. From stories Nanny told, Claire knew that poor children didn't have bodyguards following them whenever they left the house, and that they didn't have to run from photographers like her mother and she had. Most poor children didn't have to worry about things like kidnappers. Best of all, many lived in neighborhoods where lots of other children lived. They saw each other every day, and could walk to one another's houses. Might not be too bad, being one of the poor children…

  Curiosity eating at her, she stretched out and propped up on her elbow to read. Both articles were about the fighting in court between her Aunt Shirley, her mother's sister, and Uncle Edgar, her father's uncle. Both wanted "custody." Nanny had told her that meant they both wanted her to live with them because they loved her. As Claire continued to read, though, she detected a slight difference in Nanny's version of the custody battle and the tabloid's version. The tabloids made it sound as if her aunt and uncle wanted her only for the billion dollars.

  Did they?

  A terrible uncertainty gripped her, making her hands tremble and her stomach hurt. How could your aunt and uncle love you? They don't even know you. When her parents had been alive, she'd seen her aunts and uncles only on holidays.

  But it hurt too much to think that her only remaining family wanted her for the money. She thought back to what her mother used to say: Don't believe what you read in the papers or see on television. It's not always true. But sometimes it was. She'd found out about her parents' death from the nightly news.

  With her throat aching from the pressure of unshed tears, Claire came out from under the covers and lay back against the pillows. Who could she ask who wouldn't lie to her? Nanny would tell her that everything was fine. She always said that, just to make her feel better. Claire knew she couldn't ask Uncle Edgar or Aunt Shirley, or anyone in their families, if they wanted her only for the money. It might hurt their feelings.

  With a little sob, she slipped out of bed, sank to her knees and fervently prayed. Please, God, help me know who to trust. And please, please, let someone love me.

  When she'd prayed as long and hard as she possibly could, she climbed back into bed and found the tabloid pages. A slight shudder of revulsion went through her. She wished she hadn't read them. No wonder Momma had hated them so, and Uncle Edgar forbade them in the house. Claire resolved to never read a tabloid again.

  She also solemnly vowed to be very, very good, to follow all the rules and do exactly as she should … just in case God needed help in making someone love her.

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  1

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  It had taken her fifteen years from the time the question had first entered her heart to learn the truth. She could trust no one. No one except Johnny.

  And "being good" hadn't won anyone's love. She'd followed every rule and tried her hardest to please them all—her uncle, her teachers, her trust officer, her public relations team, her bodyguards, her small circle of approved friends, and in the last couple years, her fiancé. Where had all that effort gotten her?

  Betrayed and humiliated on her would-be wedding day.

  At least her eyes had been opened.

  Still dressed in her sadly wilted wedding gown, she peered down from the hotel window into lush California gardens. "Look at them out there, Johnny. Dozens of paparazzi, circling like sharks for a kill."

  "They can't get in, Claire," her cousin assured her, peering out another window. "We've rented out the entire hotel, and Uncle Edgar has guards at every door."

  "Don't underestimate paparazzi," she warned. "They always find a way in." They'd hunted her like prey for years. She remembered the days when she'd tried to please even them. Her cooperation had only worsened their demands.

  They were almost as troublesome as the faceless stalker who plied her with hate mail and anonymous phone calls, mentioning details of her private life that he'd apparently watched. He'd gone so far as to break into her New York town house and vandalize her bedroom.

  Which of course necessitated more bodyguards. More eyes watching every move she made, more authority to bow to—a strain for someone who'd grown up trying to please everybody.

  That had be
en her main problem, she realized. She'd been an approval junkie. The time had come to kick that habit.

  "You need to rest, Claire," Johnny was telling her now as she paced across the hotel suite, the train of her pearl-seeded wedding gown dragging and tangling behind her. "You've had one hell of a morning, and dinner won't be any better."

  An understatement. Dinner would be worse. By then, her uncle would have gathered all his forces, and they'd try to coerce her into rescheduling the wedding. "It doesn't matter what they say or do, Johnny," she informed him, squaring her jaw. "I won't marry Preston."

  He sighed and sank down into an armchair. "Maybe I shouldn't have interfered this morning. You'd have been at your wedding reception by now."

  "I'd have been miserable. If you hadn't shown me the article before the ceremony…" She paused, remembering how reluctant she'd been to look at the tabloid he'd thrust into her hands. Until that moment, she'd kept her resolution to never again read the tabloids. "If you hadn't shown me the article, I would have married him and regretted it. When I marry, I want … I want…" She didn't finish the statement. It sounded too corny.

  She wanted her husband to love her.

  "Maybe I'm asking too much," she mused. "But what about simple loyalty?" Throwing out her hands, she exclaimed, "Three out of four of my bridesmaids, Johnny!"

  There wasn't much he could say to that. The tabloid photos of her intended in the arms of her so-called friends had left very little to the imagination. Preston hadn't bothered to deny the affairs. "They meant nothing to anyone," he claimed.

  They'd meant a great deal to her. Even now, hours after seeing the photos, she felt the stab of betrayal.

  Uncle Edgar had sided with Preston. "You can't let little things like infidelity bother you. Much more important issues are at stake."

  Like your lucrative deal with his parents, she'd thought. Throughout all the years she'd been under his guardianship, her uncle hadn't been around enough to get to know her. But while managing her funds, he had found the time to build a fortune of his own…

  "Wealth and fame like yours make you a target, Valentina," he'd told her. "It's not bad enough that you're one of the richest women in the world, but your mother was a Hollywood legend. Your face and name are known everywhere. I want to see you married to someone who can handle that pressure. Preston's family is very powerful. He's being groomed to run for the presidency someday. Your fame would be an asset."

  An asset. She wanted to be more to her husband than an asset.

  "And don't worry about this little scandal," he'd assured her. "It'll blow over soon enough. People will forget."

  People might, but she wouldn't. At the very least, Preston's affairs had proven that he didn't love her … and that she didn't love him. She'd been more hurt by her friends' betrayals than she had been by his.

  Oh, she cared about Preston, all right. Since their early teens, they'd been herded together with an elite group of peers to share ski trips, cruises, polo matches, yacht races and glittering social events. She'd liked him the best out of all the men in their closed little group, and had never considered going out of that group to meet others. It simply wasn't done. So she and Preston had convinced themselves they were in love.

  She wished Nanny were still alive. She'd turn to her for reassurance that everything was fine, even though it wasn't.

  "Claire, are you okay?" asked Johnny.

  She forced a smile for her weary-looking cousin. "Of course I am. I just have to figure out what to do with my life."

  "Now?" he exclaimed with a quirk of his dark blond brow.

  She laughed in spite of her despondent mood. "I suppose it is getting late. You look like you need a nap more than I do. You have to fly back to Boston tonight, don't you?"

  He nodded, looking contrite. "I hate to leave you like this, but I have exams all week and need to study."

  "Go get some rest. It'll be a long flight."

  He lurched gratefully toward the door. "See you at dinner. Or should I call it, Round Two?" They shared a grim smile and he left her alone.

  Or rather, as "alone" as she could be with paparazzi beneath her window, some perched in the trees with telescopic lenses, waiting to snap pictures of the bride who'd run away from her lavish Los Angeles wedding. In the next room was her public relations specialist, preparing a statement for the media that said she'd taken ill. Stationed outside her door were protection agents, and elsewhere in the hotel lurked countless other individuals who somehow governed her life, keeping everything in line, putting the best face on any situation, advising her on what to do, what to say and how to act.

  She was thoroughly sick of it all—the rules, the expectations, the correct behavior. If only she could go away somewhere, anywhere, to be alone. Someplace where she wouldn't be recognized. To think. To heal. To decide what to do with her future.

  She'd never had that kind of freedom. Ever.

  The idea, once sparked, fanned into a fierce longing. Freedom. Freedom to do whatever she liked, without advisors, guards, stalkers, or paparazzi. Was it possible?

  Her uncle and the powers-that-be would never go for it. "Too dangerous," they'd say. But what could be more damaging to her than this slow suffocation of her spirit?

  She was a woman now, not a child. Twenty-five years old. She'd come into her money six months ago. Surely she could come and go as she pleased … couldn't she?

  She almost laughed at that. Only if she ran away like a thief in the night and traveled incognito. She'd have to disguise herself, use false identification and get lost in some crowd.

  She wasn't sure she could manage on her own, outside of her sheltered world. She'd lived her entire life so far like a delicate hothouse flower. But she wanted now to face the wind, to feel the rain. To find the sun.

  She would do it!

  She would go away somewhere, if only for a few weeks, and prove to herself that she could manage on her own. Maybe then she'd feel more prepared to take control of her life.

  Though her heart raced with excitement, she reached for the phone with amazingly steady hands. "Johnny? Can you come back to my room, please? There's something I'd like to run past you."

  "Bug the phones of family and friends. We've got the airports, train stations and harbors covered. Fred, arrange interviews with her household staff—in all of her homes. Her vacation villas, too. Her uncle thinks she might be headed for one of them."

  "Excuse me, Mr. Walker," his secretary interrupted from the door of the conference room as the rest of his hand-chosen team of private investigators scribbled notes, rifled through files and typed on notebook computers. "You have a visitor."

  Tyce Walker of Walker Investigative & Security Services frowned. Who would drop by his office at this ungodly hour? It was six in the morning; he'd summoned his crew for an early meeting after an emergency call from Edgar Richmond last night. "Who is it?"

  "Ms. Pitts."

  With a soft curse, Tyce tossed down his pen and stood up. "Tell the security guard not to let her past the lobby. Just to be safe, lock every filing cabinet in my office and yours." To his staff, he muttered, "No matter what happens in the next half hour, keep a close watch on your briefcases and laptops. Hattie and her accomplices can be masters at diversionary tactics."

  A grumble of agreement sounded from all corners of the room. During his wily foster mother's last visit, she'd waltzed away with a photograph of Senator Whitman cheating on his wife—a photo meant for Mrs. Whitman's eyes only. To Hattie's credit, though, she hadn't used the photo in the tabloid she owned; she'd merely blackmailed Tyce into helping her scoop another story.

  She could be a real pain in the butt. He'd barred her from visiting any of his offices. He had, after all, learned his most devious surveillance techniques from her.

  He'd been a streetwise punk when she'd plucked him out of his probation officer's car by the collar of his scruffy leather jacket, settled him into her Los Angeles home as her foster son and put him to work for h
er tabloid. By age seventeen, he'd converted his breaking-and-entering skills into a marketable trade, learning the basics of a stakeout, covert videotaping, electronic bugging and tracking. He'd found he had a talent for it, though no taste for tabloid reporting.

  He now owned one of the top P.I. firms in the country, with offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Miami. Hattie, on the other hand, had nurtured her tabloid into a worldwide press. He wondered what story she was after now. He had a sinking feeling that he knew.

  He spied her the moment the elevator doors opened. Petite and wiry, she paced across the lobby smoking a cigarette despite the No Smoking signs. She tipped her ashes into the paper coffee cup she held. As always, her short salt-and-pepper hair stuck up in odd places, and her dark pantsuit looked rumpled. He recognized the expression on her weathered face—impatience.

  "What are you doing here in Chicago, Hattie? And at my office, yet. You know my offices are off-limits."

  Squinting up at him through a haze of smoke, she took one last drag off her cigarette, then flicked the butt into the cup where it hissed and died in a pool of black coffee. "Don't waste my time, T.K.," she rumbled in her gruff, asthmatic voice.

  Tyce had no idea why she called him "T.K." He didn't have a middle name, as far as he knew, and his last name was Walker, but from the time she'd first collared him, she'd called him T.K.

  "Let's go to your office and talk," she said. "Here, get rid of this." She shoved the paper cup into his hands on her way to the elevator.

  In one fluid motion he dropped the cup into a trash receptacle, grabbed Hattie's arm and turned her toward the glass front door, where the first weak rays of dawn barely filtered through the darkness. "I don't have time to talk."

  "I've got a hot tip you'll want to hear."

  "I don't work for you anymore, Hattie. I haven't for seven years. Why would I want your tip?"