shares. You even waited to make the threat until she and Tad were officially engaged so you could pull him in as well. A two-for-one, so to speak.”
Fen’s left eye twitched. I took it as a victory and pressed ahead. “I know Tad and Rena tried to outmaneuver you by selling their shares to other investors—in an effort to help Lottie retain control of her company. Poor Rena obviously died because she was trying to protect her boss.”
“Rena was a greedy little fool, Ms. Cosi, but I had nothing to do with her death, either. I was as shocked by the news as anyone.”
“Nice try. But I don’t believe you.”
Fen slammed the table with his fist. “Then you are a stupid woman. Her death has thrown her estate into legal limbo. Rena Garcia died without a will. Now I can’t touch those stocks—nobody can. Not until the legal mess is worked out.”
Fen leaned back. Forcing self-control, he coolly crossed his legs again. “So you see, Ms. Garcia’s death in no way benefits me.”
I still wasn’t convinced, but I let the subject drop. “So what were you saying about control of the Lottie Harmon label?” I asked, continuing to boost my nerve by gulping down more of the plum wine.
“Not the Lottie Harmon label. I don’t give a damn about that. I want control of Lottie.”
So, I thought, Madame had been right. “You’re still in love with her.”
Fen sighed and glanced away, his gaze raking the wall of gilded oil paintings, women posed in empire waists and velvet gowns, Elizabethan collars and powdered wigs, hoop skirts and floor-length furs. “She was addictive, back then,” he said softly. “Intense. Soft and sensual, but dangerous too. Tempestuous and totally unpredictable. Like a psychotropic drug. I’ve had countless women since her, but I’ve never met one whom I could feel even a fraction as strongly about. I want her back in my bed, you see?”
“And you’re a man who gets what he wants?”
Fen shrugged.
It was sad, really. Fen’s memories of the wildly sensual Lottie just didn’t add up to the somewhat restrained woman I knew Lottie to be now. Clearly, the woman had changed over the past twenty years, but Fen hadn’t noticed—or didn’t want to.
I didn’t know much about this Fen/Stephen Goldin character sitting across from me. Maybe the man lived his life in a succession of obsessions and Lottie was just the latest. Or maybe middle-age panic had recently kicked in and regrets were making him yearn desperately for something that simply didn’t exist anymore—if it ever did. He certainly wouldn’t be the first person to idealize a past relationship to make up for a present emptiness.
I set the glass down on the intricately carved table with a loud clink, and realized this particular plum wine was much more powerful than any I’d ever consumed. “Those feelings,” I said, a little woozy, “I suspect they all came back for you when Lottie contacted you again after all these years?”
Fen nodded as he refilled my glass. “Lottie was finished when she walked away all those years ago—from her business and me. She’d been washed up for decades. This new line of hers, the java jewelry thing, it was interesting and commercially viable—if wholly conventional. But I saw it could be lucrative. Like something Isaac might produce for Target. Or David Mintzer for the Bullseye stores—”
My jaw dropped. David Mintzer. Good lord, I thought, that’s who I’d been talking to at the Pierre Hotel, one of the most successful clothing designers in the industry. Mintzer owned two restaurant chains; three magazines; and lines of clothes, handbags, shoes, fragrances, and bath products; plus exclusive product lines just for the Bullseye chain of mass merchandisers. For god’s sake, Clare, the man regularly appears on Oprah, and you didn’t even recognize him!
I took another swig of the plum wine as Fen continued to talk. “I knew I could help sell Lottie’s collection, of course, so I helped her, expecting she’d want to become involved with me again—but she’s kept me at arm’s length for over a year now, and I’ve run out of patience.”
Then why are you trying to kill her? I wondered. Clearly, it didn’t add up. About then, the room began to spin. “So what’s the big deal, Fenny?” I found myself babbling. “Woo her. Win her. Marry her even—just like everybody else.”
“You don’t understand. She wants nothing to do with me. The past is still alive for her as it is for me. But