Lovers and Liars Read Online Free PDF Page B

her reflection. Everyone told her she was a stunning woman, that she looked ten years younger than her forty-eight years. When Nancy looked at her reflection, she saw the beginnings of faint wrinkles around her eyes and on her forehead instead of the perfectly sculpted oval face framed by shoulder-length dark blond hair. For the hundredth time, she wondered if it was time to have her eyes done.
    “Mrs. Glassman,” a uniformed maid said, standing in the doorway. “Phone call, ma’am.”
    It was Belinda.
    “Oh, hello, darling. This is a surprise.” As always, her pulse started to race. Her brow gathered dampness. She felt warm. She put one hand over the mouth of the receiver. “Ingrid, would you get me a glass of wine, please, and turn up the air conditioner.” The maid left. “What were you saying, dear? I missed that.”
    “I have some really good news,” Belinda said.
    It was nearly impossible to hear her daughter. There was loud, raucous background music at Belinda’s end. Unmistakably, she was calling from a bar. And Nancy felt a sinking feeling—after all, her daughter never called.
    “I sold a screenplay. In fact, I just put my John Hancock on the dotted line this morning.”
    “How wonderful,” Nancy said, her tone gushing too much, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. She never could, not with Belinda. “How very, very wonderful, dear.” Frantically she tried to think of something else to say.
    There was a pause. “Lester sold it for three hundred and fifty grand, Mom.”
    Money was one thing Nancy understood very well, and this gave her and her daughter a common ground on which to meet. She seized the opening. “Oh, my! So much for a movie?”
    “It’s the going rate, pretty much,” Belinda said. “The news gets even bet—”
    “Thank you, Ingrid. What, dear?”
    “The news gets even better …”
    Ingrid was pointing at her watch. “You have to get dressed for the party, Mrs. Glassman.”
    Nancy nodded, feeling guilty relief. She tuned in once more to her daughter, who was now saying something about production. “That’s very nice, dear.” She sipped her wine, not really understanding what Belinda was talking about—but why should she? When she didn’t understand her daughter at all. Maybe the diamonds would go better with the taffeta. Everyone was wearing emeralds this season.
    “And Jackson Ford is going to star in it, Mom. He’s one of the hottest properties right now.”
    Her heart actually skipped a beat. Then it began pounding very hard, so hard that Nancy could feel the reverberations throughout her entire body. She didn’t know how she managed to speak at all, much less in a normal tone. “That’s very nice, Belinda.”
    “I called Abe.” It was a flat statement.
    Now Nancy was truly perspiring. Jackson Ford. With supreme effort, she thrust him from her foremost thoughts. She could just imagine what the conversation between her daughter and her husband had been like—and she couldn’t handle it, not now. She took a long sip of wine. “Dear, I’m running late. I have to get dressed for a charity cocktail party that your father and I are going to.”
    “Right,” Belinda said. “But just for the record, do you know he couldn’t say one fucking nice thing to me?”
    “He’s very proud of you,” Nancy managed.
    “Right. Look, Mom, forget it, I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not fair for me to put you between us. Go to your party and have a good time.”
    “Call me tomorrow,” Nancy told her, sweat gathering between her breasts. “Belinda, I am proud of you. I—”
    “Yeah.” The phone went dead.
    Nancy hung up and wiped the dampness from her brow. She noticed her hand was trembling slightly. She was having a distinctly bad feeling, like an aftertaste, but this time it wasn’t because her daughter made her anxious or because constant the battle of wills between her daughterand husband made her even more anxious. She took another sip of wine in an