Belinda remembered her last visit to the farmhouse two months ago. It had been early July, just after the Fourth. She’d stepped out of her car directly into a pile of dog refuse from one of those dirty animals Fleur insisted upon keeping. Her new Maud Frizon pumps were ruined. She rang the front doorbell. No one answered, so she had to let herself into the house.
The interior was cool and fragrant with kitchen smells, but it wasn’t Belinda’s idea of what the inside of a house belonging to two such famous people should look like. Wide-pegged floors instead of marble. Two braided rugs—“rag rugs” they’d called them in Indiana—instead of Persian carpets. A basketball was shoved into one corner of the foyer. A galvanized watering can held some very ordinary garden flowers. And, on the console, she spotted something that looked suspiciously like the Peretti evening bag she’d given Fleur two Christmases earlier, except now Big Bird’s fuzzy yellow head stuck out the top.
Belinda had removed her soiled pumps and padded through the silent downstairs into the dining room. A manuscript sat on the sideboard, but Belinda wasn’t tempted to look at it, although she knew dozens of people would give anything to get an early peek at a new Koranda play. Despite all his awards and honors, Jake’s writing didn’t interest her. And the book about Vietnam that had won him his second Pulitzer was the most depressing thing she’d ever read.
She liked his movies so much better than his writing and wished he made more of them, but there’d been only one Bird Dog picture in the last three years, and Fleur had thrown a fit about that. She and Jake had argued for days, but Jake wouldn’t budge. He told her he liked playing Bird Dog, and she could just suffer through it every few years. She ended up going on location with him whenever she could get away from work and spending her time wrangling the horses.
Just then, Belinda heard Fleur’s laughter drifting through the open window. She pushed back the lace curtain.
There her pregnant daughter lay, her head in her husband’s lap, both of them sprawled underneath a gnarled cherry tree that should have been removed years ago. Fleur wore faded navy maternity shorts and one of Jake’s shirts with the bottom buttons unfastened to make room for her stomach. Belinda wanted to cry. Her daughter’s beautiful blond hair was pulled back with a rubber band, a long scratch ran along the calf of one sunburned leg, and a mosquito bite marred her ankle. Worst of all, Jake was popping cherries into her mouth with one hand while he stroked her stomach with the other.
Fleur tilted her head, and Belinda saw the sheen of cherry juice on her chin. Jake kissed her, then slid his hand under her shirt to cup her breast. Embarrassed, Belinda started to turn away, only to hear a car door slam followed by a high-pitched, happy shriek. Belinda’s pulses quickened, and she leaned forward to catch her first glimpse of Meg in weeks.
Meg…
Fleur and Jake looked up as the child came running around the side of the house. She dashed past a green plastic wading pool and launched her chubby body at them. Jake caught her before she could reach Fleur and pulled her into the crook of his arm. “Whoa, Cookie Bird. You’re gonna make Mommy’s tummy pop.”
“Great start to her sex education, cowboy.” Fleur tugged down the elastic leg on Meg’s cotton sunsuit. “I see ice cream around that mouth? Did you pull a fast one on Nanny again?”
Meg plopped her index finger into her mouth and took a contemplative suck, then turned to her father and gave him her biggest grin. He laughed, pulled her close, and buried his head in her neck.
“Con artist.” Fleur leaned forward and closed her mouth over a chubby thigh, almost as if she were tasting her daughter’s skin.
The diving board banged, and Darian Boothe somersaulted into the pool, bringing Belinda back to her own house in Bel Air and the reminder that her daughter now had two more babies. As she lay in the sun with the scent of chlorine filling her nostrils, she thought of how contemptuously Alexi would have regarded Fleur’s childbearing. Poor Alexi.
But she didn’t like thinking about him, so she thought about Darian Boothe instead and whether the network would buy the pilot. Then she thought of Fleur, who was still so beautiful she made Belinda’s heart ache. And Meg…
It wasn’t much of a name—far too plain for a beautiful little girl with her father’s mouth, her mother’s eyes, and Errol Flynn’s gleaming chestnut hair. Still, any name with Koranda after it was going to look fabulous on a marquee, and blood would tell.
More than thirty years had passed since the night James Dean had died on the road to Salinas. Belinda stretched in the California sun. All in all, she hadn’t done too badly for herself.
Author’s Note
So many people have helped directly and indirectly with this book, both in its original form and this newly revised edition. My special thanks to those in fashion and film who answered my questions so graciously: David Price, Calvin Klein Ltd.; Ford Models, Inc.; and the production staff and cast of Flanagan. A wonderful group of writers offered both wise counsel and practical information: Dionne Brennan Polk, Mary Shukis, Rosanne Kohake, Ann Rinaldi, Barbara Bretton, and Joi Nobisso. Friends and former neighbors shared their specialized knowledge with me: Simone Baldeon, Thelma Canty, Don Cucurello, Dr. Robert Pallay, Joe Phillips, and the staff of the Hills-borough (New Jersey) Public Library. My original editor, Maggie Crawford, loved this project from the beginning. Since then, my current editor, Carrie Feron, has wisely and enthusiastically steered it through its rebirth, along with my terrific agent, Steven Axelrod. How do I thank all the fabulous people at HarperCollins, William Morrow, and Avon Books, who continue to watch over me so well? Every writer should be so blessed. And to Bill and Dr. J.—thanks for the inspiration.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
www.susanelizabethphillips.com
About the Author
Award-winning and critically praised bestselling author SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS has found fans all over the world with her warm and wonderful contemporary love stories that manage to touch hearts as well as funny bones. She lives in the Chicage suburbs with her husband, and she has two grown sons. Visit Susan on the web at www.susanelizabethphillips.com.
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Praise
“[Susan Elizabeth Phillips is] a natural-born storyteller who has a wicked way with words.”
Library Journal
“Engaging and funny.”
The State (Columbia, MD)
“Funny, smart, satisfying read.”
Contra Costa Times
“Phillips not only plucks at heartstrings, she plays a full concert.”
Romantic Times BOOKreviews
“Delightful, funny, and quirky.”
Columbus Dispatch
“She makes you laugh, makes you cry—makes you feel good.”
JAYNE ANN KRENTZ
“Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s bestselling novels have helped to give romance fiction something it long deserved—respectability.”
Chicago Sun-Times
“Romance fans should check out Susan Elizabeth Phillips.”
Omaha World Herald
“A dazzling voice in contemporary woman’s fiction.”
LINDA BARLOW
“Susan Elizabeth Phillips writes a story that wraps around your heart and doesn’t let go.”
Oakland Press
“If you can read Susan Elizabeth Phillips without laughing out loud, check for a pulse!”
ELIZABETH LOWELL
By Susan Elizabeth Phillips
GLITTER BABY
NATURAL BORN CHARMER
MATCH ME IF YOU CAN
AIN’T SHE SWEET?
BREATHING ROOM
THIS HEART OF MINE
JUST IMAGINE
FIRST LADY
LADY BE GOOD
DREAM A LITTLE DREAM
NOBODY’S BABY BUT MINE
KISS AN ANGEL
HEAVEN, TEXAS
IT HAD TO BE YOU
An
d in Hardcover
WHAT I DID FOR LOVE
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
GLITTER BABY. Copyright © 1987, 2009 by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition DECEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061977695
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Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Glitter Baby
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