The Doll Brokers Read online

  “Morhardt?” Brewer repeated.

  “Felicia’s son,” Jonathan said. “The other one.”

  “I didn’t know there were two.”

  “We were able to keep it a secret until just recently,” Ann said.

  Brewer laughed. “Well, I’m the producer. Good to meet you.”

  “Likewise. Who’s this?” Jonathan put his hand on Ann’s shoulder and moved her slightly aside. He felt her twitch at the contact.

  The girl who stood behind her was all of seven, Jonathan thought, but she would grow into a woman who would make a man go willingly to his knees. She was blond, with dimples and blue eyes. She was extraordinary and, Jonathan knew in the next moment, she’d been trained to use her looks.

  “Hello.” She offered her hand perfectly. “My name is Lisette Smile.”

  Jonathan hunkered down to her level. “And a beautiful smile you have, too.”

  “Thank you.” She kept forcing it.

  “Go on now,” Brewer said to her. “Make-up needs you.”

  The girl went back to the set, tossing a coquettish grin over her shoulder—flirting with him, Jonathan realized. He stood. “Where’d you find her?”

  Ann rubbed the back of her neck as though it hurt. “Three hundred photographs. We picked forty, auditioned them, narrowed it to five, then gave them camera tests.”

  “You did all this in less than a week?”

  “I started the search before I actually contracted for the doll.”

  “Malice aforethought. You knew you would sign the deal.”

  She met his gaze. “Yes.”

  “Well, what if you hadn’t?” he hissed the question at her. “And all these expenses were for naught?”

  “That wasn’t an alternative, Jonathan,” she countered softly.

  He watched her move off and wondered about a woman to whom failure was not an option.

  Brewer began talking effusively to Jonathan, gesturing at the set before them. “We did all this in the last twenty-four hours, from the wood floor up. It’ll take us all day to capture one hour of thirty-five millimeter film. From that, we’ll get a thirty-second commercial.”

  Jonathan scanned the set. To his unpracticed eye, it all seemed professional enough. But Ann had said flat-out that she was taking the cheaper route here. Why? Was she pocketing the difference? That was beneath her, he decided. Too crass.

  He watched her stop and lean against a wall to watch the proceedings. Another man—the director, Jonathan assumed—called for quiet. The grip started the dolly moving along the guide rail at a deliberate speed, carrying the camera and the cameraman toward the action.

  Lisette touched a hand to the doll’s heart and gave the camera a look of bemusement. Jonathan was impressed. The director called for the scene to be shot again.

  And again.

  Every time it happened, the girl’s look of surprise became more wooden. Jonathan could tell that the poor kid was melting. Someone mercifully called for a break and a sandwich cart was rolled out. Jonathan moved over to Ann who seemed preoccupied with her briefcase. “What’s that?” he asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “It’s nothing.” She slammed the lid, nearly taking off his fingers as he reached for it.

  “It’s one of those kids games, isn’t it? The electronic kind that we don’t sell? And if I hadn’t come along, you’d be sitting here, playing with it?” It jived with nothing he knew of her.

  “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

  He dropped it because he thought of something else. “Are we paying this idiot by the hour?” he asked.

  “Which idiot?” She shook the bottle of Maalox she had removed from her briefcase, held it up, peered into it, shook it again.

  “The one in the dark shirt who seems to be running this show.”

  “Oh. That idiot. Gene Sullivan. He’s a genius, actually.” Ann found the tablets she was looking for and palmed a handful. She popped them into her mouth as if they were candy and began chewing.

  She closed her eyes briefly and rubbed her waist. She was letting him get to her. And for the life of her, she didn’t know why. Patrick’s barbs usually made her laugh, roll her eyes, dig in. But this was different. She had a very strong urge to take Jonathan by the throat and strangle him.

  Ann looked at Lisette. The child was sitting off in a far corner by herself while everyone else ate. Her eyes were too bright. “Oh, shit.” She left him and went to the girl.

  “Hey, there,” she said, kneeling in front of her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I want my mom.”

  Ann looked over her shoulder for the woman, and found her bearing down on them.

  “Mommy, I did it!” Lisette cried as the woman approached. “I tried!”

  “You didn’t listen to anything that man said! You just took it in your own head to do it your way!” She raised a hand as though to slap the child.

  Ann panicked. “Hold on here!”

  “Who are you?” the woman demanded.

  They were fighting words. Ann stood to confront her. “I’m the woman who hired your daughter.”

  “Oh.” She went flame red. And, like flames, the color crept up from her neck into her cheeks, part anger and part embarrassment. “Well, you talk to her then. Make her see sense.”

  Lisette wailed as her mother wheeled around and left them.

  “Easy does it, chicklet.” Ann got down to the child’s level again. “Let’s talk.”

  You’re hot, baby. Ann tensed, her smallest muscles reacting to the remembered voice inside her head. Her blood started humming. She hadn’t heard that voice since she was fourteen years old. But sometimes it still came to life. In her dreams, mainly. Or when little girls cried.

  Ann took a breath. “They’re outside you, Lisette. Your mom, Mr. Sullivan, all of them. They’re not here.” She touched a palm to her own chest. “Just pull back into that place inside yourself and everything will be fine. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  “I have a place like that,” the girl whispered.

  “I know you do. We all do. Go inside there and talk to the doll for yourself, okay? Do it for the girl in that special spot. No one will yell at you anymore, not while I’m here.”

  “Are you important?”

  I’m just another little blond girl, Ann thought. She stood and turned away to look for Gene Sullivan. She plowed straight into Jonathan’s chest. “Not a word,” she snapped, jumping back when they made contact.

  “I was just going to ask if everything is okay.”

  “Right as rain. Leave me alone.” She stepped past him and he let her go.

  She was halfway across the set, looking for the director, when she saw one of the guards making a lumbering beeline toward her. He was overweight and his face was florid from the rising warmth in the building. “Ms. Lesage?” he asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “I have an urgent message for you to call Mr. Morhardt.”

  Involuntarily, her neck snapped around and her gaze went to Jonathan. He had Lisette on her feet now and was laughing with her. Patrick, Ann thought dazedly. The guard was referring to Patrick, not Jonathan.

  She had turned her cell phone off earlier so as not to disturb the filming. Ann headed for her briefcase.

  She removed her phone and tapped in the number of the office. Patrick took the call in record time. Generally he played games with her, pretending he was too important, too busy to jump when she tried to contact him.

  “What is it?” she demanded.

  “Stop the shoot.”

  She was shocked into laughing aloud. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “I’m telling you to cut our losses, Ann. As soon as possible. Our bank turned us down and I can’t find another one.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Verna Sallinger raised her hand and felt it hover an inch from Patrick’s closed office door. If anyone turned into the corridor, they would assume she was knocking. But it was late and she didn’t expe
ct to see anyone. She turned her head to the side and leaned close, listening.

  He’d been at her desk when Ann had returned his call. He’d gone back to his own office to take it, moving like a kid who was hurrying to the bathroom. The fact that he wouldn’t talk to Ann in front of her, hurt Verna in a spot that was already raw from his other casual insults.

  Patrick opened the door suddenly. Verna took a quick step back to save herself from stumbling inside. “You startled me!”

  He scowled at her, then looked up and down the hall. “What are you doing out here?”

  Verna decided not to answer him. She slid one shoulder between him and the door jamb, moved past, then turned.

  The whites of his eyes were threaded with red. The skin beneath them was puffy.

  Verna took a breath. “What’s wrong, Pat? Talk to me.” This time, she thought, he would tell her. He would confide in her and let her into his life.

  Patrick laughed hoarsely. “Besides the obvious?”

  The only obvious thing she knew was that three banks had turned him down on a doll project he wasn’t keen on anyway. “Besides that.” Verna touched his midriff and slowly slid her hands up. She used her fingers to knead the tension from his shoulders.

  He closed his eyes. “That feels good.”

  “I know.”

  She waited but he didn’t volunteer anything more. Verna took her hands away and his eyes flew open. She glanced at her watch.

  “I thought you might need a sounding board, but I guess not. I’m heading off.”

  Verna made a move toward the door and caught a glimmer of her reflection in the glass of the framed print beside it. She considered herself attractive, weight held in check, curves in all the right places. Then why this penchant for falling for the wrong guy? Ever since she’d moved to Manhattan from upstate New York. Not that there had been many, but invariably the men she became involved with were either single and jerks, or married.

  If at times she found Patrick’s touch unpleasant, then Verna simply reminded herself of how much better he was than other men she had known. He had his faults, of course. There was no denying that. Yet, she would give anything to hear him say that he truly cared about her.

  “Wait,” Patrick said when she reached the door. “Is everyone gone?”

  She kept her hand on the knob and nodded.

  “Don’t go.” He caught her free hand to reel her back in.

  She let him. And he walked her over to the bar.

  His office was huge and pretentious. An impressive oak desk and computer station faced the window. The other side of the room was given over to a black leather sofa fronted by a narrow smoked-glass table. A few pictures of his family hung on the wall, but none of Irene.

  Patrick poured himself a snifter of Courvoisier. He held the bottle aloft as though to invite her to join him.

  Verna shrugged indifference.

  He poured another snifter. She made no move to take it.

  “You’re angry with me,” he said finally.

  “I’m worried about you.”

  He let out a deep, rough breath. “It’s been a rotten day.”

  “What did the banks say?” she asked, finally taking the snifter in hand. “Besides no?”

  He groaned and shook his head. “What does it matter? That’s the bottom line.”

  “What did your mother say?”

  “That doesn’t matter now, either.”

  Which meant he hadn’t told her yet, Verna thought.

  Patrick hooked his free hand behind her neck and tried to pull her face closer to his.

  She moved away. “How did Ann take it?” She asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about her,” Patrick said.

  Verna realized that she was going to have to put more effort into this. “I could help you.”

  “I know. That’s what I’m waiting for.”

  “I meant with a way to fix the bank mess.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, me.” Her anger flared. “We could set a plan down on paper, figure out a new approach.”

  He took a long swallow from his glass. “I have better plans for you,” he said.

  “But you don’t trust me.”

  “I crave you. That’s better.”

  “Is it?” She stepped further away from him.

  “Don’t do this. Don’t play with me. Everybody wants something from me. Except you.”

  For a moment she almost faltered, found herself prepared to give in. But too often she’d given herself to him and it proved meaningless. “Pat,” she started to say.

  As if she hadn’t spoken, his arms reached out and he tried pulling her tight.

  She struggled against him.

  “I need you,” he said.

  And I need you, she was thinking. But not this way. Not tonight. She pushed hard. He almost lost his balance. She backed up towards the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  There it was, the insecurity in his voice.

  “Home.”

  “What the hell do you want from me?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, reaching for the door.

  “For Christ”s sake, Verna!”

  She opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

  “Wait! Let me see if I can get you something special. Maybe … maybe have Ann approve a big, fat raise.”

  She stood there, feeling sorry for him, feeling sorry for both of them. “I don’t need a raise,” she said.

  “What do you need, then?”

  Slowly, sadly, she shook her head. “You figure it out,” she said, and she walked away.

  CHAPTER 10

  “What does ‘tire down’ mean?” Jonathan asked.

  He had spent the last fifteen minutes with her Gameboy, and had gotten pretty good at dancing his fingers over the buttons, when the message ‘TIRE DOWN’ popped up.

  “You’ve got a flat.” Ann kept her eyes on the window as the plane hurtled them back toward New York.

  “How’d I get that?”

  “You must have run over something.”

  “I did not.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, give it to me.” She turned from the window and snatched the toy out of his hands. “Was there a crash?”

  “Not involving my car. I’m a damned good driver.”

  Ann glared at him. “In front of you. Was there any debris on the track in front of you?”

  “If there was, I didn’t notice.”

  She started working the buttons and handed the gizmo back to him. “There you go. You’re headed for a pit stop.”

  “I don’t want to go in for a pit stop.”

  “You have a flat tire. You have to go in for a pit stop.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “You know, I’m starting to remember why I never liked you.”

  His attention was already back on the toy. “Why’s that?” he asked absently.

  “You’re argumentative.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Everything becomes an issue for you. Like the reason why you’re here and tracking my every move.”

  “The doll’s a pretty big issue on its own, Ann.”

  She felt something boom behind her eyes. The headache didn’t start slowly and build. It was the kind that was just suddenly there, in full force. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. “What the hell am I supposed to do about this mess?”

  “Are you asking me?”

  “It was a rhetorical question.”

  “I’ll make a suggestion anyway. Give Pat another chance.”

  She turned her head to look at him. “Damn it, why did he lie?” He’d told her that he’d gone to their own bank and three others, and that he had been refused by all of them. Ann had spent the remainder of the afternoon on her cell phone, calling the institutions herself, trying to pull off a miracle. One of them—Margin Savings and Loan—claimed that they had never even gotten a request from Pat. The officers at the two other banks ha
d confided in her that Pat hadn’t been able to answer questions about the doll, and had left the impression that he himself didn’t think Baby Talk N Glow was going to fly.

  Jonathan turned the Gameboy off and gave it back to her. “Screw it. I don’t want to go to pit row.”

  “Your way or no way?” Ann put the game back into her briefcase.

  “Tell me something,” he said. “Why’s our own bank being so difficult?”

  “Because they’re stuck on our inventory situation.”

  “The Moonlight Game business? I thought that was fixed.”

  She gave him an appraising look. “Osmosis again?”

  “Something like that.”

  “It was. Is.” Ann let out a throaty sigh. “Okay. Here’s the gist of it. When we bought that company out of Chicago, one of the key products was a successful board game called Moonlight that we could re-release every fall.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  Ann rubbed her forehead and nodded. “In theory. But we’re dependent on three major accounts—Toys ‘R’ Us, Walmart, and Target. Last year, Toys ‘R’ Us got themselves into an inventory bind. They canceled commitments right before Christmas, including ours for the Moonlight game, and we were left holding the bag.”

  “What happened to the inventory?”

  “We sold it. Eventually.”

  “Could that happen with this doll?”

  Things went weak inside her. “Yes.”

  To his credit, Jonathan didn’t comment.

  Ann fell silent, too, wondering how to touch on the subject of Patrick again without instigating a fight. She was too tired and anxious to quarrel. “Your brother has got to stop drinking, Jonathan.”

  “Patrick lets things get to him. It’s his way of relaxing.”

  “You can make excuses for him, but I can’t afford to. He has responsibilities to your mother’s company.”

  “So what are you going to do? Fire him?”

  “Unfortunately, Felicia wouldn’t condone that.”

  Jonathan studied her face for a moment.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked suspiciously.

  “You.”

  “Well, stop.”

  He continued to study her, then asked quietly, “Tell me, Ann, why did you lie to me about Mattie?”