KISS AND MAKE-UP Read online

  Kiss & Make Up

  by

  Leslie Kelly

  Copyright © 2015 Leslie Kelly

  Kindle Edition

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Ellen Devane hadn’t been dubbed the “steel-spined lipstick queen of the U.S.” for nothing. A Vanity Fair reporter had coined the phrase decades ago, at the height of her career, and she’d never shaken it off. In fact, she’d always rather fancied it.

  In those days, she’d been the undisputed champion of the cosmetic wars that had escalated during the sexual revolution. Hollywood had taken her advice throughout the fifties, and the Cosmo girls had made her an icon of the seventies. Burn your bra and thicken your eyelashes—that had been Ellen’s battle cry.

  She’d crawled out from behind the Gimbel’s makeup counter into her own million-dollar, Manhattan-based company by age thirty. Fresh Face Cosmetics had been her entire life, and she’d never looked back or second-guessed the choices she’d made. Never.

  Not after Rex, the first and only man she’d ever truly loved, had tired of her constant need for more and married someone else. Not after the sad end of her own all-too-brief marriage to another man who’d always known he was her second choice. Not after watching her sons battle each other for control over her empire when she’d retired twenty years ago. Not even after the crushing sense of loss she’d felt when she’d learned Rex had died at much too young an age. She’d stayed strong and resolute, a powerhouse—the lipstick queen—throughout it all.

  So why, goodness, gracious, why, had she suddenly gone soft?

  “Cassandra’s miserably unhappy, you know.” She blew on the surface of her steaming tea, taking off a bit of the heat. Bringing the Sevres porcelain cup to her lips, she sipped lightly, then eyed Patricia, her daughter-in-law. Her older son’s wife was, as usual, impeccably dressed, but her perfectly made-up face was noticeably pale and tight lines were evident around her lips.

  “I know,” Patricia replied. “Do you think I don’t know my own child?” Lurching to her feet, she swayed on the slender heels of her Italian leather pumps. “I rue the day I encouraged her to fight for CEO when Larry stepped down last year.”

  “It isn’t her job,” Ellen snapped with an impatient shake of her head. “It’s her…her…”

  “Her love life?”

  “Her entire life,” Ellen replied. “Her inability to fall in love with anyone is just a symptom. The girl has changed. She’s not the funny, mischievous child who brought light and laughter into this house. She’s turned into a corporate drone by day.” Her gaze fell upon a pile of tabloid magazines scattered across her dressing table. “And an international playgirl by night.”

  The images of her sweet grandchild splashed across the trashy magazines wouldn’t leave Ellen’s mind. Nor would the starkness that had replaced the warmth in Cassandra’s eyes.

  Empty eyes. Eyes devoid of passion and emotion. Eyes that said she would never let anyone get close enough to hurt her, that she would focus only on all the things Ellen, herself, had once deemed more important than anything. Or anyone.

  Funny, at the age of eighty-four, she certainly didn’t long for one more product meeting or one more power play in the boardroom. She wished, instead, to feel once again the warmth of a strong hand cupping her cheek with tenderness. Or to inhale the familiar, spicy scent of a male cologne on the pillow beside hers. Or to hear the laughter of her sons running through the yard.

  They were simple things. Gentle things. Things she’d scorned or taken for granted.

  Her mood darkening, she acknowledged one more truth: these were things Cassandra was never going to experience if she didn’t chip away the shell she’d allowed to encase her.

  “She’s capable of loving,” Patricia murmured, gazing out the window to the south lawn. “I believe she loved very much once.”

  Something in her daughter-in-law’s voice made Ellen lower her cup and saucer. Staring hard at her son’s wife, she asked in her best no-nonsense voice, “What are you talking about?”

  And, as if she’d merely been waiting for the opportunity, Patricia told her the whole sad, sorry truth—a truth Ellen’s family had kept hidden from her for eight long years.

  It boggled the mind. But the story explained so much. No wonder her granddaughter had grown cold. Wasn’t she, after all, following exactly in her grandmother’s footsteps?

  No. By God, she would not. “How long were they married?”

  “Less than a year. It was when you were so ill and had your surgery, which was why we thought it best…” Obviously seeing the tightness in Ellen’s jaw, Patricia fell silent.

  They’d thought it best to hide the fact that her only granddaughter had run away at the age of twenty to marry a boy she’d met during a vacation in Florida. And had been divorced from him less than twelve months later.

  Lord in heaven, everything made sense now. Why Cassandra had changed from a sweetly thoughtful, smiling young woman, who’d loved books, the sea and black jelly beans, to the tabloids’ second-favorite flavor of the month after that Miley Cyrus child. She’d thought it was simply college that had brought about the change. Now she knew it was much more serious.

  Ellen couldn’t bear it. “Leave me,” she barked, hoping Patricia hadn’t heard the shakiness in her voice.

  Once alone, she reached for her telephone. Ellen’s body might have given up on her, but her brain was every bit as sharp today as it had been when she’d argued with Alberto de Rossi over Elizabeth Taylor’s skin tone during the filming of Cleopatra.

  Dialing the number of a private investigator she’d used on more than one occasion, she related the details Patricia had revealed. The P.I. would find out everything he could about the man Cassandra had loved, this Wyatt Reston. Where he was, what he’d done with his life. If he was as heartbroken as her granddaughter.

  And once she had the answers she sought, she would figure out how to save her beloved granddaughter from the fate Ellen had long endured:

  A lifetime of regrets.

  Chapter 1

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, child, but it’s true. Due to a mix-up in the attorney’s office, your divorce papers were never filed. You are still legally married.”

  Cassandra Devane never drank during the day, and certainly never in front of her elderly grandmother. But after the woman’s announcement sank into her brain, her instinctive reaction was to get up from the sofa, walk over to the bar in her office, and pour herself a scotch on the rocks. Because of the way her hand shook, it ended up being a double. Or maybe that was just because her world was shaking.

  She gulped the drink, counted to ten, drew deep calming breaths. Eventually, she felt calm enough to turn and face the matriarch of the family. “That can’t be right.”

  “I’m afraid it is.” Ellen sipped her tea. “It appears everything was done quickly and quietly, and mistakes were made.”

  Cassandra took her seat across from the frail-looking woman. “I didn’t even know you were aware of my…folly.”

  “I wasn’t, until recently.” Her expression disappointed, the elderly woman continued. “You could have told me, dear.”

  “You were so sick.”

  “Not every day for the past eight years I wasn’t,” the tart and tough Ellen replied.

  Cassandra sighed heavily. “I suppose I was ashamed.”

  “You feared I’d think less of you because you fell in love?”
>
  “No,” she mused. “Because I botched it so badly.”

  Ellen’s stance softened and she took one of Cassie’s hands, squeezing gently. “The very fact that you tried and failed gives me hope that you will find love again. I had feared the little girl who so loved fairy tales would never even try to find her own happily ever after.”

  “I don’t believe in them anymore,” she mumbled. Yes, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had once been her favorite story. Now, she couldn’t imagine why. How moronic to hook up with some horny prince who went around kissing dead chicks in the woods. The necrophilia rumors alone would have been bad enough to live down, not to mention the shacking-up-with-seven-men thing. “I grew up.”

  Most definitely. Fairy-tale fantasies had been left far behind. Along with a lot of other things, like romantic dreams and expectations. Even, perhaps, a bit of her optimism.

  Jesus, was it really possible? Was she still legally married to someone who’d made it very clear he never wanted to lay eyes on her again? What if Wyatt had remarried—was he a bigamist? This was beyond any nightmare she’d ever envisioned when she’d received her grandmother’s message to come see her at once. To think, she’d just been worried about getting called on the carpet for her latest run-in with the paparazzi, who had decided to paint her as this generation’s Paris Hilton, never mind the fact that Cassandra ran a multimillion dollar, international company, and had embarrassed herself in public no more than any other twenty-eight year old, single woman.

  “Well, dear, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate your choices.” Ellen sat back on her chair, crossing her ankles. “Before decisions are taken out of your hands.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your cousin, Harold…”

  Cassandra groaned, not wanting to hear the rest, knowing she had to. “What about him?”

  “He has approached a few of the board members, claiming you are unfit to run the company because of your, er, reputation.”

  “And I suppose Fresh Face Cosmetics, which appeals to young, trendy women, should be run by a forty-year-old mama’s boy who’s never had a girlfriend in his life?” Cassandra snapped, furious at her cousin. More furious at herself for having given him any leverage.

  Ellen held her hands up, palms out, and shook her head in a don’t-shoot-the-messenger pose. “You know I angered your older cousins when I supported you as CEO. We both expected some pushback.”

  Of course they had. Her three older cousins were all male. None of them had been happy that Cassandra had been given the position as CEO when her own father had retired last year. “And they’re now pushing back using my imaginary reputation?”

  “Not entirely imaginary, is it?” Ellen asked, tapping a long, pink-tinged nail onto the top of a tabloid magazine lying on an end table.

  Cassandra averted her eyes, instantly recognizing—and regretting—the picture. No, she wasn’t the wild child the press made her out to be. But she had been caught in a bad light by the ever-hounding paparazzi a handful of times. Bad luck, bad timing. And, okay, maybe a bad decision or two. But when it came to work, nobody was more fit to run the family business. Nobody.

  “At least you managed to avoid any publicity on your latest trip to the conference in Dallas,” her grandmother said, smiling. “How did you like Texas?”

  “It’s hot and full of cowboys. What’s not to like?”

  “I never took you for the cowboy type.”

  “I’m not,” she said with a sigh, not up to playing any kind of word games with the family matriarch. “Can we cut to the chase, Grandmother? Harold, my divorce…what is it you want me to do?”

  Ellen smiled demurely and tucked a strand of snowy white hair behind her ear. Cassandra saw a hint of steel in those still bright blue eyes and knew her grandmother had something very specific in mind. And, knowing Ellen to be as brilliant as she was devious, something that would probably solve both problems in one stroke.

  “That’s easy, my dear. You can get the press and your cousins, er, off your back, as they say, by admitting the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “Why, that you are thoroughly respectable, responsible….and married.”

  If Wyatt Reston had walked into his office overlooking the Newmarket business district in Boston and found a goat napping on his desk, he couldn’t have been more surprised than he was right now. In fact, the goat would probably have been better for his sanity. Because this couldn’t be happening. The strawberry-blond woman standing at the window, looking down toward the bustling street eight stories below, couldn’t be…couldn’t possibly be…

  “Hello, Wyatt.”

  Damn. It was happening. It was her, the person he’d hoped never to see again, even though his heart lurched every time he spotted her picture in a society column or a magazine.

  Cassandra Devane Reston—now just Devane again—stood framed in the brilliant afternoon sunlight pouring through his office windows. Her full lips were curved into a very small, demure smile and her expression was calm, as if she visited him every day instead of only in his deepest, darkest, most torturous dreams. Or his deepest, darkest, most dangerous fantasies.

  Dressed in a yellow blouse and a pair of silky pants, she looked cool and springy, perfectly at ease. Like she’d stepped out of one of those magazines that always seemed to have her on display, setting fashion trends and causing eyebrows to raise.

  “I imagine you’re surprised to see me,” she said.

  He closed his eyes, instinctive protection against that soft, lyrical voice. Cassandra’s sweet voice had reduced him to a six-foot-tall pile of want the first time he’d heard it on a sunny Florida beach. When he’d seen the bright smile and blue eyes that accompanied the voice, he’d been halfway in love already. Her red bikini had added to the steam. He’d never wanted anyone else the way he’d wanted her. Before or since.

  “Surprise. That’s one word for it,” he finally managed to say in the charged air, ripe with tension only he seemed to feel.

  Surprise. Yeah. That was the only reason his blood was rushing through his veins so loudly it could surely be heard above the chatter of voices outside the office and the city traffic far below them. Just surprise.

  Bull. He was an ad man, and he couldn’t even sell that garbage to himself.

  Adrenaline was fueling his response. And excitement. A response he’d always had around this particular female.

  “You look almost the same,” she said as she stepped away from the window, her high heels sinking into the plush carpet of his office. She approached him, but stopped several feet away, as if she suddenly felt the charged expectation in the room and didn’t quite know what to do about it.

  He had a few suggestions. Back away. Disappear. Leave me with my sanity and my comfortable life and kindly remove yourself from my memories.

  “Really, other than that glower on your face and the shorter hair, you could be the same guy I met outside the Blue Dolphin nine years ago,” she said.

  Wyatt kept his teeth clenched, determined to get through this unexpected meeting with his dignity—and his heart—intact. Not to mention with his pants firmly zipped, despite how uncomfortably tight they’d begun to feel the minute he’d set eyes on her. He forced an impersonal smile. “You look older.”

  She stiffened, taking his words as a criticism, then said, “Isn’t the standard response ‘some things get better with age’?”

  Oh, yeah. Definitely. He could think of lots of things that would probably be better now. He imagined that with a little more experience on each of them, they could be absolutely combustible together. They’d already been an inferno when they’d been a couple of young, inexperienced kids. Now, well, he couldn’t imagine how much fun they’d have playing grown-up bedroom games.

  Forget it. The only games this woman knows how to play are games with your heart and your head.

  “It wasn’t an insult,” he managed to mutter, trying to keep his mind out of the corner of his brain rese
rved for his most erotic fantasies. “You look great.”

  As a coed, Cassie had been a pretty girl. Her long hair had been a thick mass of golds and reds, every day on the beach adding more streaks of sunshine. Her stunning eyes had caught and reflected any shade of blue within a hundred-yard radius. She’d had a delicate face and full lips that tasted like sin against his own.

  But now…well, now she looked simply amazing. Softer. More womanly. Mature and sultry rather than simply young and lovely.

  “So do you,” she murmured, her stare roaming over him, her eyes warm and appreciative.

  He tried not to react to her, tried again to stomp the memories out of his brain. He should have known that wouldn’t work. It certainly hadn’t over the past eight years.

  Funny, right now, he couldn’t muster up any of the bad images. Just the good ones. Images of the crazy, sexy, wonderful way they’d been in the beginning.

  He’d been a twenty-two-year-old kid, struggling to finish college before his scholarship money ran out. Hitching a ride with a buddy to Florida for spring break had been an impulsive idea inspired by a bitch of a chemistry midterm.

  Sure, like every college guy heading south on I-95 in April, he’d had his mind on girls. He’d never, however, expected to fall in love with one. Certainly he’d never dreamed he’d be married ten days later. But he had fallen in love, and he had married the girl with the sultry voice, the sapphire eyes, and the red bikini. The one who’d always had her nose buried in a book, as if completely unaware of the raucous party going on around her.

  Some people had tried to stereotype her as a rich bitch, interpreting her reserve as arrogance. On the contrary, Cassie was one of the nicest, most intelligent, unpretentious girls he’d ever met. And she’d had a wicked sense of humor that seemed to come out of nowhere and take people completely by surprise. It had delighted him. Everything about her had delighted him.

  “You’re more beautiful than you were,” he admitted, hating himself for it the moment after the words had left his mouth.