Chapter 15
For a man who was supposedly so incredibly wealthy, Connor drove a rather boring car. Mira sat in the passenger seat of this Swedish dark blue family wagon and asked herself how Connor had decided on this particular vehicle and if he secretly owned a garage full of motorcycles and luxury cars. The contrast between her image of the Connor back then and the Connor today had never been more different than when she saw his hands on the steering wheel of this stuffy automobile.
“Are women even allowed in your club?”
“We aren’t going to the club,” Connor replied without lifting his eyes from the cars in front of them. He steered the car easily and safely through the Saturday traffic. “By the way, you did well back there. I had no idea that you were such a great actress.”
She didn’t react to his comment, despite the fact that she had flat out lied to the manager of the Hyborn Hotel and as his two security guards, which made her turn a deep shade of red. It hadn’t even taken three minutes and she also hadn’t even had to mention her sister’s name to eliminate all of Mr. Frost and his men’s worries. They hadn’t even looked at the hotel room. “Don’t change the subject,” Mira said firmly. “Tell me right now where you are taking me, or I swear to God, at the next traffic light I will jump out of this car.”
“You do know that these Swedish bombers have a child safety lock, right?” Just to prove his point, he pressed a button and all the doors locked immediately with a loud click. Just a few seconds later, he released the locks again.
“Do you always have to have the last word?”
He frowned with a questioning look on his face. “I didn’t say anything,” he pointed out.
“You know exactly what I am talking about. To lock someone up is one way of having the last word.” He didn’t say anything, but Mira noticed that his hands, which had been wrapped around the steering wheel in a relaxed way, now gripped the leather slightly tighter than before. “Did I hit a sore point?” she asked snarkily. “Why do you always have to prove that you are the stronger one and that you are the one in control?”
He set the turn signal and turned right. They drove towards Holmby Hills, which was the most elegant and poshest neighborhood in L.A. “To answer your earlier question,” he mentioned in an almost playful undertone, “we will stay at a friend’s house — at least for now.”
“And you just spontaneously decided that. Not just for yourself, but also for me.”
“Yes, I made that decision,” he confirmed and then stopped in front of a large cast-iron gate. “Not because I think of you as a child who cannot make her own decisions, but because I don’t want anything to happen to you.” He took a small remote control from the middle console. The gate opened slowly and revealed a long and curvy driveway in the midst of an immaculately kept park. As they drove through the gate, Mira caught a glimpse of the actual house number and realized where they were going and who this mysterious friend was, who was allowing Connor to stay in his precious home.
“Humphrey Bogart’s house, that’s where we will be staying,” she said and for a short moment she forgot all of her worries. Bogey and Lauren Bacall had lived here, back when they had been huge Hollywood celebrities!
“I knew you would like it here,” Connor said contently. He parked the car in front of the entrance and looked extremely self-satisfied, almost like a little boy who had brought home good grades in a school test.
“You are friends with Colin Slater?”
“Not exactly.” Just like Mira, Connor didn’t make any attempt to get out of the car. Apart from the lamp that lit up the entrance to the house and highlighted his profile in a soft light, it was completely dark around them. “Let’s just say that I made a deal with him. He has been pestering me for years now to make a film of my life’s story and I basically agreed — on the condition that he would have to let us stay in this house for an unlimited amount of time.”
Mira shook her head. “You are crazy.” She laughed quietly. “Who will play you in the film? And who will play the female lead?”
“There won’t be a female lead.”
“There will be, if the screenwriters have anything to do with it,” Mira replied. “They will add a fictitious romance to your story, don’t you worry.” She pursed her lips and made kissing sounds like a thirteen-year-old who had caught her older sister smooching some guy. Connor rolled his eyes and acted as if he wanted to puke. After a very short moment of absolute silence, Mira started to giggle. Then she laughed until tears ran down her face and Connor joined her.
“I… I can’t… My belly hurts,” Mira gasped at some point. The light at the entrance had turned off. They couldn’t see a thing through the now slightly steamed up windows. It was almost as if the two were trapped inside some time warp, where nothing else mattered but the present. She tried to calm down and wiped away the last of her tears.
“Hang on, I have a tissue.” Connor reached across and opened up the glove box in front of Mira. His shoulder brushed against hers. After her laughing fit, this simple touch almost made her lose her balance again. She could feel the warmth of his body and immediately the creepy cold as soon as he leaned back and held the little box out to her.
Now or never, she thought. “We need to talk.”
“Yup,” he agreed with her. In the darkness, she had to guess his movements more than she actually saw what he did. His light-colored hair let her know that he had now turned and leaned towards her. Mira looked right at him. He was so close that she could feel his breath on her lips. Her heart hammered wildly inside her chest. What would she do if Connor kissed her? With this thought, her body shivered suddenly, and it wasn’t just out of fear or disgust. She lifted her chin ever so slightly.
“But first I need to talk to Peter. Let’s go inside,” he said and pulled the car key from the ignition. “I will make the call and then we’ll have a look in the fridge. Or we could order a pizza. And then we can talk.”
The inside of the monumental house was disappointing.
Nothing was left of the former owners, Bogart and Bacall, the two Hollywood icons that had once lived here. Mira didn’t really know what she had expected to see there — at least the atmosphere of a movie from the forties, where the lady of the house would slowly descend down the wide stairs, a cocktail in one hand and a quellazaire in the other?
From what she could see, the house had been completely modernized from the entrance hall all the way into the kitchen, which was slightly depressing. Even the bathrooms and bedrooms were light-colored and transparent. Obviously, this wasn’t so bad in itself, but it didn’t match Mira’s romantic ideas about the place. Connor seemed to have been there before because he immediately led her upstairs and opened a door for her. “This will be your room,” he said. “I will be right next door to you. There is also a door that directly connects both rooms, which you can lock, of course, if that makes you feel safer.” The magic that had sparked between them in the car was gone. Now, he was back to being his cool and distant self and he still hadn’t answered her question, but instead he had suddenly disappeared somewhere to make his phone call. She stared at the door that connected both of their rooms, which he had carefully closed behind him.
Mira walked towards the huge bed, which quite unusually stood directly next to the window. If she left the curtains open, she would wake up tomorrow morning with a view of the garden.
She sat down on the mattress.
She could hear Connor’s muffled voice from the other room. Mira couldn’t understand what he was saying, it was just a constant mumbling. It didn’t take her more than two seconds to decide whether listening in was morally acceptable or not and she walked over to the door and held her ear against it. Nope, she still couldn’t hear what he was saying. But didn’t she have a right to know what was happening here? She turned the door knob slowly and as carefully as was humanly possible, so that she could open the door slightly. Her hand was sweaty, and she hoped that she hadn’t made a noise when she let the door knob slide back into its original position. If Connor noticed that the door was open, she could always turn around and say that he hadn’t closed it properly.
Her pulse was racing as she pulled the door open just a little further. It wasn’t enough to look into his room, but it was enough to realize that Connor hadn’t turned on a light. At least, she could hear him speaking clearly now. “… be? We have just arrived, and she is not ready for it yet.”
What was he talking about? What was she not ready for?
He was quiet for a while. Only the noise of his shoes on the laminate floor told her that Connor was moving around. “Yes and I am very grateful to you for that,” he said. Mira jerked back somewhat, because now his voice seemed so close that she was scared he would be able to hear her breathing. “She does know something, I am sure of that. I just need time to find out what that is. She is almost at the point where she trusts me. If you put her under pressure right now, you could ruin everything I have worked towards these last few days.”
Then silence again. Something creaked.
Mira pressed herself against the wall next to the door. She felt nauseous. Connor was playing with her. And she had actually believed that she could trust him! How could she have been so blind. He was no exception — he was also hiding something from her, something he wanted from her. It had all been lies. “Yes, you can come by and question her,” he then said. “I have already told her that we should expect to see you.” He laughed quietly. “Not tonight. Tomorrow is Sunday. Come at around noon. We will be here.” She realized from the tone of his voice that the conversation had ended. Wherever he had sat down, he now stood up and walked towards the door.
Mira was immediately filled with panic as she looked for a possible escape, but it was already too late. Instead she tried as hard as she could to put on a neutral face looking out into the pitch black garden.
“Anything exciting to see out there?”
“Nope,” she replied without looking at him. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard.
“Are you coming into the kitchen? You wanted to talk,” he reminded her.
“Yes, sure.”
She watched his reflection in the window as he walked out into the hallway. Connor hadn’t mentioned the opened door at all. She followed him quickly down the stairs. Her curiosity about this mysterious friend almost got the better of her and she desperately wanted to ask who the person actually was, who he had told all those things to. She didn’t dare, though, and she didn’t trust herself enough to keep her fear and anger in check if she were to ask. Connor had shown her more than once that his instincts were literally animalistic and too reliable. Obviously, or he wouldn’t have become such a successful bodyguard, Mira thought. She would have to be very careful not to give anything away by accident.
He was clearly playing on both sides of the fence. She would have to do it to. Offense was always the best defense after all, not so? He had left the door to the kitchen open and stood in front of a huge double-door fridge. This room mirrored everything else she had seen in the house so far and was also extremely modern and spotless. Everything was shiny and polished. A large modern gas stove sat in the middle of the kitchen and copper pots and pans hung above the island across from it, which proved that Colin Slater either had an amazing interior designer (and an even better cleaner) or that he was an avid cook himself. Somehow, Mira could not envision the lanky and slightly depressed looking regisseur at the stove. The idea of the dark-haired man with his characteristic short beard wearing an apron and holding a wooden spoon in his hand, helped Mira a little bit to get her equilibrium back.
Connor searched through the fridge and put cream, pancetta, and a flat paper-wrapped package onto the island. Before he turned back towards her, a bottle of cold white wine landed right next to these items.
“Have a look behind you in the cabinet and see if you can find the spaghetti.” She turned her back to him and was glad about the distraction. How could she find out what he was up to? “You really know your way around Slater’s kitchen,” Mira mentioned, when she found the spaghetti exactly where he had told her it would be. “How do you know him and his house so well?” She assumed that both men, who were roughly of the same age, had been to the same wild parties.
“It’s not what you think,” Connor replied. She heard a cork pop out of a bottle. He had opened the white wine and now, if she could trust her ears, he had set two glasses right next to it.
“How do you know what I am thinking?” It sounded harsh and unfortunately also a little more hurt than she would have wanted. But before she could remedy the situation, he had already stepped around the kitchen island and stopped right in front of the cabinet, where she had found the pasta, to hand her a glass of wine. “Try this,” he ordered and in Mira’s ears it sounded like a command. “I think, this once we won’t give the wine time to breathe first. You look like you need a drink right now.” She bit her lip to stop herself from sounding too angry when she answered him. Why did he think he knew what she needed? She took a quick sip and smiled sweetly — or so she hoped.
“I once spent six weeks with Colin when he was threatened by a crazy stalker,” he then explained and filled a pot with water before setting it onto the stove. The gas flashed blue with a slight hissing sound as he turned it on. Without waiting for her reaction, he handed her a grater and the paper-wrapped package from the fridge. “You grate the parmesan and I will do the rest.” He pulled a knife out of a knife block on the counter and began to slice the Italian ham into evenly sized cubes. The usual ice-blue in his eyes had darkened somewhat as he looked at her without stopping what he was doing. “Have you changed your mind and now you don’t want to talk anymore?” He raised both of his blonde brows, which gave him a sarcastic look. “Or would you like me to tell you what I am thinking about right now?” Oh, that almost sounded like a declaration of war.
“You asked why I always have to have the last word?” He spoke as if they were having a perfectly normal conversation. This strange situation did not seem to bother him half as much as it did Mira and if she was honest with herself, then his attempt at creating a normal everyday atmosphere calmed her down more than she would have liked to admit. “The thing is, I know from personal experience what it feels like to lose control over everything.” He looked at her quickly before placing a big pan onto the stove next to the boiling water. “When I had to defend myself in court, there was nothing, absolutely nothing I could possibly do, other than wait. I had to completely rely on my attorney and also trust that he knew what he was doing.” He threw a handful of bacon into the pan. The kitchen immediately filled with the comforting smell of crispy fried meat and spices.
“But they released you,” Mira murmured.
“Due to a lack of evidence,” he said calmly. “That doesn’t make it better — quite the opposite. I felt like a caged tiger. My lawyer was my trainer, who made me jump through burning hoops just to entertain the crowds. Can you imagine what that felt like? For three whole months I sat in jail and had to wait around, unable to do anything — particularly finding the man, who…”
“… killed my father,” Mira finished his sentence. “And can you imagine what it felt like to lose your father and then also somehow your mother, and then to learn that the man who I had to assume was the killer, walked out of the court room as a free man?”
“I am truly very sorry,” he said. “I acted like the absolute worst and most egotistic asshole.”
“Yup, you did,” Mira confirmed and looked down at the mountain of cheese. She realized then that she had grated enough parmesan for five portions of spaghetti carbonara.
“Did you honestly believe that it was me, for all those years?”
She wasn’t prepared for this question. She had expected all kinds of topics, but not this direct approach. Mira lowered her head and stared at his tanned, strong fingers holding a spoon and stirring the food in the pan. “Who else could it have been? I heard you and dad arguing. Then a shot. You came out of his study and carried me upstairs.” Even though she tried to focus only on the facts, the pain welled up so powerfully that it almost took her breath away. “I did not see anybody else in the house, Connor. My mind and plain common sense tell me today even more than back then that it must have been you.” She forced these words out of her dry throat.
“But your instinct tells you something else, or you would not be here with me right now.”
“Maybe I only agreed to come with you because I want to snoop on you to find out what you are up to.”
For a moment, they stared at each other with challenging looks, until Connor threw his head back and laughed.
“What is so funny about that?” Mira did not like his reaction at all.
“And how would you have done that? Was your plan to stare at me with your gorgeous brown fawn eyes until I give up and admitted to a murder that I did not commit?” He laughed again mockingly, and his blue eyes sparked.
“Would I have been successful with that plan?”
He didn’t say a word. The answer in his eyes sent a shiver through Mira’s entire body.