Montand car just in time to catch a departing yacht. Now that she’d seen his house, Emma thought it might fit in to one of the Montand company’s glamorous commercials.
“I haven’t seen Montand in the two weeks I’ve worked here. I hear he’s very busy, but still . . .” Margie’s voice trailed away. She glanced toward the partially open door to the bedroom, but there was no way the patient could hear even if she were awake. The suite took up the entire floor. The rooms were large and draped with luxurious fabrics and several large paintings. Emma could hear her patient, of course, from a one-way monitor perched on the desk. “The maid told me there’s another reason for his absence as far as Cristina. According to all accounts, Montand hates her with a passion.”
“Hates his stepmother? I suppose it wouldn’t be the first time in history,” Emma said with a grin. “He certainly provides top-quality care if he dislikes Cristina so much,” she said, closing the chart and sitting back in the chair.
“The rumor is that he relishes seeing her sick and miserable. I’ve asked the other nurses. He’s never once been here to visit her, either while I’ve been on duty or during any of the other nurses’ shifts,” Margie said significantly.
“That would seem to negate the rumor, wouldn’t it?” Emma asked drolly. Margie was a little prone to gossip and sticking her nose in where she shouldn’t in family dynamics. Working in the mansion of an elusive billionaire sports car magnate was bound to amplify her sense of drama. Emma had learned to keep perspective in every new home where she worked, however. She was there to do a job and ease suffering, not take sides in family feuds.
“I just mean if Montand never comes to see her, he can’t be relishing the sight of her misery too much,” Emma explained when Margie just gave her a blank, non-comprehending look.
Margie’s dark brown eyes went wide. “You saw what happened today with the curtains,” she hissed, glancing significantly at a video monitor on the desk that showed Cristina’s motionless form sleeping in the bed.
“You know families often use surveillance cameras when a loved one is this sick.”
Margie rolled her eyes and took a swig of her soda. “Montand probably has a screen set up in his bedroom and office and private plane. Sick bastard. He’s glorying in every second of his stepmother’s death while he eats chocolates and sips champagne in bed.”
Emma chuckled. “You make him sound like a depressed Dynasty character.”
“It’s creepy, I’m telling you,” Margie said firmly, glancing warily at the television monitor and Cristina’s image again. “It’s not at all like our normal assignments.”
“Every family has different needs,” Emma said in an attempt at rationality. She glanced around the lovely living room. “Besides, there are much, much less uncomfortable and unpleasant places to spend one’s last days and hours,” she said mildly. “He must be rich as a Rockefeller to have a house like this. Maybe he’s too busy making money to visit his stepmother.”
“He travels a lot for work. Not that he has to work, of course. From what the maid tells me, he inherited this car company from his father that makes these superfast French sports cars.”
“I’ve heard of Montand cars. Very exclusive. Very expensive.”
“And he’d already started his own company here in the States before his father died. They make racecars, or something like that. He’s got like a couple dozen cars in this megahuge garage that he had dug into the bluff. It’s like some kind of billionaire playground or museum. At least that’s what Alice, the maid, tells me. She says Montand is hot as Hades, but all that sexy goodness is a waste, because he’s a cold, scary bastard.”
“So Alice is around him a lot?”
“Never,” Margie whispered. “He’s paranoid. He doesn’t want anyone in his private chambers but that scarecrow, Mrs. Shaw. Those two are cut from the same cloth. The cook hardly ever sees him, either. Mrs. Shaw collects the food and serves him or him and his guests,” Margie said with a pointed glance, “in the dining room.”
Emma sighed. “Well, if this Montand guy holds any animosity for Cristina, he’s doing us all a favor by steering clear. I’m only interested in him if Cristina wants to—or needs to—see him during her last days.”
“That’s why I believe in Alice’s opinion that he’s the devil,” Margie insisted before noticing Emma’s cautionary glance and nod toward the bedroom. She quieted her voice. “Cristina says her stepson is the last person on earth she wants to see.”
Both women blinked when Emma’s cell phone buzzed where it sat on the desk.
“The tech nerd?” Margie asked, grinning.
“Yeah,” Emma said, reading the message from her boyfriend, Colin. “He says he’s so smoking Amanda’s butt at Modern Warlord.”
Margie rolled her eyes and grabbed her purse. “They hang around together even when you’re not around?”
“All the time. They’re both video game–aholics,” Emma replied, rapidly texting Colin back.
She glanced up and caught Margie’s sharp glance. “And here I thought your sister was cool,” Margie said before she headed for the door.
* * *
The next night, Emma sat in an upholstered chair near Cristina’s bed and read out loud from a 1986 version of Vogue. Cristina had chosen the reading material, and then grinned the biggest smile Emma had seen on her yet when Emma discovered the article featuring Cristina. It turned out that Cristina had been quite the fashion maven in her day. She’d twice been declared one of the best-dressed women in the world. She had owned a posh, renowned secondhand designer retail store in downtown Kenilworth. Fashionistas from all over the world used to throng to her shop not only to buy one-of-a-kind, barely used designer shoes, handbags, and apparel, but also to empty out their own closets—presumably so they could be filled all over again.
“I love it,” Emma said, setting aside the magazine and standing to pull down the covers. Cristina had broken out in a sweat while Emma’d read. Her regulatory mechanisms were going haywire. Poor woman was freezing one second, boiling the next. Emma picked up a cool, damp cloth and pressed it to Cristina’s forehead and cheeks. “I can’t imagine having wardrobes like those women must have owned.”
“They were bored,” Cristina rasped. “I was bored. What else did we have to do but recycle our wardrobes? We couldn’t change our lives, so we changed our clothes . . . and our makeup and our hair. It didn’t work, of course, but doing it made us forget that. For a little while. How much does my stepson pay you?” she suddenly asked sharply.
Emma blinked as she set down the cloth. “Your stepson doesn’t pay me. The hospice does. Are you asking me my salary?” she clarified amusedly as she stripped off a soiled pillowcase.