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in his chair, giving no indication whatsoever that he meant to do as Shay had asked. “I could have lied to you, you know. Won your confidence and then presented you with a fait accompli.”
    “I imagine you’re very practiced at that, Mr. Prescott. Winning people’s confidence, I mean, and then betraying them.” She remembered the coffeepot and went back to measure in the grounds, which sprinkled the counter because she was shaking, put the lid on and plug the thing in. “Surely you don’t write for one of those cheap supermarket scandal sheets—that would never pay you enough money to buy a house like yours.”
    “I write books,” he said, unruffled. “Under a pen name.”
    Shay leaned back against the counter’s edge, the coffeepot chortling behind her, and folded her arms across her glitzy chest. “So my mother rates a real book, does she? Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Prescott, but there will be no book!”
    “I’m afraid there will.”
    Shay went back to the table and sat down again. “I won’t permit it! I’ll sue!”
    “You don’t have to permit anything—unauthorized biographies are perfectly legal. Moreover, nothing would make my publisher happier than a lawsuit filed by Rosamond Dallas’s daughter. The publicity would be well worth any settlement they, or I, might have to pay.”
    Shay felt the color drain from her face. What Mitch said made a dreadful sort of sense.
    “I would have turned the project down cold, Shay,” he went on, “except for one thing.”
    Shay sat up a little straighter. “What ‘one thing’ was that? Money?”
    “I have plenty of money. Have you ever heard of Lucetta White?”
    Lucetta White. Shay searched her memory and remembered the woman as the one person Rosamond had truly feared. Ms. White’s books could be lethal to a career, every word as sharply honed as a razor’s edge. “She ruined half a dozen of my mother’s friends.”
    Mitch nodded. “Lucetta and I have the same agent. If I don’t write this book, Shay, she will.”
    Shay felt sick at the prospect. “What assurance do I have that you’ll be any kinder?”
    “This. I’d like you to co-author the book. The byline is yours, if you want it.”
    Thinking of other books written by the children of movie stars, Shay shook her head. “I couldn’t.”
    “You couldn’t help, or you couldn’t claim the byline?”
    “I won’t exploit my own mother,” Shay said firmly. “Besides, I’m no writer.”
    “I’ll handle that part of it. All I want is your input: memories, old scrapbooks, family pictures. In return, I’ll pay you half of the advance and half of the royalties.”
    Shay swallowed hard. “You’re talking about a considerable amount of money.”
    Again he nodded.
    A kaleidoscope of possibilities fanned out and then merged in Shay’s mind. She could provide for Hank’s education, start her catering business….
    “Would I have full control?”
    Mitch was turning a teaspoon from end to end on the tabletop. “‘Full control’ is a very broad term. You can read all the material as we go along. I’ll be as kind as I can, but I won’t sugarcoat anything, and if I find a skeleton, I’ll drag it out of the closet.”
    Shay’s color flared, aching on her cheekbones and flowing in a hot rush down her neck. “That sounds like Lucetta White’s method.”
    “Read a few of her books,” Mitch answered briskly. “Lucetta invents her own skeletons, bone by grizzly bone.”
    The coffee was done, but Shay couldn’t offer any, couldn’t move from her chair. She rested her forehead in her palms. “I’ll have to think about this.”
    She heard Mitch’s chair scrape the linoleum floor as he stood up to go. “Fair enough. I’ll call you in a few days.”
    Shay did not move until she had heard the front door open and close again. Then she went and locked it and watched through one of the picture windows as Mitch Prescott’s Italian car pulled away.
    Mitch waited for three days.
    During those