Free Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game by Sidney Sheldon, Tilly Bagshawe

savage scream, running at his father like a maddened bull.
    Peter glanced up. The expression on Robbie’s face was curiously frozen, like a videotape on pause. The fear was gone. It had been replaced by something else. Determination perhaps? Or hatred? Peter wasn’t sure.
    He heard the housekeeper’s voice.
    “No!”
    Mrs. Carter had had a terrible night. She hadn’t slept a wink, lying awake next to her husband, Mike, tossing and turning with guilt. She should never have left Mr. Templeton alone with those kids. He was in no fit state to take care of them. By five o’clock, she could take it no longer. Leaving a snoring Mike in bed, she pulled on yesterday’s clothes without even taking a shower and hurried across town. As she slipped her key into the front door, she heard a loud bang. Heart pounding, she followed the raised voices in the direction of the study. She burst in just in time to see her employer aiming a shiny black pistol directly at his four-year-old daughter’s head.
    Peter needed to think, but he couldn’t. The whistling in his headwas so loud he wanted to cry. Suddenly he was crying. He opened his eyes and looked at Lexi’s face.
    She’s so like Alex.
    A second shot rang out.
    The whistling stopped.

F IVE
    MAX WEBSTER TOOK THE SHINY RED PACKAGE FROM HIS mother and turned it over excitedly in his hands.
    It was heavy. Something solid. He decided it was probably not a toy, despite the childish wrapping paper and jauntily scribbled HAPPY BIRTHDAY in gold glitter across the top.
    “What is it?”
    Eve Blackwell smiled at her son, her eyes dancing with anticipation.
    “Open it and find out.”
    It was Max’s eighth birthday. A striking child, with a predatory, aquiline nose, ink-black eyes to match his hair, and cheekbones most fashion models would have killed for, there was something both feminine and adult about him. Max had none of the fat-cheeked innocence of his friends. Max was knowing. He was lean. He was wild. If other little boys were puppies, Max Webster was a cougar in their midst, as dangerous as he was beautiful.
    Less than an hour ago, the Fifth Avenue penthouse Max shared with his parents had been crammed to bursting with fat-cheeked, eight-year-old puppies, all eager to ingratiate themselves with their famous classmate. The party had been Max’s father’s idea.
    Keith Webster said: “The boy needs friends, Eve. He needs tosocialize. It’s not normal for a kid his age to spend every minute of his free time with his mother.”
    Eve did not object. She simply retired to her bedroom for the duration, locking the door. The party went ahead, and Max was inundated with presents: Transformers and Skalectrix and Hornby train sets and Action Men galore. Everybody ate a lot of cake and s’mores and drank Coke till it came shooting out of their noses in frothy black torrents. Keith Webster took pictures.
    Afterward Keith Webster asked his son: “So, sport, d’you have a good time?” His face beamed with love and pride.
    Max nodded. Sure, Dad. It was great.
    Max waited for Keith Webster to leave. Sunday night was Keith’s regular softball game. He and some of the other surgeons from the hospital had gotten a team together to help relieve the stress of their life-and-death jobs. As soon as Max heard the click of the front door, he went in search of his mother.
    “Are they gone?”
    “Yes, Mommy.”
    “All of them?”
    “Yes. It’s just us now. I’m sorry it took so long.”
    Eve unlocked her bedroom door. Dressed in a chocolate silk kimono-style robe that fell open at the front to reveal matching lace underwear, she pulled her son close. At eight, Max was still a fairly short child. The top of his dark, gypsy head reached just above Eve’s navel. Pressing his cheek against her smooth, flat stomach, she felt him inhaling her scent, a mixture of Eve’s own feral smell and the Chanel perfume she had worn since girlhood.
    All Max did was breathe. But Eve could feel the adoration in