Genuine Lies

by Nora Roberts Narrated by Joyce Bean

Overview

New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts weaves scandal, celebrity secrets, and murder into an explosive novel of Hollywood almost too wicked not to be true: the story of a legendary actress who knows too much-and the woman she's chosen to reveal it all....

Eve Benedict is the kind of subject who could make any biographer's career. Last of the movie goddesses, she has two Oscars, four ex-husbands, and a legion of lovers, both famous and infamous. Now she is ready to write a tell-all memoir that has even Hollywood's richest and most powerful worried.

Julia Summers never dreamed of being chosen to tell Eve's story. But even if it means transplanting herself and her ten-year-old son from their quiet life in Connecticut to the withering limelight of Beverly Hills, it's an opportunity too great to pass up. But Julia never imagined how far someone would go to keep Eve Benedict's book from being published...until she discovers just how dark Eve's secrets are. And the one man Julia hopes she can trust-Eve's stepson, Paul Winthrop-may have the most to gain if his stepmother's story is never told...and if Julia's life ends before she can write a word of the truth.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Though the opening scene of this book refers to a murder, that deed only occurs 100 pages from the end of the story, when Roberts's ( Public Secrets ) disappointing tale finally heats up. Until then, the reader is dragged through the sordid secrets of a dreary collection of friends, lovers, employees and ex-husbands of 67-year-old film star Eve Benedict. She has hired Julia Summers to write an authorized biography, an expose of Hollywood life guaranteed to irk most of her past associates. And soon an aggressor swings into action: Eve and Julia receive threatening notes; Julia's rooms are broken into twice; finally, Eve is silenced permanently. So whodunit? The suspects are legion: Eve's nephew and agent, Drake Morrison, now fired and disinherited; former lover Michael Delrickio, whose mob connections Eve planned to reveal; actress Gloria DuBarry, a symbol of morality--provided no one learns of her affair and abortion. Or maybe it was Eva's devoted supporters Nina Soloman and Dorothy Travers, who are more than just staff. Or Eve's stepson, mystery writer Paul Winthrop, who has a marked interest in Julia. Or, as the police think, Julia herself. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

You can’t bottle wish fulfillment, but Nora Roberts certainly knows how to put it on the page.”—The New York Times

“Roberts does a beautiful job weaving together the movie star’s tittilating tales and the love story that develops.”—USA Today

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172524158
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	12/01/2014
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,161,331

Read an Excerpt

"So, we'll be richer." She toasted Eve with her glass, drank, then rattled ice cubes. "Now, why don't you tell me why you really asked me out here today?"

Leaning back against the bar, Eve sipped. Diamonds glinted at her ears; her feet were bare. "You do know me too well. I've got another project in mind. One I've been thinking about for some time. I'll need your help with it."

Maggie arched one thin blond brow. "My help, not my opinion?"

"Your opinion's always welcome, Maggie. It's one of the few that is." She sat in a high-back wicker chair cushioned in scarlet. From there she could see her gardens, the meticulously tended blooms, the carefully trimmed hedges. Bright water fumed up in a marble fountain and glinted in its basin. Beyond was the pool, the guest house--an exact reproduction of a Tudor home from one of her most successful films. Behind a stand of palms were the tennis courts she used at least twice a week, a putting green she had lost interest in, a shooting range she had installed after the Manson murders twenty years before. There was an orange grove, a ten-car garage, a man-made lagoon, and a twenty-foot stone fence to close it all in.

She'd worked for every square inch of her estate in Beverly Hills. Just as she'd worked to turn a smoky-voiced sex symbol into a respected actress. There had been sacrifices, but she rarely thought of them. There had been pain. That was something she never forgot. She had clawed her way up a ladder slippery with sweat and blood--and had been at the top for a long time. But she was there alone.

"Tell me about the project," Maggie was saying. "I'll give you my opinion, and thenmy help."

"What project?"

Both women looked toward the doorway at the sound of the man's voice. It carried the faintest of British accents, like polish over fine wood, though the man had not lived in England for more than a decade in his thirty-five years. Paul Winthrop's home was southern California.

"You're late." But Eve was smiling easily and holding out both hands for him.

"Am I?" He kissed her hands first, then her cheek, finding them both as soft as rose petals. "Hello, gorgeous." He lifted her glass, sipped, and grinned. "Best damn oranges in the country. Hi, Maggie."

"Paul. Christ, you look more like your father every day. I could get you a screen test in a heartbeat."

He sipped again before handing the glass back to Eve. "I'm going to take you up on that one day--when hell freezes over."

He crossed to the bar, a tall, leanly built male with a hint of muscle beneath his loose shirt. His hair was the color of aged mahogany and was windswept from driving fast with the top of his convertible down. His face, which had been almost too pretty as a boy, had weathered--much to his relief. Eve studied it now, the long, straight nose, the hollowed cheeks, the deep blue eyes with their faint lines that were a woman's curse and a man's character. His mouth was quirked in a grin and was strong and beautifully shaped. It was a mouth she had fallen in love with twenty-five years before. His father's mouth.

"How is the old bastard?" she asked with affection.

"Enjoying his fifth wife, and the tables at Monte Carlo."

"He'll never learn. Women and gambling were always Rory's weaknesses."

Because he planned to work that evening, Paul sipped his juice straight. He'd interrupted his day for Eve, as he would have done for no one else. "Fortunately, he's always had uncanny luck with both."

Eve drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. She'd been married to Rory Winthrop for a brief and tumultuous two years a quarter of a century before, and wasn't certain she agreed with his son's verdict. "How old is this one, thirty?"

"According to her press releases." Amused, Paul tilted his head as Eve snatched up another cigarette. "Come now, gorgeous, don't tell me you're jealous."

If anyone else had suggested it, she would have raked them clean to the bone. Now Eve merely shrugged.

"I hate to see him make a fool of himself. Besides, every time he takes the plunge, they run a list of his exes." A cloud of smoke veiled her face for a moment, then was whipped up into the current from the ceiling fan. "I detest seeing my name linked with his poorer choices."

"Ah, but yours shines the brightest." Paul lifted his glass in salute. "As it should."

"Always the right words at the right time." Pleased, Eve settled back. But her fingers moved restlessly on the arm of the chair. "The mark of the successful novelist. Which is one of the reasons I asked you here today."

"One of?"

"The other being that I don't see enough of you, Paul, when you're in the middle of one of your books." Again she held out a hand for his. "I might have been your stepmama for only a short time, but you're still my only son."

Touched, he brought her hand to his lips. "And you're still the only woman I love."

"Because you're too damn choosy." But Eve squeezed his fingers before she released them. "I didn't ask both of you here for sentiment. I need your professional advice." She took a slow drag on her cigarette, knowing the value of the dramatic timing. "I've decided to write my memoirs."

"Oh, Christ," was Maggie's first reaction, but Paul merely lifted a brow.

"Why?"

Only the sharpest of ears would have heard the hesitation. Eve always had her lines cold. "Having a lifetime achievement award thrust on me started me thinking."

"That was an honor, Eve," Maggie put in. "Not a kick in the pants."

"It was both," Eve said. "It was fitting to have my body of work honored, but my life--and my work--are far from finished. It did cause me to reflect on the fact that my fifty years in this business have been far from dull. I don't think even someone with Paul's imagination could dream up a more interesting story--with such varied characters." Her lips curved slowly, with malice as well as humor. "There will be some who won't be pleased to see their names and their little secrets in print."

"And there's nothing you like better than to stir the pot," Paul murmured.

"Nothing," Eve agreed. "And why not? The sauce sticks to the bottom and burns if it isn't stirred now and again. I intend to be frank, brutally so. I won't waste my time on a celebrity biography that reads like a press release or a fan letter. I need a writer who won't soften my words or exploit them. Someone who will put my story together as it is, not as some might want it to be." She caught the expression on Paul's face and laughed. "Don't worry, darling, I'm not asking you to take the job."

"I gather you have someone in mind." He took her glass to freshen her drink. "Is that why you sent the Robert Chambers bio over to me last week?"

Eve accepted the glass and smiled. "What did you think of it?"

He shrugged. "It was well done for its kind."

"Don't be a snob, darling." Amused, she gestured with her cigarette. "As I'm sure you're aware, the book received excellent reviews and stayed on the New York Times list for twenty weeks."

"Twenty-two," he corrected her, and made her grin.

"It was an interesting work, if one was into Robert's bravado, and machismo, but what I found most fascinating was that the author managed to ferret out a number of truths among the carefully crafted lies."

"Julia Summers," Maggie put in, debating hard and long over another piece of candy. "I saw her on Today when she was doing the promotion rounds last spring. Very cool, very attractive. There was a rumor that she and Robert were lovers."

"If they were, she maintained her objectivity." Eve made a circle in the air with her cigarette before crushing it out. "Her personal life isn't the issue."

"But yours will be," Paul reminded her. After setting his glass aside, he moved closer to her. "Eve, I don't like the idea of your opening yourself up. Whatever they say about sticks and stones, words leave scars, especially when they're tossed by a clever writer."

"You're absolutely right--that's why I intend for most of the words to be mine." She waved away his protest, impatiently, so that he saw her mind was already made up. "Paul, without getting on your literary hobby horse, what do you think of Julia Summers professionally?"

"She does what she does well enough. Maybe too well." The idea made him uneasy. "You don't need to expose yourself to public curiosity this way, Eve. You certainly don't need the money, or the publicity."

"My dear boy, I'm not doing this for the money or the publicity. I'm doing it as I do most things, for the satisfaction." Eve glanced toward her agent. She knew Maggie well enough to see that the wheels were already turning. "Call her agent," Eve said briefly. "Make the pitch. I'll give you a list of my requirements." She rose then to press a kiss to Paul's cheek. "Don't scowl. You have to trust that I know what I'm doing."

She walked with perfect poise to the bar to add more champagne to her glass, hoping she hadn't started a ball rolling that would ultimately flatten her.

Videos