“I think you do understand, Shay,” he countered gently.

Shay felt tears gather in her eyes, stinging and hot. To hide them, she averted her face. “You plan to write about my mother, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

Swift, simmering anger made Shay meet his gaze. Damn, but it hurt to know that he hadn’t taken her to the party just because he found her attractive and wanted her company! “I think you’d better leave.”

Mitch sat easily 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 coauthor 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.”