Laura’s face registered shock, and she nearly tipped over her chair as she got up.
They assembled at the bridal bower. Her father, Trev, Laura, and the reluctant bride and groom.
Dirk thoughtfully turned his back to the room so that Bram and Georgie were facing their guests, then he cupped his hand over the microphone. “Is everybody ready?”
She and Bram gazed at each other, and a moment of perfect, un-spoken communication passed between them. He lifted an eyebrow. She told him with her eyes exactly what she thought. He smiled, squeezed her hand, and pulled the microphone away from Dirk.
“A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walked into a bar…” Everyone laughed. Bram grinned and brought the mike closer. “Thank you all for your good wishes. Georgie and I appreciate them more than we can say.”
Off to the side, Poppy started chewing on her bottom lip. Bram’s speech wasn’t on her program, and she obviously didn’t like pesky clients interfering with her agenda.
Bram released Georgie’s hand and gestured toward the bower. “As you can probably tell, this ceremony is a surprise. But the truth is, while we both understand the allure of watching Skip and Scooter get married, Georgie and I aren’t those characters, and this doesn’t feel right to either one of us.”
Georgie slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and smiled for the nice people.
He covered her fingers with his own. “I’m tempted to say some very sentimental things about Georgie right now. How warmhearted she is. Sweet and funny. How she’s my best friend. But I don’t want to embarrass her…”
“It’s okay.” She leaned into the microphone. “Embarrass me.”
He laughed, and so did the crowd. They exchanged another of their kisses followed by a long loving glance while Bram surreptitiously felt her up and she pinched him on the ass.
And then, out of nowhere, her knees started to shake. Really shake. Earthquake shake. But this earthquake was happening inside her.
She’d fallen in love with him.
All the blood rushed from her head. She absorbed the awful truth. Despite everything she knew, she had fallen in love with Bram Shepard, the self-absorbed, self-destructive bad boy who’d stolen her virginity, wrecked a television show, and nearly destroyed himself.
Bram glittered beneath the chandeliers, his burnished beauty and masculine elegance designed for the silver screen. She could barely breathe. Just as she was finally learning to be her own person, she’d sabotaged herself by falling in love with a man she couldn’t trust, a man she was paying to stay by her side. The breadth of the calamity made her dizzy.
He finished his speech, and they wheeled out the wedding cake, a multitiered wonder of icing lace and confectionary hydrangeas topped by a pair of Skip and Scooter dolls dressed in wedding finery. Bram fed her the first piece, getting only a dab of frosting on her lips, which he kissed away. She somehow managed to return the favor. The cake tasted like heartache.
Afterward, April drew her aside to change out of her magical crystal gown into the modified cameo-blue flapper dress they’d chosen for dancing. Georgie moved through the rest of the night in a flurry of perpetual motion, dancing and laughing, her hips moving, her hair stinging her cheeks.
She danced with Bram, who told her she looked beautiful and that he couldn’t wait to get her in bed. She danced with Trev and her girlfriends, with Jake Koranda, Aaron, and her father. She danced with her costars and Jack Patriot. She even danced with Dirk Duke. As long as her feet were moving, she didn’t have to think about how she would save herself.
Bram loomed over her as they stood in his foyer a little after two in the morning. His black bow tie hung loose at his neck, his shirt collar open. “What the hell do you mean, you’re sleeping in the guesthouse?”
Georgie was still a little drunk, but not so drunk that she didn’t know exactly what she had to do. She wanted to cry…or scream, but there’d be plenty of time for both later. “I have to audition for you on Tuesday afternoon, remember? Sleeping with you three nights before gives me an unfair advantage over the other actresses.”
“That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Somehow she managed to conjure up the sass of the old Georgie, the Georgie who’d once again fallen so stupidly in love. “Sorry, Skipper. I believe in fair play. It’d be on my conscience.”
“Fuck your conscience.” He pushed her against the wall at the base of the stairs and started kissing her. Deep, invasive kisses with a stubborn edge. Her toes curled in her shoes. He shoved his hand under the hem of her little blue flapper dress and nipped at the upper slope of her breast as it curved above the bodice. “You make me crazy,” he murmured against her damp skin.
She was dizzy with champagne, desire, and despair. He slipped his fingers inside panties so tiny and fragile they hardly counted as a garment. Stop. Don’t stop. The words bounced in her head as his kisses grew more insistent and his touch so intimate she couldn’t bear it.
“Enough,” he said, and he swept her up in his arms.
The theme music swelled. Strains of Dr. Zhivago and Titanic, An Affair to Remember and Out of Africa enfolded them as he carried her up the stairs in the most romantic gesture ever, except it was two in the morning, and he banged his elbow against the door as he crossed the threshold.
But it took him only a moment to recover. He set her on the edge of the bed, tugged at her clothes, and it was like the first time on the boat all over again. Her naked hips at the edge of the mattress. Her dress pushed up to her waist. His clothing scattered. And herself stupidly in love with a man who didn’t love her back.
It was like the first time…and it wasn’t. After the initial breathless assault, he slowed down—loving her with his touch, his mouth, his sex, with everything but his heart. And she let herself love him back. Just this one last time.
Something faintly inquisitive flickered in his eyes as he gazed into her own. He sensed a change in her but couldn’t figure out what it was. Their pleasure surged, the music rose to a crescendo in her head, and the camera pulled back. She closed her eyes and rode with him into oblivion.
As she lay curled against his shoulder, her despair resurfaced. This self-destruction had to stop. “So when did you fall in love with me?” she said.
“The instant I set eyes on you,” he replied drowsily. “No, wait…That was me. The first time I looked in a mirror.”
“No, really.”
He yawned and kissed her forehead. “Go to sleep.”
She lumbered on. “I’ve been getting this feeling…”
“What feeling?”
He was wide-awake now and suspicious, but she needed to know for sure exactly where she stood. This was too important for them to suffer some kind of sitcom misunderstanding that could be set straight with a few words. “A feeling that you’re in love with me.”
He sat up, dumping her unceremoniously. “Of all the stupid—you know exactly how I feel about you.”
“Not really. You’re more sensitive than you pretend to be, and you hide a lot.”
“I’m not one bit sensitive.” He glared down at her. “You want to rub it in, don’t you? What I said at the party.”
She couldn’t remember what he’d said at the party, so she curled her lip at him. “Of course I want to rub it in. So say it again.”
He released an exasperated sigh and lay back in the pillows. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. Go ahead and laugh. Believe me, I never expected it to work out that way.”
His best friend…She swallowed. “I don’t know why. I’m a very likable person.”
“You’re a nut bar. In a million years I’d never have imagined you’d be the person I trusted most.”
And she didn’t trust him at all. Except about this. He was telling the truth about his feelings for her. “What about Chaz? She’d take a bullet for you.”
“Okay, you’re the second most trustworthy person I know.”
“That’s better.” She told h
erself to let it go, but she had to try. One more time. “It could really screw us up”—she sighed, as if this were all too tedious—“if you turned into an idiot and decided to fall in love—”
“Jesus, Georgie, will you give it a rest? Nobody’s in love with anybody.”
“If you’re sure…?”
“I’m sure.”
“That’s a relief. Now stop talking so I can go to sleep.”
Her leg cramped, but she didn’t dare move until she heard the deep, even sound of his breathing. Only then did she ease out of bed. She slipped into the first thing she touched, his abandoned tuxedo shirt, and crept downstairs. Her father had gone back to his condo, leaving the guesthouse empty once again. She padded along the cold stone path, tears trickling down her cheeks. If she kept making love with him, she’d have to pretend it was only sex. She’d have to perform for him, just as she performed for the cameras.
She couldn’t do it. Not for him. Not for herself. Not ever again.
Chapter 24
Bram arrived late for Georgie’s audition, and Hank Peters’s cool nod indicated he wasn’t happy about it. Bram knew they were all waiting for him to fall back into his old, unreliable habits, but he’d been legitimately delayed by a call from one of the partners at Endeavor. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to explain—he’d spewed out too many bullshit excuses in the past—and he merely offered a short apology. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Although no one said it to his face, they all thought having Georgie read for them today was a waste of time. But he owed her an audition, no matter how much he hated being part of something that, in the end, would devastate her.
“Let’s get to work,” Hank said.
The audition room had bilious green walls, stained brown carpet, some battered metal chairs, and a couple of folding tables. It was located on the top floor of an old building at the rear of the Vortex lot that housed Siracca Productions, Vortex’s independent film subsidiary. Bram took the empty chair between Hank and the female casting director.
With his long face, thinning hair, and glasses, Hank looked more like an Ivy League professor than a Hollywood director, but he was enormously talented, and Bram still couldn’t quite believe they were working together. The casting director nodded at her assistant, who left to escort Georgie in from wherever they’d stashed her.
He hadn’t seen her since the night of the party. Paul had gotten sick afterward—some kind of stomach flu, according to Chaz—and Georgie had driven off to take care of him before Bram had woken up the next morning. Georgie didn’t need the distraction of playing nursemaid right before a major audition, and Bram couldn’t believe Paul hadn’t managed to send her home. Bram had wanted one more chance to talk her out of this.
The casting assistant returned and held the door open. Georgie’s self-confidence was a lot more fragile than she let on. She wouldn’t be horrible, but she wouldn’t be good, either, and he hated the idea of everybody picking over her performance.
A tall, dark-haired actress entered. An actress who wasn’t Georgie. As the casting director asked her what she’d been doing since her last film, Bram leaned closer to Hank. “Where the hell is Georgie?”
Hank regarded him oddly. “You don’t know?”
“We haven’t had a chance to talk. Her father has the flu, and she’s been taking care of him.”
Hank pulled off his glasses and polished them on the hem of his shirt, almost as if he didn’t want to make eye contact. “Georgie changed her mind. She decided the part wasn’t right for her, and she’s not auditioning for us.”
Bram couldn’t take it in. He sat through the audition without hearing a word of it, then excused himself and tried to reach her. But she wasn’t picking up. Neither was Paul or Aaron, and Chaz didn’t know anything more than what Georgie had originally told her. He finally called Laura. She said she’d spoken with Paul only a few hours earlier, and he hadn’t mentioned being sick.
Something was very wrong. He set off for home.
Only three black SUVs were standing guard near the gates. Sunday’s wedding celebration had played big on TMZ and the other online gossip sites, but the craziness of the first two months finally seemed to be fading. It wouldn’t take much, however, to reignite the flames, and if word got out that Georgie had disappeared, all hell was going to break loose.
His cell rang as he pulled up to the garage. It was Aaron. “I have a message from Georgie. She’s said to tell you she’s taken off for some R and R.”
“What the hell? Forget that!”
“I know. I don’t understand it either.”
“Where is she?”
There was a long pause. “I can’t tell you.”
“The hell you can’t!”
But Aaron’s first loyalty was to Georgie, and Bram’s threats didn’t break his resolve. Bram finally hung up on him, then sat in his car dumbfounded. Was she ashamed to face him because she’d gotten cold feet? But Georgie had never been afraid of an audition in her life. None of this made sense.
Their odd conversation from the night of the party replayed in his mind. Could she seriously believe he’d fallen in love with her? He thought about all the mixed signals he’d sent her and snatched up his cell again. She didn’t answer, so he was forced to leave a message.
“Okay, Georgie, I get it. You were serious the other night. But I swear to God, I am not in love with you, so stop worrying. It’s total crap. Think about it. Have you ever known me to care about anybody other than myself? Why would I start now? Especially with you. Damn it, if I’d known you were going to freak out like this, I’d have kept my mouth shut about the friendship thing. Friendship. That’s all it is. I promise. So stop making up crap and call me back.”
But she didn’t call, and by the next morning, something more insidious had occurred to him. Georgie wanted a baby, and right now she couldn’t have one without him. What if this was blackmail? Her way of manipulating him? The fact that she might even be thinking of doing something so odious made him furious. He called her voice mail and let her have it. Since he didn’t mince words, he wasn’t exactly surprised when she didn’t return his call.
The white stucco private villa Georgie had rented sat high above the Sea of Cortez just outside Cabo San Lucas. It had two bedrooms, a scallop-shaped Jacuzzi, and a sliding glass wall opening onto a shady patio. Since Georgie couldn’t fly commercial to Mexico, she’d used a private charter service.
Every morning for a week, she donned an oversize T-shirt and a pair of baggy capris, then slipped on big sunglasses and a wide straw hat to walk for miles unrecognized along the beach. In the afternoons, she edited film and tried to make peace with her sadness.
Bram was furious with her for disappearing, and his telephone messages had ripped out her heart.
I swear to God, I am not in love with you…Friendship. That’s all it is. I promise.
As for his second message about blackmailing him to have a baby…She deleted that halfway through.
Her father knew where she was. She’d finally told him the truth about Las Vegas and a little bit about why she’d needed to get away. Naturally, he’d tried to blame Bram, but she wouldn’t let him, and she made him promise not to contact him. “Just give me some time, Dad, okay?” He’d reluctantly agreed.
A day later her father had called with a piece of news that left her reeling. “I did some investigating. Bram hasn’t touched a penny of the money you were supposed to be paying him. It turns out, he doesn’t need it.”
“Of course, he does. Everybody knows he blew through all his Skip and Scooter money.”
“‘Blow’ pretty much describes it. But when he finally got clean and sober, he downscaled his lifestyle and started investing his residuals. He’s done shockingly well for himself. He even paid off the mortgage on his house.”
It was ironic. The only thing Bram hadn’t deceived her about was his feelings for her. Friendship. And there it stopped.
She found herself stari
ng at nothing, or picking up a book and reading the same sentence over and over. But she didn’t cry as she had with Lance. This time, her sadness ran too deep for tears. The only activity that interested her involved taking a camera down to one of the luxury resorts and interviewing the maids. Since she couldn’t endure that kind of public exposure, she set up her camera on the shady white stone patio and interviewed herself.
“Tell me, Georgie. Have you always been a loser in love?”
“More or less. How about yourself?”
“More or less. And why do you think that is?”
“A pathetic need to be loved?”
“And you’re blaming that on…what? Your childhood relationship with your father?”
“Let’s.”
“So it’s ultimately your father’s fault you fell in love with Bram Shepard?”
“No,” she whispered. “It’s my fault. I knew falling in love with him was impossible, but I had to go and do it anyway.”
“You gave up your audition and a chance to play Helene.”
“How about that. What a woman will do for love, right?”
“Stupid.”
“What was I supposed to do? Work with him every day, then go home with him at night?”
“What you should do is make your career your first priority.”
“I don’t care about my career right now. I haven’t even hired a new agent. I only care about…”
“Being miserable?”
“A few months and I’ll be over him.”
“Do you really believe that?”
No, she didn’t believe it. She loved Bram in a clear-eyed way she’d never loved her ex-husband, no rose-colored glasses or mindless giddiness, no Cinderella fantasies or false certainty that he’d put her life in order. What she felt for Bram was messy, honest, and soul-deep. He felt like…part of her, the best and the worst. Like someone she wanted to struggle through life with; share triumphs and catastrophes; share holidays, birthdays, every days.
“Excellent,” her interviewer said. “I’ve finally made you cry. Just like Barbara Walters.”