He pointed his drink toward the deck. “Party getting a little too wild for you?”
She wanted to tell him that watching girls demean themselves depressed her, but he already thought she was a prude. “Not at all.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t know me. You only think you do.” She’d tried to sound mysterious, and maybe it was working because his eyes slid over her in a way that made her finally feel as if he was really seeing her.
Her orange curls had gone wild with the humidity, but her makeup looked good. She’d used bronzy shadow on her eyes and nude-colored lipstick to downplay her mouth. The leopard-print halter dress wasn’t anything Scooter Brown would wear, and she’d emphasized the difference by sticking cutlets in her bra, but as his gaze came to rest on her breasts, she had the feeling he knew they were fake.
He blew a thin ribbon of smoke. “I bet you’re still a virgin.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m eighteen. I haven’t been a virgin for a couple of years.” Her heart began to pound at the lie.
“If you say so.”
“He was an older man. You’d know who if I told you, but I’m not going to.”
“You’re lying.”
“He had this hang-up about powerful women. That’s why I finally had to break up with him.” She loved how worldly she sounded, but his mocking smile wasn’t reassuring.
“Daddy Paul wouldn’t let an older man get near you. He never lets you out of his sight.”
“I got here tonight, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, I guess you did.” He drained his glass, ground out his cigarette, and stood. “Let’s go then.”
She stared at him, her confidence slipping away. “Go?”
He jerked his head toward a door with an anchor etched into the wood. “In there.”
She gazed at him uncertainly. “I don’t…”
“Forget it then.” He shrugged and started to turn away.
“No! I’ll go.”
And she did. Just like that. Without asking anything of him, she followed him into the first stateroom.
A half-dressed couple sprawled on the double berth. They lifted their heads to see who’d barged in.
“Beat it,” Bram said.
They scrambled from the berth.
She should have gone with them, but she didn’t. Instead, she stood there in her leopard-print dress and platform sandals with corkscrews tightening her carrot hair and watched the door close behind them. She didn’t ask why he’d developed this sudden interest in her. She didn’t ask what value she placed on herself to follow him like this. She simply stood there and let him press her to the door.
He splayed his hands on each side of her head. His thumbs slipped into her hair and snagged on a curl. She winced. He angled his head and kissed her with his mouth open. He tasted of liquor and smoke. She kissed him back with everything she had. The stubble on his jaw abraded her cheek. His teeth bumped against hers. This was what she’d wanted, for him to see her as a woman instead of as a kid he had to rescue from scripted jams.
He snagged the hem of her dress and pushed it up. She wore a frail pair of bikini panties, and the zipper on his jeans scraped her bare stomach. He was going too fast for her, and she wanted to ask him to slow down. If he’d been anyone else, she’d have pushed him away and told him to take her home. But this was Bram, her home was half a continent away, and she let him slip his fingers into her panties and touch her however he wanted.
Before she knew it, he’d gotten rid of her panties and pulled her to the berth. “Lie down,” he said.
As she sat on the side of the bed and felt the boat’s engines vibrating through the thin fabric of her dress, she told herself this was what she’d been dreaming about. He shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out a condom. It was really going to happen.
Despite the cabin’s air-conditioned chill, her skin was damp from nerves. She watched him kick off his jeans and tried not to stare at his penis, but it was fully erect, and she couldn’t look away. He peeled his polo shirt over his head revealing a bony chest with threads of pale blond hair. She studied the ceiling as he pulled on the condom.
The bed was high, and he didn’t have to reach far to slide her hips to the edge. She fell back on her elbows, and the skirt of her dress bunched beneath her. He hooked his hand under her knees, splayed her legs, and stepped between them. His expression was intent, his eyes smoky as he gazed down at her. She was helplessly open, and she’d never felt more vulnerable.
He slid his hands down the back of her thighs to her hips and angled them upward. More of her weight shifted onto her elbows. Her neck ached from the awkward position. She smelled latex from the rubber, she smelled him—the beer, the tobacco, a hint of another woman’s perfume. His fingers dug into her bottom as he worked himself inside her. It hurt, and she winced. The boat lurched, pushing him deeper. Her head bumped against the wall as he began to thrust. She tilted her neck, but it didn’t help. He ground into her. Again and again. She looked up at the perfectly symmetrical bones in his pale face, the diamond shadows cutting across his cheeks. Finally, he began to shudder.
Her elbows gave way, and she fell back. Moments later, he pulled out and dropped her legs to the carpet. They were so stiff she had a hard time drawing them together. He went into the tiny attached bathroom. She pushed her dress down and told herself this could still turn out all right. Now he’d have to see her in a new light. They’d talk. Spend time together.
She bit her lip and managed to stand up on her shaky legs. He came back out and lit a cigarette. “Later,” he said. And the door closed behind him.
As the lock clicked, all her fantasies about him shattered, and she finally saw him for exactly who he was, a crude, self-centered, egotistical ass. She saw herself, too—needy and stupid. Shame took her to her knees, and self-hatred smoldered in her chest. She didn’t know anything about people, about life. All she knew was how to make stupid faces into the camera.
She wanted vengeance. She wanted to stab him. To torture him and kill him and hurt him as he’d hurt her. How could she ever have imagined herself in love?
The following season was agonizing. Unless they were filming, she pretended he was invisible. Ironically, her awful tension led to a powerful on-screen chemistry, and their ratings grew. She surrounded herself with her friends in the cast and crew or studied in her trailer—anything to avoid him and whichever of his foulmouthed cronies was hanging around the set on a particular day. Her hatred froze into a mass large and solid enough to protect her.
One season followed another, and by their sixth year on the air, Bram’s antics had begun to chip away at the ratings. Drunken parties, reckless driving, rumors of drug abuse. The fans of good-guy Skip Scofield weren’t happy, but he ignored the warnings from the show’s producers. When the sex tape surfaced at the end of season eight, it all came crashing down.
As sex tapes went, it was fairly tame, but not tame enough to obscure what was happening. The press went wild, and no amount of spin control could repair the damage. The network brass decided they’d had enough of Bram Shepard’s antics. Skip and Scooter was canceled.
“Damn it!”
She jumped as Bram appeared. It took her a moment to reconcile the oversexed youthful jerk she remembered with the healthy, full-grown jerk walking toward her. He wore a matching hotel robe, and his hair was wet from his shower. More than anything, she wanted to avenge her eighteen-year-old self.
He looked uncharacteristically grim as he gave the robe’s sash an extra tug. The clock registered two, which meant this miserable day was already half over. “Did you happen to spot any condoms in the trash?”
Hot coffee splashed her hand, and her heart stopped. She rushed into the bedroom and began searching the trash basket, but she only found her panties. She dashed back out into the living room. He pointed his coffee cup at her head. “You better tell me you’ve been tested since the last time you slept with your scumbag ex-husband.
”
“Me?” She wanted to throw another shoe, but she couldn’t find one. “You’ll nail anything that walks. Hookers. Strippers. Pool boys!” Eighteen-year-old virgins with misplaced fantasies.
“I’ve never nailed a pool boy in my life.”
Bram was notoriously heterosexual, but considering his hedonistic nature, she figured that was merely an oversight.
He went on the counteroffensive. “I keep my engine in top working order, and I happen to be clean as a whistle. But then, I never slept with Lance the Loser and whatever candy-ass boys you replaced him with.”
She couldn’t believe this. “I’m the tramp? You haven’t seen single digits since you were fourteen.”
“And I’ll bet anything, you’re still in them. Thirty-one years old. Have you been to a shrink?”
Thanks to her father’s overprotection, she’d only slept with four men, but since Bram had been her first so-called lover, and, apparently her last, the overall total hadn’t changed. “Ten lovers, so you can keep the tramp trophy. And I’m also ‘clean as a whistle.’ Now get out of here. This whole thing never happened.”
But he’d been distracted by the food cart. “They forgot the Bloody Marys. Shit.” He began taking the covers off the serving dishes. “You were an animal last night. Your claws in my back, your moans in my ear…” As he sat, his robe fell open over a muscular thigh. “The things you begged me to do to you.” He speared a chunk of mango. “Even I was embarrassed.”
“You don’t remember any of it.”
“Not much.”
She wanted to beg him to tell her exactly what he did remember. For all she knew, he could have attacked her, but somehow that didn’t seem as horrible as the notion that she’d willingly given herself to him. She felt woozy and sank down at the table.
“You called me your wild stallion,” he said. “I’m sure I remember that.”
“I’m sure you don’t.” She had to figure out what had happened, but how could she get him to tell her what he knew? He began eating an omelet. She tried to settle her stomach with a piece of hard roll.
He reached for a pepper shaker. “So…you’re on the pill, right?”
She threw down her roll and jumped up. “Oh, God…”
He stopped chewing. “Georgie…”
“Maybe nothing happened.” She pressed her fingers to her lips. “Maybe we were so out of it, we fell asleep.”
He shot out of the chair. “Are you telling me—”
“It’ll be okay. It has to be.” She started to pace. “What are the odds, right? I couldn’t possibly be pregnant.”
He’d started to look wild around the eyes. “You could be if you aren’t on the pill!”
“If it—If it happens, we’ll—I’ll—I’ll give it away. I know it’ll be hard to find a person desperate enough to take a baby with a forked tongue and a tail, but I’m sure I can find someone.”
The color returned to his cheeks. He sat back down and picked up his coffee cup. “A stellar performance.”
“Thanks.” Her small retaliation might have been juvenile, but it lifted her spirits enough so she could eat a strawberry. But a second berry was beyond her as she imagined the warm, solid weight of the baby she’d never hold.
Bram poured another coffee. Antagonism clawed away at her, the first time in forever that she’d had strong feelings toward anything except the collapse of her marriage.
Bram tossed down his napkin. “I’m going to get dressed.” His gaze drifted toward the open collar of her robe. “Unless you want to…”
“Not in this lifetime.”
He shrugged. “It seems a shame, that’s all. Now we’ll never know if we were any good together.”
“I was fabulous. You, on the other hand, were as selfish as ever.” A momentary stab of pain reminded her of the girl she’d been.
“I doubt that.” He pushed away from the table and headed into the bedroom. She studied the strawberries, trying to convince herself she could eat another one. A loud curse interrupted her thoughts.
Bram stormed back into the living room. His jeans were unzipped and his dress shirt hung open, the French cuffs flapping. She found it hard to relate those solid chest muscles with the bonier body of his youth.
He thrust a sheet of paper under her nose. She was used to his sneers and his mockery, but she couldn’t remember ever seeing him look genuinely upset. “I found this under my clothes,” he said.
“A note from your parole officer?”
“Go ahead and enjoy yourself while you can.”
She examined the paper, but what she saw made no sense. “Why would someone leave their marriage license here? It’s—” Her throat closed, and she started to choke. “No! This is a joke, right? Tell me this is one of your sick jokes.”
“Even I’m not this sick.”
His face was ashen. She jumped up out of the chair and snatched the paper from him. “We got—” She could barely say the word. “We got married?”
He winced.
“But why would we do that? I hate you!”
“Those cocktails we drank last night must have had enough happy pills in them to make both of us overcome our mutual loathing.”
She was starting to hyperventilate. “This can’t be. They changed the law in Vegas. I read about it. The marriage license bureau is closed at night so exactly this kind of thing can’t happen.”
His lips tightened into a sneer. “We’re celebrities. Apparently we found someone willing to bend the rules just for us.”
“But…Maybe it’s not legal. Maybe this is a—a joke certificate.”
“Run your fingers over the official seal of the state of Nevada and tell me that feels like a fucking joke.”
The raised bumps scraped her fingertips. She rounded on him. “This was your idea. I know it.”
“Mine? You’re the one who’s desperate for a husband.” His eyes narrowed, and he shoved his index finger in her face. “You used me.”
“I’m calling my lawyer.”
“Not before I call mine.”
They ran for the nearest phone, but his legs were longer, and he got there first. She made a dash for her purse and dug out her cell. He punched the buttons. “This should be the easiest annulment on record.”
The word “record” sent a chill through her. “Wait!” She dropped her cell, rushed to him, and grabbed the hotel room phone out of his hands.
“What are you doing?”
“Let me think for a minute.” She shoved the phone back on the cradle.
“You can think later.”
He started to reach for the phone again, but she jammed her hand over it. “The marriage—the annulment—will be a matter of public record.” She plowed her free hand through her tangled hair. “Within twenty-four hours, everyone will know. There’ll be a media circus complete with helicopters and car chases.”
“You’re used to it.”
Her fingers were icy, her stomach nauseated. “I’m not going through another scandal. If I even stumble on the sidewalk, somebody reports that I tried to kill myself. Imagine what they’ll do with this.”
“Not my problem. You brought it on yourself by marrying The Loser.”
“Will you stop calling him that?”
“He dumped you. What do you care?”
“Why do you hate him so much?”
“I don’t hate him for me,” he said caustically. “I hate him for you, since you don’t seem to be able to do it for yourself. The guy’s a mama’s boy.” Instead of pushing her away from the phone, he bent down and snatched up his shoe, then started looking around for his socks. “I’m going to find that bitch who drugged us.”
She followed him into the bedroom, still not quite believing that he wasn’t on the phone with his lawyer. “You can’t leave until we come up with a story.”
He found his socks and sat on the side of the bed to pull them on. “I have my story.” He yanked on the first sock. “You’re a desperate, pathetic woman. I
married you out of pity, and—”
“You will not say that.”
He yanked on the other sock. “—and now that I’m sober, I realize I’m not cut out for a life of misery.”
“I’ll sue you. I swear.”
“Get a sense of humor, will you?” Displaying not even a trace of humor himself, he shoved his foot into one shoe and went back into the living room to get the other. “We’ll make a joke out of it. Say we had too many drinks and started watching Skip and Scooter reruns. We were swept away by nostalgia, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
That would be fine for him, but not for her. No one would believe her if she told the truth about the drugged drinks. For the rest of her life, she’d be branded as both a loser and a loony. She was trapped, and she couldn’t let her bitterest enemy see that she was at his mercy. She shoved her fists into the pockets of her robe. “We’re going to retrace our steps from last night. There have to be some clues about where we were. Do you remember anything?”
“Does ‘Give it to me, big boy’ count?”
“At least pretend to be decent.”
“I’m not that good an actor.”
“You know all kinds of shady characters. Surely you know someone who can make the record of our marriage disappear?”
She expected him to brush her off. Instead, his fingers stalled on a shirt button. “There’s this guy I met a couple of times. A former councilman. He loves hobnobbing with celebrities. It’s a long shot, but we can pay him a call.”
She didn’t have a better idea, so she agreed.
He dug into his pocket. “Apparently this belongs to you.” He opened his palm and held out a cheap metal ring with a plastic “diamond” solitaire. “You can’t say I don’t have taste.”
As he tossed it at her, she thought of the two-carat engagement diamond locked in her safe-deposit box. Lance had told her to keep it, as if her engagement ring was something she’d still want to wear.
She shoved the plastic diamond in her pocket. “Nothing says ‘I love you’ like fake jewelry.”