About now Caesar was probably wishing he’d taken our money and headed for the Caribbean himself. At any rate, Armand was clear of him, and so were we.
“It’s a strange feelin’,” Boone said, “being free.” We found a private spot by a panoramic window in the suite’s two-story atrium. We held each other tight, fearful and intimate and happy, slowly growing accustomed to the scenery we shared. “Feels strange,” Boone repeated gruffly. “Lookin’ down on the French Quarter from way up here; down on the river, the back streets and alleys. Finally gettin’ a good look at who I used to be. Who I still am, I guess.”
I tilted my head back to frown at him. “You mean you’ll always be a man with a past? Certainly. But you’re a man with a future, too. I can see it, now.” My voice broke. “You’re going to live to be an old, old man alongside me, and our children and grandchildren will honor you.”
He tightened his arms around me like the pulse of a heart. “Gracie,” he whispered, “let’s go find a bedroom and play ‘hide the cell phone.’”
I smiled. We slipped into the suite’s huge and elegant living room, only to find ourselves engulfed by Stone’s entourage, which now numbered at least a hundred people, not including waiters and bartenders staffing a lavish buffet.
Stone sat in a kingly armchair in one corner, surrounded by his toadies, looking blank and unhappy. He hadn’t had much to say to Roarke, Boone, or Armand since their morning bombshell.
“I’ve never fainted before in my life,” he kept mumbling to Kanda, who had arrived from California. “What kind of action hero faints? Mel Gibson doesn’t faint.”
“Sssh, you big sweet schmuck.” She smiled and cried and kissed him. “You’ll always be my hero.”
“Keep movin’,” Boone whispered to me as we sidled through the crowd. “Pretend you’re heading for the buffet. We’ll duck out that door to the right of the ice sculpture.”
“The one that looks like Yul Brynner?”
“That’s not Yul Brynner. That’s Stone. It’s just that his hair’s meltin’ off.”
“Hmmm. Realistic.”
“Boone, boy. Whoa!” Tex and Mojo hustled over with horrified looks on their faces. Tex jerked a thumb toward a doorway to a private sitting room. “You better go after your brother, and quick. Diamond came in a back entrance. She was headed straight for you with her claws out, but he grabbed her.”
Boone froze. “What do you mean, ‘grabbed?’”
Mojo arched a brow. “As in picked her up and carried her away. Like a pirate snatching some booty. Diamond’s booty was about three feet off the ground the last time we saw her.”
“She let him carry her out of this room?”
“I think her booty was in denial.”
Tex shook his head. “Nah, she was just lurin’ him into her clutches. She’s probably got him cornered in that sittin’ room right now, gettin’ ready to chew his booty off.”
We hurried to Armand’s rescue, stationing ourselves beside a large, potted Ficus just outside the doorway. We peeked through the branches.
“No, I’m not lyin’ to you, chere,” Armand said in a low, sincere voice. He and Diamond sat on the edges of chairs as delicate as the mood, facing each other. Armand even had her hands in his, cuddling them. She stared at her captured hands as if she might, at any moment, try to thumb wrestle Armand to the floor. But she didn’t.
Armand went on, “I swear to you. I swear. During all those years when I was locked in a cell, you kept my heart alive. When they let me have a laptop computer, you were my screen saver. See? You even saved my computer screen!”
Diamond raised her eyes to his with hypnotized fascination. “I get a lot of fan mail from guys in prison. Most of them asking me to send them autographed panties.”
“Not me, chere. You weren’t just a fantasy to me. You were . . . the Venus de Milo. The Mona Lisa. The Xena, warrior princess.”
Her eyes went wide. She put a hand to her chest. “I’ll say one thing for you. You’ve got good taste.”
“I’m gonna need an acting coach, chere. It’d be such an honor if you could spend a little of your time teaching me the business—not that I expect somebody as talented as you to do more than polish my rough edges—but if you could give me some tips—”
“Well, sure. I want you to be a credit to the Senterra name. Even if you’re not my brother, you’re my brother’s half-brother. All right, I admit it—I was the one who convinced Stone to keep you and Boone a secret, but maybe I was wrong about that. We’re going to get a lot of great press out of this hostage-rescue thing. It makes Stone look good, even if he did fall over with an attack of the vapors after Roarke dropped his little nugget of news.”
Armand drew her hands to his chest. “Chere, you don’t know how much this means to me. Having you on my side. And by the way, I’m glad I’m not your brother.”
She frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’d hate to have to spend the rest of my life in church confessin’ my wicked thoughts about my sister.”
Armand hooked her at that very moment. Boone and I saw it happen. We saw the flash in her eyes, the preening tilt of her head, the flutter of her inch-long fake eyelashes. Hooked like a trout on Armand’s lines. “Since I’m not your sister, you can just confess any wicked thoughts to me.”
He smiled. One dark brow arched languidly. “Why don’t we take a little private stroll through the French Quarter after dark? I’ll show you the sights. Places only the wild girls go.”
Diamond gave him a sultry look. “If the sights get any better, I may have to confess some wicked thoughts of my own.”
Armand laughed.
Boone tugged my arm. We slipped around a corner. “I don’t like the feeling I get from this, chere. He likes her. And she likes him. I have instincts. Trouble.”
I nodded. “I have a very bad feeling, too. That one day they might . . . have children.”
“Agggh!”
“Children with huge egos and big muscles.”
“And that’s just the girls.”
I looked up to see a tall, hollow-eyed older man walking toward me through the party crowd. He looked rumpled, relieved, worried, but very distinguished.
Dad.
He and Candace had been rushing through airports for the past twenty-four hours, trying to get home from a business trip in France. Boone nudged me. “Go hug your papa.”
Something broke inside me. “Dad,” I said hoarsely. I ran to him. He held out his arms and I went into his embrace as if I were a child, again. The wall had been torn down.
“All that matters is that you’re alive and happy,” he said. “That’s all that ever mattered to me.” We both cried.
Watching us, Stone staggered to his feet.
Tears slid down his face. “Papa,” he said loudly, “all that matters is that we’re alive and happy. You really did save my life this morning. Papa.”
He headed for Roarke with his arms open wide. Somewhere in an alternate universe where our lives really do unfurl like movies, the background music rose, the camera pulled back for a wide shot, and Bette Midler began singing, You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings.
In real life, Stone was crying so hard he blew bubbles out his nose. He grabbed Roarke in a deep, rocking hug, which Roarke returned with fierce happiness. Stone pulled back just enough to scan the room but continued to hold onto his new-found father with all the fervor of a koala bear hanging onto a eucalyptus tree. When he spotted Boone and Armand he yelled, “Come’ere, bros! Group hug!”
Boone, who’d been smiling at Dad and I from a discreet distance, now frowned. He nodded toward the door. We could make our escape.
“Later,” I called softly. “Right now you have to go get hugged, too.”
He scowled harder, sighed, then headed for the limelight.
Armand was already there, cheerfully hugging and being hugged by Stone and Roarke, mugging for the cameras, and keeping Diamond’s attention with seriously seductive
glances in her direction. She lounged just outside the door to the sitting room, her eyes wide, a slight, unhinged smile on her flushed face. Cats on leashes had more dignity. Her love-struck expression almost made me feel sorry for her.
I said almost.
“Here’s my baby brother!” Stone bawled as Boone reached him and the others. He grabbed Boone and hugged him, then held him by the shoulders and grinned at him tearfully. “Now that you’re quitting to build houses with Papa, who’s gonna take Mel Gibson outdoors to crap?”
“How about Armand? Armand likes pigs.”
Armand gave Boone a dark look. “I like ’em barbecued.”
Stone laughed. “I can hire a new pig walker! Who cares! I’ve got brothers! I’ve always wanted brothers and a papa! Let’s go fishing! Let’s go hunting! Let’s get matching Harleys! I know—let’s buy season tickets to the Yankee games. Hell, let’s buy the Yankees!”
“Big bro, I’m just happy not to walk your pig, anymore.”
Stone roared. “Enough chitchat! Let’s take some pictures!”
“Do you love Boone Noleene?” Dad asked quietly.
“Yes. Very much.”
“I swear to you I’ll make him feel welcome. I won’t make him prove himself, the way I did with Harp.”
“Dad, of course you’ll make Boone prove himself. I expect you to. What kind of father would you be if you didn’t expect the best from the man your daughter marries?”
Dad gave an enormous sigh of relief. “Thank God. I didn’t know how I was going to control my urge to harass, harangue, and intimidate a new son-in-law.”
“You can’t intimidate Boone. He’s happy to be happy. He’s sure of his place in the world. He knows where he’s rooted.” My voice broke. “The one thing I couldn’t do for Harp was teach him how to belong. Dad, I’ve learned a lot in the past two years. I know how it feels to lose someone I loved the way you loved Mother. I know how it feels to be afraid to love anyone else. I know how it feels to be over-protective and overly defensive. I don’t blame you for anything you’ve said or done on my behalf, whether it was right or wrong.”
Dad looked down at me with his throat working. “Don’t make me cry, again.”
Over in the group-hug department, Stone halted the photo session to hug some more. He grabbed Roarke, Armand, and Boone, who looked more embarrassed with every brawny Senterra embrace. “Papa,” Stone kept saying, hugging and sniffling as he went. “Bros.”
My father leaned close and whispered, “If Senterra doesn’t get himself under control this is going to turn into some kind of manly therapy session.”
I nodded. “They could wind up beating drums around a campfire and trying to get in touch with their inner movie star.”
Dad and I shared the first laugh we’d had together in many years. Over at Hug Central, Stone was making another circuit. Boone finally held up a warning hand. “Bro,” he said gently, “I still got a sore rib from the river thing. If you hug me one more time I’m gonna need an aspirin and a back brace.”
Stone chortled, then pivoted and beamed at the reporters and photographers. “No more hugging! Let’s do one more picture!”
Jack Roarke and his sons stood close together and looked into the cameras. What a picture they made—tall, handsome, good men, each big-hearted in his own way. Like my father. And like Harp. I gazed at Boone with a feeling of deep homecoming, and deep love for the future with him.
“Smile and say ‘Saluta famile!’” Stone brayed.
“Le famile,” Armand echoed.
“My sons,” Roarke said.
Boone looked beyond the cameras, at me.
“Home,” he said.
Top This, Mel Gibson! (The National Enquirer)
Stone Saves The Day! (Los Angeles Times)
Real-Life Heroics Of World’s Top Action Star (Newsweek)
Heartwarming Story Of Stone’s Good-Hearted Ex-Con Dad And Brothers! (USA Today)
Diamond Shines On Arm Of Bad Boy Armand (People Magazine)
Publicity A Windfall For Vance Scholarship Fund (Atlanta Journal/Constitution.)
Grace Vance Rejects Playboy Offer, Still To Enter Law School This Winter
(Emory University newsletter)
Roarke & Son Home Builders Join Chamber Of Commerce
(Dahlonega Nugget)
When the phone rang, Grace and I were naked together in a camping tent up on Chestatee Ridge. I could say all sorts of things about being happy, about bumbling along in life until everything makes sense in ways I never could have expected. But I won’t. I’ll just say I was naked in a camping tent with Grace, in the woods of the land where our house would stand, and that phone was the only little devil I hadn’t shaken off.
“When we don’t want the phone to work, it works,” I said darkly, as Grace slid one bare arm out of the sleeping bag just long enough to retrieve her cell phone. “Gracie, next time get one of those phones that just vibrates when someone calls. It’s easier to ignore.” I paused. “And more fun on a date.”
She grinned. We were both flushed and a little breathless from recent activities in the sleeping bag. “My old phone would get jealous.”
I chuckled, then ducked inside the sleeping bag and returned to kissing her breasts. She put the phone to my ear and went, “Hmmm?”
“Grace! We need to talk!”
Stone’s booming voice was loud enough for me to hear, too.
Grace frowned. “Stone, where are you calling from—a tree right outside this tent?”
“I’m at the Downs! About to have breakfast with Papa and your grandmama! You and Boone quit playin’ house up there and come see me! You and me need to talk!”
“About what?”
“Getting started on our movie, again!”
Mon Dieu. “Boone and I will meet you at the Downs in an hour. Bye.” She laid the phone aside and stared blankly into space.
I slid upward and studied her. “Just tell him no.”
She sighed. “I should have loaded the shotgun.”
I sat across the table from Stone in G. Helen’s beautiful sun room. Stone said he needed to talk to me alone. “Mano-a-mano,” he said. “Or mano-a-womano. Whatever.”
“If you think I’ve changed my mind about your movie, you’re wrong.”
Stone sighed. “Look, Grace, I know I’m a joke and a jerk to you. And yeah, I admit I kinda got carried away with the script for Hero. I love to entertain people. Pull out all the stops. Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, make ‘em gasp. And all right, let’s be honest, mano-a-womano: I’m scared that someday I won’t entertain people. That the magic of what I do will just, Poof!—go away. I can’t tell you how I catch lightning in a bottle, Grace. I only know that I do catch it, at least in the big dumb movies I know how to make best. When I went into this Hero project I thought to myself, ‘If Harp Vance had the guts to die on that rooftop then I should at least have the guts to tell his story right.’ I really meant to do it with dignity. I really did. But then . . . well, the old nervous me took over. The nervous me who loves being loved by people who pay six bucks to see me blow stuff up.”
“Stone, I don’t blame you for—”
“You can blame me. It’s all right.”
For the first time, I saw Stone look serious and pensive. He spread his big hands on the table in supplication. “Grace, I’m 45 years old. These young stars coming up in my kind of films, these young guys I’m competing with, they’re wearing earrings and tattoos. Kanda would kill me if I got an earring or tattoo. The NRA would cancel my membership. The organization of police chiefs would take back my honorary badge. I can’t do it.
“And the films coming along now, they’re all slow motion, goofy martial arts, flying through the air. Hell, I can’t tell if the guys are fighting or planning a ballet. It’s like freakin’ Swan Lake without gravity. You know Clint Eastwood gave me my big break? I was just a wrestler trying to get bit parts in movies, and he told his director to work me into Dirty Harry. I was just in it for five
minutes—just another thug he killed, but I got a couple of good lines, and people noticed me. Clint—now there was a movie hero. There was some dignity. Some class. When he killed somebody, he did it right.”
“Look, Stone, this isn’t about—”
“Grace, I know I’m getting too old for this action stuff. And I’m tired of being a cartoon character. You know what Roger Ebert said about me in a review? That I was a combination of G. I. Joe and Buzz Lightyear. Only they were more lifelike. Look, Grace, maybe my career is a joke, but I entertain people, and I give ‘em something to root for.
“But your husband, he was the real deal. People need to see his story. And you. You’re a real hero, too, Grace. Real inspiration. That’s what I want to celebrate. No slow-mo ballet fights. No gimmicks. Something to remember Harp Vance by. Something to remember you by. And something, yeah, to remember me by. Grant a middle-aged man with no tattoos a little glory, will ya?”
After a stunned moment, I said quietly, “What are you suggesting?”
“We do it right, Grace. You and me. We write a new script, and we start over, and we get Abbie and Lowe back—you liked ‘em, I could tell—and so we’ll make this movie the way you want it made. I promise.” He made a cross over his heart. “My Dirty Harry word of honor.”
“No air kung fu. No boa constrictors. No white Stone Senterra playing black Grunt Gianelli. And no Siam Patton?”
“No, no, no and no Siam Patton. But . . . couldn’t Diamond have some kind of itsy bitsy part?”
“Well, there was a crack-addicted, trailer-park hooker who gave Harp some information on the Turn-Key up in Asheville—”
“Agggh.”
“On the other hand, Marvin Constraint had a girlfriend who was an artist. When Marvin was helping Harp track the Turn-Key, his girlfriend went along and sketched pictures of the Turn-Key from descriptions people gave her. We could write small parts for Marvin and his girlfriend into the movie.” I paused. A little voice whispered inside my head. Are you crazy? What are you doing? “Maybe Armand could play Marvin. Only with a full set of teeth.”