Bound to Love (5 page)

Steve was tall and blond and the best ass-kisser I’d ever known. That is, he was the best fundraiser, in museum terms. He greeted me with a smile and waved to a seat. “Your work on the pavement was excellent. I received a report from your supervisor.”

I waited for the ‘but.’

He glanced at his laptop, which was open. “I’ve been looking at your resume. Although this is your first internship, we’re happy with the way you fit in to the department.”

“I only ever wanted to be a museum curator.” I twisted my hands in my lap. “When other kids were talking about becoming pop stars or movie actors, I dug holes in the back yard.”

He nodded. “Commendable. And now you have the movie star in any case.”

Oh yes. That. “Troy has nothing to do with my work here.”

“In a way he does. Look, I might be out of order asking this, but is it permanent? Because you know he’s only in New York for six months, max.”

I nodded. “It’s a fling.” I wanted it to be more, and I knew we’d always be friends, but I didn’t know how long we could carry on when we were at opposite ends of the country.

He sighed. “Then we’ll have to make the most of it. First, I’d like to offer you the position of assistant museum curator.” While I was still getting my breath back, he outlined what the job would be, and where I would work. Basically, where I was working now. “We have the funding for one more assistant.”

Suspicion crept into my mind. “You mean you made a job for me because of my boyfriend.” I scraped back the chair, ready to leave. “I’m not good enough on my own.”

“No.” He spoke so sharply, I decided to stay and listen. He turned his computer so I could see the screen. “These are the reports on you and they date back to well before you started dating Troy Cooper. Sure, his father is a benefactor, but if you hadn’t deserved the job, you’d better believe I’d have offered it to someone else. But of all our recent intake, you’re the best.”

I waved my hand helplessly. “But—”

“Sure, the position’s been created because Mr. Cooper made it possible, but when he called me yesterday I made him agree the choice was ours. So yeah, he gave us the funding, but you’re still my choice.”

Wow. “Really?” I squeaked.

“Really. I’ll be sending you the details in the next few days. When you get them, read everything carefully and let me know what you want to do. The initial contract is for a year.”

I smiled, thanked Steve and left his office.

If I took this job, I’d be committing myself for a year. And Troy would be going home. If I took the job, we’d be apart, and at the end of six months, who knew? I knew. Troy was too popular, too tempting for someone not to step in. I’d lose him.

What had started as a wild affair was ending in romance.

I should be punching the air and yelling with joy, but instead I was nearly in tears. What the fuck was happening to me?

I was afraid I knew, but I didn’t want to admit it until now. I was falling in love with Troy Cooper. No, that was wrong.

I was there already.

*****

B
y the time Troy’s first night came around I’d gotten used to the idea that I might have a great job, the one I’d dreamed about since I was a kid. There was no doubt I wouldn’t take it. I had to think of the rest of my life, after all. But then Troy showed me a snail mail letter he’d gotten from Hollywood.

I’d never seen a real life offer before. While Troy chopped veggies for our supper, I read it through. They wanted to do a third Foxman movie. The amount they offered him was staggering. “My agent passed it on to me this morning,” he said. “He thinks I’d be mad to turn it down.”

“That would set you up for life!”

He turned to me, amusement quirking his lips. “That’s my last consideration. It hardly seems fair, does it? To be born into money and then enter a profession that pays so well.” He shrugged. “Eh, it is what it is. But, baby, shooting starts after the play closes. I can’t get an extension. I was thinking of it, because, well, I want to stay here.”

She swallowed. “We knew this was temporary.”

“Hey.” He put down the knife and came over to where I sat at the counter, taking my hands in his. He did that much more easily these days, a measure of how well we were doing. Without me, he’d do just fine, especially if he went for therapy, as I’d mentioned to him. He’d promised to think about it, which was a huge step forward. “This won’t be forever.”

I dropped the letter. “It says here the movie is part of a three movie contract. You’d have to sign for two more Foxman films.”

He grimaced. “Yeah. That’s why I’m still thinking about it. The new Foxman movie is darker, and I get a better chance to deepen the role and make him more than a man in a superhero costume. They want to reboot the series with his supposed death. That’s tempting. But I’d have to make my base in LA, maybe with side trips to London.”

“You should take it.” It sounded exactly what he needed. “And I have something to tell you.” Now or never. I gripped his hands harder to give myself courage. “I’ve been offered a job at the museum. Assistant curator.”

“That’s fantastic!” His blue eyes sparkled and he bent forward to plant a kiss on my lips.

“It’s a year’s contract.”

He nodded. “You can do it, baby.”

“But we can’t.”

He stilled, and the smile left his mouth. “We can.”

I shook my head. “Be honest. Once you’re back in your old life—New York isn’t a good place for you.”

“It is while you’re here.”

I was with an incurable romantic. It was a good job one of us had her feet on the ground. “Troy, I can’t ask you to wait for me. You need help and you need someone close. Support. You know what I’m talking about.”

Instead of coming back with a snappy retort or an impossible solution, he nodded and met my eyes. “Yeah. I know.”

My life was looking up and I wanted to die.

*****

I
hadn’t seen the play since that disastrous preview, when fans had clung to Troy for all the wrong reasons and he’d been in despair. That night had begun our new connection, and I’d come to terms with the brief affair this would be. I’d cling to the memories for the rest of my life, because deep down I knew I had met The One. And I was going to let him go. I did everything I could to keep us light and fun, even going out to dinner with him, and showing him a smiling face all the time. I would help him all I could but he would be going on by himself.

But now, I had to stand by him. The last time I’d seen this play, Sonia Riley had been brilliant and Troy had been adequate. He knew his lines. But tonight all the critics would be here.

The rumors had already started. Some critics had gone into previews, and online, the snarkettes had gone into overdrive. They were working up to several puns about Foxman and Antony, and by opening night, they’d have their insults ready to go.

The theater was packed. Just like in Shakespeare’s time, they’d have their rotten tomatoes ready to throw, but tonight the tomatoes were virtual.

I sat with Cindy on the front row of the stalls. Before, we’d had seats upstairs, out of Troy’s eyeline. He hadn’t wanted any distractions, but his mother had taken care of that. As far as I knew, she hadn’t been in touch since that night, or if she had, Troy hadn’t read her texts. Maybe she was here tonight, but she wasn’t where I could see her. I hadn’t met her in person, but I’d seen her picture. A New York socialite on her fifth marriage, she featured as a gracious hostess and patron to various young men. No more children, though. I might have objected to that. I couldn’t stand by and see her abuse more boys, and neither could Troy.

I saw the difference at once, when they came on. Troy seemed more uncertain, but not about his role. He’d nuanced it so that toward Cleopatra, he was unsure, but his dealings with the other characters in the play were more strident, and assertive. Antony had been a great military general, undone by his affair with the Egyptian queen. She was flawlessly lovely, her skin smooth, her mouth a perfect pout. She treated everyone arrogantly, holding her head high, looking down on everyone.

I don’t know how they did it, but by the end of the first act, I was hooked. My lover had become someone else, but I by then I’d seen what he’d done.

He’d taken his private terror, and he’d put it out there for everyone to see. Cleopatra was a predator. She’d discovered Antony’s weaknesses and exploited them, used them to trap him before she’d shown him what she really was. He couldn’t break away from her. Then he’d discovered his attraction to her. That was their version of what Troy’s mother had done to him. He’d taken the terror and the trapped feeling and externalized it.

Antony returned to Rome and agreed to marry Octavia in a political alliance. His movements were freer, his actions more decisive without Cleopatra’s influence. Then Cleopatra went into her tirade. When she’d played this before, Cleopatra was a dignified, tragic queen. Now she was a jealous cat. Sonia Riley had turned the part around completely. She ripped off her wig and hurled it at her servants, screwing her face up so that her perfect, painted mask of makeup was wrinkled, turning her into a grotesque.

She got Antony back, and the audience watched, horrified, as he came further under her influence. This man of so much promise was destroying himself for a woman who didn’t deserve him.

“This is fantastic,” Cindy murmured to me. “They could make a movie from this.”

Except the leading man was going on to play Foxman.

The play showed the progress of a strong man ruined by an older woman whose only concern was herself and the continuation of her dynasty. While being true to the words on the page, Sonia and Troy had torn the play apart and put it back together. What they’d created before was gone. In two weeks, they’d worked to make this.

The audience lapped it up. It chimed with the times, recent news events, and of course Troy’s history, although they wouldn’t know that. If his mother and her three friends were in the audience tonight, then five of us knew what he was doing. Troy was opening his heart and soul and showing how a man could be destroyed by a woman who had power over him.

I wasn’t ashamed to say that I wept. So did many of the audience.

By the last scene Cleopatra’s make up had deteriorated, and her wig was often askew, so the shock when she lost her wig as she fell to the ground, poisoned by the asp, didn’t have the effect it’d had in the preview.

I saw what Troy meant when he’d said that Sonia had helped him. She’d taken over before, become the tragic queen and owned the play. Now it was as much Troy’s as hers. The whole cast seemed energized by the change in direction. No wonder I’d hardly seen him that week.

Fuck, but it took courage to expose yourself like that! I couldn’t have done it. My admiration for Troy’s acting went up tenfold. I couldn’t wait to see him afterward.

I had to wait. They took a standing ovation and call after call. The audience wouldn’t let them go. They could have expected three or four curtain calls, because this was a star vehicle at a prestigious theater, but anything else was gravy. And there was a lot of gravy flowing over the stage tonight.

This time we had our wristbands ready, but we could hardly get through the press of people in the lobby. They were chattering excitedly. Troy didn’t make an appearance at first, until I was nearly there. Then the door opened and he came out with Sonia.

He reached out and tugged me to his side. He was beaming. “Like it?”

“You know I did. It was amazing.”

He kissed my temple. Sonia found her husband, a tall man with a delicious gray stubble and eyes that twinkled. They were still in costume, and they didn’t stay long. The security guy ushered Cindy in with a smile. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they had something going. But I hadn’t spent as much time with her, so what did I know?

Uncaring of who was watching, Troy swept me into his arms and kissed me. Unlike the public kiss of before, this was for us. He shared his joy with me in one searing, passionate kiss, and then he dragged me into his dressing room.

His mother sat there, and her friends stood around.

Troy closed the door quietly, far too quietly for my liking. He kept me by his side. “Who let you in?” he said, his voice soft and low with menace. He wasn’t acting now.

His mother, a small, delicate woman with a face that was far too smooth for nature, smiled easily. “I just reminded them I was your mother and here we are. I wanted to be here to congratulate you, dear.”

“Out.” His gaze went from his mother to the three women watching him. “All of you, out. I have nothing to say to any of you.”

I hated to see him treated like this.

“But dear—”

He gave her such a look of contempt she should have burned where she sat. “Did you get the point of my performance tonight?”

Forcing a smile, she waved her hand airily. “It was magnificent.”

“It showed what happens when an older woman gets her claws into a young man. How she can exploit and destroy him. If I had stayed with you, that wouldn’t be a play out there. It would have been me.”

She lost the smile. “Do you really want to discuss family matters before strangers?” She glared at me. How could she be more embarrassed by my presence that what she’d done? “Childhood games are gone and forgotten. We need to stick together as a family. I can tell some very influential people to come.”

“By tomorrow we’ll be a sellout,” he said. “At least, I’ll make sure we are to you.” He stood aside and with an exaggerated flourish, opened the door. “Now get out. If I see you once more before I die that will be one time too many.”

His mother got to her feet, bridling. “I can make things very difficult for you. This is my town.”

“I think I can survive without your help,” he said. “If you want to take this public, then go for it. If you try to ruin this, then I will take what you did to the media.”

The fraught moment of silence was complete in the room. Outside people laughed and celebrated, but in the room, son confronted mother in a battle of wills that could only end one way.

Troy won. She tipped her chin up, and left without a word. Her friends trailed after her, their bright clothes a mockery of what they had done.