Extreme Bachelor (19 page)

Leah dropped her arms. “Why?”

“Just a guess,” he said with a slight roll
of his eyes.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Lucy is my
best friend.”

“I know. It’s just that Lucy has a way of .
. . let’s just say, coloring things.”

“Well,” Leah sniffed, and pressed her lips
together. She didn’t have much to say to that because it was so
true. Usually. “Not this time,” she said, and looked to where the
other women were milling about. “So when do we start?”

“You and me? Hard to say,” he said with a
warm smile. “I’m hoping we start over before we’ve wrapped this
film. In the meantime, do me a favor, would you? Tell Lucy that I
am very sorry, that I am trying to grovel, and I will do anything
for a second chance, so if she has any suggestions, I’d love to
hear them.”

Melting. She could feel herself melting a
little. “I’ll be sure and tell her all that, and how you are trying
to impress me with orchids, just like you try to impress all the
girls.”

“Okay, now, we covered that,” he reminded
her amicably. “I don’t give flowers to all the girls, and I only
gave orchids to you. And besides, you love orchids. You should be
impressed,” he added with a captivating grin.

“Aha!” she said, pointing at him accusingly.
“But I don’t love orchids anymore. That’s what you aren’t
getting.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding thoughtfully.
“Message received and duly filed away.”

“Well.
Good
.”

He glanced down, his gaze roaming her body
to her shoes and back. “Hope you’re limbered up.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding adamantly, “I’m
limbered.”

He chuckled as he walked away, and she
wondered if she’d really just won the battle. And damn, he did look
fine walking away, the tenacious, persistent, charming bastard.

She was still admiring his butt when Trudy
joined her and looked in the direction Leah was looking. “What did
Lover Boy have to say?” she asked.

“Him? Nothing,” Leah said, and turned away.
“So how’d you do with Jack?”

Trudy snorted. “I had to take a number. What
a dilemma, huh? I want one of the guys, and he hasn’t noticed me.
One of the guys wants you, but you won’t take sloppy seconds. . .”
She sighed. “It’s enough to make a grown girl come to work without
makeup.”

“At least you already have a boyfriend,”
Leah muttered, stealing another glimpse of Michael as he stopped to
talk to a Starlet, noticing how his smile lit up the whole bay . .
. not to mention the Starlet. Christ, there were a lot of women on
this film!

“Please,” Trudy snorted. “Rick is easy,
that’s all. Come on, let’s go smoke before they begin torturing us
for the day.” And linking her arm through Leah’s, Yin led Yang out
the door.

THE blocking was more difficult than any of
the women had anticipated. They worked through tuck and rolls, then
diving belly flops onto the mats. And before lunch, they practiced
flying backward, with Jack and Michael catching them.

Over and over again, they flew, and over and
over again, Michael caught Leah, his arms going around her, holding
her tight. Every catch reminded her of being in his arms—in a cab,
on the subway, on Rex’s boat, in bed. Every bit of contact took her
back five years, to a man she loved but who had been a lie. Every
bit of her memory was really a phantom, of someone who hadn’t
really existed, who claimed to have loved her and had left her.
That’s what made it so painful now—as tempting as his entreaty was,
she couldn’t trust him . . . could she?

By the time the lunch hour rolled around,
Leah couldn’t wait to get outside and away from the conflicts in
her head.

She grabbed her bag, walked out, and checked
her cell. There was a call from her agent, Frances. While Trudy was
yakking the ear off of a Serious Actress, Leah walked off in the
opposite direction of the commissary and wandered around the back
lot, looking for a little peace and quiet to return the call. She
finally parked herself on a box and dialed. “Hey, Frances, it’s
Leah,” she said when she got Frances on the phone.

“Oh hi, sweetie. Well, the WB folks want a
brunette for the part of Chloe, so they are passing on us.”

“But I can dye my hair!” Leah cried.

“There is no need to do that. They are
looking for a brunette they like. They just didn’t like you that
much.”

Leah’s shoulders sagged.

“Don’t take it personally,” Frances said
cheerfully. “These things are all about looks first, talent
second.”

“Did they say what they didn’t like?” Leah
asked, thinking it might be her delivery, or her hands, something
she could work on.

Frances snorted. “Sweetie,
they didn’t like
you
,” she said. “I have to run—the other line is ringing,”
Frances said, and clicked off.

Damn
. It was a little hard not to take it personally when a
casting director just didn’t like
you
. Leah sat on the box, her chin
on her fists, thinking for a long time until the rumbling of hunger
in her belly could no longer be ignored. She got up, started
walking, heavy-footed, to the commissary.

As she made her way, a man with the dark,
sexy look of an Hispanic or Italian actor stepped out from between
two buildings. “Pardon me, pretty lady, but have you a light?” he
asked with a lovely smile.

“I don’t smoke,” Leah said, wishing that she
did in this case, and continued on.

But the man was quickly at her side, walking
with her. “Neither do I smoke. Very ugly habit.”

“Then why did you ask for a light?” she
asked laughingly, looking up at him. He was definitely
handsome—square jaw, jet-black hair, deep brown eyes, olive skin.
“And why do you have a cigarette behind your ear?”

“No!” he exclaimed, his eyes wide. “There is
a cigarette on my ear?” He reached up, grabbed the smoke and tossed
it aside, then swept his arm wide. “There. You see? I do not
smoke.”

She laughed. “I think you do.”

“Ach
,” he said, with a dismissive flick of his wrist. “I do not
make the line very well.”

“Make the line?”

“Si
,
si
, the
line, the line. The man has a line for the woman.”

“Oh,” she said, catching
on. “That was a
line
.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling charmingly and
proudly. “Do you like it?”

She smiled. “I have to be honest. It wasn’t
very good.”

“No?” he asked, wincing.

“No,” she said, smiling. “Smoking isn’t
sexy.”

“Aha. Then you tell me the good line. I will
learn it.”

She laughed. “I don’t know any pickup lines.
That’s strictly a guy thing.”

“Then how shall a poor man have a beautiful
woman like you?”

“Maybe by cutting the crap,” Leah said with
a laugh, and veered off on a path to the right that led to the
commissary.

“No, no,
señorita
, do not go!”
the man called after her. “I have not provided my name to
you.”

Leah turned around, walking backward.
“What’s your name?”

“Adolfo! Adolfo Rafael!”

“Nice to meet you, Adolfo Rafael,” she said,
gave him a little wave, and turned around, walking away from
him.

“Wait, wait!” he cried. “You did not provide
your name!”

Leah laughed, waved over her head, and kept
walking.

Subject: Re: Him Again

From: Lucy Frederick

To: Leah Kleinschmidt

Time: 12:12 am

I can’t believe he said that about me! Hell
if I know what it means, other than maybe, he knows that I know
what I am talking about, and how maybe you don’t, so he knows if he
wants to get through to you, he needs to get me on board.

Subject: Re: Re: Him Again

From: Leah Kleinschmidt

To: Lucy Frederick

Time: 9:25 pm

Maybe that’s what he meant. But maybe he
meant that you tend to put a different spin on things. Sometimes
not a favorable spin. Remember that whole thing with you and him at
the sushi bar? Who could forget that?

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Him Again

From: Lucy Frederick

To: Leah Kleinschmidt

Time: 12:42 am

Excuse me, but can’t a person make a mistake
without fear of being persecuted for the rest of her life? I’ll
have you know I haven’t had sushi since then. You tell Mr.
Extreme-Bachelor-Can’t-Let-Anything-Go that I am just calling a
spade a spade. What’s wrong with that? Whatever. Let him bring you
orchids and remind you of all the great sex you had and tell you
he’s sorry for the way he treated you, and that he screwed it up
really bad, and that he’s changed. But do NOT come crying to me
when he turns out to still be a spy or something like that. And
anyway, this is supposed to be about me!! MY WEDDING IS ONLY
FOURTEEN MONTHS AWAY!! Do you realize how much there is to be
done?!?!

THE week ended uneventfully—Leah didn’t see
much of Michael after that afternoon of tuck and roll. He wasn’t
hanging around the blocking of the first battle scene, and the
soccer mom network (a formidable gossip loop, in spite of the rift
between Serious Actresses and Starlets, which Michele said just
went to prove that women love to talk trash), said there was some
big issue with the studio and the film’s budget, and that Michael
and Eli had been holed up in meetings with the director, trying to
sort it out.

That was just as well. Leah could actually
focus on her job when Michael wasn’t around.

Friday night, Leah, Trudy, Jamie, and
Michele went out for a drink and ended up at a club where a bunch
of really cute guys who said they were actors—wasn’t everyone,
really?—bought them drinks. They danced all night, something Leah
hadn’t done in ages and ages. But it was funny—with each guy that
asked her to dance, and each guy who bought her a drink, all she
could think of was Michael.

She combated his image in her mind’s eye by
trying to like each guy who approached her, but by the end of the
evening, she was very disheartened. She thought she was so over
Michael, so way past comparing him to every guy she’d ever met. But
from the look of things on that sorry Friday night, she would never
be over him.

Late Saturday morning, a morose Leah was
sitting cross-legged on the floor of her living room, staring at
the lopsided and unfinished origami peacock, sipping a cup of
coffee. Her interest in origami, like her interest in Michael, had
been renewed, and as she studied that godawful peacock, she decided
she should figure out a way to un-lopside it. It deserved
better.

While she was wondering
exactly how she’d managed to get it
that
lopsided, Brad stormed into the
room, on his way out. He shoved one arm into a V-neck sweater.
“Hey, did you see the package for you?” he asked as he pulled the
sweater over his head, and nodded toward the kitchen table as he
wrestled his other arm into the sweater.

Leah glanced over her shoulder, saw a small
gray box. “Where did that come from?”

“Don’t know. Some driver in a suit delivered
it yesterday while you were at work. Okay, I’m gone,” Brad said,
and left Leah alone in the house.

Still cross-legged, she inched her way
around and stared at the box as she sipped her coffee. She had a
pretty good idea who it was from and frowned, because that little
shiver of anticipation that ran up her spine was ridiculously
shortsighted. She was a fool to trust him. Regardless of the
fluttery feelings she got every time he so much as smiled, what
he’d done to her five years ago was no small thing.

Okay, so he was sorry for it. What was to
say he wouldn’t do the same thing again?

Whatever, curiosity was killing her, so she
put her coffee cup aside and hopped to her feet, padding across the
wood floor to the kitchen table. She hesitated only a moment before
picking up the box.

Van Cleef &
Arpels
, it said in cursive, silver
letters. She slipped the silver ribbon from the box and lifted the
lid. There was a note on top—she picked it up, saw that beneath it,
there was a small bottle of Van Cleef French perfume—
real
perfume. She could
not help grinning. She knew that perfume.

Leah opened the note first.

Remember the night we went to see Phantom of
the Opera? I will never forget how you looked and how you smelled.
You wore a slinky long black dress and your hair up. Your favorite
perfume was Van Cleef. You never were more beautiful than you were
that night. M.

Her smile deepened—she remembered, all
right. Michael had surprised her with box seats and dinner at
Pierre Au Tunnel, a swanky New York restaurant for her birthday.
She’d worn a simple, floor-length black gown that he later removed
so that he could have his leisurely way with her.

That memory prompted another delicious
shiver as she extracted the bottle from the box. She removed the
stopper and inhaled. It was heavenly, just as she remembered. This
was her favorite perfume, but she hadn’t been able to afford
another bottle since she left New York. The fact that he remembered
that it was her favorite was astonishing.

Goddammit, his crap was beginning to work.
She could feel herself softening, could feel the ironclad grip she
held on her fragile heart starting to ease. She picked up the card
again and turned it over. Smart boy. He’d left his cell phone
number on the back. She’d once complained about people leaving
cards with no cell phone numbers and then never answering their
landlines. It had been a running joke with them, checking every
business card for a cell phone number.