Extreme Bachelor (42 page)

After weeks of obsessing about it, it all
seemed simple now. Her heart had finally won out over her fear of
being hurt again. What she wanted, what would make her happy, had
trumped the fear of the thing that would destroy her.

As Trudy talked, Leah remembered a time in
New York, just a couple of months after she and Michael had started
dating. She’d run into an old boyfriend—hard to believe that she’d
been a dating fiend before she met Michael, but she had—and once,
when she’d tried to remember them all, Lucy had to fill in some of
the blanks.

Anyway, she’d run into John, and they had
chatted a little bit, and he’d remarked that she looked great. Leah
remembered very clearly what she was wearing—a black turtleneck
sweater, black slacks, some killer Manolo Blahniks (an extravagance
she couldn’t afford even then), and a full-length camel coat. Her
hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was holding a bag with
two giant muffins, hoping to catch Michael before he went to
work.

“Thanks,” she’d said to John, beaming at the
compliment. “You look pretty good yourself.”

He laughed and shook his head. “I look like
I’m going to a stuffy law office. You look . . . shiny. Very shiny.
It must be a guy.”

Leah had blushed a little, but laughed at
his calling her shiny. “Okay, I’m busted, there’s a guy. How’d you
know?”

“Just a guess,” he said, taking her in from
the top of her head to the tip of her toes, “because you never
looked that good with me. It’s sort of corny, but my grandma used
to say that the heart has a way of shining through when it’s full.
You know what I mean? You always looked good when we were dating,
but you were never quite so shiny,” he said with a laugh.

At the time, Leah hadn’t understood exactly
what he meant. But she did now.

She hadn’t shined in three months.

THE following month, a new
cast member was introduced to
Coming to
America
. Nina Anderson was to play Meoma,
a Native American woman who would become the love interest of one
of the lead actors. She would make her debut in the last episode of
the first season as a teaser leading in to the second season.
Assuming there was a second season.

Leah liked Nina. She was mid-twenties, Leah
guessed, petite with jet-black hair and luminous gray eyes. This
was her first real break, and she was as excited as any young
actress would be by the prospect.

When the series wrapped for the season, the
director, Ted, and the producer planned a party at Ted’s big
rambling ranch house in Sherman Oaks.

Leah made Brad go with her so she didn’t
have to go alone. Brad was happy to oblige her—his last gig had
been as a giant chicken (Leah thought he was a rooster, but Brad
insisted he was a chicken) on a kid’s show, and he was really
getting desperate for some good roles. He even dressed in his best
going out clothes—a tie-dyed tee and some baggy jeans.

Ted had a great place in Sherman Oaks, near
Dixie Canyon, and had hired a valet to handle parking for the
night. Leah wasn’t crazy about that idea, because she’d just bought
a slightly used T-bird like she’d wanted for so long. It wasn’t
blue, it was white, and it wasn’t a convertible, it was a hardtop.
But it was a T-bird, and it ran, and she didn’t trust the
pimply-faced kid who asked for her keys to treat it right.

But when she balked at valet parking, Brad
had groaned. “You can be such an old lady sometimes,” he said, and
popped out.

Leah frowned at his back, but with a sigh,
she got out, too, and gave the kid her keys. “You scratch it, and I
will rip your head off,” she warned him. Leah straightened the pale
pink dress she’d found in the back of her closet, checked out the
sparkly sandals Trudy had loaned her, and deciding that she looked
okay, marched forward, into Partyville.

Partyville was in full swing, too—there were
tons of people Leah had seen around the set and then some. There
was a smell of pot in the air, and dance music was pumped into
every room of the house. Tables of finger food were spread out
through the cavernous living and dining areas, and then again on
the flagstone patio that surrounded the in-ground pool. There were
three bars, one of the cast members pointed out to her, tended by
bartenders wearing pilgrim hats. Funny.

Brad abandoned her the moment they stepped
in together. So Leah got a glass of wine and started working her
way through the front room, speaking to everyone she knew, grabbing
a couple of finger wraps to munch on. She found a couple of women
who also played wives on the series, and they amused themselves for
a while by making hilariously snarky comments about their
characters.

When they had exhausted that series of
gossip, Leah moved on, talked to a guy who was making independent
films and thought she’d be perfect in his next one. It took Leah
some doing to get away from him.

She had no idea how much time had passed
when Brad, looking a little stoned, found Leah. “Great party!” he
shouted over the noise.

“Yeah!” Leah shouted back.

“Hey, guess who I saw? That guy you
like.”

As she hadn’t mentioned any guy she liked,
Leah blinked.

“You know, the one with the flowers and
perfume and shit.”

Her heart twisted. Really, she could feel it
twisting in her chest, knocking the breath from her lungs. “Here?”
she shouted.

“Yeah, in there,” Brad said, and pointed
with a smoke and a full beer bottle toward the French doors that
led into the living area. But when Leah looked in that direction,
all she saw was Nina, who had obviously just come in. She actually
felt relieved. She didn’t know what she’d say to Michael after a
couple of glasses of wine, and waved at Nina, who instantly glided
over.

“Hey,” Nina said, happy to see her. “Have
you been here long?”

“Long enough for a couple of these,” Leah
said, holding up her wineglass.

“Oooh, I’d love one of those. Where’d you
get it?”

Leah turned and pointed behind her. “Pilgrim
hat. You can’t miss it.”

“Okay, I’m going to get one. But listen,
don’t go anywhere. I want to introduce you to someone.”

“I’m planted,” Leah said, and smiled as Nina
glided off to get her drink.

“Leah?”

Her heart seized at the sound of his voice,
just stopped beating altogether, and her tongue suddenly felt very
thick and unusable in her mouth.

“Leah?”

He was closer. She squeezed her eyes shut,
then turned awkwardly, gripping her wineglass like a gavel, and
looked into those glimmering penny-brown eyes and smiled.

God, but he looked good. His black hair had
grown a little, and he was wearing it in a ponytail at his nape.
His jaw was covered with the start of a dark beard. He was wearing
a black, collared cotton shirt tucked into white jeans and had a
pair of really cool black sandals. “Oh. Hi, Michael,” she said as
cheerfully as she possibly could, given the circumstance. “How are
you?”

“Good,” he responded as his gaze flicked the
length of her. He smiled, dimples creasing his cheeks. “You look
great, as usual.”

But I’m not
shiny
. “Thanks. So do you.”

“How do you know Ted?” he asked, and his
smile suddenly widened. “Hey, are you working on the HBO
series?”

“Yep,” she said, shifting her weight from
one hip to the other and then back again. “I’m a . . .” She made a
gesture with her hand. “A wife of an old guy.”

He laughed. Leah didn’t. “Oh,” he said,
smiling sympathetically. “I get it. Not a coveted role.”

“Maybe by middle-aged character actors,” she
said with a smile. “I’m kidding. It’s great work and fabulous
exposure for me. If they’ll just give me something I can sink my
teeth into—” She caught herself. Now was really not the best time
to discuss the stagnation of her career. “So, ah . . . what about
you?” she asked. “What are you up to these days?”

“Pyramid climbing.”

“Excuse me?”

He grinned at her look of confusion.
“Scaling ancient pyramids. Don’t laugh—it’s a lot harder than it
looks.”

Leah had no idea how hard
it looked—she’d never seen it or even imagined it. “I’m not
laughing, I’m crying,” she joked. “It does beg the question . .
.
why
are you
scaling ancient pyramids?”

She heard Michael’s throaty laugh in spite
of the loud music, and it drifted through her on a soft, slow wave.
“Because it’s there,” he said with a wink.

“Ah.” She couldn’t think of a single thing
she’d ever done, just because it was there. Maybe now was the time.
Maybe today was the day she finally danced out on that fragile limb
and jumped up and down a couple of times, just because he was here,
just because she might never have this chance again. She had to do
it. She had to tell him she’d made the mistake this time, and took
a fortifying sip of wine. “So, Mikey . . .”

He raised a brow over his smile. “Yes?”

“I’m glad to see you. I’ve wondered about
you.”

His smile faded a little. “About Bellingham,
you mean.”

“Right, Bellingham.”
Except that wasn’t right, and she looked at her glass of wine as
someone pumped the music up. “No, not Bellingham.
After
Bellingham,” she
said, lifting her gaze again. “I’ve been thinking.”

This was the moment she should say what
she’d been thinking, but Leah couldn’t get the words off her
tongue.

Even worse, Michael couldn’t hear her. He
leaned forward and said loudly, “What did you say?”

“I’ve been thinking,” she said louder.

He nodded.

“And . . . and I’ve been thinking that you
were right,” she shouted. “I was wrong, Michael, I was really
wrong. I never gave you a chance, I jumped to conclusions, and I
wasn’t very open.”

Michael blinked. He looked
extremely surprised. Or was that mortified? Hell, there was no
going back now. “I’m sorry for being afraid. I really did want it
to work—I mean, I
still
want it to work. I do, Michael, I really
do!”

Now he looked so stunned that she began to
panic. What was she thinking? Shouting at him to take her back in
the middle of a big party full of people she worked with? It was
insane. Michael looked as if he wanted to crawl into a hole.

The panic swelled in her, and Leah was
suddenly talking, her tongue, which wouldn’t work a moment ago, now
moving with lightning speed ahead of her brain. “I know what you
must be thinking,” she blurted. “That whole thing with Adolfo—”

“Juan Carlo.”

“Juan Carlo. That whole scene was pretty
weird, sure, and yes, I was upset—but then again, I’m not usually
held hostage—”

“Whoa,” he said, putting a hand on her arm
with a laugh and uneasily looking around them to see if anyone
heard.

“But I’m over it now. I am. I said some
things I really didn’t mean, and I’m sorry for that, and the only
thing I can say is that I was sort of freaking out, but it’s behind
me, and I want it to be behind us.”

He nodded, but still he said nothing, and
his silence was killing her.

“Okay, you’re going to force me to say it,”
she said moving closer. “The thing is, I don’t feel shiny anymore,
and—”

“Shiny
?” Nina said from somewhere next to her, and Leah caught her
breath, closed her eyes, and let her head drop back in sheer
frustration. “What a weird thing to say,” Nina laughed. “What does
it mean?” she asked as she stepped in between Leah and
Michael.

“Nothing,” Leah said, trying to smile. “Just
a joke. Sort of. Not really a joke, but a . . . saying.”

Nina laughed and beamed a smile up a
Michael. “So I take it you two already know each other?” she
remarked, and slipped her hand into Michael’s.

They were holding
hands.
They were holding
hands
. Leah couldn’t stop staring at their
hands, unable to speak or to think.

“We know each other,” Michael said.

“You’re kidding!” Nina cried. “That’s
great.” She smiled at Leah as she laid her cheek on Michael’s
shoulder. “Isn’t my boyfriend cute?”

That remark made Leah
forget she was holding a glass of wine, which she promptly spilled
on the hem of her dress and all over Trudy’s sparkly shoes. The
heat of her stupidity and embarrassment began to bleed into her
neck and face. “That’s great,” she said, but she was looking at her
dress.
Oh God, she could die, she could
just die. Someone bury her here, right now, right
away
. She felt like an old woman, an old,
stupid, dull woman, and desperately grabbed the hem of her dress
and lifted it slightly. “Will you look at what a klutz I am? I
better go do something about this,” she said, and forced a
laugh.

“Get some soda water,” Nina suggested.

“Yeah, I’ll do that.”

“Leah,” Michael said, but she was already
moving.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it out,” she said
cheerfully, and walked away before she absolutely passed out from
mortification and shame.

She hurried through the
crowd in the living room thinking she had just played out the scene
from every bad movie broadcast on
Lifetime
.

“Hey, Leah, where are you off to?” Ted
called after her as she hurried past, headed for the door.

“I ah . . . I spilled some wine,” she
said.

“I’ve got some red wine remover. Let me get
it—”

“No, really, I probably ought to just go,”
she said, opening the front door. “It’s silk.” As if that made a
difference somehow. “Ted, the party was great. Thanks for inviting
me.”

“You’re not leaving. We’re just getting
started,” he exclaimed, following her out. “Why rush off? Try the
stuff I have and see if that doesn’t work.”