Heartthrob (28 page)

She sighed. “Do you think her life is in danger?”

“No. But I think she’s miserable, and I
know
she’s scared.”

“And you’ve confronted her about this?”

Jamaal sat down on his couch and rubbed the back of his neck. “Just tonight. She says nothing’s going on. But I know that even if her father’s not touching her, he’s breaking her with his words.”

“Give her time,” his mother told him. “You may have frightened her by asking her what’s happening. If her father
is
abusing her—and I assume you believe it’s sexual abuse …?”

Jamaal closed his eyes. “I don’t believe it—I’m just afraid that’s what it is.”

“If that
is
going on, you better believe she’s working overtime to keep anyone from finding out. And then
you
come along and essentially say to her ‘I see through your disguise.’ That’s got to be pretty shocking to her. Give her time. But don’t let her distance herself from you. Give her the hotline number. Make sure she knows that she doesn’t have to talk to you about it—but she
does
have to talk to someone.”

“All right.”

“You want me to come down there?”

Jamaal smiled. “With your busy schedule?”

“If you want me to come, just tell me, and I’ll come.”

“Thanks, Mommy, I know. And I might take you up on that. But right now …” He sat up. “I’ll call you later in the week.”

“You want to talk more about this now?”

“No, I got an early makeup call.”

“I’m glad you phoned. I’m proud of you, and I love you,” she told him.

“Back at you, babe.”

“Sleep well, smart-ass.”

Jed lay in the dark, listening to Kate pretend she wasn’t crying.

She’d had her team of builders come in several hours ago and install a door down at the end of the hall, offering
her a small amount of privacy. But the door was flimsy, and try as she might, she couldn’t control the raggedness of her breathing.

After hustling all day to find a replacement, she’d actually called the other financial backers, recommending that they let the 24/7 supervision requirement drop. She’d been
that
anxious to get away from him.

But much to her dismay, the backers had insisted Jed continue to be supervised, that she protect their investment.

Short of letting one of the gofers baby-sit him, she was stuck.

He got up and stood next to the door that now separated his half of the trailer from hers. He leaned his forehead against it, then tried the knob. Locked.

“Kate.”

She was suddenly absolutely silent—it was as if she’d even stopped breathing.

“I’m sorry,” he said through the door.

And he was. He was tremendously sorry. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this bad.

Just yesterday, he’d let himself dare to feel happy for the first time in forever. And now he was facedown in the flip side of it.

This was why he always tried his damnedest not to feel anything at all. It was better to skip the happiness entirely than feel this way.

He tried to push all he was feeling away from him, to vaporize this persistent sense of loss. What had he lost? The chance for something unattainable. It wasn’t as if anything lasting would’ve come from a relationship with Kate. It was absurd to think that was a possibility. He’d lost the opportunity for great sex. It was regretful, but nothing to cry over.

So why couldn’t he shake this feeling of despair?

Nearly an entire minute passed, and Kate finally spoke.
“Go to sleep, Jericho. Wasn’t last night enough of a win for you?”

He pressed the palm of his hand against the door. “What’s it going to take to convince you that it wasn’t a game to me?” His voice came out sounding husky, his accent a little thicker. It was Laramie’s voice. If anyone could get through to her, it would be Laramie. And if Laramie couldn’t win her trust, Jed himself didn’t stand a chance.

“Probably years of therapy.” He heard her draw in a deep breath. “Just … leave me alone. Back off, all right? I’m not going to sleep with you ever again—not for as long as I live, so you might as well make things easier on both of us and just accept that.”

So much for Laramie. Jed’s stomach hurt. “Okay,” he said. “What if I
do
accept that? Can we be friends again?”

She was silent.

“Can we?” he asked again.

“I don’t think I want to be your friend.”

Jed closed his eyes. God, he wanted a drink. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

“Me, too.”

T
he heat was driving Kate insane.

And she wasn’t the only one. Tempers were on edge all over. Even Naomi and Victor had taken opposite sides in the set-wide argument over the ending of the script. Two of the production assistants had even come to blows over whether or not a rewrite was needed.

Kate heard the shower shut off and braced herself for Jericho to come out into the trailer.

The air conditioner was positioned at its coolest setting, but even working overtime, the lowest the thermostat went in this heat was seventy-five. Still, when Jericho came into the room, it felt a whole hell of a lot hotter.

Kate had the TV on, tuned to the Weather Channel, and she focused on it as she heard him come out of the bathroom. It seemed impossible that she’d managed to survive the past five days since they’d returned from Alabama. But she had. And she was going to survive three more. But only three more. Because in three days, a social worker named Joe Boren was flying in from Alabama to take over as Jericho’s supervisor.

The good news had come in that afternoon.

She could feel Jericho watching the TV over her shoulder. “Lord,” he said. “More rain?”

The current environmental condition was one of the few topics she’d discuss with him. Everything else seemed way too personal.

But summer had arrived with a vengeance, and the heat had gone from hellish to unbearable. And with the heat had come torrential rainfall. And with the rain, the mosquitoes swarmed.

There was plenty to talk about.

The rain was pounding on the roof of the trailer, and the thought of having to go out in it to get to the other trailer was exhausting. But the thought of just about everything was exhausting these days.

Kate was trapped 24/7 with a man who—simply by existing, simply by breathing—repeatedly reminded her of the hottest, most explosive sex she’d ever had in her life.

But it was also among the cheapest, and least meaningful. It wasn’t worthy of such extensive thought, such shallow obsessing. It had been nothing more than a one-night stand—a point that shamed her beyond belief. She’d sworn to herself she’d never do that again.

And the fact that she still wanted him was even more mortifying. It was bad enough to be duped, but for her to know full well the kind of man he was and still yearn for his touch …

Lightning flashed and thunder boomed almost immediately, and Kate jumped. God, she was on edge.

“Kate, what’s this?” There was a note of something in Jericho’s voice that was more than mere curiosity.

She glanced up.

He was standing by the table, where two glasses of iced tea had been set, complete with lemon wedges, sugar cubes, and long-handled stirring spoons. One of the glasses was empty.

“It’s really great iced tea,” she said. “It was there when we came in. Didn’t you call and ask Edna to send it over?”

“No.” He picked something up from the table. “Oh, Christ. Did you drink this?”

“Yeah.” Kate stood up. “Why? What’s that?”

There was some kind of card—the kind with a little envelope that florists sent with flower arrangements. He held it up for her to see. “This was under the glass.”

“ ‘Have a nice trip,’ ” Kate read aloud. “What does that mean? I’m not going anywhere.”

He reached for the phone and quickly dialed. “Hey, Edna. Yeah, it’s Jericho. A question—do you ever use sugar cubes at the Grill—you know, those little squares of …”

Kate crossed her arms. “What are you—”

He held up his hand. “I didn’t think so. All right. Thanks.” He hung up the phone and turned to Kate. “The Grill uses those little packets of sugar. How many of those cubes did you put in your tea?”

She stared at him. “Jericho, you’re scaring me.”

“Kate, I ran into Tony today. Remember Tony? The kid you fired for drugs? You were on the phone, and I went over to craft services to get a soda. He came over to me—I don’t know how he got on the set. He was really wasted, and he wanted to know if I was interested in scoring some really top-notch acid. He told me I wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught—that I could keep my stash in the kitchen, in plain view because it was in sugar-cube form.”

Sugar cubes. Kate felt all of her blood drain from her hands and feet. It was the oddest sensation and, despite the heat, she suddenly felt cold. “And you think those sugar cubes I put in my iced tea …?” She couldn’t even say it.

“I told him to get off the set, to go somewhere and decompress, and then get out of town. I gave him a hundred bucks to pay for his gas—I guess because I felt bad about
getting him fired. He got mad at me and started making all kinds of threats.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone?”

“I should have. But I thought it was just the drugs talking. I didn’t think he was serious.” Jericho grimly shook his head. “Kate, I don’t mean to scare you, but you need to tell me how many of those sugar cubes you used.”

“Two. Actually, I only used one and a half in the tea, but then I … I ate the other half.”

“Shit.”

Lightning flashed again, and the power in the trailer flickered and went out.

“No,” Kate said. “God, no. Not now, please …”

She heard Jericho moving around, saw lightning flash again as he peeked through the blinds. “Looks like this entire part of town lost power.” He picked up the phone and swore again. “The line’s dead. Look, Kate, go into the bathroom and try to make yourself throw up, all right? But first give me your cell phone. I’m going to call David. He’ll be able to tell us how long we’ve got until this stuff kicks in.”

Kate’s hands were shaking as she dug through her purse and found her phone. She handed it to him. “Jed, find a candle, please? I’m afraid of the dark.”

He dialed David’s number by touch, then started searching through the kitchen drawers. “I’m on it.”

“David said if there was LSD in the sugar, you’ll definitely start experiencing its effects within twenty minutes.”

“It’s been at least fifteen since I had the tea.” Kate looked up at him from the bathroom floor. She was sitting, leaning back against the wall, holding her knees close to her chest. She looked scared to death, her eyes wide in the flickering light from the candle he’d found in the bathroom cabinet, of all places.

“It’s occurred to me that Tony might’ve just wanted to
scare us,” Jed said, sitting down next to her. “He may not have laced the sugar cubes with anything at all.”

She sat up slightly, such hope in her eyes. “You think?”

“Yeah,” he lied, smiling at her. “Yeah, definitely.”

David had told him quite a bit about LSD—the most important fact being that if she
had
ingested it, there was not much anyone could do for her, except stay with her over the next few hours while the hallucinogenic drug ran its course. If she became too agitated, he could take her to the hospital and she could be given Valium to calm her down. But David had suggested staying away from the hospital—simply being in a hospital often created extra fear in most people, and fear and negative emotions were often the cause of what was known as “a bad trip.”

The first thing Jed had to do was get Kate to relax, to try to override that fear.

“It’s hot in here,” she whispered.

“No power equals no air conditioning. I called Annie—apparently a car hit a telephone pole over on the state road. The electric company’s giving it a repair priority, but best case scenario doesn’t have it fixed until tomorrow morning.”

“We can’t get another day behind schedule,” she said worriedly.

“Oh, no way. We won’t. We’re shooting up at Brandall Hall tomorrow, remember? For the next few days, we’re working all those scenes with Susie and Jamaal in the slave quarters, so we’re okay, even if it keeps raining. I had Annie call up there and check, and as of right now, they’ve still got power. We’re good to go.”

“You had Annie call …?” She was looking at him with such surprise.

“Yeah. I thought you might be worried about tomorrow, and I didn’t want you to have to … you know. Worry. About tomorrow.”

“Oh, my God, am I going to die?”

Jed laughed. But then he realized that she was serious. “Oh, Kate, no.” He put his arms out, and when she came willingly into his embrace, he realized that she was even more terrified than she was letting on. “You’re going to be fine.”

She tilted her head to look up at him. “So why are you being so nice to me?”

“Believe it or not, I, um …” He cleared his throat. “I like you. A lot. And—”

She was still looking up at him. “And you think maybe if you act really sweet and nice, I’ll have sex with you again.”