Impossible Glamour (16 page)

Webber was good in an emergency. Cool. Composed. Absolutely tight. I turned away. My hand shook as I pressed Mama’s number. Somebody had to tell her that Daddy might die.

Webber

“He arrived soon after the incident. We’ve put in a stent and relieved the blockage, but we need to monitor him. Once he’s released, Mr. Legend needs to remain”—Dr. Carmichael’s gaze landed on Ms. Delgado, Sophia and Ellen’s mother—“less excited.”

Nice job, Doc. No need to spill all the family secrets right now. Not that Ms. Delgado wasn’t aware of all Steve’s extracurricular activities. Hell, she’d started dating him before he married Joanna.

By excitable, the doc meant not sleep with three twentysomethings at the same time. Dick Munch had discovered that Steve was having his own private orgy in a hot tub when his ticker had kicked to off. Heat. Three babes. The blow on the mirror beside the hot tub. Good times when you were young and virile, but a recipe for a coronary when you were pushing seventysomething.

“Can we see him?” Ellen’s mom asked.

God bless this woman. Where did Steve find such a saint? And how much did she love Steve?

“Of course, but maybe limit the visit to two of you for just a few minutes. Tomorrow after he’s rested the entire family may visit.”

Sophia and Ellen each took one of their mother’s arms.

“Sterling, you and Mama should go,” Ellen said and pressed her mother’s hand into Sterling’s.

He nodded and a grim smile passed over his face before he turned to Ms. Delgado and they both walked down the hall hand in hand. Sophia and Amanda also walked toward the family grouped in the waiting room.

Ellen still stood at the edge of the hallway, her gaze following her mom and Sterling. “She’s not going to like what she sees. I wish I could have warned her.”

“Hospital lighting makes everyone look bad.”

Ellen’s eyes gave away her emotions. Absent was the joking, replaced with sadness and worry. She turned and walked the opposite direction down the hallway and I followed her, eventually stopping in front of the vending machines. She stared through the glass as though she couldn’t understand what was on the other side.

“Hey.” I reached out and pulled her into my arms. “Everything will be fine.”

She fit against my body as though she were made to be mine, and I pressed my lips to the top of her head. I wanted to take the sadness away from her eyes, replace the worry and her frown with a smile, I wanted to—

“Well, I guess that answers that question,” Ellen said.

I guess Big Boy wanted a little something too.

“Babe, last night was a fluke. Mucho pressure. Too much for the Big Boy. I mean, you are who you are.”

Ellen pulled away from me and squinted. “What does that mean?”

Wow. Not the best time. Daddy-o just nearly kicked it. Nope. Not here. Not now.

“Babe, let’s table the discussion and get back to it when we’re not in a hospital after Steve had a cardiac event. Sound good?”

She stood in the middle of the hall with her arms crossed, all irritation and impatience, then her chest deflated and she dropped her arms to her sides. “You’re right. Not the best time to discuss anything.” She turned back toward the machines. A defeated tone in her voice, she asked, “Have any change?”

“You’re in luck.” I pulled quarters and dimes from my pocket, and she fed them into the vending machine.

“What’s your poison, babe?”

“Oreos.” She pressed A4. “My secret pleasure when things go wrong”—she glanced down the hall—“and Sophia isn’t around.”

“Ixnay on the ookiescay?”

“Yeah, she hates sugar. Which I get, I mean I’m in med school, but just because she’s sugar free doesn’t mean the world needs to be sugar free, right?” Ellen yanked open the sleeve and popped a cookie into her mouth.

“Right.”

She handed me a cookie and leaned against the wall. A slow, deep breath filled her lungs.

“Babe, you look whipped.”

“I feel whipped. Think once Mama is finished I’ll see if she needs a ride and then head home. This night—” She shook her head and twisted open a cookie. Her tongue scraped at the white center.

“Unbelievable, right?”

“Completely.” She pointed the sleeve of Oreos toward me. “And this isn’t over. I mean, he could have months of recovery depending…I mean, we just don’t know yet. Damn.”

I grabbed another cookie. “The health stuff with the parentals is tough. I’ve dealt with it since high school.”

“High school?”

I nodded. “Mom had early onset. Plus she had me late in life. So she was like fifty-six when the signs started. Wandering in her nightgown. Getting lost. Spent a whole lot of time in the emergency room until we got everything sorted out.”

“And your dad?”

“
Ausente
, babe. Total
ausente
.” I grabbed a third cookie. “Musician. In and out of my life. Have no idea where the dude is now.”

Ellen’s eyes widened.

“Yep. Just me and the mom. Well, and her gay best friend Ted, who attempted to be in loco parentis in the father role until it was time to learn to throw a football. Very stereotypical femme gay, that Ted.”

“Seriously, so you’ve dealt with your mom’s Alzheimer’s since you were—”

“About sixteen.”

“Wow.”

“Totally manageable until my second year at UCLA, that’s when the shit hit the fan. Kitchen fire. Bad scene. Had to get Mom some serious help.” I plucked the empty Oreo bag from Ellen’s fingertips. “But we managed. Right? That’s what you do with family. You make it work. I mean, you guys weren’t the Brady Bunch until recently. Unless Mike Brady had another family in Santa Clarita that Carol didn’t know about.”

Ellen crossed her arms. “Right. Exactly.”

She turned her head toward mine, and that need, that fucking need I kept fighting to brush my lips over hers and pull her into my arms, surged through me. Instead, I turned toward the trash can on the far side of the hall, crumpled the Oreo wrapper, and took my shot.

“Nice,” Ellen said as the trash swished into the bin.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Nothin’ but net.”

“This is where you two are?”

We both spun toward the voice from the main hall. Like looking into a mirror, if the mirror was the wicked sister, Sophia stood with her arms crossed, her lips pursed, and chin tilted.

Other people confused Ellen with Sophia, but I didn’t see how they could mistake one for the other. Sure, they looked the same but there was this softness around Ellen’s mouth and a quick smile, not hard, cold judgment in her eyes.

“Daddy nearly dies, Mama is a wreck, and you two are playing basketball in front of the snack machines?” She shook her head and looked at both of us as though we were children.

“Lay off, Sophia,” Ellen said and walked toward her sister. Ellen’s shoulders took on a noticeable slouch, maybe weighed down by her sister’s harsh tone and words.

“Trick and I are taking Mama back to our place tonight. She wants to come by here early in the morning and I told her we’d do that.”

I followed the two of them back to the waiting room. The entire family huddled and whispered, then slowly broke apart into groups of twos.

“Who’s taking Ellen?” Sophia asked as though her twin had to be a burden on someone.

“I got it,” I said and raised my hand. “Not far from my pad, can totally do it.”

A quick look passed between Sophia and Amanda. What was that? Usually I didn’t notice the no-talk communication signals that went on between the womenfolk, but that one, the cocked brow, the smirk, the hitch of the hip—pretty obvious signals.

“Are you sure? I mean, Ryan and I can—”

“It’s fine,” Ellen said and ran her hands over her hair. “Webber lives close. He can drop me.”

“Okay,” Sophia said and shrugged.

Ellen gave her mama a hug and kiss. And then Ms. Delgado walked down the hall with Trick holding her arm. Poor lady. She’d aged ten years in one night. The rest of the Legend clan followed.

“You ready?” Ellen asked.

“I’m always ready, babe.”

Ellen rolled her gaze toward the ceiling and followed her family. Hot. Cold. Hot. Cold. I never knew whether my jokes would hit with Ellen or land with a complete thud. Maybe that was part of the draw. She kept me on my toes. I lived for her smile and that laugh.

Lived.

But I wasn’t getting any more of those tonight. Maybe not until Steve-o got the all clear.

Ellen

Exhaustion hit me like a bag of wet sand. We headed toward my house, which wasn’t far from UCLA Med. I pressed my fingertips to my temples and made a small circular motion, hoping to hold off the throbbing at least until I could climb into bed. I slid my gaze to the left. Webber just stared at the empty streets and drove.

A quiet Webber? I didn’t know what to do with his silence. This attraction I had for him simmered in the back of my mind. A wave of embarrassment about Webber and our evening two nights before washed over me. I rubbed my eyes. “My God,” I mumbled.

“What, babe?” He turned onto my street. “You okay?” He pulled to a stop in front of my town house.

“Yeah.” No. Completely embarrassing that Webzie had now seen me naked and begging for Big Boy, not once but two times. And both times I’d gotten the no-go from Webber. I opened the car door then stopped.

My heart pounded in my chest.

I pulled shut the door. I had to say something. Had to. Webber and I saw each other way too much to have this weirdness hanging between us. My life was complicated enough. I was about to get kicked out of my surgical rotation, I might not get a residency, Daddy was in the hospital. My anxiety was careening toward the stratosphere. I didn’t need to add discomfort and embarrassment every time I was around Webber to my growing list of stress inducers.

“So here’s the thing,” I started. “The night before last.”

Webber turned away from me and looked out the windshield. He took a deep breath. “Babe, that was—”

“Look, I get it. You don’t have to explain. There was this weird attraction thing going on between us, but then it hit you that you totally weren’t interested and—”

“Babe.” Webber’s voice shot out and he turned toward me. “What hit me like a fucking ton of bricks was not that I
wasn’t
interested in you”—his brows were creased and his tone was sharp—“but that you totally deserve the next US ambassador to the UN, or the guy that cures cancer, or the president of the United States, but definitely not me.”

Even through the darkness, a sharp sincerity decorated his features. “I won’t ever be that guy, okay? I know what I am. I’m the Webzie, and while I’m the best damn Webzie in the universe—hell, I may be the
only
Webzie in the universe—I’m not the guy who’s climbing the ivy tower and throwing down the next big discovery that saves humanity. I’m the guy who’s schlepping scripts and screenwriters and actors and making movies on my
best
day. So don’t go telling me how I, or Big Boy, didn’t
want
you last night. Because we”—he paused and took a deep breath and lowered his voice—“because
I
did want you.” He pulled his fingers through his hair. “Still want you.”

A tingle lasered through my body.

“But babe, you and that amazing brain of yours deserve more than I’ll ever be.”

My heart pounded in my chest. Those words…all those words that he’d just unleashed on me here in his car. Not one of them was what I’d thought he’d say. What I’d expected was funny ha-ha Webber, the guy who would defuse the situation and get rid of my embarrassment through humor. Not this guy. Not the guy with the serious face, one hand on the steering wheel, who was staring into my eyes as though he expected me to say something thoughtful, insightful, important, when all I’d wanted was to get rid of any weird feelings between us.

So much for that.

“You…” I swallowed. I could barely get my mouth to form the words. “You wanted me?”

“Yes. Hell yes. I’ve wanted you since before Choo’s wedding, and I don’t know how it started or when or even why. I mean, most the time you look like an upscale bag lady, but babe, you’ve got this thing that drives me over the fucking edge. Maybe it’s how you don’t laugh at all my jokes but there’s this hidden wicked sarcasm that admits that you see me trying to knock those jokes out of the park combined with that fucking amazing rack you hide under all those baggy clothes. Plus that little noise you make in your throat when you’re completely turned on. It’s like this purring noise and—”

Heat barreled through my chest and into my face.

“Okay!” I held up my hand. “Okay, I get it. I totally get it. But you know this”—I waved my hand between us—“this won’t work. And not because I’m not attracted to you and not because I’m too smart and you’re not smart enough but because—”

“Of your dad,” Webber said and sighed. “I get it.”

“Not just that. Daddy personifies the problem. Webber, I can’t do entertainment. The Industry, that world is your whole world and you’re good at it. Really,
really
good at it, but I’ve fought like hell to get out and to find my own identity that doesn’t necessarily include fame and being a Legend. At least not the way my family are Legends.”

He sighed and shook his head. “I know you hate it and don’t want to be any part of it.” He turned his head toward me and his eyes locked with mine.

A bolt of lightning shot through my body. Heat. Want. Desire. I lit up inside with a sexual need I’d only experienced around Webber. One look from him and my nipples were tight.

There wasn’t any air. If I didn’t go, if I didn’t leave, if I didn’t— “I’m sorry,” I whispered. I opened the car door.

“Yeah, I know.” Webber’s voice was rough and filled with unspoken needs I wanted to satisfy. “I’m sorry too.”

I slammed the car door. If I didn’t leave Webber now, I might not ever.

Webber

Nearly a week after Steve-o’s cardiac event and Ellen and my heart-to-heart, I stood in video village behind the director of
Be Good Girl
. Ryan Sinclair was killing this scene. Gut-wrenching, heart-pounding bullshit about how he’d die for his girl. Damn! My phone vibrated in my breast pocket. Thank God for vibrate. I backed away from the village and hightailed it off set.