Incidental Happenstance (14 page)

            This one, however, was going to be hell. She was still planning her comeback, and was still plagued b the bad press and her suspicious absence from the whole scene for the past few months. In her seclusion, she didn’t have to answer questions about why Jason had dumped her for some Italian whore or why her latest movie had flopped. Plus, she didn’t have a date, and didn’t want one—if she was going to attach herself to Dylan Miller, she didn’t want any rumors flying about her and someone else; so she wasn’t about to start calling people, sounding desperate, asking for an escort. She’d been away from the game for too long; didn’t know who was available and who wasn’t; and wasn’t in a position to step on any toes. Not yet.

            Skipping this one, though, wasn’t an option. At least she knew that Jason wouldn’t show up—the latest tabloid she’d read had him sexing it up on some beach in St. Tropez with his Italian superbitch—so she didn’t need to have a real date, just an escort. She decided on Peter Michaels, an up and coming designer who was so openly gay that no one would ever tag them as a couple. He’d wanted to make something for her to wear since she was on the best dressed list at her Oscar debut, and since she’d fallen out of the good graces of the business over the past few months, she thought she’d give him a shot at creating the dress she’d wear for the premier of her new movie. She wanted something that would highlight Dylan’s blonde hair and rich skin tone, maybe something the color of his eyes, which were the most alarming color of sapphire. It was months away yet, but since she’d be on the other side of the world for so long, he’d need to get some measurements and some drawings made up for her approval before she left.

            He accepted her invitation immediately, in his high-pitched and irritating voice. “Oh honey, you know I’d just love to go with you to that party! I can throw together something fabulous for you if you want to stop by!” He drew out the word love for about two seconds, and over accentuated the ‘a’ in fabulous.  Nope, she thought, no one would ever peg them as a couple.

            In the end she did let him dress her, and he didn’t do a bad job. He put just the right emphasis on her cleavage and highlighted her long neck with a simple diamond teardrop. It wasn’t real, of course, he didn’t have that kind of pull yet in the industry, but no one else would know that. He was even more thrilled when she suggested he make her dress for the movie premier, dropping casually who’d be escorting her.

            “Ah, isn’t he just yummy!” he said when she mentioned Dylan’s name. “It’s really too bad he’s straight—I could just eat him right up!” Penelope agreed wholeheartedly then he added, “Do you think he’d let me dress him too?” He started getting excited, throwing his hands in the air and rubbing them together. “I could do his tie in the same color of your dress,” his eyes widened as an idea inspired him, “ooh, ooh! Something in a blue, like his eyes, now you know the man’s got gorgeous eyes!” He put his hands on his hips, daring her to disagree with him, which of course, she didn’t.

            Oh hell, she thought, getting through a night with him was going to be trying, but it was better than not having anyone.

            The party was a housewarming for newly-married Evangaline Prisco and Clayton Timms, so of course Penelope had to bring an extravagant gift. They’d never last, she figured, Hollywood power couples seldom did. He had a taste for young Asian girls, a fact that was widely known but seldom publicized, and she was the poster child for high maintenance. Penelope figured she’d been inv mostly as a curiosity—she’d worked once with Evangaline on a film, but wouldn’t call her a friend. In this business, you couldn’t really call anyone a friend, at least not in Penelope’s experiences.

            The house was gorgeous, of course, all huge and marble and dripping with original artwork and expensive furniture. The pool was filled with floating candles and a huge tent had been erected in the expansive back yard; waitresses flitted among the guests offering champagne and canapés, and a six piece band played soft background music.

            Penelope greeted her hosts warmly, gushed openly at their beautiful new home, introduced Peter, and made her rounds. She deftly deflected questions about her seclusion, her box office flop, and her disaster with Jason, sipped mineral water and nibbled lightly at hors d’oeuvres. She still had six more pounds to drop before she hit her target weight, and was determined to do so before she had to start fittings with Peter.

            Penelope switched tactics, and started opening conversations about the film she’d make with Dylan. The studio hadn’t announced her officially as the female lead yet, but it would only be a couple more days, so what the hell?  She chatted lightly about New Zealand and her new co-star.

            “Have you met him yet?” Gabriella Evonovich, star of a long-running TV series, asked.

            “Not yet,” she said casually, “but I’m heading out to Chicago tomorrow to see a friend,” she lied,” and I thought I might catch one of his shows and introduce myself. I heard he was playing there this weekend.”

            “I hear he’s an absolute doll,” she whispered. “Hot as hell, too.”

            “He is that,” Penelope agreed. “Have you met him?”

            “No, but I have a couple friends who worked with him on one of his other films—
Flip Side of Tomorrow
? They were both in love with him by the second day of shooting. Both of them agreed that he’s even sexier in person, and that he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. One of them--you know Susannah Atwald? She actually dated him for a couple months. She still says she wishes she hadn’t screwed it up. Says he was the best boyfriend she ever had.”

            Now Penelope was seriously interested, but she kept her face, gestures, and voice calm. “Really? What happened to mess it up?”

            Gabriella waved her hand through the air. “Oh, you know…the usual. The star of her next movie was more famous than Dylan—he was still pretty green at that time as far as the film scene, anyway—the guy promised her a starring role in his next film, and she got a little careless when there were cameras around.”

            “Wow,” Penelope whispered, hanging on every word, hoping she’d continue.

            “Yeah, she still says it was the biggest mistake of her life. He’s a keeper, she said. Better be careful, or he’ll have you under his spell too!”

            “Now wouldn’t that be something,” Penelope replied, her mind racing around the idea.

            She found several others who either knew Dylanhe ully or knew someone who knew him. There weren’t a lot of personal details; it seemed he kept his private side private as much as possible. He didn’t live in California at all, but had a ranch somewhere in Colorado; of course, he was on the road so much, he didn’t spend much time there, anyway. Everyone had only good things to say about him, and these weren’t people who had good things to say about anyone. As she was working her plans in her mind, she wondered if she could really genuinely like this guy. That would make things easier, and considerably more fun.

            It was only an hour before Peter abandoned her to chat up the rest of the guests in a blatant attempt to try and increase his own client base, but by that time, she was tired of the scene anyway. She’d learned what she could about Dylan and had had enough idle chatter. She was also convinced that too many people were talking about her—she noticed sideways glances and conversations that became suddenly hushed as she approached. She knew she didn’t have any real friends here, but she suddenly felt uncomfortable and nabbed a glass of champagne from one of the waitresses—tiny and Asian, she noticed—and walked away from the bright lights of the party to a gazebo that sat back in the shadows of the yard. Plopping herself on a swing, she moaned as she kicked off her shoes and massaged her aching feet. It’d been a while since she’d worn stilettos, and her toes and arches were simultaneously and loudly screaming their protests.

            From her vantage point she looked down at the party, couples mingling, smiling at all the right places, tossing their heads in polite laughter, talking business and making deals. As usual, she was an outsider looking in, and it just wasn’t fair. She’d worked hard to get where she was, but a little bad press and she was suddenly on the outskirts.

            She’d grown up with television and movies; her mother was always too busy working two jobs to support the family that her father’d abandoned for another woman, making a new life with her and their kids and ignoring the kids he’d already had. Her sister Tatiana was a natural beauty, and as a gawky teenager, Penelope was never able to measure up. She didn’t get the grades, the attention, or the boys that her sister took for granted, and no matter how hard she tried, she was always in the shadows. Movies were her escape—she’d save her meager wages from allowance, birthdays, and the occasional babysitting job and hide out in the theater, spending her weekends dreaming herself into the glamorous life of a movie star or on-screen character. She finally found her niche in high school, landing the lead role in the school play. She threw everything she had into the project, and when the curtain rose, she was someone else, someone beautiful and eccentric, and she bathed in the applause and adulation. The time she spent center stage was like being on top of the world, which made falling back into her own life even harder. Rural Connecticut was no place to become an actress, however, and before the end of her senior year, one week after her eighteenth birthday, she quit school and moved to California, much to chagrin of her mother, and vowed to never look back.

            She’d had to, though. After six months she was broke and broken, and she had to go crawling back to her mother’s pathetic two-bedroom ranch house to regroup. She’d failed again, in her mother’s eyes, and they butted heads on everything from how she dressed to how she spent her time. Her mother was convinced that she’d ruined her life and looked at her with distaste; when she looked at her at all. Penelope hated everything about her life in Connecticut in a pathetic little town full of pathetic little people. She’d had enough of a taste of the good life in California—had seen the stars in the streets and at premiers and in the salons; had seen the beautiful homes they lived in and the cars they drove—and she was hungry for more. Tatiana was still the golden child, graduating from college with a business degree and launching a successful career. She was getting married, too, to some guy named Preston, of all things, from a well-to-do family, and Tatiana considered herself so much better than her sister that she didn’t even ask her to stand up in her wedding. 

            It was six months before Penelope taught her sister an important life lesson, six months before she got Preston into her bed. He wasn’t that good looking and was a mediocre lover at best, but the look on her sister’s face said it all when she let the indiscretion ‘slip’ during an argument at Thanksgiving dinner. Penelope had won; finally she’d come out on top. Her bags had been packed for days, and when she closed the door on their screaming and carrying on, she knew that no matter what happened, she’d never go back again, never be a part of their broken little family.

            It didn’t take her long to land a job on her second attempt; she was no longer a skinny teenager and had figured out that she could use her body and her feminine attributes to her advantage. Men were gullible creatures, easy to manipulate, and she got enough work to keep her afloat. She hadn’t slept her way all the way to the top, though; she was smart enough to know when she could take control of her career without using sex to get it, and when she landed her first decent role in a major motion picture, she sent postcards to her mother and sister that read simply, “Who’s the big shot now?” and put all of her energy into her climb to the top. She’d stepped on a lot of people to get there, but it was all part of playing the game.

            She drifted out of her memories and drained the last of her champagne. She wanted more, but could already feel it going to her head since she hadn’t eaten more than a couple of nibbles all day. Glancing down again at the gathering by the pool, she saw the happy couple, arm in arm, smiling, him bending down to tenderly kiss her lips to the oohs and aahs of the guests, and felt a rock in the pit of her stomach. She deserved to be happy, too, didn’t she? She’d had nothing but shit most of her life, and she longed to have someone to call her own, someone to love her. It had never been easy for her to give of herself or to be open or real with anyone, but it wasn’t too late for her to be happy. She was only twenty eight, for chrissakes. Maybe fate had finally intervened on her behalf and she would find the love that had always been missing in her life—maybe Dylan was the key. If she played her hand right, maybe he could be more than another step on her ladder to the top. Maybe he was her future.

            She shoved her feet back into her painful shoes and headed back toward the party. She’d do all the right things for another hour, feign a headache, collect Peter, and call it a night. She had a lot of planning to do.

            She’d just poured her second cup of strong coffee when the phone rang. She glanced at the clock, and saw that it was just past 7:00. She had hours yet before she was meeting Dylan, and she was already nervous. He’d said he was doing an inalrview early in the morning, and she grabbed at the phone, expecting to hear his voice—who else would be calling so early?

            “Well, good morning,” she said in a voice that she hoped sounded sexy and not like someone who’d just rolled out of bed.