License to Thrill (31 page)
“Do you suppose the accounting firm has been cooking the books on the awards ever since 1955?”
That was a chilling thought. Mason pressed his lips together. Since Cahill’s revelation he’d been too busy dodging bullets and running for his life to fully consider the implications. But now, reality sank in.
His grandfather and his entire family’s reputation hung in the balance. That’s why Gramps had taken off alone. Somehow he’d found out about the bastardized accounting practices. That was why he had kept silent until he’d had a chance to investigate for himself. And that was probably why Nolan had taken the half-million dollars. He hadn’t known ahead of time who he might have to bribe, hire, or hush up, so he’d taken enough money to cover any eventuality.
A spear of worry arrowed through him when he thought about Nolan and Maybelline. Where were they? If Cahill didn’t have them, had Elwood recaptured them? And just where did Charlee’s father factor in this whole Oscar scenario?
One thing was certain. They couldn’t worry about Maybelline and Nolan. Not right now.
Top priority, they had to get to L.A. before the Academy Awards ceremony, audit the votes, and announce the real winner of the best supporting actor category. If he couldn’t prevent Blade Bradford from getting the award, his entire family fortune would be destroyed.
But they had plenty of time. It wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning and L.A. was less than two hundred miles away. The Academy Awards didn’t start until seven. That gave them a full twelve hours. No sweat. They would even have time for a meal, a shower, and a change of clothes.
And then the airplane sputtered ominously. Startled, his gaze shifted to the instrument panel.
The engine coughed. Once, twice, three times.
“Uh-oh,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Look around. Quick. Help me find a good place to land.”
“What’s wrong?”
“We’re out of gas.”
Charlee ran a hand through her tangled hair and shook her head. She wanted to whine, but she was tougher than that. It seemed as if they’d been walking for weeks.
She was tired and hungry and thirsty. Her boots were rubbing blisters on her heels, her nose was sunburned, and she smelled of sweat and dirt and smoke and general run-of-the-mill funk. She wished for her cowboy hat and sunscreen and two dozen Band-Aids. She wished for toothpaste and a hairbrush and toilet paper.
But mostly, she wished for water. Cool, clear water.
So much for tough. Apparently, she was as soft as the next girl.
Mason had safely landed the plane, albeit in the middle of a cactus patch. Gingerly, they’d clambered out only to realize with despair they had no idea where they were.
It was long past noon, edging on toward one-thirty, she guessed.
“We’ve got to get to L.A. before the Oscars tonight,” Mason said. They walked side by side, kicking up sand and dust behind them.
“So you told me. About a hundred times.”
“I can’t stress how important this is.”
“I get it, I get it, but what can we do about it, Mason? We can’t even find the friggin’ highway and if we did, for all we know Sal and Petey are trolling it with orders from Cahill to shoot on sight.”
“It’s a big stretch of road between here and L.A. Sorry, but Petey and Sal just aren’t that good.”
“Hey, maybe even as we speak your grandfather is taking care of all this. Right now he and Maybelline could be at the accounting firm running roughshod on the number crunchers.”
“We can hope.”
“Boy, if that’s your hopeful face don’t let me see discouraged.”
“Charlee,” he said, “I’m on the verge of losing everything.”
“That’s gotta suck. Especially when you were on the verge of finding yourself.”
He frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”
“When you were up in the air you were a completely different person. Relaxed, calm, confident. Now the old Mason is back. Anxious, controlling, argumentative.”
“I’m not argumentative.”
“You’re arguing right now.”
“This isn’t arguing.”
“What is it?”
“Charlee, I still don’t think you get it. If we don’t stop Blade Bradford from winning and it comes out after the fact that our accounting firm cheated, the Gentry name will be destroyed. In a business like ours reputation is everything. Companies will pull their accounts. Our stock value will plummet. The scandal will affect not only my family, but also all the people who work for us, or do business with us. You saw what happened to the stock market after Enron and WorldCom and Tyco.”
“Your family has that much influence on the U.S. economy?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Oh.” She paused a moment. She knew Mason was rich and powerful. She had no idea he was
that
rich and powerful. Her secret lingering hope that things could work out between them all but evaporated. “Well, then walk faster.”
“I’m glad you appreciate the gravity of the situation.”
“So,” she said, a few minutes later, “what would happen if, say, Blade did win and you and your grandfather just kept your mouths shut?”
“You mean cover up the accounting discrepancy?”
She slanted a glance over at him. “It seems like the easy way out.”
“You mean just let Cahill and Bradford get away with their scam?”
“It’s what most people would do.”
Mason shook his head. “Let’s concentrate on getting to L.A. so I’m not faced with that temptation.”
Two hours later they finally reached the highway. Mason was so wound up about the time slipping away from them that Charlee thought she was going to have to put Valium on the top of her “I want” list behind food, sweet tea, and a long cool shower. The Valium was for him, not for her.
They hurried to the edge of the road.
It was empty. Not a vehicle in sight.
“Shall we?” Charlee inclined her head toward L.A. and tried not to limp. Her heels felt as if her leather boots had flayed the flesh to the bone. The only consolation, she hadn’t been wearing Violet’s ankle strap stilettos for the trek.
“You’re hobbling,” he said.
“It’s nothing.”
“Guess those boots weren’t made for walking.”
“Ha, ha. Normally they are very comfortable. They’re rubbing blisters because I don’t have on any socks. Violet apparently doesn’t believe in them.”
He stopped walking, turned toward her, and motioned with his index finger. “Come here.”
“What for?”
“I’m going to give you a piggyback ride.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Don’t be so damned stubborn, woman. You can barely walk.”
“Mason, I’m no little thing. I weigh a hundred and thirty-five pounds.”
“I don’t care. Get over here.”
“You say you don’t care now…”
Before she could finish her sentence he stalked over and slung her unceremoniously over his shoulder.
“Hey, wait, stop it. Put me down.”
“Only if you agree to let me give you a piggyback ride.”
“Okay, all right, I’ll do it.”
They trudged along the shoulder of the road, Mason carrying Charlee on his back, her bare legs wrapped around his muscled waist, her skirt hem flapping as he walked. She felt guilty, but man-o-man did her feet ever feel better.
Minutes passed, then half an hour. No car. No truck. Not even a motorcycle.
“Why don’t we take a break,” she said, fretting about his back.
He stopped and let her slide gently to the ground. “Where is this godforsaken place?” he asked. “I didn’t think anywhere in America was this deserted.”
“It’s just a bad time of day. The later it gets the more likely it is someone will come along.”
“Charlee, we’re still three hours outside of L.A.”
“Okay, let’s not get off on the time issue again.”
Or I’ll have to strangle you with my bare hands.
“Listen.”
They stopped walking and cocked their heads.
“Sounds like an engine.”
“Quick, stick out your thumb.”
“Better yet, I’ll strike a pose,” Charlee said and imitated Claudette Colbert from
It Happened One Night.
It helped that she had on a skirt so short Barbie could have used it for a hanky.
They peered into the distance, waiting. Heat waves shimmered up from the ground like gasoline fumes, wriggling and crinkling and blurring the edges of reality.
Finally, an aging flatbed truck chugged into view over the rise. Charlee wriggled her leg provocatively. Mason stuck out his thumb.
Please stop, please stop, please stop.
The truck putt-putted leisurely over the asphalt. A smiling dark-complexioned woman sat behind the wheel, three hound dogs lolled on the front seat beside her. She waved at them and pulled over.
Mason and Charlee raced to the truck.
The woman gave them a dazzling smile and said something in Spanish. They shrugged. She pointed to the back of the truck stacked high with crates of strawberries. Apparently she wasn’t about to dethrone her dogs for hitchhikers.
Who cared? It was a ride.
“Gracias, gracias,”
they repeated and hurried around the truck, ready to hop in the back among all those delicious-smelling strawberries.
Only to be stopped by an unexpected but totally wonderful surprise.
There, curled up in each other’s arms, looking just as grime-ridden and road-weary and hungry as Mason and Charlee, sat their grandparents.
C
harlee flung herself into her grandmother’s arms. “Maybelline! You’re alive.”
All four of them started hugging and laughing and talking at once with no one getting a word in edgewise. Charlee glanced over at Mason. He winked at her and gave the time-out gesture. “Okay, all right. One at a time. You start, Gramps. What happened?”
The attractive older man who shared a remarkable resemblance to Mason said, “Actually, the story starts with Maybelline. If she hadn’t intervened, I might never have found out that Blade Bradford, his wife, and Spencer Cahill were rigging the Oscars.”
Maybelline looked at Charlee with a happy glow in her eyes that she had never seen there before.
She’s in love with Mason’s grandfather.
The thought hit Charlee out of the blue and when Nolan squeezed Maybelline’s hand and smiled at her, she knew not only was it true, but that Nolan loved her grandmother in return.
Her stomach gave a funny little boot to her heart. Charlee slid a sidelong glance at Mason and her stomach kicked harder. Were she and Maybelline going to end up with dual broken hearts after all this was over? The women from the wrong side of the tracks falling for the guys far out of their league?
“Have some strawberries.” Maybelline passed around an open crate of the juicy ripe fruit like the perfect hostess. “Angelina told us to help ourselves.”
Charlee grabbed a handful of strawberries, leaned back against a stack of crates, and nibbled them politely instead of wolfing them down the way she wanted. Mason was sitting on the opposite side of the truck with Maybelline and Nolan sandwiched between the two of them.
Silly as it seemed, Charlee missed sitting next to him. For the past four days they’d been side by side almost constantly.
“It all started forty-seven years ago,” Maybelline began, “when I first came to Hollywood, met a charismatic actor, and thought I’d fallen in love.”
Charlee shifted her gaze to Nolan. He shook his head, denying he was the actor in question.
“It was only later, after I got pregnant with your father, Charlee, that I discovered the man was already married.”
“Blade Bradford,” Mason guessed.
“Yes,” Maybelline admitted.
“How come you never told me this before?” Charlee asked her grandmother.
“I was ashamed. Embarrassed that I’d been taken advantage of. I never told anyone. Not even Elwood.”
“You had nothing to be ashamed of,” Nolan said gruffly.
Maybelline smiled at Mason. “Your grandfather was wonderful. In fact, he stopped me from flinging myself off the H
OLLYWOOD
sign.”
Her grandmother had once tried to kill herself? Charlee struggled to imagine her tough-minded granny as a young and vulnerable girl and finally gave up. The years had erased all traces of the naive innocent she had once been.
But then she caught Nolan looking at Maybelline. In his eyes, Charlee saw that young, troubled girl. How little she really knew about her own grandmother.
“Anyway, fast forward to the future,” Maybelline said to Mason. “My son Elwood, who much to my un-happiness has always had trouble controlling his impulses, got in deep with gambling debts. He shoplifted cigarettes in order to get thrown in jail to avoid his creditors.”
“I remember that,” Charlee said. “I thought it seemed really weird at the time since he doesn’t smoke, but he told me he’d planned on selling the cigarettes.”
Maybelline sighed. “While he was in lock-up he met some guy who told him he could help him locate his biological father. Elwood got all excited. Not about the thought of meeting his father, but because it was another person he could put the bite on. I discovered all this after the fact of course.”
“Let me guess,” Charlee interjected. “Elwood blackmailed Blade Bradford.”
The truck hit a bump and they all went sliding into each other. They righted themselves and Maybelline continued with her story.
“Elwood sent Blake a letter demanding five hundred thousand dollars or he threatened to go to the
National Enquirer
with what happened forty-seven years ago. But Elwood got more than he bargained for. In the blackmail letter, he was talking about his illegitimate birth. But apparently Blade thought he was talking about how he and his wife and father-in-law had rigged the Oscar votes so he would beat out Nolan for best actor.”
“And Elwood’s threats couldn’t have come at a worse time,” Mason said. “Considering how Blade was up for another Oscar again this year.”
“Exactly.”
Mason ate a strawberry and glanced at Charlee over the top of her grandmother’s head. He had to fight the urge to drag her into his arms, kiss those rich, berry-stained lips and make all sorts of wild promises to her that he feared he could not keep.