Redemption (13 page)

Claire had noticed the slightly crooked slant of his nose years ago, while examining his face on a magazine cover as she waited in line at the supermarket. It didn’t seem to have adversely affected his looks; if anything, it gave an edge to a face that was almost too perfect.

She looked away, determined to get the meeting over.

“We both behaved despicably. A little guilt was in order.”

“Yeah,” he said slowly, as if he was exhausted. “I was the world’s biggest scumbag. And you…” He looked at her. “They were even harder on you. Those photos—”

There was one, Claire remembered seeing, taken immediately after the shooting, of “Clarissa” being led away, a blanket tossed around her shoulders, a chilling smile on her face. It had led to rampant speculation that she had seduced him, even plotted Hayley’s death. Ironically, she didn’t even remember that day. Her mind had erased all the gruesome images, the same way it had protected her in the past. Many times as a child, she’d awakened not knowing where her bruises came from.

But she remembered seeing Matt at the police station later, remembered how he’d looked away from her.

“Tell me something, Claire. Why did you do it? Why did you sleep with me?” Matt asked bluntly. “I never believed all that garbage they said in the papers, about you sleeping your way to the top. One of them even implied you set me up, that you wanted Hayley to find out about us.” His voice was harsh, the accusation creeping through.

“I didn’t,” she said in a flat voice. “I told you I didn’t know you were living with her.”

“Then why? Why did you go to bed with me, a man you hardly knew? And why did you run off afterward? You could have contacted me. Instead, you slunk away in the middle of the night like some pay-by-the-hour whore.”

The blood drained from Claire’s face. She closed her eyes, trapping the hurt beneath her eyelids.

But he’d given her the perfect opening, and like a fencer spotting an exposed vein, she took it.

“No, I wasn’t really a whore. I just played one on TV,” she said with a raw laugh. “You see, it was all an experiment—‘on-the-job training.’ Method acting taken a bit too far.” Her voice was stained with ten years of bitterness. “I realized I was in over my head. I was totally inexperienced—with acting. I didn’t know how I could possibly play the part of your mistress. So I decided I would become exactly what the script called for. Your lover.” She gave an offhand shrug, then dragged her gaze from the rose-patterned carpet to eye him, completely emotionless. “I figured for that role, you would be the perfect teacher.”

Claire had planned exactly what she would tell him, justification for sleeping with someone she barely knew. She had even convinced herself it was true.

Matt didn’t say anything, just looked at her with those startling green eyes. His irises were shot with gold, Claire noticed absently, just like Tripper’s.

Then she twisted her lips in a brittle smile and added the kill shot: “It was all an act, Matt. I even told you I loved you. Remember?”

For a moment, he was silent, staring at her as if she’d just uttered heresy, and then he gave a harsh laugh. “Jesus Christ. They were right. You were every bit the cold, calculating bitch, weren’t you?”

She didn’t bother to agree. She could tell from the look on his face he believed her.

He shook his head derisively. “All this time, I had convinced myself you were just a sweet, innocent kid. A kid who got caught up in something she couldn’t control, didn’t expect.”

“I was,” she admitted. “And I hate that, not being in control. So I did what I always do. I tried to gather all the information I could, as efficiently as possible. That was all it was, my ‘attraction’ for you. I needed you to get me out of a tight spot. I had no idea anyone would get hurt, and I’ve regretted that ever since, but I don’t beat myself up with the guilt.” She gave him a plastic smile, ignoring the devastated look in his eyes, knowing he would easily recover from any blow to the ego she was capable of inflicting.

“Now, I think we’ve said everything we needed to.” She stood and looked down at him. “We can walk off into the sunset, no looking behind us. Roll the credits, hit the lights.”

He didn’t say anything, just looked up at her, an unfathomable expression on his face.

“I wish you good luck with your film, Matt. I really do. I’ll try to make it as easy for you as possible. And afterward, you can go back to California and forget I ever existed.”

She turned and walked away, her heels leaving little scars all over the roses.

Matt sat there after she was gone, feeling raw and drained. Used, he realized, used years ago, not so much to propel her career but to save her the embarrassment of appearing foolish in front of the camera. It shouldn’t hurt so much, he told himself. It wasn’t as if his trip to the top hadn’t been accompanied by his fair share of users.

But this was more personal. He had been convinced that what she’d felt had been real, that the passion they shared was honest.

He remembered the shy little look on her face when they had brought the birthday cake, how she had pretended not to know where it came from. The twinkle in her eye that gave her away. There had been no doubt in his mind then that she was really as sweet as she looked.

And later, in bed with her, their lovemaking had been so tender, so innocent. It was the first time a woman had ever cried with him, though she had sworn they were tears of joy.

No, his mind had never accepted the fact that their affair was as sordid as the press had made it out.

Or was that just his guilt, trying to justify an act that ended up destroying a woman he had cared for?

He shook his head. Hell, he was going to wind up in a therapist’s office after all. Wearily he pushed himself up from the chair. He wasn’t used to prolonged bouts of self-pity, preferring action to stewing over a problem.

But there was nothing he could do, no way to put Claire Porter under a microscope and detect her true feelings. She was probably immune to truth serum, and there was no way to relive the past.

As he reached the door, a thought struck him. How many times had he done exactly that? Each time he reviewed the dailies from filming, he was essentially reliving events that had occurred hours before. A record of his hours with Claire still existed, in a film vault somewhere, fragments of footage stored originally as evidence in case of a lawsuit. It had to be there still, an unfinished story waiting to be told.

He opened the door, a plan of action brewing in his head. There were few people he trusted to be completely discreet, and one of them owed him a favor. A.J., he decided, was about to earn his keep. Personal indiscretions aside, Matt knew the lawyer in him was as closemouthed as a tick when it came to his client’s activities, and he would be even more protective of his friends.

He’d call A.J., have him dig up the footage from
Bed of Roses
and send it here.

Then he would see exactly what the camera saw during those two days of filming, unedited and unvarnished. Claire could dodge her emotions, and his questions, all she wanted. But the camera had caught her performance, and if he had learned anything during his career, it was how to judge a fake.

Chapter Nine

F
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, Matt managed to push the confrontation with Claire out of his mind. The film took up most of his time—there were still script revisions to approve, shooting schedules to coordinate, and a dozen last-minute problems to deal with.

He’d hardly had time to walk Sadie, so today he’d brought her along on his daily run. He was beginning to wish he’d left her with his brother Mark. With four kids in the house, she’d have had no shortage of exercise.

Dodging a heap of gray snow on the sidewalk, he wondered what his family would say if they knew he was once again in the proximity of That Woman. He’d never tried to explain to them just why he had gotten mixed up with Clarissa—Claire, he reminded himself, slowing his pace as he turned the corner. He wasn’t even sure himself. Was he such a poor judge of character? Could he have misjudged her so much?

But he had been in the middle of a painful breakup and susceptible to a sweet smile.

At his door he stopped, exhaustion slumping his shoulders. Had Kaslow’s previous owners experienced the same punched-in-the-gut feeling he’d felt when she’d hung him out to dry, all nice and tidy in the ladies room?

Snow White, it seemed, had grown a thorny hide along with a new hairstyle.

After a quick shower, Matt walked into the office. A FedEx package lay unopened on the desk. He tossed down the script revisions he’d meant to read and ripped open the envelope. A DVD was inside. As A.J. had explained over the phone, the entire footage from
Bed of Roses
had been transferred to tape and a copy given to the officers investigating the incident.

He glanced at his watch. He had an hour before he had to meet Jack to review tomorrow’s shots, and fortunately Laura was meeting with Wardrobe this afternoon. He went to the rec room in the basement, where a TV hung on one wall.

He inserted the disc into the player and settled on the sofa opposite.

The total running time was less than an hour. The director had had an unerring eye when it came to deciding which take to print; consequently, only a few scenes were repeat performances. The first few minutes were master shots of the set, taken to ensure proper placement of props later. Halfway into the tape, the first scene with “Vanessa” came into view.

The camera caught her running to him, the action unnecessarily drawn out on the unedited footage. They met, exchanged a few words, and then he was crushing her to him.

Matt realized then what everyone had meant when they used the word “chemistry.” It was as if a magnetic force existed between the two people on screen, an invisible bonding agent. Pheromones, perhaps, that tugged at gazes, that tenderized each touch, each caress. A substance that could be scooped up and bottled and used to melt camera lenses.

Then came another shot of the same setup, a close-up this time. Matt stared at the lovers on screen. He remembered this take. For the first time in his career, he had totally forgotten the presence of lights, cameras, and the other crew members. He’d just let the feeling overtake him. He had told himself later it was acting, the best bit of acting he had done, but the truth was he hadn’t faked a damn thing.

What was on the screen wasn’t chemistry. It was honesty.

He watched the scene unfold, struck by the differences ten years had made in Claire. She had been so young, only twenty-one, though he knew women that age whose years showed on them like worn dollar bills. There was something fresh, untried about her—untested, yet somehow knowing. A distance, even then, as if she were merely observing.

He remembered the comments from several of the crew members later, after the disaster on the set, when the scandal had started to creep around them. Jumping on the slander wagon, they had called her snooty, claiming she looked down her nose at everyone else. Though Matt was convinced it was shyness that had set her apart from the rest of the cast and crew, the words had done their damage. Claire was branded a stuck-up bitch, as well as a homewrecker.

Neither reputation was deserved.

The scene ended, and he pressed the pause button. He knew what was coming up, but now he wasn’t sure he wanted to view it.

He rubbed his fingertips lightly against the soft buttons of the remote control, staring at the frozen image of a clapboard on the screen.

He knew the camera was not the impartial judge some thought. The image it produced was subject to the visions of the director, the cinematographer, the cameraman. The angles, the lighting, the screens used to soften the edges—all of it could change the tone completely. Even the most passionless scene could be artificially enhanced, setting a completely different mood.

As an actor, he had trained himself to look beyond the special effects and get to the emotion, or lack of it, in the acting itself. It was an annoying habit. He could hardly watch a performance without dissecting it, looking at every nuance, each expression, with the critical eyes of an Academy voter.

So now when he pressed the play button and watched the screen, he viewed it dispassionately. An observer, not a participant.

It was easy to see what was going on in this scene.

It hardly registered that it was him. A younger, leaner version of himself, entwined with a younger, softer version of Claire.

The camera lens was in soft focus. But it did nothing to dim the passion that flamed between the two lovers on the rich loam of the greenhouse.

Matt watched as Johnny slipped his hands over Vanessa’s shoulders. He had forgotten skin that white existed. Skin that soft. His hand moved to her breast, covering it from the harsh glare of the camera. He had used his body as much as possible to shield hers, knowing how nervous she was. Her flesh had trembled when he touched her, and Matt had imagined himself soothing a frightened mare, trying to give his mind something to focus on besides the erotic feel of the woman in his arms.