Triple Threat (22 page)

“Indiana?”

Holly froze, listening to Garrett.

“Yeah, they’re doing all the baseball scenes at an old stadium in Evansville. Same one they used in
A League of Their Own.
”

“Fine by me.” Nick sounded almost giddy. “Hell, I’d go to Detroit to work with Spielberg.”

“Here’s to you, Joe DiMaggio.” They clinked glasses again. “Now let’s get back to the party and celebrate. But not too much. By noon tomorrow, I need you packed and on a plane home.”

* * *

“
Y
OU OKAY?”
N
ICK
asked Holly a few hours later when they were finally alone in his apartment—the last time they’d be alone together. “You’ve been awfully quiet tonight. Especially for a woman who should be on top of the world.” He brushed a fingertip down her arm, leaving goose bumps in its wake. “You made it, baby. The show’s back on Broadway.”

“I’m fine,” she lied, flopping onto the couch, removing one of her shoes and wiggling her toes to make sure they still worked. She’d wanted to know how Nick felt and now she did. He was leaving the show. Leaving her. He wasn’t thinking next month or even next week. More like
it’s been fun, gotta run.
“Just a little overwhelmed.”

“Good.” He sat down next to her, taking her feet onto his lap and removing her other shoe. “Because there’s something we need to talk about.” His thumbs drew gentle circles along her arches, turning her bones to Jell-O.

Here it comes,
she thought.
The Dear Jane speech. It’s not you, it’s me. We always knew this was temporary. Our lives are just too different.

“Spielberg wants me back in L.A. as soon as possible. I’m playing Joe DiMaggio in his new biopic. Filming starts in a few weeks.”

“Oh, Nick. That’s wonderful.” She sat up, trying to look surprised. “I’m happy for you. Really, I am. It’s the kind of film role you’ve always wanted. You’ve worked so hard. Don’t worry about the show. Ethan and Judith will work their magic and find someone almost as fabulous as you for New York.”

“I don’t doubt that. Actors are a dime a dozen. But it’s not the show I’m worried about. It’s you.” He massaged her toes gently. “It’s us.”

She pulled her feet away and tucked them underneath her, praying she sounded more laid-back than she felt. This acting thing was hard work. “We knew going into this it was only short-term. A showmance.” God, she hated that word.

“I was hoping we could renegotiate our deal.” Nick laid a hand on her thigh, and heat burned through the fabric of the Oscar de la Renta sheath dress Noelle had sent her as a closing-night gift, accompanied by a note threatening bodily injury if she didn’t wear it to the party along with the masochistic Manolos that were back in Holly’s closet. “I want to keep things going. There’s Skype, email, texting. And you can come visit me on set in your downtime.”

“I don’t know....” It sounded good in theory. But Holly didn’t have to be a fortune-teller to figure out what would happen. They’d keep up the pretense for a while. Long, steamy video-chat sessions. Heartfelt emails. Sexts. Maybe even a visit or two. Then gradually, almost imperceptibly, the messages would slow. They’d be too busy with their respective careers to see each other. And eventually their contact would stop altogether.

The poets had it all wrong. Absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder. It made the heart forget.

“Don’t say anything yet.” He shushed her with a finger to her lips, then used it to trace their outline. “Just think of the possibilities. We’re filming the baseball scenes in Evansville. And you know what they say about Indiana.”

“No.” She shuddered as his finger moved down her neck, following the low-cut line of her dress to the valley between her breasts. “What?”

He leaned in, his voice a warm murmur against her ear. “Indiana is for lovers.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s Virginia.”

“Virginia, Indiana. It’s all the same to me.” The hand on her leg slid beneath the hem of her dress. “I’d be hot for you in Siberia.”

She sighed and curved into his touch, as helpless to resist him now as she had been at sixteen. Even more so, now that she knew firsthand the heights he could bring her to in oh-so-many wicked ways she never could have imagined as a teenager. “We are pretty combustible, aren’t we?”

“Downright explosive.”

His lips met hers, but the kiss they shared belied their words. Tender, coaxing and sweet, it was more like a slow-burning ember than a flash fire. Tears pricked at her eyelids. Saying goodbye to him now was going to be agony. Prolonging the torture by stringing things out long-distance would just about kill her.

“You’re crying,” Nick said when he lifted his head.

She smiled through the stabbing pain in her heart. “They’re happy tears.”

He kissed one away. “Happy?”

“For you. For tonight. For this.” She framed his face with her hands and kissed him, harder this time, more insistent. Desperate.

“Slow down, sugar.” He freed himself from her grasp, stood and extended his hand, pulling her up with him when she took it. “We’ve got all night.”

“Yes.” Hand in hand, she followed him to the bedroom. “We do.”

They undressed each other slowly, savoring every breath, every whispered endearment, every touch. Naked, they lay on the bed, his long, broad body somehow fitting perfectly with her smaller, softer one. She hooked one leg over his hip, pulling him even closer. She wanted to inhale him, consume him, take him inside her and make him a part of her so he’d be with her always.

But Nick had other ideas. He teased her with his wicked hands and tongue on every inch of her body, from her earlobes to the sensitive skin behind her knees until she nearly wept with desire.

“Nick,” she panted when she couldn’t stand it one second longer. “Now.”

He answered her with a long, slow thrust, entering her for what she knew would be the last time. Claiming her, as if she hadn’t been his from the moment he’d resurfaced in her life.

“I need you,” he said when he was fully embedded in her body. “So much.”

Need. A step above want. But not quite love.

She arched her neck to run a string of kisses along his stubbled jaw. “You’ve got me.”

He thrust again and she met him movement for movement, moan for moan, until together they exploded in a heated rush.

“Stay,” he murmured as he drifted into sleep, still buried inside her.

She nodded, not able to voice the lie, and laid her head on his chest, listening to the steady sound of his breathing and the patter of raindrops on the roof. She didn’t know when it had started to rain, but it suited her mood. Dreary. Hopeless. Alone.

After a few minutes, when she was sure Nick was asleep, Holly eased herself out of his embrace and out of bed, gathered her clothes and dressed quickly and quietly in the darkened bedroom, checking periodically to make sure he hadn’t stirred. A strange sense of déjà vu came over her. She was running away again, chickening out the way she had that night at the Plaza. She’d never thought of herself as a quitter. But quitting Nick seemed like the only sane thing to do. He had his career to consider. And she had her heart to protect.

As she let herself out, holding the door to make sure it didn’t slam shut, she consoled herself with the thought that at least this time she’d had the guts to leave him a note.

Three words.

I’m sorry. Holly.

21

“
C
UT.”
W
ITH A
shake of his head, the director—Spielberg’s latest golden boy—hopped out of his chair, rubbing the back of his neck and scowling at Nick, who’d flubbed his line for the umpteenth time that morning. “Why don’t we break for lunch. We’ll start fresh in an hour.”

Nick swore under his breath and threw down the baseball bat he’d been swinging. True to character, the preteen playing the batboy stepped in and picked it up.

“Thanks.” Nick gave the boy an embarrassed smile. Christ. He was becoming as obnoxious as Malcolm. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I let my temper get the best of me.”

“No sweat, Mr. Damone. My dad says everyone’s entitled to a bad day once in a while.” The boy leaned the bat against the backstop and bounded off for the craft service table.

Nick steered away from the crowded buffet toward his trailer, needing solitude more than food. The kid’s dad was right. An occasional bad day was par for the course. But Nick’s bad days were becoming a regular occurrence. Not even three weeks on set, and his legendary focus had deserted him. He was screwing up left and right, forgetting lines and missing his mark. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why.

Okay, that was a bald-faced lie. He knew why. He just didn’t want to admit it.

Holly.

He missed her. And not the sex. Or not just the sex. He missed her laugh. Missed sitting on the lumpy sofa in his temporary apartment after rehearsal with her curled up next to him, going over the events of the day. Hell, he was even jonesing for stuff like the fruity smell of her shampoo and the adorable way her tongue poked out one corner of her mouth when she was concentrating on something extra-hard.

He barely ate. Slept like shit. Yesterday, the director had flat out asked him if he had a drug problem. He was one screwup away from getting fired.

With a groan, Nick settled onto the overstuffed couch that occupied most of the living room of the Airstream the studio had provided for him. In what had become a daily ritual, he sat down with his tablet and surfed through several theater message boards and chat rooms, looking for news of the play. Pathetic, he knew. But it was his only way of keeping track of Holly, since she’d refused to return any of his phone calls or text messages. Her family and friends hadn’t been any better. They were harder to crack than Fort Knox. Devin had even threatened to tie him down and tattoo his ass if he kept—in her words—“blowing up her phone.”

He was on one of the most popular—and poisonous—boards,
Broadway Buzz,
when he struck gold. The subject line alone was enough to make him lose his lunch, if he’d eaten any: Newbie playwright a prima donna? Holly Ryan storms out of auditions.

“Shit.” He clicked on the link, which led him to a blurb in the
New York Post’
s infamous gossip column, Page Six:

Still reeling from the arrest of one of its producers, Ted Aaronson,
The Lesser Vessel,
the domestic-violence drama slated to open at the Lyceum in October, may have a new problem child to deal with—fledgling playwright Holly Ryan. According to eyewitnesses, Ryan stormed out of recent auditions to replace Nick Damone, best known for his screen portrayal of action hero Trent Savage, who left the production to take the title role in Steven Spielberg’s
Joltin’ Joe,
based on the life of legendary Yankees slugger Joe DiMaggio. No word on the reason for Ryan’s outburst, but sources close to the show say she and Damone were “quite the couple” in New Haven, where the show had a successful out-of-town tryout.

Nick shut down his tablet and reached for his cell. He’d blow up Devin’s phone, Ethan’s, Gabe’s—heck, even Holly’s parents’—but he was going to get some answers from someone. The Holly described in here wasn’t the Holly he knew. He needed to know what had happened. And why.

Four phone calls later, Nick finally heard a live voice on the other end of the line.

“Hallo?”

Crap.
For some reason, he’d expected Holly’s mother to answer the phone at the nursery, not her father. The longest conversation Nick had had with him had lasted all of two minutes and involved flowering hibiscus.

“Um, hi, Mr. Nelson. This is Nick. Nick Damone. Holly’s, uh, friend. From the play.” Great. He sounded like a complete idiot.

“Of course, Niklas. Holly’s not here. She’s in New York.”

“I know. I just... I was hoping... I wondered if you’d seen or spoken to her lately.”

“I talked to her yesterday.”

“Did she seem okay to you? Was she angry or upset?”

“You read the article in the
Post,
I take it?”

“Yes, sir.” There was something about Nils Nelson’s old-world manners, even long-distance, that made Nick slip into formality.

“Why not call her yourself and ask?”

“I would, but she won’t take my calls.”

“Ah,” Nils said after a moment. “A lovers’ spat.”

“It’s not that. We weren’t... I mean, I’m not...”

“Aren’t you?” Nils’s voice was soft but pointed. “Let me ask you this, Niklas. Why do you think Holly walked out of auditions?”

“So she did walk out. I hoped it was an exaggeration.”

“Unfortunately, no.”

Nick rubbed his forehead. “I can’t imagine why Holly would do something like that.”

“Can’t you?”

“She’s never anything less than professional when it comes to her work.”

“And you, Niklas. Are you anything less than professional when it comes to your work?”

“Usually,” Nick blurted out without thinking. “But lately...” He trailed off, remembering his flubbed lines, missed marks and temper tantrums.

“Lately?”

“I’ve been distracted.”

“As has Holly. For much the same reason as you, I think.”

There was an awkward silence while Nick rolled Nils’s words around in his mind. Was Holly as miserable as he was? Then why hadn’t she wanted to keep things going? Why had she run out on him?

“Do you love her?” Nils asked finally, breaking the stillness.

“I think so,” Nick answered, for the first time voicing what had been growing inside him for months. He wasn’t his father. Holly wasn’t his mother. And what they had together was a hell of a lot more than a showmance. What they had was love. The once-in-a-lifetime kind. The kind men fought wars, slayed dragons—gave up Spielberg films—for.

Now all he had to do was prove it to her.

“Be sure,” Nils cautioned him. “Be very sure. When you are, you’ll know what to do.”