What I Did for Love (31 page)

At the next
table, Laura toyed with a bite of lobster and surreptitiously pushed up her bra strap. She’d planned to wear a garden-party dress tonight, like so many of the other female guests, but at the last minute, she’d changed her mind. This was a business occasion, and she couldn’t afford to be tugging on a bodice that would
inevitably show too much cleavage or worrying about bare arms that weren’t as toned as they should be. Instead, she’d opted for a simple beige business suit, a draped-neck camisole, and pearls—the sort of outfit Mrs. Scofield had worn. Other than her perpetual problem with bra straps, she’d done fairly well keeping herself neat.

Paul’s invitation had been a shock. She’d called to break the news that he’d struck out on his first audition, but that the casting agent wanted to see him about another part. Just as she’d launched into her standard ego-repairing pep talk, he’d cut her off. “I wasn’t right for the part, but the audition was good practice.” And then he’d invited her to the party.

She would have been foolish to refuse. Being seen here tonight would help put a little of the luster back on her professional reputation, as Paul very well knew. But she couldn’t help being wary. Paul’s icy personality had always been the perfect antidote to his good looks and other male assets, but his new vulnerability made it tempting to view him in a more unsettling way.

Fortunately, she understood the perils of female rescue fantasies. She was clear about what she wanted from her life, and she wouldn’t screw that up just because Paul York was both more interesting and complicated than she’d ever imagined. So what if she was sometimes lonely? Her days of letting a man distract her from her real goals were long behind her. Paul was a client, and being seen at this party was good business.

He’d been attentive all evening, a perfect gentleman, but she was too nervous to eat much. While the others at the table were engaged in private conversations, she leaned closer. “Thanks for inviting me. I owe you.”

“You have to admit tonight hasn’t been as awkward as you thought it would be.”

“Only because your daughter is a class act.”

“Quit defending her. She fired you.”

“She needed to fire me. And the two of you haven’t been able to stop smiling at each other all evening, so don’t bother playing the tough guy.”

“We talked. That’s all.” He pointed to the corner of his mouth, indicating she had something on her face. Embarrassed, she snatched up her napkin, but she didn’t get the right spot, and he ended up dabbing at her with his own.

She grabbed her water glass when he was done. “It must have been a great talk.”

“It was. Remind me to tell you about it the next time I’m drunk.”

“I can’t imagine you ever getting drunk. You’re too self-disciplined.”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“When?”

She expected him to brush her off, but he didn’t. “When my wife died. Every night after Georgie fell asleep.”

This was a Paul York she’d only just begun to know. She gazed at him for a long moment. “What was your wife like? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

He set down his fork. “She was amazing. Brilliant. Funny. Sweet. I didn’t deserve her.”

“She must have thought differently, or she wouldn’t have married you.”

He looked slightly taken aback, as if he’d gotten so used to regarding himself as a second-class citizen in his marriage that he couldn’t comprehend it any other way. “She was barely twenty-five when she died,” he said. “A kid.”

She rolled her pearls between her fingers. “And you’re still in love with her.”

“Not in the way you mean.” He toyed with the spun sugar miniature of the Scofield mansion resting above his plate. “I guess the twenty-five-year-old inside me always will be, but that was a long
time ago. She lived in her head a lot. I was as likely to find the car keys in the refrigerator as in her purse. She didn’t care anything about her appearance. It drove me crazy. She was always losing buttons or ripping things…”

Gooseflesh crept along the base of her spine. “It’s hard to imagine you with anyone like that. The women you date are all so elegant.”

He shrugged. “Life is messy. I look for order wherever I can find it.”

She pleated her napkin in her lap. “But you haven’t fallen in love with any of them.”

“How do you know? Maybe I fell in love and got rejected.”

“Unlikely. You’re the grand prize in the ex-wives sweepstakes. Stable, intelligent, and great-looking.”

“I was too busy managing Georgie’s career to remarry.”

She heard his leftover self-rebuke. “You did a good job with her for a lot of years,” she said. “I’ve heard the stories. As a kid, Georgie couldn’t resist either a microphone or a pair of dancing shoes. Stop beating yourself up about it.”

“She loved to perform. She’d climb up on tables to dance if I wasn’t watching.” His expression clouded over again. “But still, I should never have pushed her so much. Her mother would have hated that.”

“Hey, it’s easy to criticize when you’re standing on the celestial sidelines watching somebody else do the heavy lifting.”

She’d had the audacity to make light of his sainted wife, and his expression grew still and cold. In the old days, she’d have fallen all over herself trying to make up for it, but she didn’t feel the urge, even as his frown grew more pronounced. Instead, she leaned closer and whispered, “Get over it.”

His head snapped up, and his killer glare turned his eyes into bullets.

She met his gaze straight on. “It’s time.”

Withdrawal was Paul York’s weapon of choice, and she waited for him to turn away, but he didn’t. The ice melted from his eyes. “Interesting. Georgie said the same thing.”

He retrieved the napkin Laura had dropped and gave her a long look that melted her bones.

At
first Chaz noticed the waiter because he was really cute and he didn’t look like an actor. Too short, but with a nice body and a dark, burr haircut. As he passed the hors d’oeuvres trays, he kept stealing glances at everybody, a little sneaky, but she was doing the same thing, so she didn’t think much about it. Then she noticed the awkward way he kept turning his body.

When she finally figured out what he was doing, she was totally pissed. She waited until the meal was nearly done before she excused herself and slipped into the service hallway, where she found him arranging dishes on a metal cart. As she came up next to him, he took in her halo with a cocky grin. “Hey, angel. What can I do for you?”

She glanced at his name tag. “You can hand over your camera, Marcus.”

His cockiness faded. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You have a hidden camera.”

“You’re crazy.”

She tried to remember where television investigative reporters hid their cameras.

“I know who you are,” the waiter said. “You work for Bram and Georgie. How much do they pay you?”

“More than you’re getting.” Marcus wasn’t tall, but he looked like he worked out, and it belatedly occurred to her that maybe she should have gotten someone from security to handle this. But there were
people around, and it seemed better to keep it quiet. “You can either give me the camera, Marcus, or I’ll have somebody take it off you.”

She must have sounded like she meant it because he looked uneasy. The fact that she could intimidate him, even a little, made her feel good.

“It’s no skin off your nose,” he said.

“You’re only trying to make a living. Yeah, I understand. And once you hand it over, I’ll forget about it.”

“Don’t be a bitch.”

She moved quickly, reaching for the top button on his vest, the one that didn’t quite match the others. The button came off in her hand, and as she pulled it free, she met resistance from a thin piece of cable.

“Hey!”

With a jerk, she yanked it free. “No cameras allowed. Didn’t you get the message?”

“What do you care? You got any idea what the photo agencies pay for shit like this?”

“Not enough.”

He’d turned red, but he couldn’t wrestle the camera from her without everyone seeing. She started to walk away only to have him come up behind her. “You could sell your story, you know. About working for them. I’ll bet you could get at least a hundred grand. Give me my camera back, and I’ll put you in touch with this guy. He’ll handle the whole thing for you.”

A hundred thousand dollars…

“You wouldn’t even have to say anything bad about them.”

She didn’t answer. She just walked away.

A hundred thousand dollars…

A funny video
montage of
Skip and Scooter
clips played after dinner. Shortly before the cake-cutting ceremony, Dirk Duke appeared
with a microphone. He was the most popular DJ in town—real name Adam Levenstein—and Poppy had hired him to spin music for dancing, which wasn’t scheduled to begin for another half hour. Dirk was short, with a bullet-shaped head, tattooed neck, and Ivy League education he did his best to hide. Tonight he wore a badly fitted tuxedo instead of his customary jeans. “Yo, everybody! This is a great party! Let’s give it up for Georgie and Bram.”

The audience dutifully gave it up.

“All you
Skip and Scooter
fans. Seeing Bram and Georgie married is great, right?”

Applause and a couple of whistles, one of them from Meg.

“We’re here to celebrate a marriage that happened two months ago. A marriage none of us was important enough to be invited to.”

Laughter.

“And tonight…We’re going to do something about that…”

Four waiters appeared bearing an arched bridal bower draped in white tulle caught up with blue hydrangeas. Poppy trailed behind in a floor-length black dress, her face smug with anticipation.

Georgie poked Bram with her elbow. “I think Poppy’s just unveiled her surprise. The one you told her to go ahead with.”

Bram grimaced. “You should have hit me over the head. I don’t like this.”

Georgie liked it even less as she watched the waiters position the bower at the front of the ballroom. Bram swore under his breath. “That woman is officially fired.”

“As an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church”—Dirk paused for dramatic effect—“it is my honor”—another pause—“to ask our bride and groom to step forward and”—raised voice—“repeat their vows in front of all of us!”

The guests were eating this up. Even her father. Poppy’s glossy, inflated lips formed a triumphant smile. A muscle ticked in the corner of Bram’s jaw. Poppy had no right to stage something this personal without consulting them.

Bram clenched his teeth and rose. “Put on your game face.”

Georgie told herself it didn’t mater. What was one more public performance after so many? Her crystal gown rustled as she stood.

Dirk elongated his vowels like a game-show host. “Dad. Come up and join them. Mr. Paul York, everybody! Bram, choose your best man.”

“He chooses me.” Trev shot up, and the guests laughed.

Georgie felt as though she were suffocating.

“Georgie, who’s your maid of honor going to be?”

She looked at Sasha, at Meg and April, and thought how lucky she was to have these wonderful women as her best friends. Then she cocked her head. “Laura.”

Laura’s face registered shock, and she nearly tipped over her chair as she got up.

They assembled at the bridal bower. Her father, Trev, Laura, and the reluctant bride and groom.

Dirk thoughtfully turned his back to the room so that Bram and Georgie were facing their guests, then he cupped his hand over the microphone. “Is everybody ready?”

She and Bram gazed at each other, and a moment of perfect, un-spoken communication passed between them. He lifted an eyebrow. She told him with her eyes exactly what she thought. He smiled, squeezed her hand, and pulled the microphone away from Dirk.

“A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walked into a bar…” Everyone laughed. Bram grinned and brought the mike closer. “Thank you all for your good wishes. Georgie and I appreciate them more than we can say.”

Off to the side, Poppy started chewing on her bottom lip. Bram’s speech wasn’t on her program, and she obviously didn’t like pesky clients interfering with her agenda.

Bram released Georgie’s hand and gestured toward the bower. “As you can probably tell, this ceremony is a surprise. But the truth is, while we both understand the allure of watching Skip and
Scooter get married, Georgie and I aren’t those characters, and this doesn’t feel right to either one of us.”

Georgie slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and smiled for the nice people.

He covered her fingers with his own. “I’m tempted to say some very sentimental things about Georgie right now. How warmhearted she is. Sweet and funny. How she’s my best friend. But I don’t want to embarrass her…”

“It’s okay.” She leaned into the microphone. “Embarrass me.”

He laughed, and so did the crowd. They exchanged another of their kisses followed by a long loving glance while Bram surreptitiously felt her up and she pinched him on the ass.

And then, out of nowhere, her knees started to shake. Really shake. Earthquake shake. But this earthquake was happening inside her.

She’d fallen in love with him.

All the blood rushed from her head. She absorbed the awful truth. Despite everything she knew, she had fallen in love with Bram Shepard, the self-absorbed, self-destructive bad boy who’d stolen her virginity, wrecked a television show, and nearly destroyed himself.

Bram glittered beneath the chandeliers, his burnished beauty and masculine elegance designed for the silver screen. She could barely breathe. Just as she was finally learning to be her own person, she’d sabotaged herself by falling in love with a man she couldn’t trust, a man she was paying to stay by her side. The breadth of the calamity made her dizzy.

He finished his speech, and they wheeled out the wedding cake, a multitiered wonder of icing lace and confectionary hydrangeas topped by a pair of Skip and Scooter dolls dressed in wedding finery. Bram fed her the first piece, getting only a dab of frosting on her lips, which he kissed away. She somehow managed to return the favor. The cake tasted like heartache.

Afterward, April drew her aside to change out of her magical crystal gown into the modified cameo-blue flapper dress they’d chosen for dancing. Georgie moved through the rest of the night in a flurry of perpetual motion, dancing and laughing, her hips moving, her hair stinging her cheeks.

She danced with Bram, who told her she looked beautiful and that he couldn’t wait to get her in bed. She danced with Trev and her girlfriends, with Jake Koranda, Aaron, and her father. She danced with her costars and Jack Patriot. She even danced with Dirk Duke. As long as her feet were moving, she didn’t have to think about how she would save herself.

Bram loomed over
her as they stood in his foyer a little after two in the morning. His black bow tie hung loose at his neck, his shirt collar open. “What the hell do you mean, you’re sleeping in the guesthouse?”

Georgie was still a little drunk, but not so drunk that she didn’t know exactly what she had to do. She wanted to cry…or scream, but there’d be plenty of time for both later. “I have to audition for you on Tuesday afternoon, remember? Sleeping with you three nights before gives me an unfair advantage over the other actresses.”

“That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Somehow she managed to conjure up the sass of the old Georgie, the Georgie who’d once again fallen so stupidly in love. “Sorry, Skipper. I believe in fair play. It’d be on my conscience.”

“Fuck your conscience.” He pushed her against the wall at the base of the stairs and started kissing her. Deep, invasive kisses with a stubborn edge. Her toes curled in her shoes. He shoved his hand under the hem of her little blue flapper dress and nipped at the upper slope of her breast as it curved above the bodice. “You make me crazy,” he murmured against her damp skin.

She was dizzy with champagne, desire, and despair. He slipped
his fingers inside panties so tiny and fragile they hardly counted as a garment.
Stop. Don’t stop.
The words bounced in her head as his kisses grew more insistent and his touch so intimate she couldn’t bear it.

“Enough,” he said, and he swept her up in his arms.

The theme music swelled. Strains of
Dr. Zhivago
and
Titanic, An Affair to Remember
and
Out of Africa
enfolded them as he carried her up the stairs in the most romantic gesture ever, except it was two in the morning, and he banged his elbow against the door as he crossed the threshold.

But it took him only a moment to recover. He set her on the edge of the bed, tugged at her clothes, and it was like the first time on the boat all over again. Her naked hips at the edge of the mattress. Her dress pushed up to her waist. His clothing scattered. And herself stupidly in love with a man who didn’t love her back.

It was like the first time…and it wasn’t. After the initial breathless assault, he slowed down—loving her with his touch, his mouth, his sex, with everything but his heart. And she let herself love him back. Just this one last time.

Something faintly inquisitive flickered in his eyes as he gazed into her own. He sensed a change in her but couldn’t figure out what it was. Their pleasure surged, the music rose to a crescendo in her head, and the camera pulled back. She closed her eyes and rode with him into oblivion.

As she lay
curled against his shoulder, her despair resurfaced. This self-destruction had to stop. “So when did you fall in love with me?” she said.

“The instant I set eyes on you,” he replied drowsily. “No, wait…That was me. The first time I looked in a mirror.”

“No, really.”

He yawned and kissed her forehead. “Go to sleep.”

She lumbered on. “I’ve been getting this feeling…”

“What feeling?”

He was wide-awake now and suspicious, but she needed to know for sure exactly where she stood. This was too important for them to suffer some kind of sitcom misunderstanding that could be set straight with a few words. “A feeling that you’re in love with me.”

He sat up, dumping her unceremoniously. “Of all the stupid—you know exactly how I feel about you.”

“Not really. You’re more sensitive than you pretend to be, and you hide a lot.”

“I’m not one bit sensitive.” He glared down at her. “You want to rub it in, don’t you? What I said at the party.”

She couldn’t remember what he’d said at the party, so she curled her lip at him. “Of course I want to rub it in. So say it again.”

He released an exasperated sigh and lay back in the pillows. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. Go ahead and laugh. Believe me, I never expected it to work out that way.”

His best friend…She swallowed. “I don’t know why. I’m a very likable person.”

“You’re a nut bar. In a million years I’d never have imagined you’d be the person I trusted most.”

And she didn’t trust him at all. Except about this. He was telling the truth about his feelings for her. “What about Chaz? She’d take a bullet for you.”

“Okay, you’re the second most trustworthy person I know.”

“That’s better.” She told herself to let it go, but she had to try. One more time. “It could really screw us up”—she sighed, as if this were all too tedious—“if you turned into an idiot and decided to fall in love—”

“Jesus, Georgie, will you give it a rest? Nobody’s in love with anybody.”

“If you’re sure…?”

“I’m sure.”

“That’s a relief. Now stop talking so I can go to sleep.”

Her leg cramped, but she didn’t dare move until she heard the deep, even sound of his breathing. Only then did she ease out of bed. She slipped into the first thing she touched, his abandoned tuxedo shirt, and crept downstairs. Her father had gone back to his condo, leaving the guesthouse empty once again. She padded along the cold stone path, tears trickling down her cheeks. If she kept making love with him, she’d have to pretend it was only sex. She’d have to perform for him, just as she performed for the cameras.