Chapter 11
Georgie called out softly…ever so softly…and in her friendliest, most soothing voice. “Uhm…Rory? Please don’t shoot.”
Rory spun toward the wall, her blond hair flying. “Who is that?”
“It’s Georgie. York. And that man you just saw running across your yard was Bram. My…uh…husband. You probably shouldn’t shoot him either.”
“Georgie?”
Her toes were going numb inside her Crocs, and she was starting to slip. “A photographer climbed your tree to take pictures of us. Bram went after him.” She tried to cling tighter to the top of the wall, but her arms were getting tired. “I’m…losing my grip. I have to get down.”
“I think there’s a gate at the end of the wall.”
Georgie made it to the ground, but not before she’d scraped her other shin.
“It’s here somewhere,” Rory called from the other side as Georgie picked her way along the stones. “The studio owns the house, and I haven’t lived here long, so I haven’t really looked for it.”
Georgie located the wooden gate, partially hidden behind some shrubs. “I found it, but it’s stuck.”
“I’ll push from my side.”
The gate dragged but eventually gave way enough for Georgie to slip through. Rory stood on the other side with the gun resting in the folds of her nightgown. Despite her long, sleep-rumpled blond hair, she looked cool and calm, as if confronting nighttime intruders was all in a day’s work. “What’s going on?”
Georgie looked around for Bram, but he was nowhere in sight. “I’m really sorry about this. Bram and I were out on our balcony when a flash went off. A photographer was hiding in that big tree of yours. Bram went after him. It happened so fast.”
“A photographer sneaked on my property to watch your house?”
“It looks that way.”
“Do you want me to call the police?”
If Georgie were an ordinary citizen, that’s exactly what she’d do, but she wasn’t, and the police weren’t an option. Rory arrived at the same conclusion. “Stupid question.”
“I need to…I’d better make sure Bram hasn’t killed anybody.” She took off in the direction he’d disappeared. Just as she reached the pool, she spotted him coming around the side of the house. Other than a slight limp and a murderous expression, he seemed unharmed. “The son of a bitch got away from me.”
“You could have killed yourself jumping off the roof like that.”
“I don’t care. That cockroach stepped way over the line.”
Just then he spotted Rory coming toward him, the gun dangling at her side like a Prada purse. Georgie couldn’t help but envy her. A woman as coolheaded as Rory Keene would never wake up in a Las Vegas hotel room married to her oldest enemy. But then a woman like Rory Keene controlled her life, not the other way around.
Bram froze. Rory ignored him. “I’ll call my security company first thing tomorrow, Georgie. Obviously, the lights aren’t enough to discourage unwelcome visitors.”
Bram stared at the handgun. “Is that thing loaded?”
“Of course.”
Georgie bit back a wisecrack about the dangers of being armed and blond. Even in jest, it didn’t seem smart to crack a joke at the expense of such a powerful woman, especially one they’d awakened at three in the morning.
“It looks like a Glock,” Bram said.
“A thirty-one.”
His interest in the gun gave Georgie a chill, and she quickly intervened. “You can’t have one. You’re way too hotheaded to be armed.”
Bram chucked her under the chin in a way that made her itch to slap him. He gave her a quick, businesslike kiss that couldn’t have been more different from the intimate one they’d exchanged a few minutes earlier. “I can’t get used to the way you worry about me, sweetheart,” he said. “How did you get over here?”
“There’s a gate.”
Bram nodded. “I’d almost forgotten. Apparently the original families were good friends.”
Georgie wondered why Rory was in a house leased by the studio instead of in a place of her own. “Bram forgot to mention that you lived next door.” She slipped her hand behind his back, an affectionate gesture except for the sharp pinch she gave him to retaliate for the way he’d chin-chucked her.
He winced. “Sure I mentioned it, sweetheart. I guess there’s been so much going on that it slipped your mind. Besides, this isn’t exactly a get-to-know-your-neighbors kind of neighborhood.”
It was true. Pricey estates separated by high walls and locked gates didn’t make for a block party atmosphere. In the Brentwood neighborhood where she and Lance had lived, they’d never met the nineties pop star in the house next door.
Georgie’s gaze wandered to Rory’s Glock. “We’d better let you go back to bed.”
Rory slipped her nightgown strap up on her shoulder. “I doubt if any of us will get much sleep after this.”
“Good point,” Bram said. “Why don’t you come over to the house? I’ll put on a pot of coffee and heat up some of my housekeeper’s cinnamon rolls. You’ll be our first official company.”
Georgie stared at him. It was the middle of the night. Had he lost his mind?
“Another time. I need to catch up on some reading.” Rory gave him her coolest look, then shocked Georgie by offering a quick hug. “I’ll call you as soon as I talk to the security company.” She turned back to Bram. “Be good to her. And, Georgie, if you need any help, let me know.”
Bram’s fake good humor slipped. “If she needs any help, I’ll take care of it.”
“I’m sure you will,” Rory replied in a manner that suggested she wasn’t sure at all. She walked away, the folds of her nightgown concealing her gun.
Bram waited until they were on their own side of the wall before he spoke. “If the tabs run any of those shots, we’re going after them.”
“They probably won’t,” she said. “Not here. But there’s a big market in Europe, and then they’ll hit the Web. We won’t be able to do anything about it.”
“We’re suing.”
“Our marriage will be long over before a lawsuit reaches the courts.”
“What do you suggest? We just forget the whole thing? This doesn’t bother you?”
The truth was that she’d gotten numb. “I hate it,” she said.
They walked silently across the yard. She shouldn’t be so upset. The photos of the two of them would lend legitimacy to her sham marriage. But she felt almost as violated as the day the paps had caught her looking at the sonogram. “I’m going to bed,” she said, when they reached the house. “Alone.”
“Your loss.”
She was heading up the steps when an interesting piece of the puzzle that made up Bram Shepard fell into place. “Rory has something to do with your reunion show project, doesn’t she? That’s why you were sucking up to her at The Ivy two weeks ago. And that embarrassing invitation to heat up cinnamon rolls…”
“Babe, I suck up to anybody who might be able to get me a decent acting job.”
“That’s pathetic. But I’ll admit it’s enormously gratifying to watch you grovel.”
“Whatever it takes to get ahead,” he said lightly.
Sleep was beyond him, so Bram went to the pool. Life had become way too complicated, he thought as he stripped and dove in. He’d hoped this idiotic marriage would make things run smoother for him, but he hadn’t factored in how protective Rory was of Georgie.
He flipped to his back and let himself drift. Every time he tried to dig his way out of the tunnel he’d fallen into, another cave-in threatened to bury him. Georgie thought it was all about money. She didn’t know that he needed respectability more. And he didn’t want her to know. He intended to make sure Georgie continued to see him as the bastard he’d always been. His life was his own, and he wasn’t letting her into any part of it that mattered.
