and kissed them gently. He could play fricking Prince Charming every bit as well as Lance the Loser.
But he had to work hard at being cynical. Tonight might be nothing more than another Hollywood fairy tale, but the illusion felt real.
Georgie wanted it to be real. This night. The magical sparkling dress. Her friends around her, and the soft expression on her father’s face. Only the man standing at her side was wrong. But he didn’t feel as wrong as he should. They mingled with their guests, who were dressed in everything from jeans and tennis skirts to dinner jackets and schoolgirl outfits. Trev and Sasha had volunteered to give the toasts, but after everyone was seated, Paul rose unexpectedly and raised his glass. “Tonight we celebrate the commitment these two amazing people have made to each other.” He gazed at Georgie. “One of these people…I love very much.” His voice broke, and Georgie’s eyes filled with tears. Paul cleared his throat. “The other is…growing on me.”
Everyone laughed, including Bram. The past week with her father had been strange and wonderful. Knowing how much he loved her-how much he’d loved her mother-meant everything. But as Paul began expressing hope for the bride and groom’s future, Georgie worked to keep a smile on her face. Telling her father the truth instead of trying to hide her mistakes for fear of disappointing him was the next step in her journey of becoming her own woman.
Paul had waited until this morning to tell her he’d invited her ex-agent as his date. She was glad he’d thought of it, no matter how awkward greeting Laura had been. “It’s a nice thing to do for her,” he’d said. “This way everyone can see that you still consider her part of your inner circle.”
Georgie had tried to make a joke out of it. “It’s also the perfect way to start letting people know you’re returning to acting, and that Laura is representing you.”
His face had fallen. “Georgie, that’s not why-”
“I know it’s not,” she’d said quickly. “I didn’t mean it that way.” They were navigating a new relationship, with both of them trying to find their footing. She’d poked him in the ribs to make him laugh.
The other toasts followed-Trev’s irreverent, Sasha’s warm, both of them funny. As the meal began, she and Bram were subjected to frequent interruptions from guests tapping their water goblets. Their public kisses no longer felt so phony. She’d never known a man who enjoyed kissing as much as Bram Shepard…or one who did it so well. She’d never known a man she enjoyed kissing more.
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.
