Georgie couldn’t find her moorings. She lay on a teak chaise as the late-afternoon sun slanted over the white stone patio. It was Tuesday afternoon, exactly sixteen days since she’d arrived in Mexico. She would force herself to go back to L.A. before the end of the week instead of staying here forever as she wanted to. Stay here until she figured out what new form her life should take. Unless she was in front of the computer she’d bought a few days ago, she couldn’t concentrate on anything. She hurt too much.
A pair of geckos scurried into the shade. Boats bobbed in the distance, their windshields flashing like strobes in the sun. It was too hot for her to lie out any longer, but she didn’t move. Last night she’d dreamed she was a bride. She’d stood by a window in her gown, wisps of white ribbon in her hair, and watched Bram approach through a gossamer lace curtain.
The gate creaked on its hinges. She looked up, and there he was, sauntering onto her patio as if she’d conjured him, but the romantic bridegroom of her dream now wore gunmetal gray aviators and a surly expression. She hated the way her stomach dipped. He was lean, tall, and healthy, the years of dissipation long behind him. Her self- absorbed, self-destructive bad boy had stopped being a bad boy years ago, only no one had noticed. The constriction in her throat made words impossible.
Through the lenses of his sunglasses, he took her in from her sweat-damp hair to her purple bikini bottom and then to her bare breasts. The patio was private and she hadn’t expected a visitor, especially this visitor, so here she was, topless when she least wanted to be.
“Enjoying your vacation?” The soft rumble of his voice drifted over her skin like the leading edge of a storm.
She was an actress, the cameras had started to roll, and she found her voice. “Look around. What’s not to love?”
He wandered toward her. “You should have talked to me before you ran out.”
“We don’t have that kind of marriage.” Her arm felt rubbery as she reached for her yellow-and-purple-striped cover-up.
He snatched it from her hand and flicked it across the patio, where it landed on a small table. “Don’t bother getting dressed.”
“Smooth.” She walked over to fetch it, counting slowly under her breath so she didn’t rush, letting her hips sway in the tiny purple bikini bottom-maybe in a last-ditch effort to make him fall in love with her? But he wouldn’t. Bram didn’t fall in love, not because he was as self-centered as he believed, but because he didn’t know how.
She slipped on the cover-up and shook out her hair. “This is a wasted trip. I’m going back to L.A. soon.”
“So I hear from Trev.” His fingers curled into fists at his sides. “I talked to him in Australia a couple of days ago, but I got the full story from the tabs. According to
“My once-retiring P.A. has turned into quite the media mouthpiece.”
“At least somebody’s watching out for you. What’s going on, Georgie?”
She tried to pull it together. “I’m moving into Trevor’s house. You’re not. It’s a good solution.”
“A solution to
He was so cold, so angry. “Our future,” she said. “The next phase. Don’t you think it’s time we get on with our lives? Everybody knows you’re working, so it won’t seem strange for me to spend the summer in Malibu. Aaron can keep planting his stories if that’s what you want. You can even show up for a couple of very public beach walks. It’ll be fine.” It wouldn’t be fine at all. Any contact she had with him from now on would only prolong the agony.
“This isn’t how we decided we’d handle it.” He jammed the stems of his sunglasses into the neck of his T-shirt. “We have an agreement. One year. I’m holding you to it, every second.”
He’d insisted on six months, not a year, but she let that go. “You’re not paying attention.” Somehow she pulled off Scooter’s innocent act. “You’re working. I’m at the beach. A couple of public appearances. No one will suspect a thing.”
“You need to be at the house. My house. And I seem to have missed your explanation about why you’re not there.”
“Because it’s long past time I started setting a new course for my life. The beach will be a great place for me to take my first steps.”
The shadows of an African tulip tree cut across his face as he moved closer. “Your present life course is just fine.”
She played the mildly exasperated female even as her heart broke. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. You men are all alike.” She picked up her towel and clutched it to her chest like a child’s lovey. “I’m going to take a shower while you cool down.”
But just as she turned to walk back into the house, he stopped her cold.
“I saw your audition tape.”
Bram watched Georgie’s expression change from confusion to puzzled understanding. He wanted to hold her, shake her, make her tell him the truth.
Her fingers grew slack on the towel. “Are you talking about the tape Chaz recorded for me?”
“It was great,” he said slowly. “You were great.”
She stared at him with her big green eyes.
“You nailed it, just like you promised,” he said. “People underestimate me as an actor. It never occurred to me that I was doing the same to you. We’ve all done it.”
“I know.”
Her straightforward response unnerved him.
Last night he’d sat in his darkened bedroom and watched it. As he hit the play button, the blank wall in Georgie’s office had come into focus, and he heard Chaz’s voice off camera. “I’ve got things to do. I don’t have time for this crap.”
Georgie stepping into the frame. Her hair was severely parted, and she wore a minimum of makeup: light foundation, no mascara, the barest hint of eyebrow pencil, and a shockingly deep scarlet mouth that couldn’t have been more wrong for Helene. The camera caught her from the waist up: an austere black suit jacket, a white shell, and a set of intricately twisted black beads.
“I mean it,” Chaz said. “I need to start dinner.”
Georgie pierced Chaz’s bluster with Helene’s icy imperiousness instead of her normal friendly puppy-dog manner. “You’ll do as I say.”
Chaz muttered something the mike didn’t catch and stayed where she was. Georgie’s breasts rose ever so slightly under the suit jacket, and then a smile-a fucking ice-pick smile-curled over the bottom of her face and made that scarlet mouth seem absolutely right.
You think you can embarrass me, Danny? I don’t embarrass. Embarrassment is for losers. And a loser is what you are, not me. You’re a zero. A nothing. We all knew it, even when you were a kid.
Her voice was low, deathly quiet, and completely composed. Unlike the other actresses they’d auditioned, she didn’t emote. No teeth gnawing or scenery rattling. Everything underplayed.
You don’t have a friend left in this town, but you still think you’ve gotten the best of me…
The words poured out of her, cold fury prowling behind her bloodred smile, perfectly capturing Helene’s selfishness, her guile, her intelligence, and her utter conviction that she deserved whatever she could grab. He sat spellbound until finally, with that smile frozen like black ice on her lips, she came to the end.
Remember how you used to make fun of me when we were in school? How hard you laughed? Well, who’s laughing now, funny man? Who’s laughing now?
The camera stayed on her, but she didn’t move. She simply waited, every cell of her body discharging quiet rage, intractable pride, and dogged determination. The camera wobbled, and he heard Chaz’s voice. “Holy shit, Georgie, that was-”
The picture went dark.
He looked at Georgie now, standing across from him on the whitewashed patio, her hair caught up in a sweaty, unkempt knot, her face scrubbed free of makeup, a beach towel dangling at her side, and for a moment he thought he saw Helene’s calculating eyes looking back at him-resolute, cynical, astute. He’d fix that. “I woke Hank up this morning and made him look at the tape before he even had coffee.”
