Choices

by Tessa Vidal

  “Group hug,” I said.

  Caro and I dropped for a moment to embrace fluffy Dickens between the two of us. “It's all right now,” Caro said. “She's not going anywhere.” Then, remembering, she sent a tiny hand signal to let him know he didn't have to tangle up my feet anymore.

  Another signal, and Dickens was leading the way, his curly tail a flag to guide us across the doggy playground and through the hedges into the pool area. Caro and I lagged behind, our hips brushing lightly together with every step forward. Somebody spent a lot of time training this dog, so it was only a matter of teaching him the signals specific to him and Caro. What really amazed me is how fast she'd learned all the tiny signals― fast enough to already use one of them to trip me up.

  “That was a pretty cute trick,” I said. “Most people mix up the signals for several weeks.”

  “I'm not an actor who mixes up her cues.”

  The pool was in the sun this time of day. I didn't need to remind Caro about the heat. She was already letting Dickens back into the house.

  Then it was the two of us by the pool, nobody else. We stood a little apart to look at each other. There was a faint gloss on her skin, the glow from working outside. Her smooth blonde hair, tucked into a neat bun at the start of the session, was beginning to tumble down. And yet she still looked perfect in that polished way only movie stars are perfect.

  “Caro,” I said. “Don't try to distract me. We really do have to be more professional.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Because you think you have to protect me? Or you think you have to protect this illusion I've created?”

  “You shouldn't have to lose what you've worked for because of somebody else.”

  She walked over to the deep end of the pool, then toed off her shoes. Hell's bells, she knew exactly what it did to me when she dipped one long gold-tipped toe in the water.

  “No, really, Caro,” I said. “You need to think about the consequences of being linked to me and Ryder. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm going to give you the name of a different behaviorist. He's very well regarded, and...”

  “No.” She kicked into the blue water, sending off a little plume of clear droplets. “You're not going to give me the name of a different behaviorist. We could do all that, shut each other out again for another eleven years, and it wouldn't do a damn bit of good anyway. The truth about me is going to get out. The truth always gets out in the end, doesn't it?”

  “I'm sorry, Caro.” I went over, touching her at shoulder and hip to move her away from the pool. She turned in my arms, and we were kissing again. Wet lips, warm lips. Soft as satin.

  “Well, maybe I'm not sorry.” Her voice was throaty, even actress-y, but the blown pupils in her eyes told me she wasn't acting. “I'm not giving this up just when we found each other. And, anyway, I doubt it would do any good.” Her breath caught in her throat a minute. “Somebody already found out who I am, where I came from. He reached out to me a few minutes before you arrived for our lesson.”

  “Shit,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for. You didn't do it. And I don't want you blaming yourself for something else you didn't do.” She thumbed gently at the corner of my mouth, but there was no gentle way to say it. “He asked for money.”

  Blackmail, whisper campaigns, lies and threats, gossip and lawsuits... It was all part and parcel of the world of Hollywood celebrity. The dark side of fame. “What? Who? How much?”

  “Doesn't really matter how much.” She sketched out her conversation with Devos Grimes, private eye and part-time blackmailer. “I'm not paying him. I'm playing him. I want to buy time until I figure out how to handle it, but the secret's coming out one way or another. Either on my terms or his.”

  I sat down hard on the nearest lounge chair.

  “So, you see, there's no point in giving each other up. We're going to be linked anyway. The world will soon know we were brought up in the same trailer park in Robinsonville.”

  Turning to the line of inflatables hanging from the wooden fence, she picked one the cheerful color of a flamingo and tossed it on the tile next to the lounge chair. A moment later, there she sat, as cute as Dickens himself would have been fluffed at my feet.

  “He could lose his license if you filed a complaint,” I said. “You hired him to do a job, and using your own money and permissions to snoop around for blackmail material isn't exactly great ethics.”

  “He figures I won't file a complaint. That blows up my secret immediately.”

  I couldn't resist the urge to tousle her hair. The bun fell apart, and a sweep of blonde tumbled past her shoulders. “I wonder how many other celebrities he's blackmailing? Because that's hardly the deepest, darkest, dirtiest secret in Hollywood.”

  “Yeah, he has some experience playing people out. Letting them think about what's going to happen. He's going to give me a few days, then come back asking for money again.”

  “Caro...” I brushed my fingers against the sweet hollow of her collarbone. She needed to be crystal clear about what she was choosing. “If you don't pay him, and he sells your story to some gossip reporter, your image changes.”

  “My image is going to change anyway. My only choice is who changes it. Me or him.”

  The next time we kissed, I tumbled out of the lounge chair and on top of Caro sprawled on her inflatable. Our bodies rocked together. Our lips melted together, danced apart, melted together again.

  “I figure we have a week, maybe more,” Caro said. “Plenty of time for my people to craft some announcement.”

  “But only if we pretend to be afraid of being found out.”

  Caro nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  If we were open about our new relationship, if we made it clear we were girlfriends who didn't give a fuck who knew it, he'd know she was resigned to the fact her history was going to come out. Then it would be a race to see if he could sell his story to some gossip reporter while it was still a secret that held some value.

  You didn't have to be a social media guru to figure out the story of Caro's past would fly better with her public if it came from her instead of the entertainment press.

  “So a secret romance,” she said. “It will be like one of my movies. In public, we're strictly professional. Client and dog behaviorist. Nothing more. But in private...” Her hand was already sliding under my jeans. “In private, it's something completely else.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Caro

  Silk scarves are one way to make somebody be in the now. They aren't the only way. Shell's attention pinned me as surely as the silken bonds had pinned her long limbs the night before. Did she know how her face lit up when I kicked away a shoe or shrugged off my shirt? It was intoxicating, the soft pink of her tongue licking fast at the corner of her damp mouth.

  I slithered out of her embrace and off the pink inflatable. Standing, I let my hips sway easily from side to side as I shimmied out of my jeans.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, laughing.

  “You can see what I'm doing.”

  She looked up at the sky as if expecting a drone to fly over the house to start snapping illegal nudes of Caro Ballad. It wasn't an unknown problem this time of century, but LAPD was aware of the issue, and nobody had ever succeeded in getting a camera over my fourteen-foot security fence.

  I scoot/danced off my French lace flimsies and twirled on my polished toes like a ballerina. Naked under the sky, soon to be free of all my secrets, I felt a sense of abandon I'd never felt before. My hand slipped down the front of her jeans again. I rubbed at the curly warmth I found inside. Shell shuddered in pleasure. Turning this way and that, she let me help her out of her shirt, her pants, her everything. As her jeans slid off her big toe, she twisted into a graceful, easy dive.

  I dived in right behind her. The water was warmish but not so warm it made us lazy. We chased each other up and down the length of the pool a few times. I got ahead of her and then she caught me aro
und the waist, pulling me back down and under until only my head was out of the water and the rest of me was squirming beneath her. Then we were sinking down together, but it was the shallow end, and we landed on our feet, twisting again to kiss and lick each other's faces. And then lower.

  Maybe it was a little cool after all, when we were half in, half out of the water like that. Her nipples were rock-hard. When I fluttered the flat of my tongue across her nips, I could feel all the tiny goose pimples that surrounded the peak. She licked me back, her lips closing tight to suck my right nipple out as long as she could pull it. A shiver of anticipation ran up and down my spine.

  “Where's that inflatable?” she asked.

  No. She didn't ask. She demanded. And, even before I could reply, she'd snaked a long arm out of the pool to snatch it into the water.

  “Show me what that's for,” she said.

  “Yes, ma'am.” Pushing the floatie into deeper water, I climbed aboard and wriggled around to arrange myself. If I sprawled in a lazy spread-eagle, my naked body was lifted up and a little out of reach unless Shell climbed onto the inflatable too. Would it hold both of us? I doubted it, but I had a better idea. Scooting my butt down, I let my open legs hang in the water. My pussy was lifted on the puffed rim of the floatie, a bold offering to the sky, a bolder invitation to Shell. Just like that, I was on my back, floating and a little lazy, my legs open to invite her to dog-paddle up close between my knees.

  My pussy was open and lifted, the petals raised out of the water by the inflatable, but my flesh probably still tasted ever-so-slightly of chlorine.

  “Ah.” Her hot breath tickled the insides of my thighs. “So fresh. So smooth.”

  I scooted my thighs closer together, the better to grab her face. She splashed a little and adjusted her position, and my legs clutched at her shoulders instead. Her patient, teasing tongue was in control of the whole scene. “This is for you,” she said. “Relax. Float. It's all a dream. You don't have to do anything, you can't do anything. Everything will be done for you...”

  It was the mirror image of the bondage scene. A pink floatie shouldn't be a restraint device, but it would be hard to lift myself out of it, especially when I was feeling so relaxed and lazy. “Yes,” I said. “I'm floating.”

  “Mmmm.” She chose to do almost everything with the flick of a tongue and only the first inch or so of a probing finger. Revenge. I'd edged her the night before, and now she was edging me back. “Soon. Soon. Not so fast. But soon.” All those “soons” were ticklish against my personal flesh.

  Her fingers slid out of me. Her tongue slid inside. Her entire right hand pressed itself against my mound, the better to distribute the pressure going to my clit. My heels kicked more frantically as I drew closer and closer to the finish line. The arcs of water spanked Shell's bare back and shoulders, encouraging her to lick deeper and more strategically.

  And still she teased.

  I arched my spine and re-positioned my butt where it rested on the floatie. My head rolled back, and I had a blurred vision of the blue sky. The build-up to orgasm reached that point where desperation becomes impossible to distinguish from ecstasy. All the drones in California could have buzzed overhead at that instant, and I wouldn't have been able to stop the open-legged jerks of my convulsive climax. So beyond good. And what made it even better was knowing soon I'd be doing the same thing back to Shell.

  THE HOUSE SMELLED GOOD when we walked inside. The housekeeper had left a lasagna in the oven. A good bottle of Chianti was breathing on the counter. I poured, and Shell and I clinked glasses.

  “Only one,” she said. “I can't stay the night.”

  I put down my own glass untasted. Of course. A secret romance wasn't much of a secret if Shell Tate could be observed regularly slipping out of my house in the wee hours of the morning.

  We were both wearing fluffy robes. Dickens snuffled from where he slept in his doggy bed near the front door. It was a safe moment. A quiet moment. A glass of wine, balsamic salad, a slice of vegetarian lasagna. Some people's whole lives were like this.

  Not ours.

  “Do you ever wonder who we would be if we really were born rich?” I asked.

  Shell's knee touched my knee under the table, a gesture of understanding in sharp contrast to the unreadable expression that flickered across her face. “No, Caro. I can't say I ever did. It seemed impossible to me. Like winning Megabucks or something. Everybody always says they're going to win, but nobody ever does. Not anybody we know.”

  “I thought about it all the time.” Still did, really. Did that make me shallow? It seemed to me that money changed everything. If we were rich, Ryder would never need to rob the casino. If we were rich, Shell and Ryder's mom might still be alive. Hell, even my mom might still be alive. The doctor said it was sudden, that nobody could have known, but maybe somebody would have known if she was from the kind of family where you got regular checkups.

  “There's no use thinking about things like that. Although...” She put down her fork, her food forgotten. “I did sometimes wonder about you. There was something special about you. I used to think maybe in another life you were a princess. Or I thought maybe the babies got switched at the hospital. But I never thought I was special or I was switched or I might be a princess. Only you, Caroline. Only you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Shell

  The remaining days of my visit to Los Angeles unwound all too quickly. Caro and I met each afternoon, sometimes at her home, sometimes at more public locations.

  Caro found it easy to play a part in public. Of course she did. Her entire public life was about playing a part. The graceful, long-fingered aristocrat guiding an expensive dog on a leash, her high-priced celebrity dog behaviorist at her side...

  Phones and cameras flashed. Caro smiled prim, above-it-all smiles. Her eyes were invisible behind the sunglasses. Dickens's eyes, deep set in ginger fluff, were all but invisible too.

  Even before I got to him, somebody had already trained him not to eat without permission. Some dogs struggle to break the habit of eating dropped food they find on the ground or in the street, but snobby Dickens didn't even deign to recognize such items. If a stranger offered him a treat from their fingers, he might snuffle at it, but he wouldn't accept until Caro gave him the hidden signal. Could he have once been another celebrity's pet? He certainly understood how to play the game.

  I seemed to be the only one who felt fake and staged. As if I wasn't Shell Tate, up-and-coming lesbian dog whisperer but instead some struggling actor playing the part of Shell Tate.

  Real blood pumped in my veins, real desire thrummed through my body. Yet I couldn't betray my feelings for Caro in public. I too began to wear dark glasses.

  Heather Heath's publicity plan involved a complicated series of slow feeds to various gossip outlets. A hint here, a denial there. Back and forth. I should have studied poker or chess instead of blackjack. The strategy hurt my head.

  “We've got to make a better show of it,” she said. “You two have got to be seen with other people.”

  “I don't want to be seen with other people,” I said.

  “Me neither.” But Caro was looking not at me, but at Heather.

  Who sighed heavily. “Ladies, this is theater― the theater of the real world, the toughest theater there is. We have to set the scene. Create a mood. Slowly ease people into the new reality.”

  “It's enough to be professional in public, surely,” I said. “Where's the new reality in faking hookups with other people?”

  Heather shot Caro a meaningful look, although what it meant I couldn't have told you. “I don't want to insult your intelligence, Shell, honey, but let me explain it to you like you're five. It's this simple, girlfriend. The public has to be slowly brought around to the idea that Miss Ice Queen was lying like a dog on a rug about her family background. She was pretending to be something she wasn't for years and years. Now she's got to come forward with the facts, and yet she's got to make them li
ke her for it. She's got to make them...” She waved an impatient hand. “Feel all understanding. Like they would've done the exact same thing.”

  She was, I realized, not exactly thrilled that all this time Caro had lied not only to the public, but also to the self-appointed greatest publicist in Hollywood, the legendary Heather Heath.

  “It's the price of dating famous, hon,” she said. “We need a story that keeps Caro's public happy.”

  “I need more of an explanation than dating famous,” I said. “How does us being seen with other people keep the public happy?”

  She sighed again. “It buys us time to tease the big reveal.”

  I hadn't even signed the deal yet, and my life had somehow already become reality TV. Still, much as I hated losing even a single one of my Los Angeles days to feeding the gossip machine, I couldn't do anything to hurt Caro's career. Especially since her agent was already in negotiations for a big new movie.

  “I have a list of clubs where you might want to be seen. This is good for your career, too.”

  My phone vibrated― a text containing the list of clubs in question.

  “It won't be much longer,” Caro said. “And I have to do it too.”

  “Caro has never been papped at a club,” Heather said. “I'm going to tip off a couple of big names.”

  “Is this about keeping Caro's public happy?” I asked. “Or is it about keeping the gutter press photographers happy?”

  “I've probably refused one too many interviews.” Caro adjusted her dark glasses. “Now I need to get the tabloids on my side.”

  “They'll love photos of the Ice Princess letting her hair down and doing something crazy,” Heather said. “I'm thinking maybe some karaoke videos for Instagram.”

  Was karaoke really all that crazy? It was the strategy itself that was starting to sound crazy to me. Had all this delay and secrecy really started as my own idea? What the hell had I been thinking?