by Maggie Marr
“Fine,” I said to my furry bed partner. “Take the bed. I don’t have anything else, why should I have a good night’s sleep?” I walked toward the bathroom and flipped on the light. “Is my step-monster paying you? How much kibble?” I called. “Once I get a job, I’ll double it.”
Bernie didn’t seem amused. Actually, he seemed tired. And comfortable. And why not? He was sacked out on a warm bed with giant blankets and pillows. I’d be comfortable too if I were him. I swept my hair up and grabbed a thick cotton robe from the back of the bathroom door. If sleep was over for me, then coffee needed to be in my immediate future. I flipped off the lights, shot my bedmate a nasty look, and went in search of caffeine.
*
I understood the concept of making coffee. I understood that making coffee was a basic skill that most people learned early in life. I also understood, as I stood in front of the coffee maker, that this was a skill I’d never mastered.
How had I failed to learn how to make coffee?
Because I was a pampered pet. More spoiled than the giant dog in my bed. When I lived at home someone else always made the coffee—a cook, a housekeeper, anyone but me. While in college I simply went out and grabbed a cup of joe. When I roomed with Sterling, he too had a housekeeper who would arrive just before I’d leave to go to my Pilates class. Now there was no housekeeper, at least not now at five-fifteen a.m., and there was no Pilates and, seriously as pathetic as it sounded, not even a buck ninety-five for a cup of coffee.
The black and chrome coffee machine on the counter looked pretty fancy. Fancier than it needed to be. Why couldn’t I George Jetson this thing and simply press a button and have my warm cup of coffee appear? Peering into the top I realized I’d seen this machine before. All I needed was coffee and water. Surely even I could find coffee and water.
The water was easy. But the coffee? I pulled open the cupboards on the hunt for beans, grounds, anything that might provide me with the life force known as caffeine. Why couldn’t I just go buy a cup of coffee? An image from ninth grade of a pudgy and pimple-faced Kiley, with mousy brown hair and a mouth full of dental work flashed in my mind. How things had changed.
In the kitchen pantry rows of pasta, and cereal, and beans lined the cabinets. I tilted my head back. There, on the very top shelf was a tin of coffee. No way was I getting that tin without the serious help of a step stool or a ladder. Their housekeeper, Mathilde, really needed to up her game. We’d had help my entire life, and even I knew you had to stock the kitchen so that the pathetic people that paid the help could find the very basics when they needed them.
I walked out of the pantry and spied a barstool by the counter.
Safe? No.
Did I care? No.
At this point I wanted caffeine so badly I’d pay the price of a broken limb. I dragged the chair across the kitchen floor on the march to my death mission. I settled one knee onto the seat cushion and my lower body turned from under me. Great. The chair swiveled. I could do this. I could seriously do this. I had balance, I had core strength (thank you former Pilates class). I settled my foot onto the chair and made certain I didn’t stand on the edge of my robe. Slowly I wobbled my way to a fully upright position. Now I was nearly as tall as the top cabinet. A smile crept across my face. I wasn’t completely incompetent. I could get things done. Everything would be fine. My hand trembled toward the tin of coffee while my other waved outward in space for balance.
Then I heard the clickety-clack of damned doggie nails on the tile floor.
Ryan
I unsnapped Scorsese and Spielberg’s leashes before I opened the kitchen door. They bounded in, each with a bark. A light shone from the pantry. Mathilde got here this early? It wasn’t even six a.m. I followed Scorsese and Spielberg as they bounded across the kitchen floor toward the pantry. I rounded the corner and looked up.
My eyes trailed up over her legs and a jolt hammered into my heart. A lick of heat pulsed in my belly until I saw the look of terror on her face. She held onto the top shelf of the pantry cabinet. Scorsese jumped up and put his paws on the barstool.
“Get down!” she yelled.
Spielberg barked and jumped up and placed his paws on the other side of the chair. The seat swiveled and her legs twisted from under her. Fear flashed through her eyes. I stepped forward. Amanda Legend landed in my arms.
Her mane of black hair dusted across my face. She smelled like lavender and mint. Her eyes were scrunched closed as though she was braced for impact with the floor. My eyes traced the outline of her nose and danced down the vee of her robe, to her bare legs. Bare legs that were pressed against my arms. My gaze stopped at her bare beautiful skin. The urge to lean forward and kiss her thigh pulsed through me. To press my lips to the spot near the edge of her pajama shorts. Heat licked upward through my body. A jolt of want pulled at me. Not just the heat of desire—something deeper—something different.
I settled her feet on the ground. She pressed her hands along her robe checking that she was still in one solid piece. She opened her eyes. “Oh my God, thank you.” She shook her head. “I am such an id—” She looked up and her eyes finally met mine.
The smile slid from her face. Her gaze hardened. Her lips pulled into a thin line.
“You?”
I took a step backward. She looked as if she might slug me.
“What are you doing here?”
“Well, I’m … I guess I’m living here. For a while.”
“Seriously? How could I not know this? How could Lane fail to tell me this?”
She wasn’t talking to me as much as spitting out the words. She turned her gaze to me and squinted. Those deep sapphire blue eyes pinned me. “I thought you were in rehab,” she said.
I scrubbed my hand over my jaw. “I was,” I said. “I got out yesterday.”
The space in the pantry was tight. We stood close to each other. The heat of her breath whispered over me. The tiny muscles under the porcelain-colored skin of her face flinched. For the slightest second an emotion—was it irritation?—passed through her eyes, and then in the flicker of a second, the irritation was gone and replaced by a smooth smile.
“Congratulations,” Amanda said. Her tone was even. Her face bore no more emotion than her smile, but her eyes remained hard. “Excuse me.”
She scooted past me and out the pantry door. With her went the heat, the electricity that had circled me and caused desire to shift and harden in my belly.
She walked toward the coffeemaker on the counter. She opened the tin of coffee that she’d nearly broken both legs to get. Her shoulders slumped. “All that and no coffee,” she mumbled.
I walked up beside her. My body was close to hers. Very close. Again I smelled the scents of mint and lavender. I opened the cabinet above the coffeemaker and pulled out a green jar that already had ground coffee and a filter ready for this morning.
“Here you go,” I said.
Amanda surveyed me and again the irritation laced her eyes. I put the coffee filter and coffee in the coffeemaker and pressed the button. She watched me closely. She stood there when I was finished, still staring at the machine.
“It’ll take a little while,” I said.
Had Amanda Legend perhaps never made coffee before? She pressed a palm to the counter and settled her hip against the edge. The last time I had seen Amanda was at her father’s wedding. The night of my accident. The end of life as I knew it and the opportunity for the start of a different life, instead.
I’d never connected with Amanda. She was beautiful, but she was also cold and aloof. We traveled in similar circles with Sterling and Dillon and Webber, but whereas I couldn’t stand to do anything but hit every party in town, Amanda wasn’t on the scene very often. She’d always seemed a bit above all of the Hollywood bullshit, as though she couldn’t be bothered. Her face had this semi-friendly but neutral expression. You couldn’t read her. How funny that Lane, one of the warmest people I’d ever met, was best friends with the Ice Princess of
Hollywood.
“And you? What about you? Why are you here so early?” I asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be in New York?”
Amanda locked her blue eyes onto mine. My heart sped under her gaze. A tingle started low in my back and rolled upward through my body. She was a gorgeous woman. A classic beauty with fair skin, wide blue eyes that at first appeared to be sapphire but then glittered and changed with the light. Her nose was tiny and upturned and she had a strong jaw and long neck. Her hair was a little messy with wild wisps curling about her face. She tightened the belt on her robe and stood taller.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go.” She reached up and pulled two coffee cups from the cabinet above the coffeemaker.
A smile dodged across my face. “Yeah, right,” I said. “Funny.”
Steve Legend was the most gargantuan box office star of the last twenty years. No actor earned more. He wasn’t cheap and he wasn’t stingy with his kids. Amanda’s father had homes all over the world to which she had keys. I knew from working with Sterling just how lucky he and Amanda were.
Amanda puckered her lips and tilted her head. She no longer smiled. She no longer laughed. A tiny line formed between her eyebrows while she examined me.
“Do you remember my father’s wedding?” She poured two cups of coffee and handed one to me.
A giant maw opened in my belly with Amanda’s question. A fear, a guilt, an anxiety crept upward from my belly and into my chest. I’d spent my time in rehab trying to get my mind wrapped around an existence I could remember, an existence in which I didn’t try to dull the pain. I didn’t like having to tell people that I used to be a complete boob. I knew I had done unreasonable things. Things I couldn’t remember, but things for which I was sorry. Part of my recovery was working my steps and making my amends.
“Amanda”—a breath of air followed her name out of my mouth— “I don’t remember much of the last year.”
Her lips pursed at hearing my comment and the brow that had been arched high above her right eye dropped to its natural position.
Damn, she was beautiful. Effortlessly beautiful. She looked as though she should be in a painting in a museum or wearing a crown. An urge shot through me to close the two feet between us, grab her, kiss her, and untie the belt of her robe and thaw the ice that surrounded her…. Of course I’d still have the cotton pajamas with blue bunnies to get past, but I guessed Amanda Legend’s body would be worth the effort.
“You don’t remember anything about that day?” She angled her head down and looked up at me through her lashes. “Nothing before the wedding?”
I crossed my arms and settled my hip against the marble counter. The muscle in my jaw flinched. I locked my gaze onto Amanda’s. She stared at me, her eyes piercing as though she needed something from me, as if this question was more than just a simple question about the wedding.
Then like a sucker punch to the gut it hit me. Long dress. Long hair. The scent of perfume and … I held it together. I kept my face smooth and even. Had I been with Amanda the night of the wedding? I searched my memories. Nothing … I couldn’t grasp the pictures that had just danced in my head.
“Nothing?” Amanda asked again, prodding me for a response.
“No, no,” I said raising both my hands in surrender. I pulled out my mega-watt actor smile and slapped it onto my face. I tilted my chin down and looked at Amanda through my lashes in a gaze that I knew most every woman found absolutely irresistible.
“I mean how could I forget?” I lied.
Amanda’s mouth popped open. My instinct was to attempt to make her feel better, to not let her know that I had almost no memory of our night together at her dad’s wedding. I wished I could find the memory—maybe it would come back to me. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
The surprise that first clouded her face evaporated. She pulled her mouth closed and shook her head. A knowing look, one that seemed laced with impatience and yet resignation, registered on her face.
“Actors,” she said, took her coffee cup, and exited the room.
Chapter 7
Amanda
“Amanda darling, we simply cannot hold your internship.”
My stomach knotted and my palms were cold and damp against the steering wheel. I pulled over and parked Lane’s Jeep in front of Terri Wigham’s bungalow on the Worldwide lot. “Willohmena, I promise I will get to New York as soon as I can—”
“Darling, I understand, but I need someone now.”
My fingertips pressed my temple. My eyes closed. It could take weeks, months, before I had enough money to get to New York.
“Your father,” Willohmena lowered her voice, “must be completely pissed to cut you off. What did you do, Amanda?”
I leaned my forehead against the steering wheel. I had done the unthinkable—I had been honest with Steve Legend. And, I had rediscovered that honesty was not the best policy, not in Hollywood and definitely not in the Legend family. Why had I thought telling Daddy Dearest the truth, this time, would be different?
“Willohmena, please,” I begged. “I just … I need some time to get there.”
“Darling, there is another internship at the gallery that begins in the fall, beginning of September. Why don’t we plan for that?”
My heart dropped to my belly. The beginning of September felt as though it were a lifetime away. But she was right. I wasn’t even certain I could scrape together enough money by the fall, but at least I had a goal and more time to pull my resources together.
“Thank you, Willohmena. I appreciate you holding a spot for me.”
“Listen, I know it’s not my business but perhaps you should try to mend the fence with your father? I know he can be a difficult man.”
I swallowed my words. Calling Daddy difficult was like calling Attila the Hun a challenge. My father was beyond difficult. He was rigid and unwilling to yield, plus when he was in the throes of a new marriage he saw nothing but the new wifey’s way of doing things.
But instead of all the words that I wanted to say to Willohmena, I said, “Yes, I’m certain you’re right.”
“Okay, darling, let me know if I can help. Ciao, my love!”
She hung up, and I pictured her bustling down a busy New York street filled with cars and people. People who did things other than work in movies. What I wanted more now, even more than at Daddy’s wedding, was to leave Los Angeles. To get out of entertainment. To live my life without ever seeing another movie set, actor, actress, script, or director.
I sat back and looked into the rearview mirror. Just across Steve Legend Drive was my father’s bungalow, home of his and Sterling’s production company, Legend Films. A building that I’d spent many days working in and simply hanging out at. My heart lurched a little bit knowing that I couldn’t go to my father’s bungalow, knowing that, now, I wouldn’t be welcome there. At the same time I thought about how the myopic focus of moviemaking was sucking the life out of me. I knew only a few people in L.A. who did anything but work in film, talk about film, or want to work in film. There was a whole world of art, books and culture to discuss, instead of what the next Steve Legend film was expected to gross. Plus, the anonymity of New York would be so great.
All I wanted was to get out of the film industry and out of L.A., but to do that I needed a summer job—a way to make some money—and my best bet for that was finding something within the heart of the business. I’d parked in the visitor’s spot in front Terri Wigham’s bungalow on the Worldwide Pictures lot. She’d run my father’s production company, Legend Films, for over a decade, but now she had her own deal at Worldwide, and I was here to beg her for a job.
*
Terri’s office was lush with overstuffed couches and chairs in deep reds and dark cinnamon. The walls were covered in Indian art work. She sat on the red couch with a gold tasseled cushion pulled to her side and an aluminum water bottle in her other hand. Her lush black hair was pulled away from her face, her smile was quick, and her blue eyes sparkle
d. She was Hollywood ageless, hovering somewhere between forty and fifty-five.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you looking so good,” Terri said.
I paused. There was something in the way her eyes wandered over me as though she was looking for something amiss. I’d known Terri since I was five. I’d worked for her in the summers when I was in high school and college. She ran Daddy’s company and she was a part of the Legend film family.
“Is your Dad back yet?” Terri asked.
“He went straight to set in the Amazon.”
Terri nodded. The Amazon Legend was a tent pole film for Worldwide to release next summer. Her face took on an expression of practiced neutrality that was so familiar in Hollywood.
I pressed my fingernails into my palms. I hadn’t seen Terri since the wedding and then she’d known I was meant to go to New York for my internship. I looked at the table between us and then up into Terri’s eyes. My heart crumpled in my chest. “I was wondering if you had some work for me this summer.”
Her face didn’t change, but I saw a glimmer pass through her eyes.
“I just need to save enough money to go to New York in the fall for my internship.”
She reached down and set her water bottle onto the table. She glanced toward her open office door and then back at me.
“I’m sorry, Amanda, I wish I had something for you, I really do, but I simply don’t. I can’t. Not now.”
Terri’s eyes and tone conveyed something different than her words. I glanced toward her open door where her two assistants sat on the other side doing the busy work of assistants at production companies.
“Terri,” I lowered my voice. “What is going on? I’ve called a lot of people and they’re all saying the same thing.”
Terri stood and with three quick strides she crossed her office and closed the door. She turned back to me and crossed her arms over her chest.
