You Don't Know Me

by Nancy Bush

His arms surrounded her. For once his professionalism wasn’t warring with his need to comfort. Denise whimpered.

  A loud, furious knock.

  “Oh, shit,” Hayley gasped.

  Stoner relaxed his embrace. “Answer it.”

  A cool breeze against her cold flesh. Denise shivered uncontrollably.

  “Dr. Stone,” Connor Jackley’s voice greeted grimly. “Ah, yes. I was hoping to find Denise here. The police want to question her regarding the death of Lambert Wallace.”

  “They’ll have to question her in the ER.” Then Stone’s arms picked her up and carried her outside.

  Hayley drank the hospital coffee black though she was a stickler for cream in any form, real cream, milk, Coffee-Mate, whatever. But cops were everywhere, swarming, hanging around, full of questions.

  And the press. Word had leaked. They were outside in droves. The hospital had suddenly become the hottest spot in L.A. Tomorrow’s papers would scream.

  Denise Scott Arrested for Attempted Murder.

  Actress Bashes Former Lover’s Skull After Severe Beating.

  Superstar Chooses Real-life Role of Murderess.

  Dr. Stone and the hospital staff were running interference. Stone feared for Denise’s mental health—with good reason. And Connor, well, he was in the thick of it, too. His gaze had touched hers all evening, but Hayley’s eyes slid away every time. She couldn’t handle the scrutiny. Not now.

  As if hearing her thoughts, he came to her side. She stopped him before he could start. “This kind of shoves my stepfather’s murder to the background, doesn’t it?”

  “The press is turning this into a circus,” he said tonelessly.

  “The bastard deserved it, you know.”

  Connor nodded.

  Denise’s bruises had worsened. Her face was a caricature of itself. Luckily, the press were being kept out of the section of the ER where Denise was being treated. There was a flurry of activity when Wallace’s unconscious body was brought into the same hospital, but the cops were holding the press and other lookie-loos back. No one was saying whether Wallace would make it or not.

  “Daniels deserved it, too,” Hayley observed to Connor.

  “Someday maybe you’ll tell me the truth about that.”

  “I’d have to remember it first.”

  His gray eyes were tired but full of something Hayley couldn’t name, something she was afraid to trust. “You already do,” he said.

  Then he walked over to confer with Dr. Stone who’d appeared momentarily from where they were treating Denise. Hayley’s gaze followed the lines of his back, his familiar form.

  I already do, she thought. I already do.

  Chapter Sixteen

  One Year Later . . .

  Dinah pounded on her laptop keyboard until the screen blinked alarmingly. She waited, breath held, expecting the worst. The Corolla—rest its soul—had been a nuisance. Losing her laptop was probably in the cards, but she just didn’t feel like buying another, newer version that she probably wouldn’t like half as well.

  The screen cleared and her words jumped out at her. “. . . and what constitutes the right of privacy? Does the press have a right—or, as some claim, an obligation—to delve into the lives of celebrities? Reporting the minutiae of their days? Following them 24-7? If a story’s deemed newsworthy, does that give the press carte blanche to go after them? Get the narrative, no holds barred? What about personal safety? How do we draw the line? Should it be drawn? And if it’s not, how do we protect the people who are dissected, tried, and convicted in the court of public opinion? What happens to the Denise Scotts after we, the press and the public, are through with them . . . ?”

  Dinah sat back and gazed at the words. A lot had changed in a year. A lot still remained the same. She had a new job. On the air no less, with KBLA, a local television station, while Hayley had won the role of Isabella in Blackbird, working with John Callahan. Not that Dinah had much to do with any part of the film. Even before Denise had bludgeoned Lambert Wallace, he’d cut Dinah out of his life, and that hadn’t changed in the intervening months.

  Denise had survived this long year with a stoicism completely out of character. Dinah believed it was directly due to Dr. Stone whose influence on her twin was nothing short of miraculous, especially after Denise was accused of battery and attempted murder. Those charges had recently been reduced to self-defense, and in a small way, Dinah was partly responsible as she’d chosen to make Denise’s situation her personal crusade.

  From the get-go Flick refused to print Dinah’s impassioned, angry columns about men who control women’s lives and the high price of celebrity. She’d lasted at the Santa Fe Review for exactly one month after Denise was arrested before she quit. Surprisingly, she’d been immediately approached by a Los Angeles paper and so she’d jumped ship, only to immediately quit that paper when her new editor rewrote her piece about Denise’s side of the Lambert Wallace tale, embellishing it tabloid style and printing Dinah Scott’s name in the byline—all without telling her. Infuriated and feeling used, she went straight to KBLA and told them how her sleazoid editor had slanted her story about Denise and was soon offered a position with their station on camera. She might have been slightly flattered, except there was no escaping the fact that she’d been chosen because she was Denise’s doppelganger. She took the job anyway, feeling a little like a traitor to herself, but hey . . . she had to eat.

  God, she hated L.A. . . . and kind of loved it, too.

  Whatever. It was her home now. A one-bedroom apartment in Westwood, trendy enough to please her, small enough to remind her that she wasn’t the sudden celebrity everyone else wanted to make her.

  She turned her attention toward the sliding glass door, gazing across her balcony to the smog-shrouded surrounding buildings. All of a sudden all three of them were big news with a capital BIG. Without meaning to be, without wanting to be, Dinah had become as sought after as Denise. Inside Edition and E! were all about her . . . and Hayley . . . and Denise, of course.

  Denise . . .

  Thank God Dr. Stone had changed from footloose shrink to concerned and doting doctor. The cataclysmic volcano that followed Lambert Wallace’s hospitalization might have buried Denise once and for all if it weren’t for the good doctor. He really was working miracles. Dinah just hoped Denise continued on her current path, but with her mercurial twin, one never knew.

  Lambert Wallace had lived. At least long enough to call Denise a scheming cunt whom he planned to put in jail for the rest of her life. Dinah thought Denise should have saved herself some grief and made sure he was dead before phoning Hayley. Wallace had tried hard to pound the last nails in her coffin, and in the beginning he succeeded. He was the real victim, he said. He was the one who deserved support and sympathy, and initially, that’s the way it went.

  But then a raft of suits had suddenly landed at Lambert’s door. Old girlfriends who’d been beaten, raped, and humiliated, then paid off. Casual acquaintances who’d been unlucky enough to find themselves alone with a man who hid his monstrosity by average good looks and a polished banter. Losers who’d once clung to someone as low as Lambert only for the money, then had suffered miserably at his cruel hands. Everyone who’d been afraid to cross the powerful, wealthy, loner Lambert Wallace. Now they came in wave after wave, an unrelenting army of abused females who took up the battle cry in the name of Denise Scott.

  Overnight, Lambert Wallace changed from famous to infamous, and Denise changed from screwed-up murderess to tabloid heroine. Delicious irony, though Dinah didn’t know if Denise, whose stoicism seemed more an act than a true change in personality, could appreciate it.

  Dinah had then charged after Lambert with words. The pen was truly mightier than the sword. She’d written editorial after editorial about the nature of subhumans such as Lambert Wallace. The man himself, recovering in a hospital, became bombarded with press and paparazzi. Those who knew him, like Rodney Walburn III, head of Titan Pictures, quickly washed their
hands of any association with the monster.

  When Lambert was finally released he was plagued by the press camped outside his home. The police were looking into the reports of abuse. No rest for the wicked.

  That would have been enough, but then Wallace’s body turned up floating facedown in his own pool. Too many opiates and too many drinks—a lethal combination. Accident, or suicide? It didn’t matter to Dinah. His final swan song was unlamented. But it had put her in a reflective mood and hence the harsh words about her brethren, those perennial vultures, the press.

  Lambert was dead, but Denise was alive and well and free. Dinah was in a new job she was liking more and more each day, and Hayley was riding a fast rollercoaster to success.

  Dinah gritted her teeth. Hayley was John’s latest find. The publicity surrounding Denise hadn’t hurt the youngest Scott sister, and though Dinah wished the best for Hayley, her feelings were much more ambivalent about John.

  And this latest twist: Blackbird’s supporting role was suddenly up for grabs. Just when the delayed production finally got going, the actress contracted to play Jennifer, the title character’s close friend and the film’s most tragic role, had been summarily fired by John. The film’s director, Frank Carello, had gone apeshit, walking out because the fired actress was some shirttail relative whom he’d personally recommended, supposedly against John’s better judgment. Apparently, this was Frankie’s modus operandi, and John, not known for compromise, had just plain had it. So now John was producing and directing, stepping into Carello’s shoes without so much as a hiccup. More rumors. Everyone was relieved. Everyone happier. Until the costar’s role was offered to Denise Scott, the flavor of the month no matter how nuts she was.

  Now Dinah grimaced. Two days ago she’d made the mistake of phoning John and telling him exactly what she thought of his decision.

  “You’re doing it for the publicity,” she’d raged. “You’re a sell-out.”

  “I’m doing it for Denise,” he answered coldly.

  “Bullshit.”

  “The goddamn truth.”

  They’d both shut off their phones at the same moment. Dinah was beside herself, especially since Denise was recovering at the Malibu house and she could just imagine the cozy scenes being played out between ex-husband and ex-wife.

  “Don’t do that to yourself,” she muttered, running a hand over her face. Jealousy. A truly hateful emotion. She knew she was wrong. John didn’t love Denise. Too much water under the bridge. Too much angst and misery and just plain everything. The blissful moments she—Dinah—had spent with him had been because they were two different people. If she’d truly been Denise, the situation would have grown too complicated and out of hand, but because she was a replica, a totally different human being inside, the brew that bubbled between them had boiled over into something delicious, dangerous, and unexpectedly tantalizing and sweet.

  The stuff dreams were made of.

  But it was over. Over, over, over. And all that was left for her now was newfound—albeit unwanted—stardom and a career suddenly hot as a comet. Hardly the dregs, but it sure as hell felt like it.

  Weary all over, Dinah sent her copy to the wireless printer and read over her latest editorial, disturbed and a bit angry that her success had been kissed by the whim of fate rather than earned by her own sweat and talent.

  “Have you ever made love to a patient?” Denise asked, her feet curled beneath her on the living room sofa.

  Stoner barely reacted. He was distracted today, his brows drawn in concentration as he studied the inside of his coffee cup. He’d finished the coffee an hour ago, so she had no clue what he found so fascinating inside. She suspected he was avoiding her for some reason.

  Well, hell, that was sure an exercise in futility. He came here to cure her, didn’t he? Wasn’t that why she was paying him?

  “Do I get the pleasure of your company, or are you going to stay in your distant land?” she asked.

  “What made you decide to take the part?”

  “Ahhh . . . I should have guessed. You think I’m too sick to do it, don’t you? Hey, that’s what the lithium’s for, remember?”

  “Lithium isn’t a cure.”

  Denise waved him away, bored. She knew all about being bipolar. She didn’t even believe it anymore. Lithium shmithium. She had a job now. A job with John, and she wanted to wallow in it. Savor it. And she didn’t need some damn naysayer like Sigmund here screwing it up. “You know, you really piss me off.”

  He regarded her seriously, and Denise itched to touch him. These months of quietude, where she’d huddled in the eye of the storm and let Stone and Connor Jackley and her sisters battle the biggest winds while she healed, inside and out, had made her aware of Dr. Hayden Stone in an entirely unacceptable way. She wanted him. Not sexually. Not really . . . though it was nice to feel strong vibes humming along those lines, too. (She couldn’t remember the last time she’d really wanted a man like that.) But she wanted something more, too. Something else that didn’t make any sense at all.

  What if he wants you, too?

  She couldn’t bear it. She didn’t want him to want her sexually.

  Oh, sure. Like you aren’t thinking about it right now?

  God, it could drive a person crazy.

  That struck her as funny and she broke into a huge grin. Stone didn’t react and Denise jumped to her feet, padding barefoot across the rug to where he sat on the edge of the black leather armchair.

  “I’m not suffering from delusions. I haven’t had one romantic liaison in any way, shape, or form in a year. I’ve been so good, I hate myself. And I’m just lucky that John’s giving me this chance. Damn lucky.”

  Stoner studied her, probably gauging how honest he could be with such a messed-up loony. Denise knew the look. “He told me your agent badgered him. Called every hour on the hour from the moment that other girl was fired.”

  “Do you think John would have buckled if he didn’t think I was right for the part?”

  “I think he feels responsible for you.”

  “He doesn’t give a shit about me.”

  “He gave you this house. He wants you well. He just doesn’t know how to go about it.”

  Denise couldn’t handle this unflattering account of her effect on John. Especially not from Stone. She clenched her fists and had to fight an overpowering urge to run her fingers through his thick hair and drag his mouth to hers.

  “Is my hour up?” she asked, placing a hand on her thrust-out hip. “I wouldn’t want to keep you.”

  “When are you going to talk to me about Thomas Daniels?”

  Denise started, genuinely shocked. All these months and not one word. And now here it was again. The sticky, unrelenting past.

  “Why?”

  “Because if you don’t come to grips with it, touch it, look at it, and understand it, you’ll fall back into your old patterns. I can already see it,” he added softly. “You’re turning it on again.”

  “Turning what on, Doc?” Denise’s jaw was taut. She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears! No, no, no!

  “The sexuality. You know. Your way of putting up walls, but all it does is victimize you.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You’ll either find another Mr. Hawaiian Tropic, or, worse, a Lambert Wallace. It’ll start again. Maybe it’ll be someone working on this picture.”

  “This picture’s practically wrapped. I’m just working myself in around the edges because that talentless bitch made John fire her, and I fell into an enormous opportunity. Like Leo says, this is a perfect way for me to get back into it. I don’t have to carry the picture. That’s Hayley’s problem.” A brief flare of envy.

  “Denise, you’ve got to be careful.”

  “Why, Doc?”

  “You’ve made progress, but it’s nothing. It’s waiting to be swept away by an uncaring, ruthless world. I want you to succeed.”

  Was that pent-up passion she heard? He definitely sounded more ruffled tha
n she would have credited him for. Was she getting to him?

  “Don’t worry, I will,” she assured him. She knew how to act. The one thing she really knew was how to be someone else. “You worry too much. It’s kind of sweet. But that whole thing about my stepfather is over. I haven’t seen Connor in weeks.”

  “That’s because he’s in Wagon Wheel.”

  A breath across her shoulders. Cold worry. She shook it off. “I’ve walked through the fire, okay? Besides, that’s all old news. Nobody cares.”

  “Denise,” he murmured softly, shaking his head.

  “What? What do you want me to do?” she demanded.

  “Try.”

  “No.” Her answer came swiftly.

  “It won’t go away. It will never go away.” He spoke slowly, meaningfully.

  “I can cope without it.”

  The doctor climbed to his feet. He looked down at her from his superior height, and Denise responded to the defeat in his face. She touched the sleeve of his white oxford shirt. He glanced down at her fingers. Acting on instinct alone, her other hand cupped his jaw, thrilling to the feel of bone and tissue and the beginnings of afternoon shadow.

  “It’s time to leave,” he told her, moving from her tentative embrace.

  “You haven’t ever made it with a patient.” She answered her own question. “Too many scruples.”

  He almost smiled. She could feel the warmth beneath his ever-proper exterior. She had great radar for such things.

  “Next time, we’ll meet at my office,” he told her, a warning.

  “Maybe there won’t be a next time,” Denise challenged him. How do you like that, Sigmund?

  For an answer he gave her his patented professional stare. Rage shivered beneath her skin. Giving in to impulse she grabbed up one of John’s vases and threw it after him as he walked into the foyer.

  Crash! It shattered against the wall, shards of cerulean glass flying everywhere. Shocked, Denise cried out and ran after him, filled with remorse at the sight of him nursing a cut that was bleeding through the arm of his shirt—almost the exact place she’d first touched him.