The Player's Club: Lincoln

by Cathy Yardley

  “At least I’m being civil,” her father retorted.

  Juliana fought the urge to rub at her temples. She’d just wanted to get it over with, one fell swoop, rather than wining and dining both her parents at separate venues. Besides, she knew that they’d be at each other’s throats…counted on it, really, to keep the whole thing short, if not sweet.

  “I just wanted to tell you both how much you mean to me,” she said. “I just wanted to say what I…” She swallowed. “What I really felt.”

  The lie stuck like glue in her throat.

  Her mother’s eyes narrowed, then she glanced at Lincoln again. “Oh, I get it,” she said, with a smile that was a blend of smugness and sagacity. “He’s your mentor, isn’t he?”

  Her mouth dropped open, and she glanced at Lincoln, who looked similarly gobsmacked.

  How did she know about the Player’s Club? About the challenges?

  Her father nodded, as well. “Sponsor, Arianna. They’re called sponsors,” he said sharply. “If you’d ever completed a rehab program, you would know that. Now, let’s let her get on with…whatever. You know, making amends, opening up, what have you.”

  Juliana felt her stomach drop, as though she was on a roller coaster. “I am not in rehab.”

  “There’s no shame in it, kiddo,” her father said, raising his glass in salute. “Hell, I’ve been in rehab four times. Getting straightened out was one of the best things to happen to me, and my career. Each time.”

  “Says the man with the vodka martini,” her mother said with a catlike smile.

  “I kicked cocaine,” he snapped back. “And it was no picnic, let me tell you.”

  “You just…”

  “I think the focus here was supposed to be your daughter.”

  Now, all three of them stared at Lincoln, who looked completely placid—unless you took note of his eyes. They burned with a fury Juliana hadn’t known he was capable of.

  “Now, Juliana,” he said, and his voice was low, even and somehow all the scarier for it. “You wanted to tell your parents exactly what you think about them. Do you really think that you’ve accomplished that here?”

  There it was. That truth, flaying her alive. Making her feel more naked than when she’d slept with him. Definitely more vulnerable.

  Her parents looked expectantly at her.

  She bit her lip.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” she whispered.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” her mother said, drinking the rest of her champagne.

  Then her father’s eyes rounded, and he glanced around. “Juliana, darling, I’m glad to know how much we mean to you. You’ve always been my precious baby girl. Always been my heart. I’m just sorry I was so busy with my career when you were younger.” He held out his hand across the table, and she was surprised enough to take it. “Maybe…maybe we could make up for lost time. I’d like to spend more time with you.”

  She was speechless. Her mother looked at him as though he was possessed.

  “Somebody’s unemployed again, hmm?” her mother sniped. “Looking to stay in her spare room, maybe?”

  “You never did care about her the way I did,” he said, and there was…something in his tone that reminded Juliana of when she used to watch him, on set, or practicing his lines at the theater. “You don’t care about anybody but yourself.”

  “You’re a selfish tightwad, Jason, and you always were,” her mother spat. The ugliness of her tone seemed to make wrinkles form on her plastic-surgery-perfect face. “What is with you two, anyway? If you’re not dying, and not in rehab, what’s with the Hallmark sentimentality? For heaven’s sake, you’re both acting like one of those awful movies. I’ve seen fake orgasms that were more real than what’s going on here.”

  “Damn it, Arianna, can’t you just zip it for two seconds?” Her father finally sighed in frustration, then turned to Juliana. “They can edit that out, right?”

  She blinked. “They? Edit?”

  “You got the reality show,” he whispered, glaring at Arianna, who yawned. “You must’ve gotten the green light.”

  “I…how did you know about that?”

  “I’ve still got friends in the business, even if I haven’t been, ah, as busy as usual,” he said, ignoring Arianna’s derisive eye roll. “I heard on the grapevine that you might be landing a reality show. Where do they have the cameras hidden? The mike? I want to make sure I’m projecting.”

  She stared at him blankly, then swallowed.

  He didn’t mean a word. Not a goddamned word. No wonder it had seemed so familiar.

  He was acting.

  Well, then, so had she been. Her temper bubbled.

  Her mother clicked in, following her father’s flawed logic. “Oh, really? A reality show?” Her hands went up reflexively to her hair, smoothing out her low-cut silk top. “Damn it. You can’t use this footage without a release from me, Juliana. Don’t try to make me a villainess. I’ll sue. Don’t think being my daughter would protect you.”

  “When the hell has being your daughter protected me from anything?”

  Her mother was finally listening to her. “How dare you take that tone of voice with me!”

  “Honey,” her father intoned, obviously still thinking he was on the air, “you shouldn’t be so hard on your mother. No matter what she’s done to deserve it.”

  “Oh, stop it. There aren’t any cameras running,” Juliana said bitterly. “I came here basically on a dare, to tell you how I really felt about you. But I didn’t want to admit it in front of him,” she said, pointing at Lincoln. “Hell, I didn’t even want to admit it to myself. But all those years of you sending me off to boarding school, or camps or whatever, leaving me alone in whatever house you were leasing at the time…I don’t know how to feel about you. I don’t even know you, and let’s face it, you don’t know me. You don’t even know my birthday.”

  “I texted you for your birthday!” her mother protested. “You had that big party!”

  “It was a fake!” she shouted. The waiter was pushing in a tray, and when he took one look at her face, he swiftly and silently backed out, shutting the door behind him. “Mother, you gave birth to me, and you don’t even know what day it was! And you.” She spun on her father. “You only pay attention to me when you think it might help your career. The two of you make me sick!”

  “How dare you?” her father echoed, in stentorian tones.

  “Stop playing the offended father,” she snapped. “You were always lousy at it. Stick with the drunken bon vivant.”

  She didn’t know what hurt him more—her words, or the idea that he sucked at a role.

  “Aren’t you a tad old for all this acting out?” Arianna said.

  “You never wanted me to call you ‘Mom,’” Juliana said, her voice cracking. “Didn’t want anyone to hear. Afraid they’d start to do the math and figure out your age.”

  “You never understood the pressures of being a successful model,” her mother said, eyes blazing. Then she smiled again. “You were never thin enough.”

  “Oh, screw this.” She turned to Lincoln. “Did you get what you need?”

  “Juliana…”

  “Did you get what you need?”

  He nodded, his eyes mournful.

  “Then we’re done here.” She stood up. “Enjoy your lunch. Don’t worry. I’ll pay for every damned bite.”

  “I’m not the bad guy here,” her father said, getting to his feet.

  “She’s just being dramatic, Jason,” her mother said, a little shaky. Still, she stayed seated. “I can’t imagine where she gets it from.”

  Juliana let them bicker as she stalked out of the restaurant, ignoring the tears on her cheeks. She made it all the way to Lincoln’s car, refusing to break down.

  “Juliana…”

  “Shut up. I didn’t want to do it like this, but it’s done,” she said, biting out each word. “Let’s just…let’s move on.”

  “All right,” he said, and she go
t in the car.

  “The Player’s Club had better be worth it,” she whispered, fighting tears.

  She’d better get that reality show—get whatever the hell she wanted. Because that was the worst twenty minutes of her life.

  LINCOLN WASN’T SURE what to do with Juliana. He’d driven her back to her condo, and then persuaded her to let him come up, simply because she seemed so terribly fragile—an unheard of state, from what he knew of Juliana Mayfield. She was trying gamely to pretend that nothing had happened and nothing was wrong, but that was ridiculous.

  He wasn’t sure exactly when his attitude toward her had shifted. He’d known he was physically attracted to her. What red-blooded man wouldn’t be? From the first time he’d seen her hourglass figure and frankly sensual smile in the dressing room of Agent Provocateur, his cock seemed at perpetual half-mast, dying to make love to her. But he hadn’t trusted her. As he’d gotten to know her, he’d found himself attracted to her mind as much as her body, and that was saying something. Then, after seeing her with her parents, he saw her true nature…the soft, warm core beneath her ferocious steel-rose personality.

  The combination of all those things made her perhaps the most stunning woman he’d ever known in his life.

  Then there was the fact that he’d finally gotten his hands on her. She was heaven in bed—or out of it, for that matter. He’d been with women who were sexually skillful before, but none of them had been as generous or as transparently passionate as Juliana had been. He literally could not get enough of her. Even up to the point when her parents had arrived, he had been considering ducking her into whatever corner he could, just so he could have his mouth, his hands on her again.

  He was acting like a man obsessed. No, beyond obsessed. He was addicted to her.

  Right now, though, he didn’t just want to sink himself into her, finding the blissful oblivion of her response. He wanted to comfort her, to protect her. To help her regain her footing.

  He knew it might be more than attraction, more than just mental affliction. And frankly, he didn’t want to think about it.

  “Really, Lincoln, you don’t need to stay.” Her smile was as bright and false as paste diamonds, but he gave her props for having the acting chops to almost pull it off. If he didn’t know her as well as he did, he would’ve bought it. “I’m fine. In fact, I’ve got some work I need to do, so maybe you should just…”

  “What work?” he asked.

  Her eyes dropped to the floor. “Okay, I don’t have work, per se, but I do need to think about the challenges.”

  “Right. The challenges,” he said, leaning against her high kitchen counter. He shivered imperceptibly as he remembered her, up on that same counter, and quickly moved to the living room…where he was faced with the couch.

  God, was there anywhere safe so a man could focus?

  “Let’s knock one of them out, right now,” he said. “Do you have a video recorder?”

  “What? Why?” she asked quickly, crossing her arms in front of her.

  “So I can assist you,” he said gently, then walked over and kissed her on the temple. She didn’t melt against him, instead stood woodenly, arms still crossed. “You said if you had one month to live, you’d probably film life lessons. Why don’t I tape you doing that?”

  She nudged him away, and the weariness and bitterness was clear in her amethyst eyes. “I only said that because I figured it’d be a way to be famous,” she said in a low voice. “Since obviously I’m not doing anything that qualifies as worthwhile or famous now, I might as well see if I can’t cash in on dying, right?”

  “You’re not like that.”

  “How do you know, Lincoln?” she asked. “You’ve slept with me, sure. But you don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Yeah, I do,” he said, and he tugged her against him, holding her and gazing down at her disgruntled expression. “For example, you’re broke.”

  “Well, that’s enlightening.” She struggled against him weakly, a snit of anger rather than any fear or discomfort, but he refused to release her.

  “You’ve been trying to keep up with party people, a bunch of society types that your family approves of. You had a trust fund, but they systematically raided it—you thought you had a lot more than you wound up having, and spent more than you realized.”

  Now she shoved him back in earnest. “How the hell do you know that?”

  “I researched you.” Then he held his hands up when her eyes blazed with battle. “I violated your privacy, and I’m sorry. I didn’t find out until this morning, when you were getting dressed to go to lunch. I wanted to find out about your parents, and more about you. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Of course you didn’t.” Now, her tone moved beyond weariness to a sort of exhausted woundedness. “Nobody ever means to hurt anybody. They just have to do what they need to do, right? My parents needed to pay for things. They needed private time. They never meant to hurt me. They just weren’t thinking.”

  He winced. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “You were thinking of protecting the club. You were doing what you had to do.” She shrugged. “Where’s the difference?”

  “The difference is,” he corrected, “I hate the thought of hurting you.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s nice.” She closed her eyes, and two sparkling tears trailed down her golden rose-petal cheeks. “Why don’t you get out now?”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, brushing the drops away with his fingertips. “I can’t even tell you how sorry.”

  “I’m doing what I have to do,” she repeated stubbornly, refusing to look at him. “Last night—this morning—with you. Was a mistake.” She looked up, her eyes damp and beautiful.

  “No, it wasn’t.” He reached for her, and she dodged.

  “You might know me, but I don’t know a damned thing about you, Lincoln.”

  He took a deep breath. Then sat on the couch. “Fair enough.”

  She nodded, seemed uneasy. “So why don’t you—”

  “I am the illegitimate son of a famous politician.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  He swallowed hard, the words he’d never admitted to anyone almost choked him. He swallowed again, then continued shakily, “My mom was a young housemaid, working for his family. He was married, but claimed he was in love with her. Well, that lasted for a while, until she turned up pregnant. Then, they paid her some hush money, threatened her when she tried to contact him again. That was in Massachusetts,” he said. “She moved all the way to San Francisco to get away from his family’s bulldogs.”

  “Oh, my God.” She sat next to him, eyes round.

  “She worked at a hotel, cleaning rooms,” he said. “We never had that much money—the hush money covered hospital bills and stuff. She told me I had a rich father, but I could never ask who. When I was about ten, I found some love letters he’d written to her…ones he’d put his name on. I found out who he was. From then on, I hated rich people who treated my mom and me like garbage, who acted like they could do whatever they wanted with no repercussions. Ones that never valued what they had. When I was a teenager, I wanted to find him and ruin his life.”

  “What happened?” she asked, her voice filled with a sort of horrified fascination. It forced him to keep his own voice neutral.

  “It was the only time my mother ever hit me,” he said, remembering. “She slapped me across the face. Said that if it weren’t for publicity, she might have been able to keep my father. Said that absolutely nobody could know.”

  Juliana made a low, sympathetic sound.

  “From then on, I was a hell-raiser. I ran with a group of stupid kids…got into a lot of trouble. I stole a lot. And I was a little too smart for my own good. I read up on things, learned how to break security systems and pick locks, pull some con jobs. I think I would’ve headed for jail if I’d kept it up.”

  She took his hand. “What changed?”

  “My mom die
d.” To this day, it still made his throat clog. He took a second, then shrugged. “Cancer. She hadn’t told me about it, but it was fast moving and by the time she could tell me, it was a little too late. When she died, she made me promise not to confront my father, and above all, not to go to the press. So I promised, and I’ve kept it.”

  “So that’s why you hate publicity,” she murmured. “Why you hate the press.”

  He nodded.

  “Have you ever…” She paused. “I don’t mean confront, but have you considered contacting him?”

  “I didn’t have to,” Lincoln said.

  Don’t tell her, the voice inside him ordered. You can’t tell anyone.

  “He found me.” She gripped his hand, hard. “I was doing okay, at a nothing job, when this guy comes up to me. I was going to community college, working two jobs actually, trying to make ends meet. And this guy says that he’s my father. I tell him he’s full of it, but he tells me he doesn’t have a lot of time. Besides, he’s the spitting image of me. So we go to my apartment.”

  “Was it him?”

  “Yeah.” He ran his hands over his face. “I wanted to light into him. And he told me he’d always loved my mom…that losing her was one of the biggest regrets of his life. He’d been so on the political bandwagon, and needing his family’s approval, that he’d basically killed the only happiness he ever had. Now he was a big politician, but he was dying. Of cancer, ironically,” Lincoln said with a dry, harsh laugh.

  “So he wanted to make amends.”

  “Right. He wanted to meet his son, since he’d never had any children with his wife.” Lincoln couldn’t believe it, but now that he was finally telling someone, the words were tumbling from his lips before he could stop them. “Beyond that, he wanted to make sure I got my legacy, my inheritance. He wanted to give me something before he died. All I’d really wanted was his love and recognition. Instead, he gave me cash.”

  Juliana put an arm around his shoulders, and he was surprised to feel his eyes welling up. He blinked and swallowed until the tears receded.

  “He gave me his entire personal fortune,” Lincoln confessed. “Let’s just say it was a lot.”