by Sara Celi
“Do you? If you become too much of an insurance risk—”
“My career is over. They won’t book me for movies or anything else. I won’t get any work.”
“And it could go on for years, Tanner. Years.”
“I know.” I sighed. “I know.”
“I—we—haven’t worked this hard to throw it all away. I get you’ve been going through a tough time ever since Lana left, but don’t make me think I’ve made a mistake here.”
Maybe Kenneth wasn’t wrong, and as his words sank in, neither of us said anything for a moment. James turned the car onto Mulholland Drive, and my stomach tied into a deep knot.
“You need to figure something out,” Kenneth finally said. “You can’t go on like this, Tanner.”
He hung up the phone, and silence filled the car. James didn’t say anything for a few blocks, and I didn’t either. Instead, I focused on that night at Bungalow 23. It was still a blur, just like the night before. Two nights of partying this week, but this morning, I knew I’d been lucky. I might have had a monster hangover, but waking up in Miss No Name’s apartment hadn’t been the worst thing to happen to me during the last hellish year.
Not even close.
James stopped the Mercedes at a red light. When I glanced out the back passenger window, my gaze locked with a haggard, weather-beaten man standing at the corner of Santa Monica and Beverly Glen. He held a cardboard sign, and deep track marks from life on the edge of society crisscrossed his face. I’d seen this man dozens of times before and always in the same spot, but I’d never looked at him until that morning.
“Pull over,” I said to James. “Now.”
He maneuvered the car out of traffic and I unrolled the passenger window. “Come here,” I said, already shifting around in the seat for my wallet. The man with the sign walked over to the car. “Take it.” I handed him three twenty-dollar bills—all of the cash remaining in my billfold from the previous night’s debauchery.
The man snatched the money from my hand. When he looked down at the amount, his dry, chapped mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”
“You need it more than me.” I waved a hand at James. “Let’s go.”
James nodded and pulled the car back into traffic before the man had time to say much more. For the rest of that drive, I didn’t stop thinking about the man. What had made him homeless? Had he come here dreaming of a better life, like me, only to have Hollywood spit him out like gristle?
A small part of me realized something. If things didn’t change, I might wind up the same way.
For a while, I thought about Tanner a lot. I couldn’t stop reflecting on the horrible way he’d treated me after I went out of my way to help him. How many other people had he done that to in life? What an ungrateful dick. If being famous meant behaving like that, well… if I ever saw him again, he’d get a piece of my mind, and fast. That I vowed.
I got my chance on a random Sunday a few weeks later, and once again before three in the morning.
I stumbled out of Twisted after another long night of fighting the groping and grabbing from drunken men. My new black high heels hadn’t been such a great purchase after all, and my feet already had broken blisters. I needed a bath, some red wine, and a book.
Instead, I got Tanner.
He stood beside my car, waiting. At first, I didn’t believe it was him, but he didn’t move, and when I got closer, a huge grin decorated his face. “I’m not drunk tonight. So you don’t have to worry.”
“Nice to see you, too,” I said.
He cleared his throat. “Excuse me. Good evening. I hope you’re doing well. And no, I’m not drunk right now.”
“Good. Now, what the heck are you doing here?”
“I thought you’d never come out of the bar,” he said. “I’ve been waiting out here for a while.”
“What? Why? Craving’s not open on Sundays.”
“I didn’t come here for Craving. Or Twisted. I came here for you.”
“You did?” I cocked my head as I looked closer at him. Dark jeans. Black shoes. Dark green military jacket. Blue knit shirt. A light spray of dark brown stubble on his face. Sharp blue eyes.
I won’t let his looks sway me. I won’t let his looks sway me. . .
“If this is about the other night, you made your point pretty clear.” I tightened my grip on my keys. “So you can go home. Don’t worry about me. If I wanted to sell my story to the tabloids, I would’ve done that by now.”
A smiled pulled at his lips. “I wonder how much money you would’ve made.”
“Really? Is this why you came here?”
Whatever he had to say, he needed to say it fast. I didn’t have much patience for this guy, no matter how famous he might be.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I owe you an apology for being such an asshole.”
“Well, that’s what you were. A total asshole.” I thought about it. “Scratch that. An asshole covered in cheese and deep-fried.”
He laughed. “That the best you can do?”
I shrugged. “I can think of a few other choice words.”
“I deserve it.” He shoved both his hands in the front pockets of his pants. “I shouldn’t have taken whatever was going on with me out on someone like you.”
I bristled. “Someone like me? What does that mean, ‘someone like me’? Just because I work at a strip club and you’re a movie star—”
Tanner took a hand out of his pocket and held it up to stop me from speaking. “I mean—okay, came out wrong. What I meant is, I shouldn’t have taken whatever’s going on with me out on you. Out on anyone.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.” My eyes narrowed. “You think you’re better than other people, don’t you?”
“No—yes. I don’t know. I have a tendency say things the wrong way. Offend people when I don’t mean to. Bad habit.”
“Bad habits can be broken.” I bounced back and forth on my feet. God, they felt like they had ten thousand needles in them. I wanted to sit down, and the driver’s seat of my car was right behind him, like a promised land I couldn’t get to fast enough.
So close. So close. So close…
“Don’t worry about it, okay?” I moved closer to my car, hoping he’d get the hint, step out of my way, and let me get inside. This conversation didn’t have to go on any longer. He’d made his point. “Apology accepted.”
Tanner grabbed my shoulder and turned me toward him. His eyes locked with mine. “No, that’s not enough. I fucked up the other night. Let me make it up to you.”
“You don’t need to make up anything.”
“Yes, I do.” His eyes searched my face. “Please, let me. Come over to my place for dinner. I need to talk to you about something, but I don’t want to do it here.”
“Dinner? Are you kidding? You don’t even know my name.”
“Tell it to me, then.”
I hesitated before I held out my hand. “I’m Brynn. Brynn Price.”
He shook it, his gaze still on me, and his eyes penetrating mine. God, they were beautiful. Striking. I had to admit. The kind of eyes that could make a woman do anything. Well, almost anything.
“Nice to meet you, Brynn. I’m Tanner. Tanner Vance.”
“I already know your name,” I said, and suddenly, my feet didn’t hurt anymore. Interesting.
“Now we’ve got that settled, how about that invitation. Dinner? Sound good?”
He broke my gaze and looked me up and down. It made me wish I’d bothered to change into the black pants and lightweight gray sweater I carried in the tote bag on my shoulder, but, I’d been too tired at the end of my shift. My uniform from Twisted showed off most of my body.
I was exposed.
“My personal chef makes a fantastic kale salad with shrimp.” He paused, as if considering his next move. “So how about it? Will you come over for dinner?”
I struggled to reply.
“I promise I’m not dangerous.” He shrugged and a smile tugg
ed at his lips. “Well, not all the time.”
Few women in LA would have been able to resist an invitation from this guy. “Okay,” I said. “When?”
Tanner broke into a full on grin. “Are you working tomorrow?”
I shook my head.
“Then tomorrow it is. How about seven? I’ll send a car to your apartment and we can have dinner at my place. Consider it my way of saying thank you.”
“You have an interesting way of saying thank you, you know.”
“But it worked, didn’t it?” he said.
As I drove home, I couldn’t think about anything but the expression on his face when I accepted his invitation. Curiosity had triumphed.
The next night, the black Mercedes arrived outside the apartment two minutes before seven. I waited for it in living room, trying to keep myself from pacing back and forth so I wouldn’t tip off my roommates. They didn’t ask too many questions. Both of them had plenty of other distractions—yoga, spinning, the recurring role Samantha had booked on the soap opera Hawthorne’s Landing, Kelly’s latest boyfriend, and her upcoming photo shoot for Nasty Gal.
Neither one appeared to notice when I slipped out the front door and into the awaiting car. I didn’t even have to tell them good-bye.
Soon, the car and driver whisked me away from Culver City and we traveled high above the city into the Hollywood Hills. The car wound around Mulholland Drive and ended at a large, white stone mansion with black trim. The driver, James, who’d said almost nothing to me during the ride, announced, “This is Mr. Vance ’s home,” as he drove up the property’s stone driveway and ended at a detached three-car garage with a second floor. James did not pull the car inside.
“Mr. Vance will be out in a moment,” he said a few seconds later as he helped me out of the car. “He’s tied up with a last-minute phone call.”
“That’s fine.”
I shivered as I took in the immense beauty of the place. A reinforced wall rooted the home to the hillside, and the landscaping made the property appear to sit in an English garden, despite the Southern California sunlight and drought. Tanner owned one of the prettiest homes I had ever seen in Los Angeles. His sliver of Mulholland Drive belonged in its own Architectural Digest spread, and seeing it in person was better than what had been caught on-camera during LA Stands for Lana. That show hadn’t come close to showing off the classic elegance of this estate.
“Like what you see, Brynn?”
I whirled around and my cheeks flushed, embarrassed Tanner had caught me ogling the view from the property—a scenic 180-degree panorama of the skyline. From here, the buildings and smog seemed so far away, though they couldn’t have been more than a few miles. I liked that. Sometimes, the city could be so stifling. Slow and fast at the same time. A mystery city I hadn’t been able to figure out, though I’d lived there for years.
“This is a nice area,” I told Tanner as he stepped off the stone front porch and walked over to me. “Peaceful.”
He nodded. “It can be.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Three years. I bought it with—” He broke off and shook his head. “Don’t need to spoil things by talking about her. I bought it at another point in my life. When things were different.”
Lana. He could have only meant he bought the house with Lana. Lana, who needed absolutely no introduction in this town.
“Well, it’s gorgeous,” I said. “You have good taste.”
“That’s a first. Good taste and I don’t always go together.” One side of Tanner’s mouth turned upward. “Want to come inside? Dinner is almost ready.”
I followed him through a large foyer with light gray walls and featuring an open staircase trimmed in black wrought iron. He mumbled various things about the house as I took it in. Some famous architect built it in 1963, he rehabbed it when he bought it. It had five bedrooms, two and a half baths, an infinity pool in the back with a separate pool house for guests, a full dining room, a fitness center… The list seemed never-ending, and Tanner only stopped when we reached the large patio doors at the end of a living room decked out with red leather couches, with two museum-quality modern art pieces on the walls.
“I’m not bragging,” he said. “I hope you don’t see it that way.”
“You’re rich. I get it.”
“Rich is relative.” Tanner placed a hand on the silver handle at the far end of the patio doors. “Anyway, it’s a fantastic night to eat outside. I figured”—he pulled, opening the door to the crisp SoCal night air—“you wouldn’t object to this view.”
The patio doors opened up to a large stone terrace and a six-person outdoor dining table made of thick, dark mahogany. Two plates full of dark green kale salad sat adjacent to each other at the far end of the table, and each place setting had a magnificent view of the city. Two bowls of sautéed mushrooms and a bottle of white wine topped off the spread.
I eyed him. “Did you do at least some of this yourself? Slave away all day?”
Tanner put a hand on his heart. “I did. All day. Hard work.” He gave a small, throaty laugh. “Like I said, Martha makes a mean kale salad with shrimp. Actually, I haven’t had anything of hers that I haven’t enjoyed. She’s good with my, er, requirements.”
“I’m sure it’s complicated.”
“No carbs.” He wrinkled his nose. “No sugar, either. And not too much salt.”
“Just plenty of whiskey, right? And bourbon? Maybe some wine.”
He gestured to the place settings and didn’t let my sarcasm affect him. “Plenty of all those things, Brynn. Have a seat.”
I took mine and set my purse in the chair beside me. After Tanner sat down at the head of the table, he picked up the bottle of wine. “Pinot grigio. One of my favorite vintages from a little spot near Solvang called Avalon. Ever heard of it?”
I hadn’t.
Someone had already uncorked the wine, so Tanner needed to open it. “People always talk about Napa or Sonoma, but I think Central California is the best. Not as crowded, and more like how things used to be, before the wine industry only cared about the tourism dollars.”
He poured two large glasses, and after we toasted, I decided to break my silence. I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Why are you being so nice to me? You don’t know me.”
Tanner took a long sip from his glass and his gaze caught mine again. “Because I can. Isn’t that enough?”
“No.”
“People don’t do nice things for you?”
I shook my head. “No. Not like this.”
“That’s a shame.”
We stared at each other for a beat.
“Well, as I said in the parking lot, I thought about how I treated you the other day, and this is a sort of peace offering,” Tanner said.
“Still not good enough.” I took my fork and picked at my salad, then stirred the tomatoes, kale, cucumbers, dressing, and almonds together. “The way you were the other day and the way you are now are like two different people.”
“I guess you could say that.” Tanner took a large bite of shrimp, his predatory gaze never leaving my face. “But I assure you, I’m the same person. A complicated one, but the same.”
I ate some of the salad and hoped the nerves twisting and turning in my stomach would subside. It didn’t work. I didn’t belong in this house with a man like Tanner, so the sooner he told me what he wanted from me, the better off we’d be. Well, the better off I’d be.
“I still don’t understand why you went to the trouble to invite me here,” I said. “A simple thank you and apology were enough. You certainly didn’t have to do all of this.”
“I wanted to.”
I raised my eyebrow and stared at him.
“Maybe I like your company.” Tanner popped another shrimp in his mouth, and it struck me how much control he had in this situation. His home. His territory. His food. And his decisions.
“Bullshit. You can find company anywhere you want it.
” I gulped down some more wine. “So level with me. Now.”
“So stubborn.”
“One of my finer qualities.” I added a tight smile. “Are you going to answer me, or do I need to leave?”
“And how would you accomplish that?”
“I’ll call Uber. They’ll be here right away.”
He laughed. “Touché. You’re a fiery one, Brynn. I sensed that the other day in your apartment.” He sipped some more wine. “Do you like this property? Do you like what you see?”
I glanced at the magnificent view of the skyline, and then back at the house’s exterior. “Of course I do. It’s a little—a little overwhelming—but yes, I like this house.”
Another low laugh. “Good. You need to like this place.”
“Why? What does it matter what I think of this house?”
A long pause.
“You’ll need to like it if you’re going to live here.”
I dropped my fork and it clattered against my plate, but neither of us looked at it. “Excuse me?”
Perhaps I hadn’t correctly heard him. He hadn’t invited me to live with him, had he? That didn’t make any sense. He wouldn’t do something like that. No one would. Would they?
“I don’t think I understood you,” I said.
“I said, ‘You’ll need to like it if you’re going to live here.’” The words floated out of Tanner’s mouth, plain and strong. “You don’t want to live somewhere you hate. I’ve done that before, and it sucks. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.”
“What are you saying? Why would I be living here?”
“Good question.” Tanner settled farther into his chair, sizing me up like I was a dessert he wanted to eat in thick, savory bites. “Glad you asked, and it’s simple. You’d be living here as part of an arrangement. Strictly business, and nothing else. As my employee, if you want to call it that.”
A thousand questions tumbled through my brain. Employee? Employee of what? It couldn’t be good. Did he want a servant? A sex slave? A weird, twisted plaything for his fantasies?
