“Can you take care of that?” Chad asks the doorman.
“No problem, Mr. Stone,” he says, going out to disband the crowd.
I motion to the growing crowd. “Looks like you may need Cole after all.”
“I can’t even walk from the fucking curb to a building anymore? It’s getting goddamn ridiculous.” He shakes his head in disgust. “I didn’t mean to blow you off out there. I just didn’t want anyone bothering you or taking your picture.”
“It’s perfectly fine, Chad. I understand. And I think it’s nice that you took the time to do what you did for your fans. A lot of actors would have just ignored them.”
He laughs. “A lot of actors aren’t as stupid as I am.”
“Not stupid,” I tell him. “Just kind.”
“Come on, let’s go up before anyone tries to come in after us.” He leads me to the elevator and presses the button for the penthouse.
I look at him with inquisitive eyes. “The penthouse?” I ask. “Did Ethan win the lottery or something?”
“If you call my grandparents dying and leaving us all their money winning the lottery, then yes.”
My hand comes to cover my mouth. “Oh, Chad, your Pap and Nana died? I’m so sorry.” I remember them fondly. We would often go out to their house in The Hamptons in the summer. They had a fantastic pool that had a separate pool house. We would pretend it was our house and we were a king and queen. When Julian would come, they would take turns being the prince.
“Thanks,” he says. “It’s been about six years now.”
“I wish I would have known, I’d like to have attended their funerals.”
He nods. “I’m sorry, I know you would have. My parents asked if I wanted to call you. But I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Pap died first,” he says, hooking his thumbs into his front pockets. “It was about a year after you stopped talking to me. My life was a mess. I couldn’t get through the day without drugs. I didn’t want you seeing me like that. I knew I had become a disappointment to you.”
“Why would you think that?” I ask, knowing it’s true but finding it surprising he’d thought it.
“Because you stopped taking my calls. You stopped emailing me. You cut me off all social media.” He shakes his head and sighs. “And because when your mom died and I didn’t come back for her funeral, Julian tore me a new one, telling me how much you hated what I’d become. It’s true, right? That you hated me?”
I take a step back and lean against the elevator wall. “I wouldn’t say I hated you. I just missed my friend, Chad. He was gone and it made me sad.”
Chad pushes himself off the wall and cages me in, his hands on either side of my face. “I’m so sorry,” he says, staring intensely into my eyes. “You’ll never know just how much. But I’m me again. I’m Chad. That other selfish prick is gone.”
The elevator doors open and he backs away, allowing me to breathe again. He helps me off with my coat when we reach the penthouse door.
When we walk through, Ethan comes over, ignoring Chad as he pulls me in for a huge hug. “Little Mallory Schaffer,” he says, releasing me to look me over. “You look wonderful. It’s so nice to see you again.”
“You too, Ethan. Thank you for having me.” My eyes quickly take in the massive great room lined by floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. “Hey, can I borrow a hundred-dollar bill to scrape the gum off my shoe that I stepped on in that deplorable contraption you call an elevator? I mean, seriously, this building should be condemned.”
“You always were a smartass, Schaffer. I’m glad to see some things haven’t changed.” He takes my elbow and escorts me into the kitchen. “Mallory, this is my wife, Charlie.”
She looks familiar. About my age, maybe a bit younger. I wonder if we went to college together. “Nice to meet you, Charlie.”
I extend my hand to her but she hugs me. “It’s nice to meet you, too. I’ve heard a lot about you this week.”
She has? “You have?”
“Oh, yeah,” she says, nodding. “My brother-in-law here has you on a pretty high pedestal.”
Ethan clears his throat. “You’ll have to excuse my wife and her unfiltered mouth.”
Charlie swats him. “You love my mouth,” she says.
He pulls her in for a kiss. “Very true. Must be that Stone men love smartass women.”
“Must be,” she says, her striking red hair flowing around her shoulders.
Pedestal? Stone men love smartass women? Am I missing something here?
I can’t get over the feeling I know Charlie from somewhere. “You look so familiar; did you go to Berkeley?”
“Nope, I skipped college and went straight to life,” she says.
“Charlie’s mom was Caroline Anthony,” Ethan says. “Caroline was an actress and Charlie looks a lot like her, that’s probably why she looks familiar.” The way he says it is like he’s said it a thousand times before, matter-of-factly, but in a protective kind of way.
Oh, geez. She’s Caroline Anthony’s daughter? Charlie looks a bit perturbed by the mention of her mother, so I don’t ask her about it. Maybe she feels the same way I did when Melissa was bombarding me with questions about Chad.
“Mallory, this is my best friend, Piper Mitchell,” Charlie says, indicating the woman sitting at the bar. “And this is her fiancé, Mason Lawrence.”
I look at the stunning couple, immediately recognizing Mason as a professional football player. What, is everyone here famous or uber-freaking-rich? Suddenly I feel very insignificant. And very out of place. “Uh, hello. Nice to meet you.” I shake Piper’s hand and then Mason’s. “My dad is a huge fan,” I say with a shaky voice. “He will be beside himself when I tell him I had dinner with you.” I feel a little faint and quickly take a seat on the couch as everyone falls into comfortable conversation.
Chad sits next to me on the end of the couch. “Are you okay, Mal? You look a little pale. Can I get you something?”
I shake my head. “I’ll be okay,” I whisper so only he can hear. “I mean, as if you being a movie star isn’t enough, but now—this penthouse, the daughter of an Oscar-winning actress, a guy who plays football for the Giants? I guess I’m just a little overwhelmed, that’s all. And way out of my league.”
“We’re all just regular people like you, Mal,” he says.
I look at him like he’s gone off his rocker. “Right,” I say. “Just ask those girls downstairs, or the hundreds of people that swarmed you at the club the other night.”
“That’s just part of the job,” he says. “It’s not who we are. We want to get together and have a good time with our friends, just like everyone else. That’s all this is, a good time with friends. Okay?”
I look around at everyone. I guess he’s right. Watching them talk and drink and laugh, they do all seem fairly normal despite the fact that the collective wealth in this room could eliminate a big chunk of the national debt.
I see a woman come down the hallway with a baby in her arms. She walks up to Charlie. “He’s all clean. Thanks for letting me change him,” she says.
“Are you kidding?” Charlie hands the woman a drink, leaning down to kiss the baby. “You can have that job whenever you’d like. You’re a lifesaver.”
Chad stands up and holds his hand out to me. I let him pull me up off the couch. He walks us over to the woman, not letting go of my hand. It reminds me of the times he held my hand when we were young. Only with more sparks now. “Mallory, this is my publicist, Kendra.”
“Hi, Mallory,” she says, smiling at our entwined hands. “Sorry, I’d give you a hug, but my hands are kind of full.”
“Here, let me,” Chad says, taking the baby from her. I’m surprised at the emptiness I feel when he pulls his hand from mine.
Kendra gives me a hug. “So, you’re the one,” she whispers in my ear.
I have the feeling tonight is some elaborate hoax that everyone is in on but me. Maybe I’m being punk’d. I loo
k at Kendra as she releases me and she gives me this incredible, ear-to-ear smile. “Doesn’t he look like a natural?” she asks, motioning to Chad.
“I think Eli has my nose,” he says, admiring the tiny baby in his arms.
“Eli has my nose,” Ethan shouts from the kitchen.
The front door slams shut. “You’re both crazy, he has my nose. And he’s damn lucky because you two have beaks that belong on pelicans.”
“Kyle!” I race over to hug the youngest Stone brother. “Oh my gosh, I’ve missed you.”
“Hi, Mallory.” He holds me at arm’s length, looking me over from head to toe. “Jesus, you look incredible. I never had a teacher as hot as you in fourth grade, that’s for damn sure.”
I’m surprised he knows I teach fourth grade. But before I can ask, Chad comes up beside me, draping a possessive arm over my shoulder. “Go get your own hot teacher,” he says. “This one’s mine.” He leans down to place a kiss on the top of my head, causing goosebumps to line my arms.
Mine? He wants me to be his? His what—friend, one-night-stand, New York booty-call?
“Dinner’s ready,” Charlie calls from the kitchen.
I extract myself from Chad, happy to have an excuse to get away from him for a minute so I can breathe again. Piper, Kendra and I help Charlie carry plates of food from the kitchen to the dining room.
Dinner is surreal. I hear all about what professional football players do in the off-season. Ethan and Charlie entertain us with tales of some of the strangest cases they’ve had at their P.I. agency. Kendra regales us with stories of her most diva-like clients—minus the names, of course. She is their publicist after all. And Kyle grosses us out by telling us about the latest cadaver he got to dissect. My tales of teaching don’t even begin to hold a candle to the rest of the dinnertime chatter.
“What about you?” I ask Chad. “Do you have any funny stories to tell?”
He shakes his head. “Nope. My life is hardly interesting.”
Chad gets pelted with rolls thrown by his brothers. He takes one and rips at it with his teeth, throwing it back to Ethan and then does the same to Kyle.
“Do not have a food fight in my house, boys,” Charlie says with the conviction of a tried-and-true mother. “Play nice or I’ll cut you off.” She stands up and retrieves a bottle of wine, making her way around the table to refill all the glasses. Chad puts his hand over his glass and waves her by.
Is he doing that just for me, because he told me the other night he doesn’t drink much? Or has he really changed his ways? He’s only had one glass tonight when everyone else has had at least three. But then, who’s counting?
I should quit analyzing everything about him. Every look he gives me with those ocean-blue eyes. Every chair he pulls out for me. Every flutter of my heart when he touches me innocently.
He’s so much like the boy I remember. At my house. At the school. Tonight. He’s nothing like the movie star the press makes him out to be. Nothing like the womanizing drug-head I thought he was. In fact, he’s the kind of man I could see myself with. Then again, he is an actor. By profession, he lies to people, getting them to believe he’s something that he’s not.
Kendra slurs her words ever so slightly when she asks, “I want to hear about the missing ball.”
All eyes at the table turn to her. “The what?” Ethan asks.
“It’s been driving me crazy for a few days,” she says. “I dug into it and there are some records of hospital employees violating HIPPA laws by talking about your case, so what I want to know is” —she looks at Chad— “and please don’t fire me for this, but how in the hell did you lose a testicle at the Santa Monica Pier?”
Kyle chokes on his wine, sputtering some across the table. “Oh, hell yes,” he says. “Tell them the story, bro.”
“I’m not telling shit,” Chad says, looking embarrassed as he rolls the stem of his empty wine glass between his fingers.
“I was there, I’ll tell it then,” Kyle says.
“Whatever,” Chad says, stiffening in his chair. He chews on his inner cheek. Nobody else seems to notice that he’s bothered by this. But I can read his body language. I’ve always been able to.
I look around to see that everyone is done with dinner. “Chad, I’d really like to see the view,” I say. “Will you show me the balcony?”
He looks at me and sighs. He thanks me with his eyes. He’s happy I saved him. But it’s no big deal, really, it’s what we’ve always done. Saved each other. Except for the one time when I couldn’t.
He stands up and takes my hand, leading me away from the table as Kyle begins to tell his story.
Chapter Nine
Chad
Mallory is beautiful as she leans over the railing to see the street below. I tried my best not to stare at her throughout dinner, but I couldn’t help it. I swear her eyes have gotten greener. Her hair, that was always long when we were kids, has gotten even wavier. Her breasts . . . Jesus, my dick still thinks I’m a hormonal sixteen-year-old kid.
“This is incredible,” she says, enjoying the awe-inspiring view. “How far up are we?”
“Twenty-five floors,” I tell her. “So almost three-hundred feet I’d say.”
“Do you have a place like this out in L.A.?” she asks.
“I used to. But not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I sold it along with three of my cars.”
She gasps. “You had three cars?”
“Four,” I tell her. “I kept one of them.”
It’s hard for me to keep my eyes focused on her face. It’s chilly out here and her nipples are standing at full attention under the thin fabric of her blouse. “Uh, do you want to go back inside, it’s pretty cold out here.”
“It’s nice. I like it,” she says, blowing out a deep breath that turns to smoke as she exhales. “So why did you sell your high-rise apartment and three of your cars?”
“Because I’ve changed.” I walk up next to her and join her taking in the stunning view. It’s one of the things I had taken for granted during those years. Watching her look wide-eyed at the city below is fascinating. She sees it like a little girl who’s looking over the city for the first time. “I went wild those first few years. I bought everything money could buy. And when I got my inheritance, things just got worse.”
She turns to me, holding my eyes with hers. “You keep saying you’ve changed. But what do you mean exactly?” I see her shiver and she wraps her arms around herself. “And what was it that made you want to change?”
I position myself behind her so that we’re both looking over the city. It’s truth time and I’m not sure I want her looking at me when she hears it. I rub her arms to try and keep her warm. “When I got signed for Malibu, my life changed in ways I could have never imagined. I was seventeen—just a kid. I wasn’t equipped to handle it. Money was rolling in. Everyone wanted a piece of me. Hollywood doesn’t care how old you are, it just cares who you are. Booze, drugs, women—they were all thrown at me like it was no big deal. My parents tried to keep me grounded, but there was only so much they could do. They worked all the time and I was good at hiding things from them early on. And then when I turned eighteen, I moved out, giving them no say at all. That’s when things got really bad.”
She nods. “That’s when I got that horrible email from you, when you were eighteen.”
“What email?”
“The one that wasn’t meant for me. I think you had intended for Julian to get it. You wrote about sleeping with one of your co-stars. You wrote about it graphically. I sent you an email back, don’t you remember it?”
I close my eyes, absorbing the words she just said. And for the millionth time, I berate myself for the asshole I became. I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been for her. “God, Mallory, I’m so sorry. I wish I could say I remember it, but there is a lot of stuff I don’t. Things that were important to me like friends and family just stopped being a priority for me once I starte
d doing drugs. The only thing that mattered was when I could get my next high.”
She turns around, our bodies so close I can feel the heat radiating from hers. “What happened to change all that?”
“You mean, what was my rock bottom?”
She nods.
“You might hate me if I tell you.”
“I’m willing to risk it,” she says.
“Maybe I’m not.” I walk away from her and sit down on one of the lounge chairs. “This week has been one of the best I’ve had in years, Mal. Seeing you after all this time, it’s better than I imagined. I feel like a kid again.”
She takes the seat next to me. “You say you want to be friends again, Chad?”
“I do. More than anything.”
“Then help me understand you,” she says. “Because you hurt me back then. And I need to know it won’t happen again.”
“I hurt a lot of people back then, Mallory.” I sit forward and put my elbows on my knees. “I’d like to say hurting you was what I regret the most, but I can’t. I’ve done worse. And I promised myself I would never do anything like that again.” I look up and our eyes meet. “I promise you I’ll never hurt you.”
“Well, that’s the thing, Chad. You’ve broken so many promises before, I don’t know if I can trust you.”
I nod in agreement. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“You say you’ll never hurt me. You promised that once before, you know, that you’d never let anyone hurt me,” she says. “Do you remember that? I was six and you were seven and those bullies at the bus stop were making fun of me, and then I ran away and tripped over my own feet. You helped me up and then you stood up to them. They towered over you by a foot and you stood up to them and then you promised me you’d never let anyone hurt me again. But the irony is, you are the one who hurt me most of all.”
I nod regretfully. I remember every promise I ever made to her. “I also promised I’d never leave you.”
“Yeah, well in your defense, you couldn’t help breaking that promise. You were only sixteen when your parents moved. It’s not like you had a choice in the matter.”
Stone Promises (A Stone Brothers Novel) Page 8
