Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story

by Rebecca Norinne Caudill

  “I don’t want to be offensive, but I still think the fact that you don’t suffer fools gladly could prove problematic. Don’t get me wrong, it’s one of the things I love most about you, but if I’m going to work for you I need to know you’ve thought this through. I mean, really done your due diligence and know what it is you’re getting into.”

  She snorted and I knew if it’d been anyone but me saying this she probably would have been offended.

  “I know what I’m doing and I know what role I want you to play in this enterprise. I’m hitting send right now on an email that has more information and I’ve overnighted some additional paperwork for you to go over – a full contract, payment information, healthcare … that sort of thing.”

  Interrupting her, I said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “I’d be concerned if you didn’t,” she responded matter-of-factly.

  “Are you doing this because Broderick had to fire me and you feel bad, or do you really want me to come work for you?”

  “I had paperwork drawn up well before news of your relationship with Cameron went public. I’ve been threatening Broderick for weeks I was going to hire you out from under his nose just like he did to me. While I’m sad it had to come to this, his loss is my gain. At least I hope so.”

  I had no doubt Shanna would have helped me find a job once Broderick fired me if I had asked her to, but knowing she wanted me on her staff even before the proverbial axe had fallen went a long way to boosting my self-esteem.

  “And just so we’re clear Sarah, I’ll never ask you to hide or be anyone other than who you are. You’re a smart, talented, wonderful woman and I’d be lucky to have you come work for me.”

  I knew Shanna meant what she said and regardless of what some PR person might tell her was best for her actors or actresses, she would never heed their advice if it meant hurting someone close to her. That was the difference between Shanna and Broderick. He cared about people in so far as they could help him while his wife actually went out of her way to protect and uplift those she valued. Not for the first time I wondered what kept their marriage on solid ground. Broderick must have some hidden depths those who worked for him weren’t privy to. I’d gotten as close to the family as an employee possibly could and I still didn’t have it figured out.

  “Alright Shanna, I’ll tell you what. I’ll talk this over with Cameron and if he’s on board and everything looks good, then I’m in.”

  “Yes!” She shouted, and despite her high level of polish and sophistication, I could picture her dancing around whatever room she was in, hand thrust high into the air in a sign of victory. Shanna liked to win.

  Putting her mantle of sophisticated businesswoman back on, she said, “I think you’ll find the paperwork in good order, and if there’s anything you have a question about, don’t hesitate to ask. I want this to be mutually beneficial. I don’t want you to feel like you’re taking something because you have to. Remember, I wanted to hire you before any of this got out.”

  “Got it,” I responded. “And thanks Shanna, I appreciate it.”

  “No problem kiddo,” she said. “Talk to you later.”

  The phone went silent and I did a little victory dance of my own. In the span of thirty minutes I’d gone from persona non grata with the tabloids, to fired, to hired by someone I admired and respected. There were worse ways to start the day.

  “You are not going to believe this!” I shouted to Cameron as I made my way up the stairs to our bedroom.

  After I communicated Shanna’s plan to him, we looked over the email she’d sent and were surprised to see that not only would she be bringing me on in a fairly senior position, but the pay was significantly more than I would ever make working for Broderick (bribe money notwithstanding).

  When he finished reading through the document, Cameron had a strange, confused look on his face. He shook his head and it cleared. “Is this what you want to do?”

  “That’s the funny thing. If you had asked me two hours ago, I wouldn’t have given it the first thought, but the fact of the matter is I’m officially unemployed and I have to do something. The more I think about what Shanna wants to do with her studio, the more intrigued I am by how it could play out.”

  He looked away, and several seconds went by before he turned back to me. “I’m trying to think how to say this without upsetting you.”

  “You don’t want me to do it.” It wasn’t a question. Now that he’d dropped his mask, I could tell he wasn’t as thrilled with Shanna’s offer as I was.

  “It’s not that. Not really.” Cameron ran his hand through hair that was still rumpled from sleep. “Promise you won’t be mad?”

  Given he’d prefaced his statement like this, I figured there was a very high likelihood that was exactly how I’d feel once he told me what was on his mind. But since we’d finally gotten to a place in our relationship where we were being completely open and honest with one another, I didn’t want him keeping his true feelings inside any more than I wanted to do that myself. So even if what he said made me angry, I’d do my best to reign in my reaction. “Sure.”

  “Okay. I don’t want you to take the job.”

  I waited to see if he’d elaborate and when he didn’t I climbed up next to him, placing my back against the headboard and my head on his shoulder. “You’re going to have to give me more than that Cameron. This is a big deal. I just got fired and Shanna is offering me an even better job than the one I lost.”

  He fidgeted with the end of the sheet. He was naked under that thin layer of cotton but I tried not to get too distracted by the thought as I watched him bunch and release the material. The action gave me frequent – if fleeting – views of the trail of dusky blonde hair that led to one of my favorite parts of him.

  On a beleaguered sigh, he started to speak and then halted while I continued to wait in silence. He obviously had something important to say and I wanted to know what it was. Never again did I want him feeling like I’d made unilateral decisions about something that affected our relationship without hearing him out first.

  “I don’t know why I’m having such a hard time saying this. I guess I don’t want you to see me as some male chauvinist pig or something.” He shifted so that his body faced me, his right leg brought up against him. “It’s just that a few days ago, when we talked about what came next for us you never mentioned wanting to pursue anything like this. I thought we were on the same page. I’d make the money and you’d …”

  He trailed off but I knew exactly where the statement would have landed if he’d continued. He’d be the breadwinner while I’d stay home to take care of him and our eventual family. Maybe not too eventual though since the longer we waited to get starting on the baby making part of our plan the harder it might turn out to be. That said, I didn’t see why I couldn’t have a job like the one Shanna described and still had kids.

  I reached over to still his fidgeting hands. “You’ll make the money while I make the family is what you meant to say. The thing is, when we talked about us starting a family, that was in the future.” I tried to keep my words neutral so he knew I wasn’t angry at him for having the thought. In truth, there was a decided lack of any strong emotion going on in my head or my heart, which told me perhaps I wasn’t quite as excited by Shanna’s job as I had first thought. I think the issue I struggled with the most being used to doing what I wanted, when I wanted it, and having to consider how my plans impacted our life would take some getting used to. But again, neither of us were getting any younger and decisions needed to be made sooner rather than later.

  “Sarah …” I heard the frustration in that one word but let it slide.

  “I know, I know. I’m thirty-three. Trust me, my advanced age is not lost on me. But when we made those plans it was under an entirely different scenario. The first movie would be a big hit, you’d be a huge international star, we’d finally get married, and then I could step away to paint and raise our family. I don’t know about y
ou, but in my head that wasn’t for a few years yet.”

  He leaned back in bed and brought me with him, and tucking me up against his body I rested my head in the crook of his neck.

  “We could get married now.” He spoke softly, his voice filled with a yearning I hadn’t realized he felt.

  Given how quickly he’d asked me to marry him, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the quiet declaration but I was. And yet … I didn’t completely reject the idea out of hand either. Thinking it over some more, I found I rather quite liked it. A long engagement was the exact opposite of what I wanted.

  “You know I want nothing more than to marry you,” I said, running my hand absently over his chiseled washboard abs. “When we get back to L.A., I’ll look in to everything and we do something as soon as possible. Maybe we’ll skip the whole big wedding and just have a small ceremony and then a reception at home. I could probably pull something together for the end of the summer, once everything dies down and all the vendors have time in their schedules.” I hadn’t been one of those little girls who planned on having a fairytale wedding so it didn’t really matter to me what we did. The only thing I cared about was becoming Mrs. Scott.

  I scooted out from his embrace to face him. I wanted to be able to see his face when he spoke so I could gauge his reaction. Not that I hadn’t learned he was a master at locking his emotions down so I couldn’t read him if he didn’t want me to. “Filming should be wrapped by then so we’ll only need to work around publicity and maybe some re-shoots. The schedule should work.”

  When his face betrayed no feeling one way or the other, I worried that maybe I’d shot far wide of the mark. What if instead of a quiet, relaxed wedding he wanted something big and traditional back in Ohio so that all of his extended family could join us? When we’d first gotten engaged, I told myself if that was what he wanted, I would work with his mom to make it happen.

  “I don’t want to wait that long,” he whispered, his words pulling me out of my head.

  “Okaaaaaay,” I responded, mentally shifting our schedules around to find a time that accommodated his desire for something sooner that still worked with his schedule. Since I no longer had a job – unless I decided to take the one with Shanna – my schedule was obvious the more flexible one, but I didn’t see a way to make something earlier work unless we went down to the Justice of the Peace and I really wasn’t thrilled with that idea. And with Cameron about to become incredibly busy for a prolonged period of time, I didn’t think Broderick would be willing to give him a break to run off and get married. Especially given all the grief Cameron’s personal life had already cost him.

  “Sarah?”

  The uncertainty in of his name on my lips had me forgetting all of the schedules and tactics and strategies I’d been sorting through in my mind. “Yes?”

  “Don’t laugh, but I think I want to marry you here. As soon as we can.”

  “Here?” My question came out as a squeak, but as I considered it, in many ways getting married in Eagle Harbour made sense.

  “If my sisters taught me anything, it’s that you’ve probably had your perfect wedding planned since you were six years old, but maybe you could consider this idea too? I’d give anything to make you happy, but the last few days the idea sort of stuck in my head and I haven’t been able to shake it.”

  I laughed. “Cameron Scott, it’s like you don’t even know me! Do I look like the type of woman who planned her wedding when she was six years old?”

  He peered at me through half-lidded eyes. “Well, you are a woman.”

  I smacked his arm. “Besides, if I had planned my wedding when I was six years old, I’d be marrying Zach Morris and dancing my first dance to New Kids on the Block. To be honest, I like the idea of marrying you here in Eagle Harbour much, much better.” I launched myself into his embrace and planted a series of quick, joyful kisses all over his face. He wrapped his arms around my middle, held me tight, and returned my kisses with equal parts glee and heat.

  “I was thinking New Year’s Eve sounded good …”

  Oh wow, that was fast. When he’d said “as soon as we can” I still hadn’t understood his meaning. I’d thought with us being in Vancouver for filming we’d fly over for a quick sunset beach wedding and then fly back when filming resumed but it occurred to me now this wasn’t some half-baked plan and when he’d said the idea had stuck with him he hadn’t been exaggerating. He’d obviously thought it through and had done some calculations of his own in regards to our respective schedules. As he continued laying it out for me, showing me with his words how utterly perfect – and absolutely romantic – it could be, I was in perfect agreement.

  “We could do it here, literally. Alex checked and if we want we can rent the house for the rest of the winter from Thad. We could have the ceremony on the beach out front. It might be freezing and wet, but it might not.” He shrugged because as we’d learned, there was no use planning around an Eagle Harbour winter. Since we’d been here we’d experienced freezing sleet, torrential rain, and warm, clear days. “If the weather turns nasty we can say our vows inside in front of the fire. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Some of our friends have already said they’ll come up.”

  “Wait, what?” I bolted upright and stared at him, my jaw slack.

  “Um … so, don’t get mad, but I kind of called Mike on Monday and told him what I was thinking. You know, ran it past him to see if I was being crazy.” He laughed, a low sexy rumble. “He reminded me that when it comes to you I tend to go a bit crazy and lose my head. He also said to tell you to go easy on me because I’m only making up for lost time and can’t seem to help myself. But yeah, he said of course he’d come and he was sure he could wrangle a few others. Since then, the texts have been coming in all week. If we get married on New Year’s Eve, we’ll have at least ten friends from back home.”

  “When did you … how?”

  “You tend to take long showers Sarah,” he responded, as if that explained everything. “Like I said, once I got the idea in my head it kind of got stuck there so I started investigating if it was even possible. I didn’t want to deprive you of a real wedding since so much of our relationship has been under that fucking stupid shroud of secrecy, but I want to marry you. Right away. So I made some calls.” He shrugged, and I took the gesture to mean he’d done what he felt had to be done.

  I let the situation settle in my mind, looked at it from every vantage point. We’d effectively gone public less than two weeks ago and for basically the better part of this week he’d been capitalizing on that by planning our wedding.

  “Out of curiosity, when were you thinking of telling me all this?”

  He had the good grace to look sheepish. “Remember that time I proposed to you quite suddenly but it turned out I already had my grandmother’s ring?”

  I did remember and the memory of him walking in to my house with that ring never failed to take my breath away. While the proposal had been spontaneous and romantic and wonderful, what he wanted to do now was something entirely different. Wasn’t it? “Don’t try to distract me.”

  “I know what I want and it’s you. All this other stuff is just the icing on the cake. If I had to give it all up tomorrow, that’d be okay because I’d still have you.”

  “I know. And it’s not that I don’t fully appreciate just how much you love me. It’s just a bit much to take in all at once. You have a habit of blindsiding me. I need some time to catch up with the things you’ve already figured out.”

  “I know,” he replied on a resigned sigh. “I’d planned to broach the subject once we got to Vancouver and I had a better idea of what our schedules were going to be like and whether or not I could actually pull it off. We already know Broderick plans to shut down from Christmas to the third of January since Shanna put her foot down on that one.”

  “Oh yeah she did.” Three years ago Broderick had disappeared from Christmas dinner with her family to go through edits with the sound mixer on his las
t movie. “I was working for her back then and once Breaking Point premiered she told him she’d reached her breaking point and if he ever skipped out on Christmas dinner again he’d be speaking with her lawyer.”

  “I think he’s slightly afraid of her.”

  “He should be. She’s a force of nature,” I said fondly. “So, who else knows?” I asked, switching our conversation back to the more important topic. He’d already worked out so many details without me having any clue what he’d been up to that I wondered just how many people he’d pulled in to the scheme.

  He laughed again, and I knew I was in for a few more shocks. “Everyone here, of course. I had to ask Alex if we could rent the house for longer and then I had to find out if there was anything special we needed to do to get married in Canada. Stewart assured me all we need is a marriage license, which can be purchased at the district office. It takes like twenty minutes and it stays good for three months. And then when I was surfing with Hal the morning you met Drea for breakfast, I asked him about supplying the beer and then Drea texted me later that afternoon to tell me if I managed to pull this off, she’d take care of catering. At this point, practically all we need to do is show up.”

  I let it all sink in. He’d basically planned our entire wedding and I’d had no clue whatsoever. The thought crossed my mind that I should be mad at him, and yet I couldn’t muster any anger.

  “I want to marry you; you want to marry me. There’s nothing stopping us.”

  When he put it like that, how could I argue.? “I know, but … doesn’t it seem a bit sudden?”

  “Are you kidding me? Considering how quickly I knew I wanted to marry you, you should be thanking me for not whisking you off to city hall the second you said yes. I love you Sarah and I want to start our life together. Is that so wrong?”