by Francis Ray
The TV screen went blank. There was silence, then applause filled the room. Laurel hugged her mother, who had tears in her eyes, then Peterson was hugging her.
Releasing Laurel, the record executive got to his feet and picked up his glass of champagne. Everyone had been given a flute upon entering the room. He faced the crowd.
“I’ve never been prouder to be associated with a project.” He beckoned for Zach and motioned for Laurel to stand. Once Zach and Laurel stood on either side of him, Peterson lifted his glass.
“To Laurel, Zach, and A Father’s Love.”
Laurel sipped her wine, wondering why Zach’s mother slowly lifted her glass, and looked angry instead of proud.
“Pay up.” Her arms folded, her head tilted to one side, Laurel stood on the terrace of Zach’s house. The last party straggler had finally gone home. The caterers and extra staff had soon followed. Toby had taken her mother home, and his mother had retired to her upstairs bedroom shortly afterward.
“Technically the album isn’t finished until I’ve done the mixing and mastering and have a master to send to your record label,” Zach said, fingering the earrings in his pocket
“After putting up with pushy reporters and women crawling all over you, I think I more than deserve my earrings now.”
Catching both arms, he stared down into her upturned face. He’d hoped to see a teasing smile, but he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t. “There’ll always be those who try to use people or be more interested in what sells.”
“But it’s not the truth,” she countered.
“You can’t change what people think. If you let it bother you, it will take away your joy in life.” His arms slid around her waist, hoping she’d remember that he’d called her his joy. “Surely Sabra has had to deal with the same thing.”
She placed her hand on his chest. “She says it doesn’t bother her.”
“But she’s had years to get that way,” he said slowly. “Your associating with me thrust you into the limelight. Although I don’t like it that you’re upset, it brought us together. You’re in my arms and forever in my heart.”
She sighed and relaxed against him. “You should have been a poet or a songwriter.”
“The words only come because of you, because you’re in my arms.” He set her away. “I better take you home.”
“Not without at least one earring.”
Removing one of the earrings, he leaned over and brushed his lips across her cheek, slid to her ear, nibbled, and slipped the earring into the small hole. He straightened. “I’ve missed kissing you.”
“Me, too.”
“How about we go out to dinner tomorrow night? I can tell you how everything is going.”
Her eyes brightened. “I’d like that.”
Taking her arm, he started toward the front door. He needed to show Laurel how crazy his life could get—and just hope she cared enough for him to stick it out.
Laurel was more than ready for her date with Zach when he picked her up. The day had been crazy. People were calling to congratulate her, and to ask for interviews. There were flowers from her record label, flowers from Zach, and two arrangements from people she couldn’t remember.
Leaving her estate, she saw several people waiting outside. Two men had cameras and snapped as they passed. She was glad they were in the Bentley instead of the Porsche. “I can’t believe this.”
“I wish I could say it will go away but, because of your association with me and your album set to drop, I don’t think so.” He caught her hand. “After last night, you made a lot of people’s lists.”
“I’m not sure I like that.” She glanced over her shoulder to look out the back window of the car. No, that wasn’t true. She didn’t like it at all.
At the restaurant, they were barely out of the car before cameras were flashing and screaming fans were running up to Zachary for autographs. He seemed to take it in stride, even when one female fan pulled down the neck of her T-shirt for him to sign on her skin.
Inside the restaurant, Zach seemed to know everyone, and everyone wanted to chat. He always introduced her. Some knew her and others obviously couldn’t have cared less. She couldn’t enjoy dinner because people kept coming over. She declined dessert so they could leave early, but forgot about the gauntlet they had to run to reach the car.
In the Bentley, she leaned her head back on the seat. “Is it always like that?” She couldn’t imagine living that way, without a moment of peace.
“Sometimes but, like I said, you get used to it.”
Laurel didn’t say anything else. She didn’t think she’d get used to people always in her face. She liked privacy and quiet time. It suddenly occurred to her that this craziness was Zach’s life. If she wanted them to be together it would be her life as well.
Zach had been well aware of the reason for Laurel being so quiet on the way to her house. He’d seen her to her door and made a date for the next night. Her brief hesitation had been telling.
Their date the next night and the nights following were a replay. He took her where he knew they would be seen. Her visibility would get her more press, increase name recognition, and hopefully get more airtime for her single. But it also glaringly showed the difference in their lifestyles.
A week later Toby pulled up in front of a nightclub, a hot spot for celebrities. As soon as they were out of the car, the questions started.
“R.D., what’s the story on you and Laurel Raineau?”
“Ms. Raineau, how do you feel about R.D.?”
Laurel stopped abruptly. “I want to go home.”
Turning smartly, Zach escorted her back to the car. She didn’t speak until they were two blocks away. “I don’t know if I can go through this again.”
Zach’s stomach knotted. “After a while you learn to ignore and accept them. They get worse if you try to evade them. Just smile.”
“How can you live like that?” she questioned, her voice slightly accusatory.
“The media can be useful. Your album drops in two weeks. Your picture was in People last week for the first time. You’ve been asked to do covers for three top fashion magazines. Orders are up fifty percent and climbing.”
“I don’t like this.”
He gaze was steady. “It’s the life I live. The one you’ll have to live because of your association with me if you want your music to reach a wider audience.”
“I’m just beginning to realize that. I’m not sure I want to pay the high price.”
Unable to look at the bleakness of her eyes, he stared straight ahead and fingered the earring in his pocket. He’d hoped against hope that one day he’d be able to give it to her. He knew now it would never happen.
He was losing Laurel all over again, and this time he didn’t think he’d be able to get her back.
Thirteen
Zach was miserable. Wednesday evening, hands braced on the balustrade, he stared out at the gardens at the back of his house. He hadn’t seen Laurel in six unbelievably long days.
They’d talked briefly on the phone, but the conversations had always been strained. He hadn’t asked her to go out, and she hadn’t asked him to come over. He got the impression that she was just waiting for the album to drop, and then heading to Nashville.
It would be laughable if it didn’t hurt so much that the lifestyle that had initially made her distrustful of him was the very thing that had eventually torn them apart. Blowing out a breath, he shoved his fingers through his hair. Arial Records was having a release party for A Father’s Love on Saturday night at one of the hottest nightspots in LA.
He hadn’t asked Laurel to go with him because he didn’t want to put her in a position of turning him down. The least he could do was let her go quietly. He wasn’t what she needed, and she was his heart.
Slowly, he went back inside. Hearing the doorbell, his head came up. He quickly crossed to the door. Please. Please. Please. His heart beat out a steady staccato as he swung it open.
&nb
sp; “Hello, Zachary, can I come in?” Carmen Simpson-Harris bit her lush lower lip, then dabbed her teary eyes with a silk Hermès scarf.
“What are you doing here, Carmen?” he questioned, not moving from the door. He didn’t need any more drama in his life.
“I had no place else to go.” She bit her lip again, glanced over her shoulder. “He could have had me followed.” She lowered the handkerchief, and he saw the bruise on her cheek.
Anger surged through him. Reaching for her, he gently pulled her inside, then picked up the two large pieces of Hermès luggage. “Carmen, what’s going on?”
“Please, can I sit down for a moment? Get a drink?”
“Sorry.” Taking her arm again, he led her to the living room and helped her to the sofa. Going to the sidebar, he poured her a whiskey. Carmen might look like a lady, but she liked the hard stuff. “Here.”
She grabbed for the glass and downed the drink in one practiced toss of her head of tussled auburn curls. Closing her eyes, her hands curled around the glass.
Taking the seat on the coffee table in front of her, he removed the glass from her hands. “Carmen, tell me what’s going on.”
Her long eyelashes fluttered, then opened. He vaguely remembered that, at one time, he’d thought her hazel eyes were the most beautiful in the world. Heck, he thought she was the most beautiful woman. He stared at her and felt empathy for whatever she was going through, but nothing else. His heart was firmly in Laurel’s hands. “Carmen?”
“I left Peter, my husband.” Her eyes closed again. Tears seeped from beneath the lashes. “I couldn’t stand it another second.”
“Stand what?” Zach asked, although, after seeing the bruise on her cheek, he had a pretty good idea.
“He—” She broke off and looked away. “I-I tried to be a good wife, but nothing I did pleased him and when Peter is unhappy, everyone in the house pays.”
Zach felt rage surge through him. He gently placed his hand over hers. “Did he hit you?”
She tensed, then slowly nodded.
Zach pulled out his BlackBerry. “I’m calling the police.”
Carmen frantically reached for it. “You can’t! Please. I’ve tried that before. He’s an important man in Atlanta. All it does is make things worse.”
“Not this time,” Zach told her. “Maybe my brother-in-law can help.”
“No. Please. He’ll find out and I’ll pay. You have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone I’m here,” she said, tears falling again. “You’re my last hope.”
“What about your parents, relatives, friends?” he asked.
She lowered her head. “He has more friends than I do. My parents like him. Please, I just need a place to stay for a few days until I can think straight.”
No matter what, his mother would never take anyone’s side over her children, regardless of who it was. “You’re their daughter. Their only child.”
“And Peter controls the money. They wouldn’t like the scandal. I’m expendable.”
Zach sat back. As harsh as it was to accept, he knew that, to some people, money came before anyone. He stood. The threat of a scandal had certainly made his mother reach a decision she’d regret for the rest of her life. “I’ll get my keys and take you to a hotel.”
She shot to her feet. Fear widening her eyes. “No, he’ll find me. I had to use my credit card to buy my flight here, so he’ll be looking in LA.”
“LA is a big place.”
“So is New York, but he tracked me down six months ago.” Her hand went to her cheek. “Please, can I stay here?”
“Here?”
“I know it’s asking a lot, but it will just be for a few days,” she said. “I just want to feel safe and know that he won’t walk in on me and—” She looked away but not before Zach saw the tears in her eyes.
“You can stay here,” he said. He’d like to have five minutes with Peter.
“Thank you.”
He picked up her luggage. “I’ll take you up to the guest bedroom. Mother should be arriving in a couple of days.”
Carmen stopped. Her hand pressed against her breast. A five-carat diamond glinted on her finger. Several narrow eighteen-karat-gold jeweled bangles jingled on her wrist. “Here?”
He paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Mother would never betray a confidence.”
She placed her hand on his forearm, leaned into him, and stared into his eyes. “I didn’t mean to infer that she would. You know how much I admire your mother.”
He searched his mind, but he couldn’t recall Carmen ever talking about his mother, although she had raved about how smart his father was. Her parents were well off, but they weren’t anywhere in the same league as his parents or his wealthy grandparents. It wasn’t worth thinking about.
“I’ll take you up.” Turning, he went up the stairs.
Zach asked the chef to prepare dinner for Carmen, then went to his office. He had three back-to-back albums to produce in the coming months. He needed to get busy selecting music, organizing and scheduling the productions, but he couldn’t concentrate. He now knew exactly how off center Laurel had felt.
His BlackBerry rang. He grabbed it off his desk and saw his mother’s name. He tried not to be disappointed. “Hi, Mother. What time does your plane get in Friday?”
“How are you?”
He blew out a breath and sat back in his chair behind his desk. She’d picked up that something was wrong by the inflection of his voice a couple of days ago. He’d just told her that he and Laurel were going through an adjustment period. “I’ve been better.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No—”
“Zachary.” A knock sounded on his door.
“Just a moment, Mother.” He lowered the BlackBerry. “Come in, Carmen.”
The door opened and she stepped in wearing the tiniest black bikini he’d ever seen—and that was saying a lot. She carried a towel over her arm. “Is it all right if I take a swim?”
“Go on.”
She started out, giving him an eye-popping view of her backside, then swung back. “When you’re free, can you join me? I don’t always feel safe.”
“Sure.” He held up the BlackBerry.
Waving, she closed the door after her.
“Sor—”
“Is Carmen there with you?”
“Yes,” he answered. “She’s having some problems.”
“What kind of problems that she needs to be at your house instead of home with her husband or her parents?” his mother asked.
“She told me some things in confidence, Mother. She has no place else to go.”
“There are hotels.”
“Mother, she’s going through a difficult time.” He blew out a breath. “Life can kick you in the teeth. If I can help her, I will.”
There was a brief pause. “I think I’ll come tomorrow, if it’s all right.”
“You know it is. Let me know when your plane is due and I’ll pick you up.”
“All right. Good night, Zach.”
“Good night, Mother.” Zach hung up the cell phone and placed it on his desk. Standing, he headed for his recording studio, joining Carmen the farthest thing from his mind.
Zach’s mother called Shane and Paige the moment she hung up from speaking with her son. Carmen was up to no good. Joann didn’t listen to gossip, but there were increasing rumors of Carmen cheating on her older husband.
Joann had hurt for Zachary when Carmen broke up with him, but Joann had never thought the other woman was right for him. She was too self-indulgent and too conscious of money and social status. She wasn’t adjusting well to her husband’s financial problems. But if she thought she was going after Zachary now, she’d picked the wrong man!
Hanging up a few minutes later, Joann went to pack. She quickly climbed the stairs, her anger growing with each step. Carmen would soon find out that no one messed with her children and got away with it.
Wednesday evening Laurel sat
cross-legged on the floor in the living room, the recent newspaper and magazine articles scattered around her. She’d won her first competition when she was seven years old, and her mother had kept a scrapbook of everything. Usually, Laurel didn’t mind clipping and helping, but each snip made her miss Zach more.
She blinked, hoping to keep the tears at bay. When she opened her eyes again, she saw a white tissue. She lifted her gaze to see her mother’s worried face.
“I’ve tried to keep out of it, but I’ve grown to like Zach.” She came down on the floor in front of Laurel. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Laurel shook her head and took the tissue. “It won’t change anything.”
“You two were going out every night, and then nothing,” her mother persisted. “Something had to have happened.”
Laurel balled the tissue in her hands. “His life is just so much different from ours. Everyone seems to know him or want to. We can’t move two feet without a camera in our face or a screaming woman wanting him to autograph a part of her body.”
Her mother placed her hand on Laurel’s knee. “You know what Sabra had to endure, and since she’s making movies, the media attention has gotten worse. With her getting an Academy Award nomination for her last movie, it has intensified.”
“I can’t live like that,” Laurel said.
“Are you sure the media attention is the only reason?”
Laurel’s head came up sharply. “What are you talking about?”
“Perhaps all the women bother you most of all,” her mother said. “I’ve watched Zach around you. Women might be watching him, but he’s watching you.”
Laurel opened her mouth to say she wasn’t jealous, then snapped it shut and ran her hand through her hair. “Maybe I am a little jealous, but Zach likes going out all the time. I don’t mind it occasionally, but not every night.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No. I wanted to be with him and he wanted to go out.”
“Did you ever think he might think you wanted to go out?” her mother asked. “During the time you worked on the album until it was finished, you didn’t go out once. Personally, I admire him for waiting. Especially knowing how impatient you can be when you want something.”
