Starstruck

by Anne McAllister

  The trauma of the night at his house had receded in her mind to where she could get through several hours, if not a whole day, without dwelling on it. At first all she could do was remember how agonizing it had been finally to let her wall of reserve down slightly, to trust a man at all, and then to have another “other woman” thrown in her face. Then she felt a fool, as blind and stupid as could be. And finally she became angry, furiously angry at herself and Joe. But at last she had become numb to the pain of it all, and was even able to face Tom again without stammering and looking away when she talked to him.

  Oddly enough, she began to realize with a certain amount of amusement, that Joe Harrington had, if nothing else, rekindled Tom’s interest in her as a woman it was as though she had suddenly acquired the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval or, perhaps, she thought wryly, more likely the Playboy Guarantee of Quality. At any rate she was not a little surprised the first night that he called and suggested that they get together for a drink.

  “Why?” It was the last thing on earth she wanted to do that night.

  “Well—” It was Tom’s turn to sound uncomfortable. “I thought we could discuss how to divide up the kids for the summer. Who takes whom when, you know?”

  “Fine,” Liv said, her mind more on the story she was trying to write than on dealing with Tom. “Drop by tonight after supper. The kids will all be here then and we can discuss it.”

  “But I thought just the two of us could—”

  “It’s the kids’ summer, Tom,” Liv said flatly. “I won’t make these decisions without them. And I don’t want to have a drink with you.” She was not going to have Tom complicating her life right now, not for the kids’ sake or any other reason. He was part of her past, not her present, and she had no intention of getting involved with him again.

  Everyone at the office commented about how involved she was becoming with her work. And that was fine with her—just the way she wanted it, in fact. When she was busy, she wasn’t thinking about Joe Harrington.

  I am getting over him, she congratulated herself as the days went by and she coped very well. It was an aberration, nothing more—like a reaction to a vaccination. It was just that she had been so long without a man who made her feel like a woman that she had overreacted, read too much into his attentions and had acted like a fool. Well, it wouldn’t happen again. She was sure of that. Anyway, he was gone for good, no question about it. So she was shocked on Thursday when George Slade popped into the office to pick up Frances for lunch.

  “I’m glad your friend, Mr. Gates, was satisfied with the Traynor house.”

  Liv’s eyes widened as if she had been jolted by electricity. She had told George that her friend Tim Gates wanted the house, since Joe didn’t want it in his name. “It’s not a retreat if everybody knows you’re there,” he had said But she had imagined that Tim had called George and said he had changed his mind. “Was he?” she asked, trying to sound only vaguely interested. “Satisfied, I mean?”

  “Sent me six months rent the other day,” George said happily, a Cheshire cat smile on his round, ruddy face. “Have to give you a cut if you keep on bringing me clients.”

  “N-never mind that,” Liv stammered, her stomach churning. He couldn’t really be considering coming back, could he? If he did, what would it mean? What does it matter, she asked herself crossly. You’re not going to get involved! She stabbed the pencil lead so fiercely into the paper in front of her that the point snapped off and skidded across her desk to the floor.

  Being alone wasn’t the answer, Joe discovered very quickly. Brooding was what he did best, and, as usual, it didn’t solve a thing. He went directly to his house in the hills above Malibu. It was odd, he thought, how much more at home he felt in the architect’s house in Madison, where he had spent one day, than he did in his own home. A decorator’s idea of how a successful Hollywood actor’s house ought to be furnished, it did nothing for Joe. It was a place to hang his clothes, to take a swim, to entertain women, and to catch some sleep in between movies. It had never been a home like his parents’ or like Liv’s. But he hadn’t cared. In fact until he walked in the door now, he hadn’t even noticed. The earth tone? of the conversation pit ought to have been pleasing, but they simply looked empty, stark, rather like a desert. He sighed and rubbed a hand around the back of his neck. He wasn’t usually given to thinking of his house in poetic images. What on earth was happening to him? Shaking his head he wandered through the rooms, trying to get a feel for his home. But the only feelings he had were lonely and unfulfilling, It's because you're frustrated, idiot, he told himself sharply. And it was, of course, the truth, but not all the truth. He just couldn’t stop comparing the house to where he had been with Liv. And that brought back thoughts of the ending of the evening. Groaning he kicked off his clothes and threw himself down in the middle of his king-size water bed, praying for the oblivion that sheer exhaustion promised. Unfortunately, he didn’t sleep.

  Instead he spent the rest of the night—what little there was of it—lying there awake thinking of all the things he should have said, should have done, bumping into his own thoughts over and over again. In the morning he drove to Linda Lucas’s apartment, figuring that by now he was probably weak enough from lack of sleep that he wouldn’t have the strength to kill her, even though he wanted to.

  “What did you think you were doing, calling me in Madison?” he demanded, shouldering past her wide-eyed rumpled self when she finally opened the door to his furious pounding.

  “I, well, I… oh, Joey, I missed you so!” she gurgled and flung herself onto him, her bare legs tangling with his so that he stumbled over onto the sofa.

  “Linda, stop it!” He took her hand out from inside his shirt and wriggled away from her, trying in vain to sit up and put some space between them.

  “But, Joey, Luther Nelson said he thought you should come to his party last night. He has a great new script for a Steve Scott movie, and he said I might get a role and—”

  “For that you called me in Madison? For a lousy, stinking— How in hell did you get the number anyway?”

  “Tim?” she offered a smaller voice now, sensing perhaps that his anger was real and not easily quenched. Still, though, she kept up a steady stroking of his thigh until he clamped his hand over hers and forcibly removed it.

  “Tim?” he was aghast. Tim had strict orders not to give out such numbers to anyone except in emergencies. “What did you say to him?”

  “I told him it was an emergency,” Linda said uneasily, one hand tangling in her long golden hair nervously. She giggled. “Me getting a part is a bit of an emergency, wouldn’t you say?”

  Another time Joe might have thought it was funny. Now he was just furious. “It might be,” he said with ominous coldness. “You might never work in Hollywood again.”

  “Joe!” She stared at him, shocked, the wheedling, kitten-softness gone, replaced by spitting indignation. “You wouldn’t!”

  “I could,” he said, extricating himself from her grasp and going to stand across the room from her, staring out at the palm tree before his eyes. For once she didn’t follow him and hang on him like Spanish moss.

  “I’m sorry,” she pouted, the indignation vanishing as quickly as it had come. She looked at him with pleading blue eyes.

  “So am I,” he said roughly. Sorrier than he could have imagined. Just seeing Linda again had made what had happened with Liv all the more distressing. Linda couldn’t hold a candle to her. Liv was substance, depth, understanding. Linda was cotton candy, a dandelion puff, as insubstantial as smoke. Suddenly he couldn’t be bothered anymore. He had said what he had come to say; now he only wanted to be gone. “Good-bye, Linda,” he said, meaning it, and strode to the door.

  “But, Joe—” She ran after him, one hand barely keeping the front of her pink negligee together.

  “Don’t push it, Linda,” he warned, amazed that he could contemplate her curvaceous body practically nude and not feel a thing. “And te
ll Luther I am not interested in a new Steve Scott.”

  “Are you… are you going back to, um, Manchester?” Linda asked, gripping his wrist.

  “I don’t know,” Joe said, letting the Manchester bit pass uncorrected.

  “But what are you going to do?” Linda demanded.

  “I don’t know,” he said again, prying her hand off his arm. “What would Steve Scott do?” he mocked, and dropping her hand, he shut the door firmly between them.

  Who cared what Steve Scott would do, he thought. Except the millions of people who thought he was, somehow, a real person—a person who always had the answer, who always knew how to solve the problem, how to win the war, how to get the girl. He sighed and rested his head on the steering wheel of his maroon Jaguar. Steve Scott had it easy. Steve Scott had scriptwriters. What did Joe Harrington have?

  Ellie, he thought. I have Ellie.

  “Look what’s on the porch,” Mike McPherson yelled to his wife an hour later. “What did you do?” he queried as Joe brushed through the door past him, suitcase in hand. “Run away from home?”

  “Home?” Not that elegant monstrosity tucked away in the Malibu hills, certainly. “What’s that?” he asked, heading directly into the den at the rear of the house and opening the double doors of the Spanish-style armoire that served as a liquor cabinet and pouring himself a straight Scotch. He gulped it down, feeling it burn all the way to his toes.

  “You look ghastly,” Ellie said easily, studying him from the table where she stood folding clothes. She eyed him with such intensity that he instinctively ducked his head, staring at the bottom of the glass in his hand. “Leave the unshaven look to Harrison Ford. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “Thanks very much,” Joe muttered. He should have known better than to come here—Ellie never pulled her punches. Other people might be polite and say that he looked tired or exhausted. Ellie always came right to the point.

  “Too many speeches or too many women?” she asked.

  Joe winced. One woman too many, that was for sure. How relatively uncomplicated his life had been before Olivia James had got under his skin. He poured himself another Scotch, and Ellie swooped across the room and confiscated the bottle, capping it and thrusting it back into the liquor cabinet, banging the door.

  “It’s only one in the afternoon,” she chastised him, and he wished again that he had never come. It was a bad idea all around. Steve Scott had doubtless been an only child. No nosy, bossy older sisters for him. “What’s this I hear about your doing another Steve Scott flick for Luther Nelson?” she asked as she took an undershirt from the laundry pile and deftly folded it.

  “What?” It was a yelp of indignation.

  “I saw him on Wednesday,” Mike said, “when we were doing budget projections for his next picture. Your name came up, of course.” He grinned. “Big box office draw and all that. Luther said he had been talking to your Linda and—”

  “She’s not my Linda!”

  “Tell her that,” Mike suggested, grinning from his post by the door. As a CPA he had only to deal with Luther’s money flow, not the women.

  “I did. Just before I came here.” Joe wished he still smoked. A cigarette sounded heavenly just now.

  Ellie stopped folding clothes and regarded him curiously. “Someone new, is there?”

  Joe lurched out of the chair where he had been sitting and crossed the room to stand with his back to the fireplace. “There’s always someone new, isn’t there?” he asked more lightly than he felt.

  “Apparently,” Ellie replied grimly. “I wish you’d stop riding off into the sunset and get the girl for once.”

  So do I, Joe thought suddenly, and choked on the last of his Scotch. Was that really what he did want? His eyes swept over the homey comfort of Mike and Ellie’s home—scattered newspapers, stacks of laundry amid thick rust-colored carpet and heavy Spanish oak furniture. More comfortable than elegant, more cozy than luxurious, warmth without suffocation. It had none of the starchiness of the home he had grown up in, none of the front-parlor mentality he had been running away from for years. His mind could easily see Liv moving through these rooms. He tried to picture her in his lonely but elegant palace on the hill. It didn’t work. That was a Linda Lucas sort of place, not a home but a showplace. Chrome and glass, stark and polished. Lots of flashy surfaces, not much depth. He shook his head, his mind reeling.

  “How about it, huh, Joe?” Ellie prodded him.

  “Huh? What?” He tried to focus again on what she was saying.

  “Panicked you, didn’t I?” she teased, misunderstanding. “All I’ve got to do is mention settling down and you blank me out.”

  “Not really. I—” he began, but she cut him off, shaking her finger at him imperiously and saying, “I think you’re a case of arrested development, Joseph Harrington. You’re wonderful when it comes to commitments to films, to causes you believe in, to getting inside a character and acting him out. But when it comes to your relationships with people —” She flung her hands up in the air in disgust.

  “What’s wrong with my relationships with people?” Joe demanded, cut to the quick. He turned and glared at her.

  Ellie pursed her lips. “Deep down where they count, they’re shallow,” she said.

  That stung. Damn her anyway. She had no right to condemn his choice of lifestyle. Would she rather have seen him shackled to Patsy Everett for the rest of his life? He strode across the room and picked up his suitcase with a jerk; then Mike laid a hand on his arm.

  “Lay off, Ellie,” Mike said easily. “He looks as though he could use a few hours of sleep, not a tongue-lashing.”

  Ellie dropped her hands, sighing. “You’re right.” She gave Joe a sheepish smile. “I’m sorry, love. I just get carried away sometimes.”

  “It’s your evangelical fervor coming out,” Joe said, forgiving her. It had always been this way between them. She had saved his sanity when they were younger and he was growing up under the thumb of his all-too-knowing father and never living up to the old man’s expectations. Ellie stuck up for him then, but no sooner had she done so than she would turn around and upbraid him herself. Only from her he could take it. Usually. “Mike’s right,” he said now. “I am bushed. Can I sack out here?”

  “Of course. Tony’s on some white-water canoe expedition. Take his room,” she said, waving him away, all disagreements forgotten.

  This time sleep came more easily. As he settled into the down comforter, Joe’s visions of Liv were less the grim-faced, censorious ones, and more the laughing, gentle ones. And when he woke up, he knew that he couldn’t just walk away and forget her. She had touched something in him that no one else had. What it was he didn’t know yet. But if no one else had ever reached it before, maybe no one ever would again, and that, he knew, he was not prepared to risk. He would risk her wrath and go back to Madison instead.

  “You’re right, you know,” he said to Ellie when he came downstairs after his five-hour nap in his nephew’s bed and perched on the edge of the kitchen counter. He had shaved and showered and looked every bit as attractive as his playboy reputation warranted. He wondered if Liv would think so. Or did he even want her to think along those lines? She didn’t seem to find his sex symbol identity a plus any more than he did. Still, he’d never get back into her good graces looking like something the cat dragged in.

  “Right about what?” Ellie asked. She was chopping onions and looked up at him with tear-streaked cheeks.

  “My relationships. Riding off into the sunset and all that. So I just thought you’d like to know, I’m renting a house in Madison.”

  “Madison? As in Wisconsin?” Ellie looked stunned; tears streamed into her gaping mouth and she wiped at them ineffectually, as if getting rid of them would improve not only her vision but her hearing. “Did you say you rented a house in Madison, Wisconsin?”

  “Yes.” Telling someone made it official, he decided. He would be more likely to go through with it then.

  A
grin split through the tears. “Joe, that’s the first step on the road to respectability!”

  Joe grimaced. She would say something like that. He hopped off the counter and fetched a beer from the refrigerator, glowering at her as he snapped off the top.

  “It’s not a bad word, Joe,” she teased. “Really. Some of my best friends are respectable.”

  “Yeah,” he said sourly, “and your relatives, too. With their split level ranch in Sioux City, their nicely behaved 2.5 children and their cocker spaniel puppy and—”

  “Joe,” Ellie said quietly. “Some of them aren’t a bit like dad.”

  He took a long draught of beer. “Yeah, I know,” he muttered grudgingly. “It’s just if you were to distill people and come up with something called ‘essence of respectability,’ Arthur Harrington is what you’d get. I get the shudders just thinking about it.”

  “Don’t think about it, then. Your career, your life— they’re your choice. Just be sure that they’re what you want, not just what he doesn’t want. Besides,” she went on with a grin, “your career wasn’t the only career he didn’t approve of. You should have stuck around long enough to hear some of the things he said about playwrights.”

  “Yeah, but you redeemed yourself by marrying a CPA,” Joe said glumly.

  “You could, too,” Ellie offered. “There’s one in Mike’s office. Carla, I think her name is.”

  “Very funny.” It amazed him how often marriage seemed to crop up these days. Cripes, he’d gone years during which it was scarcely mentioned—except by his parents over long distance—and now he thought about it all the time. It was a word that seemed to come with Liv. And it petrified him. Marriage meant commitment, and commitment meant responsibility, and together they meant sameness and ruts and all the things that he’d been avoiding for years. He’d never even got as far as living with someone. Even that was more than he wanted till now. And now? Now he didn’t know what he wanted. He only knew he had to find out.