Starstruck

by Anne McAllister

  “It’ll be a nine-day wonder,” Frances promised her, smiling confidently over her knitting.

  Liv looked up from the feature she was writing on pick-your-own apple orchards for the mid-September Sunday edition and scowled. “It’s already going on fourteen,” she reminded her friend.

  Frances looked at her as though she disapproved of the truth, but then brightened considerably. “Well, it certainly has made Tom sit up and take notice. You have to admit that.”

  Liv did. Tom, having taken an offer to move his practice to Phoenix, was dropping by regularly now. Ostensibly he was there to spend time with the kids before leaving, but he spent most of his visits lurking in the kitchen, watching Liv stir the spaghetti sauce or make pudding, and saying things like “You’d love Phoenix this time of year.” He never mentioned Joe to her, though Ben had said that his father had expressed pleasure when he learned that Joe Harrington seemed to have forgotten that Madison—and Liv—existed anymore.

  Liv, for her part, was wishing she could forget him. She didn’t cry herself to sleep at night anymore, and she could stare at her Steve Scott poster for upwards of four minutes without having her pulse race. But her feelings for Joe were nowhere near as dead as she wished they were, nowhere near as dead as her feelings for Tom.

  Tom could come and go as he pleased for all she cared. She scarcely even noticed. And all his hints about them all moving to Phoenix and starting over together—Trudy now having gone the way of the previous eight or ten other women in his life—went in one ear and out the other. She sat next to him at Noel’s championship baseball game and never felt a thing. Except regret that Joe had not been there.

  She had held out a tiny, flickering hope, scarcely even admitting it to herself, that he might be there. He had known how important the game was to Noel. But she had spent more time watching the stands than the game, and she knew, positively and completely, that while the game had come and gone, Joe had not.

  But it wasn’t until Frances bustled in with her gossip magazine the following Friday that Liv’s hopes well and truly died. Frances kept the magazine away from her, reading it like a teenager with a dirty book, stashing it between the covers of the weekly TV guide, but her gasps and duckings couldn’t be ignored. When she went out to lunch with George, Liv’s curiosity could be contained no longer.

  How far I’ve sunk, she thought as she rummaged furtively through Frances’s desk drawer. And how much further she fell when she opened it to see a splashy two-page article on the latest Steve Scott film, now in the works, and pictures of a smiling Luther Nelson, his arms around the two co-stars, Joe Harrington and Veronique Moreau.

  When she got home that night there was a postcard of a turquoise bay on Grand Cayman, West Inches. “Here researching next possible comedy,” Ellie had written. “Gave up on my movie star divorcée play. Some plots are too far-fetched even for me.”

  “Amen,” Liv said to the rabbit, last hope buried, and thumped the pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove to reheat it for supper.

  Chapter Twelve

  The infamous contract for the next Steve Scott film had been burning a hole first in Joe’s pocket and then in his bedside table for two and a half weeks, ever since Veronique had pressed it on him that afternoon in Vienna. And Luther had been burning a hole in his ear for just as long. The low pressure tactics of suggestions, hints, bribes and a visit to Madison had got Luther Nelson nowhere. Now he was hauling out the big guns—Veronique Moreau, a contract promising casting veto, script control and a percentage of the gross, a cut of subsidiary profits and so on. And Joe, at first hanging onto a future of writing and directing, of Pio and Elena and Joe knew, having lost Liv, that he was slipping, that he might at any minute give in.

  Luther knew it, too. That was why he planted the article in the magazines. A fait accompli announced to the press would be harder to deny, and Joe, faced with denying it because it simply wasn’t true, wasn’t even sure that he wanted to.

  Maybe, he thought glumly as he rolled over onto his back and let the hot September sun of southern California bake him an even darker brown, his future lay with Steve Scott after all. Maybe his ideas of writing and directing the love-and-war story of Pio and Elena were nothing more than dreams. Like Liv.

  She still had the power to spear him, to make him forget where he was and what he was saying, if even for a moment her face flickered into his mind or a woman walked by with a walk like hers or blond hair that caught in the breeze in a Liv-like way. Even now he could see her against the red of his sunbaked eyelids. Damn her anyway. She had no business getting under his skin this way. He ought to be able to pick up and forget her in a minute. Heaven knew, all the others had been easy enough to forget. And the string of beauties he had wined and dined since coming back to L.A. should have had some effect.

  But Liv wasn’t wearing off at all. He saw her everywhere he wait, day and night. She was in his thoughts, in his memories, even in his bed—her phantom caresses driving him mad. He shifted uncomfortably on the hot, sticky cushion of the lounge, all too aware of the effect that merely thinking about her was having on him. A cold dip in the pool wouldn’t be amiss right now. He sprang to his feet and dived in, letting the shock of the unheated pool water do what his firmest resolutions couldn’t.

  “Luther was on the phone,” Tim Gates told him when he dragged himself up on the pool’s edge forty laps later. “Says he wants you and Veronique for a press conference tomorrow.”

  “To give credence to his premature story?” Joe asked sarcastically, annoyed but grudgingly admiring of Luther’s persistence.

  “Of course,” Tim grinned. “It’s not a bad idea, really. You were a great Steve Scott. This other whim of yours—this writing business—might not succeed, you know,” he added tentatively. He dropped easily into one of the lounges around Joe’s naturally-landscaped pool and tugged his Lacoste shirt over his head. Then, lying back, he began to sort slowly through an inch-high stack of mail.

  “I know,” Joe said slowly, deep breaths heaving his chest as he dripped onto the Spanish tile and wished that he were still under the water swimming. No one asked anything of people under water. But once you got out— watch out, he thought. Luther was waiting the moment he stuck his head up. And Tim. And heaven knew how many other interested parties who thought that their livelihoods might be threatened if Joe Harrington refused to be Steve Scott one more time. Liv didn’t think so, he remembered. She didn't seem to care what he did, as long as he wanted to do it. She encouraged his writing, his non-acting desires. Damn, there he was, thinking about her again. “Toss me a towel,” he growled at Tim. “I’ll let Luther know later.”

  “Right,” Tim said, handing him a chocolate-brown bath towel. “Here.” He thrust a picture postcard into Joe’s hand. “The rest of this is business, but you might like to have a personal note of your own.”

  There was a lake on the postcard, blue and inviting. Like Lake Mendota, he thought with a sudden yearning as he flipped it over. It was Lake Mendota. He swallowed hard, his hands suddenly trembling. God, let it be from Liv! His eyes quickly scanned down to the signature. Noel.

  “Sorry you couldn’t be at my game. I know you were probably too busy. We won 8-5. I hit a triple. I wish you could come but that’s okay. Mom and Dad were there,” he read silently. He stood stock still, water dripping from his hair, smudging the words before his eyes. Mom and Dad? He felt as though the breath were being squeezed out of him, as if he were suffocating, smothering. “Mom and Dad were there?” he mumbled, rereading. “No,” he said aloud. “No.”

  “Huh?” Tim looked up, puzzled. “What’s wrong?”

  “N-nothing. Nothing.” Everything. Did that mean what he thought it meant? Liv and Tom? Liv was back together with Tom? No, she couldn’t be. He wouldn’t let her. Liv was his now, not Tom’s. His. Always. Forever. His.

  He loped up the steps through the garden to the house, going through the chrome-and-glass living room and down the elegant hallway to the
rust-and-cream master bedroom, where he opened the top drawer of his bedside table and took out the picture of Liv. This was the first time he had allowed himself to look at it since he had come back. But now he needed to, desperately. His hands were shaking, his mouth dry. “No,” he muttered and sank down on the bed, heedless of the damp towel around his hips, his mind totally consumed by the woman in the grainy black and white photo, nose-to-nose with the zoning commissioner, making her point.

  “You can’t, Liv,” he whispered, dropping back on the bed, staring up at the worn clipping he held in his hands. “You can’t. I love you.”

  And at that moment he knew that he did.

  He closed his eyes, his throat tightening as he remembered her words in Vienna, “I want a commitment, I want you—as husband, as father. Till death do us part.” And suddenly he knew what he should have known for weeks, that that was what he wanted, too. He wanted all of Liv—her love, her commitment, her children, for all time. He did not want to share her with other men—not with Tom, not with anyone.

  He groped around on the bed, finding Noel’s postcard and reading it again. And again. Maybe they weren’t together. It was a big ball park, after all. Noel didn’t say they came together, just that they were both there. Joe sucked in his breath and sat up, reaching for the phone. It wasn’t too late yet. You hope, he reminded himself as he dialed.

  “I want to book a flight on the next plane to Madison,” he told the travel agent who answered. “No,” he said firmly, answering her question, “One way.”

  “But what’ll I tell Luther?” Tim wailed as Joe strode up and down his room throwing shirts and pants into his suitcases as fast as he could yank them out of drawers or pull them off hangers.

  “Whatever you like. ‘No’ for a start. Use your imagination from there. Only for the moment, keep him away from Madison and out of my life! I don’t know if I can make a go of it just writing and directing, but I intend to give it a try. I don’t know if Liv will have me, but I intend to ask.” He paused, turning to face Tim, his arms full of unfolded shirts. “Once I told Liv that marriage was a trap, but if there’s a bigger trap than being Steve Scott with an endless procession of floozies, I don’t know what it is.” He crammed the assortment of clothes into the last suitcase and banged it shut.

  “Luther will argue,” Tim pointed out, arguing himself. “You know he will.”

  He would, too. Joe’s eyes fell on the contract still smoldering on the bedside table. “Give him this, then,” he snapped, ripping the contract down the middle. “Let it speak for itself.”

  “But—” Tim was aghast.

  “No buts. Call me a taxi, will you? My plane leaves L.A. International in less than two hours. I don’t have a minute to spare.”

  “I’ll drive you,” Tim said hastily, finally convinced that now, at least, was not the time to argue further. But it didn’t stop him from saying as he dropped Joe off at the terminal, “I still think you’ve lost your mind.”

  Or found it, Joe thought, once he was on his way, first to Denver and then, after a brief change of planes, to Madison. He had plenty of time en route to consider the ramifications of his instantaneous decision, to know that it was the right one because he loved her, and to worry that it was already too late. What if, somehow, Tom had come to his senses first and Liv, despairing of Joe ever returning to his, had accepted Tom back?

  Stop it, he advised himself. Don’t think that way. Be positive. So he was, stopping on his way to her house in his rented Buick only long enough to pick up a magnum of champagne. He could feel his pulse accelerate, his heart quicken as he drove past the supermarket where she shopped, past Noel’s school and the ball park, glimpsing the lake in the distance, and finally turning the corner of Liv’s street.

  He pulled over to the curb where he could see Liv’s small frame house four doors down, and rested his head on the steering wheel, taking deep breaths to steady himself. He heard a door bang and looked up. Several bodies hurtled down the steps and sorted themselves out, tossing a football back and forth. Blond, Noel. Dark, Ben. Pigtails, Jennifer. And a tall man with thick, dark hair. He waved Ben back for a pass and turned to throw. Joe’s stomach clenched. Tom.

  “No,” he muttered, shaken to the core. “Please, no.” But he couldn’t deny the sight before his eyes. He closed them, pained. The children’s shouts and thudding feet echoed around his head, but all he really heard was the shattering of his own broken dreams.

  He slumped in the seat, considering. There was the possibility, of course, that they hadn’t remarried yet, that Tom wasn’t definitely a permanent fixture in her life once more. He knew it would take Liv a while to come to trust Tom again. He could just get out of the car and walk up the sidewalk and challenge Tom’s right to be there, his right to have again the woman he had once thrown away.

  The woman I threw away too, Joe remembered miserably. He had even less right than Tom to come back and demand entrance to her life again. Still, it was tempting!

  He needed her warmth, her love. He needed— Stop it, he commanded himself. Think about what Liv needs for a change. Liv needed a man who would appreciate her, love her, be a father to her children. “Me,” he said aloud, but an inner voice mocked him. “Tom,” it insisted. “He is after all their real father. He probably loves her, too.”

  Joe shook his head, wanting to deny it, but he knew it wasn’t possible. Tom’s reaction when he found out that Liv was going to Vienna with him had effectively scotched that. He was as jealous as Othello. No, there was no use telling himself that Tom didn’t care any longer. It just wasn’t true. He straightened up in the seat and let out a long, shuddering breath.

  Be noble, Harrington, he told himself. For once, do the right thing. Turn around and go away. Liv and the kids need Tom far more than they need you. His hand hovered for a moment over the ignition key, then with shaky resolution, he turned the key and the engine sprang to life. He backed quickly down the street, not looking again at Liv’s house or the children. His eyes were blurring, but he didn’t want to think why. And he never saw the small blond-haired girl standing on the curb, staring at him as he drove away.

  Tonight he would sleep in the lakeside house, he decided as he sped off into the sunset. Tomorrow was another day. Steve Scott would be proud, he thought with wry self-mockery. But if there was comfort in knowing that, it was small and almost worse than no comfort at all.

  Olivia finished wiping off the dinner table and flicked off the light in the kitchen. Just like old times, she thought heavily—the seven of them around the dinner table. But no matter how familiar it seemed, she knew that things had irrevocably changed. She could eat with Tom, make small talk with him, but she couldn’t love him whether he wanted her love now or not. She’d had him for dinner only because the kids had wanted it.

  “He’s leaving Monday, Ma,” Noel said.

  “It’s the last time we’ll ever…” Stephen had pleaded.

  And she hadn’t had the heart to say no. And what would it hurt? Not her. Tom couldn’t hurt her any more. So she had made a traditional pot roast, potatoes, carrots, green beans and fruit salad sort of Sunday meal, and they had waded through it with no major catastrophes. Now Liv was counting the minutes until it was over.

  It had been hard trying not to pretend that it was Joe at the head of the table, hard, too, remembering that he was out of her life forever and that tomorrow it would be Noel’s blond head she would see across the Formica tabletop.

  “Guess what. I just saw Joe,” Jennifer announced, banging into the kitchen and beaming at her mother.

  Liv stared. “Joe? Where?” The roast beef whirled in her stomach.

  “Down the street jus’ now. Sittin’ in a car. Then he left. He looked kinda funny.”

  Liv nearly knocked Jennifer over as she bolted to the living room windows to peer out.

  “He’s already gone,” Jennifer said. “I told you that.”

  Joe? Back? “Are you sure?” Liv demanded.

&nb
sp; “’Course I’m sure. I know Joe.” Jennifer looked indignant. “Wanta come play ball now?”

  “I… I don’t think so.” Jennifer vanished back outside and Liv sank into the tweedy overstuffed chair by the window, dazed and disoriented. Her mind skittered out of control. What had he wanted? Had he seen Tom? Why had he left again without even coming in?

  Call him, she told herself. Tell him Jennifer said he came by. And then what? She snorted at her clammy hands and lurching stomach. She could not call him on the phone. She had to see him. Now. Tonight. As soon as Tom left she would go. With luck he would be at his house overnight at least.

  But Tom was in no hurry to leave. He played ball with the kids until dark, then came in and played Scrabble with Noel and gin rummy with the younger boys, while Liv chivvied Jennifer off to a bath and bed. By the time she had all the boys but Noel bedded down, she thought she would go mad. Her mind was totally consumed by Joe.

  She came downstairs, hoping to find Noel alone doing his homework and willing to baby-sit. Instead she found Tom, still on the couch, stocking-clad feet on the coffee table, totally absorbed in a movie on TV.

  Leave, she thought, rummaging through her mending basket and beginning to patch Theo’s corduroy jeans with a ferocity that surprised even her. Go home. Go to Phoenix. Go to another woman. Just leave.

  “Remember when we saw this in Chicago?” Tom asked.

  “Hmm? No.” She took another stitch and glanced up at the screen, not having bothered to look before. Joe Harrington, ten years younger, was kissing a gorgeous blonde. Liv shut her eyes.