“Look, I know I’m not exactly the world’s best catch. Money and fame can’t make up for screwing up fifteen years of your life.”
“So what do you want from my sister?”
Derek exhaled. “To spend the rest of my life with her.”
“Then why is your wife still keeping a room here?”
Ouch. That one couldn’t really be explained. Derek shrugged. “She won’t give up. I’ve told her our marriage is over.”
Kieran crossed his arms over his chest. “I might have some information that’ll help you move things along.” He paused. “For a price.”
Derek was nonplussed. “You want money from me? Last time I checked, NHL salaries are pretty damn decent.”
A laugh started deep in Kieran’s chest. “Not money, you dick. A promise.”
“I’m waiting.” Derek raised a brow but said nothing else. This was going to be good.
“You have to promise me that you won’t hurt my sister in any way.”
“Hurting Wynne is the last thing I want to do.” Derek struggled to find the right words. He was talking man-to-man here, and men didn’t deal in sentimental, Dr. Phil emotional babble. “She’s…Christ, she’s everything to me. If I didn’t have her and Paige in my life, I’d probably be six feet under about now.”
“If you hurt my sister, you will be six feet under.” Kieran grinned, and it wasn’t a particularly friendly grin either. “And that’s my promise to you.”
“Fair enough.” Derek would sooner kill himself than hurt her, anyway. He’d finally found something to make him want to live again. He belonged here in Atlantic, with Wynne and Paige, a flower shop and a ramshackle theater.
“All right then.” Kieran stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and cocked his head to one side. “I’ve been seeing your wife.”
“Ex-wife,” Derek corrected instantly, stilling as the words sank into his brain and processed. “Seeing her as in…”
“As in sleeping with her.” Kieran gave a careless shrug. “She didn’t exactly seem like a woman hell-bent on reconciliation. In fact, she didn’t mention you once.”
Trina was sleeping with Wynne’s brother? Although it sounded somehow incestuous, this could be exactly the sort of ammunition against her that he needed. That she had been pretending to want to get back together with him all the while sleeping with another man didn’t surprise him. Trina was merely being Trina and looking out for her best interests. He wasn’t a fool. The only reason she wanted to stay married to him was so they could be reinstated as a super couple and sop up all the good press. She wanted him as an accent to her career, nothing more.
“If I were you, I’d steer clear of her,” he advised Kieran. “She’s toxic.”
Kieran grinned again. “Don’t worry about me, Shaw. I can handle two more just like her. At one time. The only thing you need to be concerned about is convincing my sister to take your pathetic ass back. And then keeping her happy for the rest of your pathetic life.”’
“That I can do.” He ignored the inner voice that reminded him Wynne wouldn’t return any of his calls.
He’d fly to Dallas if he had to.
He met Trina the next morning in the restaurant of the hotel. She swooped down on him, way overdressed for an informal dining room in a small town, carrying her Louis Vuitton bag as if it were her child. After dropping a kiss on his cheek that had really been intended for his mouth before he moved his head to the side, she sat down in the chair opposite him. She wore sunglasses and a low-cut black dress that revealed the results of her latest round of dieting. Her chest seemed almost sunken, her clavicles rising in sharp relief against the diamond necklace around her neck.
“I’ve been dying to see you all week,” she murmured, drawing his attention to her collagen-enhanced lips. “Have you thought about the part Lizzie and I mentioned to you? You know it would be perfect for you.”
Lizzie and Trina had tag-teamed him earlier in the week in an attempt to lure him back into the acting world. And they’d been right about one thing. He loved acting. But he didn’t love all the excess that had come along with acting in Hollywood. So he planned to spend the rest of his life getting back to the basics, to the grit and grunt of acting on stage.
“I’ve told you before that I’m not going back to LA.” He kept his voice quiet, trying to blunt the edge of his rejection, even though he knew her feelings weren’t really involved. “I don’t want the part, and I already called Lizzie and told her as much.”
She frowned, toying with the stem of her water glass. “What’s this about, then?”
“This is about settling the divorce. I want to do this without lawyers, Trina, just you and me.”
“Derek.” She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. Her fingers were cold and wet from the condensation filming her water glass, and he had to resist the urge to snatch his hand away and wipe it on his pants. “You know I don’t want a divorce.”
“I know you’ve been sleeping with another man.” He decided to lay his cards out on the table.
“You’ve been sleeping with another woman,” she countered, pulling her hand away. “But I haven’t been with Billy in a long time now. Our past doesn’t keep us from moving forward.”
“I wasn’t referring to Billy.” Derek’s gaze was pointed. He could see the exact moment comprehension set in by the way her shoulders stiffened. “You don’t really want to be married to me.”
“I do want to be married to you.” She pulled off her sunglasses and flung them to the table. “We work together. Have you seen how much press we’ve gotten here in this middle-of-nowhere town? It’s priceless. You aren’t thinking clearly. If you were, you wouldn’t turn your back on the opportunity to reclaim your life.”
“I am thinking clearly, Trina, and maybe for the first time. I have priorities now. My life isn’t about box office sales, red carpet events, and awards shows anymore. I don’t care if I get press. I don’t care if I get parts.”
“Priorities.” She said the word as though it tasted like dog food.
“I have a daughter.”
A waitress stopped by their table, effectively halting further conversation for the moment. Derek ordered pancakes and bacon. Trina ordered fat-free yogurt. When the waitress left with their order, Derek leaned across the table.
“You really should eat more, Trina. You look like a corpse.”
“A corpse?” Her mouth hung open with disbelief. “I’m only a size two. You’re being ridiculous. Besides, I have to get down to a size zero if I want to stay competitive.”
He snorted. “Do you even hear yourself?”
She tilted her head to the side. “If I recall correctly, you always liked me thin.”
“I was probably too wasted to know any better.” He sighed. “Trina, I didn’t come here to argue. I came here so that we could talk like two rational adults.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She smiled cattily. “You want a divorce. Why, so you can marry that redhead? How long do you think it’ll last, Derek? Five seconds? She just wants your money, you know.”
Actually, she didn’t want any part of him at all at the moment, but that wasn’t Trina’s concern. “Trina, Wynne has nothing to do with this. We filed for divorce before I even knew about Paige.”
“Fine.” She stuffed her sunglasses back onto her face and leaned back in her chair, looking furious. “You can have your goddamn divorce, but you’ll change your mind and by then it’ll be too late. You will be sorry every day of your life that you left me for some cheap little flower shop slut. God, this is so embarrassing. I can’t believe I’m losing you to a nobody. How will anyone take me seriously now?”
“I’m sure you’ll land on your feet.” He kept his voice dry, but the words were true. Trina was like a cat, with nine lives. It was how she was able to keep afloat in a world that constantly looked to the next, younger, prettier, thinner actress and forgot about the rest.
She crossed her arms over
her chest. “I want the house in LA. And I want you to sell the house in Malibu and give me seventy-five percent of it.”
He nodded. “The house in LA is yours, furniture and everything. I only want my clothing and a few other personal items. Other than that, I’ll give you half of everything else that I sell.”
She raised a brow.
“The cars,” he explained. “I don’t need them anymore.”
“Deal.” She pursed her lips. “Have your lawyer call mine and draw up the papers. I’ll sign everything.”
Trina rose, her chair legs scraping noisily across the hardwood floor of the restaurant. “I seem to have lost my appetite.” She turned away, then paused and looked back at him. “You will regret this. I promise you that. Every time you see me on TV, on the screen, in magazines, think that it could have been you there with me. Think of what you lost.”
She spun away and clipped from the room in her heels, head high.
Derek exhaled. Another battle won. He didn’t bother informing Trina that what he could gain by making a life with Wynne and Paige would far outweigh any life he could have reclaimed in LA. He was home in Atlantic. Where he belonged.
Looking puzzled, the waitress returned and deposited the yogurt at Trina’s vacated spot. Derek smiled up at her, feeling his heart expand in his chest. For the first time in years, he felt free. Nothing else—no sadness—just free. And it felt damn good.
“She left,” Derek explained, still smiling like an idiot, “and she won’t be back.”
“Okay.” The girl frowned. “Should I take it back to the kitchen?”
“Nah.” Derek reached for the yogurt and pulled it over to his side of the table. “I’ll eat that too. I’m in a good mood.”
And he proved just how good of a mood he was in when he left her what was undoubtedly the most generous tip ever left at the Grand Hotel. His good mood lasted as he left the restaurant and headed back up to his room with a full stomach. But the good mood ended when he dialed Dallas and Wynne’s mother answered the phone.
“Could I speak with Wynne?” He heard the edge in his voice, the edge that said he knew he was about to be rejected again.
“She’s not in,” her mother informed him, this time sounding less smug. “Maybe if you call back this afternoon you can catch her.”
He sighed, deciding the time for playing dumb had come to an end. “Look, Eileen, I know she’s avoiding me. But there’s something very important that I have to tell her.”
“Hold on.”
The muffled sound of voices reached him, but he couldn’t discern any words. Then came the sound of a palm being removed from the receiver. “I’m sorry, Derek, but she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Why the hell not?” he burst out, unable to restrain himself.
Eileen cleared her throat. “You should know the answer to that question better than anyone else.”
“Yes, apparently.” He clenched his fist at his side, frustration seeping through him. “But I’m afraid I don’t know the answer, so would you mind filling me in?”
There was a silent pause during which Derek feared the woman had hung up on him. “When Paige told her that you’re going back to acting, she was very upset,” Eileen murmured finally, so quietly Derek could barely hear her.
“What?”
“Mother!” Wynne’s voice interceded then as she apparently wrenched the phone away from her mother’s grasp. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Wynne, I’m not going back to acting.”
“I can understand that you wouldn’t want to give up the fame and the money, but I wish you could have given us some warning. It’s not me that I’m upset for as much as Paige. She has no idea you’re leaving.”
If the situation weren’t so damn serious, he’d laugh. This was the reason she’d been pretending like he didn’t exist all week? He shook his head, bemused. “Wynne, I’m not leaving. Listen to me, sweetheart. You misunderstood Paige.”
“So you’re saying you never told her you had a new job?”
Derek could picture her clamping a hand on her hip and catching her lower lip between her teeth as she contemplated what he’d told her. He’d never loathed a telephone more. He wanted to see her, to hold her, to feel her skin beneath his palms, and fall into her big green eyes. Instead, he clutched a white hotel phone to his ear, hovering as far away from the nightstand as the minimal cord would allow him.
“I did tell her that, but it was supposed to be a surprise.” He sighed, wanting to explain to her, but reluctant to do so via telephone. It just didn’t feel right. “Wynne, I need to talk to you face-to-face. Please come home early.”
Damn if he didn’t sound like a pathetic, wheedling little boy begging his mommy for an extra cookie.
Silence. She still didn’t believe him.
“Push.”
Wynne still didn’t believe Derek. Oh, his sexy, let-me-take-you-to-bed voice and his “sweethearts” and his plea to talk to her face-to-face all launched an assault on her sympathy. She wanted to believe him, wanted to believe this was all a misunderstanding. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was simply trying to calm her, to let her down gently before telling her the truth.
“I can’t come home early.” She frowned at the doorway her mother had fled through after handing her the telephone. Whose side was she on, anyway? “We’re very busy here.” The empty room she stood in mocked her words. Actually, the movers were already finished with the entire house.
“Wynne, I know you don’t believe me.” His voice rumbled deeply over the phone. She’d missed the sound of his voice, pitiable creature that she was. “But I-I…there are things I need to say to you that can’t be said over the phone.”
Like that he was getting back together with Trina, Queen of Botox, and he was flying to Fiji for six months to film his comeback role.
She snorted. “Too bad. Because this is all you’re going to get from me. In fact, you’re lucky that you’re getting this much from me.”
“Come home to me.”
She swallowed. His voice sounded frustrated, and she wished he hadn’t phrased his request quite that way. He made it sound as if he were her home. And in so many ways, Derek was home to her. But that home was about to fly across the globe never to return.
“No, Derek.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“I’ll buy you and Paige tickets for tomorrow morning. I’ll even fly in your mother.”
She pursed her lips, glaring at a black smudge on the otherwise blank white wall. “Generous of you, but we don’t need you to buy us anything. Just fly off to your real life with a free conscience.”
“Damn it, Wynne, you are my real life.” She’d never heard his voice so angry before, so edgy and hard. “You and Paige are my only life. How many times do I have to tell you that before you believe it? Before you believe in me?”
Maybe it was the emotion underlying his words. Maybe it was the poignant words he used. Whatever it was, she felt herself caving. Even her legs gave out, and she sank down onto the hardwood floor, leaning her head against the wall. Somehow, he’d managed to make himself sound like the wronged party.
The what-if litany started playing in her mind.
What if she’d jumped to conclusions about him again? What if he could really explain everything to her? His words echoed in her mind. You and Paige are my only life. Hardly the sort of thing a man would say to a woman he was about to unload. Now that she thought about it, if Derek was trying to unload her, would he really persist in calling for her every day even though he had to realize she was ducking him?
Her heart kicked up its pace.
“Wynne? Are you still there?”
She cleared her throat, suddenly uncertain of herself. “Yes. I’m here.”
“I miss you.” His deep voice sent a pleasant shiver skittering down her spine. “I walk past your flower shop just to be close to a part of you. I miss playing tea party and watching pri
ncess movies. I miss the way you smell, the way you move, the way you taste. The way you fit against me. Tell me you don’t miss me at all.”
“You know I can’t.” Her lips had gone dry. She pressed a hand to her mouth, wondering why she didn’t have more willpower where he was concerned. “Do you really walk past my flower shop?”
“Yes.” She could hear the tender grin in his voice.
“I’ll try to get a flight out tomorrow.” Wynne just blurted out her decision without giving the matter further thought. An internal debate would only waste more time, and she already knew the outcome. If she wanted to be realistic, she had to admit that she loved Derek Shaw. Nothing could change that. And when it came down to the final deciding moment, if he asked her to fly back to him, she would.
Which was probably why she’d been avoiding him all week. She knew damn well what kind of effect he had on her, how he could change her mind and soften her with just a few words. But too late now. He’d worked his magic, and by this time tomorrow, she’d be back home. She tried to muster up some disappointment at her capitulation, but could find none.
The thought of going home to find Derek waiting for her appealed. Greatly. How could it not?
A bumpy, turbulence-filled flight to Baltimore and a misplaced luggage scare later, Wynne, her mother and Paige wheeled their suitcases out of BWI. Her growling stomach reaffirmed that she had missed lunch as she tramped alongside Paige, holding her daughter’s hand tighter than necessary. She’d always hated airplanes, and the flight in had felt like a bad version of a Disney World ride. The shakiness in her knees could probably be chalked up to the barf-bag-esque drops in altitude and the jarring up-and-down motion of the plane as it cleaved winds in two.
Oh, and the small fact that she knew Derek would be waiting for her.
Her mother thought she was crazy rushing home just because he asked her to—Wynne felt a little crazy herself. Eileen cast Wynne another tight-lipped, disapproving look to reiterate her earlier anti-Derek diatribe. Wynne flashed her a smile she didn’t quite feel and looked down at her daughter. Paige skipped happily along, wheeling her Snow White suitcase behind her and carrying a floppy-eared stuffed puppy Derek had given her under her other arm. If only she could be as carefree as her daughter.
Win My Love (Love's Second Chance Book 3) Page 18
