What I Did for Love

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  Her stomach clenched. “Birds of a feather.”

  “He’s house-sitting—”

  She held up her hand. “Stop. I can’t talk about Bramwell Shepard. Especially not today.” Bram would have watched her get trampled to death this afternoon and never lost the smile on his face. God, she hated him, even after all these years.

  Trev mercifully changed the subject without questioning her. “You saw last week’s USA Today poll, right? Favorite sitcom heroines? Scooter Brown came in third after Lucy and Mary Tyler Moore. You even beat out Barbara Eden.”

  She’d seen the poll and couldn’t bring herself to care. “I hate Scooter Brown.”

  “You’re the only one who does. She’s an icon. It’s anti-American not to love her.”

  “The series has been off the air for eight years. Why can’t everybody let it go?”

  “Maybe those perpetual reruns blasting out all over the globe have something to do with it?”

  She pushed her sunglasses on top of her head. “I was a kid when the show started, only fifteen. And barely twenty-three when it ended.”

  He took in her red eyes but didn’t comment on them. “Scooter Brown is ageless. Every woman’s best friend. Every man’s favorite virgin.”

  “But I’m not Scooter Brown. I’m Georgie York. My life belongs to me, not to the world.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  She couldn’t let herself do this any longer. Perpetually reacting to external forces. Unable to set her own counterforces in motion. Always acted upon. Never acting. She drew her knees closer and studied the rainbows she’d asked her manicurist to paint on her toenails in the vain hope of cheering herself up. If she didn’t do this now, she never would. “Trev, what would you think about you and me having a little—a big romance?”

  “Romance?”

  “The two of us.” She couldn’t look at him, and she kept her eyes on the rainbows. “Falling very publicly in love. And…maybe—” She pushed out the words. “Trev, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time…I know you’re going to think it’s crazy. It is crazy. But…If you don’t hate the idea, I was thinking…we should at least consider the possibility of…getting married.”

  “Married?” Trevor’s feet hit the deck.

  He was one of her dearest friends, but her cheeks burned. Still, what was one more monumentally humiliating moment in a year filled with them? She unlocked her arms from her knees. “I know I shouldn’t be dumping this on you out of nowhere. And I know it’s weird. Really weird. I felt that way when I first started thinking about it, but when I considered it objectively, I couldn’t see a big downside.”

  “Georgie, I’m gay.”

  “You’re rumored to be gay.”

  “I’m also really gay.”

  “But you’re so deep in the closet hardly anybody knows.” The fresh scrape on her ankle stung as she eased her legs over the side of the chaise. “This would finally put an end to the rumors. Face it, Trev. If the frat-boy crowd ever finds out you’re playing for their team, your career is gone.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” He rubbed his hand over his shaved head. “Georgie, your life is a circus, and as much as I adore you, I don’t want to be dragged into the center ring.”

  “That’s the point. If you and I were together, the circus would stop.” As he sat back down, she went to his side and knelt there. “Trev, just think about it. We’ve always gotten along. We’d be able to live our lives the way we want—without any interference from each other. Think about how much more freedom you’d have—we’d both have.” She rested her cheek against his knee, just for a moment, then sat back on her heels. “You and I aren’t an odd couple like Lance and I were. Trevor and Georgie are a boring match, and after the first couple of months, the press will leave us alone. We could live under the radar. You wouldn’t need to keep going out with all those women you have to pretend to be interested in. You could see who you wanted. Our marriage would be the perfect cover for you.” And for her, it would be a way to make the world stop its pity party. She’d have both her public dignity back and a kind of insurance policy to keep her from ever again throwing herself off an emotional cliff for a man.

  “Think about it, Trev. Please.” She needed to let him get used to the idea before she mentioned children. “Think how liberating it would be.”

  “I’m not marrying you.”

  “Me either.” A horrifyingly familiar voice drifted across the deck. “I’d rather stop drinking.”

  Georgie shot to her feet and watched Bramwell Shepard saunter up the stairs from the beach. He stopped at the top, his mouth quirking with calculated amusement.

  She sucked in her breath.

  “Don’t let me interrupt.” He leaned against the rail. “This is the most interesting conversation I’ve eavesdropped on since Scooter and her friends debated dyeing their pubic hair. Trev, why didn’t you tell me you’re a fairy? Now we can’t ever be seen in public together again.”

  Unlike Georgie, Trevor seemed relieved by the interruption, and he pointed his margarita glass in the general direction of Bram’s sun-drenched head. “You fixed me up with my last boyfriend.”

  “I must have been wasted.” Her former costar took her in. “Speaking of wasted…You look like crap.”

  She had to get out of here. She glanced toward the doors that led back into the house, but a frail ember of dignity still lingered in the ashes of her self-respect, and she couldn’t let him see her run. “What are you doing here?” she said. “This isn’t an accident.”

  He nodded toward the pitcher. “You two aren’t really drinking that shit, are you?”

  “I’m sure you remember where I keep the real liquor.” Trev eyed her with concern.

  “Later.” Bram folded his long frame onto the chaise across from the one where Georgie had been sitting. The sand clinging to his calves sparkled like tiny diamonds. The breeze frolicked in his crisp golden-bronze hair. Her stomach twisted. A beautiful debauched angel.

  The image had come from an essay written by a well-known television critic not long after the debacle that had ended one of the most successful television shows in history. She still remembered.

  We can imagine Bram Shepard in heaven, his face so perfect the other angels can’t bring themselves to cast him out even though he’s drunk up all the sacred wine, seduced the pretty virgin angels, and stolen a harp to replace the one he gambled away in a celestial poker game. We watch him endanger the entire flock by flying too close to the sun, then plunging too recklessly toward the sea. But the angel community is mesmerized by the fields of lavender in his eyes, the rays of sun weaving through his hair, so they forgive him his transgressions…until his last dangerous plunge drives them all into the muck.

  Bram rested his head on the back of the chaise, a position that outlined his still-flawless profile against the sky. At thirty-three, the softer edges of his pleasure-seeking youth had hardened, making his lazy, glittering beauty even more destructive. Bronze threaded his blond hair, cynicism tainted his choirboy’s lavender eyes, and mockery lurked at the corners of his perfectly symmetrical mouth.

  The fact that someone so utterly without scruples had overheard her conversation with Trevor made her ill. She couldn’t flee, not yet, but her legs were giving out. “Why are you here?” She sank into one of the tulip chairs.

  “I started to tell you,” Trev said. “Bram sometimes uses my other house down the beach, the one I’m trying to sell. Since he’s made himself unemployable, he doesn’t have anything better to do than laze around and bother me.”

  “I’m not exactly unemployable.” Bram crossed his sandy ankles. Even the arches of his feet were as gracefully curved as the blade of a scimitar. “Just last week I got an offer to humiliate myself on a new reality TV show. If I hadn’t been stoned when the call came in, I’d probably have accepted. Just as well.” He waved an elegant hand. “Too much work.”

  “Point made,” Trev said.

  S
he frantically scanned the sand for photographers. This was a private beach, but the press would do anything to get a photo of her with Bram again. Skip and Scooter publicly reunited after all this time. Her stomach churned at the thought of someone as predictably evil as Bram Shepard becoming part of her public nightmare.

  He leaned back and closed his eyes again. He looked like a bored aristocrat taking in the sun—a deceptive image, since he was a high school dropout who’d been raised on Chicago’s South Side by a deadbeat father. “I hope you hid your razor blades, Trev. Word is that our Scooter has a death wish now that life’s dealt her such a cruel blow. Personally, I think she should celebrate finally getting rid of that moron she married. Jade Gentry must have lost her mind to let herself be taken in by Mr. All-American. Tell me the truth, Scoot. Lance Marks can’t get it up, can he?”

  “I see you’re still a perfect gentleman. How reassuring.” She had to escape without looking like she was running away. She made a play of slowly rising from the chair and sauntering over to fetch her sandals. Too late, she realized she couldn’t remember where she’d left them.

  He opened his eyes and gave her the lazy, mocking smile that had annihilated so many otherwise sensible women. “I read that the happy couple is back on foreign shores doing more of their well-publicized good work.”

  Lance and Jade had spent their honeymoon on a humanitarian trip to Thailand. She’d never forget their press release. “We want to use our celebrity to spotlight Jade’s pet cause, the exploitation of children in the sex industry.”

  Georgie didn’t have a pet cause, at least nothing that went beyond writing some generous checks. She looked frantically around for her shoes.

  Bram pointed the tip of a lean finger toward the base of the chaise where she’d been sitting earlier. “Their campaign to beef up laws against child-sex tourists is heartwarming. And while they’re battling Congress, I hear you’ve been power shopping at Fred Segal.”

  Just like that, her self-control snapped. “I truly hate you.”

  “Impossible. Scooter could never hate her beloved Skip. Not after he spent eight years of his life getting her out of those crazy little jams.”

  She grabbed the sandals and shoved in one foot.

  “Stop it, Bram,” Trev said.

  But Bram wasn’t done with her. “Remember when you fell in the lake wearing Mother Scofield’s fur coat? Or what about the time you released that cage of mice at her annual Christmas party?”

  If she didn’t react to his baiting, he’d stop.

  But Bram had always loved slow torture. “Even on our wedding day, you got into trouble. A good thing we never actually shot that show. I heard I was going to knock you up on our honeymoon. If the network hadn’t pulled the plug, I would have sired a little Skip.”

  Her fury erupted. “It wasn’t a little Skip! It was twins! We were supposed to have twins—a girl and a boy. Obviously, you were too high to remember that small detail.”

  “Immaculate conception, I’m sure. Can you imagine Scooter naked and—”

  She couldn’t take any more, and she spun toward the house, one shoe on, one in her hand.

  “I wouldn’t go, if I were you,” he said lazily. “Ten minutes ago, I spotted a photographer crawling into those shrubs across the road. Someone must have seen your car.”

  She was trapped.

  He raked her with his eyes, one of his many unpleasant habits. “You haven’t taken up smoking by any chance, have you, Scoot? I need a cigarette, and Trev refuses to keep a carton around for his guests. He’s such a Boy Scout.” Bram arched a flawless eyebrow. “Except for his filthy habits with members of his own sex.”

  Trevor tried to ease the tension. “You know I only put up with him because I secretly lust after his buff body. Such a pity he’s straight.”

  “You’re too fastidious to lust after him,” she retorted.

  “Look again,” Trev said dryly.

  It wasn’t fair. Bram should be dead by now, killed by his own excesses, but the bony body she remembered from Skip and Scooter had grown tough, its wasted elegance transformed into hard muscle and long sinew. Beneath the sleeve of his white T-shirt a tribal tattoo banded a formidable bicep, and his navy swim trunks revealed legs with the taut, extended tendons of a distance runner. He wore his thick, bronzed hair rumpled, and the pale skin that had been as much a part of him as a hangover had disappeared. Except for the air of decadence that clung to him like a bad reputation, Bram Shepard looked shockingly healthy.

  “He works out now,” Trev interrupted with an exaggerated whisper, as if he were divulging a juicy bit of scandal.

  “Bram never worked out a day in his life,” she said. “He got those muscles by selling what was left of his soul.”

  Bram smiled and turned his badass angel’s face to her. “Tell me more about this plan of yours to get your pride back by marrying Trev. Not quite as interesting as the pubic hair conversation, but still…”

  She clenched her teeth. “I swear to God, if you breathe a word to anybody—”

  “He won’t,” Trevor said. “Our Bramwell has never been interested in anybody but himself.”

  That was so true. But she still couldn’t bear knowing he’d overheard something so humiliating. She and Bram had worked together from the time he was seventeen until he was twenty-five. At seventeen, his selfishness had been thoughtless, but as his fame had spread, his behavior had become more deliberately reckless. It wasn’t hard to see that he’d only grown more cynical and self-centered.

  He drew up his knee. “Aren’t you a little young to have given up on true love?”

  She felt a hundred years old. Her fairy-tale marriage had failed, putting an end to her dreams of finally having a family of her own and a man who’d love her for herself instead of what she could do for his career. She flipped her sunglasses back over her eyes, weighing the danger of the jackals lurking outside against the danger of the beast in front of her. “I am not talking to you about this.”

  “Ease up, Bram,” Trevor said. “She’s had a tough year.”

  “The downside of being worshipped,” Bram replied.

  Trev sniffed. “Nothing you’ll ever have to worry about.”

  Bram picked up her abandoned margarita, sipped, and shuddered at the taste. “I’ve never seen the public take a celebrity divorce so personally. I’m surprised none of your crazed fans set themselves on fire.”

  “People feel like Georgie’s family,” Trevor said. “They grew up with Scooter Brown.”

  Bram set the glass down. “They grew up with me, too.”

  “But Georgie and Scooter are basically the same person,” Trevor pointed out. “You and Skip aren’t.”

  “Thank God.” Bram rose from the chaise. “I still hate that uptight little preppy prick.”

  But Georgie had loved Skip Scofield. She’d loved everything about him. His big heart, his loyalty, the way he’d tried to protect Scooter from the Scofield family. The way he’d eventually fallen in love with her silly round face and rubber-band mouth. She’d loved everything except the man Skip turned into when the cameras stopped rolling.

  The three of them had fallen back into their old pattern—Bram on the attack and Trevor defending her. But she wasn’t a kid any longer, and she needed to defend herself. “I don’t think you hate Skip at all. I think you always wanted to be Skip, but you fell so far short of the mark that you had to pretend to despise him.”

  Bram yawned. “Maybe you’re right. Trev, are you sure no one’s left any weed lying around? Or even a cigarette?”

  “I’m sure,” Trevor said, just as the phone rang. “Don’t kill each other while I answer that.”

  Trevor went inside.

  She wanted to punish Bram for being exactly who he was. “I could have been trampled to death today. Thanks for nothing.”

  “You were handling it. And without Daddy. Now that was the real surprise.”

  She stared him down. “What do you want, Bram? We both know y
our showing up here isn’t an accident.”

  He rose, wandered toward the railing, and peered down at the beach. “If Trev had been stupid enough to take you up on your bizarre offer, what would you have done for a sex life?”

  “Right. That’s something I’m going to talk to you about.”

  “Who better to confide in?” he said. “I was there at the beginning, remember?”

  She couldn’t bear another moment, and she spun toward the French doors.

  “Just out of curiosity, Scoot…,” he said from behind her. “Now that Trev’s rejected you, who’s next in line to be Mr. Georgie York?”

  She pasted on a smile full of mockery and turned back. “Aren’t you sweet to tax that big evil head of yours worrying about my future when your own life is such a screwed-up mess.” Her hand was trembling, but she gave what she hoped passed for a jaunty wave and went inside. Trev had just gotten off the phone, but she was too drained to do more than ask him to at least consider her idea.

  By the time she reached Pacific Palisades, she was so tightly coiled she ached. She ignored the photographer parked at the end of her court and turned into a narrow driveway that curled down to an unassuming pseudo-Mediterranean ranch that could have fit into her former home’s swimming pool. She hadn’t been able to bear staying in the house where she and Lance had lived. This rental came furnished with bulky pieces that were too heavy for the small rooms, just as the ceilings were too low for the rough wooden beams, but she didn’t care enough to look for another place.

  She cranked open a bedroom window, then made herself check her voice mail.

  “Georgie, I saw the stupid tabloid, and—”

  Delete

  “Georgie, I’m so sorry—”

  Delete

  “He’s a bastard, kiddo, and you’re—”

  Delete

  Her friends were well meaning—most of them, anyway—but their nonstop sympathy choked her. She wanted to be the one handing out sympathy for a change, not always having to receive it.

  “Georgie, call me immediately.” Her father’s crisp voice filled the room. “There’s a photo in the new Flash that’s bound to upset you. I don’t want you to be taken off guard.”