She’d hitched a flight to Vegas on a private jet, so they needed to use Bram’s car. While she showered, he arranged a discreet exit from the hotel. She pulled on her gray cotton slacks and a wraparound white top, the least conspicuous clothes she’d brought with her. “They have my car waiting in the back,” he said when she came out of the bedroom.
“We’ll take the service elevator down.” She rubbed her forehead. “This is like Ross and Rachel all over again. The exact same thing happened to them at the end of season—”
“Except Ross and Rachel don’t really exist!”
Neither of them spoke while they rode the elevator to the first floor. She didn’t even bother telling him that he’d buttoned his shirt wrong.
They entered a service hallway and headed for the exit. As Bram held the door open, a blast of afternoon heat swept over them. She squinted against the sun and stepped outside.
A camera snapped in her face.
Chapter 5
Mel Duffy, the Darth Vader of the paparazzi, trapped them in his lens. Georgie experienced the odd sensation of floating out of her body and taking in the whole disaster from a spot somewhere above her head.
“Congratulations,” Duffy said, clicking away. “In the words of my Irish grandmother, ‘May you be poor in misfortunes and rich in blessings.’”
Bram just stood there, his hand on the door, his shirt buttoned wrong, and his jaw wired shut. He was leaving it up to her. This time she wouldn’t let the jackals get the best of her, and she plastered on her Scooter Brown smile. “It’s nice to have your grandmother’s blessing. But what for?”
Duffy was overweight, with ruddy skin and an unkempt beard. “I’ve seen a copy of your marriage license, and I talked with the guy who performed the ceremony. He looks like a seedy Justin Timber-lake.” Duffy continued to shoot as he spoke. “It’ll be all over the wires within an hour, so you might as well give me the story. I promise I’ll send you a great wedding present.” He shifted his angle again. “How long have you been—”
“There’s no story.” Bram whipped an arm around Georgie’s waist and yanked her back into the building.
Ignoring trespassing laws, Duffy caught the door before it closed and followed them in. “Have you talked to Lance? Does he know about this?”
“Back off,” Bram said.
“Come on, Shepard. You know the score as well as I do. This is the biggest celebrity story of the year.”
“I said back off.” Bram lunged for Duffy’s camera.
Georgie, with the ounce of sanity she had left, grabbed his arm and held on. “Don’t do it!”
Duffy quickly stepped back, took one final shot, and ducked out the door. “No hard feelings.”
Bram shook her off and started after him.
“Stop it!” Georgie blocked the door with her body. “What good will smashing his camera do now?”
“It’ll make me feel better.”
“That’s so you. Still trying to solve problems with your fists.”
“As opposed to smiling at any asshole who points a lens in your direction and pretending life’s just peachy?” He narrowed his eyes at her. “The next time I decide to deck somebody, stay out of my way.”
A busboy came into the hallway, forcing her to stifle a hot retort. They headed for the service elevator and rode up in furious silence. When they reached the suite, he kicked the door open, then whipped his cell from his pocket.
“No!” She snatched it from his hand and raced with it to the bathroom.
He rushed after her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She tossed the cell in the toilet before he could grab it back. He pushed her aside and stared down into the tank. “I cannot believe you did that.”
Scooter had once accidentally dropped Mother Scofield’s ancestral photo album into the garden fountain, then spent the rest of the show trying to cover her tracks. In the end, Skip had saved her by taking the blame. That so wasn’t going to happen this time. “You’re not calling anybody until we figure this out together,” she said.
“Is that right?”
Her chest heaved, and she focused all her anger on him. “Do not screw with me. I’m an American icon, remember. Lance barely got away with it, and he was Mr. Squeaky Clean. You’re not, and you won’t.”
His clenched-jaw reflection in the mirror wasn’t reassuring. “We’re going with my original plan,” he said. “In exactly one hour, your publicist and the one I’m about to hire are going to release a statement. Too much liquor, too much nostalgia, remain good friends, bullshit, bullshit.” He stalked out of the bathroom.
She went after him as she’d never gone after Lance. “A bubble-headed pop star might be able to get away with a Vegas marriage that lasts less than twenty-four hours, but I can’t, and neither can you. Give me some time to think.”
“No amount of thinking is going to make this little scrape go away.” He headed for the phone next to the couch.
“Five minutes! That’s all I need.” She pointed toward the television. “You can watch porn while you’re waiting.”
“You watch porn. I’m finding a publicist.”
She tore around the couch and once again slapped her hands over the phone. “Do not make me toss this one in the toilet, too.”
“Do not make me tie you up, lock you in a closet, and toss in a match!”
Right now that didn’t sound so horrible. And then—
An impossible idea came to her.
An idea so much worse than any murderous plot he could come up with…
An idea so unbearable, so revolting…
She backed away from the phone. “I need alcohol.”
He jabbed the receiver in the general direction of her head. “Kerosene burns hotter and faster.” She must have looked as sick as she felt because he didn’t immediately start to dial. “What’s wrong? You’re not going to throw up, are you?”
If only it were that simple. She gulped. “J-just hear me out, okay?”
“Make it quick.”
“Oh, God…” Her legs had begun to buckle, and she sank into the chair on the other side of the couch. “There’s a…” The room started to spin around her. “There might be…a-a way out of this.”
“You’re right. And I promise, I’ll have fresh flowers delivered to your grave once a month. Plus your birthday and Christmas.”
She absolutely could not look at him, so she stared at the creases of her gray slacks. “We could…” She cleared her throat. Swallowed. “We could s-stay married.”
Thick silence filled the room, followed by the piercing bleat of a telephone left too long off its cradle.
Her palms were sweating, and her cheeks burned. He set the phone back on its hook. “What did you say?”
She swallowed again and tried to pull herself together. “Just for—for a year. We stay married for a year.” Her words sounded wheezy, as if she was squeezing them through a kazoo. “A—a year from today, we announce that—that we’ve decided we’re better friends than lovers, and we’re getting a divorce. But that we’ll love each other forever. And—Here’s the important part.” Her thoughts tumbled over one another, then focused. “We—we make sure we’re seen together in public after that. Always laughing and having a good time together so neither of us gets painted as a”—she caught herself just before she said “victim”—“so neither of us gets painted as a villain.”
The bits and pieces came together in her mind like a sitcom episode on crack. “Slowly, we let the story leak that I’ve started fixing you up with some of my girlfriends and that you’re fixing me up with a few of those cretins you hang out with. Everything incredibly friendly. All Bruce and Demi. No drama, no scandal.”
And no pity. That was the important part, the only way she’d be able to keep it together. No more pity for pathetic, heartbroken Georgie York who couldn’t hold on to love.
Bram was still stuck at the beginning. “We stay married? You and me?”
&nbs
p; “Just for a year. It’s—I know it’s not a perfect plan”—a mind-numbing understatement—“but given the circumstances, I think it’s the best we can do.”
“We hate each other!”
She couldn’t fold now. Everything was at stake. Her reputation, her career, and most of all, her battered pride…
Except it was more than pride. Pride was a surface emotion, and this went deeper—all the way to her sense of identity. She faced the painful truth that she’d lived her entire life without making a single important decision of her own. Her father had guided every step of her career and her personal life, from the jobs she took to how she looked. He’d even introduced her to Lance, who’d dictated when they’d get married, where they’d live, and a thousand other things. Lance had announced they’d have no children, and he was the one who’d delivered the verdict that had ended her marriage. For thirty-one years, she’d let other people chart her destiny, and she was sick of it. She could either continue to live by the dictates of others, or she could set her own path, however bizarre.
A frightening—almost exhilarating—sense of purpose came over her. “I’ll pay you.”
That got his attention. “Pay me?”
“Fifty thousand for every month we stay together. That’s over half a million dollars, in case you can’t add.”
“I can add.”
“A post prenup,” she said.
Once again, he jabbed a finger toward her head. “You did this on purpose. You trapped me just like you tried to trap Trevor. This was what you had in mind all along.”
She jumped up from the chair. “Even you can’t believe that! Every minute I spend with you is misery. But I care more about my…career than about how much I hate you.”
“Your career or your image?”
She wasn’t discussing her self-worth issues with the enemy. “Image is career in this town,” she said, giving him the easy answer. “You know that better than anyone. It’s why you can’t get a decent job. Because nobody trusts you. But the public does trust me—even through all this mess with Lance. My reputation will rub off on you. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by going along with this. People will think you’ve reformed, and you might finally be able to get a decent job.”
Something flickered in his eyes. She’d picked the wrong argument, and she quickly switched direction. “Half a million dollars, Bram.”
He turned his back on her and wandered over to the balcony doors. “Six months.”
Her boldness faded, and she gulped. “Really?”
“I’ll go along with this for six months,” he said. “And then we renegotiate. You also have to agree to every one of my conditions.”
Alarm bells shrieked. She struggled to pull herself together. “Which are?”
“I’ll let you know when the time comes.”
“No deal.”
He shrugged. “Okay. No deal. This was your idea, not mine.”
“You’re being completely unreasonable!”
“I’m not the one who wants this so badly. Either we do it by my rules or I don’t play.”
No way in the world was she doing it by his rules. She’d had her fill of that with her father and Lance. “Fine,” she said. “Your rules. And I’m sure they’ll be eminently fair.”
“Oh, yeah, you can count on that, all right.”
She pretended not to hear. “The first thing we should do—”
“The first thing we’re doing is getting hold of Mel Duffy.” Suddenly he was all-business, which was unnerving, since Bram never paid any attention to business. “We’ll tell him he can take exclusive photos right here in the suite, but only if he turns over his shots from downstairs.” He gazed at her along his sublimely shaped nose. “He didn’t get my good side.”
Bram was right. The photos Duffy had just taken would make them look more like fugitives than blissful newlyweds. “Let’s get to work,” she said. “You remember how to do that, right?”
“Don’t push me.”
She notified the switchboard to hold the calls that would soon flood in, and Bram set about locating Mel Duffy. Three hours later, she and her dearly detested bridegroom were both clad in white, courtesy of the Bellagio’s excellent concierge service. Her dress had a bustier top, a handkerchief hem, and some strategically placed double-sided fashion tape to make it fit. Bram wore a white linen suit and an open-collared white shirt. All that white against his tanned skin, tawny hair, and rakish stubble made him look like a pirate who’d just stepped off a luxury yacht to plunder the Cannes Film Festival.
She phoned her people—all of them but her father—with the news. She did a halfway decent job of professing her joy and excitement at being married to the Playboy of the Western World, but it wouldn’t be nearly as easy with her friends. She deliberately left messages on their home voice mail so she didn’t have to speak to them directly. As for her father…One crisis at a time.
Bram came up behind her while she was in the bathroom. If she let him walk all over her now, there’d be no retakes. He needed to see a whole new Georgie York.
She picked up the lipstick wand she’d just set down. “I don’t share my makeup,” she said. “Use your own.”
“Is this stuff really nonsmear? I don’t want to get it all over me when I french you.”
“You’re not frenching me.”
“Wanna bet?” He crossed his arms over his chest and planted a shoulder against the doorjamb. “You know what I think?”
“You actually think?”
“I think all that crap you were spouting off about protecting your career is bogus.” The doorbell rang. “The real reason you want to go through with this farce is because you never got over me.”
“Oh, gee, you found me out.” She elbowed him hard as she passed through the doorway.
Bram caught her before she reached the living room, and he tousled her hair. “There. Now you look like you just tumbled out of bed.” He headed for the door. “Smile for the nice photographer.”
Mel Duffy lumbered in, bringing the smell of onion rings with him. “Georgie, you look gorgeous.” He studied the room, then gestured toward the balcony. “Let’s start out here.”
A few minutes later, they were posing by the railing with the sun sinking and their arms entwined around each other’s waists. Duffy took some close-ups of the bride and groom laughing over the plastic diamond, then suggested Bram pick her up.
Just what she didn’t want…Bram Shepard dangling her thirty stories above the ground.
Her filmy white skirt swirled around them as he swept her into his arms. She dug her fingers in his bicep. He gazed down at her, his face all lovey-dovey. She slipped her palm inside his jacket and lovey-doveyed him right back. She wondered what it would be like not to fake emotions she wasn’t even close to feeling. At least this time, she’d chosen her path, and that had to count for something.
Duffy shifted position. “How about a kiss?”
“Exactly what I had in mind.” Bram’s voice was liquid sex.
She manufactured a silky smile. “I was hoping you’d ask.”
He dipped his head, and just like that, she was sucked back to the past—the day of their first on-screen kiss.
She’d stood by another railing then, one that looked down on the Chicago River near the Michigan Avenue Bridge. As usual, they were spending the first couple of weeks shooting exteriors before they returned to L.A. to film the rest of what would be their fifth season. It was a Sunday morning in late July, and the police had temporarily closed off the area. Even with a breeze blowing in from the lake, it was already nearly ninety degrees.
“Is Bram here yet?” Jerry Clarke, their director, called out.
“Not yet,” the A.D. replied.
Bram hated early-morning calls nearly as much as he’d come to hate playing Skip, and Georgie knew for a fact that Jerry had assigned a production assistant to get him out of bed. Her hands curled over the railing. She couldn’t wait for today to be ov
er. A year might have passed since the ugly night on the boat, but she still hadn’t forgiven him for what he’d done or forgiven herself for letting him go so far. She coped by pretending he didn’t exist. Only when the cameras began to roll and he turned into her Skip Scofield with his gentle, intelligent eyes and worried, caring expression did she let down her defenses.
They’d dressed her that day in a skinny, but not too skinny, T-shirt and a short, but not too short, cotton skirt. The producers had begun letting her have more auburn added to her hair, but she still hated the curls. Not only did the network own her hair, but they owned the rest of her, too. Her contract prohibited body piercing, tattoos, sexual scandal, and drug abuse. Apparently Bram’s contract forbade nothing.
The director exploded in frustration. “Somebody go find the son of a bitch!”
“The son of a bitch is right here.” Bram slithered forward, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, his bloodshot eyes at odds with his light blue knit shirt, pressed chinos, and preppy wristwatch.
“Did you have a chance to look over the script?” Jerry said with open sarcasm. “We’re doing Skip and Scooter’s first kiss.”
“Yeah, I read it.” He pitched a cigarette butt through the railing. “Let’s get this bullshit over with.”
As she stood there in her girl-next-door clothes, she hated him so fiercely she burned with it. Those first few years, she’d been so determined to see him as a moody romantic figure waiting for the right woman to redeem him, but he was really just a garden-variety snake, and she was a sucker not to have figured that out right away.
They ran their lines and found their marks. The cameras began to roll. She waited for the magic to begin as Bram transformed himself into Skip.
SKIP
(Gazing tenderly at SCOOTER)
Scooter, what am I going to do with you?
SCOOTER
You could kiss me. I know you don’t want to. I know you’re going to say that I’m—
SKIP
Trouble.
SCOOTER
I don’t mean to be.
SKIP
What I Did for Love Page 7
