Within This Frame

by Zart, Lindy

  “It’s hard to pretend to love someone you hate,” he said dryly, referring to Derek and Cecilia’s onscreen romance.

  “That’s a load of crap.”

  Lance frowned.

  Steven leaned close, his green eyes sad and sympathetic. A lock of brown hair fell over his eyebrow and he shoved it back. “It’s hard because she still cares. It’d be easy if she hated you.” He straightened and waved. “See you tomorrow.”

  “See you,” Lance mumbled, waiting until Maggie left to walk up to Herman.

  Herman’s perpetual onion and garlic smell wafted to Lance as Herman glared at him. “I said to meet me in my office!”

  “You don’t have an office.”

  “Let’s pretend for a second I do!”

  Lance looked balefully at the bald, perspiring man.

  “You royally messed things up with that girl!”

  He closed his eyes. “I know that. Everyone keeps telling me that like I don’t know it.”

  “What you don’t know, is that if your act doesn’t straighten up, this show is going to tank! Do you want that? Do you want to be unemployed because you don’t know how to keep your dick in your pants? Do you want everyone else to lose their jobs because of it too?”

  Most days Lance wished there was a volume control on the always shouting man, and that wish was tenfold at the moment.

  “I’ll do better,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “You will.” Herman nodded. “Or we’ll all be looking for new jobs! Act like your job depends on how you perform from now on, because it does.” He stomped away, pausing to jab a finger in Lance’s direction. “Keep it in your pants! We have two seasons for sure to get through, and then I don’t care what you do with it, let it loose on the world for all I care!”

  Somewhat concerned about Herman’s word choice and apparent views on such things, Lance slowly walked from the building. Once outside, he looked around him like he was lost. The sky was colored in gray clouds, thunder rumbling as he stood there. The door to the house opened behind him, and with a lump in his throat, Lance turned, eyes trained on Maggie.

  Lance didn’t know how it was possible, but she looked skinnier every season. There were hollows around her eyes and cheeks. He fisted his hands and started for her as she grappled with a box in her arms.

  “Maggie,” he said, his voice choked and rough.

  She looked up, almost dropping the box, and then steadied it as she took the last step to reach the ground. “I’m glad I caught you.”

  “You are?” Hope filled the two words and he let it take over his mind, wanting so desperately to have her back. “Maggie, please. I messed up, I know that, but this can’t be the end for us. Give me—give us—another chance. Please.”

  Lance didn’t know when they started, but tears ran down his face, hot and unstoppable. He couldn’t breathe, his chest tight, throat dry. He felt sick, and lost, and for the first time in a long time, in control. He understood loss, and grief. Lance was an instrument of his own self-destruction.

  “You need help,” she said in a quaking voice.

  “I know,” Lance whispered. “I know that.”

  “I came home to find my boyfriend in bed with another woman, and a slutty one at that—pretty much the one girl I hate in this whole world, actually.” Maggie’s voice was quiet, but as piercing as a razorblade. “Why would you ever think I would go back to you after that?”

  There was no way to deny it. He did it. He was drunk and confused, yeah, but he still did it.

  Maggie pushed the box toward him. “This is yours. I don’t want any of it. If I find anything else, I’ll let you know. You can keep it, or throw it away.” She met his gaze, her normally warm eyes dark and cold. It was like looking into a void. “Please throw it all away.”

  Lance carefully took the box, staring down at months and months of pictures, gifts, notes. Even her Bon Jovi CD was in the box. Their love was reduced to things, and she wanted none of them.

  “My love wasn’t enough for you, right? No, not Lance. He always has to see what else is out there. And the thing is—I can’t even be that angry with you, because I knew what you were like.” She laughed, but it was sour with bitterness. “This is my fault, really.”

  “No.” Lance dropped the box and reached for her, but Maggie yanked her arm away. “This isn’t your fault. It’s mine. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I still—I still love you, Maggie.”

  “You don’t love me!” Eyes wild, she pointed a shaking finger at him. “You don’t know what love is. You don’t love me,” Maggie said in a quieter voice. “Because if you did, you wouldn’t have slept with Tabitha Volden, drunk or not.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his head lowered. “I’m sorry for what I did.”

  “Don’t apologize for that,” Maggie said sharply.

  Lance looked up, confused. “Why not?”

  “Because that isn’t what hurt the most. Not that it doesn’t feel like my heart has been ripped from my body, and stomped on, repeatedly, relentlessly, every second of every day, or that every time I see you I feel like I’m going to be sick, but what was worse than finding you with her . . .”

  Maggie’s throat moved as she swallowed. “What was worse was knowing how easily it could have been avoided, if you’d just . . . I don’t know.” She shrugged, dropping her eyes to where her nails dug crescent shapes into the palms of her hands. “If you’d just let us be enough. That’s why you got scared, right?”

  She looked up, shredding him with the grief twisting her features. “You were scared you’d want something else, something better, something more. That’s you, that’s Lance Denton. You want everything, and even when you have it, you want more.”

  They stared at one another, Lance with his guilt and Maggie with her blame, and then she walked away.

  “How are we going to work like this?” he called after her as she headed for her car.

  Maggie looked over her shoulder and gave him a thin smile. “I guess I’ll just have to pretend you’re someone else, someone better, someone more.”

  MAGGIE—2010

  MAGGIE WAS PROUD of herself. The last twenty-four days she’d been on her own and she’d continued her healthy eating and exercising. It was said to take twenty-one days to form a habit, or break one, and she was confident of her new lifestyle. She could do it, and she could do it the right way.

  She was stronger than any eating disorder or self-doubt.

  Maggie could have flown, but instead chose to drive the seven-hour trip to the Berryhill Bed and Breakfast located in Agenda, Missouri—a town with under two thousand people in residence. The drive was scenic, reflective, and filled with anticipation. She could feel her heart pounding harder against her chest the closer she got. Maggie liked the smallness of Agenda, quaint shops and old structures lining the streets. Fall was approaching, leaves already showing a turn in color.

  The bed and breakfast was set on a corner lot, an emerald green Victorian-style building with a pillared porch and painted windows on the lower level. Maggie parked her car in the designated guest parking behind the house, and with her rollaway luggage trailing behind her, walked to the front to stare. The air was crisp and smelled like autumn—leaves and cinnamon and apples.

  “Where are you manners, Maggie? Didn’t your parents teach you that staring is rude?”

  Maggie slowly turned.

  “Unless you’re staring at me, then it’s encouraged. Stare away.”

  Lance grinned at her from the sidewalk, clothed in jeans and a hooded black sweatshirt. They’d talked and texted, but it wasn’t the same as seeing him. It was insane how fast her pulse got, and the air left her, but she couldn’t draw more in, and tears stung her eyes, but she was happy. Maggie threw herself at him, and Lance’s arms went around her as they stumbled to the side. The hug was warm and scented like Lance and made her heart sing.

  “I brought you something,” she said, grudgingly releasing her hold on him.

>   Lance smiled down at her. “Oh?”

  “It’s out of this world.” Maggie moved for her suitcase, opening it and taking out the little soaps.

  Laughing, he accepted the alien headed soaps. “Thank you. I was actually going to ask you about your soap making skills.” He took her luggage and walked toward the house.

  “What about it?” she asked.

  “You said you donate a lot of the soaps you make, and you mentioned kids. Would you be interested in making some for the children’s program the benefit is sponsoring?”

  “I would love to do that,” Maggie told him, stepping through the door of the toasty warm house. It was dark inside, country décor with dominant checkered prints flagging the area, and the smell of fruit and sugar told the tale of recently baked goods. Wood floors and furniture added to the rustic ambience.

  “Say, enough to cover the uncashed check you wrote me?”

  Maggie paused, facing Lance. “That’s why you didn’t take the money. Lance, you didn’t have to do that. I would gladly make and donate soap, no payment necessary.”

  “Good. Then you can give me back the check. Kidding.” He winked. “Let’s find out where your room is and get you settled.”

  “If you need the money,” she began.

  Lance quelled her words with a look. “I don’t. Things are working out better than I’d hoped. I’ll be okay.”

  “I didn’t ask you to donate your services, you know. I went into the arrangement intending to pay you.”

  “Oh, you will. I just haven’t decided how yet.”

  Maggie was about to demand what he meant by that when they stepped into a kitchen and were greeted by a short, plump, gray-haired woman wearing a long brown skirt and a white blouse with a red apron over it. She wiped her flour-caked hands on the front of the garment and smiled as she approached.

  “Hello, Maggie! You’re the first of the guests, other than Lance here, to arrive. It’s wonderful to meet you. Lance has said a lot about you. I’m Diane.” Diane grabbed Maggie by the shoulders and pulled her into a warm, delicious-scented hug.

  “You’ve been talking about me to a stranger?” Maggie loudly whispered after returning the hug and greeting to Diane.

  “Stranger?” Diane laughed and took a pumpkin pie from the oven. “I’m his—well, Lance will have to tell you about that.”

  Maggie frowned at Lance, but he wouldn’t look at her.

  “Here’s your key.” Diane took a keyring from a hook on the wall and set it on Maggie’s palm. “Room thirty-five, on the third floor. Lance can show you. There will be refreshments and snacks at four in the Leaf Room. Lance knows where that is too. See you then.”

  Immensely confused, Maggie quietly followed Lance up two sets of stairs. The halls on each floor were wallpapered in pink roses and stripes and lined in white trim. She didn’t talk until he set her suitcase before a white door and turned to face her.

  “Talk, Lance.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, his expression calm even as his eyes stayed away from hers. “About what?”

  “Something’s going on here. Who is that woman and what do you have to do with her? You’re not just a guest to her. Is there really a fundraising dinner? Because I have to say, this is the craziest place I’ve ever been invited to for one.”

  “I may not have been entirely upfront with you.”

  Maggie stared at Lance. “This is the part where you tell me you’re insanely infatuated with me, and that you orchestrated all of this—the invitation, the training, me being here now—as a way to make me fall in love with you again, right? Next you’ll announce that we’re sharing a room and demand payment for your training in endless, mind-boggling, amazing sex.” Funny, but that didn’t sound all that bad.

  “You asked your sister to recommend a personal trainer,” he reminded her.

  “Don’t point out the flaws in my logic.”

  Lance’s mouth lifted in a small smile. “Is that what you’re hoping is going on?”

  She shoved the key in the keyhole and turned her wrist. “You don’t get to ask the questions here, I do.”

  Maggie swung open the door, stunned by the beauty within and somewhat disappointed that nothing of Lance’s was in the room. The room was wrapped in cream and lace from the curtained windows to the huge four-poster bed. Sunshine streamed in through the windows, catching the crystal chandelier to create little rainbows within the teardrops.

  “Wow. This looks like Cecilia’s room, from the set. Prettier, of course, but similar.” She stepped inside and looked at Lance.

  “Yeah.” He swallowed and looked at his shoes. “I picked out the room. It . . . reminded me of the show, which could be considered unsettling, I guess.”

  Maggie didn’t speak, watching Lance, waiting.

  He met her gaze and shrugged. “Diane was my therapist, the one who helped me get my head on straight. She retired a few years back and started a bed and breakfast. I don’t really talk to my dad all that often, so she’s kind of been my surrogate parent.”

  “And the dinner is here, why? And how?”

  “That’s all I’m telling you for now. But there really is a fundraising dinner here tonight. I’ll give you time to get ready and come back in an hour?”

  She nodded a numb head.

  “Oh.” Lance turned from the door and said, “One more thing—I’m no longer your employee. Remember what I said before? Run, or submit. You didn’t run.” He smiled with wicked promise, and then he was gone, leaving her breathless and shaking.

  LANCE—2000

  “LANCE! HOW GREAT to see you. Heads up—I got a new best friend for this season. She’s replacing Tabitha. Remember Tabitha? Anyway, she’s starting on the show next week. I just thought I’d let you know because I’m sure you’ll want to sleep with her.”

  The show took its customary two-week vacation over the Christmas holidays and was back in production early January. In the months following their breakup, Maggie had turned into a viper, and he had reacted in kind.

  Lance let Jackie finish prepping his hair before looking at Maggie. His eyebrows lowered. She was so thin. What the hell was she doing to herself?

  “Wow. I’m back on the set all of two full minutes before you seek me out. Obviously you missed me—not that I blame you.” Lance smiled, but it was dark and unfriendly. It was a lot like the smile on Maggie’s face.

  “I did miss you.” She nodded. “Like I miss vomiting, and diarrhea, and any other horrible affliction you can think of. In fact, I feel like I could vomit right now, right here, just from standing near you.”

  Lance narrowed his eyes and stood up. “Good to know.”

  Ratings for the show were low, and everyone was feeling it. Attitudes were prickly, although that wasn’t the reasoning for Maggie’s treatment of Lance. She simply despised him. The remainder of the season had to have an outstanding comeback, or they were done. The chemistry between Derek and Cecilia had gone sour, and the viewers didn’t like that.

  Maggie tossed a magazine at him. “It didn’t take you long to go back to your old ways.”

  He caught it, a picture of him with three women surrounding him on the front cover. He’d only had sex with one of them, unlike all three of them like the headline implied. He looked up. “It almost sounds as if you care.”

  “Do I care that my co-star is a whore? Not at all. Why would I care what you do? I’m not your girlfriend anymore, or your babysitter.” Maggie crossed her arms and glared at him.

  Lance shrugged and offered a wide, fake smile. “If you can’t beat the past, might as well embrace it, right?”

  “That is a wonderful motto. Sort of like saying it’s hard to be a decent person, so why bother?” Her voice was sweet, but Lance knew there were spikes hidden beneath it.

  “Hey.” Lance grabbed her wrist when she went to walk away.

  Maggie stiffened, her mouth trembling for a second before it went back to a hard line.

  He frowned, surprised by
that. He still felt the ache where she should be, but he couldn’t imagine it being the same for her.

  “What?” she snapped, trying to pull her arm from his grasp.

  Lance tightened his grip. Even her wrist was bonier. “You and I have to work together if this show is going to make it another season.”

  “Let go of me.”

  He dropped his hand.

  “I’ll do my job,” Maggie promised. “And you do yours.”

  Lance’s voice was solemn when he said, “You got it.”

  An hour later they were garbed in full winter gear, clamoring around in the hills like it was zero degree Iowa weather instead of the thirty degrees it really was. The sun was high in the sky, glinting off the snow to blind him if he looked at it in the right spot. The snow was a foot deep, maybe two at the most, and supremely dull to Lance.

  “What a rip off,” he muttered.

  Maggie heard him, glancing over her shoulder as she scaled the uneven terrain. The pink and white stocking cap looked adorable on her, her sharp-boned face glowing against the snow backdrop.

  “This snow. This winter. It’s a rip off, a cheap imitation,” he continued, leaning down to scoop up a handful of the white powder. A light breeze blew it all away.

  “Good thing none of this is real then, right?”

  Lance stood, staring at her intently. “It was real.”

  Maggie’s cheeks went red and she looked away.

  “Ready, Derek and Cecilia?” Herman shouted from where he stood a few feet away. “Let’s see what you got, and it better be amazing or we’re all fired!”

  “Way to be positive,” Maggie mumbled.

  Lance smiled in spite of himself.

  Their eyes met, and it was like the first time they’d ever done a scene together. Lance was mesmerized as he watched Maggie turn into Cecilia, and once again, he felt himself fall a little in love with her. She was breathtaking. Whatever happened with the show, he hoped she continued to act. It would be a travesty if she didn’t. Maggie was a natural.