Freefall

by Kristen Heitzmann

  “Gentry!” Helen came out a side door.

  She stopped and waited for her to catch up. “Well?”

  Helen grabbed her hands. “I got it.”

  “Molly?”

  Helen nodded, her face flushing to the pale roots of her hair. “I got Molly.”

  Gentry threw out her arms and hugged her. When she’d seen the part for the secondary character who served as a foil for her own intrepid Eva Thorne, she’d lobbied hard for Helen to at least get a reading. Helen had done the rest.

  “Congratulations.” Gentry gave her another squeeze.

  “I can hardly believe it.” Helen’s cheeks were infused with rose, excitement shining in her eyes.

  “Believe it.” Gentry set her back. “So what about the troupe?”

  “I won’t be nearly as tied up here as you are.”

  “It’s still too much to do both by yourself.”

  Helen turned. “Do you want to come back?”

  Not what she’d meant. She shook her head. “I was thinking of Troy.”

  Helen widened her eyes. “You think he would? He hasn’t been part of it since …”

  “I know. But I won’t be there, and I bet he misses it. Talk to him.”

  Helen nodded uncertainly. “You don’t want to?”

  “Do it, or talk to him?”

  Helen shrugged. “I know he misses you.”

  Gentry swallowed the sudden ache. “I miss him too. He’s a great kid. I’m just not sure where his head is.”

  Helen looked down. “Can we go somewhere?”

  “The studio has a cafeteria.” Anywhere else she’d be ducking fans and paparazzi. “This way.” They changed course, and she said, “It’ll be great working with you, Helen.”

  Helen nodded, but her agreement seemed strained. Maybe their friendship had been irreparably torn. The lot they crossed smelled of oil and smog, and she quashed a sudden longing for balmy trade winds and fresh, clean rain. Gentry slid her card into the cafeteria door and pulled it open.

  They went through the beverage line and got a table away from the few other people in the room. Helen had sounded serious and seemed uncomfortable.

  Gentry sipped her iced tea. “The part’s perfect for you. I hope they won’t change your look too much.”

  “They can do whatever they want. I’m just glad to be working.” Helen raised her diet 7-Up, then set it down without drinking. She looked up. The honest Helen she’d known would tell her right now that she didn’t want to chum it up on the set, that their friendship—“I need to tell you something, and I’m not sure how.”

  There’d been a time when neither of them would have hesitated to share her deepest thoughts. Gentry felt the pang of loss. How many friends would this world of competition and success cost her? “Would it help if we lay on the floor and kicked off our shoes?”

  Helen laughed. “Only if we had our pajamas on and pillows to throw.”

  “You want to hit me?”

  Helen paled, the pink leaving her face white enough to show the soft freckles along her cheekbones. “I already have.” She sat back in her chair. “I feel terrible.”

  Gentry held her breath. Now that it came to it, she was not sure she could hear what Helen had to say.

  After a couple false starts, she said, “Everything always works for you. People find you so interesting, so incredible. You landed Rachel Bach without even trying, and it all got so big and important. It seemed that even God would give you whatever you wanted.”

  Helen must not have read the papers lately. Gentry rubbed the drops from her glass. “I’ve revised that assumption.”

  Helen shook her head. “When Troy told me what was going on, you seemed like such a hypocrite, like I’d never known you at all.”

  Her chest ached. “You didn’t even wonder whether it was true?”

  “I would have, but when you landed Rachel Bach, I wondered what you’d been willing to do for it; I mean… Gentry, you must hate me so much.”

  Hate wasn’t what she felt, just a pale desolation.

  “He said your relationship had evolved and …”

  “You gave the tabloids the pictures? My stage kiss with Troy?”

  Helen gripped her hands together. “I wanted it to be true so that I wasn’t what it felt like I’d become. I even hired a detective to prove—”

  “Bette Walden?”

  Helen raised her teary eyes and nodded. “If she proved it, then I’d done a good thing, the right thing. She told me she’d been abused and shared my fervor for the truth. She worked for next to nothing.”

  Gentry started to shake. “You wanted me killed?”

  “What?” The color left Helen’s face. “No. Of course not.”

  “You didn’t hire Grover Malakua to push me over the falls?”

  Helen’s hands fell to her lap. Her mouth hung slack. Her turquoise eyes hollowed. “Gentry, I’m sure you can’t believe me after everything I just said …” Tears broke free and trickled down her cheeks. “But I never …”

  Gentry closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips to the sockets. Helen wasn’t a good enough actor to fake that reaction, and why bring it up at all if she’d done something so heinous and illegal? She’d hurt and betrayed her, but it was crazy to think she could have orchestrated an accident on Kauai when she hadn’t even known about the trip. “I believe you.”

  Cameron must have been wrong. Malakua had acted alone. Maybe he’d meant to kidnap her for ransom the way he’d taken Nica. Only, she’d fallen. She still didn’t remember what had happened above the falls, but that made more sense than someone wanting her dead. Now they had him, and it was over.

  “I’m so sorry.” Helen rubbed her fingers under her nose.

  All those months of ridicule and accusations, all the doubts that would never truly be erased. She tried to put herself in Helen’s place. Could she have done the same if Troy had come to her with stories about Helen? She shook her head. But then, she hadn’t spent years in Helen’s shadow. She understood now how it must have rankled. “Even God would give you whatever you wanted.”

  Not true. But he had given more than she deserved. He had saved Uncle Rob. He had saved her. More than that, he’d saved her soul for all eternity. Was she the hypocrite Helen had thought her? Or did she owe a debt of forgiveness she could never repay?

  The pain of betrayal still stung, but she reached across the table and gripped Helen’s hand with the aloha she’d been shown, the divine grace she’d received. The tightness in her throat released, and she said, “I forgive you.”

  “That’s enough for today.” Paul called the session to a halt.

  Rob had offered him a personal retainer to stay on through the process, and Paul had surprised him by obtaining a leave from the hospital on Kauai and accepting. Exhausted from therapy, leg throbbing, Rob lowered himself into the wheelchair. “Hard to see much improvement.”

  “Yet.” Was Paul laying aside his usual tart remarks because he sensed the emotional fragility Rob was trying hard not to show?

  He had dreamed about Allegra, dreamed that she came and sat on the bed and said, “Here, let me fix that.” Then she’d stretched out his leg like a telescope, matched up his feet and said, “Perfect.”

  Even as she’d said it, he’d thought, No. Perfection is a summit I haven’t reached. He’d thought he could but knew better now. He wished he could tell her.

  But Gentry had told her what happened, and she hadn’t come—he guessed because she couldn’t bear it. He didn’t blame her. She’d had so little substance to fall back on, her self-esteem as fragile as thin blown glass. Her image, her social position, her quest for ageless beauty—none of it had given her the stability she’d longed for. Not when it could be lost, or taken from her.

  For a while he’d been her pride, his success her elixir. When he came to faith and revised his priorities, she’d been shocked. She wanted the glitz and glamour. He shook his head. The real shame was that inside she had substance, dete
rmination, intelligence. If only she valued the person he’d fallen in love with.

  Paul backed him through the doors and took the outside walkway to the building that housed his room. The sunshine reflecting off the sidewalk made him squint. Sprinklers churk-churk-churked beside him, keeping the lawn green.

  “Won’t be long before you’re walking this path.” Paul’s voice was strong and confident.

  Rob nodded. “If you say so.”

  “Won’t give you a day’s peace until you do. So don’t think you can shirk it.”

  “Ah. So it is you. For a minute there I thought you’d been body snatched.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  As soon as he woke, Cameron picked up the phone. He shouldn’t have let it go so long, but he’d been hit by a wave he hadn’t seen coming, plunged to the ocean floor, desperately hoping he’d have breath enough to come back up. When Gentry answered, he realized she could have been the breath of hope he needed.

  “Aloha.”

  “Cameron?” Her voice sank in and warmed him. How had he gone three weeks without hearing it? Their parting had been brief and harried with the ambulance waiting to transport her uncle. Then Myra’s tidal wave had plunged him into silence.

  “Sorry I didn’t get back to you before.”

  “Oh. I just wanted to make sure you’d gotten in all right. Myra told me you were fine.”

  Right. Just before she sucked the air from his lungs. “I need to explain.”

  “No, you don’t.” She’d meant to sound sincere, but a hint of hurt came through. “We’re back in real life.”

  “Gentry, can we meet somewhere?”

  Her silence lasted a beat too long.

  “If you’d rather not—”

  “We’re starting production soon. It would have to be today or tomorrow.”

  He thought fast. “Santa Barbara?” Roughly ninety miles for each of them. “Or I can come to L.A.”

  “Santa Barbara would be better. Stearn’s Wharf, end of the pier?”

  “When?”

  “A couple hours?”

  His heart hammered. “Good. I’ll see you there.”

  Myra had proven beyond doubt their irreconcilable differences. In marrying her, he had stepped outside God’s will, ignored the check in his spirit, ridden when he should have bailed, and only now risen from the fetal roll on the ocean floor. In severing ties with the boy who might be his son, he prayed the Lord would recognize the sacrifice and forgive his rebellion.

  When he’d pulled Nica back the day their parents died, he’d pitted himself against the One who took away. He saw that now. It wasn’t that he thought God didn’t intervene; it was that he didn’t want the intervention. He wanted control. Every wave he’d carved, he’d rubbed in God’s face. The very skill God had given him, he’d used to strike back.

  But just as the sea took, it also gave. In its embrace he felt renewed, strengthened, alive. Ever mindful of its power, he’d entered again and again. And now he knew the wave was ke Akua’s. God had allowed the anger and defiance and carried him safely again and again until he could recognize the authority that gave life grace. And in that he found hope and promise.

  Gentry was standing at the end of the pier, talking with an old fisherman, when he arrived. The floppy hat and sunglasses did little to conceal her magic, and he wondered how he had ever not recognized her and if there’d ever be a time that seeing her didn’t feel like a gift and a miracle.

  The sea scent surrounded them, the waves slapping the shellencrusted piles. Sunshine illuminated each azure peak and ripple—ke Akua showing off. The cool breeze ruffled the brim of Gentry’s hat as she turned. Her glasses superimposed his face over her eyes. If he kissed her cheek, he’d find her mouth. If he kissed her mouth …

  “Don’t let me stop you,” the old guy said, adjusting his poles.

  Cameron sent him a glance as she slipped off her glasses and hung them in the neck of her sleeveless hooded shirt. Her Kauaian-forest eyes assessed him with courage and caution. His jaw clenched with restraint, but it was useless. He reached behind her head and kissed her. She tasted like hope, memories, and dreams.

  He pressed his forehead to hers. “I wasn’t going to do that.”

  “And yet you do.”

  “I overestimate my powers of resistance.” He rested his hand on the back of her neck. “I ought to admit I have none.”

  She raised her chin. “So admit it.”

  He risked another encounter with the lips of a star. “I’ve missed you.”

  She huffed. He couldn’t blame her. The words were empty after his long silence.

  “Gentry.” He caught her shoulders and turned her away from a couple strolling near. He didn’t want to be interrupted by fans or fanatics. “Myra was there when I got home. I was dog tired and went to bed. I don’t know what she told you—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me.” He ran his gaze over every one of her features, then sank back into her eyes.

  “She only said what I told you. That she was there and you were fine.” She slid her gaze away.

  “She didn’t mention my son?” His voice grated.

  Her mouth fell open. “You never said—”

  “I didn’t know.” He ran a hand over his beard and shot a look at the old fisherman who seemed fixed on the sea. “You’d have to know Myra to understand.”

  “Okay.”

  “I met her at the Haleiwa Surfing Championship the only time I won it all. She was covering the event for a British sports station. She had a potent sort of energy; I was feeling cocky. We hooked up for an evening that showed me everything I needed to know but was too stubborn to see.” Memories flooded in, all the things he should have realized long before he did. “There’s such a fine line between selfconfident and self-absorbed. Ambitious and driven. Uninhibited and remorseless.”

  He shook his head. “I liked her strength, her independence. She didn’t need anyone, yet six weeks later we were married. I have no idea why. The novelty, maybe, or a joke. Took me five years to get the punch line. And then it wasn’t funny.”

  Gentry touched his hand. “You don’t have to do this, Cameron.”

  “Yes, I do.” He closed her hand in his. “It was a poor excuse for a marriage. I wanted an intimacy she scorned. She wanted a place with the broadcast elite. As hard as I tried to make my dream happen, she tried harder for hers.” He locked his gaze on Gentry’s. “She went to extraordinary lengths. She described them to me the night she decided to leave.”

  Gentry reflected his pain.

  “Even with that, if I’d known the real reason she wanted out—”

  Gentry’s phone rang. She let out a breath. “That’s Darla.”

  He swallowed. “Go ahead.”

  “She can wait.”

  When the ring stopped, he gathered himself. “Myra left because she intended to give the baby to her sister.”

  Gentry searched his face. “You didn’t know?”

  “She saw no advantage in telling me until now.”

  “Oh, Kai …”

  The phone rang again. Darla’s ring.

  “Take it,” he said.

  Gentry dragged the phone from her shirt pocket. “Darla, what is it?” Sharper than he’d heard her with her publicist before. “Seen what?” She looked up at him while she listened, then pressed her fingers to her eyes and sighed. “In Santa Barbara. With Cameron.” She nodded at the next part, even though Darla couldn’t see her, then said, “Okay, I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up and stuffed the phone back into her pocket, then looked up. “Cameron, I’m so sorry.”

  He frowned. “Must be bad if I’m Cameron again.”

  She took his hand. “They know. It’s in today’s gossip mags.”

  For a minute nothing registered. Then he got it. She’d warned him. She had said they would find all his dirt, that he didn’t know how bad it could be. He’d known Myra was a wild card, but he hadn’t known about his son. If h
e was his son. He’d instructed his lawyer to proceed with that assumption. He’d expected the notice of termination to arrive at Mary and Tom’s with no fanfare, but Myra, it seemed, had other ideas.

  He straightened. “Let’s see how bad it is.”

  She tugged him back. “We can’t just walk up to some newsstand together. Darla’s spitting bullets that we’re out here at all.”

  He tipped his head back. “Does it ever stop? How can you live this way?”

  “At least no one’s trying to kill me.”

  It hit him that he’d left her unprotected all this time. Not that it was his responsibility; he’d only agreed to watch out for her until they apprehended Malakua. But if it hadn’t been for Myra, he’d have stayed closer to the situation. “How do you know?”

  “Helen was the one who gave the tabloids the pictures. She hired Bette to prove me a hypocrite, but no one to knock me off a cliff. Malakua must have acted on his own.”

  That didn’t feel right, but he would follow up with TJ to make sure. Right now he had something else to deal with. “Wait here, and I’ll round up the tabloids.”

  “Good.” She glanced at the fisherman. “He can use them to wrap his fish.”

  He turned to the salty guy. “Mind keeping an eye on her while I make a run for something?”

  “Have to be blind or stupid to take my eyes off that one.”

  Why did that sound more like advice than agreement? He had to walk awhile to find a newsstand, but when he did, his and Gentry’s pictures were front and center with Myra’s angry cameo framed in the lower right on one, second page of another. The shots were not flattering; the words were worse. Fox Lover Rejects Kid. When given the chance to raise his own son, Cameron Pierce terminated his parental rights. “He doesn’t want anything interfering with his hot romance.” Exwife tells all.

  Her other quotes were equally disturbing. “Unhealthy attachment

  to his sister. Obsessive and clingy.”

  The second paper’s headline read, Lover or Stalker? Is Gentry Safe? But the worst one: Gentry Forces Choice; Your Kid or Me. Gentry, looking sexy on the beach after surfing, split the page with the little boy who could be his. Hurt flooded in. She’d given them pictures of her son. All the emotion he’d blocked with doubt and denial smothered him when he looked into that face. He’d lost his child—and thought he’d felt the hand of God.