by Lori Wilde
“My ex-husband, Malcolm Talmadge is coming here on Thanksgiving Day. To see the play.”
“The Malcolm Talmadge? The head of Shooting Star Studios?”
“Yes.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
A chill of excitement traced over Emma. They walked past a pond. Four white swans glided gracefully past.
“I’ve got a confession to make,” Nina said.
“A confession?”
“I haven’t been completely honest with you about why I brought you here, and you deserve to know the truth.”
Hmm, she wasn’t surprised. She’d suspected all along that Nina had ulterior motives.
“You thought Twilight was your last stop, your only hope for redemption. Didn’t you?”
Emma jammed her hands into her pockets. “Yes.”
“What you didn’t understand was that you were my last chance at redemption.” Nina stopped beside the Sweetheart Tree and motioned at the bench underneath. “Shall we sit?”
“Is it that bad that I need to be sitting down?”
Nina smiled. “Not for you. My knees are the shaky ones.”
Nina sat down, leaving Emma with little choice except to sit beside her. A long moment stretched between them, and a faraway look came into Nina’s eyes. Finally, she said softly, “Last year, I was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer.”
Emma inhaled sharply. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“It could have been much worse, but I had to undergo both chemotherapy and radiation treatments. The women in this town were wonderful—Patsy, Marva, Terri, Raylene, Belinda, Dotty Mae. They rallied around me. Took care of me. Made me whole again. But it was while I was going through this process that I realized I’d never forgiven myself for something terrible I’d done. And I didn’t want to die without making amends.”
Her words sent a shiver of sympathy through Emma. “This is why you believe so deeply in giving people second chances.”
Nina tilted her head. “It is.” She paused, took a deep breath of the morning air that smelled like pumpkins and the scent of yeast bread from the Twilight Bakery. Overhead a pair of mockingbirds called to each other, batting a melody of songs back and forth across the park.
“Malcolm and I were childhood sweethearts who shared the same dream. He was a playwright. I was an actress. We married and moved to Manhattan together, shared a tiny, grungy apartment in SoHo. We struggled to feed ourselves, but there were parties all the time, people in and out of the apartment. We stayed up late, but got up early to hit the pavement looking for work. You know how it is. We were young and in love, full of hope and ambition. It was the best time of my life.”
Emma waited for her to go on, watched a leaf the color of her hair drift down from a tree across the way.
“Then I met Scott Miller. He was young, yes, but he was already a director. His father had money. Scott was Ivy League, powerful, rich. He could have any woman he wanted. Actresses threw themselves at him, but not me. I didn’t care. I was desperately in love with Malcolm.”
“I have a bad feeling about where this story is headed.”
Nina patted Emma’s knee. “Of course you do. You lived it. Anyway, one afternoon following an audition, Scott cornered me backstage and propositioned me. If I’d become his mistress, then he’d give me a part that would make me a star. I turned him down. He kept after me. The more I spurned him, the more he pursued me. Malcolm and I were so broke. Although Malcolm had written an amazing script, he couldn’t get anyone to take a look at it. You know how brutal it can be trying to get attention in Manhattan. You can understand the things people are driven to do for their careers. The values that get compromised along the way.”
Emma nodded. Boy, did she ever understand that.
“Scott is brilliant at figuring out other people’s weaknesses and targeting them. He knew I wouldn’t sleep with him to further my career, but he realized Malcolm was my Achilles’ heel. He upped the ante. Sleep with him and not only would he give me the starring role in his next production, but his next production would be Malcolm’s play.”
“Firelight,” Emma guessed.
“Yes. Scott loves the power. He likes making people grovel and dance to his tune.” Nina tightened her jaw. “God help me, but I did it for Malcolm, and he never knew how he got his big break. At least not in the beginning.”
“I can’t imagine what that was like. Agreeing to have an affair with Scott Miller in order to help your husband achieve his dreams. It was a huge sacrifice.”
“Don’t paint me out to be altruistic,” Nina said. “I got my piece of the pie. Firelight went on to earn me a Tony award and it’s grossed both Malcolm and me millions over the years.”
“So what happened with your marriage?”
Nina smoothed her skirt with a palm. “I got pregnant.”
“Oh, gosh.” Emma splayed a palm to her chest.
“I had to tell Malcolm the truth. I didn’t know whose baby it was.” She took a deep breath and told the rest of the story in a rush. “When I could no longer avoid it, I finally told him the truth. He was shattered by my betrayal and he asked for a divorce. When I told Miller I was pregnant, he fired me. I fled New York, came back to Twilight, and that’s when I had the miscarriage. That day you caught me crying in the church? If he had lived, that would have been the baby’s birthday.”
Emma touched the other woman’s shoulder. “Oh, Nina, I’m so sorry.”
“I didn’t even realize I was waiting for a chance to make things right with Malcolm until I heard about what happened to you with Miller. I must confess, bringing you here was twofold. I did want to help you after you’d been devastated by that tyrant, but I also wanted to find peace with my past. I wrote Malcolm a long letter. It was the first time I’d contacted him since losing the baby. I told him about you, how talented you were. About how Miller was treating you. About Twilight and the play. About my breast cancer. And I asked for his forgiveness. I’d kept up with what he was doing over the years. Watched his career skyrocket as he turned from writer to director to producer. I knew he’d lost his wife to cancer. That his only child, a son, enlisted in the Army and came back from overseas so traumatized he ended up taking his own life.”
“How sad,” Emma said.
Nina nodded. “Tragic.”
A school bus lumbered by. A man on a motorcycle tooted his horn. Nina waved a hand in greeting. “I didn’t hear back from Malcolm. I took it as a sign he wasn’t going to forgive me.”
They sat there, not talking, the town coming awake around them. Emma didn’t know what to think about the bombshell Nina had just dropped.
“But then he called me last night,” she said, and a happy smile curled her lips. “He’d been out of the country and hadn’t received my letter until just now. He wants to meet you and Beau. He’s pulled some strings, and a crew from Entertainment Tonight is coming out to cover the story of you, our quilt making, and the charity auction for our troops.”
“And you and Malcolm?”
Her smile widened. “We talked for hours. It was like forty years just fell away. Unbelievably, the love was still there. I think…” She paused. Her lips trembled. “I think we rekindled a spark.”
“Nina, that’s amazing.” Emma squeezed her hand.
“It’s amazing for you as well. If Malcolm likes your performance, and I’m certain he will, there very well could be a part for you in one of his movies.”
“You mean it?”
Nina nodded. “But we’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us.”
“I’m up to the challenge.”
“No distractions?”
“What do you mean?”
“You and Sam.”
Emma said, “I’ve always been focused on my career.”
“And that hasn’t changed?”
She thought of Sam and how much she loved him. Thought of how his mother had warned her off. Thought of all the issues that lay between the
m. Thought of how he truly did deserve a woman who could give him her all. She swallowed, pushed back the part of her that wanted so much to be that woman, and said softly, “Nothing’s changed.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The quilting must go on.
—Nina Blakley, ex-wife of movie mogul Malcolm Talmadge
When Emma told Sam about Malcolm Talmadge, he wrapped her in a big bear hug and whispered, “This is it. Everything you’ve wanted is about to come true.”
Not everything.
She looked at him sadly. By following her dreams and achieving the one major thing she’d set out in life to do, she would be losing Sam. Her gut wrenched as her heart split in two.
“Hey,” he said, and chucked her lightly under the chin. “Why the glum face? This is cause for celebration.”
“I’m going to miss you,” she whispered.
“No you won’t. Once you get to Hollywood, start making friends, you’ll forget all about me.”
She squeezed him tightly. “I will never, ever forget about you, Sam Cheek.”
They savored the three weeks that followed, both of them knowing this was their last hurrah. They treasured each moment they shared, acutely aware of how bittersweet and fragile it all was. They agreed that while they could handle the temporariness of their relationship, Charlie could not. So they limited his exposure to Emma. Each evening, after Sam put his son to bed, he would slip over to the Merry Cherub and spend his night making love to Emma, arising at dawn to slip back home to be at the breakfast table when his son awoke.
During the day, Emma kept her mind honed on the work, and never had she wrung from herself such a commanding performance. Twelve long years of toil and sacrifice were finally coming to fruition. The thought of it took her breath. At long last, success hovered just inches from her fingers. All she had to do was reach out and grab it.
She tried not to dwell on what she was going to lose, but instead, stayed focused on each precious second they shared, enjoying the beautiful fantasy of those soft autumn nights. She set about learning everything she could about Sam and committed it to memory. The way he brushed his hair down over his scar, his favorite foods, his easy way with animals and children. She admired his patience and calm demeanor, but also the way he stood up for the underdog, even if it meant letting go of some of that calm patience.
Save for not letting her get too close to Charlie, he let her into his world without reservation. He introduced her to his friends, of whom she was surprised to discover he had many. She’d thought he was too insular for that many intimate contacts. Then again, that was Twilight and he’d grown up here. Everyone knew him, respected him, and came to him for pet care advice. He didn’t put expectations on people and he didn’t judge them. He let them be who they were meant to be. Sam was a live-and-let-live kind of guy, and everyone loved him for it.
With Emma, he was adventuresome in a way he wasn’t with others. In bed, he eagerly took to role playing with her and they had fun. More fun than she’d ever had. It went beyond sex into true intimacy. A physical bond forged between deep friends.
“We’ll always be friends,” he told her one evening just a few days before Thanksgiving. They were lying naked on her bed, snuggled beneath a beautiful wedding ring quilt. He reached out a hand to gently stroke her cheek, his eyes gleaming in the muted light from the pink angel lamp on the bedside table. “Even if we marry other people. No one can ever take that away from us.”
“I’ve opened up to you in a way I’ve never opened up to anyone,” she confessed.
“I know,” he said, and kissed the tip of her nose. “And thank you for that precious gift.”
“You’ll never be far from my heart.”
“Nor you from mine.”
Then he made love to her, slow and tender, all night long.
Thanksgiving Day turned out to be one of those not uncommon autumn days in North Texas where the temperature suddenly notched up to the high seventies. Kids shed their jackets in favor of short sleeves and abandoned the Macy’s parade on TV for sandlot baseball. Mothers raised kitchen windows to grab a bit of springlike weather while toiling over the upcoming feasts. Fathers dug boxes from attics, getting a jumpstart on decorating their yards for Christmas.
After a restless night of going over and over her lines in her head, Emma woke to the smell of roasting turkey mingled with the scent of bacon. The sound of Christmas music wafted up the floor-boards. “Jingle Bells,” she recognized, and threw back the covers. The Merry Cherub was booked for the holiday weekend. Emma heard numerous footsteps outside her door as guests flocked downstairs for breakfast.
Emma did some yoga stretches, and then showered. The dining room was packed, and besides, she was too nervous for a sit-down meal. She greeted Jenny good morning, grabbed black coffee and a muffin, and went over to the Twilight Playhouse to get ready for the play. This was the event she’d been working toward for the past nine weeks.
She found several members of the True Love Quilting Club working with the stage crew to get the quilts strung up on battens and counterweighted ropes for use as backdrops. More grips were loading in other sets and props. The place pulsed with activity. The college students hired as extras frantically rehearsed lines. Nina prowled the control booth, going over final instructions with the sound and lighting technicians. The costume designer and her assistant sorted through costumes, while the prop man ticked off the items in his catalogue, making sure every prop needed for the play was present and accounted for.
Putting on the play was a team endeavor, and Emma was grateful for the behind-the-scenes crew who made her look good. They were the unsung heroes of any successful stage production, and she took the opportunity to stop by and tell each one how much she appreciated his or her contribution.
Nina came down out of the control booth and waved Emma over. “Malcolm’s here. He wants to meet you.”
Oh gosh. Was she ready for this? Emma raised a hand to her hair. “I’m not in makeup, I haven’t done my hair—”
“Malcolm understands about all that. He just wants to meet the girl who had the balls—sorry for the pun—to stand up to Scott Miller.”
Nina turned and waved to a silver-haired man in the booth. “Come on.” She took Emma’s hand and led her up the steps to introduce her to her ex-husband.
“Malcolm, this is Emma Parks. Emma, this is Malcolm Talmadge, head of Shooting Star Studios.”
It hit her then. The importance of this moment. She was meeting one of the most influential men in Hollywood. And yet he looked so normal. Like he could be anyone’s grandfather. He had an affable smile, keen blue eyes, and a small paunch that slightly hung over the waistband of his jeans. If it wasn’t for the Vacheron Constantin at his wrist—that made Scott Miller’s Rolex look like a dime store trinket—no one would guess he was a billionaire accustomed to rubbing shoulders with royalty, celebrities, and VIPs. The way he gave her his complete attention made Emma feel like a VIP.
“I know you’re going to be very impressed with her performance, Malcolm,” Nina went on. “For the life of me I can’t figure out why Hollywood isn’t beating a path to her door.”
“Perhaps all that will be rectified today.” Malcolm smiled warmly. “It’s my great pleasure to meet you, Emma. If you’ve earned Nina’s seal of approval, I have no doubt I’m in for a treat. She has high standards. And…” He flicked a gaze to Nina. “I can’t tell you both how impressed I am with your tribute to our soldiers overseas. The quilts are visually stunning and I…” Malcolm paused and swallowed visibly as if struggling to control some intense emotions.
“Malcolm’s son was in Afghanistan,” Nina murmured.
“There was no reason for him to enlist,” Malcolm said. “He was my son. He had all the privileges that money could buy, but he insisted the war effort needed people from all walks of life. He wanted to do his part, and I was so proud of him.” A dark look of heavy sadness crossed Malcolm’s face, and Emma remembered what Nina had told her
about his son.
“My son, Brian couldn’t deal with what he saw over there, what he was forced to do. He was always a sensitive boy, and he came home a shattered shell of a man. I tried to help him but I was ill-equipped in spite of all my money…” Malcolm shook his head. “He ended up…I lost him.” His voice cracked, fractured into a sharp sound of grief.
“Oh sir, I’m so sorry.” Emma’s heart wrenched. “I can’t imagine what you went through.”
He forced a smile, and she could see him purposefully putting his emotions on the shelf. “Please,” he said, “you must call me Malcolm.”
“Malcolm.” She nodded.
“My son’s death was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but because of it I got involved in the war effort. It’s become the driving focus in my life for the last few years, and I like to think I’ve helped a few people along the way.”
Nina touched a hand to his shoulder. “Malcolm is being modest. He spearheaded an entire campaign that’s resulted in a change in military policy about treating post-traumatic stress disorder. So many of the young men and women returning from the Middle East weren’t getting the help they needed to deal with what they experienced over there. Their families can’t understand what they’re going through and they feel isolated, cut off. Malcolm is determined to change all that. He’s got a film in production dealing with just that.”
Sympathy fisted inside Emma. So many people had been touched by the war. Far more people than she’d expected. When she’d first come to Twilight, her main motivations had been self-interest—money and a desperate last chance to redeem her career. But somewhere between rehearsing the play and making the quilts and listening to the stories of women who lived in Twilight and dating Sam and getting to know Charlie, all that had changed. The only thing that concerned her now was giving a performance that was truly worthy of the men and women in uniform who had sacrificed so much for their country.
“But enough of sad talk.” Malcolm waved his hand. “Today is a day of honoring, recognizing, and celebrating those who have fought to keep our country free.”
