Redemption of a Hollywood Starlet

by Kimberly Lang

  An eyebrow went up. “Quoting your mother is cheating.”

  She rolled her eyes at him and sighed. “Fine. I was a teenage girl and there were cute boys around. I wanted to fit in and be like everyone else, so …”

  He looked at her oddly. “But you weren’t like everyone else.”

  “No, but I wanted to be.” She struggled for the right words. “You know what it’s like.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  It took her a second to realize that Finn was serious. “You’re telling me that you always advertised your pedigree to impress people?” Finn’s unrepentant grin made her want to smack him. “You should be ashamed.”

  “Teenage boys feel no shame when it comes to pretty girls. We’re slaves to our hormones and will do whatever it takes.”

  “And you never wanted anyone to just like you for you? Not because of your family?”

  “Liking me for myself wasn’t high on my list of priorities when it came to girls.”

  “That’s truly shameful, Finn.”

  “Money and power are very attractive. You know that.”

  “I do. Which is why most people with money and power want to be liked for something else. They try to bring attention to their other qualities.”

  “But not teenage boys. I had no problem working that angle. Most people—regardless of age—are quite shallow.”

  “Well, I can’t claim to be the deepest puddle there is, but that’s not why I was interested in you.”

  “I know.” His mouth twitched. “The first woman I’d met on either coast who didn’t need my money or my connections.”

  She laughed. “Because I had my own, thank you very much.”

  “Exactly. That’s why you were such a challenge.”

  “Me? A challenge?” She’d been swamped by his charm and looks and … everything. Finn was a force of nature, and she hadn’t exactly played hard to get. Then or now.

  “Definitely. It meant I had to actually talk to you about something, try to find common interests …” He trailed off with a shudder. “It was very difficult.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  He grinned. “You should be.”

  She smacked his arm half-heartedly, but the truth was that she was. In her world, it was often difficult to know what was real. In retrospect, though, she was beginning to realize that the Finn she’d known had been very different from the public Finn. The intervening years and layers of hurt had clouded that.

  But it was heartening to see that Finn again. It was more than just flattering.

  “And,” Finn continued, “since you still aren’t impressed by my money or my name, I’m now going to have to try to impress you your way.” He sighed dramatically before twining his fingers through hers and leading her to the shooting gallery. “Which one of those teddy bears do you want?”

  At that, this adventure seemed to morph into something that felt a lot like a date.

  And it scared her more than a little.

  But it wasn’t nearly as scary as the feeling that washed over her when Finn finally won the fuzzy purple bear she’d pointed out. He presented it to her with flair, and her heart lurched painfully in her chest.

  This was what falling in love with Finn Marshall felt like. She remembered it all too well. And that was dangerous.

  CHAPTER NINE

  FINN could have purchased a dozen teddy bears for the money he’d spent shooting an air rifle with a crooked sight at a stupid mechanical duck. But in the end, he’d prevailed, and Cait accepted the token with what he could only call glee. He’d seen women less appreciative of diamond jewelry.

  “You can add it to your collection.”

  “Collection? Hardly. This is the first time anyone’s ever won me one.” She rose up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Thank you, Finn.”

  She seemed so genuinely pleased that Finn rather felt he’d accomplished something much more complicated—like dragon-slaying. He couldn’t put a name on the feeling inside his chest, but he was very glad he’d decided to bring Cait here tonight.

  Cait tucked the teddy into the crook of her elbow and dragged him toward something called the Scrambler. The ride looked decrepit and possibly unsafe—more like it belonged in a movie where dozens of people were about to be killed and maimed in an unfortunate carnival accident.

  But Cait enjoyed it so much, they got back on for a second ride. The big surprise came when he realized he was enjoying it, too.

  Cait, for all of her public glamour, was ridiculously easy to please. He’d forgotten about that. He’d forgotten how easy it was to just be with her, being Cait and Finn—not Caitlyn Reese and Finn Marshall. Cait couldn’t be impressed or cowed by a famous name or a fat checkbook, and he didn’t have to be anything other than himself.

  Whatever reservations Cait had harbored earlier about being here evaporated completely as they made their way down the midway from ride to ride. As they reached the back gate Cait licked the last of the powdered sugar from her funnel cake off her fingers and looked around, the corners of her mouth turning down in a slight frown.

  “What is it?”

  “No Tunnel of Love. That stinks. I wanted to ride the Tunnel of Love.”

  A dozen cheesy double-entendres sprang to mind regarding tunnels of love, but he kept them behind his teeth. Mostly.

  “You’ll just have to fill me in later.” But her disappointed frown only intensified. “What, Caity?”

  “This was going to be my first time. I was looking forward to doing it.”

  “But earlier you said …”

  “I said teddy-bear-to-Tunnel-of-Love was the general path. I never had a boy win me a bear or ask to ride the Tunnel of Love with me.”

  Oh, the need to say something about riding love tunnels was about to kill him. But Cait seemed genuinely disappointed. “Never? I find that very hard to believe.”

  “The part I didn’t mention earlier was that I was a bit of a late bloomer, with a mouthful of braces and, geez, I thought I’d never get breasts. I was shy and awkward—particularly when I was so far out of my element—and I blended into the wallpaper. Without my pedigree on display I wasn’t exactly Miss Popularity. Teenage boys can be quite shallow, you know.”

  She laughed, but it was slightly bitter. Obviously Cait’s experimental forays into being “normal” hadn’t always been the way they worked out in the movies.

  “This was going to be my do-over night. Rats.”

  As she sat on a nearby bench with a sigh, he had the urge to have a Tunnel of Love shipped in from wherever such things were made. He joined her on the bench. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m just being silly.” She leaned back and toyed with the teddy bear. “As far as do-overs go, this was pretty awesome. I’ve had a great time. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.” And, surprisingly enough, he meant it.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “I was wrong to blame you for my problems. Then and now. I needed a bad guy—who wasn’t me—and you were an easy target.”

  “We all do what we have to do to get through.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t handle it well. I thought I was fighting back, but I was really just running away. Going to London was just the literal part.”

  “Sometimes running away is the only way to handle something.”

  Cait started to say something, then stopped and bit her lip as she reconsidered. Finally she looked at him. “Like you did? You left Virginia and went to L.A.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Do you ever regret it?”

  “No. I needed to start over, away from my family and all the baggage that came with them. Do you regret it?”

  “No.” She gave him a half-smile. “The execution was a bit faulty, but overall I have no regrets.”

  “Good. Then accept it for what it is and move on.”

  “Like you do?”

  “You can’t change people who don’t want to be cha
nged. You can’t change the past.”

  “So that’s how you’ve come to peace with your fath—family,” she corrected hastily. When he nodded, she laughed. “Wow, we really aren’t normal people, are we?”

  “Not even remotely.”

  That caused her to laugh again. “You know, this is probably the most normal thing we’ve ever done together—even if I include the wig. You’re definitely the best-looking boy I’ve ever ridden on a Ferris wheel with.”

  Her hand landed on his thigh, and she squeezed gently. Cait’s smile turned a little shy and knowing, but then she leaned in to kiss him. It wasn’t the same kind of chaste kiss he’d received for the teddy bear, nor was it the hot, carnal kind that never failed to set him on fire. For lack of a better word, he’d have to call it “sweet.”

  At that moment Finn quit running. He and Cait made sense. They understood each other. He should have seen it years ago. He should have gone to London after her instead of trying to pretend she was just another ex. All his denials to the contrary were being proved false.

  When she pulled away she looked happy and relaxed, and it transformed her face. He’d gotten used to the guarded, slightly wary look of mere tolerance she’d worn on the set for so long. This reminded him of the Cait he used to know, and he realized that even when they’d been alone recently she’d never really relaxed back into herself. Of course, they weren’t exactly spending their time chatting, either. He brushed the blond bangs away from her eyes and ran a thumb across her jawline. Part of him wanted to take her back now and spend the rest of the evening in bed, putting a different kind of happy and relaxed look on her face—the sated kind. But he was oddly loath to end this. Hard on the heels of that realization came an even more shocking one. He was loath to end any of it, and that was the biggest shocker of all.

  “Wanna ride the Ferris wheel again?”

  She beamed. “Sure.”

  He stood and held out his hand. Cait tucked the teddy bear in the front pouch of her hoodie before she took it.

  Three steps away from the bench, he heard someone shout “Finn!” He turned a split-second before he realized he shouldn’t.

  The flash of the cameras nearly blinded him.

  The weatherman on the news predicted a near-perfect summer day of warm temperatures, low humidity and lots of sunshine—an ideal day to get outside and enjoy.

  But there was no way in hell Cait could leave her house. She was trapped unless she wanted to face the cameras waiting outside. All the shades were drawn tightly shut, and only a visit from the police earlier this morning had kept the media confined to the sidewalk and street beyond.

  Ah, for the good old days, when it took longer than twelve hours to break a story. Thanks to the internet, and the twenty-four-hour cable channels with plenty of time to fill, news spread like wildfire.

  They’d sprinted out of the fair last night, but in the time it had taken them to get back to the city, the local paparazzi had been tipped off and were waiting for them outside her condo. She went and peeked out the window. Yep, still there.

  The director was fit to be tied, gossip-hungry locusts had descended on the set, effectively shutting down production for the day. Her agent was hyperventilating. Jason Elkins was giving interviews denying that they’d ever been anything more than colleagues. Thank goodness she hadn’t gone with the original idea to really snuggle up for the cameras, or today would have been very embarrassing for them both.

  But the worst was Naomi, who’d appeared on TV looking beautifully woebegone, the occasional tear sliding down her cheek as she spoke of heartbreak and betrayal.

  It was a disaster, and as soon as she got near Finn Marshall again she was going to kill him just as she’d promised.

  Her only contact with Finn, though, had been a brief text telling her to “sit tight.” She hadn’t responded because she wasn’t quite sure exactly what she wanted to say to him, and she didn’t trust her temper not to say something she’d regret. Since she had no plans to run that gauntlet outside until she had a good story in place, that instruction had been unnecessary, anyway.

  But it meant she was locked inside, unable not to watch the entertainment news shows. The rash of amateur cameramen who’d gotten Finn’s attention and then followed them out of the fair hadn’t been the first attention they’d drawn that evening, based on the photographic evidence. She’d let her guard down too soon, gotten caught up in the fun and forgotten to be careful. There was a picture of Finn winning the teddy bear, one of them climbing onto the roller coaster and—her personal favorite—one of them kissing on the bench.

  Oddly enough, her disguise had worked; it was Finn who’d first drawn attention—the man had a bigger following than some A-list stars, for God’s sake—so the first story to break had been about Finn “cheating” on Naomi with some unidentified woman.

  Unfortunately it had been only a short jump to then identify the blonde.

  That was when the fun had really started. And it was worse than she’d imagined. In addition to “cheating” on Jason—his protestations about their relationship were being chalked up to avoiding the shame of being cheated on—she was being painted as “the other woman” in Finn and Naomi’s relationship. From the mileage being made out of that, you’d have thought Finn and Naomi were married with a couple of kids and she was a homewrecker.

  And, of course, their history was being rehashed with glee by the talking heads. And where had they found all those pictures? She didn’t remember half of them—which really wasn’t surprising, as they’d tended to party hard back then and there were several nights that were fuzzy at best. It was embarrassing, but Finn had been right about one thing: she’d been far too skinny.

  She and Finn making out in the back of a limo. Finn giving her a piggyback ride out of a club—she had her shoes in one hand and her hair was a mess. There were the ones she called the “Sunset Series”: three photos of her stumbling off a curb and sprawled on the ground, two of Finn swinging at the cameraman and one of them arguing with the police. Classy. Someone had finally dragged out the one of her on Finn’s motorcycle, and her humiliation was complete.

  She would never claim that their reputations were completely undeserved—but, geez, no wonder it had got as bad as it had. In the retrospective pieces on TV they both looked as if they were one bender away from celebrity rehab.

  Especially her. And while there were plenty of stories of the young and famous shaving their heads, forgoing underwear when climbing out of cars and wearing electronic anklets for multiple DUIs to compete with her flame-out, somehow she seemed to be the poster child for all that was wrong with “Kids in Hollywood.”

  She should turn it off, but listening to the reporters gleefully describe her fall from grace was exactly the punishment she deserved. Lord, the public never forgot anything. Even if they did, the gossip columns were happy to remind them.

  She heard an increase in the noise level outside and went to the window. Peeking through the shades, she saw Finn making his way through the crowd, ignoring the shouted questions and waving away the cameras.

  Nice of him to let me know he was coming by. Part of her was feeling petty enough to leave him standing out there to face the press and the ensuing embarrassment alone, but that would only make the situation worse. Instead, she unlocked the door and let him in.

  She slammed the door behind him and threw the bolt. “You are a brave man to show up here, you know.”

  “They’re just reporters.”

  She leaned against the door. “The press is not who you should be scared of at the moment.”

  “If you’ll just calm down—”

  His patronizing caused her to lose her already tenuous grip on her temper. “I will not calm down. I’ve spent all morning trapped in here—”

  “I haven’t exactly been at the beach myself. I’ve been trying to do damage control.”

  “This is your idea of damage control?” She waved at the TV, where they were replaying Naomi�
��s and Jason’s clips. “It looks more like every man for himself right now. Why aren’t they ‘sitting tight’?”

  “It’s messy, yes, but—”

  She gritted her teeth. “Just once in your life could you at least pretend to give a damn about something? Anything?”

  Finn finally got irritated and lost that calm, placating tone. “If you’d lay off your pity party for just a minute,” he snapped, “I’ll explain how we’re going to get through this mess. All of us.”

  “Oh, I’m all ears.” She stomped over to the couch, so mad now that she was tempted to take a swing at him. The pictures flashing on the screen now—what she was beginning to call their worst hits—didn’t help her mood any. She pointed at the TV. “That was exactly what I wanted to avoid. I was very clear about not wanting my past with you dragged out and rehashed.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have signed on to one of my projects.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Not everything is about you, Cait. Your insistence that everyone try to pretend we had no past helped put us in this position.”

  “You’re blaming me?” Her head might explode at any moment.

  “Oh, I’ve saved some blame for Naomi, too, because her unreasonable demands based on her jealousy of you caused part of this, but you get your fair share.”

  “And you get none at all? How convenient. My apologies for coming by your apartment and your trailer—”

  “Enough. I won’t apologize for wanting you. I’ve never hidden that fact and, you’re right, I don’t give a damn who knows it.”

  “You’ve made that very clear,” she muttered.

  He continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “But I have bigger issues to deal with.”

  “I don’t know. This seems like a pretty big deal to me.”

  “And you’re right. It seems like a big deal. To you.”

  At that moment she almost hated him. And it hurt. But that hurt was a vivid reminder of why she should have never abandoned her earlier plan not to get near him again.

  “In the grand scheme of things, Caity, it’s not, and it will blow over. Hollywood is nothing if not forgiving.”