Will sighed heavily. “No, you’re right. I have to go. It’s in the contract. The more we fight the terms, the longer they’ll take to fulfill.”
“Well, then, is there any way we can have a decent time?”
He pulled off his sunglasses, and the anger and fear in his eyes morphed into something closer to shame. He exhaled, long and low. “Got a shot for me?” he joked.
Calliope grunted. I didn’t find it particularly funny either.
Will shook his head. “I’m joking, I’m joking. Okay, Lil. Yeah…we can try, okay. And if I start acting like an asshole, tackle me in a closet somewhere, okay?”
One side of his mouth tipped up into a suggestive smile, and immediately, I was taken back to the premiere party where he had done just that to me. I flushed, and Will chuckled.
“Or you can blush like that all night,” he whispered in my ear. “That would distract any man from a nuclear bomb.”
“Stop,” I whispered, turning even brighter red.
“Never,” Will said with a broader smirk, and then replaced his sunglasses.
“You guys are nauseating,” Calliope pronounced, though her smile said something different.
Will lifted my hand. “Nah, just lucky,” he said as he kissed my knuckles.
“All right,” Benny said as we pulled to a stop in the roundabout driveway. “Showtime.”
After dodging the flurry of flashes and photographers who eagerly snapped away as we walked from the car to the entrance, we managed to get inside safely. We checked our bags with the temporary coat check set up in one of the main floor rooms and wandered to the backyard to join the rest of the party, in full swing around Corbyn’s massive pool, set against a panoramic view of Los Angeles.
“Welcome!” Corbyn greeted Will with a slap on the shoulder and a brief kiss to my cheek. “Everything is outside, but feel free to wander the downstairs. The VF reporter and photographer are floating around, so try not to get too sloshed until they leave.” He winked at me, and I tried to smile back. I could already tell this was the kind of party where I would be uncomfortable within an hour.
Will grabbed my hand and led me to the backyard, where two more people approached that made dread spool in my stomach: Amelia and Tricia, arm in arm, looking thick as thieves.
“Better get it over with early,” Will said. “Then we can find a quiet corner somewhere and hibernate for a few hours.” He squeezed my hand. “Don’t let go.”
“Darling!”
Amelia swept in like a tropical fruit-scented breeze and clasped her perfectly manicured fingers on Will’s shirt. She looked as stunning as always in a flowing pink dress that clung to her curves like paint. Her blonde hair swished around Will’s face as she dropped kisses to each of his cheeks. It smacked me in the face a few times, and I had to brush strands out of my mouth.
“Hey, Amy.” Will smiled tightly before pulling me back to his side. “Mom.”
Tricia, in a tasteful black dress that showcased her enviable genes, stepped forward, but didn’t offer her son any kind of touch. It was almost as if she knew better. “Will. And…” She eyed me carefully.
Will rolled his eyes. “You know Maggie’s name, Mom.”
For a moment, the resemblance between Tricia Owens-Baker and her son was uncanny. The long, straight nose, the sharp green eyes, the radiant blonde hair. But only for a second before her face twisted into a nasty sneer.
“My goodness. Aren’t you a butterfly,” she remarked, looking over my dress frankly. “It’s a bit different from the outfit you wore on the sailboat.”
“Mom.”
“I’m surprised,” she said, ignoring Will’s tone. “I honestly thought this dalliance would have run its course by now.”
Will immediately turned away. “This was a mistake. Come on, Lil.”
“Come now, darling, it was only a joke,” Amelia put in with a hand on his arm. “You can’t expect to prance around Corbyn’s boat in the nude and not get a bit of ribbing here and there.” She winked. “We ought to know, hmm?”
Will stared straight ahead without a response. I worked very hard not to slap Amelia’s hand away when she tapped him on the shoulder.
“Anyway, there’s no need to put your nose out of joint, Willie.” She tugged him toward her, but he still didn’t let go of my hand.
“It’s Will,” he said tightly. But when I waited for him to give his mother’s nasty comment a harsh rebuke, none came.
“Sorry, sorry. Old habits, of course.” Amelia winked at me. “So serious, now. Can’t even call you Willie, then? Not ever?”
Will gave her a hard look I didn’t quite understand. “You can’t do a lot of things anymore, Amy. I thought I made that clear the other night.”
Her childlike blue gaze turned icy in a second, then darted quickly between us.
“Did you?” she asked breathily. “Because it rather seemed like something…else…thought otherwise.”
Will fixed a cold stare that finally made Amelia look away.
“We’ll see then,” she said and danced around Will, playing a few fingers over his shoulder as she sauntered past us and down the rest of the path.
Tricia watched her go with something like nostalgia. “Why you ever let that girl go is beyond me,” she remarked. “She’s a darling, and you always looked so good together.”
“Mom, Maggie is right fucking here.”
Tricia shrugged and took a measured sip of her cocktail. “It’s only a matter of aesthetic taste, Will. I’m sure Margie here understands what I mean.”
“It’s Maggie,” I corrected her, only to be waved away.
“Because that’s really what matters, right?” Will snapped. “How people look together?”
Tricia turned back to us, and I found it hard not to look away when, once again, her hard gaze worked incessantly to cut me down. “Some people look wrong from the start,” she said. “It’s…obvious.”
I tried to maintain eye contact. I really did. But Tricia Owens-Baker had the same distinctive talent that her son had of tearing down a person or building them up with a mere look. She was definitely not doing the latter with me, and in the end, I looked down at my toes, wishing I’d had time for a nice pedicure before coming here.
“That’s it,” Will said, turning to leave. “This is bullshit. Maggie, we’re going.”
“Will, you can’t do that,” his mother said. “You have an obligation to Max, and if you don’t—”
Will whirled around with a face full of fire. Even Tricia had to take a step back.
“Stop,” he ordered emphatically. “You don’t have the right to talk to me like that. You haven’t had it for a very long time. So stop.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about, Will? She’s just looking out for you—”
“Please.” Will’s eyes wavered. “Maggie, let’s go.”
“Didn’t he tell you?” Tricia asked sharply, then darted a look back to Will. “Well, of course he wouldn’t, now, would he?” She flipped out a hand. “Will left me. He was eighteen when he chose that idiot savant from Yonkers over his own flesh and blood.”
“She means Benny,” Will said. “He was the only one who would take me on that young.” He looked up at Tricia. “I think you’re forgetting why I did that, Mom.”
Tricia rolled her eyes. “Please. You can’t still hold a grudge about that.”
“What?” I asked, looking between them.
Amelia snorted. Her blue eyes were a little bigger than usual. I wondered if she had taken something before coming to the party. Or maybe since she got here.
“Sabotaging your own son’s college admissions was a good fucking start!”
The chatter around us died down for a moment, but we were in a secluded enough area of the yard that it didn’t make that much of a difference.
“Are you forgetting what that did for you?” She wasn’t yelling, but she looked like she wanted to. Her eyes flashed exactly like her son’s. But unlike him, they lac
ked the warmth that so easily replaced the anger. “If you had gone to Brown, you would have missed out on several roles of a lifetime! You would have missed out on every one of those nominations. Your entire life!”
“I. Never. Wanted. It.” Will’s words were brittle.
“You were seventeen years old. You didn’t know what you wanted. I was doing you a favor until you did!”
“But that’s the thing, isn’t it, Mom?” Will shoved a hand through his hair. “You never gave me the chance, did you? That’s why I had to leave you, leave this life, in every sense of the word.”
“No, you left me out of some misguided sense of self-righteousness,” Tricia retorted. “It was my negotiating that put you on the map. My hard work that got you every major gig you had before you turned eighteen. You’d be nothing without me. Nothing.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Will said in a voice that was quiet, but somehow more intimidating than if he were yelling. “I was nothing because of you. I had everything in the world, but my life was completely empty. You stuck me in a fucking gilded cage with no one but coked-up actors and production assistants to keep me company. You took away everything that meant anything to me. My home—”
“Stop,” Tricia started.
“My friends—”
“I said stop it—”
“My father.”
At that, Tricia reared. “You are joking. You can’t possibly blame me for Michael’s death.”
“No, but I do blame you for taking me away from him. For barely giving me any time with him! I’m almost thirty years old. In another life, I could have been working a boat with my dad, bringing my kid to a little league game, worrying about how to pay the mortgage instead of whether or not my latest stalker is going to kill me.”
“You mean you could have been ordinary.”
Will closed his eyes. “I could have been happy.”
And there it was. The tradeoff of Will’s life, one that had been made for him long before he ever had the knowledge of what choice was made.
But if he’s not happy with you, my inner voice asked, what does that say about you together?
Tricia finished the rest of her drink, then slowly set it on the ground next to a palm tree. She smoothed her hands over her skirt and patted her hair before she spoke in an eerily even tone.
“You. Ungrateful. Brat. Literally billions of people would wish to be in your shoes, and it’s all because of what I built for you. They’d kill to have a mother who’s half the manager I am.”
“You are not my manager,” Will said emphatically. “You are not my publicist. My agent. You are barely my mother, and even that’s stretching it, all things considered.”
He looked her up and down, and Tricia withered slightly. I might have felt bad if by that point I’d had even an inkling that she wanted something beyond financial gains from her own son.
Tricia stared at him for a very long time, and then at me.
“You know what,” she said in the end, her voice more immovable than her expression. “You should have stayed dead. If you hated this life so much, you should have gone to the bottom with the rest of that godforsaken boat. Then, at least, everything I earned would have come back to its rightful place.”
Will caved inward, like he had been hit in the chest. My mouth dropped. How could she say something like that to her son? I watched as Will, despite his height, crumpled slightly while Tricia folded her arms and watched.
Rage, pure and violent, rushed through me like a river. I only had one instinct: protect.
I straightened up and faced Tricia. “You need to go.”
She arched a neatly plucked brow, as if she had just realized I was there. “Is that right?”
I took a step toward her. “Yeah, that’s right. You might be rich, lady, but you don’t want to mess with me. Especially not when it comes to your son.”
“Oh, honey. What are you going to do? Start a brawl? Throw a punch?”
Her eyes drifted down my thin body, silently measuring me up. But I was no pushover. Months of training, from the time I’d started the triathlon work and all the weeks since, had given me strength, which was only compounded by Will’s presence in my life.
I stepped a little closer. “You want to bring out my inner fighter, Tricia?” I asked softly. “Be my guest. I haven’t met her, but I’m pretty sure she would kick your damn ass if I gave her the go-ahead.”
Tricia’s hard green eyes, so like her son’s, held mine for several seconds. This time, I didn’t look away. She did, as she took a step back, and then another.
“You know what?” she said softly as she glanced back at Will. “You’re not worth it. Neither of you are worth it.”
It didn’t occur to me until much later to wonder which of us she meant.
“Jesus,” Will said once she had gone. “I need a drink.”
Without waiting, he turned and started walking toward a drink station at the far end of the pool, towing me along. We moved to the end of the line, and Will smiled and signed a few quick autographs for crew members until he was able to wait alone, staring at the walls behind the servers.
“Willie!” Amelia cried from behind him. Her eyes were even more dilated than before.
Will shuddered, but I watched her curiously. Her comments from before came floating back.
“What was that about?” I asked. “That comment Amelia made. About you and her…the other night?”
Will peered at me like he couldn’t believe I was asking about that. I didn’t blink.
“It was nothing,” he replied, turning back to the bar.
“Will.”
He continued to stare ahead.
“Will!”
Finally, he looked down at me. “Look, it wasn’t a big deal, so I didn’t tell you at the time. But when we were in the middle of doing our final scene, I don’t know. Amy got the wrong idea—read too much into it or something—and, well, she tried to kiss me.”
My mouth dropped. “She what?”
Will shook his head, waving his hands back and forth as if to dispel the words like smoke. “Lil, it didn’t mean anything. Obviously, I pushed her away and told her to stop. We finished the scene, everything wrapped, and I came home. To you.”
I blinked. “If it didn’t mean anything, then why not tell me? Didn’t you think I’d find out somehow?”
“I am telling you,” Will insisted. “That is how you’re finding out.”
I crossed my arms and stared at him. “This is messed up. You know that, don’t you? How many people at this party watched what happened, huh? How many are taking bets on how long it takes for the English Princess and America’s Heartthrob to get back together? God, your own mother is counting the days until I’m out of the way!”
He opened his mouth to argue, but before anything came out, Will’s gaze flickered somewhere behind me. I turned around to find Amelia watching us intently, looking more than pleased with herself. She gave a sickening little wave at Will and winked at me.
I whirled back around. “Yeah. She looks like she totally got that message.”
“Lil—”
I waved his words away. “I’m going to use the bathroom, all right?” I turned to step away, but was pulled back when Will snatched my hand again.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t run away from me. Not here.”
“Oh, that’s rich coming from a man who’s barely had a moment for me for the last two weeks. You used to swim across an entire lake at the first sign of any real emotion. You’re not exactly an expert at sticking around to deal.” I jerked my hand, but he still wouldn’t release it. “Let go.”
“Not until you let me apologize properly.”
I grimaced. “Not here.”
“Lil, I’m sorry.”
I looked down at our joined hands. Around us, I could see the curious onlookers, many waiting for me to leave so they could approach him instead. Will felt their curiosity too, felt pinned by it.
But as much as I wanted to shield him, I was mad too. And I needed a moment to reconstitute myself so I could be the support system he needed. Our reckoning about Amelia would come, but I could see it for what it was: a mistake. The discussion could wait until later.
Summoning all of the forgiveness I felt capable of, I stepped closer to give him a kiss on the cheek, but immediately, he wrapped an arm around my waist to keep me there for a real kiss. One that was insistent and a bit inappropriate for such a crowded setting. A few whistles rose, and when he let go, I was breathless.
“You’re mine,” he whispered in a low, languid voice. “Say it.”
“Yours,” I replied immediately. The lazy smile that spread across his face made my insides twist. I grabbed his shirt and pulled him to me. “But you’re mine too.”
It was a little unsettling how much I meant it. The idea of Amelia touching him, trying to kiss him, made me physically ill. Everyone in the world seemed to feel like they were entitled to a piece of the one person on this planet who was supposed to belong to me.
But…did he feel that way too?
His smile only widened, and Will pulled me in for another open-mouthed, heart-stopping kiss. This time the whistles were much louder.
“Get a room!” someone jeered, followed by a bunch of laughter.
Will let me go, and his body was already more relaxed than before. Come to think of it, so was mine.
“Yours,” he repeated in a voice that made my toes curl and my heart thump. “Always. Now go and come right back, promise?”
I was barely able to stand upright, but managed to totter a few steps back. “P-promise.”
26
I escaped the backyard, looking for the quickest route to the bathroom so I could keep said promise.
Unfortunately, when I found it, there was a line ten-people long.
“Shit,” I muttered. I really did have to go.
“Just use the master upstairs.”
I swung around to find Tricia holding three drinks. She tipped her head toward the large staircase that wound to the second floor.
“Oh,” I said. “I—I thought you’d gone.”
Indiscreet (The Discreet Duet Book 2) Page 27
