The Hollywood Project: Shuttergirl Part 33

"That was very kind. I don't get that much anymore."

"You're just amazing. I'm sorry. You were, I mean, are so talented. And I'm sorry to meet you with all this terrible stuff happening." I willed my mouth shut.

"How is he?" Lucy asked. I felt rescued.

"Stable," Brooke said. "He's in there telling his son the meaning of life right now. Apparently it only comes to you when your internal organs fail."

"I hear that happens. You only figure out what's important at times like that? I've heard that's the case." I thought I'd willed my mouth shut, but like a lousy dieter seeing friends at a restaurant, all my self-control went out the window in front of Brooke Chambers.

"It's a bad time, Laine," Brooke said. "Just a bad time all around, with the movie falling off schedule and my son being arrested."

"I'm sorry about that."

Lucy put her hand on my arm.

"You didn't mean any harm," Brooke said. "Everyone has the best intentions. You know, my son never does things the easy way. He makes everything an uphill battle. But it's his career."

Best intentions. I didn't like the sound of that. Best intentions meant everyone was misguided. It meant everything had gone wrong and people were hurt. It meant that no matter how much everyone involved wanted to be upright and strong, some situations were dead in the water.

I was probably being oversensitive. I was probably only hearing a reprimand because that was what I chose to hear. Brooke wouldn't be at her best in a hospital waiting room. She didn't know me, yet she knew what I'd been through. I was in a fishbowl where she could see me, but I didn't really see her.

I eked out a smile. I wanted Brooke Chambers's approval, and asking what she meant or defending myself at fifteen or twenty-five wouldn't be helpful. We were there for a family, not petty insults. She was making a point about something bigger than three women in a tiny room.

I got it. I got it loud and clear, a message developed in boiling hot chemicals, cl.u.s.tering the silver grains into lumps. I saw the image of what she meant, though the details were lost in the contrast.

And I found that image was perfect in the frame. Uncomfortable and unpleasant but somehow more real and accurate than anything with the details burned in. She was right, even in what she didn't say.

She didn't say that the pain was inevitable despite our best intentions.

She didn't say that he and I were an uphill battle.

But she did. She'd said I'd break him in the course of loving him. I was just another choice that made things harder than they had to be. I'd end his career.

My career was over. Was I going to make sure his was too?

Michael came into the room, and I felt a longing for something I didn't have, even though he was right in front of me.

Chapter 41.

Michael I didn't expect her. I'd expected my mother and Lucy and no one else, because my father wouldn't want anyone to know he was in the hospital until he was back on his feet and growling at doctors.

"Hi," I said to Laine as I hugged Brooke.

Lucy piped in, "I brought her, so if you didn't want her here, you can blame me."

"Nice to see you too," I replied, kissing her cheek.

"How is he?" she asked.

"Getting his curmudgeon back."

I put my hand on Laine's shoulder and pulled her into me, expecting her body to feel the way it always did: pliable, soft, and luxurious against me. But though she made all the motions of affection, she was stiff and distant.

"Excuse us a second," I said to my mother.

I pulled Laine out into the hall. The lights were brighter and the floors more scuffed. She looked tired and wrung out.

"How are you doing?" I asked, touching her face. "We're trying to get the pictures taken down."

She didn't look at me. "I don't care about the pictures."

"Really?" I didn't believe her, and my tone let her know it.

"No, I care." She let her gaze drift up to me. "But how are you doing? You look tired."

"Long night. For both of us. Want to go to bed?"

I didn't know where my sudden playfulness had come from-maybe the fact that my dad would be all right and seeing Laine wasn't broken about the pictures. She was miles away, but she was in front of me. I was relieved that I could do something, and that she was there, and I needed her.

Yes, I needed her against me. I admitted that. So I said quick good-byes and hustled her into my car. I may have been too wrapped up in my own happiness and despair to realize she was pensive. Or I may have expected any normal person to be a little off after the events of the last twenty-four hours. I can't imagine we weren't both completely scrambled.

But I took her hand in the car and she put her head back on the seat, looking out the window.

"We're getting as many of the pictures taken down as we can," I said as we crossed La Cienega.

"What does liver failure mean? Will he be all right?"

"Ken is on it. And the police are doing what they can."

"Your mother, she was upset, she couldn't hide it. Is she always like that?"

"That Jake guy, I swear if they don't lock him up and throw away the key..."

"Lucy's all right," she said. "I really thought she was the worst person in the world, but she's thoughtful, and she loves you. I guess people change."

"I think they do." I turned into the hills. "I mean, they don't really. But they do."

"They improve." She turned her head to face me, her cheek on the back of the seat. "We improve."

"Yeah."

I didn't ask her where she wanted to go, but I brought her home. There may have been a practical matter of her clothes or a camera. I didn't ask if she had to get to work. She didn't object. I a.s.sumed she needed me as much as I needed her.

Chapter 42.

Laine He got out of the car and came around the front. The front lights of the little house clicked on when he pa.s.sed.

Was he my last chance at happiness? Was the disaster of those pictures going to break me? Or would we find a way through it? Because his hips swung around the car and I thought if I lost him because of Jake, I'd never recover.

He opened the door for me and stood with his hand out, framed in the triangle between the door and the car, half lit by the porch light. I hadn't thought about s.e.x, or more accurately, I hadn't thought about good s.e.x, since the previous morning. But as I put my hand out for him and we touched, I couldn't think about anything else. I was body slammed with arousal, and I wasn't the only one, because I was barely out of the car before Michael pushed me against the car in a bruising kiss.

And it was good, exactly what I needed. I wanted to be swept away in his hands, his mouth on my face and neck, pulling groans from me. I kicked my leg around his waist to feel his erection against me. He pushed. I pushed back. If I could just make the fabric between us disappear, rub it away with friction until the threads frayed and popped, getting to the skin, the fluid and blood, until he was inside me.

"I have to have you," he said, cupping the back of my head, mouth to mouth.

"Yes."

It must have taken twenty minutes to get to the front door. He pushed me against every stable surface, kissing me, fondling me, yanking b.u.t.tons and zippers. I could barely get a foothold long enough to touch him. By the time we got to the door, my s.h.i.+rt was hiked over my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and his pants were unb.u.t.toned.

The door swung open, and we tumbled in. My pants were undone, I don't remember when or how, but he stuck his hands down them. I let loose with a long vowel when he touched me.

"Christ, Laine."

He slapped the door shut and got on his knees before me, pulling my pants down. I stepped out of them. He got a condom from his back pocket before lowering his pants below his hips. I opened for him, hitching one leg over his waist and my arms over his shoulders. He pushed me against the wall, driving into me.

"Say you're mine," he growled.

He felt so good, pus.h.i.+ng on me just the right way, holding my legs apart so he could go deeper. Light and heat gathered where we were connected.

"Oh, Michael, I'm so close."

"Say it."

"I'm yours." I pulled him to me, not doubting the words as they escaped my lips, because no man had made me feel like this. No man had made me feel so safe, so wanted, so valuable. We could do this, and if I didn't believe we could get past our troubles, my world wouldn't have exploded in pleasure. I pulled him close with my legs and came for all it was worth, letting go of everything for that moment.

He came right after me with a bark and a groan, panting as if he'd just been for a run. We didn't move, didn't say a word. He hitched me up and I gripped him tighter as he carried me to the bedroom.

Chapter 43.

Michael I'd fallen asleep wrapped around her, which felt as natural and right as any place I'd ever fallen asleep. Once I got her into my bed, we kissed, touched, talked, and made love twice more. She asked about my parents as if she were asking about an exotic trip I'd taken in the distant past. She was fascinated, as if the silliest details were important, and the parental idiosyncrasies I took for granted were the cornerstone of my relations.h.i.+p with them.

She was still guarded about her time with those a.s.sholes who'd hurt her, but she told me about Suns.h.i.+ne and Rover, and I remembered the faraway look on her face when she'd spoken of them during our conversations in the bleachers. I wanted to find them for her, to reunite her with the only people who had been parents to her.

We acted as if nothing had gone wrong in the previous twenty-four hours. We twisted together in the coc.o.o.n of my bed until the sun blasted through the guest house window and my phone woke me. In the previous night's haste to get naked, I'd forgotten to turn off the d.a.m.ned ringer.

I untwisted myself and walked out to the living room. My jacket was half under the couch, in a ball with the sleeve sticking straight out as if it was hailing a cab. I yanked it, and the phone slid out of the pocket. I plucked it up to shut it.

But I saw who it was from and felt compelled to take the call. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Mike. It's Steven."

"Good morning. Is it morning? The sun's barely up."

"I've been up all night," he said, and I heard it in his voice. The guy never lost a minute's sleep for anything.

"Good thing we're not shooting." I threw myself on the couch. I was completely naked, and it was my house, yet I felt as though I should put something on. I knew what this was about.

"Last night," he said.

"Wasn't me."

"Stop joking."

"What do you want me to say? I didn't do anything wrong." I heard Laine behind me, but I couldn't look at her. The house was so small I couldn't go anywhere to have the conversation where she couldn't hear me.

"Look," Steven said in his director voice, "I don't want to get into a big battle over morality."

I sat up straight. "Morality? Are you-?"

"I don't want this to go bad. I respect you as an artist. But hear me out. This shoot's already compromised. I have the Overland thing b.u.mping right up against it. The delay was going to eat into my pre-production. And now this?"

"This what? Say it."

"I can't work with you."

My heart sank as if sucked into a vacuum. He was bailing. Losing an actor was the worst thing that could happen to a project. That killed it immediately. But losing a director was the second worst thing. That killed it in a slow, wasting death. And my father needed Bullets. He'd been waiting for this chance for ten years, and I'd put everything on the line to make it happen. Gareth was in the hospital because production had paused. How bad would he get when the project died?

"I've got Ken on the PR," I said. "It's going to go away."

"I have daughters."

"You have daughters?"

"I have to think about them. I'm sorry. But they're going to be the same age as that girl soon."