All That Lies Within (3 page)

Regretfully, Rebecca folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. Her senior seminar students would be filing into class at any moment. Rebecca locked the letter in her desk drawer, gathered up her lecture notes, and tried to get the enigma that was Constance Darrow out of her mind.

“And, that’s a wrap, people! Nice job,” the director called.

The cast and crew broke into applause. Dara, who just had finished an emotionally grueling scene, blew out an explosive breath and rubbed the sore spot in the back of her neck. She blinked away the tears that had been required for the scene and looked around at the people she’d spent so many hours and days with over the course of the twelve-week shoot. They weren’t a bad lot, really. But there wasn’t one of them who knew the first thing about who Dara Thomas was, which made this set just like every other one she’d been on.

“Hey, pretty thing. Are you coming to the wrap party?” Luther Rollins sidled up to Dara and slipped his arm around her waist. “Leading man and his on-screen love. It’d make for great headlines.”

Dara twisted out of Luther’s grasp. Despite the smile still plastered on her face, she allowed the ice to show in her eyes. “I don’t think so, Luther.”

Then she walked away.
Not if you were the last man left on Earth.
Indeed, she would have to make an appearance at the wrap party; after all, she was the female lead and it would be bad form not to attend, but she would arrive solo, as she always did.

CHAPTER TWO

“Ms. Thomas, you’re the hottest box office draw and, some would argue, the most striking actress in Hollywood.” The television interviewer leaned in closer, and Dara steeled herself for the inevitable. “Every man in America, and plenty of women, for that matter, would love to have you on their arm. Yet you consistently arrive at premieres and parties alone. Just yesterday, you showed up solo to the premiere of your new movie,
Rock Me Gently
. You’ve never been photographed with anyone ‘special.’ Why is that?”

Dara mustered her best aw-shucks look, even as the familiar pain stabbed at her heart. Despite her best efforts and no matter how many times she was asked the same question, Dara couldn’t seem to prevent the sting of Sheilah’s betrayal from piercing her well-developed emotional armor. Sheilah—the first woman she’d ever been with, the woman to whom she’d pledged her love and her life at the age of twenty-one. How naïve she’d been back then! She vividly recalled the moment all of her illusions were shattered.

“What in the world made you think it was acceptable to talk politics?” Sheilah whispered fiercely in Dara’s ear.

“You told me you wanted me to have a good time. I thought—”

“You thought? What in the world gave you the impression I was interested in you for your mind?”

Dara cleared her throat and focused on the interviewer. “I’m sorry, what was the question?”

“I asked why you’re never photographed with anyone special? You’re a beautiful woman…”

“Listen,” Sheilah hissed, “when’s the last time you looked in a mirror? You’re gorgeous, even first thing in the morning. Nobody, including me, cares what’s in your head. They just want to look at you. To covet you. I love that other people want what I have. Why else do you think I’ve kept you around the past few months? You’re great for my image.”

“But you told me you loved me.”

“Would you have stayed if I hadn’t?”

With a practiced air of ease, and no hint of the angst she was feeling, Dara answered the interviewer. “I’m picky.” She sold it with a wink and a saucy smile.

The rhythmic slapping of the waves against the shore did little to soothe Dara, so she ran harder and faster. She understood that there were some things that could not be outrun, and a heart still broken after ten years was one of those things. But she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to try.

Sheilah was Dara’s first female lover and it was only natural for the first to hold a special place in her heart. But the newness of the experience and her budding sexuality weren’t the only reasons the aborted relationship with Sheilah left such lasting scars. Sheilah encouraged Dara to share her deepest desires and dreams and held out the promise of a lifetime spent fulfilling them together. Her interest and support seemed so genuine and Dara’s trust in her promises was so absolute that she poured all of her heart into the relationship.

In the beginning, it had been magical. Sheilah was the only person apart from Carolyn who accepted Dara for who she was and encouraged her to be herself, or so Dara thought. They spent hours lying in each other’s arms talking about Dara’s childhood. Sheilah was nurturing and compassionate, and Dara was so relieved to let her guard down for the first time in a romantic relationship. Then Sheilah so callously revealed everything to be a sham, and Dara was cast adrift and once again betrayed by someone who purported to love her.

I could’ve done without reliving all that.

Dara gave herself the now-familiar pep talk designed to get her out of this brooding head space: her time with Sheilah had helped her to understand herself better. She had gained sexual experience that served her well. She had learned to guard her heart, and she had learned to be more discerning about people and their motivations.

By the time Dara returned to the beach house, she was physically spent. Unfortunately, her emotions continued to churn. She turned the key in the lock and let herself in. Normally, Dara welcomed the silence of the house. Now it was a reminder of how very alone she was. Apart from Carolyn, who’d been her best friend since nursery school, Dara had no close friends. Oh, there were plenty of people who wanted to be close. Fame and beauty tended to attract all kinds of potential hangers-on. But, like Sheilah, those people were more interested in what Dara was and what she looked like, than in who she was.

Finally unable to hold back or pretend anymore that it didn’t matter, she collapsed on the floor in front of the sofa and let the torrent of tears flow until they lulled her into a restless sleep.

Dara didn’t know how much time had passed when she heard the incessant buzzing and the sound of someone banging on the front door. She looked around at the dark shadows that had crept across the tile floor. How long had she been asleep? She wiped her bleary, swollen eyes and grabbed a tissue.

“Dara? Sweetheart? Are you in there?”

She recognized Carolyn’s voice and the alarm in her tone and hustled to undo the locks and open the door.

“Oh, thank God.” Carolyn swept her into a tight hug.

“W—” Dara cleared her throat, trying to erase the hoarseness from her crying jag. “What are you doing here?”

Carolyn pulled back and examined Dara’s puffy face. “Oh, my God, sweetie.” Carolyn reached out her hands and smoothed her thumbs under Dara’s eyes. Without another word, she drew Dara closer again and rubbed her back.

Dara wanted to object, wanted to say that she didn’t need to be comforted, to be consoled. But it felt so good to be held. She closed her eyes and soaked in the sensation. As always, her best friend knew exactly what she needed and when.

After several moments, Dara pulled back. She saw the caring and deep concern written on Carolyn’s face and turned away. “I need to get cleaned up.” She started toward the bedroom. Carolyn stopped her with a hand on the arm.

“Don’t, Dara. Don’t stuff your emotions. Don’t run from me.”

Dara stopped and reluctantly turned around. “I don’t want to feel like an emotional midget who needs her best friend every time someone says something that hurts her.”

“You’re not and you don’t. But I saw the interview and I knew I needed to be here.”

“Last I knew, you were packing to tour the national parks with Stan. And now I feel guilty for dragging you away from your plans. Poor Stan. It’s a wonder he stays married to you, you know that? You spend more time with me than you do with him.”

“Stan knew who he was marrying and he knew you and I were a package deal. We have been since we were five years old. He loves you as much as I do.”

“That’s because he doesn’t know anything about me.”

“He doesn’t know about Constance Darrow, that’s true. But he knows who you are to me, and that’s good enough for him. And stop changing the subject. I didn’t come here to talk about my husband or our marriage. I came here because I know you. And I know what that interview did to you.”

Dara sighed and led the way to the sofa. It was clear Carolyn wasn’t going to let this go.

Rebecca paused the interview she had recorded on her DVR to pull her dinner out of the microwave. Once resettled on the sofa, she picked up the remote to resume the program but stopped short of hitting the Play button. There, frozen on her big-screen TV, was Hollywood sensation Dara Thomas.

Despite her best efforts, Rebecca felt her pulse quicken. Who wouldn’t be turned on by that kind of beauty? Even paused in mid-word, the actress had the most perfect features Rebecca ever had seen. It was the kind of face that was tailor-made for the movies.

But there was something else, maybe the obvious intelligence in the actress’s eyes, that Rebecca found absolutely irresistible. Rebecca hit the Play button.

“Ms. Thomas, you’ve taken some interesting roles over the past few years.” The interviewer consulted his notes. “A scheming woman scorned, a romantic ingénue, a cancer-stricken young mother, a fiery rock singer… Is there any kind of role you feel is beyond you?”

Rebecca’s heart melted a little more when Dara Thomas flashed her megawatt smile.

“As an actress, it’s my job to make the audience suspend disbelief. I love the challenge of stretching beyond my comfort zone. My goal is always for movie-goers to forget that they’re watching Dara Thomas and become absorbed in whatever character I’m playing. I so admire Meryl Streep. She’s my role model. Have you ever noticed how she becomes the character she plays? She’s not playing a role. She
is
the role. That’s the way it should be. So I like to push myself, to play a variety of character types so that I don’t get too comfortable in any one archetype.”

“Oh, SAT word,” Rebecca mumbled. “I knew you were more than a just pretty face.” Rebecca pulled her laptop into her lap as she continued to listen to the interview. She googled Dara Thomas, unsurprised to see that there were hundreds of hits.

After reading Dara’s filmography on IMDb, Rebecca clicked to the actress’s official website. She scrolled through dozens of pictures of Dara at movie premieres in glorious dresses that hugged her perfect body. Rebecca got lost in the movie trailers and the numerous incarnations of Dara for a time, and then moved on to her biography. “Huh. Yale, eh? Definitely no slouch in the brains department.” In fact, Dara Thomas was a magna cum laude graduate of the Yale School of Drama. There wasn’t much information about her life prior to college apart from the fact that she grew up in a suburb of New York City, left home for college, and never looked back.

Rebecca read on.

Dara was an understudy at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2002, the summer after her graduation from Yale. Rebecca paused and whistled. The Williamstown Theatre Festival featured some of the biggest names in the business. Many famous movie and television actors and actresses took roles there in order to hone their stage skills. That Dara was able to secure an understudy position right out of school said a lot about her talent.