Celebrity 1 - Wrong Number, Right Guy (8 page)

Ryan tossed another newspaper aside. He’d seen all the articles on all the people coming out of the woodwork claiming to have slept with him, or claiming he’d assaulted them on-set. It was all bullshit.

Maggie picked up the discarded paper and folded it on top of the existing stack of similar papers. “You should call him,” she said quietly.

“Who?”
Maggie shot him a deadpan look.
He groaned and dropped back on the couch to stare at the

ceiling, his arm across his forehead.
“Did you read the article I gave you?”
“No.”
“Any of them?” she asked again.
“No.”
He heard paper moving as she messed with the stack. Maggie

walked over and waved one of the papers in front of his face. “Read it.”
He swatted at it.
“Stop being a premenstrual pre-teen and read the article.
You’re in love with him and anyone who’s been in your presence
for more than ten minutes, knows it.”
He sent her a glare. “I’ve tried to call him.”
Maggie shook the paper importantly. “Fine. I’ll read it.” “Suit yourself,” he muttered.
“…Sources say Pierce and Phillips got caught at their love
nest…”
Ryan snorted.
“…in a small cabin next to a large forest reserve. Reporters
claim that Phillips called the story in, but this reporter has new
information. A source near the resort inform that a hotel desk clerk called
World Review
after delivering a private message to Phillips
in the lobby.”
Ryan uncovered his face. His pulse kicked to a gallop. Maggie
kept reading.
“Sources say the desk clerk was fired when heard bragging to
coworkers about the sum he received for the information. The desk
clerk informed them that he’d taken the torn and discarded
message from a lobby receptacle and used the information
accordingly.”
She folded the paper and put it on the coffee table. “It goes on
to speculate whether you and Phillips are still together and whether
or not it will alter your movie carrier options.”
“That’s just one paper,” Ryan said, hope burning in his chest
that she’d contradict him.
“Actually, it’s three rag-mags and two reputable newspapers.” “Did Jack arrange that?” Ryan asked, sitting up now.
Could it
be? Was my relationship with Dar real after all?
“Jack had nothing to do with this.” Maggie folded her hands in
front of her. “And you know it, or you wouldn’t be moping
because Dar won’t take your calls.”
“Jesus.” Ryan leapt to his feet, completely ignoring her
observation. “You know what this means?”
“You need a ticket?”
“Oh, God, Maggie. What if he doesn’t take me back? I accused
him of using me and lying about it. I have no reason to think he’d
see me.”
“I’ll book the first available flight out and let you figure out the
rest.”
Excitement and fear gripped him. “I have to pack.” Feeling
wild-eyed and flushed with adrenaline, Ryan pivoted. “But first, I need you to do a couple of things for me.”

The doorbell rang and Dar pulled his grilled cheese off the burner. When he got to the door, a small bouquet of flowers in a brown pottery vase was thrust at him.

Dar could ask if he needed to sign or tip. “Huh.”
He placed the vase on the front credenza and pulled the card
from the center of the arrangement.

One daisy for each freckle I’ve kissed. One black-eyed Susan for every day we were together. One purple-pair for each time I was in your arms. One purple and white crocus for each time I’ve thought of you since
.

“There aren’t any crocus in here,” he muttered. “You’ve thought of me a lot, I guess.”
The doorbell chimed again. Dar opened it and a haggard flower delivery man stood among hundreds of purple and white crocus flowers, their orange-red centers standing erect and proud filled multiple arrangements with fern greens and baby’s breath.
“Where would you like these?” the man said, breathing heavily.
“In the hall, I guess,” Dar answered.
“She must really like you,” the guy offered.
“Because of the number of flowers?”
“Well, that, and crocus are a bitch to find and arrange this time of year.”
“He’s kissing up.”
“He?”
“The guy who sent these,” Dar said flatly. Ryan might be into hiding his identity, but Dar wasn’t and never had been.
“Oh. Oh! Oh, so, that’s everything. Can I get you to sign for these?”
Dar took the pen and clipboard, putting his scrawl on the bottom line. “Do I owe you anything?”
“No, there was a hefty tip pre-paid.”
“Of course there was.” Dar looked around the sea of flowers.
I’m not giving in. I don’t know what this is about, but some pretty flowers and nice words won’t cut it
.

And frankly, he’d never received flowers. Grudgingly, he admitted it was kind of nice. Okay, very nice. He picked up the card and read it again, deliberately counting the daisies, black-eyed Susans and then starting to count the crocus. Dar got choked up when he hit thirty and he hadn’t even finished counting the first bouquet of what looked like more than a dozen.

Dar stormed back to the kitchen.
Asshole. Thinks a couple of flowers will make everything okay again
.
Brett called from the front door.
“Back here, if you can find me,” he groused.
“What the fuck is with the wilderness expedition?”
“Ryan.”
“Wow, he misses you.”
Dar turned on him, eyes narrowed. “Excuse me? What happened to, ‘I’ll kill him for you after I kick his bodyguards’ asses?’”
Brett shrugged.
“Shit. Did he get to you? What did he do? Pay off your rent?” Dar slapped down his spatula, giving up on having a grilled cheese. “He thinks he can buy his way off? He doesn’t know me at all.”
“Naw, he didn’t buy anything for me. He called me.”
“And offered you a movie part?” Dar accused.
“I wish! We just talked. He’s pretty messed up over what he did to you.”
“Did he tell you what he did?” Dar fumed. The humiliation of it stung like lemon juice on a fucking decapitation. With rock salt. “Never mind. There’s no way the nuance of what he did could be explained.”
“Sure he did. He said you two had mind blowing sex where you made a real connection, were talking about how to have a future together, and then the minute the paparazzi showed up, he slammed the door and left you to the sharks, because he believed you’d called them without ever stopping to give you the benefit of the doubt. Or something like that.”
Dar stared. “Were those his words?” He hated himself for asking.
“Yeah, except he said some other mushy stuff, too.”
“What did he say?” Dar demanded. Damn his own hide for being needy.
Brett brushed past him and took the half-cooked sandwich from the cool pan. He lifted it and took a huge bite. “Some shit about how he was in love with you and had fucked everything up and would I help him.”
“He said that?” His stomach fluttered. Then he got mad at himself. “Why the fuck didn’t he tell me that himself? Why did he go through you to say all that?”
Brett eyed the sandwich, seeming to look for a new attack point. “You wouldn’t pick up the phone and you turned off your voice mail.” He bit off more than half the sandwich in the next bite, and chewed happily.
“You’re eating my lunch.”
Brett shrugged, his mouth still full.
“Why didn’t he come to the door, then, huh? Do you have an answer for that?”
Brett swallowed. “He just flew into town,” Brett glanced at his watch. “About forty-five minutes ago.”
“It’s only twenty minutes to the airport from here,” Dar scoffed.
“Yeah, but he called a news conference with local and national news, down at the area CBS station. Which is why I’m here, because I have to make you watch it on TV.”
“What if I don’t?”
Brett cocked his head, brows raised. “You really think I believe that you’d miss a chance to see Ryan confess before the entire country that he’s in love with you?”
Dar paled. “He can’t do that! He’ll lose his career! We have to stop him.” Dar grabbed his arm. “You’re coming with me.”
“It’s being held in less than fifteen minutes,” Brett argued.
“I don’t care if it was held fifteen minutes
ago
, we’re going down there and we’re going to stop him before he ruins his fucking career.” Dar shoved Brett through the house. “Keys! Drive, now!”
Brett and Dar raced to Brett’s pathetically rusted Passat. The car chugged to life and Brett rattled and shook them all the way to the station downtown. Cars already filled the parking lot.
“Go, I’ll find a place and join you in a few minutes,” Brett insisted.
“I owe you,” Dar shouted back.
“I know.”
Dar raced for the front of the building. The security scan line was too long. Though most of the media were already inside, it was the blockage there that kept Dar from getting through. The conference doors closed and Dar knew he was out of time to play it patiently.
He hopped the velvet rope. A guard shouted after him, but Dar wove through the media and slipped into the conference room, now jam-packed with reporters, cameras, and microphones. At the front, Ryan, in all his glory, stood before a podium, preparing to speak to the gathered crowd.
“I called this news conference today to come clean about something that’s been in the news lately,” Ryan began.
“Stop!” Dar shouted.
A security guard from the lobby skidded to a halt beside Dar. Ryan held his hand up to the guard and the guard backed out of the room.
All eyes turned to them. Wild to make them all go away, to stop hounding Ryan, to stop hounding both of them, Dar ran to the elevated dais.
“Dar? You’re supposed to be at your house.”
Dar cupped his hand over the largest mic. “Don’t do this.”
“I have to,” Ryan said seriously. “I have to set the record straight and I have to tell you how wrong I was.”
“I accept, okay? You’re wrong. Now get down off this thing and let’s go talk.”
“I’m tired of hiding. I’m not going to hedge my bets anymore. There are things that need to be said, apologies to be made, and I’m damn sure not letting you out of my sight again.”
Dar blinked at him. “You’re going to kill your career.”
“I’d rather lose that, than lose you.”
“Ryan, this is a mistake.”
Ryan turned his back on the crowd, blocking their view of Dar. “Do I have any chance of starting over with you?”
Dar looked up at him, his brown eyes wide and hopeful. Worry lines had appeared around his generous mouth and smudges under his eyes made him look tired. He seemed pale and cautious.
“I don’t know. We never figured out how it was going to work the first time. Now you’re asking me if there’s a chance to try again? Ryan, what you did—you didn’t even
try
to trust me. I don’t know if I can let that go.”
“You’re right, I didn’t. I panicked when that reporter asked about your call. If I’d stopped for two seconds to think about it, instead of reacting to the moment, I would have known it was out of character.”
“And the next time a reporter you don’t know says I did something?” Dar asked.
Ryan made to touch his cheek, flexed his fingers, and dropped his hand. “There will be a lot of those times, I won’t lie. But I’d like to think that losing you once scared me badly enough to know better than to do it again.”
“Will you?”
“Just watch me,” Ryan said, determination tightening his lips.
“Don’t do it here. I don’t want to be the reason you can’t work in Hollywood.”
“Dar, don’t you get it? You’re the
only
thing I want. Hollywood is just a job.
You’re
my future.”
Dar folded his arms. “What if I’m not? What if you do all this and I say, no thanks? You’ve done it all for nothing.”
“No. I’ll have done it all honestly. I want you in my life, but I also won’t keep lying about the choices I make just to keep the public happily deluded.”
Ryan faced the podium again.
“Ryan, please,” Dar plead.
He turned and looked at Dar over his shoulder. “It’s something I have to do. Something you need to hear, too.”
Conflicted, Dar moved aside to let him hold his conference. He was of two minds—pleased that Ryan cared enough about him to risk everything to keep him, scared shitless that Ryan would regret it and blame him later. Either way, this appeared to be something Ryan had to do.
* * *

“I called you all here to tell you a story. Let me get through it, and if you have any questions for me, I’ll take them at the end.”
There was a general murmur of agreement from the crowd.
“Thank you. I came here a couple of months ago to do several scenes in my upcoming movie, with actress Selene Laramie. Just after I got to town, I got a phone call. It was a wrong number though it took several minutes for either of us to realize we weren’t talking to the right person.”
A few chuckles came from the media personalities. Brett Shackley slipped into the room, and stood like a sentry by the door, glaring at Ryan.
“The guy was nice. He didn’t know who I was, and our conversation was genuine. It’s rare to find someone with whom you can be yourself, who doesn’t care about your name, or how many figures you pull in from a box-office hit. He didn’t want to know who my agent was. He didn’t ask me for money. He didn’t want my autograph. He just wanted to talk.
“And we did. We talked for a long time and he made me laugh. He reminded me what it was like to be a regular guy.”
“A regular
gay
guy?” someone shouted.
“Please wait until I’m finished. I’ll take questions then.”
Brett loudly shushed the reporter.
“He didn’t know what number he’d called, but I had an ID monitor on my phone. So after a tough day of shooting, I’d come back and think about the guy who’d called. I’d wonder about him and what he was doing. I think I called him back because I needed some normal perspective. At first.
“Later I called back because I liked him. I liked how he thought about things. I liked his humor and that he made me laugh even when I thought I was too exhausted to laugh, or too jaded, perhaps. And over the course of phone calls, I developed a friendship unlike any I’d known before.”
Ryan paused to look over at him. Dar nodded for him to continue. Ryan smiled. That had to be a good sign, didn’t it? Dar no longer discouraged him, but stayed close to offer support. God, he loved that man.
“Eventually I met him. He didn’t know the man on the phone was me, he just knew that I had arranged”—Ryan smiled with selfdepreciation—“for him to meet Ryan Pierce.”
The group laughed again, and their gazes went to Dar. Dar shifted from foot to foot. He was blushing and Ryan knew that even if he’d been close enough to touch Dar, his freckles would have faded right into that blush.
“He was the same in person as he was on the phone. In fact, he was completely unimpressed with me, and wanted to meet the phone friend who’d brought him there.”
Again the laughing.
“And that’s when I knew that fame wasn’t important to him. Somehow, in the course of our communication,
I
had become important to him. Not because of my name or my business, but because of the words put over a phone line and delivered without the benefit of anything other than who I was on the inside.
“That’s a rare gift.”
Ryan took a minute to look around at the sea of faces. They stood silently waiting for him to continue and he felt a moment of gratitude that they were letting him tell his story.
“What my agent was successful in covering up, is that I’m gay.”
Flashes suddenly blinded him, and questions fired like bullets of noise, each unintelligible from the last. Ryan held up his hand. “I won’t continue, if you don’t let me.”
The group settled down, fitfully.
“Contrary to what you’ve been hearing, I dated only once before I first starred in a movie. I haven’t since because of the impact to my career. I am gay, though. So when I say that the man I met through the fate of a wrong number stole my heart, it shouldn’t be hard for you to understand why.”
Ryan turned, giving the media his profile as he spoke to Dar. Because this is what he wanted Dar to know, more than anything.
“I arranged to meet him and tell him who I was. I think it was awkward at first.”
Dar smiled and nodded. The media chuckled with understanding.
“Yeah. It was for me, too. I was afraid he’d walk away, or change. I should have known better, because once again, he was just as real in person as he was on the phone. But later that day when the paparazzi found my cabin, and saw the kiss I gave him,
I
was the one who changed.”
Ryan swallowed. His chest ached and his throat felt tight with feeling. His future with Dar was too important to get this wrong. Yet, speaking from the heart in front of witnesses was the hardest thing he’d had to do.
“I believed the shouted question of a total stranger, over the character of the man I knew. I slammed the door on him, letting him deal with the media and answer how he would, and I let him do it knowing that I believed he’d betrayed me.
“I’m sorry, Dar. I didn’t trust my instinct, but more importantly, I didn’t trust you. I think fear motivated me more than anything. That day, when you came to have lunch with me, I knew I was in love with you.”
The questions filled the room, but this time Ryan ignored them.
“I knew I was in love with you and that putting my heart out there would hurt if you didn’t want me back. I was afraid there’d be some flaw you’d find that would keep you from loving me, too. Instead of letting you find one and seeing how we dealt with it, I thrust you straight into the lion’s den, deliberately pushing you away.
“It would be easy and romantic, I suppose, to say that loving you scared me into doing what I did. That would be a lie. Because, Dar, I fucked up. I fucked up big and risking the loss of any possible affection you could have for me, by guaranteeing it, was…moronic.
“Dar, I love you.” Ryan shrugged, through the tears glazing his vision. He blinked a few times to clear it. “It’s as simple as that. I love you. I don’t care what happens in Hollywood or if I never get another movie deal after this. Fixing things with you is a thousand times more important. I’m so sorry. Please, tell me, can we fix this? Is there anything to fix?”
The room fell silent as Ryan finished his plea. Dar had stood stock-still but for the occasional head bob of encouragement. After what seemed like an eternity, Dar crossed the dais to him. He looked up at Ryan, his hazel eyes shining.
“And you wanted me to stay home and watch this on TV? Are you crazy?” he asked, softly.
The room laughed and someone shouted agreement with Dar.
Ryan shrugged. “I wasn’t sure you wanted to see me. You weren’t taking my calls.”
“I was pissed.”
“I gathered that.”
“Thank you for the flowers,” Dar said.
“You’re welcome.”
“Don’t buy me flowers again. It’s kind of gay.”
Media erupted with laughter.
“I promise,” Ryan agreed, grinning like a fool.
Dar smiled back. He tipped his head to the side. “I forgive you.”
It felt like a weight had been lifted from Ryan’s shoulders. “Thank, God.”
Dar put his hands on Ryan’s shoulders, lifted his chin, and before God and country, kissed Ryan with melting tenderness.
“I love you, too,” he said as he lowered from his toes to his feet again.
Ryan grabbed him into a full body hug, holding him as close as he could. “I’ve missed you so much,” he whispered for only Dar to hear.
“I’ve missed you, too.” When Ryan finally let him go, Dar cocked an eyebrow. “Are you done being a media diva now? I’d like to show you where I live.”
Ryan leaned into the panel of microphones, a goofy grin twisting his lips. “Thanks everybody, this conference is over.”
“What about the questions?” someone shouted.
“Oh, right. Do you have any?” he asked. He looped an arm around Dar’s waist.
“Is this the happy ending of your own romantic adventure?”
“God, I hope so.”
“Does this mean you’d be open to doing homosexual movies?” another asked.
“If someone out there has another
Brokeback Mountain
for me to consider, I have it on excellent authority that there is at least one person who’d watch it.”
Dar squeezed him back.
“Any more questions?”
The room fell silent. Smiles touched almost all the faces in the room.
“I believe we’ve witnessed a miracle. The media has no further questions.” Ryan dropped his arm to take Dar’s hand instead. Photos snapped around them. “Thank you for coming.”
Dar practically dragged him from the room. Brett held off the reporters as Ryan and Dar raced to the front entrance and out into the sunlight. Ryan laughed, grabbed Dar and swung him around.
Dar squirmed from his hold, laughing, too. “Let’s go before Brett loses the battle. Some guy delivered an entire forest to my house. It’s something you ought to see.”
“Do with me what you want. I’m yours to command.”
“Oh, my God! Ryan Pierce is my sex slave!” Dar shouted.