Extreme Bachelor (41 page)

“I’m sure,” he cut in, his
eyes dark. “Just like I can’t handle the constant need to apologize
to you, or the need to prove to you that I’m not screwing around,
or that every stranger who speaks to you isn’t trying to kidnap
you. I can’t erase my past, Leah. It is what it is. I can’t erase
what happened in New York, or on Sunlight Canyon Road. I can’t
erase the fact that I have dated a lot of women. And I can’t live
my life with your . . .
constant
. . . uncertainty.”

His response took her aback. “Are you
kidding?” she asked. “Seriously, are you kidding?”

“Kidding
?” He made a sound of
disbelief. “Why in God’s name would I kid about something like
this? I don’t know what else to say to you, Leah,” he said angrily.
“You are angry with me because I left you, but I can’t change that,
anymore than I can change my eye color. Jesus, I
love
you, I adore you,
and I can’t change that, either—I don’t
want
to change that. But I am who I
am, and if you can’t be certain about me or what I say to you now,
and if you will always wonder, then I don’t know what else to say.
I tried. I failed. I’m not going to be reminded of my failure day
in and day out.”

Her heart was reeling, her thoughts
collapsing, her anger and frustration mounting. “Good, that’s
great,” she said sharply, her voice betraying her hurt. “I’m glad
to hear you say it, because I can’t live with the uncertainty of
you, I just can’t. I can’t live with the Extreme Bachelor or the
ex–CIA agent with enemies or the worry whether you are being honest
with me. It’s too hard and too much and I don’t want it. I want to
be happy, not constantly fearing that this will be the day you
break my heart to pieces again!”

He looked as if she had physically struck
him. He blinked. Put his hand to his nape. “Okay,” he said stiffly.
“If that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want,” she
said firmly, yanking the stupid gloves from her fingers. But it was
a lie, a stupid lie, because it
wasn’t
what she wanted, it wasn’t
even
close
to
what she wanted. Only it was too late—days, years, eons too late.
And now that she’d said the words, had set them free to swell
between them, she couldn’t take them back.

Michael was already moving backward. “I wish
you well, Leah,” he said quietly. “Whatever you do, wherever life
takes you, I wish you nothing but the best.”

“Great,” she said, her voice damnably shaky.
“You, too.”

He smiled sadly, shoved his hands into his
pockets. “Good-bye, Leah.”

“Good-bye, Michael,” she choked out, and
watched the only man she would ever love turn on his heel and walk
away.

Subject: Re: I’m Home!

From: Lucy Frederick

To: Leah Kleinschmidt

Time: 3:23 pm

I’m so glad you’re back! There are soooo
many things we have to decide, but the big one is the color of the
bridesmaid dress, surprise, surprise. So now I’m thinking red, a
rich, ruby red. You like red, don’t you? Yes, you do. Remember that
red dress you wore to my holiday party? Anyway, I attached another
great halter dress to this e-mail. Tell me what you think.

Hey, did you get a chance to talk to
Michael?

Subject: Re: Re: I’m Back!

From: Leah Kleinschmidt

To: Lucy Frederick

Time: 12:48 pm

I like the style of the dress. And the red
is really pretty, even if most of your bridesmaids are blondes or
redheads. I always thought red was a better color for brunettes.
And BTW, I never wore a ruby-red dress to your holiday party. I
wore black. Maybe a rich green would be a better idea. But hey, if
you want red, that’s cool, too. It’s your wedding! I am here to
serve.

I didn’t talk to anyone. I mostly worked. I
think I’m off guys for a while. And please don’t give me the speech
you always give me when I take a break from guys. I’m not being a
hermit, I’m not wearing my feelings on my sleeve, I’m not doing
anything but concentrating on my career, okay? In fact, Frances
called me today and told me I have a shot at an HBO Original Series
about pilgrims or something. Kewl, huh?

LEAH did manage to snag a
role in the new HBO series,
Coming to
America
, which was about the grueling
reality the pilgrims faced in settling America. Leah had wanted the
part of the trapper’s daughter, but when she asked, Frances laughed
so hard that she threw her back out. “You’re not going to be the
star, honey,” she’d said, not unkindly, but as if it was obvious to
the entire world, save Leah. “It’s like I’ve been telling
you—
character
roles.”

Which is exactly what Leah got when they
tapped her for the minor part of the wife of one of the
settlement’s elders. Essentially, that meant her on-screen time was
devoted to slaving over a washboard, lifting giant kettles of
water, or, conversely, stirring something in it, and looking after
the five kids that supposedly she had given birth to while they
eked out their meager existence, which no woman in her right mind
would have done. In fact, it became a running joke between her and
the other minor wives as to how in God’s name their stinky pretend
husbands could possibly be getting any action in bed, what with the
life they led.

The only thing Leah liked about the role was
the costumes, but even that got old after a bout of unusually warm
weather and the soundstage heated up along with the rest of L.A.
Wool was not Leah’s first choice when the temperatures started
hitting eighty-five degrees and higher.

Trudy dropped by the set a few times, always
in stylish shades, ostensibly to check out the available guys, but
really to bug the director, Ted, into giving her a part. Ted would
never take the bait, so Trudy would do the next best thing—make
Leah go out with her for drinks before she had to go pick up her
kids at one relative’s house or another.

Their favorite watering
hole was a place on Sunset Boulevard, where the drinks were way too
high for Leah to afford—she’d spent most of her
War of the Soccer Moms
windfall on a
new car—but Trudy insisted it was a great place to see and be seen
by all the right people.

“Who are the right people?” Leah asked
once.

Trudy shrugged behind her John Lennon
shades. “Directors. Producers. People like that. The next big thing
is discovered in places like this all the time.”

They both looked around at the other people
in the bar. “Do you see anyone you know?” Leah asked.

“No, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

Exactly.

Leah drank water most of
the time; Trudy drank Pink Ladies and talked endlessly about her
kid (genius), her boyfriend (loser), and what she’d heard about the
post- production work on
War of the Soccer
Moms
. It had been three months since
production wrapped, with a scheduled release date in another six
months, to hit the summer rush.

“The film editing isn’t going very well,”
Trudy told Leah one afternoon, nodding as if she was in-the-know,
which she wasn’t. But then again, she was an actress and liked the
part.

“It isn’t? How come?”

“Because there are a couple of divergent
opinions about how it ought to be edited—one side thinks Charlene
needs more screen time because she’s the big draw, but get this—”
Trudy paused, glanced surreptitiously about to see if anyone was
listening in, then leaned forward and whispered loudly,
“Apparently, Nicole was blowing the executive producer the whole
time! And guess who is the exec’s good golfing buddy?”

“Who?” Leah whispered.

Trudy inched forward a
little more. “The
head
of the
studio
.” She sat back, clearly pleased with her scoop. “So who do
you think is going to get more screen time? Charlene?” she asked,
thrusting one hand out, palm up, “or Nicole?” she finished,
thrusting the other hand out in the opposite direction. “Do
you
believe
that
shit?”

“I don’t know, and I’ll be
honest, Trudy—I don’t care,” Leah said. “All I care about is how
much screen time
I
get. And with whom, of course.”

With a snort, Trudy picked up her Pink Lady
and took a healthy swallow. “You’re not going to get enough screen
time to make a difference to an ant, kiddo. With two stars like
Charlene Ribisi and Nicole Redding, the rest of us poor bit players
will be lucky to get a toe into a shot,” Trudy said confidently.
She suddenly sat up, her eyes shining. “Is Nicole a slut or what?
She was blowing the exec producer the whole time she was trying to
blow your guy.”

At the mention of “her guy,” Leah almost
choked on her water.

“What’s the deal with him, anyway?” Trudy
asked. “What happened to him?”

Leah shrugged and looked around the room,
avoiding eye contact. “Who knows? It was just one of those
production flings, anyway. You know, once it wraps, that’s the end,
and everyone is cool with that.”

“Really?” Trudy asked, her brow wrinkling.
“Are you cool with that? Because I thought he was so into you.”

Leah shrugged again and pretended to be
examining the drink menu.

“Okay, what about the lighting guy?”

“Who?” Leah asked, pretending not to know,
hoping Trudy would drop it, knowing it was exactly the wrong thing
to do.

So wrong, in fact, that Trudy actually
laughed at her. “Don’t give me that crap, girl,” she said
cheerfully. “So? Have you heard from him?”

“Oh him,” Leah said flippantly. “No, I
haven’t. He went back to Puerto Rico, I think.”

“I thought it was Spain.”

“Spain, Puerto Rico,” Leah said with a flick
of her wrist as if they were practically the same country. She’d
told so many lies about Juan Carlo the night she came back from the
cabin that she couldn’t remember what she’d said any longer.

“That whole thing was so weird,” Trudy
doggedly went on.

Leah glanced up over the top of the drink
menu. “What was weird?”

“Just you and that guy,” Trudy said
thoughtfully. “It was so unlike you.”

“Everyone has a one-night stand now and
again,” Leah retorted. “What about you and the sandwich guy?”

“Not the same thing,”
Trudy said with a shake of her head. “Because I
am
that kind of person, so it’s no
surprise when I do it. But when
you
do it, we all sit up and take notice.”

Great, just what any girl wanted to hear.
“It was a long time ago,” Leah said, and ducked her head again. “I
think I might try one of these martinis,” she added, hoping to
divert Trudy to one of her favorite pastimes—drinking.

But Trudy was having none
of it. “Michael Raney, that was
really
weird,” she said, squinting
at Leah over her John Lennon sunglasses. “I mean it—he was
so
into
you. We
all saw it.”

“You guys saw what you wanted to see.”

“Don’t think so. And I don’t think it was
just a production fling.”

“It was. Trust me,” Leah muttered, refusing
to make eye contact.

When she didn’t play along, Trudy sighed
irritably. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “I saw him the other
day at the airport, did I tell you? I went to pick up my kid from
his trip to see Grandma, and who comes striding down the Jetway out
of first class like he owns the place?”

Leah looked up again. “From Vegas? You saw
Michael get off a plane from Vegas?”

“Vegas
,
” Trudy reached over and bonked her
on the shoulder. “What makes you think my mother lives in Vegas?
She lives in Atlanta! And Handsome got off the plane from Atlanta.
But he was just passing through. He said he’d been to Cairo to
climb some pyramids or something like that.”

“Cairo! As in
Egypt?
That
Cairo?”

Trudy laughed. “Oh right, it was just a
fling!” she cried dramatically. “You seem pretty interested to
me.”

“Shut up,” Leah said, and ducked again.

“Fine,” Trudy said with an exaggerated sigh.
“So anyway, I picked up Barton that day, and do you know what my
mother did to his hair?” she demanded, launching into a tale of her
mother’s lame ideas about child-rearing as Leah tried to process
what she’d just heard.

Leah had wondered—oh, who was she kidding?
She’d obsessed—about why he hadn’t called her. Or if he would ever
call her. And she’d assumed—in an obsessive manner again—that she
had lost him twice in a lifetime. What sort of woman had two shots
at the love of her life and watched them fall apart? She did not
want to believe that it was really over, that a single day in a
cabin with a madman could turn things around so completely. But it
had.

Leah had done a lot of thinking about that
day and the things she’d said after it was all over. She’d been
hurt and frightened, and so damn angry that he hadn’t fallen all
over himself to apologize to her for it all that she’d lost sight
of some of the stuff he’d said. Like how he couldn’t live with her
uncertainty, that he’d tried, and he’d been honest, but couldn’t
apologize enough for who he was to suit her.

And all she’d talked about was how “sorry”
wasn’t good enough.

Funny how crystal clear her thoughts were
about him when he wasn’t around to muddy the waters. Her thoughts
were pretty crystal clear now that she didn’t want to be without
him. She loved him like she had never and would never love another
man, she was certain. In spite of Juan Carlo, and all the women
Michael had dated showing up everywhere, and even though he had
left her so cruelly five years ago, she loved him.