Heartthrob (21 page)

Kate suspected it was only the beginning.

The tour of the plantation house was conducted by a young woman in a hoop skirt. She looked as if she might give way to the vapors when she realized her customers were none other than Susie McCoy and Jamaal Hawkes.

Forget about Jericho Beaumont. He might as well have been invisible.

He was quiet as they went first into the front parlor, and then into the lavishly furnished dining room. They’d be filming the scene where Jane had dinner with Reginald Brooks and his family right here.

Jericho hung back to look out the window at a beautifully maintained flower garden as the tour guide led the way into the kitchen.

And Kate hung back to wait for him.

He looked particularly good today, refreshed and healthy, despite the stubble of beard—Laramie’s beard—on his chin. He wore a Hawaiian-print shirt, a pair of khaki
shorts, and Teva sandals, his long hair back in a ponytail because of the heat. With his sunglasses on, he seemed ready to play the part of a beach bum in some retro, early 1970’s movie.

It was possible that the tour guide simply hadn’t recognized him. He’d worn his hair extremely short in his most recent movies. And of course his most recent movie had been out five years ago—a lifetime by Hollywood standards.

Jericho turned to see Kate standing there, and managed to read her mind.

“It’s my fault for not having a movie out in years.” He smiled crookedly. “Completely my fault. It took longer than I thought to get clean. And once I was ready to come back, I’d been out of the public’s mind for too long. I was no longer a guaranteed box-office draw and that—combined with how I’d burned my bridges on the way to hitting bottom—has made me uncastable.” He held out his hands in a gesture of amused resignation so like one Laramie would make. “I stand before you—a has-been at age thirty-four.”

She stepped around the dining table. “You’re not a has-been.”

“Yes,” he said. “I am. I’m counting on this movie to hit big. And bring me back to life.”

“But if it doesn’t?” Her voice sounded very small in the high-ceilinged room.

Jericho turned back to the window, but not before she caught a glimpse of the sudden bleakness in his eyes. “I don’t know. Damn, if I go through this, and I’m still considered uncastable …” He laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “Hell, I might as well go through life stinking drunk. What’s the point in torturing myself to stay sober if no one’s going to hire me anyway?”

Kate took another step toward him. “You can’t really mean that.”

His voice was tight. “You have no idea how hard it is.
No
idea.”

She touched his back. She couldn’t resist. “And you seriously believe that it wouldn’t be any easier if you got back into some kind of twelve-step program?”

“Yeah, great,
that’s
all I need—to go around trying to make amends with everyone I hurt because I was a drunk? Well, most of ’em are dead. Nothing will get resolved, and I’ll just end up feeling like shit. No thanks.”

“You
know
there’s more to those programs than that.” Beneath her hand his muscles were tight, his shoulders tense. “Jed, you need to learn to relax.”

“Whiskey relaxes me just fine.” He turned to look at her. “Sex does the trick, too.”

She lifted her hand from him and started backing away. “We better catch up with the others.”

He caught her by the wrist. “I’m sorry. Damn, I’m always apologizing to you, aren’t I? It’s just … I can’t figure you out. How could somebody so uptight do a movie like
Dead of Night?
I hate to tell you, babe, but half the men in the country have spent quite a bit of time staring at your breasts. And you sure as hell weren’t wearing a high-necked sweater at the time.”

Kate felt herself flush, but she held his gaze steadily as she pulled her hand free. “You’re right. I wasn’t.” She took a deep breath. “I wanted to be an actress. And
Dead of Night
was a movie. I talked myself into believing that I wouldn’t care that I had to take my clothes off. I convinced myself that because people had been staring at my body since I was eleven, I might as well use it to launch my career. But I was wrong—I
did
care. That was something I should have learned back in seventh grade, courtesy of my brothers and their classmates.”

He was silent, waiting for her to go on, but she turned away. “They’re probably wondering where we are.”

“I’d like to be your friend,” Jericho said suddenly.

She turned back to look at him. He hadn’t moved an inch, but he had become Laramie. God, somehow she
must’ve given herself away. Somehow he knew exactly how to get under her skin.

He smiled slightly. “I’d also like to jump your bones, but I figure that’s pretty much understood, whereas the friend thing might not be.”

It was her turn to stand there, silently staring at him.

“What happened in seventh grade? And I’m praying that you’re not going to tell me that one of ’em touched you when you were what? Thirteen years old?”

“I was twelve. And no. They didn’t try that until I was in eighth grade.”

Jericho swore.

“But in seventh grade, my brothers always had this steady stream of friends coming over to the house, always at the same time, after dinner. I thought they were coming over to do homework, or to play games. Timothy and Stephen were heavily into Dungeons and Dragons, and Jack was really good at chess. Mickey liked basketball, so he always had a few friends out in the driveway, shooting hoops. He wasn’t a part of it, though. It was Jack and the twins.”

“Part of what?” Laramie asked. She could tell from his eyes that he knew what she was going to say before she said it.

“My brothers had a nifty little business going. They charged guys a dollar to watch me get ready for bed at night. Jack’s room was directly over mine, and they drilled a bunch of peepholes in the floor. When I found out about it, I was beyond mortified. God knows what those boys saw. I was twelve, and I had the body of a seventeen-year-old. I was alone in my room with the door locked and the shades pulled down. I thought I was safe.”

The memory was still enough to make her heart pound with anger. “When I found out,” she continued, “Timothy gave me half of the money they’d made, hoping I wouldn’t tell on them. I took it, and I didn’t tell, but only because I
was so embarrassed. It sure wasn’t the money that kept me from talking. There was enough there to buy a new tape player, but I never spent it. I couldn’t—it made me feel sick just to look at it, and I knew I’d feel the same about the tape player. The money’s still hidden in my parents’ house. In the closet in my old room, under a loose board.”

“I have this overpowering urge to go and kick the crap out of your brothers,” Laramie said. Laramie?
Jericho.
Jesus.

“Who are you kidding?” Kate asked, angry at herself for slipping that way. He wasn’t anything like Laramie. “You would’ve been standing in line with your dollar in your hand.”

“You’re wrong.”

When he said it like that, with Laramie’s conviction in his voice, she could almost believe him. But he wasn’t Laramie. He was only a very talented actor who could sometimes make her believe he was someone special. It was not the same thing.

“I’m afraid to ask what happened when you were in eighth grade,” he said.

“Then don’t.”

Jericho reached for her. “Kate—”

She moved out of his grasp. “We need to find Susie and Jamaal.”

As if on cue, Susie burst into the room. “Kate, you’ve got to see the slave quarters!”

Kate slapped a smile on her face. “Hey, I was just coming to find you.” Jericho was still standing there, wearing Laramie’s concern. She looked at him pointedly. “Want to go see the slave quarters?” In other words, conversation over.

To her relief, he nodded.

“This is amazing,” Susie said. “Do you realize that right here, right in this very spot, people who were
owned
by other people lived and walked and probably even died? Children played right here in this yard. Women gave birth to babies—babies that would be sold away from them on their master’s whim. For more than
sixty years
this was all there was for these people. This was the beginning and end.”

The slave cabins were made of brick. An entire row of them, about ten altogether, ran down the driveway in a neat line, outside of the main gates of Brandall Hall.

Jed could feel Jamaal’s tension as he stood in the yard and looked past the brick structure, up toward the gleaming white splendor of the big house. He motioned toward it with his chin.

“Imagine having that view every day of your life,” he said quietly to the younger man. “Living down here, like animals, looking up at that. And you know, these brick houses were the quarters for the domestic slaves—the
civilized
ones—the men and women who worked as servants up in the main house. They were allowed to live at least a little bit like human beings.”

Jamaal turned away, and Jed followed him. “On this plantation, the field slaves were stabled in wooden shacks. They had a separate house for the men, a separate one for the women, and another one for the children. The strongest men were used as studs, sent to lie with women at the foreman’s command. And babies were taken from the women shortly after birth and raised in a group, like animals. There was no sense of family, no hope for love.”

Jamaal clearly didn’t like what he was hearing. “How do you know so much about this?”

“I did research,” Jed told him. “This was the world Laramie lived in. A world where the people you love most can die from a common fever in a matter of days. One day they’re there, the next day they’re gone. It was a crap-shoot. It was also a world where people treated other people worse than dogs—where men could kill other
human beings that he owned, and not be thought a murderer, but merely a poor businessman.”

Jamaal looked up at Brandall Hall, and when he spoke, his voice was tight. “I can’t imagine living here,” he said. “And that’s my problem with playing Moses. I can’t imagine ever being another man’s possession. I can’t stand wearing those chains—and have you seen that costume? Shit, I know I’m an actor and supposed to be beyond that, but every time I put on those rags, I feel—I don’t know—humiliated and completely pissed off.”

“But that’s exactly what Moses is feeling,” Jed told him. “Humiliation and anger. He can’t imagine being a slave, either—that’s why he runs. Most of the slaves who ran away were caught and killed. Moses knows that, he’s an intelligent man, but he’d rather face a brutal death than live his life in chains.”

He could feel Kate watching him, sense her listening. This was why she’d wanted Jamaal to come to the plantation, so that he could see and really begin to understand the desperation that was Moses’ life.

She had no idea the story he’d told in the van had been for her benefit. He’d wanted her to know where he’d come from, but years of being completely private prevented him from being comfortable just sitting down and starting a conversation. “Hey, got a minute? Thought you might want to know about the pond scum from which I evolved.”

If she’d asked, he would’ve told her—provided she didn’t ask about things that were still too tough to think about, like Tom or his mother. Or that phone call from his sister Louise that prompted him to pack his bag and check himself securely into rehab.

So far his plan was working. She was starting to like him. At least, he hoped she was. If he could just be patient, he could use Laramie to wear her down, and he’d find himself in her bed soon enough.

But right now, all he really wanted was to pull her into his arms and hold her.

It was the strangest thing, this tenderness that had stirred to life within him.

Jed was still feeling a little light-headed from all that Kate had told him about her brothers’ ‘business’ deal. That must’ve been a nightmare for a twelve-year-old girl. He could remember how body conscious and embarrassed he’d been at that age. He ached for her, and for the little girl she’d been.

He wished they hadn’t been interrupted. He wanted to know what had happened in eighth grade. He wanted a chance to apologize to her—for all boys and men, everywhere. He wanted to find out more about her.

She’d told him she’d taken that part in
Dead of Night
to further her acting career, but after that one movie, she’d dropped off the face of the earth. She’d married Victor Strauss shortly after, but as far as he knew, she hadn’t acted again. And he wanted to know why.

Maybe it was because he could use that information to convince her they should be lovers. That was his goal here, he reminded himself. Revenge, with some hot sex as a bonus.

A very large bonus.

But he had to take his time, make sure he didn’t scare her away.

Of course, what he’d said about wanting to jump her didn’t fall under the heading “taking his time.” He definitely had to take a deep breath and back off. There was no way she was ready for a direct assault. Unless …

He was going to Alabama in a few days—to appear as the guest of honor at a fund-raiser David was throwing for the Rehab Center. If he could make sure she came along …

“It’s just so different from anything I’ve ever experienced,” Jamaal said, breaking into his thoughts.

“Moses is a great character,” Jed told the kid. “And
you’ve got way more in common with him than you think. Neither of you can imagine living your lives in chains. Wearing that costume makes you feel humiliated? Hell, that’s a good thing. Use it. Use your own humiliation to give real depth to Moses’ anger. When you play Moses, it’s going to come across as being completely real—because so much of it is real. So much of it is your own.”

“Is that what you do?” Susie dared to interrupt. “Take your own emotions and channel them into the character you’re playing?”

Jed thought about that. “Yeah, that’s one way of describing it. I’m not … really very good at expressing myself,” he admitted carefully. Man, was that the understatement of the year, or what? “I think I have a need to be an actor not just because I like slipping on other people’s lives, but because it gives me a chance to vent some of the emotions I might—in my own life—have trouble venting. I can allow myself to get angry, and really feel angry, but it’s in a very controlled environment because I’m acting. It’s safe.”