Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story (40 page)

Screw it
, I thought. He’d already broken protocol when he kissed me when I’d stepped to the alter, and sine so much of our relationship had been the exact opposite of traditional, there was no reason to go the prescribed route now. I slid my hands from his, catching him by surprise. I stepped forward and wrapped him in my arms and held tight and leaned my cheek against the soft wool of his suit.

I don’t know how long we stood like that, the rest of the world having fallen away. After several long moments, maybe two minutes or twenty – who could tell? – I felt him inhale and then slowly exhale. I took a slight step back, making sure our bodies never lost contact, and looked up at the love of my life. He gazed down at me with love, devotion, and adoration.

He nodded, and having gathered his emotions, began speaking. “I will honor and cherish you every day for the rest of my life. I love you for so many reasons, not the least of which is because you are the absolute best, most giving, and humble person I know. When I close my eyes at night, it’s your face that I see, and when I wake up in the morning, yours is the only voice I want to hear. I cannot imagine a world without you by my side. I vow to never stop showing you how much I love you.”

I didn’t know how much longer I could wait to get him alone, but there were still a handful of minutes left in the ceremony. Slowly I became aware of our guests sitting in front of us, many of them sniffling into handkerchiefs and wiping away tears of their own.

Stewart let out a shaky laugh, coughed to clear his throat, and continued. “Okay, where was I? Right. Your wedding rings are the outward and visible sign of the inward and invisible bond that unites your two hearts in love. Mike, please hand Cameron the ring.” Mike dropped the antique platinum band into his palm.

“Cameron,” Stewart intoned. “Place the ring on Sarah’s finger and repeat after me.”

In a clear voice that filled the room, Cameron echoed his words as he slid the ring on my bare finger. “With this ring, I thee wed. With my body, I thee worship.” His mouth hitched up in a sly smile and I could only imagine what he was thinking. “With my heart, I thee love.”

Carly handed me Cameron’s ring and I repeated the same verse as I slid a plain, platinum band on the ring finger of his left hand.

“And now, by the power vested in me, it is my honor and privilege to declare Cameron and Sarah husband and wife. Cameron, you may now kiss your bride.”

Cameron’s strong arms came around me and pulled me up tight against his hard, muscular chest. His lips descended to mine and captured them in a kiss that merged our souls, took all of my dreams and wishes and desires into him and returned them. Vaguely, I heard hooting and hollering but it sounded a million miles away. When he finally stepped away, I couldn’t have stood on my own, such was the power of that kiss.

“Ladies and gentleman, may I present to you for the very first time, Cameron and Sarah Scott.”

We were enveloped in a wave of cheers and good wishes and as I looked out across our gathered friends and family, I had never been happier. Had never felt more complete.

Cameron and I walked hand-in-hand down the make-shift aisle to the sounds of Ben Harper’s “Forever” and straight out the door where we kept walking down the redwood stairs and through the fern-lined path to the water, our path lit by a full silver moon. When we reached the quiet solitude of the beach he pulled me into his arms and captured my mouth with hungry urgency, kissing me deeper than he had at the conclusion of the ceremony. Our public kiss had been designed to show me how much he loved me, how profoundly moved he was by the vows we’d shared. This kiss, however, was designed to steal my breath, to melt by bones, to absorb the very essence of me into his cells. He tilted my head to take the kiss deeper while his tongue made sweeping, swirling motions inside my mouth as he fed from my lips. Gently, he slowed the fervor of the long, drugging kiss and pulled away to stare down at me.

“Hello Mrs. Scott,” he said and then captured my mouth once again.

“You ready to do this?” I asked, taking Sarah’s hand in mine.

“If I said no?” She smiled to let me know she wasn’t really saying no.

Even if she had meant it, I didn’t have to think what my answer would be. If ever this became too much for her, I knew exactly what I’d do. “We would turn this car around and go back to the hotel where I’d worship your body until it was time to board the plane and go home.”

She hummed low in her throat. “Mmm, when you put it like that, maybe I
should
say no.” She laughed and kissed me lightly. “But as good as that sounds, this is more important.”

“
Nothing’s
more important than having my way with my lovely wife,” I answered, meaning it completely and without question.

Life had been good to us lately and I had a lot to be thankful for, but nothing more so than the woman by my side. I still couldn’t believe she was mine for the rest of our lives. Never in a million years would I have seen our friendship playing out like this. In fact, there’d been a few times I’d convinced myself I was going to have to live my life without her, watch while she fell in love with some other man. I hadn’t thought I could be enough for her but I thanked my lucky stars that one night, many long nights before, we’d gotten completely shit faced and had sex with each other. The immediate aftermath of that encounter had been less than stellar, but it had gotten us to where we were today and for that I couldn’t complain. Yeah, life was good.

While I had been in Vancouver shooting
The Ties That Bind
, Sarah returned to L.A. to sell her house in the Hollywood Hills for a ludicrous amount of cash. She used some of the money to buy a small gallery in Eagle Harbour so now she was one of the young creative who, as they liked to say, “ran the town”. The owner had been ready to retire and move somewhere warmer so the timing had been perfect. Naturally, she’d started painting again and a handful of her pieces now decorated the walls our friends’ homes and businesses, including Stewart’s office and the coffee shop Drea and Alex owned together.

Once Jillian and I were done filming, I’d joined Sarah back at our new loft where we’d spent several happy months until we sold it and bought a bigger house on the opposite end of Lester Beach from where we’d first stayed and gotten married. While we were here in L.A. for the premier, work was being done on the house to capture some of the elements we’d so loved about Thad’s place, including adding in the floor to ceiling windows I’d loved so much in that house and the loft.

“Alright, let’s do this,” I said, sliding along the leather seat and pulling Sarah with me, but she halted me before I could exit the car. “Wait,” she said, placing her hand on my shoulder. When I swiveled in her direction, she took my face in her hands and flicked her eyes between mine, studying my face. After a few seconds she said, “I want you to know how proud I am of you.”

“I know,” I acknowledged on a smile because it was true. She didn’t need to tell me because it was there in everything she’d ever done for me. From the very beginning, she’d been my biggest fan and because of her taking a chance on me, I’d been able to get my shot at the role that had changed our lives forever.

She leaned forward and placed an intoxicatingly slow kiss on my lips, and then sighing, pulled back. “Are you sure it’s not too late to go back to the hotel so you can have your wicked way with me?”

I eyed her hungrily. In a black halter dress that swayed tantalizingly against her full, ripe breasts every time she breathed, it was all I could do not to slip my hands under the fabric and cup her in my palms. If I did though, I’d never leave this car and we both knew it.

“Later,” I said, with another kiss that promised when all this was over, I’d devour every succulent inch of her beautiful fucking body.

Sighing, she slid her hands down my shoulders and rested them against my chest. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

“I expect you to.” My wolfish smile told her I had no plans to take it easy on her. We’d been married for almost a year and every time I was with her was better than the last. I never got tired of exploring her body, of listening to the sounds she made when I entered her, the moans and gasped she shared as I brought her to ecstasy.    

“Okay,” she said on a sigh. “The sooner you get out there the sooner we can go back to the hotel.” She dropped her hands and nudged me forward. “Let’s go.”

Stepping out of the limo into the bright lights of Tinsel Town, my hand raised in a relaxed wave, the crowd erupted into a roar of my name, my character’s name, and chants of “over here, over here” as photographers and reporters vied for my attention. Searchlights crisscrossed the starless night sky while overhead helicopters buzzed as they jockeyed for the best position to capture the red carpet arrivals from the air.

Pulling Sarah tight against me, I stepped onto the red carpet and led her over to the first reporter I’d been instructed to speak to. Rather than Jillian and I giving joint interviews, she’d arrived twenty minutes before, the beleaguered Murray on her arm. After I’d learned about the role she’d played in setting up our fauxmance, I’d distanced myself and we’d gone from being friends to something more closely resembling distantly polite colleagues. Thankfully, we were both professional enough to be able to manufacture the type of fake passion the studio had hoped for. Much to their surprise, the fans seemed to accept that we’d never hooked up and were just good friends. Only once filming had wrapped did Broderick finally admit the “relationship” had never been necessary.

Leading Sarah up to a reporter I recognized from a previous interview I’d done at the Toronto International Film Festival back in September, I shook his hand and offered myself up for his inspection. Even though Broderick hadn’t officially screened anything at TIFF, he’d shared a few key scenes with several influential outlets and so far, feedback was unanimously positive. James here worked for one of those magazines and while he hadn’t been privy to the screening, I had given him more time than some other reporters while in Toronto and now he’d repay the clicks that interview had generated for him with a positive interview now.

“Hi Cameron, thanks for stopping by,” James opened while the cameraman next to him taped the footage. “Coming off the sneak peek Broderick shared at TIFF and the early screening he conducted the Vancouver International Film Festival in October, early buzz about your performance is incredibly positive.”

“Thanks James, I’m really happy with how things turned out. It was a pleasure working with a director like Broderick, and of course, Jillian is extremely talented. They both made my job incredibly easy and I’m thrilled Broderick took a chance on me.”

“As you should be,” he responded, then segued into his next question. “There was a lot of skepticism early on over the source material being a good fit for film, but it seems there was no cause for concern. How’d you find filming an adaptation of a beloved book?”

“It was great. The dialogue was incredibly strong to begin with, and the relationship Katrina Kaspian created between Xander and Arabella was so emotionally charged that I’d argue it was the perfect one to bring to film. I’m just happy I was able to do this complex, damaged character justice.”

“Looking at you standing here in a … Gucci suit, I’m going to guess—”

“Dean Boothe,” I corrected since it was important for my endorsement deal to get the brand out there as often as possible without being obvious or obnoxious about it.

“Right,” James swallowed nervously. “Dean Boothe, of course. You recently signed on to be a brand ambassador for them.”

“And happily,” I continued, smiling winningly into the camera. “At six-foot-five, not everything works on my frame, but Dean, being extremely tall himself, has a keen understanding of how to dress as body like ours.” Chuckling, I steered the conversation back to the topic at hand. “But I’m guessing you don’t want to know who I’m wearing and instead want to talk about the physical transformation it took to play a hardened criminal like Xander.”

James laughed. “Thank you, yes.”

As I answered his question, Sarah stood at my side like a pro. Initially I’d been worried about how she’d feel being cast into the spotlight only to be virtually ignored, acting more as a decoration for my public person than someone reporters cared to acknowledge. She was used to being asked, almost as an afterthought, who she was wearing and while I knew inside she hated the focus only on her appearance, she stood proudly next to me each and every time we had to walk a carpet and told the world how proud she was of me. Tonight was no exception.

“And your lovely wife Sarah. You got married during filming, right? How did she take your rather graphic sex scenes with your co-star Jillian?”

Sarah stiffened next to me. It wasn’t that I was being asked about the sex scenes I’d had to film – the most awkward fucking thing in the world, by the way – that bothered her, but rather the fact that even though she was standing right next to me, he hadn’t asked her how she felt about it.

Despite my own annoyance, I put on my actor’s mask and laughed good-naturedly at this question. “Well, she’s standing right here. I’m sure she’d be happy to tell you.”

“Oh, right,” James stammered, and then turned his microphone in Sarah’s direction. “Tell us, what was it like knowing your husband had to film such graphic material?”

Sarah swallowed and when she answered, you would have thought she’d been the one to go through media training instead of me. Only, she hadn’t. Unless, of course, you counted the years she’d worked for Broderick a crash course in what not to say in Hollywood. Which, come to think of it, really had been a type of its own media training.

Turning on the charm, she tinkled out a sly laugh. “You forget James, I used to work for Broderick. Not only did I read the script well before Cameron ever had and knew exactly what sort of scenes he’d have to film, but I’ve also ban a fan of Katrina’s writing for many years.” She wrapped her arm in mine and leaned in closer, subtly signaling there was no discord between us and the idea of me making simulated love on camera didn’t faze her at all. They didn’t need to know that Shanna had brought her on set each day we’d filmed one of the ten arduous scenes in question, and that half of the cuts Broderick used where the camera zoomed in on my face, my eyes had actually been glued to my wife’s, not Jillian’s.

Undeterred, James continued his life of questioning. “And having your husband writhing naked with his co-star didn’t bother you?”

Sarah looked him dead in the eye. “Have you ever been on set when a love scene is being filmed?” she asked, her voice giving nothing away. When James shook his head no, she continued. “It’s the least sexy thing you can imagine. First of all, neither of them was completely nude, and second of all, there are scores of people milling around during filming telling Cameron and Jillian where to angle their bodies for maximum impact, how to breathe, where to look, what to show, what to cover. So no, even though Jillian is an extremely beautiful and charming woman, I wasn’t bothered at all.”

Turning to me, James asked his final question as someone from the PR team whispered in his ear that he needed to wrap the interview up. “Cameron, you must love knowing you have a wife so well versed in Hollywood and its inner workings. How has being married to an insider changed your approach to acting?”

I glanced down at Sarah and smiled adoringly at her. “I wouldn’t be here without her.” At that same moment a flash burst in front of us, capturing for posterity the obvious love I felt for the woman by my side.