Summer Shadows (41 page)

Celia blushed and became very interested in arranging her cutlery. “Aunt Bernice wouldn’t have to use her napkin to polish the silver here. No leftover food would dare cling, and water spots would be forbidden.”

When the waiter took her napkin, shook it open, and laid it in her lap, Celia tried not to giggle. When the headwaiter made a Caesar salad from scratch on a cart wheeled to their table, she tried to look blasé instead of captivated. When the flambé dessert
burned itself out, she gave up on blasé and sighed with pleasure. When the bill came, she was glad she couldn’t see the total.

“I knew it,” she said. “No line.”

As the waiter hurried away with Rick’s credit card, Rick reached across the table, taking her hand. “Thank you.”

She blinked. “I’m the one who’s supposed to thank you.”

He gave her that smile that turned her heart over every time. “You have no idea what a joy it is to spend time with someone who is real.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean someone who’s so much of a hayseed that she can’t stop staring at it all? I’ve probably embarrassed you several times with my realness.”

He rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand, sending little shock waves racing up her arm. “In my business I meet a lot of poseurs trying to be what they think is expected of them. Some of them are cynics, some act the life of the party, some become flirts or wheeler-dealers. I value honesty and authenticity, to say nothing of natural beauty.” He looked at her, his gaze steady. “I value you.”

Celia looked at her lap, bewildered and scared. Why would he pay her, Celia Fitzmeyer, extravagant compliments like that?
Don’t say such things. Please. They mean too much
.

“Celia, look at me.”

She raised her eyes to his, then lifted her chin, feigning confidence. If she could handle Aunt Bernice, she could deal with Rick. The only difference between the two was that Celia neither expected nor wanted anything beyond a place to stay from Aunt Bernice. From Rick she could so very easily want it all.

“I mean what I say,” he said.

“Thank you,” she whispered, lifting her coffee cup to hide the hunger his lightly given compliment aroused. To be valued by someone like him. To be loved by someone like him!

Oh, Lord, I’m in deep trouble here. Keep my heart safe. Having it broken once was more than enough
.

The waiter appeared for Rick’s signature. He automatically scribbled his name, but his attention was still on her.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“About what?” Her coffee cup clattered as she set it down. She put her shaking hand in her lap, but he still held her other one. Undoubtedly he could feel her nervous quaking.

“About how beautiful you are. About how much I value you.”

“Rick, I—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Mathis.” The man from the next table stood at Rick’s side. “I hate to bother you, but my boys think you walk on water. May I have your autograph for them? Their names are Jason and Tommy.” He stuck a piece of paper under Rick’s nose, holding out a gold pen for him to use.

Celia sighed.
Here we go again
.

As automatically as he’d signed the credit chit, Rick wrote “To Jason and Tommy,” then signed “Rick Mathis” in large, splashy letters. He handed the paper back to the man.

“Thank you. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

Rick smiled and nodded. “No problem.” The man walked away smiling, holding the paper like it was a large denomination stock certificate for original shares of Microsoft. Rick turned back to Celia. He froze.

She wasn’t sure what he saw in her face, but she knew what she saw in his. And she felt the total fool.

“You
are
him,” she whispered as her heart plummeted to her feet. She’d made the mistake of trusting a man again. She shook her head. “Talk about naïve!” She threw her napkin onto the table, grabbed her purse, and bolted for the door. She was aware of another patron stopping him, but she kept on going. By the time she hit the front door, she was running.

He caught up with her as she stalked along the bay front, heading for the marina and a phone to call Abby or Pinky to come get her. A strange combination of anger and disappointment swirled through her. As she heard him bearing down on her, she swatted at the tears that streamed down her face. She couldn’t let him know how much his deception hurt.

He spun her to face him. “Celia, let me explain!”

She heard desperation in his voice, but she steeled her heart against him. She lifted her face to him, trying to look like Aunt Bernice when she was displeased, which was 99 percent of the time, so Celia had seen the expression with great frequency.

“Don’t,” she said. “Whatever line you’re going to feed me, I don’t want to hear it.” She began to walk again, wishing with all her might that she could hate him. Then his dishonesty wouldn’t matter as much.

He grabbed her hand, pulling her toward him. “You can’t just walk off like this.”

“Just watch me!” She struggled briefly. “Let go.”

“No.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “I can’t let you go.”

She looked at him, knowing he would see more than she wanted him to but unable to think of anything else to do. “Rick, let me go. Please.”

“On one condition.” He pointed to a bench under a tree. “Sit with me for a minute. Let me explain.”

She looked at the bench. If she sat, she was a goner. She knew it. She tended to believe the stories people told her as her years of hoping for the best with Eddie proved. Whatever Rick told her, she’d want desperately, too desperately, to believe. He was an actor. He could conjure up any emotion on demand. How would she ever be able to discern between his lies and the truth? “I—I can’t.”

He grabbed her other hand. “Celia, you’ve got to. Please.”

She studied his red-rimmed eyes in surprise. Tears? From Rick Mathis? Real distress or alligator tears?

“Please, Cely. I’m begging you.”

She closed her eyes. She felt herself falling, falling under his spell, sinking into the soft, sweet dream of who she had thought he was. She couldn’t decide whom she despised most: herself for being so weak or him for making her that way. She pulled her hands free and stalked over to the bench. He followed. Before she sat, she skewered him with a malevolent look. “Think of this as what I owe you for tonight’s dinner. I don’t want to be indebted to you.” She sat.

I want to be loved by you
, she thought as she worked at keeping the nasty expression in place. “All right. Say whatever it is you have to say. Then call me a cab.”

He reached for her hand again. She thought about pulling it back, but this was the last time he’d touch her, and she wanted the bittersweet experience.

“My name is Rick Yakabuski.”

She stiffened.

“It is.” He looked at her, imploring her to believe. “I was born in a little town named Barry’s Bay in Ontario, Canada.”

She frowned, uncertain. “You’re Canadian?”

He nodded.

She was interested in spite of herself. “That’s a long way from California. How’d you end up in Hollywood?”

Her question seemed to release some of his tension. He sat back, sliding an arm along the bench until his hand came to rest on her shoulder. His fingers began to toy with her hair. “When I was in college, I worked summers as a guide at Algonquin Provincial Park, a hour or so down the road from Barry’s Bay. I guided parties on canoe trips on the many lakes pocking the park, places accessible only by canoe. I was the one that cooked them dinner, that kept them from losing their gear, but I made them portage their own supplies.”

She could imagine him as a guide, paddling through the bush, pitching pup tents, cooking over a campfire, taking his party to places most people would never visit.

“One party was a group of ten, three men and their sons. All I knew was that they came from California. After one of the sons finally understood that I wasn’t his servant and he had to work on this trip, we had a fine time. At the end of their two-week trip, one of the men asked me if I wanted to be on television.”

“Just like that?” Celia grimaced.
I’m believing him
. She hardened her heart, trying to be skeptical, but it was hard with his fingers tickling the back of her neck.

He nodded. “Just like that. The man’s name was Mike Rosko, and he was about to begin a search for someone to play a cowboy named Duke Beldon for a new series. I was twenty-two. Playing Duke Beldon sounded like a lot more fun than getting a real job, so I said I was game. Mike flew me to California, put me up in his home, and gave me a screen test. It was a great lark.”

Screen tests, Hollywood producers, TV shows. Poverty, Aunt Bernice, Seaside Spa. They hadn’t a thing in common, she thought with a deep sorrow.

“Then it dawned on me that I’d have to ride a horse.” Rick laced his fingers through hers, folding them to clasp her hand possessively. Automatically she gripped him back.

“Never ridden one before?” She stared at their meshed hands, felt the fingers of his other hand comb through her hair.

“Never. I’d been too close for comfort to moose and bear in the Algonquin back country, and it never fazed me. Horses scared me for some reason. The whole deal almost fell apart over that one
fact. Mike made me take riding lessons every day for a month until I at least looked comfortable in the saddle.”

Celia thought about the Duke Beldon episodes she’d seen. She couldn’t remember much horseback riding. But she’d watched a Rick Mathis TV movie with Poor Uncle Walter last year. “Do you mean that was a double in that Colton West adaptation on TV?”

He shook his head, amused at her outrage. “No, that was me. Horses and I do very well together now. It was just a matter of getting used to each other. I even own a horse ranch in Montana.”

“A ranch?” Celia couldn’t imagine such a wonderful thing. “A big one?”

Rick’s eyes turned dreamy. “It’s wonderful. Wide skies and open range.” He smiled at her. “You’d love it.”

She didn’t respond. She was certain, though, that she would love it, mostly because he would be there. “Why did you lie to me, Rick? I feel like an idiot.”

“I didn’t actually lie,” he said. “I just told you I was Rick Yakabuski, and that’s true. All my identity papers say Yakabuski. It’s only on the marquee that I’m Mathis.”

She could see the obvious reasons why Yakabuski had been changed to Mathis professionally. “Still you lied by implication.”

He watched a sailboat coming into the marina under power, its sails packed in a blue boom cover, and nodded. “I did. When I left California, I was so sick of the fawning, of the pretense. I wanted to be a real person again. I told Marsh that I didn’t want anyone to know who I was professionally. I was just his friend Rick. I—I never counted on meeting you.”

Celia studied the sailboat too, its white hull glistening under the lights along the docks. He’d wanted to be just a guy, not Duke Beldon, famous cowboy. He wanted to have people respond to him, Rick Yakabuski, not to Rick Mathis, star. She could understand that, sort of. She had to admit that his little identity misdirection wouldn’t have been an issue at all if she hadn’t been so taken with him. Well, that was her fault, not his.

“Besides, Cely.” He slid closer. “Would you have felt comfortable with me if you’d known about my other life?”

That question was easy to answer. She shook her head. “Never. I know my limitations. I’d have been too overcome to even talk to you, let alone spend time with you alone.”

“The minute I saw you, I knew I wanted to spend time with you alone.”

She looked at him, confounded. She knew why she’d want to spend time with him, but why would he seek her out?

“You have no idea how beautiful you are, do you?” He ran a thumb down the side of her jaw.

Given the responses of the previously important people in her life—her mother, Eddie, Aunt Bernice, and Poor Uncle Walter—she had no reason to think herself notable in any way. “I’ve not had caring people in my life, Rick. I’m not used to people, especially men, saying nice things to me. If it weren’t for the fact that God loves me, I’d be convinced I have no value at all.”

“Your relationship with God is part of what makes you so beautiful to me,” Rick said. “His love anchored you when no one cared, and your dependence on Him has given you a depth that reaches out to me.”

“Rick,” she began, but she didn’t know how to express her thoughts.

“Believe me, Cely, I would never feed you a line about something as important as God’s love. It’s saved me too, from the falsity and hype of the industry in which I work. When Marsh first shared Jesus with me, telling me how I could find real love and real relationships through Him, I was skeptical. It was bad enough when I found out the writer of my movie was a seminary professor, but when he began to talk about the Lord in such a personal way, it made me squirm. I’d been in Hollywood so long that it was hard to remember what authenticity was. But his faith is so real, and his knowledge so vast that I came to the point where it was harder not to believe than it was to believe. It was during our second movie together that I accepted Jesus as my Savior.”

The lights of Seaside winked at Celia from across the bay. The scents and sounds of the salt marshes whispered. Her heart yearned to believe him, to trust him.

Rick stood, pulling her to her feet. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

She nodded. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it?

They walked hand in hand back along the road she’d run down such a short time ago. She stole a glance up at him and found him looking at her. He smiled that devastating smile.

“All I ask, Cely, is that you don’t shut me out. Let me keep seeing you while you make up your mind about me.”

She wanted to tell him he could keep on seeing her forever, but she managed to restrain herself. She needed time to pray, to think when he wasn’t beside her, his mere presence turning her mind to mush. “How long are you going to be in Seaside?”

“Marsh and I have lots still to do on the screenplay for
Shadows at Noon
, and I don’t need to report for work for another month and a half. I’ve been thinking of spending the whole time here, assuming Marsh doesn’t kick me out.”