The Wedding Fling (16 page)

She made a disgusted noise, shaking her head.

“I was never with you for the story. I never planned to get close to you. All I thought it would be was chatting with you, on the plane, selling a few innocent details. Nothing ugly. Nothing personal. I never went digging for dirt.”

“But I’m sure you gave yourself a big high five every time I dropped some in your lap.”

“No, I didn’t. Once we talked at the party, I knew I couldn’t go through with it. I told the tabloid editor to fuck off that same night. That’s what I meant when I told you my gig fell through.”

“Maybe,” she said, nodding. “Maybe that’s true. Maybe the second you realized you could sleep with me. Maybe right then, you decided you couldn’t take the money.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Don’t tell me what’s fair and what’s not. You’re always just the right price away from selling your ethics, aren’t you? A bribe or an extra paycheck or an invitation into somebody’s bed. I bet right now you’re wishing you stuck with the money.” She huffed a breath. “You
slept
with me. What were you hoping to buy when you auctioned off the details on that one? Your own island?”

“I never—”

“Tell me, Will, am I going to discover in a week’s time that I’ve joined the celebrity sex-tape club?”

Her eyes had adjusted to the dark and she could see when his face fell, utterly. “Oh, Leigh. Jesus, no. Like I said, I told them to screw off the second I got to know you. The second I realized I was in danger of having feelings for you—”

She shot to her feet, cutting off his reply. “I don’t know what I came out here expecting to hear. And I don’t care what your excuses are. I just know I’ve spent the last ten years desperately trying to stay sane and respectable.” She dusted the sand from her legs, not meeting his eyes. “Coming here the way I did, that was my own fault. But this... Well, all this is my fault, too. For trusting a man I barely knew, and for not having the good sense to expect that this is exactly what would happen.” She should have known this was the only way it could have ended. Not like those stupid movies. If only everything had faded to black, credits rolling just after they kissed on the beach...

Will stood. “Leigh—”

“Enjoy whatever justifications let you sleep at night, but spare me, please. All you are to me now is a mistake, one I should have seen coming a mile away. I screwed up, trusting you and telling you so much. I screwed up when I slept with you, and when I fell for you. Because I did. I don’t care if that makes you feel like a shit or a huge frigging stud. I can only control how it makes
me
feel, which is disappointed. But I’ll get over it. You were a hard, ugly lesson to learn, Will Burgess. And I hope I forget about you as soon as possible.”

“Leigh—”

“I know you haven’t accepted my manager’s deal, by the way.”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“I can only assume it’s because you’re holding out for more, or because you think you can get a bigger payoff from the press if you tell them everything you know. And you know...” She felt the tears again, the heat rising in her face. “You know what happened the morning of my wedding. The worst day of my life.”
Second
worst day of her life.

Will kept his mouth shut, holding her gaze in the near dark.

“We both know you could sell the story. But if any of what you’ve said to me tonight is true, prove it by at least keeping your mouth shut about that. Everything that happened between us was my mistake, and your secret to blab to whoever wants to cut you the fattest check. But that stuff about me and Dan isn’t yours.”

“I’m not going to tell anyone anything. Especially not that.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” She started to turn away, then stopped. “And if you really do have a sick father, I hope he gets better. And I hope your club is successful, so you won’t wake up and realize you got his hopes up for nothing, like you did mine. If karma doesn’t come back to bite you in the ass, I hope you’re goddamn grateful for whatever you get from jerking me around.”

Despite the persisting misery, Leigh felt lighter as she turned and headed toward the patio. She’d said everything she needed to, and she’d leave here tomorrow with no regrets regarding how she’d handled things.

She felt sand hit the backs of her calves as Will jogged to catch up.

“Leigh, I have no idea what to say to make you believe me.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Even when I first took the offer and we were total strangers, I never wanted to hurt you. I could have told them any number of things about what happened between us, and I didn’t.”

“You couldn’t. I’d have known it was you.”

“No, that’s not why.”

“Spare me, Will.”

“I didn’t—”

She whirled toward him. “Don’t. Just don’t. Even if you did refuse that paycheck, even if you did feel bad about it, how could you have accepted my offer of money without coming clean?”

Will’s expression changed, and when he spoke his voice was soft and quiet. “I didn’t want to lose you.”

“Lose my money, you mean.”

“No, you. I couldn’t stand the idea of hurting you. And not just because of how guilty I’d feel. Because I knew how much it meant to you, feeling like a normal person here and being taken at face value. And that
is
how I felt about you, as soon as I got to know you. I just wanted the mistake I made to go away, like it had never happened. You deserved to feel that what we had was real.”

“I deserved to live a lie? I deserved to sleep with a man who was being paid to get dirt on me, and believe it was what I so badly wanted it to be?”

“No, it wasn’t a lie. Everything that happened between us was real to me. The second I felt something for you, I called it off.”

She shook her head. “All that tells me is that you value sex
slightly
more than money. You may be ethical enough to know you can’t take both, but that doesn’t make you a good person. It sure as hell doesn’t make you into the man I thought I was falling in love with.”

That shut him up. They stared at one another for a few seconds, and when Leigh walked away, she knew he wasn’t following.

She entered her villa through the bedroom, locked the door. She went to the living room and sifted through freshly missed calls and messages, and after ten minutes or more, she heard Will’s truck start up and drive away.

She dropped her head into her palms. She prayed he’d take Angela’s buyout over what the press might offer him. How pathetic that she’d fallen for Will, thinking him the antithesis of Hollywood duplicity. She’d have given him that money gladly. She’d practically begged him to let her, and she’d bought his hesitation. Now he’d get that and more, from her or the tabloids. He nearly deserved it—he’d played her like a fiddle.

But he’d hurt far more than her bank account or her pride. He’d wrecked her hope that she’d ever find true love, a man who loved her for who she really was. For a few glorious days she thought she’d found that, but it had been an illusion, as phoney as a movie set.

Whatever profit came to Will for all her heartbreak, she hoped it was saddled with a steep tax of guilt. But more than that, she wanted him punished, she wanted him gone. Rounded up with all the other regrets of the past ten years, packed away and left to collect dust while she moved on. Living one’s life well was said to be the best revenge, and Leigh would do just that. And if she never thought about Will Burgess again, she’d be halfway there.

* * *

A
N
EXCEEDINGLY
UNWELCOME
sight greeted Will as he arrived at the dock the next morning. Twenty feet from his own plane was another one. Bigger, newer, certainly more expensive, and splashed with the logo of a charter company that served islands off the southern coast of Barbados. He strode into the reception area. He was bound to get fired sooner or later. No point putting it off.

There was indeed a strange pilot loitering by the front desk, chatting with the receptionist and the day manager, Analee. His uniform was crisp, its patches more for show than to tout any actual accomplishment, Will decided. He walked over, faking cheer.

“Morning, ladies.”

Analee nodded curtly, with nothing like her usual warm demeanor. “Captain.”

“This my replacement?” Will aimed a thumb in the stranger’s direction.

Analee crossed her arms over her imposing bosom. “No. There’s a special charter this morning. You’re still the pilot ’round here.”

For now.
“Special charter?”

“One of the guests requested it.”

The pilot stepped forward and offered a hand and an introduction, which Will returned grudgingly.

He bade them goodbye, panic rising in his chest as he exited. Leigh had requested this asshole, no doubt. What had Will expected? That she’d stick out the rest of her honeymoon after he broke her heart? The resort would surely be comping her stay, to make up for what had happened. Even if they did value Will’s service enough to overlook his nearly getting in bed with a tabloid—for that matter, a guest—they’d be garnisheeing his wages for years to recoup the loss. Though it was far more likely he’d be fired as soon as the gossip dust settled and they had all the facts straight.

It burned. These people had been Will’s family for the better half of a decade, and he’d let everyone down. Let himself down. Let Leigh down, which tied for the lowest low right beside letting his dad down.

But now wasn’t the time for regret. This was the last chance he’d have to talk to Leigh before she flew out of his life for good.

* * *

L
EIGH
’
S
CAR
ARRIVED
at ten-thirty sharp. The driver helped her with her suitcases and she bade a goodbye to the villa, a week sooner than planned. It wasn’t a good riddance...not quite. Though the memories she’d made here with Will had withered from roses to ash, she’d also gotten a lot figured out about herself within these walls and on the surrounding sand. She was bruised, but she’d started to feel like herself again, for the first time in years.

Sleep hadn’t arrived the previous night, and she hoped once she was on a flight back to Los Angeles it might catch up with her. Though more likely, somebody would recognize her between Bridgetown and LAX, throw her off balance and she’d be back to square one. Such was the price of living in reality.

Sadly, she was doomed to be thrown off balance before even leaving Harrier Key. Will’s plane should have been long gone for the mainland, but she spotted it from the parking lot. And as the hired pilot escorted Leigh and her bags from the car, she found Will himself waiting halfway down the dock, arms locked over his chest.

“Make way kindly, Captain,” Leigh’s new pilot said as they approached.

“Just need to talk to Miss Bailey.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said over her escort’s shoulder. “You had your chance to say what you needed to last night, and that’s more than I owed you.”

Will’s posture changed once he was speaking to her, not the pilot. His shoulders sank and his face went from set to pained. “I don’t even want to talk, Leigh. I want to know what I can do to fix this.”

“Make way,” the new pilot repeated, beginning to crowd Will. He stepped to the edge of the dock, letting them pass, then followed.

“Leigh, tell me what I can do.”

“You’ve already done plenty. More than enough, in fact.”

“Tell me how to make this up to you.”

She stopped to glare at him, both stopping in their tracks. “By leaving me alone.” His expression gave her the tiniest pause, that same broken glimmer she’d seen when he spoke about his father’s situation. Too bad for him, she wasn’t ready to believe it was anything more than another tool in his manipulative arsenal. “Just stay out of my life.”

She turned to catch up with the new pilot.

“I’m in love with you, Leigh.”

She froze. For a long moment she stared at her feet, at the water glinting between the aluminum slats. Heat was rising through her like steam. No, lava. Her fists shook as she turned to glare daggers at him.

“Leigh—”

“How
dare
you say that.” Two years hadn’t been enough for Dan to truly love her. How would Will claim to feel the same after a single
week?

“It’s true.”

She closed the ten-foot gap between them, marching right up to give him a sharp shove in the chest. It sent him back a pace, nowhere near enough to knock him on his butt or send him toppling into the waves. But for deferring little people-pleaser Leigh Bailey, it was a full-on assault. Oddly enough, it was herself that Leigh wanted to knock some sense into, because for better or worse, she’d fallen in love with Will. Just as quickly, and far more foolishly.

“You don’t love me. You barely know me.”

Will paused a beat or two before saying simply, “I love you, anyway.”

“Live in that delusion if it makes you feel better, but it won’t change the fact that you don’t respect me. Not my privacy or my feelings or my space even, coming here like this. You just love yourself, and you can’t stand letting me leave thinking badly of you.”

“You know that’s not true.” Sure, he’d never seemed too worried about her opinion of his character when they’d first met. But still.

“Love me all you want. But I can’t wait to get home and forget about you. If you loved me—if you
respected
me—you’d leave me alone to do just that. So that’s how you make this up to me, Will Burgess. You keep standing right there and let me make my getaway.”

His blue eyes were full of defeat. He didn’t speak, didn’t follow. When Leigh’s plane took off he was right where she’d left him on the dock, standing with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t wave as the craft banked and charted a course for Bridgetown. Leigh watched him fade until he was just another speck, another anonymous shape to leave behind with the rest of her disastrous honeymoon.

12

T
HE
FIRST
WEEK
BACK
HOME
was the worst. The meetings were endless; daily meetings with Angela and the other members of the PR team. Meetings with friends who’d excitedly bought new dresses and gifts for Leigh’s wedding and deserved some answers.

But things slowly quieted down. Leigh submitted to a second interview, with a respectable fashion and lifestyle magazine. She let them do an editorial photo shoot centered around her holding billowing swathes of gauzy fabric before a wind machine on the beach, a metaphor about her newfound freedom or some such stylish nonsense. More designed to sell the summer’s hot trends, but what the hell, it was fun. And the interviewer let Leigh focus mainly on her future plans instead of the details of her split with Dan or her rebound with...

Sigh
.

As for Dan himself, he’d stayed dutifully mum and cordial, with not a single snide sentiment to share on the topic of Leigh’s rather quick recasting of his role in their honeymoon. Her things had been carefully boxed and labeled and were waiting at her parents’ house, the paperwork to remove her name from their condo drawn up and ready to sign, her half of the money waiting to be transferred. Dan was as fair and sensitive as always, which let Leigh forgive herself for having loved him once. Their wedding day may have proved the most expensive breakup in history, but as the days went on, that’s what it was beginning to feel like. A breakup, no longer a crisis. Her friends would forgive her. All she needed was time and patience and humility, and things would be okay.

Crashing with her parents felt comforting for a few days, but once things settled down, she found herself back amid their endless bickering. Bickering over Leigh’s choices, Leigh’s career, Leigh’s future. All these years and she was still their smoke screen. But let them waste their energy on it, if it was what they loved so much. Leigh had her own decisions to make now, whether they approved or not.

Step one,
figure out what to do with my life
. Hell of a step. She renumbered it as step two, and made finding a temporary apartment across town her first priority.

Though she’d hoped she’d left him behind on that dock, Leigh hadn’t forgotten about Will Burgess. Or what he’d said when they parted. Each day that passed with no fresh gossip leaked about their affair dulled Leigh’s pain. Her guard was still up, but after two weeks’ dead silence from Will, she’d begun to let herself feel optimistic.

A more famous actress’s epic meltdown had overshadowed Leigh’s boring old flight-and-fling, and though her and Will’s story was disappearing from the Hollywood blogs, her memories of him weren’t.

Troublingly, she thought less and less about how he’d hurt her, and more and more about the fun and passionate moments they’d shared. If he never told the press another thing about her, she’d probably be able to forgive him. She might be able to believe that he hadn’t conned her on purpose, that their romance had been the real deal....

She hoped so. It had felt wonderful, loving someone that way. It was ruined with Will, but it heartened her to know she had the potential inside her, that she might be able to recapture that ecstatic, easy feeling with another man. Someday.

It was a week later when Will suddenly burst back into her life, in the last place she’d expected.

Leigh was flipping through magazines in the waiting room of her accountant’s office, twenty minutes early for her appointment. The agency handled entertainers’ finances almost exclusively, and communal narcissism dictated that the television set into the wall be tuned to the Hollywood news channel. The current show had been nothing more than a background drone to Leigh until it returned from a commercial, and her chin jerked up at the sound of her name.

“Anyone wondering what became of Leigh Bailey’s hunky honeymoon rebound?”

“Oh, dear God.” She craned her neck and found the secretary on the phone, no chance of asking for the remote to turn this nonsense off. Leigh looked back to the screen, groaning at the splashy graphic; Will’s handsome face above the obnoxious title Pilots of the Caribbean!

“We caught up with Captain William Burgess in Bridgetown, Barbados. Here’s Erin with the latest.”

The scene changed to a perky young reporter approaching Will. He was on the beach, busy with a hacksaw and a stack of two-by-fours. Leigh cursed her middle for fluttering the way it did. Traitor.

“Captain Burgess?”

Will stood, frowning, and set down his saw.
“Yeah.”

“Erin Mayfair, with
The Daily Dish
.”

“Whatever you ask, the answer is ‘no comment.’”

The segment was edited, jumping ahead to Will standing a bit closer, a microphone in his face, his resistance apparently worn down. Goddamn those eyes. Blue as real life in high definition.

“Do you regret how things ended with Leigh Bailey?”

“Leigh’s a lovely woman. I’m sure she’s doing just fine.”

“Word has it your deal with the papers fell through and you had to sell your plane to buy this property.”

The flutter in Leigh’s stomach collapsed to a lurch.

A grim smile from Will.
“Any deal I was offered, I refused. And yeah, I sold my plane. You think I’d be doing this myself if I could afford a crew?”

Shows like this were geniuses at telling you who to like and who to hate, and the audience was clearly meant to hate Will. His appeal was an acquired taste, and although it worked well enough in person, he came off like a snarky jackass on TV. Leigh felt another funny pang in her middle, and realized she’d forgiven Will enough to feel badly for him.

“And what exactly are you working on, Captain?”

He nodded to the building behind him, and the camera panned. It was that derelict old property, just as Leigh remembered it, only infinitely less personal on screen.
“Bit of renovation.”
No plug for the club. No grasping for media pity by explaining about his father.

“What else has been going on in your life since Leigh left for the States? Any love interests to report?”

Will blinked at the camera.
“I don’t seriously qualify as a celebrity, do I? You people don’t
seriously
care if some nobody who once crossed paths with a vacationing actress is dating or not, do you? Can I have my own show?”

Having painted Will as a jerk, the reporter turned to the camera.
“Erin Mayfair, Bridgetown, Barbados.”

Leigh shook her head and a segment about Hollywood slimming secrets came on. She fished her phone from her bag and dialed Angela.

“Hey, Leigh. What can I do for you?”

“You weren’t watching the entertainment news just now, were you?”

A pause, then Angela’s voice returned, cold with dread. “No. Why?”

“Don’t panic, nothing too terrible. But I thought it might’ve given you a laugh. They had Will Burgess on. He didn’t fare so hot.”

“No, I don’t imagine a man of his...
charms
would come off well with the press. Glad you sound okay about it, though. Does this mean your pride’s officially on the mend?”

“I think so. I sure as heck hope so.”

“Good. I’ve actually been sitting on some Burgess news of my own for a couple days, thinking I ought to wait until I knew you could bear hearing his name.”

“Oh, what kind of news?”

Angela laughed. “My turn to tell
you
not to panic. It’s good news—he’s finally agreed to a buyout offer. Of his own design.”

Leigh cringed, not liking the sound of that. A fresh knife in the heart, after she’d just mustered sympathy for the man. She sighed. “Go on.”

“He agreed to sign papers promising never to speak about your relationship, or you personally, on one condition. That condition being that I quit offering him money for it and never call him again.”

Leigh felt her brow furrow. “I see.”

“If I’d known his price really was zero dollars, I’d have quit ramping the offer up by five grand every time I called him. I was tempted to tell you the day it happened, but I thought it’d be kind to give you a little more time.”

So he’d told her the truth about what he planned to do with what he knew.... Hell, now she had no clue what to make of him.

“One other thing, Leigh, since you brought the guy up.”

“What?”

“I’ve got a package from him, at the office.”

“Oh. What was it?”

“I don’t know. It’s addressed to you. Should I have it dropped off?”

Leigh chewed her lip. How bad could it be? Well, it could be really bad, actually. Could be more photos or some secret sex tape, evidence he thought it was kind to surrender to her, though knowing he’d ever done such a thing would destroy her all over again. But what the hell. Being destroyed—twice in one month, no less—had made her stronger in the greater scheme of things. “Yeah, fine. Send it over.”

Her accountant appeared from the hallway. “Sorry, Angela, I have an appointment to go to,” Leigh said.

“No worries. Glad for a chance to bring you up-to-speed. And please let me know what’s in this mysterious box when you get it. We’ve got a little pool going here in the office. My money’s on a big wad of Barbadian cash, to make up for ruining your luxury vacation. Most of the girls say if it’s anything short of his heart on ice, it’s not enough.”

“I’m not interested in either of those things. But I’ll call you later and solve the mystery for everyone.”

They said goodbye and Leigh headed into her appointment, curious to discuss the options for her finances, the options for her future. Whatever lay ahead, it was bound to be better than the way she’d been floundering for the past few years. And even if she drove herself into a ditch, finally steering her own life... Well, at least it’d be her hands on the wheel for a change.

* * *

L
EIGH
’
S
HEAD
WAS
SPINNING
by the time she got back home, late that afternoon. She’d been presented with a virtual buffet of options for what to do with her money, and as exciting as it all was, she felt punch-drunk and overwhelmed. College? But to become what? More investments? Fund a business? Perhaps, but she wanted such a decision to feel personal, more than an investment of her savings. Rather, an investment of her excitement and energy and faith, and she didn’t know where such things ought to be directed just yet.

She was so overloaded she’d completely forgotten about the package.

The box, only as big as a brick, had been signed for by the doorman and left in her mailbox. Leigh brought it into her apartment, sitting on the couch with it. She peeled off the courier service’s slip and studied the address label. Funny how she could’ve felt so close to Will and not even known what his handwriting looked like.

She grabbed a pen from her bag and slit open the tape. As she pulled crumpled newspaper from the box, something rolled out and onto the cushions. A peanut butter jar. Leigh laughed, more surprised than amused. It had been emptied and cleaned, and she unscrewed the lid to discover a wad of tissue paper and a curled-up card—a postcard.

Sliding out the latter, she found a note taped to its edge. She flattened it against her leg and studied the glossy image, a sunset on a Caribbean shore, with Bridgetown set in fancy script along the bottom. Just a silly photo of a beach she’d never been to, but there she was again, in her mind’s eye, sitting on that warm white sand, drunk on all those colors.... Holding her breath, she flipped the postcard over. Will’s writing took up the entire back, growing smaller and smaller as he’d filled the space, then continuing on the attached notepaper.

Leigh,

You asked me to leave you alone, so let me preface this first and foremost with a fresh apology. It was selfish of me to make contact, though I suspect my selfishness won’t surprise you. But still, I’m sorry.

I have no doubt that you won’t deem me worthy of indulging in your precious peanut butter therapy, so I’ve sent the tiniest, most inadequate token in its place. I thought the gift was a wise one. If you don’t like it as it is, you can smash it with a hammer while picturing my face.

Leigh set the postcard aside and upended the jar, dropping the tissue-wrapped bundle onto the couch. Her fingers shook as she peeled the layers away, finding a jewelry box inside. She took the lid off, and sitting on a pillow of cotton was a pendant. Smooth glass, big as a domino. Clear, pale blue fading to turquoise, to aqua, to green and citron and yellow, then finally to opaque cream. A Bajan beach sunset, small enough to wrap one’s hand around. Leigh did just that, squeezing the glass in her fist as she picked the postcard back up.

I signed some papers for your management agency, promising to keep my mouth shut, no bribe necessary. I’m sure that means more than a hunk of pretty glass, knowing you can sue my pants off if I’m lying. Which would be tragic, as my pants are about all I’ve got left.

She recalled what she’d heard on the TV that afternoon. He’d sold his plane. She remembered, too, what Angela had said, and realized that Will’s severed heart wasn’t in this box. His heart was tethered to a strange owner’s dock or locked in a hangar someplace, someone else’s name on the deed, someone else’s fingerprints all over the console. Will could’ve made that money and more by selling Leigh’s secrets, but he hadn’t. He’d traded the thing she’d assumed he valued above all else—his freedom.

Chest aching, sinuses stinging, Leigh turned back to his letter.

To tell you I’m sorry may be the truth, but it’s also grossly inadequate. But I am sorry. For ever considering using you at first, and for humiliating you in the end. You’re the last person who deserves that.

But I’m not sorry for what happened in the middle, what we shared before I wrecked everything, because it was the closest I’ve ever felt to a woman, ever in my life. It sucks beyond comprehension that it might feel like the opposite to you, nothing but a regret. Or maybe I’m giving myself too much credit.