The Wedding Fling (5 page)

“Lots of people dream of having what you do.”

“I know they do.”

“But not you.”

She sipped her beer, considering. “I never wanted to be famous. I was seventeen and all I wanted to do was dance, and maybe see if I could build a life out of it. The fame was a fluke, but it had its own momentum, especially when I saw how proud it made my parents. I’m sort of a people pleaser. Okay, I’m a
massive
people pleaser.”

Will laughed, the rich sound as relaxing as the alcohol. As warm and intimate as she imagined his breath might feel on her neck.

“It’s hard for me to admit I don’t want any of it anymore,” Leigh said, “knowing how ungrateful so many people would say I was if I quit.”

“Fans, you mean?”

“Fans, sure. But there’s way more guilt about your family, for whatever they may have sacrificed. And from all the people who believed in your talent, pushed you and promoted you. But I also know I’m expendable. I’m not the ‘it’ girl-next-door, twenty-year-old actress anymore.”

He finally met her eyes, his blue ones seeming as bright in the torchlight as they were in the sunshine. “Washed up at twenty-five? That’s harsh.”

“Twenty-seven, but yeah. I’m a certain kind of commodity, and my time’s peaked. There’s an army of perky replacements happy to take my old roles.”

“Ouch.”

She laughed. “Yeah, my expiration date’s fast approaching.”

They shared a smile, again lingering just longer than was innocent. Her gaze moved to his bare chest before she got hold of herself and turned to watch the party on the beach. People were eating and laughing, and more musicians had joined the drummer, as children danced in the sand.

“So what do you want to do?” Will asked. “If your dream of becoming a nobody comes true.”

She kept her eyes on the party. “I want to dance.”

“Like on stage or—”

“No, right now. I want to dance.” No thoughts of what to do once she got home. Just enjoy the present, the simple pleasures of this place.

She sloshed to shore and left her bottle in a milk crate full of empties. The two children who’d run past earlier were hopping and gyrating before the band, and as Leigh approached they looked up at her, curious.

“What’s the best dance you guys know?” Leigh asked them.

After a pause, the older child demonstrated her moves, a hip-thrusting motion accompanied by a rolling of her narrow shoulders, bawdy if not for the fact the kid was only about ten. Leigh mimicked the choreography, earning herself a hesitant grin.

“Look, look,” said the younger girl. She offered her own signature moves, something equally raunchy she must have stolen from a music video. Leigh gave it a go, until the little girl dissolved into giggles.

“What?”

The child pointed to Leigh’s butt.

“You got no ass,” said the older girl.

Leigh laughed, faking offense. “Sure I do.”

“You all flat back there. Like all them skinny, rich white ladies.”

“I can’t help that.”

“You oughta eat more,” the smaller girl announced loudly, earning a reprimand and waggle of grill tongs from her mother. “Sorry.”

“Anyhow,” Leigh said, “you can dance with whatever size butt you’ve got. Show me any moves you have, I bet I can do them as well as you.”

“Bet you can’t,” the older girl taunted.

“Bet I can. Go on, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Will wandered over. “Careful, girls. She was in a movie about a dancer and everything.”

For a stinging second, his comment made Leigh feel like even more of an outsider, but she was grateful for the credibility it seemed to earn her with this tough crowd. Two sets of eyes widened. “You was in a movie?”

“I was. And I was the star. It was about a girl who learned how to tango. You want to see?”

Vigorous nods answered her.

Leigh demonstrated a flourish of moves, and her skeptical audience warmed before her eyes.

“That’s cool,” the bossy girl said. “How you do that?”

Leigh offered lessons, accepted tips in return from her young acquaintances. Before long the grown-ups were finishing their dinners and fetching fresh drinks, dancing in pairs on the sand. Seeking a partner of her own, Leigh scanned the growing crowd, but found Will busy at the grill, giving their pregnant hostess a break. No matter.

Leigh danced by herself, enjoying the beat and the atmosphere, the flicker of firelight and the deep indigo of the sky overhead. She shut her eyes, absorbing the laughter and music, feeling free in a way she hadn’t in years. Feeling a high no vice Hollywood traded in could ever touch. Just some nobody girl, dancing on some nowhere beach. Just Leigh, for the first time in forever.

Across the sand, Will caught her eye again, laughing at a friend’s joke. That damnable smile... Her energy shifted, dropping low in her belly, warm and curious, and Leigh wondered if maybe it wasn’t high time to get busy making some bad decisions.

4

W
ILL
DITCHED
HIS
PLATE
in the kitchen. Leigh ought to get herself some dinner before they ran out...or maybe she was planning on a late-night call to room service, not this lowbrow fare. Still, at the moment she was doing a fine impression of lowbrow herself. She was dancing with Rex, one of the younger drivers, and watching gave Will a funny pang.

Jealousy
was too strong a diagnosis, as was
concern
. Let the girl have her fun. He only hoped she didn’t go too nuts, as celebrities seemed so fond of doing.

He wandered closer, if only to keep an eye on her. Well, fine—to have a better
view
of her. This not-quite guest, his not-quite date, the answer to his financial prayers...though he had yet to do a thing with what she’d told him in the plane. Just now it was hard to remember who she was supposed to be to him. Skin pale as the sand, smile bright as the torches. The hesitant, haunted girl he’d met on the mainland was gone, along with her street clothes, a vibrant creature now inhabiting her body. Will couldn’t for the life of him put his finger on who this woman really was, and until he did, he couldn’t bring himself to sell any details to the press, not even harmless ones.

But whoever she was, it was exciting to watch her body moving this way, at once rhythmic and chaotic, like the waves. Will knew better than anybody how intoxicating this place was. He’d been high for seven years now.

What would those stupid tabloids make of her?
Runaway Bride Dances the Night Away with Resort Staff
. Some picture of her, long hair whipping wildly. Some shot that made her look drunk despite the fact she’d yet to open a second beer. No photo would convey what he saw—a woman lost in her own infectious joy. The way a bride ought to look, dancing at her wedding.

Will remembered how he’d felt the first time he’d set foot on a beach like this. He’d been eight when his father had taken him to Mexico—a future pilot’s first plane ride, a city kid’s first trip beyond the bounds of the subway. All that brown Bronx slush forgotten the second they’d lifted off, winter gloom eclipsed by the thrill of flying. He’d known from the moment his toes sank into the warm sand that he was going to live somewhere like that. Just a shitty little seaside town, but the best his dad had been able to afford. All Will had known was that for the first time since his mother took off, the world had seemed beautiful again.

He wondered if Leigh had left some sad soul heartbroken in her wake. Will didn’t think so. She was an actress, maybe a decent one, but even a guy as simple as Will could sense the pain behind the performance. He wasn’t the type to pry or question, but he wanted answers from this stranger who’d managed to invite herself along on his evening. He was also a master of playing the free spirit himself, and if Leigh’s front was anything like his, he wondered what burdens it was designed to hide.

He grabbed a fresh beer, dodged gyrating couples to make his way to Leigh and her dance partner. They were getting quite cozy, though surely not as cozy as Rex would prefer.

“Mind if I cut in?”

Rex departed with a shameless show of bowing and hand-kissing. Laughing, Leigh turned to Will. “You better deliver, Captain. He was good.”

Will obeyed, moving in time with the music in his lazy fashion. “You might want to grab yourself some food before it’s all gone.”

She glanced at the grill. “I’m not hungry just yet. All I want is this.” She stepped closer, and Will got distracted by the movement of her hips, the sheen of sweat along her throat in the firelight.

“You afraid of me?” she teased, noting his scrutiny.

“Only thing I’m afraid of is bats. I’m just trying to be professional, Miss Bailey.”

She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Oh, right. My chaperone. Very professional when you wheedled that bribe out of me.”

“I returned it, didn’t I?”

“You did. And you can earn it back if you’ll dance with me properly.”

“What they call ‘proper’ dancing around this place will get you pregnant.”

Leigh laughed again, a pure and thrilling sound. “Maybe not
properly
proper, then.”

Will switched his bottle to his left hand and put his free palm to Leigh’s waist, stepping closer, close enough for their knees and thighs to brush. From this near, she made him feel big in a primal, aggressive way he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

She had that dancer build, a slender neck and long torso, proportions that seemed slightly improbable. Proportions women craved for themselves—the kind they respected, free of the more obvious curves that men’s magazines sold like prime rib. Leigh moved as Will hadn’t known American women could, as though no one was looking. As though she danced for the sheer physical pleasure the movement gave her. A supremely unprofessional thought had Will imagining what else her body might demand of his.

They edged ever closer. The drumbeat seemed to slow to the precise rhythm of sex itself. Will’s thigh crept between hers, their hips separated by the barest of spaces. Her smooth hand settled on his ribs beneath his open shirt, her attention on his body as tangible as her touch.

He opened and closed his mouth, his fuzzy brain unable to supply one of the taunts that had so quickly come to characterize their rapport. Blood redistributed to dangerous places, and he strained to think of something boring. Something safe. Something to distract him from the curious, agile body brushing his.

As if someone upstairs had been misinformed that Will deserved a favor, the music wound down. The two of them stepped apart as the band disassembled for a break. Will and Leigh looked at one another, her pursed lips telling him she’d awoken from her little carnal trance. His collar somehow felt tight, despite all the buttons being undone.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“I do okay, as a partner?”

She nodded. “You did just fine. You’re actually quite pleasant when you’ve got your mouth shut.”

He shook his head and smiled. “Want some grub?”

“Sure.”

He found Leigh a plate and she foraged at the grill. All the makeshift seats were taken, so they sat on the sand, off to the side with a view of both the ocean and the party.

“This is really lovely,” Leigh said between bites. “Just what I needed.”

“Good.”

“I know you weren’t supposed to let me hang out, so thank you.”

Will shrugged. “I’ve never done what I’m supposed to. Just par for the course.” He studied her as she took in the scene. Her face had gone from pretty to sexy in the firelight, those grayish irises looking dark and liquid now, reflecting the flames.

“This must just be the same-old, same-old to you.” She glanced at him suddenly, too quick for Will to pretend he hadn’t been staring.

He cleared his throat. “I guess. But it’s the same-old because we choose to do it nearly every night. Nothing much better I can imagine.”

He looked at his friends of the last few years, his muscles melting with the easiness of this strip of sand. “In fact...” He trailed off, afraid of sharing too much with a stranger. She’d be the first he told, which felt far too familiar, far too soon.

She poked him with her elbow. “In fact what?”

Impulse had the words tumbling out before Will could stop them. “I, um... I’m going to buy a place on the mainland. In just a few weeks, I hope.”

“Oh? You’re going to move?”

“Eventually, yeah.”

“But you’ll still do all the flying out here?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m going to buy this run-down old vacation home, right on the beach. Sort of a shady part of town, but I’m looking to change that a bit.”

“How?”

“I want to turn the place into a club.”

“Like a bar?”

“Nothing fancy. Like this,” he said, waving at the partygoers. “Bonfires on the beach, simple food, cold beer. Put in a patio for dancing, string twinkly lights everywhere.”

“For locals only?”

“Nah, for everybody. Locals, tourists, runaway brides.”

She smiled down at her plate.

“Just someplace to hang out. No pretense, no gimmicks.”

“That sounds nice.”

It did. And until last week it had seemed ages from realization, his father’s doomed dream. The property Will could nearly afford to make an offer on, but to transform it into what he envisioned... Then after renovations there was staff to hire and train, licenses to procure, and of course the endless bribes that needed tendering to get the neighborhood’s residents on his side. It’d take years on his stipend, and Will was even shorter on time than he was on cash. But with just a few innocent scraps of gossip sold to the tabloid, he’d be sitting pretty. He liked Leigh, though. He wouldn’t share anything unflattering, and no photos. Still, the proposal sat heavily in his chest now, his golden opportunity having grown sharper and rustier barbs as he’d gotten to know this woman, uncertainty punching holes in his resolve.

“I’d like to see it sometime. Your club.” Leigh’s voice was airy, as though she was far away or half-asleep.

“It’s not much to look at. Not yet. Just a tumbledown ruin on the beach.”

“Do you ever visit it, and sit there and daydream, imagining what it’ll be like? Like, ‘hang a hammock between those two trees, a bar along there for people to set their drinks on’?”

Will felt himself blush, an unfamiliar sensation. “Yeah, I’ve done that.”

“What will you call it?”

“Billy’s.”

“Is that your nickname?”

“No, it’s my dad’s.”

“Oh. You guys are close?”

“We are. Close as you can be, living that far apart. He’s been pretty sick, the last year or so.”

“Oh, no. Like, cancer, or...?”

Will shook his head. “Armed robbery in his cab, shot in the stomach.”

Leigh’s hand flew to her lips. “Oh, my God.”

“Three months before he’d planned to retire.” All those years’ careful savings, gone in a flash of gunfire. Will felt anger boiling in his gut, but kept his voice steady. “He was stuck in the hospital with infections for ages, and Jesus, it took a toll. He’s sixty-two, but the last time I was home he looked about a hundred. I can shell out to see him and forfeit a week’s pay here, or keep working and keep our necks above water on the medical bills.”

A warm palm alighted on Will’s knee, drawing him from his thoughts and back into his body.

“That sounds like an awful choice. I’m sorry.”

He stared down at his hands. “Fingers crossed this unexpected gig I got offered will pan out, and solve some of those problems.”

“Fingers crossed.”

She felt close suddenly, and welcoming. Warm and soft as the fire’s glow. It’d take so little to dip his face to hers. Such a tiny movement, yet such a huge nerve on Will’s part, considering his arrangement. And even if his already questionable ethics took a hike, here was certainly not the place, not with all these witnesses.

Yet he could feel her inviting him, could see it in the way her gaze flicked from his eyes to his mouth to her hand on his knee. He could feel it as surely as he could feel his own body begging him to accept the invitation. There was something reckless and needy in her eyes, something that resonated inside him and brought his own impulsive, bad-idea desires to a steady boil. He wanted her, as badly as he could recall wanting any woman, the ache made deeper by his conflicted conscience and the impossibility of the setting. His brain felt fuzzy and he swallowed, his attention focused on her lips.

Loud laughter from the party woke him from the trance. Realizing things were taking a sharp turn in a dangerous direction, Will sat up straight and cleared his throat. “So.”

For a split second he saw disappointment tense her pretty face, then Leigh withdrew her hand, her tone turning light. “So?”

“Got it out of your system now? Bit of slumming to wash away that Hollywood glitz?”

“I’m not slumming.”

“But you’re going back. Back to your parties and premieres? You say you want to be a nobody, but come on. You’ll miss that, right? Not today, but eventually.”

“I’ve had my time to play dress-up and be the center of attention. Now I just want to be this, you know?” She stretched out her legs, digging her heels into the sand. “Just plain old me.”

Will did the same, flexing his feet beside hers, intrigued by how small and pale hers were. “And so this is plain old you?”

“Yup. This is the most I’ve felt like myself in ages. Being around all these people who don’t already have some idea about who I am, based on some character I played in a movie.”

Will stole a glance at her profile, liking plain old Leigh. When they first met, he’d thought she must be a glutton for attention, to bail on her wedding day. Now he suspected it was more than that. Some awful mess she’d decided to tackle, not merely a dramatic near-miss with a silly, youth-clouded whim. Not a cowardly mad dash toward freedom and away from regrets and responsibility, as his mother’s flight had been.

“What’s your ex like?” Will asked. “What does he do, back in California?”

“He’s a musician. Or was. When we met he was in a band.”

“Rock star?”

She laughed, a weak sound. “Not quite. But his band was sort of an indie hit. They could go really far if they wanted, but he got bit by the Hollywood bug after we’d been together the first year. Now he’s really ambitious about the scene, more than actual music. He was talking about producing. And he wants to open a club. Just like you.” Leigh turned to stare at Will, her eyes narrowed with curiosity. “Actually, nothing like you.”

“No?”

“He wanted to open a club, and make it the trendy new place to be. You sound like you want the opposite of that.”

“Booze plus sand plus music,” Will agreed. “Pretty basic formula.”

“Sounds more my speed than what Dan wanted.”

Dan.

“Sounds very nice,” she added with a yawn. “I’ll be sure to check it out when it opens.”

“You do that. First round’s on me.” Actually, all her rounds ought to be on him, if his funding came through as he hoped. “You look bushed. You want me to walk you back to your place?”