What I Did for Love (32 page)

She couldn’t do it. Not for him. Not for herself. Not ever again.

Bram
arrived late for Georgie’s audition, and Hank Peters’s cool nod indicated he wasn’t happy about it. Bram knew they were all waiting for him to fall back into his old, unreliable habits, but he’d been legitimately delayed by a call from one of the partners at Endeavor. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to explain—he’d spewed out too many bullshit excuses in the past—and he merely offered a short apology. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Although no one said it to his face, they all thought having Georgie read for them today was a waste of time. But he owed her an audition, no matter how much he hated being part of something that, in the end, would devastate her.

“Let’s get to work,” Hank said.

The audition room had bilious green walls, stained brown carpet, some battered metal chairs, and a couple of folding tables. It was located on the top floor of an old building at the rear of the Vortex lot that housed Siracca Productions, Vortex’s independent film subsidiary. Bram took the empty chair between Hank and the female casting director.

With his long face, thinning hair, and glasses, Hank looked more like an Ivy League professor than a Hollywood director, but he was enormously talented, and Bram still couldn’t quite believe they were working together. The casting director nodded at her assistant, who left to escort Georgie in from wherever they’d stashed her.

He hadn’t seen her since the night of the party. Paul had gotten sick afterward—some kind of stomach flu, according to Chaz—and Georgie had driven off to take care of him before Bram had woken up the next morning. Georgie didn’t need the distraction of playing nursemaid right before a major audition, and Bram couldn’t believe Paul hadn’t managed to send her home. Bram had wanted one more chance to talk her out of this.

The casting assistant returned and held the door open. Georgie’s self-confidence was a lot more fragile than she let on. She wouldn’t be horrible, but she wouldn’t be good, either, and he hated the idea of everybody picking over her performance.

A tall, dark-haired actress entered. An actress who wasn’t Georgie. As the casting director asked her what she’d been doing since her last film, Bram leaned closer to Hank. “Where the hell is Georgie?”

Hank regarded him oddly. “You don’t know?”

“We haven’t had a chance to talk. Her father has the flu, and she’s been taking care of him.”

Hank pulled off his glasses and polished them on the hem of his shirt, almost as if he didn’t want to make eye contact. “Georgie changed her mind. She decided the part wasn’t right for her, and she’s not auditioning for us.”

Bram couldn’t take it in. He sat through the audition without hearing a word of it, then excused himself and tried to reach her. But she wasn’t picking up. Neither was Paul or Aaron, and Chaz didn’t know anything more than what Georgie had originally told her. He finally called Laura. She said she’d spoken with Paul only a few hours earlier, and he hadn’t mentioned being sick.

Something was very wrong. He set off for home.

Only three black SUVs were standing guard near the gates. Sunday’s wedding celebration had played big on TMZ and the other online gossip sites, but the craziness of the first two months finally seemed to be fading. It wouldn’t take much, however, to reignite
the flames, and if word got out that Georgie had disappeared, all hell was going to break loose.

His cell rang as he pulled up to the garage. It was Aaron. “I have a message from Georgie. She’s said to tell you she’s taken off for some R and R.”

“What the hell? Forget that!”

“I know. I don’t understand it either.”

“Where is she?”

There was a long pause. “I can’t tell you.”

“The hell you can’t!”

But Aaron’s first loyalty was to Georgie, and Bram’s threats didn’t break his resolve. Bram finally hung up on him, then sat in his car dumbfounded. Was she ashamed to face him because she’d gotten cold feet? But Georgie had never been afraid of an audition in her life. None of this made sense.

Their odd conversation from the night of the party replayed in his mind. Could she seriously believe he’d fallen in love with her? He thought about all the mixed signals he’d sent her and snatched up his cell again. She didn’t answer, so he was forced to leave a message.

“Okay, Georgie, I get it. You were serious the other night. But I swear to God, I am not in love with you, so stop worrying. It’s total crap. Think about it. Have you ever known me to care about anybody other than myself? Why would I start now? Especially with you. Damn it, if I’d known you were going to freak out like this, I’d have kept my mouth shut about the friendship thing. Friendship. That’s all it is. I promise. So stop making up crap and call me back.”

But she didn’t call, and by the next morning, something more insidious had occurred to him. Georgie wanted a baby, and right now she couldn’t have one without him. What if this was blackmail? Her way of manipulating him? The fact that she might even be thinking of doing something so odious made him furious. He
called her voice mail and let her have it. Since he didn’t mince words, he wasn’t exactly surprised when she didn’t return his call.

The white stucco
private villa Georgie had rented sat high above the Sea of Cortez just outside Cabo San Lucas. It had two bedrooms, a scallop-shaped Jacuzzi, and a sliding glass wall opening onto a shady patio. Since Georgie couldn’t fly commercial to Mexico, she’d used a private charter service.

Every morning for a week, she donned an oversize T-shirt and a pair of baggy capris, then slipped on big sunglasses and a wide straw hat to walk for miles unrecognized along the beach. In the afternoons, she edited film and tried to make peace with her sadness.

Bram was furious with her for disappearing, and his telephone messages had ripped out her heart.

I swear to God, I am not in love with you…Friendship. That’s all it is. I promise.

As for his second message about blackmailing him to have a baby…She deleted that halfway through.

Her father knew where she was. She’d finally told him the truth about Las Vegas and a little bit about why she’d needed to get away. Naturally, he’d tried to blame Bram, but she wouldn’t let him, and she made him promise not to contact him. “Just give me some time, Dad, okay?” He’d reluctantly agreed.

A day later her father had called with a piece of news that left her reeling. “I did some investigating. Bram hasn’t touched a penny of the money you were supposed to be paying him. It turns out, he doesn’t need it.”

“Of course, he does. Everybody knows he blew through all his
Skip and Scooter
money.”

“‘Blow’ pretty much describes it. But when he finally got clean and sober, he downscaled his lifestyle and started investing his re
siduals. He’s done shockingly well for himself. He even paid off the mortgage on his house.”

It was ironic. The only thing Bram hadn’t deceived her about was his feelings for her. Friendship. And there it stopped.

She found herself staring at nothing, or picking up a book and reading the same sentence over and over. But she didn’t cry as she had with Lance. This time, her sadness ran too deep for tears. The only activity that interested her involved taking a camera down to one of the luxury resorts and interviewing the maids. Since she couldn’t endure that kind of public exposure, she set up her camera on the shady white stone patio and interviewed herself.

“Tell me, Georgie. Have you always been a loser in love?”

“More or less. How about yourself?”

“More or less. And why do you think that is?”

“A pathetic need to be loved?”

“And you’re blaming that on…what? Your childhood relationship with your father?”

“Let’s.”

“So it’s ultimately your father’s fault you fell in love with Bram Shepard?”

“No,” she whispered. “It’s my fault. I knew falling in love with him was impossible, but I had to go and do it anyway.”

“You gave up your audition and a chance to play Helene.”

“How about that. What a woman will do for love, right?”

“Stupid.”

“What was I supposed to do? Work with him every day, then go home with him at night?”

“What you should do is make your career your first priority.”

“I don’t care about my career right now. I haven’t even hired a new agent. I only care about…”

“Being miserable?”

“A few months and I’ll be over him.”

“Do you really believe that?”

No, she didn’t believe it. She loved Bram in a clear-eyed way she’d never loved her ex-husband, no rose-colored glasses or mindless giddiness, no Cinderella fantasies or false certainty that he’d put her life in order. What she felt for Bram was messy, honest, and soul-deep. He felt like…part of her, the best and the worst. Like someone she wanted to struggle through life with; share triumphs and catastrophes; share holidays, birthdays, every days.

“Excellent,” her interviewer said. “I’ve finally made you cry. Just like Barbara Walters.”

Georgie turned off the camera and buried her face in her hands.

Georgie had been
gone almost two weeks, and Aaron was Bram’s only source of information. Georgie’s P.A. had taken it upon himself to leak a series of fictitious stories to the tabs. He’d detailed Georgie’s decision to take a vacation while Bram worked and also served up long descriptions of romantic phone calls between the newlyweds. Aaron’s fabrications kept the press at bay, so Bram didn’t correct them.

Tree House
continued to move forward without any major snarls, even though they still hadn’t finished casting. He should have been on top of the world, but he mainly wanted to look up his old drug dealer. He buried himself in work instead, to keep the devils at bay.

Chaz was waiting for him on Monday night when he got home from the studio, a new supply of cookbooks spread out on the kitchen table instead of the GED workbooks she still hadn’t opened. She jumped up as he appeared. “I’ll make a sandwich for you. A good one, with whole grain bread, turkey, and guacamole. I’ll bet all you’ve eaten today is junk.”

“I don’t want anything, and I told you not to wait up for me.”

She bustled over to the refrigerator. “It isn’t even midnight.”

Long experience had taught him the futility of arguing with
Chaz about food, so even though all he wanted to do was sleep, he hung around and pretended to sift through some mail on the counter while she pulled containers from the refrigerator and filled him in on her life. “Aaron’s being a pain. He and Becky split up—they haven’t even been together three weeks. He said they’re too much alike. But that should be a good thing, right?”

“Not always.” Bram gazed blindly at a party invitation, then tossed it in the trash. He and Georgie were more alike than they were different, although it had taken him a while to figure that out.

Chaz slapped a container on the counter so hard the lip popped off. “Aaron knows where Georgie is.”

“Yeah, I know he does. So does her father.”

“You should make them tell you.”

“Why? I’m not running after her.” Besides, Bram already knew she’d gone to Cabo, thanks to a phone conversation with Trev, who was in Australia shooting his new film. Bram had thought about flying to Mexico and dragging her back, but she’d stung his pride. Bottom line—she was the one who’d left, and it was up to her to come back and make things right.

Chaz put a loaf of bread on the cutting board and began slicing it, her knife coming down with hard
thwacks
. “I know why you guys got married.”

He looked up.

She flipped the lid on a container of guacamole. “You should have been honest about what happened in Vegas and gotten the stupid marriage annulled or whatever. Like Britney Spears did that first time she got married.”

“How do you know what happened?”

“I overheard you and Georgie talking about it.”

“You overheard with your ear smashed against a keyhole. If you ever say anything to anybody…”

She slammed the cupboard door shut. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m some big asshole blabbermouth?”

Now he had two pissed-off females in his life, but getting back in Chaz’s good graces was relatively easy. “No, I don’t think that. Sorry.”

She chewed over his apology but eventually decided to accept it, as he’d known she would. He sat down in front of the food she’d put out. He didn’t want to end his phony marriage yet. It held too many advantages—starting with sex, which was so great he couldn’t imagine giving it up yet. Thanks to Georgie, he was back in the game, and he intended to stay there. He wanted
Tree House
to be the first in a string of great films, and somehow she’d become an intricate part of making that happen.

Chaz set his sandwich in front of him. “I still can’t believe she didn’t audition. She goes to all that work and then blows it off. You wouldn’t believe the way she made Aaron run around to get her a special outfit. Then she kept making me check out different hairstyles and makeup. She even made me tape her stupid audition. Then she turns chicken and runs away.”

He set down his sandwich. “You taped her audition?”

“You know how she is. She tapes everything. I probably shouldn’t say this, but if she ever made any sex tapes of you, I seriously think you should—”

“Is the tape still around?”

“I don’t know. I guess. Probably in her office.”

He started to get up, then sat back in his chair. Screw it. He knew exactly what he’d see.

But before he went to bed that night, his curiosity got the best of him, and he searched her office until he found what he was looking for.

They had their
first tussle over the check. “Give it to me,” Laura said, genuinely surprised to see Paul grab the check before she could reach for it. They’d dined together more times than she could
count, and she always picked up the check. “This is a business dinner. The client never pays.”

“It was a business dinner for the first hour,” Paul said. “After that, I’m not so sure.”

She fumbled for her napkin. It was true that tonight had been different. They’d never talked about their high school embarrassments before, or their mutual love of music and baseball. And he’d certainly never insisted on picking her up at her new condo. All evening, she’d been doing her best to keep things professional, but he kept sabotaging her. Something had happened. Something she needed to make un-happen as quickly as possible.