Windstar (14 page)

The audience broke into laughter and clapped.

He looked back down at the award and he took a deep breath before setting it down on the table before him. “Thank you to the members of the Academy for this wonderful award but if you’ll permit me, there is something I need to do just now. I was gonna do it later this evening but there’s no better time than right now.”

As the world watched, Rory John Keith left the podium and walked back down into the audience and to Angela’s seat. With millions of people watching, he reached out to take her hand. When she reluctantly gave it to him, he grinned.

“Angela Evans,” he said in his thick brogue, “Before the entire world, my family, my friends, and everybody else watching, I want to tell you that I love you with all my heart and all my soul. I’ve never told that to another woman and never will again. When you came into my life you made me start living. You chased away my loneliness and brought me happiness and peace.”

Those in the audience made an aaahing sound and many of them clapped.

“And I want you to know that although I am so very proud of this award these nice folks have given me, the only thing in life I really want is you. I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my days with you.”

Angela’s eyes widened and her lips parted. She was stunned into silence as those who could not see stood up as the young actor went to one knee before his startled companion. Tears gathered in his green eyes as he brought her hand to his heart and held it there as he used his other hand to fish in his coat pocket. What he brought out made those who could see what he held draw in a slow breath. He opened the red velvet box with a casual flip of his thumb to reveal an emerald cut, four-carat alexandrite engagement ring set on an intricate gold Celtic filigree knot band.

“Angela, my precious, beautiful love, the blood that pumps through my heart, the breath that fills my lungs,” he said, a tear falling down his cheek, “will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”

Those gathered at the Kodak Theater could have heard a pin drop as breaths were held, ears strained for the Wench’s answer. Hands were pressed over mouths, gripped the arms of chairs, and were clasped in front of chests and under chins.

Angela was trembling as she stared into his beautiful face. All around her the room was still—the entire world watching and waiting for her answer on television sets from Australia to Zanzibar—and when she smiled and nodded, unable to speak, an ear-shattering roar rose to the rafters and wild applause and whistles and hoots rang out as camera whirred and the orchestra began playing the love song from The Wayward Wind.

“Yeah?” Rory mouthed, his words drowned out by the noise.

“Yeah,” she agreed and she had to bite her lip as he slipped the color-changing jewel ring upon her finger.

He got up and drew her to her feet, enfolding her in his arms for a sensuous kiss that would appear on the front page of every newspaper in the world and magazines covers far and wide for months to come.

* * * *

It was a quiet little ceremony performed in a small Catholic church in the Scottish Highlands with Rory’s family and a few of his best friends in attendance. Donal Keith, Rory’s oldest brother, was his best man and Martha-Helen Shutts, a childhood friend of Angela’s, was her matron of honor. She was escorted down the aisle and given in marriage by her sons, Timothy and Matthew. Her granddaughter Vivica and grandson Peyton was flower girl and ring bearer. Father Craig Keith, a cousin of Rory’s, performed the honors. So carefully had the wedding been planned by Rory’s mother and sisters, the secret kept so well, there were no paparazzi hovering about to ruin the festivities that lasted well into the evening.

The couple sailed to Australia aboard a beautiful tall ship for a two month-long honeymoon.

* * * *

Rory was so angry he could not contain himself and when Angela found him, he was sitting on his precious bear skin rug shredding tabloid after tabloid and cursing brutally. Torn paper surrounded him as he sat tailor fashion, lips drawn back from his teeth as he ripped the Star into small pieces.

“That’s not going to help, Boss Man,” she told him as she curled up on the sofa.

“I ought to sue every one of them and the fucking bitch!” He glared at his wife. “I will sue every last one of them and that fucking bitch!”

Angela could understand his anger. It had begun two evenings before when his mother had called from London to ask him if what she’d read in the Scottish press was true.

* * * *

“What are they saying about me now?” he’d asked, sighing heavily.

“That you are having a baby with Audrey LaVane,” his mother snapped.

“What?”

Angela had been making them a cup of hot chocolate and her husband’s roar had erupted so violently, so loudly, she’d nearly dropped one of the cups. She’d come hurrying into the living area. “What’s wrong?”

“What the hell does it say, Mom?” her husband demanded. “Read the damned thing to me.”

As Angela watched, Rory’s face had gone from mottled pink then drained of color before flushing to a dangerous red hue and she had stepped up to him to put a hand on his back, worried.

“I haven’t touched that woman!” Rory nearly screamed into the phone. “Not since I met Angie.” He listened for a moment then shook his head savagely. “Yes, but not since Angie!” He listened some more, trying to break in on whatever his mother was saying. “Mom?”

Listening. “Mom?” Then fury erupted. “Damn it, Mom, will you let me speak? I didn’t get that bitch pregnant. I couldn’t even if I wanted to which I sure as hell don’t! You have to sleep with someone to get them preggers and I haven’t slept with Audrey in over three years!”

Angela cringed. She knew Rory hadn’t been a saint before she met him, that he’d had more than his share of women, but to hear him say it hurt.

“I didn’t get nobody pregnant, Mom!” he yelled. He listened for a few seconds then growled like an enraged bear. “Mom, you’re fucking not listening to me!”

“Rory, calm down before you have a stroke,” Angela told him and when he suddenly threw the phone across the room as hard as he could and stormed toward the front door, she didn’t know whether to stop him or pick up the phone. Hearing his mother’s voice from the cell phone, her decision was made. She stooped down to pick it up as the door to their apartment slammed shut so hard it rattled the wall.

“Mom?” Angela asked. “Tell me what’s happening.”

* * * *

Rory made a growling sound low in his throat as he ripped more paper.

“You’re making a mess,” Angela told him and when he swung his head toward her, she saw tears in his eyes.

“I haven’t touched that skanky whore!” he said. “I’ve not cheated on you, wench!”

She gave him a gentle look. “I know that, Rory.”

“If she were the last bitch on earth, I wouldn’t touch her with a foot thick rubber condom on a ten foot pole!”

Angela smiled. “Then why are you so upset?”

The tears slid down his cheeks. “Because people will believe I was unfaithful to you!” he said. “They’ll think I cheated on you!”

Her heart ached at his misery and she lowered her feet to the floor and sat forward, her arms wrapped around her as she spoke softly to him. “I know you didn’t do it, baby, or I would have walked out that door and been long gone before now,” she told him. At his look of concern, she cocked her head to one side. “I got enough of being cheated on when I was married to Tim Senior,” she said. “If I’d thought you’d done the same thing to me--no matter how much I love you, Rory Keith--I would be out that door in a heartbeat.”

“I would never cheat on you,” he stated. He reached up to swipe at his tears, smearing printer’s ink on his cheek and chin. “Why would she say something like that?”

Angela took a deep breath then exhaled slowly. “Sweetie, since the first movie stars emerged from the celluloid swamp of Hollywood, women have been doing stuff like this. Why they do it is as varied as the movies being churned out every year. A woman becomes obsessed with a movie star and fantasizes about him. She wants him to notice her and if by charging him with fathering her baby--true or not--she gains the world’s notice and in the doing his notice--she feels connected to him. Why a woman who is, herself, a world-famous star would do is either because she thinks the publicity will help her or she wants to get back at the man she accuses. I imagine the latter is true in this case.”

“Then what the hell should I do?” he demanded. “I don’t want people to think I’d ever cheat on ….”

“Contact your lawyer and have him set up a paternity test,” Angela said. “After you do that and you prove it isn’t your child, sue her ass then go after the tabloids. When you win the suit--and you will--turn the money over to a charity.”

“I want an apology and an admission of guilt from her!” he snapped.

“That would be playing into her hands and eliciting more publicity for her. Just let it go. Don’t discuss it with reporters or anyone else. Ignore it and her. Let your lawyers handle it.”

His shoulders slumped. “How’d you get to be so smart, wench?”

“Age,” she said then nudged her chin toward the mess he’d made. “Now clean that up because
I’m
not going to do it for you.”

He looked down at the litter, a deep crease in his forehead. “Stuffing it into the trash bin won’t be as satisfying as tearing it was.”

“Tough shit,” she said then got up to start supper. “Get to it, you unruly Scot.”

* * * *

The brouhaha over Audrey LeVane’s false accusations against Rory Keith lasted less than a month and when the paternity results came back, proving he could not be the father of the starlet’s child, suits were filed. Settlements were made out of court for undisclosed sums of money.

Chapter Seven

Four Years Later

What had started out as a playful romp to celebrate the wrapping of his latest movie turned into something far more serious and would prove to have deeper reaching repercussions than Rory could ever have imagine.

Her name was Velvet MacCarrick, a Scottish lass who had taken the movie industry by storm with her first starring role opposite Hugh Jackson in a remake of the Stanley Kranson classic,
On the Beach
. Playing the role sultry Eva Garder had made famous in the movie alongside Greg Peckton, Velvet had garnered an Oscar nod for her role.

With thick long black hair that fell in waves to her shapely shoulders, the five-foot-eight actress sported a luscious 42-C bra, a twenty-two inch waist, and curvaceous hips that flowed into legs to rival those of the famed Betsy Gable. Add a sensuous voice, startling sapphire eyes and full lips that bore a striking resemblance to those of actress Angela Jolly and you had the makings of a temptress the likes of which Hollywood had not seen in decades.

And Rory Keith had not been immune to the devastating and direct charms the lovely young woman threw at him, no holds barred, when she had been cast as his leading lady in the psychological thriller Depths of Desire being shot on location in Greece. The fallout from his week-long affair with the starlet that began at the wrap party made front page news and when he went home to New York with his tail tucked between his legs, he had found the loft apartment empty of his wife’s presence, her personal possessions gone.

* * * *

“Why wasn’t she on the set with you?” his mother had demanded of him. “Why didn’t she go to Greece with you?”

Rory sat on the floor of the bedroom that he’d shared with Angela for six years, with his back against the edge of the mattress. With his free hand, he rubbed at the migraine that was crushing his right temple. “She had been with me, Ma,” he replied. “She had come home because her granddaughter had been in a motorcycle wreck. Viv is okay but she has a broken shoulder. It wasn’t where I could leave the set and ….”

“Did you even
want
to leave that set, R.J.?” his mother interrupted. There was bright anger in her tone and her brogue was very pronounced. “Or were you already flirting with that little tramp with her silly bee-stung lips?”

“Have you heard from Angie, Ma?” Rory asked, not wanting a lecture from his mother.

“If I had, I wouldn’t tell you!” his mother snapped. “I am very disappointed in you, Rory John. Your Dad and your brothers are, too--not to mention how your sisters feel about what you’ve done. We’re all
very
disappointed in you!”

The loud click on the other end of the line told Rory his mother had abandoned him to his own feelings of guilt. He pulled the cell phone screen to his mouth and thumped it against his lips several times before dropping it into his lap.

He’d called Bobby and everyone else he could think to call but no one knew where Angela was. None of her friends in Georgia would admit to knowing where she’d gone and her sons wouldn’t even answer his calls. It was almost as though she’d simply vanished off the face of the earth.

He had hired a detective agency to locate her but two months into their investigation, they still had no word for him regarding his wife’s whereabouts. When the phone call from Velvet MacCarrick came to his Malibu beach house a month later, it was all he could do to be civil to the woman he blamed for his predicament. The world had fallen out of love with Rory Keith and his name was being plastered in every tabloid and sleazy publication from Atlanta to Zurich.

Having gone off the wagon the evening before and already three sheets to the wind, he was totally unprepared for Velvet’s words to him: “I’m pregnant.”

For a long moment, he sat there with the cell phone pressed to his ear, blinking until the words finally registered, and then he started laughing.

“Rory, did you hear me?” Velvet asked.

He laughed so hard tears came into his eyes and he wiped them away with the heel of his free hand. He was still laughing when he got up from his chair and stumbled into the bedroom, nearly bent double as he continued to laugh uncontrollably. He scooped up his car keys and left the house, mindless of the infrequent thunderstorm that was slamming in from the ocean.