Beth’s temperature rose even though the cool winter air tumbled in from the vent, and her slick palms slid against the wheel. This place couldn’t be farther from Tinseltown.
Dawn had scooted in beside her without saying a word. The silence was comforting at first since Beth hadn’t a clue about how to talk to a big-time movie star, but now the quiet was so heavy it almost weighed the car down.
“That’s some car. I’ve never seen one in person.” Beth jerked her head at the red Cadillac gliding in front of them. Her voice sounded odd to her own ears, but loads better than the silence. “Does he like it?”
“Probably more than me.” Dawn shot Beth a glance. “You’re not going to blab that to the tabloids are you?”
The idea was so ridiculous, Beth chuckled. “Definitely not. That’s not my style.”
“No. I don’t think it is.” Dawn relaxed against the seat back. “You have me at a disadvantage. You know my name. But I don’t know yours.”
“It’s Beth Walker.”
“So, Beth Walker. What’s your story?”
Beth chuckled again. “Me? I have no story. I’m a nobody.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
Beth glanced over and caught Dawn staring at her again. They locked gazes once more, and this time Beth’s lingered so long that when she finally looked back to the road, she was only inches from the Cadillac. She slammed on the brakes with a jolt. What on earth was going on here? What was it about this woman that made Beth lose her way every time she looked at her?
And even when she didn’t.
She almost drove right past 741 Fern Drive, skidding into the dirt road at the last minute. She followed the Cadillac, and both cars bumped their way up the drive.
“I can hear Jimmy right now. He’s telling your boss that he won’t buy the house unless the owners pave over the driveway.”
“Hank will do it himself, on his hands and knees if necessary. He’ll do anything to sell you this house. He has people believing that he’s the celebrity in this town. If you buy the house, he’ll milk it for all that it’s worth.”
“It might happen. Jimmy can be very capricious. He makes decisions with his gut in just seconds and not always with all the right information. The only thing he thinks through thoroughly are his film roles.” Dawn smoothed down her hair and brought her hand all the way down her neck to rub it for a second. “My God, sometimes I think I’ll grow old and die before he’ll sign the contracts. Do you take in many films?”
“No, not really.”
“Why not?”
“Steelhead doesn’t have a movie theater, for one. But mostly I spend my free time trying to write.” The words were out before Beth could bite them back. Why on earth had she said that? Even her own family didn’t know she longed to be a writer, and here she was blabbing to a stranger that she had just met.
“I won’t tell anyone.”
Scary. How did she know what Beth was thinking?
A sudden tingling ran up her arm.
Dawn had dropped her hand on Beth’s forearm and gave it a little squeeze. “Seriously. If you keep my secret, I’ll keep yours.”
Secrets? What was Dawn talking about?
Thankfully for Beth, the house loomed up in front of them, and she didn’t have to answer. James had stopped his car right by the front door, leaving Beth just enough room to scoot around to park by the garage. By the time they joined the men, Hank was already into the hard sell.
“Look at those trees.” He bowed reverently to the small grove of California redwoods just beyond the house. “They can live over two thousand years and grow to around three hundred and fifty feet. Down by the river is the actual Tall Tree, which is where the river got its name. We can go visit it if you want. That one, they say, is taller than the Empire State Building.”
James’s eyes widened.
“Your boss is very good,” Dawn said so only Beth could hear. She stood so close to her it seemed that this was yet another confidence they were sharing.
“Now, the architect who built this house was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in Arizona. You’ll see that the house complements the forest and nature outside. He mined the harmony between them to create a grace only seen at Falling Water in Pennsylvania. Shall we go inside?”
“Ooh. There’s his first mistake,” Dawn whispered.
Sure enough, James slapped his thigh with his hand, and a popping noise echoed through the trees. “I’m not buying a work of art, Hank. I’m buying a pad for me, my wife, and the couple of ankle bitters we plan to have. I don’t give a flip if nature and the house have a party. I just want a place that we can hide from all the craziness in Hollywood. Can we do that here?”
“Yes. Yes, you can,” Hank said. “Come inside. I’ll show you.”
James tailed after Hank as he unlocked the front door and stepped inside. Fresh air poured out from the stone and wood foyer as an invitation to enter.
Dawn shuffled her feet but didn’t make a move to follow.
“Don’t you want to see the house too?” Beth asked.
Dawn shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what I think. Hank did well. Jimmy’s going to buy the house. I was never really part of that equation.”
Beth glanced over, but this time Dawn didn’t meet her gaze. Apparently, why wasn’t a secret that they were sharing.
Beth thought about Dawn almost constantly over the thirty-day escrow. She found herself working obscure references about the star into conversations with her family, doodling Dawn’s name onto loose pages instead of writing, and even driving all the way to San Francisco one rainy Sunday morning to see her latest release, Woman About Town. When Hank announced that the couple was coming up to get the keys to the house personally, Beth’s heart flipped over and her knees went weak. She had to grab hold of the back of her desk chair to steady herself.
In her saner moments, she kept telling herself she was being silly. She had spent all of one afternoon with the woman. Their worlds were miles apart. Dawn was a bona fide movie star, and Beth was a real estate assistant in a little town no one had ever heard of. And to top it all off, Dawn was married to hunky James Montgomery, no less. There was no way in hell that America’s Sweetheart was even giving her a second thought as she flitted off to parties and premieres in Los Angeles.
When the day finally came, Beth took extra care with her appearance. She grabbed a new shirtwaist dress out of the closet and slid it over her body. The black stripes made her look taller than her five foot two, or so her mother had said, and the tight belt accentuated her best feature, her nice, flat waist. She fluffed up her short brown hair and pulled a few pieces down by her ears, trying to bring a pleasing roundness to her face. A splash of lipstick and she was done. She nodded at her reflection in the mirror. Beth Walker wasn’t going to win any beauty contests, but the villagers weren’t going to chase her out of town with torches either.
“You look nice.” Rachel gave Beth a little wave when she entered the office. She had cleared her desk and was arranging a pitcher of something fruity, glasses, and a plate of cookies on its surface.
“What’s going on?” Beth asked.
“Oh, you know Mr. Armstrong. He hired Michael from the Sentinel to come over to take a few pictures when he gives the Montgomerys their keys at two o’clock. And then Mrs. Armstrong found out. So now, I think, her bridge club and a couple of Mr. Armstrong’s fishing buddies are coming too. Oh, and Sheriff Tom said he might stop by as well.”
By two, the office was jammed full of people who just happened to be in the neighborhood. By three, the cookie plate held only crumbs, and by four, only Beth, Rachel, and Hank remained. Everyone else had gone home, grumbling that Hank had pulled one over on them. He didn’t know any movie stars, and this was just one of his crazy stunts to get more attention. At four thirty, Rachel gathered the glasses of what had turned out to be strawberry lemonade and brought them into the kitchenette. Beth rolled up her sleeves and began to scru
b them clean.
The jingle of the bell broke through the heavy silence. Beth couldn’t see who it was, but she knew the deep voice instantly. “Sorry we’re late. Anyone still here?”
Hank couldn’t scurry out of his office fast enough. He flung a glass of lemonade that reeked of mostly vodka through the kitchenette doorway into Beth’s hand.
“You’re here. You’re here! I thought maybe you had changed your mind.”
“Nope.” James puffed out his chest. “Once I’ve signed, I never back down from a deal.”
In the kitchenette, Beth took a deep breath. Was Dawn here too? She hadn’t heard her voice or any evidence of another person. She almost didn’t want to look. If Dawn wasn’t there, the disappointment would hit her like a sledgehammer. She rolled down her sleeves, ran a hand through her hair, and stepped into the room.
There she was standing off to the side, quietly rocking back and forth on her heels. Dressed in a tailored red suit, she looked as if she had just stepped off a Hollywood photo shoot. She was scanning the room, and when she lit on Beth, she stilled. A smile crept to her lips, and she raised a hand in greeting.
Had Dawn actually been looking for her? Beth shyly waved back. Relief flooded her chest, making it hard for her to catch a breath—a sledgehammer either way, apparently.
“Do you want some cookies? My wife made them especially…” Hank turned to only crumbs on the plate. “Do we have any more cookies?”
“No, Mr. Armstrong.” Rachel’s bottom lip trembled.
“What?”
“No matter. We don’t eat cookies.” James laughed and spun Hank back toward him. He leaned in, focusing all of his attention on Hank. “I’m under contract with my studio to lose weight for my next picture. I’m a warrior in Alexander the Great’s army, fighting for glory and money so I can rise up in ranks and marry the woman I love.”
“It sounds amazing.” Standing only inches from an A-list movie star, he swooned like a teenager. Now his bottom lip was trembling as well.
“The studio and I want to ride the Ben Hur wave of success. Actually, it’s almost a copy of the film without all the religious stuff. It’s a really good role for me. My shirt is off for over sixty percent of the film.” He flexed, and his pecs jumped beneath his shirt. “Yes, siree. I’m ready.”
Dawn stepped out of James’s shadow and strode over toward Beth. “We’re both only going to be here for a couple of days, but I was thinking that maybe you’d want to come out to dinner tomorrow.”
Beth, dumbfounded, couldn’t speak.
“To celebrate and all.”
“Yes. I would love to.” Beth found her voice and rushed the answer out before the stunning woman in front of her changed her mind.
“Good. Around six? You know the house, of course.” Dawn stepped back to James’s side. She took his arm as James regaled Hank with more stories about the film. He glanced at his wife and smiled offhandedly.
Beth spent the next twenty-four hours spinning the conversation around in her head. The exchange had only been a couple of sentences, but surely there was more to it than an honest invitation to dinner. What had she missed? Maybe there was some paperwork to bring out. But both Hank and Rachel told her everything was filled out. Maybe it was a housewarming party, and lots of people would be there?
She knocked on the door at 741 Fern Drive exactly at six. One hand held a purple flowering rhododendron plant, the only flowers she could find in February, and the other clutched a bottle of champagne that Hank had given her at Christmas.
James opened the door and craned his head around her. “That yours?” He pointed at the black Chevy truck in the driveway.
“Ah…yeah. I bought it two months ago.” The truck gleamed from a wash just that morning—one of the few things that made the job at Hank’s worth it.
“Good.” He took the champagne and grinned. “Come in. Come in.”
Beth shook off the odd question and followed him into the living room. Even though she had been involved in selling this house first to the Thompsons and then to the Montgomerys, she had never been inside. The dynamism of the room hit her immediately. Waxed stone floors drew her gaze to the fireplace at the far side of the room. The stones of the hearth were left plain and when coupled with the highly polished floor, Beth imagined she was flowing down a river to an outcropping of natural rocks. Not to be outdone, the back of the room cantilevered out into the redwood forest behind the house.
Hank might be a brownnoser through and through, but he knew design. This house really was a tour-de-force of organic architecture. No wonder the Thompsons had threatened lawsuits when Hank had withdrawn their offer.
Dawn sat by the fireplace in a striped wing-tip chair, wearing capris and a thin scarf. Her curls fell loose and soft around her face.
Beth had to look away she was so lovely and then gasped. There was no one else in the room!
“It’s just the three of us.” Dawn’s ability to read Beth’s mind was unnerving to say the least.
James handed her a flute of the champagne she had brought. “But we’ll have lots of fun anyway.”
“Don’t mind him.” Dawn got out of the chair to join them and took the plant with a smile. “I’m glad you came.”
“Me too.” Beth forced the words out more to be polite, even though up to five minutes ago, spending time with Dawn was one of her greatest desires. But now with that wish playing out as an intimate dinner with the Montgomerys, anxiety rolled in her stomach. What was happening here didn’t fit any of the possibilities that had danced in her head all day. Mostly, she had envisioned standing off to one side of a grand party and watching the excitement all around her. She shook her head to clear it only to note that furniture filled every room.
“How did you get the place together so quickly?”
“Oh.” James laughed. “We have people for that.”
“And they also delivered dinner. Should we eat before it gets cold?”
Beth followed them into a dining room that could’ve easily been a spread in House Beautiful. A long, polished table was set for three at one end—china with domed covers, wineglasses already filled with a rich, red liquid, and simple green salads off to one side.
When she sat down, a delicious smell of puffed pastry greeted her.
James, delighted by the theatrics of it all, ran around, pulling the covers off with loud ta-da’s.
One bite and Beth’s nerves completely melted away. “This is one of the best things I’ve ever had. Is this Beef Wellington? I’ve only seen it in magazines.”
“There’s this little bistro in the City,” James said, his mouth already full. “No one does it better.”
“Mmmm.” The night was full of mystery. How they had gotten it here and kept it so warm and fresh was beyond her. But another bite told her she really didn’t care. These people didn’t have to abide by the same rules as everyone else did. And here she was sitting right beside them.
“We don’t eat like this every night,” Dawn said. In fact, she wasn’t really eating at all. She poked at her food with her fork, taking only a small bite of the baby carrots every so often.
Was she sick? She looked positively glowing.
Waving his fork around while he spoke, James launched into tales of his last picture and the crazy director at its helm.
Beth laughed so hard she almost fell off her seat. Maybe it was the wine talking, but somewhere in the middle of a story about the director trying to convince him to wrestle a live lion, his charm spilled over and filled the room. No wonder Dawn was attracted to him.
After dessert—a chocolate cake so moist that it melted in her mouth—James leaned back in his seat and twirled the nearly empty wineglass in his fingers. “This was fun, Beth. But I’m sure you’re wondering why we invited you out here.”
“I am. A little.”
“We need to ask you a favor.”
Beth looked to Dawn, who nodded ever so slightly.
“You see, Dawn needs to
take a break from Hollywood for a while. Live up here while I shoot Conqueror of the World. I’ll be overseas for months, and she can’t come with me. I need to know that she will be righti-o here, away from it all.”
“Okay.” Beth waited for James to continue. He didn’t. He just sat in his chair nodding slightly. “And how does that involve me?”
“We want you to look after Dawn while I’m gone. You’d have to run errands, do whatever she needs here, and generally make sure the people in town give her privacy. She can’t drive. So we need a driver, obviously, and a Girl Friday, but we also thought it would be better if it was someone people in Steelhead already know.”
Beth glanced back and forth between the two. Her mind spun in a million directions.
“I would stay, but you see I’m taking a big chance with this film. No salary, just a cut of the profits, so I’ve got a lot riding here. Otherwise I wouldn’t leave Dawn, of course, but I got to think about my future.” He looked at his wife. “And my future’s our future, right, sweetie pie?”
“Jimmy, she doesn’t care about all that.” Dawn wrinkled her nose as if the beef had suddenly gone off. “Look. Here’s the thing. The hours and the money are great, but the best part is that you wouldn’t have to work at the real estate office anymore. You’d have enough time to do something else on the side. Something you wouldn’t have to hide in drawers.”
Beth flinched. How could Dawn know about that? Her mind leap-frogged over that puzzle and straight into writing almost full-time. Excitement gripped her. She had been wrong before. Becoming a real writer was her deepest desire. Friendship with Dawn was just icing on the cake.
Were they really offering her a way to do both?
“Why do you need someone to take care of you? Are you sick?” That would explain the dinner of only carrots.
“No.” James downed the rest of the wine in one gulp. “She’s not sick. She’s pregnant.”
Heartwood Page 3