The Little Shop of Afternoon Delights

by Sarah Lefebve

  “It’s starting to.” The mention of her pregnancy brought her back down to earth. “It’ll take a bit of getting used to.”

  They’d been having a chilled-out day – apart from the hot fire that crackled through her when his body connected with hers, that is. All of a sudden his mood darkened. His jaw clenched and the blue glimmer in his eyes clouded, greyed like the sea and the sky all around them.

  “You’ve made a brave decision.” A muscle flickered in his cheek. He’d turned into an iceberg. “Choosing to become a single parent can’t have been easy.”

  Over the tannoy the guide enlightened passengers with some stuff about whale tail markings. Maggie’s head swam. Was she missing something? What was she not getting? He’d gone all serious.

  “It’s complicated,” she admitted. “I know my grandma could be a bit of a dragon at times, but it was only because she loved me to bits. She was my substitute mum and dad, rolled into one all-purpose package.”

  Alex shrugged. “She didn’t think you should trust men. I guess she had her reasons.”

  “It turned out she was right.”

  Alex drew in a deep breath, then exhaled, long and slow. His arms released her and she grabbed onto the handrail to keep her balance on the choppy sea. He looked down, glowering at the water. “I didn’t exactly help. Leaving like I did. Not calling you.”

  The boat rolled, lifted and dropped by the movement of the ocean. Maggie felt as if she’d been slapped in the face with a cold clump of wet seaweed. Did Alex think he was the reason she was going it alone?

  “We let each other go. If we’d talked, we might have made things harder for each other.”

  Alex reached out and squeezed her shoulders. She’d have had to tell him she was in love with him, and he’d have had to tell her that he wasn’t coming back. They might have started putting the kind of pressure on each other that ends up with people hating each other. Leaving a good-luck message and fading away was easy. She distanced herself from people because she didn’t believe that she was worth sticking around for. Her mother hadn’t thought she was worth staying for. Why should anyone else?

  “Back then I needed to put Nick first.”

  “There wasn’t a part for an extra,” she joked. “It’s okay. I understood.” Alex running off to join the metaphorical circus in LA hadn’t been the clincher. She didn’t need to be an astrologer to predict that he’d have left her eventually. Still she’d remained cautiously optimistic on the boyfriend front. She had a tendency to cut guys loose before they got close enough to dump her first, but generally speaking she’d hoped to find The One someday. Until Marcus.

  “I wouldn’t have gone for the part of Jago if Nick – and our mother – hadn’t begged me to. They made it impossible to say no.”

  “I know.” Maggie stared at Alex’s granite face. Shoulders hunched, head hanging, he didn’t look up. Tabloid fodder, rumors abounded that Cassandra Wells had used shameless nepotism to guarantee that her sons landed the parts of the vampire twins. That must have been hell for Alex, but it was years ago. They’d more than proved themselves in the decade since.

  “I couldn’t let Nick down. He wanted it badly. And I went along for the ride. Now that it’s all over, he thinks I regret the last ten years.”

  Alex’s hands grasped the guardrail. Relieved that they’d strayed onto safer ground than why she was having a baby on her own, Maggie placed one hand over his taut knuckles.

  “I want to explore the things I might have done if Mercy of the Vampires hadn’t happened. Nick resents that. According to him, there’s no going back, only forward. He thinks I should use the popularity of the show as a springboard. That’s what he plans to do.”

  “Seems like six of one and half a dozen of the other, if you ask me.” Maggie squeezed his hand. “If you want to retrace your steps in order to move on, why shouldn’t you?”

  “Nick doesn’t believe I can go back to zero.”

  “Maybe he’s got a point.” She nudged him with her elbow, attempting to lighten the mood. “I mean, look at me. What am I if not a scene in your rear-view mirror? Right?”

  He raked his gaze over her. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”

  They both laughed. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of Mercy. It’s been an amazing success. You should be proud.”

  “It’s hard to be proud when my own father called it the ‘naffest thing on the goggle box’. He hates it.”

  Maggie breathed out a long, shrill whistle. “Harsh!” She whooshed her chipped purple nails through the air. “It’s sour grapes. Didn’t I read somewhere that he’s starring as a sci-fi villain? That’s not exactly Richard III!”

  Maggie didn’t get Alex and his family. He was devoted to Nick, even though they were behaving more like their on-screen characters than real-life brothers. Why couldn’t he agree to disagree with Nick about there not being any more mileage in Vampires? And why was he so eager to please a father who did nothing but put down his work? As families went the Wells made her “one parent, one baby” plan look positively idyllic.

  “Nick and I have been at each other’s throats since Mercy ended.”

  “Maybe you’re being unfair on him. The show might have started out more his thing than yours, but if you hadn’t been into it, it would have shown. There’s no way it would have lasted ten years.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he admitted, his tone mock-grudging, “Without Jago, I’d have been lucky to get a walk-on in Hamlet.”

  “Or Rosencrantz. Or Guildenstern. If you were really lucky,” Maggie teased.

  “And that’s only maybe, on a good day, with the wind in the right direction, and all the stars in my horoscope perfectly aligned and shining down on me.”

  Maggie giggled. “I read the horoscope on the plane.”

  “What did mine say? That I’m not destined to play a vampire forever?”

  “I think it said something cryptic about Saturn’s life-changing energy.”

  “Thank you, Mystic Maggie. What about yours?”

  “Mine said I should prepare for an encounter with my destiny.”

  A deep chuckle erupted from Alex’s throat. “Well, you encountered me. Only I’m not your destiny. It’s not in my stars to play a part in anyone’s destiny but my own.”

  Her heart plummeted. Inappropriately gutted, she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why. She wasn’t expecting anything from Alex. A quirk of fate had brought them together, but they’d be going back to their real lives soon enough. She’d return to the world outside his celebrity bubble, resume her place as a plankton speck he’d hung out with before he’d landed the top spot on a gazillion hottest bachelor lists.

  The spark she’d felt from his kiss on the beach was all about the feelings she’d once had for him. He’d left her floating on air like a party balloon. None of it meant a thing. Acting was his job description. Friends would be fine for him because there’d never been any danger of him seeing her as anything more. For a few whimsical minutes at Cape Cod they’d slipped back like a couple of characters from a time-travel drama. In reality, there’d be no going back. Only forward.

  “Anyway,” he said, breaking the sudden silence. “You don’t need to know what’s in the stars. You know what you want and you’re making it happen.”

  Wasn’t that what he was doing? It bothered her that he was so sure he’d never find The One. She had Marcus to thank for that, but she only had to open her eyes and look around to see that Alex could have lovely women queuing around the block to share his life. She didn’t really want to know, but deep down she couldn’t help herself.

  “Haven’t you ever come close to meeting Miss Right?” she quizzed.

  “A soul mate?” He gave a bitter laugh. “You’ve got to be joking.” As soon as it was out there she felt bad for asking. Just like her mother and her grandmother’s imperfect love lives, Alex’s parents’ marriage hadn’t been a match made in heaven. Still before Marcus had shattered her hopes, she’d r
emained optimistic about love, so why should Alex let Drake and Cassandra spoil his chances of happiness? “The One is a flawed concept. Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Well … yes … but,” she stumbled over her words, not wanting to confess all about Marcus.

  “Here’s the thing.” He swept a hand through his hair. “True love in Hollywood doesn’t really exist. It’s a fiction like practically everything else that happens there. Take Nick and Ella Swift, for example.”

  “That’s not fake?”

  “Sure it is. Nick’s love life is a publicity stunt. And Ella’s a willing accessory.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “No, Maggie. I don’t think you do see. Nick and Ella are a publicist’s dream. Being seen out and about at the right places with the right people? Great. Everyone’s happy. Get papped at the wrong place with the wrong person?” He hesitated, frowning. “Well, actually, that can be good publicity too. It depends.”

  “It’s not an exact science?”

  “Precisely. And it makes any kind of meaningful relationship impossible.” He stared at the horizon. “It does for me, at any rate.” He stood tall, dark and steadfast, sea spray flying in his face. Her heart lurched. She stumbled and grabbed tighter onto the handrail. Alex put a steadying arm around her. Their bodies swayed together with the heaving waves. “If you must know,” he said quietly. “There was someone. Rachel. She was a hand model. And a jewelry designer. And a cocktail waitress.”

  “I like the sound of Rachel.”

  “Yeah. You’d have liked Rachel. She was a bit like … Well, yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  “We were together for about a year. She moved in with me. Her picture started to appear in the tabloids. It freaked her out. She didn’t like it. The final straw came when I was on location in Europe filming a perfume ad. The press announced our engagement.” He choked out a sarcastic laugh. “It was news to both of us. She went nuts. Said the papers knowing more about her life than she did was intolerable.” Tension rippled through his shoulders. “By the time I got back to LA she’d moved out. She didn’t want to talk about it. She ended it by text.”“Just like that?”

  “Just like that.” Alex smiled. “It turned out the only part of her she wanted to share with the world was her hands. And who could blame her?”

  “You always did hate publicity. It must make things difficult.”

  “Not everyone hates it. There was the TV executive’s daughter. She let me wine and dine her until she found a bigger fish to fry. She loved the spotlight so much she kept a scrapbook. Go figure! And then there was the voiceover artist who begged me to get her a role in Mercy.”

  “Did you?”

  Alex nodded. “Uh-huh. She dumped me very loudly in her made-for-cartoons voice the day she walked on set…” He mimicked the actress squeakily as if he’d been messing about with helium. “And got several column inches to show for it.”

  Maggie clapped her hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles. “Oh Alex. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re smirking behind that hand. Admit it.”

  “Only because you made the voice-over girl sound so funny.”

  “It’s alright for you. You’ve never had your heart broken.” He laughed, and it rang hollow. There was silence from Maggie. She looked away, her mood cool. Alex reached out and touched her chin, gently turning her head to face him. “I’m an idiot,” he said, his eyes fixed on hers. “That’s what this is all about. This ‘having a baby by yourself’. Someone hurt you.” The dawning of her reality shadowed his face. “What happened?”

  “I met someone,” she confessed. “His name was Marcus. He took me over and organized the life out of me. He had a five-year plan. It was all mapped out. He had a spreadsheet.” Alex winced, but he didn’t say anything. “I know.” She nodded, acknowledging that it was kind of wrong, not her thing at all. “The thing is – I thought I was happy. We got engaged on schedule, we were going to get married, have kids. The whole package. It was going to be perfect. Note – going to be.” She’d been blind to the fact that it actually wasn’t. “One day I walked into our flat and found him in bed with someone. They had wine.” She pictured the scene in her mind as she spoke. “And candles, and there were torn-off clothes all over the floor.” She coughed. Her voice had gone hoarse because she was having difficulty getting the words out. “I was a twit. The first thing I did when I walked in the door was pick up a ripped-off button from the carpet, and I was thinking, “What’s going on?”” She paused, wondering why she was telling him this, and unable to stop now it was out there. “It was as if the floor fell away from beneath me.” Her world had disintegrated. Instead of swishing her hand through the air, she curled it into a fist so tight the nails dug into her palm. “Poof.” She uncurled her fingers. “My future vanished in a puff of smoke.”

  “Just. Like. That.” Alex appeared indignant on her behalf. “When did this happen?”

  “About three years ago. A month or so before my grandma died,” she said sadly. “The irony of it! She’d been happy for me. She thought I was going to break the Plumtree women’s run of bad luck with men with Marcus. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d been right all along.”

  “Oh, Maggie. I’m sorry.”

  She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I didn’t tell anyone at the time. Not even Layla.”

  She’d kept it in – pretended everything was fine. When Marcus was a no-show at the funeral, she’d had to say something, so she’d crossed her fingers against the white lie and told everyone that they’d had a mutual parting of the ways.

  Alex steered her into the shelter of the cabin. They sat close together in silence, huddled on a wooden bench. On the way back to Boston, going into the wind, the boat thrashed against the waves. The real storm was in Maggie’s heart. If she’d kept her distance, she could have done the styling job and left. She’d been captivated by Alex. She’d reacted to him like they’d been apart ten days, not ten years. Now he’d rumbled her. She’d fessed up about Marcus and she felt certifiably stupid. Again. Just like the day she’d walked in on him and his lover.

  “I know you saw something in him you loved.” He spoke softly, his jaw hard set, every facial muscle tight. “You’ll have to forgive me, Maggie, but I think he was a tosser. He wasn’t right for you. He was the wrong one.” He stared at the grey sea. “The guy for you is still out there.”

  “If he is,” she laughed, “he’s keeping himself well hidden.” Concealed below the surface, like a whale. She smiled brightly up at him. What she’d liked most about Marcus was his sense of certainty, right down to the spreadsheet with their future on it. Only, as it happened, he wasn’t certain about the one thing that mattered – love. He’d pleaded for a second chance, called the affair a hiccup. For Maggie his hiccup was non-negotiable. She’d rather have no love than a watered-down, unfaithful version. “Anyway, I don’t need a man. He’d just get in the way. I’ve made plans.”

  If she played her cards right she could make the most of the opportunity that had landed in her lap when Alex had invited her to New York. It was high time she got noticed. She’d do her utmost to sparkle on the red carpet – in a little black dress, naturally. She loved being a behind-the-scenes person, but Alex gave her the confidence to believe that she could be more. She wasn’t a rejected child any longer. Or a cheated-on fiancée. She could dare to come out from the shadows where she’d learned to hide.

  Chapter Nine

  “Two people can’t get together after a decade and expect things to start over as if they’d pressed an invisible pause button.”

  Alex and Nick were jogging in Central Park. In shorts, tees, dark shades and baseball caps nobody paid them any attention. They were just two guys – running. Balmy September sunshine dappled the trees with light and shade. Only a few paint-box spatters of yellow and red amongst the green hinted at the fall colors to come. Nick was in an upbeat mood. He’d tied up his movie deal. Finally, he and Alex were on
the same page. He’d conceded that Alex’s leaving Mercy had pulled the plug on the show at precisely the right time.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong. She’s based London. So are you. And you used to have the hots for each other.”

  “Promise me that if the movie roles dry up you won’t take up professional match-making.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s having a donor-sperm baby.”

  Nick’s mouth gaped. “Man. What are the chances? Why’s she done that?”

  “Because she wants to.”

  Alex didn’t add because she doesn’t believe in The One. He’d already said too much. His stride lengthened. He ran as if he was trying to get away from something. Nick matched his pace. Somewhere through the trees he heard the shrieks of happy children coming from the adventure playground. They got closer and he could see that kids were splashing about in a water feature. They jogged on, only to find themselves circumnavigating the tots’ playground, where cute babies dangled in bucket swings and tiny kids toddled about in the sandbox. He didn’t usually notice kids unless they were going feral in a restaurant or screaming on a plane. Suddenly, they were everywhere – being cute.

  “You used to be pretty into her.”

  Alex drained the bottle of mineral water he was carrying and tossed the empty into a trash can. Nick seemed contrite, but he knew his brother well. If he could use a piece of information to his advantage, he probably would.

  “The past is a no-go zone.”

  “You’re not hooking up, then?”

  “There’s no going back to zero.”

  “That’s too bad. She’s awesome. And she’s good at what she does. She was in her element in Boston.” Alex ran faster, so Nick shouted after him, “Since honesty is the order of the day, if I’m not mistaken, she’s still into you.”

  Alex suppressed his smile. He looked back over his shoulder. “Don’t go there.”

  Nick ignored the warning.

  “Let me see if I’ve got this right. You and Maggie are on separate paths.”