by Peggy Gaddis
“But why should you follow me? Oh, Terry, what arrant nonsense,” she protested when she could speak.
“I always have—remember?” he said quietly.
“I know,” said Phyllis as quietly, her hands tightly clenched. “But that was in the days B.E.”
“B.E.?” Terry repeated, puzzled.
“The days Before Eleanor,” Phyllis reminded him.
There was a silence that seemed to stretch out endlessly, while a tiny frown drew Terry’s eyebrows together. After a little he said as though he had just remembered, “Oh, yes—before Eleanor.”
Phyllis let out the tiny breath that she had held, and clutched for something casual and matter-of-fact to say. “Oh, well, I’m entitled to a bit of a holiday. I haven’t had a vacation this year. I think I’ll take one before I start looking around for another job.”
“Good idea,” said Terry politely. “Shall you go away—mountains, I suppose, or the beach?”
Phyllis looked about her at the apartment, which was cool and restful, and shook her head. “No, I think I’ll stay right here at home and get acquainted with my own place. I see it so seldom, rushing to and from my job. I think it would be fun just to sleep late, dawdle through breakfast, see a lot of movies.”
There was something in the way Terry was looking at her that made her heart beat faster, and so she broke off and said gaily, “Oh, well, let’s have a bite to eat and discuss my vacation later. Have you had dinner?”
“I don’t think so. The paper knocked me for a loop and I couldn’t get here fast enough. I was afraid you’d—er—do something silly like … like an overdose of sleeping pills or something,” he admitted frankly.
Phyllis gasped, and her eyes were wide.
“But, for goodness’ sake, Terry, what a perfectly crazy idea!” she said in honest amazement. “Why on earth should I do such a fool thing—just because my poisonous little cousin has copped herself a millionaire?”
Terry moved unexpectedly, caught her by the shoulders and shook her hard. His face was set and his eyes were angry.
“Cut out the damn foolishness,” he snapped at her roughly. “I don’t deserve that you should put up a front with me. I’m Terry, remember me? I know you better than anyone else on earth, and I know how crazy-mad you were about Kenyon Rutledge.”
“Were is right, Terry,” she told him levelly.
He studied her, his hands still on her shoulders, and there was in his eyes an almost desperate need to believe her, and yet a fear that he dared not.
“Are you trying to tell me that you stopped being in love with him just because he gave you the grand bounce? Oh, no, Phyl—that won’t wash! Maybe you’re sore as a pup at him now—that’s the shock. But it will wear off, and by morning, you’ll be grieving—” He broke off as she laughed in his face.
It was a small but quite honest laugh of genuine amusement.
“Terry, my pet, I stopped being in love with Kenyon ever so long ago,” she told him in a tone that forced him to believe her. “I was never really in love with him. It was—well, just an hallucination. I think the night we worked late—” She broke off and the hot color flowed into her face, and her eyes fell before his.
“The night you planned to sleep with him and Mrs. Lawrence intruded,” he finished for her almost contemptuously.
Her face burning, she met his eyes bravely.
“Yes, Terry, that night,” she told him simply. “I knew that I’d made a terrific mistake and I’ve realized it more every day.”
Terry said swiftly, “Then you were not sitting here moping because he had married somebody else?”
“Of course not.” And there was conviction in the very simplicity of her words.
For a long, long moment, Terry held her, his hands gripping her shoulders so tightly that she winced a little. And then he said, in a tone of awe and wonder, “Then—thank the good Lord!”
She was in his arms then, held so closely that he could feel the exciting pressure of her firm, pointed breasts through the thin silk of her housecoat. For a moment she rested in the utter heaven of his arms, joying in the perfection of it—until he lifted her face, one hand cupping her chin, and set his mouth on hers in a kiss that seemed to rock the very floor beneath their feet.
She clung to him in wordless ecstasy and gave him back his kiss with an ardor that was beyond belief. And then, tears in her eyes, reluctant, her heart crying out, she drew herself away from him and said unsteadily, trying to smile, “Careful, Terry—I doubt if Miss Adams would approve.”
Terry’s arms would not let her go, and there was an impish twinkle in his eyes as he asked, “Miss Adams? Who is she?”
“The girl you’re going to marry—” Phyllis broke off and stared at him.
“Miss Adams?” Terry repeated the name as though he had never heard it before in his life, and then he shook his head and said firmly, “Never heard of her.”
Phyllis was staring up at him, her face white, her eyes enormous.
“Terry McLean!” she gasped at last, in a tone of accusation. “Are you mad? You said you met her upstate and were going to marry her.”
“I was lying through my pearly teeth,” said Terry and grinned.
A wave of such exquisite delight as to make her a little dizzy flowed over Phyllis, and her heart was beating so fast and so loud that she felt sure he must hear it.
“Terry!” she gasped at last, when she could manage her voice. “Terry, are you trying to tell me that you just … just made up a fiancée—But, Terry, why?”
Terry held her a little away from him and looked down at her sternly.
“Now that’s a damned fool question if ever I heard one, and I’ve heard plenty,” he told her sternly. “Why would I invent an almost-fiancée, except to try to make you realize what a darned good matrimonial bet you were passing up in one Terence O’Malley McLean, who had asked you to marry him so many times he’d lost count, and who was ready to try any desperate measures to see if he couldn’t make you notice him?”
“But—but—oh, Terry—”
He nodded, his expression grim.
“It’s a corny old dodge, of course,” he admitted without shame. “But after all, what makes a dodge old and corny? The fact that it almost always succeeds! You were making a fool of yourself about Rutledge. I knew it wasn’t his money—I knew you believed you were in love with him. But, well, Phyllis, a girl can’t be as sweet to a man as you have been to me, unless she cares for him a little—even though she may be too blind to realize it. I took a chance. After all, a man’s got a little pride. You hadn’t left me much, I admit. I knew that you never came into my arms without thinking of Rutledge. There were times when I could have left you and not looked back—but I guess I’m too much of a dope to walk away from you. So that left me my only hope—making you believe that you were about to lose me in order to make you realize that maybe you liked having me around more than you know.”
Phyllis nodded soberly, and there was a bright mist of tears in her eyes, despite the slightly tremulous smile on her lips.
“You—you’re terribly sweet, Terry,” she whispered huskily.
Terry asked anxiously, “Does that mean that we can abandon Miss Adams?”
“Of course, you blessed idiot!” she told him unsteadily.
His arms caught her close, and he kissed her hard. But there was still the shadow of a frown, a tiny trace of lingering doubt in his mind, and after a moment it came into words.
“Look here, pretty thing, we might as well get all of this cleared up once and for all,” he said sternly. “This … this sudden aversion for the Rutledge lug—it didn’t just spring into being today when you knew he’d married the little blond bitch?”
She shook her head soberly.
“It began that night, when Mrs. Lawrence walked in,” she admitted frankly. “But it didn’t entirely disappear until you began telling me about Miss Adams. That night when we had dinner and you began raving about her—well, I l
ay awake all night, facing facts. The fact that all along I’d been an utter fool, and that I wasn’t in love with Kenyon after all, but that I was crazy about you. And that I’d fooled around and lost you to somebody else.”
Terry kissed her and asked one last assurance.
“Will I have to go around inventing any more Miss Adamses in order to keep you conscious that you’re in love with me?” he wondered worriedly.
She laughed richly, and framed his face between her two palms, and kissed him.
“All you have to do is to go on loving me, and reminding me, and staying pretty close at hand,” she told him with a soft gaiety that belied her tears.
Terry held her close, and for a long moment they were silent. And then Terry said huskily, “We’ve lost such a lot of time, Phyllis, fooling around.”
“And that’s my fault, Terry, because I was such a dope,” she confessed humbly.
Terry said suddenly, “Hey, why don’t we get married tonight?”
Phyllis gasped, but her eyes were eager.
“Well, not tonight, Terry. We can’t—there are laws and things. We have to wait three days for a license,” she pointed out reluctantly.
“Not in Elkton, we don’t,” he reminded her. He kicked the newspaper that lay at his feet and said proudly, “What’s good enough for a multi-millionaire is good enough—but only just!—for us! My car’s downstairs; it will hold together for a drive that far—and who the blazes cares whether it holds together for the return? You’re not working, and I’m due for a vacation. We’ll just go from Elkton for a honeymoon.”
Phyllis said radiantly, “Give me twenty minutes to get dressed and pack a bag!”
“I’ll give you fifteen,” he bargained.
Phyllis laughed joyously.
“Make it ten,” she promised recklessly, and spent several of them giving and receiving a kiss.
A Sneak Peek from Crimson Romance
(From Hiding From Hollywood by Ellie Darkins)
“Abby, get your butt out here!”
Abby licked her finger and scrubbed at the black smudges beneath her eyes, ignoring Candy calling her from the kitchen. She checked the results and sighed. No such luck. It wasn’t mascara after all, just the color of her skin. Three double shifts in a row had clearly taken their toll. She applied another layer of concealer and groaned as she caught sight of her uniform.
The uniform of the Hollywood Diner was too everything: too short, too tight, too see-through. And worst of all, too clichéd. But Abby had to face facts. Her acting career was over, and like every other “resting” actor in Los Angeles, she was waiting tables.
Before she’d left England, the waitress uniform had haunted her dreams—though the one in her nightmares was nowhere near as bad as the real thing—but she never imagined that she might be grateful for it. She’d headed out here, full of excitement and expectation, buoyed up by her BAFTA nomination, her British Soap Awards gongs. She couldn’t have foreseen that within weeks she’d have been forced out of her acting career and be hiding from the world.
There was no use feeling sorry for herself though; plenty of people were worse off. This job put food on the table, a roof over her head, and kept the bailiffs from the door. She should be grateful. She was grateful. She just had to remind herself of that fact from time to time.
“Abby!”
Last checks: tighten ponytail, pull down skirt to try and cover another half inch of thigh, paste on Hollywood Diner Smile. Ready for business. Thank God her mum couldn’t see her now, she thought. Abby knew exactly what her mother would think of the sort of girl who wore this to work. It was typical of this city that she couldn’t even serve burgers without giving her customers an eyeful of leg—though thankfully, at just five foot two, she didn’t have too much leg to worry about.
“Abby!”
The kitchen was its usual combination of smoke, steam, heat, and cursing. On her first shift Abby had thought it was hell. She couldn’t imagine what the devil could possibly have down there that was worse than this room. But two years on she could see that this wasn’t chaos. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t strictly true, but it was organized chaos. It had a tempo and a rhythm that was second nature to her now. And when she had really needed somewhere to hide out, this place had been here.
On the surface there was nothing remarkable about the diner. It looked like any other: peeling Formica tables, vinyl-covered benches, and a host of slightly greasy-looking regulars. In fact, the only thing that would mark it out from a hundred others was that it would be the shabbiest of the lot. The first time she’d seen it, it seemed like the perfect place to lie low for a while; all she’d wanted was somewhere quiet and out of the way. Somewhere no one with any profile in the movie business could stumble across her and ask questions. But after a few weeks, she’d realized that she wanted to stay. She couldn’t go back to England—the tabloids and gossip blogs would be all over it, wondering why Britain’s brightest young acting talent was back so soon, with no blockbuster to her name. And a new job or a new city meant more people knowing her face, her name—her legal one—the one she thought she’d said goodbye to the first time she’d seen Abby Richards on her Equity card.
So the likelihood of finding anywhere else that would make her feel as safe as this grungy old place was slim. And the thought of leaving, exposing herself to more people, more questions, kept her here. If any of the Hollywood elite—or, more likely, a D-list wannabe—stepped foot in here, they would be too concerned about the welfare of their Gucci loafers, and distracted by the suspicious-looking stains, to look closely at the waitresses.
“I’m here, what’s the emergency?” Abby said, walking out into the restaurant.
“No emergency.” Candy grinned from where she was standing behind the counter. “I was bored out here on my own, that’s all. It’s quiet today.”
Abby rolled her eyes at her friend and walked over to the booth by the window. She started to clear the empty coffee cups, but was distracted by the sight of a sleek, black Aston Martin pulling up at the curb. Not the sort of car you saw every day—or ever—in this neighborhood. Idiot, she thought. It wouldn’t last ten minutes parked out there before word spread among the neighborhood kids.
She continued watching the car, and her eyes widened as its driver climbed out. It couldn’t be… The resemblance was uncanny. He looked just like Ethan Walker—but there was no way a Hollywood producer would be in this part of town. That was the whole point of being in this part of town. She stared as he walked towards the diner and when he was ten feet away, she was certain it was him. He was all sharp cheekbones, chiseled jaw, and three-day stubble. Abby would recognize that face anywhere, every woman in the city probably would—it featured every week in the online gossip rags and trashy magazines, usually accompanied by some hot new actress. Abby held her breath as he came closer. Surely he wouldn’t be coming in here.
Her cheeks warmed as he looked over and noticed her watching him from the window. Their eyes met, just for a second, and he smiled at her. Her feet were frozen. She had to move; she had to get out of here. And yet, one smile from him, and she couldn’t put one foot in front of the other.
It’s okay, she told herself as the bell rang and he stepped through the door. In here, I’m a waitress. I’m just like every other waitress in the city. What are the chances he watches British soaps anyway? He doesn’t know me. I’m safe.
But he kept moving towards her, and reached out to shake her hand. Still frozen in place, she looked up at him.
“Abby Richards?”
With those two words, Abby wished she had lingered longer in the bathroom. She wished she had run out the back door. She wished that she had never come to this bloody country in the first place.
He knew who she was.
Her feet finally unstuck from the floor. She grabbed his outstretched hand and dragged him out the door, away from the window, and around the corner.
Abby tried to weigh up the damage. The door to
the kitchen had swung shut just before Ethan walked in, so she didn’t think Candy had seen him. She didn’t think anyone else in the diner had had time to recognize him either—in jeans and a casual shirt his appearance didn’t scream “millionaire Hollywood movie producer.” But if he didn’t leave, right now, her secret could be blown and the life she’d built for herself here would be over. How had he found her? Why had he found her? And more importantly, how was she going to get rid of him?
He was smiling at her. He had the nerve to stand there and smile at her when any second he was going to ruin her life—or what was left of it anyway.
Even now, though, angry and afraid, she couldn’t help but notice his eyes, so dark they were almost black, twinkling at her from under ever-so-slightly-too-long hair. And the way the angles of his cheekbones and jaw fell with perfect balance and symmetry. It was the sort of anatomical perfection a girl just couldn’t ignore, whatever the circumstances.
His jeans and shirt were understated, but they drew more attention to his body than an Armani tux. The white shirt highlighted his tan, just the right side of golden, and the open collar showed a hint of black hair disappearing below the neckline. The rolled sleeves exposed perfectly toned forearms and Abby’s stomach clenched at the sight of the muscles there.
Ethan Walker leant against the wall in the stinking alley she’d dragged them to and gave her a questioning look.
“Miss Richards, my name is—”
“I know who you are.” When she realized that she was still clenching his hand, she pulled away, though he tried to keep a hold of her. Determined to keep him at a distance, she crossed her arms in front of her body. Between her anger and attraction, she didn’t quite trust herself not to do something with them that she might later regret.
It was painful to admit, even to herself (especially as he could be about to ruin the little of her life she’d managed to salvage), but he was hot. In two years, she hadn’t given a man—any man—a second glance. She hadn’t thought, after what had been done to her, that she would ever feel anything like it again. But something in her, something that had hidden, scared, was making tentative steps out towards the world, towards Ethan. Typical that the first man she’d felt even a spark of attraction for since her assault was not only the city’s most notoriously confirmed bachelor, but also the man whose high profile could do her more harm than just about anyone else on the planet.