I didn’t comment on how him bringing a date seemed to hinge on whether Sarah’s best friend Carly was attending or not. Sarah and I were pretty sure the two had hooked up at least once, maybe twice, and were waiting for them to come clean about it. So far Carly had adamantly denied she’d had sex with Mike, and for his part, my best friend had had remained completely mum on the topic. That alone told me something was up between them.
Carly was exactly the type of woman he secretly desired – so far removed from the silicone-enhanced blondes he normally dated, Hannah included – but not once had he asked me to put in a good word with her or made a joke about how he’d like to tap that ass. I didn’t want to jinx anything, but it was almost like he respected her and that was pretty fucking major because Mike, as much as I loved him, was a dog when it came to women. Except for how he treated Sarah and my sisters, I wasn’t sure he knew what respect was.
“Thanks man. I knew I could count on you.”
“Don’t you forget it.”
Even if I had wanted, I couldn’t. Mike kept a running tally of all the times he’d saved my ass over the years and vice versa. It was a weird quirk of his that had started when we were just kids and he’d wanted to make it clear he wasn’t a charity case. Not that my family was rich or anything, but Mike’s was downright poor and he’d carried a chip on his shoulder his entire life about my family and I doing things for him without him being able to repay us. He’d started his list in seventh grade when he’d distracted the teacher while I snuck into class after having missed the bell because I’d been kissing Susie Winters behind the backstop. “That’s for last night’s dinner,” he’d whispered as he slid into his seat next to me a few minutes later. And so it had gone for the rest of our lives.
If he managed to help me pull this off, I’d make sure he never felt like he owed me anything else the rest of our lives.
The next couple of days were a whirlwind of activity that kept us busy from sun up to sun down. Our mornings were spent hiking the lush temperate rainforests of the island, our afternoons surfing the beach outside our house with Hal and Drea – or in my case, attempting a handful of times to get up on a board before rolling to shore and then giving up to watch Cameron take to cold water surfing like a seal – and our nights drinking beer and eating fresh-caught seafood with our new friends.
And our nights? In a word, they were magical. I’d never felt more connected to Cameron than I did during those long, languid hours we spent making love. Whether he cornered me in the shower after a long, wet day in the surf, laid me down in front of the fire where flames danced over his muscled back and sculpted chest, or carried me upstairs to bed at the end of the night, we couldn’t seem to get enough of each other. Though our days in Eagle Harbour were dwindling faster than I would have expected, I never wanted our trip to end.
As November came to a close and December loomed around the corner, I knew we’d have to speak with Broderick before the entire crew descended on Vancouver for the start of filming. Cameron knew it as well, but neither of us made the effort to reach out to our boss. He hadn’t tried contacting us either which we knew was a very bad sign. Broderick wasn’t exactly the type of man who kept his feelings to himself, much less when he thought he’d been wronged. And whether or not what we’d done was the right thing for our relationship, Broderick would have viewed it as the worst kind of professional disloyalty.
On the morning of our eighth day we lay in bed, our limbs tangled up in rumpled sheets, when my phone buzzed loudly on the nightstand next to my head.
“Ignore it,” Cameron groaned, his arm thrown over his eyes to block out the bright rays of a full winter’s sun. “Nothing can be as important as sleeping for two more hours.”
“Ha! As if you’re sleeping.”
“Well, maybe not.” He rolled over, his big body looming over me. “I can think of other ways to spend the morning.” Then he leaned down and kissed me in hopes of distracting me from the phone that was now practically vibrating off its pedestal. I expected the call to go to voicemail, but after the sixth ring there was a pause indicating the caller had hung up and then the trilling started all over again.
“I have to get it,” I told Cameron, breaking away from his lips. “It might be an emergency.”
Cameron dropped his forehead to mine in resignation. “Fine. But I’m not done here.” He flopped over and resumed his previous position, as if he’d never tried to seduce me into ignoring my phone.
I pulled the device to me, checking out the name on the screen before answering lest it be my mother calling with another one of her gossip emergencies. Cameron and I had agreed not to check Twitter or Facebook for the remainder of our trip, so if people were talking about us, we didn’t know. My mother, we knew, was sure to inform me.
“It’s Shanna,” I told him.
“And so it begins. Be brave, my sweet girl.” He sat up in bed and grabbed his own phone. As he typed out a long text to someone, I sighed and answered the call.
“Hi Shanna, what’s up?”
“Don’t play coy with me Sarah. You know exactly what’s up.” Instead of censure, her voice held a note of humor. “Broderick is in the kitchen right now cursing the day he hired you away from me and the moment he signed Cameron to play Xander.” Laughing, she added, “You guys have been naughty.”
Slipping out of bed, I walked naked down the stairs to stare out windows that looked onto Lester Beach. “Before you say anything, you have to know it was an accident—”
Shanna didn’t let me finish, interrupting to say I better not dare apologize. Rather, she said, everyone else should be apologizing to me for putting me through this horrible stunt in the first place. “You did nothing wrong. And besides, it doesn’t matter now. I’ve taken care of everything.”
I pictured Shanna waving a hand in front of her face as she normally did when brushing aside something that was of no consequence to her. A woman in her position – married to a major Hollywood director but with significant cash and power of her own – could choose to ignore anything she damn well pleased and think nothing of incidents that were very much consequential for people like me. Shanna knew exactly her place in the world and the benefits her status afforded her.
“I was talking Broderick down from the ledge last night and I have to admit it wasn’t pretty. He’s very angry with you, by the way. He trusted you to do right by him, Sarah. He feels you deceived him. Rather, he felt that way until I explained to him, at length, how ridiculous this whole PR campaign was from the get go.
“There is no way Cameron and Jillian could have kept up this farce over the course of the five years it’s going to take for all of the movies to be filmed and released. And there’s certainly no way I was going to let you put off marrying him for the sake of a movie that doesn’t need the extra publicity in order to succeed. People are intrigued about who Cameron and Jillian are, yes, but it’s preposterous to think in order to keep the public interested in Xander and Arabella those two have to pretend to be in love! That woman Aerin … Well, let’s just say the less said about her, the better.”
This was unexpectedly fantastic news. There was only one person in the world whose opinion Broderick trusted more than his own, and she was currently telling me she had my back. “Thank you so much Shanna. Your support means the world to me.”
“How could you have doubted it? I just wish you’d have come to me instead of having me hear about all this from my girlfriends. You know you can trust me, right?” Unless I was mistaken, I thought I detected a hint of vulnerability in her tone, which was surprising because I wouldn’t have said Shanna had an unguarded bone in her body.
“Of course I know that!” I rushed to reassure her. “I just didn’t want to bother you with something like this when you have your own family and husband to worry about. I respect and admire you so much Shanna, but I didn’t want to lay this problem at your feet.”
“Pshaw,” she exhaled on a disgusted sigh. “When it’s my husband’s fault a
nd I can fix it, I damn well expect you to tell me exactly how I can help. Speaking of, I was talking with my sister over lunch the other day and I told her all about you and Cameron.” Shanna had been one of the only people who’d known how I felt about Cameron, but even though I’d confided that I’d fallen in love with him, I’d never told her what had happened back in June.
“You never shared all of the details, of course,” she continued, “but I know something major went down between you two this summer. Now here you are months later, finally able to tell the world you are in love each other, and there’s my dolt of a husband trying to force you to keep it a secret.
I’d forgotten that when Shanna got wound up about something she could talk a mile a minute. I had to really focus on what she was saying to keep up with the conversation and all the various twists and turns she included while telling a story.
“And do you know what Marnie said to me? She said that Broderick should scrap the movie he’s working on since it’s much too sinister and dark, and make a movie about your relationship instead.”
As she finished, I heard the excitement in her voice echoing across the line. Shanna’s emphatic words were eerily close to what I had said to Cameron as we stood on the roadside just days before, vowing to put an end to the PR campaign once and for all. While no one doubted The Ties That Bind would be a huge international hit Shanna and I both recognized there would always ben an audience for stories like his and mine.
“Hello, Sarah. You still there?”
“Yes, um. Yeah.”
Shanna misunderstood my silence as anxiety and rushed to assure me everything was going to be okay. “Oh sweetie, don’t worry. Broderick isn’t going to fire Cameron. Oh, he might say he wants to but he knows damn well the gold mine he’s got with your man. Cameron might have been a nobody—” I winced at the classification “—six months ago but already he’s got the world’s attention and Broderick knows it. There’s no one out there with his good looks and versatility. He’ll never want for work again.”
I let out a long breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, relieved to receive Shanna’s guarantee.
“Oh Sarah honey, did you really think Cameron was going to be fired for refusing to hide his love for you?”
I finally found my words. “Um, yeah. That’s exactly what I thought, especially since Broderick hinted heavily at the possibility.”
She muttered something that sounded like “that goddamn bully” under her breath before continuing. “I’m going to play it straight and I expect you to do the same. You’re not one of those dumb women that arrive in L.A. by the boatload, and since you fell in love with him, I’m going to assume Cameron has some brains in that pretty little head of his as well. You know this business and how it works. Broderick fires Cameron for not complying with a PR campaign the studio set up and what realistically happens?”
I waited a heartbeat before answering. I’d known Shanna for years and if ever there was a person I could trust, it was she. But still, she was Broderick’s wife. Would she play me like this? I didn’t think so, and yet …
Almost like she could read my mind through my hesitation, she said, “I’m not going to tell Broderick anything we talk about here.”
Choosing to believe her, I shared everything I’d told Cameron he could do to get even with Broderick if push came to shove. “He goes on the talk show circuit and tells the world how he stepped away from the movie because it conflicted with his personal life. The tabloids start digging, they find out about me and when they put the pieces together and Broderick looks like a dick.
“Then Gramalkin has to cast someone new but by then most actors who’ve already auditioned have landed something else or are too gun shy about to work with him because they don’t like the idea of having their personal lives managed the way Cameron’s was. Or, you find an actor who is slimy enough to do whatever it takes to get the role, including letting Aerin tell him exactly what to wear and who the fuck. But it doesn’t matter because by then the fans have to be convinced all over again that this new guy – whoever he might be – is the right Xander, the one they should have cast from the beginning. But unfortunately you’ve already got fans and critics who’ve bought into Cameron and they start going nuts on social media.
“Suddenly the studio has a legitimate PR nightmare on its hands, a scandal worse even than its mega hot star marrying a fat girl who was the director’s assistant.”
“Bingo,” Shanna said into the receiver. “Except you’re wrong about that last part. You’re gorgeous, Sarah. I don’t know why you don’t give yourself more credit. You’ve got Ginger’s body with Maryanne’s face. You’re every guy’s secret fantasy.”
I didn’t believe a word of that for a minute, but it was a nice thought. Objectively speaking, I knew I was a moderately attractive woman, but I hadn’t quite recovered from the reactions some of Cameron’s friends had to news of our engagement. When you paired their befuddlement and disgust with Aerin’s “hide the fat fiancé” plan, my ego and self-worth had taken a battering.
“I mean really, have you looked at yourself lately?” Shanna continued. “What I wouldn’t do for your some of your curves. Young, stupid girls straight off the bus to Hollywood pay ridiculous sums of money to get boobs like that … and Mother Nature bestowed them to you for free.”
“Thank you Shanna. That means a lot to me,” I said, not wanting to appear ungrateful for her lovely compliments. “It’s hard though, you know, being with someone who looks like Cameron. There are … certain expectations.”
“I don’t want to hear you say that ever again. Has that man ever given you any reason to doubt how hot he is for you? Does he think he should be with a different sort of woman?”
“No, I don’t think so.” In fact, these past few nights had reminded me just how much Cameron cherished my womanly curves, loved my voluptuous body.
“Well, then there you go. Enough about that.” She paused long enough to gather a breath, and then launched into her next topic. “What I really want to talk about is your job.”
“My job?”
“I told you I was going to give you to you straight. Broderick can’t fire Cameron but I’m afraid there’s been some backlash against you,” she said, not with pity but with anger. “I’m afraid you no longer work for Gramalkin.”
For the second time during our conversation, Shanna’s words struck me speechless but this time it wasn’t with wonder. Instead I felt anger and shame.
“Once he had a chance to simmer down, Broderick admitted you didn’t do anything technically wrong, but he has partners and investors and the blame for this fiasco had to be laid somewhere. You were nominated as the sacrificial lamb.”
“I see.”
And I did, truly. We’d wasted a lot of the studio’s time and money by revealing our relationship and now we had to pay. Well, technically I had to pay. I wasn’t thrilled, but I hadn’t been thrilled with my job lately either so all things considered, the only thing I would miss out on was Broderick’s payout.
“I’m not sure you do,” Shanna said, interrupting my internal monologue. “Well, not entirely.”
“What am I missing?”
“I’d like you to come work for me.”
While the offer was generous, going back to being her personal assistant wasn’t what I wanted to do at this point in my life. With Cameron assured of continued work, maybe it was time for me to retire from Hollywood altogether and focus on the plans we’d come up with a couple of months back – spend my days painting and my nights making love to my husband until I found myself knocked up with his babies.
“Sarah?”
“I appreciate the offer, Shanna. Really I do, but I’m not sure that’s the best thing for me at this point in my life. I respect you, but—”
“Oh, I should have been clearer.” She sighed impatiently, more at herself than at my response. “I always do this. Jump straight to the ask when I haven’t set up the scenario. What I me
an to say is I’m starting my own production company. I want to make movies for women, by women. I’m tired of people believing only men can make good movies and I think you have a lot of experience that would be beneficial to this venture.” She paused dramatically, letting her words sink in.
I didn’t respond right away. How could I? The offer was entirely unexpected. Shanna was driven and ambitious, but if you’d asked me back when I was working for her coordinating parties and philanthropic events if she’d follow in her husband’s footsteps I would have said no. Shanna had absolutely no patience for dealing with sycophants and prima donnas and it was precisely those types of people who made up the majority of Hollywood. Broderick could barely hold it together in meetings and he was much more used to people trying to kiss his ass in order to curry favor. Picturing Shanna tell a bunch of brown-nosers to get their faces out of her ass made me giggle like a twelve-year-old little boy.
“Did I say something funny?”
Shit, I’d offended her, something I absolutely did not want to do. “No, not at all. I was just picturing you telling a room full of sycophants to get their brown noses out of your ass.”
She laughed with me then. “Yeah, you might have a point. Still, this is what I’ve decided to do with my time.”
When she continued, her words held a hint of irritation. “People don’t see women in their fifties doing anything beyond throwing parties for their more successful, powerful husbands and frankly, I’m sick of it. I have an MBA from Wharton and I’ve raised millions of dollars for other people. Hell, I’m the reason Broderick was able to strike out on his own to begin with.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt you’re capable, it’s just … and I don’t say this to be rude … but I don’t know if you have the patience to deal with the type of people that cross Broderick’s path every day.”
“Yes, well. I can be much more diplomatic than he, don’t you think?”
I didn’t know if she was asking me rhetorically or expected me to answer but either way I stayed quiet. Of the two of them, Shanna was the one you never wanted to cross. Broderick was an asshole used to stomping around until he got his way, but Shanna would cut a bitch and not even blink. While Broderick threw temper tantrums and moved on as quickly as he’d erupted, Shanna never forgot a slight.
Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story Page 30