by BETH KERY
“Hold on. It’s going to be okay, Joy.”
She was mortified to realize tears had sprung to her eyes.
“No. No, it’s not.” Not for me, it’s not. He looked taken aback.
For a second or two, the silence swelled.
“Of course it is,” he said, smiling even though puzzlement shadowed what she could see of his features.
She swallowed and looked away from his smile. “I need to touch you up,” she said, realizing for the first time that her voice was hoarse from taking his cock so deep. Another wave of heat flooded her cheeks. She tried to move to gather her paints—to gather herself—but he continued to hold her wrist.
“Joy.”
She glanced up at him doubtfully, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.
“Meet me later. After the shoot. Please?” he added when she just continued to stare in the vicinity of his collarbone.
“I . . . I don’t know what . . . why . . .”
“I understand,” he said quietly. He released her wrist and touched her cheek until she looked at him. “I’m not sure I know, either. But I want to figure it out. Meet me at the statue? The studio statue? After this craziness is done? Just give me enough time to get out of this getup and shower, and I’ll be there. I just want to talk to you. Please, Joy.”
Something squeezed at her heart a little when he entreated her. In the distance, she heard her uncle’s voice as he approached.
“I haven’t got time right now. You’ll have to handle it,” Seth called out, as if he was walking away from whomever had interrupted him.
“Joy?” the stranger said sharply.
She looked into his clear aquamarine eyes and nodded once.
“Say it. Say you’ll be there.”
“I’ll be there,” she whispered.
* * *
Six hours later, she checked her watch yet again.
He wasn’t coming.
She should have known better than to come herself.
The photo shoot had been completed now for almost three hours. She’d kept herself busy in Seth’s studio during the shoot itself. Seth had returned after a while in order to oversee prosthetic removal. Joy had helped him, but she hadn’t caught sight of the man she’d promised to meet.
She’d been waiting by the United Studios’ statue of the seven muses for long enough. There was no way the man was still occupied. Not when almost everyone else on the set had long since showered and left. He’d stood her up, plain and simple.
She stood from one of the benches that lined the little park at the north studio entrance. One of the bronze muses caught her eye.
Joy lowered her head and walked toward the gate. She didn’t need the muse’s somber stare to know it was time for her to leave the whimsy of fantasyland and deal with the reality of a harsh world.
Two
FOURTEEN MONTHS LATER
Joy leaned back in a booth at Harry’s Brew and Bake and let the air-conditioning do its thing. Being a native Southern Californian, she’d had no idea that Chicago summers sweltered. Wasn’t this supposed to be the land of frigid lake winds and blizzards that brought the city of broad shoulders to a halt? The mixture of heat and humidity in the air this afternoon had her wilting by the time she hit the second step outside her front door.
“Oh, look,” Sarah Weisman, a fellow teacher at the Steadman School, exclaimed, pointing out the window. Outside on North Avenue, a bus paused at a light. An advertisement for the movie Maritime looked oddly colorful and surreal on the mundane city bus, the bored profiles of passengers in the windows above the poster only adding to the impression. “I read in the Tribune this morning that the Midwest premiere of Maritime is going on in Streeterville tomorrow,” Sarah continued excitedly. “You’re going, right, Joy?”
“No.” Joy laughed. She fingered her short tresses. Her hair was growing back after her cancer treatment, and she was almost back to her usual weight. She’d been fastidious about taking care of herself—regular diet, exercise, vitamins and supplements out the wazoo. Still, she was hardly up for attending a high-profile, gilded event.
“Why not? Don’t tell me you didn’t get a ticket?” Max Weisman, Sarah’s husband, asked, his brow bunched in consternation.
“No, I could go with my uncle if I wanted,” Joy said quickly. She thought she understood Max’s confusion. Sarah and Max both taught with her at an art school for gifted high school students. The entire staff had been involved in the hiring process, so they’d all seen Joy’s résumé, including her mention of having done makeup on several high-profile movies, including Maritime. “A movie premiere isn’t really my scene, that’s all,” Joy said, taking a sip of her iced chai tea.
“You’re crazy,” Sarah said with typical bluntness. “I’d give my right butt cheek to attend that premiere.”
“I’d give my left one to make sure your buttocks stay exactly the way they are,” Max said drolly to a smirking Sarah. He leaned toward Joy, suddenly intent. “You’re not going doesn’t have anything to do with how you’re feeling, does it?”
Joy’s cheeks heated. She hated the fact—despised it, actually—that the teachers and administration at her new job knew about her cancer diagnosis. It’d been necessary to reveal the basics of that information since she’d chosen to take a half semester off from the school where she’d taught in Los Angeles while she’d undergone six cycles of chemotherapy followed by radiation. After her treatment and recovery, she’d decided to move. Start anew. People asked questions about a missing chunk of time in a résumé, though, and Joy had felt compelled to tell the truth, even if she kept her explanation to the bare minimum. It made her feel guilty, knowing that her good friends in L.A. knew less about her illness than near strangers at her present school. Not that Max and Sarah were near strangers, but still . . .
“Max, you have the finesse of a dull ax,” Sarah mumbled, obviously noticing Joy’s discomfort.
“No, it’s okay,” Joy assured. “My health is perfect, aside from the fact that I melt every time I go outside in this humidity. I can’t believe you two grew up in summer saunas like this.”
“She changes the subject to the weather,” Max said archly to Sarah, sipping his coffee.
“I am not changing the subject,” Joy said, laughing. “Look, if you like, I could ask Seth to get you two tickets. He’s staying at the Elysian Hotel over on Walton. If he has a couple tickets, you could pick them up after we finish here. I’ll call him right now,” Joy said, extricating her cell phone from her pocket.
“Hold the phone,” Sarah said in an odd, tense tone that made Joy glance up. She’d thought Sarah had been referring to the call she’d been about to make, but Sarah’s turned head told her that her friend wasn’t even aware of Joy’s actions. Instead, she stared fixedly at the entrance. Sarah jerked her hand down, slapping Joy’s thigh. She squeezed convulsively at the same time she placed her other hand over her heart. Joy glanced around her shoulder, curious as to what had transfixed a usually practical, down-to-earth woman. She saw a tall man wearing a newsboy cap and a gorgeous woman with long golden hair tumbling around her shoulders entering the coffee house.
“It’s Everett Hughes,” Sarah said in a strangled voice. “Everett Hughes just walked into Harry’s Brew and Bake.”
“You’re losing it,” Max told his wife as he scowled at the couple. “You’ve got Maritime on the brain.”
“It is Everett Hughes,” Sarah hissed at her husband as if she were a poked snake.
Joy craned to see around Sarah. The man who was the focus of Sarah’s undivided attention had a tall, lean frame and filled out his jeans in an eye-catching manner. He was nice to look at, but she suspected Max was right in thinking Sarah had Hollywood on the brain—until the man tilted his head back to study the blackboard menu. Beneath the bill of a newsboy cap that had seen better days, Joy glimpsed the profile of one of the most famous faces in the country. He sported a short, golden brown goatee. Besides the newsboy cap and well-worn jean
s, he wore what looked like a vintage bowling shirt. It was awful. The fact that the man made the shirt look like the height of careless-sexy said a lot about him.
“It is him, Max,” Joy said, sitting back in the booth and smiling. She’d grown up in the land of movie stars and was used to occasionally glimpsing a celebrity. It was strange how her heart had lurched upon seeing Hughes’s profile. Perhaps it was because he was one of the most super of the superstars she’d ever witnessed combined with the strangeness of it happening in an innocuous coffee shop in Chicago. “Er . . . Sarah, can you release the death grip on my thigh?”
“Oh sure, sorry,” Sarah said distractedly, still watching Hughes, but now straining to do so in a less obvious manner. Even though she’d consented to releasing Joy, she continued to grip her leg until Joy manually removed her hand.
“He’s here for the premiere. Is that his wife?” Max asked in a hushed tone.
“He’s not married.” Sarah scowled, her gaze still trained sideways, her entire attention seemingly focused on the single point of Hughes. “How could you not know Everett Hughes is single?”
“What do I care if he’s single or not? What’s so great about Everett Hughes? The guy dresses like a bum,” Max mumbled under his breath. “His friend there—now she’s a different story.”
Joy chuckled at the same moment that Sarah whispered, “Be quiet. He’s coming this way.” Joy glanced in the direction where Sarah was staring and suddenly found herself looking into shadowed, gleaming eyes that were trained directly on her.
A memory flickered in Joy’s brain and faded elusively. Something inside her quickened.
She looked away. It must be true what they said about Everett Hughes: His insouciant good looks and easygoing charm reputedly had the power to stun a woman. His sex appeal was utterly effortless, but that didn’t make it any less potent. She was vaguely aware that Sarah went stiff as a board next to her.
“Oh my God,” her friend whispered shakily.
“Joy?”
Joy blinked at the sound of the deep, resonant voice. Everett stood right next to their table, an expectant look on his face, his gaze fixed on Joy. Sarah was looking at her, aghast.
“Uh . . . yes, I’m Joy,” she said, her feeling of disorientation only escalating. She crushed the napkin in her fist.
“Hi. I’m Everett. Everett Hughes?”
“I know who you are,” said Joy, blushing at the stupidity of her statement. Everybody in the coffee shop knew who he was. Everyone in the country did. Why was he looking at her that way? “I’m sorry . . . I’m a little . . .”
Confused, shocked, breathless.
He straightened. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Well, I’ve seen several of your films.”
“No. We met,” he said significantly. When she just stared at him with blank incredulity, he glanced first at Max, then at Sarah. He must have decided he wasn’t going to get any help from that department, because he returned to Joy. “On the set of Maritime? Remember? Your uncle was busy, so you gave me the starburst tattoo.”
The napkin she’d been clutching dropped heedlessly to the table.
“Joy, you didn’t tell us you did Everett Hughes’s tattoo for Maritime,” Max said. “I’m Max Weisman, and this is my wife, Sarah.” He held out his hand and Everett shook it. “We work with Joy at the Steadman School. On Joy’s résumé, she said she did body paint and tattoos for some of Maritime’s extras, but she never mentioned she did your tattoo. Modest,” Max said, giving Everett a significant glance, which Everett didn’t see. He was too busy studying Joy, his brow creased in consternation.
“No. I wasn’t being modest. I didn’t know,” Joy said in a strangled voice. “I . . . I thought he was an extra.”
“Hi.” Everett’s companion approached their table carrying two cups. Sunlight turned her hair into a golden cascade of waves and curls. She gave everyone a friendly, frank appraisal and smile, and then nudged Everett with one of the cups. “Here’s your coffee. Who are your friends?”
“This is Max and Sarah Weisman and Joy Hightower. Remember, I told you about Joy?” The blond woman’s green eyes widened and she stared at Joy with increased interest. Joy wanted to slither beneath the table, she was so mortified. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. The man she’d shared that impulsive, crazy, steaming sexual encounter with on the set of Maritime had been him?
She’d gone down on Everett Hughes?
“I’m Everett’s sister, Katie. I’ve heard all about you from Everett.”
A wave of panic flashed through her.
“I just mentioned how talented I thought you were. As an artist,” Everett added quickly. She met his stare. His eyelids narrowed. Joy couldn’t decide if he seemed confused or concerned as he observed her.
“And of course I know all about Hightower Special Effects,” Katie continued. “Your uncle is very well respected in the business. Rill would do cartwheels to get Seth Hightower for Razor Pass,” she murmured as an aside to her brother, then smiled at Joy. “You might even see him do a couple tomorrow at the premiere to get your uncle’s attention,” she said, her grin widening as if she found the prospect amusing.
Joy inhaled slowly, commanding herself to focus. She’d been doing nothing but gaping like an idiot and blushing the entire time. “Are you referring to Rill Pierce?” she managed to ask.
Katie nodded. “He’s my husband. Do you know him?”
Joy shook her head. She’d never met the renowned Irish director, but she’d read somewhere that he’d done a screenplay adaptation of the postapocalyptic classic biker novel Razor Pass and planned to direct the film. Everett himself had been slated to play the lead role of Slader.
“You’ll get to meet Rill at the premiere tomorrow, then,” Katie said brightly.
“Oh . . . I’m not going.”
Katie’s smile faltered. “No? Isn’t that why you’re in Chicago?”
“She works here,” Everett said gruffly. He’d been standing there wearing a slight frown for the past minute, his gaze never leaving Joy.
“I teach at a high school near here,” Joy said.
“She teaches drawing and painting,” Sarah said in a rapid, pressured fashion, as if she’d just found her voice and couldn’t wait to use it. “It’s an art school for gifted students.”
“That’s interesting,” Katie said warmly. “I must have misunderstood Everett when he spoke of you. I thought you lived and worked in the Los Angeles area.”
“I did. I moved here last winter.”
“Well, how come you’re not coming to the premiere? It seems a shame, since you worked on the movie and all. Can’t your uncle get tickets? Why don’t you ask her, Everett?” Katie said, sipping her coffee and glancing at her brother casually.
Joy’s cheeks went from hot to scalding. “Oh no, that’s not it—”
“Do you have other plans?” Everett asked.
“No, I just hadn’t planned to go.”
“Well, why don’t you? We can all sit together,” Katie said.
“Katie,” Everett warned under his breath.
“Well, I just meant—”
Everett jerked his arm abruptly, waving toward an empty corner of the café. “Can I talk to you for a second? In private?” Everett asked Joy pointedly.
A bomb going off would have startled Joy less. Four sets of eyes pinned her to the spot.
“I . . . well, yes, of course.”
Sarah shot out of the booth, making way for her. Joy stood and glanced at Everett warily. He gestured for her to pass in front of him. She led him to an empty corner and turned to face him, her forearms crossed beneath her breasts, and stared at the second button on his shirt. Her heart began to beat uncomfortably.
“You cut your hair. I like it.”
She blinked and glanced up into his face. This close, she could make out the bluish-green color of his eyes beneath the shadow of the bill of his cap.
“Thank you,” sh
e murmured, studying his shirt again.
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he said.
“It’s okay. You’re not making me uncomfortable.”
He gave a soft bark of sarcastic laughter. Her gaze shot up to meet his, and this time it stuck. No wonder he was a movie star. Those eyes were like sensual laser beams.
“When you didn’t come to the statue after that . . . that time, I asked your uncle for your phone number. Seth and I always got along pretty well, but after that day, he got pretty tight-mouthed when it came to you. I guess I shouldn’t have bothered him about it. You must have told him not to tell me anything about you.”
“I never said anything to Seth about it,” she blurted out. Tell her uncle she’d impulsively gone down on a stranger? Not likely. But that wasn’t the most significant thing Everett had said. “And I did go to the statue,” she said, anger filtering into her voice for the first time. How dare he claim she’d stood him up, when it happened the other way around?
His expression shifted. “I waited for hours and hours for you by the statue after the shoot. I thought maybe you were held up, helping Seth, but when I went back inside, the studio was empty. Everyone, including Seth, was gone.”
“That’s not true,” she said, irritation melting away the haze of mortification and shock that had settled on her since Everett had greeted her like an old friend earlier. “Why would you bother to say that when you know perfectly well that I’ll know you’re lying?”
His expression stiffened. “Yeah, why would I? It would be stupid to lie about it. I was at that statue.”
“I was at that statue.”
Something flickered across his face. “How long were you there?”
“More than an hour,” she muttered after a pause, hating to have to admit the truth to him. “I thought maybe you’d been held up.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Of course I’m serious. Why would I lie about . . .” She faded off as something struck her. “The statue of the seven muses, right? At the entrance of the studio?”