by Julia London
But he went. And it was torture—all he could think of was Leah. He cursed himself for not thinking to take his cell along to Malibu—although it would have been awkward to receive her call on a yacht while some other young woman was smiling with big moon eyes at him—at least he would have had an opportunity to talk to her, maybe coax her into a date. He took some solace in the fact that she seemed receptive to the perfume, which gave him another idea.
The next morning, Michael was up early, driving to Laguna, where he hoped a little shop he knew of was still in existence. By one o’clock, he was in his T-bird, headed back to L.A. and Leah’s house.
When he pulled up in front of Leah’s house, there were two cars in front of the house, both junkers, but Leah’s car definitely taking top prize. He got out of his car, took a deep breath as he smoothed the crease of his khakis, and walked up to her door.
Michael presumed that the guy who answered his knock was Brad. Brad was wearing pajama bottoms but no shirt. His hair was sticking out in several different directions, as if he’d just gotten up, and he scratched his bare chest as he took Michael in. “Yo,” he drawled, and Michael had the impression that he was as high as a kite.
“Hey,” Michael responded, suddenly questioning his wisdom for having come here. “Is, ah . . . is Leah here?”
“Leah?” the guy echoed, as if he had to think of who Leah was, then shrugged. “Let me check.” He disappeared from the door, leaving it wide open, but not inviting Michael in. That was just as well—from where he stood, Michael could see into the living room. The most remarkable feature was an enormous, big-screen TV in one corner.
As he stood there waiting for Brad to come back, a small, dark-haired woman poked her head out from the kitchen. She was wearing a tiny T-shirt and very short shorts. She, too, looked like she had just rolled out of bed. “Hey,” she said, lifting a spatula. “We’re making pancakes. You want some?”
Was she kidding? “Ah, no . . . thanks,” he said.
Brad reappeared, still scratching. “She booked, dude,” he informed Michael.
“Oh. Okay.” He glanced behind him, to her car. So did Brad. “Hey, sweet wheels,” he said.
“Any idea where she might be?” Michael tried again.
“Nope.”
The woman appeared from the kitchen again, this time holding a plate of pancakes. “I think she went for a run.”
“A run?” Brad asked, then laughed. “Since when does Leah run?”
Since New York, Michael wanted to tell him. Even when he would tease her, telling her she looked like she was bouncing on a pogo stick when she ran, she would get up at dawn, walk the two blocks up to Central Park, and run.
Brad shrugged and looked at Michael. “So you want me to tell her something?”
Michael had no hope that this guy would remember he’d even been here, much less any message he might give Leah. “Ah, no . . . no thanks,” he said. “I’ll catch up with her later.”
“Sure.”
“Come on, Brad! I made like four dozen of these things!” the woman shouted from the living area.
Brad smiled sheepishly. “Gotta run.”
“Right,” Michael said and stepped off the porch. “Thanks.”
“No prob,” Brad said, and shut the door.
Michael sighed, turned on his heel, and walked back to his car.
He pulled out onto the street, drove down to the intersection, and took the first parking spot he could find. This was undoubtedly a useless exercise—Leah had probably gone another route, or if she hadn’t, maybe she’d already been by here. But it was a gorgeous day, and as long as he was in the area, he figured he had nothing to lose by waiting a little while.
As luck would have it, about a half hour later, he spotted her down the street. She was at a crosswalk, her hands on her hips, waiting for a light to change. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing tight running pants with a jacket tied around her hips, and a form-fitting sports bra.
When the light turned green, she strode purposefully into the crosswalk, her arms and her ponytail swinging. As she neared him, Michael got out of his car, walked to the front, and perched himself on the bumper. Leah kept walking, was about to stride past him when she saw him, and caught herself just before she walked into a light pole.
“Hey!” she said, and smiled. She smiled. A beautiful, almost-happy-to-see-him sort of smile. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“You’re kidding. How did you know where to find me?”
“Your roommate made a good guess. Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”
Leah laughed. “But I live like a block away.”
“I was going to take the long way around. By Santa Monica, and Malibu, on up to Oregon, and back. Maybe.”
She grinned, cocked her weight to one hip, folded her arms across her middle, and eyed him curiously. “You must have met Brad. Everyone wants to run to Oregon when they meet him.”
“I got a pretty good look at him, yeah.”
“Sort of goofy, isn’t he?” Leah asked with a wrinkled nose. “But then again, I guess most actors are.”
“I guessed doper,” Michael said.
She laughed again. “He’s a Sunday doper—it’s his weekend ritual. And the woman he is seeing these days—Alice—she loves to cook. It’s a perfect arrangement for the two of them.”
“Aha. That would explain the four dozen pancakes,” Michael said dryly. “So is it a perfect arrangement for you?” he asked, wondering how long she had lived with Brad, how long she could keep on living with him, and how she deserved to be living in Bel Air or Brentwood instead of a Venice Beach rattrap.
But Leah shrugged nonchalantly at his question. “Brad and I wound up in L.A. at the same time, in the same acting class, and we’ve been friends ever since. But I keep different hours. I like the daytime.”
Michael smiled, privately appreciating how pretty she was, how genuine her smile. His casual perusal seemed to make her self-conscious; she suddenly lifted a hand and smoothed her hair. “So hey, listen . . . thanks for the perfume,” she said. “I don’t know why you are going to all that trouble, and I really should give it back—”
“No, I—”
“But I’m not going to,” she quickly interjected. “Because it is my favorite perfume, and I ran out two years ago and couldn’t afford another bottle. I figure if you are fool enough to buy it, then I am just fool enough to keep it.”
Sweeter words were never spoken. “Good, because I want you to have it,” he said. “Even if you don’t want to talk to me, or if you find another way to make me the laughingstock in front of the cast, or if you tell me you never want to see me again, I want you to have it.”
“Thank you,” she said, bowing her head graciously. “That’s really very sweet. And I’m not going to make you a laughingstock. That was fun for the week, but I’m over it.”
“Great news,” he said, standing up from the hood of his car and dropping his hands. “I think we’re making progress here. What about seeing me again? Have you decided that?”
She half-laughed, half-groaned, and clasped her hands behind her neck for a moment before peeking up at him. “I’m not going to see you again.”
“Damn,” he said. “Isn’t there anything I can do to convince you that it would be the best decision of your life?”
She dropped her hands, smiled up at him. “You could try feeding me.”
His heart nudged him, and he felt the first real glimmer of hope since he saw her on the gym floor, eyes closed, brought down by a dodgeball.
“That wasn’t exactly what I meant, but okay, what would Soccer Mom Number Five like to eat?”
With a grin, she put her hands to her hips and rose up on her toes. “Hamburgers,” she said, and her blue eyes lit up with pleasure before sliding down to her heels again. “Please don’t tell me you’ve gone all California and will only eat sushi, because I want a hamburger. A big, juicy hamb
urger. With cheese. And fries. And maybe even a milkshake. And I know the best place in town to get it.”
Michael laughed and gestured toward his car. “Hamburger it is, then. Your carriage awaits.”
With a pleased-as-punch smile, Leah got in.
Chapter Fourteen
MICHAEL followed Leah’s directions to a hole-in-the-wall burger joint near Venice Beach. They ordered cheeseburgers with fries and a couple of beers instead of milkshakes and sat out on the wooden deck overlooking a parking lot.
Michael was a wealthy man. Personally, he was not accustomed to this sort of joint, but it was clear to him that Leah was. And as he listened to her talk about how she and Brad had found that wretched little house, he couldn’t help but wonder what path their lives might have taken—together—had he not done what he did five years ago. It made him feel a little ill, and he left half of his burger uneaten.
“So what sort of acting have you done since you came to L.A.?” he asked when Leah had exhausted the subject of Brad, thank God.
She snorted, shoved a fry into her mouth. “Nothing great. A couple of national commercials. A ton of regional ones,” she said with a weird little flip of her hand. “A few theater gigs, and now, War of the Soccer Moms.”
So . . . nothing but bit parts and commercials, and no big breaks. He felt even worse.
“Which reminds me,” she said, lifting her gaze and pointing a fry at him. “What’s the truth about this film? I mean, how is it we ended up working together? Don’t tell me it’s a coincidence, because it’s too freaky. Be real, Raney—how did we end up here?”
Ugh. He preferred having her believe that it was one big coincidence, but he wasn’t about to lie to her anymore. He reached across the table and snagged one of her fries, because he knew she wouldn’t eat them all. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s sort of a long story.”
“I’m all ears,” she said, sitting back, focusing on him instead of her food.
“Okay . . . Cooper and Jack and I were in New York a few months ago, and while we were there, I happened to see a commercial.” He looked up at her. “A laxative commercial.”
“Oh,” she said, coloring slightly, and gave him a lopsided smile. “We do what we have to do.”
He smiled thinly. “I saw the commercial, and it was the first time I’d seen you in almost five years. So I guess I sort of reacted, and Jack took notice. He asked me what the deal was, and I said I used to know you. So when they were doing the casting for War, Jack was sitting in for T.A. He saw your audition and remembered that night in New York, and added you to the list. He did it as a little joke on me, I guess—but he had no idea who you were or what you meant to me.”
“Wait a minute,” Leah said, suddenly sitting up, planting her elbows on the table, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you saying I got this role as a joke?”
“No, no,” Michael said, instantly waving his hands and smiling reassuringly. “The casting was a decision by committee. T.A. had one vote out of five. It’s legit, Leah, I swear it.”
That seemed to appease her; she leaned back, folded her arms again, and said, “Go on.”
He laughed. “What else is there? You got the part, I came back from Costa Rica, and there you were.”
“How many times have you been in New York since then?” she asked.
“Since . . . a few months ago?”
“No, since five years ago—since March 18 five years ago, to be exact.”
With a mental groan, Michael picked up another fry. “I didn’t go back until two years ago.”
“Did you look for me?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
Being totally and completely honest was shaping up to be a real bitch. “No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think there was a point. I thought if you were still there, you wouldn’t see me. And I thought you were probably with someone else, probably even married. Either way, I didn’t want to know.”
She frowned. “So what made this different? Why is L.A. the place you’ve decided to unearth it all again?”
“Because I saw you,” he said instantly. “From the moment I saw you on TV, I didn’t care who you were with, I wanted to talk to you. And when I saw you lying there on the gym floor—”
“Okay, okay,” she said, motioning with her hand for him to speed past that part.
“When I saw you, I couldn’t help myself or the rush of all those feelings I still had for you.”
She looked skeptical. Michael pushed the baskets away and extended his hand, palm up, silently asking for hers. She didn’t take it at first, just stared at his hand until he said please, and then she very reluctantly put hers in his, and he folded his fingers over hers, holding her tightly.
“I made a mistake, Leah. I don’t know how to impress on you how sorry I am for it. I would bring down the stars one at a time and hand them to you on a silver platter, and it still wouldn’t be enough. I’ve known for years that it was a mistake, almost from the moment I left, even when I was working to convince myself it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, as time went on, the more I realized how bad the mistake was. I loved you, and I made a huge fucking mistake and I didn’t know how to make it right. But then I saw you—”
He paused, looked heavenward for a moment, trying to put a word to all the emotions he’d felt that morning when he saw her. Hope. Dread. Love. More hope, and a strange twisting in his heart, like the thing was cranking up after five years.
He lowered his gaze to her crystalline blue eyes and said softly, “It’s just that . . . I never lost your taste in my mouth. I never lost your scent. I never lost the feel of your body on my hands,” he said, lifting his palm up to her. “And when I saw you that morning, more beautiful than I remembered, your smile more golden than it had ever been, I knew I had to try. I had to do it for me, because I knew—know—I won’t ever feel this way for another woman again in my life. And even though the odds are stacked against me, I have to try, because I still love you. I always have.”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment, just held his gaze, her eyes full of myriad emotions and tears. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I never had the guts to say it before,” he confessed.
“It’s hard to know what to say,” she admitted. “What happened that night was the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my life. I wanted to die. I felt like I’d lost a physical part of me. I felt like a fool, like I’d been used, like I didn’t matter.”
Those words burned like acid, and he sagged backward against the back of the chair.
But Leah sat up, leaned toward him. “The thing is, there was a time . . . a long period of time . . . that I would have fallen on my knees and given everything I had for you to take me back. But . . . but you disappeared, and I didn’t have that option, so I had to bury it,” she said, gesturing to herself. “Just . . . bury everything, because everything had died. All the love and trust and faith I had in you just died, and I buried it, and I can’t resurrect it now. I don’t think I have the strength to even try. It’s really asking too much of me.”
That was it, then. He’d hoped, and he’d lost. “I understand,” he said wearily. With another sigh, he reached down to the small bag he’d brought inside, and put it on the table between them. “I got this for you.” He shoved the bag toward her. “Just a small reminder . . . that I love you.” His voice trailed off, and he leaned back, unable to finish his thought. Now everything seemed like a reminder of how he’d ruined her life.
Leah took the bag and opened it. Her face lit up at the sight of the little origami bird, and she carefully extracted it from the bag and put it on the table. “Oh my God,” she said softly. “It’s beautiful. Where did you find it?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said sullenly.
She leaned forward, examining the intricate folds. She spied the rolled-up note he’d lodged beneath the bird’s wing, and carefully extracted it. Now Michael groaned—in a flush of dreamy love, he had penned a
godawful poem, just like he used to do. It was a joke between them. He’d write awful poems and leave them on Post-It notes around her apartment and his, or call up and recite them into her voice mail. In hindsight, it seemed completely moronic.
She unrolled the note and read it, and Michael winced. Roses are red, Violets are blue, I would walk over fire to come back to you. God, how lame. He honestly had not realized he could be such a sentimental jerk. He turned in his chair and looked out over the parking lot, unwilling and unable to see her laugh or roll her eyes, whatever she did when she read that lame note. He was five years too late for this crap, and as soon as he figured that out, they’d both be a lot—
“Michael, it’s so sweet,” she said.
Wait a minute. That was sincerity in her voice. He risked a look at her from the corner of his eye. She was holding the origami in her hand, admiring the craftsmanship. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Absolutely beautiful.” She put it down and showed him the rolled up note, which she tucked into her sports bra. “You always did know how to make me smile,” she said, and smiled fully then, knocking him back on his heels with the force of it. “Okay, look. I don’t want to go back . . . but maybe we could at least be friends?”
Whoa. Was she serious? Hope picked itself up, brushed itself off, and spoke carefully. “Maybe we could try and hang out a little? Just a little. And if it’s too uncomfortable, or it looks like you can’t find your way back . . . then at least we can say we gave it a shot.”
She thought about it a moment, and after what seemed hours rather than moments, she nodded. “I guess we could try that.”
He felt a wave of relief. “How’s this,” he said, his heart pounding with sheer delight. “We could start with a really good date. One date. There is a movie premiere Friday night, which is a little unusual, but they are accommodating James Cameron’s schedule.”
Her eyes widened. “James Cameron? The James Cameron, the director?”
“Yep, the same James Cameron. We worked his film, The Hero. So I’d love to take you to dinner and a movie premiere.”