A thrill ran down her back. “Anytime.”
“If this tastes half as good as you look making it, I’m going to be in heaven tonight.”
She smiled. She loved this. Cooking was one of her greatest pleasures, in addition to being one of her greatest liabilities, so the fact that Randy was hot for her food and for her thrilled her to the bone.
She stopped stirring the glaze and turned the heat on the burner down to low. “How hungry are you?” she asked, skimming her fingertips down the side of Randy’s chiseled cheekbones. “Or maybe I should ask, what are you hungry for?”
He eyed the stove behind her. “Is that okay?”
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure it—or she—wasn’t on fire. But no, the liquid was simmering very slowly. She easily had a half hour or forty-five minutes before it had reduced at this rate. “It’s fine. How about you?”
She wasn’t great at flirting.
Never had been.
“I’m good.” He bent down and kissed her.
This was going to be her fiancé.
Her husband.
This was the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with. Happily.
Why was she worried about flirting adequately with him?
Holly closed her eyes and imagined the life they’d have together. A home. Maybe children someday. Maybe a dog or a cat. She didn’t like cats, but Randy did, and she was willing to make that sacrifice for him.
They were going to grow old together, and just knowing she’d never have to date again thrilled her. What luck, she thought. Finally, finally the hunt for a soul mate was over. And here he was, right in front of her, holding her.
She moved her hands around his hips to the front of his pants and started to undo his belt.
He drew back. “That smells so good.” He gestured unnecessarily at the pot.
It did smell good, but . . . she’d been about to unbuckle his pants.
She frowned. “So you want to . . . eat . . . first?” She felt so awkward. She never made the first move with a man, because the fear of being rejected was huge, but this time—this one time—she thought she could because this man wanted to marry her.
But he was rejecting her.
Actually, sort of pushing her away.
“Yes. I’m starved.”
She couldn’t help but look down at the front of his pants, half-hoping there would be evidence there that the body was willing even if the gut was hungry.
But nope. Zip. Nothing.
“Randy,” she started, then paused for a moment before going on. “Did I just do something to turn you off?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, we were just . . .” She gestured limply. “I thought maybe we’d move to the bedroom.”
He gave a laugh. “A guy’s got to have some energy, right? I’m sorry, Holly, but the shrimp just smells so good.”
She gave the pot a stir. “If you’re ready to eat, I can heat things up.” She was conscious of the double entendre, but immediately embarrassed by the fact that she was the only one in the room who would have seen it as a double entendre.
“Bring it on!”
“Take a seat, and we’ll eat.”
“Excellent.” With enthusiasm that could have been construed as flattering or insulting, depending how one looked at it, he hurried to the table and sat himself down at one end, watching expectantly for her to go finish the dinner preparations.
That part was easy. She turned the gas to High under the glaze and gave it a stir before arranging the shrimp on a broiler pan. When the glaze had thickened, she painted it onto the shrimp with a pastry brush and put it in the oven. As the timer ticked down the first two minutes of the shrimp’s cooking time and she stirred the rapidly evaporating glaze mixture that may or may not have needed orange juice, Holly contemplated her situation.
Maybe a character on TV would have been more interested in boning his girlfriend at a moment like this than in eating the shrimp, but wasn’t domesticity what she really wanted? Wasn’t it, in fact, her ultimate goal in getting married and settling down?
Holly had never wanted to travel the world and be where things were happening. She liked a quiet home life graced with simple pleasures.
Randy and she were a picture of that right now.
Actually, it was kind of flattering that the smell of it was making him so hungry, he wasn’t interested in Other Things. It wasn’t fair to expect him always to be ready to go like a teenager. He’d had a long day at work, he was hungry, he should eat, not be forced to perform.
She pulled the shrimp out of the oven and carefully removed them to a platter with tongs, just as she’d seen Paula Deen do on the Food Network. It looked perfect.
And Holly felt proud.
She took out two plates and handed one to Randy. “Eat up.”
“After you.” He gestured toward the platter.
She hesitated, then spooned a little bit of rice onto her plate and topped it with a couple of shrimp. She would have loved to pour the sauce over the whole thing, but that would have been ridiculously caloric, so she stepped back and made room for Randy.
“Is that all you’re going to have?” he asked, eyeing the platter rather than her plate.
“It’s plenty.”
“So you don’t mind if I take the rest?”
It was unfair that men could do that—take a dozen shrimp, a softball-sized portion of rice, and top the whole thing with half a cup of buttery sauce—without gaining weight, but it wasn’t Randy’s fault. Sure, he was a little doughy around the waist, but nothing like Holly—that was for sure.
They sat down at the table, and Randy raised his glass of wine to Holly’s water glass. “To my future bride. You’re looking better all the time. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks,” she said. But she clinked her glass against his just a little too hard.
Randy didn’t notice.
10
Mike was half an hour late meeting Nicola for lunch at a new restaurant downtown called the Pier.
So this was how it was now. He couldn’t even bother to show up. She’d jumped through hoops to try to revive her career; he wasn’t even going to see the new her and give her a chance to make a new start.
He’d already written her off as a has-been. She’d waited too long to make the change, and she’d lost the only real conduit she had to the industry. She might as well get a job application for Barnes & Noble.
“This comes compliments of the gentleman over there,” the waiter said, pointing to a guy two tables away. He was probably mid-thirties, pretty nondescript, sitting with another guy of the same description. They had to be tourists, unused to the beauty around here, because there were far, far more attractive girls than Nicola to send drinks to. Unless maybe he recognized her from Duet.
He gave a little wave when Nicola looked his way.
She gave a half wave back, then saw that what the waiter had brought was a bottle of Cristal.
And one glass, so he obviously wasn’t thinking he could come over and join her.
“That’s very nice, but it’s not necessary,” she said. Obviously it wasn’t necessary. Kind—or patronizing—gestures from strangers were never necessary. “But thank him for me, please.”
It was the second time this week something like this had happened.
“The bottle’s open,” her waiter said in confidential tones. “You might as well.”
And it was tempting. It had been easy to refuse the tequila shot someone sent to her at Cacique, but she hadn’t had really good champagne for a couple of years now, and as great as it was for celebrating a big occasion, she thought it was even better as a pick-me-up when times were hard.
Sitting here, all alone and conspicuous, in a little place no one had ever heard of felt like a great time for a pick-me-up.
“No, really—” She stopped. How stupid to refuse. The guy had sent it, already paid for it. All she had to do was pretend this happ
ened all the time, give a gracious wave, and drink the champagne.
God knew it would make her feel better.
And she certainly wanted to feel better.
“I’ll take it,” she said.
The waiter chuckled. “Good call. He’s sending it because you’re hot, but you can drink it just because you’re thirsty.”
She laughed out loud at that. No one had ever called her hot before. Three months ago, she might have sat in this very seat with her hair on fire and Mr. Cristal wouldn’t have noticed her. So why not drink his champagne now?
The waiter poured it into her glass. Apparently they did away with the formality of pouring a small amount for her approval first when the wine was sent from another patron.
She took a sip. The bubbles tickled down her tongue, improving her mood instantly. “That’s good.” She smiled. “Turns out it’s just what I needed.” She raised her glass to her anonymous benefactor.
He raised an Amstel Light in return.
She looked away before there was a question in his eyes or a gesture that would require an answer.
Luckily, her phone rang, and grateful for the chance to do anything besides sit alone at her table looking like a loser with an expensive bottle of champagne, she flipped it open without first looking to see who it was. “Hello?” Maybe it was a telemarketer. Normally that would piss her off, but today a nice long conversation about her taste in radio stations would suit her just fine.
“Where the hell are you? I don’t have time for this bullshit!” It was Mike.
She matched his anger and upped him indignation. “I’m at the Pier—where the hell are you?”
“What pier? San Francisco?”
“That’s a wharf. I’m at the restaurant, and you were supposed to be here”—she looked at her watch—“forty minutes ago. But this is a nice defense. Good offense and all.”
“I’m at the Pier, and you’re not here.”
“Yes, I am. Where are you?”
“Out front. Where are you?”
“Inside.” Dumbass. “You weren’t here when I got here, so I took a table. You know, the way we always do it.”
“I looked inside.” His pause also implied dumbass. “And you weren’t there, so I decided to wait outside.”
She frowned and looked around. “Well, I’m here.”
“Where?”
“Along the wall. Like three feet from the fountain.” She saw him, then, by the hostess’s stand, squinting and looking with blind eyes around the room. “Right here.” She waved a hand.
What was with him? Was he suddenly blind?
“Wait . . . where?”
She waved again, looking directly into his eyes. “Right. Here.” She gestured for him to come over.
His jaw went slack. “I . . . see someone waving . . . but . . . it’s not you. What the hell is going on? Am I being Punk’d?”
She sighed. “Mike, you’re not nearly famous enough to be Punk’d. Now get the hell over here and stop this bullshit.”
But he didn’t move.
That’s when she realized that she looked different to him. He hadn’t seen her since the nose job.
The nose job that was supposed to make her look like herself, only better, but that had, in fact, rendered her unrecognizable to her own grandmother and, now, to her agent, with whom she’d been working for ten years.
She flipped her phone shut and got up to walk over to him, moving with the kind of caution the Incredible Hulk had to use when he was big and green instead of nice old Bill Bixby.
“Mike,” she said when she got close enough. “It’s me.”
His brow furrowed into a collection of lines. “Nicola?”
She was embarrassed now. She felt like she’d gotten a Halloween mask stuck to her face and she couldn’t get it off. She couldn’t remove the visage, prove who she was. All she could do was talk, in an increasingly pleading manner, to a friend she’d known for a decade who was now looking at her like she was a stranger.
“Yes,” she said, her voice more confident than she was. “God almighty, Mike, I only had a nose job. It’s not like I was disfigured in an accident.”
“But you look completely different!”
“No.” Her voice grew thin. “I don’t.” But it sounded more like a question than an answer. Did she?
“It’s great.” He smiled. Finally. “You look wonderful, but, wow, what a difference.” He scrutinized her as unashamedly as one might look over a cow at a small-town agricultural fair. “You must have had more than your nose done.”
She shook her head. “Nope.”
“A little lip injection?”
She scoffed. “No.”
“Eye lift?”
“Mike, I’m serious—I didn’t have anything else done.” She shook her head. “But, for what it’s worth, you’re not alone. My grandmother didn’t recognize me, either.” She took him by the arm. “Come on, let’s go sit down. We’re getting a lot of looks.”
They went back to the table and sat down.
“Champagne,” Mike commented with an approving nod. “Good call.”
“It wasn’t my call. It was that guy over there.” She smiled at the guy again and he smiled back. “He sent it to my table.”
“One glass, I notice.”
“Go figure. I guess he’s not psychic.”
Mike was still looking at her: up, down, side to side. She couldn’t even take it personally; it was so obvious he was trying to connect the dots and make her into someone he recognized. “So you had your nose done.”
“Yup.”
He blew into his cheeks, then out in one long stream, like a balloon losing air. “I gotta say, you look hot.”
“Thanks.” To the point. “Can you get me work now?”
His gaze shifted instantly from detached appraisal to scrutiny. “As Nicola Kestle?”
She was taken aback by that. “What are you talking about? Of course as Nicola Kestle!” But her words, so obvious and so rightly forceful, hung uncertainly in the air. “Why in the world would you ask that?”
“Because you’re not Nicola Kestle anymore.”
“Yes, I am.” She was incredulous. “I don’t even know how to argue with that. Just tell me you can get me some good jobs.”
“I can try,” he said, steepling and unsteepling his hands in front of him. “But . . .” He met her eyes. “You don’t really look like the Nicola Kestle people expect anymore.”
This was stupid. “But I am!”
People from several tables around looked in her direction.
“I am,” she said again, more quietly but with equal force. “How could I get work as anyone else?”
Mike laughed. “I’m not suggesting you go out and try to get work as Angelina Jolie—”
“I didn’t say that!”
“—only that you are not the Nicola Kestle that I made famous.”
She was no longer the product that he had supposedly made famous. Though, frankly, she kind of felt like he’d just gone along for the ride once she lucked into the Duet role.
Then he’d gotten off when the bus slowed down.
“Then who am I?” She caught his gaze and held it. “Seriously, Mike, who am I if I’m not me?”
He winced and twined his fingers some more, but he didn’t shy away. “That’s hard to answer, Nic. Because your stock-in-trade was your whole ethnic-looking girl-next-door cuteness. Now you look like a new person. A beautiful woman,” he hastened to add. “But not the cute, ethnic girl next door. The kid from Duet. So how do I sell you?”
“The same way you always have: as an actress.”
He laughed outright at that. “Honey, that just ain’t possible in this day and age. You’ve got to have a thing, and ideally it’s a thing everyone identifies with you. Don’t get me wrong—you look pretty gorgeous. But as far as the industry goes, you’re starting over at zero.”
This was incomprehensible. “What are you talking about? I realize I’m not Jennife
r Aniston these days, but I’ve got a name. People know who I am!”
He raised his glass. “Not anymore.” He drank.
“But . . .” This wasn’t how she’d planned things at all. “I had only a minor rhinoplasty.”
He snorted. “It made a major change.”
“You said I needed that change!”
He shrugged. “You’re right. I did say that. I was only reporting what I’d been hearing. But, sweetheart, you look like a different person. It’s one thing to have a small nip or tuck to make you look like you only better.” He drank again. “You’re unrecognizable.”
How could she argue with that? Even her own grandmother didn’t recognize her.
“So you’re saying I’m a complete unknown all over again. Aren’t you up to that challenge?”
He flattened his hand and tipped it side to side. “A complete unknown of a certain age. That’s what makes it difficult.”
She groaned. “So now I’m old and anonymous.”
This had been a mistake. This had been a colossal mistake. On some level, she’d known it as soon as the swelling began to go down and the magnitude of what she’d done became clear. She’d wanted so badly to be pretty—and now she was—that she hadn’t thought about all the other implications. The possibility that she would no longer stand out, the possibility that she wouldn’t be any “type” at all anymore.
And on top of that, the more she walked around being generically pretty, the less she felt like she had any identity herself.
“Well, you do look terrific for your age,” Mike said, evidently thinking he was being encouraging.
Frustration choked the words out of her. What could she do? What could she say? She was devastated, but she knew it would be days, maybe weeks, before the tears came.
She’d gone through a surprising amount of physical hell, followed by an ongoing dose of emotional hell, because Mike—and, more important, all the casting directors in the United States—had indicated that she didn’t have a hireable look.
So she’d changed it.
According to their specifications.
Now she was no one.
“Get me some auditions,” she said quietly but firmly. “I did what you told me to do—now take up your end of this.”
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