by Cari Quinn
“Jason Lyons was beautiful—is beautiful, funny, bright, harsh, and didn’t do much more than get my mother pregnant twice between affairs. He was the life of every party. The shining star of the Los Angeles set, the hedonistic icon of Milan and the exotic toast of Paris. He’s the man I aspired to be, to beat, to outshine.”
“Why?”
She blinked up at him. The harsh laugh was out before she could stop it. “Good question. At the time it seemed like it was the only thing I could do to make a mark. Don’t get me wrong, I had a nice life. A childhood that most would kill for. The best schools, the best tutors, the best nannies.”
“What about your family?” he asked quietly.
“My family was all about the parties. I can remember watching from my balcony—my mother and father hosting, the glittering diamonds, the laughter, the music. Every night there was another party or premiere. Sometimes there were smaller get-togethers, but my parents always seemed to be hosting some incredibly important gathering.”
“And you loved it.”
“I loved it, because I didn’t know what it was. From the balcony and the stairwell it looked beautiful and shiny. Like Christmas every day. I didn’t know until years later that most of the parties dissolved into drugs and swinger parties in the basement. Los Angeles was about excess and my parents were the king and queen.”
“And you were the princess.”
She blinked out of her memories, meeting his sad eyes. “I became the princess,” she agreed. “I also learned damn quick that having a teenager around was not good for my parents’ image. So I was shipped off to boarding school.
“I learned that being a Lyons gave me access to parties as a first-year student at Cate Hill Preparatory School. I learned that people wanted to be my friend because of my name. I also learned that doors opened to me because I looked like my mother. I could be funny like my father when I had a few shots of tequila swimming through my veins.”
He folded his foot under his thigh, turning until their knees bumped. “And MJ was born.”
“MJ was far more interesting than Miranda Jayne Lyons. I wanted to be better, more outrageous than my father. I wanted to be glamorous and special like Mother. What did it matter that my mother was sleeping with men closer to my age than my father’s? That my father had a mistress in every hotel and had one-nighters with dozens of other women that circled the party set like piranhas?
“At fourteen, I lost my virginity. I don’t remember who it was, if I was even safe. I remember vodka and tequila, music and a dark corner.” She tried to pull away but he held on tight. “I remember it being fast. I remember it being more than one guy that night.”
“Oh baby.”
“By the time I was sixteen, I was well versed in men and how to make them do what I wanted.” She stared at their linked fingers and forced herself to go on. “By eighteen I’d already had an abortion and a sex video show up on the internet.”
“No. God no.” He leaned back, his hands finally slipping from hers to fist in his lap.
Their knees still touched, but everything was blurry and indistinct as the memories swamped her. Without his touch, she folded in on herself, hugging herself tight. “This is who I am.”
“Wasn’t there anyone there for you, Miranda?”
“My grandmother,” she said quietly.
The tip of his forefinger curled under hers, locked at her elbow. “Tell me about your grandmother.”
She closed her eyes. The first tendrils of hope curled inside her. She was halfway there and he hadn’t sent her away. “Grandmother Woods. She was…” Her life, her mother, her confidante. “She was everything,” she whispered. “When I was nineteen, she whisked me away to this amazing apartment in the heart of Paris. We shopped, we were pampered, we talked,” she sniffled, “we laughed. She was funny, Nate. You would have loved her. She was the best of us by far.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Miranda.”
The way he kept saying her name, as if he was trying to convince himself she was Miranda—it broke her. “It was a great moment in time but even she had an ulterior motive. She wanted me to make something of myself. To be something other than Page Six fodder. I promised her I’d go to college, so I majored in business and finance. I hated it. I went because I should, because I didn’t want to disappoint her.”
Memories of that time were sketchy. She had a reputation to uphold and a kingdom to take over according to Grandmother Woods. A kingdom she had no interest in beyond the money and fame it brought her. She was as bad as her parents.
He smoothed his hands over her thighs. Nothing sexual in the touch, just a steady stroke over her not-quite-broken-in jeans.
“Now I had the pressure to make my grandmother proud of me and to keep up with the reputation I’d built.” She looked up from his steady stroking and forced herself to keep eye contact. “Do you know how easy it is to get pills when you are a Lyons?” She’d needed them to feel alive, needed them to hide. “The harder stuff? The things I did to get my next score…” She swallowed hard but didn’t break the contact. “Nate, the things I did…”
His thumb brushed away tears she didn’t realize had fallen. She curled her fingers around his wrist, holding him there. “I’d do anything to feel alive. I found underground clubs that fed the addiction and catered to the rich.” She shuddered, closing her eyes as disjointed flashes bombarded her. “I did things that make me sick to think about.”
“It’s okay.” His voice was so rough that she opened her eyes. His face was pale and his Adam’s apple bobbed. Was he swallowing down the bile from her confession? “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
She splayed her fingers over his chest, determined to say the rest of it. “In the middle of it all was the men. They used me as much as I used them. The next score was as important as the feel of a man beneath me, behind me, above me. Soon that wasn’t enough and I went deeper into the clubs that focused on underground pleasures.” She tipped her head back. “MJ loved it, reveled in it.”
“What about Miranda?”
She met his eyes. “Miranda was just a memory. MJ was my black butterfly transition. I met James—the girl in the videos with me—and she was just as broken as me. For years we ruled the party scene.”
“What brought Miranda back out?”
“My grandmother died.”
Nate pressed his forehead to hers. The way she’d said it. So simply, so profoundly, cut him deeper than the rest of her confessional. He thought he’d been prepared for what she’d come there to tell him, but he wasn’t. Nothing could have readied him for this. “What happened?”
“I didn’t know she was sick. I was too involved with myself. I knew she wasn’t working anymore, but I’d just assumed she’d finally retired.” Her lower lip quivered just before she sucked it in, mashing her teeth into the soft skin. “She had cervical cancer. They found it late, way after they’d look for someone her age, but it happened nonetheless. Horrible way to die,” she whispered.
He rubbed her arm, urging her on.
“I wasn’t there when she died. I wasn’t there. She had my grandfather, but not me. I didn’t even realize someone had called me about it.”
“Your parents?”
The laugh was harsh. “My mother? No. She was in Milan at the time. She was actually upset that she had to cut her vacation short to deal with ‘that woman’ as she called my grandmother.”
“I’m sorry.” There was so much pain wrapped around her, as much of a shield as it was the result of so many years without a loving family. Of everything she told him, that was the one thing that was painfully obvious. She didn’t know how to love, or have someone love her.
She cupped his face, bumping her nose against his. “Thanks.”
“Was it just her death that made you…” he trailed off, not sure how to describe her leaving that life behind, changing her name. Just how far in hiding was she?
“I went to the funeral, did my d
uties. All of the things I was supposed to do. What a Lyons did for the public image.”
He traced her eyebrow, caught a few more tears that had gathered under her eyes. “Sounds like what she would have wanted.”
“Of course. As amazing as my grandmother was, she was very proper. It hurt her, how I acted in public, but I was too far gone to care. She was the only one who ever believed in me.”
Not the only one. He slowly massaged the base of her skull, watching the tension in her eyes fade a little.
“I was sad, but you know…part of you is ready for a grandparent to die eventually. It’s the order of things.” She rested her cheek against his chest. “But when the will was read, that’s when I went a little crazy.”
“She took you out?”
“Worse,” she said softly. “She gave me everything. My sister, my parents, my cousins. No one got any of her fortune. Grandfather was still the one with all the true riches and he lorded it over my parents, but my Grandmother was Katherine Woods. She’d come from a long line of publishing houses and factories. She was worth a small fortune, and then it was mine. I didn’t have to live off my parents anymore. I was free.”
“That’s a good thing, right?”
“Sure, if you’re normal.” She gave a half sniffle, half laugh. “I didn’t think I deserved it. I still don’t. I was a mess, Nate. Stupid and reckless, and only became more so after she died. In fact, that’s when I hit rock bottom.”
Gathering her into his arms, he draped her legs over his and hauled her onto his lap. He felt her closing off, and that was the only way he knew how to make her stay with him. “What happened?”
“I overdosed. I ended up in a psych ward because they thought I was trying to commit suicide.”
His blood chilled. “Were you?”
She shook her head. “Not intentionally, but to be honest I just don’t know. I wanted to get away from the pain so badly that I went to the ultimate high. I’d done a lot of things, but I’d never quite gone over the edge into hard-core drugs, but I did that night. When I woke up in restraints and so messed up I couldn’t string sentences together I decided it was a damn good thing I finally woke up, in every way.” She pressed her hand against his face. “I put myself in rehab. I walked away from everyone who was bad for me…family, friends and that life. No one understood. My family still believes it’s just a phase.”
She looked into his eyes, her green-gold eyes swirling with so much pain. “You became Miranda Woods,” he said, putting it all together. “What your grandmother wanted you to be.”
She nodded. “I used her money to set myself up here. I don’t know that I’d ever be able to turn my back against California, but my grandparents had a home outside of San Francisco and I always loved it. I still need the city.” She laughed. “I’m not made for the country, but I came here and found Max. He introduced me to Leo and it was Leo who realized before I did that I was never going to be happy working for someone else. Already the restlessness was threatening, so we started working out of a small office, and then I found my building…” She shrugged one shoulder. “And here I am.”
“Did you know they were talking about you on television lately?” he asked carefully. Tension gathered across his shoulders.
She nodded. “For the first year they tried to find me at every turn. James was so mad at me for deserting her.”
A numbness crept through him as he remembered the footage he’d seen. The two women were practically living in the same skin in some of the clips.
“Then she hooked up with Jazz, my sister, and proceeded to tear me down at every opportunity. I let them. I was happy that they were getting the attention. The one good thing about being famous is that there’s always someone out there hungry enough to bump you out of the limelight. But then I got a heads-up from one of the few people I would trust my life to.”
“The whole ‘Where’s MJ’ thing.”
She nodded. “My sister, she opened her big mouth and got the reporters salivating about a story and boom—that’s all it takes.” She sat back, playing with his watchband absently. “I didn’t take you for a tabloid or entertainment program guy.”
“Believe me, I’m not, but it’s on right after the news…” He drifted off. His gut twisted, but none of what she told him would make a difference unless he knew for sure. “I have one question for you.”
She nodded. “Just one? Okay.”
“Were you going to tell me?” He watched her face. Now that he knew some of her background, he understood a lot more about her. He hated that she believed she had to build an entire life…hell, invent another whole person to move on, but he had to know if she would ever have come clean.
She carefully climbed off him, standing with her arms wrapped around her midsection. “No, Nate.”
The sucker punch was unexpected. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. “No?”
“I wanted you, Nate. I fought it, but I wanted you so very badly. But if I could have managed it, I wouldn’t want you to know this side of me.”
“You are MJ,” he said quietly.
“No—”
“Part of you will always be MJ. You don’t trust me.”
“No!” She stepped forward. “It wasn’t that.”
“Wasn’t it? I’m a good guy, Miranda. I always felt like you were holding something back and I was willing to wait, but now you tell me you’d have lied to me every day.”
“I don’t know, Nate. Maybe I would have—”
His gut bottomed out. He could see it in her eyes and the truth couldn’t be shielded by lust or love. Not anymore. “No, you wouldn’t have told me. You never would have been completely mine. I’d always be sharing you with a ghost.”
She shook her head, her face paling. “I don’t understand.”
“MJ has always been there between us. Each time I touch you, after we make love,” she shook her head again but he pressed on, “if it’s hard and fast, or slow and amazing, every time it means more for me, but you’re always pulling away. Are you afraid that—” He broke off as she turned her head, closing her eyes. The tumblers clicked into place. “It’s not just mindless fucking, Miranda. I touch you because I need to touch you.”
“Like a drug,” she whispered.
He stepped forward, grasping her upper arms. “Like a man who was falling in love with a woman. Like a man that was already more than halfway there.”
“Was?” Her voice cracked and it killed him.
“How can I know when it was all based on a lie?”
She wouldn’t look at him, her gaze darting around the room as her whole body shuddered. “I didn’t want anyone to know. I’m not that person anymore.”
“You can’t hide forever. Your past is crowded around my apartment building with cameras and reporters that are probably going through my garbage right now.”
She slipped away from him, her eyes blank as she paced the length of Noah’s house. “If I just wait them out—”
He caught her wrist when she passed him, pulling her around to face him. “What about the next time?” She tilted her chin up, her eyes wide and a little wild. Her cocoa butter spice scent teased him into yielding.
He wanted to cave. Just one step closer and he could have her in his arms. “What did you think would happen if you lied every day? That you lied to me every day?”
“This—between us, this isn’t a lie!”
He closed his eyes against the panic and pain in her eyes. “How would I know?”
“Nate, I—” Her voice stalled out and he dragged his fingers through his hair in frustration.
He turned to her, but her eyes were still shifting around. She was scared, he knew that, even understood that to a degree. But his gut rolled. After all they’d been through she still wouldn’t take a chance on him.
“What do you want me to say? Did you honestly think lying to me all this time would make us okay?” His chest tightened when she just bowed her head without an answer. “Do you even ca
re?”
Her gaze shot to his, misery swirling in tears.
Say something. Anything.
The silence settled like a granite wall between them. He tipped his head back, his eyes dry as dust. Her footsteps and the soft click of the door tore him down the center.
On autopilot, he found himself on Noah’s deck. Full night and the bobbing lights on the water stared back at him. Just how much was he supposed to give when he got nothing in return?
He didn’t know how long he’d been out there when his brother’s voice came from the dark.
“I’m here if you need anything,” he said quietly. “You can stay as long as you need.”
Nate managed to nod, but couldn’t break the stare.
Miranda rubbed behind Stella’s ears, the monotonous sifting of silky fur soothing her as it settled her dog. Her eyes were wind-burn dry and painful but she couldn’t look away from the roofline view. She’d found herself there hours before dawn. Stella hadn’t been more than a step away from her through the night. Even now the protective mutt’s big head was on her lap as the sun’s shimmering fingertips enveloped the city.
Hadn’t the sun heard that today was supposed to be a terrible day? Couldn’t the fog and the heavy clouds bring their normal gloom?
She’d worked all night. It was what she did best, after all. Every site was updated, all the email she’d gotten backed up on was answered, three proposals were finalized and she’d received a reply from Dante about how much he loved his site. He’d also left her a side note to step away from the computer once in a while.
She probably shouldn’t have answered her correspondence at two in the morning.
Her mind wandered with the light breeze that kissed her stinging cheeks. The sudden tongue swipe and blurred vision tightened her chest. A soft whine followed by Stella trying to climb into her lap loosened the rest of the tears. She tucked her face into her dog’s neck and tried to shore up all the walls she’d learned how to build.
With each breath she lost another stone.
The sadness and the anger in Nate’s eyes were so clear in her mind’s eye he could have been standing in front of her. Surely he understood that making herself over from the broken woman she’d been was a good thing?