She’d been the target of too many of Bram’s cat-and-mouse games not to see where this was headed, and she didn’t like it.
He steered her around a corner. “Do you have any idea how much money I could make selling the story of sad, desperate Georgie York begging a man to marry her?”
“Even you wouldn’t do that.” Except he might.
“I guess it depends on how good a slave you are. I hope you’re wearing some sexy underwear because I’m in the mood for a lap dance.”
“I’ll make a phone call for you. There are a lot of desperate girls in Vegas.”
He rapped on a door with the back of his knuckles. “I’m only admitting this to you, Scoot, but I’m pretty much shit-faced from all those martinis they were pouring down my throat. Since I want to be cold sober for your lap dance, I’m sticking to club soda for the rest of the night.”
He didn’t look shit-faced, but she’d learned from past experience that he could consume vast quantities of alcohol before he slurred a single syllable. He was probably messing with her mind about the lap dance, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t conjured up something just as evil to use as blackmail. She could have a big problem on her hands, and she needed to figure out fast how to cope with it.
The door opened, and he swept her into a spacious private suite filled with marble, gilt, fresh flowers, and some very young, very beautiful women only slightly outnumbered by men. Judging by their height, most of them seemed to be basketball players except for a couple of unctuous-looking agents wearing pricey suits, expensive watches, and anxious expressions hanging out in the corner.
“It’s Scooter!” One of the basketball players rose to his feet and flashed a couple of gold teeth. “Damn, girl, you look good. Come on over here and have a drink.”
“Your adoring public.” Bram made a sweeping gesture, then headed for the bar where the women perched.
With only an empty hotel room waiting for her and plenty of women to claim Bram’s attention, she decided she could safely stick around for a while. Besides, she wouldn’t let Bram see her run. She soon discovered most of the men in the room played for the Knicks. The one who’d called her over turned out to be a goofball, but his teammate was a charmer. Kerry Cleveland had sexy dreadlocks, long dark eyelashes, and an infectious enthusiasm. Halfway through her first chocolate martini, she began to enjoy herself. She didn’t have to worry about cameras snapping away, and Bram was too preoccupied with the pretty young things hanging all over him to bother her.
Sometime around two in the morning, the party moved to a private gaming room, where Kerry taught her to play craps. For the first time in months, she was having fun. She’d just made her initial bet when Bram appeared at her side. “You do realize those are five-hundred-dollar chips.”
“I do, and I don’t care. You’re way too uptight.”
“I don’t think you’re uptight, Bram.” A lethal-looking redhead with a cigarette voice tried to drape herself around him, but he shrugged her off and announced he was playing, too.
When it was Georgie’s turn to roll, Bram placed his chips on the Don’t Pass Line. She threw the dice. A cheer went up as she rolled a winning six and five. Only Bram had bet against her.
“Too bad,” she whispered. “I know money’s tight for you, but I’ve heard male prostitutes can make a fortune if they find the right clients.”
“Always looking out for me.”
“That’s what friends do.”
The redhead kept trying to get Bram’s attention, and he kept ignoring her. She finally disappeared, only to return with two fresh martinis. She pressed one in Bram’s hand, but as she lifted the other to her lips, he took it away from her and handed it to Georgie. “Maybe this will loosen you up.”
The redhead looked so undone by his rejection that Georgie would have felt sorry for her if she hadn’t been so pushy. Bram rolled the dice and came up with a seven. So far, he’d broken even, while Georgie was down a few thousand. She didn’t care. This was fun. She sipped her martini and cheered Kerry on when it was his turn.
Time slid by, and the world began to whirl into a kaleidoscope of color. The dice bounced against the table’s edge. The stick swept across the green felt. The chips clicked. Suddenly, everything was beautiful, even Bram Shepard. They’d once created small-screen magic. Surely that counted for something. She rested her cheek against him. “I don’t hate you anymore.”
He draped his arm around her shoulder, sounding as happy as she felt. “I don’t hate you, either.”
Another beautiful minute ticked by, and then, for no reason at all, he pulled back. She wanted to protest as he walked away, but she felt too good.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him approach the redhead. He looked angry. How could he be mad on such a beautiful night?
The dice clicked and clicked again. Bram reappeared at her side. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
That was the last thing she remembered until the next afternoon, when she made the mistake of waking up.
Chapter 4
Georgie groaned. Her head throbbed, her mouth tasted like battery acid, and she had a septic tank where her stomach should be. As she curled her knees to her belly, her bottom brushed against Lance’s side. His skin was warm and—
Nooooooo!
She popped open the eye that wasn’t buried in her pillow.
A cruel blade of afternoon sunlight seeped through the draperies and picked out her lacy white bra lying on the bedroom carpet of her suite at the Bellagio. One of last night’s heels peeped out from beneath a pair of men’s jeans.
Please, oh, please, let those jeans belong to that sweet basketball player.
She buried her face in the pillow. What if they didn’t? What if they belonged to—
They couldn’t. She and the basketball player…Kerry—his name was Kerry…They’d flirted up a storm over the craps table. It had felt so good to flirt. So what if he was a younger man?
Okay, she was naked, and this was awkward. But now Lance was no longer the last man she’d slept with, and that was a sign of progress, right? Her stomach rumbled unpleasantly. She peeled her eye open again. She’d suffered through a few hangovers, but nothing like this. Nothing that had ever wiped out her memory.
The thigh rubbed against her bottom. It felt exceptionally muscular, definitely an athlete’s thigh. But no matter how hard she concentrated, the last thing she remembered was Bram dragging her away from the party.
Kerry must have come after her. Yes, she was sure she remembered him stealing her from Bram. They’d come back here where they’d talked till dawn. He’d made her laugh and told her she had more fortitude than any woman he knew. He’d said she was intelligent, talented, and a lot prettier than most people realized. He’d said that Lance had made himself look like an idiot walking out on a woman like her. They’d started talking about having children together—beautiful biracial babies, unlike Lance’s future pasty-faced kid. They’d agreed to sell the photos of their beautiful baby to the highest bidder and donate the money to charity, which would be especially touching after the Drudge Report dug up news that Jade Gentry had used all the charity money she’d raised to buy herself a yacht. Then Georgie would win an Oscar, and Kerry would win the Super Bowl.
Okay, wrong sport, but her head was hammering, her stomach churning, and a hard knee was trying to wedge deeper into her bottom.
She had to put herself out of her misery, but that would involve turning over and dealing with the consequences of what she saw. She needed water. And Tylenol. An entire bottle.
It began to dawn on her that liquor didn’t give a person total amnesia. This was no ordinary hangover. She’d been drugged. And she knew only one person corrupt enough to drug a woman.
She drove her elbow into his chest with as much force as she could muster.
He gave an oof of pain and rolled over, taking the sheet with him.
She buried her face in the pillow. Soon the mattress sagged as he got up. S
he heard the muffled sound of his footsteps dragging toward the bathroom. When the door shut, she fumbled for the sheet and made herself sit up. The room tilted. Her stomach roiled. She wrapped the sheet around her, wobbled to her feet, and staggered to the second bathroom, where she leaned against the sink and buried her face in her hands.
What would Scooter do if she’d been drugged and woke up naked in bed with a stranger? Or not a stranger. Scooter wouldn’t do anything because nothing this horrible had ever happened to her. It was easy to be all feisty and optimistic when you had a full-time writing staff protecting you from the real crap life tossed out.
As she let her hands drop, a horrifying image greeted her in the mirror, like early Courtney Love. A witch’s brew of tangled cherry-cola hair didn’t hide the beard burn on her neck. Blotches of old mascara smudged her green eyes like mud around an algae pond. Her wide mouth sagged at the corners, and her complexion was the color of bad yogurt. She made herself drink a glass of water. All her toiletries were in the other bathroom, but she washed her face and swirled some hotel mouthwash.
She still didn’t feel capable of coping with whatever lurked on the other side of that door, so she pushed her hair out of her face and sat on the marble tub deck. She wanted to call someone, but she couldn’t burden Sasha right now, Meg was unreachable, and she wasn’t up to confessing her transgression to April, who would be so disappointed in her. A former rock-and-roll groupie had become her moral compass. As for her father…Never.
She made herself get up and tightened the sheet under her arms. The bedroom was empty, but her hopes that he’d left faded when she saw his clothes still on the floor. She shuffled across the carpet and out into the living room.
He stood at the windows with his back to her. He was tall. But he wasn’t NBA tall. He was her worst nightmare.
“Don’t say a word until the coffee gets here,” he said without turning. “I mean it, Georgie. I can’t deal with you right now. Unless you have a cigarette.”
Rage swept through her. She snatched up a couch pillow and hurled it at Bramwell Shepard’s rumpled tawny head. “You drugged me!”
He ducked, and the pillow hit the window.
She tried to go after him, but as he turned toward her, she tripped over the bedsheet, and it slipped to her waist.
“Put those away,” he said. “They’ve already gotten us into enough trouble.”
She had better luck connecting with one of his abandoned shoes.
“Ow!” He rubbed his chest and had the nerve to look outraged. “I didn’t drug you! Believe me, if I was going to drug a woman, it wouldn’t be you.”
She tugged the sheet into her armpits and looked around for something else to throw. “You’re lying. I was drugged.”
“Yeah, you were. We both were. But not by me. By Meredith, Marilyn, Mary-somebody.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“The redhead at the party last night. Remember those drinks she brought over? I took one and gave you the other—the one she made for herself.”
“Why would she drug herself?”
“Because she likes the feeling she gets!”
Georgie had her first inkling that, for once in his life, Bramwell Shepard might be telling the truth. She also remembered the way he’d confronted the woman and how angry he’d looked. She jerked up the sheet and lurched toward him. “You knew those drinks were drugged? You knew, and you didn’t put a stop to it?”
“I didn’t know. Not until I finished mine, looked at you, and realized I wasn’t totally repulsed!”
A rap sounded at the door, and a voice announced room service. “Get back in the bedroom,” she hissed. “And give me that robe! The tabloids have informants everywhere. Hurry up!”
“If you give me one more order…”
“Please hurry up, you dickhead!”
“I liked you better when you were drunk.” He pulled off the robe, tossed it over her arm, and disappeared. She threw the sheet behind the couch and knotted the sash on her way to the door.
The waiter wheeled in the serving cart and arranged the dishes on the dining room table, which sat under a gilded chandelier. She heard the shower go on in the bathroom. Word would spread that she hadn’t spent the night alone. Fortunately, no one knew whom she’d spent it with, so this might work to her advantage.
The waiter finally left. She made a dash for the coffee, then wobbled over to the windows and tried to pull herself together. Far below, tourists had gathered to watch the Bellagio’s fountain show. What had taken place in that bedroom last night? She couldn’t remember anything. Only the first time…
The day they’d met, she’d been fifteen, and he was seventeen. His beauty had left her dumbstruck, but he’d dismissed her with a bored grunt and a single sweep of those cocky lavender eyes. Naturally, she was smitten.
Her father’s warnings about him only intensified her crush. Bram was arrogant, sulky, undisciplined, and gorgeous—catnip for a fifteen-year-old romantic—but he ignored her during those first two seasons unless they were actually filming. She might have been on the cover of a dozen teen magazines, but she was still a skinny kid with gum ball green eyes, marshmallow cheeks, and a Silly Putty mouth. Her skin was perpetually broken out from the makeup she had to wear, and her curly orange Orphan Annie hair made her look even younger. Going out with a few cute teen actors didn’t bolster her confidence, since her father had arranged the dates for publicity. The rest of the time, Paul York kept her locked up tight, safe from Hollywood’s vices.
Bram’s glittering good looks, cocky manner, and street tough’s attitude stirred all her fantasies. She’d never known anyone so wild, so free of the need to please. She laughed too loud trying to get his attention. She bought him presents—a new CD he had to hear, gourmet chocolates that were the best ever, funny T-shirts he never wore. She saved up jokes to tell him, agreed with all his opinions, and did everything she could to make him like her, but unless the cameras were rolling, she might as well have been invisible.
The contrast between his rough upbringing and the polished preppy he played fascinated her, and she pieced together his history from his hometown buddies, loudmouth jerks who hung around the set.
Bram had grown up on Chicago’s South Side. From the time he was seven, when his mother died from a drug overdose, he’d had to look out for himself. His irresponsible father, a sometimes house-painter who relied on his girlfriends for beer money, had died when Bram was fifteen. Bram had dropped out of school not long after and started hustling. One day a wealthy forty-year-old divorcée spotted him while she was doing volunteer work and took him under her wing—maybe into her bed—Georgie had never been sure about that. The woman polished up his rough edges and talked him into modeling. After a high-end Chicago men’s store snatched him up for an ad campaign, he’d dumped his benefactor, taken some acting lessons, and eventually landed a couple of parts with one of the local theater companies, which led to his audition for Skip.
The show’s fourth season began. Georgie promised herself she’d make him see that she wasn’t a nuisance but had grown into a desirable eighteen-year-old woman. They started work in July, shooting on location in Chicago. One of Bram’s loser friends mentioned that Bram was chartering a yacht for a Saturday-night drinking cruise on Lake Michigan. Since her father was going to New York for the weekend, Georgie decided to crash the party.
She dressed carefully in a leopard-print halter dress and little platform sandals. As she stepped on the yacht, she noticed most of the women wore short shorts and bathing suit tops. R. Kelly blared from the boat’s sound system. The women were all in their twenties with gleaming hair, long legs, and sexy bodies, but Georgie held the fame card, and as the boat left the dock, they detached themselves from Bram’s homeboys to talk to her.
“Could I have your autograph for my niece?”
“Do you take acting classes and everything?”
“You’re so lucky to be working with Bram. He’s like the hott
est guy on the planet.”
Georgie smiled and autographed, all the while keeping an eye out for Bram.
He finally emerged from the cabin. He wore rumpled shorts and a tan polo shirt. He had a woman under each arm, a drink in his hand, and a cigarette dangling from his lips. She wanted him so badly she hurt.
The moon came up, and the party got rowdier—exactly the kind of party her father had always kept her away from. One of the girls took off her top. The men hooted. Two of the women started kissing. Georgie would have been okay with it if they’d been lesbians, but they weren’t, and the idea of women making out just to put on a show for men disgusted her. When they started rubbing each other’s breasts, she slipped inside to the salon, where half a dozen guests were hanging out around the bar and lounging on a horseshoe-shaped white leather couch.
An air-conditioning vent sent a chilly blast over her ankles. She’d nurtured so many hopes for tonight, but Bram hadn’t even spoken to her. Above her head, the sound of catcalls grew louder. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t belong anywhere except mugging in front of a camera.
The door opened, and Bram ambled down the steps. This time he was alone. The hope that he might have followed her blossomed as he slouched into a bucket chair not far from where she was standing and looked her over. The combination of his preppy Skip haircut, golden beard stubble, and a brand-new tattoo circling his thin bicep just beneath the sleeve of his knit shirt thrilled her. He draped one leg over the chair arm and took a slug from his drink, his eyes still on her.
She tried to think of something clever to say. “Great party.”
He gave her his familiar bored look, lit another cigarette, and squinted at her through the smoke. “You weren’t invited.”
“I showed up anyway.”
“Meaning that Daddy’s out of town.”
“I don’t do everything my father says.”
“That’s not the way it looks to me.”
She shrugged and tried to look cool. He flicked an ash on the carpet. She’d never been able to figure out what she’d done to earn his dislike except get paid more, and that wasn’t her fault.
What I Did for Love Page 5