What I Did for Love

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  “That’s right. Lance only cheated with one woman. With you, there’ll be legions.” She pointed her finger at his perfect face. “I’ve been publicly humiliated once. Call me overly sensitive, but I don’t want it to happen again.”

  “I can stick with one woman for six months.” His eyes drifted to her breasts. “If she’s good enough in bed to hold my interest.”

  He was deliberately baiting her, but his words stung just enough so her sarcastic comeback didn’t sound sarcastic at all. “Then obviously we have a problem.”

  He frowned. “Hey, I’m the only one who gets to put you down. It takes all the fun out of our relationship if you do it to yourself.”

  She hated having him witness even a moment of self-doubt. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  He looked annoyed. “I can’t believe you let that jerk-off do such a number on you. It’s his problem. Not yours.”

  “I know that.”

  “I don’t think you do. Your marriage fell apart because of his character, not yours. Guys like Lance will always gravitate toward the woman they think is the strongest, and the Loser decided that was Jade.”

  Georgie’s control snapped. “Of course it was Jade! She does everything! She’s beautiful, she’s a great actress, and when it comes to giving back, she walks the walk. Jade is out there saving lives. Thanks to her, little Asian girls are going to school right now instead of being forced to sell their bodies to sexual perverts. She’s probably going to win the Nobel Peace Prize one of these days. And she deserves it. It’s a little hard to compete.”

  “I’m sure Lance is starting to figure that out.”

  All the emotions she tried so hard to control boiled to the surface. “I care about people, too!”

  He blinked. “Okay.”

  “I do care! I know there’s suffering in the world. I know, and I’m going to do something about it.” She told herself to shut up, but the words kept tumbling out. “I’m going to Haiti. As soon as I can arrange it. I’m getting medical supplies, and I’m taking them to Haiti.”

  He cocked his head. There was a long pause. When he finally spoke, he displayed an unusual degree of gentleness. “Don’t you think that’s a little…cold? Using a country’s misery for a press op?”

  She buried her face in her hands. He was right, and she hated herself. “Oh, God, I’m horrible.”

  He turned her by the shoulders and drew her to his chest. “I finally get married, and I pick the biggest nutcase in L.A.”

  She was mortified, and she didn’t trust his sympathy. “You’ve always had lousy taste in women.”

  “And a one-track mind.” He tipped up her chin with his finger. “As sympathetic as I am toward that embarrassing nervous breakdown you just had, let’s return to more pressing matters.”

  “Let’s not.”

  “As long as you’re wearing my fake diamond, I promise there’ll be no cheating.”

  “Your promises are worthless. The minute the challenge is gone, you’ll be on the prowl, and we both know it.”

  “Wrong. Come on, Georgie. Put out.”

  “I need a little more time to adjust to the idea of being a slut.”

  “Let me speed things along.” He crushed his mouth to hers.

  This kiss was real, with no photographers watching or directors ready to call “cut.” She began to pull away only to realize she didn’t feel the need. This was Bram. She understood exactly how duplicitous he was, exactly how little his kisses meant, and that kept her expectations comfortably low.

  He slid his tongue into her mouth in a sensuous exploration. He’d turned into a great kisser, and she’d missed this intimacy more than she wanted to admit. She slipped her arms around his shoulders. He tasted of dark nights and treacherous winds. Of youthful betrayal and heartless abandonment. But because she knew him so well, because she was beginning to trust herself, she wasn’t in any emotional peril. Bram wanted to use her. Fine. She’d use him, too. Just for a moment. Just for the lifetime of one kiss.

  He splayed a hand across the small of her back, bringing their hips together. He was hard, and she was going to say no, and possessing that power freed her to indulge. His hand curled over her hip. If only the man who smelled so good, and felt so good, and kissed so well weren’t Bram Shepard.

  Night and the dim light from her bedroom turned his eyes from lavender to jet. “I want you so damned much,” he said.

  A dark, erotic thrill swept through her punctuated by a flash of blue-white light.

  Bram’s head shot up. “Fuck!”

  It took a moment for her brain to function. By the time she processed the fact that the sudden light had come from a strobe, he’d already sprung into action. He swung his legs over the balcony railing and dropped to the roof of the veranda below. She gasped and leaned over the rail. “Stop! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Ignoring her, he scrambled over the roof tiles, just like either Lance or his stunt double had done in a dozen films. The flash seemed to have come from the big tree that draped the property between Bram’s house and his neighbor’s. “You’re going to break your neck!” she cried.

  He lowered himself over the edge of the veranda roof, hung by his fingers for a moment, then dropped to the ground.

  All the security lights in the rear of the house came on. He clambered to his feet, shot off across the yard, and disappeared behind a thicket of bamboo. Seconds later, his head and shoulders emerged as he climbed the high stone wall that divided his property from next door.

  Of all the stupid…She rushed downstairs and ran out into the backyard, which was lit up like midday. The idea of having such a private moment exposed to the world made her sick. She hurried along the path to the wall, her Crocs slapping her heels. The wall rose a good two feet above her head, but she found some footholds in the stones and began pulling herself up. A sharp edge scraped her calf. Finally, she climbed high enough to brace her arms across the top and see what was happening on the other side.

  The neighbor’s yard was bigger and more open than Bram’s, with formally clipped shrubbery, a rectangular swimming pool, and a tennis court. Here, too, the security lights had come on, and she could see Bram racing across the lawn, chasing a man who was gripping what could only be a camera. He must have climbed the tree to spy on them, but he had to be using some kind of high-speed film, so the flash must have gone off accidentally. Who knew how many pictures he’d taken before he’d given himself away?

  The photographer had a long head start, but Bram wasn’t conceding. He jumped over a row of shrubs. The man hit an open space of lawn. He was small and wiry, no one she recognized. He disappeared around a cabana.

  A woman flew out of the neighboring house. In the light flooding the yard, Georgie saw long, light hair and a silky peach robe. The woman rushed down a set of semicircular stone steps into the yard, which didn’t seem like the brightest thing to do with an unknown intruder on the prowl. As she stepped into a pool of bright light, Georgie realized two things at once.

  The woman was Rory Keene…and she had a gun.

  Chapter 11

  Georgie called out softly…ever so softly…and in her friendliest, most soothing voice. “Uhm…Rory? Please don’t shoot.”

  Rory spun toward the wall, her blond hair flying. “Who is that?”

  “It’s Georgie. York. And that man you just saw running across your yard was Bram. My…uh…husband. You probably shouldn’t shoot him either.”

  “Georgie?”

  Her toes were going numb inside her Crocs, and she was starting to slip. “A photographer climbed your tree to take pictures of us. Bram went after him.” She tried to cling tighter to the top of the wall, but her arms were getting tired. “I’m…losing my grip. I have to get down.”

  “I think there’s a gate at the end of the wall.”

  Georgie made it to the ground, but not before she’d scraped her other shin.

  “It’s here somewhere,” Rory called from the ot
her side as Georgie picked her way along the stones. “The studio owns the house, and I haven’t lived here long, so I haven’t really looked for it.”

  Georgie located the wooden gate, partially hidden behind some shrubs. “I found it, but it’s stuck.”

  “I’ll push from my side.”

  The gate dragged but eventually gave way enough for Georgie to slip through. Rory stood on the other side with the gun resting in the folds of her nightgown. Despite her long, sleep-rumpled blond hair, she looked cool and calm, as if confronting nighttime intruders was all in a day’s work. “What’s going on?”

  Georgie looked around for Bram, but he was nowhere in sight. “I’m really sorry about this. Bram and I were out on our balcony when a flash went off. A photographer was hiding in that big tree of yours. Bram went after him. It happened so fast.”

  “A photographer sneaked on my property to watch your house?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “Do you want me to call the police?”

  If Georgie were an ordinary citizen, that’s exactly what she’d do, but she wasn’t, and the police weren’t an option. Rory arrived at the same conclusion. “Stupid question.”

  “I need to…I’d better make sure Bram hasn’t killed anybody.” She took off in the direction he’d disappeared. Just as she reached the pool, she spotted him coming around the side of the house. Other than a slight limp and a murderous expression, he seemed unharmed. “The son of a bitch got away from me.”

  “You could have killed yourself jumping off the roof like that.”

  “I don’t care. That cockroach stepped way over the line.”

  Just then he spotted Rory coming toward him, the gun dangling at her side like a Prada purse. Georgie couldn’t help but envy her. A woman as coolheaded as Rory Keene would never wake up in a Las Vegas hotel room married to her oldest enemy. But then a woman like Rory Keene controlled her life, not the other way around.

  Bram froze. Rory ignored him. “I’ll call my security company first thing tomorrow, Georgie. Obviously, the lights aren’t enough to discourage unwelcome visitors.”

  Bram stared at the handgun. “Is that thing loaded?”

  “Of course.”

  Georgie bit back a wisecrack about the dangers of being armed and blond. Even in jest, it didn’t seem smart to crack a joke at the expense of such a powerful woman, especially one they’d awakened at three in the morning.

  “It looks like a Glock,” Bram said.

  “A thirty-one.”

  His interest in the gun gave Georgie a chill, and she quickly intervened. “You can’t have one. You’re way too hotheaded to be armed.”

  Bram chucked her under the chin in a way that made her itch to slap him. He gave her a quick, businesslike kiss that couldn’t have been more different from the intimate one they’d exchanged a few minutes earlier. “I can’t get used to the way you worry about me, sweetheart,” he said. “How did you get over here?”

  “There’s a gate.”

  Bram nodded. “I’d almost forgotten. Apparently the original families were good friends.”

  Georgie wondered why Rory was in a house leased by the studio instead of in a place of her own. “Bram forgot to mention that you lived next door.” She slipped her hand behind his back, an affectionate gesture except for the sharp pinch she gave him to retaliate for the way he’d chin-chucked her.

  He winced. “Sure I mentioned it, sweetheart. I guess there’s been so much going on that it slipped your mind. Besides, this isn’t exactly a get-to-know-your-neighbors kind of neighborhood.”

  It was true. Pricey estates separated by high walls and locked gates didn’t make for a block party atmosphere. In the Brentwood neighborhood where she and Lance had lived, they’d never met the nineties pop star in the house next door.

  Georgie’s gaze wandered to Rory’s Glock. “We’d better let you go back to bed.”

  Rory slipped her nightgown strap up on her shoulder. “I doubt if any of us will get much sleep after this.”

  “Good point,” Bram said. “Why don’t you come over to the house? I’ll put on a pot of coffee and heat up some of my housekeeper’s cinnamon rolls. You’ll be our first official company.”

  Georgie stared at him. It was the middle of the night. Had he lost his mind?

  “Another time. I need to catch up on some reading.” Rory gave him her coolest look, then shocked Georgie by offering a quick hug. “I’ll call you as soon as I talk to the security company.” She turned back to Bram. “Be good to her. And, Georgie, if you need any help, let me know.”

  Bram’s fake good humor slipped. “If she needs any help, I’ll take care of it.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Rory replied in a manner that suggested she wasn’t sure at all. She walked away, the folds of her nightgown concealing her gun.

  Bram waited until they were on their own side of the wall before he spoke. “If the tabs run any of those shots, we’re going after them.”

  “They probably won’t,” she said. “Not here. But there’s a big market in Europe, and then they’ll hit the Web. We won’t be able to do anything about it.”

  “We’re suing.”

  “Our marriage will be long over before a lawsuit reaches the courts.”

  “What do you suggest? We just forget the whole thing? This doesn’t bother you?”

  The truth was that she’d gotten numb. “I hate it,” she said.

  They walked silently across the yard. She shouldn’t be so upset. The photos of the two of them would lend legitimacy to her sham marriage. But she felt almost as violated as the day the paps had caught her looking at the sonogram. “I’m going to bed,” she said, when they reached the house. “Alone.”

  “Your loss.”

  She was heading up the steps when an interesting piece of the puzzle that made up Bram Shepard fell into place. “Rory has something to do with your reunion show project, doesn’t she? That’s why you were sucking up to her at The Ivy two weeks ago. And that embarrassing invitation to heat up cinnamon rolls…”

  “Babe, I suck up to anybody who might be able to get me a decent acting job.”

  “That’s pathetic. But I’ll admit it’s enormously gratifying to watch you grovel.”

  “Whatever it takes to get ahead,” he said lightly.

  Sleep was beyond him, so Bram went to the pool. Life had become way too complicated, he thought as he stripped and dove in. He’d hoped this idiotic marriage would make things run smoother for him, but he hadn’t factored in how protective Rory was of Georgie.

  He flipped to his back and let himself drift. Every time he tried to dig his way out of the tunnel he’d fallen into, another cave-in threatened to bury him. Georgie thought it was all about money. She didn’t know that he needed respectability more. And he didn’t want her to know. He intended to make sure Georgie continued to see him as the bastard he’d always been. His life was his own, and he wasn’t letting her into any part of it that mattered.

  He hadn’t always been a loner. Growing up without a real family had made him quick to create an artificial one from the guys who’d eventually bitten him in the ass. He’d thought they were his friends, but they’d been users—spending his money, exploiting his connections, and eventually setting him up for that damned sex tape. Lesson well learned. Looking out for number one meant going it alone.

  Georgie wasn’t a user, but that didn’t mean he wanted her rooting around in his psyche, figuring out how much he needed to create a new life for himself. She’d known him too long, she saw too much, and she was dangerously easy to talk to. But he couldn’t stomach the idea of having her watch him fail, a possibility that grew more likely every day.

  Georgie was useful for polishing his reputation and for sex. As much as he wanted to rush that last part, his ugly behavior that night on the boat meant he had to give her as much time as she needed…and then draw her in.

  Four days passed. Just as Georgie began to hope the balcony photos would ne
ver appear, they showed up in a U.K. tabloid. After that, they were everywhere. But instead of revealing a lovers’ tryst, the blurry nighttime images the photographer had caught seemed to show Georgie and Bram having a nasty argument. In the first frame, Georgie looked combative with her hand splayed on her hip. Next came Georgie with her face buried in her palms, remorseful over her self-serving plan to go to Haiti, except even the most casual observer would believe she was crying from their fight. Another picture showed Bram holding her by the shoulders. It had been a comforting gesture, but the shadowy image made his posture look menacing. The final shot, the blurriest of them all, showed their private kiss. Unfortunately, it was impossible to tell whether he was kissing her or shaking her.

  All hell broke loose.

  “I can’t believe these bastards get away with this kind of crap.” Bram took a vicious swipe at a fly that had the temerity to land on the table next to his coffee mug. He’d once made an art out of shrugging off bad publicity, but now he wanted blood—the photographer’s and everyone who’d printed the photos, from the original tabloid to the online gossip sites. “If I could just get my hands on one of them…”

  “Don’t look at me if you’re going to turn violent,” she said. “I’m on your side for once.”

  They were sitting outside at Urth Caffé on Melrose sipping cups of organic coffee. Seven days had elapsed since the photos had appeared. Photographers and gawkers lined the sidewalk, and the Caffé’s other customers were openly staring at the city’s most famous newlyweds.

  Everything she’d hoped to achieve with this marriage was backfiring. All her friends had called except Meg, who was still M.I.A. She’d had to keep both April and Sasha from flying back to L.A. As for her father…He’d stormed over to the house and threatened to kill Bram. She still wasn’t sure he believed her account of what had really happened, and his resistance to their marriage had only intensified. So much for taking charge of her life. Her self-confidence was shakier than ever.

  “Will you smile at me, for chrissake?” His clenched jaw made his own smile suspect, but she played the good soldier and leaned forward to kiss the tight corner of his mouth.