by Rachel Hauck
Old. Refurbed. A put-down if Taylor ever heard one.
“Again, why are you here?”
Doug’s gaze passed over her as he angled to see out the stacked panes. “Nice deck. Great view of the river.”
“We like it,” Jack answered, tense and suspicious, his tone marking his territory.
“Can I offer you some . . . tea or coffee? Water?” Taylor gave Jack a pointed look. What? I don’t know why he’s here. She felt trapped between Doug’s invasion and Jack’s stony stance.
“No, nothing for me.” Doug gave Jack the once-over. “You play ball?”
“Yeah, a little. Relieves the—”
“Tension. I’d agree. I shoot a bit of hoops myself.”
“Doug, I know you didn’t come here to talk basketball with Jack.” His presence seemed overbearing, nosy, as if inspecting where Taylor landed. Well, it wasn’t his business.
“I need you for a job.”
“A job? What sort of job?” Working for Doug and Gossip had kept her busy when she first came to the city eighteen months ago, kept her name out there and the bills paid. But they were the fame jobs. Not the fortune ones. Commercial jobs, like working for an agency like Jack’s, were where the money could be found.
“Don’t worry, not another Brandon Colter shoot.”
“Thank goodness. He was a real treat,” she said. The teen rocker showed up late, with glassy eyes, slurred speech, and five beautiful, very skinny girls as his entourage. It took Taylor two days to do what should’ve taken her one.
“Oh, say, how did the gig from CBS work out?” Doug asked, his eyes steady on her. “I told them you were the best.”
“It turned out. I’m shooting the cast of Always Tomorrow in the morning.” He was marking his territory. Letting Jack know he, the mighty Doug Voss, took care of his girl. But she wasn’t his girl anymore.
“Excellent. See, babe, I got your back.”
“What’s this CBS job?” Jack shifted his stance over the restored hardwood. “Does it pay money? Voss, you seem to send her work that ends up costing her more than she earns.”
“Ah, husband and agent, I see.”
“ ‘Husband’ pretty much covers all the bases, I think.”
Doug made a face, turned to Taylor, rolling his eyes. Get this guy. “So, you’re shooting the cast of Always Tomorrow?”
“In the morning, yes.”
“The pay is good? I told them not to go cheap on you.”
“Better than most.” CBS wanted a photo spread of their first and longest-running soap opera cast as they marked the end of the show’s sixty-two-year run.
“The last show airs at the end of the month,” Taylor explained to Jack. “Doug got an exclusive for Gossip.”
“They have fans all around the world,” Doug said. “Gossip will be going into forty languages for that special issue. Taylor’s photo will be on the cover.”
“Is that why you’re here? To check on the job?” Taylor asked.
“No, actually, I have another job for you.”
“You seem to be swimming in jobs for my wife, Voss.” Said with an edge, a hint of possession rather than affection. Taylor cut Jack a sharp glance.
But Doug chuckled, easing down into a chair, slowing the game, playing at his pace. “What about your aunt? Did you contact her?”
Colette Greer, Granny’s sister, was the madam and star of Always Tomorrow. She had played Vivica Spenser all sixty-two years—from teen to grandmother, from cheerleader to business tycoon and matriarch. Though a familiar face on daytime television, she was a stranger to Taylor and the family. Since moving to New York, she’d seen Aunt Colette once.
“I called her. Doug, really, what is the job?” The tension wafting off Jack pressed against her, stealing her strength.
“Are you looking forward to seeing her?”
“Voss, she’s asked you several times. What’s the job?” Jack’s phone pinged from his pocket. Probably Aaron. Where are you? But he didn’t answer.
“Pardon me.” Doug remained in control, undaunted by Jack’s presence. “Taylor is my friend, despite our . . . past.”
“Which is exactly what you are. Her past. Now state your purpose and go.” Jack’s elevated voice boomed into the space between them.
Taylor felt it beat against her heart. “Jack, please.”
“State my purpose?” He glanced about the small but airy, modern apartment. “I wanted to see how you fared.” His tone, his gaze bored into her. “To see if you were happy. After all, you left me and next thing I know you’re married to this man.”
“Stop, right now.” Taylor held up her hand and moved to the door, somehow commanding her weak legs. Doug was maneuvering, manipulating. She could feel it, and if she waited another moment, he’d soil her soul with his brand of charm.
“Listen, Tay,” Doug said, still seated. Reclining. “LA next week, you and me, the staff, at the Emmys.”
“What? You’re kidding.”
Doug Voss was beyond her Big Mistake. Her time with him had been a desert. A season where she’d stopped hearing the heartbeat of God. She never wanted to go there again. So why spend a week in LA with him? Even for a job.
“Would I kid about business? Never. I need you for the Emmys. You’re the best photographer in the business for the red carpet.”
“I’m not the best—”
“Jack, tell her, she’s the best.” Doug baited Jack, but he was in advertising, used to the cloak and mirror of swindlers.
“She’s the best.”
“Are you and that fancy firm offering her any gigs? You know she wants to go commercial.”
“Doug—”
“So, what do you say? You and me in LA for a week? Visiting our old haunts? Seeing the old gang?”
The old gang were his friends. And Taylor saw more than just work in his thinly veiled offer. He didn’t like losing things. Especially the women in his life.
“No, Doug, I’m busy.”
“If you change your mind . . .” With a cocky grin, Doug left, unfazed by her rejection, as if he had a plan to change her mind. When the door clicked shut, Taylor shivered, peering sideways at her husband.
“What did you ever see in that guy?”
At first, everything. “I’m just glad I saw the light.” She smiled at Jack, inhaling. “Go, play ball. Have fun. Tell Aaron hello.” She motioned to the door, pushing every ounce of merriment to the surface. All is well!
“You okay?” Jack slipped his hand lightly about her waist, kissing her temple.
“I’m fine.” Now. Really fine. She rested her cheek against his chest where the soft motor of his heart reached her ears and reminded her why she’d said yes.
Chapter Three
JACK
He looked toward the door, a familiar dark wave crashing over him. Doug Voss had come to his house and mocked him by flirting with Taylor. An unease belted his middle.
Voss would be back.
Jack had known about Voss before they married. Taylor dated him briefly in LA when he flew in for business. Then she moved to New York to be with him, breaking up shortly after.
What she saw in Voss confounded him. He was arrogant and rude. But he was also wealthy, powerful, and some sick version of charming.
Yet she chose you, man. You.
However, in the moment, the private confession carried no weight.
Jack exhaled, holding Taylor a bit closer. She seemed flustered. Bothered. “You okay?” From his pocket, his phone buzzed again. He pulled it out to peek at the screen.
Aaron. He’d have to wait.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” She pushed out of his arms, leaving him instantly cold, aching to reach for her. “Aaron is going to wonder what happened to you.”
“I don’t have to go . . .”
“Sure you do. Blow off steam and all that . . . Plus, I have work to do.” Taylor waved toward her computer.
“Right. Well then.” Jack reached for his gym bag. “I won’t be lo
ng. And, Taylor, you are a great photographer. One of the best.”
The best. In every sense of the word. Since he first met her in tenth grade, Taylor Branson captured his imagination. He just never had the courage to do anything about it until they ran into each other on Madison Avenue one cold January day.
He’d come to love the city, the avenue, the job that brought him the life he dreamed of during the dark days of his youth in Heart’s Bend, Tennessee. The city, the avenue, the life that brought him Taylor.
“See you,” he said without moving toward the door. Should he stay?
“Have fun.” Her smile caught the light of her desk lamp and filled Jack. “Really. Have fun.”
“Oh, Taylor, I forgot.” Jack leaned on the doorknob, watching her, moving from insecure husband to confident ad man. “I have a job for you.”
She glanced up from her computer. “You have a job for me? What sort of job? Not another ‘old friend’s’ wedding. Jack, I won’t do it—”
“A shoot for Architecture Quarterly.” His boss, Hops Williams, would kill him for giving a job to his wife, but Jack could endure his pseudo wrath. He earned the man boatloads of money.
Besides, Hops had asked Jack to relocate. Head up a client’s foundation. In London. A request he had yet to pass by Taylor. What was a bit of nepotism in light of moving across the ocean?
She gasped. “AQ? A commercial shoot? Jack, really?” Her expression softened. Joy sparked in her blue eyes.
“Kind of. It’s part of their new brand. With all the DIY shows and HGTV, there’s a new interest in architecture. They have a campaign going and there’s a building—” Jack had no clue about the details. He’d only overheard pieces of conversation between Hops and AQ’s publisher, Cabot Grayson. “Somewhere.” Jack smiled, determined to do this for his wife. Let her know, in some way his words could not, that he believed in her. “I’ll get the details.”
“And they want me?”
“They asked for a photographer. I put you forward.” Was it so wrong to shade the truth for love? He wanted to be her hero. He wanted her to not regret taking a leap with him.
He’d have a whale of a tale to tell Hops in the morning. But it was a small job. Surely he could bend a few of his rules for Jack, for his new bride.
“Really? When were you going to tell me?”
“Tonight. Like I said, I meant to when I walked in—” And London. He needed to tell her about London. But he had a presentation this week and he wanted to shut out everything else until it was perfected.
Nevertheless, he felt the weight of his lie. If it boomeranged, he’d be in trouble with his boss and his wife.
The dark wave rolled toward him again, crashing over the rocks of his soul. Nothing good stayed the same for Jack Forester. Ever. This issue with Hops, his job, his new marriage were simply illusions.
“Jack, I’d love to do the job. Thanks for thinking of me.” Taylor moved across the room toward him, the long angle of the kitchen light kissing the top of her golden-brown hair. “When is this job?” She kissed him, wrapping her arms around his neck, leaning her body against his.
“I-I th-think next week.” Jack buried his face in her long, silky hair. “I’ll have Petra e-mail you and Addison.”
“Th-thank you.”
And his heart sighed.
“As for earlier, the household chores and stuff, we’ll figure it out, Taylor. We will—” Again, his phone buzzed. More demanding than the last time, if possible.
Taylor stepped out of his arms, returning to her desk, and for a second time a cold chill rushed his chest. “Go! We can talk later. Aaron is going to be livid.”
“Taylor,” Jack said, easing the door open. “About Doug—”
“Forget him, Jack. He just likes to get his way.”
He nodded. “But he’s pretty persuasive.”
“What are you saying, Jack?” The glow of her computer screen highlighted the smooth, high planes of her face, and the sight knocked the gumption out of him.
“Nothing. Just an observation.”
Just a fear that Jack could lose her. How could he tell Taylor, show her, how much he was all hers? Love was such foreign ground for him.
What he wanted to ask was if she still loved him. Their whirlwind romance and marriage happened on the edge of Taylor breaking off her relationship with Voss.
But asking would make him look weak and sound pitiful.
“Don’t work too hard, okay?”
She nodded, smiling. “Don’t play too hard.”
“With Aaron? No way. It’s all out.”
He needed to play hard. Needed to exorcise doubt and the scum of Doug Voss from his soul. Perhaps happily ever after was not in the cards for them—surely they leapt without looking—but Jack held on to hope. Giving Taylor the benefit of the doubt where that guy was concerned seemed like a good place to start.
Chapter Four
COLETTE
MANHATTAN
Her day began in the back of a taxicab, riding to a photo shoot, being whisked across the river to a Brooklyn studio where she and her Always Tomorrow cast members would pose together one last time.
The end of an era. A very long, glorious era.
Colette twisted her handkerchief around her fingers. She’d not become weepy or sentimental. But the end of an era? Well, what was an old soap opera siren supposed to do with her life now?
There had been several endings in her life, the most painful ones occurring before she turned twenty-one. Being sent out of London to live in the country at the start of the Blitz. Though that was seventy-five years ago, there were days, like today, when it felt like yesterday.
Then the death of her parents during the war, and leaving England at sixteen to live with her aunt and uncle in Tennessee.
Running away from Heart’s Bend at nineteen. Leaving him and her very core behind.
“Zoë said your niece is going to be the photographer on this shoot. I didn’t know you had a niece in town.”
“What?” Colette turned to Ford, her manager of fifty-one years. Her most constant friend besides her alter ego, Vivica Spenser, whom she embodied on Always Tomorrow since the summer of ’54.
“Your niece? She’s the photographer today?”
Her niece? “Oh yes, Taylor. My sister, Peg’s, granddaughter.”
“Peg?” Colette knew that expression, the raised eyebrow and lowered chin, peering at her with expectation. “Don’t tell me that’s not bringing up some buried feelings,” he said.
“Really, Ford, you should’ve been a psychiatrist instead of a talent manager.”
“I didn’t know there was a difference.”
Colette pressed her hand on his arm. “Seeing Taylor won’t bring up buried feelings.” Thanks to her career on the small screen, she’d perfected the art of pretending. She could sell water to a drowning man. “We’re practically strangers. I met her when she was a girl, twenty-plus years ago. The last time I was in Heart’s Bend. When you coerced me into being their Christmas parade marshal.”
She’d been out of the country when her Aunt Jean had died the summer of 1990, so when the parade marshal offer came, Colette’s longing for home, for some part of her roots, won the day. Before the parade, she spent an afternoon with good ole Uncle Fred in the nursing home, grateful he was tender and sleepy with age. That he never asked the hard question, though she read it in his eyes. “What happened, Lettie?”
“Coerced? It was great publicity. Especially after the Daytime Emmy debacle between you and Marilee Jones.”
“She told the world I was a horrible actress. A fraud. What did you expect me to do?”
“Oh, a number of things besides saying, ‘Take that, Marilee. Pfffbbtt!’ when you won best actress.”
“Now that was great publicity.” Colette laughed. Comedians, sitcoms, talk show hosts turned the moment into a bit. One Colette parodied on Saturday Night Live and spoofed on Carson and Letterman.
Ford’s low chuckle made Colet
te smile. She liked the man now as much as ever. He’d been a young, hungry talent scout for a big New York agency when he decided to launch out on his own. He met Colette at a reception for the mayor and wooed her endlessly until she became his first client, the anchor of his agency.
And his lover.
It was an act beyond her sensibilities and moral boundaries. But she was so desperate to move on, to bury her wounds and fears. To feel. When the affair ended, she fled to England for the summer. Why England, with its rude and rough memories, she could never say. Except the fact that she’d been invited to tea with the Queen . . .
Colette gripped her handbag, a Diamatia-Greer, named after her by the exclusive, in-demand designer Luciano Diamatia, who had been in love with her. But she had not loved him.
There were other men. Spice Keating, an old friend from Heart’s Bend and a fellow actor. And Bart Maverick, her Always Tomorrow costar.
All romance found its end road. Because her heart belonged to another.
So she had fame, fortune, and celebrity as her companions. Awards, acclaim, honorary degrees, and a Park Avenue penthouse.
The car jostled from side to side, hitting uneven pavement.
Colette stared out her window as New York passed by. Just like life, if she were honest. She’d slid inside the “ride” of her career and watched life pass her by. She had accomplishments the world envied. But inside she was empty. Though for over sixty years she’d filled herself with foolishness. The hype of the show. The grandeur of being one of the most beautiful, then one of the oldest actresses on television. A career that spanned the ages.
But since the taping ended a month ago, she found her days long and silent. Lonely. And it was then that she began to hear the beating of her own heart.
So much so she thought it might drive her mad.
“Did you decide about the book?” Ford pulled her attention back inside the cab, back to the moment. The cab jerked again as the driver wove through traffic, muttering in Arabic, as orange cones narrowed two thick lanes down to one. “The show is over. You’ve had a month to enjoy your freedom. I declare I don’t know why you didn’t go down to your Caribbean home. Anyway, now that you’ve had some time, you can start work on the book. I’ve been promising your publisher a manuscript for the past three years.”