Max gave Siena a stern look. They had discussed this ad infinitum. No interviews, no pictures. The article was about her and Hunter. He had no desire to go into print as Siena’s sad hanger-on of a boyfriend or as Hunter’s charity case.
“I appreciate that, Johanna, thank you,” he said politely, forcing himself to give her a friendly smile. He hated journalists, especially fat women journalists. “But as Siena is very well aware, I’m afraid I don’t feel it’s either necessary or appropriate for me to be involved in your piece. And I do have a lot of work to do. So if you’ll excuse me—”
“I thought you said it was only pictures he didn’t want to do?” said Hunter to Siena, who looked the picture of wide-eyed innocence sitting beside him.
“Well,” she said shiftily, “the pictures were the main thing.”
Hunter rolled his eyes. “Siena?” he pressed her.
“Oh, all right, fine,” she admitted grumpily. “He did say he didn’t want to be interviewed.” She turned to Max, gazing up at him with the pleading look that seemed to work so well with every other man in the universe. “But I thought you might have changed your mind, darling. I really want you to do it. For me. Please?”
“Well I haven’t changed my mind,” said Max firmly. He wasn’t giving in to her this time. “And I’m not likely to, when you try to ambush me like that.”
“But why not?” she demanded, screwing her hands into tight little fists and banging them down in frustration on Hunter’s thigh. “You’re part of my life, and part of Hunter’s, a big part. And you live here. If Tiffany were here, she’d do the interview, wouldn’t she, Hunter?”
“Ow,” said Hunter, rubbing his leg.
“She bloody well would not,” said Max, picking his way over boxes of makeup and discarded tripods into the kitchen to grab himself an Oreo from the cookie jar. Tiffany was away filming in Vancouver—as Hunter had predicted, Sea Rescue had been picked up for the full twelve episodes—and Max happened to know for a fact that she’d been relieved to fly back up there last week and miss today’s shenanigans. “Besides, that’s not the point and you know it. We’ve already discussed this, sweetheart. We agreed.”
The photographer leered appreciatively at Max as he stumbled clumsily back toward his study, all blond hair, broad shoulders, and powerful tree-trunk thighs. Now there was a real man.
“You agreed, you mean,” sulked Siena, who always became unreasonable and moody when she knew she was in the wrong.
“I’m not rowing about it,” said Max, returning to his desk and shutting the door behind him.
“Ooo!” Siena squealed in frustration.
Why did he always have to be so infuriatingly self-controlled?
For the next two hours, Siena fumed quietly while the photographer shot roll after roll of film.
For the first time in her life, she was truly, madly in love with someone. And not just someone but Max, Max who was so gorgeous and sexy and talented and amazing that she woke up every morning wondering how on earth she’d ever won his heart.
She never thought it would happen to her—never thought she was capable of that kind of love. But now she’d found it, she wanted the whole world to know that she and Max were together, that it was real and that it was serious between them.
Was that such a crime?
I mean, what did he have to do today that was so earth-shatteringly important that he couldn’t spend five minutes talking to that stupid whale of a woman about how happy he was to be with her?
She didn’t know why, but somehow Siena felt she would have liked to see Max’s love for her spelled out in black-and-white, in print, for the whole world to see. It was as if seeing the words written down might magically transform his feelings into something more tangible, more permanent and safe. It would have meant a lot to her, and he knew it.
But oh no, Mr. Fucking Integrity, Mr. I Have My Own Career and I’m Not Your Sidekick, was too damn insecure to make the effort.
It wasn’t until after two that Max finally emerged from his room to forage for some more food. Things seemed quiet, and indeed, when he opened his study door, he could see that the living room was empty.
Moving into the kitchen to grab a cold drink, he noticed two empty champagne bottles on the table beside an overflowing ashtray, and followed the distant sound of semi-drunken laughter out through the kitchen door and onto the terrace.
Turning the corner to the western side of the house, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Siena, topless and giggling, was swinging from one of the low branches of the cypress tree. Admittedly, the photographer was shooting only her back—this was US Weekly, not Playboy—but on the other side of the tree, a whole gaggle of assistants and lighting guys were sprawled out on the lawn, mesmerized by her little exhibition. Hunter was nowhere to be seen.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Max roared, dropping his plastic glass of iced tea with a clatter and vaulting down from the terrace onto the grass below.
Everybody spun around to stare at him, including Siena, who promptly lost her grip and fell with a shriek into the arms of one of the assistants, a boy of about eighteen who could barely breathe with the excitement of having Siena McMahon’s bare breasts only inches from his face.
She was laughing so hard at first that she could hardly see her enraged boyfriend, let alone respond. That champagne really had gone straight to her head. Extricating herself with some difficulty from the dumbstruck boy’s lap, she collapsed on the grass, rubbing her ankle and giggling. “Damn. I think I’ve twisted my ankle,” she moaned. “It really kills.”
“Put this on,” Max commanded, pulling his old gray T-shirt off over his head as he advanced furiously toward her. “You’re making a fucking spectacle of yourself, as usual. And where the fuck is Hunter?”
Siena took the T-shirt and held it against her chest but didn’t put it on. “He went out,” she replied flatly. Everybody else had fallen silent. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. “His pictures were all finished.”
“But yours weren’t, I see?” snapped Max. “They just wanted to get a few more shots of you with your tits out for their private collections, I suppose?”
Siena sat rubbing her swelling ankle in shock. She hadn’t thought she was doing anything wrong and couldn’t understand his sudden outburst of hostility.
“I wanted some shots of her outdoors, looking natural in such wonderful natural surroundings,” interrupted the photographer in a high-pitched, high-camp whine. “We’re only photographing her back, sweetie, no need to blow a gasket.”
“Who the fuck asked you?” said Max rudely. “Go on,” he shouted, while the nervous group on the ground scrambled hurriedly to their feet. “Get out, the lot of you. The shoot’s over.”
“No, it isn’t!” said Siena, standing up a little unsteadily and flinging Max’s T-shirt on the ground defiantly. “Just who do you think you are, Max, telling everybody else what they can and can’t do? Who made you judge and fucking jury?”
Naked except for her skimpy orange bikini bottoms, and less than half his size, Siena nevertheless managed to look very intimidating when she was angry. Sexy but scary. The crew skulked farther back into the shade. “You’ve seen me topless on the beach a hundred times.”
“That’s different,” he muttered darkly.
“Why?” she challenged him. She was on a roll now. “Because this time I’m in a magazine? My fucking back will be in a magazine? Because I’m trying to promote my film and my career? Because this is what I do for a living?”
Max stood facing her in uneasy silence. He knew he was right to be angry—of course he was angry, dammit—but he didn’t exactly know why. He didn’t know how to defend himself when Siena started yelling at him. It was like she’d turned the tables on him, and managed to seize the moral high ground, when she was the one in the wrong. He felt desperate, trapped.
“Well, I think she looks beautiful,” piped up Johanna, the fat journalist,
who had a problem with aggressive men and wanted Siena to like her.
“Compared to you, everyone looks beautiful,” whispered one of the lighting guys to his friend, who stifled a giggle.
“Do you?” said Max sarcastically. “How fascinating.”
Siena felt her eyes welling up with tears. Her anger was spent, and now she just felt miserable. Max had seen hundreds of topless shots from her modeling days and never batted an eyelid. She couldn’t understand why he was being so nasty to her now.
“Okay, everyone,” she said, her voice trembling with unhappiness and barely contained emotion. “He’s right, that’s enough for today. Thank you all for your time.”
Embarrassed, they all began gathering up their equipment in double-quick time. The fat journalist scowled pointedly at Max in a show of sisterly solidarity and passed Siena her bikini top.
“It’s a terrific interview, my dear,” she said in a stage whisper, squeezing Siena’s hand encouragingly. “Don’t you worry. You can see the copy before we run it in September, in case you want to make any changes.”
“Thanks,” said Siena weakly.
Max was just standing there, bare-chested, looking at her as though she were the lowest form of life. Of course, it was fine for him to stand around with his top off.
After what seemed like forever, he turned away from her without a word and walked back into the house. Seconds later, he was back with a blue Nike sweatshirt on and his wallet and car keys in hand.
“Where are you going?” asked Siena. She now felt utterly vulnerable and afraid, unable to recapture the anger and defiance that had protected her before. All she wanted was for Max to turn around and tell her he loved her. He didn’t even have to say he was sorry. Just not to go.
“Out,” he said angrily, without breaking stride.
She tried to run after him as he got into his battered old car, but she was barefoot and nursing her sore ankle and couldn’t keep up once she hit the pebbles and shingle of the driveway. “Out where?” she called desperately after him. “Max, I’m sorry. Please don’t go. Please!”
He seemed to stare right through her, and with one violent rev of his ancient engine, he screeched out of the driveway, leaving a distraught Siena standing in a cloud of angry dust.
She was still standing there ten minutes later when Hunter arrived back home and got out of his Mercedes looking cheerful and relaxed with a bag of Whole Foods groceries under his arm.
“Siena,” he said, his voice all concern as he registered the forlorn, frightened look in her eyes. “What’s wrong, lovely one? What happened?”
Crumpling into tears, she fell gratefully into his arms.
“It’s Max,” she sobbed. “He’s gone. Oh, Hunter, I think he’s gone for good.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Max drove along the coast road to San Vicente and headed east toward Brentwood, Beverly Hills, and eventually, West Hollywood. Lining the route were sumptuous homes in every style from mock Tudor, to Nantucket Craftsman, to glass and concrete modernist boxes. The blazing afternoon sunshine poured down its life-giving energy on the orange and lemon trees that grew in every garden, overflowing with abundance and color, fruitfulness and life.
But Max barely registered his glorious surroundings as he rattled along in his Honda, the car that Siena had once been too mortified to set foot in but now loved as a battle-scarred old friend, the same as he did.
He felt confused. And angry.
Angry at Siena, and angry at himself.
Fuck.
He banged his fist so hard against the dashboard that the instruments started to spin out of control.
Why. Why?
Why had he lost his temper, why did she have to show off in front of all those people, why didn’t he know anymore if he was even right or wrong to feel so fucking furious?
His temples were starting to ache from the ceaseless, berating, conflicting voices in his head. He swerved, narrowly missing a huge SUV heading for the beach. He could see the Brentwood housewife in his rearview mirror, shaking her fist at him. Silly cow. He’d had it up to here with rich, spoiled women.
If only he could get a break, he thought bitterly. If he could ever have one hit play, or one half-decent film funded, maybe this wouldn’t be happening? But that was stupid. What did his fucked-up career have to do with a houseful of arse-licking media parasites and Siena exposing herself to half of Santa Monica?
He couldn’t think anymore. He needed a drink.
Without realizing it, he looked up to find that he had already turned onto Wilshire and was now practically at La Cienega. The digital clock in front of him told him it was still only half past three, too early to go to Jones’s and hide away in a dingy red booth, unnoticed, to drink himself into oblivion. He’d have to go up to Sunset and try one of the hotel bars.
Veering sharply left, he found himself looking at a hundred-foot-tall picture of Siena—the face of Maginelle—plastered onto the white west wall of the Mondrian Hotel and chuckled bitterly. If that wasn’t a sign, he didn’t know what was.
Five minutes later, he had left his Honda with a disdainful white-suited valet out front—they were more used to Ferraris and Aston Martins, he supposed—and made his way through the lobby to the Sky Bar.
By six o’clock, this famous poolside hangout for L.A.’s movers and shakers would be starting to get busy. By eight, burly doormen would be turning away all but the most beautiful women and most powerful men in Hollywood. But at a quarter to four, Max had the place almost to himself, with only a sunburned family from Pennsylvania and a party of German businessmen to prevent the pretty, sarong-clad waitresses from giving him their full, undivided attention.
He sank down exhausted on one of the oversize cushions underneath the famous potted trees on the deck, and ordered a sour-apple martini.
“They’re pretty strong, you know,” said one of the dark-haired waitresses after watching Max guzzle down his fifth drink as though it were 7-Up.
“So am I.” He grinned at her inanely, already drunk. “I’ll have another, please. May the best man win!”
“Bad day?” she ventured, offering him a bowl of wasabi peas and taking his empty glass.
Max shook his head. “Not really.” He gave a hollow laugh and flopped back on the cushion. He tried to look up at her face, but it was hard to see because of the sun, so he shut his eyes. “More like bad year. Bad life, really.”
“Oh, come on now,” said the girl, with a skeptical raise of the eyebrows. “I’m sure things aren’t that bad. You look fit and healthy to me, and you’ve obviously got money to burn on these.” She leaned over and handed him another neon-green martini, which Max grasped with a surprisingly steady hand.
As her shadow fell across his face, he opened his eyes and glanced up at her flat brown belly, exposed between the top of her sarong and her tight white T-shirt. He was surprised to find he had an almost overwhelming urge to sit up and lick it.
Fuck. He must be drunker than he’d thought.
“Call me if you need anything else,” she said, and before he had a chance to marshal his incoherent thoughts into any kind of a response, she had shimmied off toward the Germans.
He closed his eyes again for a moment, then opened them to find himself being shaken, gently but firmly, by another saronged nymph, this time a blonde with the most enormous pair of tits Max had ever seen.
“Sir.” She leaned down low over his face and shook him again. “Excuse me, sir,” she repeated more loudly.
Max sat up rather too suddenly and felt a wave of nausea hit him like a punch in the stomach. “It’s six-thirty, sir,” the girl was saying. “You’ve been out for a couple of hours. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to settle your bill. Unless you want something else to drink?”
He rubbed his eyes blearily and tried to focus, but it was no good; the bar and pool were spinning around him like horses on a carousel.
Good, he thought. He wasn’t hungover yet, he was
still drunk. And the only thing to do when drunk, of course, is to keep drinking.
“I’ll have another martini, angel,” he said, patting the seat beside him. “Why don’t you sit down for a minute first though, and tell me your name. I’m Max.”
The girl smiled. He was an attractive guy, and she was sure she recognized him from somewhere. An actor, perhaps? Or a producer? Even better. Maybe he could help her out.
“I’m Camille,” she said, extending her hand and looking deep into his eyes. “But we’re not allowed to sit and chat I’m afraid. I’ll get you that drink.”
Max took her hand and held on to it, partly because he wanted her to stay and partly because he hoped it might stop her spinning. She had a beautiful face, but it was hard and, he suspected, lightly surgically enhanced.
When he’d first moved back to California from England, he used to think that all that inner-beauty stuff was a load of crap. But the more time he spent in Hollywood—watching pretty young girls rushing out to surgeons to have themselves carved up, then propping up the bar at the Standard or Koi every Friday night, trying to snag some producer or millionaire, sleeping around and wrecking marriages and families wherever they went—the more he had come to recognize a certain inner ugliness that truly revolted him.
Normally, he wouldn’t have given a girl like Camille a second look. But the combination of the martinis, her incredible breasts, and his renewed fury at Siena—how could she have humiliated him like that—all drew him toward her like a moth to a flame.
“I really have to get back to work,” she giggled, trying to remove her hand from Max’s bearlike grip.
“You’re far too beautiful to be working here,” he slurred, releasing her. “What are you? Actress? Model?”
“Both,” Camille replied matter-of-factly. She knew she was beautiful and wasn’t about to contest his assumptions. “What about you?”
“I’m a director,” said Max, and even in his drunkenness, he clocked the light of interest switching on in her eyes. Poor girl! She probably thought he could help her find work. If she had any idea how broke he was, she wouldn’t be giving him a second look.
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