“He wouldn’t—”
“He’s angry,” Lyla said, her attention darting to the producer. “If he shouts at someone, or… hits them… Please, he won’t keep it together if he doesn’t vent, let him vent at you.”
“What about you?” Sadie asked. “He’ll never forgive me for leaving you alone.”
Lyla smiled. “I’ll get in a cab. I’m only going home. I won’t talk to anyone, I promise.”
Sadie nodded and gave her a hug. “Don’t let Bunyan get you down. You and Trick have something special. Something real.”
Lyla nodded, hoping that Sadie was right. “Please, hurry.”
Sadie gave her hand another squeeze before turning to hurry back toward the studio where Trick would be.
When Lyla was alone, she fell back against the wall and covered her face with her hands.
What she’d said to Trick in his dressing room today had already affected him, probably enough that Bunyan’s words would be worming their way into his mind. Lyla knew her husband. She knew that Trick played the character because he’d been taught over and over that his true self wasn’t good enough.
He didn’t believe he deserved her and if he got it into his head that she needed to be free of him, he’d do something stupid.
If that something stupid involved another woman…
Lyla squeezed her hands around her throat. She wouldn’t be able to stop herself, she’d hate him, she’d never be able to forgive any infidelity. If Trick was hers, he had to be hers, only hers.
But she didn’t believe he’d ever cheat on her, not ever. He hadn’t been able to cheat on her on their wedding night and he could have. He wasn’t what the media made him out to be. He was decent, kind, and oh so caring. Trick was hers. Only hers.
They weren’t strangers anymore. They were lovers… and that was where all the problems had started.
Shoving off the wall, she knew what she had to do.
Bunyan wouldn’t like it.
Paul wouldn’t either.
But she was only interested in doing what was best for her man… while he still was her man.
When Lyla heard the hammering on her apartment door, she knew there could only be one person on the other side of it.
Sliding the chain from its runner, she pushed her hair from her eyes and opened the door. Still half-asleep, she didn’t expect the door to fly toward her or for Trick to come barreling inside.
“A note on the fridge, Malloy, really?” he yelled, storming into her living room.
Lyla had come back to her own apartment as much to get her own head straight as to put physical distance between her and her husband. She had no clue what time it was now, but it had to be seriously late. Filming would’ve run into the wee hours and Trick would’ve had to get home before he would’ve known she wasn’t there.
“I didn’t want you to worry,” she said, clearing her throat and finger-combing her hair from her temples.
“Then you should’ve been in my bed when I got home,” he said, whirling around to glare at her. “You think that stunt tonight was bad? This is a thousand times worse. Did they put you up to this? Huh? They tell you to leave me to piss me off and create drama? Is this all part of the plan to make me look like a maniac?”
She knew it! She’d known that Bunyan’s words would’ve wormed their way into his psyche. Considering her husband for a second, Lyla didn’t want to think about the cameras on the wall that would be capturing this fraught moment.
Going to the front door, she opened it and pointed outside. “I don’t think so, Malloy,” he said. “You are not kicking me out, no way!”
“We need blueberries,” she said, focusing her own scowl on him.
There was no way their code was going to fly under the radar now, but what choice did she have? The hallway was the only place that wasn’t monitored by the studio, as a public space it was too difficult to get permission to film out there twenty-four-seven.
Trick lunged over to grab the throw from the back of her couch and although she didn’t get why he wanted it, she didn’t argue, because he did march over the room to pass her to enter the hallway.
Lyla made sure the door wouldn’t lock behind her and then went out, closing the door behind them to limit what the audio recording may pick up. Trick threw the blanket around her shoulders and tightened it around her chest. Was he worried about her modesty? She was wearing her nightdress that covered her all the way to her ankles.
But folding her arms around the throw, she kept it on and leaned away when he bowed toward her and she caught the smell of alcohol on his breath. “Have you been drinking?” she asked, pushing on his chest as he crowded her closer to the wall. “Geez, Trick—”
“I came home to find out my wife left me,” he said, punching the door frame above her head, he gritted his teeth. “Ly! You left me!”
“Trick, calm down,” she said, keeping the throw hooked around her hands, she rested them on the inside of his elbows. Sober Trick was hard enough to reason with when he was mad; intoxicated Trick would be even less reasonable. “Please, we don’t want to make a scene, if we wake up the neighbors and they get this on their camera phones, we’ll end up on the internet and—”
“Isn’t that what you want?” he asked. “You want to be famous, baby?” Crouching, he buried his face in her hair and kissed her neck. “If we do some real nasty things on film, you’ll get your payday.”
Smacking his chest, Lyla shoved him with all her strength. “Don’t you speak to me that way, Nairn. I don’t want to be famous and you know that! Don’t let that… that…”
“Bastard?” he asked, clutching the side of her neck. “I know how to loosen that tongue, baby. We’ve never done it in your bed; let’s christen it tonight.”
“No,” she said, torn between being upset and annoyed that this more vicious version of himself had shown up. “There are cameras in there, did you forget?”
“That’s what you wanted,” he said, holding her hips to angle their bodies together. “You wanted to get filthy on film and I’m here. I’m saying, let’s do it.”
“No! Stop this. Stop being like this. What is wrong with you?”
He hissed a breath through his teeth as he swung down to get in her face. “I love you and I’m not enough for you. You know what that does to a guy? You know what it was like walking into that apartment and finding you gone?”
Lyla reached for his face with a slow hand, but he ducked away and stormed a few paces down the corridor. “I don’t want to be famous and you know better than to believe Bunyan or anything he says. If you believed I was like that, you wouldn’t be in love with me… My problem isn’t with you, it’s with… everything else. I was so confused in Bunyan’s office without you. I didn’t know what to do and he told me… he said I should seduce you, that I should let them film it without telling you. Do you know what that felt like?”
“You did tell me,” he muttered. “You did what you were supposed to.”
Lyla was glad that she’d been honest with him. Despite the way things turned out, she would rather deal with this than exploit Trick in the way so many other people had. “I don’t like seeing you upset. I don’t like causing that upset.”
Spinning around, he held open an arm. “Then come back to me,” he said. “I told you the only way to hurt me was to leave me… Come back to me, Malloy, and we’ll be just fine.”
“Come back to what?” she asked. “Do you want to share a bed with me when there’s a lens recording everything we do? Every time you touch me in front of that camera, it cheapens this, it makes me wonder if…”
“If it’s all fake,” he said and his arm fell.
Just like she’d said in his dressing room. Lyla was new to this celebrity thing and new to being monitored and deconstructed. She didn’t know how to deal with intimidating executives or contracts and sexual setups.
Her love for Trick felt so real and solid when they were just them. But when the camera turned on and they had to become t
heir characters, she felt like they lost a bit of what made their bond so strong. Maybe she just needed time to get used to it. If she had her confidence, and knew how to tell Bunyan to leave her alone, then maybe she could be what Trick needed.
But Lyla didn’t want to ever be in Bunyan’s office in that same position again. She didn’t want to be standing in Trick’s arms wondering if he was suspicious of her motives, and she didn’t want to ever be suspicious of his.
And that fight. She didn’t want to be the reason Trick was mad or the cause of him being sued or hurting someone. Sending Sadie after him was supposed to offer him a relief valve, but he was here tonight, just as keyed up as he had been earlier.
“I didn’t ever think in a million years that I would actually fall in love with you,” she said, recalling what she’d thought during the panel when Sadie had seemed so sure that Lyla would sleep with Trick.
Lyla hadn’t believed it was possible, yet here she was, standing in her hallway with tears streaking her cheeks, looking at the man she loved who didn’t appear to be angry anymore.
A kind of resigned dejection settled over him. He exhaled and dug his hands into his pockets. “Go back inside, it’s cold out here.”
“Nairn,” she whispered, but when she tried to reach for him, he took a step backwards.
“I told you if I didn’t satisfy you that you had to cut me off. I told you not to hesitate… You promised never to lie to me, Malloy, and all you’re doing is being honest, right? I can’t tell you to do that then flip at you for it.” His tight smile wasn’t convincing. “You’re a good girl and you know yourself. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough, baby… I’ll leave you alone.”
Trick walked away down the corridor and she opened her mouth to call him back, but no sound came out. She couldn’t call him back. What would she say? She wasn’t going to invite him in to her apartment, and she wasn’t going back to his place with him either.
Conversations in the hallway weren’t secure and fighting would be guaranteed to bring the neighbors out of their apartments. Even after he was gone, she stayed put. Numbness had taken her over and she felt that cold he’d referred to.
She’d left him. Had she really left him?
Lyla loved him; she hadn’t meant him to think anything else. He knew that, didn’t he? But until she could be comfortable with their relationship being in front of the lens, she couldn’t be what he needed her to be and couldn’t share the marital bed with him.
Why was it she could be so confident in front of the Boys Night lens and so uncomfortable filming Opposites?
Because one was spontaneous and fun. The other was contrived and contorted.
Being on Boys Night was her choice and they’d captured a genuine moment between new lovers. Opposites was artificial. It was cut and reset over and over until the producers got exactly the shot they wanted.
Lyla didn’t want to recreate her first night with Trick. Didn’t want to be told when or how to seduce him. All she wanted was to be a woman in love with her man and as long as Alan Bunyan was in charge of that show, he was in charge of their relationship too and that was one element of control she just wasn’t willing to relinquish.
TWENTY-FOUR
Lyla had thought that Bunyan and Paul would go postal about her moving back to her apartment.
They didn’t.
They said it was believable for there to be bumps in the relationship since the couple were so different from each other. The drama was exactly what they wanted.
She and Trick got through a whole week without seeing each other. Until Trick, Lyla had never missed a person so much that her body hurt whenever she thought about them. And she thought about her husband a lot.
It would be easy to go and knock on his door. Easy to call him up and ask him to come and visit her. But with the cameras set up in both of their apartments the studio were determined not to miss a thing and she didn’t want to share him, just like he’d said he didn’t want to share her.
So, the cameras followed her and they followed Trick. Separately. Her interviews revolved around being told stories about what Trick was up to and being asked to comment. Apparently, he’d been out clubbing a few nights this week and the interviewers were very interested to find out how she felt about that. Lyla tried to keep her responses short, knowing that they really wanted Trick. They didn’t want her. So, she tried her best to be polite, but vague.
The pressure was on Trick right now to carry the show. Lyla wasn’t clubbing or hanging out with famous people. Her life was as boring as it had ever been.
The show that aired last night had revolved around their second week of marriage. Seeing them back then, still new to each other, learning how to live together, was nostalgic. If it was possible to feel that way about something that happened two weeks ago.
Lyla was at work, in her old routine, sitting in the canteen, eating her packed lunch and sipping her smoothie when a shadow made her look up.
Ah, the Cronies, it had been a while.
“I guess it was only a matter of time before you did it,” Faith said.
“What?” Lyla asked, turning the page of her open magazine and picking up another carrot stick.
The three women sat down with her, two opposite, and one at the end of the table. “Do you feel ridiculous for doing it?” Chelsea asked.
“I still don’t know what ‘it’ is,” Lyla said.
“We saw what you were like with him at the team-building thing,” Faith said. “How did you get him to look at you like that? Is he that good an actor?”
“He?” Lyla asked, realizing she’d learned something from her husband about being a smart ass.
“Trick,” Dinah said. “We heard… you messed it up. It’s over… right?”
Ah, yes, the good old rumor mill. It was difficult to always be on top of the current titbit. Lyla knew she’d been a subject on the gossip list regularly since marrying Trick. But with the show airing two weeks after events, sometimes the masses were behind the curve.
The Cronies must be getting fresh information from somewhere. Good for them. It was reassuring to find that some things never changed.
“Yep,” Lyla said, biting into her stick. “I messed it up.”
“Aww,” Faith said, but Lyla didn’t believe she meant the sorrow in the exclamation. “Well, you did your best.”
“Sure, and I’m sure he’s only sleeping with five or six other women by now,” Dinah said.
“Least we can all be sure that’s a list none of you will ever be on.”
Looking up from her magazine, the last person Lyla expected to see standing behind the Cronies was Trick. But there he was.
Tilting her head in question, she watched him come around the table to slide onto the bench beside her, with one leg on each side of the seat.
Picking up her hand from the table, he held it in both of his and fixed his eyes on hers as he took it up to his lips. “You ladies want the skinny, watch the show, in the meantime… get lost. You don’t deserve to be in the presence of my beautiful, perfect wife. She’s worth a thousand of you black-hearted bitches.”
The Cronies squawked and objected, but when Trick turned a glare on them, it didn’t take long for them to scarper.
Only when the trio was gone, did he look at her. “Trick?” Lyla asked.
He’d been doing such a good job of avoiding her that she had wondered if they’d ever talk again. “I broke,” he murmured, kissing her knuckles again.
Sucking in a breath, Lyla tossed her carrot stick back in the box and drew her knee up on the bench to turn toward him. “Broke?”
His brows came down as his hand fell to the bench, taking hers with it. “I didn’t screw around. I broke by coming to see you… I was trying not to do that.”
“Oh,” she said. Lyla didn’t know if it was offensive that he was trying not to see her. “I knew you were avoiding me. I figured you had your reasons.”
“I did, but it’s not like you think,” he said,
putting her hand back on her own leg. “I told you, I’m not what they say I am… I’m not a whore.”
“I didn’t say that you were,” she said, having not considered that he might be here to confess an affair.
But Trick was building up steam and didn’t seem to hear her. “Baby, you’re the one who came to me and threw me against a wall because you wanted to have sex on camera. If I’d done that to you, you’d have cursed me up and down every alley in the city.”
Lyla couldn’t deny how she would’ve reacted if the shoe was on the other foot. “I know,” she said, nodding. “That’s why I thought I could let you know—”
“Not before you gave them something,” he said. “You know we’re going to have to watch that? They have you unzipping your dress, flashing your tits at me… you putting your hand in my pants… They have that, and they will use it.”
Yes, they would because it was the juiciest thing they had on show. “I didn’t know what to do, Trick. They cornered me. Told me we had to do something spontaneous and—”
“And you didn’t think you should’ve said no? If you’d said you wouldn’t do a damn thing without bringing me into the meeting, do you think that blow out would’ve happened?”
So he blamed her for everything. “I… I didn’t mean for everyone to fight like that… I had no idea that Bunyan felt that way about me.”
“And the first thing you did after was leave me.” He sighed. “You did the right thing. I told you as soon as I wasn’t good enough for you that you should split and you did,” he said and stood up to pull something out of his back pocket. Throwing it on the table, he took his leg out from under the table. “It’s an invite to my birthday thing next Friday. I want you there. Show up or don’t, it’s your call.”
Looking at the white envelope on the table, Lyla was stunned. But when he turned to go, she grabbed his hand, halting him. “Nairn,” she whispered, and the heat behind her eyes quickly became tears. “I… I feel lost without you.”
Lyla was terrified as she lifted her gaze, and her fears weren’t allayed when she found that he wasn’t looking at her. But he didn’t try to pull away. After a second of nothing, he turned his hand into hers and just held her for a minute.
Getting Tricky Page 24