by Serena Bell
Celine teetered between the bed and the door.
“Please?” Elisa said.
He sighed. “Okay. I’ll talk to him.”
Brett went to the door while Elisa helped Celine back to bed. She could hear the rise and fall of Brett’s and Steve’s voices outside, spiking in anger.
“You’ll be fine. Back on the horse by tomorrow,” Elisa told Celine, partly to cover the sounds of the argument in the hallway and partly to reassure herself.
“I can’t do dating boot camp with a sprained ankle.”
Elisa was inclined to agree, but at the moment she couldn’t let herself think about that. “You don’t know it’s sprained. Tomorrow we can go into town—the bakeries are supposed to be amazing—get you some coffee and plant you by yourself at a little table by the window, maybe? Easier on the ankle than hiking or shopping. And a great way to meet a man and get to know him.” Sober and with your clothes on.
“I met a man. Brett. You screwed it up. Then I met another man, and you screwed that up, too.”
All traces of the sunny TV star had vanished. Maybe it was the pain, maybe it was the drunkenness, or maybe Celine Carr had just had enough and no longer wanted to play the game. Elisa couldn’t blame her. If Elisa wasn’t supposed to be the grown-up in this situation, she’d be bawling by now.
Brett came into the room without Steve, gave Elisa a tight nod of affirmation and said to Celine, “He said to tell you he’s sorry about what happened, and he’ll see you around.”
Celine frowned. “What did you say to him?”
“I pointed out to him that if he really had your best interests at heart, he’d see that he probably wasn’t going to help your situation here by hanging around.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said I was right.”
Celine’s shoulders slumped, causing Elisa a pang of sympathy. What a miserable day the actress had had. One rejection after another. This was nothing like the weekend of being adored that Elisa had promised her. “Tomorrow, I swear, we’ll get you back out there and help you to enjoy this weekend.”
“I was enjoying this weekend. With Steve.”
Elisa was about to answer her, but Brett put his hand on Celine’s arm. “For what it’s worth—Steve said he had a good time with you.”
That seemed to settle Celine down. She rested her head back on the pillow, and if she didn’t exactly smile, some of the hurt and worry smoothed out of her forehead. “He used to be a fine arts photographer, and he had a gallery representing him, but it burned down. He couldn’t make enough money to stay in New York, so he started taking celebrity photos. He hates it, though. He wants to go back to taking the photos he wants to take.”
Which he’ll be a lot closer to doing after he makes a killing spreading photos of you all over the web, the weeklies and the evening entertainment shows, thought Elisa.
“He sounds like an interesting guy,” said Brett. “If you weren’t a celebrity, and he weren’t a paparazzo, you guys could have a good time. But Elisa’s right. No point in setting yourself up to get used and abused.”
Celine rose partway from the pillow, protest already on her lips, but Brett plowed on. “And, hey, I meant to say this earlier. Doctor’s on his way. There are doctors on the island, but we’re getting a special visit from a guest who happens to be an orthopedist. Lucky you.”
“I just want to go home.” Celine sounded more like a six-year-old than a twenty-two-year-old.
Elisa stroked her hair back from her forehead. “The doctor’ll be here soon. Rest for now, and if you want to go home, we will tomorrow.”
She knew it was weakness, but the thought of going home tomorrow filled Elisa with a profound sense of relief.
8
“WELL, THAT SUCKED.”
Brett stepped out on the balcony and stood behind Elisa, who was sipping a glass of wine. The view here was of secluded, quiet water. A string of lanterns disappeared off to the left, leading, he guessed, to the bar’s open-air seating area. He thought he could hear laughter and a tinkle of glasses from that general direction, but maybe that was just Caribbean fantasy.
She stared out at the water, face set. “It did, didn’t it?”
Celine was asleep inside, her breathing deep and even. The doctor had come, diagnosed a sprained ankle and given her a pain pill that had knocked her out in a matter of minutes. Brett didn’t know about Elisa, but he was more than happy to see the outside of Celine’s eyelids. The worst part was how bitchy she’d been to Elisa, who was only trying to make the best of a bad situation. She’d been calm and cool under pressure, holding off the photographers and managing Steve. She’d called Haven, a conversation that had consisted of shrill squawking on the other end of the phone and Elisa murmuring reassurances until finally she’d started just saying, “Yes. Yes. Of course. Yes. She’s your client. Yes. If that’s what—yes.” She’d hung up, expression stormy, then had gone to Celine’s room to retrieve a few of her things. Upon returning, she helped wrangle the actress out of her clothes and into her PJs while Brett stayed in the hall. And all the while, she’d been kind to Celine, even when Celine was whiny and nasty. He’d wanted to strangle Celine by the end.
Speaking of wanting to do violence—he’d surprised himself with his own hotheadedness when Steve had insulted Elisa. When was the last time he’d shoved a guy over anything? Probably when he was seventeen.
Something had snapped in him, some protective instinct that, after all these years, Elisa still called up. They’d been close friends—it was natural to be protective of your friends, even after so much time had passed.
A breeze blew off the ocean and shifted strands of her auburn hair. If he reached out, he could touch her hair, run his fingers through it and wrap a hank of it around his hand. Tilt her head and find her mouth.
His body roared to life at the thought.
“You want a drink?” Elisa asked.
He took another step closer in the now-chilly night air. Elisa held her glass up, as if for a toast. “Minibar. Get yourself something?”
“It’s going to cost you a fortune.”
She shrugged. “This fiasco is going to cost me a fortune.”
He went back into the room where Celine slept in the king-size bed, a small lump in a sea of white. The minibar had a better selection than his liquor cabinet at home, including a collection of proper glasses for wine, champagne, highballs, lowballs and shots. He poured himself two miniatures of Jack Daniels and turned off most of the lights in the room, leaving only a small desk lamp lit before returning to the balcony and pulling the glass doors shut behind him. With less light, they could see the ocean spread out below them, the crests of the subdued waves lit by the moon. He was suddenly, unaccountably happy.
“Can I ask you a question?” Her voice was low, her fatigue evident.
“Shoot.”
“Why are you still here?”
He laughed. “You made me stay.”
“No, seriously.”
“Seriously, that is why I am here. Because you told me I couldn’t leave. And you were really bossy about it.”
She was looking at him in a way that made his blood heat up. With curiosity, with warmth. With possibility. “But you didn’t have to, you know, stick around through this whole drama with the ankle.”
“What kind of dick would have walked out?”
She turned away.
“Are you thinking, ‘The dick I thought you were?’”
A snort of laughter burst out of her.
“You were. You were totally thinking that.” And he would never have said this out loud, but his pride was wounded. He knew how she felt about his sex life, but beyond that, he’d always figured she respected him. They’d been friends for a long time, and maybe he’d only been one of many to her,
but to him, she’d been special.
“Seriously, Brett, thank you. You were really helpful tonight.”
“Least I could do, after I messed up your weekend.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Then abruptly, she was crying, her shoulders shaking.
“Elisa—” He wanted to grab her and wrap her up, but he held the impulse at bay, not knowing how she’d take it.
She swiped at her face. Elisa was not a woman who liked to be seen at a weak moment. Or, in fact, to have weak moments at all.
“Kiddo, it’s gonna be okay.” The pet name slipped easily off his tongue, and he waited for her to bristle.
Instead, she shook her head. “No. It’s not.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“No. Yes.”
He waited, wondering how she managed to look beautiful and remote even as she dissolved.
“I was working at the matchmaking job, the one I got when we were still hanging out. And it was great. I was doing it, Brett! I was really doing it. Making matches. Making marriages. And contrary to what you may think, it wasn’t all about you.”
“I never really thought that.”
“I mean, I’m not going to lie. Watching the way you were—it made me realize that someone had to be out there, standing up for women and giving them an alternative to being at the beck and call of guys like you.”
Again, that jab. Guys like him. “We’re not all so bad,” he said mildly.
“That’s the point. Guys aren’t all the same. You don’t have to settle. And it works in reverse, too. Men let themselves be jerked around by women, too. The point is, people, when they’re dating, feel like the opposite sex holds all the cards, and traditional ideas about dating reinforce that belief. I wanted to take a different perspective. I did take a different perspective. ‘Give her the right match and she’ll make a fire that’ll burn for the rest of their lives.’”
He smiled. Trust Elisa to have boiled her matchmaking philosophy down to an aphorism.
“And it was working. I was good.”
A light caught his eye near the horizon, a boat, moving across the water. His legs were getting tired from standing, but he didn’t want to do anything to break the spell. He wanted to keep her talking all night. “Tell me what you do as a dating coach.”
She smiled into the distance, and a strand of hair blew loose. He watched her tuck it back behind the curve of her ear. He wanted to bury his face there and follow her scent down her slim neck and into the hollow of her collarbone. He cut that thought off before it could dive lower, but not before it made his balls tighten.
“It’s fun. Really fun. I do self-esteem-building exercises with them, get them to see and play to their strengths, talk to them about what they want in a relationship and how they might be undermining their own goals, dress them up, help with makeup, coach them on body language.”
“Body language, like what?”
“I encourage them to be aware of the signals they send. Some language encourages, like touching hair, touching cleavage, licking lips, while other body language discourages, like crossing arms or legs.”
He watched her lick her lips, a sheen of wetness that made his own mouth dry. And damn, now he was licking his, and his cock was heavy, headed toward hard.
“I take them out, I watch how they interact, I point out where they might have inadvertently chased someone away by not making eye contact, or where they might have been too eager when playing hard-to-get would have worked better. They’re skills—all these things are skills.”
“So you’re probably the superchamp of dating, right? You spot him, you get him?”
She crossed her arms. “I do fine,” she said stiffly.
Or, on the flip side, if she was determined not to be drawn in, she was pretty damn good at broadcasting that, too. Not that the crossed arms deterred him—they only pushed her breasts up. And the slightly sulky expression was more turn-on than repellent. “You were telling me about what happened. You were doing it, making matches, and you were good. Here, sit.”
The balcony offered two rattan chairs with cream-colored cushions, and he held one out for her.
“Right.” She told him the story of how her loser boss had fired her for being good at what she did.
“That sucks.”
“I don’t feel sorry for myself.”
He laughed. “No, I remember you always had strict rules against that.”
“The whole Celine thing—a couple of months ago, Julie and I—”
She shot him a look, seeking confirmation that he remembered who Julie was. He gave a tight nod. As if he could forget.
“We were brainstorming how I could grow the business. And she thought I should try to get someone really well-known to be a client, and she said she knew someone who knew Celine’s publicist. I knew who Celine was. I watch her show. Do you?”
He shook his head.
“She’s kind of brilliant. Do you know the premise?”
He shook his head again, feeling like a heel. He’d forgotten there was substance to Celine’s celebrity, that she wasn’t just one of those tabloid types.
“Her character was in a car accident, and she was left a quadriplegic.”
“Seriously?”
Elisa folded her legs up under her so she was sitting cross-legged in the big chair’s embrace. “Seriously. And she—the character—has been struggling to put her life back together ever since. It makes me cry multiple times per month. Her fiancé left her, and she couldn’t do her job any more, but she’s seeing someone else now, and she’s got a great job, but of course all this bad shit keeps happening to her, or it would have been over after the first season.”
“Wow.” He didn’t know what he’d pictured, but it certainly wasn’t anything like that. Maybe something teenybopperish, like Hannah Montana.
Elisa sipped her wine, and he watched her tongue flirt with the rim. Blood headed south so fast he got light-headed. He’d been at least semiaroused since they’d stepped onto the balcony.
“It’s a great show. If you’d told me that you had the hots for her because of her acting, I’d totally believe that. She obviously has a lot of depth.”
He shrugged. “Despite tonight’s performance. Although we can’t take her behavior tonight too seriously. I hurt her feelings. God knows why, but she likes me.”
Elisa shook her head and rolled her eyes at that, and they both laughed. “So, anyway, that’s my story. Not much I can do about it now. Haven—that’s Celine’s publicist—is flying in tomorrow morning. I think the weekend’s a lost cause.”
He doubted that. But then, here he was, the champion of second chances. He had to be a crazy optimist. “Why do you say that?”
“She originally didn’t come on the trip because her mom was having her appendix out. And now she’s leaving her hospital bed to come rescue me—”
“She’s not rescuing you. She’s rescuing Celine.” And surely, if Haven was worth her salary, she knew her client was a total nut job.
“Same difference, in this situation.”
Brett screwed up his face at that, drawing a small smile from Elisa. It was surprisingly sweet. He’d like to get her to smile for real.
“Was she angry?”
“No, not angry, exactly. Not at me, anyway. Stressed out.”
“So—there you go. Celine will be better in the morning, you’ll get things back on track, and Haven can clean up. By the time she gets here, you’ll be making it look easy.”
“You think I can get Celine to work with me again? She seemed pretty angry.”
“If you can’t, I’ll talk her into it. For whatever sick reason she seems to listen to me.”
She pointed a finger at him. “You’re authoritative.”
“That’s just another word for bossy, right?” He laughed. “I hope you’re right. I just got this news anchor job, and I think the network’s worried I don’t have enough gravitas.”
“I saw you on TV once,” she said meditatively.
“So you’re still living in New York.”
“Yeah.” She got up from her chair and returned to the railing, turning her back on him.
“You knew I was still in New York?”
“Yeah, I knew.”
Why did that bother him so much? He hadn’t gone looking for her, either. Of course—he had done his share of chasing after her in the early days after she’d dropped out of his life. Calls, emails, friend requests, texts. All for naught. But she’d seen him on TV, and she hadn’t dropped him a line to say, “Nice work.”
Of course, maybe she hadn’t thought it was.
“You looked good. You had gravitas, all right.” She said it to the Caribbean, the words whipped back at him by the breeze.
Or maybe she had.
Ah, what did it matter? They were here now. The past was the past, but this was now, and he wasn’t going to screw it up by fuming over a cold shoulder he’d probably deserved.
He got up and leaned on the railing beside her.
The silence stretched out too long. Elisa broke it. “How’re your parents?”
“Busy. Busier than ever. My dad still works like a crazy man. I think he likes it that way, because he’s turned down a few early-retirement offers. And my mom runs around like mad. I don’t know how she’s busier than when we were kids, but she is. Volunteering, organizing shit. You know. She asks about you sometimes. She always liked you.”
“She only met me once.”
“You make an impression.”
Elisa shook her head, dismissing that. “So. A news anchor. I thought you wanted to be an investigative journalist. You used to say your goal was the New York Times, NPR, something like that.”
“You remember.”
“Of course I remember.”
As far as he was concerned, there was no “of course” about it. She’d dropped off the face of the earth for two years, and he’d assumed she’d cleared all the Brett info from her mental cache.