If I Can't Have You

by Patti Berg

  “I’m not going anywhere, Adriana.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Good.” Adriana grinned, and drew a finger down the center of his bare chest and tugged at the tight waistband of his jeans.

  “Have you ever made love in a theater?” she asked.

  “Only on the movie screen. Pretty chaste, pretty calm stuff.”

  “I’m not chaste any longer,” she whispered. “I’m not calm, either.”

  “Are you trying to seduce me?”

  A slow smile crossed her lips. “Don’t say another word. Just kiss me.”

  Chapter 18

  They hid at Sparta for two entire days, watching old movies, skinny-dipping in the pool, walking through the gardens, playing chess, and making love morning, afternoon, and night.

  And they tried to hide from Trevor’s nightmare, but it found him whenever he drifted off to sleep.

  “We need to go to Santa Monica,” Adriana said. “You need to look at Carole’s house and try to remember every detail of that night.”

  “Why? The nightmares bring it back all too clearly.”

  “There must be something you’re forgetting, something I can help you figure out. Please. Let me try.”

  “It’s bad enough that one of us should know. This is one thing in my life that I don’t want to share with you.”

  Adriana slid cool fingers over his cheek and kissed him. “You’re already sharing it with me. Every night when you break out in a cold sweat. When you scream Carole’s name in your sleep. I can’t shut this thing out of my life any more than you can.”

  “And you think reliving that night’s going to make it go away?”

  “No. Knowing that you weren’t responsible is the only thing that’s going to make it go away. I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I think it’s the only way to learn the truth.”

  oOo

  Horrid memories of that morning in Santa Monica rushed through Trevor’s mind, through his senses. The nightmarish sight of Carole’s body and the vile odor of her blood tore at his stomach, tightened his throat. Not even the cool, salty ocean breeze or the light, sweet scent of Adriana’s perfume could wipe it away.

  “We shouldn’t have come,” Adriana said, squeezing his hand as they stood on the beach and faced the pastel pink exterior of Carole’s old home. Once again she was reading his thoughts, and knew that this was the last place he wanted to be. “You don’t have to tell me what happened, Trevor. Let’s just forget about it, pretend it didn’t happen.”

  “I’d pretend that in a moment, if I could,” he said, drawing her down to sit beside him on the sand. “I’d like to wipe every disgusting detail from my mind, but I can’t. They’re all too vivid.”

  He stared at the house, at the redheaded woman and two young children building a sand castle at the base of the steps. Did they know a murder had been committed inside their home? Did Carole haunt the house the way she haunted his dreams? He hoped not. No one should have to live with such horrid nightmares.

  He planned to get rid of them himself, and being in this place was the first step. He’d hidden his fears behind a bottle and a heroic facade for far too long. Not any longer though. He’d told Adriana some of his secrets. Now was the time to bring everything else out into the open.

  He turned toward Adriana when cool fingers touched his cheek. Her blue eyes radiated with warmth and understanding. God, how he loved her.

  “Tell me the good things you remember about Carole,” she said, as if she thought those memories could drown out the bad. “Try to remember the way she was before.”

  He smoothed a hand over one of Adriana’s tanned, sun-baked legs, soaking up her softness, her gentleness.

  There hadn’t been anything soft or gentle about Carole. She’d been a gangster’s mistress at seventeen and a bleached-blond sex goddess at twenty-six. He wished he could tell Adriana that Carole had had a heart of gold, but he’d never mastered the art of lying. Carole Sinclair was a cold, conniving bitch who’d slept her way into the movies and would stop at nothing to stay there.

  “Trevor?” Once more Adriana brought his attention back to the present. “What’s wrong? What are you thinking about?”

  “Carole,” he answered, laughing ruefully as he remembered the exaggerated swing of her hips each time she entered a room, and the way her luscious red lips puckered into a pout when she didn’t get her way. “She wasn’t the best of actresses, but she sure as hell knew how to light up the screen. She had an infectious laugh—reserved only for the camera—and a body that...”

  Trevor looked at Adriana out of the corner of his eye. “You don’t want to hear about her body, do you?”

  “No.” Adriana shook her head slowly, but he could see the hint of a grin trying to tilt her lips. “I’m not interested in the other women you’ve known. Of course, thinking about her did make you smile. That’s the first time since we got to the beach.”

  “I don’t have a lot of fond memories of this place.”

  Few moments with Carole had been worth remembering, either. No one would have guessed that, though, considering all the pictures that had been taken of them together. The studios had loved the publicity. They didn’t give a damn what went on behind closed doors, and they didn’t much care that he didn’t want to be hooked up with Carole.

  It’s for your career, he’d been told. She’s a knockout. The press will have a field day over the two of you together.

  The press did love it. The studio was right. But the only thing he’d had in common with Carole was an uncommonly strong desire to be with the opposite sex. Like alcohol, she was a quick and easy antidote for pain. She used him; he used her. They’d been the perfect match.

  Thinking back on it, he should have told the studio he’d rather be paired up with Janet Julian. She’d been a friend, rather sweet and naive. A far cry from Carole Sinclair.

  But Janet Julian didn’t turn heads, and she didn’t have her name up in lights.

  Carole did—for two entire years—and then she was murdered.

  Trevor pressed fingers to his temple. Would the pain of remembrance ever go away?

  “Let me do that for you,” Adriana said, kneeling behind him. With warm fingers she massaged the throbbing veins near his eyes and worked her way down to his neck. Her comforting hands slid over his ribs, grabbed the hem of his T-shirt, pulled it over his head, and worked at the taut muscles in his shoulders and back.

  He took a long, deep breath, relishing her touch, and lowered his head and closed his eyes.

  He could feel her lips softly brush his neck, felt the sun beating down on his skin, felt her love pouring into him.

  He didn’t deserve her.

  But he’d never give her up.

  “Tell me what happened before... before that morning,” she said. “I know it isn’t easy to talk about, but maybe there’s a clue somewhere about what happened to Carole.”

  That night? Sixty years ago to Adriana, not much more than a week to him. It was easy to remember that night. It started out so well.

  “I was at a party after the premiere of Break the Night,” he began. “Reviews were pouring in already. People were saying I might get a second Oscar for the role, and I was drinking down champagne—one glass after another—to celebrate. Two Oscars. That’s what I wanted.”

  A second Oscar. It seemed such a trivial thing to think about when he had so much else to deal with. It seemed inconsequential when he’d won Adriana’s heart—the greatest prize he could ever attain. If he could win another Oscar, he’d just consider it icing on the cake.

  “The Trocadero was packed,” he continued. “Everyone was eating caviar and drinking champagne. I remember Jack Warner walking through the crowd, patting people on the back and making speeches. He wasn’t always a nice guy, but he could be damned generous when the mood was right—and he was feeling good that night. He liked successful movies. We all did, and if everything went well, Break the Night had
a chance of being the studio’s biggest hit ever.

  “We were having a gay old time, until Carole’s ex showed up, jealous as hell. They’d been divorced a good year or so, but he wasn’t ready to let her go—not to me or anyone else.”

  “I read that he beat her. Was that true?”

  “I suppose. When we first started working together she’d show up on the set with a black eye or a swollen jaw. ‘It was an accident,’ she’d tell everyone. One week she’d say she’d run into a door, the next she’d tripped and fallen down the steps. None of us believed her. She had a jerk of a husband, but Carole didn’t let much bother her. She wasn’t afraid of much, either, and for the longest time she refused to dump the guy. One day she got smart, went to Reno, and got him out of her life—legally, at least. That night at the party, though, he announced to everyone that he’d rather see Carole dead than to see her with anyone else—particularly me.”

  “I’ve seen the old police, reports. They suspected him at first,” Adriana said, telling him something he already knew from reading about the murder and subsequent investigations. “He had an alibi and pictures proving he was nowhere near Santa Monica that night.”

  “Maybe he hired someone?”

  “That possibility was checked out, too, but the police never came up with a thing.”

  “What do you think? Did he have a hand in it?”

  Adriana shook her head. “He was one of the few people who mourned at Carole’s funeral. He put a rose on her grave every day, right up until the time he died.”

  “Maybe he should have shown some of that love for her while they were still married. Of course, we all should have done things differently. My entire life would have been different if I hadn’t gone home with Carole that night.”

  He wrapped his arms around his knees and leaned forward as Adriana kneaded the tightness in his back.

  “She was upset,” he continued, “worried that her ex might try to hurt her. She asked me to take her home, to stay with her, just in case.”

  “Why didn’t the studio hire a bodyguard? I thought they protected their stars.”

  “Carole had a unique way of getting what she wanted. She’d pout, she’d cry, and someone always gave in. But the studio was getting wise. She was difficult to work with. She was late half the time and driving up production costs. They weren’t in any rush to spend money on a bodyguard, especially when they’d indulged her after too many other scenes with her ex.”

  “If she was so much trouble, why did they give her the part in Break the Night?”

  “Because she made money for the studio, and because Jean Harlow died,” Trevor said, a touch of sorrow filling his heart at the memory of a very dear friend. “The part was written for Jean. She would have been perfect for it, but... but life isn’t always perfect.”

  He remembered the phone call he’d gotten from Carole the day after Jean’s funeral. “I got the part, Trev. God, what luck, Jean dying and all.”

  Carole was a poor substitute for Jean—in life, and in the movies, Trevor remembered.

  “Carole wasn’t half the woman or half the actress Jean was,” he said. “Unfortunately, the studio had commitments. It was either rewrite the script or hire someone who could somewhat handle the role. Carole was available, and she was more than ready to work. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

  “So, the studio decided to strengthen Carole’s image by pairing her up with you off-screen as well as on?”

  “That was the idea. It worked, too, but it didn’t make her a better or more cooperative actress. Press is press, though. All I ever wanted to be was a star. I liked having my name in the papers, and it didn’t matter how it got there.”

  “Didn’t you care at all?”

  “I wasn’t a saint, Adriana. I’ve told you that before.”

  He took her hand and pulled her around to his side. He touched her cheeks and gently kissed her lips. “If I’d known you then, I wouldn’t have gone along with the studio’s games. I know I wouldn’t have taken Carole home that night. My life would have been a hell of a lot different if you’d been a part of it then.”

  “You can’t change history.”

  “If I could, I’d go back in a moment and set things right.”

  He curled a strand of wind-tossed hair behind her ear and cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand. “Would you go back with me... if you could?”

  She nodded, and the warmth of her smile melted a little more of the ice surrounding his heart. “I wish we could change history,” she said. “But I think all we can really do is learn the truth about the past and try to move on. Please. Tell me everything.”

  Trevor looked at the house again, and allowed his mind to drift to that night, to the interior of the Trocadero. He thought about the beautiful gowns the women were wearing, the champagne that flowed, and the pretty young starlet who’d been his friend. Hell, that’s who he should have gone home with.

  “Janet Julian had asked me to take her home from the party that night. God, she was a sweetheart—not a bad actress, either. A little mixed up at times, but she tried so hard to make people like her. There was this one young kid—a photographer—who’d lost his heart to Janet a few years before, when she’d first started at the studio. She liked him, but that was it. Crazy kid, she’d set her sights on me and no one else. I could have given her what she wanted, but I didn’t like the idea of breaking her heart. She’d been through enough.”

  “Like what?”

  “A year in a mental hospital. She kept losing touch with reality, actually becoming the people whose roles she was playing. I visited her in the hospital a few times. Charlie Beck, the photographer, was usually there, too. Nice guy.”

  “I’ve met him. He’s still visiting Janet every day.”

  He smiled at Adriana's words. Janet was still alive. Someone from his old life was still around, still breathing, still remembered the past.

  “She should have married him, ” he said, remembering his old friend. “She wasn’t cut out for Hollywood, for someone like me. But that’s what she wanted. The night of the party she told me she wanted to celebrate the success of our movie. She said she had champagne chilling at home. Like a fool, I decided to take her up on her offer. Then, when Carole needed a ride home, I backed out.”

  “How’d she react?”

  “As she always did when things weren’t going right. She slipped into one of her roles and fed me a line straight off a script. ‘I knew you could never be true to just one woman.’ She’d said those same words to me when she played my wife in Break the Night. I laughed at her in the movie, but I tried not to laugh at her then. I didn’t want to hurt her, but Carole needed me more than Janet.”

  “So you and Carole took off?”

  “We posed for a few photos, then headed for the beach. I remember the glaring lights as we drove down the highway, the cool wind blowing our hair, and Carole raving madly about her ex. She needed to get it off her chest, and I hoped she’d get over it by the time I got her home. I hadn’t wanted to leave the party, but I figured we’d have one of our own once we got to her place.”

  “Did you?”

  Trevor shook his head, still remembering Carole’s anger, the way she’d stormed out of his Duesenberg and rushed into the beach house.

  “She pushed me away when we got to the house. ‘Leave me alone, will you!’ she shouted. ‘I’m tired of you and every other stinking man I’ve ever met.’ I remember laughing as she slammed her bedroom door in my face. I knew she’d change her mind if I just gave her time to cool off. I found some glasses and a bottle of chilled champagne—”

  “Chilled?” Adriana interrupted. “Who put a bottle of chilled champagne out for you?”

  “I never gave it much thought. Maybe her housekeeper. Maybe she phoned someone before we left the party. Maybe she’d planned on bringing company home and put the bottle on ice before she left for the party.”

  “Then why did she go straight to bed?
”

  “She was upset. I don’t know the why of any of this, Adriana. All I know is that there was a bottle of chilled champagne, it was hot that night, and I was thirsty. I stripped everything off but my trousers, grabbed the bottle, and walked out to the beach. I didn’t even have to pop the cork. It was already out.”

  Trevor felt Adriana’s hair brushing against his shoulder as she shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Think about it. Why would someone open the bottle and leave it to go flat?”

  “Like I said, she must have called someone.”

  “But who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe one of her admirers brought the bottle and was waiting for her to come home.”

  “No one else was there. Just me and Carole.”

  “They could have been hiding.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Like I said, I didn’t give anything a thought. But if someone else was in the house, why would he hide?”

  “Because he or she planned to kill her?” Adriana ventured.

  “Then why bring champagne?”

  Adriana sighed deeply. ‘I don’t know. I’m just trying to explore all the angles.”

  She wrapped her arms around her knees and stared intently at the house, as if she herself were reliving the events of that night. Maybe she should have been the investigator on the case. He was sure she’d already asked more questions than the police had asked after Carole’s body was found. He assumed the police had thought that they had an open-and-shut case: Trevor Montgomery—guilty. Trevor Montgomery—disappeared. Case closed.

  He wanted to close it in his mind, too. He wanted to shut out the horror.

  He was at the beach. The woman he’d give his life for was sitting beside him, and all he wanted to do was press her back into the sand and make love to her.

  But she wasn’t going to let him shut out the nightmare by hiding in her arms.

  “Tell me what happened next,” she prodded.