“Not so good, huh?”
“He’s not here.”
“Then go find somebody else!”
“I’m not moving. I’m just reassessing my game plan.”
“Moving back home and getting married to Rodney?” Lydia asked hopefully. Unfortunately obstinacy was a familial trait. “He’s single again.”
Sorry, but I shudder at the thought of dragging an ice chest to Little League games, overseeing piñatas at birthday parties, and running into the people I went to high school with at Toda Moda. “No.”
“Whatever. Is Hugh Jackman there?” Hell if I knew, standing out here in the main room where the current celebrity to civilian ratio was 4,000 to 2. Oh, now that Courtney and David slipped past the sentinels, it dwindled to zero.
Sentinel One, who pushed me around, patted David’s shoulder like an old buddy. My eyes narrowed. “No.”
“Damn. Well, call me if anything else happens. Tony’s passed out and I can’t go to sleep.”
“You’re still not sleeping?”
“No. I don’t know what’s wrong and I can’t take those pills Mom keeps trying to give me because I’m breast-feeding.”
My mother’s answer to any and every ailment, especially motherhood, was her sleeping pills. I doubt Mom ever had a natural state of rest after she turned eighteen.
“I guess I just worry too much.” Lydia sighed and if she hadn’t laid it on so thick I might’ve offered to come down next weekend. “If things don’t work out, m’ija, you can come live with us.”
That was about all I could take. Lydia was probably sleeping just fine for all I knew. Discreetly I pressed the End key. I’d tell her it must’ve been a bad connection.
I slapped my hand on my purse and then tried to pry it back open. A solid arm brushed mine and I looked over and then up into his eyes. Cha-ching.
My first thought was, what did he look like naked? My second was, is that really him?
No. In the pictures I’d seen, Tyler Banks had short hair and this vision standing beside me, smiling at me, was Brad Pitt with the Ocean’s Eleven wardrobe, but with Legends of the Fall hair.
“Looks like you need help with that,” he said.
My brain flatlined and then blipped. “Oh thanks,” I said, handing him, a complete stranger, my purse.
His blunt-tipped finger brushed mine and when he looked down at my purse, a gold strand of hair fell into his face.
I was never this lucky. Something had to go wrong. I couldn’t even shut my mouth.
Unlike most directors, Tyler Banks didn’t do Steven Spielberg geek chic. His face was all strong lines and hard features, a beaklike nose that was balanced by a stubborn jaw, a broad forehead with a wave of blond hair, and green eyes that saw right through a girl.
“There,” he pronounced, holding my opened purse.
“Thanks.”
“Welcome.”
“I’m Isela,” I offered, curling my shaking hand at my side.
“Nice to meet you.”
I completely forgot about my phone until it rang again. Lydia. With an eye roll I shoved it into my purse and snapped it shut.
“Your sister?” he guessed.
“Yeah. You have one, too?”
“Cousins, which are probably worse.”
I didn’t want to be obvious that I knew who he was. “I’ve still got you beat. Nothing is deadlier than an older sister.”
He swiveled his barstool and bumped my knees with his, “So are you—”
“Hey there,” cooed a deep British female voice behind us.
He looked over and then forgot what he was saying.
She-Ra smiled at me in that dismissive way girls who know they’re prettier than you do. She rested her skeletal hands on his thighs. “What are you doing out here?”
“Just hanging out,” he said.
She cocked her head and I swear, her curly highlighted mane did not move. “You didn’t wait for me?”
He laughed uncomfortably, glancing at me and then back at her. “Sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong brother.” He moved her hands off him. “I’m Sebastian,” he clarified as if she were a slow child. “Tyler’s brother.”
Both She-Ra and I blinked. She drew her hands to her chest. “Oh.”
Maybe I didn’t have a Playboy pedigree but as a mujer de la familia Vargas, I had centuries of coquetry and manipulating the male mind running in my blood. As I scooted off my stool and wiggled my skirt down, I had what we Mexicans referred to as cojones.
American translation: balls.
Tyler Banks’s brother was mine. “Honey, how about I send him to you when I’m done,” I spoke up loud enough for her not to ignore me.
“Oh,” she breathed.
Intrigued, Sebastian grinned at me. “That’s right. I was going to show you something.”
Even though direct eye contact with those green eyes of his made me just a touch shaky in the knees, I kept my smile beguiling and gaze steady. “That’s right.”
Unhappy that her excursion among the peasant class had been interrupted by a short, flat-chested girl in vintage and Footsie Tootsie shoes, She-Ra crossed her arms, her hip bone clearly outlined against her dress.
What she didn’t know was that my stomach twisted so tight that it hurt. Even though her verbal repartee lacked something, she outclassed me by two Victoria’s Secret catalogs.
When Sebastian said nothing to soothe her questioning pout, She-Ra flounced off after tossing a weltering, “Fucking bitch.”
“You just cost me a date,” Sebastian said, his eyes dancing with amusement.
“And I feel just terrible about that. So what were you planning to show me?”
His eyes did a quick survey. “You really want to find out?”
I must’ve been having an out-of-body experience. While my heart ran laps in my chest and bells clanged in my ears, I’ve never sounded this cool before. “How long will it take?”
His eyebrows lifted. “You know, I like a woman with balls.”
Somehow I said this with a straight face. “I like a man with balls, too.”
He laughed at that one, and I told myself I didn’t like his laugh or the fact that he had a sense of a humor. A laugh like his in a package like him could throw me off in this game.
“This might take all night,” he said.
Oh God, this sounds like dialogue from one of my boss’s movies. All we needed was the heavy bass line. But I matched him. “Are you up for it?”
He watched me, something twinkling in those eyes. “Where’ve you been all this time?”
In a windowless office with no air-conditioning or heating. “I’m here right now.”
His grin widened. “Glad to meet you, Isela. Sebastian Banks.”
I took his hand and let’s just say that everything south of the border sprang to life.
From now on he would be only known to me as The Mark. The Mark was a way for me to get to the man who I knew would produce my script. Of course, it got complicated because Sebastian was too damn sexy for my own good.
“So where do we go from here?” he asked.
I took a deep breath. “Surprise me.”
Chapter Four
If you ever make a movie about ants chasing stupida white girls running with their boobies out, I’ll disown you.
—Lydia to Isela when the family realized she wasn’t moving back home
Now that I had him, I had no idea what to do with him. Sebastian got us up into one of the opera boxes high above the dance floor built over the main floor seats. Standing up there alone with him, I was suddenly the girl I would’ve envied if I had been stuck down there. Except that girl would’ve made sparkling conversation and then segued into a suggestion that they meet up with his brother for drinks.
“I noticed you earlier,” he said after a long silence. “You were staring up at the ceiling.”
“Really? Oh yeah,” I replied, cringing inside.
He leaned on the back of a seat. “What
were you thinking?”
“Nothing. Just … about the last time I’d been here.”
“And when was that?”
“A really long time ago. They showed Vertigo. It’s my favor—”
“—ite Hitchcock movie,” we said together.
When we stared at each other, the nightclub lights whirling colors against our faces, a recognition sprouted between us. It wasn’t love. My heart was zero for three on that score. Just this freakish buzzing thing between us that intensified with each passing second.
A smile touched his face. “How many times have you seen it?”
“Seen what?”
“Vertigo.”
“Oh. Thirty-four times.”
He looked impressed. “You’ve got me beat by two.”
“No one can beat Hitchcock.”
“What did you think about the remake of Psycho.”
My hand sliced through the air. “Never happened. It doesn’t exist.”
“So I take it you hated my brother’s last movie?”
I hit the mouth brakes and asked carefully, “Why would you think that?”
“You know what everyone said, all those comparisons to Jimmy Stewart when he stared at the lady he thought was Kim Novak.”
“He didn’t swipe from Vertigo. He had Brad doing that whole Steve McQueen thing from Bullitt.”
“Bullitt?”
“Yes, Bullitt.” Even though he was related to the best filmmaker since Steven Spielberg, Sebastian stared at me a lot like Lydia did when I talked about movies.
I explained, “You know the scene where they’re at dinner and the way McQueen stares at Jacqueline Bisset across the table. No dialogue, not even any cheesy romantic music. Just the ambient noise of the restaurant, the people talking, and the camera catches him devouring her with his eyes across the table.”
Sebastian didn’t say anything. I tried to read the way he looked at me. Truthfully, it was like the way McQueen did Bisset.
Sebastian edged forward, hovering right at the border of my personal space, and I swear I heard the hairs on the back of my neck spear up. “You pass,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t like compliments?,” he asked.
Dropping my hip against the seat back put some distance between us, but not enough. “So you’re into movies, too, huh?”
He dropped his gaze down to his Bruno Maglis, grinning at some joke only known to him. “Not right now. You’re in the business,” he said, as if that somehow made me dirty.
“I’ve produced a couple of movies. Not that they went anywhere. Are you thinking about working for your brother?”
One broad shoulder jerked up. “Maybe. I’m really not sure yet.”
“This business is tough. But at least you’ve got an in.”
He didn’t blink. If I was standing in the center of a frozen body of water, the ice would be cracking and groaning around me. Apparently our boy Sebastian here didn’t mind wearing the VIP stamp on his hand or four thousand dollars worth of clothes. But he radiated a strong inferiority-complex vibe about his wildly successful brother.
Sebastian’s hand flattened against his chest and he pulled out a tiny cell phone from his coat pocket. Checking the display, his jaw flexed. “Sorry, but I have to take this.”
Long strides carried him into the blackness of the hallway.
A rush of air heaved out of my mouth and my shoulders bowed forward. What just happened? Did I blow it? And for a second, I worried about waking up tomorrow morning with this guy.
Okay, collect thyself, woman. I was not going to race after him to make sure he came back. Because he was and when he did, I was going to play this game through and end up with five minutes with his brother.
And yes, I admit that I didn’t want the clock to strike midnight. I wanted to stay on this fantasy nondate with this very sexy prince.
When Sebastian reappeared I leapt to my feet. Subtle, huh?
“I took a while so I got us these,” he said, handing me a glass of champagne before he sat down.
I murmured, “thank you,” and looked down into the glass.
“I’m not that kind of guy,” he said. “I only use the fast-dissolving kind.”
“What are you talking about?”
His eyes widened and then he laughed. “I thought you were— Never mind.”
Did I miss something?
With a sigh he shook his head. “You were looking in your glass like I put something in it.”
I looked down in the glass. No white pill fizzed lecherously from the bottom. “I thought maybe I said something wrong before you took off with your cell phone and … I’m sorry. I feel like there’s an elephant in the room and we’re pretending it’s not there.”
“My brother?”
I nodded.
“What about him?”
Oh God. What do I say? “Does talking about him make you feel uncomfortable?”
“No. But tonight I’m not interested in talking about him or the industry or anything else,” he said. The wine shined on his lower lip and I wondered what it would taste like if I licked it clean. “But let’s you and me start over.”
“How do we do that?”
“Want to go dancing?”
“Here?”
He made a face and shook his head. “Nah. Somewhere more … classy.”
“Like where?”
“Like somewhere down the street from here.”
“I’d love to.”
“Good. So may I?” I felt his gaze on my lips.
Why the hell not? My smile said yes and his lips, ever so lightly, landed on mine. He was better than chocolate.
“I want to spend the evening with you,” he said against my lips, now wet with the taste of him.
Before I could say a word, Sebastian held up a finger and I shut up.
“I didn’t say, sleep with me. I said, spend the evening with me. No cheap moves from me and everything out on the table. Deal?”
I was still trying to shush all the clanging in my head.
Clearly amused, Sebastian added, “I’m not a psychopath, rapist, or stalker. Does that make you feel any better?”
I curled my hands into fists. “Sure,” I said. “That’s what they all say.”
Chapter Five
Mas vale de balde hacer, que de balde ser. (“It is better to do something for nothing than to be worth nothing.”)
—Advice from Isela’s mom
Later in the ladies room with Sebastian’s taste mixed with champagne still on my lips, I called Lydia.
“It’s me.” My voice echoed against the glaring white tiled walls. A toilet hissed by itself and having seen too many movies where the heroine looks in the mirror and sees some crazy-eyed ghost behind her, I kept my back to the dull mirror.
“Why the hell did you hang up on me?” she yelled. “I’m the only one in the family talking to you right now.”
That wasn’t true! But then I remembered I had little time and a big dilemma, who was waiting outside for me. “I’m sorry but this guy was sitting next to me and—”
“What guy?” She gasped, “Oh. That guy, you mean?”
“His brother.”
Suddenly all business, “Are you at his place?” I imagined her eyes wide with vicarious delight.
A quick aside: What is it about my married sister, cousins, and friends who think all I do as a single woman is shop, fuck, and worry about my shoes? And when I do any of these things, they want every juicy morsel. Cochinas.
“No,” I told her. “I’m in the ladies room. He wants to spend the evening with me. What the hell do you think he means by that?”
“Madre de Dios. How did he ask? Was he all player or romantic?”
Was Sebastian romantic or was he saying all the right things so I’d trust him? It worked for Ted Bundy.
Or wait, even worse, was he using some reverse psychology on me by not wanting to talk about his brother to lure me to him?
I
n this town actresses and models can do what we call “dating your manager.” But the rules change for executives.
As an executive you have to be smart. You actually have to earn the respect of your male colleagues. And it helps if you’re married to one of them or sprung from one of their loins. So for the rest of us, we have to twist the rules to work to our advantage.
“Well?” Lydia pressed.
“Romantic, I think.”
She muttered something about knowing my mother had an affair before she had me. “How can you not know?”
“Because what if he’s using me?”
“Man, it has been a while since you got laid!”
Why did I even call her? “I can’t sleep with him!”
“Is he ugly?”
“No.”
“What’s his name?”
“Sebastian Banks.”
“What is it with you and these white boys anyway?” she asked. I bet she had her fist planted on one hip and one dragon-lady nail waving in the air. “Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time?”
I described Sebastian and she made an assessing hum.
“Well, that changes things,” Lydia decided, thinking over my problem. “Wait a minute, I’m confused. He wants to spend the evening with you.”
“Yes.”
“But he doesn’t want to sleep with you?”
“Well, yeah I think so.”
“Ay, m’ija. Didn’t we raise you right?”
“You’re my sister,” I corrected.
“Your older, much wiser sister.” Who, I admit, took over for Mom when she went off the deep end after my father died. And since Lydia was the one with a kid and a husband while I was the one leaning against a rust-stained sink in a bathroom that was probably haunted, maybe she was the wiser of the two.
“Would you hate me if I slept with him?” I asked.
“So he’d introduce you to his brother?”
“No. Because … I don’t know.”
“Ay, Isela, why do you make this so difficult? If he’s sexy and into you and you’re into him, then get it on with him. And meeting his brother would be a side benefit. But would you hate yourself?”
Yes. No. I don’t know. The tricky thing was that I wanted to sleep with him. Sometime after he opened my purse, Sebastian ceased to be my mark and suddenly became the guy I wanted to get it on with, you know. And when Lydia made it sound like he was the free gift from Lancôme, suddenly it didn’t seem all that bad.
Friday Night Chicas Page 2