Leo had one hand on the steering wheel and his elbow casually on the sill of the open window. A cool breeze filled the smooth-sailing, shiny black Lexus, as it hummed along La Cienega Boulevard, and whipped his dark, floppy hair away from his face. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and revealed, on one forearm, a bear, and on the other, a symbol, but the tattoo was badly done—homemade.
“What’s that tat?” I asked.
“Which one? I have so many.”
“The blurry one on your arm with the bluish ink—I can’t make out what it is.”
“Nothing you need to know about,” he said with an enigmatic smile. He’d piqued my curiosity.
“You did it yourself?”
“No.”
“If you decided to get a tattoo, why didn’t you go to a professional?”
He laughed. “I didn’t decide, Star. It wasn’t like that.”
“Tattoos,” I said, “are always a choice—maybe a bad one, but—”
“Oh are they now.” It wasn’t a question but a statement. “What food are you in mood for?” he asked, changing the subject. “Oh yes, I remember, no meat, etcetera. There’s a place nearby where they sell Middle Eastern stuff—take-out, but good. You like falafel, pita bread, hummus?”
“Sounds perfect.” I glanced at the tautly strung tendons in his forearm again, where the smudgy tattoo lived. His muscles flexed as he maneuvered the car around a bend. There was something rough and raw about Leo. Not like Jake, who was classy—no, Leo was rugged and could have easily passed for my bodyguard. I guessed that’s why they had let him take me home—because he could have punched out anyone, done some damage; except he wasn’t carrying arms, of course. At least, I didn’t think so, although he did look the type to have a Colt.45 stuffed behind the waistband of his jeans.
“What’s your story, Leo?”
A ghost of a smile flickered on his lips. “It’s a long one—maybe some other day.”
“Family?”
“Kind of.”
I laughed. “Yeah, that’s how I feel.” I put my feet higher up on the dashboard and noticed him flick his glimmering green eyes at the bit of my exposed thigh where my dress had risen up, revealing the top of my stocking. Then he forced his gaze back to the road ahead.
“What brought you to LA?” I asked.
“Jake Wild.”
“Sorry, that was a dumb question. I forgot §he discovered you from that film school competition in London. “So that’s what took you to London—you got a place to study film?”
“No, my uncle had a job for me in London. But soon as I had money saved I went to film school—got hell away from job.”
“That bad, huh? What was the job?”
“Nothing good.”
“Waiting tables?”
“No, nothing respectable like that.”
“Some kind of menial job? Flipping burgers or something?”
“Had to pay back debt doing some—”—he cut himself off mid-sentence. “Please, Star, don’t ask me about my past—it’s not pretty.” He cracked his knuckles, and I suddenly got the picture: Leo was a knuckle-cracking kind of guy. No way had he been flipping burgers; his job must have been something far more underground. Dark. Dangerous. His tattoos spoke a thousand words. Not like Jake’s lion tattoo; beautifully executed, artistic, with a myriad of colors and attention to detail. No, Leo’s told a different story—what that story was, I wanted to find out.
“So you’re close to your uncle?” I asked, hoping for a clue.
“Last I heard, something went down and he got shot,” Leo said, with no emotion whatsoever.
“I’m sorry,” I offered, tentatively.
“I’m not.” He swerved the car suddenly into a parking lot. “Here we are, Star. You wanna wait in the car? while I get take-out? Or we could eat inside restaurant.”
“Is it busy? I don’t want to end up signing autographs all evening.”
“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
I watched him edge his tall, solid frame out of the car and swagger purposefully toward the restaurant. He turned and zapped the locks on the car with the remote. A nice attention to detail. Protective. I felt safe with Leo and wished he were my bodyguard for real. There was something erotic about a man who would lay down his life for you—protect you under any circumstance. My bodyguards, and John—the one they’d hired for me especially for the movie—were hardly eye-candy like Leo, though.
I observed him as he held the restaurant door open for two teenage girls as they came out. They began giggling at his gallant gesture, practically swooning as if they’d seen a rock star. I’d noticed that about him; he held doors open for women and stood up whenever anyone of the opposite sex came into the room, or got up from the table to go to the bathroom when we were in a restaurant. Unusual, especially for a man of our generation.
A diamond in the rough.
I heard the girls squeal at each other excitedly. I buzzed my passenger seat back, fiddled with the radio station and lay back, stretching out my legs. I’d have a quick shut-eye, I decided—filming, and all the Jake drama, had made me tired, especially when I reminded myself of what a dumb-ass I’d been, fooling around with a man who had a girlfriend. A movie director, no less. What a Hollywood cliché. Yes, I was exhausted and felt my heavy eyelids close as Jhené Aiko’s “The Worst” floated in my subconscious.
I AWOKE WITH A JOLT and observed a solid pair of legs standing there beside the passenger door. Leo leaned in and put the take-out bags on the floor in front of me.
“Sleeping Beauty,” he said in a low, quiet voice. “Sorry to wake you, Star.”
I put my hand over my mouth and yawned.
“There was line, sorry I took so long.” He leaned in closer and I could feel his breath on my face. He smelled of mint and some faint—very faint—earthy, manly scent, like the woods in spring after a heavy bout of rain. I thought for a second that he was going to kiss me, but he was just buckling up my seat belt.
“Oh, my God!!” It is her. It is her! It’s Star Davis! I told you so!”
I flicked my eyes up and saw a bevvy of teenage girls and a couple of young guys honing in on us, their Smartphones pointed through the open car door. Leo snapped to attention, closed the door shut and stood there, blocking me from our new audience. Luckily, the car had tinted windows, but they’d already gotten their shot, or worse, mini movie. He quickly dashed around to his side, leaped into the car, and we screeched off.
“Pain in neck, must drive you crazy,” he said, shaking his head with annoyance.
“I’m used to it. Wanna be my new, full-time bodyguard?” I half joked.
“Not chance in hell. I’d lose my temper, probably.” We shot out of the parking lot, people’s iPhones pointing at the back of the car.
“This is being fed to YouTube or Tweeted right now, guaranteed,” I said. “Step on it before they follow us.”
“Where are we going?”
“I live in Hancock Park.”
“Hand Cock? Love the name,” Leo said with a smirk.
“I know, right?” I dug a soda out of one of the take-out bags, popped the ring, stuck in a straw and took a sip. “But my neighborhood is very old-fashioned. Big old mansions, with huge backyards for people’s 2.5 kids. It was designed and built in the 1920s and it hasn’t changed much since. It’s a historical neighborhood.” I handed Leo my can of Coke but he didn’t want any.
“Not usual sort of place for young movie star,” he said.
“That’s why I chose it. I just want a discreet, normal life, you know?”
“2.5 kids?”
“One day, yeah.”
“Me too.”
“Really? You? You’re kidding me.”
“Why so surprised? I had troubled childhood. Want to make it right. Even guys like me with badass tattoos have dreams, right?”
We drove along in silence and I ruminated on Jake and felt bad for him that he didn’t seem to want the good things in life. Family. Kid
s. A stable life. Or if he did, he didn’t want those things with me but with someone like boring, squeaky-clean Cassie. I thought about Mindy and wondered if Leo would be a good match for her, now that I realized he wasn’t the player I had imagined him to be. Or maybe he was. Maybe his 2.5 kids fantasy was just talk. Men love to do that. Get women’s hopes up, just to get them into bed. Leo’s, “How loud will you scream when I fuck you?” when we first met hadn’t worked, so now he was trying a new, more subtle tactic. Smart.
We finally arrived at my house, a Spanish Colonial, approximately ten thousand square feet of pure Heaven, with six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, and an office, on a double corner lot of nearly an acre. Right now, the roof was being fixed, and I was converting the loft into an extra room. I couldn’t wait to get back. It had a theater room in the den with a state-of-the-art movie projector and screen. Next to it: a bar (now stocked with only sodas and Perrier water). The dining room was wood paneled with a butler’s pantry. There was even a wine cellar, and a kitchen that was the size of most people’s whole apartments. The garden behind (I didn’t call it a “back yard” because it was so much more) was landscaped, with fountains and perfectly trimmed box-hedges. A sparkling, mosaic-tiled pool with spa and a pergola, sat in the middle, and at the front, at the side of my house, a three-car garage, with a two-bedroom apartment above, where my full-time maid lived. I buzzed open the security gates and as we drove into the curving driveway, even I took a breath at its beauty (despite the temporary scaffolding), and when I cut a glance at Leo, he looked stunned.
“All this and you’re only . . . how old?” he said, his green eyes wide.
“Nineteen. I know, it’s pretty awesome.” I was thinking of my next move—my plan to stay here and shake Leo off, or persuade him somehow, that we didn’t need to go back to Jake’s. “Come, I’ll show you around,” I said. But before I could get out of the car Leo had raced around to my door and opened it. And then, something happened: he came crashing down on me as if he’d had a sudden stroke: his head knocking against the edge of the car rooftop as he practically landed on my lap. That’s when I too, blanked out.
Everything went black.
MY PULSE SPED UP as I mentally prepared my speech, but what came out was a garbled mess. “There’s something about this girl,” I started, “that makes me . . . literally crazy. Obsessed! I can’t control myself. Which makes me feel it must be wrong, right? I mean, love is meant to be sweet and thoughtful and caring . . . but this girl, I almost want to throttle her . . . she drives me so . . . crazy! And then the drug feeling comes back. Full on. But it’s not drugs I crave, but her.” I was sweating. Had come straight here on my run and was donned in shorts and sneakers, probably stinking of B.O., but I did feel better after expending so much pent-up energy. I needed the exercise.
“It works if you work it,” someone said, and then they all chanted, “Thanks for sharing, Jason.”
I wanted to go on, but a bodybuilder in a wife-beater tank piped up: “I relapsed last night. Fucked two women in a row. One after the other. I picked the first one up at the gym, took her out and then got sidetracked by another, prettier one, I met at the bar. I feel bad, man, like a real jerk. And the sex wasn’t even that good. Worse, I didn’t use protection.”
The group nodded knowingly. But I felt sick hearing everyone else’s sordid details. Star was different. Star was beautiful. Divine. Special. I felt I’d sullied her in some way, sharing details about her with strangers. I needed to get the hell out of this dirty meeting and see her in person. Tell her I wanted to make a go of it. A real relationship. Flowers, dinners. The whole damn lot. I needed to know if it was love I felt or simply lust, and the only possible way of finding out for sure was to woo her.
The old fashioned way.
I slipped out of the meeting but, with my head in my hands, went careening into someone glued to her iPad. We were both at fault. “Sorry,” we both said simultaneously.
I looked up. “Holly?”
“Jake, what a coincidence!” Then she furrowed her brows. “I came to this branch because I though I was being incognito.” She laughed.
“Me too,” I admitted. We’d both been caught.
“So, how’s it going with Skye’s The Limit?”
“Great,” I told her. “How are things working out with my uncle? Is he treating you nicely?”
“He’s a dream,” she answered with a grin. I’d gotten Holly the job. I’d fucked her and then felt guilty: a sort of severance pay. “How about that wild child, Star Davis?” she went on. “You’ve got a lot on your plate with her.”
“She’s fine, really,” I said, wishing I could have some sort of anonymity in this bloody town.
“I see she’s having some fun with your AD?” Holly said with a little smirk.
“What?”
She shoved her iPad in my face. “Twitter feed. That’s why I crashed into you. This one’s trending as we speak.”
I looked at the screen. There was Leo, his lips centimeters away from Star’s face, as Star gazed at him with her big fucking baby-doll blue eyes. My heart began to pound uncontrollably.
“Eat-A-Pita parking lot, couldn’t keep their hands off each other apparently. Sexy guy your AD. When she’s done with him, pass him my way.”
I stood there, dumbfounded. Star was punishing me. Or maybe not. Maybe she genuinely didn’t give a damn. And as far as Leo was concerned? He was fucking well fired. And if I had my way he’d never work in this town again. Dammit, I’d trusted him! I’d told him Star was off limits! But then, poor guy, as far as he knew I was still with Cassie. And it had been my own bloody fault that he was chaperoning Star home in the first place! No, I wouldn’t fire him, but . . .
“Well, bye, Jake, see you around. Good luck with that little vixen. Rumor has it she’s tipped to win an Oscar—great performance they’re all saying. Early days though, eh? If she’s hanging out with a Russian they’re big on vodka shots and partying hard—”
“Bye, Holly,” I interrupted. “Say hi to my uncle for me—tell him I’ll call him soon.”
I’d left my phone behind so couldn’t call Leo. Bastard! I had to stop them! Right now!
I started running faster than I’d ever run in my life.
I OPENED MY EYES, expecting to find light, but stared into the unending darkness. I caught my breath, panicked by the eerie silence and deep black that was now my vision. I had no idea what time it was, nor where the hell I was. Some kind of bedding was beneath me. It was pitch, pitch black. My head felt groggy and I ached, but not with a headache when you have a pain behind your eyes from too much alcohol or something, but a hazy, flu-like feeling, thick in my brain. I tried to recall something—anything—but all that came to mind was the fact that I must be late and I should be on set.
That’s right—I remembered suddenly—we’d be flying out early to South Dakota. My hands padded out in front of me and I felt an unfamiliar, hard mattress beneath me, some rough sheets, and I realized I was shivering. I pulled the sheet up around myself and felt my naked body, although I still had my bra, panties, and thigh-highs on. The mattress was directly on the floor. I walked my fingers to the edge of the bedding and felt the tackiness of linoleum. I tried to lift up my head and sit.
My lids felt heavy, swollen, and my head and shoulders slumped back down in a thud. I felt numb again and let myself fall back into a muzzy, dazed sleep.
THEY’D BEEN GONE for twelve hours. No news. Disappeared into thin air. The more I was finding out, the more painful their betrayal was. Star betraying her profession, and Leo betraying me. I’d given him a chance. Plucked him from obscurity. Star was being given a chance, too, by the studio—the role of a lifetime—and she was throwing it all away. For what? So we had a little scene in my trailer?—she got pissed off at me. So, what? It was no reason to bail on the movie itself. I still couldn’t believe what they were telling me was true. Something didn’t add up.
Brian poured us out another coffee. It was six a.m.
We were in my kitchen, waiting for more news from the private investigators I’d hired. The law didn’t recognize “missing persons” when they hadn’t even been gone twenty-four hours. Besides, it was their right, as adults, to do whatever they liked. Why would they waste taxpayers’ money hunting down a runaway couple “in love?”
The ten-second YouTube video clip played over and over in my mind. Leo leaning in and saying, “Sleeping Beauty” and Star’s eyes half-mast, full of lust, or full of something.
Brian was still talking—I was only half paying attention; my mind was focused on losing Star to Leo.
He rambled on, “ ‘So they broke their contracts, then ‘sue them,’ a police officer said to me, thinking he was being smart. The law doesn’t give a fuck, Jake. You did the right thing to hire private investigators—the cops aren’t going to lift a finger to help us. They have gang shootings in South Central—a runaway movie star and her side-kick are the least of their problems.”
I looked at my watch again. We should have been at the airport by now, settling into our cabins later this morning, and setting up shots for the golden hour, this evening, when we’d be commencing the car chase.
“It’s just not like Star,” Brian repeated for the umpteenth time.
“How do you know, what is, or isn’t, ‘like Star’ ” I snapped. “She’s an alcoholic/drug addict, Brian—she’s done this sort of shit before.”
“No she hasn’t, Jake. She may have turned up sozzled on set, but she still showed. She’s a professional. ‘The show must go on’ . . . that’s the kind of person she is. She wouldn’t simply bail on her job like this, whatever personal problems she’s having.”
“I can’t get over Leo,” I muttered. “How could he do that to me? After all I’ve done for him?”
“Come on, Jake! He’s an opportunist. A poor boy from Russia—”
“Ukraine, not Russia, there’s a difference, Brian.”
Falling Star (Beautiful Chaos #2) Page 5