by Maggie Marr
A gust of wind from the chopper blades blasted towards us and I clamped my hand onto my elaborate updo that contained Swavorski crystals and flowers.
My father took one more hard look toward the sky, ignored the pleas of his soon-to-be-wife, and entered the house through the French doors. With no direct response from my father, Kiley stomped toward the stairs.
“Not a very happy wedding day.” Lane Channing, my BFF, stood beside me. She too had endured the long and painful process of getting ready for the blessed event with the bride.
“No,” I said. “Not very happy at all.” I wanted to say that Kiley was a horrible bitch and deserved her wedding day to be ruined, but I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth, even though they were true and Lane would most likely agree. I was too well-trained by my mother and my father and a childhood in Hollywood to ever speak my mind in public. Well-trained in the Legend Facade which made certain that all members of the Legend family understood our family motto: Diplomacy over Honesty.
“Kiley looks upset.” Lane made her observation without a whit of snarkiness. Which was a true testament to just how good of a person Lane was, because before Kiley landed my dad as her betrothed, she’d tried to snag Lane’s fiance Dillon MacAvoy. The giant five-carat ring on Lane’s left hand was a bright testament to Kiley’s failure. Yet, one more reason that I loathed Kiley Kepner.
“Should we go over there?” Lane asked.
My teeth bit into my bottom lip and I closed my eyes. Yes, we should, but I didn’t want to walk across the room and tell Kiley how sorry I was that the helicopter was ruining her day. I wasn’t sorry, not really, my heart actually ached with the thought of Kiley marrying my father.
“Is this hard for you?”
I pulled my gaze from Kiley and looked into Lane’s eyes. I couldn’t answer, not here.
“It has to be, I mean you two were practically sisters,” Lane said. “Your mother raised her too.”
“Yes,” I said, “until Kiley was ten, my mother did.” I pressed my hand against my updo testing for wisps of loose hair. “I’m fine, really,” I said. My gaze traveled from Lane toward Kiley who now ascended the stairs. She nodded to her bridesmaids and handed off her bouquet. “She must be going to her room.”
“I know it sounds selfish but I hope this doesn’t happen next January,” Lane said.
“It won’t. First your wedding is inside and second,” I looked across the room where Boom Boom Wong my father and Kiley’s publicist stood yammering into her cell phone, “you won’t have Boom Boom tip the tabs.”
Lane’s cheeks tightened and she tilted her chin. “We won’t be having Boom Boom do anything,” Lane said.
“Smart choice,” I said. I wasn’t a fan of Boom Boom’s and neither was Lane.
My father hadn’t seemed to notice the exit of his bride. He still stood beside the bar in the terrace room surrounded by his gaggle of groomsmen. Each had been selected by Kiley to ensure that we were an A-list bridal party, a veritable Who’s Who of the rich and famous of Hollywood. A total of five, they were a motley bunch of young and beautiful stars and one lone sixty-year-old, my father’s agent, Buddy. Beside Buddy stood Dillon MacAvoy, heir apparent to my dad’s action star crown and engaged to Lane, Sterling my brother, Taylor my cousin, and Ryan Sinclair.
Ryan was gorgeous in an I-am-an-actor sort of a way. But he was also an insufferabl drunk. I couldn’t stand arrogance, entitlement, and drunkenness. My childhood was filled with the memories of a hard-drinking Steve Legend until he actually put the bottle down the year I turned fourteen.
Laughter burst from the circle of men. My dad stood in the center his hands waving in the air. After thirty years in the film industry he had good stories. Stories that every one of those men would want to hear.
“At least they’re having a good time,” Lane said.
The wrinkle in my heart smoothed with the sound of my father’s laughter and the smile on my brother’s face. They were happy, both of them, and Steve and Sterling meant everything to me. Kiley’s wedding to my father was simply one more Hollywood event, an event that I would endure. As long as Sterling and my father were happy and healthy then truly all was right in my world.
“I love it when they laugh,” I said. “Nothing makes me happier.”
*
The ceremony had been pushed two times and we were now three hours behind schedule. After a multitude of delays, security managed to put two helicopters in the air to chase away the photographers. The roaring persisted but the low level swooping was gone.
Now, all we needed was the bride.
Hours before, when Kiley couldn’t foresee a possible start-time to this blessed event, she’d retreated to my father’s bedroom. I left the bridal party milling just inside the back doors that led out to the tent where the wedding was meant to happen. I walked up the stairs and down the hall toward my father’s bedroom. The bedroom that would soon be Kiley’s.
“Kiley,” I said and turned the door knob, “I think we’re finally,” I opened the door— “ready to be—” I stopped.
My eyes froze to the scene in front of me. A giant fluff of white crinoline was bent over the bed. Kiley’s arms were outstretched in front of her body and her hands braced the mattress. Her head bobbed forward and then back as though she was being pushed and pulled from behind.
The scene finally registered in my mind. My eyes focused on what took place just four feet in front of me.
My father’s bride was getting banged from behind.
I didn’t exit. I didn’t scurry away. Instead I walked into the room, shut the door behind me, and crossed my arms over the horrendous green-apple colored bride’s maid dress that Kiley had forced me to wear.
“Ryan,” Kiley breathed out, “Ryan stop.” Her eyes locked with mine. “Ryan,” she tried again. She pulled forward away from Ryan and he stumbled forward and fell to the floor.
Ryan rolled to his back and laughed. A deep masculine sound that burst from his chest. His flacid cock dangled on the side of his leg and pants were around his knees.
“Saved the whiskey,” he said. He held up a silver flask in his right hand and tipped a giant shot of booze into his mouth.
My gaze slid toward Kiley. This was to be my father’s wife?
Classy.
Ryan lifted his empty hand to his face and pressed the back of it to his lips and laughter convulsed his body. I stood over him. The stench of whiskey and beer wafted up from his position on the floor.
Drunk. As usual.
What a scene. I grew up in Hollywood and was part of the premiere family in entertainment. I’d seen the worst behavior that humanity could offer. But this? This horrible behavior was near the top of the list.
“Banging a groomsman on your wedding day? And not just your wedding day, but hours after the wedding was meant to begin? Even for you, Kiley, that’s classless.”
Kiley stood with her hands under her gargantuan skirts. A handy wipe emerged and she tossed it in the trash. She didn’t bother to wash her hands before she started futzing with her make-up. The girl was disgusting.
“He won’t believe you,” she said.
I took a long breath. Sad, but true. My father the uber-famous action star didn’t believe anything that he didn’t want to believe. Kiley having sex with Ryan—while true—was something Steve Legend wouldn’t want to believe. No, this scene didn’t fit anywhere into my dad’s action- star life.
“You might as well turn around and walk away,” Kiley said. She pulled at her false eyelashes in the mirror and glanced at my reflection. “Besides, I know you. You won’t say a word, you never did, not even in high school. You’ve always been too scared to tell the truth.”
A cold trickle dripped down my spine. A trickle of fear, of doubt, the knowledge of what it felt like to be abandoned by someone you love. To tell the truth today could mean the end of my relationship with my father for always.
Ryan let loose another belly laugh.
“Sh
ut the hell up, Ryan.” Kiley said.
He was so hammered I wondered how he’d managed to even get hard.
“Fucking Amanda Legend!” He chortled and curled into a comma shaped position on the floor.
“No,” I said. “You were fucking Kiley Kepner soon-to-be Legend.”
My father might not believe me, but I knew the truth. Where was a cell phone when you needed one? Mine was in my bag which was downstairs on the lap of Dillon MacAvoy’s little brother Choo.
Kiley turned from the mirror. She stalked toward me, slowly, quietly, and with intent. If I couldn’t see both her hands I would have worried that she held an ice pick that she intended to plant in my heart.
Kiley stopped inches from me. The sweet smell of roses and vanilla filled my nose. She was taller than me. She’d always been taller than me; at sleep away camp, at Crossroads, at Archer, even the first year of college when we’d been dorm mates at USC. Kiley was taller, but she was also bitchier and she had bigger feet.
This close to her, I could see every line, every blemish, every flaw that hours with a make-up artist were meant to hide. Kiley was far from perfect, but her image was perfect for my father.
“Amanda, he will never believe you.” She reached out and tucked a tiny strand of hair behind my ear. “We were friends for a very long time and I know your father. He wants this wedding, he wants this marriage, he wants this so much that if you tell him what you think you saw, he won’t believe you and not only will he not believe you, but Steve will be very very mad.”
My heart thumped hard in my chest. I grasped at my nonchalant expression. Kiley was right. The trickle of fear that dripped down my spine told me what I knew to be true—my father would not believe me. He would assume that I was trying to sabotage his marriage. The chill in my spine hardened to a solid block of ice in my gut. Daddy made it abundantly clear with the parade of women through his life that he would always, always, pick these women over me—his child.
“I suggest, that if you want things to remain the way they are,” Kiley tilted her head to the side, “with your stipend and your credit cards and your car and the pied a tierre in NY—-everything that you intend to use during your internship this summer, that you forget what you saw, turn around, walk downstairs, and tell everyone that the bride is on her way.”
My eyes flicked from Kiley and her big pout of a mouth to Ryan. He was vertical but he couldn’t seem to summon the necessary brain power to button his pants. His fingers fumbled around the waistband.
“Where are the buttons?” He looked up and a drunken grin wobbled over his face, “Someone stole my fucking buttons!”
Ryan wouldn’t remember a bit of this in the morning. Kiley must have counted on Ryan’s inability to remember as well.
“It’s your word Amanda, against mine. And really? What would my motivation be? To fuck Ryan? On my wedding day? Especially when I was about to marry the world’s biggest action star? Like Steve would ever believe that I would choose to come up here and have sex with Ryan? Steve’s ego could never abide by that.”
Again Kiley was right.
“But you? He knows that you loathe me. We’ve had so many conversations about this Amanda, your father and I,” Kiley leaned in closer, “after we fuck.”
I swallowed. My stomach sickened.
“And I always stand up for you. Put in a good word for you. You know — there is something about you that your father just absolutely does not like.” Kiley bit her bottom lip and let her eyes flick upward to the ceiling, “Maybe it’s your obstinate refusal to kiss his ass.”
I stiffened, each vertebrae clicking into place. The entire world kissed my father’s ass. I was the sole hold-out, the lone survivor. My mother had never done it so why should I?
“Even Sterling puckers up and kisses your father‘s ass. But you? You refuse and truly, your stubbornness hurts Steve’s feelings.”
Again I flinched. I abhorred the intimacy between Kiley and my father. Their intimacy that made my stomach lurch and me want to heave. He was sleeping with my former best friend and not just sleeping with, but marrying.
“If you go downstairs and tell Steve about this he won’t believe you, and he may”—she arched on eyebrow and tilted her head to the side—“and this is just a guess, but he may even get a wee bit angry.” A smiled curved around her lips, “and not at me, but at you.”
Ryan had managed to button his dress pants but his zipper still eluded his grasp. His fingers fumbled around his crotch.
I was definitely more well-screwed than Kiley. I knew what I had to do. The only thing that the daughter of Steve Legend could ever do, and I would do it now.
Ryan
Amanda Legend was a ball-buster of a knock out. With that black hair and those ice blue eyes. She was tall and willowy with a long neck and long legs. She had a nice handful of little titties . . . ooo those titties . . . titties I’d like to taste. I lay on the floor and peered up at at Amanda while she and Kiley went back and forth. I tilted my flask over my head and a long pour of Mr. Daniels filled my mouth. I swallowed. Heat seared down my throat and into my belly. A comforting numbness oozed outward from my chest into my arms and fingers.
Why was I here?
Wedding. Kiley’s wedding. I rolled to my side. Kiley Kepner was getting married. Who would want to marry Kiley Kpener? Talk about ball buster—I mean she was hot. Smokin’ but the bitch was cold and mean.
I curled around myself. Laughter started in my belly and rolled up over my body. This was so funny. Amanda Legend walking in on me with Kiley, who was about to marry Amanda’s dad. I couldn’t stop laughing.
Amanda leaned over me with both her hands on her hips. She didn’t think this was funny. No, that face looked as though it belonged on a pissed off librarian. The idea of Amanda Legend being a librarian when she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever laid eyes upon was even funnier than Kiley marrying Steve. A giant laugh started in my belly and rolled through my body.
“This is not funny,” Amanda said. Her words were sharp but not loud.
“You...you...as a librarian,” I gasped out.
“What?” She squinted her eyes and her face scrunched up as though I had lost my mind. I laughed harder at her look. She turned away from me, and toward Kiley.
I rolled to my hands and knees. I planted my feet under me. Not easy. I couldn’t remember how much I’d drank—who the hell cared? This was a wedding! I pulled myself upward and sat on my ass. The rug was coarse on my ass cheeks I climbed up the side of the bed and pulled my pants upward with me.
Where was my zipper? Where were my buttons?
“Who stole my buttons!”
I looked up. Amanda’s gaze locked onto me. Her head was tilted to the side and her cheeks were pulled in with a tight look of anger ... no disgust ...or disdain. Maybe all three.
“I can’t seem to find my zipper,” I said and felt the pressure of a laugh begin to build.
Amanda said nothing, shook her head, and then walked out the door.
“Unbelievable!” Kiley said. “She walks into my room without knocking, and suddenly this is my fault.” She directed her gaze toward me. Kiley looked like an angry bird, an angry bird that wanted to devour me.
“Ryan get your pants on,” she said.
Shit why were my pants off? Oh right, because of the sex. She wasn’t very good. Not good enough for me to get hard.
“My zipper!” I pulled up the zipper. My dick, once again safe.
I turned to Kiley. There were lots of Kileys. Looking at all those Kileys made me wobble. She stood in front of her three way mirror examining the big white balloon shaped thing that she called a dress. I reached for the bed and put a hand on my head.
“She will either keep her mouth closed or pay,” Kiley said. She looked at my reflection in the mirror. “She will not ruin this for me. This wedding has been in the works for over a year. There is no way that Steve would let your sad little attempt ruin that.” She pressed her hands over th
e front of her gown.
I was drunk, but not so drunk to fail to recognize a cold-hearted bitch when I saw one.
I heard my name and looked across the room. There they were—those ice cold eyes staring at me.
“Ryan,” Kiley said. “Get the hell out.”