AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Belinda took Fleur’s arm and smiled down at her luncheon partner. “Excuse us for a moment, will you?” She pulled Fleur into the restroom and locked the door. “What’s this all about?” she said coldly.
Fleur gripped the keys tighter. The pain of their sharp edges digging into her skin almost felt good, maybe because she knew she could make it stop. “I just talked to Parker Dayton. He said there was nothing about a body double in my contract. He said you told him I’d changed my mind.”
Belinda shrugged. “They wouldn’t agree to it, baby. Parker pushed them, but they said it was nonnegotiable. They wouldn’t film the scene with a double.”
“So you lied to me? Even though you know how I feel about working nude?”
Belinda pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse. “You wouldn’t have signed if you’d known you couldn’t use a double. I had to protect you. Surely you can see that now.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“Of course you are.” Belinda looked faintly alarmed. “My God, a breach-of-contract suit would finish you in Hollywood. You’re not ruining your career because of some silly bourgeois prudery.”
The keys cut deeper, and Fleur asked the question she’d held back for so long. “Is it my career, Belinda, or is it yours?”
“What a wicked, ungrateful thing to say!” Belinda pitched the cigarette she’d just lit to the floor and stubbed it out with the toe of her shoe. “You listen to me, Fleur, and pay attention to exactly what I’m telling you. If you do anything to jeopardize this film, things will never be the same between us.”
Fleur stared at her mother. A chill slithered through her. “You don’t mean that.”
“I’ve never meant anything more.”
As Fleur gazed into Belinda’s face, she saw only determination. Her lungs compressed, and she ran from the restroom. Belinda called out for her, but Fleur didn’t stop. She wove through the tables and out onto the street. The thin soles of her sandals slapped the pavement as she began to run, up one street, down another, trying to outrace her misery. She had no destination in mind, but she couldn’t stop. Then she saw the phone booth.
Her hands shook as she placed the call, and her dress stuck to her skin.
“It’s…me,” she said when he answered.
“I can barely hear you. Is something wrong, enfant?”
“Yes, something’s really wrong. She—she lied to me.” Struggling to breathe, she told him what had happened.
“You signed a contract without reading it first?” he said when she finished.
“Belinda always takes care of that.”
“I am very much afraid, enfant,” he said quietly, “that you have learned a most difficult lesson about your mother. She is not to be trusted. Ever.”
Ironically, Alexi’s attack on Belinda made Fleur feel an automatic need to defend her. She didn’t.
She waited until she knew Belinda would be at her hair appointment before she went home. As soon as she got there, she changed into a swimsuit and threw herself into the pool. Jake found her as she was climbing out.
He wore a pair of ratty navy shorts and a T-shirt so faded that only the outlines of Beethoven’s face were still visible on the front. One of his sweat socks had fallen into accordion folds around his ankle. He was rumpled and mussed, a hard-fisted cowboy misplaced in Beverly Hills. She was absurdly, insanely glad to see him. “Go away, Koranda. Nobody invited you.”
“Get your shoes on. We’re going for a run.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Don’t piss me off. You’ve got a minute and a half to change your clothes.”
“Or what?”
“I call in Bird Dog.”
“I’m scared.” She grabbed a towel and took her time drying off. “I’ll run with you, but only because I was planning to go out anyway.”
“Understood.”
She went into the house and changed. If what she felt for Jake was puppy love, she prayed the real thing never came along. It was too painful. Every night as she fell asleep, she imagined they were making love in a sun-drenched room filled with flowers and soft music. She saw them lying on a bed with pastel sheets that billowed over their bodies in the breeze from the open window. He pulled a flower from a vase by the bed and brushed the petals over her nipples and her stomach. She opened her legs, and he touched her there, too. They were in love, and they were alone. No camera. No crew. Just the two of them.
