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The picture would get made without her. They’d find another actress, maybe not as good, but adequate. Except everyone wanted Georgie, and his job as a producer was to make the impossible happen. He couldn’t let any of them—Rory, Hank, the lowliest crew member—see that he wasn’t up to that job.
They reached the house as a crack of lightning broke over the surf. He snagged her wrist, pulling her to a stop just as she was about to climb up to the deck. “Georgie…” He had trouble getting enough air into his lungs. “I’m not quite sure how to tell you this…”
The wind blew another lock of hair over her face. She pushed it back and cocked her head. He released her wrist. “I’ve…missed you these past few weeks. More than I ever thought.” Acid churned in his stomach as she continued to stand there, patiently waiting. “Help me out here.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
“That…I didn’t realize how much I’d gotten used to being with you until you left. The two of us…I thought it was just a great friendship, but—I don’t know how to say this.” An awning cracked in the wind. “I might be…falling for you.”
She stared at him.
“Ironic, isn’t it. Just when you’ve gotten over me, now here I am…wishing you hadn’t.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That lie about Jade. There was something a little desperate about it, right? I guess I didn’t want to…admit what I was really feeling.”
“What are you really feeling, Bram? You’re going to have to spell it out because I’m not getting it.”
“You know what I’m saying.”
Apparently she’d had enough of his hedging because she turned away and headed up the short flight of stairs.
“It started right here, you know,” he called after her. “Not fifteen or sixteen years ago during Skip and Scooter, but right here on Trev’s deck three months ago. You and me.” She stopped at the top and gazed down at him. He took the steps two at a time to reach her. “Ever since we woke up in the Vegas hotel room, we’ve been on this crazy Ferris wheel ride.” A gust of wind blew a newspaper across the deck. “I kept thinking you were the best friend I’ve ever had, but now I know it’s more than friendship.”
“It’s sex.”
He felt a flash of anger. “Sure, it’s sex, but that’s not all. We don’t have to put on false faces for each other. We…understand each other.” He rushed on, forcing out the next part even as he hated himself for what he was about to say. “I’ve even been thinking—Just thinking. Your idea about”—a giant fist squeezed his chest—“about having a baby.” She made a soft, indecipherable sound. He plowed on. “I’m a long way from saying let’s go for it. I’m just saying that…Just that I’m ready to at least talk about it.”
She was swallowing his face with her eyes, and he wanted to yell at her, to tell her he was a liar and not to be so damned gullible. Instead, he set aside whatever shreds of honor he had left and went for the big fucking finish. “I’m…falling in love with you, Georgie. For real.”
She pressed her fingertips to her lips. A boom of thunder shook the deck. “For real?” she whispered.
Pebble-sharp raindrops stung his face, and he nodded.
She didn’t do anything. She simply stood there. And then she said his name. “Bram…” Opening her arms, she threw herself at him. She wrapped herself around his chest, slid her legs between his, and he wanted to howl at the harm he’d done…right until the moment she jerked up her knee and slammed him in the nuts. Through his agonizing wheeze of pain, he heard two words.
“You bastard.”
The roar of the wind…The stomp of bare feet across the deck…The slam of the door as she disappeared inside…And the sound of his own wrenching gasps. He clutched the edge of a stone and tried not to pass out. The door opened again and his car keys flew by, over the deck rail and into the sand.
The storm broke.
Georgie stood inside the locked door, clutching herself to keep her insides from boiling through her skin. The rain slashed at the windows, slashed at her. Bram hadn’t changed. He was a user, as manipulative as ever, pretending to offer what she most yearned for in order to get what he coveted for himself.
The storm raged outside; a fiercer storm raged inside.
Her sham of a marriage was over, and there’d be no friendly divorce. No Bruce and Demi. This public humiliation would be so much worse than the first time. And she didn’t care. Her years of posing and posturing had ended. She’d never be spunky Scooter Brown, the girl who could bounce back from any adversity with a smile and a wisecrack. She was a real woman who’d been betrayed.
And this time she’d have her revenge.
Once Bram was able to move again, he staggered down to the sand and threw himself in the ocean. Oblivious to the angry waves and dark undertow, he prayed for the water to wash away his sins. He dove under a wave, came up, and dove under again. All his life he’d hustled and manipulated, but he’d never done anything as wicked as what he’d just tried to put over on the person who least deserved it.
He saw the wave right before it hit him, a looming tower of water. It crashed on top of him and flipped him over. He twisted, pitched, floated for an instant, then flipped again. Sand scraped his elbow, then something sharp bit into his leg. He lost his bearings. His lungs burned. The current caught him and pulled him—up, down, he didn’t know—the selfish current, following its own course without sparing a thought for its victim.
He broke through the surface, glimpsed the shore, then got sucked beneath again by the undertow. She’d become his conscience, his mistress, his guardian angel, his best friend. She’d become his love.
His body shot toward the light—a shimmering glow visible only in his head. He gasped for air, went under, plunged to the bottom. He loved her.
