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“You never said you didn’t like him, just that he didn’t have as many dimensions as I did, once again implying that I need to be more focused.”
“That’s not what I meant at all. Georgie, Lance is a decent actor—he’s found his niche, and he’s smart enough to stick to it. But he’s never had a personal identity of his own. He relies on the people around him to define who he is. Until he met you, he’d hardly read at all. You’re the one who got him interested in music, dance, art—even current events. The way he absorbs other people’s personalities helps make him a good actor, but it doesn’t make him a good husband.”
This was virtually the same thing Bram had said.
“I could never stomach the way you acted around him,” he went on, “as though you were grateful he’d chosen you when it should have been the other way around. He fed off that. He fed off you—your sense of humor, your curiosity, how easy you are with people. Those things don’t come naturally to him.”
“I can’t believe…Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell me how you felt about him?”
“Because every time I tried, your back went up. You worshipped him, and nothing I said was going to change that. We had enough tension over your career. What would criticizing him have accomplished except to make you resent me even more?”
“You should have been honest. I always believed you cared more about him than you did about me.”
“You like to think the worst of me.”
“You blamed me for the divorce!”
“I never blamed you. But I do blame you for marrying Bramwell Shepard. Of all the stupid—”
“Stop. Don’t say any more.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. She felt upended. Was her father telling her the truth, or was he trying to rewrite history so he could preserve the illusion of his own omnipotence?
Phones were ringing inside, and she could hear the gate intercom buzzing. A third helicopter dropped down, lower than the other two. “This is crazy.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “We can…talk about it later.”
Laura waited until Georgie disappeared to emerge from the back of the veranda. Paul looked as vulnerable as an invincible man of steel could look. He was such a mystery to her. So tightly controlled. She couldn’t imagine him laughing at a great dirty joke, let alone being caught up in a colossal orgasm. She couldn’t imagine him doing anything to excess.
He lived modestly by Hollywood standards. He drove a Lexus instead of a Bentley and owned a three-bedroom town house instead of a mansion. He had no personal staff, and he dated women his own age. What other fifty-two-year-old Hollywood male did that?
Over the years, she’d spent so much energy resenting him that she’d stopped thinking of him as anything more than a symbol of her ineffectiveness, but she’d just witnessed his Achilles’ heel, and something inside her shifted. “Georgie’s a terrific person, Paul.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He quickly reverted to his starchy self. “Is this how you’ve built your career? By eavesdropping?”
“It wasn’t intentional,” she said. “I came out here to see if I could get better cell reception, and I heard the two of you talking. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Or go back inside and leave us alone?”
“I got sucked in by your cluelessness. It temporarily paralyzed me.” She caught her breath, unable to believe those words had come from her mouth. She wanted to chalk up her unguarded tongue to a sleepless night, but what if it was something more dangerous? What if all these years of self-disgust had finally eaten away at the last threads of her restraint?
He wasn’t used to anything but her obsequiousness, and his eyebrows lifted. Her entire career depended on representing Georgie York, and she had to apologize quickly. “I just meant…You always seem so together. You’re sure of your opinions, and you don’t second-guess yourself.” She took in his navy slacks and expensive polo shirt, and her apology began to go awry. “Just look at you. Those are the same clothes you had on last night, but you don’t muss. You don’t wrinkle. You’re very intimidating.”
If only he hadn’t reared back on his heels and looked down his nose at her sadly wrinkled kimono top and wilted ivory slacks, she might have been able to stop herself. Instead, she said, much too loudly, “That was your daughter you were talking to. Your only child.”
His fingers curled around the coffee cup Georgie had left behind. “I know who she is.”
“I always thought my father was screwed up. He was lousy with money, and he couldn’t hold a job, but a day never went by that he didn’t give all us kids a hug and say how much he loved us.”
“If you’re suggesting I don’t love my daughter, you’re wrong. You’re not a parent. You can’t understand what it’s like.”
She had four wonderful nieces, so she had a fairly good idea what parental love involved, but she had to stop herself right now. Except her tongue seemed to have disconnected from her brain. “I don’t get how you can b
e so distant with her. Can’t you just act like a father?”
“Apparently you weren’t eavesdropping hard enough or you’d know that’s exactly what I was doing.”
“By lecturing and criticizing? You don’t approve of what she wants to do with her career. You don’t like her taste in men. Exactly what do you like about her? Other than her earning power.”
His face flushed with fury. She didn’t know which of them was more shocked. She was ruining everything she’d taken so many years to build. She had to beg his forgiveness, but she was too sick of herself to find the right words.
“You just stepped way over the line,” he said.
