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“I know. I’m—I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You’re damned right you shouldn’t have.”
But instead of rushing away from him before she could do any more damage, her feet remained stubbornly in place. “I’ve never understood why you seem so disapproving of her. She’s a terrific woman. She might not have the best taste in men, although I have to say Bram has been a pleasant surprise, but…She’s warm and generous. How many actors do you know who try to make life easier for the people around them? She’s smart as a whip, and interested in everything. If she were my daughter, I’d want to enjoy her instead of always behaving as though she needs to be made over.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” But she could see he understood exactly what she meant.
“Why don’t you just have fun with her sometimes? Goof off. Do something that doesn’t involve business. Play a card game, splash around in the pool.”
“How about a trip to Disneyland?” he said caustically.
“How about it?” she tossed back.
“Georgie’s thirty-one, not five.”
“Did you do those things with her when she was five?”
“Her mother had just died, so I was a little preoccupied,” he snapped.
“That must have been horrible.”
“I was the best father I knew how to be.”
She saw real pain in his eyes, but it didn’t stir her compassion. “Here’s what bothers me, Paul…If I don’t understand how much you love her, how’s she supposed to?”
“That’s enough. More than enough. If this is all the respect you have for our professional relationship, then maybe we need to reassess where we are.”
Her stomach twisted. She could still salvage this. She could plead illness, insanity, SARS…But she didn’t do any of it. Instead, she squared her shoulders and stepped off the veranda.
Her heart pounded as she made her way back to the guesthouse. She thought about her killer mortgage, about what would happen to her reputation if she lost her star client, about how badly, how catastrophically, she’d screwed up. So why didn’t she run back and apologize?
Because a good agent—a great agent—served her client well, and for the first time, Laura felt as though she’d done exactly that.
Chapter 19
All day Bram watched the human chess game being played out in front of him as helicopters circled overhead. He observed Georgie doing her best to stay away from Lance, Jade, and her father, while Paul barely spoke to anyone. He saw Chaz pandering to Lance and Jade but remaining her customary pain in the ass to Georgie and Aaron. Meg helped out in the kitchen, sneered at Lance whenever he passed by, and acted as if Jade were invisible. Laura assumed the role of a nervous Switzerland, trying to move neutrally among all warring nations. And everybody sucked up to Rory, including himself.
With the possible exception of Chaz, Bram decided, he was the only one happy about the quarantine. He’d planned to pitch to Rory last night only to have Lance show up, but now he had the rest of the weekend to get her alone, and she couldn’t keep avoiding him forever.
Between the helicopters and the snake incident, no one wanted to go in the pool. A few of them congregated in the kitchen, and he noticed Georgie beginning to mess around again with the video camera. Chaz started to bristle, and he quickly stepped in. “Georgie, why don’t you practice your interviewing techniques on Laura? A female agent in the Hollywood shark pool and all that.”
“I don’t want to talk to Laura. I want to talk to Chaz again.”
“Only because the housecleaners aren’t here,” Chaz sneered. “She loves talking to them.”
It was unusual for him to feel like the only adult in the room. “How about interviewing Aaron then,” he said with what seemed to him great reasonableness.
“I’m not interested in talking to men,” Georgie snapped. “Fine. I’ll interview you.”
“Make him take off his clothes,” Meg piped up from the kitchen table. “It’ll spice things up.”
“Great idea,” he said. “Let’s do it in the bedroom.”
Georgie finally recalled her role of loving wife. “Don’t tantalize me like that when we have company.”
A series of semipornographic images flashed through his head. Who’d have figured Georgie would turn out to be such a firecracker? From the beginning, her sexual bossiness had turned him on. Unlike other women, she didn’t give a damn about arousing him, and somehow that only aroused him more. The sex part of this phony marriage had turned out to be a lot more fun than he could have imagined. So much fun that he’d started to feel a little uneasy. He only had room for one person in his life, and that was himself. Chaz had been an accident.
By late afternoon, everyone’s cell phones and PDAs were running out of power. Only Rory, who’d had a charger and a spare phone included in the package left by the gate, continued to work. Laura announced that being without a phone was making her hyperventilate, and she asked Georgie to sing, but there was no piano in the house, and Georgie declined. As much as he teased her about her Annie past, she was fun to listen to with her big voice and inexhaustible energy. Maybe he’d get a piano in here to surprise her.
