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“I suppose you’re wondering how I got them.”
“Hmm. Most people don’t have eighth row seats and backstage passes for a sold-out concert just fall into their lap.”
Jenna’s cheeks grew warm, and she scrunched her nose in the manner of a child caught pilfering a cookie. “I confess. I asked Eric to get them. I told Janie I won them from a radio station, so that’s the story.”
“My lips are sealed. But how the hell do you plan on going backstage without anyone recognizing you? It might be hard explaining to the kids why you’re wearing a wig and dark glasses, don’t you think?”
Sunlight filtered through Anne’s sheer curtains like golden rays of optimism, and Jenna took a deep breath. “I know what these backstage things are like. I should be able to blend into the background and you can mingle a little with the girls.”
“Are you sure? What if there are people there who knew you from before?”
Jenna stretched her arms wide. “There will be. My old manager for one. I’ll be keeping my head down and my fingers crossed. Besides…I don’t think my secrets are going to be secrets much longer anyway.”
****
Thinking it wise to be in the city and near Jenna, Eric returned to his suite at the Plaza, the digs he had been paying fifteen hundred a night for and hadn’t used in weeks. He retrieved an endless list of messages from the desk—seventeen from his lawyers, and about fifty from his agent. If Eric had wanted to talk to them, he would have answered his cell phone when they called. He crumpled the mass of paper in his fist and ambled to the elevator. He checked his watch. It was two-thirty, and Jenna should be on her way to the city by now.
After wolfing down a room service sandwich, he called the front desk and asked to have a taxi waiting for him. While playing carpenter, he had worn some pretty serious holes in the knees and the backsides of all his jeans, so he decided on a trip to the penthouse to pick up more clothes. He had complete wardrobes in the various places he and Bree owned.
Saturday traffic in the city was its usual crawl, and it took more than fifteen minutes to travel the seven short blocks from 5th Avenue to York. The doorman greeted him and held the door. Getting into the apartment was another matter. His key no longer worked.
He heard sounds coming from within and knocked. A maid, someone new, answered the door, standing firm and blocking it. She said something to him in fractured English. From the distance of the long entryway, he saw Bree standing with her arms folded and her eyes narrowed.
“My apartment,” he explained to the maid.
She turned and appealed to Bree. “Missus Laine?”
“You can let him in, Natalia.”
With her arms still twined and pressed tightly under her breasts, Bree padded over. “Do you mind telling me where you’ve been?”
“Does it matter? And what areyoudoinghere in New York?”
Her tone softened marginally. “You left L.A. weeks ago. I got worried and decided to look for you. You are still my husband.”
“For now.”
“For now? Marriage is supposed to be forever.” Her expression was downcast, veiled in sorrow, eyes wide and lips aquiver. “Why are you doing this, Eric?” She spread her arms wide at an expanse of luxury that stretched forth like food at a Bacchanalian feast. “All of this is because of us…because we’re a team. We should be working things out. It isn’t too late.”
Eric shook his head, genuinely sorry for his part in entering and leaving the ill-fated marriage. His words were measured and soft. “Working things out isn’t a realistic goal. It’s been too late for us for about three years now. Don’t you think it’s time we made it official?”
Dropping her hands to her sides, Bree clenched her fingers into something resembling French manicured talons. Tears clung to her lashes. “No. I don’t. Things were fine. The whole world knows how perfect we are for each other.”
Eric slanted his mouth into the pained half-grin of a person finally conceding defeat. “We were far from perfect. I ignored everything wrong between us, while you turned a relationship into soundbites and headlines. The only place we were a happy couple was in the press.”
Bree scraped her tears away, and her eyes settled back into their natural shape, narrow and appraising. “The press is very powerful. Public opinion is swayed by it all the time. Celebrities rely on a good Q Score.”
Tired and defeated, the tang of failure bitter on his tongue, Eric looked at his wife. This was the true Bree, glacial and imposing, a woman whose ambition blanketed any humor or kindness. He slumped his shoulders. “You know I never cared about popularity polls or stats. And all I care about right now is packing up some of my clothes. Excuse me.”
Brushing by her, he headed for the bedroom. He walked down a hall as wide as an average room and tugged at the collar of his shirt as if it was suddenly too tight. For all of the apartment’s airy space, it still made him feel cloistered—shuttered and alone.
“Fine! Disappear again,” Bree shouted. “When it comes down to it, the court will side with me. I’m not the one who abandoned us.”
“And I’m not the one who slept with a twenty-year-old who waxed my skis.”
Bree’s response was a smoky laugh, a deep and mocking lilt that made Eric stop and turn. His comment hadn’t made his wife falter or gasp her shock. Instead, her rigid stance relaxed into a languid lean onto one hip. Her pupils dilated amorously, and her voice was a dark utterance. “You have noproofthat I’ve ever been unfaithful. But it is a shame you can’t seem to find a wife who doesn’t end up with another man’s dick inside her.”
The reference to Jenna’s assault made Eric’s heart pound, the rhythm quick and heavy, his lungs burning. His body stiffened and his hands rounded into such tight fists the veins in his hands bulged. “You’re lucky I would never hit a woman.” He continued on to his bedroom, grabbed four pairs of jeans and strode from the apartment.
