Susan Phillips - What I Did for Love

Outside, the night was a romantic cliché. Moonlight frosted the tips of the waves. The surf lapped at the shore. Cool sand squished between her toes. The only thing missing was the right man. She thought about that scrap of conversation she’d overheard earlier with the mysterious Caitlin and wondered how long it would be before she found herself drawn into a second scandal involving another woman.

He slowed his steps as they neared the water. A ribbon of moonlight silvered the tips of his eyelashes. “You’re right, Scooter,” he said. “I was a jerk that night on the boat, and I apologize.”

She’d never heard him apologize for anything, but too much hurt and shame lingered inside her for a few words to make a difference. “Apology not accepted.”

“Okay.”

She waited. “That’s it?”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know what else to say. It happened, and I’m not proud of myself.”

“You wanted to get off,” she said bitterly, “and there I was, standing so conveniently in front of you.”

“Hold on.” Unlike her, he wasn’t wearing a sweater, and the breeze pressed his T-shirt against his chest. “I could have gotten off with any of the women on the boat that night. And I’m not being arrogant. It’s just the way it was.”

A wave splashed her ankles. “But you didn’t. You chose dumb-ass here instead.”

“You weren’t dumb. Just naïve.”

She needed to ask him something, but she didn’t want to look at him, so she leaned down to turn up the cuffs of her jeans. “Why did you do it?”

“Why do you think?” He picked up a beach stone and hurled it into the water. “I wanted to put you in your place. Knock you down a few pegs. Show you that even though Daddy made sure you got top billing and a bigger paycheck, I could get you to do what I wanted.”

She stood up. “Nice guy.”

“You asked.”

The fact that he’d finally owned up to his bad behavior made her feel a little better. Not good enough to forgive him, but good enough to accept that she had to somehow coexist with him while they were trapped in this farce of a marriage. They began walking again. “It was years ago.” She stepped around a sand turtle some kids had made earlier. “No lasting harm done.”

“You were a virgin. I didn’t believe that bull you handed out about being with an older man.”

“Hugh Grant,” she said.

“You wish.”

She snagged a flyaway lock of hair and pushed it behind her ear. “Hugh told me I was sublime. No, wait. That was Colin Firth. I get those aging Brits I slept with mixed up.”

“A common problem.” He sent another stone flying into the water.

She gazed up at the single star that had begun to shine. At a beach party last year, someone had told her it wasn’t a star at all, but the International Space Station. “Who was she?”

“Who?”

“The woman I heard you whispering to on your cell this morning.”

“What big ears you have.”

“All the better to catch you cheating.”

“Isn’t it a little early for me to cheat? Although you have to admit, the honeymoon’s been a real bust-out so far.”

She dug her heels deeper into the sand. “When it comes to vice, I never underestimate you.”

“You’ve wised up.”

“It wasn’t just the sex, Bram. It was everything. You got handed the opportunity of a lifetime with Skip and Scooter, and you blew it. You didn’t appreciate what you had.”

“I appreciated what it got me. Cars, women, liquor, drugs. I had free designer clothes, a collection of Rolexes, big houses where I could hang out with my buddies. I had the time of my life.”

“I noticed.”

“The way I grew up-if you had money, you spent it. I loved every second.”

But his pleasure had come at the expense of so many other people. She shoved up the sleeves of her sweater. “A lot of people paid a big price for your fun. The cast, the crew.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve got me there.”

“You paid a price, too.”

“And you won’t hear me complaining about it.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

His head came up. “Shit.”

“What-?”

He pulled her hard against him and crushed her mouth in a fiery kiss. One hand slipped under her T-shirt at the small of her back, the other cradled her hip. A wave caught them, and the surf swirled around their ankles. Perfect moonlit passion.

“Cameras.” He ground the word against her lips as if she hadn’t already figured that out.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and tilted her head. Had they really thought they’d have privacy, even on a supposedly private beach? The jackals always found a way in. She wondered how much the pictures would bring. A lot.

Their kiss grew hotter. Deeper. Her breasts flattened against his chest, and the tips began to tingle. She felt him growing hard.

He settled his thumb into the soft flesh along her spine. Forced his thigh between her legs. “I’m going to feel you up now.” His hand moved over her rib cage to her breast. The hand no photographer could see. He caressed her through her bra, and dirty little cesspools of illicit arousal swirled through her body. It had been a long time, and this was safe, because it was all so phony. And because it would only go as far as she let it.

His fingers traced the swells of her breasts above the cups, and he whispered against her lips, “When we stop playing games, I’m going to take you so hard and so deep you’ll want it to last forever.”

His crude words sent a surge of heat sizzling through her, and she didn’t feel one bit guilty about it. They had no personal relationship. This was purely physical. Bram could be a stud she’d hired for the night.

But a stud went home when he’d done his job, and she reluctantly extracted herself from his arms. “Okay, I’m bored.”

His fingers brushed her hardened nipple before he stepped away. “I can tell.”

The breeze lifted her hair from the back of her neck and left a trail of goose bumps behind. She pulled her sweater tighter around her. “Well, you’re no Hugh Grant, but your technique has definitely improved from the bad old days.”

“Glad to hear it.”

She didn’t like that silky note in his voice. “Let’s go back,” she said. “I’m getting cold.”

“I can fix that.”

She’d just bet he could. “About that woman you were talking to on your cell today…” She walked faster.

“Are we back to that again?”

“You should know…If I die while we’re married, all my money goes either to charity or to my father.”

He came to a dead stop. “I don’t exactly see the connection.”

“You wouldn’t get a penny.” She picked up her pace. “I’m not making any accusations, just setting the record straight in case you and the friend you were talking to on the phone start thinking about how much fun you could have living off my money.”

She was mainly being a smart-ass to irritate him. Still, Bram was broke and had no morals, so she felt marginally better for having made sure he understood there was no advantage in plotting her premature death.

His heels kicked up the sand as he closed the distance between them. “You’re an idiot.”

“Just covering my bases.”

He grabbed her hand, more like a prison warden’s than a lover’s. “For your information, there was no camera. I just wanted to get my kicks.”

“And for your information…I knew there wasn’t a camera, and I wanted a few kicks myself.” She hadn’t known, but she should have suspected.

The breeze sighed, the waves lapped. She wasn’t done antagonizing him, and she leaned against his arm. “Skip and Scooter, together in the moonlight. How romantic.”

He retaliated by whistling “Tomorrow” from Annie, just the way he used to do whenever he wanted to piss her off.

Georgie waited until the next morning when she heard Bram go into the workout room. She headed for the dining room, grabbed the key she’d seen him toss into a brass dish on the bookshelves, and made her way out to his office in the guesthouse. She still couldn’t get used to Bram having an office instead of conducting his business from a bar stool.

As she moved along the gravel path, she thought about how different Bram’s sexual aggression was from what she’d experienced with Lance. Her ex-husband had wanted her to be the seductress, and that’s exactly what she’d tried to do. She’d read a dozen sex manuals and bought the most erotic lingerie she could find, no matter how much it pinched. She’d performed stripteases that left her feeling stupid, whispered male fantasies in his ear that turned her off, and tried to find inventive lovemaking locales to keep things fresh. He’d seemed appreciative and always said he was satisfied, but obviously she’d come up short or he wouldn’t have left her for Jade Gentry.

She’d worked too hard to have failed so miserably. Sex might be easy for some women, but it was complicated for her, and just thinking about the quandary she found herself in with Bram made her queasy. Bram wasn’t going to give up sex. He’d either have it with her or with someone else. Maybe both.

She’d promised herself she’d face her problems head-on, but they’d only been married five days, and she needed some time to figure this one out.

She unlocked his office and turned on his computer. As she waited for it to boot up, she began searching his bookshelves. She had to know right now whether the reunion show was a figment of Bram’s imagination or something more tangible.

She found a diverse book collection and an eclectic pile of scripts, but none of them for a Skip and Scooter reunion show. She spotted assorted DVDs ranging from Raging Bull to something called Sex Trek: The Next Penetration. His file cabinets were locked, but not his desk, and that’s where she discovered a manuscript box under a bottle of scotch. It was taped shut. The label read skip and scooter: the reunion.

She was stunned. She’d hoped Bram had made this up to needle her. He knew doing a reunion movie would be a huge career setback for her, so why did he think he could convince her to go along with it?

She didn’t like the only answer she could come up with. Blackmail. He might threaten to walk out on their marriage if she didn’t go along with the project. But dumping her would put a stop to the money train, as well as making him look like an ass, although he might not care about that. Still…She remembered the way he’d behaved around Rory Keene. Maybe he cared more about his image than he’d led her to believe.

“What are you doing in here?”

Her head shot up, and she saw Chaz standing in the doorway looking like the love child of Martha Stewart and Joey Ramone. Her housekeeper’s uniform for the day consisted of holey jeans, olive tank top, and black flip-flops. Georgie pushed the drawer closed with her foot. Since she couldn’t conjure up a reasonable explanation, she decided to turn the tables. “Better question-what are you doing?”

Chaz’s dark-rimmed eyes narrowed with hostility. “Bram doesn’t like strangers in his office. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m not a stranger. I’m his wife.” Words she’d never expected to hear coming out of her mouth.

“He doesn’t even let the cleaning people in here.” Chaz lifted her chin. “I’m the only one.”

“You’re very loyal. What’s that about, anyway?”

She pulled a broom from a small closet. “It’s my job.”

Georgie couldn’t snoop through his computer files now, so she began to leave, but as she got up, she spotted a video camera sitting on the corner of the desk. Chaz began to sweep the floor. Georgie examined the camera long enough to discover that Bram had erased whatever tawdry sexual encounter he’d last filmed.

Chaz stopped sweeping. “Don’t mess with that.”

Georgie impulsively turned the camera on Chaz and hit the record button. “Why do you care so much?”

Chaz pulled the broom handle to her chest. “What are you doing?”

“I’m curious about your loyalty.”

“Turn that off.”

Georgie brought her into sharper focus. Beneath the piercings and scowl, Chaz had delicate, almost fragile, features. She’d pulled one side of her chopped hair away from her eyes with a small silver barrette, and the other side stood out in a spiky tuft above her ear. Chaz’s hostile independence fascinated Georgie. She couldn’t imagine having that kind of freedom from caring what other people thought. “I guess you’re the only person in L.A. who doesn’t love a camera,” Georgie said. “No ambitions to be an actress? That’s why most girls come here.”

“Me? No. And how do you know I haven’t always lived here?”

“Just a feeling.” Through the viewer, Georgie could see tension tightening the corners of Chaz’s small mouth. “Most twenty-year-olds would be bored with a job like yours.”