“Georgie! Right here!”

Bram pulled her against him. “Stand back, guys. Give us some room.”

“Georgie, I heard you saw a lawyer.”

Bram shoved the burly photographer who’d gotten too close. “I said to stay back!”

Out of nowhere, Mel Duffy emerged from the swarm and lifted his camera toward them. “Hey, Georgie. Any comment about Jade Gentry’s miscarriage?”

His shutter clicked away.

Georgie felt sick. Her envy had somehow poisoned that defenseless fetus. Duffy had told them the miscarriage had happened in Thailand nearly two weeks ago, only a few days after her Vegas wedding, when Lance and Jade had been about to join up with a U.N. task force. Their publicist had just released the news, saying the couple was devastated but that doctors had assured them there was no reason they couldn’t have another child. All those phone messages Lance had left her…

Bram didn’t say anything until they were nearly home. Then he turned down the radio and gazed over at her. “Tell me you’re not taking this to heart.”

What kind of woman resented an innocent, unborn child? She was nauseated by guilt. “Me? Of course not. It’s sad, that’s all. Of course, I’m sorry for them.”

His knowing expression made her look away. She needed a gigolo, not a shrink. She adjusted her sunglasses. “Nobody wants something like this to happen. Maybe I wish I hadn’t been quite so upset when I heard she was pregnant. That’s only natural.”

“This had nothing to do with you.”

“I know that.”

“Your brain knows it, but the rest of you is seriously screwed up when it comes to anything associated with the Loser.”

Her self-control snapped. “He just lost his baby! A baby I didn’t want to see born.”

“I knew it! I knew you’d decide you were somehow responsible. Toughen up, Georgie.”

“You think I’m not tough? I’m surviving this marriage, aren’t I?”

“This isn’t a marriage. It’s a chess game.”

He was right, and she was sick of the whole thing.

They drove the rest of the way to the house in silence, but after he’d parked the car in the garage, he didn’t immediately get out. Instead, he sat there, pulling off his sunglasses and messing with the stems. “Caitlin is the daughter of Sarah Carter.”

“The novelist?” She let go of the door handle.

“She died three years ago.”

“I remember.” Considering Bram’s past history, she’d been certain Caitlin was a bimbo, but that was unlikely, with an author of Sarah Carter’s caliber as her mother. Carter had written a number of literary thrillers, none of them successful. Several years after her death, a small press had brought out Tree House, a previously unpublished work. The novel had gradually caught fire with the public, and eventually became the darling of book clubs. Like everyone else, Georgie had loved it.

“Caitlin and I were dating when the book first came out,” Bram said. “Before it hit the best-seller lists. She mentioned that the last thing her mother had written before she died was a screenplay for Tree House, and she let me read it.”

“Sarah Carter turned the book into a screenplay herself?”

“A damn good one. I optioned it two hours after I finished it.”

Georgie nearly choked. “You hold the film option on Tree House? You?”

“I was drunk and didn’t think about what I was getting into.” He climbed out of the car looking as gorgeous and worthless as ever.

She hurried across the garage after him. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me you optioned it before the book became a best seller?”

He headed into the house. “I was drunk and lucky.”

“I’ll say. How lucky?”

“Very. Caitlin could sell a new option on that screenplay for twenty times what I paid her, something she never stops reminding me about.”

Georgie pressed her palm to her chest. “Give me a minute. I don’t know which is harder for me to visualize. You as a producer or the fact that you actually read an entire screenplay start to finish.”

He made his way to the kitchen. “I’ve matured since our Skip and Scooter days.”

“In your opinion.”

“I hardly had to look up any of the big words.” She didn’t expect him to say more and was surprised when he went on. “Unfortunately, I’m having a little trouble getting it financed.”

She stopped. “You’re actually trying to get the project made?”

“Nothing better to do.”

That explained all the mysterious phone calls, but it didn’t explain why Bram had kept this such a big secret. He tossed his car keys on the kitchen counter. “The bad news is that my option runs out in less than three weeks, and if I can’t get a package put together by then, Caitlin will have her rights back.”

“And be considerably richer.”

“She doesn’t give a damn about anything except the money. She hated her mother. She’d sell Tree House to a cartoon factory if they made the best offer.”

Georgie had never optioned a book or screenplay, but she knew how the process worked. The option holder-in this case Bram-had only a specific amount of time to get solid backing for his project before his option expired and the rights reverted to the original owner. Since all he’d have left when that happened would be a hole in his bank account, his suck-up attitude toward Rory Keene finally made sense.

“How close are you to getting someone to green-light Tree House?” she asked, even though she already had an inkling of the answer.

He grabbed a water bottle from the refrigerator. “Pretty close. Hank Peters loves the screenplay, and he’s interested in directing, so that’s caught a lot of attention. With the right casting, we can make the movie on a shoestring, another plus.”

Peters was a great director, but Georgie couldn’t imagine him being willing to work with unreliable Bram Shepard. “Is Hank interested or committed?”

“Interested in committing. And I have a leading man to play Danny Grimes. That’s part of the deal.”

Grimes was a fabulously multidimensional character, and it didn’t surprise her that lots of actors would be interested. “Who did you get?”

He twisted off the bottle cap. “Who do you think?”

She stared at him, then groaned. “Oh, no…You’re not.”

“A couple of acting lessons…I’ll be able to handle it.”

“You can’t play a part like that. Grimes is a complex character. He’s conflicted, tortured…You’d be laughed out of town. No wonder you can’t get financing.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” He took a slug of water.

“Have you really thought this through? Successful producers need a reputation for something other than gross unreliability. And the way you’re insisting on playing the lead…Not smart.”

“I can do it.”

His intensity unsettled her. The Bram she knew only cared about pleasure. She considered the possibility that she didn’t understand him as well as she thought, and not just because of his interest in Tree House…She hadn’t seen any signs of drug abuse, and he spent hours every day in his office. He’d even gotten rid of his old, disreputable friends, which was odd for a guy who’d hated being alone. Alcohol and pathological arrogance seemed to be his last vices.

“I’m going for a swim.” He disappeared toward the pool.

She went to her room to change into shorts and a tank. If the screenplay was as good as he said, everyone in town had to be waiting for his option to expire so they could pounce on the project themselves. The leading role would go to the male Flavor of the Month instead of the actor best equipped to handle the part, which in any case wouldn’t be Bram. He’d handled Skip Scofield brilliantly, but he didn’t have the skills or the depth to tackle anything more emotionally intricate, witness the lightweight roles he’d taken on since then.

As she was slipping into her most comfortable pair of sandals, her head shot up. “Bastard!”

She charged downstairs and across the veranda to the pool, where he was swimming laps. “You jerk! There isn’t any Skip and Scooter reunion movie! That was a smoke screen you threw up to hide what you were really doing.”

“I told you there was no reunion movie.” He dove under.

“But you made me think there was,” she said the instant he resurfaced. “This stupid fake marriage…My money was just a bonus, wasn’t it? Tree House is the real reason you agreed to cooperate. You couldn’t afford to be the second man in recent history to break sweet Georgie York’s heart. Not when you need the honchos to believe you’ve turned into a solid citizen so they’ll take you seriously.”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“I have a problem being misled,” she said.

“It’s me you’re dealing with. What did you expect?”

She stalked across the pool deck as he swam toward the waterfall. “If people believe my respectability has rubbed off on you, you’ve gone a long way toward improving your chances of getting your movie made, now haven’t you?”

“You shouldn’t call the sacred bonds of holy matrimony ‘stupid.’”

“What sacred bonds? The only reason you’re finally telling me the truth is because you want to get in my panties.”

“I’m a guy, so sue me.”

“Don’t speak to me ever again. For the rest of your life.” She stalked away.

“Fine by me,” he called after her. “Unless you’re planning to say dirty words, I don’t like a woman who talks too much in bed.”

The phone he’d left by the side of the pool rang. He swam to the edge and grabbed it. She stopped to listen in.

“Scott…How’s it going? Yeah, it’s been crazy…” He switched to the other ear and climbed the ladder. “I don’t want to say too much on the phone, but I have something I know you’ll be interested in. Let’s meet at the Mandarin tomorrow afternoon for a drink so we can talk about it.” He frowned. “Friday morning? Okay, I’ll shift a couple of things around. Hey, I need to let you go. I’m late for a meeting.”

He flipped his phone shut and grabbed a towel. She tapped her toe. “Late for a meeting?”

“It’s L.A. Always be first to end the call.”

“I’ll remember that. And you’re not getting another penny from me.”

Instead of returning to the house, she stomped out to his office. The idea of Bram being willing to work at anything unsettled her. But at least his disclosure about the screenplay had given her something to think about other than whatever metaphysical part she’d played in the loss of Lance’s baby.

She ripped open the manuscript box that was supposed to contain the Skip and Scooter reunion script and tilted out a neat stack of porno magazines with a blue Post-it note on top. the real thing is so much better.

As Bram headed up to his workout room, he wondered what stupid-ass weakness had made him tell Georgie about Tree House. But she’d looked so frickin’ tragic when she’d heard about Lance and Jade’s baby-that overdeveloped sense of responsibility popping up again-and somehow he’d let the truth slip out only to immediately regret it. Failure already hung over him like a mushroom cloud. With the odds stacked so high against him, the fewer people who knew how much Tree House meant to him, the better. That especially applied to Georgie, who couldn’t wait for him to fail.

He didn’t bother changing out of his wet trunks but went right to his workout room. A ballet barre had appeared a couple of days ago. One more invasion of his private space. What would he do with his life if Tree House slipped away from him? Go back to guest roles as vapid playboys? The idea turned his stomach.

He put on an Usher CD and eyed the elliptical machine with distaste. He wanted to be outside, free to run for miles in the hills like he used to, but thanks to his Vegas misadventure, he was trapped.

At least he had the room to himself. Watching Georgie go through her stretching routine had become torturous. She tied up her hair before she worked out, so that even the nape of her neck became an erogenous zone. Then there was the sexy extension of those long legs. It said something about his life that getting down and dirty with Little Orphan Annie had gone to the top of his thrill list.

But he couldn’t dismiss her as easily as she dismissed herself. She had an unconscious sex appeal that trumped big tits and phony posturing. Nobody was going to catch Georgie York flashing her goody bits in public.

Or in private…Something he was growing increasingly intent on changing. She might hate his guts, but she definitely liked the packaging they came in. Georgie didn’t know it yet, but her days of wasting away over the Loser were coming to an end.

Who said he only cared about himself? Liberating Georgie York had become his civic duty.