Susan Phillips - What I Did for Love

If she didn’t react to his baiting, he’d stop.

But Bram had always loved slow torture. “Even on our wedding day, you got into trouble. A good thing we never actually shot that show. I heard I was going to knock you up on our honeymoon. If the network hadn’t pulled the plug, I would have sired a little Skip.”

Her fury erupted. “It wasn’t a little Skip! It was twins! We were supposed to have twins-a girl and a boy. Obviously, you were too high to remember that small detail.”

“Immaculate conception, I’m sure. Can you imagine Scooter naked and-”

She couldn’t take any more, and she spun toward the house, one shoe on, one in her hand.

“I wouldn’t go, if I were you,” he said lazily. “Ten minutes ago, I spotted a photographer crawling into those shrubs across the road. Someone must have seen your car.”

She was trapped.

He raked her with his eyes, one of his many unpleasant habits. “You haven’t taken up smoking by any chance, have you, Scoot? I need a cigarette, and Trev refuses to keep a carton around for his guests. He’s such a Boy Scout.” Bram arched a flawless eyebrow. “Except for his filthy habits with members of his own sex.”

Trevor tried to ease the tension. “You know I only put up with him because I secretly lust after his buff body. Such a pity he’s straight.”

“You’re too fastidious to lust after him,” she retorted.

“Look again,” Trev said dryly.

It wasn’t fair. Bram should be dead by now, killed by his own excesses, but the bony body she remembered from Skip and Scooter had grown tough, its wasted elegance transformed into hard muscle and long sinew. Beneath the sleeve of his white T-shirt a tribal tattoo banded a formidable bicep, and his navy swim trunks revealed legs with the taut, extended tendons of a distance runner. He wore his thick, bronzed hair rumpled, and the pale skin that had been as much a part of him as a hangover had disappeared. Except for the air of decadence that clung to him like a bad reputation, Bram Shepard looked shockingly healthy.

“He works out now,” Trev interrupted with an exaggerated whisper, as if he were divulging a juicy bit of scandal.

“Bram never worked out a day in his life,” she said. “He got those muscles by selling what was left of his soul.”

Bram smiled and turned his badass angel’s face to her. “Tell me more about this plan of yours to get your pride back by marrying Trev. Not quite as interesting as the pubic hair conversation, but still…”

She clenched her teeth. “I swear to God, if you breathe a word to anybody-”

“He won’t,” Trevor said. “Our Bramwell has never been interested in anybody but himself.”

That was so true. But she still couldn’t bear knowing he’d overheard something so humiliating. She and Bram had worked together from the time he was seventeen until he was twenty-five. At seventeen, his selfishness had been thoughtless, but as his fame had spread, his behavior had become more deliberately reckless. It wasn’t hard to see that he’d only grown more cynical and self-centered.

He drew up his knee. “Aren’t you a little young to have given up on true love?”

She felt a hundred years old. Her fairy-tale marriage had failed, putting an end to her dreams of finally having a family of her own and a man who’d love her for herself instead of what she could do for his career. She flipped her sunglasses back over her eyes, weighing the danger of the jackals lurking outside against the danger of the beast in front of her. “I am not talking to you about this.”

“Ease up, Bram,” Trevor said. “She’s had a tough year.”

“The downside of being worshipped,” Bram replied.

Trev sniffed. “Nothing you’ll ever have to worry about.”

Bram picked up her abandoned margarita, sipped, and shuddered at the taste. “I’ve never seen the public take a celebrity divorce so personally. I’m surprised none of your crazed fans set themselves on fire.”

“People feel like Georgie’s family,” Trevor said. “They grew up with Scooter Brown.”

Bram set the glass down. “They grew up with me, too.”

“But Georgie and Scooter are basically the same person,” Trevor pointed out. “You and Skip aren’t.”

“Thank God.” Bram rose from the chaise. “I still hate that uptight little preppy prick.”

But Georgie had loved Skip Scofield. She’d loved everything about him. His big heart, his loyalty, the way he’d tried to protect Scooter from the Scofield family. The way he’d eventually fallen in love with her silly round face and rubber-band mouth. She’d loved everything except the man Skip turned into when the cameras stopped rolling.

The three of them had fallen back into their old pattern-Bram on the attack and Trevor defending her. But she wasn’t a kid any longer, and she needed to defend herself. “I don’t think you hate Skip at all. I think you always wanted to be Skip, but you fell so far short of the mark that you had to pretend to despise him.”

Bram yawned. “Maybe you’re right. Trev, are you sure no one’s left any weed lying around? Or even a cigarette?”

“I’m sure,” Trevor said, just as the phone rang. “Don’t kill each other while I answer that.”

Trevor went inside.

She wanted to punish Bram for being exactly who he was. “I could have been trampled to death today. Thanks for nothing.”

“You were handling it. And without Daddy. Now that was the real surprise.”

She stared him down. “What do you want, Bram? We both know your showing up here isn’t an accident.”

He rose, wandered toward the railing, and peered down at the beach. “If Trev had been stupid enough to take you up on your bizarre offer, what would you have done for a sex life?”

“Right. That’s something I’m going to talk to you about.”

“Who better to confide in?” he said. “I was there at the beginning, remember?”

She couldn’t bear another moment, and she spun toward the French doors.

“Just out of curiosity, Scoot…,” he said from behind her. “Now that Trev’s rejected you, who’s next in line to be Mr. Georgie York?”

She pasted on a smile full of mockery and turned back. “Aren’t you sweet to tax that big evil head of yours worrying about my future when your own life is such a screwed-up mess.” Her hand was trembling, but she gave what she hoped passed for a jaunty wave and went inside. Trev had just gotten off the phone, but she was too drained to do more than ask him to at least consider her idea.

By the time she reached Pacific Palisades, she was so tightly coiled she ached. She ignored the photographer parked at the end of her court and turned into a narrow driveway that curled down to an unassuming pseudo-Mediterranean ranch that could have fit into her former home’s swimming pool. She hadn’t been able to bear staying in the house where she and Lance had lived. This rental came furnished with bulky pieces that were too heavy for the small rooms, just as the ceilings were too low for the rough wooden beams, but she didn’t care enough to look for another place.

She cranked open a bedroom window, then made herself check her voice mail.

“Georgie, I saw the stupid tabloid, and-”

Delete

“Georgie, I’m so sorry-”

Delete

“He’s a bastard, kiddo, and you’re-”

Delete

Her friends were well meaning-most of them, anyway-but their nonstop sympathy choked her. She wanted to be the one handing out sympathy for a change, not always having to receive it.

“Georgie, call me immediately.” Her father’s crisp voice filled the room. “There’s a photo in the new Flash that’s bound to upset you. I don’t want you to be taken off guard.”

Too late, Daddy.

“It’s important that you rise to the occasion. I’ve e-mailed Aaron a statement to post on your Web site telling the world how happy you are for Lance. I’m sure you know-”

She jammed the delete button. Why couldn’t her father just once behave like a father instead of a manager? He’d begun building her career when she was five, less than a year after her mother’s death. He’d accompanied her to every cattle call, orchestrated her first television commercials, and forced her to take the singing and dancing lessons that had won her the starring role in the Broadway revival of Annie, the part that had led to her casting as Scooter Brown. Unlike so many other parents of child stars, her father had made sure her money was wisely invested. Thanks to him, she’d never have to work again, and while she was grateful he’d watched after her money so well, she’d give up every penny to have had a real father.

She stepped back from the phone as she heard Lance’s voice. “Georgie, it’s me,” he said softly. “We arrived in the Philippines yesterday. I just heard about a story in Flash…I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet. I-I wanted to tell you myself before you read about it. Jade is pregnant…”

She listened to his message all the way to the end. She heard the guilt in his voice, the entreaty, the pride he wasn’t a good enough actor to conceal. He still wanted her to forgive him for leaving, to forgive him for lying to the press about how she hadn’t wanted a baby. Lance was an actor, with an actor’s need for everyone to love him, even the woman whose heart he’d broken. He wanted her to hand him a free pass on guilt. But she couldn’t. She’d given him everything. Not just her heart, not just her body, but everything she had, and look where it had taken her.

She sank down against the couch. It had been a year, and here she was. Crying again. When was she going to get over it? When was she going to stop acting exactly like the loser the world believed her to be? If she kept on like this, the bitterness eating away inside her would win, and she’d turn into a person she didn’t want to be. She needed to do something-anything-that would make her look-that would make her feel-like a winner.

What would Scooter Brown do? That was the question Georgie kept asking herself, and that was how she ended up crossing the outdoor patio at The Ivy to a table right by the restaurant’s famous white picket fence. Scooter Brown, the spunky orphaned stowaway who’d hidden in the servants’ quarters of the Scofield estate to keep herself out of foster care, would have taken charge of her own destiny, and it was long past time for Georgie to do exactly that.

She waved at a big-name rapper, acknowledged a talk-show host, and blew a kiss toward a former Grey’s Anatomy star. Only Rory Keene, the new head of Vortex Studios, was too absorbed in her luncheon conversation with a C.A.A. honcho to notice Georgie’s arrival.

Item number one on Georgie’s new list: Be seen with the perfect man. With that humiliating photograph of her staring at the sonogram of Lance’s baby plastered everywhere, she had to stop hiding and do what she should have done months ago. Today’s lunch date needed to be big enough news for everyone to forget her stricken expression.

Unfortunately, the perfect man she’d chosen for her first date hadn’t arrived, forcing her to sit at an empty table for two. Georgie tried to look as though she was happy to have a few extra minutes to herself. She couldn’t get mad at Trevor. Maybe she hadn’t been able to convince him to get married, but at least he’d agreed to step into her media circus for a few weeks.

The Ivy was an L.A. institution, the perfect place to see and be seen, with an army of paparazzi permanently camped out in front. Celebrities who dined at Ivy and pretended to be annoyed by the attention they received were the world’s biggest hypocrites, especially those who sat outside on the patio where the weathered picket fence ran alongside the sidewalk and busy Robertson Boulevard.

Georgie settled under a white umbrella. Drinking wine at lunch could signal she was drowning her troubles in alcohol, so she ordered iced tea. Two women paused on the sidewalk beyond the picket fence to gawk at her. Where was Trevor?

Her plan was simple. Instead of avoiding publicity, she’d court it, but on her terms-as a single woman having the time of her life. She’d spend a few weeks with one perfect man, a few weeks with another. She wouldn’t date any of them long enough to suggest a serious love affair. Just fun, fun, fun accompanied by lots of photos of her laughing and enjoying herself-photos that her publicist would make certain were well distributed. She knew a dozen great-looking actors who were anxious for publicity and understood the rules of the game. Trevor would kick off her campaign. If only he weren’t so averse to being on time.

And if only the whole idea of voluntarily encouraging publicity weren’t so repugnant.