Susan Phillips - What I Did for Love

“Amazing. You’re an amazing man, Paul York. I’m looking forward to making your acquaintance.”

He turned his lips into her soft hair. “Is it still only lust for you?”

She rested her cheek against his shoulder. “Give me a couple of months to get back to you on that.”

Georgie couldn’t find her moorings. She lay on a teak chaise as the late-afternoon sun slanted over the white stone patio. It was Tuesday afternoon, exactly sixteen days since she’d arrived in Mexico. She would force herself to go back to L.A. before the end of the week instead of staying here forever as she wanted to. Stay here until she figured out what new form her life should take. Unless she was in front of the computer she’d bought a few days ago, she couldn’t concentrate on anything. She hurt too much.

A pair of geckos scurried into the shade. Boats bobbed in the distance, their windshields flashing like strobes in the sun. It was too hot for her to lie out any longer, but she didn’t move. Last night she’d dreamed she was a bride. She’d stood by a window in her gown, wisps of white ribbon in her hair, and watched Bram approach through a gossamer lace curtain.

The gate creaked on its hinges. She looked up, and there he was, sauntering onto her patio as if she’d conjured him, but the romantic bridegroom of her dream now wore gunmetal gray aviators and a surly expression. She hated the way her stomach dipped. He was lean, tall, and healthy, the years of dissipation long behind him. Her self-absorbed, self-destructive bad boy had stopped being a bad boy years ago, only no one had noticed. The constriction in her throat made words impossible.

Through the lenses of his sunglasses, he took her in from her sweat-damp hair to her purple bikini bottom and then to her bare breasts. The patio was private and she hadn’t expected a visitor, especially this visitor, so here she was, topless when she least wanted to be.

“Enjoying your vacation?” The soft rumble of his voice drifted over her skin like the leading edge of a storm.

She was an actress, the cameras had started to roll, and she found her voice. “Look around. What’s not to love?”

He wandered toward her. “You should have talked to me before you ran out.”

“We don’t have that kind of marriage.” Her arm felt rubbery as she reached for her yellow-and-purple-striped cover-up.

He snatched it from her hand and flicked it across the patio, where it landed on a small table. “Don’t bother getting dressed.”

“Smooth.” She walked over to fetch it, counting slowly under her breath so she didn’t rush, letting her hips sway in the tiny purple bikini bottom-maybe in a last-ditch effort to make him fall in love with her? But he wouldn’t. Bram didn’t fall in love, not because he was as self-centered as he believed, but because he didn’t know how.

She slipped on the cover-up and shook out her hair. “This is a wasted trip. I’m going back to L.A. soon.”

“So I hear from Trev.” His fingers curled into fists at his sides. “I talked to him in Australia a couple of days ago, but I got the full story from the tabs. According to Flash, we’re both moving into his house while he’s on location so we can enjoy summer at the beach.”

“My once-retiring P.A. has turned into quite the media mouthpiece.”

“At least somebody’s watching out for you. What’s going on, Georgie?”

She tried to pull it together. “I’m moving into Trevor’s house. You’re not. It’s a good solution.”

“A solution to what?” He jerked off his sunglasses. “I don’t understand that part-why this happened all of a sudden-so maybe you’d better explain it.”

He was so cold, so angry. “Our future,” she said. “The next phase. Don’t you think it’s time we get on with our lives? Everybody knows you’re working, so it won’t seem strange for me to spend the summer in Malibu. Aaron can keep planting his stories if that’s what you want. You can even show up for a couple of very public beach walks. It’ll be fine.” It wouldn’t be fine at all. Any contact she had with him from now on would only prolong the agony.

“This isn’t how we decided we’d handle it.” He jammed the stems of his sunglasses into the neck of his T-shirt. “We have an agreement. One year. I’m holding you to it, every second.”

He’d insisted on six months, not a year, but she let that go. “You’re not paying attention.” Somehow she pulled off Scooter’s innocent act. “You’re working. I’m at the beach. A couple of public appearances. No one will suspect a thing.”

“You need to be at the house. My house. And I seem to have missed your explanation about why you’re not there.”

“Because it’s long past time I started setting a new course for my life. The beach will be a great place for me to take my first steps.”

The shadows of an African tulip tree cut across his face as he moved closer. “Your present life course is just fine.”

She played the mildly exasperated female even as her heart broke. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. You men are all alike.” She picked up her towel and clutched it to her chest like a child’s lovey. “I’m going to take a shower while you cool down.”

But just as she turned to walk back into the house, he stopped her cold.

“I saw your audition tape.”

Bram watched Georgie’s expression change from confusion to puzzled understanding. He wanted to hold her, shake her, make her tell him the truth.

Her fingers grew slack on the towel. “Are you talking about the tape Chaz recorded for me?”

“It was great,” he said slowly. “You were great.”

She stared at him with her big green eyes.

“You nailed it, just like you promised,” he said. “People underestimate me as an actor. It never occurred to me that I was doing the same to you. We’ve all done it.”

“I know.”

Her straightforward response unnerved him. He hadn’t known, and when he’d seen the tape, he’d felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach.

Last night he’d sat in his darkened bedroom and watched it. As he hit the play button, the blank wall in Georgie’s office had come into focus, and he heard Chaz’s voice off camera. “I’ve got things to do. I don’t have time for this crap.”

Georgie stepping into the frame. Her hair was severely parted, and she wore a minimum of makeup: light foundation, no mascara, the barest hint of eyebrow pencil, and a shockingly deep scarlet mouth that couldn’t have been more wrong for Helene. The camera caught her from the waist up: an austere black suit jacket, a white shell, and a set of intricately twisted black beads.

“I mean it,” Chaz said. “I need to start dinner.”

Georgie pierced Chaz’s bluster with Helene’s icy imperiousness instead of her normal friendly puppy-dog manner. “You’ll do as I say.”

Chaz muttered something the mike didn’t catch and stayed where she was. Georgie’s breasts rose ever so slightly under the suit jacket, and then a smile-a fucking ice-pick smile-curled over the bottom of her face and made that scarlet mouth seem absolutely right.

You think you can embarrass me, Danny? I don’t embarrass. Embarrassment is for losers. And a loser is what you are, not me. You’re a zero. A nothing. We all knew it, even when you were a kid.

Her voice was low, deathly quiet, and completely composed. Unlike the other actresses they’d auditioned, she didn’t emote. No teeth gnawing or scenery rattling. Everything underplayed.

You don’t have a friend left in this town, but you still think you’ve gotten the best of me…

The words poured out of her, cold fury prowling behind her bloodred smile, perfectly capturing Helene’s selfishness, her guile, her intelligence, and her utter conviction that she deserved whatever she could grab. He sat spellbound until finally, with that smile frozen like black ice on her lips, she came to the end.

Remember how you used to make fun of me when we were in school? How hard you laughed? Well, who’s laughing now, funny man? Who’s laughing now?

The camera stayed on her, but she didn’t move. She simply waited, every cell of her body discharging quiet rage, intractable pride, and dogged determination. The camera wobbled, and he heard Chaz’s voice. “Holy shit, Georgie, that was-”

The picture went dark.

He looked at Georgie now, standing across from him on the whitewashed patio, her hair caught up in a sweaty, unkempt knot, her face scrubbed free of makeup, a beach towel dangling at her side, and for a moment he thought he saw Helene’s calculating eyes looking back at him-resolute, cynical, astute. He’d fix that. “I woke Hank up this morning and made him look at the tape before he even had coffee.”

“Did you now?”

“He was blown away. Just like me. No other actress we’ve seen has delivered what you did-the complexity, that dark humor.”

“I’m a comedian. It’s what I do.”

“Your performance was chilling.”

“Thank you.”

Her reserve was starting to unnerve him. He expected her to crow and say she’d told him so. When she didn’t, he tried again. “You blasted Scooter Brown into oblivion.”

“That was my intention.”

She still didn’t seem to have registered his message, so he spelled it out. “The part’s yours.”

Instead of throwing herself in his arms, she turned away. “I need to take a shower. Make yourself comfortable while I get dressed.”

She locked herself in the bathroom and let the water wash over her. She’d been vindicated, and it didn’t mean anything. She’d known exactly how good she was. Ironic. The only person’s approval she’d needed was her own. How was that for personal growth?

She pulled on the same white shorts and navy baby-doll she’d worn that morning and ran a comb through her wet hair. It was time to face him with as much of the truth as she could bear to reveal, but she couldn’t do it by herself. She needed help from her most faithful companion.

The cool, compact living area had whitewashed walls, a tile floor, and brown wicker basket chairs with cool blue cushions. Every morning, she opened the sliding glass wall so the patio became an extension of the interior, allowing an occasional gecko to get inside, but she didn’t mind. She’d read that some of the species were parthenogenic, meaning the females could reproduce without a male. If only she could do that.

Bram had located the iced tea pitcher in the refrigerator, and he sat with his feet propped on the coffee table, a heavy-bottomed green tumbler balanced on his thigh. He heard her padding across the cool terra-cotta tiles, but he didn’t look at her. “You don’t seem as happy about your casting as I thought you’d be.”

“Apparently I only had something to prove to myself,” Georgie’s faithful companion Scooter chirped. “Who’d have expected that?”

“This is the career break you’ve been waiting for.”

“Yes, but…” When she hesitated, he swung around to look at her. She held up her hand. “I have something to tell you. You’re not going to be happy-I’m not happy. You’ll call me every name you can think of, and I won’t argue with you.”

He rose from the couch and approached her as carefully as if she were an abandoned piece of airport luggage. “You’re not staying at Trev’s. I mean it, Georgie. I’ve honored every word of this stupid marriage agreement, and you can damn well do the same.”

“You haven’t honored it out of nobility. You have your own selfish reasons.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ve stuck with my end of the bargain, and you need to stick with yours, or you’re not the woman I thought you were.”

“Fine in principle, but…” Time to blurt it out like the bubblehead she wasn’t. “Cards on the table, Skipper.” She straightened a magazine on the end table. “I can feel myself starting to fall for you again.”

“The hell you can.”

He hadn’t even blinked. She plunged on. “Ridiculous, isn’t it. Humiliating. Embarrassing. Fortunately, it hasn’t gone very far, but you know me-determined to shoot myself in the foot whenever I get the chance. Not this time, though. This time, I’m nipping this sucker right in the bud.”

“You are not falling in love with me.”

“I can hardly believe it myself. Thank God, I’m only on the fringe.” She jabbed her finger toward him. “It’s your body. Your face. That hair. You’re a total hunk, and, sorry to say, I’m as susceptible as the next woman.”

“I get it. This is all about sex. You’re fundamentally an old-fashioned girl who needs to believe she’s in love to enjoy sex.”

“God, I think you’re right.”

He blinked and, a few seconds too late, realized she’d cornered him. “What I mean is…”

“You’re definitely right,” she said emphatically. “Thank you. No more sex.”