Susan Phillips - What I Did for Love

“While you were ditching school and hanging out on street corners.” She propped her chin on the back of her hand. “Did you ever get that high school diploma?”

“Well, well…Isn’t this interesting?”

They’d been so absorbed in their argument, they hadn’t noticed the tall, cool blonde approaching their table. Rory Keene, with her classic French twist and long, patrician features, looked more like an East Coast socialite than a powerful studio executive, but even during her single season as a lowly production assistant on Skip and Scooter, she’d been a little intimidating.

Bram shot to his feet and planted a cool kiss on her cheek. “Rory, it’s great to see you. You look beautiful, as always. Did you enjoy your lunch?”

“Very much. I can’t believe the two of you are sitting at the same table without a loaded weapon.”

“Mine’s in my purse,” Georgie said with a Scooter grin.

Bram curled his hand around Georgie’s shoulder. “Water under the bridge. We made peace a long time ago.”

“Really?” Rory slipped her purse higher on her arm and gave Bram a long, hard stare. “Take care of Georgie. This town has a limited supply of nice people, and we can’t afford to lose one of them.” With a nod, she turned away and headed across the patio.

Bram’s smooth smile faded. He glared down at Georgie. “When did you and Rory get to be such good buddies?”

“We’re not.”

Without excusing himself, he headed across the patio after Rory.

Being with Bram was as draining as ever, and Georgie welcomed having a few minutes to recharge. The dessert arrived. Her stomach rebelled. She averted her eyes and thought about the day her father had given her the pilot script for Skip and Scooter. She’d had no idea her life was about to change forever.

The show’s silly premise had been perfect sitcom fare. Scooter Brown was a spunky fourteen-year-old orphan who showed up at the luxurious Scofield mansion on Chicago’s posh North Shore. Scooter was trying to stay out of foster care by locating a stepsister who’d once worked there, but the stepsister had long since disappeared. With no place to go, Scooter had hidden out at the mansion only to be discovered by stuffy, fifteen-year-old Skip, the heir to the Scofield fortune. He, along with the servants, became unwillingly involved in a plot to hide her from the Scofield adults.

No one had expected the show to last more than a season, but the cast had exceptional chemistry, and the show’s writing staff had come up with inventive plots. More important, they’d managed to deepen the core characters beyond their initial stereotypes.

Georgie gave Bram a vicious smile. “Finished sucking up to Rory?”

“I went out to buy cigarettes.”

“Sure you did.”

“To buy cigarettes and suck up. I like to multitask. Is our lunch from hell finally over?”

“Before it even began.”

Bram insisted on waiting inside with her until the valet brought her car. She braced herself, and, sure enough, as soon as they hit the sidewalk, the jackals surrounded them. Bram slipped a supposedly protective arm around her shoulders-she wanted to bite it off-held up his hand, and gave the cameras his dazzling smile. “Just a couple of old friends getting together for lunch,” he said over their shouts. “Don’t make anything more out of it.”

“You guys are supposed to hate each other.”

“Have you buried the hatchet?”

“Are you dating?”

“Georgie, have you talked to Lance? Does he know you’re seeing Bram?”

Bram assumed an unhappy expression she knew was totally phony. “Give us a break, guys. It’s only lunch. And don’t pay any attention to those rumors about a Skip and Scooter reunion show. It’s not going to happen.”

Reunion show?

The paps went nuts.

“Is there a script?”

“Has the rest of the cast signed on?”

“When are you going to shoot?”

Bram muscled her through the crowd to her car. She tried to slam his fingers in the door, but he was too quick. As she pulled away, she made herself smile and wave to the cameras, but the moment she was out of sight, she let out a scream.

There was no reunion show, rumored or otherwise. Bram had made it up to punish her.

On Saturday morning Georgie parked her car just off Temescal Canyon Road, sliding in behind a dusty blue Bentley and a red Benz Roadster. With the paparazzi still asleep from last night’s club action, she didn’t have any unwelcome escorts. “You’re late!” Sasha said as Georgie got out. “Too busy smooching it up with Bramwell Shepard?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was doing, all right.” Georgie slammed the car door.

Sasha laughed. She looked incredible as always, tall and willowy in a white L.A.M.B. hoodie and gray pants. She’d pulled her straight brunette hair into a ponytail and shaded her face with a pink visor.

“Ignore Sasha.” April, the oldest and only truly sane member of her inner friendship circle, wore a black T-shirt from her husband’s last tour. “She just drove up thirty seconds ago.”

“I overslept,” Sasha said. “Young people do that.”

April was in her early fifties, with beautiful bold features, a dramatic square-jawed face, and a glow that spoke of well-earned contentment. She’d been Georgie’s stylist for years, but even more important, she was a dear friend. April tossed her streaky blond hair and gave Sasha a sweet smile. “I slept like a dream. But then I had hot sex last night.”

Sasha frowned. “Yeah, well, I’d have had hot sex, too, if I was married to Jack Patriot.”

“But you’re not, now are you?” April said smugly.

Three decades earlier, April had been a famous rock-and-roll groupie, but her notorious days were long behind her. She was now the wife of legendary rocker Jack Patriot as well as the mother of a famous NFL quarterback and a recent grandmother. She no longer worked as a stylist, except as a favor to Georgie.

Georgie tucked her hair behind her ears and slipped on a ball cap. She pulled a backpack heavy with water bottles from her car. She was the only one of them who didn’t mind wearing a pack, so she carried all the water, a calorie-burner they’d been trying to talk her out of since she’d gotten so thin, but she refused to cave.

Sometimes she wondered how women who didn’t have girlfriends coped with life. In her own life, these were the friends who never let her down, even though they were so frequently separated by geography, making these Saturday-morning hikes a rarity. Sasha lived in Chicago. April lived in L.A. but spent as much time as she could at the family farm in Tennessee. Meg Koranda, the baby of the group, was off on another of her journeys. None of them were exactly sure where.

Sasha led them toward the trailhead. She held back from her normal killer pace so Georgie, who used to be their leader, could keep up. “Tell us exactly what happened with Bram,” she said.

“Honestly, Georgie, what were you thinking?” April frowned.

“It was an accident.” Georgie yanked on her backpack. “On my part anyway. Totally premeditated on his.” She told them about her plan to start serial dating, then explained what had happened at The Ivy. She avoided mentioning her marriage proposal to Trevor, not because she didn’t trust them-unlike Lance, these women would never betray her-but because she didn’t want her closest friends to know she was even more pathetic than they realized. By the time they reached the open ridge above the canyon, she was gasping for breath.

The last of the morning chill had burned off, and they could see the coastline from Santa Monica Bay to Malibu. They stopped for a moment to take off their jackets and tie the sleeves around their waists. Sasha pulled out two candy bars and offered one to Georgie, trying to be casual about it, but Georgie declined. “I ate this morning. Honest.”

“A spoonful of yogurt,” April said.

“A whole carton. It’s getting better. Really.”

They didn’t believe her.

“Well, I’m starved,” Sasha said.

As she bit into her candy bar, neither Georgie nor April pointed out that Sasha Holiday, the founder of Holiday Healthy Eating, might want to munch on a piece of fruit or a Holiday Power Bar instead of a Milky Way. Sasha was a secret junk-food junkie, something only they knew. Not that it showed on her body.

Sasha tucked the wrapper into the bodice of her white top where it made a lump under the stretchy fabric. “Let’s think this through. Maybe seeing Bram isn’t such a bad idea. For sure it’ll distract everybody from talking about Lance and St. Jade.” She took a bite. “Plus, Bram Shepard is still the hottest bad boy in town.”

Georgie hated hearing anything even remotely complimentary about Bram. “He’s not hot at the box office,” she said. “And I’m lucky his drug dealer didn’t show up while we were eating.”

Sasha stuck the candy bar between her teeth and slipped behind Georgie so she could unzip the backpack and pull out their water bottles. “Trev told me Bram hasn’t done drugs in years.”

“Trev’s gullible.” Georgie twisted off the top of her bottle. “No more talk about Bram, okay? I’m not letting him spoil my morning.” He’d spoiled enough, she thought.

They spent the next two miles hiking on a fire road that wound through the sycamore, live oak, and bay. Georgie relished the feeling of privacy. They reached a shallow creek bed. Sasha leaned over to stretch her legs. “I have the best idea. Let’s all go to Vegas next weekend.”

April knelt next to the water. “That town isn’t good for me. And Jack and I have plans.”

Sasha snorted. “Naked plans.”

April grinned, and Georgie smiled with her, but inside she felt the familiar pain of betrayal. Once, she’d been as certain of Lance’s love as April was of Jack Patriot’s. Then Lance had met Jade Gentry, and everything had changed.

Lance and Jade had been filming a movie together in Ecuador. Lance had played a dashing soldier of fortune and Jade was a nerdy archaeologist, definitely a stretch, considering her exotic beauty. During Lance’s early phone calls, he’d told Georgie how Jade was so absorbed in her work as a professional do-gooder that she seldom fraternized with the crew and that she spent so much time on the phone advocating for her pet causes, she didn’t always have her lines memorized.

But gradually the stories had stopped. And Georgie hadn’t noticed.

She turned to Sasha. “A trip to Vegas sounds just right. Count me in.” She imagined photos of Georgie York and her glamorous friend whooping it up in Sin City. If she followed the trip with a few months of serial dating as she’d originally planned, maybe the stories of “Georgie’s Unending Heartbreak” would finally give way to “Georgie’s Wild Nights.”

Sasha began to sing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Georgie made herself do a little dance. It was a good idea. A great idea. Exactly what she needed.

What do you mean you had to go back to Chicago?” Georgie hissed into her cell phone six days later. She was at a table in the Bellagio’s Le Cirque restaurant where Sasha was supposed to be meeting her to kick off their Vegas weekend.

Sasha sounded harried instead of her normal sarcastic self. “I left three messages. Why didn’t you call me back?”

Because Georgie had accidentally left her cell in her suitcase and only retrieved it on her way to the restaurant.

“We had a fire in the warehouse,” Sasha went on. “I had to get back right away.”

“Is everybody okay?”

“Yes, but there’s a lot of damage. Georgie, I know the Vegas trip was my idea. I’d never have stood you up like this if-”

“Don’t be silly. I’ll be fine.” Sasha was cool in a crisis, but she also wasn’t the tough nut she pretended to be. “Take care of yourself, and call me when you know more. Promise.”

“I will.”

After Georgie hung up, she gazed around the hotel’s jewel-like dining room with its silk-tented ceiling and view of Lake Bellagio. Several of the diners were openly staring at her, and she realized she was once again alone at a table for two. She left a hundred-dollar bill by her water goblet and slipped out into the casino through the restaurant’s star-studded entry. She kept her head down as she walked past the Monopoly slot machines.

“I swear, you’re stalking me.”

She whipped around and saw Bram Shepard standing outside Circo, the sister restaurant to the one she’d just fled. He was predictably gorgeous in jeans and a pinstriped dress shirt with white French cuffs, a mix of casual and elegant that should have looked awful, but didn’t. The casino lighting had turned his lavender eyes into mercury. He was like one of the Seven Wonders of the World-except he’d been tarnished by too much acid rain.