“Jeez, guy, what’s your fucking problem?” yelled the first guy, who had dropped his paper in the scuffle and was desperately trying to turn himself around to take a swing at his mystery attacker.
As soon as they were through the door, Max hurled both of them down onto the tarmac with all the ease of a WWE wrestler.
“
You’re
my problem, asshole,” he said. “How dare you talk about Siena like that? You don’t know the first thing about her. Where do you get off spreading it around that she’s slept with some fucking moronic friend of yours?”
“What’s it to you, buddy?” challenged the second guy, who had gotten to his feet and was mentally calculating his chances of walking away with both arms and legs if he gave Max the punch he deserved.
“She’s a friend of mine,” said Max defensively. “I won’t have her disrespected.”
“Oh yeah? Well I don’t know how good of a friend you are, man. But I’m telling you, she slept with Bodie. That’s a fact, whether you wanna believe it or not.”
Max lunged toward him again, but a couple of surf dudes who’d been watching the drama grabbed him and dragged him away.
“Leave it, man,” said one of them, a friendly-looking giant of a teenager who was even bigger than Max and clearly wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “Let it go.”
“And stay the fuck away from me or I’ll sue you for assault, you motherfucking psycho!” called the first agent, who was still sitting ignominiously on the ground, rubbing his leg, but had grown quite brave now that the danger had passed.
Shaking from head to toe, Max threw off the surfers angrily and started staggering back across the beach. He could see Siena, still lying facedown on the white sand, her beautifully curved buttocks rising like two round scoops of ice cream, already tanned to a perfect shade of café au lait.
He knew he shouldn’t wade right in in anger and confront her, but he couldn’t help himself. The thought of what he’d just heard, of some sleazeball producer touching her and bragging about it to all his friends, made him feel physically sick.
“Siena,” he called out gruffly as he came within the last few feet of her.
“Mmmm?” she murmured in reply, still prone and semi-comatose with sun. Rolling over slowly, she failed to notice that she had rucked up her bikini top, leaving her left nipple completely exposed. She gazed up innocently at Max. “What happened to the drinks?”
“Never mind the fucking drinks,” he barked. “And cover yourself up, for Christ’s sake, do you want the whole of Malibu to see your tits?”
She blushed and straightened her top. He had never spoken so brutally to her before. It frightened her. “What’s the matter?”
The old Siena would have shouted at him and told him to go fuck himself, but her love for him had done what nothing else had ever been able to achieve—disabled her legendary temper.
“Did you fuck a producer named Glen Bodie?” The anger and hostility in his voice were unmistakable. Siena could feel her heart pounding with fear. “Did you?” he shouted, when she failed to answer immediately.
“I’m not going to answer you if you keep shouting at me like that,” she said, trying to sound firm, although her voice was quavering. She drew her knees up to her chest defensively and reached for a beach towel to cover herself with. “Who told you that, anyway?”
“Never mind who told me it,” snapped Max. He was now crouched down with his face inches from hers. All of a sudden the size and strength that Siena had found so comforting before had become threatening and awful. “Is it true?”
Instinctively, she recoiled from him, scrambling backward on her hands like a frightened crab. “Yes,” she blurted out, raising her voice more in fear than in anger. “Yes, it is true.”
“How could you?” He stood rooted to the spot, looking at her like she was some sort of scum. It was that look that finally stirred her, despite her terrible fear of losing him, to defend herself.
“What do you mean, how could I?” she said. “How could
you
sleep with all those models and waitresses you used to bring back to the beach house? You’re not some saint you know, Max, and neither am I. Yes, I did sleep with Glen. Yes, I’m an awful, disgusting, terrible, promiscuous person. Is that what you want to hear, Max? Yes, yes, YES!”
He looked on, horrified, as she collapsed into tears, pulling the towel completely over her head in utter misery, her whole body shuddering in a series of terrible lurching sobs. In an instant, he had sat down beside her and pulled her, struggling and crying, into his arms.
“Shhhh. Shhhh, Siena, I’m sorry,” he whispered softly, rocking her in his arms until she stopped resisting, with the multicolored beach towel still draped over her face. “I’m sorry, baby. I shouldn’t have shouted at you. It’s my fault. I don’t think you’re awful or terrible or any of those things.”
“Or promiscuous?” She allowed the towel to drop and looked at him with eyes still welling up with tears, wet cheeks, and the bright red, sniffling nose of a five-year-old. Max felt his anger dissolving. Why was he being such a jealous prick?
“Or that,” he assured her. He tried to explain himself. “There were these two guys. At the café.” He gestured miserably behind him. “I overheard them talking.”
“About Glen?” she asked meekly. Max nodded. Siena wished the beach could have opened up and swallowed her.
Glen Bodie—to her he had been an evening’s entertainment. Sure, he was a jerk, but he had a great body and a dick like a cruise missile. She hadn’t given Bodie a thought before or since.
The fact was, she had always enjoyed sex, and in the past had prided herself on her ability to screw around as and when the fancy took her, without ever becoming emotionally attached to any man. Apart from Patrick Cash—and that had been years ago, a lifetime ago—she had never experienced anything approaching genuine affection, let alone love, for any of her many lovers.
But all that was before Max.
Siena didn’t really know how or why, but Max had broken through to a place in her heart that even she had almost forgotten ever existed. She not only
allowed
him to see her vulnerability and fear, she
wanted
him to see it.
Needed
him to see it. Not even Hunter had gotten as close to her, in a lifetime, as Max had in the last four weeks.
Siena knew she could be spoiled and selfish and that she wasn’t a millionth of the wonderful, kind, honorable person that Max was. But by some miracle, he seemed to love her anyway. For the first time in her life, she began to view her past sexual conquests as something less than glorious notches on the bedpost of her invulnerability. She began to view them as mistakes—perhaps terrible mistakes—that meant she could never be the pure, perfect woman Max wanted and deserved.
“I’m sorry,” she cried despairingly, scanning his face for further imagined signs of disgust. “It was a one-night thing. A long time ago. Oh Max, I wish it hadn’t happened, I wish a lot of things had never happened, but they did and I can’t change them now. And I wish I could tell you that Glen was the only one, but he wasn’t. Please. Please don’t hate me for it.”
Max squeezed her even tighter. What the fuck was wrong with him? Here he was with the most incredible, beautiful, loving girl—with Siena, Siena who he’d wanted, deep down, for as long as he could ever remember—and all he seemed to do was make her cry.
He tried to reason with himself. So what if she’d slept with some producer? So what if she’d slept with a whole bunch of them? It had all happened long before they got together. And she was right: He’d certainly been no angel in the past himself, so what right did he have to lay a guilt trip on her?
He was ashamed to admit it even to himself, but the fact was that he felt scared. Scared that she would wake up one day and realize she could do a whole lot better than a struggling English director with only a few thousand dollars and a battered old Honda to his name.
Everywhere they went together, men stared or swarmed around her. Sometimes it was as if Max couldn’t hear himself think for the low background hum of industry types taking bets on how long the relationship would last. It was bad enough being thought of as Hunter’s hanger-on. But to be dismissed as Siena’s plaything was unbearable, and it filled him with a frustration that he couldn’t seem to stop taking out on her.
“Angel,” he said, his voice breaking. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. If anything, it’s you who should hate me, for being such a stupid, jealous—”
She stopped him with a kiss, a long, lingering embrace charged with love and relief. Sometimes it felt like the only way they could really communicate was physically. Sex was their safety net.
“Take me home,” said Siena when they finally pulled away from each other. His anger had shaken her more than she wanted to admit. “Let’s go to bed.”
Out in Colorado with Tiffany’s family, Hunter was anxiously smiling his way through another family meal.
“Thanks, Marcie, honey.” Jack Wedan leaned back in his chair and loosened his belt a notch, patting his groaning paunch appreciatively. “That was great.”
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Wedan,” said Hunter with a sly wink at a furiously blushing Tiffany, who was clearly mortified by her dad’s behavior. “It was absolutely delicious.”
Dinner had, in fact, been very good, the highlight in an otherwise rather tense day. He didn’t know what it was about Tiffany’s family. They were always gracious hosts and studiously polite, asking him about his career and his plans, arranging trips or hikes to ensure that he wasn’t bored during his stay, cooking up a storm. But still, there was an awkwardness with them that he couldn’t seem to crack.
He’d been coming to Estes Park for years as Tiffany’s steady boyfriend, and never done anything to hurt or disrespect her, anything that might cause her parents to distrust him, at least not that he could think of. But for some reason, this undercurrent of something—reticence, suspicion maybe?—hung in the air throughout all of his visits. It made it very hard to relax.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it, dear,” said Tiffany’s mother kindly, getting up to start clearing the plates.
“Leave it, Mom, Hunter and I can do that, can’t we, honey?” said Tiffany, deftly relieving her mother of the plate and stacking it on top of her own.
“Sure, of course,” Hunter agreed, jumping to his feet, ever eager to be helpful. “You put your feet up, Mrs. Wedan, you’ve done more than enough.”
Tiffany also felt the tension around her parents and was grateful for a few minutes alone in the kitchen with Hunter. Creeping up behind him, she ran her hands over his butt while he was bending down to load the dishwasher. “Hey, sexy.”
He spun around and grabbed her, burying his face in her neck and kissing her until she broke out in goose bumps. “Hey sexy yourself,” he grinned.
She was wearing the pair of black suede hipsters he’d bought her at Fred Segal a few weeks ago, with sleek black ankle boots that made her already long legs look endless. Hunter felt his groin stir. If only her folks weren’t in the next room, he’d have ripped her clothes off then and there and taken her on the kitchen floor.
“Sorry about my dad,” she said, leaning into his chest and breathing in his musky, familiar smell. “Sometimes he can be
so
Homer Simpson.”
Hunter laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I love Homer Simpson. Believe me, he’s a hell of a lot more functional than my dad ever was.” He let go of her and went back to rinsing and stacking. “How d’you think it’s going, though?” he asked hopefully, scrubbing hard at the inside of a roasting pan. “I think your mom’s starting to like me a little bit.”
“Baby, they both love you,” lied Tiffany, reaching over him to rinse out a wineglass. “Quit obsessing. Just be yourself.”
Yeah, right. Just being himself hadn’t been a roaring success so far. Nearly four years and he was still waiting for a “Hey, man, call me Jack” from her dad. This weekend was probably the best opportunity Hunter had had yet to try and win over Tiffany’s parents, but it was proving to be an uphill struggle. For the last twenty-four hours he’d felt like he was trying to melt a glacier with a candle.
Once the dishes were finished, they went through into the family room, where her parents were sitting together on the couch, leaving only two armchairs, one on either side of the room, for Tiffany and Hunter. Maybe he was being paranoid, but Hunter couldn’t help feeling that the enforced separation was both intentional and symbolic. Reluctantly, he took one of the chairs and watched Tiffany walk over to sit by her father in the other.
Despite the family’s inexplicable hostility toward him, Hunter liked the Wedans’ house because it felt like a real home. It was built in true Rocky Mountain style, all warm, polished pine with double-height vaulted ceilings and antlers on the walls. Every available space was filled with pictures or mementos of Tiffany, from framed photos of her graduation to an enlarged still of her on
UCLA,
in pride of place above the fireplace. The refrigerator was still plastered with her early-childhood artwork, along with carefully laminated lists of her various phone numbers, addresses, and e-mail contacts, held in place by a bunch of multicolored magnets.
Hunter couldn’t help but contrast it bitterly to the grandeur and sterility of his own childhood home. He was certain that no finger painting of his had ever made it onto the refrigerator door in Hancock Park.
“So, Hunter.” As usual, it was Tiffany’s mom who made the stilted effort to kick-start a conversation. “Have you got any new projects lined up for next year?”
“He’s already told you, Mom, no,” snapped Tiffany. She couldn’t face any more pseudo chitchat. She knew that her parents worried about her relationship with Hunter because he was wealthy and well known and they thought she would eventually get hurt. Tiffany, of all people, could understand that. But she still resented their frostiness.
“Don’t talk to your mother like that,” said Jack, without ungluing his eyes from the Bobcats game on TV.
“I was only asking,” explained Marcie meekly, “because Tiffany was telling me that the pilot season has just finished, so I thought, well, maybe you had something else in the pipeline?”
“That’s okay,” said Hunter, with an encouraging smile. If her mom was going to make the effort to express an interest, the least he could do was be nice about it. “But no, I don’t have any new projects. I’m totally overstretched as it is, filming two shows at the same time. At one point I thought this might be the last season for
Counselor
. But now that we’ve all signed up again, there’s no way I’d have time for more TV work, never mind a movie.”
“Mmmm, I see.” Marcie nodded in agreement with the sage look of someone well versed in the problems of juggling a TV and movie career. “Well, we’re just thrilled that Tiffany’s pilot seems to have gone so well, aren’t we, Jack?”
Her father grunted noncommittally. Tiffany’s face went white. She could cheerfully have strangled her mother.
“What pilot?” Hunter looked across at her, bewildered. “You never told me you were up for anything?”
“Oh, yes,” said Marcie, blissfully unaware of the bomb she had just exploded between the two of them. “Tiffany called us last week. She did say she wanted to keep it quiet”—she beamed proudly at her daughter—“but you know, I’m just so excited about it, I don’t think I could hold it in a moment longer.”
“The show hasn’t been picked up yet,” said Tiffany guiltily, unable to meet Hunter’s eye. “It may still not come to anything, you know? I didn’t want to get everybody’s hopes up.”
“But you told your mom, right?” Hunter’s voice was flat, as if all the emotion had been punched out of him.
“Honey, I was going to tell you, really,” she said, tearing her eyes away from her lap and looking into his hurt, disappointed face. “I just wanted to be sure, to know if we were being picked up or not.”
“If they make the show then she’ll have to go up to Vancouver to do the filming,” Marcie plowed on excitedly. “I hear it’s wonderful up there, although I’ve never been to Canada myself. Have you, Hunter?”
“Excuse me,” he said suddenly, getting up with a face like thunder and heading for the front door. “I think I need some air.”
“Take your coat!” shouted Tiffany’s father after him, still glued to the game. “It’s cold out there.”
“Oh dear,” said Marcie, taking in her daughter’s stricken expression and finally registering that she’d put her foot in it. “Is there a problem? Was it something I said?”
Tiffany found Hunter outside, shivering in just his sweater, leaning against the gate at the end of the driveway. It was a beautiful, crisp late-April evening, without a single cloud to spoil the blanket of stars above them. Dirty, ice-hardened piles of snow still lay, resolutely unmelting, at the foot of the gate and along the verge of the winding mountain road that led down to Estes Park Village. It was warm here during the days in springtime, but the nights could still be bitter right up until early May.
Tiffany breathed in the familiar smell of wood smoke and mountain air and steeled herself to talk to him. “There you are,” she said softly, moving over to stand beside him.
“Yeah,” said Hunter, flicking an imaginary piece of dirt off the gatepost so he wouldn’t have to look at her. “Here I am.”
There was an uncomfortable silence while she struggled to think of what to say next. She knew she should have told him that she’d auditioned for the pilot and that she’d finally gotten herself a really decent part. Part of her, the better part, had wanted to share her success with him. But another part knew that if the show got picked up in the next few weeks, things would change between them. Difficult questions would have to be faced.
She would, at last, have the means to move out of the crappy old apartment she shared with Lennox, which would inevitably lead to a renewed push by Hunter for her to move in with him, something she felt less inclined than ever to contemplate now that Siena and Max had set themselves up in a permanent lovefest at the beach house.
She would also have to spend a lot of the next year away from home, filming up in Vancouver. Her contract was all but up at NBC, and she would ask them to release her formally before the end of the current series of
UCLA,
so she’d be free to go by mid-June.
She knew that Hunter would react badly to any sort of separation, and she had wanted to come to terms with the idea herself before springing it on him. Besides, maybe the show wouldn’t make it, and she needn’t have worried him with it after all. She really could murder her mother—why couldn’t she have let her break the news to him in her own time?
“I was gonna tell you,” she said, wrapping her arm around Hunter’s waist protectively. “I was just waiting for the right time.”
He didn’t remove her arm, but neither did he return the gesture. His awkward, unyielding stance told her he was still angry, but she continued trying to explain. “What I said in there was the truth. I have no idea if this is even going to get made yet. I didn’t want to get into it all and then have to say, ‘Oops, sorry, ain’t happening. Good old Tiffany screws it up again.’ Story of my life, you know?”
“That’s not true,” said Hunter with feeling. “You haven’t screwed anything up. You’re a terrific actress, you always have been. You just needed to get a break, and now you’ve got one. I just wish . . .” He shook his head in disappointment. “I just wish you would have shared it with me, that’s all. I tell you everything.”
Tiffany couldn’t help herself. “You didn’t tell me you were asking Siena to move in.”
“God, could you
stop
about Siena for five minutes?” said Hunter, exasperated. “We aren’t talking about Siena, we’re talking about you. About us. I mean, Vancouver?”
“I know, I know,” she placated him. “But I can fly back a lot. Or you can come up there. I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. It might not happen anyway.”
“It’ll happen,” he said miserably, still scratching away morosely at the gatepost. “So, what’s the show, CBS?”
Tiffany nodded. “
Sea Rescue.
You know, the one about the dolphin sanctuary? I’m Barbara, the chief at the rescue station.”
“Great,” said Hunter without an iota of enthusiasm. He knew he should be happy for her, be supportive, but all he felt was selfishly, miserably depressed. No sooner had he found Siena and replaced one missing piece in his life than Tiffany was about to leave him.
“It’s not like I’m leaving you, honey,” she whispered into his ear as if reading his mind. “It’s just one season. And it’s Canada, not the moon.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, finally relenting and wrapping his arm around her. He made a supreme effort to smile and try to look pleased. He knew this was a wonderful chance for Tiffany. He’d heard all about this particular pilot, and it was a big deal. If it all went ahead, and he saw no reason why it shouldn’t, she could become a household name overnight.
He was ashamed by how frightening he found that prospect.
Comforted by his embrace, Tiffany heaved a sigh of relief. For the past few weeks this secret had been weighing her down like concrete boots, and it felt good to have everything out in the open at last. She kissed Hunter tenderly on the cheek and began walking back toward the house. It was fucking freezing out.
Hunter watched her go. Her long legs were lost in the darkness, but the starlight caught the loose blond strands of hair that flew around her face, some of them sticking to the lip gloss on her wide, pink, infinitely sensual mouth. God, he loved her so much.
In that split second he knew, for certain, that he wanted to marry her. He wanted to make her his, keep her safe, have her and hold her forever, never let her leave. Not to Vancouver, not anywhere without him.
“Tiffany, wait!” he called after her, and she stopped in her tracks. “Will you . . .” he stammered helplessly, but couldn’t seem to get any more words out. She looked so perfect standing there, so beautiful and fearless. What if she said no? What if he ruined everything, what if he lost her for good for the sake of one crazy, impulsive moment?
“Will you promise to tell me this stuff from now on?” he finished lamely. “No more secrets between us?”
She held out her hand for his and led him inside.
“I promise,” she told him. “No more secrets.”
Back in L.A. the next morning on the
Prodigal Daughter
set, Dierk Muller was watching Siena run through her scene and scowling.
Sometimes, when he watched her act, he could see a raw talent so exciting that it made the pale hairs on his arms stand on end. Other times—like this morning—he cursed the day he’d ever been stupid enough to hire a model with next to no dramatic experience and a seemingly pathological need to hold herself back on camera.
“Cut!” he shouted testily, snapping his fingers at Siena as though summoning a recalcitrant puppy. “Siena, my dear. What are you doing?”