Harlequin Romance September 2021 Box Set Page 13
* * *
Kitt and the screenwriters decided to make a couple of dialogue changes, so Luna spent a lot of the day waiting. She sent Anush home and banished the squad from her trailer until needed. Had she or Charlie been in a better mood, they could have played a card game or something to pass the time. But the morning’s headlines still resonated through her, and she suspected Charlie was second-guessing everything, as well.
“The phone call came at eleven fifty-six in the evening,” he said, eyes fixed on the painting of a tree above the table.
“What call?”
“The police. To tell me that an accident had occurred. They told me there was no point in me coming to the scene as they’d be rushing the victims to the hospital. I have almost no recollection of running through the house to get to the car, only of myself driving in the dead of an icy night.” Luna looked around her trailer. The shoes that cost thousands of dollars. The styling chair where a half-dozen people made their livelihood by servicing an industry of make-believe. Nothing mattered at all in the face of Charlie’s tragedy. “It was Lily’s six-month birthday. That would indeed make for a tearjerker of a film, wouldn’t it?”
Tears rolled down Luna’s cheeks. She didn’t care if her makeup artist was going to have to start his work over again today. Her heart shattered for Charlie. She reached for his hand, which was next to hers on the sofa. He accepted it, but distractedly. With her other hand, she stroked his forearm up and down, down and up, hoping to soothe him in some way. A small crook of his lip told her he had noticed.
* * *
When she was finally called for a quick reshoot, Charlie followed along, perhaps just for the activity. The sun had already gone down and a fair amount of the crew had been dismissed. So, unusually, a handler wasn’t sent to accompany Luna the short distance to set.
As soon as they stepped out of the trailer, she heard it. Click, click, click, click. Rapid-fire, like bullets from a machine gun. Someone with a long-lensed camera was in the vicinity. Click, click, click. The sound would be forever etched in her brain. On and on it went. Whoever the photographer was would take hundreds of shots, hoping for the one good one that would make a sale to the tabloids. Charlie, with tension in his eyes after reliving the night that altered him forever, heard it, too. He whipped his head around and located the camera being focused on them. The glower he pierced the photographer with could have curdled blood.
The next morning, he checked his phone and showed it to her. Sure enough, there was a photo of Charlie seething, with Luna by his side, the reason for his scowl misconstrued. The caption read, Luna Price’s new love affair—already on the rocks?
* * *
Charlie walked Luna out her front door and waved her off as the driver took her to the studio. He’d had enough of being trapped in her trailer, which seemed even more of a fortress now that he’d witnessed the relentless paparazzi, who perched like vultures everywhere she went, planning their attack, always ready. That Luna could withstand their constant presence was hard to believe. In a way he felt proud of her, proud that she ultimately must have a very strong character to stand up to all of that limelight. He knew it had gotten to her, which is why she’d taken the year off. He hoped, for her sake, that her recovery tools would be enough to keep her from sliding back into danger.
She’d suggested he take one of her cars and go out to the beach while she worked, promising that they’d meet tonight for a low-key dinner at home. Sensible advice, and perhaps a drive to the ocean would do him good. He still couldn’t shake the bloodthirsty face of that photographer yesterday, the vicious glee he took in snapping shots when he shouldn’t have. Not long after Luna left, Charlie got into her car and flipped the ignition. Swooshing down the canyon was exhilarating and he cranked up the rock ’n’ roll Luna had programmed.
The Pacific Ocean was as fierce as he remembered it, with tall waves exploding onto the shoreline. The waters surrounding sweet Puerto Rico were so much milder by comparison. He parked the car and walked down the path leading to the beach. It was still morning and the beachcombers were just beginning to stake their claims in the sand with blankets, picnics, toys and towels. A windy morning, at that, which is why he watched a few people struggle to anchor the poles of their umbrellas.
He took off his shoes, rolled up his pants and went as far as ankle-deep into the bracingly cold water, where he began his stroll. He thought of Luna’s luminous face under the tender moon of Puerto Rico.
Luna, Luna. With her, he’d begun to think that energy could whoosh through his veins again. She’d reawakened him sexually, made him virile and potent once more, able to howl into those sultry Caribbean midnights. Together they’d looked into the mirror and been willing to face what they saw. For a brief moment in time, Charlie thought he could change that reflection from a man whose heart and soul and spirit had already been used up into someone whose well was full again. Who had hope.
But his central nervous system told him otherwise. He’d put a tiny crack in that hard shell, certain that he’d now be able to manage a dinner date or attend a party under the guise of civilized society. Puerto Rico let in just a sliver of light so that he could appease his employees and his investors. Progress had been made. That was enough.
He couldn’t survive at Luna’s level of interaction with the human race. She deserved someone who could. Someone who could even rise above it to put boundaries around the invasion. Charlie had built a wall around himself, but the space was only large enough for him. In Puerto Rico, he’d thought for a minute he might be able to tear down the barriers and truly live out in the open, in trust, in faith. The last few days in LA had shown him how wrong he’d been.
He kicked the sand and shook his head. A family playing on the beach caught his eye. The woman and the littlest ones filled colorful plastic containers with sand. An older girl, probably about ten, the same age Lily would have been if she was still alive, and her father were trying to fly kites. Amelia and her kites. The vivid displays of kites at the El Morro in Viejo San Juan. Charlie had convinced himself that they were a sign from Amelia, assuring him that not only could he smile again, but also that he could love once more.
In this morning’s swirling wind, the girl and her father couldn’t get the kites into the air. They floundered, flopping over and over in the sand, the lines tangling into a mess. That was the real sign, Charlie thought to himself. Not being able to fly the kite. Not even getting it off the ground.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“LUNA, SIT UP STRAIGHTER!” Kitt yelled over as he and his cinematographer, Hans, viewed her through several camera lenses.
“The shoulders are still off.”
“And I don’t like the shadow under the chin.”
“You’re slouching, Luna. Can you please sit up straighter?”
“I can blend out some of the width here and here.” Hans gestured something to Kitt.
Luna could feel the simmer within her. It always began as little bubbles in her gut, like a fountain just beginning to gurgle. Making her feel restless, uncomfortable in her own skin. Listening to the two men talk about the shoulders and the chin, as if she was a collection of inanimate parts, the bubbles were multiplying. They made her want to sink down into the spring so that their words couldn’t reach her. It was starting again. She knew it as sure as she’d know night from day.
She and Charlie had spent the day apart. He texted that he’d gone to the beach. Things weren’t right between them—they could both feel it in their bones. They were a million miles from the carefree shores of Puerto Rico. Him being in LA wasn’t working out.
* * *
That night, Luna was detained on set for so long that by the time she got home, she’d missed the dinner they were planning. She found Charlie asleep on one of the living room sofas, the golden glow from a lamp obscuring half of his face. Knowing that sleep didn’t come easy for him, she wasn’t a
bout to disturb him, so she covered him with a blanket and turned off the light.
She’d already had both the assistant director and her manager tell Kitt that she needed to keep reasonable hours if she was going to do her best work. Last time she’d approached Kitt herself, he’d reminded her that after she’d disappeared last year, throwing off the production schedule for the film and costing the studio millions of dollars, she might want to be less demanding. She remembered in therapy discussing how to circumvent people who pressed her buttons. Wisely, she’d decided not to have any conversations directly with Kitt anymore. But it had been a trying day. She forced herself to eat a sandwich and then got into her own bed, alone.
* * *
In the morning, she promised Charlie a rain check on dinner. And so indeed, before the moon had risen too high in the sky that night, she and Charlie sat at her kitchen table for a home-cooked meal, albeit one prepared by her housekeeper.
“You haven’t touched your food,” he observed.
The bubbles began to percolate inside her again. She hated people noticing or commenting on what she ate. Pausing, she realized that he was only trying to help.
She picked up her fork and knife, then sliced into the roast chicken with a seasoning rub she’d asked her housekeeper to prepare. Bringing the bite to her mouth, the spices reminded her of lovemaking in the sand and of Charlie’s smile, which she hadn’t seen in days.
She followed one bite with another. As they’d talked about in therapy, if she took the right actions then the right thinking would follow.
“It doesn’t seem as if things are going well on the film.”
“Perhaps I came back to a movie set too soon,” she replied, voicing what she’d been thinking. “This week is triggering me. I thought I was further along in my recovery.”
“I know what you mean. What we shared at Dorada made me think for the first time since my family’s death that I might be able to start again with someone new,” he said, eyes cast down on his dinner plate and not on her. But then he lifted them. “Not with someone. With you.”
“But?”
“I can’t smile for the cameras. I can’t put makeup over the wounds that still burn me until I’m red and chapped every single night. Yes, I’ll rise up enough to do what I need to do to keep AMgen growing and thriving, even if I’m not. But I think that’s all I’ll ever be able to manage.”
“I don’t know if I can smile for the cameras anymore, either. Even though I used to be a master at disguising who I really was inside. I was more of an actress in my personal life than I ever was on the silver screen. I’m not sure it’s worth it anymore. I have some more soul-searching to do.”
They finished eating in silence. Was he thinking what she was? About what might have been? The American movie star and the British tech billionaire. Two damaged people finding each other in the darkness and hanging on for dear life was the stuff fantasies were made of. Because kindred spirits don’t come around every day. Because the safety, comfort and chances they found in each other’s arms was too rare and precious a gift to let go of.
But that wasn’t their script.
“It’s time for me to go home to England.”
Sorrow manifested in one tear that made a slow slide down Luna’s face. “I know.”
* * *
Charlie had never hated a flight more. As his jet rocketed him through the clouds, he squeezed his eyes shut for a minute. It was as if the week in Puerto Rico and this second one in California had happened in a trance. Like a vision, from which he was supposed to emerge from and then forget, getting on with his life, until the details faded away like the vast county of Los Angeles, with its endless suburbs and swimming pools that looked like little dots of turquoise viewed from the sky.
When his regular driver picked him up at Heathrow in London, his familiar face confirmed that Charlie was indeed home. The route to his estate was one he’d traveled many times, although his driver’s voice sounded tinny and distant.
The entrance hall looked like a mausoleum today. Which, in essence, it was. For ten years Charlie had considered it a cemetery, one he’d refused to leave. As if staying in the house kept Amelia and Lily nearer to him, and he was watching over his family, even though their remains were in the ground miles away. Images of Luna’s skirt as she danced the bomba and all that had transpired between them paraded in front of him, a vision from another lifetime. The tombstones were the only things that were real.
While he sifted through the mail on his desk, he could only think of Luna. First viscerally, of her silken skin and lush lips and sweet smell, like sugar in the sun. The unbridled eroticism they shared was shocking. His hunger, his sovereignty, his want for her breathed a charge back into him. But it was more than that. Even though he and Amelia had enjoyed fulfilling lovemaking, he’d been just a young adult then. Not yet in touch with his own physical prowess. Not even knowing he was capable of a savage fervor that scorched the earth he and Luna traversed. What they’d unlocked within each other was life-changing. He’d never be the same man. As he brought his luggage into the foyer for his housekeeper to unpack tomorrow, an empty thud of finality beat in his chest.
He and Luna had also knocked into a stunning candor with each other. Perhaps it was the nature of the setup through the M Dating Agency. They were both people who needed a passageway to whatever was next. Even though Charlie might never be able to exorcise the haunts of this house, he felt different indeed, although perhaps not in the ways he’d have expected. Would Luna defeat her own enemies? For a brief moment he thought they might be able to trudge on their paths side by side. But no, he’d have to walk alone. The pain of a fresh solitude needled up his spine.
There was that something between them that couldn’t be put into words. Lying on top of her, their bodies speaking in the most intimate way possible, their solar plexuses met, as well. The auras that emanated from each of them into the ether had become one. There was no separation of his spirit from hers. It was a tie he’d never known anything of, not even with Amelia. He was only able to receive it after earning the maturity he held now. Unfortunately, he dared not trust it. Because if he was wrong, if their synthesis was only born of circumstance and loneliness, it could easily betray him or evaporate. He couldn’t withstand any more defeat.
Had he hurt Luna by deciding to leave LA? It was with a flat resignation that they both agreed the M encounter, as planned, and the unplanned week in LA were all they would have together. Clearly, her year away from the spotlight hadn’t sorted all of her issues. She needed to get right within herself. But a voice within him screamed that they could have helped each other conquer it all. He hated himself for not being able to try. She was where the light shone. Without her, everything was dim. His palms flattened against the cold walls of his stone corridor as he made his way to his empty bed.
* * *
“Good to see you.” Tom greeted Charlie with a firm handshake at the shareholders’ meeting the next day.
“I can’t promise I’m a changed man in every respect, but I understand what I have to do.” He’d been dutifully shaking hands with guests for an hour. It was exhausting.
“Not changed ‘in every respect.’ What does that mean? What happened? Charlie, I have to say that I was hopeful when you decided to extend the trip and go to LA.”
“Hopeful about what?”
“That in Luna you’d unexpectedly met someone you might create a future with.”
“Perhaps I bit off more than I could chew there.”
“Did you find out that you and Luna weren’t compatible, despite M’s careful matchmaking skills?”
“Quite the opposite.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Amelia and Lily have been gone ten years. Are you going to mourn for your entire life?”
“Believe me, I ask myself the same question all the time.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Luna? She’s marvelous. Vibrant and smart and thoughtful. I’ll cherish our time together for the rest of my life. Thank you for setting that up,” he said wistfully. He honestly didn’t know if he wanted to thank Tom or hate him. For showing him what he could have had if he’d been able to reach out and grab it. That was like taunting a hungry man with food but not letting him eat.
“I read something philosophical not long ago that said something to the effect of when you’re lying on your deathbed, it’s nothing you did—like eating that chocolate mousse, or taking that impulsive trip to Prague, or telling someone you loved them—that you’ll have remorse over. It’s the things you didn’t do for which you’ll have regret.”
* * *
That night, he sat on his oxblood leather chair sipping a brandy in front of his unlit fireplace like an old man. Was he at the end of his life? That wasn’t fair to him. That wasn’t fair to his memories or to Luna. He had to tear down the stone walls. Earlier, Tom had inferred what Charlie already knew. That he loved Luna. Dearly. Urgently. Wholeheartedly. LA had cast doubt in him about who Luna was. Was she the humble rancher’s daughter or the Hollywood star millions admired? The fragile creature that crumbled under pressure or the warrior who put herself back together? But he’d realized that she was all of those things. And more. He wanted to hold dear every precious facet of her. Embrace it all. Forever.
* * *
“Wake up, sleepyhead.” Anush’s voice came through Luna’s phone once she’d swiped it open after hearing the ringtone of Puerto Rican drumbeats.
“I’m not due on set to...” She stopped herself, remembering that she wasn’t shooting with Kitt. She had a TV appearance today. A film that was finished a year and a half ago was finally being released and she had a press interview to promote it. “Oh, right. I have to be her again this morning.”
A flicker of anxiety pinged through her. Would she look good enough? Would the camera operator be one who flattered or was careless? She mentally reviewed her talking points.