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Love Me True
Ann Major
MEN of the YEAR MAN of the MONTH "You had things your way for six miserable years. Now it's my turn." - Joey Fasano, irresistible renegade screen idol He had it all - wealth, fame, success. But the emptiness aching inside him wouldn't subside. Watching TV coverage of Heather Wade's upcoming wedding, Joey marveled at how she'd changed from the wild, free spirit he'd loved to the cool, proper socialite her powerful family had made her.But now he had to see her again, and even her family couldn't stop him. Because if that boy whose hand she was holding wasn't the image of Joey at age five, he'd eat his Oscar! Some men are made for lovin' - and you'll love our 125th MAN OF THE MONTH!
“Does That Blush Go All Over, Honey?” (#u546fc033-1a28-57fe-afa6-2328f4adad32)Letter to Reader (#u64d84b83-123a-52f7-9885-10db5545a0f2)Title Page (#ud908c0f0-62c7-5f56-ba0a-e8fba9a3fc96)Dedication (#u26b74013-f2ad-5633-b83c-8c91cb12c802)About the Author (#ucda4f61c-8295-5dbe-a14e-889da77debcb)Letter to Reader (#uc8e4f30c-eb97-5825-b183-830d445e2f34)Prologue (#ue971f9c4-dddb-5889-8e9a-4553864a25fb)Chapter One (#u116352e5-399f-5cff-9215-062b5cfd1e13)Chapter Two (#ud3f6dcf0-9c36-52d9-afce-39c8c8d749ce)Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Does That Blush Go All Over, Honey?”
Joey’s grin was too conceited for words. “Let me see.”
He yanked at Heather’s blanket, but gently, just to tease her. She held on ferociously.
“You’re in a different mood this morning, my pet,” he said.
“I’m not...your pet...”
“Last night you were most...affectionate. You couldn’t get enough of me. You were...we were...well, pretty incredible.”
Her gut twisted in fresh shame. “I don’t believe you.”
“Fine. Suit yourself.” He chuckled, but her words had wiped that tender eagerness from his gaze. “Your head hurts, I’ll bet. You probably don’t remember much.... Lucky for you, I remember everything. So, if you get curious, I could describe our night together in the most vivid detail. In fact, I’d love to do so.”
She clamped her hands over her ears. “I’m living in a nightmare.... How could you sink so low as to seduce me?”
“You have it all backwards. You seduced me. For your information, I put up one hell of a fight defending my...er...virtue.”
Dear Reader,
This May we invite you to delve into six delicious new titles from Silhouette Desire!
We begin with the brand-new title you’ve been eagerly awaiting from the incomparable Ann Major. Love Me True, our May MAN OF THE MONTH, is a riveting reunion romance offering the high drama and glamour that are Ann’s hallmarks.
The enjoyment continues in FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE BRIDES with The Groom’s Revenge by Susan Crosby A young working woman is swept off her feet by a wealthy CEO who’s married her with more than love on his mind—he wants revenge on the father who never claimed her, Stuart Fortune A “must read” for all you fans of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca!
Barbara McMahon’s moving story The Cowboy and the Virgin portrays the awakening—both sensual and emotional—of an innocent young woman who falls for a ranching Romeo But can she turn the tables and corral him? Beverly Barton’s emotional miniseries 3 BABIES FOR 3 BROTHERS concludes with Having His Baby. Experience the birth of a father as well as a child when a rugged rancher is transformed by the discovery of his secret baby—and the influence of her pretty mom. Then, in her exotic SONS OF THE DESERT title, The Solitary Sherkh, Alexandra Sellers depicts a hard-hearted sheikh who finds happiness with his daughters’ aristocratic tutor. And The Billionaire’s Secret Baby by Carol Devine is a compelling marriage-of-convenience story
Now more than ever, Silhouette Desire offers you the most passionate, powerful and provocative of sensual romances. Make yourself merry this May with all six Desire novels—and buy another set for your mom or a close friend for Mother’s Day!
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
Please address questions and book requests to:
Silhouette Reader Service
U.S. 3010 Walden Ave., PO. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: PO Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
Love Me True
Ann Major
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my late father, Millard Holland Major,
who taught me to love the written word
About the Author
ANN MAJOR loves writing romance novels as much as she loves reading them. She is a proud mother of three children, who are now in high school and college. She lists hiking in the Colorado mountains with her husband, playing tennis, sailing, enjoying her cats and playing the piano among her favorite activities.
Dear Reader,
I love writing for the MAN OF THE MONTH promotional miniseries in Silhouette Desire, and I’m especially honored that my hero Joey Fasano is Desire’s 125th MAN OF THE MONTH!
If I could have three wishes, one of them would be to hop into my man’s brain, so I could figure out once and for all what makes him do and say all those illogical things that drive me crazy. Writing from the male point of view is the next best thing.
I think I get a little carried away with this sometimes. I tend to invent heroes who are larger-than-life, difficult and pushy. My guys love deeply and completely, especially when they don’t want to. They have trouble with the “no” word. They want what they want, and they go after it. In short, they are every bit as maddeningly adorable as the real man in my life.
No-fantasy haunts me more than the man from the past showing up on the heroine’s doorstep and turning her life topsy-turvy.
My hero in this latest story, Joey Fasano, bad boy turned movie star, has become a force unto himself. He’s never forgotten Heather, his first love, and once he sees her again, he realizes how empty his life and soul are without her. He can’t go on, if he doesn’t win her. Such a love is worth fighting for.
I hope you enjoy Joey and Heather’s story.
Best,
Prologue
Maybe everybody was right after all. Maybe Joey Fasano was too wild and too passionate and too damned no-account for his own good.
Whatever.
Joey was too scared about Heather to care one way or the other.
The weather was as blustery and uncertain as his foul mood. It was raining intermittently. Every so often, the moon would break out from its wispy cover and put a stop to the nonsense.
Joey was damn sure driving like a demon from hell. His knuckles shone like bright white bones as he whipped the steering wheel to the right and swerved his daddy’s battered Chevy onto the wet hospital drive.
Massive and ink-black, the rectangular building looked as forbidding as a prison as it loomed in stark relief above a black fringe of live-oak trees and was backlit by that violent, moon-dark, Texas sky.
Heather was in there somewhere...maybe dying.
His gut cramped in sick, demoralizing fear. Her powerful family would stop at nothing to keep him from seeing her.
Let them try.
He slammed on the brakes, got out of the car he’d taken without permission and ran, heedless of the soft rain that had begun to fall again, uncaring that he’d left the door wide open and the headlights blazing into the empty blackness like twin cones.
With a callused brown hand, he shielded his eyes against flashing red and white lights of an ambulance. More sirens screamed from the distant interstate, jarring him in his panicky confusion as raced toward the E.R. entrance.
His mouth twisted when he spotted the same scowling deputy who’d all but accused him of killing Ben a week ago. Ben, his best friend; Ben, Heather’s brother. Ben, whose lifeless head he’d cradled in his lap. Ben, whose grave he’d visited less than an hour ago to plead for forgiveness.
Nod Smile at the uniformed jerk. Stay cool.
Joey shot the officer a tense grin that must have passed muster. Then he shouldered his way through the sliding glass doors like a surly outlaw. Inside, heads swiveled as rain dripped off his black hair. He slicked the thick stuff back, out of his scalding eyes. A pretty teenager gasped coyly and then gave him one of those fluttery smiles all the girls gave him. He saw her father’s hand clench warningly on her slim shoulder and draw her out of Joey’s path.
Half boy, half man, Joey moved too fast, as if he hadn’t quite grown accustomed to his long, rugged body. Still, he was hunky and gorgeous. His voracious sex appeal made him suspect with all parents and teachers, and with any other guy his age who had a girlfriend.
“You’re every teenage girl’s dream lover and every daddy’s worst nightmare,” Coach Howard had teased him when he’d been voted Most Handsome in high school.
“When I was your age I had pimples. I envy the hell out of you, kid. Looks like yours will open all sorts of doors.”
Behind a cluttered desk a nurse ignored a stack of charts and blinking lights on her phone and licked pizza crust off her fingers.
But she couldn’t ignore him.
No woman ever could, especially if he smiled.
But when he tried, the skin on either side of his mouth tightened painfully.
“Save the fake charm. Visiting hours are over, sonny.”
She obviously had a teenage daughter.
Joey froze. “Please, Ma’am.... I’ve gotta find somebody.... She’s real sick.”
The nurse shook her head in curt dismissal, sucked a last crumb, and then punched a button on her telephone to tend to more important business.
Joey’s cold wet hand grabbed the receiver from her
“Heather Wade,” he rasped, suddenly seeming older and scarier than his twenty years. “The senator’s daughter.... What room is she in?”
“Your pretty face has got you way too cocky, sonny. You may be hot stuff to some little girls foolish enough to go for tall and dark and dangerous, but a Wade wouldn’t wipe her pretty feet on the likes of you...even if you did get her pregnant.”
His broad shoulders sagged. Joey’s tough stance wilted. “Where—?” he pleaded in a desperate, breathless voice, a boy’s voice now.
Her stare hardened. Then she seized the phone from him. “Get outta here, sonny, before you get yourself into real trouble. The senator’s been down here. He told me all about you and to be on the watch-out—”
When Joey didn’t budge, she hollered off-handedly, “Officer! It’s him! It’s that Joey Fasano guy.”
Joey took off in a dead run.
So did the deputy.
As Joey sprinted like a crazed rat through a maze of endless white corridors, the big deputy lumbered at his heels.
The bastard would probably throw the book at him.
Let him. All that mattered was finding Heather...before it was too late.
Then Joey slammed through a double set of swinging doors only to find himself trapped in a dead-end hall on the seventh floor.
His heart beat like a tom-tom when he pivoted wildly just as the deputy banged through the doors and smiled.
Behind Joey, Senator Wade’s voice thundered, “What the hell are you doing up here, Fasano?”
“I came to see Heather.”
“Over my dead body, punk.”
Shock and disapproval rippled through the grim clump of fashionably-dressed people standing outside Heather’s door.
“You better let me see her!” Joey screamed her name like a crazy man. “Heather!”
Heather’s mother opened the door. “She doesn’t want to see you.”
“You’re lying!”
Vaguely Joey was aware of her mother’s pitying gaze as he stumbled past her. Suddenly he felt that he moved in weird slow motion. The white walls closed in on him like a surrealistic nightmare.
Was that frail, thin creature veiled in curtains and swaddled in white sheets like a mummy in that far corner really his lively Heather?
The blinds were down. The room was gray and shadowy.
“Babe.... What have they done....” He choked. His voice died. “Oh, God...what have I done?”
Her amethyst eyes that usually brightened at the sight of him, were dull and painfilled. Dark circles of grief and exhaustion ringed them. She stared at him as if he were a ghost. Then she twisted her head away from him and lay as still as death.
Even in this state, he thought she was the prettiest girl in the world. He sat down beside her and took her slim hand. A shock went through him. Her fingers cold and stiff and lifeless. Just as Ben’s had been.
“You okay, babe?”
“I’m fine,” she whispered.
Fine? Her tone cut him. Ever after he would hate that word.
There was scarcely a pulsebeat in her slender, blue-veined wrist. Her icy skin was almost translucent.
She was so changed, so lifeless, fear squeezed his heart like a vice.
“Please...just go away,” she whispered in a strange almost thready voice.
He lifted her hand and laced his brown fingers through hers. “What about our baby?”
Her voice broke on a sob. “There is no baby.”
His own eyes filled with tears. Fighting them, he squeezed her hand and held on tightly. He gasped for air. He gasped again. He felt like a drowning man with nothing to hold on to. “But—”
“I want you out of my life, Joey. It’s the only way.”
“Heather.” He felt sick at his stomach and unable to breathe in the dark, airless room. “You listen to me. We’re still getting married—”
“No,” she said in a rehearsed, robotlike tone. “I want to start over... fresh.”
“With some rich guy like Roth that your daddy—”
“Daddy says if this gets out, me having been pregnant, people won’t understand. They’ll judge him. He says that I’ve been difficult my whole life.”
“He’s difficult and demanding. Not you. You’re not supposed to be some perfect doll who follows all his orders. You’ll shrivel up and die...if you do that.”
“He says that just this once I need to think about him and act like a normal daughter, that I have to do the predictable, respectable things, that I have to finish school... and...and forget you.”
“Yeah. Well, you tell him it’s not that easy. ’Cause I won’t ever, ever forget you. And I won’t ever let you forget me, either.”
“Don’t make this harder, Joey. Please—If you and I hadn’t dated, Ben would still be alive.”
“Is that what they say? What he says?”
“I can’t hurt them any more than I already have, especially Daddy, especially right now.”
“It’s not like I planned Ben’s death or I wanted to get you pregnant,” Joey cried. “I didn’t want to hurt them. I love you.”
He felt her fingertips flick through his thick, black hair that had probably dried into unruly tangles and then withdraw as if she were afraid to touch him because she wanted to so much. “Daddy says I’ve gotten into more trouble than ten kids.”
“You haven’t gotten into nearly as much trouble as me, babe,” he said, attempting his old teasing tone.
“Daddy says you’re a bad influence.”
The soft finality in her stone-calm voice as she kept quoting her daddy killed something inside him.
“I thought you loved me.”
Slowly she unlaced their joined fingers and shut her eyes.
“Heather—”
Tears leaked through her lashes and wet her white cheeks.
“Heather ....”
She bit her lips.
“Don’t do this, babe. Don’t leave me. You know I can’t make it without you. You’re all I’ve got. All I ever want. You’re everything.”
The door opened. “Fasano, you’ve had your time with her. Now get the hell out of here before I sic the law on you.”
Her father was standing beside Laurence Roth in the doorway. Her other relatives were peering at him like he was some kind of wild beast they’d run to ground and were about to slaughter.
“You all think you know so much. You don’t know her. You’re killing her. You’re killing both of us.”
“Get out, Fasano, before I lose my patience. You’ve already cost me one child. You’d better leave quick, boy, before I decide to use my considerable power to break you for what you’ve done to Heather.”
“Joey....” Her pleading whisper came from behind him. Joey turned back to Heather. Her eyes were closed, and tears streamed silently down her cheeks. “Go....”
He’d hurt her. He’d made her cry. Her family had never thought he was good enough. She’d always hated having to sneak around to see him. Now, because of Ben and the baby, they really hated him.
He’d lost her. How would he go on? He wasn’t rich or important like they were. She was everything to him. Everything.
More than anything, he wanted to take her into his arms and hold her till she stopped crying. He wanted to press his head into her breasts, to rock her back and forth, to never let her go. Travis Wade would probably kill him if he touched her.
Joey tossed his head back at a cocky angle and swaggered past Wade and Roth with the silent, insolent pride of a kid who had nothing else.
Joey didn’t know where he was going.
Without Heather, he didn’t care.
All he knew was that he was leaving Texas. And he wasn’t coming back till he was as rich and powerful as all of these arrogant bastards.
Then he’d make them pay.
One
A lot of smart people don’t believe in the devil, but Heather Wade knew better. Because sure as shooting, the very same devil who sent the snake to Eve also sent Joey Fasano slithering her way. It was easy for other rich girls whose daddies were senators to be good. It was hard for Heather.
Impossible when Joey was around. He brought out the worst in her. That’s why she’d fallen in love with him as a girl.
That’s why she was determined to forget him now that she was a full-grown woman on the verge of matrimony.
Tall and broad-shouldered, black-eyed and black-haired, Joey Fasano had been born sinfully handsome. He’d been as smolderingly intense as a box-office sensation years before he became one.
Maybe some seven-year-old little girls would not have found the various sorts of devilment he proposed in his hideout as exciting as she. Not all would have thought it a lark to snatch the Reverend Scott’s wife’s lacy panties off her clothesline after Joey pointed out how they snapped like a fat pirate’s pantaloons in the wind. But then it never did take much more than a sexy wink and devil-may-care grin to show her how much more fun the crooked path with the likes of him was than the straight and narrow with more staid folk.
And now, six years after she’d given that gorgeous snake in hunk’s clothing up for good, whose scalding eyes should be burning a hole out of her television screen and setting her blood afire?
Ignore those coal-bright dark eyes fringed with dense sable lashes.
Ignore how they made her feel singed to the core and shivery and alive for the first time in years.
Somehow the way Joey looked at her was more real than anything in her bedroom, more substantial than the Aubusson carpet she was curled up on, more sensual than the glass of red wine and the tall, black bottle beside the untidy pile of bridal magazines stacked on her low table, more tantalizing than the red chiffon skirt that fell so softly over her long, shapely legs.
She stared at that shock of black hair tumbling across his dark brow, her wayward heart thumping as eagerly as a hungry rabbit’s who’d seen a carrot. Every time Joey whispered her name, she punched the pause button and gasped for breath.
Turn him off. Go to bed.
No way.
This wasn’t the first time her life had swerved disastrously off course because of Joey. Not that she was about to admit, even to herself, that it had.
One minute she had been a normal bride-to-be returning home from one of those stuffy society affairs. Bored and tired, she’d stepped into her vast bedroom with the familiar, rose wallpaper, high ceilings, antebellum furniture, and tall windows. Then she’d punched a button on her answering machine and her mother’s shrill voice had jolted her into this new reality. Until then Heather had convinced herself she really could marry Larry Roth and make Daddy, who was up for re-election, very happy.
That was before Joey Fasano, bad-boy movie star, had stomped back into her life with his usual vengeance.
Except for Joey, nobody had ever known, least of all her parents, what to make of their mercurial, free-spirited, unpredictable daughter. As a baby she’d gotten into so much mischief during naptime—like the afternoon she’d pushed a stool to the stove, stood on her tiptoes, and turned on the gas jets because they smelled funny—that her mother had been forced to tie a net over her crib.
Not that a net and a few red satin tie-downs could contain a spirit as lively as the nimble-fingered Heather’s. The very next afternoon she escaped her netted prison and poured all the soap powder onto the bathroom floor and played in it like it was a sand pile.
If the adult Heather had a bad case of bridal jitters after her mother’s message, maybe it was natural under the circumstances.
It isn’t every night that your old boyfriend, who just happens to be the sexiest movie star in the universe, wins an Oscar and throws your life into a tailspin. Leave it to Joey to clasp that golden statuette to his heart and confess to millions in that low, choked voice that he couldn’t forget her.
Not that she’d caught his memorable performance live. No, to please her mother she’d hosted a fund-raiser and had taped the show. She’d come home exhausted only to be drawn into Joey’s seductive web by that little red message light.
Her mother had been frantic.
How come Joey Fasano, the big, bad movie star, thanked you, you of all people? My daughter? How come he said you were unforgettable? You promised you wouldn’t see him again! Have you been in contact with him, Heather Ann? Your father’s very upset. Call me. We have to talk. Oh, this is your mother. I don’t care how late you get in. Call!
Heather hadn’t won her unpredictable, mercurial stripes by doing what her mother told her. She yanked the phone off the hook, kicked off her high heels, and fast-forwarded the videotape. Sinking to the floor, she watched Joey collect his prize—over and over again, scarcely daring to breathe. Every time, he rasped her name and then the word, unforgettable. In fact, even though she was headachy with exhaustion, she might have watched him again if a twig hadn’t scratched her barred window.
Her hand froze on the remote, her nerves responding on some instinctive, primitive level. With a keenly honed ear for danger she strained forward, listening to the night sounds outside the mansion. There was only the wind rushing through the trees along the bayou. Only the distant hoot of a solitary owl. Then a tugboat’s light flashed through the avenue of oaks, and lurid shadows leapt against her window shade.
She jumped up, thinking to race to the hall to check on Nicky again.
The dark shape dissolved. Nothing was out there. They weren’t in any real danger as they had been two years ago. She reminded herself of the high fences girdling the grounds, of the bodyguard patrolling those fences.
Unforgettable, rasped Joey’s low voice in her tired, incredulous brain.
Joey was the reason she was so jumpy. It had taken her years to get over him. Not that it was easy; he was America’s number one sex symbol. Posters of him in skin-tight black leather were plastered all over the world.
Joey doesn’t matter. Who cares what he said about you tonight on national television.
You are in Louisiana a million miles away from him, a million worlds away from him. You are getting married. He’s a movie star. You’re a single mom. He forgot you years ago.
Heather wasn’t used to wine, or the almost mystical clarity it can bring to confused thoughts and repressed emotions. Her cheeks were flushed. Her long-lashed violet eyes were misty as she felt things and knew things she’d refused to deal with—like the real reason for the string of unsuitable boyfriends that had followed Joey till she’d finally settled on Larry.
Her father was worried about the upcoming election. She lifted a snapshot of Nicky and shivered at the thought of what Joey might do if he found out she had a son.
Not if.
When.
Men like Joey Fasano should come with warning labels tattooed on their foreheads at birth—too sexy to handle. Or danger—testosterone overload. Girls with too many hormones should be locked up in a nunnery till they were wise enough to deal with boys like Joey.
From the second he’d crawled out of his cradle and cast his moody-broody, black eyes on Heather, who’d lived on the ranch next to his, he had oozed way too much charm for a girl of her madcap, irreverent nature to resist.
Six years ago, Heather had finally come to her senses and had told him to get out of her life or else—or else being her father. Until tonight, when Joey had seared her with his megawatt, know-it-all grin and thanked her—her—on live television, she would have sworn they were through with each other forever.
After all, she was marrying the man of her father’s dreams in a week.
After all, Joey had made tabloid headlines recently by fishing the world’s most gorgeous supermodel naked out of his swimming pool.
But Joey had cradled his Oscar to his chest like a baby as he’d hunched over the podium and thanked first the Academy, his agent, and his director. Joey had gone blank for a second. Then he’d thanked her, Heather, the girl from his past, instead of the Lady Godiva of the tabloids.
He’d said she was unforgettable.
Dear God. Heather didn’t want anything Joey Fasano said or did to affect her ever again. His charm was superficial; his taste in women trashy.
Heather was an heiress, a retired photojournalist, a philanthropist, a mother. Her fairy-tale life was perfect without him.
Right.
Her life was a charade. She was such a consummate actress, she sometimes fooled even herself.
Static flickered on the silent screen of Heather’s television.
Why had she taped the Academy Awards show tonight, of all nights, when she had known Joey was up for Best Actor?
Why hadn’t she ignored her messages and gone to bed? Why wouldn’t his raspy voice stop inside her brain?
Why? Why? Why? Nothing about her feelings for Joey had ever made sense. Except they were intense So intense, she’d been running from them for years.
Thus, Heather sat huddled in a ball of misery beside the low table in her bedroom chewing the red nail polish off her long fingernails as she obsessed about Joey. Without thinking she slid two photographs together on the polished oak surface so that the smiling dark faces of the identical little boys lay side by side.
At the startling resemblance, she whitened. Huge dark eyes. Devil-may-care grins. Matching cowlicks over their left temples.
Now that she was moving back to Texas, sooner or later, Joey was bound to find out. She understood her fear. But she didn’t want to think about why Joey had stirred her so deeply on other levels.
Heather Ann, promise us you won’t ever tell Joey about Nicky.
Her parents and Julia had looked so white and stricken as they’d stood beside Nicky’s crib that she’d promised... again.
Heather’s long, golden, wavy hair was swept away from her solemn face into an elegant chignon. Her mother’s diamonds glittered at her throat. With her bare feet tucked beneath the red gown and her lips free of lipstick, she looked more like the disheveled wild-child Joey had loved than the sophisticated young woman of society at the fund-raiser.
Images, especially those on film, always affected her too profoundly. The particular pictures that quickened her pulse were of five-year-old little boys with curly black hair and jet-dark eyes that flashed with mischief as they dangled upside down from a tree.
A stranger would have thought the pictures were of the same boy. But Heather had taken one twenty years ago beside the clear waters of a spring-fed creek in central Texas and the other only yesterday on the muddy bank of the brown bayou in her backyard.
A stillness descended upon her as she touched the yellowed photograph of the boy in ragged cutoffs.
“Joey—”
He’d been an innocent boy then. Tonight, the man had seemed painfully bitter and edgily dangerous.
When she brought his picture to her lips, a single tear traced down her cheek.
Once the only man for her had been Joey Fasano. Joey, who kissed with his eyes closed. Joey, who was a bad boy by day but whose face was as innocent as an angel’s when he slept.
Joey’s teasing black eyes that had always looked straight into hers and recognized her true self.
The soft, damp Louisiana air was warm and scented with roses and rain as it sifted across the wide verandas of Belle Christine, once her grandmother’s home, now hers. Perhaps it was the antebellum mansion standing proudly on its slight rise behind the Mississippi’s levee, surrounded by ancient live oaks dripping with moss, that made Heather feel not only her fear but the past and Joey’s appeal so keenly. For old houses have a timelessness, a link to the past, that modern homes lack. Suddenly the poor, ambitious boy with his head full of dreams seemed far more real to her than the polished mahogany surface of the antique escritoire beside her canopy bed or the bladelike leaves of the banana trees rustling outside against the exterior walls of her home.
Joey.
Again she was seventeen and the torn leather upholstery on the backseat of Joey’s ancient Chevy was scratching her bare thighs. Joey’s hands fumbled with the buttons of her blouse while his hot mouth explored the sweet mysteries of her body. For as long as she could remember, the highborn Heather Wade had felt the lowborn Joey Fasano pulsing in her blood.
Forget him.
Your love for him nearly destroyed you and everybody you loved.
At twenty-six, Heather was beautiful, rich, and envied by all. She was high society. Big rich. Texas royalty. Her father, who put money and power above all else, had set up a trust fund for her so she would never have to worry about money again. Her stolid bridegroom was ambitious.
But there was a shadow-side to her seemingly perfect life. A childhood illness had taken her older sister, Alison, when she was ten; later, her brother, Ben, had died in a car wreck. As her parents’ sole surviving child, Heather felt enormous pressure to make them happy.
In her third year as a photojournalist, Heather had taken a picture that had won her a Pulitzer. But the coveted prize that should have made her career, had ended it. When she’d announced her retirement, jealous colleagues had been exultant. Her family had been equally thrilled. Only Joey had called to ask what was wrong. Shaking, she’d slammed the phone down. When it had rung again, she’d run outside to avoid hearing it.
She twisted her diamond engagement ring till it cut her finger. She had to put Joey out of her mind.
Most girls would have given anything to be marrying Laurence. Her mother kept telling her that marriage would complete her as her career hadn’t. Thus, when Laurence, who was older and wiser, had led her into the purple shade of the camphor tree in her rose garden, she had not resisted when his arrogant gaze had held hers while his cold hands slipped an engagement ring on her finger.
Laurence had bought a house high in the hills overlooking Austin and signed the deed over to her as a wedding gift. He had given her carte blanche with the finest decorator in Texas. Her thrilled mother had since taken charge.
Numbly Heather had addressed a thousand engraved wedding invitations. Ten bridesmaids’ dresses had been created out of exquisite pink brocade. They would honeymoon m Maui. Julia had obtained a sabbatical from her order to care for Nicky during the wedding festivities and honeymoon.
Everybody told Heather she was the luckiest girl alive. She sucked in a quick breath, picked up the VCR remote control, and defiantly jabbed Rewind, pausing on Joey’s face. For a long moment, she stared at the television, her glazed, intense emotions blinding her so that she saw nothing and heard nothing. Somehow in that crushing silence as Joey’s features wobbled, invisible defenses inside her began to crumble.
She had fallen in love with Joey years before their adventures in his Chevy. When she was five he’d invited her to his hideout and seduced her into that game of doctor that had resulted in endless lectures from her mother and father, who had told her Joey was worse than his drunken father.
But Joey had been too much fun to resist. Despite their fathers, Heather’s clandestine friendship with Joey had blossomed into love.
Then Ben had died, and so had her world.
Later, after Joey had become a world-famous movie star, she’d figured he’d forgotten her. Even when Joey had returned to Wimberley, the town they’d grown up in, and started buying land despite her own powerful father’s attempt to stop him, she’d clung to that illusion. Hadn’t he snubbed her the two times she’d seen him on the town square?
Then tonight, in front of millions, Joey had gone and done this wild and crazy thing that touched her wild and crazy heart.
Heather’s frantic gaze swept to her white, virginal wedding dress and its faux Renaissance beaded bridal cap and veil which hung in a plastic bag on a high hook above half a dozen hand-tooled leather suitcases. Next she looked at her camera equipment, stacked in a separate pile of black duffel bags in a distant corner since she was unsure about taking them.
All was in readiness for the long drive to the Texas hill country tomorrow.
Heather tipped the wine bottle and refilled her goblet for the fourth time. She barely felt the thin, cool crystal against her lips; barely tasted the warm red wine that slid too easily down her throat.
Tears pooled in her violet eyes as she touched the play button.
Dear God, why am I doing this to myself?
It’s 2:00 a.m. I’ve got a long drive tomorrow. And I’m not a morning person.
Heather’s head throbbed. She felt tense and achy. Four photograph albums from her high school days, loose pictures, mostly of Joey, spilling out of them, lay in a tumble at her feet. Looking through them had brought back the past, had made her weepily nostalgic. Joey had loved her. Truly loved her.
Go to bed.
She shook her bright head and gripped the remote control.
Play it again, Sam....
Heather was still trembling when Joey Fasano’s molten image blazed into focus.
Lord. He was magic on film. She was the first to be bowled over by him, to capture his special magic with a camera. If ever a rugged, male face was created to arouse and seductively provoke the female mating instinct, Joey’s was.
He’s trash. Like his father.
But as irresistible as dark, gooey chocolate.
Dusky skin stretched over ruthless, rawboned features. And, oh, why had God given him that sensual, kissable mouth that could tempt a girl to madness? Even on television Joey’s intense, black eyes burned too deeply and too hotly. His devastatingly bitter smile saw through her rich girl defenses and made her pulse skitter.
Get a life.
He’ll hurt you again; hurt your family; hurt Nicky even more.
You belong to Laurence.
Heather stared wordlessly at Joey whose long hair was tied at the nape in a ponytail. The tuxedo accentuated the breadth of his powerful shoulders and the narrowness of his waist. She was keenly aware of dangerous, sinewy muscles rippling beneath well-cut cloth.
The rough boy she’d loved was gone. This new, older, elegant version was somehow leaner, meaner, smoother, tougher. A darkness had entered this man’s soul and was etched into the hard planes of his arrogant face. He had played pirates, bikers, gypsies, warriors, mercenaries—irreverent, unrepentant scoundrels all of them. This battle-worn giant who lit big screens with his smoldering love scenes and know-it-all smiles was a stranger.
So, why after all these years could the mere sight of this embittered warrior and his saying she was unforgettable make her head pound and her womb ache? Her throat go dry? Her brain go comatose?
His raspy voice mocked her.
No more wine for you, babe.
If only he didn’t look so much like her darling Nicky.
Their uncanny resemblance turned her skin to gooseflesh.
Beneath dark, slashing brows, Joey’s hot black eyes seared and seduced her. His gaze lured her with promises even as he kept his own dangerous secrets.
Heather’s palms grew clammy.
No more dangerous than her own secrets.
His companion of the night, supermodel Daniella Wolfe, was slim and tall. With masses of gold ringlets and huge violet eyes, Daniella meant to dazzle.
She looks like me. Why do his girlfriends always look like me?
Again Joey’s roughened voice scoffed. Don’t flatter yourself, babe. What’s it to you if I dig leggy blondes?
Heather’s head buzzed when Joey leaned too far back in his seat just like he’d done in high school to taunt the teachers when he hadn’t known the answers. His gorgeous mouth was curled into that same cocky smile he’d worn when her rich crowd had snubbed him because of his bad clothes.
Even if you won’t tell your father about us, you aren’t ever going to forget me, Heather Wade... or what we did together... in bed... in the woods... in my hideout.
Her hands fisted against her chiffon-clad thigh. Yes, I will. I will, too, forget you, Joey. I have forgotten—
God created me just for you, babe.
“Maybe the devil put a hex on me,” she’d replied sassily.
The reverend once called me the devil’s spawn. You’re mine.
Joey had been the first boy to kiss Heather full on the mouth. The first boy to French kiss her. Indeed, he had claimed plenty of those long, wet kisses before seducing Heather when she’d been a naive seventeen. At eighteen, he’d been a virgin, too. There had been lots of firsts with Joey.
Lots of firsts. Lots of only’s.
From what she’d read in the tabloids, Joey no longer discriminated when it came to women. He had a revolving bedroom door. He was Hollywood’s sexiest, reigning superstud.
So—that’s his business!
The next camera shot zoomed in on the number one sex goddess who stood up on the stage holding an envelope. Strobe lights flashed behind her. The world-famous actress with the little girl voice looked like she’d poured her voluptuous body into a sequined, tubelike black gown that was slit to her navel. Beside her towered the biggest cowboy star in the business.
The long slim envelope was ripped open.
“—the nominees for Best Actor are—”
Heather gripped the remote control harder as the names of films and stars were read in the actress’s feather-soft tone.
“—the winner is—”
Applause exploded in the auditorium, drowning out the end of her sentence.
Joey’s name pulsed through Heather as she lifted her empty wineglass and then set it down, resisting the temptation to refill it again.
Now. Now he would go white with shock and then swagger up to the stage, stare into the camera with his bleak, level gaze and say it.
Heather’s breath stalled in her lungs.
No more. Turn it off. Don’t put yourself through it again.
The camera followed the tall, dark man striding down the aisle with pantherlike grace in his elegant tux. The audience rose and gave him a thundering ovation.
Heather’s blood heated in anticipation.
You got it bad, babe.
Still, her violet eyes remained glued to his powerful image.
The moment she had been waiting for came all too soon.
After thanking the Academy, his agent, and his director, Joey grew quiet. For a long, intense moment, he continued to stand before his spellbound audience. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. As his silence lengthened, he looked odd and blank-faced and suddenly very ill at ease. His dark face paled. Hard lines bracketed his mouth. His grip tightened threateningly on his gold-plated statuette.
For a tough guy, he sure looked afraid.
Every bit as afraid as he’d looked that night in the hospital.
Still, without speaking, he leaned into the mike. Glaring white light bathed his chiseled features. A muscle in his tanned cheek twitched as if long-suppressed emotions raged so close to the surface he couldn’t hold them back.
Then his cynical black gaze targeted her, and his deep, raspy voice wrapped her. For an instant he was that unsure, cocky boy she’d loved, and they were the only two people in the world.
Terror gripped her. Once that special, measured look had been meant for her alone. The only time she’d ever seen his hard features go still like that was right before he shut his eyes to kiss her. As he stared at the cameras, he broke into that special smile that had belonged only to her.
The smile died.
“I wish I had someone in my personal life to thank. But I don’t. God, here I am. You’d think I was the luckiest guy alive. But hell... I’m probably the loneliest.”
He had been a lonely little boy, too.
Joey had been bean-pole skinny in ragged, dirty jeans that always rode too high on his ankles. His hair had hung long and lank. Scorned by the teachers, ridiculed by the other kids. She remembered the way he’d sat hunched over in the back of the classroom, reading books he’d checked out of the school library to escape the bitter reality of his childhood. She remembered how sometimes she’d used her ballpoint pen to shoot spitwads at him. How once she’d hit Mrs. Vanderfort who’d then pounced on Joey. How he’d taken the abuse with an insolent smile and then later teased her. “Someday, Heather, I’ll make you pay for your crimes.”
The man on television stood up straighter. His deep tone roughened. His fathomless black eyes bored into her. “But there is someone... someone who has proved to be... unforgettable. So, Heather.... Babe, if you’re out there, I’m gonna thank you right now because I may never get another chance to. You were the first person to ever believe in me. The only real—I wish...we could go back and start—” He sounded choked. “Oh, God—”
Flushing darkly, he turned to the half-naked goddess in the slit gown. “I’m making one helluva fool of myself over a woman who threw—” Then, as if he suddenly realized the magnitude of what he’d so publicly revealed, he ducked his black head and bolted off the stage. The crowd stood up and cheered him as he ran for cover. The only person not standing and not clapping was the breathtaking Daniella. When he sat down beside her and reached for her hand, she snatched it away to finger the diamonds at her throat.
Heather’s eyes were burning as she punched the remote, freezing Joey’s stark visage on her screen. Indomitable pride was carved into his strong, handsome face. Stubborn rebellion. But there was anguish, too. His genuine pain wrapped around her heart and wouldn’t let go. She felt a shuddering deep within herself.
Both her parents and the town they had grown up in had despised him for being Deo Fasano’s son. Joey had felt less than nothing in that town. Maybe now he had the world’s acclaim, but tonight she had seen an even deeper pain in his eyes than she’d seen when she’d told him goodbye in the hospital.
Don’t do this, babe. Don’t leave me. You know I can’t make it without you.
Her grief and guilt over Ben had been so profound, she’d blocked out his pain.
Thank God, he’d made it...without her.
Heather wanted to call him and congratulate him—
No.
He’d called her, hadn’t he, when she’d won the—
When he’d asked her what was wrong, she’d hung up on him. He’d called back. She hadn’t picked up, but when he’d rasped his number into her recorder, she’d written it down.
There had been nights when she’d pulled it out and looked at it as if it were some last link to him.
Quit staring at that oversexed, conceited, rebellious, hot-blooded man who couldn’t keep his hands out of your pants. Don’t even think about calling him.
You can’t stop thinking about me, babe. If you marry anybody but me... I’ll haunt you in your bed. There’ll be three of us on your wedding night ....
Funny, how every time she kissed Larry, that obnoxious raspy voice of Joey’s started heckling her.
He doesn’t quite have my knack, now does he, babe?
But that would stop.
She was going to do what was expected of her for once and be happy about it. The well-ordered structure of Laurence’s life would smooth any rough edges in her being. Nicky, who had been asking why he didn’t have a father, would have one. Julia could relax and give her entire soul to her chosen vocation. Heather’s parents would be thrilled to have her respectably married.
A shadow passed over her face as she thought of how much her mother and father had suffered. It was up to Heather to make it up to them.
But her tears wouldn’t quit as she stared at the torture in Joey’s frozen face.
Joey had been able to read her heart and her forbidden fantasies with unerring accuracy. Once his wild, quirky soul had been a perfect match for hers. He had been her best friend. He had shared every thought that was in his heart as Laurence, who worked long hours at his law practice, never did.
That was then.
This was now.
Her love for Joey had come at a terrible price.
Joey was image; Laurence was substance. Hadn’t her career taught her the terrible danger of confusing the two?
Joey’s bedroom exploits in Hollywood were legendary.
Laurence was decent and reliable. He respected her. A happy marriage took time, work, commitment, and compromise. Sex appeal was the least important ingredient. She wanted to be safe. Larry was safe.
What about love? rasped that forbidden voice.
What about Nicky?
What would happen when Joey found out about Nicky?
Two
Joey. Daniella. Mac.
Superstar. Supermodel. Superagent.
The fallout from what Joey had said and done on stage surrounded the three passengers in the stretch limo like a poisonous gas as they sped through the night dark. Mac’s handsome black face smoldered with enigmatic misery as he stared out the window at the whizzing headlights.
If Joey was red-faced and guilty with self-loathing, Daniella’s dark silence was equally oppressive as the sleek, black car pulled up in front of L.A.’s trendiest restaurant where Mac was throwing Joey a party.
Her dark brows knitting, Daniella turned on Joey. Then the screaming crowd rushed the car, their hoarse cries drowning out her outburst.
Thank God. Joey was in no mood for another tongue-lashing.
Joey had slouched against the door while Mac had tried to cajole Danny out of her mood by praising her latest Vogue cover, but she’d stiffened and notched her exquisite nose even higher.
Finally, even Mac lost patience. “Honey, give him a break. He’s gonna have a hard enough time living that sappy speech down.”
Daniella’s glossily painted mouth had tightened. “His fans’ll love it! Poor, poor Joey, pining for some long-lost love—How does that make me look?”
Joey had had it with Daniella. She hadn’t even waited for the ceremony to end before she’d attacked.
As if he didn’t despise himself enough. He didn’t know why he’d thanked Heather. She was the last person he should have mentioned. She was marrying Larry Roth. He didn’t give a damn about her anymore.
This was supposed to be the happiest night of his life. Instead, he’d stood on that stage, drinking in the applause, feeling the heat of the lights only to wonder why he felt no rush of exhilaration. He’d come so far, in such a short time. No way would he ever forget growing up as the town drunk’s son, or his jobs as dishwasher, waiter, and bouncer. Or the cockroach-infested apartments in dangerous neighborhoods, or that awful opening night when he’d sunk so low he’d stripped naked in that back-alley play and then lost his nerve and leapt offstage. A producer had chased him with a video camera and caught a full frontal view. Joey had grabbed a lady’s sweater and jammed it against his crotch while she shrieked. From time to time that clip was still played.
But Mac had been in the audience that night and had thought Joey was magic. Mac had tracked him down, gone to his apartment and rammed a fist on the front door.
“Who the hell are you?” Joey had demanded, putting the chain on at the sight of the huge, muscular black man looming in his doorway.
“Your agent.”
“I’m through acting.”
“Can we discuss that?” Mac’s bright grin had been infectious. “You impressed me m Hanging Out.”
“You’re impressing the hell out of my downstairs neighbor—”
Mac’s dark face paled when he saw the plump little girl in black pigtails squatting on the top step, her big black eyes popping out on stems.
Mac glowered. “Quit eyeballing me, girl. Go beat a drum or play with a doll—”
“Selena,” her mother yelled. “Get in here now.”
Defiantly Selena marched down the stairs. When Mac stuck out his tongue and waggled fingers over his ears, she ran to her mother. “Mama! There’s a man out here scaring me!”
“You gonna let me in before that woman calls the cops and they haul me to jail?”
Gut instinct made Joey lift the chain.
“How’d you know Selena’s a drummer?”
“I’ve got three rug rats of my own.”
“You’re married?”
“To my high school sweetheart.”
“True love...in this city?”
“Titania keeps me sane in this insane business.”
Joey cracked the door wider. “I won’t ever take my clothes off for a part again.”
“How about a beer?”
They’d talked for hours. Mac had sworn he could make a big difference in Joey’s career, and he had. Mac had seen that he met the right people, had taught him to quit overacting
“Read the part a time or two, no more,” Mac had commanded in his bullying, enthusiastic way. “Then just get out there and wing it. What you’ve got to do is play along with the other actors. Live it when you do it. Don’t think so much. You’re a natural.”
Because of Mac and Titania, who were overzealous about handling every aspect of Joey’s life—his moods, his women and his money—Joey was at the top.
But other than Mac and Titania and their kids, Joey had no real friends. Suddenly on that stage tonight he’d felt as alone and empty as he had at the bottom, maybe lonelier.
Mac and Titania had each other. Sometimes their happiness made him even more aware of what was missing. Maybe that was why he’d started buying land in Texas.
“You could have thanked me up there—” Daniella had said to Joey in the limo.
God. Everything, everything was always about her.
“So—Thanks.” Joey bit out the word.
“You treat me like I’m nothing to you, Joey.”
“He sleeps with you, doesn’t he?” Mac inserted.
Joey flinched and hoped Mac wouldn’t catch the subtext in Danny’s sudden silence and sly look.
What the hell was wrong with him? He was supposed to be a Hollywood superstud. Danny was one of the most beautiful women in the world. And he had no interest in sex. Before her, he’d dated girls a night or two, always dropping them when they demanded to be more than a decoration on his arm.
He could have anybody. Women were always handing him room keys, phone numbers, business cards. So—how come he didn’t want them?
“You don’t care about me though,” Daniella persisted.
What did she expect? What was he to her but a celebrity stud she’d used to put herself on the map?
He hadn’t asked Daniella to jump into his pool naked and scream she couldn’t swim. She’d probably hired that paparazzi piece of trash to climb his tree and take that shot of her without a stitch on just as Joey had dragged her out of the water.
The next morning their “affair” and the incriminating photograph of him giving Daniella mouth to mouth resuscitation had made every tabloid cover in the civilized world.
Then she’d come on to him at a party with the line, “Everybody already thinks we’re doing it, so why don’t we?” Before he could cut her for being so pushy, she’d kissed him.
Second photo of their mouths and bodies glued together. More tabloids.
No use denying his involvement with her after that. The media had given the world a gripping image. Truth didn’t matter. Would his fans believe photos they could salivate over with their own eyes—or what he told them?
A week later Daniella had bribed his gullible maid out of his beach house key She’d climbed into his bed naked and kissed him. That night he’d almost lived up to his reputation as Hollywood’s number one sex symbol.
So, she’d used him. Big damn deal. His fame made him fair game.
“You’re a star. I’m a star. How come you say you’re nothing,” he murmured in her ear.
“I want more, Joey.”
For no reason at all he thought of the drowsy summer afternoon he’d taught a golden-haired Heather to skim rocks across the creek. His stones had skipped to the other side; hers had gone plunk. But, oh, how they’d laughed—together. And, oh, what they’d done later in bed.
She was getting married in a week.
Maybe he wanted more, too.
“I’ve heard that before,” he said to Daniella.
“I mean more...like a diamond ring.”
“Marriage?”
Her silent face was as easy to read as a red neon light blinking YES!
“No way, baby.”
Daniella’s eyes went white-bright as she glared. “Go to hell, Joey.”
“Been there. Done that. For six damn years.”
He didn’t know why the hell he’d said what he’d said on that stage. He’d just been standing up there with those hot kleig lights, sweating like a pig. His knees had buckled. He’d been so damned scared, he’d felt so damned alone. He’d blurted out the first stupid thing that hit him.
Heather—Again he saw Ben’s bright, broken red car, saw her bend over Ben. When he’d tried to comfort her, she’d pushed him away, crying it was his fault. Then she’d let that cold, blue-blooded bastard, Larry Roth, fold her into his arms and lead her away.
Damn her hide for carving his heart out, for driving him to these crazy, airless heights to prove he wasn’t just a worthless nobody.
After a pause he said to Daniella, “When I want to get married, I’ll ask.”
The fans’ screams outside the limo roared louder. A young brunette hurled herself at his door and beat the glass with her fists.
“Let me in. I love you, Joey.”
Join the world!
The fan mashed her breasts against the glass and squirmed.
Mac grinned. “Titania would skin me alive if she saw this—”
Mac was popular with the ladies. Not that he ever did more than look. Titania was notoriously jealous.
Joey became aware of the shrill cacophony of the crowd yelling for him to get out. Fans of all sizes and ages screamed.
“Stardom,” Mac purred. “Your big dream’s come true.”
Joey laughed shortly.
“Be careful what you wish for?” Mac murmured. “What my other clients wouldn’t give—”
This craziness was the price Joey paid, for doing the work he loved, or would have loved, if they’d give him roles with more depth. He was tired of his warrior roles even though all his movies had been smash hits. He was tired of every woman thinking he was a god in bed.
Louie, his bodyguard, opened the door and told them to run. A blonde hurled herself at Mac. Gently, Mac deflected her and flashed his wedding ring toward the cameras.
Joey dragged Daniella out of the car through the throng behind him, shielding her from the worst with his muscular body.
Flashbulbs popped, blinding him.
“Faster,” he hissed over his shoulder when she stopped and began to pull her dress down and stick her chest out, simpering and flirting with the cameras.
“Smile for the nice man, Joey,” Daniella ordered.
“Hug her!” a girl screamed.
“Kiss her!”
Encouraged, Daniella’s hand snaked around his neck, her red, gooey mouth covering his. “Kiss me, you undersexed bastard. Make it look good. After all, you’re an actor.”
He fought her. For a second more her lips and arms imprisoned him before he broke free.
Inside it was no better.
Mac’s party was frantic. When Joey stepped through the door, the music stopped. Everybody froze and stared. This awkward interval was followed by a spontaneous burst of applause started by a radiant Titania. In a room filled with gazelle-thin beauties, Titania’s buxom figure in her white-sequined gown made her seem larger than life.
Joey nodded to her and then waved the guests to go back to whatever they’d been doing. For a moment longer he lingered at the entrance, watching Mac’s endless number of guests, mostly starlets—coming and going. They crowded around Mac and Titania, standing three and four deep at the bar. Mac and Titania were soon having the time of their lives. Then the band started playing, and rock music hit Joey like a tidal wave. Above that roar, people started yelling.
“Speech! Speech!”
“Thank me, Joey,” a pretty girl teased.
Everybody laughed except Joey, whose grim smile got harder.
“Lonely, lonely superstud.”
God—Suddenly a fierce yearning for bleached limestone hills and the creek with its woodsy smells made him ache for the peace and sanity of his Texas ranch.
“I’ll go home with you, Joey,” another girl whispered.
Joey’s gut coiled tighter; his mouth twisted. Would he ever learn to handle this inconvenient side of fame—the constant stares, the never-ending invasion of his privacy? He walked straight into the room, engaging no one’s eyes, especially no female’s.
“Could I get you something, darling?” The girl who pounced had glossy black hair. Her laser-bright eyes made too many promises.
“I’m with someone.”
“Not any more, lover.” She pointed at the dance floor.
Joey spun. Daniella was dancing cheek to cheek, body to body with Zachary Ranch, his director.
Joey charged toward them. He hated like hell to be rude to Mac and Titania, but the strange, sick-at-heart mood that had gripped him on that stage had him wild with panic again. The only way he could stay here was to get wasted or stoned. He didn’t do drugs, so he had to get out of this town. Out of this state. Back to Texas where people cut him down to human size. Back to Texas before Heather got married.
Joey pulled out his cell phone and punched in his pilot’s number. His orders were brief.
Joey pocketed his flip-phone. “Let’s go, Danny.”
She snuggled against Zach.
Joey tapped her arm.
When Zach tried to ease her free, she clung like a magnet. “Zach and me, we’re having fun.”
“Stay then.” Joey’s dark tone implied he didn’t care what she did. He was a little surprised when she followed him.
Outside, they had to run the gauntlet of his fans again. Much to Louie’s dismay, when the mother of a little girl on crutches thrust a notebook toward Joey, he patiently signed it. Even though the crowd mobbed him, and Louie screamed for him to get in the car, Joey gave the little girl an encouraging word and a hug.
It took them thirty minutes to reach the airport. Howard, his pilot, was climbing aboard the Learjet and settling himself into the cockpit when the limo zoomed up.
Joey joined Howard and guided the jet down the runway until he got clearance to take off into a black, starlit sky. Reluctantly, he handed Howard the controls and went back to Daniella, who snapped her eyes shut and ignored him. He tossed his Oscar into a seat and sprawled at the other end of the jet He slept all the way to Texas.
With only a few hours left of the night, they walked through the door of his ranch house
He was opening windows to let in the smell of cedar and the warm, night air, when the phone rang.
Daniella grabbed it and then slammed it down.
“Who—?”
“Some creepo breather.” She sashayed, hips undulating, to the bathroom.
Joey checked his Caller ID.
No name.
No need.
He knew Heather’s number by heart.
Damn. He flushed at the memory of his idiotic, inexplicable confession on stage. She was the last person he wanted to talk to. He’d been half out of his mind. Fame made him crazy. Millions of people loved him. Millions of strangers.
Not that he wanted the real thing. His coming home didn’t have anything to do with Heather Wade.
He’d flown home to ground himself. The press had printed so many damn lies about him, he didn’t know who he was. It was as if the real Joey Fasano had ceased to exist. Posters of his tough face and body papered the world. The media made him into a sexual god, a macho warrior. But the real man felt even more invisible than he had when he’d been a nobody. When had his own life gotten so out of hand? What the hell could he do about it?
Heather. She’d called.
He felt a weird sensation inside his chest. It was as if his flesh were being flayed, sliced.
Forget her.
An uneasy stillness descended over him. He wanted to hate her, to forget her—but it wasn’t that easy.
Joey sighed. Despite his own meteoric climb to fame and fortune, despite his pretense at style, he was just an actor which meant he was upstart trash in Heather’s world. Her fiancé was a blue-blooded prince from old money. Joey played bad-boy outlaws that thrilled shallow, mass audiences. He didn’t know squat about opera or deep literature. He couldn’t stand tea parties or debutante balls.
The bathroom door opened and Daniella, having shed everything except her black, stiletto heels, swayed toward him.
Her blond hair was wild and unrestrained. She was gorgeous, and it worried him that he wasn’t aroused.
He shucked his clothes and opened a drawer. Yanking out a pair of pajamas, he pulled them on. In a panic he buttoned the shirt to the neck only to realize he’d started wrong and was a button off. He leapt into bed and doused the light.
“I’m tared,” he said grumpily. “So, good night.” He rolled over.
She got in beside him. He stiffened when he felt her warmth oozing nearer. Then she curled her luscious body against his back, mashing her breasts against him. He lay still, his muscles strained and taut. When her fingers groped inside his pajamas, he shoved her away.
“Not tonight, babe.”
“You pathetic bastard!” She jumped up. “What if I go to the tabloids and tell your fans about your...little... problem?”
Violence rose in him. “Go ahead.” His bluff was lethally soft. “That’ll be a refreshing switch from their usual fare.”
He shut his eyes.
When he got up the next morning, she was gone. So were the diamonds he’d borrowed for her to wear.
Joey punched his Caller ID, and Heather’s number came up again. He went to the fridge. Since he hadn’t warned Cass, there was nothing in it but beer and a coffee canister. He shook the canister and found it was empty.
He slammed the door and pitched the canister into the trash. The living room with its vaulted ceilings felt empty and huge. He was glad Danny was gone even if the house felt lonelier.
Heather.
What did he keep thinking about her? She and her family had made him feel worthless. He had scripts to read, phone calls to make.
Still, he paced restlessly across the room, finally pulling out a little drawer in a table by his sofa. Inside lay a dog-eared copy of a news magazine. On the cover a handsome dark man carried a little boy on one shoulder along a golden path through a sun-dappled forest. Heather’s Pulitzer-winning picture. At first glance, the man’s expression was rapt. Only at second glance did one see the evil. The child’s big-eyed gaze was equally fixed. Because of that photograph, Trevor Pilot, the man in the picture, a cold-blooded kidnapper, was in prison. The boy’s father had been the British ambassador. The kidnapping had been international news. When the child had been found alive because of that picture, Heather would have been honored at the White House. But she’d run, just like she had after Ben’s death.
The little boy’s almost paralyzed expression sent a chill through Joey. Heather was so good. Why had she quit?
He thrust the magazine back into the drawer and walked out onto his porch. As he studied the dark trees along the creek where he and Heather had played, he saw their childhood ghosts swinging on ropes. The golden-haired girl letting go, falling into the creek, water splashing all around her skinny body like geysers.
Every summer had been a time of enchantment. Long summer days spent lying in the sun till their skin heated and then cold swims in the creek. Shared refreshments afterward in his hideout; shared lunches at school because he never brought anything really good.
They’d trusted each other completely. Only she’d known that his father beat him and how his poverty stung him, especially the secondhand clothes and old boots that marked him as unworthy. That’s why she’d dressed so badly—to put him at ease. When she’d told him she was pregnant their first year in college, he’d asked her to marry him.
His mood grew darker. He got hungrier, too, but he couldn’t drive into town for coffee, eggs or a burger unless he was ready to answer questions about Heather.
Fame. He wasn’t handling it.
He rang Cass, who said he’d shop first thing. Joey decided to watch the news while he waited. He ambled over to the fridge, popped the top off a beer, grabbed his remote and collapsed onto his sofa.
There was a story about a shooting spree in an Austin mall parking lot. A jealous husband had plugged his wife’s lover through a grocery sack. The reporter noted that Texas and Mexico were engulfed by a record heat wave, that temperatures had never been so high in April, that violence seemed on the rise as a result. The next story featured Senator Wade’s upcoming election and his daughter’s wedding.
Blood rushed in Joey’s head at the sight of Heather in Larry’s arms. Six years ago, Roth had put his arms around her just like that right after Ben died. Funny, her turning to Roth, Alison’s old beau, that night. Funny he hadn’t realized that was the exact moment he’d lost her.
Roth still had the same flawless bone structure, the same slicked-back golden hair, the same smooth way, the same frozen eyes. Maybe he looked good to her after her other crazy boyfriends. Joey didn’t like the cynical droop of that carved mouth. He disliked even more the way the older man’s expression hardened every time Heather said anything offbeat. If Roth was edgy, Heather was even more so.
Her smiles were strained. Her bright lipstick and rouge made her look paler. She was too thin, too reserved, almost doll-like in her utter lack of passion. She used to be a mess—but an interesting mess. Not that the conventional dress didn’t flow over her slender curves. But her stylish attire and the severe knot at her nape would have suited her mother far better. The Heather he remembered was unpredictable and loved surprises. She favored loose clothes and ethnic jewelry; she wore her hair long and flowing.
This poised socialite with the tense smile and the incredible cool was a far cry from the girl with the constant grin and the tangled ringlets who’d been up to such mischief in his hideout. The Heather he’d known had wanted to experience life to its fullest, not to repress herself.
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