Bungalow Nights (Beach House No. 9) (33 page)

She curled her fingers into her palms, hoping the bite of her nails would get her mind back on track. “Could you glean anything about the state of Sunrise Pictures’ financials? When Max Sunstrum closed the doors, could you tell if it was in the red or black?”

Before Baxter could answer, she lifted her shoulders in a self-deprecating little shrug. “And please, make it simple. Because I’m going to confess I don’t actually remember which one is better, even though I took an accounting elective in high school. Mr. Finney was a complete tool. The only thing I actually know about red and black is that I don’t look good in either one.”

His mouth twitched. “No?”

“No. Too harsh for the pale hair and the pale complexion. I once tried cherry-red, which is supposed to be okay on blondes...” She subsided, realizing she was chattering about nothing. “Sorry, I’m on full babble. Used to be that I’d eat when I was nervous. Potato chips are good nervous-eating food. Or cookies. Now I talk.”

He smiled.

Had she just confessed she used to gorge on junk food? “Oh, God, I’m still doing it, aren’t I?”

“Why are you nervous, Addy?”

I’m worried it’s going to hurt to say goodbye.
She looked away from his gorgeous face and bit her lip. “Please put me out of my misery. What did you learn?”

He took her hand and led her to the sofa. His fingers were warm and sure, and she remembered them playing with her hair. She remembered being curled against him the other night in his bedroom. Then, she’d closed her eyes for just a moment and had let herself pretend again, pretend that he was hers.

Which was no way to prevent the hurt when she said goodbye.

So she slipped from his hold and perched on the edge of the cushions. The box of ledgers sat in their carton on the coffee table in front of her and she gestured with the hand that was missing his touch. “So...?”

“I’m no forensic accountant, but I’m pretty good at reading a balance sheet. From what I can tell, the company was in solid shape.”

“Oh.” Addy slumped back on the cushions. “So...so Max shut it down in order to shut Edith down.”

“Well—”

“Are you sure?” Addy asked. It was silly of her to feel such disappointment—thanks to her mother and father, she knew firsthand about lousy marriages. But...poor Edith. “Maybe you misread them. I imagine you went through them late at night, after a long day at work—”

“I’ve been a part-timer since two days ago, Addy.” Baxter was focused on her face. “I quit my job.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “I... Well... Wow.”

“Yeah, that pretty much sums up the response of everyone in the office and in the family. I went to work there out of expectation, not any interest of my own and I’d never given myself enough time off to realize that until...until you.”

“Me?”

“Until you made me start thinking with my heart, I didn’t look inside of it.” Then he scooted down the sofa and picked up her hand. His head bent, he idly played with her fingers.

Her own heart started to pound at that casual touch. And it made her absurdly proud to think she’d played some part in his change of direction if that’s what he truly needed. “Keep me posted on your next adventure then, will you?” She smiled as he looked up. “That’s what it’s going to be, you know. Now that you’ve given yourself permission to enjoy life instead of just working through it.”

Baxter stilled, and then he smiled, too, his head shaking ruefully. “Once again, I can only wonder at my idiocy of six years ago.”

“You should forget about that.”

“I can’t. Not when I need you near to remind me of abstract ideas like adventure and enjoyment.” His gaze turned serious. “Listen, Addy. I’m...I’m in love with you.” She jerked, and her hand almost slipped from his hold. But he firmed his grip and said those words a second time. “I’m in love with you, Addy March.”

Her mind was reeling, her heart was knocking around in her chest as if it was trying to get away. “But...but. You can’t. The BSLS says you have to be dating someone for a minimum of six months before that can come up.”

He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Honey, we both know I’ve been a fool about that. The BSLS is just B.S.”

She’d kind of thought that herself, but... “No, Baxter. Please don’t say that. Please don’t say any more of this.”

“You don’t feel anything for me?”

She felt so much that it scared her. But this wasn’t pretend time, this wasn’t fantasy. “Addy March doesn’t get the golden guy,” she whispered.

“Not so golden,” he replied. “Think about it. I don’t have a job, I don’t know what my future holds. I only have wishes. That you care for me. That you might be in love with me, too. That you’ll let me start my adventure by going to Paris with you.”

Paris with her! She closed her eyes at the thought and images flashed through her brain. Hand in hand on city streets. Holed up in the back row of a dark cinema. A sidewalk café table for two. Swallowing hard, Addy opened her eyes. “Do you speak French?”

He shook his head. “Can’t even claim that. I’ll have to rely on you.”

“Baxter.” She was whispering again, as if a normal voice might burst the hope that was building in her chest. “Baxter, I...”

“If you’re in love with me, say it,” Baxter urged. “Or if you aren’t, go ahead and tell me. I can take that, too.”

“Well, of course I’m in love with you,” she told him, a bit annoyed that he might doubt that. Yes, he’d been her go-to crush for years, but she was a grown-up now who knew the difference between made-up emotions and real ones that were lodged in her heart.

He grinned, and she realized he might have been a bit nervous himself. “Addy.” He pulled her close and kissed her.

She came up for air some minutes later, breathless and thrilled and...scared all over again. “Oh, my God,” she said, and tried scooting out of his arms. “This is going to be a disaster.” She was whispering again.

Baxter put his forehead against hers. “Now what?”

“It’s really going to hurt to say goodbye now.”

“I told you, I’d like to go to Paris with you.” His mouth pressed against hers once more, a quick firm kiss. “If you’ll let me.”

“I mean, when it ends. When we end.”

He groaned and pulled her into his lap. “I’m not looking for endings. I’m counting on forever.”

She turned her face into his neck, breathing in the spicy male scent of his skin. Yes, her feelings for him were real, but to believe in a relationship... “I’m afraid that it won’t last.”

“Addy, people
do
find lasting love. My parents are devoted to each other and happy. My aunt and uncle are the same.”

“I know,” she mumbled. But her parents’ marriage had been so ugly and the divorce no prettier.

“My darling pessimist.” Baxter’s arms tightened on her. “What if I could show you a sign?”

“What kind of sign?” she asked, suspicious.

Without answering, Baxter kissed the top of her head and then reached toward the carton of ledgers. “I found some of that personal correspondence you’ve been searching for when I was looking through the business records.”

She stared at him. “I didn’t give them more than a glance.”

“Then it’s a good thing I took longer with them than you did.” With a little flourish he pressed a paper into her hands—a delicate sheet of stationery covered in blue ink.

Addy swallowed and glanced at Baxter. “It’s dated 1927. That’s when Sunrise stopped making movies.”

He nodded. “Read.”

Addy turned her attention to the handwriting, which was feminine, though not particularly elegant.

Dear Max,

To commemorate this day you are closing Sunrise for good, I wanted to tell you all that is in my heart.

I know you loved the movie business and you’d be happily making pictures into the future, but you’ve given it up for me and I’ll be forever grateful. I couldn’t take the rumors and backstabbing any longer. I felt as if the critics and gossips had found a loose thread and were pulling on it harder and harder, faster and faster, until soon I would be naked and exposed, with no protection whatsoever. Perhaps I could have survived that with you as my buffer, but then came the rumors of the affair and the cruel way you were portrayed in the papers. It made me desperate to leave the business.

You are a generous, good and loving man. The speculation that you might hurt me or my career became intolerable. We should never have made
The Egyptian!
It all started with that picture and that ridiculous piece of jewelry the papers call The Collar. I’ve decided against selling it, thinking that would only add to the already unsavory notoriety I have received because of it. Drat Nicky! He refuses to take it back. I think he’s using his so-called unrequited love for me to fuel his latest brooding performance (another of the Aston Agonies, as the critics like to call them). The public will be lined up to see it, eager to know if his looks have suffered due to the “Edith Essex Affair.” Don’t think this isn’t part of his scheme.

When I looked out at the ocean this morning, I thought about throwing The Collar into the water, but you know me. My childhood makes it impossible for me to squander something so valuable. So I’ve put it safely away—we won’t have to look at it or think about it any longer.

Which means our life will have no more pretense or pretend in it. All will be real now, our love and our beautiful cove. Just you and I tucked away in the beach house, alone except for any additions that might happen to arrive (and yes, that’s a clue to the surprise I’ve been hinting about!).

I am ever grateful to you for discovering me and making me a star—and then unmaking me into nothing but the woman who loves you with all her soul. You once called me your beautiful dreamer...now, finally, my greatest dream has come true.

Always Yours, Edith

Addy looked up, a smile stretched across her face. “Edith and Max
were
happily married. He gave up Sunrise because it’s what she wanted.”

“You got your happy ending, Addy.”

At that, her smile dimmed. “But she died only a little more than five years after writing this.”

“Maybe that’s a sign, too,” Baxter said. “A sign that we shouldn’t waste time worrying about what-if when we can be loving the heck out of each other instead.”

A tear fell onto Addy’s cheek and she quickly moved the letter aside. Baxter linked his hands at the small of her back and pulled her forward to lick away the moisture. “No crying, honey, unless it’s from exhaustion.”

“Exhaustion?”

“Yeah,” he said, getting up from the couch with her still in his arms. “I’m going to make love to you until we’re both too tired to get out of bed.”

Oh, Addy thought, a little punch-drunk on emotions. She wasn’t going to be leaving, after all.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I
N
B
AXTER’S BEDROOM
, though, Addy’s doubts returned. He’d set her on her feet and she stared at the bed and its smoothly ordered covering. The pillows were stuffed in shams propped at precise intervals against the headboard. His slight OCD in evidence.

Her right foot stepped back. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

He had the hem of his T-shirt in his grip and he froze in the process of removing it, half his six-pack revealed. “Why not?” he asked, frowning at her.

“You make your bed with impeccable hospital corners, I can tell. I’ll...I’ll never measure up.”

Baxter let his shirt drop and his voice softened. “This isn’t about hospital corners, is it, Addy?”

She made a face. “Was it the Freudian ‘measure up’ that gave me away?”

He came toward her, the bright light of day hiding nothing of his face and killer body. “You know,” he said, his voice casual. “There’s one good thing about my OCD. It means I’m very, very detail-oriented.”

“Does it also mean you’ll consent to keeping your eyes shut whenever the clothes come off?” She thought of the underwear she wore today, a pale green cotton set sprinkled with darker green frogs, little golden crowns perched atop their heads. It was her story, gender-reversed, wasn’t it? The handsome prince kissed the ugly frog, transforming her.

His hands on her shoulders, Baxter lightly kissed her mouth. “Addy, I want to look at you. All of you. You’re beautiful.”

Still worry crept in, stiffening her muscles. Damn her body issues!

“Shh,” Baxter said, then kissed her cheek, her nose, her forehead. “This is me. Just me.”

Just him, the most gorgeous man she’d ever known. Her crush of a lifetime.

With stinging eyes, she looked up at golden Baxter. Even swimming in her tears he was leading-man material. “I told you before, we’re the embodiment of One of These Things Is Not like the Other.”

He closed his eyes for a brief moment, as if in pain. “Addy, no...”

“I mean it,” she insisted.

“Addy.” He moved his hands upward, using them to cup her face. “No job. No French.”

She let that sink in for a moment. Finally she heard herself add, “No taste in superheroes.”

“What?” He glanced down at the big
S
on his chest.

“Superman,” she scoffed, feeling her mojo on the rise again. “So banal, Baxter.”

He scowled now, but she knew he was just playing along. “I’ll add that to prissy and pasty.”

She laughed. “I’m sorry. That was my defense mechanism talking. You’re hunky and so handsome that it was hard for me to handle.”

“Handle me now, Addy.”

And she heard it as a plea. He wanted her. He needed her touch. So she applied herself to getting him naked. Superman shirt gone—note to self, get him into an edgier crime fighter before hitting Paris—he stopped her hands on their way to his jeans.

“Time for you to get naked, Addy,” he said, his voice guttural.

She stalled again, her hands returning his tight grip.
Be brave,
she told herself, closing her eyes and breathing in the scent of his warm skin. Intellectually, she knew she wasn’t that little girl who had lived in the dark. She was a woman,
a loved woman,
getting ready to have sex with the man she wanted in her bed for the rest of their lives.