Catch a Falling Star (Second Chances Book 3) (21 page)

She wanted to slap him, kick him, and tear his eyes out, and as much as his bellowing hurt, it felt so good to have an excuse to lay into him. “You want to talk about bills? How about all those bills of yours that you can’t afford to pay now because you screwed up your life beyond repair? You wanna talk about those?”

“It’s under control.” His voice held a new, icy edge.

“You couldn’t just screw up your own life, could you? You had to come along and screw up mine too.”

“Maybe we should take a fifteen minute break,” Moira interrupted from across the room, Yvonne nodding beside her.

Ben whipped to face them. “Yes, maybe we should—”

“No,” Jo snapped. “You do not get to call the shots in my house, no matter who the hell you think you are. This is
my
house,” she glanced around, everyone watching her, even if they were trying not to look like they were, “and I want all of you out.”

No one moved. “You can’t,” Moira started. “The contract says—”

“Out!” she yelled. “Now. All of you. Get the hell out of here.”

Moira took a hesitant step forward. “We can’t afford to drop the shoot on the deadline we’ve—”

“You heard her,” Yvonne burst in. “Everyone, pack it up for the day. There will be plenty of sunlight tomorrow.”

Moira looked as though she was about to explode. She whipped to Yvonne, who stared at her in silent communication, then let out a breath. She nodded. With a sudden rumble of movement, everyone in the room left what they were doing and headed for the front hall and the foyer. Jenny gave Jo a wary look, half support, half a hope that she knew what she was getting into, and met Simon as he crossed to leave the room with everyone else.

Within three minutes, everyone was gone, fled outside and on to who knew what. Only Ben, Jo, and Yvonne remained.

“Have it out,” Yvonne said, nodding to the two of them.

Jo didn’t need to be told twice. “What the hell is wrong with you? One minute you act like your life is over, the next you’re purring like a cat, and the next you’ve turned into a modern-day creative dictator.”

“It’s none of your business,” Ben boomed, the intensity of his anger unrelenting. He tore the headset off his head, threw it at the camera—which hadn’t been switched off—and stomped out of the living room and down the hall.

Jo rushed after him. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not going to walk away from me that easily.”

Ben pushed on, turning the corner into the library. As soon as Jo marched in to join him, he barked, “I didn’t plan for any of this to happen.”

“Neither did I,” she threw right back at him. “Do you think I set out to land in bed with a ridiculously sexy walking wrecking ball? To fall in love with that guy?”

He whipped away from her, striding to the far end of the room. “I shouldn’t have texted you after you left that day,” he said, facing away from her. “I shouldn’t have picked up your books either.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” She stopped in the middle of the room and crossed her arms.

He banged a fist against the far bookshelf, then turned to her. “You said you wanted to know what was wrong with me. Well, there it is.”

“That tells me nothing.” She shifted her weight to one side, pinned him with a stare to let him know he wasn’t getting out of any of this easily.

Ben flinched where he stood, as if he would run, but his body thought better of it. He swayed, rubbing his forehead and digging his hand into his hair, eyes not focusing. At last, he glanced up to her. “My whole life is about being in control of the situation, calling the shots. I’m a director. It’s all I know.”

“And someone took that away from you by spreading rumors that you didn’t deserve the award you won.” She filled in the things he left unsaid.

He shook his head, grimacing, and let his arms drop. “I don’t even know if I care about that,” he admitted, ten times quieter. “That scares me as much as anything else.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, his jaw snapped tight and he turned away, pacing.

Still fuming, but with shoots of sympathy poking up through the sludge, Jo watched him. Fear was something she’d always been able to deal with, one way or another. This feeling of being taken for al fool was a whole other ballgame. She hated it.

“Don’t run out on me because it scares you,” she said.

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” He snarled, still pacing.

True. She’d give him that. But for how much longer?

She held her ground, arms crossed, watching him pace with enough intensity to wear a trench in her floor. The silence went on, the tension in the air so thick it was hard to breathe.

“Okay, I can’t stand here waiting for the two of you to say something anymore,” Yvonne said, slipping around the corner from where she must have been listening in. She came to stand between the two of them.

“You’ve interfered enough for one lifetime, Yvonne,” Ben said, but there was no force behind it.

Jo raised an eyebrow. It might have been overstepping her bounds, but Yvonne had overstepped every boundary there was since the moment she walked into the house and handed Jo her coat. She, at least, was acting in character.

“Here’s how I see it,” Yvonne said, right on cue. “Jo, you’re in a pickle. You need to fire that agent of yours and sue her ass while you’re at it.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Jo grumbled.

“And hold off on signing anything having to do with the Pollards.”

Jo blinked and turned to Ben. “Diane is under the impression that the Pollards gave you a contract. Did they?”

Ben froze midway through pacing. The slowness with which he met her eyes was all the answer Jo needed.

Yvonne let out a whistle. “Okay, burn that contract. Nothing but Satan’s blood puts that kind of a look in your eyes, Ben.”

“Why didn’t you give it to me straight away?” Jo asked.

Ben rubbed the bottom half of his face, his body tense. “The terms aren’t good,” he admitted at last. “But the Pollards are determined.”

“Burn that contract and bury the ashes at sea,” Yvonne said.

“If I do, they’ll drag more garbage about me out into the open,” Ben admitted.

Horrible as it was, the admission was like a weight lifting from Jo’s shoulders. Ben was being blackmailed. Just as quickly, that weight slammed back into place. “How much more garbage do they have?”

“Hold that thought.” Yvonne held up a hand to her. It wasn’t reassuring. Neither was the seriousness in Ben’s eyes. “Ben, you need to focus on the job in front of you instead of giving good old Jett and Ashton more rope to hang you with.”

“I’ve worked my whole life to get where I was on Broadway,” Ben argued, but without energy.

“You were there, sweetheart. Did you like the view?”

Ben turned away, marched back to the bookshelf.

“To answer your question.” Yvonne pivoted to face Jo. “Do you really want to know how many more rumors a pair of determined snakes can dredge up about Ben?”

Jo signed. She wished her desk was still in the room, because right about then, all she wanted to do was sink into her chair and bang her head on it.

“No,” she answered. “Not particularly.”

“Good girl.” Yvonne took a breath. “Now, the two of you had better figure out what you really want and work out a way to be each other’s ally. Because from where I’m sitting, the two of you might be the only thing that the other one has right now.”

Her assessment stung. Although as far as Jo was concerned, even if she lost her career and her house, she still had Nick. Could Ben say the same? Who would be there to catch him if he fell?

“Now, I’m going to go back to my hotel, order a stiff drink at the bar, and hope that cute bellhop is up for earning an extra big tip,” Yvonne finished. “I suggest the two of you take the rest of the afternoon to talk it out and come up with a strategy to solve your problems together. Otherwise, Auntie Yvonne is going to come and solve them for you.”

Any other day, Jo would have laughed at the woman’s presumption and her certainty. All she could manage now was a sigh and a nod when Yvonne nodded at her.

“Bye, honey,” Yvonne called to Ben. “You think about what I said.”

She turned and left, her heels clicking on the floor all the way down the hall and to the foyer. There was a pause, probably as she got her coat, then more clicking, the door opening, then shutting. Then silence.

Jo chewed her lip and watched Ben. It took a long time for him to turn and face her.

“Do you think it might help if we went upstairs and had passionate make-up sex?” Not a flicker of teasing in his entire face.

“No.” Jo crossed her arms.

“I thought so.” Ben sighed, his shoulders dropping, his arms flopping by his side. He moved to sit in one of the old, leather chairs the production team had brought in for filming.

Jo crossed to sit in the chair beside him. “Do you love me at all?” she asked, wondering where she got the courage.

He fixed her with a flat stare. “Why do you think I’m so terrified?”

Her expression stayed dark, but bright warmth spread slowly through her chest. She nodded, slumping against the back of the chair. “Sucks to be us.”

“Yep.”

They continued to sit there in silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable. In fact, the longer they sat there, the more relaxed things were. Jo could practically see invisible particles of anger and frustration and fear sinking through the air and floating to the floor, like bits of glitter in a settling snow globe.

“We can make up for the time we lost here tomorrow,” Ben said at last, deep and grumbly, but no longer furious. “Which means we should wrap this episode in a couple of days.”

“That’s something.”

More silence. Jo peeked across at Ben. His face had gone slack, the lines around his eyes more tired than anything else. He must have felt her looking, because he turned his head to meet her eyes. Their chairs were close enough for him to reach across and take her hand.

“Will you come to New York with me when I go to pack up my surprisingly meager personal belongings and vacate my apartment?”

The ball of warmth in Jo’s chest spread to her hands and feet, flaring with compassion. “Sure, why not,” she teased as gently as she could. “I have an agent to fire down there. Might as well do it in person.”

He smiled. Such a small smile, but it thrust her right up to the brink of tears. Who in their right mind got involved with someone who was so damaged?

Someone who understood the mess
, she answered herself.

“She’s right, you know,” Ben said after another long pause, running his thumb over her knuckles as continued to hold her hand.

“About what?”

He licked his lips. “About me not having anyone else but you.”

Goddammit, Ben
. Jo’s throat ached with the effort not to cry. “Nonsense,” she squeaked, then cleared her throat. He raised an eyebrow at her. “You’ve obviously got Yvonne too.”

He burst into a fond, tired smile. “Yeah. She’s all right.”

Jo wasn’t going to argue. When Ben turned and faced forward, staring into nothing, lost in thought, still holding her hand, she did the same. Would she have had enough of a level head to stop herself from throwing Ben out if Yvonne hadn’t intervened? Maybe. Maybe not. At least she had a second chance to prove that Ben really could depend on her. She’d just have to put her faith in the fact that she could depend on him.

Chapter Seventeen

A week later, with the episode of
Second Chances
wrapped and off to post-production, slightly less than a month after Jo had walked into his life as it fell apart, Ben was back where he’d started.

“
Going back to Diane’s office now
,” Jo texted him.

His phone rested on the bureau in his bedroom, beside the closet that he was cleaning out. The furniture came with the apartment, which made the whole chore simpler, but somehow more pathetic. He stuffed a handful of old scripts into the box he was packing, then picked up his phone.

“
Good luck
,” he texted, then, “
Give her hell
.”

“
Believe me, I will
.”

A faint smile flickered across Ben’s lips. She would, all right. As far as he was concerned, that agent should lose her license, if literary agents even had licenses. He’d offered to put packing on hold for a few hours to go with her to the agency in case she needed back-up, but Jo had insisted on handling things on her own.

And that was why she was a thousand times better than he was. She could take out her own trash, and she’d probably handle it a thousand times more gracefully than he ever could. The thought sent a smirk skittering across his face as he packed up the last of the old scripts and searched for tape to seal the box. That was it, the last box of personal belongings from his bedroom. Not his anymore.

He tucked his phone into his back pocket, then carried the box downstairs to the living room. It took a special kind of pathetic for a man in his forties to have his entire life fit into a couple dozen boxes. He settled the box of scripts on top of the pile of other boxes then stepped back, shaking his head. In a fit of maudlin humor, he’d fished out his shiny, gold award for best director from the box he’d originally sealed it in and set it on top of the pile.

“A fitting tribute,” he mumbled.

Twenty plus years of clawing his way to the top of the theater world, and this is what he had to show for it. Gold and cardboard. Where had he gone wrong?

His phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket to find Jo’s message. “
And now come the excuses
.”

“
Naturally
,” he replied, amused that she was texting in the middle of what was bound to be a confrontation.

“
Thought she was acting with my full approval
.”

“
Right
,” Ben replied. He crossed to the black leather sofa with its view of the Manhattan skyline and flopped into it.

A few seconds later, Jo typed, “
Now arguing that her actions are for the best
.”

“
Sure they are. Kick-backs are always in the middleman’s best interest
.”

He caught himself smiling. Someday, he’d be able to tell people that he and Jo fell in love via texting. How modern of them.

Though the whole idea of falling in love was about as comfortable as that of falling off a cliff.

His intercom buzzed, followed by Roger saying, “Mr. Paul, Kelly from the coffee shop has an order for you.”

Ben jumped up and rushed to the intercom near the elevator. “Yep. Send her up.”

His phone buzzed in his hand. “
Begging is a stage of grief, right
?”

He chuckled. It felt good, the kind of thing that loosened up all the dark, bitter emotions that pressed in on him from all sides.

The elevator whooshed open, and barista Kelly stepped cautiously into the apartment.

“Ah, Kelly. Thanks for bringing that up.” Ben motioned for her to step deeper into the apartment as he crossed to the kitchen to retrieve his wallet.

“It’s no problem, Mr. Paul.” She followed, her eyes round, looking like she was fifteen years old.

Ben took a twenty from his wallet and walked back to hand it to her, taking the coffees and bag of pastries from her. He’d ordered sustenance for Jo, even though the coffee would be cold by the time she got back from the meeting. It was the least he could do.

“Thanks, Mr. Paul.” Kelly flashed him a hesitant smile.

“No problem.” Ben started to walk her back to the elevator.

Kelly took two steps, then paused. She wrung her hands in front of her like an ingénue at her first audition. “Mr. Paul?”

He wasn’t sure he was going to like anything a girl like her said with a look that anxious on her face. “Yes?”

She tilted her foot to the side a few times, then blurted, “I’m really sorry about the stuff that happened to you.”

With the most gratifying smile he could muster, Ben answered, “It is what it is.” He kept walking to the elevator.

“I know, and the rest of the staff of the coffee shop knows.” She followed him, but paused at the elevator. “A lot of theater people come into our shop.”

“I’m aware.” Ben nodded.

“They tend to talk pretty loud, especially when there’s a lot of them together.”

“I can imagine.”

“Well, the thing is, I’ve heard a lot of people talking about how unfair the stuff that was printed about you is.” Her gaze dropped for a minute. “Okay, and a lot of people talking about how you deserved it.”

“Is that so?” He crossed his arms, not sure if he should be discouraged or amused.

“It all got me to thinking.” She risked looking up at him again. “See, when my mom dropped me off up here for college, she told me that there would always be people who wanted to tear me down and get where I was. But there will always be people who want to help me and who have my back.”

In spite of himself, Ben smiled. “Wise advice.”

Kelly flushed with pride. “Yeah. Mom’s cool. But that’s what all those people talking made me think of. There’s the jerks that are making life miserable for you, but I have heard people—theater people—who are on your side. I don’t want you to go around thinking that everyone hates you and that you’ve flunked out of theater or something like that.”

Of all the things, her sincerity hit him like a bolt in the heart. He smiled, not quite seductive, but not dismissive. “How old are you, Kelly?”

“Twenty,” she answered. “I’m a sophomore.”

Ben remembered a time when he too had counted life in terms of which educational milestone he was in the middle of conquering. “You’re pretty smart for a sophomore,” he said, then reached out and squeezed her arm. “You’ll go far.”

She giggled and blushed. “Thanks, Mr. Paul. I’ve got to get back to work.”

As the elevator doors slid shut, Ben shook his head. Leave it to a girl young enough to be his daughter to remind him that there was more to Broadway than the Pollard brothers, more to the world he’d fought to conquer than the part he’d made his own. He walked back into the kitchen, checking his phone.

“
Tears. Not what I wanted to deal with right now
,” Jo had typed, followed by. “
I need to wrap this up, it’s gotten uncomfortable
.”

“
Coffee and pastry when you get back
,” he replied.

At almost the same time, she typed, “
Thank God that’s over! And with a minimum of blood and gore
.” And then, “
Coffee! Brilliant idea. You’re a saint
.”

Ben laughed aloud at that. No one in all his years had called him a saint. “First time for everything.”

He busied himself making a final check of the apartment for personal belongings. He hadn’t had to pack up and move out as fast as he did. Leon had generously given him until the end of the month, which was about three weeks. New York law gave him longer, but once the restlessness had entered his soul, he’d wanted to get out as fast as possible. He sipped his coffee, munched on a croissant, and wondered what the hell his next step would be. Yvonne’s advice to focus on the job in front of him was good, but it would only take a few months to wrap this season of
Second Chances
. Then what?

He was still contemplating the question when the intercom buzzed. “Mr. Paul, there’s a woman down here who wants—”

Ben was close enough to the intercom to cut Roger off with, “Yeah, send her up.” He would have thought Roger would recognize Jo by now.

He returned to the kitchen, taking Jo’s coffee from the cardboard carrier and popping it into the microwave to reheat it. She must have hit the subway exactly at the right time, or if she’s taken a cab, they must not have encountered traffic.

The elevator slid open, the staccato clip of heels followed, and then a smooth, female purr of, “Benjamin Paul. I’ve been looking for you for weeks.”

Ben swallowed his coffee wrong and sputtered, “Pamela. What are you doing here?”

The microwave beeped, but he ignored it. He set his own coffee on the kitchen counter and crossed to meet Pamela Parsons in the hallway—or to stop her. She misinterpreted his haste and slipped herself into his arms, sliding her hands into his hair. Before he could catch up, she planted a big, sultry kiss on his lips.

“Pamela.” He did his best to extract himself, mind spinning. “I thought you were in trouble these days.” He backed off, setting her at arm’s length.

Undeterred, Pamela shrugged. “Trouble is a relative term. Daddy threw a fit, of course, but he wrote a few checks, cleared my debt, and I only have to spend weekends in a minimum security prison for a year.”

A flash of anger at the injustice of someone like Pam getting out of fraud so easily while a girl like Kelly worked her ass off serving coffee to pay her way through college bit at him. It made him harsher than he should have been when he snapped, “What are you doing here?”

She ignored his temper with a coy shrug and stepped toward him, aiming to get back in his arms. Ben took a step back. She followed. “I don’t have to be in prison during the week as long as I’m working, so daddy sent me to work.”

“Doing what?”

“Pursuing you, silly.” And pursue she did, all the way into the living room, until Ben backed into the sofa.

“I’m not on the market to be pursued right now, Pam.” He held up his hands to warn her off.

Pamela blinked, crossing her arms. “What’s wrong? You’ve never been so cold before. Is it that mess with Jett and Ashton?”

His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he couldn’t answer. He needed to concentrate to stop the sensation that he was falling all over again. “That mess with Jett and Ashton is pretty much the end of my career,” he answered, keeping Jo and the raw, new, beautiful, terrifying, essential part of his life that she represented out of things.

“That’s why I’m here.” Pamela laughed as if he was stupid. The fact that he hadn’t sent her packing yet might have made her right. “Daddy thinks now is the perfect time to bring you on board with a play he wants to mount. It’s a new production, new talent, and I know that it’s not what you really want to be doing right now, but he thinks it’s the perfect way to shift your perspective on Broadway and to prove the naysayers wrong.”

“Why in God’s name would you or your father want to work with me when the world thinks I’m the one that tipped the Feds off to your credit card game?”

Pamela shrugged. “They may think that, but I know it wasn’t you.”

“What?” Ben swallowed, mouth and throat dry. “Why would you be so quick to believe it wasn’t me?”

For the first time since entering the apartment, Pamela’s siren persona slipped. “It was my own damned fault. I knew the Feds were on to me, but I was having too much fun seeing how far I could push them. Especially since one of the agents on the case was this hot, young, eager—” She stopped, brushing her sordid past away with a wave. “The biggest surprise of the whole thing was that the press pointed a finger at you.”

“Some surprise,” Ben growled.

“I keep telling Daddy to get a retraction printed, but you know how he is. He really wants you for his show, Ben.
I
really want you. For the show.” Her dusky eyes sparkled.

Ben blinked. The slow sensation of freezing from the inside out, then melting with the fire of promise left him breathless, his pulse pounding. Suddenly, Kelly’s words had more meaning. There were elements of his old world that would support him, whatever the Pollards had tried or were still trying to do. Pamela and daddy dearest were part of those elements. He hadn’t lost everything the way he thought he had.

He could get it all back.

“So what do you say?” Pamela took a step closer to him. Her proximity forced him to sit on the back of the sofa, and when she wedged herself between his legs, he had to grab her to keep himself from tumbling backwards. “Wanna play?”

The elevator door swished open. Pamela bent closer, those tempting, red lips of hers brushing near.

“I swear, I’d just as soon not have an agent then have one that—”

The abrupt end of Jo’s thought was all Ben needed to know that, up until that moment, his troubles had been child’s play. Now he was truly fucked.