Catch a Falling Star (Second Chances Book 3) (22 page)

Pamela flinched and pivoted away from him. “Oh. Who’s this, Ben?”

As soon as Pam moved, Ben could see Jo fully, see the shock and the hurt in her eyes. He jumped to his feet, putting as much distance as he could between himself and Pamela as possible.

“Jo, this is Pamela Parsons. I might have mentioned her before.”

Jo remained speechless, color rising on her face as fast as the panic rose in his gut. Across the room, understanding dawned in Pamela’s eyes, and with it a fair share of remorse.

“Pamela, this is Josephine Burkhart, the author.” He finished the introduction, giving Jo as much prestige as he could muster. It was as close as he could come to outright telling each woman what he thought of them and where they stood.

“Please to meet you,” Pamela said with all her debutante’s grace, clicking across the room on her heels to extend a hand to Jo.

“And you,” Jo managed in a tight voice, next to a growl. She wedged a bag from the coffee shop under her arm and took Pamela’s hand. The contrast between the two women was pointed. Pamela was shiny, polished, and expensive. Jo was honest, real, and on the verge of kicking him in the balls.

“Well, it seems I might have walked in on the middle of something,” Pam said. She turned to flutter her eyelashes at Ben. “Sorry about that. I didn’t know. I’ll show myself out. You have my number.”

“Thanks, Pam,” Ben mumbled after her, already mentally preparing for battle with Jo. It was a battle he damn well knew he should lose. As soon as the elevator doors slid shut, he said, “She was just here to discuss business. Her father wants me to direct a new play that he plans to produce.”

Nothing. Jo was completely silent, completely furious, staring at him.

It took him a moment to register the large coffee she held in one hand and the bag in the other. “You didn’t need to get that. I meant that I already got some.” He nodded to the kitchen.

He reached to take the coffee from her, but she backed up.

“
That’s
what they were talking about down there.”

He wasn’t at all relieved to hear her speak. “Down there?”

“In the coffee shop. While I was waiting to get this. That’s what they meant.”

“Who?” He didn’t want to know.

“They were talking about how you actually got away with it. Benjamin Paul, the man who could screw a woman over and still have her lapping at his heels for more.”

His panic took on a sharper edge. He held his hands out, saying, “I think you need to tell me exactly what you heard people talking about downstairs.”

Jo blinked, then shook her head and let out a breath. She marched for the kitchen, slamming the coffee and bag on the counter so hard that the lid popped off and coffee spilled like blood across the black marble.

“You did it, everything they accused you of, didn’t you?”

“Please tell me what you heard downstairs so that I can tell you the truth,” he demanded, following her. He wasn’t about to lose the one good thing in his life right now because of a rumor.

“You really did sleep your way to that best director award.” She crossed her eyes, staring daggers at him.

Icy prickles carved their way down his back. “Not intentionally,” he said at last.

“What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

There was nowhere to run anymore, not if he wanted any chance of keeping Jo in his life. And yet, the truth was just as likely to push her away as any lie he could tell, any rumor someone else could make up.

“Yes, I’ve slept with a lot of people, most of them connected to the theater world,” he admitted, hating the way it sounded when spoken aloud. It was a shock to hear how seedy his life sounded. “A lot of people sleep around in this business. It’s not pretty, but it happens.”

“That’s your truth?”

“It is.” He nodded, the prickles down his back beginning to ache with guilt.

“Did…did you make women sleep with you to get parts in your shows?” she asked, her voice small and strangled.

He grimaced. “No. I never coerced anyone to do anything. But I didn’t turn down unsolicited offers. And I did what I needed to do to get the things I wanted.”

“That’s disgusting,” she whispered.

“When you look at it that way, yes. But it’s how some people operate in this world.”

“And you want to be a part of that world.” She spoke as if it was fact, but Ben was far from certain.

He let out a breath, his shoulders dropping. “I don’t know what I want anymore, Jo. I spent so long working to get what I had that I didn’t see there was anything else.” He rubbed his hand over his face, hoping to wipe away the confusion that hurt worse and worse with every breath he took, but to no avail. “When I lost it and ended up on your doorstep, hazy though it was at first, I started to see that there were other choices I could have made, other lives that people lived.”

“You’re a director, Ben,” she hurled at him. “Your whole life is making other worlds appear on the stage. How could you spend your whole life doing that without realizing that those worlds are more real than the one you were living?”

He threw his arms out, heart sinking. He was losing the battle, losing Jo. “I don’t know. Blindness, I guess. But now I see.”

“See what?” Her anger hadn’t lessened by a hair. She towered in front of him as if she were twice as tall as he was, eyes radiant with betrayal. She had every right to feel betrayed.

“I see that I don’t have to be the man who charmed the panties off of half the voting board for the awards. I don’t have to be a pawn of whatever games the Pollard twins want to play.”

Through the misery of watching the chasm between him and Jo widen, a spark of hope caught hold at those words. He didn’t have to play by the Pollards’ rules. Toxic though she was, Pamela had made that much clear. So had Kelly, in her own, innocent way. All was not lost.

“So what does that make me?” Jo raged on, hugging herself as tightly as he wanted to hold her. “Am I just someone else you’ve charmed the panties off of? Did you get what you wanted from me?”

“No,” he snapped, letting his frustration drive him. “No, I haven’t gotten what I want from you. Because what I want when I look at you, what I dream of when I hold you in my arms and make love to you is something that defies everything I know.”

She clamped her jaw tight, the tears that came to her eyes killing him.

“I love you, Jo, and though I’m sure you won’t believe it, I’ve never said those words to anyone before in my life.” Saying them now left him panting with fear. “I love you, and I’m pretty sure I just screwed that up beyond repair. And that hurts far more than any blow to my reputation or the decimation of the career I’ve worked for all these years. That’s something I don’t think I’ll ever recover from.”

She turned to the side, holding a still-gloved hand to her mouth and squeezing her eyes shut.

“I’m sorry, Jo.” He took a step closer to her, pouring the last of his passion into his apology. “I’m sorry, but I’m not some romance novel hero. I would do anything to be perfect and pure and gallant for you, but I’m nothing but a messed up libertine with a ruined reputation. I can’t change the things I’ve done, but whether you walk out that door and never speak to me again or not, I’ll never be able to go back to who I was. I—”

“Stop.” She spoke quietly, but Ben froze as if she’d shouted and slapped him. “I don’t want to hear anymore.” She glanced sideways at him, long and lingering, eyes streaming with tears. “I can’t hear any more of this.”

She started forward, heading for the elevator. Ben jolted, desperate to go after her. His feet wouldn’t lift off the floor, though, and his jaw stayed clamped shut. He’d known right from the start that she was too good for him. The best thing he could do now was let her go.

She pounded on the elevator call button, and a few seconds later, the doors swished open. She turned, sending one last look his way, full of spite, but ripe with yearning as well. “I should have believed you when you told me not to trust you.”

“You should have,” he agreed, the tell-tale signs of his own tears seeping up from his soul.

Their eyes met, held, then she turned away, stepping into the elevator. The door swished shut.

Chapter Eighteen

He had to move on. He had to move past this. A whole life waited for him out there in the city—a life he thought he’d lost. But for minute after aching minute once the elevator had shut, taking Jo away, Ben couldn’t move. His breath came in short, slow bursts. His body was numb. He couldn’t even manage to convert the ache in his throat and the throbbing behind his eyes into tears. All he could do was stand there, numb.

The only thing that shook him out of his hollow reverie was the buzzing of his phone. He didn’t remember slipping it into his back pocket, but there it was. He pulled out and looked.

Jett Pollard.

Ben’s stomach twisted with rage, and his jaw hardened. He stared at the phone, closer than ever to letting those tears squeeze out, and let it ring.

Do your worst
, he spat silently at the name on the screen.
You can’t destroy me more than I’ve destroyed myself
.

The phone stopped buzzing. As it went still, notice of a text message flashed. Ben’s heart caught in his throat when he saw it was from Jo. He tapped frantically to read it.

“
At the coffee shop. Did you mean you wanted me to get coffee or you already had it
?”

His whole body sagged. If he’d checked his phone when it buzzed the first time, he could have gotten rid of Pamela and prevented the end of the world.

Until the next time the seedier part of who he’d been reared its ugly head.

His finger hovered above his phone. He should send a reply, but what? I’m so sorry? I’ll be a better man? I love you?

Letting out a breath, he dropped his hands to his sides. Cute texts were fine for good times, but he’d screwed things up beyond that.

His phone buzzed again, and like the fool he was, he jerked to look at it as fast as he could.

Voicemail from Jett.

With an ironic laugh, he shoved the phone back into his pocket and marched toward the meager pile of his belongings. He swiped the award statue off the top of the boxes, found the last box that hadn’t been taped shut, and shoved it inside. All of his frustration went into taping that box shut with more force—and more tape—than was necessary. That done, he threw the roll of packing tape across the room. It smacked into the corner of a decorative end table in the living room, the plastic casing shattering.

Ben didn’t care. He marched away from his things as fast as he could, heading for the elevator. On the way, he grabbed his coat and threw it on, pushing his arms violently through the sleeves. His small carry-on suitcase stood by the elevator, and as he punched the button, he grabbed it. He wanted to throw that too. It held clothes for him and for Jo for a few nights, but that was it. The rest of his clothes were still at Jo’s house. They’d only planned to stay in the city for two nights.

The elevator arrived, and he smacked the button to take him down to the lobby. The sickening rush of going down underscored the gaping pit in his gut. The plan had been to move his boxes to storage while he figured out what to do next. Now he wasn’t even sure how he was going to arrange for someone to store them. He could barely think, let alone plan.

A tiny part of Ben held out hope that Jo would be waiting in the lobby, that she’d only needed to cool down for a minute, and that she wouldn’t really leave. No such luck.

Are you really surprised
, he sneered at himself, marching through the lobby with the barest nod for Roger, then pushing his way outside.

The full impact of the situation he’d landed himself in hit then. He had nowhere to go. He was standing on the sidewalk in freezing temperatures, with nothing but a carry-on containing a change of clothes and clothes belonging to the woman whose heart he’d just broken with his failures. He would have laughed if it’d happened to anyone else.

He thought of ducking around the corner into the coffee shop—partly to see if Jo was there. Unable to face the stares of people who thought they knew him, he headed down the street in the opposite direction. At one point he crossed through traffic, making his way into Central Park. He was too cold to sit down, and after ten minutes of wandering, looking like some kind of well-dressed vagrant, he finally broke down and fished his phone out of his back pocket.

The voicemail from Jett was still there. He ignored it, sorting through his contact list instead. Too many of the names he had listed were people he knew he could never call again, not if he had any self-respect. At last, he ran across Spence’s number. It was as good an option as any.

“Ben,” Spence answered almost right away. “What’s up?”

Jaw clenched, no real clue what he could say, Ben said, “Do you still have an apartment in New York?”

There was a slight silence before Spence answered, “Yes. Why?”

“I’m currently homeless and need someplace to stay while I figure out what to do with the rest of my wretched life.”

Another pause, then Spence let out a breath. “Believe it or not, I’m over at Yvonne’s place right now.”

Hot and cold prickles raced down Ben’s spine. “Yvonne? Her Manhattan place?”

“Yep,” Spence answered, then, as if he knew exactly what was going on, “Come over.”

Too stunned to say anything, Ben ended the call. He twisted where he stood to look back over his shoulder at the west side. Yvonne’s apartment was only a few blocks away from the Met. Ben was under the impression she was still in Maine. Nothing was a coincidence with Yvonne. Nothing.

He took a deep breath that curled in the frozen air around him, closed his eyes and lowered his head, saying a quick prayer of thanks for the miniscule number of real friends he had. Then he held his chin up and headed across Central Park toward Yvonne’s.

“Of course I knew something like this was going to happen,” Yvonne scolded him as soon as he was three feet inside of her lavish home. “I figured if the blow-up didn’t happen that day Jo threw everyone out of her house, it would probably happen once you got down here.”

“Thanks for warning me,” Ben growled. He put his carry-on down, shrugged out of his coat, and handed it to Spence, who stuck it in the closet. “Did you come down as Yvonne’s back-up?”

Spence didn’t answer. He met Ben’s eyes and motioned for the two of them to follow Yvonne, who had already marched deeper into her apartment. Spence was a thousand times smarter than him.

“So let me guess.” Yvonne pointed Ben in the direction of her expertly designed living room. Everything was done in the soft grays that she preferred. Gray like steel, like Yvonne. “The two of you were happily packing up your things, when those Pollard bastards showed up and started spewing tales.”

“Nope,” Ben said, flopping onto the sofa and rubbing his face.

“Oh.” Yvonne was surprised. The sound of ice going into glasses followed, and a minute later, Yvonne handed him and Spence drinks before sliding into a modern armchair, like a judge at a trial. “I would have put money on the Pollards being the ones who burst the bubble.”

“They called,” Ben admitted, staring at the drink as he rolled it around. He wasn’t in the mood for alcohol. “I didn’t answer.”

One of Yvonne’s penciled brows arched up. “You didn’t take a call from the Pollards?”

“Didn’t listen to the voicemail yet either.” When she continued to gape at him, he went on with, “Didn’t see the point.”

Yvonne and Spence exchanged looks, then Yvonne cleared her throat. “Okay, honey, if it wasn’t the Pollards, who was it?”

“Pamela Parsons.”

Spence hummed and sat back in his chair. He sipped his drink, grimaced, then set it on the smoke-glass side table.

“Isn’t she supposed to be in prison?” Yvonne took a swig of her drink.

“On weekends.” Ben had no interest in chatting about the end of his life as though it were the latest gossip. He put his untouched drink on the table beside Spence’s and leaned forward. “Clint Parsons wants me to direct a new play he plans to produce. Pamela was there to convince me this would be the perfect way to restore my reputation, both personal and professional.”

“How
convincing
was she?” Spence asked. His dire look told Ben he knew exactly what sort of persuasion Pamela used.

“Convincing enough for Jo to get the wrong idea when she walked in.”

Spence blew out a breath and reached for his glass. Yvonne shook her head and tsked. “You’re an ass if you let Pam get close enough to give Jo the wrong idea.”

“I’m an ass,” Ben agreed. “I am the biggest ass this town has ever seen.” He collapsed against the back of the sofa and covered his face with his hands, feeling how deep the statement ran.

“Did you sleep with her?” Yvonne asked.

“No!” Ben barked, offended.

“Then you’re not the biggest ass in town,” Yvonne drawled. “There’s plenty of gigantic asses in this town. Your ass-i-ness is minor compared to them.”

Ben huffed an ironic laugh and let his hands drop to the sides. “Points to Pam for not making the situation worse. She backed off as soon as she figured out what was going on. But Pamela is Pamela, and it was already too late at that point.”

“How so?” Yvonne crossed her legs, staring at him in true inquisition style.

Ben spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. “I fessed up everything. I told Jo how rotten of a human being I am, how sex is currency in theater, and how I’ll never be the kind of man she wants.”

Yvonne and Spence were silent. Spence seemed lost in his own thoughts, but Yvonne studied Ben with her shrewdest expression.

“Okay, you’re an ass,” she repeated, “but sounds to me like you’re a redeemable ass.”

“Why, because I’ve got nothing left to lose? Because I lost the one thing that matters more than anything else that I thought mattered?”

That snagged Spence’s attention. “Is Jo all that really matters to you?”

The word took a good, long time working its way up from his soul to his lips. It had to break through years of boundaries and struggles and false goals before he could actually say it. “Yes. She is.”

“There you go.” Yvonne gestured toward him, then leaned back in her chair as though she’d proved a day’s worth of points. “You were honest with her. Honesty is the foundation of all solid relationships.”

“Yes, but my honesty is ugly. Why would she want to come anywhere near me when I’ve made good and certain she knows exactly what kind of jerk I am?” The darkness of the situation was so pressing that his limbs felt as though they weighed a ton. He eyed his drink, but didn’t think he had the strength to pick it up.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Spence began slowly, “but you picked her up in a coffee shop and slept with her.”

“Yep.” Ben nodded, unsure why his friend was pointing out the obvious.

“You then showed up on her doorstep three days later, blind drunk, and puked in her bathroom, passed out, and had to have her drag your sorry ass up to bed.”

Shame and the itching sense that Spence was getting to a point kept Ben silent. He met Spence’s eyes, the faint pulse of hope in his chest growing.

“You then proceeded to bum around her house for a week, introducing her to all of us and enabling the show to film there, which provided her with a stipend, and bringing her to Charles’s attention as someone who might be able to write for the show. Not to mention that she saw you have a meltdown on the set.”

“Your point?” he asked, long past the point of knowing whether to be insulted or encouraged.

“The point is that she already knew your ugly truth, sweetheart,” Yvonne said, straightening as if she’d caught on to where Spence had been heading. “She knows you’re an ass, but she kept you around anyhow. Oh. This keeps getting better and better.” She seemed downright happy.

“For you, maybe,” Ben grumbled. “For me, it’s still a major disaster.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands.

“What do you want, Ben?” Spence asked.

The question needled him. He’d been asking himself the same thing for week now.

“I don’t know,” he snapped.

“Bullshit, honey.” Yvonne’s reply shook him out of his self-loathing. He lifted his head to stare at her. “You know what you want. You’ve always known what you want. You just don’t want to admit it.”

He gaped at her. “I don’t want to admit that I want Jo—who I’ve known for a handful of weeks—more than I want the career I’ve worked most of my life for?”

A sly smile spread across Yvonne’s lips. “You said it, not me.” His frown deepened. “And that’s not exactly what I meant,” she went on. “Your problem is that you want everything, the career and the love.”

That felt closer to right, much though it twisted his stomach with guilt. What kind of arrogant bastard freely admitted he wanted it all?

“Fortunately for you,” Yvonne continued, “you’re the kind of man who can have it all.”

“Why?” he drawled. “Because I’m charming and driven? Because I have no scruples about seducing my way to my goals, and because I’m good in bed?”

“Are you?” she asked. Now she was teasing. Ben wasn’t amused. She caught on and said, “No, Ben, because you’re smart, you’re focused, and you are willing to work damn hard to get what you want.”