Heartthrob (35 page)

“When I let go of you,” he said tightly, getting right into the older man’s face, “you’re going to take five very large steps into the middle of that street. If you don’t, I’m going to beat you within an inch of your life. And if you so much as twitch a finger in Kate’s direction ever again, I’m going to beat you within an inch of your life. Have I made myself clear?”

McCoy nodded. Like most bullies, he couldn’t abide the thought of violence in which he was the recipient of the pain.

Jed released him, and McCoy stepped back, straightening his clothes and attempting to adjust his dignity. “Call the police, Annie. We’ll see what they have to say about these threats to my person. We’ll see how lightly they take statutory-rape charges. They’ll make you tell me where Susie is.”

“Susannah’s with me, Mr. McCoy. She’s been with me all evening.”

Jamaal stepped forward from the crowd. Susie was with him, and she was holding tightly to his hand, looking as if she were about to faint.

“You?” Russell McCoy staggered as if Jamaal had hit him.

The young man squared his shoulders and lifted his chin, a stance that was not ineffective in showing off both his muscles and his cool. “That’s right. I suggest you stop hassling Jericho and Kate, and come talk to me about
this.” He glanced around at the crowd in that regal manner he had down so well. “Privately would probably be best.”

“
You
?” McCoy’s voice broke. The look on his face revealed his thoughts as clearly as day. The only thought worse than Susie with a man twenty years her senior was Susie with an African American man. He looked at his daughter, his face turning a darker shade of purple. “
This
is what you’ve been sneaking out for? You’ve been screwing this n—”

Jed cut him off, stepping forward and getting right in the man’s face again. “Don’t say it, you piece of shit! Don’t you goddamn dare say it!”

Jamaal seemed to grow another four inches, and his voice dripped venom. “No, Jericho. Let the man finish. I’ve been looking for a good excuse to kill him.”

“I’m sorry.” Susie was crying. “Jamaal, oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

He put his arm around her. “Hush, baby! I know it’s not your fault.”

McCoy reached for Susie, pulling her roughly away from Jamaal. “Get your hands off her!”

Jamaal bristled. “You hurt her, motherfucker, I’ll break your arm!”

Kate raised her voice. “Please,” she said. “Why don’t we go into the production office conference room and try to get this straightened out?”

“What’s to straighten out?” McCoy spat. “Call the police.” He pointed at Jamaal. “I want to see him up on statutory-rape charges.”

“I never laid a hand on your daughter,” Jamaal said through clenched teeth.

McCoy laughed. “Yeah, right, I believe
that.
You’re going to jail,
boy.
Too bad for you, she’s underage.”

Jed saw the sheriff’s car pull up, saw the lawman and his assistant get out and approach the crowd.

“Jamaal hasn’t done anything wrong,” Susie sobbed. “I
swear it, Daddy. He hasn’t touched me. It’s all my fault. I’m crazy about him, but he doesn’t even think about me that way.”

“You go back to the trailer,” McCoy ordered her harshly. “I’ll deal with you later.”

“Susannah, don’t you go anywhere you don’t want to go,” Jamaal said.

“Do what you’re told!”

“Daddy, you don’t understand!”

“I understand you obviously take after your mother. You’re willing to spread your filthy legs and screw anyone who so much as looks at you.”

Silence. Dead, complete silence.

Jed didn’t think Jamaal could get any bigger or wider, but the young man did both. But when he spoke, his voice was very, very soft. “I’m going to give you exactly three seconds to apologize to your daughter.”

“Maybe he’s right,” Susie interrupted. She turned to her father. “Because you know what? If Jamaal had wanted to, if he’d asked me to, I would’ve done anything he wanted.
Any
thing. But I didn’t get the chance to, because what he said is true. He never even touched me.”

“Well, isn’t that a pretty acting job?” McCoy would not let up. “You would say anything, wouldn’t you, to keep your lover out of jail.” He snorted. “First your mother with her spic, and now you with this n—”

Susie hauled back and hit him. She slapped him, a hard, stinging blow across the face that left a red handprint.

McCoy was going to hit her. Jed saw the man’s rage clearly in his eyes. But the older man didn’t even get a chance to raise his hand because Jamaal saw it, too, and he tackled McCoy, taking him down into the dust.

Susie started crying again, and Kate pulled her into her arms as the sheriff stepped forward.

“I’m gonna count to five, and if y’all haven’t separated yourselves, I’m gonna bring you both in,” he announced.

Jed grabbed the back of Jamaal’s T-shirt and hauled him off of Susie’s father.

“What the Sam Hill is this all about?” the sheriff looked around for answers.

“My arm is broken,” Russell McCoy sobbed from his prone position in the street. “He broke my arm!”

“I’d love to take credit for it, but you fell on it, asshole.” Jamaal spit.

“I want to press charges. Assault and battery. This punk threatened to break my arm, and then he broke it. And statutory rape. He had sexual relations with my fifteen-year-old daughter.” McCoy held onto his arm and rocked back and forth.

Susie, Jamaal, Kate, and Annie all started talking at once.

The sheriff took off his glasses and rubbed his weary eyes. He put his glasses on and held up one hand.

As they all fell silent, he turned to his assistant. “Radio for an ambulance for this one,” he said, motioning to McCoy, “and take this one,” pointing to Jamaal, “into the county facility for safekeeping.”

Jamaal exploded. “But I didn’t—”

“If you’re gonna start shouting, I’m gonna use handcuffs. Now, you just hush up before you make things worse!”

Jamaal shook his head. “
I’m
going to jail. That’s just perfect, isn’t it? Color of my skin have much to do with this, Sheriff?”

The sheriff looked him straight in the eye. “Here’s what I saw. I saw an argument, and then I saw you go for this man. Now, maybe we can all make friends again and have the charges dropped, but until I know what the devil is going on here, I’m gonna do this by the book. I suggest you, you, and you”—he pointed to Kate, Susie, and Jed—“come over to the hospital so that I can get your statements along with Mr. McCoy’s. Do you think we can do that without everyone talking all at once?”

Susie, Jamaal, Annie, Kate, and Russell McCoy all started talking.

“Excellent,” the sheriff said dryly.

Jed looked up from the magazine he was reading as Kate came out into the hospital lobby. It was seven o’clock in the morning, and she was completely exhausted.

“Well, I think I did it,” she said as she sat next to him. “Russell’s dropping the assault-and-battery charges in return for a settlement agreement from Jamaal and O’Laughlin Productions. And he’s dropped the statutory-rape charges mainly because Susie insisted on having a physical exam, which substantiated her claim that she hasn’t been sexually active—because she’s still a virgin. But before McCoy passed out, he was
still
being a son of a bitch, saying that didn’t prove anything, insinuating that she’s been going down on Jamaal. That man is going to be mighty ashamed of himself when he finally sobers up.”

“Do you think Susie and Jamaal
were
fooling around?” Jed asked. “When they were doing the scene in the slave quarters, that kiss was pretty explosive. There was about a ton and a half of chemistry there.”

“No.” Kate shook her head. “They weren’t. Jamaal might come across as a smart-ass most of the time, but he swears he never so much as kissed her outside of that one scene. And I believe him. He’s not a liar.”

“Yeah, his non-liar aura glows pretty damn brightly. Even
I
can see it.”

Jed was smiling at her, and Kate couldn’t help but smile back. He looked scruffy and rumpled, as if he’d been pulled directly from bed—which had been the case exactly.

This night had turned out to be very different from the way she’d planned.

“Russell was ready to swear out a restraining order keeping Jamaal away from Susie,” Kate continued, “but I convinced him not to. I think I have a new future in hostile
negotiations, although Jamaal’s not too happy with me right now. Part of the settlement deal was that he had to agree to stay away from Susie unless we’re shooting a scene with the two of them together. Jamaal dug in his heels at first. I think he was ready to go to jail over this, until Susie begged him to give in.” She paused. “Poor kid, this has been total hell for her.”

“Talk about restraining orders,” Jed said. “She should get one that keeps her father away.”

Kate sighed. “Yeah. You know, I talked to her, and she’s holding tight to her claim that her father’s never hit her, although it seems apparent that he’s been doing enough damage with the emotional abuse. She told me Russell makes her feel as if she’s not good enough. She says a single day doesn’t go by without him mistrusting her in some way, or blaming her, or just making her feel like real crap.” Kate paused. “How could someone do that to their own child?”

Jed looked away. “I don’t know.”

But he did know, Kate realized. He knew probably better than anyone because, as a child, he’d lived it.

She reached over and took his hand, and he looked up at her.

“I still hate him, you know.” He was talking about his father. “Sometimes it feels like it’s going to burn a hole right through me.”

“You’re allowed to be angry with him,” Kate said softly, her heart in her throat. “I don’t even know a fraction of what he did to you, but I know enough to be certain of that.”

“But when I get angry, I’m just like him.” He stood up suddenly. “How much longer are we going to be here?”

“Susie’s going to stay with Annie for a while, at least until we can get in touch with her mother. Annie’s in with her right now. As soon as the sheriff tells me Jamaal’s been released, then we can go.”

“Thank God.”

She stood up and put her arms around him, wishing there was some way she could make him believe that even at his worst, he was nothing like his father.

“I have this vivid memory,” he said, his face buried in her hair, “of you crawling into my bed. Weren’t we in the middle of something really excellent, like watching a movie? No wait, that wasn’t it …”

“Let me find the sheriff,” Kate told him, “and then we’ll go home and I’ll refresh your memory.”

It was then that she saw them. News vans pulling into the parking lot outside the hospital lobby windows. Reporters with cameras piling out of all the vans …

“Oh, my God …”

Jed turned to look. He swore softly.

“Someone from the crew must’ve leaked the story.” Kate broke away from him and started to pace. “What am I going to say? How are we going to handle this?” She stopped, attempting to fix her hair in the wall mirror.

“Tell ’em the truth—Russell McCoy got shit-faced and lost his mind.”

The hospital doors opened, and the first of the reporters swarmed inside. “There he is!”

The lights went on, video cameras started running, and a bunch of microphones were shoved directly into Jed’s face.

“How does it feel to be back?” one reporter asked.

“Did you expect
Mean Time
to be such a runaway hit?” asked another.

“Is it true you’ve been sober for the past year?”

“What do you think about this nickname everyone’s calling you—‘The Comeback Kid?’ ”

Jed looked at Kate. He looked at the cameras. And then he looked at the reporters. “You guys are here for
me
?”

“Are you aware, Mr. Beaumont, that
Mean Time
just opened to the largest weekend box-office draw ever for such a low-budget independent movie?”

“No. That’s … cool.”

“What do you think of the reports of sold-out houses even for matinees, with theater operators having special midnight and two
A.M.
showings of your movie?”

As Jed smiled, Kate watched him morph into Jericho Beaumont, movie star. He did it so naturally, she was sure she was the only one who noticed. “Hey, guys, this is all news to me,” he told them. “I’m sorry, but I’m totally unprepared to answer any questions, although it sure seems like you can answer some of mine.”

That got a laugh.

“I’d love to talk to each one of you individually, but you’re going to have to wait to set up an appointment with my publicist,” he continued.

“Who’s your publicist, Jericho?”

Jericho grinned. “I haven’t got one yet—that’s why you’re going to have to wait.”

He extracted himself from the mob that had surrounded him, meeting Kate’s eyes and gesturing with his head toward the door. He smiled at her, all of his fatigue completely gone, excitement lighting his eyes.

And Kate knew without a doubt that—just like that—Jericho Beaumont was back on top. And Jed’s life—as well as her own—was never going to be the same.

I
t was early afternoon before sheer exhaustion hit.