Just Kiss Me (17 page)

Henry. Henry Whitley-Shuler. She’d had sex with him last night. She’d woke in his bed and arms and it all seemed so unreal. He’d kissed her and she’d kissed him right back. One unreal kiss had led to more kissing and touching and getting naked. Vivien had never been the kind of girl to throw caution to the wind and hop in a man’s bed unless she was in a relationship. Something she and Henry definitely were
not.
Jumping in Henry’s bed the day of her mother’s funeral had been inappropriate, scandalous, and just plain mind-blowing. And impulsive. Vivien didn’t like impulsive. Impulsive got her in trouble. She liked to make a plan and stick to it.

Perhaps it had been the stress of the day and the constant grief slicing her heart, but she certainly hadn’t even given a token resistance to Henry’s touch on her arms and his kiss on her neck. In fact, she’d pretty much goaded him into it. Like when they’d been kids and she’d provoked him just to see his reaction. Only this time he hadn’t scowled or called her a brat or threatened to kill her. This time he’d stripped her naked and she’d threatened to kill
him
if he stopped.

The memory made heat rise up her face and burn her cheeks. Who knew uptight Henry could kiss a woman and make her feel like she’d been struck by lightning? Who knew uptight Henry could make her come all undone?

After the table read, Vivien met with Randall Hoffman at Bouchon and discussed the starring role in his period drama based on the life of Dorothy Parker. Vivien wanted that part, along with every other actress in town. It would not only show her acting range, but an Academy Award-winning director usually meant Academy nominations for acting, too. Not only would starring in a Randall Hoffman film add more prestige to her résumé, it was essential when she started her own production company. Something she very much wanted to do in the future.

Following the lunch, Vivien drove to her house in Beverly Hills. She slowed her BMW as she passed through the gates and pulled into the garage of her Mediterranean-inspired house. Her meeting with Randall Hoffman had gone well. She was fairly certain she’d charmed the pants off him, but he wouldn’t make a decision until he met with the casting director. She’d known that in advance, of course, but waiting added stress on top of stress to her life. She wished she had a feeling one way or the other if he was going to cast her.

Exhaustion weighed on her shoulders and burned her eyes as she parked in the garage and took the elevator up to the second floor. Was it really just this morning that she’d caught a flight to L.A.? Really just this morning that Henry had woke her from a deep sleep and made sure she caught her 6-
A.M
. flight? Was she really catching a 6-
A.M
. flight right back to Charleston tomorrow?

Vivien had been jet-lagged many times. She’d flown into thirteen cities in twenty-five days, sometimes more, to promote her latest film. She’d answer the same questions thirty times a day, and her brain would just shut down at some point.

This exhaustion was different, it was a mind, body,
and
soul. She’d love to just collapse and take a long nap, but it wasn’t possible. She had too much to do and if she laid down, she knew she wouldn’t get back up until the next morning.

Some moments after Vivien got home, Sarah arrived and helped her pack several suitcases. This time they made sure she packed enough underwear and bras.

“How was the funeral?” her assistant asked.

“Difficult.” Thank God she’d had Nonnie’s help or she wasn’t sure she would have been able to manage everything on her own. Besides her shocking behavior with Henry, the biggest surprise of the past week was the discovery that Nonnie was actually human with a real, beating heart. As a kid, she’d blamed the woman for most things that had gone wrong in her life. As an adult, she’d joined with her in common grief. Her momma had always called Nonnie family, and while Vivien would not go that far, perhaps they could be friends.

“How’s Patrick?” The man skank.

“Fine.” Sarah looked away, but not before Vivien saw the tension in the corners of her blue eyes. “I think you’ll need the new Balenciaga wedges,” she said as she disappeared into the closet, the subject of Patrick closed.

Vivien folded a red cardigan and put it in the suitcase. Who was she to judge? She’d certainly dated her share of men like Patrick. Men who couldn’t be trusted out of her sight. Men she’d had to worry and wonder about and lose good sleep over. She thought of the last guy she’d trusted, Kyle Martin, aka surfer dude. She’d met him on an audition for a Neil Marshall horror flick. He’d had sun-bleached hair and bronzed skin stretched over hard muscles. He’d been the first to say “I love you,” and by then, she’d fallen for him, too. The relationship had been fun and easy and they both wanted the same things in life. They’d never fought or even argued, and if she’d question him about the days he’d go missing, he’d smile and change the subject and she’d let him because he’d never given her reason not to trust him. When she’d left to begin filming the first Raffle movie, she’d been secure in her ten-month relationship. He’d kissed her good-bye. Told her that he loved her and not to worry about him. He’d known of the lying, cheating men in her past, and he’d promised that he’d never hurt her.

When she’d been given the part of Zahara West, he’d been genuinely supportive. They’d both known how much her life would change but they’d promised each other that it wouldn’t change
them
. She loved and trusted Kyle—right up until the day a friend texted her while she’d been camped out in a Guatemalan rain forest to inform her that she’d seen Kyle’s profile on Match.com. From the ruins of an ancient city, Vivien plugged into the World Wide Web and discovered her “boyfriend” was seeking women twenty to twenty-five within a hundred-mile radius of Los Angeles. He liked “hiking” and “hanging ten in Half Moon Bay.” He preferred “tall, curvy blondes” and his idea of a “great date” was “taking a special lady on a Sturgis run.”

If Vivien hadn’t looked at the fifteen photos he’d provided (one of which had been taken at a friend’s wedding and he’d conveniently cropped Vivien out), she would not have recognized him by what he’d written. Kyle surfed, but he certainly never surfed the big waves at Mavericks, and he didn’t even have a bicycle, let alone a Harley. She wasn’t tall or blonde or curvy or any of the things he’d written that he wanted. She’d been stunned and numb, as if someone had taken over her body and she was living in an alternate universe. One that was the exact opposite of her life, like Alice in
Through the Looking Glass
.

Who are you?
she’d wondered as she’d stared at his dating-site photos.
Have I ever known you? Was everything a lie? The time you taught me to surf and the white daisies you bought because they’re my favorite? When we laughed our heads off at silly movies, was that a lie? Who are you, Kyle Martin?

God she didn’t recognize the man on Match.com. Didn’t know him, but she found out what kind of man he was after she broke up with him and he sold a story to the tabloids. An untrue story of a supposed eating disorder that made her crazy and bitchy and impossible. The whole thing had been hurtful and humiliating and the beginning of the anorexia rumors that still plagued her. Vivien knew she was thin. She had to watch everything she ate. It was part of her job. One of the unwritten rules in Hollywood. When a costume designer made clothes in a size zero, an actress didn’t have to be told to lose weight. Vivien had given up French fries, pizza, and ice cream, but she wasn’t anorexic. She wasn’t crazy or bitchy or impossible, like Kyle had said. He’d sold her out for a few bucks and his name in a headline. She’d thought he’d cared about her. He’d told her he loved her. Obviously that had been a lie. Their whole relationship had been one big fat lie, and she’d never had a clue.

“What about the newest Loubs?” Sarah asked from the closet. “Cheetah is hot this season and so versatile.”

She really didn’t think she’d find herself anywhere in Charleston that required Louboutins with 120-millimeter heels. If she did, she had the Manolos she’d picked up at Berlins. “I don’t think so.” One of the perks of being Vivien Rochet was the designer shoes and clothes and handbags and beauty products that arrived at her door in hopes that she’d be photographed or mentioned wearing them. She thought of the suede T-straps that made her look like she had legs for days. The image of her legs wrapped around Henry’s waist while wearing her do-me Louboutins popped into her head. “But I might need the red open-toes.” Her cheeks heated and she changed her mind. “No.” But maybe … “Yes.” She’d been thinking a lot about Henry, and she wondered if he’d been thinking of her.

Sarah stuck her head out of the closet. “What is it?”

“Yes,” she answered before she changed her mind again. She grabbed her cell phone and thumbed through her texts. Nothing from Henry and she knew he had her number. Not even a “Hope you made it okay,” or “How was your flight?” She tossed the phone on her bed next to her suitcase. She didn’t know what made her think he might contact her today, other than they’d had sex the night before.

She’d stripped naked in front of him, but how well did she know Henry? Really? It had been years since she’d seen him. Not since the day he’d threatened to kill her when she’d found the letters in his puzzle box and the condoms in his sock drawer. He’d just turned eighteen.

“The car service should be here at four tomorrow morning,” Sarah said as she moved from the closet with an armload of shoes and handful of dresses.

Vivien groaned. It hardly seemed worth it to return to Charleston, but she could get a lot settled in three days. She could make headway packing her mother’s things and decide whether to store, donate, or toss. She could take another look at the row house and decide what needed to be done before she could put it on the market. There was no reason to keep it now. She’d ask Henry how much longer before he had the place restored.

She thought of Henry and the day he’d made her tea and given her his smelly coat to wear, and the weird little glow she’d felt in Henry’s bed stirred in her chest again. It scared and confused her as much as it had last night, but it made her smile, too. Like Kyle and all the other men in Vivien’s past, Henry was probably a cheating man skank. Like previous boyfriends, he probably couldn’t be trusted.

A frown pulled her brows together. Why was she even thinking about Henry and trust and boyfriends? He was never going to be her boyfriend. He was scary Henry Whitley-Shuler. Growing up, she’d never trusted him for a second.

Yet, being with him last night had felt different. They were adults now. They were no longer kids butting heads. She was a grown woman. He was a mature man she thought she could trust, but what did she know? She’d fallen in love with a surfer who’d had a secret life on Match.com and then sold a bogus story to the tabloids that was still affecting her life. Clearly, her judgment couldn’t be trusted.

“
IT’S HOTTER THAN
a four-balled tomcat.”

The steady creak of an old rocking chair settled in a comfortable, familiar, place in Henry’s soul. As boys, he and Spence had spent hours on the veranda, looking out at Charleston Harbor. Nothing more on their minds but identifying various boats sailing the waves as they swatted at mosquitoes. As men, their minds were occupied with weightier issues.

“More like four and three quarter balls.” Henry rolled his head to the left and looked at his brother in the chair beside him. Through the humid sludge of a Charleston night, the weak porch light slid across Spence’s profile.

“Let’s live dangerously. It’s hotter than a four-balled tomcat and two naked ladies wrestling in a pepper patch.” The ice in Spence’s glass rattled as he raised it to his lips.

Henry laughed and turned his gaze to the inky harbor and faint lights of passing boats. As kids, he and Spence had spent a lot of their summers with their grandfather in Hilton Head and been in awe of his bottomless well of Southern expressions and euphemisms. They’d soaked them up like sponges and squeezed them out as needed to make each other laugh. “And it’s only June. Next month it’s bound to be hotter than a four-balled cat
watching
half a dozen naked ladies wrestle in a pepper patch.”

“That surely would be something to watch.”

Grandfather Shuler had attempted to teach them the important things in life. Things like hunting and fishing and women. He referred to the four seasons not as summer, spring, winter, and fall, but turkey, fish, deer, and duck. Women were never fat—they “weighed heavy like cream,” and a woman’s “special parts” were “gumdrops” and “sugar cookies.” As a result, Henry and Spence had snickered when offered either.

Henry wiped moisture from his forehead with the back of his hand. They’d just finished a supper of leftover funeral food that Nonnie insisted they come over and help “clean up” with her and the Episcopalian ladies. Neither he nor Spence were great cooks, and eating day-after-funeral ham seemed preferable to a can of soup or a table at a local restaurant. But when it came to “cleaning up” day-old tomato aspic and Gouda cheese grits, he and Spence had escaped to the wraparound veranda and their favorite old rocking chairs. “It’s going to be weird not seeing Macy Jane around here anymore.” Again the rattle of ice. “I wonder if Vivien plans to move into the carriage house.”

“I imagine she’ll sell it. Her life is in Hollywood.” Just this morning, he’d dropped Vivien off at Charleston International with an airport escort. “She’s high maintenance.” She was too famous to stand in a ticket line or go through security like regular people. Her fans popping up at Macy Jane’s funeral had proven she needed security and handlers and someone to attend to a myriad of important details.

“Sure grew up pretty, though.”

“Uh-huh.” Last night he’d attended to her important details, to her hard little nipples in his mouth, and his hand in her panties. If she were any other woman he wouldn’t mind touching her again. Hell, if she were any other woman, he wouldn’t mind taking a close look at her “sugar cookie.”

“Where did you take her yesterday?”