Lovers and Liars (42 page)

“How long are you in town for?” Hamilton asked.

“Indefinitely. Right, Jack?”

Jack managed a smile.

“Are you an actress, Leah?”

“She’s interested in getting into the business,” Jack said quickly. “We haven’t gotten her a screen test yet. She only got into town yesterday.”

Leah smiled, amused.

“She’s gorgeous. It’s obvious she’ll fly past a test. Where have you studied?”

“She hasn’t,” Jack said quickly. “She’s been living in New York.”

“What a waste,” Hamilton said.

“Yes. Jack agrees.” Leah smiled. “He hired a private eye to find me once he knew I existed and now he wants to launch me in a new career. So noble and caring, isn’t he?”

“How about dinner? I should be finished in a couple of hours. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

Jack opened his mouth too late. Leah was already saying, “I’d love it! I’m staying with Jack.”

“Great,” Hamilton murmured, mesmerized.

Great, Jack echoed silently, just fucking great.

Then he heard the page. His name. And he realized he had known this would happen all along. He didn’t have to go to the phone—although he did go—to find out from a secretary that something had come up, a “crucial meeting,” and Majoriis wasn’t going to show. He had known it deep down all along. He had become what every actor dreads—a Hollywood leper.

From hot to dead.

79

A
fterward, he knew he would have been more alert if it hadn’t been for Lydia.

She appeared beside him as he was trotting down the
steps after school. “Hey, what would Cheetah be if Tarzan and Jane were Jewish?”

Just the way she said it made him smile. “I don’t know. What?”

“A fur coat.”

Rick couldn’t help it—he laughed.

“Want to go to a movie?” Lydia asked in the next breath.

Rick was so stunned he stopped short. Was she interested in him? The thought was astounding. She wasn’t his type—even if she was sort of cute in a very different way. And she was funny. “Yeah, sure,” he answered before even thinking about it. He was flattered. No girl had ever asked him out before.

That’s when it had happened.

“Rick! Look out!” Lydia screamed.

From behind a tree, four guys leapt out at him, and Rick got a glimpse of Froth and Dale. Two huge football defensive ends grabbed him before he could run. Froth laughed. “Well, well, if it isn’t the little twerp from the bad side of town. Hey, brat. Did you really think you could get away with it?”

“What?” Rick said innocently.

“Let him go!” Lydia shouted, kicking one of the football players. He growled.

“This is so you’ll know not to mess with us,” Froth said. He looked furious, and Rick tensed for the blow. It hurt, right in the stomach, but at least he had been prepared. “Little cocksucker,” Froth said, and the next blow cracked a rib.

Lydia jumped on Froth’s back like an enraged cat, sinking her teeth into his shoulder. Froth screamed. “Get her off!”

Rick twisted, managing to loosen the hold of one of the football players in his surprise and interest at Lydia on Froth’s back, now clawing at his face. Dale was trying hesitantly to remove her, and Froth was cursing and shouting like a crazy man. Rick freed himself enough to twist aside and jam his knee into one unsuspecting groin. With a howl,
the boy dropped, clutching himself. Rick sunk his own teeth into the forearm of the other boy, who responded with slow, oxlike reflexes, grunting, releasing him, trying to pull away. Rick kicked his shin and pulled free.

Dale had managed to drag Lydia off. He had his arms around her rib cage in a viselike grip. She twisted futilely, furious. Dale was panting but laughing. “Look what I got!” he shouted. With one hand he squeezed one of her tits. Lydia shrieked in rage.

He slid his hand down and grabbed her crotch.

Froth started laughing. “This your girlfriend, punk?” He grinned, looking at Lydia with interest. He glanced at Rick, who was momentarily frozen. Then he reached out and grabbed Lydia away from Dale, jerking her against him.

Red
.

It was the color Rick saw.

After that he didn’t remember what he did. He flew at Froth, and in a moment Froth was lying moaning on the ground, clutching his nose, blood pouring around his hand. Dale ran. The football player he had kicked in the groin was still on the ground, whimpering and clutching himself. The ox stood watching, rubbing his shin and his bitten forearm. “Shit,” he said succinctly, and he walked away.

“You okay?” Rick asked worriedly, pulling Lydia away by the hand.

She wasn’t even crying, and it amazed him. She looked at him with shining eyes. “Thank you,” she said, smiling.

Her look, not her words, made him puff out with pride. He felt a hundred feet tall.

80

I
t was nine
A.M
. Where was she?

Of course Jack knew where she was—she was at Hamilton’s Beverly Hills mansion. He was sick with worry. Leah was so obvious—couldn’t Hamilton peg her for what she was? If he’d had any wits yesterday when Hamilton had asked her to dinner, he would have thought of something, anything, to make sure that date didn’t come about. He wouldn’t be there to block the punches for her, to say the right things. They hadn’t even gotten her story straight. Leah was bound to blow it. He was sure. One-hundred-percent positive.

The whole thing made him sick. She was the spitting image of Janet, as far as he could see. He knew he’d made an awful mistake bringing her here. Maybe he should just give her more money and send her packing. It was the brightest thought he’d had that day.

But she was his sister. Didn’t he owe her something?

He knew his worries and fears were selfish. He’d had bad PR in the past and had survived. Most of it had been so phony it was laughable, all that trade-rag stuff, and
part
of the truth he had openly confessed—parts of his past, his addictions. He had survived it all. If anything, the pain he’d lived through made him a more endearing hero to the masses.

Why was this different?

Why did his stomach turn over every time he thought of Leah?

He knew why.

It was like being confronted with Janet. It was like going back into the past. Even Leah looked at him with contempt as if she were superior, the way Janet had when he’d
been a boy. Leah reminded him of his abandonment. Of the love his damn mother had never given.

But there was more. If the press got hold of Leah, alive and breathing and in the flesh, it would be different from the phony bullshit the rags had glorified in the past. This was real, and he was vulnerable right now. Bad PR could kill him. If he wasn’t already dead.

Maybe he should get her her own apartment.

How long was she going to stay in L.A.?

He reached for his phone. Majoriis was not going to call him back—he knew it as sure as he knew he would take another breath after this one. It was very hard to believe he was being treated like this, when it hadn’t been so long ago that he had been fawned over, his every wish—no, his every whim—granted by the studio. Pricks.

“Mr. Majoriis is in a meeting, Mr. Ford,” the secretary told him coolly.

“Listen, sweetheart,” he purred. “This is crucial, a matter of life and death. I have to speak to Ted.”

“I’m sorry, he absolutely cannot—oh, hello, Mr. Glassman, yes, please go right in. Good-bye, Mr. Ford.”
Click
.

Jack stared at the phone. Glassman. It was too ironic. Too goddamn ironic.

Leah breezed in, still wearing her leather barely-there dress and spikes from the night before. “Hi, Bro.”

She swept right past him into her bedroom, and Jack followed her. “Leah.”

“Can’t it wait? I’m beat.”

“No, it can’t.” He watched her as she stepped out of the heels and flung her purse on the bed. “What happened?”

“My, we are lascivious!” She grinned. Unzipping the front of her dress.

At the sight of her bare bosom, Jack averted his face. “For crissake, I’m trying to talk to you!”

“And I need a bath,” she said, stepping out of the dress.

Furious, Jack pulled a robe off a hook and shoved it at her, ignoring her bare body. “What is wrong with you?”

“Too bad we’re related,” Leah said, slipping on the robe.

“What happened?”

“What do you think? The old goat can still get it up.”

“What did you tell him?” He wanted to strangle her.

“Oh, about my past? Don’t worry, dear. Our secret’s safe. He thinks I’ve been waiting tables since I was twelve—not giving blow jobs.” She walked into the bathroom and ran the tub.

“You didn’t take money from him, did you?”

“Of course not! What am I, an idiot?” Her eyes sparkled with good humor. “I actually like the old guy. I wouldn’t mind seeing him on a steady basis.” She tested the water. “Of course, if he wants to see me, he’s going to have to give me something for my time. Don’t rich stars clothe their mistresses in furs and diamonds and such, Jack?”

She meant it. She really wanted to know the answer. “Hamilton is married, you know,” Jack said testily.

“Yes, but he likes me.” She smiled. “I mean, after last night, he
really
likes me.”

Jack was getting a headache. “So you’re intending to stay for a while?”

“I can’t ever go back to New York,” she told him.

He stared. “Why not?”

“Jack,” she said, very serious now, “my pimp would find me and kill me.”

Jack tried to absorb what she said.

“And he’d take a long time to do it too,” she added casually, dipping her toe in the tub. “Umm, perfect. Here, be a dear.” And she handed him the robe, sliding into the steaming water.

With immense relief he heard the phone ring. The timing couldn’t have been better. It was Melody. “Jack, I’ve found out something very interesting,” she said, a strange, almost gloating tone in her voice.

“What’s that?”

“North-Star has no intention of resuming production of
Outrage
. They’re dumping it.”

He wasn’t aware of hanging up. He wasn’t aware of anything except the pounding of his heart and the sure
knowledge that Glassman would not stop until he had completely destroyed him.