Taming Hollywood’s Ultimate Playboy (4 page)

He made some noise of affirmation, but stopped asking questions. Which gave her an opening. “I know you don't want anyone to find me out, but if I just go to the theater and lurk in the crowds by the carpet, that should be all right. I don't want to be up here sitting, waiting, when you might need me on the ground. I'll stand out of the way somewhere.”

“I guess that's okay. I mean, you'll try to stand out of the way somewhere, but there's a lot of jostling that happens along the carpet. Not just from the cameras but also the fans lining up to snap pictures and shake hands. It's a big deal for them. If that happens, just go back to the limo and sit. I really don't want to have you helping me in public either. If I fall over, I fall over. Better that it looks like a fresh accident than something that I had to bring health professionals with me to manage.”

“You really want to fall on camera?” she asked, hand fumbling in the bag beside her for the wide athletic tape.

Liam made a noise and shook his head. “But we're not talking about what I'd like, we're talking about what might provide the best public reaction. If I fall and limp off to the limo, I can just claim the doctor said I need to stay off it a couple days and that it will be fine, but if I am there with a physical therapist...”

“This is ridiculous. A fall is a fall, everyone will react to it the same way. They might even be happy that you're bringing someone like me with you in order to try and minimize the damage. Though I dare say that they'd strangle you if they found out that you're planning on walking on it unassisted in this condition. That might make them think you're out of your mind and incapable of the part. I know that's what would push me over the edge.”

“You're a medical professional. And this is your job. Regular people, and especially people in the industry, want me to be a superhero.”

“Is that what the part is for? A superhero?”

“No.” He denied it too quickly, and for a man used to acting—basically lying for a living—he didn't pull the denial off at all.

“Your left eye just twitched.” She stopped what she was doing, though she hadn't really gotten started wrapping the thing yet. “It's
so-o-o
for a superhero. Who?”

“It's not what you think. It's different. He's a kind of medieval superhero, I suppose.”

Before she could stop it, Grace felt her eyes roll and she scooted back and went to fish the crutches out. “Just until you get on your feet and have taken a few practice steps. Ease into it. Let your arms carry you until you find the right stride. And don't be afraid to call it off if you come to your senses.”

Another moment without arguing. He took the crutches and carefully began to crutch-walk, easing onto the poor tortured foot. While he did that she got him the next round of over-the-counter painkillers.

“I think I want the stretchy tape.”

“I think you do too,” she murmured.

As bad as it was, the stretchy tape would add a tiny bit more support but it was kind of like painting the door when the house was falling down. But maybe it would help or have a placebo effect.

“I'll get it. You take these, and I'll send the anti-inflammatories with you. You can take them when the movie is playing—take water with you if you don't have drinks or whatever. I don't know how premieres are. Do they run the refreshments counter during one?”

He gave her a strange look but swallowed the pills down without water.

“Don't do that with the medicine. It needs to be taken with food.”

“I'll handle it. Whatever is necessary to make this work. Now get out, I need to get dressed.”

She handed him a blister pack with the appropriate dose, then headed for the door to the foyer area and yet more exceptionally tasteful shades of beige. She snagged her tablet as she walked out to where they'd been staging the reporters, out of sight of Liam and his crutches.

“Manage and document his dosing schedule so they can't screw it up, and add it to his chart.” Along with his inability to heed much of her advice, and her rigorous objections to him walking on it.

Not that it would matter to anyone, but it made her feel a little better. The tablet accepted her words without argument.

* * *

Liam braced himself as the door swung open and he stepped out.

The first official step of the night, and it would have to be on his bad ankle. One thing he couldn't control was the direction from which cars arrived to drop off passengers at the red carpet. But it figured that he'd have to get out of the car on his bad ankle.

With a deep breath, he stepped down and used his arms as much as possible to haul himself from the car. Smooth.

Luckily for him, he had actually managed to control when he arrived, delaying his arrival until there were already plenty of people there to look at. Maybe the effort it took to get up would be missed.

Maybe the effort it took to keep his face a calm mask would also be missed. If he was lucky. But since his fall Liam had felt anything but lucky.

The gait that Grace had returned to his suite to demonstrate and practice was unnatural, but nothing he hadn't had to do before.

He had to use the hip and knee, propel himself forward with the other leg as much as possible to disguise the fact that he wasn't really pulling off heel-to-toe locomotion anymore.

She had made it look easy. But she'd probably had to do that walk a thousand times for other patients.

In this whole mess, she was the one bit of luck on his side. Not just that she hadn't pushed him out of her office immediately, and not even that she had agreed to come with him—those were things he could actually put down to James Rothsberg's influence as everyone wanted to please their boss at least a little bit. But his luck was that she still smiled at him on occasion.

After that night had gone down, at first he'd stayed away, hoping to give her some time to get over it, but soon enough he had been so busy with all the menial gigs actors did to get by before their chosen career began to pay off that he'd put checking on her at the bottom of his list of things to do.

He'd been unable to ever ask Nick about how she was.

Neither could he have asked Mr. or Mrs. Watson—David and Lucy. Or gone directly to Grace either.

Eventually, giving her time had become just plain staying away. And he'd kept busy enough not to do anything but acknowledge that the situation had made him sad. There had always been another low-wage gig to go to, until those low-wage menial gigs had become low-wage acting gigs, and then higher-wage acting gigs as his skill had increased...

The long hours of daylight meant that he had to do the walk under the kind of light that mandated he use those skills and give an exceptional performance now.

If it weren't for the amount of radiation he'd sucked up being reassured that he hadn't broken it, and his desire not to have any more X-rays at present, he might go back to the hospital and demand another set of films. How anything could feel this bad and not be broken was beyond him.

He'd known he and Grace had been broken by that night, but only here, in his own time, when she was nowhere around since he'd forced his way back into her life, had he even realized that he was angry about it.

It had been there in his expression in the mirror, but he'd put it down to pain. But the truth was...as conflicted as he had felt in that moment, and as guilty as he'd felt since then, he'd also felt anger that he'd lost her over it.

Not angry at her, not even angry with himself, just angry and frustrated.

No more than ten steps in and he'd been noticed. Cheers started in a wave, from the first to spot him, the advance warning system for the crowd, until it was all heads and flashbulbs.

And he could feel his brows furrowing. It wasn't the time for that, it was time for smiles.

This would be easier if...he didn't have to do it.

Wave. Smile. Stop for pictures. Shake hands. Don't show the pain grinding up his leg or the conflict churning through his gut. It had all worked out for the best anyway, Grace deserved someone who could stay forever, and his relationships came with an already determined expiration date. Something he couldn't do to her, even if he could get past all the family conflicts.

When this was over, when he got back to the hotel, Grace would take care of him. She might lecture him, but she'd do it with her gentle hands and a level of exasperation that told him she still gave a damn. Even if the mortification of that night had stayed with her more strongly than he would have liked, she still gave a damn about him.

That was something to feel lucky about. Something to feel grateful for.

Even if it would make things harder.

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HE
 
TIME
 
BETWEEN
 
Liam leaving and the time that Grace had managed to make it to the theater swelled to the point that now, despite the fact that she'd not arrived for forty-five minutes after Liam had, she wedged herself through the crowds enough to catch sight of him still working the carpet.

Granted, he wasn't running up and down the length of it, but he did move from one side to the other, shaking hands, taking pictures, signing anything that people thrust at him.

Shopper Tom, or as she called him now, Tom, had come barging into Liam's suite about three minutes after Liam and his crew had left, then had insisted on making Grace try on clothes to figure out what gave the best fit. Were these shoes the right size? Did these slacks ride too high at the hem to wear with the heels he'd picked up for her to pair them with?

Did she even know how to walk in heels?

What about this color?

How did she like blouses to hang—did she prefer a very close fit that showcased her figure or did she want to go for the old Hollywood style with flowing material?

Did she even know how to put her hair up in anything but a ponytail?

By the time she'd managed to usher him out of the suite she'd had a scalp-stretching bun forced on her, as well as more than half the clothes that he'd brought with him.

This nonsense was going to last two days. Two days. Not twenty. In two days, she'd be back home and in her own clothes, she wouldn't have to blend in with Liam's Group. She could wear what she wanted. She didn't need five pairs of slacks. She didn't need blazers and blouses, and why in God's name had Liam included accessories and shoes for every outfit?

Grace flexed her toes up and then gave them a wiggle in the strappy sandals she'd still managed to succumb to wearing with the suit—aka the last thing she'd agreed to try on. She didn't blend in. The crowd dressed casually. She looked like she'd come straight from closing down a tenement for the poor and disenfranchised. Or, actually, she probably looked like she was trying too hard to look important.

While Liam looked tired. And in pain.

And like he needed to be knocked out, since that apparently was the only way she was going to get him to behave and actually take some time to heal.

Anyone who watched him right now would likely come to the same conclusion. He tried, bless his little idiotic heart, but his limp was still there. Pain had a way of overriding willpower and concentration. It also distracted from a person's ability to judge anything accurately, like how well he was doing pretending it didn't hurt.

By the time he made it to the double doors and out of her vision, Grace's irritation had turned to worry and her head ached from the way her brows refused to un-pinch.

No matter where she stood in the crowd, she wouldn't be able to keep an eye on him now. The only thing she could pray for was that Miles, the assistant who hated her, would keep an eye on him and not let him overdo things.

As if that would happen. It'd mean going along with her demands, and if she'd picked up anything from him this afternoon it was that his last priority was pleasing her. Liam wanted to keep going, and Miles would facilitate that, regardless of whether or not it was best for Liam.

With a growing sense of dread she turned to push her way back through the crowds. They were sticking around to be there and see those shining people they'd come to see on their exit back out of the theater. One trip, two chances to catch sight of them, no matter if they had to stand waiting two or more hours in between.

Not Grace.

Let Miles help keep him on his feet. The trouble with having no control over a situation? No matter how much she told herself that he'd be fine, that he was an adult and could make his own decisions, she still worried about him all the way to the street to catch a taxi. And likely would continue to worry for the remainder of the night, while she sorted out only the clothes she'd wear in the next two days and lumped the rest together to be messengered back tomorrow.

But at least that would give her something to do besides fret.

* * *

Two hours later, Grace dragged the crutches out from beneath the cream-colored sofa. She'd intended on doing so when Liam hobbled in the door of the massive suite she'd been pacing since the ten minutes it had taken her to sort the clothes out.

But, amazingly, he'd called and asked her to bring them down to the back entrance.

She couldn't decide whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. Passing her bag of supplies, she grabbed it for the splint and implements stashed inside, just in case it was a bad thing.

A short ride down, and she hurried to the back entrance.

A small part of her wanted to believe this request for the crutches was a positive thing. That he had decided that he should do what she wanted, and had given up on whatever macho idiocy that had him feigning invincibility.

When she stepped out the back, the limo was waiting. He hadn't even hobbled inside without them.

Liam sat sideways at the opened back door, pale and slouching, his tie undone and his shirt half-unbuttoned.

“Good grief, you look horrible.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, glancing down.

His look led hers and that overwhelming urge to shake him reared up again. “Oh, God, Liam. Did you try to chew through this tape?”

“It's cutting off circulation, which I would have thought would make it hurt less. But it doesn't!”

She propped the crutches against the side of the limo and dropped to her knees, glad she'd brought the bag. It took only a moment to locate her gauze scissors and she slipped the safety end under the tape to cut through what he'd managed to make impossible to remove any other way.

“Did you tape it like a puzzle on purpose?”

“Yes, actually. I taped it like a puzzle on purpose because that's the way you get the best support without cutting off circulation. Unless you hobble around on a badly sprained ankle despite medical advice, make it swell up and cut off circulation anyway.”

Pitting edema. It had swollen so much that the scissors left a groove down his leg as she cut and tugged the tape away. “If you just keep going around and around with tape, it gets far too constricting. I taped it specifically to support an inverse sprain.”

He grunted in response, but that sound became a low, pained hiss as she got the last of the wrapping off and blood rushed back into the skin.

It hurt when the blood got back into the area too.

She tilted her head to try and see the damage, but the low lighting didn't make that possible. Examination would have to wait. “Let me get the splint on.”

“No!” He couldn't snatch his foot back from it, but he did lift it. “I'll use the crutches and hold my foot up. I won't put any weight on it. Just don't touch it until we're back upstairs.”

“You don't mind if anyone sees it?”

“We'll go fast.”

Grace shrugged, grabbed the debris and stuffed it into the hands of one of his assistants, handed the bag to another, and rose to help him up on the crutches. “Don't go fast. Go slowly. I've never seen anyone else come out this way, have you? It'll be fine.”

Once inside, the light let her see just how pale he was. He almost looked like he'd been dusted with white powder, like an extra at King Louis IX's court.

She wouldn't nag. Wouldn't yell at him. She'd just get him upstairs, tie him up and refuse to let him go to New York tomorrow. Yeah, that was a plan.

The look he gave her as he leaned against the inside of the elevator let her know that her yelling wouldn't do any good anyway. He had the look of a man who'd been converted. In fact, the labored breathing and shaky hands said he'd probably have asked her for a wheelchair if there had been one in the suite.

By the time they got him upstairs, whatever civil facade he'd been putting up crumbled and no sooner had the door closed than he was announcing, “Everyone out. I need space.”

Miles and crew turned right around, Hailey dropping the bag she'd carried by the door on the way back out.

What did that mean for her? Should she go?

Grace stepped back and gestured to the bar. “I've got ice waiting. Do you want me to help you get situated before I go?”

“You stay,” he muttered, and continued through to the bedroom, which was elevated by a few deeply carpeted steps.

With the way he shook, Grace didn't trust him to navigate the steps on his own and scrambled along with him, hands at his back, ready to grab and lower him to the floor if he started to go.

“Stop. I'm fine.”

“You're not fine. You're shaking hard enough for it to measure on the Richter scale. And you were using your foot for balance when it was splinted or wrapped. Now you're just a walking tripod. And I know how to control falls. I do it all the time. So shut up and take the steps. I'm not going anywhere. Be glad I don't have you by the belt. Yet.”

He stopped at the foot of the steps and looked over his shoulder, “Your hovering is going to make me fall. Step off. If I fall, I fall. I'll roll the other way and protect my foot.”

“No.” She turned his head to face forward. “Looking back compromises balance. Move it, or I am going to do a fireman's lift and carry you up there, if for no other reason than to prove to you I'm not a delicate flower who can't help you.”

“I'm just doing this to save your fool back. We can't both be laid up.” Liam shook his head but took the steps as directed. Despite the bone-deep shaking in his frame, he got up them with ease and went to flop on the end of the bed. “You want to help me? Take off my pants.”

* * *

Grace stopped in her tracks, her hands going to her hips as she regarded him. However pained and cranky he felt right now paled to the irate tilt of her head as she looked down at him. “Your hands work fine. Take off your own pants.”

He unfastened them and then looked up at her, giving his best pitiful but harmless look. “Come on, Gracie. Don't make me stand up again. All I want to do is kick back, take some flavor of painkiller, eat, and sleep. And maybe ice it once it stops throbbing...”

“Fine. If you're going to play imbecile, I'll help you with your pants.”

“Don't you mean invalid?”

“Nope, I'm pretty sure I meant imbecile. I went to the theater. Even with your limp it shouldn't have taken more than five minutes to make it the length of that stupid carpet, but I didn't leave here for forty-five minutes because Tom came by with clothes and made me try them on.”

She hooked her fingers in the belt and tugged as he lifted with his good leg. He fell back on his elbows and watched her toss the trousers over her shoulder as she knelt to get a look at his foot. God, that thing hurt. If she touched it, he might cry like a baby. Maybe then she'd give him a little sympathy rather than her anger.

“Liam Jefferson Carter! What did you do?”

Uh-oh. The middle name had come out. She wasn't even going to pretend not to be furious.

One cool hand cupped his calf and lifted, contrasting with the fire in her eyes. “You know, I was thinking we might switch you to heat—ice is usually only for the first forty-eight hours after the injury, but it's worse now. That's why it hurts more, that's why it swelled despite the tape. Might as well be a new injury.”

“I know,” he muttered. “I'd actually say it hurts more right now than it did when I fell. So, congratulations, you were right. But you know I wasn't doing this just to be a pain in your butt. I have to, Grace. That's what this life is, if you're lucky enough to get this high, then your whole life is schedules and obligations, and when I sign a contract to do a movie I also sign on for the promotional aspects at the time of opening. It's contractual.”

“And is it also contractual that you go in there without any support? You could have done this a lot better with crutches, Liam. Then you would still have met your obligations.”

“No, I couldn't.”

“Tell me why. Tell me exactly why, because...”

He lay back fully on the bed, pinching the bridge of his nose as if that would dispel his headache. The whole night had taken him to the end of his tether, so if she didn't get off this, he might kick her out with the others. Then he could sleep and let tomorrow worry about itself.

“Liam.”

“I don't need a lecture. If you're going to keep after this, then you maybe should just go to the other room. Or your own room.”

“We didn't get me my own room. I've been here all the time.” She straightened and leaned over the bed, looking down at him.

He couldn't deal with this right now. “Then we'll get you a room.”

Just when he was about to scoot up the bed to reach the phone, she touched his face and stopped him.

That warmth again. She slid her hand to cup his cheek and his frustration all but left. And with it his ability to care whether or not he should enjoy her touch. It comforted him. It meant she still cared, and this wasn't just a job. She cared about him. And it felt good, he felt better.

Closing his eyes, he tilted his head into her hand and held it there with his own hand.

“Liam?”

“Shh. Just wait...” he said, not opening his eyes, just letting the warm strength of her hand soak into him.

Her thumb stroked his cheekbone in a soothing arc. “Tell me why it's so important. I need to understand this if we're going to keep working together. Because right now I know you're frustrated and in pain, and it isn't just hard to see you hurting yourself like this, it makes me feel ill. If you want me to stay, tell me why you have to do this.”

He wanted her to stay. Hell, he wanted her to stay right there. Or maybe put his head in her lap and stroke his weary brow. That would be nice.