Tempting Faith (Indigo Love Spectrum) (12 page)

“You little mountain deb, you,” Magda laughed. “And all this time, I thought you were a self-made, cosmopolitan woman of the world.”

“I am self-made,” Faith said defiantly. “I applied to schools they approved of, but I wanted to go into journalism. They wouldn’t pay for school unless I switched to art history, business or education. I didn’t want to spend four years in college only to go right back to Booger Hollow, get married, and stare at the framed sheepskin on the wall. I wanted to be a reporter because I thought it would give me the chance to travel and meet different people. My father thought I’d toe the line if he cut me off, so I had to make my own way.”

“At eighteen?”

“I knew that they would help me, if I ever really needed it,” Faith admitted. “They were waiting for me to crack and crawl back to them begging for help. I didn’t cave. I waited tables at a pizza joint, I made change at an all-night Laundromat, I cleaned the rat cages in the biology department—when I wasn’t in class or studying, I took any job I could to cover my tuition and rent. Between work and a couple of merit-based partial scholarships, I got through school.”

“I never knew that you were so tough, cookie,” Madga said with an admiring smile.

“I chose to be on my own,” Faith said. “Zander didn’t. He didn’t have the kind of parents he deserved.”

“Any foster care involved?”

“He might have been better off if the state had intervened. He managed to make a life for himself that no one back in Dorothy would ever believe.”

“It’s a great story, Faith. If the public knew about it, his stock would skyrocket. America loves an underdog who works hard and becomes a top dog.”

“America might love it, but Zander wouldn’t.”

“Are you kidding?” Magda scoffed. “For the past three years, the kid has worked like a Spartan. He’s in the middle of a film, and he starts another one as soon as it wraps. The industry can’t get enough of him, and the public is starting to follow suit. The up-and-comer cover we did in January with Baron’s photo generated more mail than any other cover in the past sixteen months. That issue outsold all our celebrity death and near-death issues, and that
never
happens. Magazines like ours are escapist entertainment. The public will devour a story about one of the least among them becoming one of the greatest among the Hollywood elite. He’s the J.K. Rowling of Hollywood hunks. He came out of nowhere, from nowhere—no offense—and is within reach of superstardom, and you’re saying he won’t jump at that? Is he insane?”

“No,” Faith answered. “He’s very proud.”

“For God’s sake, Faith, every actor in Hollywood has a fat ego.”

“Pride isn’t the same as ego, not for Zander,” Faith said. “He left Dorothy with nothing and nowhere to go. He’s rebuilt himself, and I don’t think it’s our right to unravel his life to sell magazines…” She shook her head.

“What is it, Faith? You don’t think he’ll do something drastic, do you?”

“I think he would disappear again.”

Magda took a moment to study Faith’s face, and Faith knew that she was deciding her next move. When Magda sighed and slumped back in her chair, Faith felt more hopeful about the story.

“Do you think anyone else from Booger Valley recognized Zander?” Magda asked.

“Booger Hollow. I doubt it. He looks so different now. People never paid much attention to him back then, anyway, other than to make fun of him. Everyone thought he died in the big flood ten years ago. People back home haven’t recognized him, because you don’t always see what’s right in front of you.”

Magda winced. “This story keeps getting better and better, and it’s killing me to have to sit on it.” She retrieved her taffy, pulled off a cigarette-sized length of it, and propped the end between her lips. “I might have to start smoking again.”

“If anyone else from Booger Hollow had recognized him, they would have spilled the beans by now,” Faith said. “It’s hard to keep secrets these days.”

“Well, we’re going to keep one,” Magda decided. “At least for a little while longer. Zander knows that you’ve got his complete X-file. Let’s play it cool and see how Mama and Baby Baxter respond. My guess is that they’ll take the story to one of our competitors, or they’ll put their trust in us.”

“Why would they do either of those things?” Faith asked.

“Well, Zander would make a fortune if he sold his story to one of the other rags. And the Baxters would get the pleasure of pissing you off for uncovering their secret,” Magda explained. “I’m banking on the latter.”

“Why?”

Magda picked up the photo and studied it. “This photo ran on the Internet,
TMZ
,
Access Hollywood
and MTV News, but no one could name the mystery woman Zander’s making out with. This is the first photo I’ve ever seen of him caught in a frisky moment. He’s usually exceptionally discreet. Honestly, Faith, I wasn’t sure it
was
you until you confirmed my hunch when I called you in. If I’m reading this photo right, I don’t think Baron would betray you. If he gives himself up to anyone, it’ll be you.”

“Thanks, Magda,” Faith said, grateful for the reprieve.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Magda said. “For now, the story is yours, and I know you’ll handle it with tact and sensitivity. You are the best person to write it, but I want this story before some other rag gets it. You and I both know how news travels in this town. Sooner rather than later, someone else will figure him out, same as you did. He’ll be exposed—that’s a given.” Magda sharply arrowed her green-eyed gaze at Faith and added, “It may as well be by someone who loves him. Still.” She handed Faith a tissue from the flat box in her desk drawer. “That’s the kink, isn’t it?”

“Yep,” Faith smiled feebly, dabbing at the corner of her eye. “That’s the kink.”

Chapter 6

“Is she there?” Zander asked. He leaned against the stone wall while Brent disconnected his call and tucked his cellphone into the pocket of his reversible Marc Ecko track jacket.

“She’s at the free weight station,” Brent said. “Ariadne says she’s been there for about an hour and that she’s just finishing up her workout. She has a massage scheduled in twenty minutes, so that gives us a little time.”

“Us?”

“This is a team effort. If it looks like you’re getting in too deep—or not deep enough—I’ll run interference and get you back on track.”

“I can handle Faith,” Zander insisted.

“Given your performance at the Wilshire, that’s exactly what Mom is hoping to avoid,” Brent said with a wry grin.

Zander bit back the insult he wanted to spit at Brent. He and his mother had reason for concern. Not since the end of World War II, when a sailor laid a smooch on a nurse in Times Square, had a photo of a kiss so captivated the public. The barely viewable photo of Zander and his “mystery lover” had graced the covers of numerous magazines in the two weeks since the kiss. Incredibly, no one had leaked Faith’s name to the media, and the coverage of Zander kissing an anonymous woman sent his Q factor into the stratosphere.

While the Baxters wanted to capitalize on this publicity windfall, it had to be done with finesse and cunning to avoid damaging the image they had carefully constructed for Zander. It would be a delicate dance with intricate steps, the most important of which was gaining Faith’s allegiance.

Zander had eagerly accepted his assigned role: to keep Faith faithful.

Step one would begin the moment he entered Venus Adonis, one of the most exclusive fitness centers in Beverly Hills. Located near the corner of Wilshire and N. La Cienega Boulevards, the club had an elite Hollywood clientele. A pair of stony-faced doormen were dressed in leather and beaten bronze costumes that made them look like Spartan warriors, and until they moved to open the door, Zander thought they were well-crafted props left over from
300
.

“Mr. Baron, Mr. Baxter, welcome to Venus Adonis,” welcomed the perky blonde receptionist standing behind a waist-high Lucite counter.

“Hi, Ariadne,” Brent said. He held his splayed fingers a few inches above the fingerprint recognition console Ariadne had swiveled to face him. “Thanks for the heads-up on Brenda Starr. I’ve been trying to get a lock on her for the past four days.”

“No problem whatsoever, Mr. B.,” Ariadne said. Flashing her dimples, she leaned forward, the bodice of her mini-toga barely containing its jaunty contents. “Anything for my favorite agent.”

Zander quietly snorted, well aware that Ariadne’s assistance had come at a price. Brent had arranged for her to attend an invite-only audition for a pilot being developed by a cable station.

“Make sure you’re on time tomorrow morning,” Brent advised. “Punctuality counts almost as much as talent in this business.”

Ariadne giggled her assurances and waved them into the center.

From the outside, the design of the building blended with its neighbors, a series of neutral-colored high rises and one-story specialty boutiques. The interior was something else entirely.

Ancient Greece intertwined with twenty-first century tackiness and technology. The lobby featured a floor-to-ceiling sculpture, pale as alabaster, of Atlas—whose face bore a suspicious resemblance to Gerard Butler—with a stylized globe propped upon its shoulders. Flexible lighting cables that slowly moved through a pastel rainbow were woven through the tarnished copper wire and crudely rendered bronze plates forming the continents of the globe.

Opposite Atlas was a matching sculpture of Venus rising from a chemically generated cloud of fog with blue-green backlighting meant to represent the seafoam from which the daughter of Zeus had risen. Venus’ long auburn hair moved against a breeze generated by a source that could be heard but not seen, and Zander smiled appreciatively when he realized that the alabaster goddess of love had been given the face of actress Leila Arcieri.

Looking over his shoulder, Zander addressed the receptionist. “Where’s Adonis?”

Laughing, she pointed at the male statue and replied, “Don’t tell me you missed him, Mr. Baron.”

“Atlas holds up the world,” Zander said. “Adonis was just a pretty face.”

“Is that right?” Ariadne said. “You should go on
Jeopardy!
”

“I’m already in jeopardy,” Zander muttered.

“Come on, genius,” Brent said. “You’re wasting your mojo on the wrong woman.”

The two statues flanked a wide archway, through which Zander and Brent moved to reach a short flight of low, wide stadium stairs leading to the Atrium. Weight-lifting and conditioning machines, free weights, elliptical trainers, bikes and other equipment designed to torture one’s physique into optimum health were situated beneath a cathedral ceiling reminiscent of the Parthenon.

The white and chrome color scheme was broken up by washed-out blues, greens and pinks, but the place still seemed too antiseptic for Zander’s taste. In his faded gray sweatpants and worn black T-shirt, Zander thought he looked like he was there to repair equipment, not to work out on it.

Zander found himself in one of the most surreal scenes he’d ever experienced in California. Almost everyone in the gym wore a phone headset, or had a smartphone pressed to an ear or clipped to a waistband, and there wasn’t an ounce of extra body fat anywhere, not even on the toga-wrapped staff wandering through the Atrium offering wheat grass, carrot juice or ginseng cocktails along with a Venus Adonis specialty—chilled, lemon-scented, oxygenated sweat towels.

“This is ridiculous,” Zander snickered after spotting a particularly scandal-prone celebutante at a wall-length mirror. More famous for her surgically-enhanced physical attributes and long, dark hair than a particular talent or contribution to society, her idea of exercise seemed to be studying her profile and asking those nearest her if her concave belly looked fat.

“Very few people come here to actually work out,” Brent told him. “They come here to be seen. There’s a three-year waiting list for memberships and a two-year waiting list for employment.”

“People actually line up to put on a toga and cater to the spoiled and spray-tanned?” Zander asked.

“A lot of industry folk work out here,” Brent said. “Ariadne replaced a girl who got a part in Jensen Lee’s new movie. He saw her at the front desk, liked her and cast her in his flick.”

“It’s so easy for some folks, huh,” Zander remarked.

“It’s easy to get that first chance,” Brent told him. “You gotta have talent to keep yourself working. That’s the difference between you and most of the other overnight sensations. You’re here to stay, as long as we can get a stay of exposure from Miss Wheeler.”

“I guess I’d better get on with this,” Zander said. “Wish me luck.”

“Like you need luck,” Brent scoffed.

Zander passed a gaggle of Lakers cheerleaders dressed in baby tees and short-shorts, and a familiar young actor working with a buff trainer who gave Zander a long, admiring wink.

Smiling uncomfortably, Zander gave the trainer a brisk, two-fingered salute, earning a squeal from the man.

Faith sat astride a padded, gray weight bench, watching herself in the mirror as she used a ten-pound chrome dumbbell to perform a set of bicep curls. She caught Zander’s reflection, and her eyes narrowed as they tracked his progress toward her.

“Need a spotter?” he asked, stopping beside her.

“What do you want?” she replied.

“Nothing,” he shrugged. “I saw you over here and I thought I’d come over and see if you needed a partner.”

“I do quite well on my own,” she said curtly. She pursed her lips and shot a jet of air at the lock of hair that kept flopping onto her sweaty brow.

“You sweat a lot,” Zander remarked. “Should I call for a towel?”

“I think Calliope and Clio are making the rounds,” Faith said. “They’re racing over here, probably to get to you.”

Zander watched them in the mirror. The toga-clad blondes seemed to be in a power-walk race as they made tracks to the free-weight station, each bearing a silver platter of folded towels.

“Are you here to
do
something with those muscles of yours, or are you one of those?” Faith snapped.

“Those what?”

“The people who come here in full makeup and their fanciest exercise apparel just to pretend to work out, when what they really want is to make contact with a director or a producer.”

“There’s no harm in that,” Zander said.

“See that guy over there, the one in the silvery-gray Speedo unitard?” Faith gave a discreet nod in the man’s direction.

Zander looked and then recoiled at the sight of the man’s rotund belly testing the limits of the space-age spandex. “He looks like a pregnant porpoise.”

“That pregnant porpoise just started casting for a big-screen version of
Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot
,” Faith said in a low voice. “That’s why he’s got six handmaidens and two male servants burying him in lecithin shooters and spot massages.”

Noticing Zander staring, the casting director waved and smiled broadly.

“He recognizes you,” Faith taunted. “Why don’t you go over there? Maybe you’ll get your big break.”

Zander threw a leg over the weight bench nearest Faith’s. He drew back, startled, when a male attendant stepped up and stood at rigid attention. Twice as wide as Zander, his oiled muscles looked like balloons lodged under his skin. His head and his neck appeared to be a single unit, and from the back, Zander thought his head looked like a bullet. A bullet crowned with a laurel wreath.

“Your pleasure, sir?” the attendant asked, dropping to one knee and bowing his head.

“Are you fu—” Zander started.

“It’s okay, Ajax,” Faith interrupted. “We can get the weights ourselves.”

Ajax pressed his right fist to his heart. “As you wish, mistress.”

Zander chuckled. Faith jabbed his shoulder. “Stop, you’ll hurt his feelings.”

“This place is ridiculous,” Zander groaned, looking at the ceiling, which had been painted to suggest a distant view of a cloud-shrouded Mount Olympus.

“If it’s so ridiculous, why do you have a membership? Wait, let me guess—Olivia Baxter sends you here for the 24k-gold facials to keep you pretty for the cameras.” She transferred her dumbbell to her left hand, and braced her left elbow against her inner left knee. Slowly, precisely, she began curling the weight.

“Nice guns,” Zander said, watching the powerful movement of the sleek bicep under Faith’s skin. “I’m not a member. Brent is. I’d have to mortgage my house to pay the dues here, although his mother swears by the caviar facials she gets once a month.” Zander grabbed two twenty-five-pound dumbbells. “Unlike some people, I work too hard for my money to throw it away on a gym with a staff that looks like a dinner theater version of
Caligula
. A bad version at that.”

Faith glared at him. “For your information,
Personality!
holds the membership to this place, not me. We get a lot of stories by lurking around here. And I work very hard for a living. At least what I do requires brains.”

“
Monkeying Around with Harley Tatum
,” Zander said, making light of the headline of her latest cover story. “Yeah, that’s real nuclear science.”

Faith swung both legs to the side of her bench nearest Zander and whispered in his ear. “Trust me when I say my next cover story will be much, much more enlightening.”

He caught the light, slightly sweet musk of her sweaty body when she stood and walked away, and combined with the sultry rasp of her voice and her breath in his ear, Zander suddenly felt lightheaded. Still clutching his dumbbells, he followed her, stopping short as she mounted an adductor machine. A low ache settled deep in his belly as he stared at her shapely dancer’s legs braced in the machine, which kept them wide apart.

Faith brought her legs together slowly, sending a sixty-pound weight stack rising on its cables. Her white shorts were very short, and Zander watched the flexion of her thigh muscles. He idly wondered if he was drooling, swiping the back of his hand across his mouth—just in case.

“Come to insult me some more?” Faith asked. “If so, hurry up and get it over with. I have a massage in a few minutes.”

“I want to know why it’s so easy for you to splash my private business all over the cover of a magazine,” Zander said, forcing his gaze away from her legs.

Unfortunately, it went straight to her bosom, which expanded against her white spandex camisole with each deep inhalation.

She let the weights clang back into place and dismounted. “Dead men don’t have secrets, or hadn’t you heard?” she grinned, her face mere inches from his. “And since you seem to have forgotten, I think I proved a long time ago that I can keep a secret.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I remember perfectly well how good you are at keeping a secret. You hid me easily enough when we were kids, yet you’re red-hot to out me now.”

“You know we had to meet in secret!” she whispered angrily. “If my father had known I was sneaking off to see you, he would have shipped me off to boarding school!”

Zander counterattacked. “Of course. It would have just been too horrible for Justus Wheeler to know that a monosyllabic hillbilly was defiling his precious, virginal daugh—
OOF!
”

Faith’s punch caught him just above his navel, driving the air, and a loud grunt, right out of him. “Don’t turn this into something it isn’t!” she said. “My father would have sent me away for dating anybody he hadn’t handpicked himself. I had friends, a big house and nice clothes, but I was just as much a prisoner in Booger Hollow as you were!”

“A prisoner of privilege,” Zander said, standing his ground. “Poor you.”

Fuming, Faith stomped off toward one of the corridors branching off the Atrium. Just inside the tall, wide, arching entrance to the Bodyworks Center, she stopped at another reception desk and accepted a gauzy white robe and a pair of white slippers from a smiling young woman. Faith glared back at Zander before disappearing around a corner.