The Cottage (14 page)

“You knew exactly who that was,” he said accusingly. It was rare for him to lose his cool with anyone, but Paloma brought out the worst in him. He wanted to strangle her, and Abe, for firing the rest of the staff and leaving him with her. Any benevolence he'd begun feeling for her instantly disappeared. As far as he was concerned, she was a witch.

“No. Who?” she said innocently. “Rita Waverly?” She had seen him at the Golden Globes too, and told all her friends watching it, what an asshole he was. He wouldn't have been pleased with her reviews.

“It was Charlene. That was a rotten thing to do. It upset her terribly and me too. She was hysterical, which is not how I like to start my day. And I warn you, if she shows up here, and you let her in, I'm going
to throw you both out of this house, and call the police and tell them you broke in.”

“Don't get so nervous,” she said with a quelling look at him.

“I'm not nervous. I'm angry, Paloma. I specifically told you, I don't want to speak to Charlene.”

“I forgot. Or maybe I didn't know who she was. Okay, I won't answer the phone again.” Her final victory, and yet another task she no longer had to do, which only made him angrier.

“You
will
answer the phone, Paloma. And you will not tell Charlene if I'm here. Is that clear?”

She nodded, and turned the vacuum on again, in open defiance of him. She did defiance extremely well. And passive aggression too.

“Fine. Thank you,” he said, and stomped back upstairs, and when he went back to bed, he couldn't concentrate on the script. Other than his fury at Paloma, he was extremely annoyed at Charlene. She was being tiresome and hysterical and rude. He hated women who hung on like that. When the romance waned, they had to know how to leave elegantly. But elegance was clearly not Charlene's strong suit. He could sense easily that she was going to be difficult. He was still irritated when he finally got out of bed, showered, shaved, and dressed.

He was having lunch at Spago with a director he'd worked with years before. Coop had called and suggested lunch, he wanted to find out what he was up to. You never knew when someone was making a movie with a great part for him. Thinking about it forced Charlene from his mind at least. And it was only on his
way to Spago that he remembered he had never heard from Alex, and he decided to page her again. He left his cell phone number on her pager.

He was surprised and pleased when she answered him immediately this time. He had just put his cell phone on the seat next to him when she called.

“Hello, this is Dr. Madison. Who's this?” She didn't recognize the number, and had her official voice on, as he smiled.

“It's Coop. How are you, Dr. Madison?” She was surprised to hear his voice, and in spite of herself, pleased. “I saw you on the Golden Globes last night.” So had half the world, and all of Hollywood. “I didn't think you had time to watch TV.” “I don't. I was walking through the waiting room, looking for one of my patients' parents, and there you were, with Rita Waverly You both looked great,” she said with sincerity. She had a young voice, and the same openness he had liked about her when they met. There was no artifice about her, only beauty and brains, unlike Charlene. But the comparison was unfair. Charlene would have been at a disadvantage with the likes of Alex Madison. Alex had everything going for her, looks, charm, intelligence, breeding. She came from another world. And in contrast, there were things Charlene did that women like Alex knew nothing about. There was room in Coop's world for both of them, or there had been until the night before. But there would be women like Charlene in his world again, Coop knew. There were a lot of them. It was women like Alex who were rare and few and far between. “I think you might have paged me yesterday,”
she said candidly. “I didn't recognize the number, and I didn't have time to return the call. I didn't even see it till today. But when it came up again just now, I thought I'd better call. I was afraid you might be a consulting physician. I'm glad you're not.” She sounded relieved.

“So am I, particularly with those little miniature rug rats you play doctor to. I'd rather be a barber than do what you do.” Although in truth, he respected her more than he was willing to admit. But his feigned horror at what she did was part of his game, and she knew it too.

“How was last night? Was it fun? Rita Waverly sure is beautiful. Is she nice?” The question made him smile. “Nice” was not a word he would have chosen to describe Rita Waverly, and she would have been insulted if he had. Nice was not a highly prized virtue in Hollywood. But she was important and powerful and beautiful and glamorous, even if slightly long of tooth.

“I think ‘interesting’ is more appropriate. Amusing. She's very much a movie star,” he said diplomatically.

“Like you,” Alex tossed the ball back to him, and he laughed.

“Touche. What are you doing for the rest of the day?” He liked talking to her, and he wanted to see her again, if he could pry her away from the hospital and her duties in the ICU. He wasn't sure he could.

“I'm working till six o'clock, and then I'm going to go home and sleep for about twelve hours. I have to be back here at eight o'clock tomorrow morning.”

“You work too hard, Alex,” he said sincerely, sounding concerned.

“Residency is like that. It's a form of slavery, I think all you have to do to pass eventually is prove you can survive.”

“It all sounds very noble,” he said blithely. “Do you suppose you could stay awake long enough to have dinner with me tonight?”

“With you and Rita Waverly?” she teased, but it had none of the malice he had gotten from Charlene the night before or earlier that morning. Alex wasn't like that. She seemed all innocence and decency and good spirits. It was very refreshing for Coop, who was so tired of jaded women. Alex was like a breath of fresh air in his very sophisticated existence. She was an entirely different creature, and the fact that she was Arthur Madison's daughter hadn't been forgotten either. A fortune of that magnitude couldn't be ignored.

“I could ask Rita, if you like,” he said sensibly, “but I thought you might have dinner alone with me, if you can make it.”

“I'd like to,” she said honestly, she was flattered to be invited to dinner by Coop. “But I'm not sure I could stay awake long enough to eat.”

“You can sleep on the banquette and I'll let you know what I ate. How does that sound?”

“Unfortunately, very realistic. Maybe if we do something early, quick, and simple. I haven't slept in about twenty hours.” Her work ethic was inconceivable to Coop, but he nonetheless admired her for it.

“It will be interesting to try and meet those specifications. I accept the challenge. Where shall I pick you up?” He wasn't going to take no for an answer.

“How about my place?” She gave him an address
on Wilshire Boulevard, in a good but not overly luxurious building. She was entirely self-supporting. She didn't actually live on her resident's salary, but she tried to add very little to it, so as not to set herself too radically apart from the others. She had a very small studio apartment. “I could be ready by seven. But I really don't want to stay out late, Coop. I have to be wide awake and fully conscious while I'm working tomorrow.”

“I understand,” and he respected her for it. “I'll pick you up at seven, and we'll go someplace simple and easy. I promise.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling at the prospect. She couldn't believe she was actually going to have dinner with Cooper Winslow. If she had told someone, she was certain they wouldn't have believed her. She went back to work after that, and Coop went to his lunch at Spago. It proved entertaining but fruitless.

Things had been more than a little thin for him of late. He'd been offered another commercial, for men's underwear this time, and he had refused to do it. He never lost sight of the importance of his image. But Abe's threats had remained clear in his mind. Much as he hated to be driven by financial concerns, he knew he had to make some money. All he needed was one great, big, fat movie, and a leading role at that. It never seemed impossible to Coop, or even unlikely. It was just a question of timing. And in the meantime, there were cameos and commercials. And girls like Alex Madison. But he wasn't after her money, he told himself. He just liked her.

Coop picked Alex up promptly at seven on Wilshire
Boulevard, and she came bounding out the door before he could walk into the lobby. The building looked respectable, though a little worn, and she admitted to him in the car that her apartment was relatively awful.

“Why don't you buy a house?” he questioned her, as they drove along in his favorite Rolls. Money was certainly no object for her, but she seemed very discreet, and he noticed that she wore no jewelry and dressed simply. She was wearing black slacks, and a black turtleneck sweater and a secondhand Navy pea-coat. He was wearing gray slacks, a black cashmere sweater, and a leather jacket, and black alligator loafers. He had sensed that she would dress down, and he was taking her to a Chinese restaurant. And when he told her, she was delighted.

“I don't need a house,” she said in answer to his question. “I'm never home, and when I am, I'm sleeping, and I don't know if I'm going to stay here. When I finish my residency, I'm not sure where I'll go into practice, although I wouldn't mind staying in Los Angeles.” The one place she knew she wasn't going to go was back to Palm Beach, to her parents. That was a closed chapter for her. She only went for major holidays and state occasions, and as seldom as she could.

Coop had a fascinating evening with her. They talked about a thousand different subjects, Kenya again, and Indonesia, where she had done extensive traveling after college. And Bali, which was one of her favorite places, along with Nepal, where she'd gone trekking. She talked about the books she liked to read, most of which were surprisingly serious. And she had very eclectic taste in music. She knew a lot about
antiques and architecture. And she was interested in politics, particularly as it related to medicine, and she was surprisingly knowledgeable about recent legislation on the subject. He had never known anyone like her. She had a mind like a finely tuned machine, and she was far better than any computer. He had to work hard to keep up with her, and he liked that. And when he asked, she told him she was thirty. She assumed he was somewhere in his late fifties, early sixties. She knew he'd been making movies for a long time, but she didn't know how old he'd been when he started. She would have been startled to realize that he had recently turned seventy, and he certainly didn't look it.

She had a delightful evening with him, and she said so as he drove her home. It was only nine-thirty, and he'd been careful not to keep her out late, or he knew she'd be reluctant to see him again, if he dragged her around till midnight and she felt like death the next morning. He knew she had to get up at six-thirty.

“You were a good sport to come out with me,” Coop said generously. “I would have been very disappointed if you hadn't.”

“That's nice of you, Coop. I had a great time, and the dinner was delicious.” Simple, but good, and just spicy enough, the way she liked it. And he had been extremely good company, even better than she'd expected. She had feared he would be all glitter and flash and charm, and very much a product of his business. She was surprised to find him intelligent and warm, and well informed. She didn't have the feeling that he was playing a part, but rather that he was in fact a worthwhile human being, which surprised her.

“I'd like to see you again, Alex, if you have time, and aren't otherwise encumbered.” He hadn't asked her until then if she had a boyfriend. Although other men had never stopped him. He had enough faith in himself to dispose of the best of them, and generally he had, without much trouble. He was, after all, Cooper Winslow. And he never forgot it.

“I'm not ‘encumbered’ actually. I don't have enough time to be. I'm not a very reliable date, I'm afraid. I'm either on duty, or on call.”

“I know,” he smiled, “or sleeping. I told you, I like a challenge.”

“Well, I am one, in more ways than one,” she admitted. “I'm a little gun-shy about serious relationships. A lot gun-shy actually.”

“Thanks to your brother-in-law?” he asked gently, and she nodded.

“He taught me some painful lessons. I haven't ventured out too far in deep waters since then. I tend to stay at the shallow end, with the kiddies. I can handle that. I'm not so sure about the other stuff.”

“You'll risk it for the right man, you just haven't met him yet.” There was some truth to what he said, but honesty in what she had too. She was terrified of getting hurt again, hadn't had a serious relationship since her broken engagement, and dated very little.

“My life is my work, Coop. As long as we both understand that, then I'd love to see you.”

“Good,” he sounded pleased. “I'll call you.” Though it wouldn't be too soon, he had good instincts about those things. He wanted her to miss him, and wonder why he wasn't calling. He knew exactly how to play
women. And Alex was open and easy to read, and she had explained herself to him.

She thanked him without kissing him, and he watched to make sure she got into the building safely. He waved as he drove away, and she looked pensive as she rode up in the elevator. It was hard to know if he was for real, and she was skeptical. It would be so easy to fall for someone as smooth and charming as he was, and then God knew what would happen. As she let herself into her apartment, she wondered if she should go out with him again, or if it was too risky. He was a very experienced player.

Alex took her clothes off and dumped them in a heap on a chair, along with the surgical pajamas she'd worn all day, and the ones she'd worn the day before, and the day before that. She never had time to do laundry either.

Coop was very pleased with himself as he drove home. It had gone exactly the way he had wanted it to. And whatever his intentions, or hers, it had been a good beginning. He would just have to see which way the wind blew, and how he wanted to play it. But Alex Madison was definitely an option.