The Proud and the Prejudiced (11 page)

 Peter said, “Seems like everyone on the show has
slept with Sienna except me.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dirk said. “I heard about the
‘shocking revelation.’ So how is Giselle? I haven’t seen her in a dog’s age.”

“To be honest, she’s having a rough time right
now,” Alice said then turned to Peter. “You know, your friend is a real ass.”

“Why? What happened?” Dirk asked.

“Giselle and this guy were dating, pretty
seriously she thought. Then once his pal Peter was off the show, she never
heard from him again. Bitch-buttoned her calls, wouldn’t reply to her texts. No
fight, no break-up email, nothing.”

“He sounds like a douche.”

“That’s what I told her, that anyone who would do
something like that didn’t deserve her; but she’s still really broken up about
it.” She glanced at Peter for his response, but he just frowned and squinted at
her. “You’re not going to defend him, are you?”

“Peter!” Cleo’s voice rang out from the other side
of the set.

“You better go,” Alice said. “If she screams
again, I might have to strangle her.”

He smiled and walked away.

CHAPTER 11

Alice, Eileen, Evan, and Dirk made up an odd
foursome at a corner bar with an eighties cover band, but of the Def
Leppard/Bon Jovi variety. No fear of hearing “Careless Whisper” there. Alice
had volunteered to get their third round of drinks but had waited so long
holding up a twenty trying to get the bartenders’ attention – the bevy of girls
with breasts as fake as their IDs having rendered her invisible – finally she
inhaled fully and exhaled a lengthy, aggravated breath and lay her head on the
bar, the strains of “You Could Be Mine” mocking her as if the band spoke of her
longing for the sour mash just ten feet away.

“Get me a Jack Daniels and ginger ale and a double
Jack on the rocks.”

The
voice
. She heard it just as his
presence compressed the humid air against her back, its timbre as sultry as the
Louisiana heat.
Stop that!

Without lifting her head from the bar, Alice
turned her neck to glance up at Peter, his eyes and mouth smiling at her.
Arrogance, no doubt, as the bartender set two plastic cups in front of him
within seconds.

“I guess it pays to be a movie star when you want
a drink,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get his attention for twenty minutes.”

“I’m sure it’s just because I’m taller than you.
Stand up, Alice.”

Alice stood, and he plucked the twenty from her
hand, replacing it with a plastic cup—half ice, a quarter Jack, and a quarter
ginger ale. For a second, she thought he intended to keep the bill, but he
slipped it into the pocket of the sundress she wore with a disconcerting
familiarity while she was distracted by finally taking a sip of the long-sought
yet disappointing cocktail, which almost caused her to do a spit-take. Although
he had once been far more familiar with her still, their chests pressed against
one another.

No! Mustn’t think of that!
He had
disappeared the next day, taking with him the man who had broken his
sister’s—well, his
fake
sister’s—heart.

She started to protest but could tell from the
glint in his eyes that he expected her to do just that, and so she chose to
disappoint his expectations instead. He drank as well, his gaze never leaving
her face, although her eyes wandered back to her table of friends—now joined by
Cleo.

At that moment, a stool adjacent from where they
stood became available, and Peter pulled it around and nodded for her to sit.
Which aggravatingly enough she did.

“I thought I might find you here,” he said, the
song having dipped to a volume over which he could speak.

“How come?”

“I just followed the eighties music.”

Tilting her head to her shoulder, she said, “Ha.
Ha. What are you
really
doing here?”

“Dirk told me he was meeting you here.”

They both glanced back at the table where Cleo had
taken
her
stool.
Too bad you can’t get skinny off a seat like herpes.
But it would probably come with that duck face.

“And you and Cleo decided to join us?
Slumming
it, I see.”

“Not at all. I just thought, well, earlier we
didn’t have much of a chance to catch up.”

She raised her eyebrows, a wrinkle forming above
her nose. “Catch up?”

Catch up
. About what? The lawsuit that
could destroy the show or almost coaxing her into his bed the last time they
were together. Although, to be fair, not that it would have taken much coaxing
until she had come to her senses.

Alice chomped on ice as she looked back at her
table of friends, longing to return to them. Her best friend stared her down,
shaking her head with eyes bulging that might have been intended as a
telepathic signal for Alice to keep her mouth shut had it not been so blatant.
Alice rolled her eyes and offered a single nod of acknowledgment, which caused
Peter to glance over his shoulder at the table before returning his focus to
her.

“Something I should know?”

“No, just something between Eileen and me.”

He leaned against the bar near her as the band
segued into “Wanted, Dead or Alive,” and Alice scoured her brain for any safe
topic of conversation. She couldn’t slam him about his hypocrisy regarding the
lawsuit, which essentially meant the soap,
er
, daytime drama was
off-limits as well. His agent and her friend were on opposite sides of a
lovers’ spat, so they certainly couldn’t gossip about them. And one thing for
certain, they definitely could never, ever, ever,
ever
discuss the night
of the cast party.

His implacable face gave every indication that he
could be content with no conversation at all, which only compelled Alice into
wanting to force him to talk. She finished off the small amount of liquor in
the ice-filled cup, soothing her throat and heartening her confidence.

“Thanks for the drink,” she yelled over the band,
and he glimpsed up at the bartender with a nod and two fingers raised before
returning his attention to her. “How’d you know I liked Jack and ginger?”

He blinked and his brows drew together in
puzzlement, as if surprised. “From eighties night, at that club.”

Oh, thank God! A safe topic of conversation
.

“I gotta admit, you impressed me with your
knowledge of George Clinton.”

Their drinks arrived, and he handed her a full
cup. “George Clinton?”

“Taking Eileen to task—”
Yeah, well, she
deserved it at this point…
“about the Parliament song.”

He grinned down at his shoes then back at her.
“I’m surprised you didn’t think I was an arrogant prick for contradicting her
like that.”

She smirked back at him because she had. “I like
George Clinton. His other band Funkadelic recorded one of my all-time favorite
songs. Amazing guitar line.” She closed her eyes and shook the song playing
beside her out of her head to pull the chords of Funkadelic into her head.
“Definitely in my top ten guitar players.”

When she opened her eyes, his features had
softened; but as he drank again from his cup, she realized it must be the Jack
Daniels relaxing him, as he leaned closer toward her on the bar. He had to,
regardless, to speak in her ear so she could hear his words over the band.

“You have a top ten list of guitar players?”

She grinned and squinted playfully. Yeah, the JD
had definitely affected her as well. “Of course! Doesn’t everyone?”

“Maybe
Rolling Stone
magazine. So let’s
hear it.”

“Hear what?”

“Your top ten.”

“Oh! Well, number one has to be—”

“—Eric Clapton,” they said together.

She laughed and he smiled, his eyes roaming over her
in an unsettling way that caused her chest to tighten. She ignored it and said,
“Well, he
is
god.”

“True enough. And who’s next on your list?”

“David Gilmour. George Harrison.”

“And here I thought you only liked music from the
eighties.”

“Well, Prince is in my top ten, too.”

“Prince?”

“Have you heard his rendition of ‘While My Guitar
Gently Weeps’?”

“Ah, that’s Harrison again.”

“Prince was amazing.” She counted off on her
fingers. “Carlos Santana. Joe Walsh. And I think Lindsay Buckingham is highly
underrated.” She drew her brows together. “Is that an oxymoron?”

“At least we have progressed to the seventies.”

Peter looked even more handsome when he smiled,
his teasing tone translating on his lips. Alice hadn’t seen him smile often,
not even on screen since he usually took dramatic roles. His smile—magnetic and
contagious—sent a ripple of remembrance through her, of his hands on her bare
skin, along with an awareness of the minute distance between them, and she
leaned away from him.

Right then Dirk popped up on her other side, and
she smiled as she expelled a breath of relief.

“I thought you might need a hand,” he said, his
eyes flicking from her to Peter then back again. “You left a lot of thirsty
people over there.”

She grimaced. “I—uh—I’m sorry. I had a hell of a
time getting the bartender’s attention. Then Peter showed up in all this state
to intimidate me with his celebrity.”

“Is that true, Pete?”

Peter sniffed, still smiling at Alice. “I have no
reason to deny it because you and I have been acquainted long enough for me to
know you are not impressed or intimidated by celebrities.”

To Dirk, she said, “I am when it can get me a
drink.”

“I don’t think my face is famous enough to pull
that act,” Dirk said, then managed to wave down the bartender. “Two Turbodogs
and a cosmopolitan,” he called out.

“Peter,” she said with a smile and widening her
eyes in challenge, “don’t deny that you expect special treatment because you’re
a movie star. The first time I saw you on the set of
All My Tomorrows
,
you…” She broke off when she spotted Eileen from over Peter’s shoulder,
slashing her finger across her throat while staring arrows at Alice. She wanted
to tell Dirk everything, about what a pompous prick Peter had been from day
one. How even now he had a pending lawsuit to keep him off a show he found so
beneath him. Instead she stared down into her plastic cup.

“C’mon, let’s hear it,” Dirk prodded. “I’d like to
hear how Pete behaves around mere mortals.”

“Go ahead, Alice,” Peter said, prompting her to
look up at his smiling face. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“He, uh.” She spoke to Dirk, but Peter’s eyes held
her trapped. “He tried to refuse the role of Tristan. He thought it was beneath
him to take another actor’s part, like he was an understudy.”

“That was only at first. I had never been in a
soap,
er
, daytime drama before, so I didn’t understand that—in that
context—such a thing would not be considered unusual, let alone implausible.
But it was your writing, Alice. Your writing has helped me make the role my
own.”

She frowned and opened her mouth to speak, but
confusion had rendered her mute.

“
Peter!
” Cleo’s childish whine preceded her
as she filled the narrow gap between them and turned her back to Alice. “
Where’s
my Chardonnay
?”

With lips together in a tight line, he lifted his
eyes to the ceiling as if he might find a bottle of white wine above them. He
said something to Cleo, which Alice couldn’t hear over “Pour Some Sugar on Me,”
but Cleo walked back toward the table. The bartender returned and set two
bottles of beer and what might have been a cosmo in front of them, and Alice
pulled the twenty from her pocket and handed it to him, asking for another Jack
and ginger.

As Peter ordered a Chardonnay, which the bartender
said they did not have, and Peter told him something to the effect of
just
give him any white wine—she won’t know the difference anyway
—Dirk grabbed
the cosmo and one Turbodog, leaving the other on the bar as he said, “I’ll be
right back,” then stepped away to deliver the drinks to Evan and Eileen.

“Now where were we?” Peter asked as he stepped
closer to her barstool.

Alice blinked rapidly, shaking her head. “Huh?”

“Your top ten list. Guitarists. I believe we left
off with Lindsay Buckingham.”

“Oh, right.”

“What about Stevie Ray Vaughan?”

“Yeah, he makes the list because I appreciate his
talent. I just don’t really like his musical selection.”

He leaned against the bar, turned so they were
face to face. “You don’t like the blues?”

“Oh, no, I do. It’s just a geography thing.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Geography?”

“Yeah, I have to be there. Just like big band
music. I love to hear it performed live, but it’s nothing I would have on my
playlist.”

He finished off his drink then spoke not loud but
deep enough for her to hear despite the band. “If you like to hear blues guitar
played live, we’re in the right city. I know of several clubs near hear, one
even on Bourbon.”

“Oh. Um. I think, uh, everyone is pretty
comfortable here.”

He responded with a barely perceptible motion of
his head in the negative. “I just meant the two of us. You and me.”

Confused, embarrassed, mortified, she knew the dim
lighting and fog of tobacco smoke would have hidden the warmth that rose in her
cheeks, but not her expression or the way she dropped her gaze.

Dirk and the bartender arrived at the same time,
and Peter straightened up. The barstool next to Alice’s was then vacated, so
Dirk sat down and took a swig from his bottle of beer while the bartender
apologized to Peter for the pink wine in the plastic cup.

“Sorry, man, that’s the best I could do. White
Zinfandel.”

Peter smiled with that ironic sniff of his and
handed the man a hundred then walked off to bring Cleo her “Chardonnay.”

“So how do you like New Orleans? Is this your
first time here?”

She turned her full attention to Dirk and her back
on the others at the table. “No, I’ve actually been here a few times. In
general, I love it; but the heat is killing me. And look what the humidity has
done to my hair.” Smiling, she pulled at a ringlet and let it spring back into
place.

He laughed as his eyes traveled around her head
then back to hers. “That’s from the humidity? Well, I think it’s very pretty.”
His eyes glanced past her a moment. “So what were you and Pete talking about so
seriously over here? You had Eileen in a panic.”

“Well, she shouldn’t have worried.”
Actually,
she was probably right to worry. If I’d had Peter alone…
“We were just
talking about music.”

“Music?”

And from there they proceeded to talk of music and
movies, places they’d been, people they knew in common. Dirk didn’t have the
charming good looks of Rich, and he wasn’t drop-dead-gorgeous like Peter; but
he had an open and fun personality that reflected in his face. The more they
talked, the more they flirted; and the more they flirted, the more Alice liked
him.