The Stars Trilogy (12 page)

She felt like she just had a meeting with the devil.

Her tears fell again as she boarded the lift going up to Ben’s suite. She wanted to drop to the floor and bawl like a disgruntled child. Her knight was a very tarnished one. Unbelievably tarnished.

Oh, what a disaster!

She saw Cruz walk out of Ben’s suite the moment she was near. Dare must have called him already. He looked at her with a hint of concern in his eyes.

“Are you alright?” he asked her gently.

She just nodded and entered the suite.

She sat beside a still sleeping Ben and cried silently. She bit her lower lip, careful not to make a distressed sound and wake Ben up. Reaching inside her sweatshirt for her necklace, she stared at the silver pendant, her heart breaking.

The Phoenix. Dare’s amulet. It didn’t seem so long ago, when she first met him. She was a naive little girl, afraid to try things. He taught her how to fly that day, aboard the Cyclone.

But now, he was teaching her a new lesson. He was teaching her that not even the most steadfast dreams would come true, for dreams were full of trickery and reality was full of bubble-busters.

She didn’t know if she was up to it.

“You alright, Sir?”

Dare looked at Cruz annoyingly. They were both sitting inside the limo now.

“When are you going to get rid of the freakin’ ‘Sir’ and call me by my name?”

“I prefer to keep things professional. Sir.”

“You’ve been with me for six years, we’ve fucked chicks together, you’ve seen all my shit you can practically write a book about my wretched life.”

Cruz’ stoic expression remained. “Yeah, I can.”

He grunted.

Cruz was looking at him oddly and he knew his bodyguard was speculating. “What?” he snapped at him.

“What did you do to her?”

“Is that a professional question?” he shot back.

“You may not answer, Sir.”

He was silent for a while. Then he sighed. “That girl is...intriguing.”

“Who?”

He gave his bodyguard a sour look.

“She is quite lovely,” Cruz said.

“Works well with you, too, I can see,” he bit out, pissed that Cruz found the girl attractive, too.

Cruz shrugged. “I’m a man who appreciates natural beauty.”

He grunted again. “I wonder what she saw in Ben. She’s way too young for him.”

“It isn’t you to actually wonder so much about stuff like that. If you like her, you know you can have her.”

“She is with Ben!” he emphasized, as if that stopped him before from stealing somebody else’s woman without remorse.

“Did she tell you that?”

“Not exactly...”

Cruz dusted imaginary lint from his impeccably pressed outer suit. If he wasn’t Dare Montgomery and easily recognizable everywhere, Cruz would be mistaken for his boss. His bodyguard was always looking straight off of Savile Row.

“Is it possible that maybe, you just jumped to the wrong conclusion?”

He thought of Celine’s reaction when he insinuated that she was Ben’s mistress. Man, was she enraged? “But what the hell is she doing with ole Ben?”

“Did you know that people associate with each other not only to fuck or abuse each other?”

He ignored Cruz’ barb. “She lives at the Sommerset. How old is she? Maybe in her early twenties? How in hell can she afford a place like that without a high-paying job? She’s Ben’s PA. Figure that.”

“Maybe she’s an heiress. Who knows?”

He snorted. That was exactly what Celine told him. “She doesn’t look like one. You’ve seen her.”

“Not all women wear grand clothes to look like one, you know? I know for a fact that you’ve slept with women wearing expensive clothes and you’ve paid for every piece of article in their bodies.”

“I don’t need your sarcasm right now.”

Cruz shrugged. “Just a thought, is all.”

He fell silent.

Cruz said no more.

Dare pensively looked outside the window as the limo cruised along Hollywood Boulevard.

Cruz was playing devil’s advocate for the girl’s benefit but they both knew the real score. In Hollywood, to trust women was handing them the authority to gut you while you sleep. For a huge celebrity like him, he had learned how to deal with the most beautiful temptresses-- to sleep with his eyes wide open and never beside a woman, and most especially not beside a woman he just fucked.

Did your success do this to you? Turn you into a hard core cynic?

Her simple question hit him solidly in the gut. But he knew it was a calculated barb. The little girl can deliver lines worthy of a movie script. With great acting, too. Her tears looked genuine enough for the cam. She was good.

He had to give it to her. She gave a great performance a while back, playing the victim to the hilt. How many times had women played this trick on him? He’d had paternity suits left and right, laughable claims that amounted to nothing as his lawyers knew what to do when women got too desperate for whatever reason. He’d had women suing him for sexual harassment, too, when they all jumped to his bed uninvited. He’d had a small fortune allocated just for such female shit.

Nothing had changed. Women would do anything to better their lives, including peddling their dignity to men who were willing to pay. He had a great personal example of such breed.

He swallowed, as the acrid taste of unwanted memories briefly tried to make a flashback. Even now, after so many years, it would still crop up here and there in the peripheries of his consciousness, when he was distracted, fragmented scenes of the past that he had scrapped from his history.

He hated it, those bits and pieces of himself in a long ago world he had long detached himself from, but sometimes, he was grateful for their sudden intrusion into his carefully structured existence, to remind him that trust meant total destruction.

Celine was no different. It was just a matter of time before her greed gave her away.

Chapter Five

“Now I understand what you were talking about while we were riding the Cyclone!

You were reciting V’s lines! I just realized that when I saw V For Vendetta yesterday

at the theater. Oh my Gosh, you delivered the lines exactly the way you delivered

them aboard the Cyclone. I had goose bumps! You were sooooo awesome in that movie,

Dare! I watched it twice and I will watch it again:))) It was just a bummer

‘coz I never saw your face throughout the film. But it’s okay.

You did great! I so love you! Mwah!”

“HE’S SUCH A CAD, BEN! I can’t believe he’s like that! I never thought he’d be like that! Why is he like that?!”

Celine finally understood what it meant for a wonderful dream to turn into a total nightmare. She thought her luck had finally changed.

Oh, was she awfully wrong? All the elements in the universe were still conspiring against her dream.

Ben was quietly listening to her from his bed as she paced the expanse of the hospital suite in all her disillusioned melodrama.

“How could he, in his warped mind even conjure that you are my...that we are...? Oh My God, I’d never live this down! You,” she gestured her hands toward Ben, “and me?!” she pointed to herself. She shook her head for the nth time.

Ben opened his mouth to speak but she interrupted him. “Don’t! Spare me the I-told-you-so lecture.”

Ben sighed and shrugged. He looked better now, thank God. His cheeks were pinkish and his eyes were animated again.

After crying buckets beside a sleeping Ben last night, she lay on the sofa, wallowing in her woe until sleep claimed her. She woke up early this morning and went about her “nurse” duties to Ben like nothing happened.

She fed him breakfast. She already felt responsible for the old man. He didn’t have relatives in the city she could contact to come take care of him. In fact, when Ben regained consciousness, he didn’t want to call any of his relatives. Instead, he appointed her to be his representative in this hospital to manage things on his behalf. He did call some of his business associates to inform them of his situation and told them that his contract jobs would be delayed for a bit. So she took it unto herself to be with him. She couldn’t just leave him alone in the hospital. Nurses were not enough. Ben needed TLC to recover faster.

Back home, whenever she got sick, all her loved ones were at her bedside, fussing over her. She couldn’t imagine living life without her family. She had always been surrounded by doting parents, an over-protective brother, loving aunts, uncles and cousins and her ever-supportive circle of friends and of course, her BFF Shavonne. This was the first time that she was actually living away from her comfort zone for real.

When Ben finally asked her what was wrong, she couldn’t contain her emotions anymore.

“I have waited for so long to see him and I’d get this?! He thinks you are my sugar daddy! Oh my God! Can you believe that?!” She cringed, just thinking about it.

“Should I be flattered?” Ben peered at her from the rim of his glasses.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, be serious! I’m so deeply hurt and insulted! That he would think of me like that...that I’m a...a...Just because I live at Sommerset!”

“Alright, alright. Come here.” He gestured to the armchair beside his bed.

She dropped her bulk on the chair and crossed her arms over her chest, her face crumpled in a deep frown. Her dermatologist always advised her to avoid frowning for it hastened the formation of wrinkles but beauty tips be damned!

“Do you want me to talk to him?” Ben asked.

“About what?”

“About this little misunderstanding.”

“No! Why would I need to explain anything to him? It’s not my fault he has a warped mind!”

“You have a point there.”

“And this is not a little misunderstanding. Oh no, this is major! I don’t know what happened to him but I’ve never met anybody so judgmental.”

“Maybe you haven’t met a lot of bad people, kid. You’ve had a sheltered life, I can tell.”

“Maybe. But he was just the worst.”

“Welcome to Hollywood, home to the most cynical people.”

She sighed. “What a rude awakening that was. One moment he was my beloved Daredevil and the next, he was just plain Devil.”

Ben chuckled. “Now, weren’t you the one who said he’s just unlucky in love?”

“Hah, no wonder he’s unlucky! No woman will be able to stand him for long! He is an asshole!”

“Hmm, so, you are giving up now?”

She pursed her lips and didn’t answer.

“After waiting for so long to finally meet your knight in shining armor, oh God, deliver me from silly fairy tales, you are going to high-tail it back to Asia after your first not-so-nice encounter. I thought you were in love with him?”

She glowered at Ben. “Whose side are you anyway? Don’t forget, I saved your life.”

“Yours, of course, my dear. And I will never forget. Didn’t I just make your Disney dream come true?”

“Dream? It’s a nightmare! The Chainsaw Massacre! He is awful! Not my type at all!”

“Okay, if you say so. Then we can leave it at that. He is an asshole. I agree, to some extent. He’s definitely never going to be a role model of good behavior in America. He’s not your type, after all. You’re going back home. And I’m going to lose a good friend. Great.”

She was silent. And then she let out a really disgruntled sound. Then she sighed deeply. “But is he kind to you, at least, Ben?” She had to admit, she wanted to look for an excuse to overlook Dare’s appalling behavior.

“’Kind’ is not a word that I’d easily associate with Dare. But this I can tell you with certainty, he is known to be fair. A really demanding boss but pays generously for a job well done. That’s what I’ve heard and experienced personally with him.”

“He has a lot of charity works.”

“Yup, that I can attest to.”

“He has a scholarship foundation for children with learning disabilities. He donated 2 million dollars to the victims of hurricane Katrina.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And he supports George Clooney’s Not On Our Watch project in Darfur. He gave a million dollars last year.”