Calling His Bluff (28 page)

“C’mon, Lana. I’ll help you, okay? I promise. I’ll call Ben tomorrow.”

Her short laugh was bitter. “You have no idea how desperate I am right now, do you?
Jesus, J.D., don’t you think I would have found another way if I could? But I have
to have you on my side. And I know you won’t humiliate her by making this public.
You’re a good guy. It’s why I fell for you.” Lana small smile was rueful. “She can
have you back. But I need you to come to California with me to talk to Ben. A phone
call won’t cut it.”

It occurred to J.D. that the past few minutes were the first honest ones he’d spent
with this woman. He scraped his fingers across his scalp and tried to tried to figure
out how he was going to explain this. Because he knew what he had to do as soon as
Sarah came back down those stairs. And if he couldn’t convince Sarah he meant what
he said, he was pretty sure it was going to be the end of everything he’d ever wanted.

Lana was still watching him.

“You really are in love with her, aren’t you?” She shook her head. “Sorry. This sucks
for you. But I told you I was desperate.” She buttoned up her coat, pulling her long
hair out from under the collar. “I wasn’t lying.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, remembering promises to love and honor. And then the
scene he’d walked in on in South America.

She had the grace, or the acting chops, to flush. “This time,” she admitted.

“Well, that’s new,” he drawled out. He couldn’t help it. He’d been dealing with the
fallout of his ex-wife’s lack of impulse control for too long. Not to mention the
fact that she’d just royally fucked up his life.

“Oh, we were already over and you know it. Don’t act like you never fed me a line.”
He knew Lana had grown up rough and polished herself to a shine with hard work and
a ruthless determination to succeed. Before she’d learned how to slide right in with
the Hollywood elite, he was pretty sure that last sentence would have been delivered
with a hand gesture.

Lana struck a melodramatic pose, one hand over her heart, the back of the other pressed
to her brow. She dropped her voice a register. “‘Lana, I love you, babe. Why dontcha
marry me and we’ll spend the rest of our lives together? Did I forget to mention that
I’m always going to be traveling on a project and when I am home, I’m not going to
want to have much to do with you anyway? Also, I don’t like your friends, going out,
meeting people, or how much money you spend on clothes.’”

She dropped the pose. And there was that hand gesture after all.

“It was my money,” he said mildly. “You could’ve blown your own cash on crap you didn’t
need.” The rest of it stung.

He’d known it was a mistake almost immediately after marrying her. They’d both said
the right words, but neither of them had meant it. She hadn’t wanted to settle down
with a family and he hadn’t really loved her. But Lana was always fun, a quick wit
and an enthusiastic partner in bed, so they’d both just sort of gone along with it.
The bullshit scales balanced out pretty evenly between them.

At least, right up until the moment when Lana started getting down and dirty with
her director, J.D. figured. He’d never loved her, but he hadn’t cheated, either.

Still. He was the one with a shot at getting what he wanted now. Assuming Sarah hadn’t
bailed out of the second story window and booked it out of town. And assuming he could
find a way to get her to listen to him after he hit her with yet another shock. Fuck.
How had he let this go on for so long?
Any
other time would have been better to confess his stupid, stupid fucking lie.

“Let’s call it even. I’m sorry it didn’t work out between us.” Whopper of a lie there.
He’d never been so frigging grateful it was over with Lana.

She nodded but didn’t budge on her determined stare.

“Yeah, well, it’s not over yet, is it? Not until my signature’s on a contract for
Ben’s movie. I’m sorry you’re married. The kind of notoriety we’ll end up with in
the tabloids if I contest the divorce isn’t in my best interest either. Any press
is
not
good press for me right now.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head before
turning to the front door. “Let’s just get through this, okay? Nobody needs
Access Hollywood
all over this one.”

He hadn’t even gotten the words out when he heard a noise behind him. He glanced over
his shoulder.
Shit.
Sarah was lurching down the stairs, the bag over the crook of her arm stuffed with
the clothes that had gradually drifted into his closets. She had a coat and running
shoes on already, and was clearly only five seconds behind Lana on the Get Out of
Town track.

He heard the front door open and close, but chasing Lana down would have to wait.
Man, he was going to be in hock to his attorney for a decade.

“Sarah. Wait.”

She shook her head, her wet, dark hair falling out of the clip she’d used to scrape
it back behind her head and pushed past him. He reached out to take her arm and she
spun around, eyes shining with unshed tears that she swiped away with a rough drag
of her hand across her face. Her nose was pink, her cheeks pale. This wasn’t the calculated
flush of angry beauty he was used to from Lana. This was a real woman, really miserable.

“Just let me go.” She gave a long wet sniff. Her hands were shaking. “I heard what
she said about you going back to L.A. with her.”

When her voice cracked and broke on the words, he gave up on trying to be gentle and
hauled her in close, wrapping his arms tightly around her shoulders. A cold blanket
of dread settled over him.

For a moment she pulled back against his grip. In the next instant, the stiffness
and outrage melted out of her and she collapsed against his chest. Her arms hung limp
at her sides, the heavy bag hitting the floor with a plop, her face buried in his
shirt.

He had to listen closely to make out her muffled words.

“I get it, okay? You need to help her.” She wiped her face from side to side against
his chest. He could feel the dampness of her tears against his chest. “It’s kind of
sweet, even.” She hiccupped. “Sorry, I’m just stressing out about all this.”

“Baby, don’t worry, please.” He pressed his lips to her hair. She still smelled like
him. Like she belonged to him for real. And he’d give anything to stop her from hurting.
“Lana’s not going to say anything to the tabloids, I promise.”

This time her jerk backwards was strong enough to break his grasp. Her mouth fell
open, her eyes wide with shock.

“The tabloids?”

Yeah, she definitely hadn’t overheard that part.

“This would be quite the story, wouldn’t it?” She jammed a fist against her mouth
then pulled it away. The words tumbled out as she talked over her own sentences, pacing
in a tiny circle. “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. You’ll talk Lana off the ledge,
and no one will ever find out I was almost married to a bigamist. Which is
great
, because I gotta tell you, I don’t think my dignity could recover from that much
humiliation.”

And he knew right then that the fallout was going to be nuclear.

He hadn’t left her any dignity at all.

There was actual pain in his chest. Regret sat like an aching knot under his sternum
as he watched her, knowing that he finally had to tell her, and that the moment he
did, she would walk right out his door and never return.

It was over.

“Sarah.” All he could get out.

It was enough to stop her crazy pacing for a moment. She looked around as if finding
herself lost in an unfamiliar place, and then her gaze caught again on his. Her face
softened and she took half a step toward him.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Her apologies nearly undid him. “I just—I can’t deal with
this, J.D. I feel like I’ve been all over the map tonight. Emotionally, at least.
Which is crazy to begin with, because this whole thing was just a drunken accident,
right?”

She stopped before she was close enough to touch him. There were echoes of Lana in
the way she bent down and picked up her bag, except Sarah wasn’t graceful about it.
Every inch of her radiated exhaustion and confusion.

“Just, please…let me know if you have any trouble in California, okay? I’d want to
give my family the heads up if any gossip is going to hit the papers.” Her shoulders
were hunched, her head bowed. As far removed from his laughing, winking goddess in
the fire engine–red dress as he could imagine.

He felt like he’d crushed a flower underfoot.

His time was up.

“We’re not married.”

She didn’t understand him.

“I know you’re not.” She shook her head wearily. “That doesn’t mean she won’t try
to give you trouble if she decides there’s something else she
needs
from you.”

“No.” He struggled to get the words out. Guilt choked his throat. He couldn’t look
away from her.
“We’re”
he waved a hand back and forth between them, “not married.”

He got a blank look.

This was not going well.

“What do you mean?” She obviously couldn’t make the leap to understand what a complete
and utter fucking asshole stood in front of her.

“We’re not married. I lied.”

It was like he was speaking Finnish. Gibberish in, gibberish out. No comprehension.

“I don’t understand.” She wasn’t even mad at him yet. Just utterly confused and looking
to him, god, to him, for answers and a way back to sanity.

“I lied when I said we were married.” Comprehension was dawning like the opposite
of a new day on her face. He tried to keep the defensiveness out of his voice, but
was pretty sure he was fighting a losing battle. “You were so goddamn horrified when
you saw the ring.” Yup. The use of “goddamn” was a pretty good sign that his defensiveness
was a rear-guard action. The next little bit of explanation did not reflect well upon
him. As if any of it did. He still told her. “You acted like I was something you wouldn’t
bother to scrape off the bottom of your shoes, so I thought I’d let you live with
it for a little while.”

“You what?” Her voice was so low he could barely hear her. Then his earlier phrase
wormed its way to the front of her brain. “For a little while? But it’s been weeks!”
She threw both hands up in the air, palms out and facing him.
Stop.

She wasn’t beat down and confused anymore. Her eyes were locked on his with laserlike
focus and the paleness of her face was from anger.

“Explain. Now.”

Words had never been his craft.

If he could’ve handed her a picture—or maybe a dozen—to show her the way she’d looked
at him in that first, stupid moment in her hotel room in Vegas and then at every moment
since then when he’d touched her and held her and known her better than anyone he’d
ever known in his life, then maybe he could have made her understand.

J.D. knew that he’d lost her before he began. But he tried, anyway. Tried to explain
what had held him to his crazy story, what had pulled him to her despite knowing how
far across the line he’d pushed it, how terrified he’d been of telling her the truth
and losing her, losing everyone in her family, right up until the moment when Lana
had dropped her little bomb of good news.

He tried, knowing that every word was a wasted effort.

“Well, dang. I thought it was all me.” Her voice was bitter, her eyes cold. “I’ve
been twisting in the wind for weeks now, trying to figure out how I could be so in
love with you after this stupid mistake of marriage, and it turns out that the entire
time I’ve been torturing myself was for nothing. Not one minute of it was real.”

There was nothing else he could say to her. He waited for her last words before she
walked out the door.

There weren’t any.

Sarah turned her back on him and left, leaving the door wide open to the cold rain
that still fell outside. He leaned against the door after shoving it closed and punched
his fist into the steel sheet. The low thunk of his blow echoed emptily in the silent
room.

The sound of the buzzer going off over his head made him jump. He pulled on the heavy
door, heart thumping.

Please, let it be Sarah.

The long-haired teenager on his doorstep reeked of pot and was balancing a flat box
on one hand.

“I checked the address three times, dude. Please tell me you ordered a pizza.”

This wasn’t the kind of thing you could share with a brother. Not unless your intention
was to get someone kneecapped with a baseball bat.

But she’d never in her life been so glad to have sisters.

After three miserable days of curling up on the sofa in a warm blanket and watching
crappy movies with car chases and explosions and no love story for miles while eating
can after can of sour cream and onion Pringles and fending off worried phone calls
from her boss, who was convinced that she must be near death after taking sick days
for the first time ever, she gave in and called her sisters.

The humiliation of explaining exactly how closely her love life resembled a
National Enquirer
cover story was conquered by the need to vent some outrage—make that rage period—over
J.D. and his manipulative, lying ass. Since she didn’t actually want him dead, no
matter what a bastard he was, she kept her brother in the dark.

Like, spelunking a mile underground and your headlamp burns out dark.

But her sisters. Her sisters were exactly what she needed. Smart, tough, funny women
who were totally on her side, and yet could be trusted not to jump on the Violence
Express speeding straight to Beat Up My Boyfriend City.

Maxie had been her first call, on the theory that her married sisters would be incapable
of keeping a secret like this from their husbands. And sooner or later one of the
guys would tell Tyler, if only to beef up their vigilante party when they set out
to murder J.D.

Her baby sister was currently rummaging through her closet, hangers rattling, random
winter scarves and hats bouncing out onto the hardwood floor behind her.