Catch a Falling Star (Second Chances Book 3) (14 page)

At least Yvonne had been right about one crucially important thing.

“I never did understand Broadway,” Simon commented as he, Ben, and Spence helped themselves to drinks from the bar to one side of the dining room. Drinks being soda this time. Ben had had enough for a few weeks, after the debacle that landed him in Maine in the first place. Simon didn’t drink since rehab. Spence abstained for his friends’ sakes, because that’s the kind of guy Spencer Ellis was. “The stage has always seemed like much ado about nothing to me.”

“Shakespeare jokes, cute,” Ben drawled.

“Leave it to the only Brit in the room to bring up Shakespeare when talk turns to theater,” Spence added. “What about O’Neil? What about Miller?”

“What about forgetting theater altogether to concentrate on more important things?” Simon bandied back. He leaned against the bar and grinned like the fool he was at Jenny and their son, Daniel.

“It’s a prestige thing. That’s the appeal of Broadway,” Ben answered on behalf of his baby, the stage. But a niggling part of him under all that greasepaint and limelight whispered that Simon might have had a point. “Too many things can be faked or glossed over on film or tape. On the stage, you have to not only know your shit, but have complete and utter command of it.”

Simon hummed, lost in watching the animated way Jenny talked to Jo. Come to think of it, Jo had a certain glow about her too. She took to Yvonne like peanut butter to jelly, and Tasha and Jenny had drawn her into their circle instantly. Ben furrowed his brow for the half second it took for him to consider whether Jo had any friends of her own. Surely she would have mentioned them by now.

Then again, he wasn’t exactly the bedrock of her life.

He stood straighter, rubbing absently at the phantom spot above his heart where those sorts of thoughts stung every time he had them.
Don’t be a fool, Benjamin
.

“It seems to me like right now, the problem is that everyone on Broadway thinks that you
do
know your shit,” Spencer said, looping the conversation around to where they’d started. “Theirs too.”

Ben swallowed the acid taste that came to his mouth. It was a pitiful thing to realize how hard of a blow it would be to lose the friendship of these two men if the Pollard twins’ little power trip destroyed
everything
.

“I had nothing to do with any of it,” he growled, swigging his soda and half wishing it were scotch. “But I’m pretty sure I know who’s behind it, and since they’re after me for something else….”

Spence and Simon both stared at him, one on either side. “What do they want?” Simon asked.

Ben hesitated. It hadn’t dawned on him that he could talk about this with anyone. He wasn’t the talking about it sort. “Something I’m not willing to give them,” he answered, taking a long drink as soon as the words were out.

Spence and Simon exchanged a look. Ben waited, muscles aching, for them to push for more, to dig in claws that would rip his flesh from the bones and expose every rotten thing he’d ever done.

“Did you hear that this joker knocked Jenny up again?” Spence hooked a thumb at Simon.

Ben started, not because a friend was pregnant, but because two friends apparently had no further interest in the end of his life as he knew it. Conversation over. Of all things, that bolstered his confidence. “Really?” He saluted Simon with his glass.

Simon nodded in deference, raising a hand. “We’re not telling people yet. Wouldn’t want the press to get hold of it. You’ve seen how they are with Spence and Tasha’s little tyke.”

“Hazel is beautiful.” Ben smiled across to where Tasha had just handed the infant girl over to Jo’s eager arms. The sight did something to his insides that he wasn’t sure he was ready to face yet. What was wrong with him? A few days in Maine, and he’d lost complete track of who he was.

As if catching on to something, Simon asked, “So who exactly is your friend, Jo? How come we’ve never heard of her before when she lives so close to Twin Pines?”

She’s just a friend. We met by chance, it’s nothing serious. I haven’t mentioned her before
? None of the lies felt right.

“It’s a long story,” he said instead, then cleared his throat.

It might not have been coincidence that at that moment, Nick glanced up at him from the center of the long dining room table, where he was chatting up Adelaide. Jo’s brother had come home from his job to find a house crowded with people. He reacted like any good parent would, blaming Ben for pushing Jo into something he believed she never would have endorsed on her own. The only thing that had saved everyone from being kicked out on the snowy curb was Ben’s quick thinking in introducing Nick to Adelaide Townsend. Unfair though it was, nothing trumped filial protectiveness like introducing a red-blooded man to a gorgeous blond movie star. Even now, Nick looked like he wasn’t sure whether to growl at Ben or smack a big wet kiss on him.

“Hey, Charles.”

Spence’s greeting snapped Ben out of his thoughts. He stood taller and turned his attention to gray-haired Charles Rigley as he came over to join them. Even at an informal gathering, Charles wore a tailored suit. At least he’d set the jacket aside when the food arrived.

“Ben. How are you holding out?” Charles picked up an open bottle of wine from the bar behind them and poured himself a glass.

“As well as could be expected,” Ben answered with a tight grin.

Charles nodded. The business nod. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

This was it. The moment the second shoe dropped, the moment he lost television on top of Broadway. Ben glanced across the table to Jo. She seemed so happy with tiny Hazel in her arms. It was a blessing that she didn’t look up at him. He wanted her to be happy, even if he was about to walk the plank.

“I don’t think Jo would mind if we talked in the library.”

“Good.” Charles nodded, then gestured with his free hand for Ben to come with him.

Ben glanced to Spence and Simon with a look that said it was nice knowing them. Spence thumped his back as he left.

Walking down the hall to the library was oddly reminiscent of the trip to the principal’s office when Ben was a boy. When Charles closed the library door, giving them privacy, he experienced the same sense of doom.

“All I want to know is if you’re responsible for the rumors I’m hearing in New York.” Charles cut straight to the chase the second the door tapped shut.

Ben flinched. “‘Responsible’ is an all-encompassing word.”

Charles smiled. It wasn’t reassuring. “You’re not a bullshitter, Ben. Don’t act like one because you’re trying to hide something.”

“I’m not.” Ben grew as serious as a monument.

“Then tell me what’s really going on, because the last thing I want is for my show to be dragged into disrepute because of a team member.”

Every nerve in Ben’s body rebelled at Charles’s tone of voice.
This
was why he’d fought his way to the top. He wasn’t some underling who could be pushed around by the big boys. He’d won awards, gained accolades, and been celebrated all over the entertainment industry. The way Charles spoke to him now was everything he had to lose and then some.

He wasn’t going to bend over and take it.

“I have not and never will sell anyone out, Charles.” He squared his shoulders and crossed his arms, meeting the man’s eyes and holding them. He was a power-player too, dammit. “Yes, I have had a lot of people tell me a lot of things over the years, sometimes in intimate situations. None of that has found its way into public knowledge because of me.” That half of his disgrace was true, at least.

“Then who?”

Ben hesitated. His gut reaction was to throw Jett and Ashton into the fire and watch them burn. But there was a saying about burning things, particularly bridges. He could hate it all he wanted, but the Pollard twins still had the money and pull that he needed if he wanted his life back.

Damn the both of them to hell.

“I know who is behind it, but until they tip their hand, I want to try to handle things myself.”

He held his breath, waiting to see how Charles would take the answer. The man was as cold as stone when he didn’t want anyone to see what he was thinking. Try as he did, Ben didn’t have a clue which way this would turn out.

When Charles raised a hand and thumped his shoulder, his hard expression softening, Ben nearly buckled with relief. “I’ve known you for more than two years now, Ben. Yvonne trusts you. Spence vouches for you. Simon says you’re all right. If you tell me you can handle this, then I believe you.”

“Thanks.” He’d never managed to sound more certain when, in fact, he was certain of nothing in his life.

Except Jo. He was certain that she would stick by him when everything else crumbled.

“
Second Chances
means a lot to me,” he added. “I’m not going to lie. Right now it’s all I have going for me. No matter what happens in New York, I know where my loyalties lie.”

He could have cringed hearing those words coming out of his mouth. Forget rumors of infidelity or financial collapse, if the Broadway purists heard him say his loyalty was with the small screen instead of the stage, they’d laugh him out of town.

Only, he was beginning to have the uncomfortable feeling that he wasn’t lying or making things up. The people out in Jo’s dining room, Jo herself, were the ones who had been loyal to him. And Ben didn’t take loyalty lightly.

“Let’s get back in there.” Charles headed for the door. “I still haven’t been properly introduced to your new girlfriend.”

Ben stumbled. “She’s not really my girlfriend.”

“No? Why not?”

A thousand answers to the question weighed on Ben’s shoulders. Because he didn’t want to wreck her life. Because she deserved much better than him. Because he would much rather have her be something far closer than a mere girlfriend.

“The question hasn’t come up,” he fumbled, following Charles into the hall.

“What a shame.” Charles grinned. “I hear she’s a pretty good writer. Plus this house is fantastic.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Ben sighed, rubbing his face as Charles walked on.

Chapter Eleven

Five hours ago, if someone had snuck up to Jo and told her that they were going to pack her house full of people she didn’t know, blowing any chance of getting work done out of the water, and leaving her washing half the dishes in the house the old fashioned way, she would not only not have believed them, she would have freaked out.

But there she stood, up to her forearms in sudsy water at the kitchen sink, a high-powered talent agent drying beside her, and she was smiling from ear to ear. Because the evening had turned out to be all sorts of fun.

“Your brother, Nick, is quite a hunk.” Yvonne tossed her a sideways look as she stacked another plate in the cupboard. “I like boys with long hair.”

Jo burst into giggles, her face flushing beet red. “He’s my brother. I’ll admit that he’s handsome, but he’s not my type.”

“I should hope not,” Yvonne drawled. “We all have our limits.”

“Besides.” Jo fished around in the bottom of the sink for stray pieces of silverware. “I like my men clean-cut and well-groomed.”

Yvonne answered with a hum. She refrained from saying more as Ben walked back into the room, his arms full of soda and wine bottles…his short hair perfectly coifed.

“Where do you want these?” he asked.

“In the pantry,” Jo answered, at the same time as Yvonne said, “Put them on the table.”

Jo and Yvonne exchanged surprised looks, before Yvonne’s expression softened. “Your house, your rules.”

“I’ll put them in the pantry.” Ben flashed Jo a knowing look, the smile lines around his eyes back in full force, then crossed behind them to the pantry.

Yvonne watched him until he disappeared around the corner. “It looks like someone is having a nice vacation.”

Jo hummed. Seeing Ben at home in her house was like being smothered by playful kittens—awesome, but still smothering. He moved with a languid grace when he was relaxed—the kind of body language that made her want to rip his clothes off and reenact every love scene she’d ever written. Too bad doing that would keep her from writing another love scene ever again.

“So how exactly did the two of you meet?” Yvonne asked when Ben strode back into the room.

“Coffee shop,” both Ben and Jo answered at the same time.

Their eyes met at the simultaneous answer, and they burst into tandem chuckles.

“I see.” Yvonne arched one carefully painted eyebrow.

Ben headed back into the dining room to finish helping Nick set things back in order.

“I accidentally sat at his reserved table in the coffee shop in his building,” Jo explained as she scrubbed the last of the silverware. “We got to talking, and the rest is history.” She handed the forks over to Yvonne, then pulled the plug in the sink, blushing, eyes averted.

“That doesn’t look like history to me.” Yvonne dried and polished the silverware as if it were her mission in life. “That looks very much like the present.”

Prickles of anxiety broke out along Jo’s skin. She hid them by rinsing out the sink. “I don’t know what it is. I like Ben. He’s smart and sexy and funny. He kind of makes me feel like I’ve been missing something in my life.”

Her throat tightened at the admission. Something told her Yvonne wasn’t the kind of person she should go saying those things to. Tasha Ellis and Jenny Mercer, yes. They’d been the best part of the night—fast friends in the making. But Yvonne was more inquisitor than friend.

“Hmm.” Yvonne eyed Ben as he came back into the kitchen with another load of drinks. “Funny, if you were to ask me, I’d say all those things mean Ben has been acting out of character.”

“Which character would that be?” Ben called from the pantry. “The one who no one likes at the moment?”

“Exactly,” Yvonne replied.

Jo shook her head, feeling like she’d walked in on a conversation that had been going on for years. As much as she liked Yvonne and—well, she wasn’t ready to put a label on how she felt about Ben—she had to remind herself that they’d known each other for far longer than she’d known either of them.

“You were the one who told me to take a vacation,” Ben went on as he crossed back to the dining room. “I’m still trying to decide if you were right. Blissful though Maine has made me—” The sarcasm in his voice didn’t match the spark in his eyes. “—somewhere right now in New York, that character that you say I’m acting out of is being assassinated.” He disappeared into the dining room before Jo could figure out how he felt about that.

Yvonne wasn’t so cagey. “Do you really care?”

“Of course I care,” he replied from the other room.

“So what are you doing to fix things?” Such a serious question, and yet Yvonne asked it while drying off a serving platter.

“I’ve made some phone calls,” Ben answered, still out of sight.

“How did that work out for you?”

No answer.

“About what I expected,” Yvonne murmured.

Jo chewed her lip. “How bad is all that stuff that was in the news anyhow?” she asked, hoping Ben couldn’t hear.

Yvonne peeked at her, then kept working. “It’s bad. Our boy Benny made the wrong enemies. If I knew who they were, then I’d jump into the fray and help him.”

“Would you?”

“You better believe it, honey.”

Jo grinned. She knew there was a reason she liked this woman. “Do you think he did all those things they’re accusing him of?”

Yvonne’s power-grin tightened. “How much do you know about him?”

Jo swallowed. Every rumor Diane had hinted at and every article she’d read came back on her. It would have been fine, except they brought the undeniable knowledge that she was a fool with them.

“I’ve read the articles. My agent, Diane, called him a man-whore.”

Yvonne snorted. “Ever notice how the term ‘whore’ gets tossed around whenever people want to stick it to someone who’s sex life they’re jealous of?”

Jo paused her work and pivoted to Yvonne. “So he
is
a man-whore?”

Yvonne arched a brow. “Jealous?”

A beat passed, and Jo went back to work. Was she? Being jealous of everything someone did before you met them was about as pointless as sunscreen in a submarine, but it was also one of those weird paradoxes of human nature.

When she didn’t answer, Yvonne, asked, “So, you two are serious?”

Jo shook her head. “We’ve known each other for less than a week. I don’t have time for anything serious. I have a book to write, a house to take care of.” A life to keep together.

“Hmm. That was a fast answer.”

Jo’s face flushed. She was spared having to argue that she did not have feelings for Ben—a total lie—as Ben walked back into the room with the last of the soda bottles. “The dining room is back to normal. Nick says to tell you he’s going to bed.”

“Good night, Nick,” Jo called into the hall.

“’Night, Jo,” his reply came from the stairs.

Jo finished with the sink, then searched for a dry towel for her hands. She kept one eye on Ben as he strode to the pantry. He’d changed into his own clothes, which included jeans tight enough to show off his assets. Here she’d just finished a gigantic dinner, and she was hungry already.

“Careful, honey. You’ll get drool all over the nice, clean dishes.” Yvonne winked.

“I was not drooling.” Much.

Yvonne chuckled. “No harm in it. Anyone with eyes would drool at the sight of him. Ben’s always had sex appeal. If you ask me, that’s half his problem.”

Interesting. “Oh?”

“I’ve been in this business long enough to see that the people who ooze honey tend not to see how many flies they’ve attracted until they’re covered in them.”

“That’s an…interesting metaphor.”

“You’re a writer. I thought you’d appreciate it.” Yvonne grinned. She nodded to the pantry, keeping her voice low. “Our boy Ben may not be the villain everyone says he is, but he did dig himself a hole.”

“How do you mean?”

“Everyone wanted to be his friend once his star shot into the sky, but he wasn’t as careful as I wish he would have been about picking which of those friends to stick with.”

Ben walked back into the kitchen. “You’re talking about me, I know it.”

“Of course we are, sweetheart,” Yvonne said without missing a beat.

“What were you saying?” He attempted to coax an answer from her.

Jo blinked, startled that she could see exactly what Yvonne was talking about. The spark in his eyes, the way he leaned toward her, even the way his shoulders were angled. He was trying to charm Yvonne into getting what he wanted.

So what did he want from
her
? And why was she so eager to give it to him?

“We were wondering what Charles said to you,” Yvonne went on, smooth as glass.

Ben’s charming veneer dropped. He was instantly someone else. Jo blinked again. Everyone played parts once in a while, but this was uncanny. At least she was learning how to see Ben’s different masks now.

“Nothing much,” he answered, honest—nervous, even. “He wanted to know if the rumors were true and if I was going to bring shame to the
Second Chances
family.”

Yvonne blew out a breath. “I could have told him you wouldn’t do that.”

“You could have?”

Yep. There was a light of genuine affection in Ben’s eyes at Yvonne's comment. The friendship between the two of them went beyond whatever mistakes Yvonne had implied he’d made in the past. A fond grin pulled at the corner of Jo’s mouth. Seems like her instinct to trust the woman was right.

“Honey, you and I both know that when it comes to your real friends,” she sent a knowing look Jo’s way, “you’re wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

“Or a fly?” Jo suggested, lips twitching.

Yvonne broke into a smile so wide that Ben looked genuinely worried.

“No, the flies he can hurt all he wants,” Yvonne answered.

Jo chuckled. Man, it felt good to be on the inside of this tight circle.

“Which brings up another issue.” Yvonne’s smile was gone. She folded the towel she’d been drying with and faced Ben fully. “You told Charles that you would never do anything to put
Second Chances
in jeopardy, I assume.”

“I did.” Ben nodded slowly.

Yvonne shrugged. “There’s your answer to everything, sweetheart. You have a perfectly good basket in front of you to put all your eggs into. Let Broadway do what it wants to do for now. Throw all of your effort into
Second Chances
. Screw them.”

Not only did Ben not jump on board with Yvonne’s suggestion, his posture shifted to something downright hostile. “I spent more than twenty years working to get to where I was on Broadway. I’m not going to shrug it all off now.”

Instead of facing his hostility, Yvonne turned to Jo. “What do you think?”

“Me?” Jo’s brow rose. A Hollywood talent agent was asking for her opinion on the course of someone’s career.

“Yes, you.” Yvonne nodded. “It’s always good to get an outsider’s opinion on this crazy world we sacrifice our souls to.”

Jo bit her lip and studied Ben. Damn, he was hot. But hadn’t Yvonne just told her that that was the thing that had landed Ben in so much trouble in the first place? It was like deconstructing a character in a book who wasn’t quite falling into place. What was this man, aside from a smoking body that knew exactly what it was doing between the sheets?

“Well, he is smart,” she answered both herself and Yvonne aloud.

Ben’s wry grin was both flattered and wounded. “Thank you for that assessment.”

“No, I mean it,” Jo assured him, holding out her hands. “You have to be smart to make it in any sort of creative business. Lord knows I know that.”

“You do?” Yvonne asked.

Jo shrugged. “It’s the same thing with writing. Talent is one thing, but the truly successful authors also have business savvy, an adventurous spirit.” Which was probably why she was struggling to keep her head above water now.

What a crappy thought.

“So, you think I should put all my effort into
Second Chances
too.” Ben saved her from the downward spiral her thoughts were pushing her toward.

“Well, yeah.” She held her hands out in a gesture of surrender. “I met all your friends from the show tonight. They’re nice. They actually seem to care about you. I can’t say the same for these people down in New York. And I know you worked hard to get to the place you are on Broadway and that that was your dream,” she cut him off before he could speak over her. “But sometimes we need to build new dreams. My agent has been telling me the same thing.”

He closed his half-opened mouth, then he lowered his head. His arms were still crossed in front of him, but all of a sudden, it looked like he was hugging himself for comfort. Good Lord, she’d broken him. That’s not what she’d been trying to do.

“I don’t mean that you should give up on Broadway entirely.” She stepped forward, reaching for his arm and squeezing it, then shifting to lean against the table with him. “But Yvonne has a point. Do what’s working now, and maybe later Broadway will come to its senses and come after you.”