Game On (25 page)

“How do you know all this? And why does she think you can help her?”

“Because, darling, the fashion world is very small, and as for the why…who do you think gave Brastow that huge amount of press?”

“I’m so sorry for dragging you into this.” Clara sank onto the disgusting filthy floor, shaking with anger at Valentina, vexed with her selfish self for having got her into this pickle and weak-kneed at the sheer relief of Lydia’s offer. “Thank you, Lyds, thank you, thank you, thank you for doing this. But what’s to stop her from telling Luc the minute she leaves Brastow’s office?”

“Hmm…yes. Good point. We’ll stall her a bit. You only need a couple of weeks, correct?”

Clara swallowed the stomach acid that crept up her esophagus before answering, “Yes.”

Clara kept her eyes on the ice. “She’ll do it. She’ll call Colin in the morning and set something up and let you know the time and place.”

“I knew we’d come to an amenable agreement,” Valentina said. She sounded so smug, Clara wanted to smack her. “I would have hated to tell Bartel about your
danno cerebrale
. Or maybe it’s Luc finding out that has you more worried?”

Clara refused to answer or even look at her. She focused on the game and seethed. She wondered how good the odds were that a flying puck would land between Val’s eyes. That would be so sweet to witness. It’d knock her into next week—or, better, into another dimension.

“You’re nothing like I expected, nothing as I pictured,” Val said.

“Really.” Clara faced her nemesis. “What were you expecting? A gaping head wound?”

“No,” she said, zeroing in on the greasy mustard stain before giving Clara a bemused smile. “You’re just not the type Luc usually goes for.”

Clara opened her mouth to speak, to defend herself, but nothing she could say would make her feel less like a sloppy, frumpy-troll.

“Don’t bother denying it,” she said, misunderstanding Clara’s inability to form a sentence. “I know you’re sleeping together.”

Clara wished she could channel Lydia’s acerbic tongue. Oh, eventually she’d think up a zinger, but the timing would be well off.

“Aren’t you going to ask?” Val dug.

“Ask
what?
” Clara said, shrugging into her coat. Third period be damned. She was leaving this nightmare.

“How well Luc and I got along while you were denying your brain damage to Charlie.”

“I don’t have to ask. I know nothing happened.”

“Oh, you’re very confident, sweetie,” she laughed as Clara stood to leave. “Come on, don’t go. I’m just having fun with you. I don’t mean you any harm, Clara Bean. I just want what I deserve.”

Clara dropped back into her seat, gobsmacked by this woman’s unmitigated gall. “What you deserve? Are you kidding me?”

“Think what you want, but I’m not pure evil, you know. I just want to prove to Kingsley that he made the right decision.”

“But he didn’t.”

“Then I’ll prove you both wrong,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Or die trying, I hope,” Clara muttered.

Val went on as if she hadn’t heard. “I know what good taste is, what constitutes excellent fashion. I have an eye for clothes. Since I was a kid, pouring over
Vogue
and
Glamour
, I’ve wanted to be in the fashion world.”

“And that’s a noble ambition,” Clara replied, her tone suitably icy. “But you don’t get something just because you want it. You have to work for it.”

“I’ve been on the pageant circuit since I was four years old. I
have
worked for it, and I’m
still
working for it.”

“No, no you’re not. You’re using people to get ahead.”

She smirked in such a way, Clara cringed. She knew what was coming. “Are you suggesting I do what your friend did and make a sex tape? ‘Inside True Love’ was quite the work of cinematic art, don’t you think?”

“That is so offside.” Clara’s blood pressure spiked. At the same time, she felt sorry for Valentina. It was clear that she’d never understand or achieve success. She’d always be striving, never satisfied until she stole somebody else’s cookie. “Lydia has worked damn hard to re-establish contacts in this business and she was coming from a place where no one wanted to touch her. She didn’t start as EuroNow’s fashion editor. She worked her way up, reconnected with photographers she knew, searched out new, up-and-coming designers, like your
friend,
Colin Brastow. She spent years cultivating friendships with people in the right places. That’s why she has carte blanche access to every design house in Europe, not because she was the accidental star of a sex tape and certainly not because she slept with the head of a media corporation.”

“We all have our paths to follow,” Val said and shrugged. “And look where Lydia’s hard work got her.
Nowhere
.”

Chapter 27

O
nce in her room, Clara
peeled off her shirt and ran it under a stream of cold water, rubbing at the greasy mustard stain with a teensy bar of French milled soap. There was no hope, but she applied more pressure, scrubbed harder, and growled in frustration at the reflection in the mirror.

Luc had been with her, that dark-souled beauty. It hurt to imagine how amazing they must have looked together. Valentina might have an ugly interior, but Clara saw how others around them couldn’t shake their stares from her.

Meanwhile, the woman staring back at her in the stained camisole with uncombed hair, too much eyeliner, and a ghostly pale complexion, was as ugly on the inside as on the outside. Her reflection judged her, condemned her, poked holes at her rice paper façade until her heart bled. You’re a selfish little girl posing as an average writer, it said, a deceitful washed-up restaurant critic, and a pathetic excuse of a friend.

Tears pricked, then burned as they ran down her cheeks, bleeding through her eye makeup. Looking down at the dull yellow stain on an otherwise lovely blouse, she realized she wasn’t even a very good laundress. She scrubbed harder, refusing to let the mustard stain win, until her shaking hands grew numb under the cold water.

She thought she was hallucinating when a blurred image of Luc appeared over her shoulder. Damn connected rooms.

“Clara?”

No, no. Not now, not here, not when the bogeymen were clawing at her from every corner, waiting for her to fall off the tightrope.

She bit the inside of her cheek, but the self-induced pain came too late for her to control her emotions and a squelchy, undignified sob wrenched through.

“Clara, what’s wrong?” Luc took her by the shoulders and turned her around. “Are you hurt?” He turned off the tap and looked her over. “Has something happened?”

Clara pulled away and ducked out of the bathroom. There was too much light. She felt too exposed, too confined, too ugly, too unworthy, too selfish.

She sank onto the edge of the bed and brought her knees up. It was better in the dark, away from the image in the mirror. The only light came from the other side of the connecting door.

She watched his silhouette approach and wished he’d go away, leave her to her pity party. He didn’t. He sat next to her and put a hand on her back, making her flinch. She wasn’t worthy of his care, of his comfort.

“Why are you limping?” she whispered.

“I overdid the athletics the last couple days. And I’ve been sitting for the past few hours, so it’s stiff.”

“Oh.”

“Why are you crying?” he asked. “Couldn’t be ‘cause the Islanders lost.”

“They lost?” she sniffed. “But they were winning three-two when I left.”

“The Leafs tied it up at the end of the third. It went into overtime, then a shootout. You missed the best part.”

“Oh.”

“What happened to your shirt?”

“Mustard.”

“Is that why you’re upset?”

Unable to hold back, she launched herself into his arms and buried her face against his neck. She couldn’t bear for Luc to see her like this, but she couldn’t bear to let him go, either. His strength buoyed her and she needed that, needed him.

She cried for herself, because that is what selfish girls did: feel sorry for themselves and wallow in the messes of their own creation. She cried because no matter how hard she wished or prayed, she couldn’t change the past. Not his, not her own. Then she cried because she couldn’t smell his flesh, the scent of his hair, his very essence, and it was so unfair to be cut off from him, like she could never really have him all. Like she didn’t deserve to have him all.

“Shhh,” he crooned. “Whatever happened, I’ll fix it, I promise.”

She sobbed harder. Clung harder. Wished harder.

Luc was such a good man, so undeserving of a lying, deceitful, petty girl who put her own damn career before everything and everybody. She used Lydia, she used all her friends—those poor unknowing companions she’d invited along to dinner. They thought her so generous to include them on her expense account, but they were wrong. She used them, for their taste and smell and perfect descriptions. She even used her poor dog. And now she was using Luc.

How could he ever love such a woman? How could he forgive such a self-serving leech?

Unknowing and oblivious to her black aura, Luc stroked her hair, rubbed her back in slow, gentle circles and spoke words she didn’t understand. French words. Soothing words.

It felt like ages before the tears stopped, before they were replaced by inelegant little hiccoughs. But still, Luc held her, smoothed her hair from her cheek, kissed her forehead.

“I…I…I…n-need,” she stuttered. “I need…a…a…”

“You need a—? What do you need, love? Anything. Just ask. I’ll bring you the moon if that’s what will make you happy.”

“A ti-ti-tissue.”

She felt his chest rumble with laughter, the kind that comes after an especially tense moment.

“I’ll be right back. Will you be okay if I let you go?”

Clara nodded against his neck but didn’t let go. He had to reach round and unlock her trembling arms from their grasp.

“Shall I turn the light on so you won’t be alone in the dark?”

“N-no.” If he caught a glimpse of her red, blotched face, swollen eyes, and runny nose in full candescence, it’d be him doing the sobbing.

She felt cold and alone in the ten seconds it took him to retrieve a box of tissues from the bathroom so she laid down, curled into a ball in the spot he’d vacated, and absorbed his warmth. She buried her face in his pillow and inhaled, but there was nothing, no scent of him, no scent of anything. And she realized that in the end, when the blog tour was over, when she had to run away from America and her job, that’s all she’d have left of Luc. Nothing.

Clara hugged a pillow to her chest as a fresh wave of tears came, but it was a poor substitute.

“Here you are, love.” Luc sat on the edge of the bed and pressed a fistful of tissues into her palm. He waited until she’d mopped her face before climbing into bed behind her, spoon-fashion, and wrapped his arm around her middle.

“Do you want to talk?”

“Not yet,” she sniffed.

“Just tell me nobody hurt you.”

A laugh-sob escaped her throat. The irony was ridiculous. He was the one limping, he was the one who’d been attacked,
shot
, and he was worried about her, the selfish little girl who never stopped to consider who
she
was hurting. “No, I’m…I’m fine.”

Clara didn’t realize how tense he was until she felt his muscles relax against her. She hugged his arm, threaded her fingers through his, and lay in a pool of quiet warmth until she found the strength to speak.

“Luc?”

“Hmm?”

She was desperate to tell him, but when she opened her mouth, she couldn’t. There was an elephant on her chest, compressing her heart, her lungs, her capacity to speak, to move.

“Did you fall asleep on me?”

Clara shook her head, unsure how to go on. She had to make a choice. Trust him with her secret and jeopardize their temporary relationship or toss her personal truths into the deepest, darkest corners of her mind and get on with it.

“You can tell me anything. You know that, don’t you? Even if…even if it’s something I’ve done. Or not done. I know I can be an ass sometimes, but I’d never forgive myself if I did something to hurt you.”

Did she really want to do this? Reveal herself, her fraud? Be unselfish? She had no choice. She couldn’t continue deceiving him. If he walked away, he walked away, but waiting would only make it worse. She was glad he couldn’t see her face. She couldn’t tell him if she had to see his eyes, if he looked at her with judgement, with condemnation. If Charlie’s disappointment in her made her want to vomit, the disappointment in Luc’s face might very well kill her.

“Last spring, I was on assignment in Rome,” she began. Her breath stuttered as she inhaled. “I met a man, a photographer, named Franco.”

She felt him tense behind her when she said the other man’s name but he didn’t interrupt. God, she really didn’t deserve him. Clara swallowed the lump in her throat and continued.

“He was working for a company that made tourist guidebooks and he wanted me on a Vespa, those cute little scooters you see everywhere in Europe. He instructed me to drive toward him just fast enough for the wind to catch my hair. It was longer then and…and I was stupid and vain enough to forego the helmet. I was so busy smiling for Franco that I didn’t see the gelato cart. I swerved, but lost control.”