Hollywood Nights (4 page)

“Maybe it’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be,” I said, trying my best to remember what had happened at the Rave Crave party. Goddamn it.

“Good grief. You don’t get it, do you? This is more than drinking we’re taking about. These are photos of you doing drugs.
Drugs.
”

“Come on. Drugs?”

“This won’t play well in the heartland,” Kenneth said. “It won’t play well here, either. In fact, it won’t play well anywhere. Did you have to go this far? MDMA? Come on, man.”

“I bet those pictures were Photoshopped.” But I honestly couldn’t recall much about that night beyond the bottle service. Maybe I had done Molly.

Shit.

“It could have been worse,” I said. “Cocaine. Crack. Meth? At least it wasn’t any of those.”

“I better not ever hear it is. No one wants another Robert Downey Jr. situation.” Kenneth sighed. “Least of all me.”

“I’m not like him,” I said, but I didn’t feel so convinced anymore.

“And of course you have to go and do this now. We were doing so well,” Kenneth said. “They were going to do an article on you in
Details
next month. Something nice. Fluffy. Positive. But this—this is the latest in the narrative, Tanner. People think you’re a drunk with no future. They already say you’re nothing but an alcoholic mess. Washed up. Distracted. A liability. Now they’ll start wondering if you’re a druggie. I told you what I—”

“I know,” I said. “I haven’t forgotten what you told me that producer said at the party you were at last week. I get it.”

“Do you? If you become too much of an insurance risk—”

“My career is over. They won’t book me for movies or anything else. I won’t get any work.”

“And it could go on for years, Tanner. Years.”

“I know.” I sighed. “I know.”

“I—
we
—haven’t worked this hard to throw it all away. I get you’ve been going through a tough time ever since Lana left, but don’t make me think I’ve made a mistake here.”

Maybe Kenneth wasn’t wrong, and as his words sank in, neither of us said anything for a moment. James turned the car onto Mulholland Drive, and my stomach tied into a deep knot.

“You need to figure something out,” Kenneth finally said. “You can’t go on like this, Tanner.”

He hung up the phone, and silence filled the car. James didn’t say anything for a few blocks, and I didn’t either. Instead, I focused on that night at Bungalow 23. It was still a blur, just like the night before. Two nights of partying this week, but this morning, I knew I’d been lucky. I might have had a monster hangover, but waking up in Miss No Name’s apartment hadn’t been the worst thing to happen to me during the last hellish year.

Not even close.

James stopped the Mercedes at a red light. When I glanced out the back passenger window, my gaze locked with a haggard, weather-beaten man standing at the corner of Santa Monica and Beverly Glen. He held a cardboard sign, and deep track marks from life on the edge of society crisscrossed his face. I’d seen this man dozens of times before and always in the same spot, but I’d never
looked
at him until that morning.

“Pull over,” I said to James. “Now.”

He maneuvered the car out of traffic and I unrolled the passenger window. “Come here,” I said, already shifting around in the seat for my wallet. The man with the sign walked over to the car. “Take it.” I handed him three twenty-dollar bills—all of the cash remaining in my billfold from the previous night’s debauchery.

The man snatched the money from my hand. When he looked down at the amount, his dry, chapped mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”

“You need it more than me.” I waved a hand at James. “Let’s go.”

James nodded and pulled the car back into traffic before the man had time to say much more. For the rest of that drive, I didn’t stop thinking about the man. What had made him homeless? Had he come here dreaming of a better life, like me, only to have Hollywood spit him out like gristle?

A small part of me realized something. If things didn’t change, I might wind up the same way.

F
or a while, I thought about Tanner a lot. I couldn’t stop reflecting on the horrible way he’d treated me after I went out of my way to help him. How many other people had he done that to in life? What an ungrateful dick. If being famous meant behaving like that, well… if I ever saw him again, he’d get a piece of my mind, and fast. That I vowed.

I got my chance on a random Sunday a few weeks later, and once again before three in the morning.

I stumbled out of Twisted after another long night of fighting the groping and grabbing from drunken men. My new black high heels hadn’t been such a great purchase after all, and my feet already had broken blisters. I needed a bath, some red wine, and a book.

Instead, I got Tanner.

He stood beside my car, waiting. At first, I didn’t believe it was him, but he didn’t move, and when I got closer, a huge grin decorated his face. “I’m not drunk tonight. So you don’t have to worry.”

“Nice to see you, too,” I said.

He cleared his throat. “Excuse me. Good evening. I hope you’re doing well. And no, I’m not drunk right now.”

“Good. Now, what the heck are you doing here?”

“I thought you’d never come out of the bar,” he said. “I’ve been waiting out here for a while.”

“What? Why? Craving’s not open on Sundays.”

“I didn’t come here for Craving. Or Twisted. I came here for you.”

“You did?” I cocked my head as I looked closer at him. Dark jeans. Black shoes. Dark green military jacket. Blue knit shirt. A light spray of dark brown stubble on his face. Sharp blue eyes.

I won’t let his looks sway me. I won’t let his looks sway me. . .

“If this is about the other night, you made your point pretty clear.” I tightened my grip on my keys. “So you can go home. Don’t worry about me. If I wanted to sell my story to the tabloids, I would’ve done that by now.”

A smiled pulled at his lips. “I wonder how much money you would’ve made.”

“Really? Is this why you came here?”

Whatever he had to say, he needed to say it fast. I didn’t have much patience for this guy, no matter how famous he might be.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I owe you an apology for being such an asshole.”

“Well, that’s what you were. A total asshole.” I thought about it. “Scratch that. An asshole covered in cheese and deep-fried.”

He laughed. “That the best you can do?”

I shrugged. “I can think of a few other choice words.”

“I deserve it.” He shoved both his hands in the front pockets of his pants. “I shouldn’t have taken whatever was going on with me out on someone like you.”

I bristled. “Someone like me? What does that mean, ‘someone like me’? Just because I work at a strip club and you’re a movie star—”

Tanner took a hand out of his pocket and held it up to stop me from speaking. “I mean—okay, came out wrong. What I meant is, I shouldn’t have taken whatever’s going on with me out on you. Out on anyone.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.” My eyes narrowed. “You think you’re better than other people, don’t you?”

“No—yes. I don’t know. I have a tendency say things the wrong way. Offend people when I don’t mean to. Bad habit.”

“Bad habits can be broken.” I bounced back and forth on my feet. God, they felt like they had ten thousand needles in them. I wanted to sit down, and the driver’s seat of my car was right behind him, like a promised land I couldn’t get to fast enough.

So close. So close. So close…

“Don’t worry about it, okay?” I moved closer to my car, hoping he’d get the hint, step out of my way, and let me get inside. This conversation didn’t have to go on any longer. He’d made his point. “Apology accepted.”

Tanner grabbed my shoulder and turned me toward him. His eyes locked with mine. “No, that’s not enough. I fucked up the other night. Let me make it up to you.”

“You don’t need to make up anything.”

“Yes, I do.” His eyes searched my face. “Please, let me. Come over to my place for dinner. I need to talk to you about something, but I don’t want to do it here.”

“Dinner? Are you kidding? You don’t even know my name.”

“Tell it to me, then.”

I hesitated before I held out my hand. “I’m Brynn. Brynn Price.”

He shook it, his gaze still on me, and his eyes penetrating mine. God, they were beautiful. Striking. I had to admit. The kind of eyes that could make a woman do anything. Well, almost anything.

“Nice to meet you, Brynn. I’m Tanner. Tanner Vance.”

“I already know your name,” I said, and suddenly, my feet didn’t hurt anymore.
Interesting.

“Now we’ve got that settled, how about that invitation. Dinner? Sound good?”

He broke my gaze and looked me up and down. It made me wish I’d bothered to change into the black pants and lightweight gray sweater I carried in the tote bag on my shoulder, but, I’d been too tired at the end of my shift. My uniform from Twisted showed off most of my body.

I was exposed.

“My personal chef makes a fantastic kale salad with shrimp.” He paused, as if considering his next move. “So how about it? Will you come over for dinner?”

I struggled to reply.

“I promise I’m not dangerous.” He shrugged and a smile tugged at his lips. “Well, not all the time.”

Few women in LA would have been able to resist an invitation from this guy. “Okay,” I said. “When?”

Tanner broke into a full on grin. “Are you working tomorrow?”

I shook my head.

“Then tomorrow it is. How about seven? I’ll send a car to your apartment and we can have dinner at my place. Consider it my way of saying thank you.”

“You have an interesting way of saying thank you, you know.”

“But it worked, didn’t it?” he said.

As I drove home, I couldn’t think about anything but the expression on his face when I accepted his invitation. Curiosity had triumphed.

T
he next night, the black Mercedes arrived outside the apartment two minutes before seven. I waited for it in living room, trying to keep myself from pacing back and forth so I wouldn’t tip off my roommates. They didn’t ask too many questions. Both of them had plenty of other distractions—yoga, spinning, the recurring role Samantha had booked on the soap opera
Hawthorne’s Landing
, Kelly’s latest boyfriend, and her upcoming photo shoot for
Nasty Gal
.

Neither one appeared to notice when I slipped out the front door and into the awaiting car. I didn’t even have to tell them good-bye.

Soon, the car and driver whisked me away from Culver City and we traveled high above the city into the Hollywood Hills. The car wound around Mulholland Drive and ended at a large, white stone mansion with black trim. The driver, James, who’d said almost nothing to me during the ride, announced, “This is Mr. Vance ’s home,” as he drove up the property’s stone driveway and ended at a detached three-car garage with a second floor. James did not pull the car inside.

“Mr. Vance will be out in a moment,” he said a few seconds later as he helped me out of the car. “He’s tied up with a last-minute phone call.”

“That’s fine.”