Infamous (20 page)

“I wasn’t planning on being here for supper.” There, she had said it. She risked a quick glance at Kinsey, whose gaze had sharpened on her. Now that the words were out, she wanted to take them back. She tried to stiffen her resolve. Kinsey and Morgan were better off without her.

“There are still a few photographers loitering down by the gates. I don’t plan on giving them any more access than necessary. That means we stay in tonight. Unless Knight plans on showing up for a visit, they should move on to more lucrative prey soon.” He gave her a bland look. “What about Antonio’s?”

“You said you didn’t want to go out.”

“We’ll have it delivered.”

“Morgan, they don’t deliver.”

“Well, then, we’ll send someone to pick it up. As long as I’m paying all these extra people, they can make themselves useful.”

“Fine, Antonio’s is fine.”

Now what? Morgan had totally ignored her when she said she wasn’t going to be here. He had to have deliberately misunderstood her, but why? He couldn’t want her to stay now.

She glanced at Kinsey, who was ostensibly watching a sitcom. Playing possum, more likely, listening for all she was worth. Her gut clenched and she looked back at Morgan.

“Can I see you in my office for a sec?”

He followed her silently, turning a bland face to her when she closed the door behind them.

“We need to talk about this.”

“About what?” He prowled around the office, picking up the knick-knacks she had scattered around and putting them down.

“About how we’re going to handle this with Kinsey.” The pressure behind her eyes was reaching debilitating new proportions.

He turned her Gucci teddy bear around in his hands, looking at it curiously. “This has got to be the ugliest teddy bear ever made.”

“Morgan!” She knew her voice was shrill, but it was all starting to be too much. The transcontinental flight. The fight. The paparazzi. The scene in the hotel … had that only been yesterday morning?

He looked up, still holding the bear.

“Jessica, I don’t know what you want me to say. I’ve spent the entire day making sure you and Kinsey are safe, that no one will bother us here. I expect a little adjustment period while we all get use to the new personnel around the house, but I think Kinsey’s going to be fine with it.”

She wanted to hit him, to scream and rage. He was making this as hard for her as possible.

“Morgan, we need to talk about how we’re going to tell Kinsey I’m leaving. I’ve been trying to do it all day.”

He didn’t put the bear down, but suddenly all his attention was focused on her.

“I see. What made you change your mind? Yesterday you seemed intent on staying.”

“Yesterday you didn’t want me here.”

“That’s not an answer,” he said. “If you want to leave, what the hell were we arguing about yesterday? Why did you even come here? It would have been easier to just let me have your things forwarded to you.”

Why was he being so difficult? Her body was flashing hot and cold. Trembling, she went to stand next to the window, staring blindly into the dark.

“I don’t
want
to leave. I just … .”

“Just what? Just want to be somewhere else …
with
someone else?”

“I just don’t want to dump all my baggage on Kinsey, okay? That guy scared her to death last night. We were lucky he didn’t get any pictures.” Possibilities flashed in front of her eyes in full technicolor. Kinsey’s picture splashed across the Internet, and not because she had been spotted with Broadway’s latest hunkie star. It had happened to her more than once.

Suddenly she was angry. Furious that anyone might do that to Kinsey. What right did they have? They printed lies, with photos cropped and photoshopped as “evidence.” No one deserved that. She didn’t deserve that. Why had she never seen it before? Never been angry on her own behalf? She had been so proud of herself all these years, for “using” them, she thought, just as they had used her. She had handed herself to them on a platter — had let them define who she was even to herself. It was a little late to salvage things for herself, but things were going to be different for Kinsey.

She dashed the tears out of her eyes and turned back to Morgan. “You were right. I’m not the sort of person good parents let their teenage kids hang around with. If I leave, you and Kinsey get your lives back.”

He stared at her.

She stared back, wondering what he was thinking. Why wasn’t he jumping at the chance to be rid of her?

He shook his head. “No, you were right yesterday. Both of us made a commitment to give this thing another shot for Kinsey.”

She opened her mouth but he raised a hand. “No, hear me out. You
were
right. Kinsey was devastated yesterday when I told her you were staying in New York. Having you bounce in and out of her life is no good. She needs stability. She doesn’t see you as a bad influence. She sees you as a confidante, someone who’s always on her side, who’ll always come when she calls.”

“Yes, but … .”

“
And
,” he continued, “I
have
just spent the day making sure we won’t be disturbed here at home. As long as Knight isn’t going to be showing up here regularly, I think it’s safe to say the media interest in all of us will die back down soon.”

She couldn’t think. Was she staying or leaving? Which was right? She didn’t know any more. God, she wanted to stay. She wanted to wake up next to Morgan, and drive Kinsey to a million-and-one classes, and learn to make cookies without burning them. She wanted to be on PTO committees and think about things other than who had gotten their boobs done and who was sleeping with whom and which was the hot club or restaurant.

Morgan was still looking at her, waiting for a commitment one way or another. She wanted to stay. She didn’t know if it was right or not, but she wanted to stay. She made one last ditch effort. So things would be right up front. So later he couldn’t accuse her of lying.

“I’m not ending my friendship with Mason. I can’t see him visiting me here often, but I can’t promise we’ll never be seen together again. Aside from anything else, he’s doing the charity auction here in a few weeks.”

Morgan’s mouth twisted and he gave a bitter laugh. “Giving up Knight — yes, I suppose that would be asking too much.”

And that said it all. He didn’t believe her, wasn’t willing to give her one bit of trust without proof of innocence. How do you prove you haven’t done something? Again, it crossed her mind to just tell him everything. But it was something she and Mason had never even discussed openly between themselves.

In Hollywood, image was everything. When you had something really big to hide about your best friend in the world, you were too afraid even to whisper it. There was always a careful skirting of the obvious while they talked around it. The elephant in the room. The big lie carefully hidden among the truths disguised as fiction in her tell-all books. After all these years, the habit of pretending it didn’t exist was too ingrained to break.

Why couldn’t he just believe her? What kind of relationship did they have that he would let her stay when he thought the worst about her?

The saddest part was, it didn’t matter. She must have a masochistic streak a mile wide, but being here was still more attractive than the alternative.

“So I’m staying?” She held her breath, afraid to hope now that it had come to it.

He gave an almost indifferent shrug. “If that’s what you want.”

She nodded.

“That’s settled then.” He was so calm, like it hadn’t mattered to him at all. “Let me know what you want from Antonio’s.”

Then he was out the door, as casual as if they had been discussing dinner plans the whole time.

She should be relieved, happy she was staying, that she had what she wanted. Instead, she felt even more depressed, almost panicked, like a stone had lodged in her chest. She stared at the empty hallway. He hadn’t kissed her, hadn’t once touched her. Really, he hadn’t asked her to stay, just assumed she would and laid out the reasons it was better for Kinsey.

She remembered their argument the night before. How long would Kinsey need her? He had been so clinical about it, so detached. Was she just a scheduling issue? A bullet point on his five-year plan? When Kinsey was older, would he just check her off--objective complete? For the first time, she wished Kinsey didn’t exist, that she could believe that she was wanted just for herself.

• • •

Late that night Morgan sat at his desk. His monitor screen was dark. He wasn’t working. It was time for a little honesty, at least with himself. He was hiding, skulking in his den like a wounded animal.

Jessica was back, she was staying, at least for now. The why of it was beyond him.

When he had seen the picture in the paper, he was sure it was the end. Knight had left his wife and Jessica had run straight to him. It was all so black and white.

He had practically hijacked Kinsey, hustling her onto a private plane and back home, fleeing across an entire continent like the worst coward. Why? To protect Kinsey? It had barely crossed his mind. It was a feeble excuse to save face. He hadn’t wanted to hear the words. Had been willing to use any excuse, pay any amount, to get away before she told him it was over, that she was going back to the man she really wanted.

Except she hadn’t stayed with Knight.

That was the part he hadn’t worked out yet. She had followed him home like a stray puppy, lectured him on commitment, seemed determined to insert herself right back into his life.

Had Knight rejected her again? He couldn’t fathom how anyone could refuse her, but Knight had done it once before. Maybe she had expected commitment on his part and he had refused.

Was it really Kinsey? “I promised I wouldn’t leave again,” she had said. He knew she loved Kinsey, that she somehow saw Kinsey as a younger version of herself, wanted to give her the loving mother, the apple-pie home she had never had.

It was all moot, anyway. Once she was back he had known he couldn’t ask her to leave again. He only wished one of her reasons for staying had been him.

He leaned back, letting the ergonomic chair cradle him weightlessly. Somewhere, his father must be laughing himself sick. After all this time, he finally understood how it could happen, how a man could ruin himself for a woman. Right now he would give everything he owned to know that Jessica was waiting in his bed because she loved him — that she had come back for him, that she would be there as long as
he
needed her. She was waiting in his bed now. If he went to her, he knew she wouldn’t turn him away. Why? A game? Boredom? A purely physical need?

He didn’t know, and that was a problem. The prospect of the next weeks, months, years of their most intimate moments being simply an act to her opened a black hole in his gut. She was apparently willing to cater to his every fantasy, to do anything he wanted -- except the one thing he really wanted. If only she would share her heart with him as easily as she shared her body.

• • •

Jessica stood at the door of Morgan’s office and watched him work. A pair of reading glasses was perched on his nose. A spreadsheet was open on one monitor and he divided his attention between that and the document he was writing on the other. Thank goodness the door was open. No way did she have the courage to barge in or, worse yet, knock. She had never disturbed him in his office. She suspected that fact had little to do with Morgan and everything to do with wandering into J.T.’s office unannounced when she was eight.

It was three
A.M.
She had watched the numbers turn over on the bedside clock herself. She had used every trick she knew to fall asleep alone. In the last few years she had learned a lot of them. Tonight they had all failed her. She couldn’t shake the ridiculous conviction that Morgan and Jessica had disappeared.

Stupid.

Disappeared where? Alien abduction? Packed up and left in the night?

None of the logic stopped the gnawing certainty in her gut that she was alone in the house. Now she was a ghost in the hallway outside Morgan’s office. She gave the door a little nudge with her toe, but Morgan’s concentration didn’t waver. She nudged a little harder and the door swung all the way in.

Nothing.

She should probably just go back to bed, but her gut clenched to the point of pain at the thought. She had to do something to break through this coldness that had settled between them. She had no game-plan for it. Since she’d been an adult, she had never tried to mend fences with anyone. If they didn’t like her, screw ’em.

But that was the kind of attitude that had ended their marriage before. They were trying to do better this time, weren’t they? If she could get Morgan to meet her half way, unbend a little…. Her thoughts went round and round in circles. When they stopped, she was cold and shivering.

She didn’t have any talent at diplomacy. Really, she only had one talent, didn’t she? Only one talent that got her what she wanted, that brought men to their knees. She wished she were ugly, fat, squint-eyed. Anything that would have forced her to develop a personality, some bit of something that made men like her instead of want to fuck her.

Two steps behind his chair she had second thoughts. She was trying to leave that Jessica behind, make something real. She wasn’t a coward. She could try now.

He jerked when she touched his shoulder. She ignored that, ignored the lack of welcome on his face and leaned forward to kiss him. He turned his head at the last minute and reached around her to save his work.

She tried again, moving her hands to his neck to massage the knots of tension.

He shrugged her away.

“What do you want, Jessica?”

She slid into his lap, looked up at him and tried a smile.

“You must be tired. Leave this and come to bed.”

“I’m not finished.”

She gave up and begged in the only way she knew how. She let the robe slide off her shoulders. She had abandoned the silk babydoll tonight and was only wearing the matching thong. Had she known all along it would come to this?