Picture Perfect (7 page)

“I ran out of gas?”

“Looks that way,” he says, slipping his fingers through my hair and pulling it back away from my face.

“Perfect,” I snap at him, falling back into my seat. “You made me drive so fast that I ran out of gas.”

“I’m sorry,” he says and pushes open the car door. “Come on. We’ll get a gallon of gas at the nearest station. I think we passed one a couple miles back.”

“We?” I fold my arms across my chest and raise one eyebrow at him.

“You don’t want me to leave you sitting here all by yourself on a deserted stretch of highway in the middle of the night, do you? Who knows what lunatic might drive up on you?”

“First of all, it isn’t the middle of the night. It’s only seven-thirty in the evening. And secondly, this is Malibu, not some hick, desert town with a haunted, state-run mental institution right down the road. It’s not like anything is going to happen to me.”

“Suit yourself,” he says with a shrug and slams the door shut.

I watch him as he strides over to his bike and hops on the back of it.

The guy is actually going to leave me here!

I shove open my door and leap out after him. “You were actually going to leave me?” I shout at him as he puts on his helmet.

Jack pulls off his jacket and hands it to me. “Get on.”

I snatch the jacket out of his hands and shove my arms into it so violently that I break a nail. Damn it! Now I
am
going to need a manicure for sure. Damn Giles and his fucking mani-pedies. I should have just gone with him tonight. Then I wouldn’t even be in this mess.

I throw my leg over the bike and lean into Jack as he hands me the spare helmet he keeps in the satchel. I strap it on and wrap my arms tightly around him as he kick starts the bike. We pull out into the road, heading back the way we came.

***

“Oh, for the love of God! What, am I cursed or something?”

“It still won’t start?” Jack asks from the passenger seat.

“Maybe a gallon wasn’t enough.”

“No, it’s enough. Might be your fuel pump. You’ll have to have a mechanic take a look at it in the morning.”

“Great.”

I flip open my cell phone to find that there is no signal. I gaze out of the windshield at the empty highway stretching into the darkness, feeling a sense of hopelessness spreading in the pit of my stomach.

“Is your phone working?” I ask of Jack.

He pulls his phone out of his pants pocket, glances at it, and shakes his head.

Fucking Malibu!
Exclusivity comes at the cost of convenience.

I bite my lip, grip the steering wheel, and try the ignition again. Nothing. Nothing but a hollow emptiness resting in the darkness. And I feel as if I might cry.

“I’ll take you home. We’ll call for a tow, and your car will be fixed tomorrow.”

I feel a tear slide down my cheek. I want to wipe it away, but I’m too embarrassed. Me, a powerful, thirty-six-year-old executive producer crying because her car won’t start!

“It’ll be okay,” Jack says. “All we need is a phone, and you’re golden.”

“I know where to find a phone,” I say.

“I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

We abandon my sixty-thousand-dollar heap at the side of the road and climb, once again, onto the back of Jack’s bike. I cling to his waist as he motors off the main highway and up into the hills and curving canyons of Malibu. I squeeze my eyes shut, not wanting to look down. Not wanting to see the cliff’s edge. The edge I know is just inches from the wheels of his bike. I feel the pull of the motorcycle as we climb higher up the side of the mountain, and I bury my face in Jack’s T-shirt. Finally, I sense the ground leveling off, and the winding road becoming straight again. Jack slows the bike and comes to a stop.

“Is this it?” he asks.

I peel my face from his back and pry open my eyes. We sit at the foot of a driveway leading to a large, modern house. The kind that looks like a big white box with windows all around it. The driveway is empty. The house is dark.

“Yes. That’s it.”

Jack parks before the large front door, and I peer up into the windows, looking for signs of life, finding none.

“Come on,” I say, hopping off the bike.

Jack follows me as I head up the front steps. I dig inside my purse for my key ring. I shuffle the keys, my thumb landing on the familiar cut of the key I haven’t used in six months. I slip it into the lock, twist it, and hear the bolt slide back.

He never changed the locks.

 I push the heavy door open with my shoulder and step inside the marble foyer. I flip on the lights, and the modern crystal chandelier hanging above our heads sparks to life.

“Wow,” Jack says. “This is some joint.”

“I haven’t been here in six months,” I say.

“I thought this was your weekend home.”

“It was. Now it’s his.”

Jack glances around furtively. “Is he here?”

“No. And I doubt he will be. Alan’s too lazy to drive out to Malibu every day. He’s been spending weeknights at The Beverly Hills Hotel since he—since we broke up.”

“Oh.”

Jack’s attention moves to the wall of the foyer, or the “wall of vain” as I like to call it. Every year, Alan has a professional photo taken of himself, and he hangs it on the wall. There are twenty-six of them. The first one, taken when he was nineteen, is a headshot. Alan started his career as a model and actor, and even though he found his success behind the scenes, his ego still commands center stage.

“This guy is pretty full of himself,” Jack says, smirking at one of the photos.

“I’m going to call a tow truck.”

“Sure,” Jack says, absent-mindedly studying the original, twenty-six-year-old headshot of Alan.

I leave Jack in the foyer as I walk through the house, flipping on the lights as I go. The living room with white shag carpeting, black leather sofas, and zebra striped coffee tables where we sat drinking red wine and listening to Cole Porter. The dining room with its rectangular glass tabletop surrounded by high-back ebony chairs where we entertained our friends. The chef’s kitchen with stainless steel appliances and black granite countertops where we always cooked Sunday brunch.

Why is it that I can only remember the
good
times? 

I slip out of Jack’s leather jacket and drape it over one of the barstools surrounding the granite-topped island in the kitchen. Picking up the phone from its cradle on the counter, I glance up at the laminated list of speed dial codes for the phone hanging on the refrigerator. I punch in the number for Alan’s mechanic, Jeff Zimmer. He picks up on the first ring.

“Zimmer Auto.”

“Hi, this is Lauren Tate, Alan Tate’s wife.”

“Oh, hi, Ms. Tate. How’s the Bimmer running?”

“It’s not. It’s sitting on the side of the road somewhere on Pacific Coast Highway. I think it has fuel pump issues.”

“No problem, I can pick it up for you. Where on PCH is it?”

“I’m not sure. It’s north of Kanaan-Dume Road across from a little beach with a wooden staircase.”

“I’ll find it. Listen, I’ll need to get the keys from you. Where are you?”

“I’m at our Malibu home. You know, the big white one on the hill.”

“Yes, I know it. I’ll stop by after I pick up your car. Give me about an hour.”

I place the phone back in its cradle.

“Tow truck on the way?” Jack asks from the doorway.

“Yes.”

He walks over to the center island and leans on it, resting his chin in his hands. “Got anything to eat in this place?”

“Probably,” I say moving to the refrigerator. “If the housekeeper hasn’t cleared out the leftovers from Alan’s weekend.”

I open the door, revealing the gourmet food Alan always asks the housekeeper to buy. Jars of caviar, creamy wedges of brie and camembert, stuffed Greek olives, deli sliced ham and turkey, and little cartons of leftover pasta.

“I think we can find something to eat in here.”

I pull plates and cups out of the cupboard as Jack grabs food from the fridge and sets it on the counter, our hips colliding occasionally as we work around each other. He spreads mustard and mayo on slices of bread, while I pour each of us a glass of sparkling water. He piles ham and turkey on top of the bread, topping it with slices of cheese and lettuce. I grab a handful of olives and toss them on the plates, popping one in my mouth.

“Let’s sit down,” I say, leading Jack to the breakfast nook overlooking the pool shrouded in darkness in the backyard.

We munch in silence for a few minutes, our knees touching occasionally, our elbows rubbing now and then. We steal little glances every few seconds, smiling coyly at each other with every bite. And as I shove the last of my sandwich in my mouth, I realize how lonely I’ve felt since Alan moved out of our Westwood condo. Eating dinners by myself, going home to an empty household, waking up and having no one to snuggle up against before rolling out of bed. No. I don’t like being single. And Alan may not have been the perfect husband, but at least he was always there for me when I needed him. That is, until Jennifer came on the scene and the two of them started plotting against me.

A knot forms in my belly.

“I gave that girl her break in this goddamn industry and how does she repay me?” I say without regard to the man sitting next to me completely unaware of the thoughts swirling about in my head.

“What girl?”

“Oh, my assistant.” I bat away the remark with my hand.

“What did she do?”

“Nothing.” I didn’t want to reveal her crime, thinking I might lose his respect. After all, I’m supposed to be this powerful TV producer who wins awards and turns actors into stars. How would it look if he knew I couldn’t even manage my own staff? It’s one thing to lose your husband to a younger woman. It’s quite another to lose him to your own damn employee.

“It can’t be nothing. You spit those words out like venom.”

“She’s just a little back-stabbing, ladder-climbing tramp is all.” I couldn’t contain my bubbling anger and just blurted it out in one tumbling jumble of a sentence.

“Oh, that’s all.” His smile is as warm as an embrace, and I instantly want to kiss him. It has been months since any man showed me the slightest bit of concern, and I’m so desperately lonely right now that I’d probably tongue-kiss a busboy just for clearing my plate. But Frenching Jack Ford holds a lot more appeal.

He leans on one elbow and brushes a strand of hair from my face. “You’re too delicate for Hollywood.”

“Delicate? I hardly think so.”

“You put on a good front, but I know you’re all sweetness deep down.”

“Sweet? You think I’m sweet?”

“I know you are. And I know that sweet girls don’t get far in Hollywood. So, you play your part. And you play it very well.”

“I guess that’s a compliment.”

“Of the highest regard. I am Hollywood’s hottest new actor, you know?” he says with a capricious grin. “I should know an Oscar caliber performance when I see one.”

A blush warms my cheeks, and a smile forms on my lips. He is so damn adorable thinking of me as
sweet.
I can’t remember the last time anyone called me that. It was probably my grandmother. I may have been a sweet girl at some point, but Hollywood doesn’t run on people being nice. It runs on people getting things done. And sometimes you have to be a bitch to get anyone to do anything right in this industry. I discovered early on that a lot of please and thank yous didn’t get a girl nearly as far as a few well-chosen threats. Intimidation is a powerful tool. And I’ve learned how to wield it well.

“I may not be quite as sweet as you like to think,” I say, determined to set him straight. “I didn’t get where I am by being nice.”

“Oh, I know,” he says, taking my hand in his and tracing the lines of my palm with his finger. “You’re no pansy. But you’ve got a good soul. It’s all mapped out right here.”

“Is that so?” I ask, enjoying his caress far too much.

“Absolutely.” He closes his hand around mine and rubs his thumb achingly slowly along my flesh.

I bite my lip as a tightness grips the back of my throat.

“Let’s go for a swim,” he says, getting up from his chair and pulling me out of mine.

“You want to swim?”

“I’m a water baby,” he says as if that explains his sudden notion.

“Water baby?”

“I was swimming at three months old. My mom was always poolside.”

“But it’s freaking cold outside. We’ll freeze.”

“You gonna tell me that pool isn’t heated?” He nods toward the backyard. “I can see the steam rising off it.”

I peer out the window. “You cannot. It’s pitch black out there.”

“But it is heated, isn’t it?”

“Oh, of course it’s heated,” I admit.

“Great,” he says, stripping off his shirt and kicking off his shoes.

Before I can protest he is standing before me in nothing but a pair of black Calvin Klein boxer briefs, and my jaw is practically hitting the floor. I gape at him as he places his hands on my hips, wraps his fingers around the bottom of my shirt and slides his hands—and my blouse—up my torso.

“Jack,” I object, clamping my hands around his and pushing them down, “what are you doing?”

“You can’t swim with your clothes on.”

Chapter 6

Just what in the
hell
am I doing?
I ask myself, as I slip, stark naked, into the warm water. How Jack managed to talk me into this, I’ll never fully appreciate. One minute he was standing in my kitchen in his underwear and the next we were standing on the pool deck with me shimmying out of my clothes and him kissing my neck. God, I have the willpower of an eight-year-old in an amusement park! But honestly, who could resist taking a spin on the ride that is Jack Ford?

A woman who wants to keep her job,
I remind myself. 

Having turned on the deck and underwater lights before completely disrobing, the pool is aglow with a cool blue hue that does nothing to disguise my nude body bobbing up and down in the water. I know this because it isn’t obscuring a single muscle of Jack’s phenomenal physique. Not a
single
one. I avert my eyes, shielding my own exposed flesh with my hands, mumbling to myself what an idiot I am for even getting to this point with him.