This earned me a small, knowing smirk from my hunk. My heartbeat braked to a normal rate.
“Of course I know Daniel Zhang!” Suzie undulated to her feet, her hot pink pantsuit tight and her relatively new cleavage at attention. “You starred with Nicole Kidman in
Moonlight in Morocco
. I adore that movie!” She giggled and didn’t stop. Diego’s brow furrowed.
Danny’s shoulders released from their angry perch, and he smiled. “Thank you very much.” He turned to me, and his face relaxed even more. “I apologise for dropping in…unannounced.” Slowly, his gaze roamed from my head—rat’s nest—to my robe—old, tatty—to my enormous jammies—octopi/tacos, mismatched/stained. I remembered that I didn’t have a stitch of makeup on. Surprising that he even recognised me. I guess the height gave me away. My mother tittered some more.
Danny continued, “But I couldn’t announce myself, because I accidentally stole your phone this morning in the coffee shop.” He handed it to me.
“Oh! I was afraid it fell in the toilet.”
Everyone gave me a strange look for that.
“Thank you for running it by,” I recovered, excellently. Mom fluttered next to me, her eyes so large on Danny’s perfect face that I worried after her heart health. “Please give my regards to your grandmother. Although she has no idea who I am.”
“Yes, she does.” No one should be allowed to be that fine in a navy suit unless their brown eyes were twinkling all over me the way his were. “I told her everything about you.”
Mom snorted and said, “You did?”
Bang bang bang!
The door shook from whoever the hell this new freaking person was.
My neighbours were gonna think I was a call girl. I was going to have that door replaced by a steel one three feet thick.
“Well, aren’t you a popular little miss tonight?” Diego sidled to the door while I plotzed in anticipation. He reached for the handle. He swept the portal open. “Look—it’s Doctor Sam!”
Oh,
fuck
.
Chapter Twelve
The Ex Files
Sam burst into the apartment and stopped, frozen, shock suffusing his face. His regard slipped from Suzie and darkened into a black cloud directed at Danny. Diego said to Mom, “You remember Samantha’s boyfriend Sam? The oncologist.”
That was the lie we’d spun the one and only time Sam had met my mother in Vegas.
Well and good, except that our current lie said his name was Zack, and he worked as my assistant.
Danny’s mouth hung open. His gaze ping-ponged from one of us to the next. Finally, he settled on Sam and said, “Good evening…Zack. You—are you—do you date Samantha? And cure cancer?” His brows tightened the more he spoke.
Sam glared at me. I stammered, “W—well… I don’t think that anyone can actually
cure cancer
.”
Crickets.
“Unfortunately.”
Crickets.
My face went numb, and I searched Sam’s eyes for the brilliant new fib that would disentangle us from the other fibs. He crossed his arms and dared me to get myself out of it, which was massively unfair. I’d never been forced to lie about a boyfriend before this asshole showed up.
“Sam is my ex.” I said it to Danny.
Mom sighed and muttered to Diego, “I knew she couldn’t keep a doctor. I win the bet!”
Bet?
I swallowed my rage…barely…and continued digging out. “His middle name is Zack, and that’s what he goes by professionally.”
“Professionally as what?” inquired Danny, whose arms were now also crossed.
This was the point at which Sam shook his head at me and jumped in to help. “I used to be a doctor, but I gave up everything to follow Samantha across the Atlantic and work as her lowly assistant in a last-ditch bid to work things out.”
Nobody knew what to say to that. Mother appeared sceptical. Danny finally began to look at me like I was the crazy person I was. Good. These efforts to appear normal take their toll.
Captain Taco ran from the bedroom and straight to Sam. He scooped up the cat and clutched Taco to his chest, a man clinging to a furry piece of wood while adrift in a sea of falsehoods and competing men.
“Why are you here?” I asked Sam, although I knew the answer was to join the parade currently ruining my evening and/or life.
Sam jerked his head out of Taco’s fur and glared at Danny. “I need to speak to you.”
Danny started. “To me?” He switched into Robert De Niro mode. If he’d have been a porcupine, every quill would have been erect for attack. “You have something to say to me?”
“I meant Samantha. But I could say something to you.”
My current flirtation inched forward. “I’d love to hear it.”
“I’d love to say it.” Sam put Taco down—I believe that’s the fighting cat-lover’s equivalent to taking off one’s earrings.
“Go ahead, then.”
“I will.”
“Spit it out.”
Sam took a step, his arms stiff, the cords in his neck vivid. “You don’t want me to do that.”
“Oh, I do. I bloody well do.”
I needed to end this before we descended into full-on poo-flinging. Or, God forbid—truth-telling.
“Stop!” I wedged between them, barely, as they were so close they’d either begin shoving or kissing, and my luck wasn’t nearly good enough to get the latter. “There’s no need for this. Jesus, I don’t even have makeup on, how can you possibly fight about my blotchy ass?”
Mom laughed. “Ha! I just said that to Diego. See, you can be funny.”
Danny blinked, retreated from Sam and curled his lip at my mother. “She’s so nasty,” he whispered. He glanced at his phone and cleared his throat. “I must go. I apologise for…bursting in.”
I grabbed his arm and walked him to the door. “I’ll call you later, okay? I’m sorry about all of this—it’s confusing, I know, and—”
“No, no.” He took my hand and held it. “You told me you were in an unusual place. I can’t be upset when it’s true.”
My guilt flowed free from my lying mouth to my horny lady parts. The fact that he behaved so gentlemanly, even in the face of my bullshit, shamed me. Fiercely. I smiled and waved while he shot a filthy look at Sam and left.
Whew. One down. Three to go. The dream of being reunited with Colin Firth, the lover who never lied or questioned your lies, was almost a reality.
“Sam,” I hissed, “I am spending the evening with my mother, who has flown all the way across the Atlantic to see me.” He ignored this and plopped himself on my couch.
“No.” Mom primped with a compact and lipstick. “My modelling agent in Vegas got me into a party tonight with an agency here in London. It’s models only, you know!”
I stared at the floor. “I am an actual film actress, Mom. Nobody is embarrassed to be seen with me, nowadays.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow—I want to visit your film set. I bet the director will adore me.” She was already halfway out the door, Diego in tow. “I got to meet Daniel Zhang!” she squeaked as the door slammed.
Why the hell had she even shown up tonight? I told myself she was concerned about me, that was what the self-improvement “suggestions” were about. But no. I think I finally landed a movie interesting to her, and she was here to ride my short coattails. That’s a kind of pride in me, right?
“If you’re not careful, she’s going to steal your part in that movie. She gave Zhang her card.”
I turned to stare in amazement at Sam. “No, she didn’t.”
He nodded, the dimple peeking out, like a groundhog sniffing at winter. His face was drawn, tired—he appeared as rough as I felt. But I couldn’t pretend that of all the people who’d traipsed through my apartment tonight, I was sorry that he ended up last. Hopefully last. There was no one else left, unless Parliament swung by.
At least I didn’t have to pretend with Sam. Not in any way. There’s a soothing freedom in being able to let your stomach loose after sucking it in for a long time.
“Want coffee?” I asked.
He nodded and took a deep breath, letting it out and unwinding a hair’s breadth. Taco joined him on the couch, and soon Sam sprawled across it to play with the cat. The entire scene of normalcy overcame the flimsy walls I’d glued around my heart, and I fled to the safety of the kitchen to avoid a total collapse.
I’d just ground fresh beans when his voice startled me. “You really have moved on.”
I knew what he meant by the hurt, defeated tone. “I just kissed him once.” Twice.
Shh, stupid conscience!
“We do that much in the movie.”
“Apparently, you do it on the street corner for the benefit of every single entertainment news show.”
A flood of memories flung themselves around my brain. “Oh, shit!” I turned and ran to get my phone, which Danny had left on the living room coffee table. Yup—hundreds of messages in my inbox from agent, manager, publicist, gossip sites, journalists, on and on. “I’d totally forgotten.”
Strange—I hadn’t thought of that kiss at all since it happened, but apparently the gossip sites had.
“How could you forget that? And how could you—” He’d followed me into the room and squeezed his eyes shut as if having an internal crisis.
I threw the phone on the couch. “How could I what?”
His face fell into stark lines of grief. “Sleep with him? Really?”
I sat on the table, too tired to stay upright. “I didn’t. I just told you that to be mean. I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry.”
“I can’t believe you’re still lying to me.”
“I’m not!”
He gripped the chair back with white hands, putting it between us. “You spent last night with him! I mean…today.”
My eyes nearly popped from my head. “You’re nuts. I came here, alone, and went almost immediately to sleep. Only to be woken up this morning, uh, evening by Valerie. And Shelley.” I shuddered.
He slid out from behind the chair like a viper. “You were with him!”
“What is wrong with you? I was here!” Controlling the urge to kick him became harder and harder. So I stomped away, brushed past him and continued to make coffee. I splashed water into the electric kettle. Some stalker Sam is. Couldn’t keep track of me for one freaking night. Maybe Danny had taken some other short redhead home.
Stalker
… Damn him!
This time I actually did kick the cabinet. It bounced hollowly and banged me in the shin. I huffed back into the living room to dish it out to my stalker. “Danny accidentally picked up my phone in the coffee shop this morning. He took it home with him, where it stayed. All night. Without me.” Sam’s mouth dropped open. “That’s why he came here this evening—to return it.” I took a step closer. “But if my ex-boyfriend was tracking my phone, then the asshole might think I’d spent the day there. Which, frankly, I wish I had.”
“Please don’t say that.” Sam ran a hand behind his neck and squeezed. “Zhang is not the primary reason I keep track of you. You know that.”
I stuck my finger in his face. “The reason
you
weren’t in my bed all day today is because you kicked yourself out of it.” My voice rose to shrillness, and soon I was practically screaming at him. “You have no right to question what I do anymore!”
“I can’t let you be with me while this shit is going on.”
“But I am with you! Here! Now! With your psycho-thief ex threatening me!” I took a step back for my own health, because seeing him up close stirred in me a confusing mix of passions—part churning loins and part balling fists. “Wait, wait, wait—you can’t ‘let me’?” A tidal wave of rage swallowed me, and I stumbled to the couch and forced myself to sit. I twisted my robe over and over in my hands.
Finally, I comprehended what had been eating my heart out for the last week. “You decided for me. You resolved to end our relationship, rather than having me choose what I wanted for myself.”
He barked out a bitter laugh. “You were on the verge of leaving me anyway.”
“Don’t tell me what I was or wasn’t going to do! I love you!” I sucked in a breath and turned away. “Loved…you. And now I’m dealing with the same villains I would have otherwise, but my only ally is a vibrator.” I put my head in my hands. “And my cat, but obviously—two different purposes.”
Dumbfounded, he stood there, just staring at me. Taco meowed and wound around his legs. Sam picked him up and slowly approached the other end of the couch. He set the cat down between us, and sank into the cushions himself. “I thought if I made you go, you’d be out of danger.”
I petted Taco to avoid actually facing his dad. The cat set his head on my thigh, and his silken fur calmed me. Or maybe I was just too tired to fight anymore.
In a low voice he said, “It was easier for me to rip off the Band-Aid than to anticipate the axe.”
I chewed on my lip, the last few days whirling through my head. I let out the breath I’d been holding. “You’re right. I mean, you tore out my heart, but—I understand your reasoning. Who the hell knows what the right answer is.”
“Whatever it is, I never seem to find it.”
Reaching over Taco, I took his hand and squeezed. He clutched it and stared glassily in front of him. After a minute or so, he patted my arm and carefully set my hand back on my side of the cat. An alluring mix of gentleman and scoundrel—that was my Sam.