Ann Major - Love Me True

Joey pulled out his cell phone and punched in his pilot’s number. His orders were brief.

Joey pocketed his flip-phone. “Let’s go, Danny.”

She snuggled against Zach.

Joey tapped her arm.

When Zach tried to ease her free, she clung like a magnet. “Zach and me, we’re having fun.”

“Stay then.” Joey’s dark tone implied he didn’t care what she did. He was a little surprised when she followed him.

Outside, they had to run the gauntlet of his fans again. Much to Louie’s dismay, when the mother of a little girl on crutches thrust a notebook toward Joey, he patiently signed it. Even though the crowd mobbed him, and Louie screamed for him to get in the car, Joey gave the little girl an encouraging word and a hug.

It took them thirty minutes to reach the airport. Howard, his pilot, was climbing aboard the Learjet and settling himself into the cockpit when the limo zoomed up.

Joey joined Howard and guided the jet down the runway until he got clearance to take off into a black, starlit sky. Reluctantly, he handed Howard the controls and went back to Daniella, who snapped her eyes shut and ignored him. He tossed his Oscar into a seat and sprawled at the other end of the jet He slept all the way to Texas.

With only a few hours left of the night, they walked through the door of his ranch house

He was opening windows to let in the smell of cedar and the warm, night air, when the phone rang.

Daniella grabbed it and then slammed it down.

“Who—?”

“Some creepo breather.” She sashayed, hips undulating, to the bathroom.

Joey checked his Caller ID.

No name.

No need.

He knew Heather’s number by heart.

Damn. He flushed at the memory of his idiotic, inexplicable confession on stage. She was the last person he wanted to talk to. He’d been half out of his mind. Fame made him crazy. Millions of people loved him. Millions of strangers.

Not that he wanted the real thing. His coming home didn’t have anything to do with Heather Wade.

He’d flown home to ground himself. The press had printed so many damn lies about him, he didn’t know who he was. It was as if the real Joey Fasano had ceased to exist. Posters of his tough face and body papered the world. The media made him into a sexual god, a macho warrior. But the real man felt even more invisible than he had when he’d been a nobody. When had his own life gotten so out of hand? What the hell could he do about it?

Heather. She’d called.

He felt a weird sensation inside his chest. It was as if his flesh were being flayed, sliced.

Forget her.

An uneasy stillness descended over him. He wanted to hate her, to forget her—but it wasn’t that easy.

Joey sighed. Despite his own meteoric climb to fame and fortune, despite his pretense at style, he was just an actor which meant he was upstart trash in Heather’s world. Her fiancé was a blue-blooded prince from old money. Joey played bad-boy outlaws that thrilled shallow, mass audiences. He didn’t know squat about opera or deep literature. He couldn’t stand tea parties or debutante balls.

The bathroom door opened and Daniella, having shed everything except her black, stiletto heels, swayed toward him.

Her blond hair was wild and unrestrained. She was gorgeous, and it worried him that he wasn’t aroused.

He shucked his clothes and opened a drawer. Yanking out a pair of pajamas, he pulled them on. In a panic he buttoned the shirt to the neck only to realize he’d started wrong and was a button off. He leapt into bed and doused the light.

“I’m tared,” he said grumpily. “So, good night.” He rolled over.

She got in beside him. He stiffened when he felt her warmth oozing nearer. Then she curled her luscious body against his back, mashing her breasts against him. He lay still, his muscles strained and taut. When her fingers groped inside his pajamas, he shoved her away.

“Not tonight, babe.”

“You pathetic bastard!” She jumped up. “What if I go to the tabloids and tell your fans about your...little... problem?”

Violence rose in him. “Go ahead.” His bluff was lethally soft. “That’ll be a refreshing switch from their usual fare.”

He shut his eyes.

When he got up the next morning, she was gone. So were the diamonds he’d borrowed for her to wear.

Joey punched his Caller ID, and Heather’s number came up again. He went to the fridge. Since he hadn’t warned Cass, there was nothing in it but beer and a coffee canister. He shook the canister and found it was empty.

He slammed the door and pitched the canister into the trash. The living room with its vaulted ceilings felt empty and huge. He was glad Danny was gone even if the house felt lonelier.

Heather.

What did he keep thinking about her? She and her family had made him feel worthless. He had scripts to read, phone calls to make.

Still, he paced restlessly across the room, finally pulling out a little drawer in a table by his sofa. Inside lay a dog-eared copy of a news magazine. On the cover a handsome dark man carried a little boy on one shoulder along a golden path through a sun-dappled forest. Heather’s Pulitzer-winning picture. At first glance, the man’s expression was rapt. Only at second glance did one see the evil. The child’s big-eyed gaze was equally fixed. Because of that photograph, Trevor Pilot, the man in the picture, a cold-blooded kidnapper, was in prison. The boy’s father had been the British ambassador. The kidnapping had been international news. When the child had been found alive because of that picture, Heather would have been honored at the White House. But she’d run, just like she had after Ben’s death.

The little boy’s almost paralyzed expression sent a chill through Joey. Heather was so good. Why had she quit?

He thrust the magazine back into the drawer and walked out onto his porch. As he studied the dark trees along the creek where he and Heather had played, he saw their childhood ghosts swinging on ropes. The golden-haired girl letting go, falling into the creek, water splashing all around her skinny body like geysers.

Every summer had been a time of enchantment. Long summer days spent lying in the sun till their skin heated and then cold swims in the creek. Shared refreshments afterward in his hideout; shared lunches at school because he never brought anything really good.

They’d trusted each other completely. Only she’d known that his father beat him and how his poverty stung him, especially the secondhand clothes and old boots that marked him as unworthy. That’s why she’d dressed so badly—to put him at ease. When she’d told him she was pregnant their first year in college, he’d asked her to marry him.

His mood grew darker. He got hungrier, too, but he couldn’t drive into town for coffee, eggs or a burger unless he was ready to answer questions about Heather.

Fame. He wasn’t handling it.

He rang Cass, who said he’d shop first thing. Joey decided to watch the news while he waited. He ambled over to the fridge, popped the top off a beer, grabbed his remote and collapsed onto his sofa.

There was a story about a shooting spree in an Austin mall parking lot. A jealous husband had plugged his wife’s lover through a grocery sack. The reporter noted that Texas and Mexico were engulfed by a record heat wave, that temperatures had never been so high in April, that violence seemed on the rise as a result. The next story featured Senator Wade’s upcoming election and his daughter’s wedding.

Blood rushed in Joey’s head at the sight of Heather in Larry’s arms. Six years ago, Roth had put his arms around her just like that right after Ben died. Funny, her turning to Roth, Alison’s old beau, that night. Funny he hadn’t realized that was the exact moment he’d lost her.