Lovers and Liars (8 page)

T
he water was steaming hot.

Melody lay back in the tub, closing her eyes. It felt so good to unwind, to sink deeper and deeper into the hot, soothing water, to release all the tension and pent-up energy of the day. And, God, what a day. She thought she had placated Price. The man probably wouldn’t blackball Jack. But he probably would badmouth him all over Hollywood. Jesus. One thing was sure. Price would never direct another Jackson Ford film.

Jack.

Even with her eyes closed, she saw him in perfect detail. Thick, brownish hair, wildly shot with gold. Green eyes, long-lashed, crinkled at the corners from too much smiling. High cheekbones in a classic face. That killer grin. She sighed as her insides melted and an old, familiar ache ran down her body.

Jack filled her days. He was her business.

Jack filled her nights. He was her lover.

In her dreams.

Melody sighed again. She wondered how the
US
interview was going. She hoped Jack was behaving himself. She didn’t feel like facing another day playing cajoler and umpire with an irate reporter. One who could do far more damage in far less time than Price. Please, Jack, please, just behave.

Fortunately the reporter was a woman. Even if she was
fat and fifty, Jack would be charming—unless she pushed him too hard the wrong way.

Melody stepped out of the tub. She tried not to look at her body. That was easy because she didn’t have her round glasses on. She was short, with small shoulders and small hips and huge breasts. Men loved her breasts. They also loved her ass. Compared to the smallness of the rest of her, it was definitely oversized. She considered herself fat.

She also disliked her face. It was plain. Worse. Square. If someone was unkind, they might call her horse-faced. Her eyes were very blue, almost purple, but small, wide-set, and she hid them behind her glasses, which made her face seem less square. A serious, no-nonsense face. One that did not go with her body. Only her incredibly thick red hair went with her body. And on top of everything else she had freckles. Not a lot. But enough. Everywhere.

Jack had never made a pass at her in all the years she had known him. She knew he never would.

In the beginning it was because she wasn’t his type. Diane was his type. A nineteen-year-old model with a nothing figure. No breasts, no ass, no thighs—nothing. Tall, coltish. A perfect, breathtaking face. Lots and lots of brown hair, so dark it was almost black. Blue eyes, black lashes. One of a million coltish brunettes that Jack took to bed.

Melody slipped into a T-shirt that came to her knees. She smirked unkindly because Diane had been furious that Jack couldn’t see her until later, and she had broken the date instead. Too bad. She was due to be dropped soon, anyway. Most of Jack’s women lasted a night. Some lasted a week or two. Usually on a shoot or on location, like now. Melody knew it was convenient. She knew Jack was one of the horniest men alive.

But she understood him. She knew—instinctively at first, and now with the insight of years of friendship—why Jack preferred children and bimbos. He was afraid. Afraid to care about a woman, afraid to love. It was actually very sad. It was because of his mother. Melody knew he made light of her desertion, but she could read past that. She knew
that somewhere deep inside he had never gotten over it. He would probably never love any woman.

Was the woman who had been calling actually Jack’s mother?

If so, Melody was determined to do something about it. Jack’s past still lived with him. It had scarred him. She knew she was making judgments she wasn’t qualified to make; after all, she wasn’t a psychologist. But she didn’t care. She loved Jack.

She had loved him from the first moment she had ever laid eyes on him.

She would never forget it. She had just moved into a run-down studio in West Hollywood and was working in the publicity department of a small firm. She had been living in her apartment for a week and had assumed she had only four neighbors. The fifth apartment on her floor appeared to be vacant. It was Saturday, around noon. She was coming up the stairs with two bags of groceries, and so was he.

He was red-eyed, staggering slightly, unshaven, and smelled distinctly of beer and sex. He was beautiful. His smile was instinctive—and sensual. As she put down her bags she watched him fumble with his keys, cursing mildly, swaying against the wall. Her next-door neighbor was a drunk—but the handsomest drunk she had ever seen.

A week later she had run into him again and introduced herself. This time he wasn’t so far gone—maybe slightly high but impeccably dressed, shaved, and cologned. They had wound up chatting. He was, of course, an actor. Their friendship grew in small stages from there, despite the constant trooping of women in and out of Jack’s apartment. Sometimes they would share a beer or a joint, if they ran into each other after work.

The night Jack was thrown in jail, it was Melody he had called.

And it was Melody as much as AA who had helped him through withdrawal.

When he had straightened out and she began to realize his potential, it had been her idea to manage Jack on her offwork
hours. She had been with him from practically the beginning, and she would be there until the end.

Melody climbed into bed. It was the best time of the night. Once she was under the sheets, she pulled off her T-shirt, letting it drop on the floor. She fondled her breasts and thought about Jack. She closed her eyes, her fingers teasing her nipples into erectness, imagining Jack’s mouth on them, sucking and tugging. In her fantasy he was crazy with desire for her, telling her how beautiful she was, how much he wanted her, how he loved her. She slid her hand between her thighs. She could almost feel Jack’s mouth, his tongue. She moaned his name when she finally found release.

As she lay waiting to fall asleep she thought about what she really wanted, what she was really hoping for. Certainly not a reconciliation between Jack and his mother. But Jack had to face her and the past in order to leave it behind.

And then what?

Maybe he’d stop fooling around with eighteen-year-old bimbos and find a mature woman he could love and trust.

Like her.

10

S
he hadn’t returned his calls.

Vince Spazzio padlocked the gate on the construction site and sauntered over to his truck. He threw his shirt on over his broad, gleaming chest, heavily slabbed with a dozen year’s accumulation of muscle. He climbed in the cab, lit a cigarette, and checked his mirror, pulling out.

Belinda hadn’t called. A vast disappointment filled him.

She only called him at work, of course, because of Mary. Maybe she would call tomorrow. He hadn’t seen her in four days. He could barely stand it.

He was almost tempted to drive over to her place, but he knew better. She’d have a fit if he appeared uninvited.

He wondered what Mary would have for dinner. He was starved. He was always ravenous after a hard day’s work. Belinda. God, he loved eating her. She was beautiful. More than beautiful. He loved and hated her at the same time. He wondered what she was doing tonight.

Didn’t she want to see him?

Traffic was usually a steady five miles per hour on the San Diego Freeway when Vince commuted, but not tonight. He had worked until dark, fiercely. It was not so much to avoid going home to Mary as it was to take his mind off Belinda. But that was impossible. He turned on the radio. Maybe she’d met someone else. That thought filled him with panic.

He pictured Belinda naked and wet with sweat on a bed amid rumpled sheets, awaiting some faceless lover. Her own face was glazed with lust. Her breasts, full but high, had hard, erect nipples. Her legs, strong, powerful, curved, were spread and waiting. The flesh between her thighs was pink and swollen and slick.

Vince hit the brakes hard and managed to avoid bumping the car in front of him as the traffic slowed. He was going to have an accident. Every day, five days a week, he drove home and thought about Belinda until he had a hard-on, until he was miserable, because most of the time he couldn’t have her. He turned up the station. How long could he go on like this?

He parked in the driveway of his two-bedroom house in Costa Mesa, next to Mary’s Volkswagen Beetle. The lawn would need cutting this weekend, he thought. The petunias he had planted were wilting from lack of water. Cursing, he went to the hose, turned it on, and dragged it over to water them. You would think she could at least water the goddamn petunias. He strode into the house.

Mary sat at the kitchen table with another woman, her friend Beth. There was a half gallon of wine between them, almost empty. There was also a sliver of mirror, a vial of coke, mostly empty, as well as a razor and straw. The two
women had been talking animatedly, laughter punctuating their conversation, and now they stopped completely.

“Hi, Vince.” Mary smiled. She was drunk. She had long, straight dark hair, a roundish face with nice features, big brown eyes. She wore a tank top and jeans. She was about fifteen pounds overweight.

“Mary.” He nodded at Beth, who was tall, plain, and slender. He curbed his annoyance at the fact that Mary was high again. “I’m going to take a shower,” He paused before leaving. “What’s for dinner?”

Mary looked guilty. “I was hoping we could grab a bite somewhere, just a burger.”

Vince felt anger rising in him, and it burst forth. “Dammit! I’m fucking starved! I work my tail off all day while you’re sitting around on your ass getting fucked up! I’m tired—and hungry.”

“Fuck you, Vince,” Mary said coolly. She pulled the mirror over and dumped some of the vial’s contents out. She started to cut lines.

Vince strode over. “Do you know the fucking flowers out there are dying? Do you even care? And just where the hell did you get the money for that?”

“It’s Beth’s,” Mary said, and Vince wondered if she was lying. Ignoring him, she evened out four lines.

“I can’t deal with this,” Vince exploded, grabbing her arm and pulling her to her feet. “Look at you! You’re a fucking mess! Look at this fucking house! It’s a fucking pigsty! I spend a hundred and fifty thousand fucking dollars on a house for my wife, and she treats it like a slum.”

“Let go,” Mary cried, her voice breaking and tears welling in her wide brown eyes.

“Oh, shit,” Vince said, releasing her. He strode into the bathroom. As he turned on the shower he heard Beth say something, then heard Mary’s trembling reply. Maybe he had come down too hard on her, but Christ, this was out of hand. How the fuck could he get her to get a job? In the beginning he hadn’t wanted her to work. Stupid. Italian macho shit. Now he would give anything if he could just get her out of the house, get her to do something worthwhile.

There had been a time when he had thought she was beautiful. He probably would never forget the day he had first seen her. He’d been building an addition onto a Bel Air mansion that belonged to Mary’s stepfather (number two). He had a crew that existed of two. They were still in the framing stages. The wing jutted out from the rest of the house and was only a hop and a skip away from a free-form pool. Mrs. Crandall—Mary’s mother—was lying out, as usual, a completely straight woman in an almost nonexistent bikini, nut-brown all over. Even her hair was nut-brown. The first time she had come out Vince and his guys had looked, of course, being normal men. There was nothing to look at though (unless you liked very thin women built like boys), except for her face—which was triangular, nut-brown, and attractive. Still, no tits, no ass—nothing. Vince had quickly redirected his crew’s attention to the window they were framing.

“Holy shit, look at that,” Fred had said one afternoon.

Vince looked and got an instant hard-on. Mrs. Crandall was in her usual position, which was no big deal—she never came on to them or anything, not like some of the Hollywood wives who loved fucking carpenters. She looked down her perfect, possibly fixed nose at the
help
. But a young girl with long, straight hair, a perfectly grabbable ass, and huge knockers was making her way toward Mrs. Crandall. She was wearing a skimpy halter top and short shorts. Her legs were not bad, a little plump, shapely, really, but who could get past the tits? Vince couldn’t. He wanted to look away, but he just couldn’t.