Malibu Betrayals (16 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Sam dragged herself into the deli to meet Cecilia Lombardi, her protective shadow following her in and settling near the door. Bone-tired from a restless sleep, and an even more restless morning, all she wanted waited for her back at her condo: solitude and her bed. Gage had been distant and polite, distracted with security and trying to figure out who was behind all the pranks. She missed his carefree affection, him swinging his arm around her shoulders or pulling her in for a kiss. She’d find herself reaching out to him, only to find him casually stepping away, studying each and every crew member on the set.

After they’d finished filming yesterday, he’d driven her home and then locked himself in his room. She’d made dinner, drank wine, channel surfed, all in hopes he’d emerge from his hermitage. In the end, she concluded her own banishment and went to bed. Rising before her alarm—and why not? She never really did sleep—she’d shuffled around the kitchen making coffee and toast.

Gage had joined her, silent and brooding, besides a non-committal grunt in greeting and a kiss on the cheek. More silence followed in the car on their way to the film set. By the time they parked, she’d wanted to scream.

He got out of the car and sent her a salute. “I need to speak with security.”

She’d stood staring at the door he’d disappeared through for at least five minutes, her ire building. She didn’t think he was trying to be rude, but it felt it all the same.

The morning slogged on like a film with no plot. Finally, when lunch time approached, she’d slipped out with no issues. She’d assured Martin she’d be escorted throughout her meal and then be back on set in an hour.

Now as she stood scanning the patrons, guilt crept in and took a strong hold of her shoulder blades, making her wonder if she should have told Gage. Too late to worry about that now.

She rolled the tension from her shoulders and approached Cecilia.

The woman wore cheap like a second skin. Her bright red nails skimmed down a leopard print dress that belonged on a twenty-year-old in a club at midnight, not a fifty-something in a deli at noon. Sam pasted a casual smile on her face and pulled out the chair opposite of the B-list wannabe starlet.

Cecilia added more blood red lipstick to her already overdone lips. With a practiced fluidity, she dropped the tube back into her clutch. “I did say one p.m.”

The woman’s attitude set her on edge, and she answered without thinking. “Yes, well, it’s close enough.”

Cecilia narrowed her eyes.

Not in the mood, Sam snapped, “What do you want, Ms. Lombardi?”

“Oh, come now. Friends call me Cecilia.”

“We’re not friends.”

“We could become the best of friends.”

Sam sipped the ice water left for her and prayed for patience. “Why would we become best friends?”

Cecilia leaned close on her elbows, her fingers loosely entwined, and made a show of looking past Sam to the guard by the door. “You’ve been through a lot, Samantha, haven’t you?”

Sam stiffened. What was this woman getting at? She answered with caution. “Sure, but many people have.”

Over-processed curls slid over Cecilia’s shoulder, and she flipped them back with a dramatic flair. “Look, you and I could be a good team. I’ve been looking around, Sam. There are those who think Hollywood is just too much for you. As for me, well, I’m dating a very powerful man.”

Sam choked on her water. Powerful man? Yeah, so powerful that one threat of leaving from Gage and he barred the woman warming his bed from the set.

Cecilia scowled. “My lover has many connections. If I were you, I wouldn’t turn my nose up so fast. With those in Hollywood who demand you for their scripts and those who don’t want to disappoint my talented boyfriend, ours is a match made in heaven. You simply require my participation in the cast, and I will require your participation in the writing. We’ll have access to twice as much work as going solo.”

Sam’s stomach turned. Even without whatever conflict Gage had with this woman, Cecilia was not a presence Sam could tolerate long—and she’d reached her limit. Pulling her shoulders back, she shook her head. “No, thank you, I prefer to go solo.”

Cecilia slammed her manicured hand on the table.

Her eyes widened. She pulled in a breath through flared nostrils and peeked from side to side as if to assess the damage. In a low voice she gritted out her words. “Solo? Is that what you call it? Aligning yourself to the likes of Martin Gallagher and Gage Cutler? By the way, I’d be careful of him if I were you. Why you’d even consider being seen with the man is beyond me. He’s tried to tie himself to every successful tail in Hollywood in order to rise in his career.” She sniffed, leaned back, and tipped up her chin. Looking down her nose at Sam, she continued, “Even mine.”

Sam’s gut tightened, and she clenched her fists under the table.
Relax
.
Count to ten.
The chatter of the deli broke through the drumming in Sam’s head. She loosened her fingers and shook out her hands. Resting her palms on the tabletop, she leaned forward and kept her voice low. “Gage Cutler is a talented actor who has risen on his own merit, but you know that. The idea his success has anything to do with you is laughable.” She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough. “What really happened between the two of you?”

Cecilia stared at Sam. Her skin turned a bright shade of red, quite close to matching her lips and nails. She stared at Sam, rigid and unmoving until the slight trembling in her hands gave her away. Sam had yet to see someone work so hard to maintain control.

On one hand she pitied Cecilia. She was aging fast, and Hollywood was leaving her behind as if she never existed. Her strategy of sleeping her way to the top did nothing more than lower her street value.

With a shake in her voice, Cecilia shot back. “No more laughable than the fact that you’re working with the man who killed your husband. Or have you been since the beginning? Maybe your plan all along? I bet your mama’s proud.”

Sam shot up, her chair slamming to the ground in a loud clap. Pure rage squeezed her chest, making it impossible to breathe. The guard approached her table, but she raised a hand to stop him. A sick dread filled her stomach.

Cecilia tilted her head to the side. Glee glittered in her eyes, providing an almost youthful glow to her skin. “Smile, Samantha, people are watching.”

She tipped her chin to the poisonous woman, and with as graceful a move as possible retrieved her fallen chair. She’d never receive any useful information from the narcissistic woman, so why had she thought she could?

“Until next time, Miss Dekker?” The woman grinned like a Cheshire.

Sam broadened her smile. “There will never be a next time, Ms. Lombardi.”

The woman’s satisfied smile thinned to a tight straight line and she shot Sam a cold look. “You
need
me.”

“No, I only need
me
,” she said. With that, Sam turned on her heel, and on shaky legs, made her way back to her car.

Guilt of all shades washed over her. She should never have gone to the lunch; she should never have started something with Gage. He deserved a woman free of baggage, and their pasts were too entwined in negativity.

But one thought pierced her to the core. She never should have married Ethan. Why had she? Had she used
him
? He’d accused her of exactly that toward the end. Maybe he’d been right. Was she no better than Cecilia Lombardi?

Sam shook her head. No, he’d been different in the beginning. He’d made promises, describing a beautiful picture of love, family, and a future full of glamour and excitement. She’d been hooked from the first line, but it didn’t last through the first act.

It had been a relationship doomed to fail from the beginning, but she hadn’t wanted to see it.

She refused to make the same mistake twice.

Later that evening, Sam stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around herself. She’d been using Gage’s bathroom, since she wasn’t comfortable making extra work for Anita, and some nights she didn’t make it back to the guest room like she should have. Tension increased in the back of her head. She’d never had sex with someone who was too busy to even talk to her before. Maybe she was just being insecure, making it all into more than it was. But she felt his distance, when, with everything going on, she craved his closeness. She grabbed her toothbrush and then frowned. Both toothbrushes usually rested bristles up in a small cup, but Gage’s brush now lay on the counter on the opposite side of the sink. A thrumming joined the tension in her head, and gripping her towel tighter, she marched out to the living room, toothbrushes in hand. “What’s this all about?”

Gage glanced up at her from a script and then returned to his reading. “What?”

She clenched her teeth together. “Seriously? Are you seriously going to play these little games?”

“What games? I’ve been working my ass off to try and help figure out who’s behind all the nonsense on set, not to mention film a movie.” He slapped his manuscript to the couch and glared at her. “And who’s playing games, Sam? I’m only trying to respect what you asked for. You said no relationship. Last I looked, people who aren’t in relationships don’t keep their toothbrushes in the same cup.”

“Oh, you can have sex with me, you just won’t put your toothbrush next to mine?”

He twisted his lips and sent her a look.

She squeezed the brushes tight in her hand. “This is so stupid.”

“Are we seriously arguing about where I keep my toothbrush?”

“This isn’t about the toothbrushes.” Heat flushed Sam’s cheeks.

Staring at her, Gage pushed up from the sofa. He walked up to her and took the toothbrushes, then threw them to the couch. His jaw twitched. “What? What do you want, Sam? Are we together, or are we not? We have sex, we sleep in the same bed, but I can’t help you. I can’t worry about you, I can’t
do
any of the things a man does for the woman he cares for, and now you’re mad because I moved my toothbrush?”

Tears formed in her eyes, and her vision blurred. “You know why.”

Gage turned away and then swung back to face her, his voice grating with emotion. “Don’t you get it? I want a relationship, Sam. Something real. I know it’s scary, I know we’ll have to work at it, but I also know it will be worth it.”

Joy and sorrow collided, burying her under their weight. He wanted
her
, something serious with
her
. This larger than life man who helped her become a better version of herself, but she couldn’t risk a relationship she knew would fail again. She wouldn’t do that to herself or to him. “I can’t give you what you want.”

He closed his eyes and pulled her to his chest. The warmth of his chest radiated through her body, and her throat constricted. Where she could never end up was the exact place she wanted to be.

He looked down at her, his gaze intense. Opening his mouth to speak, he hesitated, and then tried again. “Why?”

She dropped her chin. “You know why.” Oh, how she wanted to. More than anything in a long time, the desire to build a life with him pulled at her with an urgency so sweet it hurt. Her heart twisted, the pain tearing through her chest. Admitting to caring about him was one thing, but knowing he really cared about her, wanted more, made a terrible knot in her stomach, leaving her to long for what could have been. She hated hurting him, hated the pain in his eyes, but she feared him hating her more. And in the end, that is what would happen. She’d already seen the ending to this particular movie.

He bent his knees just enough to bring him to eye level, holding on to her waist. “It doesn’t have to be as bad as you think. Yes, there’ll be pictures, silly articles, but that’s it. You can deal with that, Sam. I know you can. Let me show you.” He held her gaze. “You care for me, so show me you trust me, too.” With a smile stretched by both hope and fear, he lowered his head, and his lips barely brushed over hers. Once. Twice.

The sensation ran through her nerves straight to her toes.

“It’ll never work, Gage,” she whispered against his mouth, her heart splitting in two.

He froze and stepped back. Her fingers flexed to pull him back and fill the cold left behind, but she dropped them to her sides.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she shook her head. “It won’t, and we both know it. You are a celebrity above and beyond anything Ethan aspired to. But even for his level of celebrity, the press intruded so far they pushed him to suicide, and I can’t let them hound me like that again. I won’t. Not to mention, they would jump all over our relationship without hesitation. You’ve worked so hard repairing your reputation. Do you really think you wouldn’t resent me if our relationship screwed that up for you? There’s no way you wouldn’t, and I couldn’t blame you. I couldn’t stand for you to hate me.” Her chest ached, and she struggled to swallow past the lump in her throat, but she lifted her head and pulled her shoulders back.

Gage sliced his hand through the air. “Excuses, they’re all excuses, Sam. It doesn’t have to be that way.”

She picked up a sofa pillow, held it to her chest, and whispered, “Excuses? Everything I’m afraid of happening keeps happening. Those aren’t excuses. They’re facts.”

“And you’ve survived every one.”

She stared at him. Her heart full of feelings she couldn’t do anything with. Arguing with him about their future was useless. She pulled in a breath and whispered, “I’m trying to figure out if it can work. But I don’t see how. I need more time. Can you give me that?”

He dropped his chin to his chest and closed his eyes. “You don’t know what you ask, Sam.”

“Don’t I? I know it won’t be easy, but it’s better for us in the end.”

“
You
think it’s better.”

“Yes, I do.”

He studied her. “For the record, I don’t think time is the issue. But fine.”

She stared back, each second feeling like a minute, wondering why it was the painful things in life rather than the pleasurable things that dragged on for eternity.

…

The next day, Sam walked through the familiar chaos of the set with two cups of coffee in search of Gage. They’d formed a tentative truce.