Phantom Series Boxed Set (60 page)

The last couple of days were a blur, but she was pretty sure their pillow talk hadn’t included anything significant about her shady past.

“I used to live on the street.”

His eyebrows scrunched together as he mulled over her meaning. What must he think, this eighteenth-century son of a nobleman? In his century she probably would never have even exchanged a civil word with him, except, perhaps, for words of gratitude as payment for services rendered.

He slipped his hands into her hair, cradling her temples, pressing her head to his shoulder. His warmth surrounded her, but did not penetrate the images flitting through her mind. For a second, impressions of her in a dirt-encrusted dress with the décolletage yanked down and her skirts hiked up while Aiden pounded into her from behind became even clearer. More vivid. As if it were becoming real…

Then he yanked his hand away.

She met his eyes, which were wide with surprise.

“You are above such depravity,” he snapped.

“What did you see?” she asked. “What just almost happened?”

Aiden pressed his palms to her cheeks and stared potently into her eyes. “I would never treat you as such,” he replied. “I would never subject you to such—”

His words cut off as his gaze flashed toward the sword. The bright light in the room normally muted the shimmering blue glow of the blade, nestled among the cushions on the couch. But at this moment the steel had turned nearly cobalt, as if aflame, and the handle glowed a fiery red.

“What’s happening?” she asked, breathless.

Aiden glanced at the sword, then stood, alarm darting across his face.

“I know not,” he replied. “But I believe it is time we found out the true nature of Rogan’s magic.”

“But you said it was evil,” she warned, her muscles bunched as Aiden stalked to the weapon.

He grabbed the hilt and held the sword aloft. “It is, but I believe the time has come to vanquish this evil once and for all.”

Twenty One

The moment Lauren’s door closed behind her, Helen nearly doubled over with an ache that was half anger, half humiliation. What had just happened?

Helen had never seen her friend so out of control. Not when she’d caught Ross with another woman. Not when she’d come to terms with the clause in her contract that required her to finish the last Athena film. Not when she’d confessed to Helen soon afterward how much of her life had been a total and complete lie. Enraged by the gash in her friendship with Lauren, Helen launched herself at David, who stood, stunned to silence, just feet from Helen’s car.

“What did you do to her?”

David twisted her into a hold that pinned her arms to her body, but still left him one hand free to press over her mouth. Terrified by his constraint, she kicked harder and struggled until she propelled them backward against the car. He lost his footing on the gravel drive and they fell in a tangled heap.

“Calm down,” he ordered.

She twisted and squirmed, but he was too strong for her. Forcing her mind clear of rage, she achieved a temporary calm—enough to assess her situation. He’d shifted her against him, but to the side, so that her butting back with her head would not gain her freedom. She tried going slack, but he countered her easily, tugging her hard underneath her rib cage.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he insisted. “And I wouldn’t hurt her. Ever. If you’ll just calm down, I’ll explain. I swear.”

She hadn’t known David long, but she’d already decided that his acting skills were above par. How did she know that the sincerity in his voice now wasn’t just another act? Well, she’d done her share of stage and film work between the ages of five and nineteen. She had the freaking Emmy to prove it. Mustering all her rage into a tiny, potent stone she could hold tightly in her hand, she allowed her body to relax to the point where he’d let her go.

And when he did, it took all her self-control not to either pummel him with her fists or run like hell, screaming for the security guards she knew were just fifty yards down the winding driveway. Instead she stood, dusted the gravel off her clothes and forced a single word through her clenched teeth.

“Explain.”

He combed his hands through his thick hair “I’m not here to hurt her. Or you.”

Helen did not react, biting into her bottom lip from the inside to keep herself from interrupting.

“I knew Lauren years ago,” he went on. “Well, ‘knew’ isn’t accurate. I met he.” He shook his head frantically, as if he had his own store of rage he was fighting to keep under control. “She wasn’t even Lauren then, and I wasn’t David Drake. We were both runaways. My first night on the damned strip, scared to frickin’ death, spent my last dollar the day before. She showed up out of nowhere in expensive clothes. Bought me dinner—burgers, fries, the works. Hardly spoke the whole time, but there was something in her eyes—something special. Then she just left. An hour later I saw her getting the shit kicked out of her. I didn’t know what to do. I made a racket, scared the punks away. Then I called the police and waited with her until they came; I talked to her, went with her to the hospital.”

Helen listened, half disbelieving. She knew all about the night in question, but while Lauren had told her the story, she’d never mentioned any runaway savior.

“And for that she hates your guts?”

He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the ground as if he hoped it would open and swallow him. “I didn’t expect her to recognize me. I’ve changed. A lot. On purpose. But I didn’t think she’d be so angry just because I…”

“Just because you what?” This time he didn’t fight her off when she grabbed his shirt and twisted the soft fabric around her fist. “What did you do to her?”

“I didn’t help her run away. She begged me not to make her go back to Ross. Not to let the hospital call him. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I thought she was delirious. Now I know she was afraid of him.”

Helen shook her head. “Lauren’s the bravest woman I know. She wasn’t afraid of Ross. She was afraid of who she’d become if she stayed with him. God!” she exclaimed, spinning in frustration. “Why am I still talking to you? You’re lying! Lauren told me everything about that night, and she never mentioned any runaway helping her or refusing to help her. What game are you playing?”

And yet Lauren had clearly recognized the man, and she couldn’t imagine that he’d made up such an elaborate story on the spot. Only three people in the world could connect the attack on the Hollywood street kid who’d wandered back into her old haunts, only to be nearly killed, to the actress who now called herself Lauren Cole—Lauren, Ross and Helen. The doctors and nurses who had treated her that night knew her under her old name. Her real name. Even Helen didn’t know what that real name was.

Lauren Cole had been Ross’s creation, a name he’d helped her choose shortly after she’d been released to his care. Now that Helen thought about it, Ross’s first wife must have known about the situation, too, but in all this time she’d never said a word to the press. She was, according to all accounts, living the high life as the wife of a New York politician, producing theater and winning Tony Awards. She’d divorced herself not only from Ross, but from any connection to Hollywood.

“Who sent you here?” she asked.

“No one,” he said. “I came on my own.”

“You used to be an actor in New York, where Ross’s ex-wife produces plays. Maybe she’s been waiting to exact revenge on Lauren for stealing her husband?”

“Stealing him?” David asked, incensed. “She was trying like hell to get away from that monster.”

Helen nearly lost her footing. “How do you know that?” Recovering herself, she tightened her grip on his shirt and asked again.

“Lauren told him when he arrived at the hospital. His address had been on her driver’s license, so the nurse called him. I grabbed scrubs and blended in so I could wait around. I heard her confess why she’d left him.”

“You are some sort of crazy stalker.”

“No,” he answered. “No. I was just there. It was…just…how things happened.”

The anger Helen had been holding inside shot spikes through her body. She released him and stepped back, afraid of the emotions roiling inside her. She’d never fought with Lauren. Never exchanged a cross word except in jest. They’d become friends in a way that Helen valued deeply. Now she’d been tossed out of Lauren’s house, marked as a betrayer, because she’d foolishly brought a stranger with a hidden agenda into her friend’s guarded life.

“Why are you here?”

“I just wanted a part in her movie.”

“I don’t believe you. You wanted to be near her. You told me so after you’d fucked my brains out, remember? You have some freakish fixation on her, don’t you? Because you saved her once and…I don’t know…maybe because the press has been making such a big fucking deal out of her divorce that you thought you’d save her again? That she’d fall in love with you? Maybe take you to bed and pay you back for helping her all those years ago?”

He didn’t answer, and the silence sliced into Helen’s lungs and wouldn’t allow her to draw breath. Mustering all her pride, she dug into her pocket, extracted her keys and got into her car.

He jumped out of the way, which was a damned good thing, because she might have run him down if he’d given her the chance. At the end of the drive she slid to a halt long enough to alert the guards about David’s presence and insist they run him off immediately. Then she left.

She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t know what she was thinking. She just knew she had to get as far away from Lauren and David as possible, as fast as possible, or she might do something really stupid.

Like cry.

***

David pushed his hand through the tear in his shirt, then shot a dirty look at the security guards who’d just shoved him off Lauren’s property and were now securing the gate.

Could this have gone any worse?

“Come anywhere near Ms. Cole again and you’ll be serving time for stalking, got it?” the guard shouted from behind the bars.

He supposed he should be happy he hadn’t been arrested. Now he was just stranded. Not that it mattered. He’d certainly been stranded in worse parts of Los Angeles than Beverly Hills. And for what he’d paid for his shoes, they could withstand a little wear and tear. He checked his pockets, but his cell phone was gone. Probably crunched under Helen’s retreating tires. Looking up to get his bearings, he headed south.

He hadn’t been lying when he told Helen that he hadn’t expected Lauren to recognize him, but then he realized that the flaw in his plan started right there. He’d recognized her, hadn’t he? The first time he’d sneaked into that movie theater, two years after bumming a cross-country ride from Los Angeles to New York, and caught sight of the blond babe playing Athena on the silver screen?

He’d known instantly it was her. The girl he’d met in Hollywood. The girl who’d shown him kindness in the face of utter fear. The girl whose life he’d saved, only for her to be shuttled off to some private facility by her rich sugar daddy. The girl who’d unwittingly kick-started his career.

His footsteps echoed on the sidewalk. From just over the side of the tall, manicured hedges and rustling palm trees of tony Beverly Hills, the colors and sounds of wild, unchained Los Angeles beckoned. The sensations of being terrified, hungry, desperate and alone flooded back over him. Leaving his mother’s house with nothing but a dozen fading bruises and his dreams of acting seemed like a lifetime ago. His fantasy had been instantly cut short by the realization that he was only one of a thousand throwaway kids who’d been tricked into trading one tragic life for another, thanks to movie-manufactured delusions and illusions.

Only, David had made it. Lauren might not have had a chance to thank him for his help that night, but her benefactor had paid him pretty nicely, both for his good deed and for his silence. Ross Marchand had paid him several thousand dollars and given him a business card for a modeling agent who owed him.

Through pure grit and will, David had parlayed his reward into an Actors’ Equity card and a letter of acceptance from the Screen Actors’ Guild.

He’d promised Marchand that he’d never come back to Hollywood, and technically the boy who’d taken the money had not returned. Now he was someone else. Someone new. Someone worthy of Lauren’s attention and gratitude and affection—someone whose past had just smacked him down yet again.

His mind lost in his humble beginnings, David was unaware of the car trailing slowly behind him until it revved forward and the passenger side window slid down.

“Get in,” the driver said.

David didn’t stop walking. “This is Beverly Hills, buddy, not the Spotlight. Pick up your boy toy somewhere else.”

The car screeched to a stop and one tire ran up on the curb. Instinctively David jumped away, then froze, stunned when the driver leaned across the seat, opened the passenger-side door and looked up into the light from the street lamp.

Ross Marchand.

“I said, get in,” he repeated.

David held his ground. “Why?”

“You want to work in this town or not?”

Though delivered with an amused tone, the hard truth in Ross’s threat hit him like a fist to the gut. With a shrug, he did as the producer asked, sliding onto the leather seat of the Jag and slamming the door.

“So you’ve taken to staking out your ex-wife’s house now?”

Ross gave him a smug glance, then turned his eyes back to the road and jumped the curb until they were gliding farther and farther away from Lauren. “Did you get what you came for? Or did you crash and burn, like I predicted?”

“I was walking home. What do you think?”

“I warned you that coming back here was not a good idea.”

“Yes, you did.”

“This town isn’t so big. Everyone knows everyone, and secrets aren’t worth squat.”

“I can see that. now.” David forced the words out. He didn’t want to talk to Ross Marchand, but what choice did he have? The moment his head shot and resume had been short-listed for the part of Lauren’s love interest, he’d been on the producer’s radar. Like an idiot, he’d thought he could bypass the producer, get to Lauren on his own.