The Beach House (14 page)

“Later.” He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Janice is waiting for me outside. We're going for a run.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Don't go anywhere. We need to talk.”

“Yes,” she said to his retreating back. “We do indeed.”

Chapter 10

Chris and Janice were almost to the rocky promontory that held the house Tony rented before either said anything. Finally Chris turned and faced her while he ran backward. “Thank you for rescuing me.” She'd come to get him an hour and a half early. “How did you know?”

“I didn't for sure. I just woke up, saw that Tracy was gone, and made a wild guess.” She spoke without lifting her eyes to look at him.

Chris dipped his head to put himself in her line of vision. “Are you mad at me?”

“Disappointed.”

“I didn't ask Tracy to come to my room.”

“Maybe not, but you obviously didn't ask her to leave, either.”

“I did. She wouldn't.”

Janice stopped and stared at him, her hands planted on her hips. “Oh? And just how hard did you try?”

He smiled. He loved that she was mad and that she'd cared enough to risk everything, including her pride, to rescue him from Tracy. “You are unbelievably beautiful.”

“Don't even try that crap on me. I know how you feel about Tracy.”

“How I felt,” he corrected her.

“You can't just turn something like that off. It takes—” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and turned away from him.

Chris came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “You scare me,” he said.

“Yeah, right. I'm one tough babe.”

“I'm falling for you, Janice, and I don't know what to do about it.”

She was very still. “What do you want to do?”

“Keep you here with me—move to St. Louis, practical things like that. But there's not a damn thing I can do. At least not now. That's what makes it so hard.”

The fight left her like an outgoing wave. She leaned her back into his chest. “How did we go from hating each other to this?”

He tightened his arms around her, snuggling his chin into her neck. “I don't know and I don't care. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me. Somehow we're going to find a way to make it work.”

“Promise?”

This one he could give easily. “I promise.”

She turned to face him, tilting her head back and reaching for a kiss. “We've got now. We'll worry about tomorrow later.”

He'd never tasted anything as sweet as her tongue as she explored his mouth. He grew hard with wanting her, but this time the reaction was as mental as physical. With desire came a wondrous need to love and be loved. He wanted to fight battles for Janice, to give her flowers and oceans and sunrises. He wanted to hold her hand when they went places together, and he wanted to lie down naked with her in front of a roaring fireplace. He'd never made love. Yesterday his virginity had been an embarrassment. Today, knowing the first time would be with Janice, he was glad that he'd waited.

He held her close, letting the feel of her body imprint itself onto his. “I'm going to see if I can postpone the trip to L.A. until the end of the month.”

“So you've made up your mind you want to do the movie after all?”

The statement had just come out. It was as if an enormous weight had been lifted from his shoulders. No more angst, no more putting it off, no more indecision. “I guess I have.”

“Have you told your mom?”

“Not yet.” He saw that the sky had started to clear, going from a gray black to dark purple. This was his last day on the set with Tony. He really couldn't miss it. “I have to get back. Tony's picking me up early today.”

“Let's go someplace tonight,” she said, taking his hand as they retraced their steps to the house. “Just us.”

He bent to kiss her. Where they went didn't matter. Knowing they would be alone was enough to send liquid fire coursing through his veins. “I'll get home as soon as I can.”

 

Chris didn't get back that night until almost midnight. Tony was leaving for Los Angeles in the morning to prepare for some upcoming interior shots, and the crew had planned a surprise party for him. Chris had felt obligated to attend. After six attempts to reach Janice and receiving a busy signal four times and letting it ring ten times twice with no answer, he finally gave up. He'd told her before he left that morning that it might not be possible to get away early. She'd said it was okay, that they could postpone their plans for another day. At the time it had been easy to say and hear because neither believed it would happen.

Tony gave Chris his address and phone number when they got in the Jeep, insisting he would be put out if Chris didn't use them. On the way home they'd talked about what Chris should expect when he went in for the screen test, about joining the Screen Actors Guild, and about what to look for in an agent.

By the time they pulled off the highway, Chris had been indoctrinated with Tony's philosophy on “being in the business.” He conceded it was an exciting way to make a living, but that Chris was never to forget that first and foremost
it was a business
. Along with that piece of reality, Tony had delivered a short, stern lecture about Chris living below his means and investing every dime he could get his hands on against the day it would all come to an end—and he wasn't ever to try to fool himself about that: his career as an actor would come to an end one day.

Most of all, he was to keep his head out of his ass when it came to Hollywood parties and the hangers-on who were always around trying to buy friendships with free drugs.

It was the speech Chris had expected from his mother that morning. Instead, after about fifty questions, he'd gotten a remarkably calm acceptance and not one thing about talking to his dad first or the possibility he would someday regret giving up his last year of high school.

“I'm going to be watching you,” Tony said when they reached the house. “Screw up and I'll be on your case so fast, you'll think I was hiding in the closet the whole time. You get in trouble, you've got my number.”

Chris couldn't decide whether he brought out some big brother instinct in Tony or if Tony had stuck his neck out to get Chris his chance. The reason didn't matter. The friendship did. He wouldn't let Tony down.

“I'll let you know how it goes.” Chris got out of the car. “The test, I mean.”

“We'll do something to celebrate when I finish this shoot.”

Chris closed the door and stepped away from the Jeep, waiting until Tony drove away before going in the house.

The lights were on, but no one was around. “Mom?” He waited a second. “Janice?” Still no answer. He headed for the kitchen to see if they'd left a note and almost fell over a suitcase left sitting beside the sofa. He bent to pick it up and saw that it was packed.

His mother came in from the deck through the sliding glass door. “I thought I heard you in here.”

He looked down at the suitcase and then at her. “What's going on?”

She put her finger to her lips and motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen. Even though they were out of earshot for anyone at the back of the house, she still spoke softly. “Beverly is taking the girls home tonight. They're leaving on a red-eye out of San Jose.”

She might as well have told him she'd staked a claim in Alaska and they were heading there in the morning. Janice leaving? Beverly flying out of San Jose? None of it made sense. “I'm not following you.”

“Tracy and Beverly have been going at it all day, or at least since Tracy got back from town this afternoon. You won't believe what she did.”

“Yes, I would,” Chris said, understanding dawning. “How did Beverly find out about the tattoo?” He couldn't believe Tracy was dumb enough to tell her mother what she'd done, but then he was beyond questioning anything Tracy might do.

“What tattoo?” Margaret asked.

“The one on her—” Chris caught himself. “If Beverly doesn't know about the tattoo, what got her going?”

Margaret hesitated.

“What?” Chris prodded.

“Nipple rings.”

“Jesus.” Tracy was really over the edge. “How did Beverly find out?”

“They started bleeding. The doctor said—”

Janice came into the room. Her eyes were red and swollen. “Would it be all right if Chris and I went outside to talk?” she asked softly. “I need to tell him something.”

“Of course,” Margaret said. She looked at the clock over the stove. “I wouldn't go too far, though. You only have a few minutes.”

“Why does Janice have to go?” Chris demanded as Margaret moved to leave. “Why can't she stay here with us?”

It was obviously not something she'd considered. “I guess she could . . . at least it's all right with me.” She looked at Janice. “How do you think your parents would feel about you staying?”

“I don't know. I'd have to call my father and ask.” A glimmer of hope lit her eyes. To Chris she said, “Were you able to talk them into waiting for the screen test?”

He'd forgotten that he was leaving himself in two days. “They said it was already set up, and that there were too many people involved to put it off.” He couldn't just let her go. “But I'll be back in—”

“I don't want you to miss your chance because you're worried about getting back to me.” She blinked to clear fresh tears.

“But you can't just leave,” Chris said, reaching out and taking her in his arms. He held her as if the contact were what would keep her there. “When will we see each other again?”

She burrowed into his shoulder, no longer fighting the tears. “I don't know. Maybe I could come out the week after Christmas.”

“But that's forever,” Chris said.

“I'll write you every day.”

“I'll call you as soon as I get to L.A.”

“I'm going to leave you alone,” Margaret said, tenderly touching Chris's arm as she left.

“It's not fair,” was the last thing Margaret heard Janice say before she closed the door to stand guard outside. She looked at her watch and calculated the minimum time it would take Beverly to get to the airport, seeking another minute or two for Janice and Chris to be together.

Any way she figured it, they had less than fifteen minutes. No matter what happened to their relationship in the months to come, their love would never be as intense or as painful as it was for them at this moment. Nor would it ever be as sweet.

Margaret's heart broke a little for them . . . while a part of her envied them, too. Seeing them together had made her remember how it felt to love and be loved. Until then she'd managed to convince herself the feelings were ones she could live without. She knew now that she was wrong.

 

Margaret propped a note of welcome against the seashells she'd gathered and left on the table in lieu of flowers for Joe and Maggie. She was leaving five days early to meet Chris in Los Angeles and didn't want them greeted with a wilted bouquet. She'd already made one pass through the house, checking to see that everything was dusted and polished for their arrival, and was about to make another when an overwhelming sense of melancholy came over her.

She went out on the deck. An early morning fog cloaked the ocean, muting the sounds of waves and shore birds. Drops of water fell silently from the eucalyptus leaves overhead, as if even they mourned her leaving.

The past three and a half weeks had seen another circle completed in her life. The beach house was where Chris had taken his first tentative step as a baby and where, seventeen years later, he'd taken the step that would leave his childhood behind. She and Beverly had watched their children grow close and then apart, their paths to adulthood as disparate as life above the ocean surface from that below. This was where she and Kevin had come to make an attempt at reconciliation, and where she'd finally told him she wanted a divorce.

The days she'd been at the house alone had given her something she rarely had at home—time to think and reflect about where she'd been and where she was going. Margaret had vicariously experienced Chris's pain at being separated from Janice and his nervous excitement about a film career. On the sideline she experienced his emotional roller coaster while he was the one taking the ride. It had been that way for years. Mentally she'd known Chris would leave one day, but it seemed she'd never accepted it in her heart.

Her emotional dependence on him couldn't go on. No, it
shouldn't
go on. She needed a life of her own. And thanks to her son and Janice, she now knew she didn't want to live the rest of her life alone. They'd made her remember how much sweeter life was when it was shared. From now on she would give the men she met a chance. They couldn't all be like Kevin. Somewhere there had to be a man who believed in the miracle of second chances, who watched PBS but couldn't understand opera, who ate scampi and fast food without complaining about either, and who didn't think stretch marks and wrinkles automatically precluded an interest in sex.

Even with the fog, people were already beginning to fill the beach, determined that not even the weather would steal a day of their vacation. For Margaret, it was time to leave. She had an appointment to meet Chris that afternoon at the William Morris Agency office in Beverly Hills and had a long drive ahead of her.