Adored (44 page)

Two hours later and the party was in full, riotous swing.

The A-list had turned out in force, in even greater numbers than in previous years. Everyone from the Spielbergs to the Spellings was there, milling around enjoying the latest Hollywood gossip, washed down with Randall’s vintage champagne. Even Mel Gibson, Siena’s childhood heartthrob, put in a brief, early appearance, much to her surprise and delight.

In quiet corners all around the estate, diets and discretion were both being thrown to the wind. Guests tucked into huge slices of brandy-soaked Yule log and held hushed conversations about their host and his beautiful young companion. How long would the relationship last? Did Siena really have the talent to live up to Randall’s hype? And did anybody know what Pete McMahon made of his daughter shacking up with a long-time business rival who also happened to be four years older than Pete himself?

“Do you know, he hasn’t seen Siena
once
since she moved out here?” an overexcited young CAA agent was whispering to his boss’s enthralled wife.

“I know. Incredible,” she said, nodding through a mouthful of pecan pie. “It’s the mother that I can’t understand, though. As a mother myself, I don’t understand how you can just walk away from your children like that. From your
only
child.”

“Pete McMahon’s got a screw loose,” chipped in her husband, who had just returned from the bar with more champagne. “He’s a virtual recluse nowadays; Claire, too. I’m not surprised they haven’t seen Siena. As far as I can tell, they haven’t seen anybody in the last eighteen months.”

“Look at Stein, though,” said the young man. “He’s besotted.”

The three of them looked over at Randall, who was nodding at the head of merchandising at Paramount and his bimbo wife, pretending to be avidly listening to their conversation while actually sneaking glances across the room at Siena.

If she was troubled by their little fracas in the bedroom earlier, she didn’t show it now. She looked utterly radiant, confident, and relaxed, throwing her head back and laughing at some comment of Jamie Silfen’s.

Every straight man in the room wanted her, thought Randall with pride. He felt his hard-on reviving and, with some effort, tore his thoughts back to Mr. Paramount and the subject of the Asian distribution rights to
Ocean Drive
.

Siena, meanwhile, was enjoying herself enormously with Silfen.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw you in the front row at McQueen,” she laughingly reminded the great casting agent of their first nonencounter. “What on earth were you doing there?”

“I like fashion, actually,” Jamie replied with a straight face. “I follow the trends.”

Siena looked at his portly form squeezed into an ill-fitting tweed suit, his bald head popping out at the top like a giant billiard ball, and found this statement rather hard to believe. If it had been anyone else, she would have laughed out loud, but Jamie was a close associate of Randall’s and far too important a person for her to accidentally insult.

“Really?” she said, trying her best to sound convinced.

“Of course not really!” He roared with laughter. “You didn’t think I picked up this little number at Alexander McQueen, did you?” He launched himself into a ridiculous twirl, wiggling his fat behind in Siena’s direction like Tweedledee. She giggled.

“That’s better,” said Jamie. “I like you better when you laugh. They should have you smiling more in pictures.”

“I know,” said Siena, forgetting for a moment Randall’s strict instructions never to talk about modeling with movie people, “but photographers almost never want the models to smile. We have to look permanently aloof and pissed.” She struck a regal pose, and now it was Jamie’s turn to laugh.

“I enjoyed
The Prodigal Daughter,
” he said, changing the subject for no apparent reason. “You were good.”

“Thank you,” said Siena, smiling modestly. She always said she’d have Jamie Silfen eating out of the palm of her hand one day. “I’m so glad you liked it.”

“Muller was fucking fantastic though, directing,” Jamie went on. “You shouldn’t have bad-mouthed him in that interview.”

Siena blushed. She’d been feeling guilty about her “second-tier” remark for some time. She knew she owed Dierk a hell of a lot.

“That sort of thing won’t help you, you know. Getting ahead,” said Silfen. He was deadly serious all of a sudden. “You might not know it, but loyalty goes a long way in this town. Further than you’d think.”

“I know,” said Siena humbly, “you’re right. It’s just that Randall felt—”

“Listen, honey,” Jamie interrupted her, putting a fat, clammy hand on her arm. “Randall’s a brilliant producer. He’s made a lot of good decisions, and a lot of money, and all credit to the guy. But trust me, he ain’t no life coach. Don’t let anyone go putting words in your mouth, Siena. Otherwise, who the hell are you anyway?”

She was standing, silently digesting this advice, when the whole room turned at the sound of an almighty crash coming from the entrance hall. The crash was followed by raised male voices, one of which Siena thought, to her horror, she recognized.

“Fuck off! Get the fuck out of my way before I hurt you.”

The clipped English accent was unmistakable.

Suddenly two of Randall’s so-called security guys came flying backward into the room, one after the other, smashing a priceless Venetian vase in the process. They were followed by the one person she had hoped she would never come face-to-face with again.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, barely audibly.

“Someone you know?” asked Silfen.

But Siena just stood and stared at Max in complete horror.

“Stein!” he yelled. “I want to talk to you. Where are you?”

She wondered for a moment if he was drunk, but his voice seemed steady, and there was no hint of a stagger as he moved among the stunned guests, like the one moving actor weaving his way through a freeze-frame.

Randall had started to step forward, but as he did so, Max caught sight of Siena, staring at him from across the room.

It was the first time he’d seen her since that awful day at the airfield, and he felt afterward that his heart must have stopped beating in that instant. She had never looked more beautiful, like some sort of otherworldly dryad in her column of clinging blue silk. Her eyes looked different—stronger, more sultry—but otherwise she looked exactly as she did in his dreams. Except that the reality was even more breathtaking.

The miracle wasn’t that he’d lost her, thought Max, taking in this vision. It was that he’d ever had her in the first place.

Siena gazed back at him, dumbstruck. In the months since she’d left, she had trained her mind, with ruthless self-discipline, to banish all thoughts of Max, both good and bad, from her consciousness. She had made a decision the night she flew to Vegas, never, ever to make the mistake of laying herself open again. She had shut down her heart, with Randall’s help, almost completely.

But seeing Max now, so lovely, so big, so out of place in his old jeans and Cambridge sweatshirt, standing right there in front of her, she felt all her good work unraveling like a ball of string. She was, momentarily, helpless.

“Siena, I’m sorry,” he began, his voice dry with nerves. “I’m sorry to burst in on your evening like this. But you won’t take my calls—I totally understand that,” he added quickly, before she could release a tirade. “And this place is always shut up like Fort Knox. This was the only night I had any chance of getting past security, with so many people coming and going. And I had to see you.”

Randall glared at the two security men still reeling from Max’s left hook—what the hell was he paying them for?—and made his way to Siena’s side.

“I hid in the back of a catering van,” Max explained unnecessarily. He knew he should stop talking, but he felt a need to fill the deafening silence.

The carolers had finally gotten the message and realized something was up, lamely spluttering to a halt halfway through their rendition of “Silent Night.” The guests maintained a rapt hush, watching him.

Finally, after what seemed like an age, Siena helped him out by speaking, although it was hardly the response he’d been hoping for.

“What do you want, Max? As you can see, I’m busy.” Her voice was as cold as ice.

“I want to take you home,” he said, pushing his hair out of his face and wiping the sweat from his brow. He was still ten feet away from her, but he didn’t want to risk moving any nearer in case she bolted or Randall took a pop at him before he’d said what he came here to say.

“He’s seriously cute, isn’t he?” whispered the daughter of a famous director to her girlfriend. “Who in their right mind would leave
that
for Randall Stein?”

Max cleared his throat and continued. “Not home to me, though. I know what I did was unforgivable. I know there’s no way back for us.”

“Good,” said Siena.

“But to Hunter. He loves you, Siena, and he misses you, even if he is too proud to show it.”

“Are you finished?” she asked.

“No. Not yet.” Max looked her in the eye. Siena was terrified that he would bore straight through into her soul and see how frightened and confused she was behind the ice-maiden facade. She willed him to hurry up and get this over with before she cracked.

“I’m worried about you,” he said. “Everybody is. You’ve changed, Siena, and not for the better. Stein is poison. He’s no good for you. Whether you go back to the beach house or not, you have to get away from him. Please. Not for me, but for yourself. He’s fucking evil.”

At this, Randall broke the spell and clapped his hands, signaling to the security reinforcements who’d been waiting by the door to make a move on Max.

“No!” said Siena, so loudly and firmly that the goons obeyed her and hung back. “I can deal with this, Randall.”

“I don’t think so,” he said and, grabbing her quite roughly by the arm, nodded to the men. He had already allowed this little scene to go on too long, and he wasn’t about to be overruled in his own house by Siena or anyone else. It was time to assert a little authority.

“Don’t you touch her!”

Before security could lay a finger on him, Max had launched himself across the room at Randall, bringing the older man crashing to the ground in a full-bodied rugby tackle. They came down with such an earth-shaking thud that a huge wreath of holly and ivy, festooned with red berries, swung down from the ceiling and landed right on top of them.

Max pulled back his fist to slam it into Randall’s face, but his arm was grabbed from behind and twisted agonizingly behind his back. Before he knew it, he was on his feet, tightly restrained by two of the heavier heavies.

He needn’t have bothered with the punch anyway. Randall was already out cold.

“See what I mean?” he said passionately to Siena. He was held so firmly that he couldn’t even begin to struggle. “See how he grabbed you like that? He’s an arsehole, Siena. He’s violent.”

“
He’s
violent?” She was so shaken up by what had just happened that she reverted to the safest reaction she knew: white rage. “Who the fuck do you think you are, Max?” she hissed at him. “You come in here, shouting the place down, telling me how I’ve changed, and how Randall’s such a terrible influence. Where the hell do you get off?”

Max opened his mouth to speak, but Siena was on a roll. “You’ve got some nerve, trying to take the moral high ground with me. If memory serves, I think you were the one running around in L.A. with your dick in every cheap fucking waitress who’d give you the time of day. So don’t you
dare
come storming in here and start telling me how to live my life.”

“For God’s sake, Siena.” He cried out in pain as the security men pulled so tightly on his shoulder that he thought it might be dislocating. “Can’t you see I’m trying to help you? I
know
it’s all my fault. I
know
I can never make it up to you. But can’t you see what this bastard’s doing to you?”

“No, Max,” she said flatly. “I can’t. Other than take me in and look after me. Randall’s a very generous man. And as for me, you know what? You’re right, I have changed. I’ve learned to look out for number one. I’ve learned that you can’t trust anyone except yourself. But it wasn’t Randall who taught me that, Max. It was you.”

Between the pain in his shoulder and the pain in his heart, Max was close to tears. He couldn’t bear to leave her like this. What if he never saw her again?

“I love you,” he said desperately.

A couple of romantic souls across the room gave an audible sigh.

“That’s your problem,” said Siena. “Unfortunately, I know what your love is, Max. And it isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. So let me make myself absolutely clear: I never, ever want to see you again.”

He looked at her pleadingly, but she turned away, raising her hand imperiously to the security men. “Get him out of here.”

In bed later that evening, she lay crying softly to herself, trying not to wake a sleeping Randall.

She’d expected him to be furious about what had happened, particularly after Max had knocked him out like that. But in fact, almost as soon as he’d come to, he’d been remarkably cheerful, insisting on carrying on until the end of the party and even making jokes about Max’s outburst.

“I’m so sorry,” Siena had told him once the last of the guests had gone. “You must blame me for all of this. The whole party was ruined.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Randall brightly. “You know Hollywood. People love a good drama.”

Siena looked at him, astonished. “You mean you’re really not mad?”

Randall smiled and took her hand, leading her up to bed. “No, I’m not mad,” he said. “Because you know what I realized tonight? He’s just a kid. He’s a dumb kid, he’s nobody.” Siena stared down at the ground and bit her lip. “He’s going to go to sleep tonight in a borrowed room he can’t even pay for, in some shitty little house on the beach. And I go to sleep here.” He waved vaguely at the opulence around them. “With you.”

He stopped to pull Siena to him and kissed her full on the mouth. His breath smelled of stale champagne, but she tried to appear enthusiastic. She supposed that was the least she owed him after everything that had happened tonight.