Encore Encore (28 page)

David clicked the email closed.

This weekend the two of them were driving up to western Massachusetts to the old farmhouse David had bought and was currently restoring. He wondered if Emilio’s enthusiasm for the trip would dim when he learned that there was no TV at the house. An entire weekend with Emilio and nothing to do but talk. Hoo boy.

David did his best not to dwell on it. Instead he focused on the thought of that incredible body and the sexy mouth that could suck the chrome off a Harley. Yeah, now, that was the ticket.

The man really was shameless and hot as fuck in the sack.

Too bad he was also dumb as a box of rocks. A very sexy box of rocks, for sure, but still.

216 Gardner ~ His Leading Man

David picked up his coffee and sipped, skimming the rest of his unopened email. He’d just about made up his mind that they all could wait when a google alert caught his eye. He clicked it open.

So Kieran was in the tabloids again, and not just any tabloid, but
Spotlight
, the trashiest of trashy rags. Already cursing himself for a fool and a masochist, David clicked through to the story.

The fi rst knife to his heart was a photograph that showed Kieran dressed in the white satin gown from the awards show, draped all over a tall, dark-haired actor named Danny Brighton.

And didn’t that body language look just so promising, for Brighton anyway?

Ouch. He really needed to take Kieran Reilly off his list of email alerts. But because apparently he just couldn’t get enough of throwing himself on that particular sword, David went ahead and read the article.

It was pretty typical
Spotlight
stuff and nothing really new. It rehashed the awards show, talked about Kieran’s success on
What
a Drag,
and listed the names of men he’d been linked with in recent months. Same old crap.

He was about to click away when another name caught his attention. Will Tierney. Wasn’t Will the name of the producer...

David read on and felt his heart drop into his shoes.

Kieran and Will’s affair had made
Spotlight
. Not that the paper said anything specifi c.
Spotlight
never did. But you’d have to be deaf, blind and stupid, not to mention having your head up your ass, not to know that Kieran was the “Hollywood pretty boy” mentioned in the article.

David blew out a breath and scrubbed both hands down his face. He remembered the text Kieran had sent, remembered how he’d felt when it arrived, the hope that they might be able to connect again, or maybe that they hadn’t entirely lost the connection they’d once had. Stupid fucking hope.

Kieran was with Will, and now their affair was out of the closet and they could be together publicly. Hell, maybe it was ENCORE! ENCORE!
217

Kieran who had given the story to
Spotlight
. Maybe he’d done it with Will’s blessing. The entertainment world was like that.

Rather than just come out and say he was in love with a man, Will might have wanted to create a scandal, a big splashy, front page grabbing love affair that would—

The doorbell rang.

Whoa, saved by the proverbial bell.

Shoving back his chair, he went to buzz Gavin in.

David opened the apartment door to the aroma of pepperoni and onions and Gavin’s smiling face.

“I brought food.” Gavin held out the pizza box like an offering.

“Good job by you.” David stepped aside, allowing his friend to pass and shut the door after him. “What did you get on it?” He headed straight into the kitchen alcove for plates and drinks.

“Pepperoni and onions with mushrooms on half. Just like you like.” Pushing aside a stack of magazines, Gavin set the box on the coffeetable while David took two beers from the fridge and passed them over the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen.

David reached for the roll of paper towels above the sink to tear off two and found nothing but the cardboard tube. Crap.

“Hang on, let me get us some paper towels.”

“Just use your sleeve.”

David groaned. “What are you, six years old?” He walked down the short hallway that led to the bedroom, stopping in front of the small closet that doubled as a pantry and a place to hang coats. Taking a fresh roll of paper towels from the shelf, he returned to the living room and found Gavin bent over his laptop.

“So you’re ex is in
Spotlight
.” Gavin turned, picked up his beer and took a long pull. “I assume you read the article.” David nodded and took a piece of pizza. “I read it.”
218 Gardner ~ His Leading Man

“And?” Gavin reached for his own piece, lifted it and snapped a long string of mozzarella before sliding it onto his plate.

“And nothing.” David pretended a nonchalance he didn’t feel.

“No comment?” Gavin bit into his pizza and spoke around a mouthful of sauce and cheese. “As much shit as you’ve put yourself through over that boy and you have nothing to say?” Oh, he had plenty he could say, but wouldn’t, not even to Gavin who knew probably more than anyone else about David’s Kieran troubles.

“Can we not talk about this? It gives me
agida
.” As if to prove it, David stifl ed a belch.

“No prob, my oh so Irish brother. But not being Italian, I don’t think you can get agida.” Gavin took a huge bite of pizza, chewed and swallowed. “Isn’t there some Gaelic word for indigestion?” David laughed and took a drink of beer. “Not that I know of.

And anyway, agida isn’t a real Italian word. It’s Italian-American slang.”

He was ridiculously grateful for the turn the conversation had taken, well away from the topic of Kieran Reilly’s affair with Will Tierney. It truly did give him agida to think of it.

And because Gavin was a friend who really did know how much shit David had put himself through over Kieran, the subject was dropped. They had fi nished off the pizza and started in on their second beers by the time Gavin turned the conversation toward their screen play.

“I talked to my sister last night,” He said, gathering up the empty pizza box and moving it to the kitchen counter. He took out his laptop and set it on the coffee table. “She asked about you.”

“Did she?” David sat down at his computer station and opened his screen writing software. “How’s she doing?”

“Good. I told her we would be casting soon.” ENCORE! ENCORE!
219

“Yeah?” David paged down to the scene he’d wanted to discuss.

“She asked if she could read the script, so I emailed her a copy.”

David looked up sharply. “It’s not really in its fi nal form.”

“I know, but it’s just my sister.” Gavin paused. “She had some ideas for casting.”

“Did she?” A memory niggled at the back of David’s brain.

Christine Ferrar saying,
“I have someone I want you to meet. I think he’d
be just perfect for yours and Gavin’s movie.”

“My sister knows a lot of people. And she’s really sharp about the business, Sully. It wouldn’t hurt to take a look at whoever she has in mind, would it?”

No, it couldn’t hurt Gavin. Him, on the other hand…

But he let himself imagine it anyway, even if just for a moment, Kieran in the role of Michael, the confused and confl icted young man, torn between his past and his future, between what he wanted and what he needed. Kieran with his dark hair and lithe build and that beautiful expressive face. Kieran speaking the words David himself had written, following his directions, coming to his bed at night after the days’ shooting was fi nished.

God, it was tempting.

“David?”

“No.” David shook his head. “It couldn’t hurt.”

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

God, but he wanted to play Michael.

Kieran let the last page of the script fl utter closed on his lap, then sat, hands folded atop the stack of pages and imagined what it would be like. He could already see himself as Michael, torn between his need to regain his independence and the new love he was just beginning to discover following the death of his longtime partner, a man who, though he had loved him, had
220 Gardner ~ His Leading Man

through that love turned him into a needy dependent shadow of his former self. It was a complex role that would challenge him as an actor in ways no other role had yet done. It would allow him to explore facets of his craft that—

Kieran stopped himself. It would also put him in close proximity with David for days and weeks at a time. They could, probably would, be working together for months. And yeah, let’s not kid ourselves, shall we? He knew David’s style of directing, knew how intimately they would be working together, how demanding David the director could be, how wrenching the work almost certainly would be.

Still, after reading the script through, twice, he wanted the role so badly he could practically taste it.

If, by some chance, he could actually get the part, he already knew how he would prepare. Years ago he had read about how teachers of the visually impaired trained by wearing black contacts, for days at a time, to simulate blindness. How the teachers had to function in their daily lives without sight to give them an indication of what their students faced each and every day. And that’s what he would do. He would get a pair of those contacts and he would live as a blind man, eating and sleeping, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and traveling all without sight.

And making love, what would that be like without the constant visual cues and feedback lovers got from one another?

What would it be like with David?

David. God! After everything that had happened between them, after the way Kieran had acted the last time they were together, would David even consider him for the role?

He would have to, simple as that. Kieran would make it happen.

And once he did, once he had the role of Michael, what then?

Because that wouldn’t be enough. Seeing David, working with him, even sleeping with him, because surely they would end up in bed, but it wouldn’t be enough. He doubted they could spend an ENCORE! ENCORE!
221

extended amount of time in each other’s company without once again becoming lovers.

Could he deal with that? Could his heart stand to be broken yet again by David Sullivan? He didn’t know.

Kieran pressed his hand to the center of his chest and rubbed at the spot as if soothing an ache. His phone rang. He jumped and his heart began to pound, hard and fast. Wow, if this were a movie instead of his life, it would be David on the other end of the line, offering him the part. But this wasn’t a movie, and that was his land-line ringing not his cell, and David didn’t have that number. So who could that be? Probably another reporter wanting to ask him about the
Spotlight
article. He’d let the damn machine get it. He sat still and counted the rings.

Three. Four. Five. Six.

Click.

Kieran listened to his own voice telling the caller to please leave a message after the tone. Then came the beep followed by Will’s familiar voice.

“Hey, babe, pick up if you’re there.” Kieran didn’t move from the couch, just sat there listening. “Why aren’t you answering your cell? We need to talk. Call me as soon as you get this. I’m on my way to your place. I have to—”

Kieran picked up. “What do you mean you’re on your way here?”

“Go to the window and look outside.”

“What? Why?” But he went to the front window and twitched the drape aside.

Jesus H. Christ!

A face peered back at him from only inches away on the other side of the glass, the man’s shocked expression mirroring Kieran’s own surprise.

Kieran yelped and stumbled back, dropping the edge of the curtain but not before he saw the small mob gathered on his
222 Gardner ~ His Leading Man

lawn. “There’s reporters all over my lawn. There’s one outside the window right now. Will, what’s going on?”

“How many?” Will demanded. “And where are they from?”

“What? I don’t know. Maybe a half dozen. What are they doing out there?”

Will laughed, actually laughed. “Calm down, baby. I’ll explain when I get there. Just get ready to let me in. And make sure you look good in case they get you on camera.”

“What the hell—”

The line clicked, fi lling his ear with the buzz of a broken connection.

Should he go back to the window, take another look? No, nothing to be gained by doing that. Still, he wondered how his peeping Tom had gotten up so close to the glass. That window was at least eight feet above the ground, and below it there was shrubbery. How had he managed— He cut the thought off.

Maybe better not to go there.

But what was up with Will? After the way they’d left things the other night, the fi ghting and the biting, why was he all of a sudden Mr. Happy? That was way more disturbing than the reporters’ presence outside his front door.

As if on cue, Kieran heard a commotion from outside, a low rumble of voices then a few shouts. Will must be out there. He went to the door and waited. When nothing happened, he opened it just a crack and peered out.

Will stood at the foot of his front steps, surrounded by the entertainment press, a cluster of microphones in his face, a huge bouquet of fl owers in his arms.

What the hell?

Yeah, he knew it was cowardly, but desperate to avoid being seen, Kieran started to close the door.

“There he is!”

Crap! Busted.

ENCORE! ENCORE!
223

The little group surged forward, up the steps, carrying Will with it like the conquering hero returning from battle. The front door was pushed inward, Kieran jostled backward, questions shouted.

Did he and Will have any plans? How did he and Roxanne get along? What was it like being the third side of a bisexual love triangle? And the dreaded, Kieran how do you feel?

Will’s grin just about split his face as he jollied along with the reporters.

“Will, can we have a shot of the two of you?”

“How about a kiss while you’re handing Kieran the fl owers?”

“C’mon, Will, Kieran, we’ll love you forever.” General laughter.