Honey Moon (34 page)

"Always. Nothing in my life—not
Beau Monde
, not even my career, is as important as my daughters." It was the most revealing statement he had made to her since their interviews began, but he could see that she didn't believe him.

Despite the fact that she had been dismissed, she made no move to gather up her tape recorder or notebook.

"You and your ex-wife have joint custody, don't you? I'm surprised you didn't leave the girls with her for the past few months instead of uprooting them by bringing them all the way across the country."

"Are you?"

She waited for him to explain, but he remained silent. He had no intention of letting her know that Lilly was incapable of dealing with the girls for very long.

In theory, the girls were supposed to divide their

time equally between their parents, but in practice they were with him ninety per cent of the time.

Lilly loved both her daughters, but for some reason that he couldn't fathom, she blamed herself for Becca's condition and her guilt made her ineffectual at meeting her daughter's special needs. In some ways the situation was even worse with Rachel. For all Lilly's intelligence, she seemed to lack the resources to deal with her strong-willed daughter, and Rachel rode roughshod over her.

Laurel continued to watch him cuddle Becca. "You're going to spoil your reputation as the last of the tough guys. Although that might not be a bad idea.

Some critics call it your fatal flaw. They say that no matter what role you play, you always seem alienated."

"That's crap."

"Not according to a recent critical analysis of your work." She flipped over some pages in her notebook. "I quote, 'Eric Dillon's solitary performances mark him as one of society's loners. He is an actor who lives on the edge: sexually dangerous, permanently alienated, a voluntary* discard. We feel his pain, but only as much as he allows. He gives us a twisted sort of brilliance, hard and difficult to crack. Ultimately, Dillon is gorgeous, hostile, and ruined.'"

He shot up from the couch, his daughter caught firmly in his arms. "I said that's enough for today."

Becca looked up at him, her eyes widening with alarm. He forced his muscles to relax and rubbed her arm. Then he glared at the reporter.

Apparently Laurel decided she'd pushed him far enough because she immediately gathered up her things and stuffed them into her tote bag. When she was on her way to the door, however, she hesitated.

"I have a job to do, Eric. Maybe after all this is over, we could—You know.

Have a drink or something."

"Or something," he said coldly.

After Laurel had left, he soothed Becca, then sent her off to play with her sister while he made some phone calls. When he was done, he went into the spacious room the girls shared and nodded at Carmen so she could slip away to take a much-needed break. Crossing to the end of the room, he observed Becca sitting at the low table patiently finger-painting red circles on white butcher paper.

Transporting the girls across the country for three months hadn't been easy. The hotel room was set up with their play equipment, along with multicolored plastic milk crates filled with toys and books. He'd arranged for a special school and a speech therapist for Rebecca and put Rachel into a private nursery school. Still, he believed the advantages of keeping the girls with him outweighed the disadvantages of uprooting them.

Rachel, growing bored with finger-painting, began to practice her cartwheels.

There was too much furniture in the room for gymnastics, and he waited for the inevitable, which wasn't long in coming. As she threw herself over, she caught her heel on the comer of one of the milk crates and gave a howl of outrage.

He squatted down. "Here, let me rub it."

She glared at him, transferring the sole responsibility for her gymnastic failure onto him.

"Daddy, you ruined it! I was doing it right till you came in! It's all your fault."

He lifted one eyebrow, letting her know that he had her number.

She was one of the few people in the world who didn't have any qualms about facing him down and she returned him raised eyebrow for raised eyebrow.

"Cartwheels are stupid."

"Uh-huh," he replied noncommittally. "Doing them in here isn't too smart, either."

He straightened and walked over to stand behind Becca, brushing his hand along the side of her neck. "Good work, champ. Give it to me when it's dry, and I'll hang it in my dressing room at the theater." He turned back to Rachel. "Let me see your painting."

She regarded him sullenly. "It's stupid. I ripped it up."

"I think somebody needs a nap."

"Daddy, I'm not cranky. You always say I need a nap when you think I'm being cranky."

"My mistake."

"Daddy, only babies take naps."

"And you certainly aren't a baby."

Becca piped up from the table. "Me want to show Patches Becca's painting, Daddy. Me want to show Patches."

Rachel's crankiness instantly vanished. She jumped up and raced over to grab Eric's leg. "Yeah, Daddy! Let Patches play with us. Please."

Both girls regarded him with eyes so full of entreaty that he laughed. "Couple of con artists. All right. But Patches can't stay too long. He told me he has to perform some major carnage this afternoon. Not only that, he has a meeting with his agent."

Rachel giggled and ran for her bureau, where she quickly pulled open a drawer and extracted a pair of

her navy blue tights. She raced back to him, the tights extended, and then rushed for the Band-Aid box.

"Not a Band-Aid again," he protested as he sat down in one of the small chairs, wrapped the navy tights around his head, and then knotted the legs to the side in the manner of a pirate's scarf. "You're going to end up with a father who's lost half of his right eyebrow. Let's just pretend."

"Daddy, you got to do the Band-Aid," Rachel insisted, just as she always did when he protested. "You can't be Patches without a patch, can he, Becca?"

"Becca want to see Patches."

He grumbled as he peeled the wrapper from the adhesive strip and secured it at a diagonal across his right eye, from the inside corner of his eyebrow to the outer edge of his cheekbone. Becca's thumb crept toward her mouth. Rachel leaned forward in anticipation. They watched in silent fascination, waiting for that magical transformation when their daddy changed into Patches the Pirate.

He took his time. No matter how humble his audience, that special moment of transformation was sacred to him, the time

when the boundary between illusion and reality grew indistinct.

He breathed once. Twice.

Rachel squealed with delight as he squinted his eye beneath the Band-Aid, crooked one edge of his mouth, and completed the transfiguration.

"Well, now, and what do we 'ave 'ere? Two bloodthirsty wenches, if me eyes ain't deceivin' me." He gave them his fiercest glower, and was rewarded with piercing squeals. Rachel began to run away from him, as she always did. He jumped up from the small chair and quickly scooped her off her feet.

"Not so fast, me pretty. I've been lookin' for some 'earty mates to carry off on me pirate ship." His eyes traveled from Rachel, squealing with delight and squirming beneath his arm, to Becca, watching gleefully from her seat at the table. He shook his head. "Nah. On second thought, I'll be throwin' you back.

The two of you look puny." He set Rachel down and, arms akimbo, regarded her ferociously.

Rachel immediately grew indignant. "We're not puny, Patches. Feel this." She raised her arm and made

a muscle. "Becca, show Patches your muscle."

Becca did as she was told. Eric dutifully leaned down and examined both sets of thin little arms. As always, the fragile delicacy of their bones struck fear into his heart, but he hid it and whistled with admiration. "Stronger than you look, the both of you. Still. . ." He fixed Becca with a dark scowl. "Are you good with a rapier, lass?"

"He means a sword," Rachel whispered loudly to her sister.

Becca nodded. "Vewwy, vewwy good."

"Patches, me too," Rachel squealed, "I'm great with a rapier." She launched them into the part of the game she liked the best. "And I can cut off a bad guy's head in a single swoop."

"Can you now?"

"1 can even open his stomach and let his blood and guts and brains spill out without blinkin' me eye."

Eric was noted for his faultless concentration, but he nearly lost it as Rachel tried, for the first time, to copy his accent. He had invented the rules of this particular game, however, and he checked any display of amusement. Instead, he regarded them doubtfully.

"I don't know. Raidin' and plunderin' is serious work. I need somebody with a strong 'eart fightin' at me side. The truth of it is ..." He sank down into the chair next to Becca and whispered conspiratorially.

"I'm not too fond of the sight of blood."

Becca reached out and patted his shoulder. "Poor Patches."

Impish lights sparked Rachel's eyes. "Patches, what kind of pirate can't stand blood?"

"Lots of 'em. It's a 'azard of the occupation."

"Patches, me and Becca love blood, don't we, Becca? If you let us come with you, we'll protect you."

"Me protect Patches," Becca offered, winding her arms around his neck.

He shook his head doubtfully. "Mighty dangerous, it is. We'll be raidin' ships full of lions with jaws powerful enough to eat up little girls." They listened wide-eyed as he described the perils of their raid. He'd learned from experience that they were especially taken with cargoes of exotic animals, but any reference to either robbers or big dogs frightened them.

Eventually Rachel spoke the words she said each time. "Patches, can my mommy come with us?"

He paused for only a moment. "Is she strong?"

"Oh, yes. Very strong."

"She's not afraid of blood, is she?"

Rachel shook her head. "She loves blood."

"Then we'll take her right along with us."

The girls giggled their pleasure and his heart swelled. In fantasy at least, he could give them the mother who was so frequently absent from their daily lives and so very ineffectual when she was present.

Then Patches the Pirate settled down to spin magic yarns of sea voyages, tales complete with valiant little girls sailing the seven seas and vanquishing all their enemies. They were tales of bravery and determination, tales where little girls were expected to stand their ground right along with the men and fight to the end.

Spellbound, the children clung to every word. As they listened, they heard only the rich bounty of their father's imagination. They were too young to understand that they were watching the man who was perhaps the best actor of his generation play the only role of his career in which he was alienated from absolutely no one.

20

"Did Daddy win?" Rachel raced into the living room, her red nightgown flying behind her, bare feet slapping the black and white marble floor.

Lilly reluctantly drew her attention from the television entombed in a pebbled gray cabinet. She had just finished redecorating the Coldwater Canyon home she and Eric had once shared. The doorways were now framed by Ionic columns topped with broken pediments, and the neo-Roman furniture was upholstered in white canvas. The light gray walls served as a background for first-century marble sculptures, French torchere lamps, and a wall-sized surrealistic canvas of a supersonic jet flying through the center of an enormous red apple. At first she had adored the new decor, but now she had begun to think so much neo-classicism was too cold.

"Don't run, Rachel," she admonished her daughter. "Why aren't you asleep? It's after nine. I hope you didn't wake Becca."

"I want to see if Daddy winned his Oscar. And I'm scared of a thunderstorm."

Lilly looked through the windows and noticed the trees were whipping in the wind. Southern California was having a terrible drought, and she suspected this storm would pass over without a drop falling as the others had, but she knew she would have trouble convincing her strong-willed daughter of that. "It's not going to rain, Rachel. It's just some wind."

Rachel gave her the mutinous look that seemed to be permanently stamped on her face. "I don' like thunderstorms."

In the background the Academy Award broadcast faded into a commercial.

"There's not going to be a thunderstorm."

"Yes there is."

"No, there isn't. We're having a drought, for God's sake."

"Yes there is."

"Dammit, Rachel, that's enough!"

Rachel glared at her and stomped her foot. "I hate you!"

Lilly squeezed her eyes shut and wished Rachel would disappear. She couldn't handle her as Eric did. Yesterday when she'd picked the girls up at their father's, Rachel had started to go outside in her socks. When Eric had ordered her to put shoes on, she'd screamed that she hated him, but it hadn't seemed to bother him. He'd glared right back at her and said, "Tough luck, kiddo. You're still going to wear your shoes."

Lilly knew that she would have given in. It wasn't that she didn't love her daughter. At night when Rachel was asleep, Lilly could stand forever by her bed and simply gaze at her. But during the daytime, she felt so incompetent.

She was like her own mother, a woman who simply wasn't maternal. Her mother had

left Lilly to be raised by her father, and Lilly was doing the same with her daughters. Sometimes it was better that way.

Even so, she found herself resenting Eric's relationship with the girls. She knew they loved him more than they loved her, but being a parent was easier for him.

He never lost his temper with Rachel, and Becca's condition didn't terrify him the way it terrified her.

"Look, there's Daddy!" Rachel squealed, her quarrel with her mother temporarily forgotten. "And Nadia. She's real nice, Mommy. Not like when her and Daddy was in Macbeth and she screamed all the time. She gived me and Becca Gummi Bears."

The camera was panning the front rows of the star-studded audience that was packed into the auditorium of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Eric's date for the Academy Awards was Nadia Evans, his
Macbeth
costar. Lilly was jealous, although she knew she had no right to be. Eric had been a faithful husband; it was her infidelities that had ended their marriage.