Just Kiss Me (21 page)

“Oh.” She hadn’t even been aware that she was smiling. “Sorry.” She retraced her steps.

“Quiet on the set!”

The camera and sound rolled again. The assistant director yelled “mark it,” and the slate person put the clapboard in front of the camera. “Scene fourteen, take two.”

“Action!”

Vivien took a deep breath and let it out. She stuffed her head with Jenny and her horrible circumstances. She became her character. Meek. Submissive. In fear of her powers and believing Enoch is the only man who can save her from hell.
I’m not your man meat, Vivien.

“Cut!”

Vivien bit the side of her lip and retraced her steps. It took six more takes before the scene ended with her gazing across the parking lot at her husband and a fresh-faced girl. The young girl who used to be her.

On Vivien’s way home from the set, she checked her text messages. Henry’s name popped up and she bit her lower lip.
How’s work
? Two words. He only wrote two words but that wasn’t the point. He’d reached out to her.

She waited until she got home to write back. She didn’t want to write too much and give him the impression that she missed him or sat around thinking of him. She typed,
Fine. How’s everything with you
? It wasn’t until she crawled into her four-poster bed that he texted back.
Muggy as hell here in Charleston. Met a friend for a drink
.

Vivien found the remote and hit a button. Across the room, her flat-screen television rose from a recessed compartment.
The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon
flashed on the screen, but she wasn’t interested in Jimmy tonight. Henry had met a friend for a drink. Possibly a female friend. Yes, she’d told him he was free to see other women, but she hadn’t meant it. He had to know she hadn’t meant it.

Right?

They weren’t in a relationship. They’d had great sex, but sex wasn’t love. Not even when it had felt like making love. He’d said he didn’t want to be her man meat, but he hadn’t said what he did want to be with her. He’d never talked of any sort of future between them. No, “let’s fly off to Mexico this summer” or “bring an extra tooth brush to my house.” He’d told her he’d pick her up from the airport. That was it. Not exactly a commitment.

Vivien tossed the remote and curled up on her side. There were plenty of obstacles that stood in the way of them ever becoming a couple. First, they lived thousands of miles apart. Second, he was Henry Whitley-Shuler, Charleston royalty, and just his name gave him entrée into the most exclusive clubs and organizations. She was Vivien Rochet, international movie star. Her name was known around the globe, but her name could never get her into the circle of society that had welcomed Henry at birth. Men like Henry had relationships with young ladies who came from old families with old family names. Not with a girl who came from the carriage house and used to vacuum their carpets. No matter how rich and famous she’d become, men like Henry formed real relationships with women like Constance Abernathy. Former St. Cecilia debutantes, members of the Junior League, and dabblers in the arts.

At the end of the day, fame and fortune and hard work was not enough. She might play fairytale characters in movies, but in real life there was no enchanted wand to turn her into a suitable princess worthy of southern royalty.

At the end of the day, she was not enough and she better remember that before she fell completely in love Henry.

VIVIEN’S FACE LIT
up when she talked about acting and the Dorothy Parker role she hoped to land. Her eyes shined with a spark of life that chased away the sorrow of her mother’s passing and the stress of the past week. She looked happy and happy looked good on her.

She’d been home a full week this time, cleaning and packing up her mother’s house. As before, he’d picked her up at the airport, but this time he’d followed her into the carriage house and made love to her on the living-room floor. He still had rug burns to prove it.

“I really want that role,” she said as she wrapped her mother’s china in newspaper and stuck it in a box. “Every actress in Hollywood has auditioned for it.” She grabbed another plate “It’s a Meryl.” She wore jean shorts and a white T-shirt and sneakers. A Clemson ball cap cast a shadow across her forehead, and her hair was held back by a plain rubber band. There was nothing plain about her.

“A what?”

“The kind of role that wins awards.” She looked up, focused and determined like when she’d been a kid. “I want to win an Oscar.”

He laughed and set a blender in the donate bin next to an old toaster. “I thought it was just great to be nominated. Isn’t that what y’all say?”

“That’s crap.” She waved a hand in the air. “Everyone wants to win.”

Henry thought about his former life, when he’d wanted to win at all cost. When losing hadn’t been an option. When he’d been flying high and his heart had beat to the rhythm of the stock market. He understood Vivien’s ambition, it just wasn’t his life any longer.

“If I’m cast, I’ll have a wider range of films on my resume and grow my brand.” She chatted about future parts and the production company she planned to create. “No remakes,” she said. “I mean, how many different times and ways do you want to see
The Invisible Man
or
Zorro
? I hate to see big studios suck the life out of Jane Austen or Hitchcock when the originals are such classics and should be left alone.” She wrapped one last plate. “But first I need to land that Dorothy Parker role.”

“When will you know if you get the part?”

“Soon.” Vivien put the last plate in the box then shoved her hands on her hips and glanced about the kitchen. “It looks like an episode of hoarders in here.”

Not quite, but there were three bins: keep, donate, and throw away. She’d made headway sorting her mother’s personal belongings, but she still had quite a bit to do yet.

“Momma was sentimental. A lot of the time, she couldn’t bear to throw away anything. Then there were other times when she cleared the house of clutter and threw away the stuff she hadn’t been able to part with the day before.” Sadness crept into her eyes and she turned toward the sink. “Her life was a rollercoaster.” She washed her hands with a bar of rose-scented soap.

“So was yours.” Henry joined her at the sink and took the soap from her hands. “You were forced to live her ups and downs alongside her.” He would smell like roses, but he’d smelled like worse.

“Yeah, but she couldn’t help it.” She ripped off two paper towels and handed him one. “Most of the time it was okay.”

Her green eyes looked into his and he could see that it hadn’t been “okay.”

“When she was stable, she was a real good momma. She cared for me and loved me and I loved her. Then she’d get hyper manic and stay up for days doing a hundred projects at once.” She looked down at her feet, and the bill of her hat blocked his view of her face.

Henry reached for her ball cap and pulled it from her head. “I remember Spence and I came home from Hilton Head one night and she had a flashlight in one hand a paintbrush in the other. She was singing to
Tom Petty
on the radio and painting the shutters.” He tossed the hat onto a box. “We just thought she didn’t want to paint during the heat of the day. Later Mother told us she was bipolar and explained what that meant.” He put a finger beneath Vivien’s chin and lifted her gaze to his. “That must have sucked for you as a kid.”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I didn’t really mind when she talked about her dreams. She made them seem real and she’d entertain me for hours with things we would do when we ran off to Zanzibar or Bali. For a while she’d just be a normal mother.
We’d
just be normal, and then I’d see her getting dressed up nice, and I knew she was going out to find some sorry excuse for a boyfriend. I hated her boyfriends, but I hated her sad moods even more.” She shook her head and her brows furrowed above her beautiful eyes. “I figured out real quick the patterns of her moods. They were always the same: happy, normal, needy, and sad. I never knew how long she’d stay in one of her moods before moving into the next. Sometimes she wouldn’t get out of bed for two weeks.”

He brushed his thumb across her jaw. “What did you do when she was in bed?”

“Sometimes Mamaw Roz stayed with us or I stayed at her house. When I got older, I took care of her.”

“She was lucky to have you.”

She tilted her head to one side in thought. “I was lucky to have her. She taught me to dream big and that nothing was beyond my reach. She always told me that I could be anything I wanted to be. She never set limits on my imagination or had crushing expectations of me. Without her, I don’t know that I would be where I am today.” One corner of her pink lips curved upward. “I grew up in your backyard, but our lives were different.”

“Drastically different. Growing up in boarding schools was lonely. Once we were sent away to school, mother’s job was over. Spence and I had each other, but we were raised by headmasters and dorm advisers and Grandfather Shuler. I don’t think Spence has ever forgiven her. If you add up the number of days we spent at home, they probably wouldn’t even add up to a year.”

“I think I’d rather have my momma than yours.”

“You don’t think,
you
know you’d rather have your momma.” He chuckled. “I love my mother. God knows I do, but she is a hard nut to crack.”

“Nonnie’s a hard nut and my momma did nutty stuff sometimes. Maybe that’s what they had in common after all.”

“Macy Jane couldn’t help her nutty side.”

“I know.” She brushed her cheek against his palm like she had the first time they’d made love. “She knew some of the kids at school made fun of me because of her. So one time, she stayed up for days and made pecan sandies for the entire school in hopes of winning them over.”

“That’s really nice. Did it work?”

“Not so much.” She chuckled. “She didn’t have baking powder so she used baking soda.”

“I take it the two are not interchangeable.”

“Not even close. Her cookies tasted like sodium bicarbonate. All five hundred. Not even the neighbor’s dog would eat them.”

She laughed now, but he imagined it hadn’t been funny at the time. He could practically see the humiliation in her eyes. He probably
had
seen it. Vivien mortified to her core but pretending she didn’t care. Pretending nothing hurt her. Hitting first before she got hit. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the part in her hair. He hadn’t understood her back then. He understood now, and he felt a
clunk clunk
like the chain drive snapping on his drum sander and wreaking havoc inside. If he wasn’t careful, Vivien would wreak havoc in him.

That night as she lay curled up against him in her favorite spoon position, he thought of the day he would take her to the airport one final time. The day she would leave and not return. The thought made him turn cold and hollow inside.

They’d both agreed that the two of them didn’t belong together long-term. They didn’t fit outside of the bedroom. Except when they were at the carriage house packing her mother’s things. At his house having dinner or driving the Mercedes with the top down. He always looked forward to picking her up at the airport, and he was going to miss her like hell.

Over the next three weeks, she made even more headway in the carriage house. He filled the bed of his truck with boxes for Goodwill and helped her stack “keep” boxes in one end of the living room. As much as he fought against it, the little clunk near his heart grew bigger and each time he took her to the airport he felt it snap a bit harder. Every time she left, it was a little bit harder to see her go, but even when she was gone, he could still see her. All he had to do was turn on the television and watch her segment on the Today Show, promoting her role in
Psychic Detectives
. Or he’d see her on the cover of some fashion magazine in the check-out line at Publix. She should look ridiculous wearing a pink feathery gown and a hat with a bird on it, but she didn’t. He bought the magazine to read the article, only to discover it talked about her clothes and not her. It did have a nice photo spread of her, though. He especially liked the black-and-white taken of her in a corset and motorcycle boots. He liked all her pictures, but nothing was like the real thing. He got a kick out of watching her on television, but having her close enough to touch was much better. “I got the role!” she said the next time she jumped into his truck. A huge smile lit her face. “I got Dorothy Parker.”

That night he took her to his favorite white-tablecloth restaurant to celebrate. He wore a blue suit and she dressed in the skirt and blouse she’d worn the day they’d had sex in the carriage house. They sat in a booth near the back of the restaurant, drinking champagne and eating steak and whipped potatoes. The meal was delicious and decadent, but not as delicious and decadent as his memory of her the last time he’d slipped that skirt from her hips.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, a slight curve to her red lips.

“You. Me. Those red shoes and your momma’s row house.”

“I thought I recognized that look in your eyes.”

“I didn’t know I had a look.”

“You have a look, Henry. It’s kind of sleepy and ravenous at the same time.”

Sleepy and ravenous?
“Sounds scary.”

“You don’t scare me anymore, Henry.”

“Were you ever really afraid of me, darlin’?”

“Terrified.”

“You didn’t seem terrified earlier when I washed your back in the shower.”

She chuckled. “I’m a trained actress and my back needed scrubbing.” Her laughter died and she tossed her napkin on the table. “I start filming in a few weeks. I won’t be in Charleston as much.”

“When you finish filming, we should find a secluded island. We’ll lay on the beach and drink rum from coconuts all day.” He took her hand. “Until then, I’ll look forward to spending time with you when you return.”

“I always look forward to spending time with you, Henry.” She dipped her head and a smile beamed at him from across the table. “When I’m gone, I think about you. A lot. You’re important to me. I trust you and—”