Love Me (3 page)

“A
nd the Oscar goes to …”

On the rose-covered stage of the cavernous ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel, Spencer Tracy stood in an immaculately cut tuxedo, flashing a mischievous grin at the audience as he broke open the fateful missive’s golden seal. He read the name inside, gave a knowing little shake of his head, and took a deep breath before he lifted his famous, grinning face back to the camera.

“Margo Sterling, for
The Nine Days’ Queen
.”

The scream of joy bursting from Margo’s throat was almost completely drowned out by a deafening sea of applause. All around her, friends and colleagues were leaping to their feet, their faces jubilant. Leo Karp, the powerful chief of Olympus Studios. Larry Julius, the head of the omniscient press department and the man who’d discovered her. Raoul Kurtzman, her beloved director, and Harry Gordon, the brilliant screenwriter,
cheering proudly as they held their own statuettes aloft. Jimmy Molloy, Olympus’s biggest box-office star (and its smallest in stature), standing on his chair, whistling with two fingers in his mouth. Her friends and rivals, Gabby Preston and Amanda Farraday, looking simultaneously thrilled and like they’d been sucking on lemons.

And in the middle of everyone, as clear as though they had a spotlight shining on them, Lowell and Helen Frobisher, Margo’s parents. She hadn’t seen them since they’d angrily disowned her when she’d forsaken stuffy Pasadena society for a chance at Hollywood stardom. No daughter of theirs was going to be anything so disreputable as an actress, they had declared, and if she was going to be one, then she wasn’t going to be their daughter anymore; it was as simple and as terrible as that.

But here they were, their cheeks wet, their arms outstretched. Cheering her as loudly as anyone, as though they couldn’t be prouder of her, as though this had been their dream all along.

Margo felt tears course down her own face as she rose to her feet. Slowly, she made her way to the podium, where the beaming Mr. Tracy held the Oscar out to her.…

Somehow, she didn’t seem to be making any progress. She felt as if she’d gotten stuck on the same conveyer belt as Charlie Chaplin in
Modern Times
. The ground beneath her was rolling, keeping her from moving forward, no matter how many steps she took. Margo looked down.

The entire floor of the Biltmore ballroom was covered in oranges. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Sticky juice pooled around her feet, seeping into her satin evening slippers. She tried to yank her trailing skirt out of the pulp, but her gown had mysteriously disappeared, replaced by the voluminous
green bloomers of the famously unflattering gym uniform of Pasadena’s Orange Grove Academy for Young Ladies.
My old gym suit?
Margo thought, frantically.
I just won an Oscar and I showed up in my gym suit?
The roar of the crowd was getting louder, less distinct, filling her ears until she thought her brain would burst out of her skull.…

Margo’s eyes flew open as she sat straight up in bed. The room was flooded with early-morning sunlight; the rushing sound in her ears was nothing more than the waves of the Pacific Ocean crashing against the Malibu coastline.
It was a dream
, she thought, her heart pounding.
Just a dream
.

Beside her on the bed, Dane twitched. “Margo,” he muttered thickly.

“What?”

“Go back to sleep.”

“I can’t.”

“Try.”

He pulled her body toward his, burrowing warmly against her. Forcing her eyes shut, Margo took a few deep breaths, trying to find her way back into slumber with the safe, familiar feeling of his strong arms around her, the pressure of his chest against her back.

It was no use. “I told you, I can’t. I’m too nervous.”

Dane let out a guttural sigh. He’d been filming a Western for the past few weeks, and the deep tawny suntan he’d acquired during the long hours spent in the sun made his eyes look more vividly green than ever.

“Margo, there’s no point,” he muttered. “There’s nothing you can do. Driving yourself crazy isn’t going to change what happens.”

“But Larry Julius said he’d call either way,” Margo insisted. “Maybe he already did and we missed the call. Maybe George is still asleep.”

George was Dane’s butler, or “house manager,” as he preferred to call himself, thinking it was a title more suited to his station. There was no one to tell him otherwise. Apart from Gloria, a skittish girl who came in twice a week to clean and spoke not a word of English, Dane Forrest employed no other servants. The private strip of sandy Malibu beach that served as the backyard needed no gardener. He drove himself everywhere, and having painfully traded a large chunk of her savings for a new silvery-blue 1939 Plymouth convertible, Margo did the same. On the rare evenings they found themselves dining in, they ate the simple meals—scrambled eggs, cold sandwiches, baked beans cooked hobo-style in a tin over the fire—Dane prepared from the single box of groceries George ordered each week.

“After all, I’m just a no-account farm boy,” Dane said, only half jokingly, when questioned about the simplicity of his lifestyle, so at odds with the opulence with which most picture stars surrounded themselves. “Who needs a swimming pool when you’ve got the ocean? Who needs a ballroom when you’ve got the stars and the sand? I don’t want to forget where I came from.”

But in the five months—almost six—since they’d officially been a couple, Margo had begun to draw a different conclusion from the strangely silent beach house with its careless bachelor ambience and conspicuous lack of visitors: Dane Forrest, one of Hollywood’s most popular leading men and bon vivants, didn’t like having people around very much.

Except me
, Margo thought firmly.
He likes me
.

Sometimes it was still hard to believe it had all really happened—that it
was
happening. Almost exactly a year ago, Margo Sterling had been Margaret Frobisher, a starstruck schoolgirl on the other side of the mountain in Pasadena, sleeping with Dane Forrest’s picture over her bed. Now, every night, she was actually sleeping in his.

And not just sleeping, either
. Margo and Dane had done things Margo was raised to believe she would only do once she was married—if then.

Except for one thing. One very important thing.

You could take the young lady out of the Orange Grove Academy it seemed, but you couldn’t quite take the Orange Grove Academy out of the young lady. At least, not all of it.

God knows I want to
. After all, this was hedonistic Hollywood, not prudish Pasadena. Sex was just par for the course.

Yet somehow, Margo just
couldn’t
. She’d try to relax, to let herself go, but some part of her would just clamp up, until the whole exercise seemed much more painful trouble than it was worth.
Funny
, she thought. Back when she thought Dane was in love with Diana Chesterfield, she would have done anything to make him happy, would have given herself to him in a heartbeat, no matter the cost. Now that she had him and wanted to keep him, something inside her just couldn’t … well, couldn’t
unclench
.

But it would. It had to. Dane hadn’t gotten around to mentioning marriage yet, but surely it was just a matter of time. Even in Hollywood, you couldn’t just invite a girl to practically
live
with you for months and then
not
marry her. And as soon as he did—as soon as Margo knew she was
safe
—she’d open up just like a flower. “Remember, girls,” Miss Schoonmaker had
once said during one particularly excruciating Poise and Presence class, “the ring is the key that unlocks the treasure chest.”

Dane’s shoulders were bare. The new muscles hewn from weeks of roping cattle bulged beneath his smooth skin.

Let’s just hope the ring comes very soon
, Margo thought.

Dane groaned. “Margo, George gets up at the crack of dawn. Before, even. When it’s still dark.”

“Maybe he stepped outside for a minute,” Margo suggested. “Or went to the bathroom. Or maybe he did answer the phone and he just didn’t put it through because he didn’t want to wake
us
up.”

With another groan, Dane propped himself up against the headboard, the white bedsheet tangled around his bare chest like a Roman toga. Rolling his eyes at Margo, he reached for the house phone on the nightstand.

“George,” he muttered into the receiver. “Yes, we’re awake.… Have there been any calls this morning?… Well, if there are, could you let us know right away? Poor Margie is practically eating her own skin off with nerves.”

Margo winced inwardly. Try as she might, she couldn’t quite get used to the informality with which Dane spoke to the help. It was almost like he didn’t realize that George worked for
him
.

“All right. Thank you, George.” Dane hung up. “He said he’ll put it straight through as soon as it comes. Feel better?”

“Not really.”

“Well.” Dane turned toward her, the exasperation in his face giving way to a naughty twinkle. “In that case, maybe we can think of some way to keep your mind off it.”

“Oh, can we?”

“Mmm. We’d better think about it very seriously. Very, very seriously indeed.”

Giggling, Margo arched her back, pressing her body against his as she met his kiss. The long, lingering mornings in bed were really the best thing, the best part of being with Dane. Even if you couldn’t quite get rid of the voice that told you nice girls didn’t go all the way, there were still plenty of things you could do.
No wonder they don’t tell you about any of those in school
, Margo thought breathlessly.
If they did, you’d never want to do anything else
. She just hoped they were enough for him. She explored his mouth hungrily, trying to kiss away her doubt, feeling herself begin to relax into his embrace.
Maybe this is it
, she thought, sighing at the feel of his calloused hands on her skin.
Maybe this time it’s all going to come together
.

The phone rang.

Dane was up like a shot to answer it. Eyes widening, he turned to Margo, covering the receiver with his hand.
“It’s the studio.”

Margo sat straight up, her heart beating so hard she thought it was going to burst out of her nightgown in a bloody mess. This was it, all right. Just a different kind of
it
.

“Yes.” Dane nodded. “Yes, I see. Well, thank you so much for calling. I appreciate it.” He hung up the phone.

“What?” Margo practically shouted. “What did they say?”

“That was my line producer. Seems I’m off today. Some kind of problem with the locations, so they have to rejig the shooting schedule.”

“Oh.” Margo felt cold.
How dare they call with something like that, this morning of all mornings?
“Oh, I see.”

“I can’t say I mind,” Dane said sexily. “Now. Where were we?”

He dropped his face back to Margo’s. His kisses were growing more urgent now. In spite of her nervousness—or maybe because of it—Margo felt her breathing grow shallow as Dane’s warm hands began creeping their way back up her nightgown, exploring what was underneath.…

The phone rang again.

Margo froze. “Answer it.”

Dane’s lips were buried in her neck. “Oh, baby, come on. It’s just my producer again. If he changed his mind about me going in today, I don’t want to know about it.”

“Dane.”
Margo jerked roughly out of his embrace.
“Answer it.”

Dane seized the receiver.
“Yes?”
he snapped tersely.
“Oh.”
His breath caught in his throat. “Larry. Hello.”

Larry!
Margo stopped breathing.

“No, no, of course I didn’t forget,” Dane was saying. “No … oh.” His eyebrows shot up. “Oh. Well. I see. No, that’s … that’s quite something.… Yes. Of course. Well, thank you for calling.… Yes. I appreciate that. I’ll see you soon.”

Dane hung up the phone. Margo lay motionless beneath the covers, too terrified to move. “Well?” she gasped finally. “What … what did he say?”

Dane didn’t seem to see her. His face was deadly pale and his eyes looked as wet and unfocused as a newborn’s.

“It seems,” he began, in a soft, small voice, “it seems I’ve been nominated for an Academy Award. For
The Nine Days’ Queen
.”

You?
Margo wanted to scream.
What about me?
“That … that’s incredible,” she stammered instead.

“I can’t believe it.” Dane’s hands were shaking. He looked
down at them stupidly, as though they belonged to somebody else. “I just can’t … I mean, who would have thought?”

Not me
, Margo thought meanly.

Not that Dane hadn’t been perfectly marvelous in his five scenes as Lord Guilford Dudley, nearly all of which had been filmed prior to Margo’s being cast in the leading role of Lady Jane Grey after the original star, Diana Chesterfield, had disappeared without a trace. But he’d barely been mentioned as more than a “typically handsome presence” (
The New York Times
) who “puts his matinee-idol profile to good use” (
Variety
) in any of the notices, let alone in any of the lead-up speculation about just who might have a chance with one of the little gold men who were suddenly the hottest date in town.

“Dane,” she ventured carefully, “that’s wonderful, and I’m so happy for you. But … Larry didn’t say anything about me, did he?”

Dane looked at her with surprise, as though he’d forgotten she was there. “You? No. He didn’t say anything about you.”

Margo’s heart was racing. “Nothing” was hardly the same thing as “no.” Maybe he’d just gotten the news about Dane first and didn’t want to wait until the full nominations were in. Or maybe Dane had hung up the phone in shock before Larry could finish talking. Maybe he was going to call back any minute.
Or maybe …

“He doesn’t know I’m here!” Margo shouted, her face flushed. “He’s probably been trying to call the bungalow! He must have been calling for ages and wondering why he didn’t get an answer.”

“The radio,” Dane said at once. “They announce the nominations on the radio.”