No Strings Attached (49 page)

“Margaritas: my own private recipe,” the freckled girl replied, setting the tray down and pretzeling her legs. “Most excellent.” She narrowed her eyes at Sara. “I assume we are still drinking?”

Sara hesitated, then shrugged. “Maybe I'll stick with only one.”

Lindsay poured the glasses full and handed them out. “So, what's our topic, besides self-flagellation? I'm not a big fan of self-criticism.”

“Yeah, we noticed,” Naomi quipped.

“But I am an expert on matters of the heart. And flesh.”

“No kidding.” Naomi again.

“And who'd guess my little savior had a sarcastic streak?” Lindsay shot Naomi a smile, grateful and genuine. “We have something in common after all.”

Naomi sipped her drink. “Not so much.”

“So, Nick.” Lindsay grinned at Sara. “So yummy!”

Sara and Naomi shot her a look.

“Not from personal experience, girls,” Lindsay assured them. “The guy is scorching! Who wouldn't want to get into his pants?”

Sara looked stricken. But she had no answer for Lindsay, who was, as advertised, spot-on.

Lindsay finished her drink and poured another. “I don't get you, Sara—and in truth, I never cared that much before.”

Bracing, brutal honesty: That's Lindsay. Sara wasn't the least bit pissed.

“You're like ‘bass-ackwards,' if you catch my drift. I'm shitty to you, so you go all overly kind to me. You sacrifice the part in the movie for me. You go to Nick for comfort—you feel great, 'cause who wouldn't, being with him? And then you feel bad about feeling good. I mean, if you really think sex is bad, why did God make it feel so good?”

“Lindsay, don't take this the wrong way, but you know nothing.” Sara was beginning to feel the tequila.

“I know about wanting. You wanted something for you. Something … oooh …
forbidden
!” she taunted. “I don't understand what you don't understand. We all want forbidden fruit—I don't have to tell you the story of Adam and Eve, do I?”

Sara felt her jaw drop.

“You're only human, Sara. You only think you're better than the rest of us. I might not be religious, but back when I starred on
All for Wong
, we did a special Christmas episode one year. The lesson was, most people believe in a higher power who forgives your sins. Don't you?”

“I can't believe I'm saying this, but she has a point, Sara.” Naomi looked shocked.

Sara slipped back into the hot tub, leaned her head against its smooth lip, and stared at the sky. “So, what do you do with those feelings? You can't give in to them every time you're attracted to someone.”

“Yeah, that'd just be slutty.” Lindsay giggled. She joined Sara in the Jacuzzi. “But if you're asking me personally, we'll need at least one other round of drinks.”

“I'll go.” Naomi started to get up, but Lindsay stopped her. “There's an intercom by the door. Hit the button and tell Desiree we need munchies and ‘mas 'ritas'—that's Spanish for ‘more.'”

When the housekeeper appeared a few minutes later with a tray of salsa and chips, guacamole, and another huge pitcher, Lindsay tried to answer Sara's question. “First, you admit your feelings. They are kind of natural, by the way. You don't have to act on them. I'm all about live and let live. But since you found this out already, sex is pleasurable. I would think it has to be that way, so people would want to procreate. I mean, I don't know that much … I'm just sayin'.”

Damn—that is,
darn
—Lindsay. When she was right, she was insufferable. Sara didn't want to debate the Bible, or her belief in waiting for marriage. She'd always look to the Bible for guidance. But maybe, just maybe, she'd also learn to listen to her own voice. Maybe that's what this summer had taught her.

She turned to Naomi. “What about you, little one? Ever fallen for the wrong boy?”

“Me? It's more like I've put my trust in too many of the wrong people,” Naomi confessed, draining her glass. “I'm in a different situation. I did what I had to, to survive. I never had the luxury of a boyfriend or thinking about who I wanted to be with.” She said it without bitterness.

“You've been very sheltered, Sara,” Lindsay pointed out. “You were bound to have some eye-opening experiences this summer. I hope at least some of them were good.”

Sara reflected. A lot of them were not just good, but great.

The tequila seemed to open Naomi up more too. “So now that we've dissected Sara and me, what about you, Lindsay? I mean,
really
? I know when someone's fronting. You pretend to be so worldly, like you've slept around so much. Something tells me that's bull.”

Lindsay rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay, we get your point, Yoda. You know, you even look like a little troll.”

Sara splashed her, hard. “That's a terrible thing to say!” But all three were laughing.

Lindsay added, “So much knowledge, spouting from the fountain of one tiny human. I do sort of, you know, love Jared.”

“Why?” Sara and Naomi had to high-five since they said it at the same time.

Lindsay licked the salty rim of her glass. “Habit?”

Naomi laughed. “Like you're getting away with that! Spill.”

“You can't tell us you've never thought about it before,” Sara added.

Lindsay drew a deep, dramatic breath. “I know he's not the hottest guy around, not like Nick. Looks-wise, I could probably do better. And he's not the smartest guy on the planet. He's no Eliot Kupferberg.”

“Stop saying what he's not—and tell us what he is,” Naomi demanded.

“Jared's kind of the best of both, straddling the fence between brains and brawn, never coming down fully on one side or the other. So, no lust-magnet, but he's sexy and smart enough, if that makes sense. He always knows the right thing to say and make it sound sincere. He's chameleon-like, snaky and shrewd, wrapped in a very nice glittery package.”

Sara listened to Lindsay, and it was like a klieg light going off in her brain. Lindsay loved Jared because he was handsome, vapid, and cagey in a hollow kind of way. Just like the town he lived in. Jared embodied Hollywood, and that's ultimately
what Lindsay saw in him. Jared can make magic happen; he's a walking all-access pass.

Sara had never met anyone like Lindsay or Jared before. She'd held her private thoughts about them, but hearing Lindsay say it out loud, admit to believing it, set off another klieg light.

“I have an idea,” Sara said.

When Jared, Nick, and Eliot returned from the movies, they
found Lindsay, Sara, and Naomi sloshing around the hot tub, happily sloshed, deep in the heart of “Margaritaville.” To Jared's amusement, it was Sara who immediately jumped up, wrapped herself in a towel, and collared him. “Can I speak to you privately?” she asked.

Jared didn't have long to wonder what was on Sara's mind. The minute they got inside the house, out of earshot of the others, she blurted, “You said you wanted to make amends, right? After the earthquake, you said you'd do anything for us?”

“Yeah, absolutely.” Only … Sara was pretty hammered—not quite slurring her words yet, but on the verge. “What'd you have in mind, Sara?”

“I need you to read something.”

Late the next afternoon, Jared jumped into his car and drove to Galaxy's offices in Beverly Hills to see his father. He didn't have an appointment, so he waited, pacing the anteroom for close to an hour while Rusty Larson finished with his meetings and then ran a teleconference.

The whole time, Jared gripped the screenplay tightly, as if someone walking by might rip it away from him, trick him into dropping it, giving it up. This treasure was titled
Hide in Plain Sight
; he'd read it only because he'd promised Sara. He'd totally planned to scan about ten pages, make short shrift of it, let Sara down gently. But … in the “who'da thunk it” department,
he
couldn't put it down!

He flipped through the 149 pages again nervously: He'd read the thing three times. Each time, he came to the same conclusion: Here was a great story, with equal parts intrigue, edge-of-your-seat action, sweet romance, laughs, and poignancy—the elements that make a movie a blockbuster. Or, expressed another way: This was
the shit
! And, the earthquake notwithstanding, the single most unexpected event of the summer.

All the stars were aligned, Jared was sure of it: The script could be had for cheap, since the screenwriter was a nobody, just a cop he'd happened across. It'd be a Galaxy exclusive, which meant his dad's company would make boatloads of money on it.

The wheels in Jared's head had not stopped spinning since he'd finished reading it the first time. Now, as he paced, he ran through a mental list of Galaxy clients for the lead role, not unlike a list of
People
magazine's sexiest: Matthew McConaughey, Jake Gyllenhaal. Ewan McGregor could do it, potentially Bradley Cooper—no, he's too pretty to play the cop. Pitt was possible, or you could go older, Denzel even.

For the lead female, there was no list. One person was born to play that role.

Rusty flung open the door to his executive office. “What are you doing here?” On the “I'm-so-happy-to-see-you” meter, his dad's tone was subzero.

“I was hoping we could talk.” It dawned on Jared that maybe this wasn't, in fact, the best time to bust in on his old man. The scowl on his dad's face hinted that Rusty had had a crap day.

“You came here to talk?” Rusty said. “About what? What a little liar you've been all summer?” His dad wearily dropped into his enormous boss-worthy leather throne and impatiently hit delete on his keyboard.

Okaaaay, so Jared had been a little hasty just dropping by. And so excited about the screenplay, a lot forgetful that a certain volcano had not yet erupted. He tried not to flinch. He'd not prepared a speech, an explanation, rationalization, or even a bald-faced lie. “Uh, yeah, that was part of the reason I came. I want to apologize.”

“Bull,” Rusty muttered. “You came here because you want something. I'm so sick of your lies, Jared. Do you ever tell the truth?”

“Only the parts that matter.”

The quip was cribbed from the TV show
Entourage
: He and his father had laughed hard when the wily agent had said the line. Now? Not so funny.

“How could you be so disrespectful?” Rusty demanded. “I'm your father. I sent you to summer school to make up your lousy grades and you just blow me off, do whatever you want. Where do you get the balls?”

Jared lowered his head. He knew from rhetorical questions.

“And don't give me any crap about me and your mother being divorced, and some other ‘poor misunderstood rich kid' garbage. I've read all those scripts. They all stink.”

Jared hadn't planned on going there. Nor would he interrupt his father's soliloquy. He knew when to “hold 'em.”

“Besides,” Rusty growled, “if you think you ditched school to screw me, you're not as smart as I give you credit for, 'cause you only screwed yourself. And then squatting in your uncle's house and charging those people rent—what were you thinking?”

Not that he'd be outed to his father by Mother Nature, that's for sure.

Rusty echoed his thoughts. “Obviously, you didn't count on an earthquake.” Suddenly, his dad went emo, teared up. “If
you had been at that school, and if something had happened, I'd never have been able to forgive myself for forcing you to go there.”

Yeah, Jared thought. Now you're off the hook, you can go on blaming me. Thoughts unmuttered were often best.

“I want the raw truth, Jared. This is your moment. Don't blow it. What possessed you to do this?”

Jared deliberated. There was too much at stake here. He went with full confessional: “I've been trying to tell you, Dad, for a long time.”

“I'm listening now.” Rusty put his feet up on the desk, crossed his arms behind his head, and leaned back. Jared talked. And talked, babbling on like some James Cameron movie desperately in need of editing.

“It's not that I don't respect you, I just don't agree with you, Dad. I don't belong in school. I belong here, at Galaxy, with you. I thought if I made you believe I'd pulled it together this summer, got good grades, and at the same time did something to help the company—”

Rusty's hand went up in a stop motion. “You think Galaxy needs help?”

Jared swallowed. “Well, doesn't it?”

“We've had better times,” his dad conceded. “What has Lindsay been telling you?”

“Nothing.” The one lie he told, he told for her. He rushed
on. “I know you think I'm a slacker, I'm lazy. How many times have you said I'm just like Uncle Rob? Take the easy way out, never live up to my potential?”

It was his father's turn to remain silent.

“And I am”—Jared's lip trembled unexpectedly—“I am lacking in a lot of ways. I messed up this summer, but not in the way you think. I was stuck up, I misjudged people big-time. I belittled Eliot when he tried to prepare us, I made fun of Sara, and I tried to kick Naomi out. Naomi! If not for her …”

He couldn't continue.

Rusty offered him a tissue but remained silent, listening.

Jared wiped his leaky eyes. “Lindsay might not have made it. 'Cause she was buried, and I was no help. Everything I have—money, access, style, everything that made me so self-important, me, the ultimate cool Hollywood insider—it all turned out to be worth nothing. I wasn't brave or smart. I was a sorry-assed wimp whose main contribution was whining.”

Truly, truly, truly, he told himself, opening up like this to his father had not been premeditated. In no way had he meant to butter up the old guy so Rusty would forgive him, so he'd … oh God … be in a prime position to make his pitch. To get Rusty excited about
Hide in Plain Sight
. It was his moment; he had the floor, and his dad's full attention, and empathy. Jared blew his nose, wiped his eyes.