The One That I Want (14 page)

There was no trace of humor in his voice when he said this, and I remembered reading in several articles over the years that Dane’s dad had left the family when he was little. His mom had raised him and his brother alone.

“Have you known him for a long time?” I noticed a familiarity in the interactions between the two men that was hard to fake.

“Since I was a kid.”

Samuel suddenly reappeared, holding out a large white paper sack that was stuffed with treats unseen. My mouth watered at the delicious mystery within.

Dane took the bag with a bow at the baking master and pulled out his wallet.

“No, no,” Samuel said. “It’s on the house.”

Dane reached around the counter and man-hugged the guy. Then he slipped a one-hundred-dollar bill into the tip jar before parting the sea of customers so we could reach the door.

I couldn’t help but observe that, while a number of people appeared to recognize Dane, no one—right through to the end—did anything more than nod kindly in greeting. Not even the slightest breach. It was uncanny. I asked Dane about it as soon as we got outside.

“Samuel runs an interference-free zone,” he explained. “He doesn’t tolerate drama of any kind or the disturbance of one of his customers, whether that customer is a popular school-board candidate, an off-duty cop, a troubled teen who just needs some down time, or—”

“Or a famous actor who’d like to avoid being hounded by the press?”

He smiled. “You nailed it. Samuel’s done some great business over the years and he could easily snazzy up the place, but he’s not a greedy man. He wants the bakery to be for locals. He figures if it looks too appealing on the outside, the snootiest and most demanding of the North Shore types might start swarming in. He wants the people who walk into his shop to be the kind who believe that what’s on the inside is what matters most.”

“That’s got to be an unusual philosophy compared to your Hollywood crowd, living most of the year, as you do, in the land of liposuction, Botox, and plastic surgery.”

He laughed. “True, though I like to think I haven’t completely bought into that philosophy myself, even though I’ve spent so much time in L.A.” He ran his fingers through his dark-blond hair. Still thick and kissed with gold as he neared forty, even if it wasn’t quite as abundant as when he was just starting out in show business.

“I do have one confession,” he said. “I’ve gotten highlights these past ten years.”

“Really?”

“They’re supposed to look natural.” He fingered his sun-streaked hair a bit more. “I paid my stylist a fortune for it. How’d he do?”

“I’m in awe.”

He arched a brow at me. “Your sarcasm is showing. But, you know, it gets harder and harder to maintain the illusion of youth in a field like mine.”

I wasn’t joking with him when I replied, “I don’t doubt it, and I don’t envy you having to deal with that.” Aging in Hollywood had to be hell for anyone who stepped in front of a camera, male or female.

He shrugged. “It’s part of the game.” Then he pointed at a forested bike path that looked all but deserted. “That’s the shortcut to my high school. Wanna see it?”

“Sure.”

We meandered down the path, a canopy of trees separating us from our view of the sky and blanketing us in a leafy cocoon. I realized it had been a very long time since I’d gone on a nature walk. During the past school year, I’d kept myself busy out of necessity and in an attempt at maintaining my own sanity. I wouldn’t allow myself to have time for much beyond my classroom and my life at home with Analise.

But, even last summer—even when Adam was still alive—I didn’t do much out of doors. I’d forgotten about the restorative powers of Mother Nature. About the peacefulness I felt in her bountiful presence.

“This is really a pretty walk,” I told Dane.

“Glad you like it. It’s still a favorite of mine. Although, every time I pass through here, I’m rocketed back to high school.”

“Good memories or bad?” I asked, just as we came to a railroad crossing.

The bike path opened up onto a two-lane street. There was a large park to the right—Highbury Park, the namesake of the town—and then farther ahead was the high school.

I couldn’t quite decipher the expression on Dane’s face as he considered my question.

“Let’s just say I was from the wrong side of the tracks.” He pointed toward the park and the school as we crossed the very tracks that separated the unruly, overgrown bike path from the well-manicured parcels of land ahead. “The people who live to the east of this line tend to have enormous houses. Those to the west of it,” he thumbed behind us, “are often ‘the help.’ I used to mow lawns for the rich families out here during the summer and shovel their long driveways in winter. Plenty of snow in these parts.”

I nodded. “I grew up in Mirabelle Harbor, so I know all about those snowy winters.”

We saw a few kids playing soccer in the park and a lady walking a pair of white poodles. Dane and I stopped and watched them for a while.

“The upside of living in a town with lots of disposable income was that the families on the east side financed a kick-ass high school. We had one of the best secondary school theaters in the area,” he said proudly. “And an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool, a state-of-the-art foreign language lab, and tennis courts that were maintained as well as the ones at the local country club. My big brother practically drooled when he saw the chem lab. All those rows of glass beakers and Bunsen burners.” He laughed, remembering.

“How much older is he than you?” I knew he had a brother, but there hadn’t been many details about Dane’s immediate family in the tabloids. The stories mostly just focused on his love interests over the years.

“Three years older,” he said, but he didn’t share any more than that, and I didn’t want to pry. What if they had a bad relationship and still didn’t get along as adults?

We stood in front of the high school, admiring it. The building was in perfect condition. Impressive. Stately. Reminded me of the one they’d featured in the movie
The Breakfast Club
.

“It wasn’t that the additional money flow evened the playing field for all of the kids in town,” Dane said, “but I think those of us on the west side got a few extra opportunities we might not have had otherwise.” He paused. “Can’t say it made me any more attractive to high-school girls on either side of the tracks, though. At least not until I scored my first film role. I could never get a date with ‘the girl next door’—not any of them.”

“I’m sure they gravely regretted their oversight later.”

He grinned. “Well, later was too late, unfortunately. Hollywood had already messed me up by then, and I wasn’t normal anymore.”

“But you come across as pretty down to earth. At least you do today.” It was true. He hadn’t behaved like an entitled movie star at the radio station or at the bakery or during our walk. Even when he was answering questions during the theater Q&A he hadn’t been too high and mighty. He only got temperamental when he thought I was some tabloid snitch.

“I know how to
act
well balanced, Julia. That’s different from actually
being
that way.”

I shrugged. “Say what you will, but I’m not sure I believe you. You seem much more normal than I’d have expected.”

He rolled his eyes.

“I remember reading about you also doing community theater during high school. You did that in addition to performing at your school, right?” We walked the length of the building and started to circle it.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. There were seasonal auditions just down the road at the community college campus. It was a pretty big deal for a high schooler of any background to get a part. After the cast list was posted, word spread like a brush fire. We’d come to school the next day and feel like a celebrity.”

“Ah! So you had some practice with that, long before Hollywood came calling.”

He chuckled. “The star treatment usually only lasted through third or fourth period, Julia, but, yes, it was an adrenaline rush. No doubt about it. A person who craved attention could get addicted to that.”

“And need more?”

“Yep. Like a narcotic.”

I glanced over at him. His eyes were facing the school building but his gaze was a million light years away.

“Ever take any of those?” I asked lightly.

He turned toward me and tilted his head, as if weighing whether to tell me the truth or a give me a canned, media-ready response.

Finally, he exhaled and said, “Yeah, a few times. It was a mistake. They made the highs higher for a while, but they also made the lows much lower. And, once you lose a friend or three to OD’ing, it’s enough to make a guy reconsider his choice of vices.” He held up the bag with Samuel’s brownies. “I choose more wisely now.”

I smiled at him. He was making a joke, of course, and, yet, he’d told me a hell of a lot about himself that we both knew wasn’t funny at all. I appreciated his openness, his honesty, but I was, admittedly, most surprised by his willingness to trust me.

“What makes you so sure I won’t go blabbing your secrets, Dane? I mean, I
won’t
, but you couldn’t possibly know that for sure.”

“Couldn’t I?” he said. “Look, I’ve been watching for signs of potential betrayal every moment of my life for the past twenty-five years. I have a long history of my privacy being invaded and people trying to siphon from me what they hope will be incriminating information.”

I felt myself blush a little, remembering Dane’s accusations when he thought I was a reporter, and I also remembered the rude questions some of the students in the audience and members of the press asked him at the theater. I mentioned this.

“Oh, that was nothing,” he said. “Believe me. When I was a kid and less guarded, I made a few slips that I lived to regret deeply. Since then, I study everyone’s non-verbal behavior, looking for tells. And as an actor, this also has the benefit of giving me a range of facial expressions I can channel—to help me mimic character ticks and emotions. But, when I was younger, it was purely so I could avoid getting myself in trouble.” He looked closely at my face, as if analyzing every contour and crease. “You’re a puzzle to me in a number of ways, but you’re not
trouble
, Julia Meriwether Crane.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That was a compliment, I think.”

He laughed. “We’ve officially talked enough about me for a while. I’d like to know a few things about you.”

“Okay. Like what?”

We’d finished our rotation around the high school and began heading back, through the park, and soon met up with the bike path again.

“Tell me something important about you,” he said. “I can Google basic details—”

I grimaced.

“Don’t look at me like that. Almost everyone has a digital footprint these days, even if it’s not a mile long, like mine.” He nudged me with his elbow. “And don’t forget, I can ask people in Mirabelle Harbor questions about you, too. After that radio station visit today, I know
lots
of people that you know.”

“That sounds suspiciously like blackmail, Dane.”

“Hey, just keeping you honest. But I’m serious. What I’d really like to know is what
you
think is something real about you. Something about you beyond the researchable facts.”

I stopped mid-stride to think about this. “That might just be the hardest question anyone has ever asked me. But, also, one of the most thoughtful.”

“Well, I’ve been interviewed a lot in my life.” He shrugged, feigning modesty. “Guess I picked up a few things.”

I laughed. “I’ll bet.”

But I hadn’t been entirely joking. It was a hard question. One I had to consider more deeply than the usual. I’d often felt very few people really knew me, but what would I have wanted them to know? Not the superficial details. Living where I did, in the kind of suburb that felt like a small town, everyone thought they knew those things about me already. But how much of the real me did I actually want to share with them? With anyone?

“What I’m telling you right now isn’t something I’ve told to anybody—at least not anybody still living.” I paused. I had told Adam, but not my parents or the rest of my family. Not even Shar. “I secretly wanted to be a poet when I was a kid,” I told Dane. “I loved to read, but I couldn’t imagine writing anything as long as a novel. Poems, though, could be short, intense, and packed with meaning. In just a few well-selected phrases, a good poet could describe an entire world.”

Dane nodded, taking this in thoughtfully, as if matching my words with what he knew about me so far to see if all the pieces fit together.

“Why didn’t you?” he asked. “Become a poet, that is. I think you’d have made an excellent one. You have an eye for things. For places and people.”

“I went part of the way there. I was an English major in college. But I hadn’t really lived long enough to have much to write about, and I knew it. So I got my teaching certification and started the adventure of working with kids. It turned out I liked it. Then I met Adam, my late husband. He was in med school, and we were in love. I needed to do practical, income-generating things with my degree, especially since I got pregnant right away.” I smiled, replaying in my mental viewfinder the day Adam and I found out that amazing, life-altering news. “We’d already planned our small wedding, but I was two months into my first trimester during the ceremony, and our daughter Analise was born seven month later.”