The Sheikh's Irresistible Proposal (15 page)

The cameras were turned off, and I headed back to wardrobe to turn in the dress they had given me. I collected my pay and made my way slowly out of the Merridoc. I denied it to myself, but I was looking for Kristos. He was nowhere to be found, and I reluctantly headed out to the parking lot.

When I got to my car, I got a shock. Kristos was leaning against my Malibu with sort of a smug look on his face.

“Um…can I help you?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“You’re a very intriguing woman, Emma,” he replied. “I’d like to get to know you better. I thought we could get a drink somewhere.”

“I’ve already told you no twice tonight,” I curtly reminded him. “I didn’t let you have the parking space, and I didn’t pick you as you suggested.” I was perfectly fine with having a drink with him, but I saw no reason to make it obvious.

“And that’s exactly why I’m here,” he returned. “I don’t like to take no for an answer. Besides, talking to you has been the highlight of my day.”

“You should really leave the acting to me,” I joked, before we headed to a high-end bar two blocks down.

FOUR

The bar Kristos chose was called The Legendary, and it was sort of a landmark in the area. Apparently, it had originally been a speakeasy during Prohibition, and since the elite kept coming afterward, its owners had decided to go legitimate.

We sat at one of the small, elegant, tables, and Kristos decided to start with a rum and coke. I opted for a Long Island iced tea, and my new Greek acquaintance opened the conversation.

“So what brought you here?” he asked as I took a drink.

“You did, remember?” I replied with a laugh.

He gave me a look of plainly false scorn. “I mean, what brought you to California?”

“I wanted to get into movies. I always have. When I was younger, I saw Interview with the Vampire. There’s a girl named Claudia who becomes a vampire as a child, and can never grow older. She’s tormented by it. The girl who played her put a ton of depth and devotion into the character. I thought that was an amazing thing, to be able to do that, and I wanted to give life to characters too, so I started getting into drama at school. When I got better, I wanted to start trying out in talent shows, but my parents thought the whole thing was a waste of time and money.”

“I heard something similar growing up,” Kristos interjected sympathetically. “Did you manage to change their minds?”

I laughed, shaking my head. “That’s sort of like trying to get an elephant to move when it doesn’t want to. Instead, I got a job, and paid for the fees and transport myself. The first few times, I didn’t even place, but after a while, I was hitting second or third. Sometimes, I got gigs in little community shows. I rarely got paid, but when I did, I put it into getting more recognition. But my family, especially my mother, tried to force me in another direction. ‘Nurses are more in demand than movie stars, Emma, and it’s far more likely to provide a stable life for you.’ Things came to a head when I turned sixteen, and won a scholarship to a theater camp in DC. I had pretty much killed myself to pull that off. Between school, practice, and a part-time job, getting that scholarship felt like climbing Mount Everest to me.”

The waitress came back to check on us, and we ordered another round of drinks. They appeared a moment later, as if by magic.

“And after you told them that, your parents still forbade you to go, didn’t they?” Kristos said, picking up our conversation. He sounded bitter.

“They did, and so I ran away. I got a friend of mine to drive me to Washington. I had to chip in for gas, and we could only afford chips and other cheap snacks. But my friend had a cousin who lived in the city, and her parents agreed to house me for the three weeks I’d be there. To me, everything seemed perfect.”

Kristos was impressed that I’d risked so much to follow my dream, and I told him how my parents had flown to DC and waited for me at the theater camp. I told him how I ran away again two years later, and struggled to support myself while I found an agent.

We started talking about his early life. Apparently, his family had been in real estate for several generations. As he was telling me how he escaped taking up that mantle, I realized that he was starting to slur his words, just every now and then. Dully I realized that my head was swimming, and I tried to remember how many drinks I’d had. I lost count twice; not a good sign. I might have been concerned, but Kristos chose that moment to start telling production stories.

One of his earlier shows had a shoot that was held up for twenty minutes because someone made the mistake of bringing their kid to work. The little brat saw the camera and, of course, leapt in front of it and started singing her favorite Our Rainbow Pony songs. The adults tried to catch her, but the little girl was fast. No matter where she ran, she kept coming back to the camera and singing. Kristos was drunkenly miming her actions, laughing voluminously as he did so. I could hardly breathe I was laughing so hard, and soon, we were falling all over each other.

“This is not what I planned to do when I saw you again,” he said after a while. “I was planning to yell at you about something or other. This is better, though.” His head was on my shoulder, and I put my arms around him in sort of a sloppy hug.

“What’cha wanna yell for,” I asked. “Ya need to let it go.” At that, I started to sing, but Kristos stopped me with a remark about how beautiful I’d looked in the green dress.

“You shoulda picked me,” he said, pulling me close to him. “I really liked talking to you.”

With a little bit of stumbling, he pulled himself up, and kissed me. A sharp heat ran up my spine, and I impulsively tightened my grip, matching his efforts.

Eventually he pulled away and whispered something in my ear.

“I don’t think I’m drunk enough to do that here,” I giggled.

“Bartender! One more!” Kristos cried.

Somehow, I got him to pay the check instead. We walked back out front, where Kristos’ chauffeur, a very sober man named Stanton, was waiting to take us anywhere we wanted.

In the back of the car, we resumed the interrupted bout of kissing. I was distantly shocked at how readily I was responding to Kristos, who was already fondling me eagerly. I took my cue from him, and slipped a hand between his open shirt buttons. I caressed the taut muscles of his chest, and felt shivers of pleasure run through my body. The cologne he was wearing was becoming intoxicating, as was the hand running along my thigh.

By the time we got to his place—a luxurious penthouse apartment that he said was only for weekdays—Kristos and I were on autopilot. My dress had been unzipped, and I’d accidentally popped two of his buttons. I don’t remember exactly how we got to the bedroom, but we collapsed on the bed in a knot of heat and lust. Kristos managed to disengage my bra with one hand, and I had his pants off in a flash. Within moments, we were writhing in fierce passion, making the halls echo with our satisfied moans.

FIVE

I awoke the next morning to an angry buzzing noise that, for the first couple of minutes, I was sure was coming from my head. Eventually, the fog lifted enough for me to realize it was my smartphone. I groped around and found it on the nightstand. I didn’t even bother to see who it was before I picked up.

“Hello,” I asked, in a voice that was heavy with sleep, and the voice of my agent answered me. I didn’t recognize it at first, because it was full of things I’d seldom heard there before. Like excitement. “Margaret? Is that you? What’s going on?” I asked groggily.

“You are,” she replied, sounding highly pleased. “A number of industry insiders saw your performance yesterday. They seem to think that they could use a talent like yours. It’s only nine and I’ve already booked you for a good three weeks of auditions!”

“You’re kidding…” I replied, perking up at once.

“I don’t really have a sense of humor, Emma. You should know that by now. The first one audition’s at 3PM tomorrow, but I want to discuss some preliminaries with you later today.”

“Sure!” I sputtered badly, still in shock. I was closer than I had ever been to the career I wanted. I was elated.

I started to disentangle myself from the blanket, when I felt a light pressure about halfway down. Kristos had fallen asleep with his hand on my ass. I eased it off gently, not wanting to wake him. The conversation that follows a night like the one we had is always awkward and complicated, and was not a conversation I wanted to have right at that moment. Even if I did, there wasn’t time. I had to get home, clean up and change, pay the dragon lady her rent, and go and see Margaret.

I searched for my panties, and found them hanging off one of my ankles. Slipping them on, I donned my bra, zipped up my dress, and headed out into the world. Stanton had been nice enough to fetch my car from the restaurant, so effecting my escape was easy.

I pinched myself several times on the way home, but when I didn’t wake up, I started to believe that it wasn’t a dream. After struggling for nearly my entire life, it seemed like my moment in the sun had finally arrived. I drove slowly and carefully, despite my excitement. I’d already gotten one ticket yesterday. I didn’t need another.

I stopped off at my bank and cashed the Date Roulette check at the ATM. Then I deposited everything I wouldn’t need for the rent, and drove back to my apartment, for the first time in a long time actually hoping to run into Mrs. Coleman.

Sure enough, I found her easily. She was standing at front door, measuring it with a tape measure.

“I think their bed will fit through here after all,” she said when she saw me.

“No it won’t,” I replied, shoving the money in her face.

She counted it in front of me. “It seems you did take care of it, dearie,” she said when she saw it was all there. “Congratulations. I’ll be back in a week for next month’s.” She might as well have cackled like the Wicked Witch of the West, and flown away on the broom in my kitchen.

I gave the woman a surreptitious middle finger before darting inside my apartment and slamming the door as loudly as I dared. My anger evaporated almost instantly when I remembered the spate of auditions waiting for me; I would likely never have to worry about paying that woman late again. I got dressed quickly and decided to treat myself to breakfast at a nearby café to celebrate.

SIX

The next day found me at Laurel, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, by 10:45 precisely. I did not want a repeat of the other day. Not when things were finally beginning to look up. The preliminaries with Margaret had gone quite well. She’d been approachable and light-hearted, almost like I suddenly had a new agent. Once or twice, she had even smiled.

Today she was introducing me to Richard Morris, a man who was famous for producing some of the better sitcoms of the seventies and eighties. He was working on a reboot of his newsroom drama Penny Lane, and I was being considered for the titular character’s best friend.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Morris,” I said. And I meant it. I grew up watching his shows online, and the way they’d managed to tackle some of the toughest issues of the time in an entertaining, accessible way, had stuck with me.

“Thank you,” he replied in a low voice. “My assistants tell me your performance the night before last was outstanding. I wonder if you might read a few lines of this,” he said, handing me a manuscript.

I nodded, and approached one of the audition rooms. I spent an hour and a half with Richard Morris, and another four on the three auditions that came afterward. I had never been so tired, but I was happy. Any one of these tryouts could launch the career that I had been working for since high school. It was all within my reach and I appreciated that more than anyone knew.

“Just a little bit more,” I told myself as I drove back toward my apartment, fantasies of sleep swelling in my mind. I could already see my bed, warm and inviting, calling to me to stop running around and relax. Those thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the last thing I was expecting to hear: the voice of my mother.

I had to pull over. There was nothing else for it. I hadn’t spoken to my mother in over four years. After I ran away to Washington DC, our relationship had irrevocably changed. To me, the theater camp had represented everything that was important in my life. It would have allowed me to work with well-respected actors, and many of its graduates had ended up having successful careers in television—usually that one cop show with the special victims unit. It was a dream I had poured everything into, and on top of everything else, I had gotten a scholarship. But none of that had prevented my mother removing me from the program and dragging me back to Arizona. It had been the most painful moment of my teenage years. Despite all my efforts, it had seemed like my own mother had no faith in me.

It had taken a long time to get me back to Arizona, and I told her every hurtful thing that occurred to me along the way: that she was a horrible mother who couldn’t be bothered to believe in her daughter or support her dreams; that I’d performed in plays and talent shows without a smidgen of support from her; that strangers had shown me more love than she ever had.

After that, my parents had agreed that since I believed that total strangers loved me more than they did, I was free to go live with them whenever I wanted. I couldn’t afford to move out, so I stayed. I rarely spoke to my mother, and she rarely spoke to me; that was the only thing we agreed on. The moment I turned eighteen, I left for Los Angeles.

What on earth does she have to say to me now?
I wondered uneasily.

“I saw you on TV the other night,” she began in a low, stiff voice, “and a few times before, actually. Whether you believe me or not, I’m glad you got what you wanted.”

“Bullshit,” I responded, and hung up.

It was a short conversation, but it stuck like a splinter in my mind. Why had my mother said that? She had done everything she could to keep me from acting, and now I was supposed to believe she was glad I’d made it work? I wasn’t buying it. Not after all this time. I told myself she probably wanted to butter me up now that I was appearing on national television. She was seeing me getting better jobs, she obviously wanted to bury the hatchet before I became too big for her to reach me.

“It’ll be a cold day in Hell…” I spat, starting up the engine and trying to recover the joy I had been feeling only moments before.

Nothing I did made the slightest bit of difference, and I reached my apartment in a foul mood. Over the next two days, I forced all thought of my mother from my mind. I buried myself in auditions, meetings, practices, and whatever else I could think of. Eventually, I was back to feeling genuinely happy again. The role on Penny Lane looked promising, and I was beginning to form contacts I knew would be important later. I was going over an audition with one of those contacts, Kristina Bell, a semi-famous choreographer, when she casually mentioned Date Roulette, and set alarm bells ringing in my head.

All the work and excitement had completely driven Kristos from my mind. He had neither my phone number, nor my address, so I didn’t expect to hear from him after I left his house. But he was on my mind now, or more specifically, the fact that the first condom we’d used during our drunken encounter had broken. Granted, he’d pulled out and put a new one on, but that wasn’t exactly foolproof. I had planned to get the morning after pill, just in case, but apparently Plan B doesn’t work if you forget to take it. The pill was effective for three days, and I was currently halfway through day four.

I tried to reassure myself that my anxiety was most likely unwarranted. Millions of people have random sexual encounters, I reminded myself, and most of those never result in pregnancy. I told myself that I was being too cautious, and that I had more than enough to worry about with my audition schedule. In a couple of days, I was going to be considered for the role of Juliet in a satirical version of the Shakespeare play, and I had several pages of lines to learn. I was also a candidate for a tongue-in-cheek homage to the famous Mac versus PC commercial from a while ago.

I turned my attention back to the audition I was preparing, and forced all thoughts of pregnancy and babies out of my mind.

“Right there,” I remarked to Kristina, “I keep losing the pacing right about there.”

“That’s because you keep worrying about the step that comes next. You need to relax and let each of your moves flow naturally from one to the next. Then, and only then, will you be able to get it down.”

I took her advice and that of several other experts, sharpening my performances with each passing day. It paid off, and by week’s end, I was a finalist for three different productions. Margaret was as close as she ever got to ecstatic. My mother called twice more, but I ignored her, determined to avoid any and all distractions. White hot anger, I told myself, was not going to get me any closer to the goals I was struggling to achieve.

Three weeks later, I was overjoyed to learn that I had won the role of Raven King in the Penny Lane reboot. Filming was due to begin next month, and wrap up sometime near the end of the year. I was going to be the co-star on what promised to be an immensely popular sitcom. I had just become a legitimate TV star. Margaret was already scheduling interviews with media outlets throughout Hollywood, and across the country. My name was trending on Facebook. I swelled with a strange kind of pride when I saw petitions to replace me with someone who ‘isn’t best known for a handful of commercials and losing a reality show’. It was a new and exhilarating feeling, being famous enough to be protested, and I drank it up greedily. I ran through my apartment, whooping and hollering until Mrs. Coleman threatened to toss me out, rent paid or no.

“It’s finally happening,” I breathed, struggling to calm down. I tried to apply myself to the mundane tasks I hadn’t had time for in days. I managed to get a little cleaning done, but couldn’t focus on very much else. I’d just switched over to gathering the laundry when an unexpected wave of nausea washed over me. For a moment I was sure I was going to vomit, but in a few minutes, the sensation passed. At that, I took a seat on my bed.

‘I’ve gotta be careful about that,” I said to myself. “Too much excitement is going to make me sick, and now is definitely not a good time for that.”

Eventually, I managed to calm down a bit and get my house in order. For the next month, my life was consumed by routine, with practices most mornings and interviews in the evenings. Every now and then, I was called in to do a commercial. In my latest, I play a mother whose children go crazy if they don’t get their favorite cereal. Things were going so well I started a savings account. For once, it seemed like everything in my life was going perfectly.

Well, almost perfectly. I did have one problem left. I couldn’t get the Greek out of my mind. Not the baby issue. By now I was sure that was a false alarm. I mean
him
. That confusing mix of coolness and passion. He was forceful, gentle, and mysterious. It didn’t hurt that he looked damn good either. Once or twice, I had been tempted to have Margaret’s secretary fish out his number from the agency’s records. But at the same time, he hadn’t made an effort to call me since our tryst, and I had no intention of looking thirsty.

It seemed to me that the proper thing to do was put him out of my mind, where I kept thoughts about my parents, and other unsettling ideas that would otherwise bubble to the surface. The problem with Kristos was that he wouldn’t stay there. Throughout the day, something about him would pop into my mind. In the middle of satirizing Shakespeare, I’d see him leaning against my Malibu with his cavalier attitude. Or I’d be doing a shampoo commercial and start fantasizing about tousled, black, hair. I thanked God I never ended up doing that commercial where the woman makes those sex noises in the shower.

When shooting finally began on Penny Lane, I hoped the project’s demanding schedule would finally make me forget about Kristos. After all, it had been two months. I was sure the chances of us meeting again were nonexistent.

Again, I was wrong. I was doing my fifteenth take of a scene where Penny is struggling to fire my character for taking advantage of her. I was supposed to dash up the stairs, burst into the newsroom, and demand to know how she could even think of doing such a thing. I made it about halfway up the stairs before a headache hit me with the force of a hammer. Everything went dizzy, and I clung to the railing. From a long way off, I could hear voices.

“…okay, Emma? Are you alright?”

“Cut, for heaven’s sake! There’s an emergency here.” It was Richard Morris, the show’s producer, with more agitation in his voice than anyone had ever heard there.

“Fine,” I replied weakly. “Just a little dizziness. I guess I ought to rest up a bit more between projects.”

“That may be,” Richard returned, “but you’d better go see a doctor just in case. We’ll resume filming your scenes tomorrow.”

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” I said, standing tall. Delaying a production wasn’t good for anyone’s career, but to a relative unknown like me, it could be devastating. At this point, unless I was dead or bleeding, the show needed to go on.

“Yes it will be,” Ann Montgomery said firmly. Ann was the actress playing Penny Lane, and the niece of the actress who had played her in the original series. “You’re seeing a doctor, Johnson.” She was the star of the show, and as it turned out, her word was final. Forty-five minutes later, I was parked on a hospital bed.

“Well, the tests are back,” Dr. Iwata said brightly, tapping her teeth with her pen once or twice. She was a small, young-looking Japanese woman, with soft features and stylish glasses. “You’re pushing yourself too hard, Ms. Johnson. You simply cannot do that in your condition.”

“Condition?” I asked, glaring at her intently. That was not a word I wanted to hear right then. I dearly hoped whatever sickness she was about to tell me I had could be treated in a day or two at most. I was so close to stardom. So close to everything I had worked for. I couldn’t come this far just to be replaced.

“Yes, Ms. Johnson, your condition. You’re two months pregnant. You need to take care of yourself.”

Her words were a bolt from the blue. I started shaking. I tried to reply to her, but my mouth wouldn’t work properly. It was suddenly drier than it had ever been before.

The doctor called a nurse over to tend to me right away, telling him I was going into shock. Within ten minutes, I was alright again. Well, I wasn’t alright. Nowhere near. But I was stable.

“You didn’t know?” Dr. Iwata asked, real concern in her voice. “You haven’t been feeling tired or nauseous? No weakness or headaches?”

“I..I’ve had all those things,” I stammered, “but I thought it was stress. Are you sure about this…?” I asked, trailing off.

Dr. Iwata nodded gravely. “At this point in the process, it would be next to impossible for me to have made a mistake. I can see this has been rather startling news for you, but I want you to try and come to terms with it.”