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With shaking fingers, I reached for the phone on the bedside table and dialed 9-1-1.
“What's your emergency?” The operator’s voice was cool and professional.
“I need an ambulance.”
“What's your emergency, ma'am?”
“It’s my boyfr—it’s my—he’s cold and clammy and he’s not moving.”
“Is he breathing?” asked the voice.
“I can’t tell—” my voice caught “—I think he might have overdosed.”
“Do you know his name, ma’am?”
“Of course.” Heat rose from my chest to my cheeks. I wasn't that girl—the girl who woke up with questionable men. Except, this morning, I was. “His name is Jake Smith.”
A few seconds ticked by. Seconds I spent staring at Jake’s pale face.
“Are you there, ma’am?”
“Yes.” Talking required effort, and between the pain in head and the pain in my heart, I was fresh out of effort.
“Where are you?”
I looked around the bedroom for clues. There were none. “I don't know.” How pathetic was that?
"Are you safe?" the operator asked.
“Yes.”
“What's your name?”
I could lie. I considered it. But my blood and fingerprints were everywhere. The police would find me. “Poppy Fields.”
There it was—the pause of recognition. “I’m tracing the landline now, Ms. Fields. Help is on the way.”
When your mother’s one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, people knew your name.
“What happened, Ms. Fields?” The operator was trained to keep me talking. I knew that. I'd seen it on one of those true crime shows.
“I woke up and he was like this.” Beyond that, everything—the previous night, how we'd come to this place, what we’d done—was lost in a dense fog.
The tequila bottle shook its self-righteous head. No one made you drink me.
José and I were done. I scowled at him.
“Officers will arrive in approximately two minutes. Can you let them in?”
“Yes.” I hauled myself out of the chair. My head objected. Strongly. How was it possible to hurt this much?
“Stay on the line with me, Ms. Fields.”
“I’ll be fine. Thank you for your help.” I put the receiver back in its cradle—gently—and
crossed the bedroom. The door opened onto a hallway filled with light. Wincing at the brightness, I made my way to the stairs. My hand closed around the bannister—clutched around the bannister. A wave of dizziness swept through me. I would not throw up. Would not.
The police were coming. I had to open the door.
Except the door at the bottom of the stairs already stood ajar, allowing a slice of sunlight to cut across the floor, sharp as the pieces of the broken crystal on the bedroom floor.
I settled onto the bottom step and rested my throbbing head in my hands. He’d be all right. He had to be. Our story couldn’t end this way. Jake being dead wasn’t part of a screwball comedy. Jake being dead was tragic.
“Ma'am?”
I lifted my head.
A police officer in a dark blue uniform stared at me. “Are you all right, ma'am?” His concern sounded genuine.
“Jake’s upstairs.” I gripped the bannister and pulled myself to standing. “This way.”
A second police officer entered the foyer. This one regarded me with narrowed eyes, his gaze traveling from my bare feet to the barely-there length of my dress. The corner of his upper lip curled.
I read his nametag. Officer Crane.
How dare he pass judgment? It wasn't like I was a ditsy party girl who drank too much and spent the night with men I shouldn’t. Well, not usually. And it wasn’t like Jake was a one-night stand. He was an ex I’d hooked up with. Maybe. Why couldn’t I remember?
“This way.” I led the police officers up the stairs to the master bedroom. “In there.”
They pushed past me, surveyed the bedroom (tangled sheets, broken crystal, and bloodied floor), and approached the bed. “Sir?”
“Is he all right?” He wasn’t. But pretending felt better than the truth.
Officer Crane ignored me. “Sir?”
Jake didn't answer.
The police officer poked Jake in the shoulder and got no response (I could have told him poking wouldn’t work). Then Officer Crane turned on the bedside lamp and took a good look at the man in the bed. The color leached out of Officer Crane’s face.
What? What was wrong? I stepped inside the bedroom.
The police officers didn't seem to notice me. Their gazes were fixed on the man in the bed.
Curly-lip looked up and speared me with a glare. “What kind of drugs did you take?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t take any drugs.”
“What kind did he take?” His lip curled until it kissed his nose.
“He didn’t.” That I knew of. “He didn’t.”
He snorted. “We’ll see what an autopsy says about that.”
The sun setting over the Pacific gilded the sky and limned wisps of clouds in shades of crimson and bronze. The glorious colors reflected on the plane’s wing. Breathtaking. It was the kind of sunset people from fly-over states paid good money to see.
I swallowed a yawn and shifted my gaze from the fading sun to the brightest star in Hollywood.
His disapproving gaze was settled firmly upon me. “Are you going to this resort opening because they’re paying you?”
“Yes.” The lie was a small one and easier than explaining my need to escape.
He pursed his lips. “If you’re hard up for money all you need to do is ask.” Then James Ballester offered me the smile that had melted a million women’s hearts. “You know that, right? Anything I have is yours.” James and my mother made four movies together. Each one grossed more than five-hundred-million dollars. Anything covered a lot of ground.
“You should be careful. Someday I may take you up on that.”
He reached across the space that separated us and took my hand. His fingers were warm and dry and elegant. His gaze shifted from my face to the last rays of sunshine glinting off the plane’s wing, then he reached deep within himself and found his soulful expression. If his smile didn’t melt a woman’s heart, the soulful expression would. Guaranteed. And once her heart was melted, she’d fall in line with his plans.
Even I blinked. And I knew the soulful expression was an act. A face practiced in front of a mirror until it was perfect.
His grip on my hand tightened. “I mean it, Poppy. What’s going on with you? If you need money, tell me.”
“I’m fine.” And I was—at least when it came to money. I wasn’t mega-movie-star-rich but I wasn’t scrounging for my next meal—or even my next first-class plane ticket. “I hate flying commercial and when Chariss said you were going to Mexico—”
“Honey, you can use my plane anytime. I don’t have to be on it.” That soulful expression of his—it said he adored me, would do anything for me, would even give me an airplane and its crew.
There were three things the movie-ticket-buying public didn’t know about James Ballester. One—he was genuinely nice. Two—he was incredibly generous. Three—he was gay.
America’s heartthrob preferred men.
For all the talk about acceptance and rainbows and inclusion, women still wanted the man they were lusting after to lust after them. James was so deeply in the closet, he had one foot in Narnia.
He amped up the soulful look. His eyes shone. His lips parted. He looked as if he was about to offer to walk through hell and back for me. “Tell me why you’re going to this resort.”
“I’m doing a favor for a friend.”
He raised a brow and tilted his head, a silent demand for a better answer.
I didn’t have a better answer. “André promised them A-listers.” Not a lie but not the truth. Telling the truth might break me.
Lying to James—I squeezed his hand—was wrong. When my dad disappeared and I moved in with Chariss, it was James who acted like a parent. Not Chariss. Chariss never wanted to be a mother. Not when I was a baby. Certainly not when I was a teenager with an attitude. For nearly ten years, James, not the woman who’d given birth to me, had been the closest thing I had to family.
“André DuChamp?” James’ lips thinned and the space between his eyes scrunched together—as if even the mention of André’s name was distasteful.
James judged André based on his father’s sins. And an epic flop was as big a sin as there was in Hollywood.
“Yes, André DuChamp.”
James released my hand and
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