Chapter 17
Flynn
F ifteen minutes have never passed so slowly. I use the time to rifle through my suitcase to find the items I packed hoping we’d have a chance to play our favorite games. It’s been almost a year since we indulged. Between the demands of her work on the foundation and our three older kids keeping her busy, Natalie had her most difficult pregnancy yet with Bennett. She was exhausted and nauseated for most of it and run ragged from dealing with the kids.
One of the few real fights we’ve ever had was over me wanting to get some help for her during that difficult time, but she still wasn’t having it.
Rather, her sisters and my parents pitched in when they could, and our friends stepped up to help out, too. She spent every minute she got away from the kids catching up on sleep.
I also packed dreaded condoms because we’re done having kids. Until I get the snip, I’m gloving up and hoping for the best. I was supposed to have the procedure after Rowan but never got around to it and then came Bennett.
We’re both thrilled to have a second son, but she’ll murder me if I get her pregnant again.
The thought of that makes me laugh as I strip down to boxers and deal with a couple of work-related texts and emails to kill the last few minutes.
Bennett is sound asleep, arms thrown over his head, his tiny lips moving, as if he’s telling a story in his sleep. He’s a cute little guy, with a delightful, easygoing way about him that makes him the perfect addition to our family.
At exactly fifteen minutes, I adjust Bennett’s blanket and leave him to sleep in full view of the bedroom, where I find my wife exactly where I told her to be. She’s wearing a silky red thing that barely covers her with her glorious dark hair contained in a bun.
“Has my love been doing some shopping?”
“Perhaps.”
“I approve.”
She looks up at me. “I’m glad to hear it.”
I extend a hand to help her up and wrap my arms around her, loving the way she fits in my embrace. She’s the other half of me, the best part of me. “I’ve missed you, sweetheart.”
“You see me every day.”
“I’ve missed this , time to ourselves to be alone together.”
Our playroom in the basement is long gone, replaced by an actual playroom with toys for children rather than adults.
“I’ve missed it, too. Feels like it’s been forever since we were really alone.”
“And we’re still not completely alone,” I remind her.
“This is as good as it gets these days.”
“Everything about these days, this life, is the best time ever.”
“For me, too. I love it all, especially my partner in crime.”
Smiling, I raise her chin to receive my kiss.
She wraps her arms around my neck and opens her mouth to my tongue, rubbing hers against mine and making me light-headed with desire.
Knowing we have all night to indulge is as much of a turn-on as having her warm and soft in my arms, kissing me like she hasn’t seen me in a year. Even as life and kids and work make it more difficult to find time alone, the sizzling chemistry between us has never waned. We’re as hot for each other as when we were first together, which is how we ended up with four kids.
“What does my baby want tonight?” I ask her when we come up for air.
“Whatever my sir has in mind.”
“Anything?”
“I trust you to make it good for both of us.”
Those words, the way she looks at me when she says them, the trust, the love… “You continue to amaze me, my love.”
“How so?”
“It would take me all night to give you the full list of ways. But the way you trust me is so… It wrecks me.”
“I trust you more than anyone in this entire world.”
“That makes me the luckiest guy ever.”
“We’re both lucky.”
“And about to get luckier.” I back her up to the bed and run my hands over the silky slip of material before I remove it and toss it aside. “You’re so beautiful, Nat. I could look at you and only you for the rest of my life and never get tired of the view.”
“You’d get tired of it.”
Cupping her breasts, I tease her nipples with my thumbs. “No, I wouldn’t.”
She gasps, and her body goes tense.
I freeze. “What?”
“We forgot condoms.”
“No, we didn’t.”
Relaxing again, she says, “Oh, thank goodness.”
“Don’t worry about anything, sweetheart. I’ve got you.” I ease her back on the bed and drop to my knees before her. “Hands over your head. Eyes closed.”
That this strong, capable, courageous, resilient woman turns over her pleasure to me is still one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given. As I love her with my tongue and fingers, the sounds she makes are like gas on a fire. I can’t ever get enough of her, but when she’s lost in pleasure that only I provide… That’s a whole other level of satisfaction.
Normally, I like to drag it out, to make her “suffer” before I deliver the payoff, but I want her so badly that I bring her to a quick orgasm and then roll on a condom. I bend to taste her nipple, and she gasps. “Still with me, love?”
“Mmm, I’m here. Can I use my arms?”
“Whatever you want.”
She opens her eyes, and her gaze collides with mine in a moment of absolute rightness. And then she smiles, and I’m as lost to her as I’ve been from the start.
“I was going for all the bells and whistles tonight,” I whisper against her lips as I push into her, slowly and carefully. Even months after she gave birth, I still worry about hurting her.
“I don’t need anything other than you and this.” She wraps her arms and legs around me, trapping me in every way.
Once upon a time, I needed the bells and whistles. I needed the kink and the variety. Now, there’s only her and us and this. It’s all I’ll ever want or need.
Stella
I’m trying to get back to normal, but I don’t know what that is anymore. The foundation under me has been rocked by the things I’ve learned about my husband. I wish I could stop picturing him in bed with young, beautiful, sexy Vivian. The woman had positively exuded sex, even when she did nothing more than enter a room.
While Max is in his office tending to last-minute business matters before we leave town for a couple of weeks, I fix a cup of tea and sit at the kitchen table, lost in thoughts of a past I thought I’d long ago left behind. If only I could stop thinking about her and my husband…
Married.
Every man I knew at that time was wild for her. They stopped what they were doing when she appeared, practically drooling over her like horny dogs who couldn’t control their baser impulses.
I saw it happen many times. A man in the middle of a conversation would lose his train of thought and every brain cell in his head when Vivian walked in. She was the literal meaning of the term showstopper.
At first, I too was awestruck by her. Back then, most women weren’t powerful like they are now. We didn’t command rooms full of men and make them stupid in the head with our presence. Not like Vivian did. Other actresses envied the seemingly effortless command she exuded like no other woman ever had, except maybe Marilyn Monroe.
Whereas Marilyn put off an almost untouchable aura of mystery, Vivian was “real.” She was in on the joke—especially the off-color ones. She could be one of the guys as easily as she was one of the girls, even if most of the girls secretly despised her because they’d never be her. They said awful things about her even as they laughed at her ribald commentary and pretended to be her friend.
Before I met her, I felt a little sorry for her because I’d rarely heard a nice word said about her among the women. I chalked it up to jealousy. We all wanted a piece of what Vivian had, if only we could articulate what it was exactly. I was prepared to befriend her, to be different from the other actresses who kept their distance from her out of fear or whatever it is that compels women to treat other women badly for no good reason.
The first day she walked onto the set of London Town , I got to see her mystique firsthand as our producer, director and cinematographer were rendered speechless and stupid by her mere presence. I noted the annoyed expression on her flawless face as they fumbled and stumbled to welcome her, as if she wanted to say, Knock it off already. I’m not going to sleep with any of you, so quit acting like fools.
I watched as she was introduced to Jonah, who played it differently than the other guys, giving her cool indifference rather than fawning adoration as he shook her hand and welcomed her to the set. I saw it happen right in front of me… the awareness, the curiosity, the pique of a well-crafted eyebrow.
Her power was like a punch to the gut he’d worked so hard to hone into rippling muscles.
We’d been together a year by then—a lifetime by young Hollywood standards of that time—and were all but living together in his apartment, which he had to himself, whereas I had roommates to help pay the bills. He’d proposed to me three weeks earlier on the beach at sunset in Santa Monica. He was romantic, loving and committed. Until he wasn’t.
At first, I chalked it up to the predictable male reaction, and while I was disappointed to realize he was just like all the other men who couldn’t resist the siren-like temptation she posed, I tried to understand that he was only human after all. He and I had made a commitment to each other to resist the temptation we encountered every day, and I believed in him.
Then he became remote and withdrawn when we were at home. At work, he began to disappear between takes rather than spending the downtime with me the way he had only a week earlier. It took a day or two for me to put together that when he was missing, so was she.
On the fourth day, I followed her from the set to the trailers on the back lot. I stayed out of sight as I watched her approach Jonah’s trailer, casting glances over each shoulder before she went up the stairs and let herself in. I held my breath, waiting for the door to open, for Jonah— my Jonah—to show her out, to tell her he was engaged, that he loved me and wouldn’t betray me this way.
The door never opened.
Armed with the information I’d come for, I returned to the set and waited for my call. I’m not sure how I got through that scene or the next one, but I did the job and then went to Jonah’s to pack my things. I returned to the apartment I hadn’t slept at in months and waited all night for him to call me.
He never called.
The next day, I returned to the set, bringing outrage and fury with me. I’m not proud of the way I confronted them with the whole cast and crew watching, agape at my utter loss of control as I called them out—him for cheating and her for being the kind of woman who goes after someone else’s man.
“If he was really your man, he wouldn’t have been so easily taken,” she said, “now would he?”
“I’d rather be cheated on,” I replied, “than be known as nothing more than a whore who’d steal another woman’s fiancé.”
“Stella.” Jonah stepped in before we came to blows. “That’s enough.”
I pulled off the gorgeous ring I’d loved so much and threw it at him, hitting him in the forehead. “Go to hell. You two deserve each other. Enjoy your whore.”
I stormed off to my trailer and refused to come out until they’d both left.
Our blowup disturbed the filming schedule, and who do you think got the blame for that? Yeah, it wasn’t them. From that moment on, everything changed for me. Word got out that I’d called Vivian a whore—twice—and I got tagged with the dreaded “difficult to work with” label, even if that wasn’t at all true.
Who cared about the truth when there was a juicy Hollywood scandal for everyone to sink their teeth into?
I went from on the rise in my career to dead on arrival overnight.
My management firm dropped me. “Friends” I’d worked with on past productions suddenly didn’t take my calls. I became persona non grata so fast, my head spun. I figured the storm would pass in a month or two, and I’d get back on track.
Six months passed without a single offer, and I began to panic about eventually running out of money.
When London Town was released, I wasn’t invited to the premiere or any of the events associated with the release.
That was a low point, especially when Vivian was given star treatment for a supporting role, while I was frozen out as one of the leads. Things became even darker after that massive snub, which was relentlessly picked apart in the media.
I’d become truly desperate and was thinking I might have to get a waitressing job—or, God forbid, go home to Iowa—when my former manager, Dabney Richards, called out of the blue on a Tuesday in November. I was so shocked to hear his voice that at first I thought it was someone playing a joke on me. Until he called me by the nickname he’d given me—Stelly Belly—and I broke down into heartbroken sobs.
“Aw, honey,” he said. “Don’t cry. We’re gonna fix it.”
“How? Your firm dumped me. You’re not even allowed to talk to me.”
“I didn’t agree with them dumping my client, so I left the firm and started my own.”
“Because of me?”
“Among other things, but mostly because of you.”
“Dabney… Why would you do that?”
“I see something in you, Stelly. You’re destined for bigger things than a two-bit movie with that bitch Vivian. You’re not the only one who sees her for what she really is. Believe me.”
His words filled the cold, dark spaces inside me with warmth and compassion and the first spark of hope I’d felt in weeks.
“What am I going to do, Dabney?”
“You’re going to sing , Stelly. You’re going to sing your way straight to the top.”
True to his word, he had me booked on The Merv Griffin Show a month later. That appearance changed my life in every possible way.
I smile at the memory of my beloved Dabney, who pulled me from the ashes, dusted me off and sent me in a whole new direction I never would’ve pursued without his support and encouragement. When Dabney, who never married or had children, became unable to care for himself at home alone, I paid for round-the-clock care for him and visited him weekly. I was by his side when he passed.
He was—and is—family to me.
I didn’t plan on a singing career, but as Dabney used to say—when life gives you lemons, kick them in the ass and make a vodka with lemonade.
I dab at tears that suddenly appear as I think of him and the way he fought for me when everyone else had deserted me. And he indirectly led me to the rest of my life with that booking on Merv, where I met a handsome young actor with kind eyes and a smile that lit up my world.
While Max and I are still very much in the game in this town, I haven’t heard a word about Jonah in ages, and Vivian hasn’t worked in years. Her looks gave out on her, and all the plastic surgery in the world couldn’t undo the ravages of time. That happens all too often, of course only to women. Old men can look like the back end of a cow and still get work. Women are held to a different standard. If she were anyone else, I’d feel sorry for her, but she doesn’t deserve my sympathy.
I’ve never held a grudge like this for anyone else. I’m not proud of it, believe me. But some things just are , and my feelings for her are among those things for me.
Speaking of things that just are, Max emerges from the hallway into the kitchen, smiling when he sees me sitting in my spot at the table.
“You were a million miles away. What’re you thinking about?”
“Things that happened ages ago.”
He frowns as he slides into his chair. “You want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“I hate that I’ve got you thinking about things that hurt you.”
“That’s not all I’m thinking about. There were good things, too, like Dabney and Merv and you.”
“So many good things. You may not believe me, but when I think back over all the years, I can barely remember anything before Merv’s Green Room.”
I give him a skeptical look.
“No, really. I remember bits and pieces from childhood, things with my brother and sister, my parents, that kind of stuff. I remember my first acting roles and people I knew back then, but it’s a fuzzy black-and-white reel. After the Green Room, everything is bright and colorful, as if someone turned a switch that day, and my real life began.”
I fan my face as tears pool in my eyes. “That might be the loveliest thing you’ve ever said to me, and that’s saying something.”
He smiles, and my heart goes soft the way it always does around him. He’s my kryptonite. He has been from the start. Whenever we’ve argued about something, which has been rare, I’ve found the strain between us so unbearable that I try to make it right as fast as I can without giving up my position on the matter. He does the same. We can’t stand being at odds, and this is no different from any other time.
“I mean it, sweetheart. You brought all the color to my life, and when I tell you I rarely gave her a thought over all these years, I mean it. It’s like the thing with her never happened, as far as I’m concerned. By the time I met you, she was so far in the past, she barely existed in my consciousness. I can’t bear the idea of you thinking otherwise.”
“I believe you.”
“You do? Really?”
I nod. “Don’t forget, I’ve been right here with you for all this time. If you were pining for someone else, I would’ve seen it.”
“I’ve never pined for anyone but you, and you know that.”
“I do.”
“I’m supposed to be sorry for keeping such an important thing from you, but a very big part of me isn’t sorry at all.”
I raise a brow at his defiant tone. “Is that right?”
“Yep. Think about the day we met.” He sits next to me and takes hold of my hand. “Close your eyes and put yourself back in that Green Room, where everything was on the line for you. If you had any prayer of a comeback, you’d know it after that appearance.”
With my eyes closed, I travel back in time to that momentous day. Other than our wedding day and the births of our children and grandchildren, that day stands out in a sea of regular days, with a bright shining light on top of it to indicate its importance to the story of my life—and Max’s.
“Are you there?”
Nodding, I say, “I want one of those pastries.”
Max laughs. “They were good.”
“The best. I always thought it was funny that he served such fat bombs to people obsessed with their weight.”
“We couldn’t resist them.”
“I sure as hell couldn’t.”
“Me either. Do you remember how anxious you were that day? And how much was riding on it?”
“I can feel it right here.” I place my free hand on my chest, which feels tight and achy, the way it did then.
“You were a ball of stress while we waited. I could feel it rolling off you. Of course, I knew the story of what’d happened to you and why. Everyone knew. And what I couldn’t tell you then was that I understood better than anyone else why you would’ve called her out the way you did. I knew her. I knew what she was capable of and the lengths she’d go to feed her voracious thirst for fame and glory. I’d seen it with my own two eyes, and I admired you for having the moxie to call her on it.”
“You did? You never told me that.”
“I studiously avoided the topic of her with you.”
The way he says that makes me snort with laughter. “Probably a good idea.”
“I knew it right away, Stel. If I told you I had a past with her, I never would’ve had a future with you.”
I open my eyes to look at him. “That’s probably true.”
“It’s definitely true. And from the moment I met you, all I wanted was more of you. I put my own selfish desire for you ahead of telling you the truth, but I still say I did the right thing.”
“One of the things I’m struggling with is how I could’ve heard about it from someone else. That you let me go through my life with that possibility out there…”
“No one who knew was ever going to talk about it. I was confident about that.”
“How has it never come up between us in all these years?”
“I never think of her. Ever . That’s how it didn’t come up. She ceased to exist for me long before I met you. Not to mention you still see red any time her name is mentioned.”
I can’t deny that, so I don’t try. “Will you tell me how you came to be married to her?”
“Ugh. Do I have to?”
“I can’t help having questions.”
“I know, but what does it matter now?”
I shrug. “I wish it didn’t, but I’d like to fill in some of the blanks.”
“I’d rather talk to you about anything other than her.”
“I understand that.”
“But you still want to know.”
“I do.”
“All right, then,” he says on a deep sigh.