Читать книгу The Wedding Fling - Meg Maguire - Страница 9

AS THE SUN DIPPED LOWER, Leigh’s mood rose higher and higher.

A shower washed away the salt from her afternoon swim, and her hastily acquired shorts and funky halter top enveloped her in a sense of blessed unfamiliarity. The smell of sunscreen had her craving a cold drink, perhaps one with an umbrella in it, served in half a pineapple or some other delightful cliché.

When the clock chimed five-thirty she grabbed her new sandals, carrying them as she walked down the beach. Just as she’d hoped, after a twenty minutes’ stroll she spotted the workers’ settlement farther along the shore.

Will’s clunky old truck was parked just off the road, and Leigh followed a wooden walkway through the grass and sand to a dwelling yards from the high tide’s edge. Tinny music played from an unseen radio, and she spotted its owner as she neared.

He was straddling an upside-down canoe raised on blocks beside the building, sanding away a coat of peeling paint. It seemed there was no limit to how casual his wardrobe could get. He was dressed in khaki cutoffs, a plaid button-up shirt left completely open to flap about his arms in the warm breeze. He swept his shaggy hair from his eyes and Leigh had to admire the greater whole of him. Tan and lean, that mischievously handsome face looking placid for a change, his attention focused on his project. His well-past-five-o’clock shadow and bare feet made her envy his life with a fresh pang.

She clapped the soles of her sandals together. “Knock knock.”

Will glanced up from his task with a grin. “Well, look who’s here. You get lost on the way to a hot-rock massage?”

“Is this where you live, Captain?” She nodded to the cottage on stilts. “It’s adorable.”

Will glowered, faking insult.

“Sorry. It’s butch. Really butch.”

He set aside the sanding block and wiped his palms on his shorts. “What can I do for you, Miss Bailey? Need a lift to civilization?”

“No.”

“Thank goodness for that.” He reached to the windowsill and took a deep swig from a bottle of beer. “How was that coffee?”

“Just fine, thank you.”

“You walk all the way here?”

“It’s only about a half mile.”

“Didn’t know your kind walked.”

She shot him a snobby look, meandering closer. “My kind?”

His smile sharpened to a smirk, one that stirred Leigh’s pulse. “Yeah, your kind, little miss movie star.”

“Well, you were misinformed. My kind does plenty more than walk. I came to ask you about the dancing you mentioned yesterday.”

His brows rose. “That’s what you came here for? Dancing?”

“Sure. It’s my favorite thing in the world. Or it used to be.”

“And here I thought maybe you’d missed me.”

“Again, you’re greatly misinformed.”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking of, but the dancing here isn’t what you’re after. More like stand-up dry-humping.”

Leigh pictured such a thing. “Sounds like a movie I starred in.”

Another of those deadly, snarky smiles. “What happened in the movie?”

“The annoying pilot told the charming actress where to find a cold drink and a good beat.”

“Of course he did.” Damn, that dimple.

She kicked at the sand. “So, will you tell me?”

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll take you.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure, what the hell.”

She smiled. “Thank you. It’s way too quiet back in my villa.”

“I’ll get chewed out if any managers think I invited you to fraternize with us lowly workers.”

“Then tell them the truth—that I forced myself on you.”

His lips twitched, as though he was holding back a remark, a flirtation. Just that tiny hesitation from this shameless man brought a warmth to Leigh’s skin, one that had nothing to do with the late afternoon sun.

“I’ll bribe you,” she offered.

“No more bribes. Plus I’ll get chewed out worse by management if they hear I failed to chaperone you, out among us uncivilized natives.” Will slid down from the canoe.

“Is this what you do with your free time? Fix up old boats?” Leigh ran a hand over the point where rough paint met smooth wood, and stole a glance at Will’s bare chest while he stowed tools.

“I do all sorts of stuff. And I work less than four hours a day, so I do a lot of all sorts of stuff.”

“No TV?”

“I don’t have one. Very little worth watching.”

“That’s for sure.” Leigh imagined what would have happened if she’d stayed in her villa—check room service for peanut butter availability, then scour the channels for news about herself. Pathetic, toxic habit. Tomorrow she’d phone and see if the satellite could be disconnected for the duration of her stay.

She waited while Will disappeared inside his house. The radio went silent and he emerged carrying a cooler, with a pair of sandals on top of it.

“What’s in there?”

“Essentials.” He headed up the walkway, dropping his sandals to the ground as they reached the rough gravel road and slipping them on. Leigh did the same.

“Thanks,” she said.

Will shrugged, setting ice inside the cooler rattling. “I would have ended up there eventually anyhow, with or without you.”

“Where are we going?”

“To Bethany and Oscar’s place.”

“And they work here, too?”

“That’s a given. Bethany’s a chef, Oscar manages the drivers.”

“They throw lots of parties?”

“It’s not that organized around here. People finish work, take a nap or smoke a joint—”

“Or sand a boat.”

“Or that. Then you wander toward wherever the ruckus is coming from. But I know it’ll be there tonight, since it’s Monday. Always something happening at their place on a Monday.”

A girl ran past them, followed by a smaller one, both shrieking with laughter.

“That little one was theirs,” Will said.

“Cute.” Leigh craned her neck to watch the kids disappear between the trees. “How often do us guests turn up at your get-togethers?”

“Rarely. Especially ones like you,” Will said with a tight, self-satisfied smile.

“Ones like me? Go on, tell me what that means, since I know you’re dying to.”

“Just that you’re a girl. Most of the guests who party-crash are older men, looking to escape their wives’ idea of a vacation. But they’re rare, as well. You’re just extra rare. Like how I like my steak.”

She laughed. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Thirty-three.”

She nodded, not sure what she’d been expecting. He lived a life she’d normally have ascribed to either a younger man, not yet compelled to shape up and find a “real” job, or an older one sick of the rat race. “What’s it like, living in a postcard?”

Will stared over the water for a moment, and Leigh studied his eyes in the dying sun, bright as a blue glass pendant she’d admired in the shopping district the previous morning. She wondered who had raised this man and given him those eyes, and what they thought of the life he’d made for himself, so far from New York City.

“It’s lovely,” he finally said.

“What’s the least lovely thing about it?”

“Hurricanes.”

“I mean, like, from day to day.”

“Honestly, there’s not much. Bit of a pain getting hold of certain things. Costs an arm and a leg to have stuff shipped from the States. Hence all the bribes you’ll see going down around here.”

“What sorts of things? What do you miss?”

“Aren’t you just brimming with questions?”

She smiled at him. “I’m desperate for human contact.”

“You must be, if you came to me. So much for your dreams of seclusion.”

“So what do you miss?”

He pondered it. “I miss watching the Knicks play. Can’t buy that off a guy in Bridgetown.”

“Well, I’m sure I get that channel at my place. Feel free to come watch a game, in exchange for tonight’s party.”

He met her gaze squarely for a breath. “I may just take you up on that.”

“You’ll have to make it worth my while, of course.” She rubbed her fingers together and bobbed her eyebrows at him, as silly as she’d been with anyone in weeks.

“You’ll fit in just fine here, Miss Bailey.”

Their gazes lingered longer than was casual before they turned back to the road. Leigh felt that heat again, the one she wished was as simple as sunburn. This time it had nothing to do with revenge, a shift that felt at once joyous and dangerous.

“That’s it.” Will nodded to the farthest house in the settlement, bigger than his own but also on stilts, with rounded lavender shingles like fish scales. Tiki torches were lit along the beach, a grill smoking and a dozen people milling around it, cups and beer bottles waving as arms gestured. The breeze carried their laughter, and the aromas of sizzling meat and ocean breeze and that distinctive Caribbean scent, of flowers and sand and the vastness of the sky here. Leigh breathed it in, drank in the color of the clouds as dusk approached. She filled herself with this place, so full there’d be no room for a single bad thought.

Will kicked off his sandals at the roadside as they headed for the beach. He glanced at her. “Ready?”

She looked at the people. “Sure. Seems calm enough to me.”

He grinned. “Wait till the sun goes down.”

“You guys can’t be crazier than the nutjobs back in L.A.”

They rounded the house to the beach, and a few partygoers cheered as they spotted Will.

“Everyone!” he bellowed. “There is royalty among us peasants this evening.”

More cheers and a few whistles sounded, and a couple of bottles raised in Leigh’s direction.

“Her highness wants a taste of how the real islanders live,” Will went on with an indulgent grin. “So do be on your worst behavior.”

He led Leigh across the warm sand and set his cooler near the grill. A tall, big-bellied man greeted him with a hand clasp and a slap on the back before turning his smile on the party’s newcomer.

“Oscar, this is Leigh, staying at Shearwater. Leigh, this is Oscar, your host for this evening.”

She shook Oscar’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“And you.” His attention shifted as Will pulled two shining blue fish from the cooler. “Ah, beauties! Bethany will be pleased.”

Will handed off the gift and rinsed his hands in the ice. Oscar left them to deliver the fish to the immensely pregnant woman manning the grill.

“You caught those?” Leigh asked Will.

He nodded. “I go out most mornings. Motorboat, not canoe.”

“Wow.” She caught it this time, mocking herself before Will got the chance. “Wow….”

He smiled. “Get you a drink? Cocktail? Beer?”

Not sure she was ready for whatever filled people’s plastic tumblers, she opted for a beer. Following Will inside to a bustling kitchen, she smiled nervously at the other guests as he found her a bottle. She was introduced in warmly teasing tones, a flurry of names and faces. Leigh’s nerves returned, seeing how intimately they all knew one another, how laughter seemed to quiet when her guest status was announced.

She leaned close to Will. “Is it making people uncomfortable, my being here?”

“Uncomfortable is too strong. Not like the boss is in the room. But you do change the atmosphere. You’ve got the power to complain.”

“I don’t want to spoil anyone’s good time.” And she certainly didn’t want to be anyplace where’d she feel once again like an outsider.

Will nudged her with his elbow. “Give them a few more drinks, an hour or so to get used to you. Just be yourself.”

“Be myself.” Whoever that was. Leigh straightened, sipping her beer and deciding to do just what he’d said. She did know who she was. It was her family and Dan and all those strangers in Hollywood who’d tricked her into believing she was someone else, someone different, some face off a screen or magazine spread.

Outside, a drum sounded. Will nodded to the exit and she preceded him into the cooler air, the darkening evening. She met a few more people, all polite but unmistakably distant once they learned she was a paying guest. She and Will wandered to the water’s edge, until they were wading in the sea, sipping their drinks, watching the torchlight bouncing off the dark waves that lapped at their shins. They’d both gone quiet, and Leigh wondered how much of a damper she was putting on his evening.

Will cleared his throat before asking, “So, do you regret it? Leaving him?”

She met his gaze, shocked. Shocked he’d been wondering something so personal, so sentimental, and equally surprised to realize the question hadn’t yet crossed her mind. But the answer needed no speculation. It would be ages before she could feel anything good about Dan. Though she hoped she could eventually forgive him, she knew he was now a figment purely of the past. “No, I don’t regret it.”

Will nodded, expression neutral as he turned his attention back to shore.

Leigh exhaled a long and melancholy sigh, and in its wake she felt relief unknotting her muscles. “It would’ve been a huge mistake if I’d gone through with it. The way I realized I couldn’t marry him… It hurts, anyhow. It’s humiliating and complicated, but once all that fades, I’ll be happy with my decision.”

“You seem like you’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”

“For a celebrity,” Leigh said wryly.

“For anybody.” He sipped his drink, not meeting her eyes. “How could you end up at the altar with any doubt in your mind?”

“It’s hard to explain. You have to think of fame as a drug. It does stuff to your head. It gets you sort of drunk or high, and reality’s modified. Especially when everyone around you seems to see things the same way.” She watched the quavering reflection of her calves in the water. “Like you’re all seeing the world in a funhouse mirror, but everyone agrees that it looks the same, so you just… You get used to the warp, I guess.”

“Enough to marry the wrong man?”

“Nearly. I know, it sounds awful.”

“Sounds typical, though. The Hollywood crowd aren’t known for their stellar marital track record.”

Leigh nodded. “My fiancé—the guy he used to be, anyhow—I would’ve married him, no hesitation. But by the time the big day arrived, he was different. And it’s so easy in that world to tell yourself, ‘things will be normal again, after X happens.’ Your movie wraps or the ink dries on your next contract. But X happens and things don’t just go back to normal. Normal is something you opt out of when you sign up to be part of the entertainment business.”

“Lots of people dream of having what you do.”

“I know they do.”

“But not you.”

She sipped her beer, considering. “I never wanted to be famous. I was seventeen and all I wanted to do was dance, and maybe see if I could build a life out of it. The fame was a fluke, but it had its own momentum, especially when I saw how proud it made my parents. I’m sort of a people pleaser. Okay, I’m a massive people pleaser.”

Will laughed, the rich sound as relaxing as the alcohol. As warm and intimate as she imagined his breath might feel on her neck.

“It’s hard for me to admit I don’t want any of it anymore,” Leigh said, “knowing how ungrateful so many people would say I was if I quit.”

“Fans, you mean?”

“Fans, sure. But there’s way more guilt about your family, for whatever they may have sacrificed. And from all the people who believed in your talent, pushed you and promoted you. But I also know I’m expendable. I’m not the ‘it’ girl-next-door, twenty-year-old actress anymore.”

He finally met her eyes, his blue ones seeming as bright in the torchlight as they were in the sunshine. “Washed up at twenty-five? That’s harsh.”

“Twenty-seven, but yeah. I’m a certain kind of commodity, and my time’s peaked. There’s an army of perky replacements happy to take my old roles.”

“Ouch.”

She laughed. “Yeah, my expiration date’s fast approaching.”

They shared a smile, again lingering just longer than was innocent. Her gaze moved to his bare chest before she got hold of herself and turned to watch the party on the beach. People were eating and laughing, and more musicians had joined the drummer, as children danced in the sand.

“So what do you want to do?” Will asked. “If your dream of becoming a nobody comes true.”

She kept her eyes on the party. “I want to dance.”

“Like on stage or—”

“No, right now. I want to dance.” No thoughts of what to do once she got home. Just enjoy the present, the simple pleasures of this place.

She sloshed to shore and left her bottle in a milk crate full of empties. The two children who’d run past earlier were hopping and gyrating before the band, and as Leigh approached they looked up at her, curious.

“What’s the best dance you guys know?” Leigh asked them.

After a pause, the older child demonstrated her moves, a hip-thrusting motion accompanied by a rolling of her narrow shoulders, bawdy if not for the fact the kid was only about ten. Leigh mimicked the choreography, earning herself a hesitant grin.

“Look, look,” said the younger girl. She offered her own signature moves, something equally raunchy she must have stolen from a music video. Leigh gave it a go, until the little girl dissolved into giggles.

“What?”

The child pointed to Leigh’s butt.

“You got no ass,” said the older girl.

Leigh laughed, faking offense. “Sure I do.”

“You all flat back there. Like all them skinny, rich white ladies.”

“I can’t help that.”

“You oughta eat more,” the smaller girl announced loudly, earning a reprimand and waggle of grill tongs from her mother. “Sorry.”

“Anyhow,” Leigh said, “you can dance with whatever size butt you’ve got. Show me any moves you have, I bet I can do them as well as you.”

“Bet you can’t,” the older girl taunted.

“Bet I can. Go on, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Will wandered over. “Careful, girls. She was in a movie about a dancer and everything.”

For a stinging second, his comment made Leigh feel like even more of an outsider, but she was grateful for the credibility it seemed to earn her with this tough crowd. Two sets of eyes widened. “You was in a movie?”

“I was. And I was the star. It was about a girl who learned how to tango. You want to see?”

Vigorous nods answered her.

Leigh demonstrated a flourish of moves, and her skeptical audience warmed before her eyes.

“That’s cool,” the bossy girl said. “How you do that?”

Leigh offered lessons, accepted tips in return from her young acquaintances. Before long the grown-ups were finishing their dinners and fetching fresh drinks, dancing in pairs on the sand. Seeking a partner of her own, Leigh scanned the growing crowd, but found Will busy at the grill, giving their pregnant hostess a break. No matter.

Leigh danced by herself, enjoying the beat and the atmosphere, the flicker of firelight and the deep indigo of the sky overhead. She shut her eyes, absorbing the laughter and music, feeling free in a way she hadn’t in years. Feeling a high no vice Hollywood traded in could ever touch. Just some nobody girl, dancing on some nowhere beach. Just Leigh, for the first time in forever.

Across the sand, Will caught her eye again, laughing at a friend’s joke. That damnable smile… Her energy shifted, dropping low in her belly, warm and curious, and Leigh wondered if maybe it wasn’t high time to get busy making some bad decisions.