Page 7 of Second Act
A frown drew down Hugh’s slashing eyebrows for a split second. Then he nodded. “Wednesday it is. Tell me where to pick you up.”
“Why don’t I just meet you at the restaurant?” She didn’t want him to see her fixer-upper row house, which was only about a third of the way toward fixed up. She’d bought the run-down building dirt cheap when she’d moved to New York, foolishly believing she could renovate it in the spare time she never had.
“You can’t possibly think I’d agree to that,” he said.
“I know. It’s just...” She surrendered and held out her hand. “Give me your phone and I’ll put my contact info in.”
The phone he passed to her was a work of art, its ultraslim shape wrapped in brown leather with gold accents that had the unmistakable luster of fourteen karats. She tapped in her address and phone number,running her fingers over the exquisite case before handing it back. He’d finally gotten the beautiful things he’d craved.
He swiped a few times, and her phone pinged in her lab-coat pocket. “Now you have my number,” he said. “I’ll be in touch about the time.”
“How about seven?” Jessica said.
“I need to check the shooting schedule.” He glanced at the elegant gold watch on his wrist. “In fact, I have to get back to the set.”
But there was one question she wanted an answer to. “Hugh, why do you want to have dinner with me after all these years?”
He gave an elegant shrug, the fabric of his jacket pulling tight across his broad shoulders. “You remind me of when I was a different man.”
Hugh ducked into the limousine waiting for him outside Jessica’s clinic. He hoped like hell that the scene between his archenemy and his love interest had taken longer to shoot than expected. Otherwise, everyone would be standing around waiting for him to show up.
Nobody would dare to complain, because Hugh was always on time and always knew his lines. Of course, he expected everyone else to do the same, which was why directors loved him. His less professional fellow cast members were not always as enthusiastic about his high standards. That meant he needed to stick to them himself.
However, he had felt an overwhelming need to find Jess. So much so that he had been less than fully focused on his performance this morning. He’d decided he should fix the problem by tracking her down.
Then he’d told her only part of the truth. She did remind him of another time and place, when he’d felt good about himself. Because Jess had loved him, he had felt worthy of that love. When she had handed back the ring he’d gone into debt to buy for her, the blow had feltphysical. He could still remember groping for the back of their hideous plaid sofa so he didn’t crumple to his knees. Of course he’d realized they were having some problems, but he knew how great her capacity for love was. He’d counted on that.
Then she’d rejected him.
He’d been so devastated that he couldn’t bring himself to speak to her after that terrible night, although he’d saved her voice messages and played them over and over again. Finally, one of his friends had deleted them because his behavior was deemed unhealthy.
Then he had let too much time go by, and his pride threw up a senseless but unyielding blockade to keep him from reaching out to break the silence between them.
Now he knew that while he’d been pretending to be a fictional character, Jessica had been saving lives in a place that truly needed her. Not to mention that she was clearly struggling financially. He’d noted the cracked linoleum floor in the hallway of her veterinary clinic and the motley array of chairs in the waiting area. Except for the desk chair, the furniture in her office looked as though it had been scavenged from a dumpster.
However, when he’d glanced into the examining room he’d passed by en route to Jessica’s office, the equipment gleamed with cleanliness and looked far more up to date than the computer on her receptionist’s desk. Of course, Jess would spend her money on the best care for her patients.
Guilt shot needles into his chest, and he caught himself rubbing at it with his palm.
The Julian Best movies had made him a fortune once Gavin had helped him negotiate a cut of the profits instead of a flat fee. The overseas distribution of the films turned out to be a box-office platinum mine. After this movie released, he intended to apply for membership in Gavin’s favorite hangout, the ultraexclusive Bellwether Club, whichrequired that the applicant have amassed a fortune of a billion dollars, starting from scratch.
Yes, he’d put a large percentage of his earnings into the foundation he’d started to help foster kids like the child he’d once been. But he just wrote checks and made the occasional visit to the organizations his money funded. He wasn’t down in the trenches getting his hands dirty like Jess.
The thought added to his nagging sense of dissatisfaction with his life.
Maybe this was just a side effect of the new, softer Julian Best. In the novel this movie was based on, Gavin Miller had killed off Julian’s old lover, the Machiavellian double agent Samantha Dubois. Gavin claimed it wasn’t because Irene Bartram, the actress who played Samantha, had interfered with Gavin’s love life, but Hugh didn’t believe it. Not that he had any sympathy for Irene. She was a first-class bitch.
Julian’s new love was a normal woman, not involved in the spy game. Gavin’s wife, Allie, had come up with the idea as a way to humanize the super spy. It also increased the stakes—Julian would have to work doubly hard to protect her since, unlike Samantha, she didn’t have the skills to protect herself.
So maybe Hugh’s sudden longing to be normal, to be more in touch with real life, was nothing more than too close an identification with Julian’s character.
The limo eased to a stop by Hugh’s trailer. He heaved a sigh of relief when no stressed-out production assistant paced the curb outside it.
But when he stepped inside, Meryl was artfully arranged on his sofa, her long legs crossed at the ankles to show off the graceful arch of her feet in their high-heeled pumps. Her skirt was slightly rucked up to reveal an expanse of smooth thigh. This time his internal sigh was not one of relief.
“Hugh, sweetie!” she said in her honeyed voice. “Bryan told us to take a break, so I thought I’d run lines with you. Since you weren’there, I raided your fruit bowl.” She held up a half-eaten pear. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“How long a break?” he asked.
