Scandal in the VIP Suite--An enemies to lovers stuck together romance Page 3

  “Not compelling?”

  There were feature stories dedicated to the rise and fall of his career. A talentless hack to some, an action hero legend to others, but nothing if not compelling.

  She rolled her eyes and murmured something about fragile Hollywood egos.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  “Open the door before they call the cops.”

  “Fair point.” He’d sweep up the shards of his ego later. “Let’s face the firing squad.”

  Three

  Ha! Joke’s on me! The second bedroom is actually a tidy study with an attached bath. All this opulence and I’m spending the night on a pullout couch.

  Nina put aside her journal and closed her eyes. She’d kept a diary since childhood. An only child, her diary was often the guardian of her deepest secrets. When her fiction had failed to sell, she’d turned a year’s worth of old journals from her late teens into a memoir—a decision she now regretted. Regretting important life decisions was becoming a pattern.

  She never should have come to Miami. What had she hoped to achieve? Closure? I mean...come on! This was life, not the Oprah show, and this trip was one big, unmitigated disaster.

  Oh, but that wasn’t entirely true. There was one tall, dark and handsome mitigating factor.

  Nina grabbed her phone and googled JL Knight. A torrent of results crowded the small screen. She started with the facts:

  Julian Leroy Knight is an English actor. He is best known for his starring role in Thunder, directed by George Kirby.

  Then she searched for the fluff. There was so much of it: fan art, photographs, video, essays and articles. Nina swiped through photos of the actor posing on the red carpet to snapshots of the man stretched out all but naked on a beach. However, the most recent photo was of him, hunched low, handing a handsome black cat to an ecstatic little girl. It had a clever little caption: JL Knight literally saves the cat! There were batches of cheerful on-camera interviews and one grainy thirty-second clip of a young JL Knight, drunk at a Hollywood party, with a message for the critics who’d panned his debut feature film: “Kiss my ass!”

  Celebrity gossip sites provided relationship status updates (Love Is Dead: JL Knight and Bettina Ford Have Split) and chronicled professional setbacks (JL Knight—of “Kiss My Ass” Infamy—Gets His Ass Kicked at Box Office). A few more clicks and Nina landed on a blog dedicated to the film industry that put it all in context. JL Knight’s ex-girlfriend and former costar, Bettina Ford, had spearheaded a boycott of his latest release after most of her scenes were cut in postproduction. The movie had flopped.

  And, to top it all off, she came across a devastating profile of the actor in Vanities, titled Nite Nite, JL Knight.

  The star’s brand of toxic masculinity should have gone the way of the Hummer. His bloated films glorify violence, celebrate hypermasculine culture and belittle women. The actor is famous for his portrayal of an assassin for hire (code name “Thunder”) in the film adaptation of a once-popular video game. In the films, he stops at nothing to fulfill a contract, sometimes destroying entire cities to wipe out one target. Having not made much of his talent, content to feed from the bottom of the Hollywood swamp, JL Knight ought to retire.

  Well, damn.

  Nina, a reader, writer and theater geek, was not one to line up for a big Hollywood release. A regular at her neighborhood’s art house movie theater, she preferred her movies with subtitles. All this fuss about an action movie seemed a bit much. A fast-paced, high-voltage action flick served a purpose and had a place on the entertainment spectrum—particularly at the end of a long, hard day. On the other hand, why cut the scenes of a female character? Who’d made that call? Representation mattered, and she would’ve supported a boycott.

  A new-message alert popped up on her phone screen. It was a much-awaited email from her literary agent.

  Had lunch with editor today. She passed on the short story collection BUT expressed great interest in a follow-up to Backstage Diva. This is promising. Let’s have lunch next week and discuss.

  Nina moaned. Another memoir? She was done with all that. Backstage Diva chronicled her experience growing up in Manhattan, the daughter of a Broadway actress. The book tour had been torture. She’d had to crisscross America answering intrusive questions from strangers that she would have never entertained otherwise. That was the price she had to pay for offering up details of her family life for public consumption. She’d vowed never to do it again.

  “Ugh!” she cried up to the ceiling. The vaulted ceiling was fresco-free, not one rosy-cheeked angel to be found—a disappointment.

  Nina kicked off her shoes, stacked a couple throw pillows under her head and sank into the couch. Thunder was available for streaming, and because this qualified as a long, hard day, she slipped on her headphones and hit Play.

  * * *

  The best room at Sand Castle didn’t guarantee rest. Julian was stretched out on his back on the comically large bed, staring at the painted ceiling and wondered who, in their right mind, would want to have sex with angels staring down at them.

  He closed his eyes, desperate for sleep. Two days ago, he’d woken up in California to the threat of wildfire overtaking his neighborhood. The view from his bedroom window was walled off with smoke. On a clear day he could see as far as the Pacific.

  He’d turned on the television and checked his phone for information. The news headlines were short, capturing the general state of panic. Brush Fire Erupts. Brush Fire Doubles in Size. Fire Changes Course. An evacuation order was in effect for the Hollywood Hills. His landlord sent him a text message in all caps to reinforce it. GET PACKING! Since his landlord was also his neighbor, he couldn’t ignore the directive.

  It had irked him to abandon his house, only it wasn’t his to stay and defend. The modern home, nestled in the Hollywood Hills, was a rental. He’d moved in after his breakup. The house had come fully furnished. Most of his personal belongings were still in storage, which made packing a breeze. Julian folded his clothes into two large suitcases and tossed in his toiletries. He gathered his laptop, tablet, camera, personal phone and burner phone. He emptied the contents of his file cabinet into a messenger bag. The only thing left to do was return the cat.

  Wasabi, his neighbor’s green-eyed cat, would be asleep under his car. As per their routines, Julian popped open the trunk of his black Ferrari and the cat sprang out. He scooped him up. It would only take a minute to deliver him to Rosie, the neighbor’s nanny.

  The night he’d moved into the neighborhood, Julian had caught Rosie lighting a cigarette in the gazebo. At his approach she’d leaped to her feet, knocking a planter on its side. She hid the hand with the cigarette behind her back, but a curl of smoke rose above her head.

  “Are you supposed to be here?” he asked.

  Her eyes widened. “Holy mother! You’re JL Knight!”

  “I know who I am.”

  “I’m not trespassing, sir,” she said. “I’m the nanny from next door. I come over once a week to do some light housekeeping.”

  She was older than him by a decade—and a Brit. Julian asked her to drop the “sir.”

  “Please don’t tell my employer you caught me smoking. He doesn’t hire smokers.”

  Her employer was his landlord. Julian told her to relax. The day he caused a hardworking woman to lose a job was the day his mother would turn in her grave—she who only wanted to rest in peace in her homeland of Jamaica. He and Rosie had been friends ever since. He would not have wanted to evacuate without first checking on her, and Wasabi gave him the perfect excuse.

  Julian accessed the neighboring property by a side gate. If not for the threat of flames and the low-hanging clouds of smoke, it was a peaceful morning. He made his way to the front door, passing a U-Haul truck parked in the U-shaped driveway. Rosie threw open the door before he had a chance to ring the doorbell. “JL Knight, yo
u’re my hero!” she exclaimed. “You’ve saved me the trouble of mounting a search party for that cat.”

  “Next time check my garage,” he said. “That’s where he’ll be. Do you still have the code?”

  While Rosie checked to make sure her information was up to date, a little blonde girl came barreling into the foyer, squealing with joy at the sight of Wasabi. Julian knelt until they were almost eye level and put the cat in her arms.

  Rosie plucked her phone from her uniform pocket and snapped a photo. “How precious! Samantha, say thank you to Mr. Knight.”

  The little girl offered a shy smile. “Tanks.”

  Julian ruffled her hair and unfolded to his full height. Then he asked Rosie if she planned to evacuate with her employers.

  “We’re heading to the house in Palm Springs,” she said. “It’s a fixer, so we’ll be roughing it. How about you?”

  “I’m ready to roll out.” Julian had no definite plans. There were calls for donations to the fire department—water bottles and eye drops, mostly. He’d see to that and then possibly check into a hotel until it was safe to return. He had no place to be, really.

  Rosie asked Samantha to find Wasabi’s favorite toy and accompanied him down the front steps.

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, JL Knight,” she said. “Now seems like the right time.”

  Julian winced at her use of his stage name. He’d asked her one hundred times to stop calling him that, but with Rosie it was either “sir” or “JL Knight.” This confirmed what he’d known to be true for some time. For some people, no matter what he did, he’d be indistinguishable from his acting persona. For years, he hadn’t minded. He was best known for his role in Thunder. The character had served him well and made him rich, but now he couldn’t shake him. Not that there would be any more Thunder movies. The third had bombed so badly at the box office there was no talk of a fourth installment. One day they’d reboot the franchise with another, younger actor and he’d be forgotten.

  Rosie linked her arm through his, and they walked down the path to the side gate. “I’m in no position to give you life advice.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Julian replied.

  Rosie was a practical-minded woman. In England, she’d run a playgroup in her home, but she’d found that looking after of the kids of the Hollywood elite was more financially rewarding. “They think I’m Mary bloody Poppins,” she’d confided one night. She planned to retire in five years once she had enough saved away to buy a cottage in her hometown. Her life was in order. By comparison, his life was a mess.

  “All this free time is not good for you. Get back to work.”

  “It’s not that simple.” Julian’s agent wasn’t returning his calls.

  “It is, actually. You’re too smart and talented to waste your time.”

  They’d reached the end of the path, and Julian felt a wave of relief. He recognized the truth when he heard it, and the truth wasn’t something he was equipped to deal with right now. He was running from an actual fire—no time to run from existential ones, too.

  He faced Rosie and rested his chin on the top of her head. “Tanks.”

  She pushed him away and called him a softie. Julian marched home and blamed his stinging eyes on the smoke that thickened the air. He loaded his bags in the trunk of his car and went back inside the house for one last thing. From a bottom dresser drawer, he pulled out a dog-eared copy of a screenplay well into its ninth revision. Midnight Sun. He flipped it open, thumbed through it, shook his head, then tucked it under his arm.

  While he locked up the house, Julian got his assistant, Katia, on the phone. “Hey, Kat. Heading to Miami in the morning. Could you charter a plane and book a suite at Sand Castle?”

  “Only if I can bum a ride. I’m heading to Boca for the holiday.”

  Oh, right. Independence Day. “I’ll be there for a bit longer, but I’d welcome the company on the flight out.”

  “How much longer?” she asked.

  She needed this information to book the hotel, only he couldn’t give her exact dates. “A month or so.”

  “You’re not retiring to Florida, are you?”

  “No. The opposite.”

  She let out a grumpy sound. “Okay. Fine.”

  His next call was to an independent film producer who had once expressed interest in his project. When Julian had finally backed out of his garage, he didn’t get far. A police checkpoint at the foot of the Hills slowed the flow of traffic, but he felt as if he were going places.

  * * *

  Julian grabbed his phone and played a few rounds of the sort of game that would have solidified his reputation as a warmonger. He lost the final round, slipped off his headphones and listened for sounds of the woman locked away in the adjoining room. Ms. Taylor. She claimed to be a writer. Time to find out. He typed “female author Taylor” in a search engine and filtered the results by image. He swiped through dozens of photos of Taylors, including Taylor Swift, but there was only one professional headshot of a dark-skinned, brown-eyed beauty.

  In the photograph, she looked straight at the camera with a measured smile. She wore red lipstick and her black hair fell straight and loose, framing her face. The caption read: Nina Taylor, memoirist, NYT Review of Books.

  I’m only really qualified to write about myself. He recalled her words. They hadn’t made sense at the time. They did now. Julian reached for a second pillow and wedged it under his head. He was about to jump down the internet rabbit hole and might as well get comfortable.

  One hour later, he’d read several reviews of her memoir, Backstage Diva, and listened to snippets of podcast interviews. He’d watched a panel discussion on memoir writing on Book TV. She was one of three panelists, but by far the most remarkable. He’d learned the following:

  A) Nina Taylor was the daughter of a deceased stage actress celebrated for her Tony-nominated portrayal of Beneatha Younger in a 1999 Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun.

  B) Nina was a respected artist in her own right with a bestselling memoir and several published magazine articles.

  C) Nina was single, lived in New York City and was working on a collection of short stories.

  There was only one thing left to do. He purchased Backstage Diva, the audiobook, with one click. Then he adjusted his headphones and hit Play.

  Four

  Nina had dozed off on the couch halfway through the movie. She woke up to the sound of screeching tires, a car chase in full swing. She sat up and massaged a kink in her neck. If the Garden Room was still unavailable, they had better find her something! She had no intention of spending the night on a sleeper sofa while JL Knight slept in luxury. If Sand Castle couldn’t accommodate her, she was leaving. She’d arrange a ride to the airport, hop on any flight and get the heck out of the Sunshine State. Sorry, Mom. I’ll light a candle or burn sage and celebrate your life...at home.

  Her room opened to the hallway. Nina slipped out and took the stairs to the courtyard. The front desk clerk had no answers, so she marched to Grace Guzman’s office. When her knock went unanswered, Nina was certain nothing would be resolved tonight. Angry and aimless, she wandered along the cloisters, coming across an enclosed garden. It was small but lush. Mesmerized by the fairy lights creating the illusion of a starry sky, she traveled down a gravel path and somehow missed the bronze statue at the center of the garden. She struck her foot against the granite pedestal, fell to the ground and yelped like a dog.

  She choked on a sob. Had she flown to Miami just to make a fool of herself?

  Rhythmic applause, sharp and slow, rose up from deep in the garden. Nina scrambled to her feet and wiped away the blades of grass stuck to her cheek. When she was presentable, she scrutinized the shadows and saw, quite clearly, Grace Guzman staring back at her. Grace sat in a rattan chair, hair loosened from the bun she’d sported earlier. Besides her was a low ta
ble with a pitcher of red sangria and a couple of wineglasses. Say what you want, the woman had style.

  “You’re quite the performance artist, Ms. Taylor.”

  Off-duty Grace was even bitchier than on-duty Grace. How was that possible?

  Nina pointed to the statue. “This thing is a hazard.”

  “The goddess is not a hazard.”

  “Goddess?”

  “Aphrodite,” Grace said, as if it were obvious.

  Nina examined Aphrodite. Hunched low to the ground, her demure pose struck Nina as unnatural—Aphrodite being the goddess of love and beauty and all. Shouldn’t she stand tall?

  “Have a seat, Ms. Taylor,” Grace said. “That statue will be here long after you’ve gone.”

  Those words put everything in perspective. This mansion had seen war, economic depression and ecologic catastrophe. Aphrodite was no stranger to drama.

  Her chin held high, Nina hobbled over to the offered seat. Grace poured a glass of sangria and handed it over as if it were the cure for all things. Then she folded her hands on her lap and waited for Nina to explain herself. If there was a goddess in this garden, it wasn’t Aphrodite.

  When Nina wasn’t forthcoming, Grace broke the silence. “I like to sit here in the early evenings. The guests are getting ready for dinner and the hotel tends to be quiet.”

  The hotel was as quiet as could be expected with the street noise drilling through the wall of high shrubs. Nina raked her brain for something to say. “This is a beautiful garden. The lights are a nice touch.”

  “We were supposed to host a wedding here tonight. It was canceled.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “The couple was eloping,” Grace said with a sigh. “Never a good sign.”

  Nina disagreed. “Not every bride needs an entourage.”

  “Yes, but for some it takes a village,” Grace said. “They need a nagging mother, a dozen bridesmaids and a minimum of fifty guests to get them to the altar. I know I did.”