Текст книги "Fighting the Fall"

Автор книги: Jennifer Snow

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter 15

Tyson had been to LA a few times before, but only for fights. They’d never stayed longer than necessary to see the sights or visit the beach. He remembered asking his father once if they could go to Disneyland while they were there, but he’d said Disneyland was for kids. He’d been twelve and he’d known immediately his childhood ended in that moment. He couldn’t help but wonder how his father’s visit to Connor at the addiction center had gone. He hoped maybe they were all turning corners for the better.

That was his plan anyway as he sat in the back of the taxi driving down Sunset Boulevard.

When it stopped in front of the Chateau Marmont hotel, he paid the driver, grabbed his bag, and headed inside the magnificent building. Stepping inside the air-conditioned lobby he was surprised by the casual yet elegant atmosphere. Couches and crooked sconces and pictures of nudes decorated the space and everyone from agent-type suits to Hollywood moms catering to their impatient children lingered in the dimly lit area. The woman at the desk greeted him with a smile as he approached. “Hello, welcome to Chateau Marmont. Checking in?”

Her friendly welcome to the guy wearing a T-shirt and ripped jeans surprised him as well. He was sure he wasn’t their usual clientele who could afford five-hundred-dollars-plus a night. “Actually, I’m looking for one of your guests. Parker Hamilton?”

She gave him a blank stare.

“Parker Hamilton,” he repeated.

“I’m sorry, sir, there’s no one staying here by that name.”

He frowned. This was the hotel she said she always stayed in. “Are you sure?”

She glanced away quickly then nodded. “There is no one by that name staying here, sir.”

His eyes narrowed, as he stared at her in confusion. Was this some sort of code or test he needed to figure out?

She waited.

Then it dawned. Didn’t big stars register under other names? He scanned his memory for her character’s name in the movie. It was worth a shot. “How about a Jessica Carlisle?” He couldn’t imagine not being able to use his own name to book a hotel room. Doubt over his being there started to creep into his chest as he surveyed the other people in the castle-shaped hotel. He didn’t belong in a place like this. He pushed the thought away. It didn’t matter.

The girl, whose name tag read Michelle, smiled. “Of course, sir. Let me call her for you.”

“Um, actually, can you just give me her room number?”

The attendant slowly put the phone down. “Unfortunately, I can’t give out that information. But if you want to wait in the restaurant, I can tell her there’s someone here to see her.”

The restaurant—a crowded place—not exactly ideal for what he’d come to tell her. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Great. I’ll call her room. Who may I say is here?”

He hesitated. “Tell her it’s her trainer.”

She nodded, as though that made sense and picked up the phone again. “The restaurant is just down the hall to the right.”

“Thank you.” As he made his way down the hallway, the urge to leave the hotel and go straight back to the airport nearly suffocated him. He hadn’t heard from her in weeks and he’d dialed six digits only to hang up about a million times, so why did he think being here now was a good idea? Showing up instead of calling or texting was . . .

The only way he could show her he was serious. That his feelings for her were stronger than any he’d ever experienced before and he couldn’t go another day without seeing her. Of course, once she was standing in front of him, he’d never be able to actually say any of that.

“Good morning, sir. Would you like a table inside or on the patio?” the hostess asked him as he entered.

He scanned the busy, noisy restaurant. “The patio would be great. I’m waiting for someone.” At least he hoped she would come down to see him.

“Of course. Follow me.” She led the way through the restaurant and as he watched her, he waited. Nothing. No reaction to the tight body and long blonde hair at all. Not even a dick twitch.

Yet, all he had to do was close his eyes and envision Parker, and every part of him responded.

“Here you are. What is the name of your other party?”

“Parker . . . Jessica Carlisle?”

The hostess smiled. “I’ll let Miss Hamilton know where you are,” she said before walking away.

Alone at the table, he took in the surroundings, not really seeing any of it. The palm trees and beautiful landscaping along the pool deck gave the place a tropical, relaxed feel, but he was anything but relaxed. His palms sweat and his mouth was dry. He took a gulp of the water on the table in front of him and spilled the liquid on his white dress shirt.

Great. He dabbed at it with a napkin, not noticing Parker coming toward the table a few moments later.

“Tyson?” The sound of her voice made him jump.

“Hi,” he said, pushing the chair back noisily and standing.

“What are you doing in LA?” Her face was void of any expression. He couldn’t tell if she was happy to see him or pissed off that he was there.

“I don’t know,” he said, feeling as though he was about to choke on his own tongue. He unbuttoned a button on his dress shirt, and pulled the fabric away from his body. Was it uncomfortably humid in LA or was it just him?

“Okay then.” Parker turned to leave.

He rushed forward and grabbed her hand. “Wait . . . that didn’t sound right.” He was no good at this. Confessing his feelings was something he’d never done before. He’d never had any to confess. And she deserved to hear how he felt, deserved an apology for his behavior. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

She folded her arms across her chest and waited.

He cleared his throat. Now or never. Just say something you moron. “I just . . . Well, I wanted to . . . The thing is . . .”

Parker’s hands fell to her sides and she shook her head in disbelief. “Jesus, Tyson, it shouldn’t be this hard.”

He touched her arms. “Yes, it should be. It should be so fucking hard that it takes every ounce of strength to board a plane and fly thousands of miles just to see the one person you can’t shake from your mind, no matter how hard you try, no matter how irritating this feeling in the pit of your stomach is. Even when you know this could end so badly . . .”

“Does this rambling get to a point? I need to be on set soon.”

She wasn’t going to make this easy. Why should she? He’d been a complete idiot. He didn’t deserve a second chance to make things right. He didn’t deserve her. He knew that. Hadn’t that been his reservation about getting involved all along? He stood staring into her dark eyes, looking for a trace of something he could grab hold of, but there was nothing but hurt. Reluctantly, he let his hands fall away from her. “I’m sorry . . . You’re right. I won’t keep you.”

A look of disappointment flashed in her eyes, but her face concealed anything else she might be feeling. “Sorry you came all this way for nothing,” she said, turning to leave.

Everything he never knew he wanted was just within reach and he was once again just going to let her walk away. “Parker . . .” He took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her.

“What’s this?”

He held her hand a fraction longer than was safe, then reluctantly released her. “Everything I can’t say.”

*   *   *

She should just throw it away . . .

Nothing in this letter could change the fact that Tyson Reed would never be the kind of man who fought for what mattered, for what he wanted—not in his personal life anyway. Perfect example—he’d flown all the way to LA for what? To hand her a note? What, were they twelve years old?

She balled the piece of paper and tossed it toward the trash. It missed.

But he had flown to LA.

She paced the empty makeup trailer on set, staring at the crumpled letter on the floor. She hadn’t heard from him in weeks. She was moving on. The movie was less than three weeks away from being finished and she had a stack of scripts waiting to be read, for parts in all kinds of films . . . She was back. Her career was back on track. Life was back to normal. Did she really want to complicate things by reading that letter? Over the last few weeks, she’d been successful in pushing Tyson to the back of her mind . . . where he stayed and refused to go away, Goddamn it. She sighed.

She’d been doing just fine without him. Some days she didn’t even think about him . . . except for every other minute.

Retrieving the paper, she unfolded it.

Her eyes scanned his messy handwriting as she read . . .

I hate leaving you, knowing I’ll miss you the moment I’m out the door.

Needing you and wanting you are two different things . . . I feel both and so much more.

I realize now that there is nothing else. Just this moment, just you, just me . . . just us.

Parker blinked back the tears burning her eyes. The long list of quotes from the leading men in her previous movie scenes filled the page. It was impossible to swallow the lump in her throat as she read them. He’d watched her movies . . . every single one.

Everything he can’t say . . .

She sat back in her chair as tears rolled down her cheeks. What the hell did she do now?

*   *   *

“So, you’ll be home for Christmas?” her grandmother asked on the phone an hour later.

Parker lifted her eyes to the ceiling as the makeup artist applied a black liner along her bottom lid, once she’d finally been successful in stopping her tears from falling. “Yes. We are filming through the weekend, hoping to wrap up early next week.”

Christmas was less than two weeks away. By the following week, filming would be done and she could take her grandmother anywhere in the world for the holidays. She certainly didn’t feel like spending them in Vegas.

In fact, she hadn’t told her grandmother yet, but she was thinking about selling the house in Vegas and moving back to LA. If the amount of scripts Ian had been receiving for her was any indication, she’d have more roles coming her way after this movie released and, well, she just didn’t want to be in Vegas.

“How is filming going?” her grandmother asked, the note of longing ever present in her voice when she asked about Parker’s work. She had accepted her forced retirement reluctantly. Parker suspected she would still audition for roles if she wouldn’t now be cast as secondary grandmother-type characters.

“Great. We’ve already filmed the fight and training scenes . . .” With a body double doing very little, she was pleased to announce. Brantley wanted them out of the way early, in case her lack of daily training meant muscle loss. He was right about that. A few weeks away from the gym, and already she could feel her muscles relaxing, the sharp definition disappearing with each day of no training.

She remembered Tyson’s offer to help her get her old body back and her chest ached. That was one offer she knew she couldn’t accept. Not that she believed he would honor it. Besides, she liked her new body. She planned to continue working out on her own. Maybe not to the same extent, but just to keep her new shape. One Tyson had called beautiful, sexy . . .

As the makeup artist moved away to get her eye shadow, she stared at herself in the mirror. She was a different person now inside and out. And it was all because of him. She sighed.

“Everything okay dear?” her grandmother asked, genuine concern in her voice threatening to destroy Parker’s freshly applied makeup.

Do not cry. She’d done enough of that earlier that day after reading Tyson’s letter, and every day since arriving in LA. She had to pull it together and focus on the movie. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Yes, everything’s great. I can’t wait for you to see the movie.” She launched into detail about the scenes they were scheduled to film that day, but her grandmother interrupted.

“It’s losing its sparkle isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Tinsel Town. It isn’t shining so bright anymore for you, is it?”

She hesitated. This make-believe world still shined, she’d just discovered something that captured her heart more. “Of course it is, Grandma.” She loved her acting career as much now as she had twenty years ago. She loved the excitement, the chaos, the commitment to the role. Unfortunately, she was also falling in love with something else—someone who didn’t fit in her world, at least according to him.

“You know your grandfather wasn’t an actor.”

She blinked. No, actually, she didn’t. She knew almost nothing at all about the man since her grandmother refused to talk about him and he’d never been a part of her life or her mother’s. “He wasn’t?” she said slowly.

“He was the contractor that built my summer home. The year my first movie released in 1968 and I bought that run-down cottage in Lake Tahoe with the money I made from the film because I knew it would be a perfect place to bring a family someday . . .” She paused.

They’d never gone to the summer home her mother had told her about once when she was angry at her grandmother. As far as Parker knew, the summer place had been boarded up a long time ago. Yet, her grandmother refused to sell it.

“His name was Arnold Fitzgerald and I loved watching him work. It was exactly the kind of love affair we portray on film—passionate, quick, and over too fast.”

She wasn’t sure how she felt hearing about her grandmother’s sex life, but the fact that her grandmother had decided to finally open up and tell her the story kept her still and silent as she waited for her to continue.

“When the summer home was finished, so were we.”

“But . . . why? If you were both in love and happy, why wouldn’t you be together?”

“We lived in different worlds. I was a movie star, he was a laborer. Back then, it was unheard of to love someone outside of the industry, someone who was of ‘lesser’ status.” She paused. “He would have been out of place and unhappy letting me support him with my career. So it was either give up acting or give up Arnold.”

And she’d chosen her career. That didn’t surprise Parker. Her grandmother’s one and only real passion was for her career. “Did he know you were pregnant?”

“Yes. For a few months we even pretended things might actually last between us . . . but we both knew the difference. Once he was gone, I planned to have an abortion.”

Parker winced. Her mother always said her grandmother had never been the kind of caring, loving parent a child needed, always on movie sets and dragging her out into the public eye. Growing up with her grandmother, Parker knew that was true, but she’d been lucky to share her grandmother’s passion for the industry and she believed that was what drew them together, made them closer than Abigail and her mother had ever been.

“I went back to LA two weeks before I was scheduled to start filming Last of the Red Dresses, my second film, and I had the appointment booked. Back then it was kept hush-hush and cost a small fortune.” She paused again and Parker held her breath. “But it was all I had left of him, so I couldn’t do it. I canceled the appointment and we moved the filming schedule to accommodate the pregnancy.” Her voice was sad as she continued. “Every time I looked at your mom, I saw him. She was so much like him . . .” Her voice trailed and a long silence fell between them.

“Did you ever see him over the years?” Parker asked.

“No. But after each movie released, I’d get a dozen roses at the summer home—no card, no message . . . just the roses.”

Her makeup would have to be reapplied. The tears couldn’t be helped as they fell from her eyes. “Grandma, how come you never told me this before?” Feeling a connection to her grandmother that went beyond their shared passion for their careers was a foreign feeling, but a welcome one. Her grandmother had always been such a mystery, someone she admired and looked up to, but never fully understood. She understood a little better now.

“I didn’t think you needed to hear an old lady’s regret story before . . .”

She wiped the tears from her cheeks.

“Things are different now. A girl can have it all,” she said. “Don’t walk away from something that makes you truly happy for all of this, Parker, because that world will forget about you someday. When the lights fade and the credits stop rolling, all you will have are the choices you’ve made along the way. Follow your heart, sweet girl.”

Parker swallowed hard. Happy endings were only in movies. “I think we’ve both been reading scripts for too long, Grandma. I’m not sure real life works that way.” But if only it did . . .

*   *   *

“Enjoy the wedding, man,” Tyson said, giving Walker a quick hug as he packed up his training gear. “Come back settled, relaxed, and focused—ready to train. I want to see a belt around your waist next year.”

“You got it,” Walker said. “Hey, what are your plans for the holidays? It’s not too late to come to Cancun—hot women everywhere, unlimited cocktails . . .”

As tempting as it sounded to disappear for a few weeks, get drunk every night, and try to mend his aching heart with no-strings-attached one-night stands, he knew it wouldn’t work. He hadn’t heard from Parker since he’d seen her in LA yet she was the only constant on his mind. As Christmas drew closer and he knew she’d be wrapping up filming, he wanted to stick around . . . just in case. “Thanks, but I’m driving out with Dad to pick up Connor at the treatment center tomorrow and then I’m going to try to see Dane at some point over the holidays . . .” Luckily Dane’s blood had come back clean from the fight and he was doing six weeks in a detention center. He’d be out in the new year.

Walker offered a sympathetic look. “Sounds like a depressing holiday, man.”

Tyson laughed. “Things can only get better, right?” He hoped that was true, that his brother was serious about staying clean this time and Dane would put his life back together. They all had a lot of rebuilding to do.

“Well, maybe it’s about to get better right now,” Walker said, nodding toward the door.

Tyson’s heart stopped at the sight of Parker in the doorway in a pair of painted-on jeans and a loose, off-the-shoulder tan sweater. Her heeled boots echoed off of the gym walls, keeping time with the steady thundering in his chest. “Get out . . . go,” he hissed at Walker.

Walker laughed as he tapped him on the back. “Don’t fuck it up again, man.” He gave Parker a warm hug as he passed, and Tyson wanted to throw something at him as an intense, irrational jealousy coursed through him.

God, she was right. How would he ever be able to watch her kiss some other guy onscreen when he couldn’t even watch her hug one of his fighters? He just wouldn’t watch her movies.

She stopped in front of him and his pulse raced. “You’re . . .”

“If you say ‘You’re back’ one more time, I’m going to knock you out,” she said softly.

He smiled. “How about ‘Thank God you’re back’?”

“Better,” she said. “Though you don’t even know why I’m here.”

That’s right. He shouldn’t assume anything. Though it didn’t matter to him why she was there; he was just grateful she was.

She cleared her throat. “About your offer to help me get my old body back—I’ve decided not to take you up on that.”

He nodded. Damn. At least that would have been one way to see her, spend time with her, touch her. He was barely able to keep his arms at his sides. He longed to reach out for her. But he remained frozen in place. “That’s all you came to tell me?”

She reached into her pocket and retrieved the note he’d given her. “About this . . .”

He was a moron. “Listen, I’m sorry about that.” The more he’d thought about the gesture over the last few weeks, the more stupid he felt. “It was a . . .”

“Tyson, shut up,” she said, moving closer and wrapping her arms around his neck. “This note was perfect,” she whispered against his lips. “It was what brought me back here. And not because of what it says, but because it exists.”

His shoulders relaxed as his arms went around her waist and he held her tight. He rested his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry that I’m not the kind of man who can say the things I feel.” He wanted to, but he’d never been around the open kind of affection and love she was used to—he wasn’t sure he was capable of it.

“It’s okay. It’s not who you are, and I love you for who you are,” she said, kissing him gently.

He closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of her, afraid to let her go. “But I want to be that kind of man for you. I lo . . .”

She kissed him again—hard—preventing him from saying the words. God, he’d missed kissing her, holding her, breathing in the familiar scent of her. He pulled her even closer, deepening the kiss, knowing this was it for him. He could never push her away or walk away from her again.

When he reluctantly broke away, he brushed her hair away from her face, placing his hands on her face and staring into her dark, love-filled eyes. “Parker, I . . .”

“Don’t say it.”

He studied her. “Why not? I mean it. I’ve never felt this way about anyone . . . and I promise I will never hurt you again.”

“I know. So why ruin it by saying the words out loud? Let’s just keep it real,” she said, smiling at him.

Keep it real. He smiled, pulling her head into his chest and breathing in the scent of her. He would never let her go again. He had everything he never knew he needed right there in his arms. And despite her claim of not needing to hear it, he needed to say it. “I love you,” he whispered.