Hollywood ex factor, p.5
Hollywood Ex Factor, page 5
“That would be so much fun!” Liam turned to his mother and implored her. “Can we go to his house and do that? Can we, please?”
She calmly replied, “Yes, but we’ll have to arrange a time when it’s convenient for all of us. We can’t rush into it.”
“Okay!” In spite of her levelheaded tone, her son was still excited. “Can I go back in the pool now? I want to pretend that I’m bodyboarding.”
“Go ahead.” She smiled, teasing him. “You can use the mermaid float.”
“Very funny.” He got up and grabbed the dolphin he’d been riding earlier. Then he changed his mind and went for Zeke’s alligator.
While Liam was off doing his thing, Margot tucked her hair behind her ears, and Zeke noticed how enticing it looked, curling around her face. It was still damp from the pool.
“I’m sorry if I put you on the spot about the bodyboarding lessons,” he said. “I should’ve waited and talked to you about it before I said anything.”
“It’s okay. It’ll be nice for him to learn a new sport.” She fussed with her hair again. “He wasn’t too thrilled about you coming over at first. He was worried about being bored. But you’re probably the most exciting person he’s ever met.”
“It’s been an exciting day. Lots of activity.” More than Zeke had even bargained for.
Margot’s phone signaled that she’d received a text, and she glanced at the notification. “Will you give me a second?” After she read the message, she said, “It was my assistant reminding me about a charity ball next Saturday that I agreed to attend. She’s going to email me the tickets. It’s a dinner and auction with an Old Hollywood theme, but I completely forgot about it.” She heaved a sigh. “Between finalizing Liam’s adoption and you coming back to town, I got sidetracked, I guess.”
“You still have time to prepare for it.” With her resources, she could pull it off. “You’ve always loved that sort of thing.” And he’d always detested it, serving as yet another reminder of why they didn’t belong together.
“I know, but now I have to rush to find someone to go with me. I can’t ask Bailey because she’s attending a writers’ retreat that weekend. Maybe I’ll call Jordan and see if he’s available.”
“Jordan?”
She nodded. “Jordan Nichols. You remember him, don’t you?”
“The guy from your old acting workshops?” He didn’t like the sound of that. He’d always suspected that Jordan had a thing for her back in the day. Not that he should concern himself with it now. Yet it still bugged him. “When’s the last time you saw him?”
“He made a guest appearance on my show last season, and we’ve had coffee a few times since then. He just got cast in a new spy thriller.”
Zeke didn’t care if Jordan was going to be the next James Bond. Suddenly he was jealous of him again. “And now you’re going to invite him on a fancy date?”
She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be a date. He and I are just friends.”
Feeling much too impulsive, he said, “If that’s the case, then I can go with you as a friend.”
“You? Mingling with my crowd?” She gaped at him. “You hate industry parties. You never attended anything with me when we were together, so why would you do it now?”
It was better than Jordan going with her. He didn’t trust that dude not to turn it into a date. “What’s the point of us being friends if we don’t step out of our comfort zone?”
“Are you sure you’re ready to step that far out of it?”
“I know how to behave in that scene. Some of the guests might even be Z-One clients.”
“That’s true.” She appeared to be mulling it over. “But you’ve always made a point of staying in the background, and now you’re offering to be front and center with me.”
“I used to attend red carpets with my mom. Big major events. This can’t be any worse than that.”
“Okay. Fine. You can come with me,” she reluctantly agreed. “But it’d better not turn into a disaster.”
“Quit worrying. I already told you that I can handle it.” Or he hoped that he could. If not, he was going to be trapped in one of the longest nights of his life.
* * *
Margot glanced around her bedroom, with its eclectic decor of chrome and glass and painted woods. How many times had she hooked up with Zeke here?
Too many, she thought.
Sometimes they never even made it to the bed. They would just go at it wherever they stood, bumping into the furniture and knocking things over. No finesse. Only urgency and lust.
She frowned at the vintage-inspired gowns her stylist had sent over, bunched together on a portable rolling rack. The ball was only four days away, and she was struggling with what to wear. At least Bailey was helping her decide. It was still weird, though, knowing that she was bringing Zeke.
Bailey reached for a sparkly green number loaded with sequins. “This color would look good on you.”
“It’s too flashy.” Margot wasn’t drawn to it, at least not for this occasion. “Do you think I’m making a mistake?”
“By not wearing something flashy?”
“No. By letting your brother escort me.”
“That’s tough to say. It could strengthen your friendship or it could backfire and seem like a date. Fine dining, drinking, dancing...”
Margot studied a purple dress with a plunging neckline. She definitely wasn’t wearing that. “I never said that I was going to dance with him.” She remembered how beautifully they’d glided across the floor together at their wedding reception, but that wasn’t something she should be rehashing. Memories of their wedding always left her pained. She’d loved him so much back then, she’d thought they were going to be together forever.
Margot scowled at the dresses again. “Normally I enjoy doing this. But I just can’t seem to concentrate today.”
“I know how you feel. I have a lot on my plate, too. The day after I return from my retreat is Mom’s surgery.”
“It’s nice that you agreed to help look after her.”
“What was I thinking, letting her talk me into that?” Bailey shook her head, making her antenna-style ponytail swish. “I must be crazy.”
“You are, but that’s why I love you.”
“I love you, too. But you need to get your rear in gear and choose a dress. At this rate, you’ll be going in the nude.”
“That’s all I need, to be naked in front of your brother after ending my affair with him.”
“That would be a bit of an issue. Maybe you should wear a really ugly gown to throw him off your scent. The yellow monstrosity with the feathers ought to do the trick.”
Margot laughed. “I’ll look like a bird.”
“No kidding. I mean, seriously, did your stylist include that as a joke?” Bailey flapped her arms and made clucking sounds. “Instead of ballroom dances, you can do the funky chicken.”
“I won’t be dancing at all, remember?” Margot chose three gowns that held possibility, hanging them side by side. “Hopefully one of these will do.” She proceeded to strip down and try on the first dress, a flirty silhouette with a snug bodice and full skirt.
“Do you need help with the zipper?” Bailey asked.
“No. I got it.” It closed on the side, under her arm. But the dang thing was still too tight. She could barely breathe, and one thing she needed to do when she was around Zeke was breathe.
The second gown had too much fabric. It overwhelmed her, bunching in places it shouldn’t.
And the third one...
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Bailey approached her. “That looks amazing on you.”
Margot stood in front of the cheval mirror, angling it to get a better view. The gold satin dress hugged her waist and flowed at the hemline, with one long, lean slit that showcased her legs. It was definitely flattering. “Hair up or down?” She held it up, then dropped it back down.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to work that out with your hair person. Who are you going to use on such short notice?”
“I already booked Martell Johnson. He’s new, but he’s good. He’s going to do my makeup, too.”
“Is he coming to the house?”
“Yes. I wanted to skip the salon.”
“I’m always up for skipping the salon. God, I hate those gossipy places.” Bailey stood behind her and met her eye in the mirror. “What about your jewelry and shoes and all that?”
“Maybe I can wear emerald earrings. I have a pair that dangle a bit. I also have gold pumps and a gold evening bag I can try, as long as the shades match.”
“You’ll figure it out.” Bailey moved away from the mirror. “You always put yourself together so well. I wonder what type of outfit would be good for our high school reunion.”
Margot shrugged. “Who cares? We’re not going anyway.”
“I know we agreed to skip it, but I’ve actually been thinking about going.”
“Seriously?” Margot couldn’t imagine a worse idea. It had been fifteen years since they’d graduated, since that particular hell had ended. They’d both been bullied something fierce in high school. The other kids picked on Bailey because she was the awkward daughter of a sex symbol, and they’d made fun of Margot because they thought the sassy character she’d played on TV was stupid. Prior to the cancellation of her show, she’d been tutored on set, and that didn’t help her social skills, either. But Bailey had experienced even more trouble. She used to stutter when she got nervous. Sometimes she still did. “What made you change your mind?”
“I guess I want to prove to myself and everyone else that I’ve changed. That I’m stronger now than I was back then. But I have some time to think about it. The reunion is still four months away.”
“It sounds daunting to me. But I understand where you’re coming from, having something to prove.” Margot had done her fair share of touting her strengths, of showing the world that she’d changed. But attending their reunion? “You’re braver than I am.”
“I guess we’ll see. I haven’t decided for sure.” Bailey sat on the edge of the bed. “I wonder if Wade Butler will be there.”
“Now, there’s a blast from the past.” Wade had been a fellow student, an oddly quiet computer nerd who’d gotten bullied, too. He rarely interacted with anyone, but he still came to Bailey’s defense whenever he saw someone picking on her. “He was your hero.”
Zeke’s sister sighed. “I really liked him, despite how withdrawn he was. I think he liked me, too, but he never asked me out or did anything about it.”
“It’s probably just as well, with how things turned out for him back then.” At the end of their senior year, Wade had gone to prison for hacking into the FBI and solving some of their cyber division crimes. But not before he’d bragged about it online under the white-hat alias he’d created.
“He’s a big-time tech billionaire now.”
“He is?” Margot hadn’t been aware of his progression.
Bailey nodded. “I saw a feature on him in Entrepreneur. He lives in San Francisco. It’s probably dumb to think that he might go to the reunion.”
“It’s not dumb.” To Margot, it made sense. “He might want to prove himself to the jerks who bullied him, too.”
“I think he’s already proven it. Even the FBI forgave him and started using him as a consultant. He’s a philanthropist now, too. He does all sorts of good in the world. The article I read about him was impressive.”
“Maybe so, but he’s still an ex-con, and that might weigh on him. They arrested him at school, right after first period, hauling him away in handcuffs. That’s not something he’s likely to forget.”
“Remember the long black coat he used to wear and those big scruffy combat boots? I always thought he seemed more like a goth guy than a computer nerd. He looks pretty stylish now, in the pictures I saw of him, anyway.”
“I guess you’ll find out how much he’s changed if you attend the reunion and if he’s there, too.”
Bailey shrugged. “Maybe I’m fooling myself into thinking I should go. As much as I like to think that I’ve changed, I’m probably still a dork.”
Margot smiled. “If you’re still a dork, then so am I.”
“A dork who’s going to a ball with my brother.”
“At least I’ll be wearing a fabulous dress.” Margot made light of her situation. But deep down, she was getting butterflies about seeing Zeke again. And in spite of her earlier claim, she actually wanted to dance with him.
Far closer than she should.
* * *
Zeke stood on Margot’s porch landing, dressed in a black tux with a white limo waiting on the street. He’d yet to ring the bell. Instead, he asked himself what he was doing, taking her to a charity ball.
He’d been worried about her bringing another guy, he reminded himself. That was the only reason he’d jumped into this glitzy ordeal.
He finally rang the doorbell, not wanting to get caught too long on camera, just standing here. Margot’s mom, June, answered it.
She flashed an appreciative smile. “Well, check you out. My daughter’s security man. Or should I call you her BFF now?”
He laughed a little. “I think my sister would have something to say about that.”
He’d always appreciated June and her pragmatic nature. She’d never told him off about the divorce, even if she didn’t agree with his reasoning.
She invited him inside, and as soon as he entered the house, Liam came skidding around the corner, dressed in a pair of baggy pajamas and eating a cookie.
“Hey, Zeke! Guess what? Grandma baked these.” He held up his half-eaten treat. “Do you want one? They’re oatmeal raisin.”
“No, thanks. I’ll be having dinner at the party I’m going to with your mom.” He glanced around. “Where is she?” He didn’t see Margot anywhere.
“She’s in her room,” the boy answered. “The guy who does her hair and makeup just left, so she’s probably getting dressed now. Right, Grandma?” He turned toward June.
“That’s right.” She looked at Zeke and said, “You might as well have a seat and wait.” She gestured to the living room.
“Sure thing.” He adjusted his waistcoat and settled into a spot on the sofa.
Liam plopped down on the floor in front of him, and June took a wingback chair by a window. The kid ate more of his cookie, dropping crumbs onto the ornamental area rug. He was naturally messy, like Margot. Zeke suspected her bedroom was in full-blown disarray about now. She tended to toss things all over the place when she got ready to go out.
About five minutes later, she came sweeping down the staircase, like a goddess in gold. Zeke stood to watch her entrance. Liam and June hopped up, too.
Her gown shimmered in the light, hugging her long, lean body. Her hair tumbled across one shoulder in thick, shiny waves, reminiscent of Veronica Lake or Jessica Rabbit or whomever the style had been patterned after. Either way, it was hot. But elegant, too. Emeralds winked glamorously at her ears.
“You’re the prettiest mom ever,” Liam said, fussing excitedly over the woman who’d adopted him.
To Zeke, she was the prettiest damned ex-lover ever. He struggled to keep his eyes off her.
“You do look gorgeous,” he said. “Really stunning.”
“Thank you, both of you.” She curtsied to her son, then met Zeke’s gaze for a highly charged moment. “You look incredible, too.”
He shrugged. By now, he was starting to feel like an anxious teenager on a fussy prom date with a girl who only wanted to be his friend.
June moved forward and said to her daughter, “You’re an absolute vision. I love what Martell did with your hair and makeup.”
“It fits the theme.” Margot batted her fake lashes. “Theatrical eyes and full lips.”
Lust-tinged lips, Zeke thought. Red-hot and passionate. But this wasn’t the night for kissing them. “Are you ready to head out?” he asked. He wanted to get this show on the road. Or better yet, skip it altogether.
She nodded and hugged Liam goodbye, pulling him tight against her. She didn’t seem concerned about him getting cookie crumbs on her dress. Luckily, he managed not to. Her gown remained as sleek and sexy as when she’d first glided down the stairs.
As soon as Zeke and Margot were outside, he took a cleansing breath. Yet it barely made a dent in his anxiety.
He walked her to the limo, and their driver opened the door so she could climb into the car. Zeke followed her into the back seat, and once they were on their way, he closed the privacy panel and opened the moonroof. The ball was being held at a nearby hotel, so they didn’t have far to go. But now that it was just the two of them, they both fell silent.
He searched for something to say, but all he could come up with was, “Do you want a drink?” The limo had a stocked bar.
She shook her head. “I’ll have a cocktail when we get there.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Again, more silence. He glanced out the window. “Well, this is awkward. Us being so quiet.”
“I can pick a fight if you think it’ll help.”
“Smart aleck.” He relaxed a bit, losing interest in the window and turning back toward her. “What do you want to fight about?”
“Oh, I don’t know. How about the way you were staring at me back at the house? It’s a good thing my mom didn’t catch you drooling over me.”
He scoffed. “I wasn’t drooling.” He paused and shifted, the leather seat creaking below his butt. “Well, maybe I was a little. Your lipstick is sexy.” He could still feel the heat of how kissable it made her look. “You smell good, too.” He leaned closer, getting a sultry waft of her perfume; he detected a mixture of night-blooming jasmine mingled with cedar or cypress or something deliciously woodsy. He couldn’t remember the brand, but she’d worn it in the past. He recognized the scent. “Will you dance with me tonight? We haven’t danced together in a really long time.”
