Susan Phillips - What I Did for Love

By the time she’d finished touching up her makeup, finger combing her straight hair, and changing into a mint green Marc Jacobs cotton eyelet dress, the smell of fresh baked goods had drifted upstairs. Her stomach growled. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so hungry. Bram was waiting in the foyer, along with Chaz, who was gazing up at him as if he hung the moon and the stars.

As Georgie reached his side, he slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Chaz, you’ll make sure Georgie has whatever she needs.”

Chaz responded with a friendliness that Bram might buy into but Georgie didn’t believe for an instant. “Anything, Georgie. You just let me know.”

“Thanks. As a matter of fact, I’ve hardly eaten all day, and I wouldn’t mind-”

“Later, sweetheart. We have work to do.” Bram kissed her forehead, then turned to pick up one of two trays piled with home-baked sugar cookies. “Chaz has made a goodwill offering for us to distribute to our friends in the press.” He handed one tray to Georgie, then picked up the other for himself. “We’re going to pass these out and pose for some photos.”

The press liked nothing better than free food. It was a great idea, and she wished she’d thought of it. He opened the door for her. “I hired extra security until the gates go up,” he said. “I’m sure you won’t mind paying your portion of the bill.”

“How big a portion is that?”

“All of it. Only fair, don’t you agree, since I’m putting a roof over your head?”

“If you’d include some actual food with that roof-”

“Can’t you think about anything but food?”

“Not at the moment.” She grabbed one of the cookies from her tray and took a big bite. It was still warm…and delicious.

“No time for that.” He snatched the cookie away and stuffed it in his mouth. “Damn, these are good. Chaz’s cooking gets better all the time.”

She watched the cookie disappear. For a year everyone had been trying to coax her to eat, and now that she had an appetite, he was taking food away. It made her even hungrier. “I wouldn’t know.”

The end of the driveway came into sight, along with the beefy security guards stationed there. Several dozen paps and a few members of the legitimate press clustered in a noisy pack in the street. Georgie gave them a gay wave. Bram took her free hand, and fingers linked, they carried the cookie trays forward. The paps began “hosing them down,” a particularly distasteful term that described the aggressive shooting of celebrities.

“If you guys play nice, we’ll pose for some pictures,” Bram called out. “But if anybody comes too close to Georgie, we’re going inside. I mean it. Nobody gets near her.”

She was momentarily touched, and then she returned to Sanity Land as she remembered Bram was acting the role of the protective husband.

“We always play nice, Bram,” one of the women reporters shouted over the din.

Even before Bram passed both trays over to the security guards to distribute, the questions began to fly. When had they hooked up? Where? Why, after all these years, had they gotten together? What about all the bad feelings between them? One question followed another.

“Georgie, is this a rebound from Lance?”

“Everybody’s saying you’re anorexic. Is that true?”

She and Bram were pros at handling the press, and they answered only the questions they wanted to.

“People think this whole thing is a big publicity stunt,” Mel Duffy called out.

“You go on dates for publicity,” Bram retorted. “You don’t get married. But people can think what they like.”

“Georgie, rumors are flying that you’re pregnant.”

“Really?” The wound ached, but Georgie played the clown and patted her waist. “Hello? Anything in there?”

“Georgie isn’t pregnant,” Bram said. “When it happens, we’ll be sure to let you know.”

“Are you taking a honeymoon?” The reporter had a British accent.

Bram rubbed her back between her shoulder blades. “When we get around to it.”

“Do you know where?”

“Maui,” he said.

“Haiti,” Georgie said.

They looked at each other. Georgie went on tiptoe and kissed the corner of his jaw. “Bram and I intend to use this silly overexposure we’re getting to call attention to the plight of people living in poverty.” She didn’t know a lot about Haiti, but she knew it had poverty, and Haiti was a lot closer than Thailand and the Philippines, where Lance and Jade were doing their good works.

“As you can see, we’re still discussing it,” Bram said. Without warning, he drew her into his arms and gave her the lusty kiss the press had been waiting for. She went through all the proper motions in response, but she was tired, hungry, and trapped in the arms of her oldest enemy.

They finally separated. Bram addressed the crowd while he fixed her with a hungry lover’s gaze. “You’re all welcome to hang around, but I can guarantee we’re not going anywhere tonight.”

She tried to blush, but blushing was beyond her. Would she ever know what had happened in that Vegas hotel room? She hadn’t seen any signs that they’d made love, except they’d both been naked, which she supposed was a fairly big sign.

As they walked back to the house, his hand strayed to her bottom for the benefit of the onlookers they’d left behind. “Nice,” he said.

The sadness she’d been trying so hard to suppress oozed to the surface. “I’ve never forgiven you for what happened that night on the boat. I never will.”

He drew back. “I’d been drinking. I know I wasn’t exactly a dream lover, but-”

“What you did was a step away from a rape.”

He snapped to a stop. “That’s bullshit. I never forced a woman in my life, and I sure as hell didn’t force you.”

“No physical force, but-”

“You had a crush on me. Everybody knew it. You threw yourself at me from the beginning.”

“You didn’t even lie down with me,” she said. “You shoved up my skirt and helped yourself.”

“All you had to do was say no.”

“Then you walked out. As soon as it was over.”

“I was never going to fall in love with you, Georgie. I’d done everything I could to make that obvious, but you wouldn’t take the hint. At least that night put an end to it.”

“Don’t you dare act as though you did me a favor! You wanted to get off and I was handy. You took advantage of a stupid kid who thought you were romantic and mysterious when you were really just an egotistical, self-centered ass. We’re enemies. We were then, and we still are.”

“Fine by me.”

As he stormed off, she told herself she’d said exactly what she needed to. But nothing could change the past, and she didn’t feel one bit better.

Georgie swam for nearly an hour the next morning in the sheltered pool. Yesterday she’d let him see how much he’d hurt her, and displaying that kind of vulnerability was a luxury she couldn’t repeat. Not anymore.

As she was getting out, she heard a voice coming from the path that ran behind the shrubbery. “Settle down, Caitlin…Yeah, I know. Have a little faith, sweetheart…”

Bram moved on before Georgie could hear any more. As she wrapped herself in a towel, she wondered who Caitlin was and how long it would be before Bram sought out one of his mystery women for extramarital sex.

She combed her wet hair with her fingers, tucked the towel under her arms, and went inside to rummage through the refrigerator. As she pulled out a carton of blueberry yogurt, Chaz came in and dropped a pile of mail on the center island. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stay out of the refrigerator. Everything’s organized the way I like it.”

“I won’t move anything I don’t eat.” Chaz was a monumental pain in the ass, but Georgie still felt sorry for her. She didn’t really believe Chaz was Bram’s lover, but she did believe Chaz was in love with him. Remembering the pain of that particular disease, she took a fresh tack. “Tell me about yourself, Chaz. Did you grow up around here?”

“No.” Chaz pulled a mixing bowl from the cupboard.

She tried again. “I can’t cook much of anything. How did you learn?”

Chaz slapped the cupboard door closed. “I don’t have time to talk. I need to get a head start on Bram’s lunch.”

“What’s on the menu?”

“A special salad he likes.”

“Fine by me.”

Chaz grabbed the dishcloth. “I can’t cook for both of you. I already have too much to do. If you don’t want me to quit, you’ll have to take care of yourself.”

Georgie licked the inside of the yogurt lid. “Who said I don’t want you to quit?”

Chaz’s face flushed with anger. Georgie understood, but Chaz’s hostility was making an already awful situation that much worse. She pulled a spoon from the drawer. “Make lunch for two, Chaz. That’s an order.”

“I take my orders from Bram. He said he’d never interfere with how I did my job.”

“He wasn’t married when he said that, but now he is, and your Godzilla act is getting old fast. You have two choices. You can play nice, or I’ll hire my own staff, and you’ll have to share your kitchen. Somehow I don’t think you’d like that.”

She and her yogurt headed back outside.

As Georgie’s footsteps faded, Chaz pressed her fists to her belly, trying to hold in all the hatred that wanted to spill out. Georgie York had everything. She was rich and famous. She had great clothes and a big career. Now she had Bram, and only Chaz was supposed to take care of him.

Outside the kitchen windows a hummingbird flew onto the veranda. Chaz grabbed a paper towel and opened the refrigerator door. The milk wasn’t where she’d left it, and a couple of the yogurt containers had fallen over. Even the eggs were on the wrong side of the shelf.

She straightened everything and wiped a smudge from the door. She couldn’t stand the idea of another person in her kitchen. In her house. She pitched the paper towel into the trash. Georgie wasn’t even that pretty, not like the women Bram went out with. She didn’t deserve him. She didn’t deserve anything she had. Everybody knew she was only famous because her old man had made her a star. Georgie had grown up with everybody kissing her ass and telling her she was hot shit. Nobody had ever kissed Chaz’s ass. Not once.