style="font-size:15px;"> He was a wonderful, loyal, devoted friend. Which was why she had stepped in and agreed to get engaged to him in his time of need...after her sister, who was supposed to be the false fiancée, had gone and fallen in love with her dream man.
No, the engagement wasn’t supposed to culminate in a real marriage, but their planned breakup was a long way off. They’d scheduled everything, figuring in shooting schedules and premieres, knowing how long they needed to keep up the pretense. They’d discussed how to pull off a gradual, friendly breakup once both of them were in good enough career positions to come out of it unscathed. And now he wanted to ditch all that in favor of an impromptu dumping, before they’d even had a chance to stage a public disagreement?
“Nobody’ll buy it. You’re the biggest fish in the ocean. What woman in her right mind would let you slip off her hook?”
“They’ll believe it once the world knows what a cheating mackerel I am,” he said with a simple shrug.
She gaped. “Tell me you’re joking. You did not cheat!”
She didn’t add on me. How could he cheat on her when they weren’t involved? Even if the big rock on her finger said otherwise.
But there was someone else he could have cheated on, which would break Madison’s heart. Tommy’s new guy was wonderful.
“You didn’t betray Simon, did you?”
“No, of course not,” he insisted, looking horrified.
That made her feel a little better. Tommy wasn’t the most reliable sort when it came to his romantic life. If he was stupid enough to screw up this new relationship, she’d personally whack him upside the head with his own SAG Award.
“So you two are still okay?”
“Fine.” Tommy smiled wistfully. “He’s great, isn’t he?”
“More than great.” Simon, a neurosurgeon, made her friend happier than she’d seen him in years. “So who’d you cheat on?”
“You.”
“You’re saying you have another best-friend-turned-fake-fiancée...besides Candace? I mean, I’ve always forgiven you for cheating on me with my sister, even when we were in third grade and you always picked her first for kick ball.”
“Not Candace,” he said. “I meant, you tell the world I cheated on you. Since I’m turning over an open-and-honest leaf, you don’t even have to say it was with a woman. That’ll just be what people will think. Who wouldn’t dump me for cheating?”
Huh. He had a point. Technically, that was true.
“People will buy it. We’ll be all Rob-and-Kristen-like.”
She caught the reference. Madison wasn’t a Hollywood insider, despite her engagement to a crown prince of Tinseltown, but who hadn’t heard of the scandal surrounding one of Hollywood’s “It” couples during the whole Twilight craze?
“Okay, so they probably would believe that. People have been wondering how on earth I caught you in the first place.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, gorgeous.”
She shrugged. Attractive? Yeah, she’d cop to that. But gorgeous? No way. She had never felt more inept and lacking as a woman than when she’d attended some of these L.A. parties packed wall-to-wall with women who were pretzel-stick thin, cover-girl perfect and runway model clothed. Oh, and saber-toothed-tiger clawed. Sheesh, the competition out here was insane.
“But even if it works, why should we do it now rather than sticking to our long engagement, slow-breakup plan?”
He thrust a hand through his thick, sun-streaked hair, looking boyishly adorable. If there’d been an audience, all the women would just have sighed, every one of them dying to smooth that soft hair back into place. Madison just grunted.
Melodrama over, he said, “It’s because of Simon.”
“He asked you to do this?”
“No. We’ve been talking about how important it is to be honest. Me living a lie with you—no matter how good the reason or the fact that you’re fine with it—won’t convince him I’m growing and becoming true to myself.”
“Simon would never want you to sabotage your career.”
“I know. But this is a step toward the kind of life I want, and the kind of man I want to be. One who isn’t afraid, who doesn’t go to crazy lengths to hide who he is.”
She rarely heard Tommy talk this way. His blue eyes didn’t sparkle with mischief. He didn’t appear to be acting. He was just being the sweet boy next door she’d always known, telling her what he really wanted, all the pretense stripped away, all the trappings of his lifestyle shoved into the background. Just Tommy. Just her friend. Her friend who needed her.
She’d always been there when he needed her, and vice versa.
“Besides, you’re not being true to yourself, either,” he added. “You aren’t like Candace. I knew it wouldn’t be a hardship for her to go without sex for a while. You, though... I know you’re horny enough to climb out of your own skin.”
She couldn’t deny that; Tommy knew her well. She’d been the first one of the three of them to lose her virginity—at sixteen—and had probably had more lovers than the other two combined. The six months of their engagement had been the longest she’d gone without sex in years, and her biggest, naughtiest toys just weren’t filling the gap anymore. So to speak.
“You’ve been a great fiancée. Now you can be off the hook and go out there and get some.”
“Sure, I’ll just find a hot guy and say, ‘Do me, baby.’”
“Yep.”
“Not so easy.”
“Not so hard, either. So, will you dump me? Free us both?”
Hell, she’d gotten engaged to him out of love, hadn’t she? Of course she could dump the man for the same reason.
But, she suddenly realized, dumping him might not be in his best interest. Because here was the thing about movie star breakup scandals. It was always the cheater who got slammed, not the cheatee. Frankly, Madison didn’t need public approval. They wouldn’t pay one moment’s attention to a wannabe screenwriter who’d had a fling.
But Tommy Shane? Every woman’s fantasy man, every kid’s comic book hero, every man’s wanna-be-him guy? Well, hell. Tommy Shane couldn’t be a cheater. It would be like...like John Wayne turning out to be a secret communist or something.
“We can do this,” she told him, slowly thinking it out. “But I have a condition of my own.”
“I’ll still pay you half of everything I made this year.”
“Forget the money.” She’d never take another dime from him. Tommy had supported her while she’d finished her screenplay. He’d helped her pay her student loans. And she’d let him, figuring if she was
