was Cole Steel’s freakin’ wife. Every man in Hollywood knew it was as good as putting a loaded gun to your balls, but that only made it more of a drug.
How in the hell he’d managed to bed Lana Falcon he simply did not know. Parker himself was a part-time celebrity, had been in several poorly produced teen films that had raised his status to that of the kind of minor heart-throb girls poster up on their walls but don’t exactly know the name of. His part in Eastern Sky as Lana’s brief fling–how life imitated art-was a major break. When she’d made her intentions clear in the first week of shooting, he couldn’t believe his luck. It was a risk, but Parker was a man who thrived on adrenalin. Life was for living in the moment–he’d think about the consequences later.
Ashlee came back in with a glass of water and some drugs. She sat down next to him, put a hand to his forehead.
‘You’re working too hard,’ she told him, kissing his fevered lips. ‘It’s exhaustion, that’s all.’ She held out the pills.
Obediently Parker swallowed them, the chalky powder sticking in his throat.
20
‘Go on, honey, go play with Su-Su.’ Kate diLaurentis gestured frantically to the Puerto Rican nanny, who came hurrying over to take her daughter.
‘Why don’t you play with her, Kate?’ asked Jimmy Hart, fixing himself a drink from the granite-topped bar.
‘Fuck off, Jimmy,’ Kate snarled. ‘It’s hardly like you’re father of the year.’
The nanny gathered up both children and ushered them out of the room, trying to cover their ears as best she could.
Kate sauntered out to the pool in their expansive Bel Air mansion. She needed some downtime–kids were so exhausting.
‘That’s right,’ muttered Jimmy, ‘another day, another sun-tan.’
Kate chose not to rise to it. Arranging herself on a lounger by their infinity pool, she closed her eyes and tried to block out her husband’s moaning. A moment later she heard him pad out on to the terrace.
If only he wasn’t such a goddamn bastard.
‘As a matter of fact,’ she told him, sitting up and sipping a Perrier, ‘I went for a casting this morning.’
‘What for?’ he asked in a bored way.
Already thinking about your next little conquest, are you? Kate thought angrily. ‘It’s Carl Rico’s new venture.’
‘Carl bloody Rico?’ Jimmy was outraged. ‘Make you get your tits out, did he?’ Carl Rico was a director with a reputation for targeting ageing actresses looking to get back into work. ‘Bit desperate, Kate.’
Kate whipped off her sunglasses. ‘You try being an actress in your forties and then tell me I should be picky!’ she blazed.
Jimmy shook his head in exasperation and wandered back into the house. He couldn’t talk to his wife when she was like this. Where had the old Kate diLaurentis gone, the woman he had fallen in love with? She’d been gorgeous, funny, smart, an actress with wisdom and ambition. He knew these days she felt like she was way past her best, but all the surgery coupled with a sharp whiff of panic wasn’t helping one bit.
With shame he admitted he was making it ten times worse by shagging around. But what was a man supposed to do? A diagnosed sex addict, at that? Over the past year his wife had barely allowed him under her nightgown–a nightgown? What were they living in, the nineteenth century?–and every time he tried to cop a feel she froze up like a rabbit in headlights. He wasn’t ready to join a monastery just yet.
Kate followed him in, her Louis Vuitton wedges pounding the floor.
‘Don’t you walk away from me,’ she fumed.
‘What are you going to do, Kate?’ Jimmy asked. ‘Batter me to death with one of your shoes?’
On cue she pulled off one of her wedges and threw it at his head. It narrowly missed and went crashing into a Ming-style vase.
‘Oh, nice,’ said Jimmy. ‘Real fucking nice.’
‘I hate you!’ she screamed, turning on one heel and storming lopsided back to the pool.
‘And just what is it that I’m supposed to have done?’ Jimmy was calling her bluff. He winced in anticipation of her response.
Kate refused to look at him. She swallowed back her tears. If only she knew how to deal with all this … frustration. She hadn’t been sleeping. She was depressed, anxious, jealous. She needed her pills–they were the only things that calmed her. But that would only give her husband something else to grumble on at her about.
Slumping on to a lounger, she put her head in her hands, waiting for him to come and comfort her. It wasn’t the first time she had hurled something at him.
Moments later she felt him sit down next to her and, sure enough, a gangly arm came to rest across her shoulders. ‘What is it?’ he asked gently.
Oh, how she was tempted to tell him all she knew. Just the other day she had found proof he was at it again. Tucked down the back of the bed was a pair of lilac panties she could have flossed her teeth with.
‘Jimmy, I …’ She shook her head, it was no use. Despite his extra-marital activities she couldn’t tolerate the thought of losing him–she absolutely refused to suffer the humiliation of becoming a divorcee twice over. And then there were the children to think about …
Jimmy patted her back as he might a friend’s and said swiftly, ‘Forget it, it’s no big deal.’ He stood up. Phew, that was a lucky escape.
Kate nodded and gazed up at him with red-rimmed eyes. Had she been so naive as to imagine she deserved her own love affair? After the arranged marriage to Cole Steel, the dreadful enforced celibacy, she had hoped for a second partnership based on trust, respect, but most of all passion. Hadn’t she earned it? The trouble was she just didn’t feel sexy any more: she felt old and ugly and stupid.
As if reading her mind, he held out a hand. ‘Come inside,’ he said throatily.
Weakly she got to her feet, took off the one remaining wedge and trailed after him. Maybe it would be better this time, she thought grimly, as they mounted the grand staircase.
In the bedroom, Jimmy pulled the blinds and tried not to think about the blonde actress-slash-model he’d been shagging. Long gone were the days when Kate would arrange herself into those ambitious positions.
Kate sat down on the edge of the bed and removed her bikini top. She crossed her arms over her breasts to cover them and lay back, rigid, looking blankly up at the ceiling.
‘Talk about the undead!’ As soon as the words escaped he knew it was the worst possible thing he could have said. Still, once upon a time she would have found it funny and teased him about being a terrible comedian.
Instead she gasped and sat up. ‘Fine, forget it, then.’ She reached for her bikini.
But he was on her in an instant,
