Lovegame(56)

“This is Hollywood, Mom. It’s always the time for sexy.”

“Not if you want an Oscar. If you want one of those, you’ve got to be smart. You have to show that you’re a ‘serious’ actress. To show the Academy that you’re more just a perfect face and body.”

“Isn’t that what the actual movie is supposed to do?”

She waves a hand dismissively. “Movies help you get noticed, sweetheart. But they don’t actually get you nominated. It’s playing the game that does that.” She pauses, taps a finger against her almost pursed lips (almost, because actual pursing causes wrinkles and neither my mother nor her plastic surgeon have any use for those). “Maybe we should hire an Oscar coach.”

I burst out laughing. I can’t help it.

“Why are you laughing at me?” she demands with a pout. “I’m serious. If we want this to go our way—”

“Our way? Don’t you mean my way?” Except she doesn’t mean that and I know it. All of this fervor, all of this planning, it’s because she’s never gotten an Academy Award—never even gotten a nomination. It always bothered her that Hollywood never saw her as anything more than a pretty face, no one but Salvatore Romero’s bimbo bombshell. Through the years, my father racked up ten nominations and three wins, while all she got was Best Dressed at the Oscars. That’s why she’s so obsessed with me getting one.

But just because I’m right—just because I understand her motivation—doesn’t mean calling her on it is the right thing to do. I know it even as I say the words and one look at the expression on her face confirms it, has me drowning in guilt. Just because she makes me crazy sometimes is no reason to go for her weaknesses.

With a sigh, I lean into her. Knock our shoulders together in a gesture that is both an apology and a bid for camaraderie. “I know you’re excited, Mom. I am, too. But the movie isn’t even out yet! Let’s see how it does at the box office and what the critics say about my performance and then we can talk about what we need to do.” Or not, as I have absolutely no interest in going down this particular road to crazytown, not even for my mother.

And I’m certainly not giving it any more of my attention today. Right now I have a lot more pressing issues to worry about, one of which is making sure the photographers my mother hired stay where they belong. The last thing I want is for them to wander around on their own. When left to his own devices, it took Ian all of three minutes to find out that I didn’t live here. The last thing I want is for the rest of Hollywood to figure that out, too.

A knock on the door interrupts my reverie and my new assistant, Danielle, opens the door and casts a wary glance between my mother and me. Not that I blame her—if I didn’t have to be a participant in this conversation, I would run in the opposite direction.

“What can I do for you, Danielle?”

“The gardener just came to the door. He wants you to take a look at the changes in the garden, make sure you’re happy with them before he and his crew leave for the night.”

“Changes? What changes?” Alarm skitters through me. “Miguel was just supposed to do the regular trimming.”

“I didn’t think there were supposed to be any changes, but he seems to be under a different impression. Do you want me to go see what his guys have done and report back?”

“No, no. I’ll go. Tell him I’ll be out in just a minute.”

I wait until Danielle is gone before turning back to my mother. One look at her face and I give in, just like we both knew from the very beginning that I was going to. “Look, if you really don’t like the Versace, I won’t wear it. But you’re going to have to come up with something else for me to wear because I have no time to go home and get another dress.”

She claps her hands like a little girl at my capitulation, all but jumping up and down in her excitement. “You won’t regret it! I promise. I already have the perfect dress in mind,” she says as she throws her arms around my neck.

I already regret it, but what’s done is done. As I head toward the backyard and my father’s gardens, I can’t help sending a prayer out to the universe that she doesn’t dress me like a total frump. Because while I buy her “you need to be seen as a more serious actress” argument to a certain extent, I’m also pretty sure the wardrobe change has just as much to do with her wanting to shine the brightest at the party tonight as it does with my image. Probably even more. Not that I have a problem with that—it is her birthday. And you only turn fifty seven times, after all. Maybe eight if you really stretch it out.

Besides, I assure myself as I throw open the French doors that lead to the side patio closest to the gardens, I don’t need a dress to make Ian suffer. If I’ve learned one thing from my mom in the last thirty years, it’s how to bring a man to his knees…and keep him there.

But one look at my father’s extensive gardens and thoughts of Ian on his knees, or anywhere else for that matter, abandon me. In their place is an abject and absolute horror, one that makes my head spin and my knees buckle. I have to be seeing things, have to be imagining—I lean into the closest outside column in an effort to steady myself, blink my eyes repeatedly in an effort to convince myself that I’m seeing things.

Neither effort works.

Frantically, I glance around for Miguel, the man who’s been in charge of my father’s prized gardens since I was a little girl. He’s nowhere to be found—and neither are the regular members of his crew. In their place is a bunch of strange men I’ve never seen before. Men who have just ripped out a huge swath of the English gardens Miguel has spent decades cultivating. Gardens my father designed when he built the house and that he continued to add to and expand all the way until his death four years ago.