They were at Parker’s Malibu penthouse overlooking the ocean. Lana had requested she run through a pivotal scene with Parker before shooting the following week–Cole’s driver had dropped her twenty minutes ago and was currently waiting outside. She’d greeted Parker cordially at the door for appearances’ sake, but once inside they hadn’t spoken. This was anything but a professional engagement.
Parker sat up. ‘Do you have to go?’ Behind him the beach stretched out, a spread of golden sand running down to sparkling water. He sat back on the pillows and gazed at it dreamily, like something out of a romance novel. ‘We could take a walk.’
Lana fastened her bra. ‘Not in this lifetime.’
‘In that case,’ he reached for her, ‘come back to bed.’
She resisted. ‘Forget it, Parker. Cole’s waiting.’
The colour drained from Parker’s boyish face at the mention of Lana’s husband. Cole’s name was taboo.
‘You freakin’ brought him here?’ he squealed.
Lana gave him a look. ‘Of course not. One of his goons.’
He threw his arms up in the air. ‘Christ! Don’t do that to me again.’
‘I’m careful, Parker, we both are.’ She grabbed the script, tucked it under her arm. ‘Long as it stays that way, we’ve got nothing to worry about.’
A noise interrupted them. The sound of the door going.
They looked at each other.
‘Get the hell out!’ Parker hissed, throwing himself off the bed. The sheets got tangled in his legs and he tripped on to the floor. ‘Shit!’
Lana hauled open the window, clambering out on to the balcony. ‘Who is it?’
He shook his head, bundling her purse out after her. ‘It’s Ashlee, she’s home early. Holy freakin’ shit!’
‘I thought you’d broken up!’
‘We’re on and off.’ A clumsy kiss on the lips. ‘Make like we sat on the terrace, I don’t know. If Cole finds out, I’m a dead man.’
‘Thanks for the heads-up,’ she said wryly. He slammed the window shut.
Staying low, Lana skirted round the side of the building. A murmur of voices could be heard from inside the apartment–she hoped Parker could handle himself: the last thing they needed was his girlfriend running to the papers.
Before she emerged she dusted off any dishevelment and pulled her cap down hard over her ears. The whole encounter had taken less than half an hour.
Cole’s car was waiting on the opposite side of the road. Its driver had his head buried in a paper.
This is getting dangerous, she told herself. You’re pushing it too hard.
But she couldn’t help it. These days it was the only thing that made her feel alive.
‘Poor baby, let me get you something to drink.’
Parker Troy made a pathetic face and lay back, half closing his eyes. He watched through the cracks as his girlfriend fussed around–he’d had to feign illness when she’d found him semi-naked amid a knot of bed sheets.
With Ashlee gone, he checked his cell. He could only assume Lana had got out OK. Parker was playing with fire and he knew it–this 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.
‘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