Famous (A Famous novel) Read online

  Because Tony thought of everything.

  She got up and looked into the cabinet in the corner. No puzzle.

  Crap. Maybe he’d left her. He’d helped her get ready this evening, wrangling the hair and makeup people and the bodyguards that came with the diamonds she’d waved off, not wanting the extra pressure of wearing millions of dollars’ worth of jewels on her person that evening. But maybe he’d gotten her ready for the appearance he disapproved of, and he now he was done. Could she really blame him?

  Maybe he was such a good assistant—no, such a good partner—that he knew she’d been questioning whether their relationship should continue, and was fading away so as to spare her the pain of having to fire him.

  “Miss Quinn?” One of the stage managers stuck her head in Emmy’s open door. “We’re ready for you.”

  Right. “Okay,” she said, forcing herself not to dwell on the fact that she’d been abandoned by her oldest friend. This was live TV, and the audience would be in the millions. This was no time for interpersonal drama. She followed the woman down the hallway past the dressing rooms, trying to catch some excitement from the buzz of focused activity all around them—people talking into headsets, presenters who would be on stage after her number having the finishing touches of their makeup done.

  “Emerson,” said Claudia, who was waiting in the wings. She held her hands out and cocked her head, like a proud mama examining her daughter. “The McCartney was definitely the right choice.” Then her face fell. “But no jewelry?”

  “No. I didn’t want to deal with the bodyguards.”

  “You’re on in fifteen seconds,” said the stage manager.

  Brian appeared, and Emmy nodded at him. “Hey, do either of you know where Tony went?”

  “Emmy!”

  She whirled, her question answered. God, it was good to hear that voice.

  “Don’t do this!” Tony arrived at her side, panting.

  “What are you talking about?” Emmy said, anger and relief at war inside her. She was so happy he hadn’t left her, but what the hell was he thinking doing this now? She only had—

  “Ten seconds!” the stage manager said, voice tinged with alarm.

  “That’s enough, Tony,” Claudia snapped, nodding at one of the venue’s security guards, who started to move toward Tony.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Tony said. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” He spoke calmly, like he was oblivious to the fact that she was about to go live—or that he was about to be forcibly thrown out of the venue.

  “Get him out of here!” Brian roared, as the stage manager said, “You have five seconds, Miss Quinn!”

  “We’ll speak afterward,” Emmy said, because whatever else happened, it wasn’t okay for them to treat Tony like that.

  “Places!” said the stage manager. “Go!”

  Emmy could see her band coming in from the opposite side, finding their marks in the dark. That was what Tony didn’t understand. It wasn’t about what she wanted or didn’t want anymore. There was a whole show depending on her now.

  “Evan’s here!” cried Tony, shrugging out of the security guy’s grasp. “He’s here in town, and he loves you,” he added, his eyes filling with tears. “He just couldn’t get here in time.”

  “What?”

  The stage manager hissed, “We come off commercial in seven seconds.” Emmy was supposed to have been out there for a full thirty seconds, in the dark, ready to go when the lights came on and the cameras rolled.

  “Don’t do this,” Tony whispered, and she could hear him even though Claudia, who was speaking much louder, was saying “So help me, Emerson Quinn, get on that stage.”

  Emmy’s mind reeled. What did Tony mean Evan loved her? How did he know?

  It didn’t matter, at least not now. Because she couldn’t let everyone down. She couldn’t embarrass herself. Again.

  Just before she stepped out of the wings, Tony thrust something in her hand. She stumbled out in the dark, but righted herself and aimed for the piano. She was to start this song seated at the piano and rise partway through to finish it at a mic stand downstage. When she reached the bench and sat down, she looked back to where she’d come from. It was too dark to see anything.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, to kick off the MTV Video Music Awards, please welcome Emerson Quinn!”

  The lights came on, and the crowd went wild. The heat of the lights converging on her was a jolt to the system. She hadn’t done this for so long. She had literally spent the summer out of the spotlight. The song was meant to start with a couple bars of her on the piano alone, before the band kicked in. Realizing she was still clenching her fist around whatever Tony had given her, she dropped it on the keyboard in front of her. It was a piece of paper, and as she was about to brush it aside, something familiar about it snagged her attention.

  Oh my God.

  She was aware of time passing, of the attention of the whole auditorium. She could imagine the attention of twenty-five million TV viewers, too. But she couldn’t not look.

  It was her. The one with her standing in the flaming lake of flowers.

  Steeped: Paintings by Evan Winslow, Jr.

  The paper was a printout of an advertisement for an art show. An art show that, judging by the address, was happening right here in L.A.

  She looked closer, at some of the smaller, thumbnail images under the large one, and was startled by several more pictures of her, some she’d seen in his attic that day, others that were unfamiliar.

  September 5 – 7, 10 am to 5 pm or by appointment.

  Evan was having an art show in L.A., and it opened tomorrow.

  All of a sudden, she got it. She got what Tony had been trying to say. Hell, she’d said it herself, to Evan, when she’d forced his hand on showing his art. What the hell was she doing? Why in heaven’s name would she, arguably one of the most powerful people in the music business, not write, record, perform, whatever the hell she wanted? Her skin started tingling. All over. Every inch of it.

  She looked back over her shoulder. It was still dark in the wings. She couldn’t see anyone, but she could hear frantic whispering back there.

  “Emerson!”

  Frantic whispering from up here on stage, too. It was Trey, a bassist who’d done a lot of session work with her, the band member standing closest to the piano, and he was looking at her like she was crazy.

  Which, to be fair, maybe she was.

  She grinned, a big wide one that felt like it was going to crack her face, and maybe her soul, open.

  She was about to blow the lid off this place.

  The entire bar held its breath, but no one more than Evan. He hadn’t made it inside the venue. He’d given it everything he had, running through the streets like a crazy man when his cab had gotten stuck in gridlock, following the directions Tony shouted at him through the phone. But when he’d reached the arena, there was no way in. Even though the stars were already inside, crowds thronged the red carpet. When he’d attempted to jump a fence around a big, white tent that looked like it might lead, on its other side, into the venue, he was chased off by security and had to actually sprint away for fear they’d call in the real cops.

  Which left him, sweaty and dirty and on the brink of insanity, in a bar a block away from the show, yelling at the bartender to turn the volume up on the TV behind the bar.

  He had no idea what, if anything, Tony had told her—or if Tony had even reached her. They’d hung up when Tony had decided Evan wasn’t going to make it, Tony promising to do his best to intercept her.

  Something was clearly going on, though, because she wasn’t starting. She was just sitting there on stage, illuminated by spotlights, looking at something on the piano as her band stood in awkward silence.

  “Oh my God,” said a twentysomething woman sitting next to him at the bar. “But I guess that’s Emerson Quinn for you,” she added. “Always with the drama.”

  “Shut up,” said her com
panion, also a young woman. “I love her.”

  Shut up. I love her.

  That made two of them. Fuck, looking at her, even just through the TV, nearly killed him. She was so beautiful, so herself, that she took his breath away.

  Everyone in the bar seemed to lean forward on their bar stools. No one spoke as Emmy got up from the piano and walked over to her guitar player. She spoke in his ear, and then the guy handed over his guitar.

  Then she walked over to an empty mic stand at the front of the stage. Hoisting the guitar over her shoulder, she said, “Sorry about the confusion, but there’s been a slight change in plan.” She smiled.

  Then she looked right at him. Well, she looked right at the camera, but he knew she was looking at him. “I’m going to play you a new song called ‘September.’ I wrote it this summer.”

  “Are you sure he’s going to wait for me there?”

  “Yes, Emmy,” Tony said, sounding exasperated but smiling as he held the car door for her. “For the millionth time, I’m sure. I’m also sure that you could have told him to wait for you at the freaking North Pole, and that’s where he’d be right now.”

  “It’s just that I want to see the art,” she said, buckling her seat belt. I want everything to be…” Ahh, it sounded so stupid. She probably should have gone running out of the theater after her song and hunted Evan down on the street. But she didn’t want their reunion to be public. And, more than that, he had heard her declaration—she assumed—and now she wanted to see his. Her art for his—an even swap.

  Tony shoved his phone in her face, showing her a text from Evan, time-stamped thirty minutes ago.

  On my way. I’ll be there when she gets there.

  She looked out the window and tried to calm her nerves as the high rises of downtown L.A gave way to the lower-rise landscape of Sunset Boulevard and on into Echo Park. The driver slowed in front of a commercial building covered by a colorful mural, then turned the corner and came to a halt next to a side entrance. There was no sign on the building, but the main floor had a huge window, and the lights were on inside.

  “Oh!” she gasped, because she could see him. He was in there. She stumbled on her way out of the car and lurched toward the door. It was heavy, and her palms were sweating. It took two tries to push it open.

  Just as she stepped into the light, he turned.

  There he was, her muse.

  If she’d been unsure of his intentions, or worried about her reception, she needn’t have been.

  Everything fell away—the past few days and all the loneliness and fear they had contained. So did that night at the gallery in Dane. It was almost like now, here, in this gallery a world away from Iowa, they had a chance for—

  “A do-over,” he said, his voice cracking. He was on the other side of the large space, and between them were paintings, so many paintings. Lots of them were of her, but there were also portraits of other people, of Mrs. Johansen and Jace, and some people she didn’t recognize. They all shared that magical, almost-supernatural quality she’d seen in his work in the attic.

  “Yes,” she said, her own voice wobbling. “A do-over.”

  He opened his arms, and she ran to him. He scooped her up, and she was crying again, but it was okay this time because it was a different kind of crying. It was a shedding of pain, of the past, of all that heavy stuff she didn’t need anymore. She hadn’t needed it for years, really, but it had taken Evan, and the space he made for her to rest in, for her to see that.

  He spun her around, like in the movies, and they laughed, but after a few twirls, he lifted her higher, his arms under her bottom, and she wrapped her legs around his waist.

  “I’m glad I didn’t catch you at the awards show,” he said. “This is better. This is what should have happened that night in Dane. I get to see my paintings and you…together.”

  “They’re beautiful,” she said, knowing full well that the word fell short.

  “If that’s true, it’s because their inspiration is beautiful,” he whispered. “She was this girl—this real girl—who taught me to paint again.”

  She couldn’t hear any more. It was too perfect; it hurt to keep listening to him. So she planted her palms on his cheeks and kissed him.

  He responded immediately, opening his mouth on a groan. They kissed and kissed, like they were making up for lost time, licking deep into each other’s mouths. Eventually, he started to lose his grip on her, and she began to slide down his body. She whimpered in protest, and tightened her legs around him. She’d fallen low enough that his erection pressed against her core. She rocked her hips into him, and he grunted, staggering backward. There was a bench behind him, nestled against the wall underneath a painting of her on that bridge in the sculpture garden at the farmers’ market. She remembered that day, that moment, when she’d looked at the wide blue sky and the miles and miles of corn, and it had felt like the world was expanding before her, like anything was possible.

  He sat down with a thud, with her crosswise over his lap. She tried to straddle him, but the wall behind the bench was in the way.

  So they sat there and kissed some more, like horny teenagers who couldn’t get enough of each other. And since his hands were free now, he wasted no time reaching for her breasts. He couldn’t reach her actual breasts, though, because of the dress, and though his hands felt good as they kneaded her through the silk, she wanted more. She squirmed off his lap and turned her back to him. “Unzip me.”

  Nothing happened. “Hello?” She looked over her shoulder. He’d stood up and was moving toward the other side of the room.

  “I’m just getting the lights,” he said, and as if to punctuate the point, the room dimmed. “I don’t want anyone to look in and see you here.”

  Right. After he flicked the switch, there was enough ambient light from outside that they could still see each other, but they wouldn’t be visible from the street unless someone was pressed right up against the window. The thoughtfulness of his gesture, the protectiveness, nearly undid her. She was safe with this man. She always had been.

  He came back to her, took her hand and slowly, too slowly, lowered her zipper. Then he turned her around and continued to move maddeningly slowly as he drew the unzipped dress down her body. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and he made a hissing noise she was pretty sure was approval. She jutted her chest out to encourage him to touch her, but he kept going with the dress. It was form-fitting, so he had to work it over her hips.

  “What the hell is that?”

  She looked down and burst out laughing. She’d forgotten about the fact that she was wearing the world’s most unattractive undergarment. She’d also forgotten how, with him, laughter and lovemaking were not mutually exclusive. “That’s Spanx.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Spanx. They keep your jiggly bits in when you’ve had too much casserole.”

  “You don’t have any jiggly bits.”

  She jiggled her boobs at him as she stepped fully out of her dress, leaving her clad only in the monstrous beige compression garment.

  He laughed. “I stand corrected. Those are some very nice jiggly bits, indeed.” He ran a finger around the waistband of the biker-shorts-style Spanx. “How does a person remove these?”

  “It’s not very dignified,” she said, starting to wiggle out of them.

  “Hey, I tried to break into the MTV Video Music Awards.” He gestured at himself. “So I think we’re post-dignity, you and I.” She only just registered that he was wearing sweatpants and a paint-splattered, holey T-shirt.

  She wagged a finger at him. “Those clothes are entirely inappropriate for this occasion.”

  “I totally agree,” he said, and he was out of them before she’d finished working off her stupid girdle.

  And then the laughing interlude was over.

  Oh, how she’d missed him. The safe space he created for her, yes, but also him, the way he filled that space.

  He ran his fingers over the indentations
in her skin where the edges of her Spanx had been, and she shivered. He continued skating his fingers lightly up one side of her torso. When he reached her breast, he paused, then took a small detour to caress her nipple. It wasn’t long enough, though, and she huffed a frustrated breath as his fingers continued up over her shoulder, circled there briefly, then started down her arm. By the time he reached her hand, and grabbed it, she was shaking with need. Moisture bloomed between her legs, and she ached deep inside. He stepped back, holding her hand high between them like they were doing an old-fashioned dance, and she, picking up his cue, took a step after him. He led her like that for a few steps until his back reached a wall. Then he sat down, but kept hold of her hand, so by the time he was seated, his arm was over his head and she was hunched over him.

  He wanted her to come down with him.

  So she did.

  “Oh, fuck, Emmy,” he ground out when he realized what she was doing, which was lowering herself directly onto him.

  She didn’t want to wait. There would be time for slow lovemaking later. Right now she needed him inside her. She started moving, levering herself up on her knees a little, then letting herself fall back onto him, taking him as deeply as she could. He thrust up to meet her every stroke, cursing every now and again like a sailor, but still holding her hand like a gentleman.