In Your Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

the “closest thing to
family” card. “How soon can you pick me up?”
    “Huh?”
    She repeated
each word slowly, succinctly. “How… soon… can… you… pick… me… up?”
    Even miles away,
she sensed his hesitation in the heavy pause between them. “Do you think that’s
a good idea? I mean, if I hadn’t found you when I did yesterday? Five minutes
later, and you’d be dead right now.”
    Five minutes.
Five lousy minutes? Oh, for crying out loud! How unlucky could she get?
    “Why’d you do
it, Justin?”
    “Why’d you do it? To get into the Cliché Hall of Fame as another failed actress who
couldn’t live without the public adulation?”
    Her breath left
her lungs in a drawn-out hiss. One of the things she’d always loved about
Justin was one of the things she also hated most about him: his razor honesty.
“What the hell do you know about it? You gave up a long time ago.”
    Justin had been
cast as the geeky neighbor boy with a crush on Bethany in the later episodes of
“Shipp Shape.” Unfortunately, since he made no attempt to hide his
homosexuality on-camera or off, the romantic interest had fizzled without ever
creating a spark in the audience. Unfazed, after his two seasons on the show,
Justin had cashed in his chips and left Hollywood to keep house with his life
partner.
    “I walked away.
You could too, you know.”
    Yeah, right.
“And do what? I’m not like you. I don’t want to open up some stupid antique
shop and become one of those losers who only signs autographs at conventions
twice a year.”
    “Because your
life is much more glamorous? Cattle calls, rejections, divorce court, hospital
rooms. Golly, it must be sooooo fabulous to be you!”
    “If it were
fabulous, I wouldn’t have tried to kill myself, now would I?”
    “Oh, sweetie.”
He sighed dramatically, and she grinned. Victory was at hand. “I’ll come get
you if that’s really what you want. Give me an hour or so. We’ll get you
discharged and then you’ll come stay with Tony and me.”
    Hmm… Maybe
victory wasn’t quite as close as she thought. “Actually, I’d rather go home.”
    “Too bad. I’m
the one signing the discharge papers. That means I’m responsible for you. And
I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave you home alone where you can pull another
suicide attempt like this one.”
    “You can’t keep
me at your place forever,” she replied. “Eventually, you’ll have to let me go
home.” And when I do…
    “Trust me,
sunshine. You’re not going back to that crappy little bungalow of yours until
I’m sure you won’t try anything stupid again.”
    “So where were
you when I married Carlo?” she retorted.
    “At home. Just
like now, a phone call away. You flew off to Vegas hush-hush. I would have told
you he was a mistake, which is exactly why you didn’t fill me in on the details
before you left.”
    He had a point.
Knowing full well her true friends would have tried to talk her out of it, she
hadn’t told a soul until after she and Carlo had emerged from the Little
White Chapel as man and wife.
    “I saw the
photos in last week’s rags,” he added softly. “How old is Carlo’s new arm
candy?”
    “You mean his
latest ‘assistant’?” She couldn’t bite back the sarcasm. “I dunno. Twenty-two?
Twenty-three?”
    “She looked
twelve in the pictures.”
    “Which explains
Carlo’s attraction. The minute she starts to look her age, he’ll dump her for
another waif.” Her voice cracked on the last word. That had been Carlo’s
special term of endearment for her: his waif . Special, until she’d heard
him call his agent’s receptionist by the very same nickname. Of course, the
fact the two of them were stark naked in her bed at the time only added insult
to injury.
    “Please don’t
tell me you tried to kill yourself over that pond scum.” Justin’s bitterness
cut into her musings.
    “God, no.”
Dammit. Still lost in the memory of that painfully embarrassing scene,