Once A Gambler. Carrie Hudson
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into a career in modeling. “RWC” Reese would call her with a smile. Rebel-without-a-Cause. And deep down, Ellie suspected that maybe her driven, accomplished sister envied that just a little.
She studied the photo under the safelight for anything—any sign that a mere twelve hours after this uproarious laugh, Reese would be gone forever and Ellie would be left alone.
There was nothing. No precognition. No warning. Just two women sharing a rare moment of sisterly hilarity. Maybe that was just how life was. A constant collision of happiness and loss.
“Ellie?” Dane knocked on the makeshift darkroom door. “Are you dressed? It’s almost six-thirty.”
She looked down at her ripped jeans and fixer-stained T-shirt. “Um…” she hedged, pulling the photo out and slipping it into the third tub containing the rapid fixer.
On the other side of the door, she heard Dane cursing. She couldn’t see him, but imagined that about now, he’d be dragging a hand through his perfect dark-brown hair and starting to sweat through the perfect charcoal Prada shirt it had taken him two hours to pick out.
“Just give me a minute, okay? I’m almost done.”
“Ah, God, Ellie.” The words were gruff, husky, disappointed.
“I know.”
“This screening is important to me. You said you’d come, dammit. I need you there.”
“I know. I’m coming.” She’d done enough red carpets in her lifetime to pave the Great Wall of China, but she detested them. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to do this for Dane. It was what she knew would come along with it.
“What are you doing in there? Can I come in?”
Ellie switched off the safelight and turned on the regular one. Outside the door the red warning light would no longer be on, and Dane took that as an invitation.
He appeared at the door, looking very Hollywood producerlike in his power suit and spiffy Italian shoes. In another lifetime, Dane Raleigh could have been a movie star, with his looks and his confidence. But now, he was a producer with a film that had made it to screen and that, in this town, was like winning the freakin’ lottery.
He glanced down at the photo in the stop bath and went quiet for a second. Ellie slipped the photo into the hypo fixer.
“So this is about Reese again?”
“Again?”
He slid his hands around her shoulders and turned her toward him. “Just for tonight, can we not put your sister between us?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I want all of you tonight. Not fifty percent. Or eighty. I want a hundred percent of you. You know the damned studio has got us opening against Lands’ End, the best reviewed gangster movie since The Godfather, and that behemoth animated kids’ movie Pixar Films made about damned ladybugs.”
“I know.”
“And if we can’t get press on this thing tonight, we’re screwed for opening weekend. And if opening weekend is screwed—”
“It won’t be. And you have me,” she said, leaning her cheek against his hard shoulder so she didn’t have to lie directly into those rich-colored eyes. “It’s just…you know I hate these things. With the paparazzi and the media.”
He patted her awkwardly with his palm, distracted by his own problems. “They’re just people trying to make a living. And for a girl who spent half her adult life on the world’s best runways facing flashbulbs, you should be used to it.”
She could explain to him again about the things she didn’t want the world to know about her, about how a chunk of her had gone missing after all those years of modeling. She could try to explain that the rock he’d put on her finger a month ago did not give them the right to invade her private life one more time. But she had the sneaking suspicion that Dane liked the attention that came with having her on his arm and the ring making the tabloids. But underneath everything else she believed about him—about them—was the fear that he loved all of that more than he loved her.
He swatted her on the rear and pushed her toward the door. “Go get ready. The driver’s here in twenty minutes. Let’s not keep him waiting.”
THE GAUNTLET set up along Sunset Boulevard beneath the historic archway of the old Cinerama Dome came complete with a red carpet and banks of halogen lights. Beacons of bright light pierced the night sky, as heavy banks of clouds hovered over the Hollywood.
There was a deep crowd just outside the railing, which included fans and paparazzi who hadn’t been lucky enough to nail a press pass. The media had already swarmed Ross Neil, the only money star of Ticking Clock!, and his little-known female costar up the line. Fans were shouting at them across the railing, hoping for autographs or even eye contact.
Ellie touched the jade necklace at her neck, Grandma Lily’s necklace, like a talisman. She hadn’t taken it off since Reese vanished. And though it complemented the designer canary-yellow dress she’d worn, she didn’t care if it did or not. It made her feel safe to wear it.
She’d spent her life, it seemed, at events like this, tugged around by her parents. Yes, they’d brought her and Reese to their movie openings. The happy family photos would show up on the pages of the latest gossip rag with captions about what great parents they were, and wasn’t it fabulous that two big stars could keep it all together the way they did? Until they’d gotten divorced.
For a while, Ellie had cherished these red carpet events as the only way she would have any time with her parents. But that was old water, way under the bridge now.
Ellie gripped Dane’s hand tighter as they exited the town car beside Caleigh Nguyen, Dane’s publicist. The woman was wearing her official I’ve-got-everything-under-control look and a lime-green, Rachel Pally kimono dress. For about the count of three, they were anonymous. Unnoticed.
Then…all hell broke loose.
Camera strobes flashed. The crowd swelled in their direction. A tribe of paparazzi and media rushed them.
“Ellie! Ellie Winslow! Look this way! This way, Ellie!”
“You look beautiful tonight, Ellie. Can you show us the ring?”
“Dane, have you two set a date?”
And then the zinger she was bracing herself for: “Any new leads on Reese’s disappearance, Ellie?”
As she felt her stomach sink, Dane slipped his hand under her arm and guided her away from the reporter who had asked what all the others hadn’t had the nerve to. “Just ignore ’em,” he told her under his breath.
“Yeah, this is me,” she answered, pasting a smile on her face, “ignoring them.”
“Good girl.” His hand slid down her hip and patted her there—a photo op missed by no one.
Dane turned to the reporters as strobes flashed. “I’d like to thank you all for coming. This is a big night for us,” he told the crowd. “And my beautiful fiancée, Ellie Winslow, is here to support me. My film Ticking Clock! has been a labor of love for us and I hope you all enjoy it and, come opening weekend, you bring your friends. By the way,” he added with a wink, “we have set the date. But that’s our secret right now.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. And a pretty good secret it is, she thought, since they were about as close to “setting a date” as they were to jetting to the moon.
Ellie allowed herself to be pulled along under Dane’s protective arm as he worked the crowd. She bore the questions with a patented smile as photographers clicked away. Caleigh leaned close to her ear and shouted. “He’s doing great, right? Look at him. He’s a freakin’ press monster.”
And she actually meant that in a good way. “Hmm,” Ellie said by way of