Page 92 of A Star is Scorned
The band struck up another fast-paced song, and he proffered his hand to continue dancing, but she shook her head. “I need a break.”
Flynn led her off the floor and directed them to the highly polished bar at the back of the room. It wasn’t crowded. It was so long, taking up the entire back half of the space, that Livvy suspected there wouldn’t be a line all night, no matter how many people were thirsty. Flynn ordered a whiskey soda for himself and a gimlet for her before leading them to the outdoor balcony.
Flynn raised his glass and clinked it to Livvy’s. “To us.”
“To us,” she agreed, giving him a quick kiss and leaning in to him. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his head gently atop hers as she looked out across the ocean. The stars were beginning to twinkle and the moon was a bright orb reflected in the water’s surface.
He hummed along to the music pouring out of the doors, and they stood together in utter contentment.
“What’s Judy up to tonight?” Flynn asked eventually.
“Oh, Walter is taking her to dinner at Perino’s, then dancing at the Biltmore.” Judy had started dating the newspaper man shortly after the aborted Powers wedding. The day after their escapades, Judy had gone to his desk at theHollywood Reporterto tell her side of the story. Walter Pince got the editor to put it on the front page, and it had led to Stanley Devlin being summarily fired from his position with the Production Code Administration. Everystudio in town had blacklisted the man, barring him from their lots and their parties. Not that Hollywood didn’t have plenty like Devlin still in their ranks. He made a convenient scapegoat for other powerful men’s abuses. But at least there was one less wolf in sheep’s clothing prowling the studio streets.
The day after the story ran, Walter—who Livvy had confirmed was, in fact, twenty-three—had called to ask Judy to dinner, and they’d been inseparable ever since. It made Livvy happy to know her sister was being cared for in her absence. She was still working to stop mothering her. Old habits die hard, after all.
With Stanley Devlin fired from the PCA and his blackmailing exposed, Rhonda Powers had retreated from the public eye. Flynn’s reputation issues had vanished seemingly overnight. Not that it mattered, since he was dating his extremely respectable leading lady. For real, this time. Harry had stopped arranging dates and photo ops for them, but the press was none the wiser that their relationship had ever been anything but genuine. The papers still followed their romance with a breathless fervor, and Flynn and Livvy didn’t even mind. It was good publicity for the picture, which would come out in February.
“Remember our meal from Perino’s?” Flynn whispered into her ear, nipping lightly at her earlobe as they continued admiring the ocean view.
“I do.” A pulse of want rushed through her from her earlobe to the tips of her toes.
She turned her head up to graze his jaw with a fierce kiss before replying. “And I look forward to having more of that dessert later tonight.”
Flynn’s eyes widened, and his irises blew out with want. “Careful,” he growled. “You wouldn’t want to give me a bad reputation.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Wouldn’t I though? I think I’ve done enough to bolster it. It’s time the rogue I was promised makes a return.”
He bent over to kiss her, flinging his arms wide so that he didn’t splash any of his drink onto her, and she stumbled backwards slightly, bowled over by the force of his enthusiasm.
She giggled and broke away from him. “I think I’m a bad influence on you.”
“It’s one of my favorite things about you,” he retorted.
The band finished their up-tempo number and started playing “Night and Day.” Livvy closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and soaked in the sound of the music. “God, I love this song.”
“Want to dance?” Flynn reached for her glass and set both of their nearly finished drinks on a high-top table a few feet from them.
“I want to stay out here a while longer.”
“We can still dance.” Flynn took her in his arms and pressed his cheek to hers, rocking them gently back and forth in the moonlight. It was one of those impossibly warm California winter nights. A precursor to that mysterious but inevitable week of January weather that reminded her why people moved here in droves, before things went back to months of gloomy days and spitting rain.
Livvy hummed along, and Flynn began to croon, “‘Night and day, you are the one…’”
He was dreadfully off-key, but Livvy loved it anyway. “I think you’ll have to leave the musicals to Don Lamont,” she teased.
He chuckled, the breath from his laugh tickling the side of her face. “It’s a good thing that Harry’s already set my next picture with you then.”
She made a sigh of contentment in reply, thinking about thecontract she’d signed right before Christmas. Harry had offered her three years on the Evets’s Studios payroll at triple the pay of her measly starting salary. Plus an option for another three years when it was up. It was the ticket to a future she’d never known she wanted. The promise of a new dream. One that fit nicely with the novel she’d secretly started writing during breaks in her dressing room. She hadn’t even told Flynn yet. It was still too new. But it turned out that when you weren’t spending every waking hour fretting about other people in your life, there was more time to write.
They kept dancing, and Livvy soaked it all in. The beautiful ballroom behind them, decorated with such care. The warm feel of Flynn’s arms around her as he held her and rocked her gently in time to the music. The smell of the brine from the ocean far below them.
She and Judy had been through so much these last years. But now she was at peace. More than at peace—she was happier than she’d ever thought possible. About to ring in the New Year with the man she loved. Secure in her career and content in the knowledge that her sister was as well cared for as she could possibly be.
“‘Till you let me spend my life making love to you,’” Flynn talked-sang into her ear.
She nuzzled his neck. “Mmm, that sounds nice.”
“Does it?” he asked, taking a step back from her and pulling a small, black velvet box out of his pocket. He didn’t get down on one knee, but simply popped the lid open with his thumb. A single emerald-cut diamond in a bezel setting winked back at her, twinkling in the moonlight.
