Scorpio Love Read online

  “Wait!” she heard someone call out. She knew it was him; no one else had his voice. She wiped away her tears quickly and pretended not to hear.

  “Wait! Stop!” John Hellstrom caught up to her and took hold of her arm. She felt a small jolt of electricity hit her.

  He noticed that she had been crying and that she was trembling slightly. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said unsteadily. “I just need to get out of here.”

  “Do you have a car?”

  She shook her head. ”I can get a cab. Just please tell me if I’m headed towards the front gate and let me go.”

  “I’ll drive you to wherever you have to go,” he said, pulling gently at her arm. “Come on.”

  She resisted. “It’s all right. You don’t have to do that.”

  “No, come on,” he urged. “I want to do it and my car is nearby.”

  She gave in and he led her to a parking area near to the sound stage. He opened the passenger door of his vintage 1956 Chevy, which she had seen in some of his photographs, and put her inside.

  “Just wait here, okay? I need to get my wallet and stuff and I’ll be right back.”

  She watched as he walked back towards the building. Two men came running out and began talking to him excitedly. He just kept walking. She wiped her eyes dry and tried to fix her makeup a little. She knew that he would have questions and she was debating whether or not to tell him the truth. If she did decide to tell him everything, she didn’t want to seem like a hysterical person when she did it. He appeared again, dressed in his own clothes, with different men in tow. One of them took hold of his arm and he yanked it away angrily. Then he jogged over to the car and climbed inside.

  “They want you to continue shooting, don’t they?” she asked, staring at the men he had left behind. “Even after what happened.”

  “To hell with what they want.” He started up the car and headed for the main gate. “Where are you staying?”

  “At the London West on…I’m not sure, just a second. I didn’t even check in yet.” She rummaged through her purse trying to find her confirmation information.

  “It’s okay. I think I know where it is. Someone said that you were on the set to get an interview or something. What’s your name anyway?”

  “Susan.”

  “Well, Susan, I don’t know what just happened in there but it seems that you saved my life. What did happen anyway? How did you know?”

  She closed her eyes. How was she going to tell him without sounding like a lunatic?

  “I’m not sure that I can explain it,” she said. “Not so that you’d understand.”

  He turned his head to look at her and although she wasn’t looking at him, she could feel his eyes on her, studying her.

  “Listen, are you hungry?” he asked. “I haven’t eaten yet. Let me take you somewhere quiet and we can talk. I can give you your interview and you can try to explain to me what you don’t think I’d understand.”

  She looked down at her hands, conflicted. She longed to say “yes” because she knew that she would never again have the opportunity to be with him and talk to him, but he would have questions and she was afraid of what his opinion of her would be if she answered those questions truthfully.

  “Please,” he said, “come with me, okay?”

  She couldn’t say “no” to her heart and nodded. He drove to a small hole-in-the-wall pizza and pasta restaurant a few blocks from the studio.

  “Hope you like pizza,” he said as he pulled his car into an open stall.

  “I’m not too particular about food.”

  “Well, this place makes great pizza,” he assured her.

  When he parked the car, she didn’t wait for him to open her door. She just climbed out and then asked, “Do you want me to lock it? Do you have your keys?”

  It took him by surprise. He nodded and watched as she depressed the lock button and then shut the door while holding down the push button on the door handle. She knew about old cars. They stepped into the restaurant and he led her to a booth towards the back of the room.

  “Do you mind if I just go to the ladies room and freshen up?” she asked. “I must look like a mess.”

  “Sure, but you look fine to me. Should I order?”

  She nodded and then went to find the ladies room. She reapplied her makeup as best as she could and tried to make herself presentable while she continued her mental debate about whether or not to tell him the truth. She knew how to conduct an interview and it was possible that she could come up with a plausible story about seeing the other actor picking up the wrong gun. But lying to him didn’t feel right—even if it was easier, even if she was never going to see him again. When she returned to the table, the slices of pizza had just arrived.

  He took a bite of his pizza and smiled at her. “Okay, what kind of information do you need for your interview? It’s the least that I can do.”

  She stirred the ice in her glass of water with her straw and watched the cubes swirl around in the vortex. His question had just made it easier for her to continue the lie, but she loved him and that compelled her to tell him the truth. She sighed softly and looked up, directly into his hypnotically blue eyes that almost sparkled in the low light of the lamp that was on the table. Scorpio eyes and they were studying her again.

  “I could keep up this charade, get back on the plane tomorrow, and you’d probably never know the difference,” she said. “That would be a lot easier for me. But I can tell that you’re a decent guy so I’m going to tell you the truth, even if you end up thinking that I must be out of my mind. I’m not a freelance journalist and I don’t want an interview. I came to L.A. specifically to prevent that accident from happening.”

  His brows knitted into a frown. She reached into her purse and pulled out her business cards. “This is who I am. I’m an attorney in Hawaii, still licensed—I can give you my judiciary number if you want to confirm that—but now I work here.” She pointed to the other card. “Just so you’ll know that I’m not some sort of aspiring psychic or something.

  “About three months ago, I started having these strange dreams. And in those dreams, I kept seeing that incident that happened tonight and you being fatally injured. I don’t know why; I can’t explain it. When it first happened, the dream was vague. I couldn’t see any real details so I just ignored it. But the dream kept returning and every time it did, the details got just a little clearer. It was almost as though someone was enhancing a video that was in my head. I saw that this incident was taking place on a sound stage. I saw the cameras and the people. But I couldn’t see your face clearly. Then, eventually, that picture got clearer and it didn’t really help because ... and please don’t take this as an insult ... I didn’t know who you were. I don’t really keep up with what’s going on in Hollywood or watch much television. But I figured that if in fact the dream was something other than just a dream, you had to be an actor. So I went to a store and started searching through magazines and there you were, on the cover of US Weekly. Then I knew that you were real, and that the dreams were probably real, and that I had to be here to prevent that accident from occurring.

  “I wasn’t sure exactly where you were filming your series and I couldn’t figure out a way to get close enough to you to warn you about the gun. So I had a friend of mine who’s connected with a Honolulu magazine call your agent’s office. She told them that the magazine wanted to do an in-depth article about you and they agreed to set up an interview. My friend scheduled the interview to take place today on the set and got me a pass. I was supposed to interview you between ‘takes’ and I was planning on warning you about that gun just before the scene took place, but everything went wrong—the plane was delayed, the administrative assistant was late and then she couldn’t find my pass. By the time they got me to the sound stage, you were already starting to film that scene. And the rest of it you know.”

  He was quiet for a few seconds. “How did you know that it would
be today?”

  “I saw the date on one of those…I’m not sure what they’re called…that thing that they hold up before they start shooting to mark the film.”

  “A clapper. Or clapperboard.”

  She nodded. “It was a little harder to find out the time. I finally saw it on someone’s wristwatch.”

  “Wristwatches don’t show the time of day. How’d you know that it was going to happen in the evening and not the morning? We’ve filmed that early before.”

  She knew that he was testing her now, trying to see if he could find a flaw in her story. She understood. She would be doing the same thing if she was in his place. She stirred the water in her glass again. “I looked at you. In my dream, I looked at you just before they filmed the scene. You looked tired ... impatient ... as though you wanted the day to be over.”

  It startled him. She was right. That was exactly how he had been feeling while he was waiting for them to set up the scene.

  “So you bought a plane ticket and flew here all the way from Hawaii even though you weren’t a hundred percent certain?”

  “If I was wrong, I’d only be out some money. But if I was right, well, saving a life ... how could I take a chance and just ignore it?”

  “Why didn’t you fly in earlier? Maybe yesterday?”

  “The arrangements made by the magazine had to be for today and the studio set the time. Anyway, if I had flown in earlier and told you this story and you didn’t believe me or just forgot about it, the accident would have still happened.”

  His voice took on a gentler tone. “Why’d you tell me the truth? You didn’t have to.”

  “Like I said, I can tell that you’re a decent person.”

  “And how can you tell that?”

  She smiled just a little. “You wanted to know if I was okay and offered to drive me back to my hotel even after what almost happened to you.” She sighed softly. “Besides, if you’re in this business, enough people must lie to you as it is. I felt that you deserved the truth.”

  He didn’t say anything. He was taking it all in.

  “Listen, Mr. Hellstrom, you—”

  “John,” he said. “Call me John. You saved my life. We should at least be on a first name basis.”

  “All right ... John. You don’t have to decide whether to believe me or not. If I were you, I’d probably think that I was some sort of kook with an angle. Almost everyone in this town has some sort of angle I guess. But I don’t have an angle. I don’t want anyone knowing about this. That’s the last thing that I want. And I don’t want anything from you. Actually, right now, I just want to get on that plane tomorrow morning and go back to my life minus those dreams. I feel as though I haven’t really slept in three months.”

  “I don’t know why,” he said quietly, “but I do believe you.”

  She felt so relieved. “Will you keep what I’ve told you to yourself? I really don’t want it known.”

  “It’ll be our secret,” he promised. “It’s a pretty incredible story though. Leaves me with a lot of questions.”

  “I’ve probably asked those same questions a thousand times in the last few months. Why you here in L.A.? Why me way over there in Hawaii? Two very different people with such very different lives who would have probably never crossed paths except for this. I don’t have any answers.”

  “Well, I will be forever grateful.”

  “You don’t need to be grateful to me. For whatever reason, someone or something simply used me to give you a chance to continue your journey through life. Maybe you should just accept it and make that journey count.”

  He smiled. “All right, I’ll try to do that. Now, try the pizza. You can only really enjoy it while it’s hot—or, in this case, warm.”

  She smiled slightly and then began removing the slices of bell pepper that were embedded in the cheese.

  “I thought you weren’t particular about food,” he remarked.

  “Except bell peppers. I hate bell peppers.”

  He grinned. He didn’t even know her but he liked her. She chose to tell him the truth when a lie would have been easier. She spoke directly—no frills, no embellishments—in a voice that was soft, almost sultry. And she spoke to him as though he was just another guy that she had met. His celebrity status didn’t seem to impress her at all. She was petite, just a little over five feet he guessed, but there was a kind of strength or confidence that she projected which made her seem taller. And she was pretty, in a non-Hollywood kind of way. She wore modest makeup and dressed simply with no jewelry except a small pair of earrings. He noticed that, like himself, she didn’t even wear a wristwatch. But it was her eyes—her dark almond shaped eyes—that got to him. When she was talking about her dreams, he saw something in those eyes. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it made him believe her and feel that he could trust her.

  “So, Susan, where in Hawaii are you from?” he asked as they ate their pizza.

  “I live in Honolulu,” she replied, and offered no other information.

  “They’ve been doing a lot of filming in Hawaii lately.” He hated “small talk” but he felt compelled to say something to her even though she didn’t seem very interested in making “small talk” either. “Is Hawaii as beautiful as it looks on TV shows like ‘Pacific Heat’?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve never seen ‘Pacific Heat’.”

  He was a little surprised. “You’ve never watched ‘Pacific Heat’?”

  She shook her head. “Is it any good?”

  “It did well in the ratings all the way up to the end of the series.”

  “Why do they do that? End a series if it’s doing well in the ratings?

  He shrugged. “Sometimes story lines get played out, and then some people feel that it’s better to end a series while it’s still popular and not hang on until it has to be cancelled.”

  “How is your show doing in the ratings?”

  “It’s been doing okay.” He couldn’t help smiling. His series was one of the top-rated shows of the season. “When you said that you don’t keep up with Hollywood stuff or watch much television, you weren’t kidding, were you?”

  She smiled slightly. “I’m sorry. I guess you’re used to meeting people who are fans.”

  “No, don’t apologize. It’s kind of nice to talk to someone who isn’t getting me confused with the character that I play.”

  “Do people do that a lot? Get you confused with your character?”

  “All the time. Most of them are very disappointed when they find out that they’re wrong.”

  She looked down at her partially eaten slice of pizza and removed another piece of bell pepper. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand people,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “Why would they want you to be that made-up guy on the screen?”

  “He’s suave, sophisticated, and heroic. What’s not to like?”

  “But you’re real ... and a better person than him.”

  Her words and the tone of her voice surprised him. “What makes you say that?”

  It had irritated her to hear that people felt disappointed with the real him and her irritation had caused her to make a mistake. After watching him in her dreams, she felt that she knew his soul and the kind of man that he really was. But this wasn’t something that she wanted to disclose to him. She chose her next words carefully, focusing only on what she had observed about him since they had actually met.

  “I don’t really know you but ... well, you dress in regular, not too expensive clothes, you come to this place to eat pizza which, by the way, really is great pizza, you came after me to check if I was all right even when it was your life that nearly ended today, you weren’t insulted by the fact that I didn’t know who you were, and the entire time that we’ve been here, you haven’t tried to impress me with your star status. All those things tell me that you’re decent, grounded, and not conceited. Those are much better qualities than suave, sophisticated, and heroic. I think so anyway.”

  Her wor
ds were unexpected and they touched him inside. “Thank you for that,” he said quietly.

  Susan smiled a little, but her heart ached. She knew now that everything that she had sensed about this man was true, but she was also even more certain that she could never be with him in this lifetime. At least she had been able to protect him. For that, she was grateful. She just hoped that the life that he had chosen would not change him ... destroy him ... as it had so many others.

  “Something wrong?” He had been watching her and noticed the sadness in her eyes.

  She shook her head. “No, I think I’m just tired,” she lied. “Now that it’s over, the three months of barely sleeping are catching up to me. Anyway, I probably should get to the hotel. They might not hold my reservation if I’m too late.”

  “Oh ... sure.” He felt a twinge of disappointment. He hadn’t expected their evening to end so early.

  She stood and picked up the bill from the table.

  “Hey, what are you doing? I’ll get that,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” she assured him. “You nearly got killed tonight. You deserve a break. Besides, you’re saving me cab fare.”

  He was taken by surprise again. Then they got to his car and after letting her in, he noticed that she slid over and unlocked the driver’s door. This, he realized, was a very different kind of woman.

  As he climbed into the driver’s seat, he rolled his window down.

  “Do you mind if I roll my window down too?” she asked.

  He smiled. Most women he knew wanted their windows rolled up to prevent their hair from being windblown. “No, go ahead. The wind might be a little cold for you though.”

  “It’s okay. I like the wind,” she said as she rolled her window down.

  As he drove to the hotel, he glanced over at her. She was staring out of the open window, hair blowing in the crisp wind. She really was pretty, although she seemed so sad. Suddenly, he hit a large pothole in the road and they bounced hard.

  “Damn it. Sorry,” he said. “Are you okay?”