Love Me True

No way.

This wasn’t the first time her life had swerved disastrously off course because of Joey. Not that she was about to admit, even to herself, that it had.

One minute she had been a normal bride-to-be returning home from one of those stuffy society affairs. Bored and tired, she’d stepped into her vast bedroom with the familiar, rose wallpaper, high ceilings, antebellum furniture, and tall windows. Then she’d punched a button on her answering machine and her mother’s shrill voice had jolted her into this new reality. Until then Heather had convinced herself she really could marry Larry Roth and make Daddy, who was up for re-election, very happy.

That was before Joey Fasano, bad-boy movie star, had stomped back into her life with his usual vengeance.

Except for Joey, nobody had ever known, least of all her parents, what to make of their mercurial, free-spirited, unpredictable daughter. As a baby she’d gotten into so much mischief during naptime—like the afternoon she’d pushed a stool to the stove, stood on her tiptoes, and turned on the gas jets because they smelled funny—that her mother had been forced to tie a net over her crib.

Not that a net and a few red satin tie-downs could contain a spirit as lively as the nimble-fingered Heather’s. The very next afternoon she escaped her netted prison and poured all the soap powder onto the bathroom floor and played in it like it was a sand pile.

If the adult Heather had a bad case of bridal jitters after her mother’s message, maybe it was natural under the circumstances.

It isn’t every night that your old boyfriend, who just happens to be the sexiest movie star in the universe, wins an Oscar and throws your life into a tailspin. Leave it to Joey to clasp that golden statuette to his heart and confess to millions in that low, choked voice that he couldn’t forget her.

Not that she’d caught his memorable performance live. No, to please her mother she’d hosted a fund-raiser and had taped the show. She’d come home exhausted only to be drawn into Joey’s seductive web by that little red message light.

Her mother had been frantic.

How come Joey Fasano, the big, bad movie star, thanked you, you of all people? My daughter? How come he said you were unforgettable? You promised you wouldn’t see him again! Have you been in contact with him, Heather Ann? Your father’s very upset. Call me. We have to talk. Oh, this is your mother. I don’t care how late you get in. Call!

Heather hadn’t won her unpredictable, mercurial stripes by doing what her mother told her. She yanked the phone off the hook, kicked off her high heels, and fast-forwarded the videotape. Sinking to the floor, she watched Joey collect his prize—over and over again, scarcely daring to breathe. Every time, he rasped her name and then the word, unforgettable. In fact, even though she was headachy with exhaustion, she might have watched him again if a twig hadn’t scratched her barred window.

Her hand froze on the remote, her nerves responding on some instinctive, primitive level. With a keenly honed ear for danger she strained forward, listening to the night sounds outside the mansion. There was only the wind rushing through the trees along the bayou. Only the distant hoot of a solitary owl. Then a tugboat’s light flashed through the avenue of oaks, and lurid shadows leapt against her window shade.

She jumped up, thinking to race to the hall to check on Nicky again.

The dark shape dissolved. Nothing was out there. They weren’t in any real danger as they had been two years ago. She reminded herself of the high fences girdling the grounds, of the bodyguard patrolling those fences.

Unforgettable, rasped Joey’s low voice in her tired, incredulous brain.

Joey was the reason she was so jumpy. It had taken her years to get over him. Not that it was easy; he was America’s number one sex symbol. Posters of him in skin-tight black leather were plastered all over the world.

Joey doesn’t matter. Who cares what he said about you tonight on national television.

You are in Louisiana a million miles away from him, a million worlds away from him. You are getting married. He’s a movie star. You’re a single mom. He forgot you years ago.

Heather wasn’t used to wine, or the almost mystical clarity it can bring to confused thoughts and repressed emotions. Her cheeks were flushed. Her long-lashed violet eyes were misty as she felt things and knew things she’d refused to deal with—like the real reason for the string of unsuitable boyfriends that had followed Joey till she’d finally settled on Larry.

Her father was worried about the upcoming election. She lifted a snapshot of Nicky and shivered at the thought of what Joey might do if he found out she had a son.

Not if.

When.

Men like Joey Fasano should come with warning labels tattooed on their foreheads at birth—too sexy to handle. Or danger—testosterone overload. Girls with too many hormones should be locked up in a nunnery till they were wise enough to deal with boys like Joey.

From the second he’d crawled out of his cradle and cast his moody-broody, black eyes on Heather, who’d lived on the ranch next to his, he had oozed way too much charm for a girl of her madcap, irreverent nature to resist.

Six years ago, Heather had finally come to her senses and had told him to get out of her life or else—or else being her father. Until tonight, when Joey had seared her with his megawatt, know-it-all grin and thanked her—her—on live television, she would have sworn they were through with each other forever.

After all, she was marrying the man of her father’s dreams in a week.

After all, Joey had made tabloid headlines recently by fishing the world’s most gorgeous supermodel naked out of his swimming pool.

But Joey had cradled his Oscar to his chest like a baby as he’d hunched over the podium and thanked first the Academy, his agent, and his director. Joey had gone blank for a second. Then he’d thanked her, Heather, the girl from his past, instead of the Lady Godiva of the tabloids.

He’d said she was unforgettable.

Dear God. Heather didn’t want anything Joey Fasano said or did to affect her ever again. His charm was superficial; his taste in women trashy.

Heather was an heiress, a retired photojournalist, a philanthropist, a mother. Her fairy-tale life was perfect without him.

Right.

Her life was a charade. She was such a consummate actress, she sometimes fooled even herself.

Static flickered on the silent screen of Heather’s television.

Why had she taped the Academy Awards show tonight, of all nights, when she had known Joey was up for Best Actor?

Why hadn’t she ignored her messages and gone to bed? Why wouldn’t his raspy voice stop inside her brain?

Why? Why? Why? Nothing about her feelings for Joey had ever made sense. Except they were intense So intense, she’d been running from them for years.

Thus, Heather sat huddled in a ball of misery beside the low table in her bedroom chewing the red nail polish off her long fingernails as she obsessed about Joey. Without thinking she slid two photographs together on the polished oak surface so that the smiling dark faces of the identical little boys lay side by side.

At the startling resemblance, she whitened. Huge dark eyes. Devil-may-care grins. Matching cowlicks over their left temples.

Now that she was moving back to Texas, sooner or later, Joey was bound to find out. She understood her fear. But she didn’t want to think about why Joey had stirred her so deeply on other levels.

Heather Ann, promise us you won’t ever tell Joey about Nicky.

Her parents and Julia had looked so white and stricken as they’d stood beside Nicky’s crib that she’d promised... again.

Heather’s long, golden, wavy hair was swept away from her solemn face into an elegant chignon. Her mother’s diamonds glittered at her throat. With her bare feet tucked beneath the red gown and her lips free of lipstick, she looked more like the disheveled wild-child Joey had loved than the sophisticated young woman of society at the fund-raiser.

Images, especially those on film, always affected her too profoundly. The particular pictures that quickened her pulse were of five-year-old little boys with curly black hair and jet-dark eyes that flashed with mischief as they dangled upside down from a tree.

A stranger would have thought the pictures were of the same boy. But Heather had taken one twenty years ago beside the clear waters of a spring-fed creek in central Texas and the other only yesterday on the muddy bank of the brown bayou in her backyard.

A stillness descended upon her as she touched the yellowed photograph of the boy in ragged cutoffs.

“Joey—”

He’d been an innocent boy then. Tonight, the man had seemed painfully bitter and edgily dangerous.

When she brought his picture to her lips, a single tear traced down her cheek.