“Morning, Harrison.”

He gave me his normal nod, but his smile was absent.

“What’s wrong?”

The big man glanced up the stairs and sighed. “It’s Miss Woods. She hasn’t gotten out of bed. She won’t open the door or talk to me. I don’t know if she’s ill or if it’s something else.”

“I’ll go talk to her.” I rested a hand on his arm.

He looked caught off-guard, then, slowly, a smile bloomed across his face and he nodded at me. “Thank you, Miss Cruz.”

I headed up the stairs, hoping I wouldn’t get lost. I’d only been to her room once, and the house was massive.

I found it easily enough and knocked on the door.

“Harrison, go away,” Florence said, her voice thin.

I reached for the doorknob and opened it.

She looked at me, the movement achingly slow. Her lashes dropped down over her eyes, and she blinked. After a moment, she sighed, then went back to looking out the window.

“Go away, Maya. Please.”

I didn’t go away. “What’s wrong, Florence?”

To my horror, she started to cry.

I rushed over to the bed and sat down next to her. She reached out and caught my hand, gripping it with surprising strength.

“I can’t…I can’t,” she said. Over and over again.

“You can’t what?”

“I love him so much, Maya. But he doesn’t love me. He barely kissed me last night. He didn’t want to come in—he hardly touches me. It’s like…I don’t even matter to him!”

Guilt twisted my insides into knots, and I struggled not to let it show. “Honey, that’s not true. He asked you out to dinner last night, didn’t he?”

“And then he treated me like…like…like I was his sister or something!” She watched me with despair and shook her head. “He doesn’t want me.”

I remember the burn of his mouth on mine, the urgency of his hands.

Swallowing, I stroked Florence’s hair back.

“Florence, you just have to give it time. Men are…well, they are a mess. He might think he’s being respectful, not rushing you and all.” I offered a weak smile, unsure if I sounded convincing or not.

“We’ve already…rushed.” She licked her lips and ducked her head, looking at me only from the corner of her eyes.

“You mean you’ve…”

Her cheeks turned pink, and she wouldn’t look at me at all now.

“Oh.” I shrugged, trying to ignore the sting of jealousy I felt. “Okay. Well…you know, guys aren’t always in the mood, no matter what people may say.”

Florence looked at me, her eyes wide. “Is that…is that all you have to say?”

“What else do you expect me to say?” For a split second, I thought maybe that she’d realized that I had a thing for Glenn, but then I figured it out. This wasn’t 2017—or even the seventies, the so-called age of free love. My grandmother had loved to tease me about how my generation had most definitely not discovered sex.

This was 1962, and women were still expected to behave nicely and be good girls. Men could be rakes, particularly in Hollywood, but women like Florence, who wanted a respectable career, they didn’t do things like that.

I scooted closer to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “So, you slept with him. Big deal.” Sure, maybe I felt like my insides had turned red-hot with jealousy, but they were involved. Not me and him. And she was hurting. “I guess you’re feeling down because he didn’t…want to come in last night?”

I was treading my way blindly, but when she nodded, I figured I was on the right track.

“Like I said, guys aren’t always in the mood.” I took her hand. “Come on. You have to get up and get moving. You need to get to the studio.”

She tried to resist. “I don’t want to. I barely slept. I cried half the night. If he sees me like this…”

“If he doesn’t see you, he’ll know you’re upset. You can’t ever let a guy see that he got to you.” I gave her a stern look. “And you’ve got responsibilities. You don’t want them thinking you can’t be trusted to live up to your responsibilities, do you?”

She gave me a baleful look, then finally, with a hard sigh, she heaved herself upright. A slinky, pale peach negligee slid off one shoulder, and she tugged it up. “Can you get Harrison to bring me up some breakfast?”

“Absolutely.” I headed out of her bedroom. Leaning against the wall, I closed my eyes. This was all turning out to be harder than I’d expected. And it sounded like things weren’t exactly going smoothly between Florence and Glenn, either. I’d have to work on that. Somehow.

It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that her life depended on it.

* * *

Nibbling on my lip wasn’t doing anything to help with my nerves, but it was better than chewing on my nails.

And I was seriously nervous.

Glenn had just slid outside, and he was leaning against the wall where he’d kissed me four days ago. I had the timing down almost to the minute.

He stood in the sun, face lifted to the rays and eyes closed.

I had to talk to him, and all I could do was stare and try not to lick my lips…and think about licking him.

Florence had been a bit of a wreck for the first hour of rehearsals, until she finally found her groove and things smoothed out. They were doing a full dress rehearsal, so Glenn was wearing a pair of work pants that, I assume, would have been worn by a man in 1940s America. He also had on a work shirt, but it hung open on his chest.

My fingers itched to trace all that golden, tanned skin and those lean muscles.

I had to go over there.

Slowly, I moved out of the shadows.

My foot hit a pebble and the noise of it skittering across the ground had Glenn straightening and looking over at me.

His eyes widened and I saw the faintest hint of a smile forming on his lips.

“Hi,” I said softly. He glanced around furtively, before his gaze settled on me.

“Hello.”

“We…um…well, I need to talk to you.”

The smile widened.

Oh, boy. “It’s about Florence.”

The smile faded and he propped his shoulder against the wall, his eyes neutral now. Moving a few feet closer, I glanced toward the door that led to the set before meeting his eyes again.

“Florence is in love with you,” I said, the words all but tripping over themselves to get out. I had to do this before I lost my nerve—and my determination. He wasn’t mine. That’s all there was to it. He wasn’t mine.

“No. She’s not.” Glenn shook his head and looked away.

“Excuse me?”

Glenn shoved a hand through his hair, then caught my gaze again. “She’s doing the same thing everybody does. She got this idea in her head that we’re this perfect Hollywood golden couple, and she’s fallen in love with that idea. She doesn’t like uncertainty. She needs to have some focus in her life, and it’s not easy for her when she doesn’t have it. But that doesn’t mean she’s in love with me.”

“It doesn’t mean she’s not!” Frustrated, I planted my hands on my hips, glaring at him.

“She spends more time gazing at me and sighing than she does talking to me.”

“You probably intimidate her!” I snapped.

“I don’t intimidate anybody.” He glared back at me. Then abruptly, he took a deep breath and held up his hands. “Look, I like Florence. She’s nice. She’s sweet. She’s definitely beautiful. But I don’t love her.”

He shoved off the wall.

He came close, his eyes dropped to my mouth. “If I had to be honest, there’s only one woman I’m interested in right now. And she’s standing right in front of me.”

My heart slammed hard against my ribs, and the oxygen in my lungs had started to burn. I opened my mouth to say something, but my throat had gone tight, and I couldn’t say anything.

Just a few inches remained between us, and he closed those up in a blink, reaching up to cup my cheek.

“Nothing to say?”

“Don’t,” I whispered. My voice cracked, and I cleared my tight throat to try and make it easier to talk. It didn’t help much. “You…me…look, I’m trying to explain things to you right now. Florence is fragile. You need to be focused on her.”

“I can’t. I know she’s had some trouble, and I’m sorry for that, but I can’t give her what she wants. I’m not the guy for her.” He stroked his thumb over my lower lip, and my heart skipped a beat. “I don’t care about her like that. I just…don’t.”

And again, his gaze dipped to my mouth, ever so briefly.

“Don’t,” I whispered again.

“Why not?”

“Because I’ll like it too much.” Because I could come to crave it. Because it wasn’t right. There were a hundred other reasons, but I had no luck saying anything save those few words.

“That’s kind of the plan,” he said, dipping his head and pressing his lips to my ear.

I shivered at the warmth of his breath dancing over me.

He kissed a path along my cheek, right to my lips, and that made me shiver more.

As his mouth closed over mine, I lifted my hands and pressed them between us. I told myself I was going to push him away.

I didn’t.

Curling my hands into the front of his shirt, I clung to him.

Some part of my brain was screaming at me and telling me to stop it, to stop him. To stop this madness.

The other part was giddy, prodding me on as I curled my arms around his neck and leaned against him.

The heat of him was shocking. His open shirt meant we only had the thin material of my bra and blouse separating us, and my nipples tightened into hard, aching points immediately. He slid one hand down my back, bringing my hips into fuller contact with his.

His cock was hard and when it pulsed, my pussy echoed in response.

I wanted him like I’d never wanted anything.

I could understand instant addiction when it came to him.

I could understand wanting somebody even when I knew it would be bad for me, and bad for others. I was already on a one-way road to hell, and I didn’t care—not in that moment.

His tongue licked at the seam of my lips, and I opened for him, desperate for another taste of him, a real taste. But he didn’t give it to me right away. He teased me, his tongue flirting with the entrance of my mouth, and in a moment of desperation, I sought him out.

He groaned in approval and the hand on my spine tightened, fisting in my shirt.

We moved—or rather, he did—and I just blindly followed.

A few seconds later, my back was pressed against something—the brick wall. Glenn slid both hands up my torso. The feel of his palms felt entirely too good against me, and I didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to think.

I only wanted to feel.

The necklace all but burned against my chest, a fiery reminder, and abruptly, reality crashed back into me.

I can’t do this…

The diary. My uncle’s words.

Glenn slid his mouth from mine, kissing a path down my neck and I closed my eyes—against the sensation, against what I was doing, against the memory of what my uncle had said.

“How did she die?”

“She killed herself. She was involved with this guy—another member of the Hollywood elite—Glenn Jackson. He was terribly talented, you know. One of the best. But while Glenn might have been a good-looking guy and a great actor, he was apparently something of a heart-breaker. He left a slew of ladies in his wake. Most of them were fine with his love ‘em and leave ‘em style, but there were some…Florence was one of the worst. When he left her, it destroyed her. She killed herself. And she wasn’t the only tragedy in his world—they seemed to follow him.”

Tragedy seemed to follow him.

I couldn’t be a part of that.