Page 4 of A Star is Scorned

“Oh?” he sputtered. “I tell you that I’m Flynn Banks, and all you have to say is ‘oh.’ Do you know how many women would kill to be in this car with me right now?”

She snorted. This time it wasn’t a manufactured response. What a pompous ass he was. “From what I could tell, it seemed like the woman back at the club would kill, all right. But it was you she was interested in murdering.”

His mouth hung open, slack-jawed at her response.

Livvy took a measure of delight in leaving Flynn Banks speechless.

But he found his tongue again quickly enough, leaning back in the seat and assuming a pose of casual indifference.

“Yes, well, some of my, er, former companions don’t appreciate what a challenge it is to be so in demand. ”

She raised her brow and rolled her eyes. “A challenge?”

He cast his hand to his forehead in mock distress. “Oh yes, dreadfully difficult being so sought after. But someone’s got to do it.” He winked at her.

Flynn Banks wasn’t anything like what she’d imagined. He was a rapscallion and an utter cad. Yet, she still liked him in spite of herself. “Ah well, we women thank you for your service, Mr. Banks,” she proclaimed in a phony transatlantic tone. “We’re ever so grateful for your sacrifice.”

“’Tis a nobler thing that I do now,” he started, before breaking out in laughter. The sound, rich and deep, was infectious, and she joined him almost instantly.

He might have a jaw that looked like it had been sculpted by Michelangelo, tourmaline-blue eyes that sparkled with mischief, and a luscious head of dirty-blond curls, but Livvy decided in that moment that his laugh was her favorite thing about him.

It wasn’t like anything she’d ever heard from him in a picture, though she supposed he didn’t often have a reason to laugh while swashbuckling his way through an adventure.

But it was full-throated, seeming to rise from the depths of his stomach, and it reminded her of cozy nights by a fire or the soft plushness of velvet.

They were nearing the end of Sunset now, the ocean dark in the twilight. The moon had yet to rise, and as the light faded, the waves crashed ominously in the distance. “So, if you’re not here because you like the pictures, what brings you to Los Angeles?” he asked.

She was taken aback. Maybe he wasn’t entirely self-involved. But she didn’t know how to answer. Because the truth was that she was there to be an actress. Even if that was never the life that she’d envisioned for herself.

“Erm, I came for a job,” she replied. There. That was a version of the truth.

She’d already been to Los Angeles once before, with Judy. Last year, when Judy convinced her to audition with her for a production of Macbeth at the Hollywood Bowl. Livvy ended up being cast as an understudy but then found herself playing Lady M when the original star backed out to shoot a film.

Now, Livvy was back. For her sister’s sake.

Judy was the one who wanted to be in pictures, as a hoofer.

But it was Livvy who’d signed a one-picture deal with Evets’s Studios.

They’d needed the money and a way to get to Los Angeles on a more permanent basis, so she’d taken the job and brought her sister with her. Because it got Judy to Hollywood.

The studio was looking to pair Livvy off with someone that could help sell her as a fresh new star—and the man they’d chosen was Flynn Banks. It was ironic, really. She’d never intended to be an actress. And now here she was, about to make a movie with her teenage dream.

“Ah, an enterprising young woman,” Flynn drawled. “My favorite kind.” Livvy blushed a little at the pronouncement and hoped he couldn’t see the rosy flush on her cheeks in the dark. “When do you start?”

“Tomorrow, actually,” she replied. That was also true.

“Excellent. A good day for it. I start a new picture tomorrow.” She giggled and then clamped her lips together, trying to hold in her laughter.

She could come clean right now. Tell him that she was his new leading lady.

But she was enjoying this sense of anonymity too much.

This opportunity to take him down a peg and be something other than yet another woman fawning over him.

Never mind that once, before the accident, that was exactly what she’d been.

She didn’t begrudge those women. She was certain, no matter how high his opinion of himself was, that he showed them a good time.

She was having a delightful evening in his company, and he wasn’t even trying to romance her anymore.

Though he was charming, debonair, and ruggedly handsome, the antics she’d witnessed tonight were a healthy reminder that she would have to avoid swooning at the sight of him throughout their time on set.

Flynn Banks was just a girlhood crush, and he needed to stay that way.

Besides, she’d come to Hollywood to work and help Judy chase her dreams of becoming a dancer. She didn’t need to be distracted by a rogue, even if he was Flynn Banks.

They hit the Roosevelt Highway, and he directed her to turn right, driving further into Malibu. “I’m about a mile down the road,” he told her. She nodded. It was fully dark, and she could only see as far as her headlights illuminated.

A prickle of fear ran down Livvy’s neck as she realized how vulnerable she was in this moment.

Alone. In a car. In a remote location in the dark with a stranger.

Her mother would have fainted at the very idea of it.

A rush of excitement trilled in her at the thought.

She’d been a very obedient, straitlaced girl.

But the idea of doing something that would have scandalized her mother was tantalizing.

She looked at him, and he grinned. It was a crooked smile that promised trouble, and she was sorely tempted to take that pledge.

“What—” they said in unison, both beginning to ask the other a question.

“Ladies first,” Flynn replied, and she silently exhaled, assuming that his next question was going to be about what she did for work.

“What’s your new picture about?” she asked. As if she didn’t know.

“Oh, the usual stuff, swashbuckling and skullduggery.” He smiled. She didn’t need the moon; that smile could light the road alone. “I play a doctor who is arrested for treason and sold into captivity. But once I escape from my captors, I embark on a life of piracy.”

“I see. And is there a lady in the picture?”

“Isn’t there always?” He winked at her. It was a look she’d seen him give on the big screen a thousand times. But somehow it was both startlingly intimate and larger than life right here in front of her.

The car slowed as her knees went weak, and her foot lifted off the gas pedal ever so slowly. He cast his eyes at her legs, still covered by the man’s trousers she’d worn to the Trocadero.

He gave her a knowing glance, but then continued. “She is the niece of the Caribbean colony’s governor, and I kidnap her for ransom. But she’s a fierce creature with a rebellious spirit. She secures me a pardon, and we take to the seas as pirate king and queen.”

Livvy knew the script by heart already. But hearing Flynn describe the plot, it was as if she was being told the story for the first time. “That’s so romantic.” Livvy sighed, forgetting for a moment that she was supposed to be unimpressed by the movies.

“I thought you would say it was ridiculous,” he drawled, seeming to know he’d caught her in a lie. “That something so silly would never happen in one of your precious books.”

“I like stories with adventure and romance,” she retorted. “One of my favorite books is Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.”

“That was my favorite as a boy.”

“You’ve read it?” she asked, a bit astonished. Flynn Banks didn’t exactly seem like the bookish, intellectual type.

He pressed his hands to his heart. “You wound me. Yes, I’ve read it. Upward of a dozen times I’d say. I learned to sail because of that book. Begged my father for lessons. Finally, one of our groundsmen, a retired sailor in His Majesty’s Navy, taught me how. Been obsessed with the sea ever since.”

“Sorry. I didn’t think—”

“That a movie star knows how to read.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she replied, a look of horror on her face. But he chuckled, and she realized he was teasing.

“It’s all right. It’s a fair assumption. To be quite honest, it’s been a while since I’ve read anything other than a script.” Something unexpectedly wistful gleamed in his eyes. “Hollywood is… How shall I put it? A distracting place.”

She nodded. “Oh, I’ve read about it in the papers. It’s a den of vice and inequity.”

He chortled. “That it is. And you’re looking at one of the city’s worst offenders.”

He seemed proud of that fact. As if he relished being a drunkard and a cad.

But there was something that charmed her about it too.

He was so unabashedly, unapologetically himself.

Livvy liked people who were honest about who they were.

Even if she had been hiding the truth of her identity all evening.

“Pull off here. That’s me on the left,” he said. She looked where he pointed, and she could make out the outline of a home on the shore. He’d called it a cottage, and she’d expected something small and charming, like the clapboard homes they’d passed on their drive here.

But this was no mere cottage. It was a looming piece of property, a mass of white stucco and colorful tile built in the Spanish style. It was, in short, the home of a movie star.

She pulled into the driveway, which was a collection of stone and grass, artfully designed to look natural. Flynn reached over and gently placed his hand beneath her chin, lightly pressing her mouth shut.

“Stop gaping,” he teased.

“I wasn’t,” she retorted, but he gave her a look.

“You were, but don’t worry, all the ladies are impressed by the size of my…house.”

He paused long enough to make her blush and then gave her a devilish wink. The man was incorrigible. Worse, she found it infernally attractive. She wondered if he might make a move, try to kiss her. Or even invite her inside.

But he didn’t. He simply leapt over the side of the door of her jalopy without even opening it. “Best to go out the way I came in,” he quipped. “Thank you for the lift, Miss…?”

She realized then she’d never told him her name.

Liv de Lesseps was the name she’d been given by the studio.

A shortening of her full first name paired with whatever the Evets publicity department had decided was suitably intriguing.

She could tell him that name now. He’d know the truth of who she was in an instant.

But some small piece of her wanted to cling to this unknowing.

This interplay of two strangers who’d taken a drive together and whose paths were not meant to meet again.

So she gave him her real name. “Blount,” she smiled. “Olivia Blount.”

“Thank you, Miss Blount.” He tipped his hat, and then surprised her by reaching for her hand and pressing a brief kiss to her knuckles.

It was polite, the kiss of a knight to his lady fair.

But the sensation of his lips against her skin seared her hand, and she pulled it back, massaging her knuckles as they tingled with the ghost of his kiss.

He walked to the front door, and she began to reverse out of the absurdly long driveway. But as she neared the end of it, he ran back out and called after her. “Miss Blount, I’d very much like to see you again.”

She called back, “You will, Mr. Banks.” And she drove off without another word.