American Outlaw - Jesse James [108]
She laughed. “Ulterior motive?”
“Oh, maybe just a little,” I said. “So, hey, seriously, when are you visiting next?”
“In about two weeks,” Sandy said. “I have business I need to take care of—rewritten scripts to read, meetings with overbearing producers . . . you know. All that glitz and glamour.”
“Will you go out to dinner with me, then?”
“Oh, I suppose.” She laughed. “You’ve been the perfect gentleman to this point. I think you should be rewarded.”
“Hey, all right!” I whooped, overjoyed.
“Okay, calm down, calm down.” Sandy laughed. “Actually, the truth is, I’d love to see you.”
As promised, she flew into Los Angeles precisely two weeks later. We made our plans to go out. The night of our date, I drove my brand-new black Porsche 996 Twin Turbo to her house to pick her up. Kind of cheeseball, I know. But I was trying hard to be classy.
“I thought we might go to Balboa’s,” I stammered nervously. “Do you like steak?”
“Yes,” Sandy said. “That’d be great.” She patted my hand. “Calm down. It’s good to see you.”
I mostly relaxed after that, and enjoyed being in the same space as she was. At the restaurant, I noticed how nice Sandy was to the hostess, to the waitress, to the guy who took our car—to everyone.
“You kind of have to do that, huh?”
“Kind of,” she admitted. “But it’s not hard. I tend to like most people.”
“Don’t you ever wish you could just stop being famous?” I asked.
She thought about it and laughed. “Oh, I don’t know . . . only every single day, that’s all.”
I grinned. “What’s the worst thing about it?”
“Hmm,” Sandy said. “There’s so much to choose from. There was a stalker for a while. That’s a pretty big downer.”
“I just don’t comprehend stalkers,” I said. “It’s dumb.”
“You mean, you wouldn’t wait outside for twenty-four hours to steal my trash? My goodness, what’s wrong with you?”
“I might have tried to steal your trash,” I said, smiling. “That is, if you hadn’t agreed to go out with me.”
“Well, good thing I agreed,” Sandy said, sweetly. “Anyway, I had to see.”
“See what?” I asked.
“Well, I just wanted to know if . . .” She turned her head to look up at me. “I wanted to know if the feeling that I’d been having on the phone with you would be the same in person.”
I grinned. “And?”
“And . . . yes,” she said, laughing softly. “It’s exciting. I really like how I feel around you.”
I drove her home at the end of the night. We stopped in her driveway.
“Well, I had a lovely time,” Sandy said. “Do you think we should do this again sometime?”
“Yes,” I said instantly.
She laughed. “And when would you like that to be?”
“Tomorrow.”
We both burst out laughing.
——
Our romance grew from there, although in a much more deliberate way than I was accustomed to. I came down with the flu the next day, and I couldn’t go out. I half expected Sandy to zoom over and nurse me back to health; but no, she left town as she had planned. It became clear that Sandy wasn’t going to give her heart up easily. That wasn’t because she didn’t like me, she just wasn’t simple to win over like that. All that was cool with me, I decided. Recent experience had shown me that the chaotic, head-over-heels sensation of wild infatuation might not be the best way to begin a relationship.
Anyway, I’d always enjoyed a challenge. So I continued to court her from afar, trying to win her trust and her approval. My steadfast efforts were rewarded when, several weeks later, Sandy invited me down to Georgia, where she was working on a project.
“How about you come down and keep me company? It can get awfully lonely, way down south,” she said, laughing. “Even though I’m a Southern girl at heart.” Sandy had spent part of her childhood in Virginia and had gone to college at East Carolina University.
“Hey, my bags are packed,” I said. “You don’t have to ask me twice.”
I flew down to see her, and drove a rental car out to where she was staying.
“Pretty rural,” I remarked. “What do you guys do for fun out here?”
“I’ve been running to stay in shape,