Previously...

Nathan returned to Los Angeles and was immediately taken into police custody. Jordan began to doubt Renee's story about Sierra's adoption, and after confronting her about it, she admitted that she was Sierra's birth mother.  James blasted Brooke for inadvertantly telling Ethan that Will was his father.  Miranda kicked Brett out, then boarded a plane to Mexico to get a quickie divorce.

Episode 56

"American Star"

Leilani opened the door at the Blackthorne mansion and greeted James and Nathan with an enthusiastic welcome.  They entered the foyer, followed by the limousine drivers who wheeled in several large designer trunks and suitcases.

“James, I don’t know how to thank you,” Nathan said.  “Your attorneys did a remarkable job of getting me released so quickly.  Eighteen hours in that cell was long enough.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” James cautioned his uncle.  “The D.A. hasn’t dropped the charges, despite all Jordan and I have done to try to convince him otherwise.”

“That’s painfully clear,” Nathan said and motioned to the sensor locked around his ankle.  “House arrest is better than jail, I suppose.  At least until they decide if a re-trial is in order.  And for the sake of our family, I hope it isn’t.  Don’t they get it that I’m innocent?”

“We’ll make sure that they do get it,” James promised, knowing in his heart that his mentor couldn’t have done the things they accused him of.  He was a good, descent man.  A man whom he looked up to since he was just a boy.   A man who he had wronged and had never had the opportunity to make it up to him.  This time he would.

Brooke and Stormy walked out from the parlor room and approached them eagerly. “James, how did everything go at the court house?” Brooke asked.  “What did the D.A. say?”

“I’ll fill you in later.”  His reply was short and bittersweet.  “I’d like you both to meet Nathan Blackthorne, the greatest actor and director this town has ever seen.”

“Welcome home, Nathan,” Stormy said and firmly shook his hand.  “I can’t tell you what an honor it is to finally meet you.  I’ve seen every one of your movies.  Dad has them all down in a refrigerated vault in the screening room.”

“Ryan, we have met before,” Nathan replied.  He’d left Hollywood before Stormy’s nickname took.  “You were only about so high but I remember you well enough.  You were a ladies man back then and from the sounds of it you still are.”

Stormy flushed and dug his hands into his pockets.  “I take after my old man,” he said jokingly.

James and Nathan laughed in unison, then Nathan turned his sights on Brooke and he stepped toward her, his watery eyes twinkling.

“And Brooke, you are every bit as lovely as James said you were,” he said and took her hand in his.  “The pictures in those horrible European rags don’t do you justice.”

Brooke shrugged immodesty.  “That’s very kind of you,” she said.  She couldn’t help but feel like an outsider.  James still wasn’t talking to her, angry over her betrayal of his secret about Ethan.  She decided to suck it up and fight for their marriage even if James was prepared to continue with his silent treatment.  “James has told me a lot about you.  I hope you’ll make yourself at home.”

Nathan didn’t take his eyes from hers for several awkward moments.  He licked his lips and turned to James with a look of uncertainty.  “Well I don’t know that I’ll be staying at the house,” he said politely.  “I certainly don’t want to impose.  I can just as easily take a suite at that hotel of yours, James.  I understand Miranda is running the place now?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” James insisted.  “We want you to stay here.  Besides, it’s part of the conditions of your house arrest.”  He looked around the entryway and realized someone was missing.  “Where is Miranda, anyway?” he asked.  “I thought she’d want to be here to meet Nathan.”

Brooke eyed Stormy and then put a hand on James’s shoulder.  “She had to leave town for a few days on business,” she replied and changed the subject from Miranda’s impromptu trip to get a divorce from Brett.  “I think Nathan’s room is ready.  Leilani made up the suite at the west end of the hall.”

“If you’re sure I’m not in the way,” Nathan said.

“Would you stop?” James said and directed the chauffer to the staircase.  “Maybe you’d like to take a nap before the party tonight.  You’ve had a long night.”

Nathan followed him up the stairs and shook his head with irritation.  “You seem to forget, James, I was the entertainer back in my day.  There would be parties at my bungalow on Alvarado Court every night.  I never took naps then and I don’t need to now.”

Stormy smiled and put an arm around Brooke as they watched the two men make their way upstairs.  Brooke couldn’t help but wonder how Nathan’s return would affect her marriage to James.  Would she fail to be as important to him now?  The not knowing if they were going to be all right was killing her.

After Nathan got settled, he took a walk through the house.  He explored the halls and various rooms where he’d once roamed, long before James had bought the house.  He pushed open the door in the family room to the hidden tunnels.  They were darker now, unlit and dusty, cracked paint and chipped brick crumbling to the floor.  A far cry from their origins.

 . . . . . . . . May, 1965 . . . . . . . .

He walked down the long corridor from the main house.  A tunnel of some kind with elegant sconces lining the walls.  Probably a servant’s passage, he decided.  All the big Hollywood moguls had them in their fancy mansions in the hills.  Through the thin walls he could hear the music and voices from Jonas Lamont’s cocktail party.  How he even got invited to his daughter’s birthday party he wasn’t quite sure.  After bit parts in three poorly received films he wasn’t exactly a star.  But his agent told him that Jonas Lamont had seen his work in Hathaway House and took an immediate interest.  So after buying a suit he couldn’t afford and driving his beat up Volkswagen to the mansion, he spent half an hour waiting for Lamont to approach him but as of yet it hadn’t happened.  So he decided to go on a sightseeing tour of the enormous mansion.  That led him through a secret passage from the family room.  As he made his way down the hall, the sounds of the party grew faint.  Now all he could hear was the silent crying of a woman.

Slowly, he pushed the door open when the passageway ended and emptied out into the pool house across the north lawn.  There, weeping on the side of a bed, was a young woman more beautiful than any he’d ever seen.

“I’m sorry, I must have taken a wrong turn-“ Nathan began, drawn to the young woman’s sad eyes.   “I’ll leave you alone.”

“Typical,” she said, suddenly feisty and devoid of the emotional mess he’d walked in on.

“I beg your pardon?” Nathan asked with a frown.  He was a dapper nineteen year old with black hair that was slicked neatly to the side.

“Why is it that men turn and run the other way anytime they see a woman crying?” she asked, dried her eyes with a handkerchief and stood up with a flourish.  She was a raving beauty with red hair and deep green eyes.  Quite spectacular, Nathan decided. 

He was dumbfounded.  “I’m sorry, I…” he stammered.  “I just didn’t want to disturb you.  And not all men are the same, by the way.”

“Tell that to Royce Jenner,” she sighed angrily.  “He shows up late to my own birthday party, smelling like another woman, and then leaves before the cake is even cut.”

Now Nathan understood.  “You’re Jonas Lamont’s daughter?”

She nodded and extended her hand.  “Jacqueline Lamont,” she said.  “Who the hell are you?”

“Uh, Nathan Blackthorne,” he replied awkwardly.  “Your father invited me.  I’m not quite sure why, but-“

“He wants you to star in his next movie,” Jacqueline cut him off.   “I heard him talking about it.”

The news sent butterflies through Nathan’s stomach.  “Oh, well, I…I….”

Jacqueline smiled and regarded him carefully.  “Do you want to swim?”  Before he could answer she walked outside to the pool and stripped off her wrap dress, revealing a turquoise one-piece bathing suit underneath.

“I ah…I didn’t bring a swimsuit.”

Jacqueline dove in, swam the length of the pool, and then bobbed to the surface with a smile.    “You don’t need one,” she said with a wink.

 . . . . . . . . Present Day . . . . . . . .

Nathan made his way to the library and inspected the dusty volumes of books that lined the walls.  He ran his hand along the shelf, impressed by how well the mansion had held up over the years.  He gazed up at a wall full of pictures hanging in concentric arrangements.  Some were of family, some were of old friends, some actors and actresses, and some friends long gone since the golden day.

 . . . . . . . . April, 1966 . . . . . . . .

Jonas Lamont was sixty-six years old and the most famous producer Hollywood had ever seen.  He’d had five wives, one of which, Elena, bore him a daughter, Jacqueline, and then passed away in ’64.  His single status now afforded him the luxury of having many tantalizing women at his beckon call.

Seated beneath the umbrella at a patio table by his pool, several young beauties tended to him dutifully while he sipped a long island iced tea.  He looked across the table at his newest protégé and slid a script across to him.

“The Benefactor?” Nathan asked as he read the title page.  “This is that script you’ve been talking about for a year, isn’t it?”

“The usual tale of love, murder, organized crime, everything that the public wants to see, and more,” Jonas explained.  “The lead is yours if you want it.”

Nathan was blown away.  He’d already starred in two of Jonas’s films, both catapulting him to fame in a matter of a year.  The Benefactor was the film that Hollywood had been buzzing about for as long as he could remember.  He couldn’t believe Jonas was offering it to him.

“You want me as the lead?” he asked.  “Are you sure that I’m right for it?”

“Of course,” Jonas replied as one of his doting lovelies massaged his shoulders.  “This is a part tailor made for you, Nathan my boy.  I guarantee it will seal your destiny as Hollywood royalty, right alongside me.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Nathan gushed with gratitude.

“No thanks required,” Jonas smiled.  “Just a favor that I ask in return.”

“Anything.”

“Marry my daughter.”

Nathan wasn’t sure if he heard him right.  “You want me to marry Jackie?” he asked.  “But she’s with Royce Jenner.  She’s crazy about him.”

“He’s bad for her,” Jonas insisted.  “Makes her miserable, creates a bad name for himself as a playboy running amuck with a new woman every night.  And for some reason Jacqueline takes it from him.  You’re much more suited for her, I think.”

Dumbfounded, Nathan struggled for words.  “Jonas, I-“

“I know you love her,” he interrupted.  “You have for the past year.  I can see it every time you look at her.  And I see the way she looks at you.  Why not make it official and take her away from the heartache that is Royce Jenner?”

“What makes you think she’d marry me?”

“Royce will never ask her,” Jonas reasoned.

Nathan hated the idea of Jackie’s father manipulating her life like that.  If she wanted Royce Jenner then who was he to tell her it was wrong? 

 . . . . . . . . Present Day . . . . . . . .

Nathan flipped through a dusty old photo album, one of the relics left behind from when Jonas owned the house.  He swirled a brandy around in a sifter and turned the pages with tan, overly-manicured hands.  He stopped, a pang of emotion that he hadn’t felt in almost thirty years as he looked at the photo of Jacqueline, himself, and Jonas posing out on the back lawn….

 . . . . . . . . November, 1969 . . . . . . . .

The Benefactor was a huge success.  Nathan became a household name in a matter of weeks after its release.  The joy over his newfound fame was clouded, however, in Jacqueline's insistence to have a child.  Despite her urging, he resisted, claiming that having a baby now would only distract him from his budding career.  Jacqueline somberly said she understood.  

The weeks of location shooting on his next film, Stockholm Syndrome, left their marriage strained.  He returned home early from shooting in the Swiss Alps just before Thanksgiving, stopped at a flower stand by the road and picked up a dozen red roses.  He entered the house, shook off his trench coat, and glanced around the dark entryway.  It was late, but Jackie was a night owl so he was sure she was still up.  He went upstairs and walked into their bedroom.  A flash of lightening illuminated the room, casting an eerie glow over Jackie and Royce as their bodies clashed together on the bed.

It was at that moment that Nathan realized his own quest for fame had become his undoing.  Jackie had gone back to Royce as surely as he had broken them up for his own personal gain.  Jonas had been the catalyst, but he went into it with open eyes, and lost his one and only love in the process.

“You couldn’t make her happy and so she went back to Jenner, what else is there to explain?” Jonas had demanded several days later.  “I should have known I couldn’t trust you to do right by my daughter!”

“She went back to him because I was on location nine months out of the year working for you!” Nathan exploded.  “Or have you forgotten that?  You were so busy worrying about getting her away from Royce Jenner that you didn’t stop to think of her happiness.”

“I don’t hear you complaining about your newfound fame,” Jonas insisted.  “You made a choice.  Your career or Jacqueline, and you chose your career.”

“You never gave me a choice!  You wanted to control everything and everyone.  No wonder you’ve failed so often in marriage.  I don’t think you’d know how to love someone, I mean really love someone, if you tried.  Instead you sit all alone in that big mansion of yours with nothing but your servants and your secret passageways to make you happy.”

“My daughter made me happy, but you drove her away,” Jonas exclaimed.  “She left town with that man and I don’t know when I’ll ever see her again.”

Nathan glared angrily at his mentor.  He knew arguing with him was useless.  It was his own fault for the way he treated Jackie.  Leaving her for so long while he cultivated his precious career.  Now he was paying for it.  And he would never be the same.

“Never again,” he said to himself quietly.  “Never again.”

Alex was sprawled out in bed at her home in Malibu.  She flipped through the television and found herself hard pressed to find a station that wasn’t talking about Nathan’s arrival and subsequent arrest.  She was floored to learn that he had already been released, remanded on house arrest until the D.A. decided when a re-trial would happen.  At least he was out of harms way at the mansion.  All she had to do was stay away and she’d be fine.

Lifting herself up off the bed proved to be exhaustive.  She lit a cigarette and gazed out the window at the roaring ocean.  Suddenly she realized that while she was safe from Nathan’s harm, others weren’t.  Miranda lived at the mansion, and could easily be one of Nathan’s victims.  Related or not, she wouldn’t put it past him.  And Brooke.  Well, did she really care about Brooke?  No.   But in good conscience she wouldn’t wish that kind of torture on any woman, even Brooke Taylor.  And she was certain that someone else would fall victim to his legacy.  Madam Valda had predicted it.

Sighing, she fled from the bedroom and down the hall.  Her nightgown billowed behind her as she made her way down the spiral staircase.  She paused on the landing, reflecting on a row of framed one-sheets from her film career.  Her eyes narrowed on the poster from Serendipity Express, her first film with Nathan.  It had been so long ago.  Now he was back and she was taken right back to that first time they’d met.

. . . . . . . . January, 1979 . . . . . . . .

Alex’s agent arranged a meeting for her with Nathan Blackthorne.  He seemed to have learned quite a bit about her prior to their meeting.  Like that she moved to Hollywood from Detroit just a year before, did some modeling and went through some auditions that didn’t pan out, until Double Strike Studios cast her in Bad Night, a B horror movie that got banned in most countries.  After that came Midnight Show, and more controversy over its graphic content.  Alex Reynolds, just 17 years old, had made a name for herself in the schlock shock basement, and Nathan was determined to turn things around for the raven haired beauty.  He was infatuated with her.

They met at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel.  Alex tried hard not to appear star struck, but she soon realized her efforts were futile.  Nathan Blackthorne was the most famous actor of their time.  She’d seen every picture he’d ever made and found him incredibly dashing, not to mention sexy.   Why he fought so hard to get a meeting with her was beyond her imagination.

“You really are lovely,” Nathan said as he watched her sip her Shirley Temple.  “I could see it on the screen the other night, despite your less than attractive makeup job.”

“It pays the bills,” Alex replied.  “Stephan Brackett was a joy to work with.  He’s a visionary.”

“If by visionary you mean a director who douses his lead actress in buckets of blood, then yes, I suppose he is,” Nathan said with a grin.   “Jonas Lamont has a new film he’s preparing for Lamont 3 called Serendipity Express.  A romantic comedy.  It’ll be my first stint at co-starring and directing the same picture.  I think it’s time you were involved in something really meaningful.”

“Meaningful?” Alex asked, the innocence in her eyes shining blatantly across the table.  “I’ve only always wanted to be a working actress.  I’m not interested in making a statement.”

“Well, you don’t have to make a statement to star in a self respecting film,” Nathan reasoned.  He took a deep breath and smiled at the exotic scent that emanated from her from across the table.   “Tell me that you’re satisfied with working for Stephan Brackett and I’ll leave you alone.

She only hesitated briefly before offering a coy response.   “I’m never satisfied.”

Nathan stared at the silky smoothness of her shoulders, covered ever so slightly by a satin halter top, and grinned devilishly.  “Then hold on to your hat, sweetheart, you’re about to become a star.”

. . . . . . . . June, 1979 . . . . . . . .

Principal photography for Serendipity Express took place in upstate New York aboard a real life passenger train.   Alex relished the attention from the cast and crew.  She had her own cabin as a dressing room instead of a dirty shack outside the studio at Kismet where she shot Midnight Show, and an actual hair and wardrobe person who made her more beautiful than she could have imagined.  It was all thanks to Nathan.