Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(29)

CHAPTER 22


BRAD


Cara got out and unbuckled Nicole. I twisted around to look at her. She was freaking cute when she smiled. If I could harvest those dimples and sell them on the open market, I’d be richer than I already was.

“Turn around,” she said. “I need to fix this hair. Who made this braid?”

“Daddy!”

“It was perfect when we left,” I defended myself from the front seat.

Cara rearranged Nicole’s stray brown strands and dangling bobby pins into a tight ponytail.

“I’m going to do the balance beam all by myself,” Nicole said, patting her hair to make sure it was flat. “I won’t even be scared.”

A bobby pin popped off. Cara leaned over to get it. I could see down her shirt, and the way her naked body looked in the shower came back to me. I turned around to face the front.

“Hop down,” Cara said. Nicole jumped to the ground and pushed the door closed with both hands. Had to do everything herself. Was the self-sufficiency from my family or Brenda’s?

I didn’t know, but when my daughter turned and waved at me, I could put money on where she got the smile.

I hadn’t even known Brenda, really. She’d had a nice smile. The kind of smile you wanted to look at all the time because it was so warm. When customers came into the store, the girls came to me and everyone else went to Brenda. Everything about her had been inviting, but the smile was more than all that put together.

See, you do remember her.

I did. Not much more than the smile came to me though. I didn’t even remember our night together. Or nights. There may have been more than one. She was from a time long ago when I needed a comforting smile.

I watched Cara’s ass sway in her jeans as she went toward the double glass doors with Nicole’s hand in hers. She was something. Not my type. Too serious. Too bossy. She was an art film that had a SAG waiver. I liked big summer tentpole girls. Cleaned up and produced. Bigger than life. I could work them quick and move to the next without ever thinking about it again.

But that shower scene. Open mouth when she came. I shouldn’t have seen it, but I did. I walked right into it. I’d had a good thirty seconds where I could have turned around and gone into the other room, but I was turned on like a thirteen-year-old.

What kind of man stays and watches?

It was a shit time to assess my life, but it wasn’t like I had much of a choice. I’d gotten drunk the night before, but the escape had been short and painful.

I was a single dad.

The papers had already told everyone that. Ken made sure he used the phrase whenever he opened his mouth. I hired people to help. I painted a room in my house pink, but the words single dad still sounded like I was talking about a character I was playing. Like when the hosts on the morning shows say, “You’re a single dad when the spaceships land on Los Angeles. How did you prepare for the part?” And I say, “Well, Tammy or Joan or Christy or whatever, I just got myself this really cute kid. You should meet her. She’s the bee’s knees and my parents love her.”

This wasn’t a part I was playing, but I couldn’t shake feeling like it was all fake.

Cara held the door open for Nicole. My daughter deserved better, but she didn’t have better. She had me.





CHAPTER 23


BRAD


Arnie liked having a cigarette in his mouth when he shot pool even though the ashtray was right f*cking there.

I’d brought a few guys from Arkansas with me. They’d all found their own life or found their way home eventually. Not Arnie. Arnie was kind of an *. And by “kind of” I mean “completely.” My buddy Michael wondered why I kept him around. He said stupid shit, had a sense of entitlement that put people off, zero work ethic, and a very small constellation of talents. His gold chain was so heavy it made creases in the skin of his neck and he wore his sunglasses inside because he’d spent two hundred dollars on them.

He was the * who had nowhere to go. No one else wanted to be his friend. I felt sorry for him. In fifth grade, he’d given Ray Borden a shiner for calling me a pansy. In eighth grade, he didn’t tell Maryann Jonas that I was the one throwing pebbles at her window that certain night, even though her dad really held his feet to the fire. He’d let me copy his homework most days and corrected the spelling on my essays, never asking for a thing in return. The list went on.

So maybe he wasn’t a complete *. Maybe he just had a narrow worldview and no filter.

He was great at pool though. Geometry hadn’t been his thing in tenth grade, but somehow it came together for him when he shot nine-ball. He shifted a little, lining up, the gold rope curving along the edge of the cue.

“The nanny’s on her way out, right?” he asked, threading the cue through his fingers. I was sure he had the whole table figured out already. “Then I can go for it, right?” He looked at me over the top edge of his blue wraparounds.

“We’ll see.”

“We will.” He took his shot, sinking the eight off the one.

We’d agreed on a month, and time was up. It was going to be me, Blakely, and Nicole soon enough. Plus some mystery nanny the agency was searching for. I needed one who could travel.

“Might keep her,” I said, chalking my stick. “If I do, you’re sidelined indefinitely.”