Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(30)

I said it as if it was an option, but Cara had been clear she wanted to move on.

“Come on, man.” Arnie circled the table, eyes on the balls, still in sunglasses and with cigarette. “If you’re not going to tap that body, at least let me do it.”

“No and no.”

He pulled his smoke from his lips and wedged it between two fingers he held up for me. “Just twice. I wanna see how those tits shake when she’s taking it from behind.”

“Shut the f*ck up, Arnie.”

“Then I wanna see her face with my dick in it.”

When I was twelve, Grady Markham had made a crack about my sister’s face. Something about how it would look with her knees on each side of it.

I’d been deeply offended. That’s what I told the sheriff when he was in the principal’s office. “Deeply offended.” Which was southern for “So f*cking mad I had no problem breaking a soda bottle on the table and slicing Grady’s cheek open.”

That was my sister. He was insulting my family.

Arnie saying shit about Cara wasn’t anything like that, because she wasn’t family. No, my feelings weren’t brotherly, but the rage was the same. Arnie put all the things I’d thought about Cara in the most disgusting and disgraceful words possible.

Which made me disgraceful.

And this was the woman who took care of my daughter.

So it was family.

But it wasn’t.

But it was all confused and I was mad as f*ck.

My hand, my left hand, oddly, considering I was right-handed, swiped at Arnie’s blue wraparounds. They went flying, exposing Arnie’s fox-colored eyes and thin eyelashes.

“Fuck? Dude?”

“I mean it. That’s my daughter’s nanny.”

What does that even mean?

Fuck that. I didn’t know what that meant and it didn’t matter. I only had a debt to white-hot rage. I put my finger in his face.

“Any single human being who takes care of my daughter is off-limits for tit-shaking and face-f*cking.”

Nice going, using Nicole like that.

Arnie put his hands up like some wronged party. A guy who’d stepped into a pile of shit from someone else’s dog.

Maybe he had. Maybe what I felt had nothing to do with him.

“You know what?” he said. “You want me to keep it in my pants, hire an ugly one, yo. Don’t be dangling some bombshell bitch in my face and say I can’t even talk about touching it.”

“It? You forget where you’re from?” I admit I carved off a little of my voice coaching to make the point. “No Redfield boy talks like that. Your mother didn’t raise you to call a lady it.”

“Don’t you tell me about home. When was the last time you went home? Buddy redid the bar, and you didn’t even go see it. You have nieces and nephews telling all their friends Uncle Brad’s famous, and I bet you don’t even know what they look like. I bring them presents when I go. No.” He wagged his finger at me. “Don’t you tell me shit. I love this life as much as you, and I still make it back home.”

You know how that hit?

It hit below the belt, right where Faye Sweeny kicked me in fifth grade and I passed out. Arnie wasn’t Faye though. She sent me a handwritten note apologizing. Arnie went right back in.

“Buddy fixed Margie up.” Slap. Sunk the six. “Your nephew’s graduating high school. He can act, you know? Biggest talent in Redfield since you.” Slap. Sunk the one off the seven. “And how about taking your daughter around?”

“You know what, you f*ck? You sit around here telling me what to do? Want to live my life? I have a three-hundred-page script to memorize and a f*cking kid. Sure, let me take a vacation in Arkansas. Great idea.”

Arnie threw his hands up. “Fuck this shit.” He took a step away from me and swooped up his glasses, then pointed them at me like some community college professor. “I’m your friend. Until you die, I’m your friend. With or without the house. I don’t like outsiders and I like the life here. But you gotta take care of what’s yours.”

Fuck him. I couldn’t get home. I didn’t have long before I was shooting on location in Asia, and you don’t just leave a movie in preproduction. It wasn’t the money. Not my money, at least. Hundreds of people had planned the shoot and without the lead actor no one had jobs.

I wondered if I had time to talk my nephew out of acting.

Did I have time to go back? If push came to shove, could I visit? Bring Cara and Nicole?

I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to see the street I grew up on, because it was still f*cked up. My parents wouldn’t move. Fixing up their house and my sister’s just made them nice houses in a town that was like a prison.

And I was different now. Leaving was frowned upon. Sure, my friend Buddy was happy for me, but he was going to give me shit that I thought I was better than him. He married his eighteen-year-old girlfriend when he knocked her up and here I was with a secret kid. Party boy. California dude. Shot down from the sky.

Since when do you care what he thinks?

I didn’t care, and I never judged him or anyone.

I should have brought Nicole first thing. I didn’t care what they thought, but they’d think I lost my manners. And they’d all ride me because I’d knocked up a girl. Like Buddy did. Like Dad did.