Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(50)

What did I want?

“Everything,” I said. “All of it.”





CHAPTER 35


CARA


I didn’t know what to expect from Ray Heywood, but he couldn’t do anything worse than give me a hard time in front of everyone at Kate Martello’s.

I had a feeling it was going to work out all right. My Brad dream had come like clockwork, and I woke up not just turned on, but happy. He and I were a terrible match, but once I wasn’t Nicole’s nanny, I could at least prove to myself that these dreams and feelings were misguided. I was hungry for sex and affection. Not Brad Sinclair particularly.

Yes, once I wasn’t his daughter’s nanny, I could kiss him again, and it would be . . . sad.

I parked the car myself and crossed over to the back entrance of the restaurant.

Brad and I were going to have some kind of short-term fling that proved we were incompatible and then what? I’d fallen in love with Nicole.

Do not fall in love with the children.

I had a fantasy. Ray hired me back. I let Brad do all the things to my body he ever imagined.

But I didn’t have enough of an imagination to make the relationship permanent. So what happened to Nicole? I couldn’t be the first of many that drifted in and out of her life. I couldn’t break her heart.

The standard-issue dog pack of paparazzi hung out behind the velvet rope. They usually ignored me, which worked out perfectly, thank you.

I didn’t even look at them or look down when I passed. My mind was on Nicole, who I loved, and Brad, who was the worst kind of person in the nicest kind of package, berating myself for giving up one so I could have the other. I couldn’t see a way around it. Couldn’t see a way to have them both. Or even one without the other.

I approached the guy in the suit who let people in (or not) and was about to say my name when I heard it, loud and clear.

“Cara DuMont!”

I looked to the source of the call, and never found it, because it was drowned out by the entire dog pack calling my name and the uncomfortable sight of black lenses pointed in my direction.

“Miss DuMont!”

“Where did you get those shoes?”

“Where’s Brad Sinclair?”

“What did you say when he mooned you?”

“How was that kiss last night?”

I swallowed my heart and lungs in one gulp, but they lodged in my throat.

The kiss.

On the path to the pool house.

Of course someone had seen it, but I hadn’t seen anything on the web about it. No pictures had surfaced. Had I missed it? Who knew about it? Everyone? Insiders? The public? What were they saying? Was I a whore? Was I a curiosity? Who was I? I couldn’t hear, taste, feel anything outside the fracture in my sense of self.

“Miss DuMont,” the man with the dark suit said. I looked at him. Forties. Kind face. Tablet tucked in the crook of his arm.

“Yes.” I could barely get my voice past the organs stuck in my throat.

“This way.”

He led me through the doors, through the packed, loud room with the high ceilings. I recognized Fiona Drazen and Neville Rage without taking my eyes off the ma?tre d’s back. I didn’t want to know if they were looking back at me.

Ray stood when he saw me. Next to him, Kendall smiled with her long, shiny hair and bangly earrings. The ma?tre d’ held a chair out for me, and Ray sat after I did.

Kendall tucked her hair behind her right ear with her left hand. The stone in the engagement ring was the size of a lightbulb and twice as bright. She was my age. Taller. Richer. More sophisticated but not more worldly.

I didn’t know why I felt as if I had to compare myself to her. My name on the lips of a pack of paps had left me exposed to my vulnerabilities.

“Thank you for coming,” Ray said.

“I’m happy to. I’m sorry about what happened with Willow. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s fine—”

“We want you to know,” Kendall interrupted Ray, “that we don’t approve at all. She’s too young, for goodness’ sake.”

“She was supposed to be at volleyball practice.”

They jumped on each other’s sentences. It was kind of cute.

“And we spoke to the mother of the girl she was supposed to get a lift from.”

“The nanny was supposed to drive them home.”

“Never told us Willow wasn’t in the car.”

“Said it wasn’t her job.”

“And the woman we hired lost track completely.”

“And we thought you’d never do that.”

“Never.”

“Never, ever.”

They ran out of story. I let the end hang there. The waiter came and we ordered.

I didn’t know what I wanted out of these people. I’d come in hoping they’d offer me a job so I could leave Brad with another job ready, but sitting there, wondering what inconstant parenting had to do with Willow’s troubles, what they’d mean for Nicole, how much I wanted Brad, and what a fool I’d been to think we could keep it under wraps, I doubted everything. I was falling into the cracks between all the things I wanted.

“And Willow?” I asked. “She’s old enough to be held accountable.”