Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(61)

“My dress! We have to clean my dress!”

Brad helped me up with his free hand. “Are you going to be sick again?”

“No. I’m fine.” I stood, hands hovering over my puke-soaked shirt.

“How much pie did you eat, woman?” Brad joked.

“Don’t say pie.”

Even the blue suits laughed as they led us off the lavender cup of hell. Nicole kept her hands a few inches from her sides, sobbing softly, saying “my dress my dress.”

Once we were on the golf cart, I peeled her dress off. She folded her arms across her chest and made a shivering motion. Brad took his jacket off and put it over her shoulders as the polka-dot golf cart whipped around the park.

“You should take yours off.” Nicole wrinkled her nose and pointed to my puke shirt.

“I agree.” Brad wrinkled his nose like his daughter. “You’d smell better. Not to mention look better.”

“Be good.”

Brad smirked. Nicole curled up close to him, breeze in her hair, and he put his arm around her. They were so damn cute.

Erin twisted around from the front seat.

“I called ahead to the first aid station.”

“No, really. It was just motion sickness. I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry, but park liability. You know how it is. If we let you go, you have to sign a waiver.”

“I’ll sign—”

“Just go,” Brad said. “They’ll take your blood pressure and look at your pupils. It’s a free checkup.”

“Brad . . .”

I had a list of good, solid arguments. But the way he looked at me stopped me from finishing my thought. He didn’t care about the free checkup, he cared about me.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” I said.

“I’m not.”

The cart came to a smooth halt at the first aid station.

“Was that the first lie you ever told me?”

He shrugged, letting a little smile curl the edges of his mouth. He hopped off the cart.

“We’re going to keep her company, right, pumpkin?”

“Yeah.” She held up her pink pony and made a squeaky voice. “We’ll go with you.”

Brad helped me off the cart while Steve led me through the glass doors. They opened automatically, but he still guided me as if I could trip over motion sickness.

Inside, the room was decorated to brighten the mood of injured children, with a train chugging along the perimeter of the room just below the ceiling and heavily branded toys and decorations everywhere. No corner was left uncheered.

A young woman with a pixie cut and pink scrubs met us at the door. Her stethoscope hung around a long neck, and she spoke to Brad before she even looked at me.

“Hi! I’m Dr. Barnes. We heard you were coming! Welcome!” Her gaze lingered over him 20 percent too long. She finally looked at me. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m really fine.”

“You’ll be out of here in no time. We get this a lot with the teacups. Come on in!” Back to Brad. “Mr. Sinclair, we have a VIP waiting room for you and your daughter.”

She led me to the exam room and pressed her back against the closed door and took a breath. It was only a moment, but the way she put the clipboard to her chest told a long story.

“He is magnificent,” I said. She seemed relieved I’d broached the subject.

“How do you even sit next to him?” She shook her head, pulling the pen from the top of the clipboard.

“I don’t do much sitting, to be honest. His daughter’s a handful.”

“I bet. Okay, sorry. That was terribly unprofessional.”

“He has that effect on people.”

“Yeah. Phew. Okay. Sit over here, and we’ll just make sure this was an isolated teacup incident.”

The brightly colored paper crunched when I sat on it, thinking about how Brad Sinclair had utterly crushed my professionalism.





CHAPTER 44


BRAD


When we got back to the hotel, Nicole chose a new set of clothes. She’d latched on to a DVD about bows and a blue submarine with squeaky little animal creatures. I’d tried to pay attention, but the text from Ken, my PR guy, came in just as I realized I’d never care about finding all the bows in the submarine.

Ken didn’t bug me about what happened on social media unless I needed to do damage control. That was rare, since my reputation was so borderline bad even mooning an employee barely registered a blip. I never explained why I didn’t do social media. Everyone assumed it was because I didn’t want to say anything I couldn’t deny later. They were right. Partly.

I skipped over the tiny words and went right to the photo Ken sent. Me and Cara on the teacup ride and the headline in bold yellow.



Shit. It was going to take me a few minutes to figure out what that said. I didn’t have a piece of paper either.

I knew it was already going to take some effort to keep Cara past her thirty days, but if this headline was bad, and I had to assume it was if Ken was texting, then I was going to have to bust my ass to keep her.

“What’s that say, Daddy?” Nicole asked. I didn’t even realize she was looking over my shoulder.

“Grown-up stuff,” I said. “Can you read it?”