Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(75)

He nodded, looking out into the front yard. The crickets were loud, and the bug light zapped more mosquitoes than it had ten minutes before.

“First, you better tell her about the reading problem.”

I shook my head and sipped my beer. “She thinks I’m this really honest guy.”

“Then you better get to it.”

“Yeah. Before we leave for Thailand. Or before I leave.”

“Atta boy.” He tipped his beer to me and we sat in silence, listening to the zzt of sparking mosquitoes.





CHAPTER 56


CARA


Brad got more disconcerted as the next two hours passed. He said he had a fight with Paula and acted like it was nothing. He drank a little, laughed less, hung out with his father on the porch but kept looking into the middle distance as if his mind was back in Los Angeles.

I helped clean up the bottles and dishes. Brad’s mom washed and I dried. Apparently, the dishwasher worked but was still not trustworthy with the good china.

I was just hanging up the house phone with the Disney hotel. They’d confirmed they’d mailed my phone to an Arkansas address for an ungodly amount of money. Erma fiddled with the silverware and asked a question that must have been on her mind.

“Is he a good father?” she asked.

I hadn’t thought about it. I didn’t think of parents as good or bad. They did their best or they didn’t. So I took my time answering.

“I’ve worked with a few dads in the business, and I have to say . . . he’s great.”

She didn’t respond. I hoped she believed me, because when push came to shove, he tried harder than the rest of them, and that mattered. He made plenty of mistakes, but Nicole would grow to see a man who was present for her.

“I had a feeling,” she said warmly.



His parents had set up Susan’s old room for me and Nicole, putting their famous son on the couch for the night. His childhood room was now his mother’s sewing room, and his room as a teen had been in the garage. It was used for storage.

“Honestly,” his mother said, “why would you come back here with that mansion you live in?”

“But that couch is for midgets,” he complained.

“You’re not too big for the floor, young man,” his dad replied with an eyebrow raised. “Unless you want to get one of your fancy staff to make you a reservation over at the Sleepytime Motel on Route 46.”

Brad snapped up a pillow and tossed it on the floor.

“I sleep late, Dad. Don’t step on me in the morning.”

So we settled in. I slept in Nicole’s bed.

“Where’s Daddy?” she whispered in the dark.

“Downstairs.”

“Is he coming? I can’t sleep without him and you. I’ll be scared.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“No! I—”

As if on cue, the door opened and Brad slipped in. I got up on my elbow, adjusting to the hallway light.

“Daddy!” Nicole sat up and turned down the sheets on his side.

“Shush,” he said, getting in fully clothed.

“You’re going to get in trouble,” I said.

“What are they going to do? Ground me?”

We squeezed into the twin bed, as usual. With his daughter curled up against him and the blue light on his face, I knew I hadn’t lied to his mother while drying dishes. We stayed silent for a few minutes, sharing a long pillow, existing in space together, until Nicole’s breathing got slow and regular.

“Is everything all right with Paula?” I asked.

“Yeah. I mean, no.” He paused and took a deep breath. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Was it what we talked about? What she’d been saying about you?”

“I don’t want to hang too much on that. Just that she knows I know, and I’m sure she’s pretty mad at herself, which won’t make her easy to be around.”

“Do you want to go back and work it out with her? We’ll wait here.”

He turned his whole body in the tiny slice of space left on the twin bed, and looked at me over Nicole’s head.

“Really?” he said. “You’d stay here while I went back to make up with her?”

“Yes. It’s not that big a deal.”

He reached over Nicole and stroked my cheek.

“You trust me?”

“To what? Negotiate a reconciliation? Or keep it in your shorts?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure I can find a cowbell around here somewhere.”

He smiled in the shadows. No cinematographer could have captured that moment better than my heart did.

“I bet,” he said. “If we got out of bed, she wouldn’t wake up.”

I slipped off the bed. He gently moved away, practically falling off.

Nicole shot up, looked at me with eyes half closed, then her dad.

“Where’s my pony?” she asked. I found it on the floor and gave it to her. She collapsed in a heap and was out like a light.

“I think we turned a corner here,” Brad said.

“I think so.”

He took my hand and pulled me out of the room. Down the hall, tiptoeing past a room where a man snored so loudly it sounded like a saw. We got to a door to the outside at the end of the hall.