The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(56)

“You know, if you recognised his talents, he might not feel like such a failure. He bloody worships you, and you treat him like he has the intellectual capacity of a houseplant.”

“And what talents would those be?”

“I don’t know, maybe the fact he fixed your car in about ten minutes flat this morning? The way he lit up like a Christmas tree when he started talking about engines and mechanics?”

“Cars are Charlie’s choice of expensive hobby. And they’re an even worse financial investment than my parents’ miniatures.” That sneer was grating on her last nerve. “You’re very warm in my brother’s defence. That comment about there being ‘just me’ didn’t last long, did it?”

“Despite all evidence to the contrary, I refuse to believe that your dickhead streak runs this deep. What did you just say about recognising reality when it’s right in front of you? I don’t want to fuck your brother, you wanker. But I like him, and more importantly, I assume you love him, and you’re both just wasting your relationship.” She was breathing too shallowly, thanks to his dick remarks. “It might be exhausting cleaning up everyone’s messes, but believe me, you get tired of being dictated to nonstop by people who only see what they want to see. I come from a family of personalities who think their way is the only way, and I recognise another one when I’m looking at him.”

There was a sharp glint in Griff’s dark, cynical eyes. “And I come from a family of dreamers, who choose to believe that the future will just work itself out, while someone else cleans up the mess.”

And apparently he recognised another one when he looked at her. Freddy lifted her chin. There was truth in that, but anyone who thought that was her sum total was not what she needed. In his turn, he obviously thought she might not be what he wanted. Another sting of tears threatened, and she bit them back.

She’d never been good at holding on to temper; when she flared, it was intense and short-lived. The anger was already starting to recede, and a deep, unhappy hollowness was taking its place.

“And believe me,” he added, with an unpleasant bite, his bastard side out in force, “I know all about your family’s desire to have their own way.”

Freddy looked up, trying to bring her focus back into the room and out of her head. God forbid she start orbiting in dreamland right in front of him. His words registered and she caught her breath. Did he think, too, that—“What?”

“Your father has finally achieved his objective.” Griff had retreated deep into that hateful, impenetrable coldness. When he was like this, the man who’d been so intimate and affectionate with her in bed did seem like something from a dream. “Having pushed through his plans to adapt All Her World into the most biased biographical film on record, he’s pulled in several favours in order to discredit me and my production company, and the studio has decided not to saturate the market. Your grandmother suddenly isn’t quite interesting enough to merit both projects.”

Freddy was frozen. “He wouldn’t do that,” she managed to get out. “How-however concerned he is with the business side of things, Dad’s always had integrity. He’s always made it clear to me that this industry can be brutal and—and dirty.” Her voice shook hard over the words. “So it’s important to do things the right way.”

“Well, for someone who turns up his nose at brutal, dirty tactics,” Griff said sarcastically, “he’s taking to it like a duck to water. End result: unless I can push back with my own connections in London, my film is on the backburner. Not indefinitely, if I have anything to say about it, but it’s certainly not going to provide the cash injection we need here any time soon.”

“I’m sorry,” Freddy said, after a moment, her voice strained. In the absence of anger, she was feeling naked—although her emotions seemed starker than her bare legs—but she didn’t move, just kept very still. “I d-didn’t know he was going to do that.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. If we’re talking about family relationships built on mutual honesty and respect, you and your father aren’t doing much better than me and Charlie, are you?”

Freddy flinched, and Griff turned away with a jerky movement and swore again, viciously, under his breath.

In the silence between them, that seemed to echo over a widening distance, her gaze went to the letter on the bedside table. “Griff—”

It was all there on her tongue; she wanted to just spill it out, all of it, everything that was nagging away at her. She wanted him to tell her she was being a typically melodramatic actor, looking for trouble where there was none.

But the derision in Sadie’s eyes had fixed in her mind, a lingering echo of her own past regret, completely throwing her off-balance. There was probably nothing in Freddy’s life that she was more ashamed of than that episode with Drew Townseville, and that shot had come unexpectedly and hit hard.

And her father’s face, the implacability. The end of the road when it came to hedging and dodging, putting off the inevitable. Show up at the audition, win the role of Marguerite, or forever alter their relationship.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the physical pain that had carved grooves into his face. His intense pride in his mother’s achievements. In Freddy’s potential.

A weight was pressing on her chest.