Bad Boy Brody(5)

It was fucking cold too.

Gayle was greeting our driver. She nodded, pointing to the bags that had been placed on the tarmac. As he went to put them in the trunk, she glanced to me. “Yeah. We lost an hour. It’s about ten right now.”

“It’s dark, and cold.”

“Yeah. It gets cold here at night, so make sure you always have a jacket with you, at least at night.” She frowned again before ducking once more and getting into the back of the car. She slid over as I sat next to her. Reaching for her seat belt, she said, “They’re hosting a party for your arrival. If you need a minute, we should stop somewhere.”

I switched from frowning to feeling a slight surge of irritation. I masked it. In some ways, Gayle had saved me over the last few months. I’d been an asshole to almost everyone. I didn’t need to start in on her too. It had been my choice to drink the bottle of Patrón last night. Not hers.

The driver shut our door, and we were soon heading from the airport. I rubbed at my forehead. I should’ve shaken the driver’s hand, been all gracious, which was what everyone wanted to see from a celebrity when they met one. I did none of those things.

Another asshole moment for me.

I’d have to give him a good tip when he dropped us off.

“Brody.”

“Hmm?”

“Do we need to stop or not? It’s an hour drive to the Kellerman estate.”

An hour-long drive? We were in fucking no-man’s land. “What’s going on again?”

She closed her eyes for a second, her mouth tightening before she let out a soft sigh. Her tone was markedly calm when she spoke. “We’re here to do the Karen Kellerman movie. You’re remembering that, right?”

I scowled. “You don’t have to treat me like a dick.” See. She was starting.

“Then stop acting like one,” she shot back.

I waited.

Her eyes widened, and she turned into a statue watching me.

I laughed. It’d been the first time she had let out Mama Gayle. “Wondered when that side would come out.”

I stretched my legs out in front, and right away, her shoulders loosened. She sank back into her seat, her hand falling to her lap. “You aren’t mad at me?”

“Gayle.” I covered her hand with mine and squeezed once before letting go. “I have been a terror to people in the last seven months. Trust me, I try to hold back with you, but I know some of it slips out.”

She laughed softly, her head falling back to rest against her headrest. “You can be . . . trying, yes.”

I chuckled. “It’s okay to want to strangle me. Just refrain from actually doing it.”

Her mouth twisted down. “You have reason, Brody.”

I felt a punch in the stomach. Yes. I listened to my brother die.

I needed a drink. The need just made my headache triple.

She reached over and patted my hand this time. “Plus, the whole reason I’m here is because Shelby was a calculating bitch.”

My scowl was firmly back in place.

Shelby had been the only other person who heard the call, and the bitch had her phone recording the whole goddamn time. She sold it to the media, and gave a few interviews hinting that my brother’s death hadn’t been an accident. There’d been no evidence that he killed himself. The police had looked. There’d been no suicide note, no indication that it was even a possibility. An eyewitness collaborated that he simply lost control of the car, but she dropped the seeds. No matter how much I loathed Shelby, I couldn’t shake the question if something else happened.

And the bitch was shocked and pissed when I fired her ass.

I growled, remembering the fucking lawsuit pending against me for unlawful termination.

Gayle was three times the manager Shelby had been, though. When Gayle came on, she’d been the one to push this Kellerman project.

I had wanted to do a superhero movie, which was still on the table. But Gayle had dug her heels in, claiming that my public image had turned to shit since Kyle’s death. I got a momentary grace in the public eye. Lots of sympathy and blessings, etc., but that had only lasted a week until I punched another actor at a bar. The media hadn’t cared that the dick called a friend of mine a slut. Phone videos and images had been sold, and the story had started a whole host of bad publicity for me.

As if overnight, I had gone from Hollywood’s heartthrob to their bad boy.

And that brought us to the whole reason I was being driven to somewhere I didn’t want to be to work on a movie I didn’t want to be a part of.

Gayle pitched the movie script to me, promising there would be Oscar buzz. That sounded amazing to her. Not me. Oscar buzz meant work. I had to be the good guy until I finally won, and that was if I won. The budget wasn’t huge, so I wasn’t getting as much money, but Gayle got this project as an attachment to the superhero one. If I didn’t do this one, they wouldn’t bring me on for that one. They were “concerned” about my behavior. I needed to be on time, be gracious, be professional, and act my way to an Oscar trophy.

I still wanted to know how the fuck this movie got tied to that one, but everyone got quiet whenever I asked questions. Gayle only kept saying that I would thank her later, and to be honest, I didn’t have much fight in me. Not for this, anyway.

Showing up and acting in this movie was small potatoes compared to the real shitstorm inside me.