Bad Boy Brody(89)

It wouldn’t be enough.

I would decide against it, only to have a new debate start in my head.

I could fly her to me. She could stay a few days and then go back to Shiloh. But I always knew she wouldn’t come.

Finn called a few times, but after I shot the first movie and flew to Iceland to begin shooting the next one, it was too hard to hear how she was. He always said the same. She was good. She was spending the day with Shiloh and the herd, and she would be with them for the evenings. Matthew relocated Finn and Abigail to Montana permanently. She was supposed to start building a huge resort that was half a waterpark. Finn was proud, boasting about how it would get national attention.

I could only think about how much more attention it would bring to Morgan, which wasn’t a comment I made. I held it back, and eventually those phone calls to Finn stopped.

Just like the attention of our relationship.

I didn’t ask Gayle if the paparazzi and blog sites were still talking about Morgan, but I knew a few still were. I got the alerts on my phone, and at first, they had been hard to read, but eventually, they became like everything else—nothing but a blur.

They couldn’t get up-close shots of her, and I wondered if Morgan was doing it on purpose to piss them off. If it had become a game to her. There was one where she held up a middle finger, but she was grinning toward the camera.

I had to think it was a game.

She could’ve easily disappeared, evading even the long-distance zoom lens. I told Finn to educate her on the distance they used for those cameras, and he insisted he had.

My phone pinged again, as if it knew I was thinking of her, and I pulled it up.

It was another shot of her, but this time she was running on the side of a cliff.

I sat up straight.

In all the other shots, she’d been staring at the person who took the pictures. She was either standing or sitting. She was never shot when she was on Shiloh, which told me she knew what she was doing, but this shot was different.

I touched the picture on my screen as if I could touch her again.

I was a fool.

I had to let her go. It would never work.

An incoming call replaced the picture, and I grimaced. It was as if Gayle knew I was considering going AWOL and she needed to crush the plan before it got off the ground.

I answered it. “I got your email from Shanna.”

Gayle had forwarded me an email from Shanna that morning. She told about the updated promotion schedule, which was more extensive than the first time I had seen it. The more press the movie got, the higher her allocated budget was for pushing the movie. I had to finish this last movie, and then the plan was to fly back to L.A. for a week before I had to start the press tour.

“That isn’t what this is about.”

Morgan . . .

Dread sank in me. Gayle was serious. “What’s wrong?”

“Okay. You’re going to get pissed at me, but you have to get over that for now.”

“What is it?” I raised my voice.

“Your sister-in-law got in touch with me.”

“Cheryl?”

“Yeah.” Gayle hesitated a moment, but I didn’t have the patience for that crap right then.

“Gayle!” I clipped out. “Spit it out.”

“Okay. Okay. Look, you must’ve talked to her about Morgan. Right?”

That dread was back and doubling.

“Gayle, what the hell happened?”

“Cheryl knows you’re miserable without Morgan. She said she wanted to meet Morgan, maybe see if there was anything she could do to help get you two together, but she was going to wait until you got back from your last movie. But then—”

She was hesitating again. She was on my last goddamn nerve.

“Gayle!”

“But then she saw a picture of Morgan, where she looked scared, running.”

I knew exactly what image she was talking about.

I checked the time stamp. It was an old alert that hadn’t come through right away.

Gayle kept going, dropping her voice lower, “She asked if I’d make the introductions. She saw that picture and didn’t want to wait anymore. I don’t know why, but she was adamant. She felt something was wrong and didn’t want you to lose your soulmate.”

Like she lost Kyle.

I felt the impending doom coming, though. She was leading up to something bad, and I bit out, “Tell me what’s wrong. Now.”

“Cheryl took your nieces to Montana. They’re missing.”

“What?” Cheryl was there? Cheryl took my nieces there? “What do you mean they’re missing?”

“Right. Okay. They got there. Cheryl was tired, and took a nap, and the girls were gone when she woke up. We don’t know what happened, but Finn called a local tracker. He could track them into the wilderness, but then he lost them. He lost their trail.”

She kept explaining, but I couldn’t hear her words anymore.

My heart was pounding.

A buzz was in the air, filling my ears and making my skin crawl.

It was growing louder and louder. It was blurring my vision.

I felt myself slipping.

Felt the way the phone cut into my hand.

The way I slid to the ground . . .

I couldn’t talk as everything slammed back into place, came back into focus, and I heard myself saying, “I have to leave.”