Hollywood Dirt (Hollywood Dirt, #1)(21)
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing dramatically. He looked at me, my worn black bathing suit, then down at the kiddie pool, as if some answer lay in its bright blue depths, then back at the house, his rental car parked at an odd angle underneath the dogwood tree, then back at me.
“Cole Masten is here.”
“Where?” Here was a very particular location. And I knew, for a fact, that he wasn’t here here. Yet, with an almost sinking certainty, my address just blindly passed over, I suddenly realized that here here was an eminent possibility, and I stepped out of the kiddie pool quickly, crossing the dry grass, until I stood right in front of Ben.
“Where?” I repeated with enough aggression for him to start.
“In Quincy. Just left the airport. That was his attorney. He wanted to know where I was, is bringing Cole here now, said something about his assistant being in the hospital.” The words came out in a mad rush, as if they wouldn’t be true if spoken fast enough, and I stepped back a step just to get away from their stench. “How far away is the airport?”
I closed my eyes, tried to think. “Five. Maybe ten minutes. Holy shit.” I glanced back down at my bathing suit, thought about my house, the dirty dishes in the sink, my tampon box on top of the toilet, the remnants of Ben’s and my mani-pedi party still on the coffee table, mail scattered on the table… this was bad. I took off running, the white-linen-panted gay close on my water-pruned heels.
“See, the Thompson family is one of the original forty-three. That was really the root of the problem. Summer is a sweet girl and all, but she just doesn’t have the family background, the rearing to handle difficult times with grace. That was the problem. You know the girl has no father. That should tell you something right there.”
“Marilyn, she has a father. He lives in Connecticut, that’s what Betty Anne says. He has some flesh-eating disorder where he can’t be around other people. That’s why they moved here.”
“That has got to be the most idiotic thing you have ever said. No, she doesn’t have a father. He ran off when Francis was pregnant with Summer; that’s the real story.”
CHAPTER 25
It turned out that the window didn’t roll all the way up. It was broken. Which was just as well since it was too hot to be in a truck with no air conditioning and no airflow. Brad DeLuca chuckled; Cole rolled the window back down, and took the phone that Brad passed him.
“The guy said he’s at 4 Darrow Lane. Do me a favor and look it up on my GPS.”
Cole opened the maps app and found the address. “It’s two miles away. Keep straight for a bit.”
The attorney nodded, and they continued on for a moment in silence, Cole spreading his feet and bracing out against the rock of the truck.
“I haven’t driven a truck in years.” Brad commented. “I’ve missed the stick.”
Cole laughed. “Yeah. I miss my Ferrari’s stick right now.” Maybe they could trailer it over. The truck hit a large pothole, and his hands found the dash and held on. Maybe not. His car wouldn’t last its first trip down a dirt road. He glanced over at the man, his fierce profile different in the light of the afternoon sun, his strong hands loose and relaxed on the wheel, his body as comfortable in the old truck as it had been at the Beverly Hills restaurant. Maybe DeLuca wasn’t such an *. Maybe he was exactly what Cole needed—someone who wouldn’t kiss his ass—someone who would give it to him straight, without the expensive bullshit that everyone in Hollywood sprinkled on their gluten-free parfaits every morning.
His optimism was punished with DeLuca’s next words. “I told that guy at the airport that I’d have his truck back in an hour. So I’m just dropping you off with this guy. His name is Bennington—he’s the location scout for the movie so he should know his way around town and be able to get you settled.” The sun shifted behind a cloud, and the outside world grew a little darker.
Cole glanced toward the sky. “Bennington?” he repeated.
“Yeah. Bennington Payne. I didn’t pick the guy’s name.”
Cole smiled, glancing down at the phone when it chimed. “Turn right here.” They eased around the bend, and Cole glanced back at the road they’d just left. They hadn’t passed another car since they left the airport. It felt strange after a lifetime in LA, a city where rush hour stretched twenty hours a day, and cars became second houses. He’d been to remote locations before, had filmed a samurai film in the Netherlands, had spent two months in Alaska, but this was the first time he had really felt the openness, the quietness, the solitude of a place. Maybe it was because the divorce papers and Justin’s accident were so recent, the two key parts of his life, of his armor, breaking off at once, his skin underneath raw and delicate. He watched the fields go by, perfect row after row of uninterrupted green and white. The phone buzzed in his hand, and he pointed to the right, to the large plantation house, ivory columns stretching up three stories, the wide front porch complete with a half dozen rockers, the ensemble framed by a chorus of hundred-year oaks. “That’s it.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Ben watched me in confusion, one perfect brow arched high as I tore through the house, a laundry basket in hand, scooping everything off every surface, my feet slapping at the floor, my damn bathing suit riding up my crack. The tampons, can’t forget those. I rushed into the bathroom, the yellow box dumped in, along with half of the contents of our medicine cabinet. Tonight would be fun, Mama screaming for Preparation H while I fished the remote control out of the loaded-to-the-brim basket.