Hollywood Dirt (Hollywood Dirt, #1)(63)

Later, Don would tell me I was brilliant, that the scene was perfect—one of the few in his career that had been captured in a single take. Later, I would nod and laugh and accept his praise as if I hadn’t been breaking, as if Ida and Royce had no correlation with Cole and me, as if I had been acting and not living through the skin of Ida Pinkerton.





CHAPTER 69


Three years ago, I should have known. When I called Scott and he didn’t answer. When I went by his office and he wasn’t there. I should have known that something was wrong, I should have seen the signs and put them together. But I didn’t. I was twenty-five years old and na?ve and in love, and I thought that best friends and fiancés didn’t mix.

I didn’t even pick up on it when I saw Bobbie Jo’s car parked behind the barn at his house. I thought, with a week before the wedding, they were planning a surprise for me—thought I was going to walk in and catch them red-handed with a honeymoon itinerary to Amelia Island spread out on the kitchen table. I almost left. Almost got back in my truck and drove home… to let them plan my surprise, to let them have their moment of AHA! where I would act surprised, and they would be clever, and I’d get the honeymoon of my dreams after all.

I would have done exactly that were it not for Scott’s mother. That was why I was hunting him down to begin with. She’d called me from home, needing her medication, and he was supposed to have picked it up that morning. She was in pain, and I was the future daughter-in-law, swooping in to her aid. I was feeling pretty good about myself, about my surprise, about my loving fiancé and doting best friend. I was all but bursting with happiness when I walked around the side of the house and toward the front porch. I was so busy in my personal positivity party I almost didn’t hear Bobbie Jo moan.

But I did. I heard her moan, and I heard him groan, and I realized, in the moment before my foot hit the first step, everything that I had overlooked.





CHAPTER 70


When Cole’s phone rang at six fifteen in the morning, he contemplated ignoring it. Glancing down at his watch, he kept pace, his feet quiet on the soft dirt, the fields stretching out before him, the sun low behind the trees, the sky pale pink and peaceful. He didn’t want to talk to his attorney right now, not when he was breathing clearly for the first time in days, his mind working through things that it had stumbled over for the last week.

Like Summer. There was a problem there, between him and her. A problem that had only disappeared during the twenty minutes in her bed. Too short of a time. Embarrassing, really. Nadia would have laughed at him and pushed him off. Then again, he’d never come that quickly with Nadia. He tried to put his finger on what was different with Summer, what had set her apart. He was just starting to work through that when DeLuca’s call came through. He declined the call.

He’d miss this when he went back to California. Running outside, the give of the soil beneath his feet, the breeze devoid of pollution and competitive fight. Maybe he’d try the Observatory when he got home. Run those hills and bring Carlos and Bart with him. Be aware, with every step, of the paps documenting his trip.

The call came through again, and he slowed to a walk, answering the phone. “Hello.”

The man’s voice came through a wall of static and missed vowels.

“I can’t hear you,” Cole said with a smile. “The service here sucks.”

There was another staccato string of words, * and summons coming through clear.

“I’ll call you from a landline when I get home.” Cole ended the call and turned off the phone, killing his music at the same time. It didn’t matter; he’d think more clearly without it.

It had been a mistake, changing the scripts. Infusing sexuality into The Fortune Bottle might work well for the movie, but it was raining hell on him. It’d taken every bit of his self-control to stand before Summer, her skirt around her waist, her lace panties, the contrast of her skin against the dark stockings, the dainty garter… his fingers had twitched against her skin, his common sense on a thin ledge, his lines forgotten, the set and crew forgotten, everything fading but the tremble of her and the images of everything he wanted to do to her. He’d been rock hard when he had yanked her skirt back into place and stepped away, had walked to the viewing room bathroom and found pre-come coming out of his dick. “We didn’t get the kiss,” he had griped to Don. It had been easy to feign irritability, to scowl, to call her a rookie. It had been easy to argue with Don when he’d said that the kiss didn’t matter, that the scene was even hotter from the lack of kiss. Foreplay, Don reminded him, can be the hottest thing. And wasn’t that the damn truth.

But today, they would need to get the kiss, would need to document that transition in Ida and Royce’s relationship, to properly build for the sex scene that would eventually come. Jesus. He would kill himself on that day. There was no way, without some release, that he’d last.

A truck approached from the opposite direction, and he jogged right, to the side of the road, his hand mimicking the driver’s and lifting in a wave. The truck rumbled by slowly. Another thing that would never happen in Los Angeles—a friendly wave to a stranger. Especially not from him. A wave would prompt the car to stop, then others, a crowd mobbing him for autographs and selfies, a start that wouldn’t have a finish until he was called an * and documented on every gossip rag and Twitter feed as such. He hadn’t been approached once in Quincy. It was odd. Almost scary. He’d wanted to ask Summer about it, had set it aside as a safe topic for the next time they were cordial. That’d been three weeks ago. Cordial just didn’t seem to be in the cards for them.