Ruined (Barnes Brothers #4)(36)

“Sebastien, spill it!”

“He sent me a script, Zach. I’m going to talk to him.”

***

Marin was pissed.

Still pissed, almost a full day later, but that didn’t stop her from doing what needed to be done.

She’d finished up a project three weeks before and was supposed to start another in a week, but thanks to a medical problem—aka the female lead was in rehab—that project had gone to the back burner.

Her schedule was clear.

That meant once she dealt with things here, she could disappear for a while.

And man did she need to.

JD sat across from her, his eyes shrewd as he studied her. “Is everything okay?

“It’s fine. I’m just feeling at loose ends now. You know how I am when I don’t have things to do. But I’m going to fly to my place in the Smokies and just take some time off.” Marin offered a smile that probably looked convincing enough. “It’s been a rough year.”

He nodded, not looking convinced. “I take it things didn’t go well with Sebastien.”

“No.” Getting up, she moved over to the window and stared outside. “Things didn’t go at all well with Sebastien.”

“I was afraid of that. Did he finally decide to start tearing into you, too?”

She glanced back at him with a faint smile. “Not like he does with everybody else.” She wasn’t about to tell her manager that she and Sebastien probably would have had sex on the counter in his kitchen if Dash hadn’t interrupted them with his call.

When he didn’t answer right away, she went back to staring out over LA. JD had most of the top floor for his agency and his office had been tucked into the southwest corner, facing out over the sprawl that was Los Angeles, California. On a clear day, Marin could stand at those windows and see forever.

More often than not, she saw smog.

Today, it was rain. An unseasonably chilly front had moved through, and the change in Los Angeles’s normally mild weather had people rushing for their designer coats.

But Marin had driven here in just a light sweater, the cool temperatures making her think of chilly fall days back in the Smoky Mountains before her parents had decided to move to LA when she was still a child.

She still went back to Tennessee on a regular basis and she kept a home there in addition to a cabin she’d bought in the Rockies and her town house in New York. She liked feeling at home when she traveled. So naturally, she just bought homes in the places where she was at most often. Hotels sucked.

“You look tired, Marin.”

She made a face at her manager over her shoulder. “I am tired. I didn’t spend the night in one place for more than three weeks while we were finishing everything for the opening of Whiskey Row and as soon as that was done, I was back to filming. Won’t be too long before I’ll be called back for the postproduction work, and then it will be time to gear up for the prerelease madness.” She shrugged and went back to staring out into the rain. It had been raining for nearly an hour and it made her wish she was at home with a book and a cup of coffee, not dealing with business. “But I’ll have plenty of time to rest as soon as I’m done here.”

“Your vacation.” JD nodded as he got up from behind his desk. He refreshed his coffee and poured her a cup without asking, bringing it to her after he’d doctored it with cream.

She accepted and took a sip. It didn’t hit with quite the same zing as always. Her stomach had been acting up on her the past couple days. Just another thing to lay at Sebastien’s feet.

If only he wasn’t a jerk. If only he wasn’t still in love with Monica.

Her eyes started to burn, but she refused to linger on any of that. She’d cry him out of her system while she was taking some time off.

Putting the coffee down, she sighed. “Look, maybe in a few more months, you can try again. Right now, Sebastien is just too . . .”

“Angry?” JD offered when she couldn’t find the right word.

“Well . . .” She remembered the frenzied passion between them and how it had turned so quickly to anger. But was anger really at the root of it all? She didn’t know. “I’m not sure if he knows how he feels right now.”

“Maybe he doesn’t,” JD said, moving to join her at the window. “But sitting at home and refusing to come back to his life isn’t helping, either.”

“I know.” Without lifting her head, she shifted her gaze to the endless wall of rain. “But I think it’s getting better. He’s heading out to see his folks—or at least thinking about it. That’s more than he’s been willing to do in a while.”

JD nodded, but his expression remained grim. “This isn’t just about the movie, you know that, right?”

“Of course I do.” She caught his hand and squeezed. JD had been with her since she’d started out and he was just as much a friend as anything else. He cared about his clients. In a world where actors and actresses came and went more often than fashion trends, he stood by his people. He believed in them or he didn’t work with them—and JD clearly believed in Sebastien. “We want to make everything better for him, but we just can’t. That’s up to Sebastien.”

JD didn’t have any response for her.

After a moment, she leaned over and kissed his cheek. He was a few inches shorter than her and usually one or the other made a wisecrack, but today, neither of them had the heart. “I have to get going. I need to finish up some last minute things before I head out of town.”