Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 66330 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66330 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Fuck. I really did love her.
While their conversation moved on, ebbing and flowing around me, I drank my beer and thought about Lily. The more I thought about her, the more the feeling intensified. I could lie by omission to the others, but I couldn’t deceive myself. For some fucked up reason, my mind had decided that Lily was the missing piece. Not any of the accomplished career women I’d dated over the years. Not any of the society women I’d been set up with now and then. Not any of the actresses who had made it all too clear what they were willing to do to get signed to The Walker Agency.
A twenty-three-year-old who happened to be my daughter’s best friend.
If I hadn’t been feeling so damn peaceful, I might have groaned out loud. Of all the fucked-up things to do to a man, the universe had really outdone itself with this one.
I pushed my empty pint glass away and shook my head when the bartender asked if I wanted another. I needed a clear head to figure out what the hell I was going to do. How I was going to get out of this without tanking my reputation, alienating my daughter, and generally ruining my fucking life.
I had to stop. The next steps played out in my mind. Telling her. Dealing with whatever emotions she threw at me. I’d deserve any of them. It made my guts clench, remembering that she had been a virgin before I came along. And when the storm had passed, and she had moved on…what then? That was where I stopped being able to visualize the next step. It was a slate gray wall that my mind refused to look beyond. Me, who had had a twenty-year plan since he was nineteen years old.
Frustrated, I tried another play. What if we just fucking went for it? Told everyone. Made it public. I’d find her another position—maybe one in an entertainment law firm. It would look shady as fuck if we were caught, but what if I just took her to the next big premiere? A couple of tongues would wag, but that was all. A few pithy comments, maybe a few nasty blind items on Perez Hilton with comments from Brand Development people thinly disguised as anonymous sources.
Yeah, that could work.
But then there was Halley.
My heart sank, and the peace shrank back as I pictured my daughter’s face screwed up in disgust as the realization that I was fucking her best friend. Because that might be all she could see, no matter how hard I tried to dress it up.
I was trapped between the two people who meant the most to me in the world, and the thing of it was, Lily had no right to be as important to me as Halley. I ground my teeth, trying to remind myself that Lily was not as important to me as my daughter.
Except she was, and I loved her.
“Is this your peaceful face again?” Garrett asked, pausing mid-sentence to study me with mock concern.
“Yes,” I growled.
When they laughed, I decided it was time for me to go. I could figure this out in my apartment where I could think more clearly. My plants never interrupted with stupid fucking questions or observations, and that was just one of the many reasons why they were better than people.
I nodded brusquely to the PI who had reappeared. He was sitting at the bar with a water, squeezing a second lemon into it. When he saw me, he jerked his head in the universal come here gesture.
I paused and glanced around, sure he must be talking to someone else. This wasn’t how we played this game. But now he was drying lemon juice off his fingers with a cocktail napkin and then holding up his hand, halfway between looking like a mob boss beckoning over a minion and a student half-heartedly raising his hand to answer a question.
I made my way over, trying not to show my surprise. He was probably going to ask me to buy him another drink, or maybe get him out of some of the parking tickets I knew he was collecting. He was getting too familiar, I decided. Son of a bitch would probably expect to be invited to The Walker Agency holiday party.
Up close, he looked like a basset hound. Droopy eyes, long face, cheeks that seemed to fold down from his hollow eye sockets. Friendly though, and a little sheepish. Again, I wondered what he was going to ask me for.
“Hey boss,” he said.
I realized it was the first time I’d heard his voice. Low, gravelly, like he’d spent a few years gargling rocks. But, like his face, friendly.
“I’m the boss, huh.” I slid into the stool beside him. I wasn’t sure why I was sitting down. If he’d asked me for something, I’d have refused by now and been on my way to the door. But he hadn’t asked, and he was looking at me with those sympathetic, droopy brown eyes, like I was the dog, and he had to put me down.