Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 106001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“Hi,” I whisper, fighting every impulse to kiss him, to hug him, to touch him.
“Hi,” he says, his dark gaze raking over me. “This whole time, I’ve wanted to take your hand. Kiss you. Touch you. Tell you that you look beautiful.”
My heart beats wildly. “So do you.”
Then, with fuck it in his eyes, he leans in, brushes his lips to my cheek, whispering, “Missed you so much.”
“Missed you too,” I say against his stubble. “Come over tonight.”
“As if I’d go anywhere else but home. With you.”
Home. That’s what he feels like. My home at last.
Then he leaves, and when my hummingbird heart settles down, I exit the alcove and head back along the hall.
But all the air vacates my lungs when a redhead pushes on the door to the ladies’ room in front of me.
I go still as a rabbit.
Maybe Isla didn’t see us.
But then she casts her gaze over her shoulder at me.
And she looks smug.
46
AND THE AWARD GOES TO…
Harlow
No big deal.
Maybe she didn’t see us after all. Maybe Isla’s face just looks like…that.
Maybe she did and she doesn’t care.
She hasn’t been around the table yet tonight. Everything will be fine. But as I return to the ballroom, my pulse is spiking. Prickles of sweat form on the back of my neck as I walk past the French doors again while the host takes the stage.
It’s Jude Fox, the British charmer who broke out on TV in Unfinished Business. He strides to the center of the stage as I scurry back to my seat.
“So lovely to see all of you tonight, and just remember if you enjoy your host, it’s custom to tip extra on the way out. I’ll pass a hat around,” he says.
The crowd chuckles softly, and my pulse starts to calm.
That was nothing with Isla. That was nothing at all.
I reach my chair and sit down, then let out a huge breath. She saw nothing. She knows nothing.
I glance around the table, reorienting myself. Someone from Vivian’s agency must have left for the restroom since there’s an empty chair next to Dad. He’s holding Vivian’s hand. Bridger is across from me. Dominic’s next to him. A few other agents are here. All is fine.
I breathe steadily again, settling back into the night, trying to focus on Jude’s monologue when I hear the sharp stab of stilettos against the floor.
The sound stops, and she’s here.
With a flick of her swishy hair, Isla drops into the empty chair and snaps her gaze to my father. “Derivative?” she hisses. She sounds like a snake.
My skin crawls. I tilt my head, listening as dread worms through me.
“Isla, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” my father says to her in his most placating, charming tone.
She whips out her phone, waggles it like a weapon, then she shoves it into his face. “It’s a pass, calling Happy-ish…derivative.”
Even while holding her loaded gun of a mobile phone, she manages to sketch angry air quotes.
Jude’s melodic voice booms from the stage, filling the ballroom. “And now for the Best Actor category. The nominees include Dominic Rivera from Sweet Nothings…”
Isla doesn’t stop. She doesn’t seem to care that one of the actors she crafts scenes for has been nominated for an award. What is she doing? Is she about to break up with my father in front of the ballroom of his contemporaries?
Holy smokes. I actually feel bad for him.
“I can’t believe this. After all I did for you,” she hisses to my father. But it’s a stage hiss, designed for the whole room to hear. “After all we shared, after Paris, after you broke my goddamn heart…You did this.”
She’s not dumping him. He’s already dumped her. My married father broke it off with his lover.
I drop my face, embarrassed for him. His affairs have gotten messier by the year, by the month as his ladies overlap increasingly.
Vivian jerks her gaze from my father to Isla and back. “Ian?” she asks. And that one word contains every question a wife could ask in this moment.
He squeezes her hand, like he did to Roselyn way back when. When Roselyn checked into the spa. “Nothing to worry about, Vivvy love.”
Isla huffs haughtily as she brandishes that phone like it’s evidence in a trial. The people against Ian Granger in the case of rampant infidelity. “There’s plenty to worry—”
Bridger clears his throat, lifts a hand as a stop sign, and cuts in. “Isla, now is not the time and place.”
His cool voice seems like it could soothe a wild beast, but Isla whips her gaze to him. Red fumes billow from her eyes as Jude rattles off the other nominees for Best Actor. “Oh, you’re one to talk about time and place,” she says to Bridger.
But he remains calm, trying to keep the peace. “Yes, I am the one to talk because that pass came from my office.” His volume low, but his command high. “You can take it up with me after the event. Not during,” he says, laying down the law.