“Hi, Hailey, it’s Sean. Is Natalie there?”
An awkward silence fell. “Sorry, she’s not available. Can I take a message?”
Fuck. Whatever his father had really told Natalie must have been horrible. “What’s going on, Hailey?”
“Don’t put me in this spot,” she pleaded.
“Please.” A single word more powerful than just about any other he knew.
“She said not to put any of your calls through. I’m sorry.” The dial tone sounded in his ear.
He’d had a lifetime to build up his defenses when it came to the mind games his father played. But Natalie hadn’t. The old man had probably homed in on every perceived weakness and pushed as hard as he could in a short span of time.
What did Natalie always say, find a problem, fix a problem? Well he had one hell of a problem and he was going to do whatever it took to fix it.
Sean closed his eyes. Ignoring the pain racking his body, he did the one thing he’d never done before. He reached for the phone and called the man who’d led his father to him. Rupert Crowley owed him one—and he was going to deliver.
“Hello?” Crowley answered.
“You called my father.”
The reporter hemmed and hawed for a second. “Reunion stories are killer for the ratings. Come on, you’re in the business. You know this.”
The one benefit of being raised by a master manipulator was knowing how to focus right in on what made people tick. When it came to Crowley, that was easy. “What would an exclusive interview with me do for your ratings?”
Chapter Fifteen
A jittery sensation Sean hadn’t felt since before he’d stepped onstage to accept his Oscar buzzed through his body, leaving him anxious and unfocused.
“You ready?” Rupert adjusted his camera for the thousandth time. “We go live in a minute. No second takes on this one.”
“I’m good.” Sean stood on his mark and closed his eyes.
It was an old trick his first acting teacher had taught him: To center himself prior to a take, an actor closed his eyes and pictured the calmest place he could think of and then added in the other sensory details—the smell, sounds, taste, and feeling of it.
He didn’t know what others pictured; maybe it was a beach or field of flowers or some crazy shit. Sean had always pictured the stage of whatever set he was on. He may not have ever had a choice in being a child actor, but being on the set under the bright lights was the only place his father couldn’t get to him with a careless backhand or a vicious remark. It was his safe place.
With a deep exhale, he cleared away the darkness behind his eyelids and revealed an empty stage. On the next heartbeat he added the director, the camera operators and the sound guy. He inhaled the fresh–paint scent of newly finished sets, felt the heat from the Klieg lights and heard the muffled footsteps of the extras waiting on the edge of the soundstage. Everything was in place, but it remained ephemeral and hazy, like a half–remembered dream.
Sweat dampened his palms and a jittery breath broke the mental image into a hundred pieces. Once again he stood alone in his mind’s eye. He couldn’t fall to stage fright. Not now. There wasn’t going to be a second take, he had to get it right the first time. Everything depended on it. Fisting his hands, Sean tried again.
But instead of a stage, he stood in the Sweet Salvation Brewery. Billy, Hailey, Miranda, and all the others were on the edges of his vision, but it was Natalie who stood next to him, with her clipboard and her sweater with all those tiny buttons. He inhaled her honeysuckle scent, felt the softness of her creamy skin and heard the way she called his name in the throes of passion.
Immediately, his nerves faded in comparison to Natalie’s high–definition image.
After a final look at the woman who’d become his everything, Sean opened his eyes.
The camera light blinked on.
Safe in her pristine white office at the Sweet Salvation Brewery, Natalie ran her fingers across the smooth pearls around her neck. For years she’d restored a sense of calm by tracing the round orbs, but today was the first time since she put it on years ago that she felt for the gold clasp. Pinching her fingers together, she grasped it and popped it open. The necklace slid from her neck and clattered to the desk.
She held her breath, waiting for the beginnings of an anxiety attack—the static in her brain, the tightening in her lungs and the blurring in her vision.
It never came.
The horrible ache in her heart remained, but the pearl necklace couldn’t do a damn thing to repair that. She didn’t have a flowchart or an organizational system to fix it either. And for once, she was okay with that. She’d finally taken Max’s advice and made change her bitch. Mostly.
Her office door slammed open and Miranda tore across the room, skidding to a stop next to Natalie’s chair. “Go to Hollywood and Vine Reports.”