by Tijan
She opened the freezer. “Holy crap. There’s enough chicken in here to last us till the movie’s done.”
The movie. The reason they were all there.
A grin tugged at the corner of Matt’s mouth, and he crossed the kitchen to the two large French doors. Standing there watching the horizon, the mountainside, he held his glass of bourbon in one hand and slipped his other hand into his pocket.
She was out there, and he had a hunch she was watching him back.
Finn moved to his left side, and Abby moved to his right.
All three Kellerman siblings looked out at the same time, each wearing a different expression.
A touch of wonder hit Abby’s eyes. A slight grimace flashed over Finn’s face, but Matt just kept looking. Unlike his two siblings, who had come to the house for the same project that would bring trailers of movie equipment within the week, he was home for a whole other reason.
Abby rested her head on his shoulder, saying softly, “I wonder what she’s doing right now.”
Finn grunted, finishing his bourbon. “Who cares? She wants to live out there with the herd of wild horses, that’s up to her.” He moved around to refill his glass. “Makes no difference to me.”
Matt didn’t say anything, only transferred his glass to his other hand and reached to grasp Abby’s arm in a half-hearted embrace.
Morgan was ten when everything fell apart, but they had gotten four years with her. Four years after their father married her mother and moved them into this house. Four years before everything ended in travesty.
Abby murmured again, “I can feel her in this house.” She shivered, looking around. “And it’s weird. It’s as if I can also feel Morgan.” Abby lifted her head, peering at her older brother. “Is Dad coming?”
Matthew shook his head with the slightest of movements. “You know how he is.”
Abby grunted.
They had two days to get the estate into shape because, within the week, actors, grips, the director, producers, and everyone from the catering staff to the actors’ assistants’ assistants would start arriving.
They were coming to film a movie about Morgan’s mother, about how Karen Kellerman was murdered.
Morgan
I saw them.
I was across the valley, standing on my own cliff while they stepped out onto my porch. I knew why they’d come. I went to the same meeting to approve the movie script, but that’d been so long ago.
Shiloh stepped close to me, nuzzling my shoulder. Her black nose, smoky grey coat, and mane rubbed against me. Her mother had almost been like mine, but since Shiloh was foaled, she and I were sisters. She could sense my unease as distinctly as I could.
This movie would be done. They would all go away, and they wouldn’t return. In the meantime, I reached up behind me, grabbed some of Shiloh’s mane and half-jumped, half-lifted myself onto her back.
She turned as soon as I settled, and the rest of the herd lifted their heads. They all turned down the path, heading to the better grazing in the next valley over.
Glancing once more back at my home, I mentally said hello and goodbye at the same time.
I was given human privileges, ones that I never took for granted. My mother’s inheritance granted them to me. I was able to stay where I was. I could avoid humans as much as necessary. Some knew about me. Some whispered about me. Some thought I was a ghost. Only my stepfather, stepsiblings, a few others knew the truth.
One day, I would have to join their world.
That wasn’t today.
I bent and laid my cheek to Shiloh’s back.
Brody
“Brody.” My new manager leaned over from her seat and shook my shoulder lightly. “We’re here. Wake up.”
My sunglasses hid my eyes, so she didn’t see I was already awake. Had been since the plane landed. The touchdown was rough, but it always takes a bit before we got to the private plane hangars for deplaning. No reason to move and upset the hangover headache that was already pressing behind my forehead.
I grunted my acknowledgement before sighing and sitting up.
A ghost of a frown crossed her face, but it was gone as soon as I lifted my head toward Gayle. Her eyebrows pinched together slightly, forming a middle wrinkle in her forehead. I almost grinned at the sight of it. Shelby would’ve panicked at the idea that she could even move her eyebrows. She would’ve fainted at the thought of a wrinkle up there. And that was one of the reasons why I enjoyed working with Gayle over Shelby.
There were others too.
Gayle was in her fifties, wore her greying hair long, and had a whole maternal side mixed with a kick-ass attitude. She didn’t take shit, but I knew she’d come to care for me over the last few months, and I saw how she was with her children. They were adult and grown, but they called almost daily to check in. That spoke volumes.
I knew she was wondering if she should say something about the headache. But she knew why I drank. Her familiar inner conflict shifted to if she said something about the drinking, then what? Then it shifted yet again to a resolute no. I was her client. I wasn’t her kid. If I’d been her kid, she would’ve kicked my ass in gear long ago, but no. She would round back to the fact that I was her client. She managed me. She didn’t raise me.
Or, at least I assumed she was thinking all that. Since replacing Shelby in the managing and publicist aspect, I’d witnessed the storm of expressions play out over her face too many times to count.
In the end, she kept quiet.
Like always.
But the same instinct that told me something was wrong with Kyle also warned me that there’d be a time Gayle wouldn’t keep quiet.
“Will there be water in the car?”
“Of course.” The attendants were already helping with our bags. Gayle turned to thank one as hers were passed to her, and then headed down the aisle. “If you need a painkiller . . .” She let the sentence hang as she disappeared down the stairs and onto the tarmac.
My bag in hand, I nodded my thanks to the pilot and attendants and then dipped down to follow. I had to take the sunglasses off. The sun had been high when we left California, but I was surprised by how dark it was. “There’s a time change, right?”
It was fucking cold too.
Gayle was greeting our driver. She nodded, pointing to the bags that had been placed on the tarmac. As he went to put them in the trunk, she glanced to me. “Yeah. We lost an hour. It’s about ten right now.”
“It’s dark, and cold.”
“Yeah. It gets cold here at night, so make sure you always have a jacket with you, at least at night.” She frowned again before ducking once more and getting into the back of the car. She slid over as I sat next to her. Reaching for her seat belt, she said, “They’re hosting a party for your arrival. If you need a minute, we should stop somewhere.”
I switched from frowning to feeling a slight surge of irritation. I masked it. In some ways, Gayle had saved me over the last few months. I’d been an asshole to almost everyone. I didn’t need to start in on her too. It had been my choice to drink the bottle of Patrón last night. Not hers.
The driver shut our door, and we were soon heading from the airport. I rubbed at my forehead. I should’ve shaken the driver’s hand, been all gracious, which was what everyone wanted to see from a celebrity when they met one. I did none of those things.
Another asshole moment for me.
I’d have to give him a good tip when he dropped us off.
“Brody.”
“Hmm?”
“Do we need to stop or not? It’s an hour drive to the Kellerman estate.”
An hour-long drive? We were in fucking no-man’s land. “What’s going on again?”
She closed her eyes for a second, her mouth tightening before she let out a soft sigh. Her tone was markedly calm when she spoke. “We’re here to do the Karen Kellerman movie. You’re remembering that, right?”
I scowled. “You don’t have to treat me like a dick.” See. Sh
e was starting.
“Then stop acting like one,” she shot back.
I waited.
Her eyes widened, and she turned into a statue watching me.
I laughed. It’d been the first time she had let out Mama Gayle. “Wondered when that side would come out.”
I stretched my legs out in front, and right away, her shoulders loosened. She sank back into her seat, her hand falling to her lap. “You aren’t mad at me?”
“Gayle.” I covered her hand with mine and squeezed once before letting go. “I have been a terror to people in the last seven months. Trust me, I try to hold back with you, but I know some of it slips out.”
She laughed softly, her head falling back to rest against her headrest. “You can be . . . trying, yes.”
I chuckled. “It’s okay to want to strangle me. Just refrain from actually doing it.”
Her mouth twisted down. “You have reason, Brody.”
I felt a punch in the stomach. Yes. I listened to my brother die.
I needed a drink. The need just made my headache triple.
She reached over and patted my hand this time. “Plus, the whole reason I’m here is because Shelby was a calculating bitch.”
My scowl was firmly back in place.
Shelby had been the only other person who heard the call, and the bitch had her phone recording the whole goddamn time. She sold it to the media, and gave a few interviews hinting that my brother’s death hadn’t been an accident. There’d been no evidence that he killed himself. The police had looked. There’d been no suicide note, no indication that it was even a possibility. An eyewitness collaborated that he simply lost control of the car, but she dropped the seeds. No matter how much I loathed Shelby, I couldn’t shake the question if something else happened.
And the bitch was shocked and pissed when I fired her ass.
I growled, remembering the fucking lawsuit pending against me for unlawful termination.
Gayle was three times the manager Shelby had been, though. When Gayle came on, she’d been the one to push this Kellerman project.
I had wanted to do a superhero movie, which was still on the table. But Gayle had dug her heels in, claiming that my public image had turned to shit since Kyle’s death. I got a momentary grace in the public eye. Lots of sympathy and blessings, etc., but that had only lasted a week until I punched another actor at a bar. The media hadn’t cared that the dick called a friend of mine a slut. Phone videos and images had been sold, and the story had started a whole host of bad publicity for me.
As if overnight, I had gone from Hollywood’s heartthrob to their bad boy.
And that brought us to the whole reason I was being driven to somewhere I didn’t want to be to work on a movie I didn’t want to be a part of.
Gayle pitched the movie script to me, promising there would be Oscar buzz. That sounded amazing to her. Not me. Oscar buzz meant work. I had to be the good guy until I finally won, and that was if I won. The budget wasn’t huge, so I wasn’t getting as much money, but Gayle got this project as an attachment to the superhero one. If I didn’t do this one, they wouldn’t bring me on for that one. They were “concerned” about my behavior. I needed to be on time, be gracious, be professional, and act my way to an Oscar trophy.
I still wanted to know how the fuck this movie got tied to that one, but everyone got quiet whenever I asked questions. Gayle only kept saying that I would thank her later, and to be honest, I didn’t have much fight in me. Not for this, anyway.
Showing up and acting in this movie was small potatoes compared to the real shitstorm inside me.
Forty minutes into the drive, I reached for one of the bottled waters. “So, tell me about this family and what’s going on tonight?”
“Right.” Gayle put the movie script she’d been reading aside and dug in her bag. She pulled out a huge packet of papers. “And before we get there, movies like this usually take five weeks, but this one might take longer. But don’t worry. I have everything handled with your schedule and, take this.” I did, and as I started to look through it, she started talking. “Peter Kellerman. He’s the main attraction for this movie because it’s based on his last wife’s death. The first one died long ago. Something health-related.”
Peter Kellerman. His photo and bio was on page one, along with an image of his latest hotel opening. “He has that hotel franchise?”
“Kellerman Hotels. It’s a global franchise, but his children are all in his newest venture. Realty. His oldest, Matthew . . .” I turned to the second page and there was Matthew’s image, along with a photo of him shaking the president’s hand. “He works for Peter. He oversees their operations on the East Coast. The other two are twins.”
I flipped the page again, and there were two separate images.
A girl was first, and the guy on the bottom half of the page.
“Abigail and Finley. They are both developers, and Kellerman Realty is currently on the rise in California because of them. They’re both good, damn good, at their jobs. Early thirties, thirty-two. And”—she motioned for me to turn the page again, so I did—“Finley is engaged to Jennifer Court. Now . . .” She took a breath, leveling me with a look. “Here’s the problem I see. I know you know Jennifer, but do I need to know how well you know her?”
My lip twitched into a crooked grin. “Are you asking if I slept with her?”
Her face remained impassive. She didn’t break a smile. “You don’t have female friends, and because you know her, I already know you slept with her. I’m asking if she is going to be a problem? Is there a reason for her to harbor resentment for you or hope to start up an affair again? They’re all going to be there. This movie is a big deal to them. It was their stepmother who was killed, and I’ve been told Jennifer is showing up too.”
Shit. “I know I’m an asshole, but I’m not the cheating kind of asshole.”
“You aren’t answering my question. Is she going to be a problem?”
I looked down and began reading through the bio Gayle had for Jennifer. “No, she won’t be. We parted on good terms, friendly terms.” I stressed the friendly part because it was true. Finishing reading what she had, my grin turned a little cocky. “And I know something you don’t have in here.” I held up the binder. “Jennifer is madly in love with her fiancé. The only way she’d look in my direction is if he turned out to be a cheating asshole and she found out about it.” I saw the warning flare in her eyes. “And no, I wouldn’t touch her even then. You have nothing to worry about. I will be professional.”
She grinned faintly. “Bad Boy Brody won’t make an appearance?”
I grimaced at what the media had dubbed me. “Bad Boy Brody will only show if I’m locked in my room and drunk and I don’t have an early call.”
Her lips pressed together again. “We’re in the middle of the mountains. I hope you use this project as a cleansing retreat. All that scenery and mountain air and shit.”
“I said I’d be professional. I’m not going to turn into a saint.”
She didn’t show any reaction, but I felt the disapproval from her.
Good thing I didn’t give a shit about that type of stuff either. I asked, “I read the script, but they never said why Karen Kellerman was killed.”
“What?”
I waved my finger at her, my grin mocking. “See. I pay attention. I have half the script already memorized.”
She shifted in her seat. “You’re one of the most sought-after actors right now. If you didn’t work hard before, none of that would’ve happened. I’m not surprised that you’ve read the script.”
No. She was surprised I already had half of it memorized, but she was right. Before Kyle’s death, I was one of the hardest working actors in the business. All the assholery had happened after. Still, I noted her surprise and made a mental note to maybe let up on some of the drinking for this movie. Some, not all. A guy still had his haunts.
“She was murdered by her first husband, right?”
Gayle nodded, turning to look out the window. After leaving Livingston, we’d turned onto a winding road, going up the side of a mountain.
She said, “The script just says it was a domestic abuse situation. She hid from her ex-husband, and when he found her, he murdered her.”
“Hmmm.” I shrugged, thumbing back through the binder she gave me. I paused on the bio about Peter Kellerman. This was my role. I needed to understand him the best I could. “He never remarried.”
“What?”
I tapped his image. “He never remarried. You said his last wife. That happened, what? Twenty years ago?”
“Eighteen years ago, and you’re right. He never did.”
He wore a fancy suit, no shock there. Unsmiling. His eyes were flat. His hair perfectly combed to the side. A speck of gray was showing, but most of it was black. Tanned so he spent time outside, but his hands were folded under his arms. It was as if he was squaring off against the camera, or whoever was behind the camera, or hell, maybe he was already challenging who would see this image of him.
But he didn’t remarry.
That stayed with me.
“Did we reach out to him? See if I can meet him before shooting starts.”
“Yes, I reached out to him, and no. We won’t meet. He said to ask his children for any insight needed.”
The guy sounded like an asshole.
I doubted I’d ever meet Peter Kellerman, and I was fine with that. He was just one role I would be playing.
The car braked suddenly.
“Oomph!” Gayle shot forward, but my arm was already there, protecting her from hitting the seat in front of her before I turned my body. I molded around her so I was half-shielding her.
The intercom crackled on. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry—”
His words were drowned out by a thundering sound. It grew and grew until they broke from the trees in front of us.
Morgan
The horses wanted to run tonight.
So did I.
