Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)

by C. D. Reiss

  Apparently, Ray didn’t care either because he caught up to me right inside the door.

  “Cara, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  I just wanted to get away from him. He represented a failure I couldn’t control, and he was a passive-aggressive sad sack. I didn’t know how he managed to run an office staff of dozens, much less a household staff you could count on one hand.

  “We really miss you,” he said.

  “Say ‘hi’ to the kids for me.”

  The maître d’ held the door open for me. The dog pack was shouting to Wanda Cravitz, who was doing a three-point turn and waving before coming in for lunch.

  “There’s no one like you,” Ray said from behind me. I looked back at him.

  “You trying to get in my pants?”

  He smiled at the joke I wouldn’t have made when I worked with him. It made me wish I’d lightened up a little when I was in his house.

  “We thought about hiring you back.”

  If I could have chosen my feelings, “hopeful” wouldn’t have been on the list, but that was how I felt. The door might not have been open wide, but it was ajar, or unlocked maybe. The Heywood house had been an enviable job, and if Kendall was on board, all the better. I assumed I knew what the obstacle was. I could crush it.

  “I’m only with Brad a limited time.”

  “I had to put the kibosh on it when pictures came across my desk this morning.”

  Forty thousand pictures came across his desk in a day. One of them had to do with me. I gripped the shoulder strap on my bag so tightly my knuckles went white.

  He got his phone out, and the maître d’ let Wanda Cravitz in. I stepped to the side in the whoosh of her entourage, knowing well and good what was in the pictures, but hoping against hope that I was wrong. I hadn’t seen them, and I would have.

  “We bought all of them, and we’re not printing them. Everyone knows about them. The rumor mill. It’s real.”

  He handed me the phone. “That’s the first. There are four more.” He cleared his throat as I flipped through. “If Kendall ever saw them, she’d flip on you. And me. She’d assume things that aren’t true about us. She’s a beautiful woman, but she’s been hurt before.”

  They all looked black except for a blotch of light illuminating two sets of legs standing close together. One had a blur of light by the faces. Brad and I could have been any couple kissing in a dark backyard, but with the right copy, I’d be tarred.

  I handed the phone back.

  “Thank you.”

  “I felt like I owed you.”

  “You didn’t. But I’m not signing that thing.”

  I could have left, and I probably should have gone to the door faster, but Fiona Drazen was on her way out with Karen Hinnley and I couldn’t walk through the traffic they caused. So I had to hear his short, painful speech in its entirety.

  “Listen. You’ve given me plenty of good advice about kids. Let me give you a little about men. Stay away from that guy. The only two things he’s ever loved are a good time and getting what he wants. You’re a challenge to him, and you deserve to be more.”

  “Yeah.” I agreed so I could get out of there. I didn’t want to be trapped in the industry eatery for another second. The paps could photograph me and call my name. I didn’t care, as long as I wasn’t kissing someone I worked for while they did it. It was the crowd making me feel like a caged animal. The noise from the high ceiling. The bustle of the lunch hour. I couldn’t think. I didn’t know if I had to.

  “Thanks, Ray. Again. I meant it when I wished you the best.”

  We shook hands and I weaved around a TV reality star and a pack of paparazzi who ignored me in favor of the reality actress. I got in the front seat of my car as if I’d just robbed a bank, but when I turned the key, I didn’t drive away.

  I didn’t move. The Hollywood sign was in front of me, three miles away on the horizon between two billboards, letters barely legible from the far western side. One of the billboards was for Broken. Brad’s blue eye was ten feet high. The laugh lines around his eyes hadn’t been smoothed over, and his pores were as big as a fist. Intentional. Appropriate to the story. He looked exactly like that kiss-close, and I shared the view with millions.

  I felt violated by that eye.

  I’d told myself I didn’t want to be a part of celebrity culture. I’d said I wanted to just be around children. I’d told myself a lot of things and right then, I didn’t believe any of them.

  CHAPTER 36

  BRAD

  She was gorgeous. They’d all been complete knockouts. Girls like that moved out of their hometown as soon as the captain of the football team turned his back. Tall. Tight. Shaped like lingerie models. They all sat in the agency conference room as if it was a casting call, but with buttoned-up blouses and ponytails.

  “Why did you come to LA?” I asked the fifth one. Maybe fifteenth. Who the fuck even knew. At interview number two I had the feeling I wasn’t going to find someone to replace either Blakely or Cara.

  “My agent said I had to move here if I was serious about acting. So. Here I am. I have a degree in child psychology from Michigan, and I love children.”

  Since time was short, Laura had set up a full day of interviews. She said they should meet Nicole, not me. Like we did the first time. I brought her and we did it that way in the morning, but I didn’t like strangers looking at my daughter and trying to get her to like them. What was she supposed to make of all these pretty faces? She was five and she was mine. I’d get a short list together. We could go from there.

  I put Nicole in the playroom with Blakely, who gave me the moon eyes as if she wanted me to know she felt guilty about chasing her dreams. She shouldn’t feel guilty. I wouldn’t.

  The girl from Michigan had a nice résumé. Seemed to come from a nice family. And it was all very nice. She looked exactly like her headshot. I got no feeling from her at all.

  “My daughter lost her mother. She gets attached.”

  “I’d love to meet her.”

  “You’re auditioning on your days off?”

  “Probably.” She smiled. Skin like butter. Had to say, she was knockout material.

  I hadn’t shaved that morning, and I rubbed the stubble. I liked the feeling on my palm. It woke me up.

  I was comparing all of them to the nanny I was losing. Who was perfect. Who I wanted to fuck so bad my balls ached. I wasn’t comparing their fuckability. I swore it and I meant it. But my wires were all crossed up. I couldn’t look at them without knowing I didn’t want to fuck them as bad, and seeing that as a good thing.

  My dick wasn’t supposed to be in the reckoning. How much or little I wanted to bed the nanny wasn’t supposed to matter. The interviews were for Nicole. What was best for her. Not me.

  After nanny number ninety, I found Blakely still sitting at the kid-size table with Nicole. I wanted to be sitting at that table. I wanted to draw crazy-ass unicorns. So I sent Blakely home.

  “This would be easier if they met your daughter first,” Laura said from the doorway of the playroom.

  “She doesn’t need to be confused,” I said. “Too many nice faces trying to get her to like them.” I held a marker up for my daughter. “Is blue next?”

  She peered at my paper and pointed to the orange stripe on top of my rainbow.

  “No, silly Daddy.” She snapped the blue marker out of my hand and handed me a yellow as if she were handing me an Oscar.

  “Here’s what I want,” I said as I made a yellow rainbow stripe. “I want the best. I want two ladies. At least one should have so much experience nothing shocks her. I’m thinking she’d be with the same family twenty years and she’d be bored now because the kids go to Harvard. If she has my mother’s values, even better.”

  “What are your mother’s values?”

  “Good Southern Baptist.”

  “Great. You sure you don’t want to keep Cara DuMont? I’m sure she can be convinced.”

&n
bsp; I was about to dismiss the idea, because I did want to keep her, and the only way to do that was to replace her. But Nicole, bless her heart, had ears like a fucking rabbit. She handed me the green marker and didn’t say a word. Didn’t look up at me. Actress. She heard everything. Every damned word.

  I thought I’d gotten away with trying to replace Cara. Even though I was replacing her so I could keep her, there was no way to explain it to Nicole.

  Blakely was easier. The news went down with vanilla fudge swirl ice cream.

  “Are you going to live in another city?” Nicole asked as Blakely wiped her face.

  “No,” Blakely balled up the napkin. “I’m staying in Los Angeles.”

  “Daddy,” Nicole said matter-of-factly.

  “Yes?”

  “Miss Blakely should stay with us. She can go to additions in daytime and sleep in her regular bed at nighttime.”

  Nicole Garcia-Sinclair. Solver of all the world’s problems.

  “We need that bed for your new nanny.”

  “What new nanny? Not Miss Cara. Miss Cara’s staying, right?”

  “Yes,” I said without thinking. Blakely shot me a look. “Mostly.” Then Nicole shot me a look. Jesus Christ. These women. “Yes. Miss Cara’s staying.”

  Nicole asked about Miss Cara the whole way home. Over dinner, she asked if Miss Cara was coming to Disney the next day. When I tried to twist up a French braid and made a huge mess, she suggested I learn from Miss Cara. And when Miss Cara herself showed up to do the night shift, Nicole ran to the door.

  “Daddy was talking to a hundred pretty ladies today.”

  “Really?” She crouched to Nicole’s eye level and looked at me sidelong. Half a smile. “A hundred?”

  CHAPTER 37

  CARA

  Brad stood back a bit, arms crossed.

  “Ninety-nine hundred!” Nicole spread her arms wide. “But none were as pretty as you!”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Miss Blakely’s leaving! She’s going to be an actress!” Nicole squealed as if Blakely’s dreams would come true just because she’d freed up her schedule. I hoped she was right. “Do you like my dress?” She held out the pink cotton stripes of the skirt. “I like your shoes.”

  I was wearing new sneakers. I thanked her, complimented her twinkling light-up shoes, and we continued the exchange into the hall. Brad waited, leaning against the doorframe, looking at me as if I was the only woman in the world. My heart sank. I had no chance against him.

  I decided right then I wasn’t telling him about the pictures. I didn’t want him to tell me it wasn’t a big deal.

  “You were at West Side today, I presume?”

  “Yeah. It’s bad out there.”

  “You’re coming tomorrow, right?” Nicole swung my hand back and forth and made a please please please smile.

  “To Disney?”

  “Yes, please!”

  Brad didn’t move. The assumption was that since it was my day, I was going. That was going to have to be renegotiated. Everything was going to have to be renegotiated. He changed the subject as if he knew.

  “I’ll read her books tonight. We picked a few.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Why?”

  “You never put her to bed before.”

  “I’m down to one nanny soon. You people are so unreliable.”

  “Don’t even.” I looked down at Nicole. “What are you wearing tomorrow?”

  “Grandma sent me something!” She pulled me to her room. I looked down before I turned at the landing, and he was there at the bottom, watching me silently with a level of determination I hadn’t seen from him.

  Then in a split second, he winked and playful Brad was back.

  CHAPTER 38

  CARA

  I approved her outfit for the theme park and handed her off to Brad for the bedtime ritual. Everything seemed to go smoothly. Bath. Dressing. Kiss for Daddy. Reading in bed with Daddy, which was more singing-and-making-things-up than following the story. Kiss good night. Lights out. Apparently bedtime went all right. I even heard him brush her hair and teeth.

  Brad came to the kitchen with his beat-to-hell white T-shirt and jeans. My hormones rushed through my blood like marauders setting the village on fire.

  “If she’s down, I’m going to the back,” I said. “If you need me—”

  He was on me in half a second with that mouth, those hands. I was utterly powerless against his kiss. His tongue found its way into my mouth. He tasted like a bad decision. He tasted like the thing you always said you shouldn’t have done, but didn’t regret anyway. A little bit of starlight. The tart sting of the forbidden and the sweetness of a sin you think you’re getting away with.

  Every inch of my skin came alive, and I felt heavy and swollen between my legs. One big undeniable throb set to the rhythm of his kiss.

  We stumbled into the hallway, and without the sound of Nicole’s patter, we became unhinged. Desperately, wildly irrational. I was leaving, and once I wasn’t in the house caring for his child it wouldn’t matter. I’d be a target for the paparazzi, but not as the nanny.

  He pushed me against the wall. Something rattled. Me. I rattled. He yanked my shirt up, getting under my bra and pulling it over my breasts. It happened so fast, his mouth on my nipple, testing its limits, his hands pulling my jeans open.

  I whispered his name, and he shushed me by putting his mouth over mine again. I groaned once, and when he put his hand over the crotch of my jeans and pressed it hard, I groaned again.

  “I’ve wanted you for weeks,” he said between his teeth. “Now this.” He pressed his fingers against me hard, and I gasped with pleasure. “I’m going to have it.”

  His eyes were so blue, so intense, and his voice wasn’t the laid-back party boy I’d met. He was a guy who didn’t take no for an answer, and I was a girl who wanted to say yes.

  He picked me up and deposited me on the kitchen table. I wrapped my legs around him, and he pushed me down, grinding his erection into me, mirroring the motions of his tongue in my mouth.

  “Yes,” I said. No time for another word. Joined below the waist like magnets, he carried me down the hall, kissing faces and necks, all tongues and lips, my hands under his shirt. He was hard everywhere. Taut. Skin stretched over lean muscle.

  He pushed his dick against me and I pushed back. Pure heat. Friction fire. The flame of potential of what was coming. I couldn’t get enough of him in my hands. They were too small, clawing at clothes and skin.

  “You ever been eaten out by a southern boy?”

  I had to think. There hadn’t been many, but no one from Los Angeles was from Los Angeles.

  “Southern England.”

  “Doesn’t count.” He hooked his fingers under my jeans and started peeling them off. “You’re in for a treat, sweetheart. Us southern boys eat pussy like pie. And I like pie.”

  Yes. Yes and yes. S’il vous plaît and thank you too. The world could take these last weeks in his employ and shove them right where the sun don’t shine because—

  “Daaaaaadddeeeeeee . . .”

  “I have no idea how this happened,” Brad said softly. He was lying down in the dark on the other side of his daughter’s sleeping body. I could see him over the edge of her soft round cheek. Her arm was draped over me, and her legs were thrown back to hook his to her.

  “You’re spoiling her, that’s how it happened.”

  “She’s afraid of having a nightmare. Then she became one.”

  I’d never seen him say a negative thing about his daughter or show signs of a short temper. I was glad to see he was finally getting involved enough to get grouchy.

  He reached over her and touched my hair.

  “You’re real pretty on the kitchen table.”

  “We should wait anyway.”

  “Not interested.”

  “We agreed.”

  His voice got sharp with urgency, but not unkind. No. Just ferocious.

  “
There is no way I can stand seeing you and not fucking you.”

  I pointed at Nicole, raising my head a little to make a face, mouthing the word language. Nicole groaned and opened her eyes halfway.

  He and I waited in silence for her breathing to get regular again.

  “What’s the difference?” he whispered.

  What was the difference? People.

  “I had lunch with Ray Heywood today,” I said. “There was a dog pack outside Kate Martello’s, and they wanted to know how you kissed. Ray showed me pictures from the party. It was us in the yard. It was dark. It could have been anybody . . . but they all know it’s me. And he knew it too. He was going to offer me my job back but couldn’t because of the pictures.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I thanked him for not printing them.”

  “About how I kissed. What did you say?”

  I picked my head up. Nicole didn’t stir.

  “Brad, really?”

  You’re a challenge to him.

  “Well that was a real short one the other night. Just now? Before the little nightmare? I think you got a better sense of what you’re refusing.”

  “I’m not refusing. I’m postponing.”

  Nicole scooted down in sleep, nuzzling her head into my neck and her body into her father. She wasn’t between our faces anymore, and I could see him in the half light. I could have leaned up and kissed him with the slightest effort, except for what that would have led to.

  He reached for me, touching my cheek. I couldn’t breathe when his finger moved to my chin and stroked my lower lip. My mouth went dry.

  “Did you always play it so safe?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I answered too quickly. “No, actually.” He smiled when I changed my mind, pulling my bottom lip a little. It would take the slightest movement to take his finger in my mouth. I wanted to taste it.

  “Tell me.” His whisper was a seduction. “Tell me everything.”

  The night was so dark, and I felt so safe in our little cocoon that I decided to tell him.