“The producer owes me a favor.”
“Oh.” The rules didn’t apply to my father. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“You’re not going to get the type of exposure you need on a show no one over the age of fourteen has heard of.”
The afternoon sun stretched his shadow over me, and I felt smaller than usual as I scurried to keep pace with him.
“As for experience,” he tossed a disdainful look over his shoulder, “not much to be gained in a bit part where you’re the butt of every joke.”
“I thought I did okay.” I dropped my gaze to my feet. Tears pricked my eyes.
“If by okay, you mean being a complete and utter disgrace to the Lesowski name, I would agree with you.”
“But everyone said—”
“What you wanted to hear, Hollie-doll. Don’t be a fool. They were laughing at you. Not with you.”
“I didn’t realize.” My cheeks on fire, I slipped past him toward his Mercedes just ahead.
My mother sat in the front passenger seat, waiting for us as he’d said she would be. Her gaze met mine through the glass. Noting my expression, hers softened in empathy.
Tears escaped and silently tracked down my cheeks as I opened the door behind her and slid into the back seat. After closing the door, I fastened my seat belt, successfully swiping the moisture from my skin before my father climbed into the driver’s seat.
I exhaled a sigh of relief. He hadn’t noticed my tears. If he had, he would have chastised me.
“You’re a good deal better at finding the car,” he said after a quick glance at me in the rearview mirror, “than you are at noting the obvious among your colleagues.” He cranked the engine, and I turned my head to the side to avoid any more comments.
Resting my damp cheek against the cool leather, I slumped down into my seat, wishing for invisibility almost as much as I wished my sister, Fanny, were in her usual spot beside me.
Alone, I twisted my hands together and focused on regulating my breathing. In for one, two, three beats. Out for one, two, three. Yoga techniques to relax. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t work all that well, given my present circumstances.
“I saw the video, Samuel,” my mother said, her pretty profile to me as she turned to look at him. “You’re being too hard on her. It wasn’t a bad performance.”
“Our daughter isn’t cut out for comedy.” He kept his gaze straight ahead, as intractable in his driving as he was in his opinion of me.
“Yet that’s the role she received.” In the rearview mirror, my mother offered me a small smile, attempting to temper his disapproval. It was a full-time occupation for her since I rarely met his exacting standards.
I returned to her what I hoped was a satisfactory smile. But looking at her beautiful face in the mirror only made me feel more inadequate.
My mother was breathtaking. Something I would never be, though we shared the same hair color and similar facial structure. Her arched brows and elegant nose aligned to give her a regal Grace Kelly effect. My features were too softly rounded, and my eyes were merely matte gray to her shiny platinum, though I liked to pretend the stage lights gave my gaze an added sparkle.
“She did her best to shine in her part.” My mother believed in the power of encouraging words and spoke them often to me. I loved her. Everyone did. To know Abigail Lesowski was to love her. She had a depth of kindness inside her heart that surpassed her outward beauty.
Kind nature aside, I also valued her opinion regarding acting. Before she’d gotten pregnant with me and chosen to stay at home, she had been on the cusp of a promising career. But though I adored and respected her, it was my father’s difficult-to-obtain approval I coveted.
“She should’ve withdrawn from the production when she didn’t get the lead.” Samuel flicked on his blinker with a slash of his hand and turned the Mercedes off the main road. “She’s a Lesowski. Destined for bigger and better things.” He had been pestering me constantly to star in one of his films.
“I want to get roles based on my own merit.” I clenched my fingers, anticipating a retort as Samuel turned onto the driveway to our estate, braking the vehicle in front of the ornate wrought-iron gate.
“Then choose a different profession.” My father lifted a finger to acknowledge our guard. The man waved back from his hut and opened the gate. “Show business is all about who you know and can influence.”
“Samuel . . .”
“She needs to grow up, Abigail.”
“There’s plenty of time for that. She’s only thirteen.”
“Almost fourteen. Nearly too old to train.”
“She doesn’t need training. She needs stability. Let her finish her schooling. Then she can make a go of things her own way before she decides whether a career in show business is for her.”
“You want her to do things that way.”
“Yes, but only because I didn’t have those choices.”
My mother’s options were ripped away from her when she lost both her parents. Near my age when they had died, she’d bounced around the foster care system afterward and used make-believe to cope. She had discovered a knack for pretending and eventually employed those skills professionally.
“You shelter her and fill her head with your fanciful ideals.”
“‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on.’” A quote from Tempest.
If my mother wasn’t pulling life philosophies from her favorite playwright, it was her beloved yoga teachings. Sometimes she even blended the two, a novel spirit who processed the world in her own unique way. I might covet my father’s approval, but deep down, I wished I could grow up to be like her.
“We should protect our daughter’s innocence,” my mother said. “This world will attempt to exploit it. If unchecked, hope will become sorrow. Sacrificial choices will become regrets. Truths will become lies, and lies will become unignorable ugliness.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“When will it end, Samuel? How many indiscretions must I overlook? When you’re at work, that’s one thing, but now . . .”
She sniffed and I couldn’t see her face anymore, but I knew from her strained voice that her eyes had tears in them.
“With the housekeeper. How could you? In my own home. The children . . .”
My sister and I were appalled. Why would he choose anyone else when we knew he only wanted her?
“Home, you say? The word rolls so effortlessly off your tongue. But what you really mean is the place you reside. A home is where a wife should love her husband.”
“I do love you.”
“What good is love without desire?”
“You have everything I have to give.”
“What you didn’t leave behind with him.”
“I’ve always been faithful.”
“Faithful makes for a cold bed.”
I swallowed hard, not wanting to hear this. I loved my parents, and it hurt when they slung insults at each other.
I slunk lower in my seat. Since I couldn’t make myself invisible, I tuned them out, erecting a setting and a story within my imagination. I used pretend to escape much like my mother had. Closing my eyes, I imagined myself as a grownup—as beautiful as my mom, my hair no longer straight and strawberry blond but boldly red and strikingly curly like my sister’s.
If I was going to dream, I’d dream big.
I was a Lesowski, after all.
In my mind, I was the most sought-after actress in Hollywood, married to the hottest actor. Our house wasn’t in the hills, but directly on the beach. In reality, the ocean was miles away from our Beverly Hills mansion, but even in the distance, the view of the fathomless blue somehow soothed me.
Instead of loud arguments and strained formalities, my house would be a home brimming with an abundance of easy affection and unconditional love. The rhythmic sound of the ocean would be so near, I would be able to hear the waves tugging at the shore.
My imagination was so good, I could s
mell cinnamon and melted butter as my mother baked her famous cinnamon rolls in my kitchen. I could feel the soft breeze on my skin as it lifted the gauzy curtains from my dream house’s open windows. Outside, my children and Fanny’s giggled as they frolicked in the surf together and built dreams of their own out of sand.
In my fantasy, my husband’s face was in shadow, his features unclear. I hadn’t yet met a man to fascinate me the way my sister already had. Her dream man was the Dirt Dogs’ drummer, Ashland Keys. She had posters of the former SoCal-surfer-turned-rock-star plastered all over her room.
One thing I did know about my dream man was that he had to treat me like I was a priority. He would have to be honorable, faithful to me and me alone. And he would have to be my forever shelter from harm, not just a temporary, fleeting ideal.
Falling further into my imagination, I pictured my husband with his arm around me as my father appeared on the television screen to announce my nomination for an Academy Award.
Hollie Lesowski.
Best actress in a leading role.
A comedy.
My lips lifted, my floundering spirit reviving at the thought.
“Hey.”
“Huh?” Recognizing my sister’s voice, I opened my eyes and blinked her concerned face into focus.
“You okay?” Silver eyes as shiny and mesmerizing as our mother’s searched mine. Opening the door wider, Fanny leaned closer. Her slender frame was outlined in gold from the setting sun behind her.
“Yeah, sure.” My brow furrowed. “Why do you ask?”
“’Cause you’ve been sitting in the back seat like a zombie since they got out. I saw you from upstairs and came down to check on you.” She glanced toward the house.
The beveled-glass door stood ajar. The shouting voices beyond it were impossible to ignore.
I shrugged. “Lost in my own thoughts.”
“Well, that’s understandable.”
We were two halves to a whole. Fanny escaped into her music the way I did inside my imagination. Creativity by necessity. If Samuel was hard on me, he was far harder on her, though she didn’t buckle under the stress like I did.
I gasped as glass shattered somewhere inside the mansion. They were probably in the library, their preferred battleground. Abigail had probably thrown another prized piece from Samuel’s Waterford crystal collection.
“They arguing in front of you?” Fanny asked.
“Almost all the time now,” I whispered.
Shame setting fire to my face, I covered my hot cheeks with my hands. I often felt as though the troubles in their marriage were my fault. After all, my mother had married Samuel because she’d gotten pregnant with me.
“He doubts her. She doubts him. Love shouldn’t be like that.”
“I know.” In my head I did, but in my heart I struggled.
“Love should be a firm foundation you can always stand on, not faulty ground.”
“‘Doubt that the stars are fire,’” I said. “‘Doubt that the sun doth move his aides. Doubt truth to be a liar. But never doubt I love.’”
“You recite sonnets beautifully, Hols. One day everyone’s going to know what a brilliant actress you are. No matter what he says.”
“Maybe.” So accustomed to my father’s criticisms, I found myself uncomfortable with compliments.
“No maybe. Definitely.” Fanny nodded with authority. She was five years older than me. It was decided. “‘Where there is light and love, there is a way.’”
One of our mother’s favorite phrases.
“I don’t know if I believe in love the way she does.” My hands twisted tighter together as I glanced again at the house. They were still going at it.
“When it’s real, love is a bright, beautiful dream better than anything you can imagine.” The underlying message was that what our mother and my father had wasn’t real.
“So, I just need to have faith?”
“Yes. Don’t close your heart because of the way things are with Mom and Samuel.” Her expression soft, Fanny untwisted my hands and gathered them in hers. “We both know she had something bright and beautiful once.”
I nodded. We knew it had been a union of love that had produced Fanny. We just didn’t know her father’s name or what had happened to end his relationship with our mother.
“You’ll find true love like she had one day.” My sister’s gaze was as unshakable as her faith. “And once you find it, everything will make sense.”
I hoped she was right.
But as the voices of our parents rose, I lifted my gaze to the light that blazed forth from the library window and saw a cautionary tale about love, not an endorsement.
Prologue
* * *
2015 - Present day
“‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.’”
Alone in my suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, my gaze dropped to the small patch of illumination in the otherwise pitch-black room. Throwing back the covers, I climbed out of bed and shuffled toward it.
I needed light. After another night plagued by misgivings, the inside of my heart was a tomb nearly as dreary as the room.
A showdown with my stepfather overshadowed everything in my life. It was guaranteed to be a long, drawn-out fight. Thoughts of it and uncertainty regarding the outcome eclipsed my attempts to be positive. Plus, my brighter-minded sibling was far away.
Quoting Shakespeare couldn’t drive out the darkness, given those obstacles. But it did make me miss my sister.
And my mother.
Not a day went by without my sister and me missing her. Our mother’s untimely death three years ago had ripped away the underpinning of our world.
Fanny poured her heartache into her chosen profession. I did the same with mine.
Music and a chance reconnection with Ashland Keys had reaffirmed my sister’s faith in love. Acting hadn’t restored mine; my faith was too fractured to be repaired. Time hadn’t eased my sorrow. It only made me more resigned to the absence of light in a world without my mother’s love.
At the window, I gripped the wooden rods and yanked open the curtains. Light flooded the room. Momentarily blinded, I blinked to adjust my eyes. The bleakness of my physical environment could be remedied. But there was no cure for the malaise inside me.
Chilled, I wrapped my arms around my body and tipped my face up to the warmth of the sun.
My phone lay behind me on the nightstand, my ringer still off from the night before. I hadn’t checked it for the time or messages before I climbed out of bed, but I knew by the position of the sun that I’d overslept.
Olivia Avalon would likely arrive any minute.
My agent was no-nonsense, no excuses, and militant about punctuality. She was also the best, a badass in the entertainment industry. She had only two clients, Shaina Bentley and me. I was fortunate to have her. But she wouldn’t be pleased that I hadn’t set an alarm.
I sighed, not in the proper mindset for a reprimand or another hectic day.
Lingering at the window, I stared out at the tranquil surface of the pool. Sunshine spilling through the palms made the turquoise water sparkle invitingly. But there would likely be no time for a swim today. No time for recreational activity or escaping the confines of the suite.
Holliewood Central was what my sister had called my hotel room before she returned to Ocean Beach and Ashland Keys. The Dirt Dogs’ drummer was a dream no longer. He was real, kind, supportive, and just right for her. I’d never bothered to put a face on my own dream man.
Maybe if . . .
I cut the film on that reel of thought. I didn’t do if-only imagining any longer. I had set those things aside the night my father—my stepfather—had returned to the house to tell Fanny and me that our mother was gone.
Wishes couldn’t change harsh reality. Dreams were for dreamers, and dreaming was a pastime that required Fanny’s kind of faith to sustain it. Nowadays, I pretended in front of the camera, voicing scripted words to br
ing someone else’s dream to life.
Hard work. Success in my profession. Those were my goals now. Tangible ones. To achieve them, I couldn’t look back, I had to move in one direction.
Forward.
I straightened my shoulders. Pulling in a steadying breath, I turned away from the window. Enough reverie. It was time to get ready for the day.
Yet knowing what I needed to do to get my life on a positive track was one thing. Implementing it was another. I’d grown accustomed to being dependent on someone stronger, an old habit ingrained from childhood. It would be difficult to break. Maybe even impossible.
I faltered in the center of the room.
Breathe, Hollie. I heard my mother’s sweet, encouraging voice inside my head. There is always hope, and a second chance for a new beginning with every dawn.
Thinking of her, I found my strength. I drew in a measured inhale, held it, then let it out slowly. Then I broke my goals down into manageable pieces. A Zen technique, a sure, certainly, and truly for me that brought me the peace of mind my sister achieved from her to-do lists.
Sure, I had a lot more work ahead. Certainly, there was no quick fix. But truly, I had begun the process. I had gotten myself out of bed, after all.
Later than I should have, I knew, but even late counted as a step in the right direction.
I’d brought light into the room, literally, and on a larger scale, I’d given myself a chance for a new beginning by starting the complicated legal process to remove my stepfather from my life.
“Miss Lesowski.”
The deep voice and polite knock on the bedroom door reminded me that though my sister was in Ocean Beach, I wasn’t entirely alone, nor was I unprotected. I had Maximillian Cash.
My bodyguard was a recent addition to my entourage. A necessary one, given my stepfather, but one I hadn’t figured out how to deal with yet, so I was attempting to limit my interaction with him.
But that wasn’t working out well. For one thing, he was always around. He was also an imposing presence. It was impossible to ignore someone who didn’t fade into the background the way I’d naively imagined a bodyguard would.
(Complete Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances #1-5) Page 89
