Chapter Seven
Jay had been interviewed by some reasonably tough characters—hard news reporters trying to get the inside track on a former client’s drug-induced spree of destruction, paparazzi trying to weasel romantic scoops on his A-listers—so to be interviewed by somebody he’d only ever considered as his best friend’s kid sister should have been a breeze. And yet, as he waited for Erin to begin, he felt strangely on edge. Erin was a lot smarter than many people gave her credit for, a good listener, and often the quiet one in a noisy family. A family that was noisier, let’s face it, when he was around. So he knew what she was like at a family breakfast, on the surfboard, and, if he was honest with himself, he’d enjoyed seeing her all dressed up and gorgeous at her brother’s wedding.
But he’d never seen her at work.
It didn’t help that they’d just shared a moment in the bedroom. It wasn’t his mind playing tricks—she’d looked at him with a kind of tenderness he’d never seen enter her eyes before. There had been heat there too. A desire he’d been pushing away—for how long?
This was Arch’s kid sister, he reminded himself. N O -G O .
He turned his attention to the interview. He could pretty much imagine all the questions she’d ask him, questions he’d been asked a hundred times. What was it like working with top celebrities, how had he got into the business, and sometimes, painfully, that almost throwaway question: If I were looking to get into the business, or if my sister / brother / girlfriend / kid wanted an in, how would they go about it? He would feel the want emanating from the interviewer as they waited for his answer, hoping he’d give them the keys to the kingdom.
Truth was, there were no golden keys. Talent, hard work, and of course good looks could help, but so much of it was luck. Luck and pure hustle. These last two had been the magic ingredients that had worked for Jay’s career.
This time, he decided, he would try to enjoy himself for once, and not feel as though he had to put up walls or be too careful about what he said. Erin looked so cute with her reporter’s notebook, her phone set to record, and her dog, but as she met his gaze, her smile was a little cooler than it had been. It must be her professional smile. Interesting.
She cleared her throat. “I’m sure my first question will come as no surprise to you. We always ask everybody, what made you choose Carmel-by-the-Sea?”
If there’d been any residual worry that Erin might ask hard-hitting questions, it melted away. He gave her his professional smile and then launched into a well-rehearsed response.
“This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I love the beach and the relaxed atmosphere here. LA can get intense, so to be able to retreat to somewhere peaceful with a slower pace of life is amazing. And then this house came up and I fell in love with it right away. Love at first sight, as they say. Plus, I’ve got a few clients in the area. A lot of people in my business find themselves up here, so I can fly between LA and here in my PJ.”
Erin shot him a teasing look. “Your pajamas?”
“My private jet.”
“Right. Cool,” she said a little sarcastically.
Jay grinned. Her brothers owned or flew in private jets all the time, so she knew exactly what he meant by PJ . But she was having fun messing with him, and it was kind of hot to be teased. Usually, women were impressed by his jet. Not Erin. It was refreshing.
He realized then that she hadn’t taken a single note. Clearly this was territory as familiar to her as it was to him.
Then she said, “I’ve known you for a long time, but I always do some background reading on my subjects before I interview them. Do you know what struck me? In none of your interviews do you say where you got your education.”
He paused, weighing his options. He tended to overshare, but it was only ever about things he was happy for the world to know. There was a big part of him that he kept closed off from public scrutiny. Still, this was Erin and he wanted her to get a good interview. Maybe he could give her a little more than he’d usually give a reporter. Maybe it would also do him good to start talking about this stuff.
He took a breath. “I went to the school of hard knocks.”
She chuckled a little. “Sure, I get that, but did you get a degree from Harvard Business School or—”
Before she listed every Ivy League school he could have gone to and didn’t, he blurted, “I didn’t finish high school.”
Silence filled the room. He must have shocked her—heck, he’d shocked himself. He’d never told anyone that, let alone someone interviewing him. But as he met Erin’s gaze, he saw that she wasn’t shocked, merely interested in him.
“Really?” she asked. “I never knew that.”
He shrugged. “It’s not something I’m proud of.” And yet saying it out loud, to Erin, made him feel lighter, freer, not ashamed. It was like a heavy burden was finally being lifted from his shoulders. And then he seemed to fall back in time. “I grew up in Los Angeles,” he said. “LA is a city that is all about fantasy. It’s Hollywood with its movie stars and fancy shops along Rodeo Drive. But then there’s the side of the city that I grew up in. With its prostitutes and pimps and drug addicts and lowlifes. I never knew who my father was.” He could almost smell the stale booze and pot smoke. “My mom never should have had a kid. She was wasted most of the time on booze and drugs and, well, she got by as best she could.”
He realized he’d been staring out the window, talking without really thinking. The words were just sliding out of him, as though they’d been waiting years and years for the seams he’d stitched up so tightly to burst open.
He glanced at Erin. Again, she didn’t look shocked. She was simply nodding as though she understood him. If she was figuring out that his mother turned tricks to make enough money to buy drugs and keep a roach-infested roof over their heads, she was getting the right idea. And yet, he didn’t read pity in her eyes, because that would have stopped him dead in his tracks. Instead, he saw something like interest, and maybe a kindling respect? It felt good, but then he caught himself.
Why was he suddenly revealing his deep, dark secrets? Erin was a friend, but she was here as a reporter, not a confidante. He shook his head. She was the exact opposite of a confidante. She was doing a profile on him for the paper that everyone in town read cover to cover.
Erin must have sensed his inner conflict, because softly, she asked, “Did social services never get involved? Did no one see what was going on?”
He laughed, a short, humorless bark. “I was probably more scared of social services than I was of some of the creeps who hung out with my mom. Besides, she needed me. By the time I was seven, I was talking grocers out of food past its expiry date and just about managed to feed us both. Mostly it was milk and cereal. I learned to cut out the bad bits from bruised fruit and vegetables. I got lunch at school, so there was that. And I loved school. I loved learning.”
He stopped again. What was he doing? No one knew how he had developed the gift of the gab by sweet-talking greengrocers out of their overripe bananas. He had a sudden flash of himself as a kid, skinny and scrappy and so darned hungry—not just for food, but for life. For living! If his mom had taught him anything, it was that he didn’t want to end up like her. Wasting away.
Erin stayed silent, but it was a comfortable silence, one that told him he was safe here, with her.
He took a breath. “I would steal money out of my mom’s purse when she was passed out, otherwise everything went on her habits. She wasn’t a bad woman, my mom. She tried. That was what was so hard. In her way, she loved me. But her addictions were stronger than any love she had.”
He paused, shocked by the stab of pain he felt at the memory. He hadn’t let himself think so much about his mom in years.
“It sounds like you had to grow up very fast,” Erin said, her voice still soft and full of understanding.
He had to stop spilling his guts and get this interview back on track and answer Erin’s original question. “By the time I was fourteen, I knew I had to get a job. I went around the fancy parts of LA to every shop and restaurant, anywhere that might hire a scrappy kid, and one place, a real nice place, had a sign in the window for a dishwasher. I marched in there and said, ‘I’ll be the best dishwasher you’ve ever seen.’ I sold them so hard I made it sound like it would be a crime if they didn’t hire me on the spot. So that’s exactly what they did. At first it was just an after-school job, but as I got older, I started working evenings, too. I began to understand that the diners were industry people. I recognized a few of them from TV and movies, but I quickly learned that the power people weren’t the pretty faces on the screen, they were the producers. I worked so hard that when the owners said they wanted to promote me to full-time dishwasher, I said yes, but only if they would train me to be a waiter. Because waiters got tips, and even better, they overheard the gossip that was going on at the tables. I dropped out of high school without giving it much thought.” He stopped again, trying to keep himself on track. He had a question to answer. “So by the time I was eighteen, I was waiting tables and charming Hollywood big shots. I made the fattest tips of all the staff. It meant my mom and I could live in a nicer apartment and eat decent food. But Mom was pretty far gone by then.” An unfamiliar lump caught in his throat. It had been so long since he’d thought about the end of his poor, messed-up mom’s life. “She died of an overdose before I turned nineteen.”
“I’m so sorry,” Erin said softly.
He nodded, took a sip of coffee and gave himself a moment. “But the one thing we always had was a TV, and sometimes if she was feeling good, she’d take me out to the movies and we’d sneak in without paying and live in a fantasy world for a few hours. It was my favorite time we spent together. I fell in love with movies and TV when I was a little kid with no hope. They showed me what life could be like. So by the time I was waiting tables, eavesdropping on the Hollywood bigwigs, I already knew the kind of life I wanted.
“A lot of people I worked with were actors, screenwriters, budding producers, and directors, waiting tables or tending bar until they got their big break. I got pally with a few of them, one in particular. He was about my age, already a crazy handsome guy, which I was never going to be, and we shared a similar work ethic. Unlike some of the others, he knew he wasn’t going to get his big break because somebody liked his pretty face. He took acting lessons and went to every audition. He was one of the most focused guys I’d ever met. One day we were playing pool after our shift and he told me about this great part that he knew he was born to play. I agreed that he was perfect for it. But they wouldn’t see him without an agent. We were both moaning about how unfair it was for people that weren’t already established, and then I had one of those lightbulb moments. I threw down my pool cue and almost knocked the poor guy out as I yelled, ‘How hard is it to be an agent?’
“And so we ran back to my apartment, spent the rest of the night putting together a cover letter and beefing up his CV, and I made up some letterhead with the name Exceptional Talent. We liked it because the initials were E.T., a movie that we both loved as kids. And it worked. It got him in the room. The studio called me—ha, I’ll never forget it. Offered him the part and I negotiated a bigger paycheck than he was expecting. All those years of hustling paid off.” He stopped and grinned. “I’m sure by now you’ve figured out the name of my first client.”
“Archer Davenport,” Erin said quietly. “My brother.”