Chapter Ten
Jay opened his copy of the Sea Shell with trepidation. The front page carried an article about school funding, but there was a little teaser of his profile, bottom right. As much as he wanted to know the local schools were well funded, he was way too curious not to flip immediately to the page where he was featured. The first thing he saw was the photograph, which had been set in the center of Erin’s profile. He grinned, appreciating how it captured his more playful side. He was usually portrayed as serious, sometimes even menacing—especially when the article focused on how cutthroat he was when making deals. When he read the caption underneath, he chuckled and wondered if Erin might like to go shopping with him for a sculpture. She clearly had a good aesthetic eye, as well as a sense of humor.
The headline was innocuous enough: Top Hollywood Agent Buys Dream Home in Carmel . Then, with a sense of dread, he began to read. He didn’t know what had possessed him to tell Erin all those intensely personal and humiliating things about his past. But there was something about the way she listened with such interest and no judgment. There had been no pity in her gaze, but a kind of understanding sympathy that made him keep going when he should have just shut the heck up. Plenty of reporters had tried to lower his mile-high walls—including the infamous Roxy Thanton from Celebrity Tonight , who’d also had a crack at Archer after he’d broken his leg. None had succeeded.
Until now.
How had a thirty-year-old woman whose hardest-hitting question was about not putting his leads in romantic comedies managed to draw out of him what he’d kept hidden from even the most intrusive of journalists? He shook his head. It couldn’t have been Erin alone. No, he’d been listening to a little voice inside of him that said it was about time to be honest about where he’d come from. That it was okay. That it was time to stop hiding. But now, faced with the consequences of listening to that voice, he was worried.
It had taken years and years to become Jay Malone and now he’d undone all that hard work in one morning. He sighed loudly.
As one sentence flowed into the next, he couldn’t believe what he was reading. It was beautiful, playful, thoughtful—and there wasn’t a single mention of Jay’s childhood. It was as though his life had begun when he and Archer met at the restaurant where they’d both been waiting tables. She’d put in the bit about him hustling to get the dishwasher job, and then when she’d talked about his agency, she’d described it as fledgling rather than revealing that he and Archer had cobbled together a CV, letterhead, and a company name. Beyond grateful, he couldn’t keep the smile off his face. He still worked with those people he’d once had to hustle, and while nobody in Hollywood wasn’t going to pick up the phone if Jay Malone called, he didn’t want studio executives feeling like they’d been made a fool of. Those guys had long memories. Dealing with a fledgling agent was okay. Being tricked by a no-account hustler was an embarrassment.
Erin had saved him from himself. He wanted to wrap her in the world’s biggest bear hug and squeeze her tight. And then he found he couldn’t stop the image from developing... He’d hug her, feeling how small she was in his arms, how smooth her skin, how taut the muscles in her back. His hands would drop farther down, trailing over that soft, soft skin until they found her waist and circled it, drawing her in tighter. He closed his eyes. He could smell the coconut of her shampoo, feel the length of her strawberry blonde hair.
He stopped there. “Get a grip,” he muttered. “This is Erin.” Erin!
He shook the erotic image from his mind. All he needed to do was thank Erin for her discretion. He was about to pick up the phone and call her, or maybe arrange for a big bouquet of flowers to be delivered to her apartment, when his cell rang.
He gulped when he saw the display—did the guy have telepathic powers?
“Hey, Archer,” he said, keeping his voice light and breezy, like he hadn’t just been fantasizing about the man’s little sister. “How’s my favorite client?”
Archer laughed. “I know you say that to all your clients.”
He grinned at that. “At the moment I’m speaking to them, every client is my favorite.” However, he didn’t pick up for all of them on the first ring like he did for Archer. He didn’t need to tell the star of Shock Tactics that—they both knew it. They were also busy guys with no time to waste. “What’s up?”
He was ready with pen and paper to take down whatever was vital from the call, but Arch surprised him. “Great job on the interview.”
“Wait, you read the Sea Shell ?”
Arch laughed. “Jay, everybody in Carmel-by-the-Sea reads the Sea Shell . I don’t like to boast, but I thought my sister did a great job.”
“I did too,” he said, not letting Arch know how much she’d kept back. And how grateful he was. Jay kept waiting for Arch to talk business, but he never did. After a couple of minutes of catching up, he said he had to get going and congratulated Jay again on the profile.
Jay hung up a little bemused. He was not the kind of guy who underestimated anything, but clearly he hadn’t quite grasped the local power of the Sea Shell .
He picked up the paper and read the other articles: The reopening of the town’s oldest bakery after extensive renovations; a fire put out by a team of volunteers up in the valley after hiking teenagers lost control of their campfire. He turned to a full page devoted to a local animal shelter. It was becoming so full of homeless animals that it was running out of funding. There was a community-wide drive to try to keep it afloat. His gaze immediately landed on a real pity ad for a homeless dog. A scrappy little stray stared out at him with what appeared to be entreaty. The dog had the most soulful dark eyes, and as he stared at the photo, Jay couldn’t help but think of that kid with a hard life looking for a break. That kid who’d been a scrappy little stray too.
He would have kept staring at that poor dog, but his phone rang again. He smiled when he saw the name. It had been a while since he’d heard from Smith Sullivan, who was currently working on a screenplay while he and Valentina looked forward to the birth of their first child. He couldn’t imagine he was having any work problems, but Jay picked up his pen again as he greeted his friend and client.
“Jay,” Smith said, “I just finished reading your profile piece in the Sea Shell . It was really great. Cool photo, too. Though you know you’re going to have every sculptor in California trying to sell you something for your garden.” He laughed.
Jay shook his head. “Smith, you don’t even live in Carmel-by-the-Sea. How on earth did you get a copy of the Sea Shell ?”
“I subscribe online. I wouldn’t miss an issue of that any more than I’d miss an issue of Variety .”
Again, Jay waited for Smith to talk business, but it never happened. Once they’d caught up on Valentina’s pregnancy and how his writing was progressing, Smith said he had to go—they had a friend’s birthday party to attend. After he hung up, Jay’s bemusement deepened. He had to accept that everybody in Carmel, or who had any association with Carmel, apparently, read the Sea Shell . And maybe some of his clients valued their friendship more than he’d given them credit for. He smiled. He really did owe Erin a lot.
He picked up his phone and found her number. She answered after two rings. At the sound of her voice, he felt an instant warmth and connection and understood immediately why he had told her so much about himself. She was just so easy to talk to.
“I owe you the biggest bunch of flowers in Carmel. In California! How come you didn’t include all those personal details I shared with you?”
There was a pause and then he heard the click of a door closing. He suspected she was still at the office and was giving herself some privacy. In a low voice, she said, “I wasn’t sure you actually intended to say all those things for public consumption. Even I kind of forgot we were on the record and weren’t just having a conversation friend to friend. But if you ever do decide you want to go public with the story of your upbringing and the heroic effort you put into carving out such a successful career, then I would love to write it for you. I think it could be really inspiring. Something that could touch a lot of people.”
Jay let her words sink in. Instead of replying with the first thing that came to mind, as usual, he allowed himself a moment. The words friend to friend and heroic effort had had a strange effect on him. And he realized that, although he’d thought she’d saved him from himself by not including those details in the story, speaking it out loud was part of a healing journey. One where he accepted his upbringing and made peace with it. Otherwise, how would the good stuff be able to climb over his mile-high walls?
“I think you might be right—and you are the only person I would let tell that story. But I need some more time. Is that okay?”
Full of understanding, she replied, “Absolutely.”
His gaze returned to the photo of the rescue dog and he smiled.
Erin asked, “Are you still there?”
“I’m just looking at the picture of your rescue dog of the week. He looks like a feisty little scrapper.”
He heard the rustle of paper as she turned to the same page. “Aww,” she said. “What a character. It’s so sad—I heard that if they don’t find a home for him soon, they’re going to have to put him down.”
Jay didn’t want to hear that. “You’re kidding. Why?”
“He’s young, but he’s had a hard life, and apparently he’s a little nervous, so people don’t really warm to him. They can’t keep him at the shelter indefinitely—there’s not enough funding.”
“I’ll send them some cash as soon as I get off the phone.” He paused. For once, money didn’t seem like enough. Of course he would help solve the problem of funding. But it wouldn’t necessarily mean that this cute mutt would find the right home. What if someone careless adopted him? Or someone who didn’t have the right skills to help him feel at ease?
He looked back at the photo and again found himself speaking his thoughts aloud to Erin. “He reminds me of myself. A young scrapper who needed socializing.”
With a chuckle, she said, “I don’t know that you’ve ever needed help socializing, but I do know it’s a nice evening for a drive. Maybe you should go look at him.”
Jay silently shook his head. He didn’t have the time—he had to get ready for his trip to LA to deal with the feud between his client and the director of the blockbuster he was shooting. There were a million things he needed to do before his flight. And yet he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the dog. There was just something about him that had got Jay, hook, line, and sinker. Besides, as Erin had pointed out, it was a nice night for a drive.
“I’ll go if you’ll come with me.” Yet another impulsive statement flying out of Jay’s mouth when Erin was around.
She laughed. It was a soft, surprisingly sexy sound. “I’d love to.”
And so, without quite knowing how it happened, Jay found himself picking up Erin from the apartment complex where she lived. She got into the Lamborghini and settled beside him in well-worn jeans and a casual cotton shirt, with sneakers on her feet and her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. Normally the woman beside him was dressed in haute couture—Dior or Valentino—and they’d be heading to a hip bar or restaurant. Not an animal shelter. But as Jay stole furtive glances at Erin’s profile, he thought she looked better than any other woman who’d ever sat there.