Chapter 29
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
“Good, you’re here,” Rex said as he nodded toward one of the empty chairs.
Angelica couldn’t wipe the smile from her lips as she sat down at the large conference table with her iPad in front of her. While it’d only been thirty minutes, it had been worth every damn second. And she could still taste Hope on her lips if she focused long enough.
“Any clue where Hope is?” Rex asked, looking directly at her.
Angelica paused, her cheeks burning and her heart racing. She really needed to figure out how to tame that. Pursing her lips, she refused to look Rex in the eye as she answered, “I think she said she’d be along soon. I do know that she arrived about an hour ago.”
Rex grumbled something, and Angelica finally flicked her gaze upward to look at his face.
He had deep lines around his eyes and mouth, and he looked more gaunt than when they’d first met all those years ago.
Would he be bothered by a rekindling of their relationship?
Would it spin production out of control again?
Angelica took her electronic pen and held it loosely between her fingers. Nothing was uncomplicated about a relationship between her and Hope. They’d just have to figure out as much as they could before the story about the two of them got out. That way they’d know what to say and what to do next.
“Evening.” Josef’s voice was a shock of cold water to Angelica’s system.
Everything was so much easier when he wasn’t around, and she’d hoped he’d just jet off back to Los Angeles and be done with her and this show already. But that was never her luck. She always had to fight harder than everyone else to get the things she wanted.
“We’re just waiting on Hope,” Rex said, not looking at Josef.
Cadence flicked her gaze between Angelica and Rex and Josef, her lips sealed shut, which was so unlike her. But Angelica had noticed that often when Josef was around Cadence was quiet as a mouse. Perhaps she should ask about that sometime, when they had the time.
“You already know what I’m going to tell you,” Josef started, tapping his fingers on the table. “We need drama, tension, as much of it as possible. Vermont was a dud.”
A dud?
Angelica nearly gagged at that phrase. Vermont had been riddled with tension, but without Leanne here this week to be Josef’s new manipulated plaything, he’d have to make up more lies to fill the drama void he insisted on.
“I didn’t think it was that bad,” Rex said, staring directly at Angelica.
Well, at least he was standing up for them. Angelica just didn’t have the energy for it any longer. She was tired of arguing with Josef and of trying to get him to see the error of his ways.
“It was awful.” Josef wrinkled his nose, still tapping his fingers against the table.
“Then let’s figure out what drama we can add,” Cadence said, staring directly at Angelica.
Fuck.
It was time for her to talk now, wasn’t it?
Angelica slid the stylus across the screen on her iPad and opened up her files.
She stared at the information that had been collected about the hotel, and tried to find some way to make it full of tension, but honestly, this looked to be the most benign hotel they were scheduled to be at all season.
Why it was chosen as one of their stops was beyond her.
“Hello!” Hope stepped into the room, her voice full of joy and happiness.
Angelica had to work hard to keep herself from smiling as she glanced up to Hope and locked their gazes together. “You’re late.”
“I, uh…” Hope’s cheeks flushed bright red. “I got a little distracted, but I’m here now.” Hope sat down between Angelica and Rex, looking from one to the other and then staring directly across the table at Cadence.
Angelica had to hand it to her, that was a nice cover-up.
Her lips twitched with a smile before she managed to tame it.
Flicking through the information in front of her, Angelica froze when Hope’s hand settled on her thigh.
She didn’t dare look down at it, not wanting to draw any more attention to what Hope was doing or the fact that they were in a room full of people.
This wasn’t what they’d agreed to.
At all.
Angelica looked at Rex and raised an eyebrow at him. “Where would you like to start this time?”
“Let’s start with the opening, setting the stage. I think it showcases how you and Hope interact.” Rex nodded to himself, and Angelica wrote that note down in her iPad.
“Ange, there’s some chatter on the dark web that I think you should know about when it comes to this place.” Cadence slid her iPad over so that Angelica could look at it.
Frowning, Angelica pulled it closer to skim through whatever Cadence had pulled up on the screen.
It was dark, and there were just comments here and there that she had to pull together, but nothing concrete.
Sighing, Angelica flicked her finger against the screen to skim even more of it.
Hope scooted closer, her fingers curling around Angelica’s knee just under the edge of her skirt and against her skin.
Hope’s middle finger played lightly on the inside of Angelica’s knee, teasing her.
Already ramped up from their thirty minutes, Angelica had to hold her breath to get herself under control and focus on what was right in front of her.
The comments were filled with praise for the way the hotel looked, the staff’s kindness and helpfulness.
But they were also littered with people saying the feel of the place was off.
What the hell did they mean by that?
Angelica shook her head and moved the iPad closer to Hope so she could read the comments as well.
“What does it say?” Josef asked.
“Nothing, really.” Angelica furrowed her brow and looked at the man who was still making her life a living hell. “It’s mainly people talking about how they didn’t feel safe here or that the energy felt off.”
“That’s a bunch of horseshit.” Josef crossed his arms and glowered. “A bunch of millennial bullshit of feelings and emotions.”
Angelica flicked her gaze to him and immediately locked her eyes on Hope before looking at Cadence. He really was showing his true colors lately, and she didn’t like what she saw. Angelica licked her lips and slid the iPad back to Cadence.
“Let’s figure out filming, shall we?” she asked.
Rex nodded. “I’d like to start with introductions, yours and Hope’s, but then I want to move into introductions and interviews with the staff and owners.”
“I’d like to be present for those,” Angelica said, shifting on the chair to cross her legs and lock Hope’s hand between her knees.
The last thing she needed was for Hope to continue to distract her from the work that needed to be done.
“I want to observe and see if there’s anything we missed in the previous interviews. ”
“Not a bad idea,” Rex said, making a note.
“I can rework the schedule to accommodate for that.” Angelica was already making a note of that.
Josef huffed. “I need to remind you that you and Hope need to up the tension. Our ratings are dropping.”
“They’re not.” Logan’s voice shocked through the room.
Angelica’s shoulders and chest tightened instantly, and she sat up even straighter. “What are you doing here?”
Logan raised an eyebrow at her and then shifted his gaze to Hope. What the hell was going on? What had Hope done? Panic swelled in Angelica’s chest, pulling the muscles even tighter. Josef’s face turned red, and he puffed out his chest like he was ready to go to war.
Well, Josef had wanted tension.
Angelica just hadn’t thought it’d come from Logan’s unexpected arrival. She looked to Hope again, who didn’t seem as surprised by this change of plans. Angelica shifted her legs and pushed Hope’s hand from her thigh. Why was she being kept in the dark again?
She hated this.
“Will you be staying with us the whole week?” Angelica asked, looking to Rex to see if he had any idea that Logan was going to be here. He, thankfully, seemed just as clueless as she was.
“Yes.” Logan pulled out a chair and flipped it around, so he was leaning against the back of it with his arms as he straddled it. “I’ll be around for the rest of filming.”
“But you just had a baby.” Angelica furrowed her brow. “You should be home, not here.”
“I should,” Logan agreed, shifting his gaze from her to look directly at Josef. “But I’ve been made aware of some situations here that require my immediate supervision.”
A shiver raced through Angelica, and once again, she found herself staring at Hope.
Angelica’s lips parted, as if she was going to say something, but she stopped herself.
Now wasn’t the time or the place to drag Hope through the mud or start an argument, especially one that might land them both into hot water.
“Well, then…” Angelica tried to steady herself, but she wasn’t used to being thrown for a loop this much in one day.
“You were discussing scheduling, I believe.” Logan looked at her again, as if expecting her to carry on as if nothing had changed.
But everything had shifted.
Logan was here, and instead of just trying to hide her relationship with Hope from Josef, she now had to hide it from Logan. And they both knew exactly the kind of person she was. Angelica flicked to another app on her iPad and tried to center herself again.
“I’d like to be at those interviews as well. Perhaps we can divide and conquer,” Hope said, bringing them back around to where they should be.
“We still need more tension between the two of you.” Josef pointed at Hope and Angelica. “I won’t let this show fail because you two refuse to work together.”
So that was how he was going to play this. Good to know. Angelica straightened her shoulders and sent Hope a cold, hard look. “I think we can find something to be angry with each other about.”
She could see the instant that Hope didn’t understand if Angelica was truly angry with her or not.
And honestly, Angelica wasn’t sure either.
But what she did know was they had to talk after this.
Angelica had more questions than answers right now, and she wasn’t willing to go without them for long.
“Y-yes,” Hope answered. “We usually can find something.”
Rex narrowed his gaze, flicking it between them before landing a curious look on Angelica. She gave him a hard look as well. “I think for this episode Hope and I can have separate theories about what’s actually going on here, and each think that we’re right.”
“Fighting tooth and nail to come out on top?” Josef asked.
“Yes.” Angelica’s jaw tightened on the word. “And then in the end, we’ll both be wrong. There’s your resolution.”
Josef grunted, but he didn’t say anything about that part.
Cadence jumped in. “I think that will work really well. We can collect more information during the interviews to build those theories.”
“Perfect.” Angelica found herself looking at Hope again.
She’d made that decision without Hope’s input, but surely Hope wouldn’t be upset about that portion.
The rest of it, perhaps. But again, they clearly needed to talk more than they had so far.
Pushing her hair over her shoulder, Angelica stared down at her iPad again.
“Then tomorrow we’ll film observation day. ”
“For the first half,” Rex responded, his nose buried in his own iPad.
“I think we need to move quickly into resolutions and trainings. I suspect that we won’t figure out what’s truly wrong until we do that.
This place… Riverside Plaza… well, from what I’ve seen they know how to give the right answers to the questions asked. ”
“Like they’ve been coached?” Angelica furrowed her brow in confusion.
“Shouldn’t they be, though?” Hope chimed in. “They should know what they’re supposed to say when asked.”
“Not to us,” Angelica pointed out, flicking her stylus between her fingers. “They need to be honest with us.”
“I meant the staff,” Hope muttered.
“Hmm.” Angelica didn’t answer more than that, though. She was curious what Rex had to say. He’d been here a full day longer than they had, and she wanted to know more about what he’d observed in that short period of time.
“What I meant, Hope, was that they all seem to be pretending as though they’re digging deeper into the problem when they’re really not. They’re open and honest to a degree and that’s in.” Rex folded his arms and sent Hope a look that Angelica didn’t understand.
Perhaps this was just their history coming up again.
“No one ever opens up in the first day,” Hope barked back.
“They don’t,” Angelica agreed. “And it’s our job to figure out what they’re hiding. Because they’re always hiding something.” She shot Hope a serious look before shifting her gaze to Cadence and then Logan.
Too many games were being played at once in here, and she needed to put some of them to an end. She needed to keep them from falling off the wall and breaking.
“Shall we get back to schedule?” Angelica asked.
“Yes, lets.” Logan was the one who answered, and his keenly observant eyes were locked on Angelica.
She wasn’t going to be able to hide for much longer.