Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
“Ange, got a minute?” Logan stepped into the staging area.
Angelica frowned as she popped up from rustling around in some bags. “That depends on what you mean by a minute.”
“Looking for something?” Logan slid into one of the seats and propped an ankle over his knee.
Sighing heavily, Angelica put her hands on her hips and surveyed the room. “My iPad. I haven’t found it all morning.”
Then again, she’d been thoroughly distracted by Hope that morning when they were in with Ansel and she hadn’t managed to pull herself together since then.
And she was supposed to meet with the owners in the next five minutes, but all the questions she wanted to ask were on that damn iPad that she couldn’t find.
“I’d like to talk about Josef,” Logan said, ignoring Angelica’s panic.
She narrowed her gaze at him before looking over his shoulder at the open door. “I’d rather not talk about that right now.”
“Ange… we need to talk about it.” Logan patted the table next to him and gave her a direct look.
Sighing, Angelica sat down, but her gaze kept flitting all around the room as she tried to see her iPad anywhere. “What do you want to talk about?”
“You didn’t call me.” Logan frowned slightly. “You promised me you would.”
“It wasn’t bad.”
Logan sighed heavily, standing up and walking to the door to shut it and subsequently sealing Angelica’s fate into the room to have this damn conversation. She tensed and bit the inside of her cheek.
“Ange, be honest with me, on a scale of one to five, one being you want to quit because of him and five being your favorite person on the planet, how do you feel about Josef?” Logan crossed his leg again and stared at her directly, as if he knew exactly what he was doing.
It was far harder to avoid questions like this than the typical ones that required a yes or a no. Pursing her lips, Angelica rolled her shoulders and settled into her chair even more. “One.”
Logan’s eyebrows shot up as if he wasn’t expecting that response. “One?”
“One,” Angelica confirmed. She rubbed her thumb over the pads of her fingers in a nervous gesture. She didn’t want him to pry any more. She just wanted to find her damn iPad and get back to filming. Avoidance was certainly the best way to deal with Josef.
“How long has it been that way, Ange?” A deep line formed in the center of Logan’s forehead, and he leaned forward, as if he actually cared about what she said.
“Since he was gone for the first part of last season.” Angelica sighed. “We’re much better at our jobs when he isn’t around.”
“And why is that?” Logan had eyes only for her, and it was unnerving.
She wasn’t used to being the one on this end of the questioning, and while she knew she needed to talk to Logan about Josef, it also meant potentially revealing her relationship with Hope. She tensed and pressed her lips together hard.
“Why are you here, Logan? You’re supposed to be on leave.”
“I am,” he answered, frowning. “But when I get enough calls to complain about Josef in a single very short filming season, I have to make myself available for the people who work for me.”
“How many complaints did you receive?” Angelica tried not to twitch. Maybe it wasn’t just Hope’s phone call that had tipped Logan over the edge.
“Last week there were three.” Logan rested back in the chair. “From three separate people.”
“Oh.” Angelica breathed out slowly. Was the crew so distant from her that they didn’t feel they could speak to her about any of this?
“I can see your mind working, and no, they would have come to you, but after the car accident, they didn’t want to put any more added stress on you.” Logan swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he tilted his head to the side. “And because the complaints involved you.”
“Involved me?” Angelica furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
“The ones last week, specifically, were all about Josef’s treatment of you—well, you and Hope.” Logan sighed. “I didn’t know he was bringing Leanne in, I need to be clear on that. If I’d known, I would have told him no, and I suspect he knew that.”
Angelica’s cheeks heated, but a small amount of the tension in her chest released. “I don’t think anyone knew.”
“We’ll have to pay her, of course, but it’s not going to be easy finagling the budget to accommodate that.”
“I don’t think Josef cared about that.” Angelica crossed her arms, wishing she could cross her legs, but with the cast still on, she was stuck sitting in this awkward and uncomfortable position.
“I mentioned it when Leanne showed up that first week. I was just as shocked she was staying for a second.”
“And glad she wasn’t staying for a third?” Logan asked.
Angelica breathed deeply and nodded. “Yes. It was… tense.” That was the most she was going to say about that.
“Do you think he brought her in specifically to goad you?”
“Why does Josef do anything?” Angelica lifted her chin, staring down her nose at Logan. “He wants drama and tension on the screen, and he knows exactly how to get it—with or without consent.”
Logan frowned. “How did you feel about Leanne being here?”
Damn, he was back to those how questions. Angelica brushed her fingers over her legs. “I really need to get back to filming.”
“Ange, I need you to talk to me. Remember? Like we talked in Los Angeles, it’s no different now than it was then.”
Except that it was. Back then she wasn’t doing exactly what Josef accused her of, and everything wasn’t coming to a head where it’d all crash down on her. She had to be better than she was back then. Angelica clenched her jaw tightly as she stared at him.
“Logan, I don’t know who to trust right now.
” Angelica looked around the room. “Every time I think I can trust someone, they prove me wrong.” She sighed.
“Having Leanne on set was difficult. Personally, for me. Professionally for everyone else. Josef continually threatened my job and Hope’s job by having Leanne here, telling us that she would be one person to replace both of us. ”
“He what?” Logan froze. “For the record, Ange, none of production is thinking about replacing you and Hope.”
“Well, that’s good to know.” Angelica rubbed her fingers again.
The knock on the door was loud, and Rex popped his head in. “We’re waiting on you.”
“Yeah, I’m on my way.” Angelica nodded at Logan. “Filming.”
“Yeah. We’ll talk more later.”
Great, that was exactly what she’d wanted to hear.
“And if I see your iPad, I’ll bring it to you.”
“Thank you.” Angelica nodded at him and stood up from the chair to get to work.
When she reached the front desk, Angelica stopped abruptly.
Rex stared at her oddly, but Angelica was frozen.
Her fucking iPad had everything on it, and she needed the information in order to do this.
Well, she could do it without, but she really would prefer to have her notes.
Sighing, she stalked forward and touched Rex’s arm lightly.
“Have you seen my iPad?”
“Nope,” he answered with a shake of his head. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Angelica held her breath and then shook her head. “My iPad issue is throwing me off my game.”
“Issue?”
“It’s gone. I can’t find it, and you know me, Rex, I don’t just misplace items.”
“No, you’re anal about everything,” he mumbled.
Angelica chose not to take that as a dig but more as a statement of fact about her. “It has my notes for this scene on it.”
“Ah.” Now he seemed to understand.
“Lyric’s looking for it. Eva too, actually.”
“Eva?” His ears perked up at that one.
Angelica cringed. She was supposed to be better than this. She should have held that information back, because he would be the first person to figure out that she and Hope were back in a relationship. “I saw her this morning when I was in with Ansel. She wanted to tell Hope good morning.”
Rex pressed his lips together hard before sighing. “She does have a certain affinity for you.”
“She’s a smart kid, and I appreciate that.” Angelica looked around the room again. “Where are Wylde and Maggie and Kaidee?”
Rex shrugged. “Rounding people up for this shoot has been difficult. You and Hope vanished yesterday when Cadence was trying to find you—”
The hair on the back of Angelica’s neck stood up and her stomach plummeted.
“—these owners are damn near impossible to find when I need them. And when I don’t need them, they’re always hanging around,” Rex finished.
Angelica spun back into the conversation. “Like they don’t really want us here?”
“I think they want us here.” Rex lowered his voice and dipped his chin to look at her squarely. “I’m just not sure they want us to be up in their business.”
“That’s every hotel.” Angelica clenched her jaw and put her hands on her hips. “No one likes to have their vulnerabilities and failures on full display for the world to judge.”
“True, but this is more than that.” Rex stepped even closer. “They don’t even seem interested in what we’re doing.”
Huh. Angelica filed that piece of information away. She’d gotten the same sense, but she’d thought it was just her. Maybe she should have brought it up with Hope to see what she thought about it, but she hadn’t had the energy the night before to do that.
“Hey, so what’s the holdup?” Hope skidded into view.
Angelica instantly tensed. Hiding this was going to be more difficult than she’d anticipated.
“Ange lost her iPad,” Rex said, nodding in Angelica’s direction. “She’s panicking.”
“You haven’t found it yet?” Hope raised her eyebrows.
Angelica pressed her lips together and shook her head with wide eyes. “I feel naked without it.”
Hope’s cheeks brightened with a blush, and Angelica instantly regretted what she said. That was far too close to flirting for comfort. She slid her gaze to Rex to see if he’d noticed anything, but he didn’t even seem to budge from what he had his nose buried in now.
“To answer your question though, we seem to be missing half the people we need to film with.” Rex looked around the room. “No owners.”
“Again?” Hope breathed out and rolled her eyes. “They vanished on Cadence earlier this morning too.”
“Yeah.” Rex cleared his throat. “Incoming.”
“What?” Hope asked.
Angelica thought the same thing, but she didn’t say it out loud, but as soon as she raised her gaze, she was met with Josef’s angry face as he barreled toward them.
Perfect. Angelica built up her armor. After the argument with him the night before, the last thing she wanted was to run face-first into that again, especially with the accusations he’d made quite loudly.
And since her microphone had been on at that point, she had to wonder how many of the crew had heard it.
But she was too scared to even ask.
If they knew, then surely Logan would have brought it up when he was questioning her that morning, right? Angelica clenched her hands into tight balls and waited for Josef to reach them and start on whatever new thing had crawled up his butt today.
“What are we doing?” Josef asked, though he didn’t sound instantly angry either.
“Waiting,” Rex said, locking his eyes on Angelica. “Not something we want to be doing either.”
“Waiting for what?” Josef looked to her.
“No one can seem to find the owners,” Angelica said. “I was just about to go in search of them.”
“I think I’ll join you,” Hope added as she turned and followed Angelica away from the two men. It was the quickest escape Angelica had ever had where Josef was concerned.
She shuddered as they stepped into the back offices and looked around even though Angelica was fairly certain the owners weren’t there. Because if they were, they would have been found already. Angelica breathed relief as it was just the two of them.
“So a missing iPad and three missing owners. Do you think we should call the FBI in for a raid?” Hope laughed as if she’d made the best joke on the planet.
Angelica rolled her eyes. “I’m more concerned about the iPad.”
“Why? Got state secrets on there?”
“No.” Angelica rubbed her hands together. “But I do have all of my notes for this entire episode on there. And the budget that I need to deal with because of the Leanne fiasco.”
“Logan’s not doing that?”
“We’re working on it together.” Angelica rubbed the back of her neck. “But it’s going to be hard to work off memory for filming.”
“You didn’t back up your iPad to the cloud?” A deep line formed in the center of Hope’s forehead.
Angelica shifted her gaze to Hope and then immediately flushed. “The what?”
“Oh my God, Angel. You…” Hope stopped and put her hands up. “You live and breathe by your iPad, and you don’t know how to back up the information?”
“Lyric does all of that for me—I think.”
“Holy crap.” Hope laughed. “I can’t believe you don’t back up your files!”
Angelica’s cheeks burned with embarrassment. It wasn’t ever an issue that she had before. Because she was rarely ever without her iPad within reach. But now… God, this just annoyed the fuck out of her. Where was it?
“I’ll help you find it.” Hope teased again. “And our wayward owners.”
“I’d rather find the iPad,” Angelica mumbled under her breath as they walked out of the office. It was going to be a hell of a day, wasn’t it?