2. Rowan
2
ROWAN
“Y ou’re doing fine.” I gave my latest client the most reassuring smile I could manage. The poor kid was shaking like a leaf and reminding me of hell a lot of myself around a decade ago. “Just be natural. Don’t try too hard to impress anybody.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” she reminded me with a tight little laugh. Penny Hargrove, all five feet ten inches of her, with a waterfall of inky hair that hung partway over her face. I used to wear my hair that way, then I said fuck it and cut it off. “You’re not the one trying to make a good impression on everybody in case somebody decides to give you a chance.”
Her hands trembled as she ran them over her thighs. The pale peach dress she wore played up her delicate complexion and big green eyes. I had recommended it with that in mind. “Remember what I told you when we first met? Do you remember when you first walked into my office? I told you why I do what I do. I remember what it was like.”
There it was, that quick, almost imperceptible glance. Her eyes shifted for just a second before darting away, but it was enough. I followed her gaze to the mirror, to the reflection I no longer recognized. I couldn’t ignore it, but after ten years and a lot of fading, the scars weren’t as noticeable as they once were.
There was a time when my entire world revolved around them. Were they getting fainter yet? Was there another brand of makeup that would cover them better? A hairstyle that would conceal them?
I was used to that glance and the obvious disbelief that went along with it. She was young, barely off the bus from her little no-name town in the Midwest. There were so many like her in a town practically built upon the discarded dreams of bright, beautiful young women. Hell, she didn’t even have an agent yet. It was because of that I took her on as a client. She might as well have been wearing a Little Red Riding Hood costume, walking through the big, scary woods while predators and cheats lurked around every corner, wondering how to take advantage of her.
“Remember,” I told her, glossing over the pointed look at my scars. “You’re here to make an impression. Nobody is holding a gun to your head. All you need to do is smile.”
“Maybe I can talk with Mr. Landry?” She rolled her shoulders back, lifting her chin, scanning the room. “I could thank him for putting me in the movie and make sure he knows how seriously I’m going to take the job.” The wide-eyed kid looked and sounded almost painfully sincere.
“There’s no need.” Her face fell a little like I popped her balloon. The girl needed an agent. Somebody to give her this sort of advice since mine was only supposed to be that of the legal variety.
“You’re not the first actress who thought they may be able to get away with that,” I explained. “Trust me. Pros like him see straight through it. It might end up doing more harm than good if he thinks you’re a fake or a kiss-ass.”
I was starting to wish I had never mentioned this event while studying the contract she’d received from the studio. I had looked at the invitation as a professional courtesy and was on the fence about whether or not I wanted to go in the first place. When she found out I was invited, she had done everything short of standing on her head to get me to add her as my guest. There were other things I could be doing that I would’ve enjoyed more than wearing an empty smile and posing for a photo when appropriate.
Not that I was in a position to be a snob about any of it. My practice was barely two years old, and it had only been within the last quarter that I’d been in a position to take on a third paralegal. It was time to start thinking seriously about expansion. That meant showing my face at award lunches and other events.
“Oh my God.” Something over my shoulder caught Penny’s eye. Her already fair skin went white as a sheet. “He’s coming this way. Lex Landry. I can’t breathe.”
“Relax,” I whispered, caught between a tiny bit of irritation and the impulse to laugh at her. She had already signed on to do a brainless action movie with the studio. The time to impress him and his dad and the other big shots would come once filming started.
I turned slightly to ask a server for a glass of chardonnay, giving me a glimpse of the man Penny was hyperventilating over. From the corner of my eye, I could just make out the sight of him cutting through the crowd. All in all, he wasn’t a bad guy. At least, I had never heard anything about him beyond rumors of being a womanizer, which was nothing special in this town. So long as the women consented and they weren’t coerced in any way, it was none of my business.
“Don’t be too eager,” I warned, looking down at the floor and composing myself the way I hoped she was. She wasn’t my only client who’d signed on to make movies at his studio. I needed to maintain a warm relationship. My client roster was healthy, but I was in no position to take chances.
“Mr. Landry. It’s so nice to see you.” Gone was the nervous, fidgeting girl. Now she was a sophisticated, worldly woman who oozed charm and confidence once Lex reached us. “Congratulations to your father. I haven’t been in town long, but I know what an honor this award is.” The girl was smooth. If she were half as convincing in front of a camera, there was a solid career ahead of her.
Lex stood a step behind me, chuckling. “Thank you. Forgive me, but I’m no good with names, Miss…” Only a guy in his position would cut to the chase like that.
“Penny Hargrove,” she purred. Meanwhile, I accepted a glass of ice-cold wine once it reached me and took a long sip, pretending I wasn’t listening to every word. Let her make her impression.
A second male voice rang out over my right shoulder, softer than Lex’s. “You look like somebody I used to know.”
That voice. Rich, deep, like warm honey rolling down my body, coating me in sweetness. The last voice I thought I’d ever hear again. The world stopped for a second. The room went silent or was that my heartbeat drowning out everything else?
Suddenly, I was twenty again, with my entire life ahead of me and nothing but hope and dreams to sustain me. Images flashed across my mind’s eye, covering the six months Spencer Collins was part of my life. Everything he’d shown me. A world I would never have known if it hadn’t been for him.
What a shame it wasn’t enough to make up for everything that came after.
My mind caught up to reality, and everything came rushing back. When I looked up, stunned, my head spun, and goose bumps covered my skin. The sight of those icy blue eyes made my heart skip a beat.
It’s like something out of a movie.
Amazing, the things that will go through a person’s head at a moment like this. Confronted with the man who’d changed the course of my life. Somebody I told myself it was better not to see since the past was the past. I didn’t need him.
Yet, there he was in front of me, the last person I ever expected to set eyes on again, especially at an event like this, with half the town in attendance to honor one of the few men in the industry with no skeletons in the closet. Sometimes, that was more than enough to earn accolades. There were too many horror stories in this business, enough to outweigh the dreams of fame and fortune.
Fame and fortune I had once dreamed of.
Fame and fortune stolen from me by the man now invading my space, destroying my composure.
My hand closed tighter around the stem of my wine glass, and my jaw ached from clenching my teeth as the past and present collided in my head.
“Rowan McNulty, right?” He was playing dumb, but it didn’t matter to my pounding heart. No one had ever said my name the way Spencer did. Any hope of my overworked mind pretending I was imagining things was lost when I heard it spoken in a voice that still haunted my dreams sometimes. A voice that, at one time, I would have done anything to hear.
“That’s my name,” I somehow managed to choke out while holding his gaze. How I could speak while staring at him was a mystery I couldn’t afford to investigate. He had barely aged a day, and the changes time had brought on only made him more handsome.
“Do we know each other?” His head tipped to the side, blue eyes tracing a path over my body. Damn my nipples for tightening the way they did while my heart beat faster and my mouth went dry. Damn for doing this to me. Looking me up and down like I was a prize heifer after vanishing off the face of the planet and abandoning me. Pretending not to remember me when we both knew he did. What gave him the right?
“This is a small town,” I pointed out. “It only feels big.” It was a miracle I could force out a single word with my jaw so tightly clenched.
How? Where had he come from? For years, I told myself he was gone, out of my life, and good riddance. I didn’t need him. I never had. I only thought I did.
“I know.” He snapped his fingers, his mouth twisting into a smirk that confirmed he was playing a game. “You went by a different name when we knew each other. Rowan Leslie, wasn’t it?”
Nobody had called me that in years. “You have a good memory,” I murmured, wearing a thin smile. Now that the shock started to clear up, something else took its place that turned my bewilderment into something harder. “I wouldn’t have expected anyone to remember that. It’s been such a long time.”
“It has.” He still had the power to look straight through me and see what was inside. I wanted to escape his perceptive gaze before he saw more than I wanted to reveal. Every instinct told me to leave, to go, to put this behind me and not turn back.
I couldn’t afford this.
I couldn’t survive him.
I barely survived the first time.
“ Let’s see how fast this baby can really go. ” I blinked rapidly, trying to push the memory of his teasing invitation aside. That was then. This was now. Only the past and present had a funny way of overlapping and getting all mixed up.
Looking at him, I saw the polished man before me and the arrogant, insolent, wild thing he used to be. I saw everything about him that had, for some reason, turned me into a brainless, careless idiot.
“That’s what stage names are for,” I concluded with a shrug. “Anyway, that was another lifetime.”
“Yes, it was.” His jaw ticked, and his nostrils flared. I had to be imagining this, or did he have the audacity to look angry? He certainly didn’t look at me like an old friend. I was a bug he wanted to squash.
He wasn’t the only one with the skill to see through people.
“Anyway…” Lex cleared his throat, and dammit, I had almost forgotten he was standing there. I had forgotten Penny too. Everything else had ceased to exist.
The man still had a strange power over me.
I turned my full attention onto Lex. “It’s nice to see so many people in attendance in your dad’s honor,” I offered, shaking his hand. “He looked great up there while giving his speech. What’s it like, inheriting such fantastic genes?”
His broad shoulders shook when he laughed. “If I’m in half his shape once I reach that age, I’ll be the luckiest bastard alive.”
Meanwhile, Spencer stared holes through me while I pretended not to care. What was he doing here? I wanted to ask. There were so many things I wanted to ask. For the time being, I settled for running a hand through my long bob, deliberately revealing the scar running along my temple and halfway down the side of my face. He wanted to stare at me? Might as well give him a look at what he hadn’t bothered to see before now.
“ Once you sign this contract, you forfeit your ability to contact Mr. Collins ever again. For any reason. ”
All of a sudden, I was in a hospital bed, staring up through a fog of pain and heartache at a man in black who loomed over me with a contract in one hand. “ You will have the money you need to finance a fresh start. ”
I had signed away the right to ask Spencer a damn thing ever again. At the time, it had seemed like the only thing to do. Flailing around in the middle of a stormy sea with nothing to grab onto, here was a man offering security, if nothing else.
Just then, security was one thing I was short on.
Spencer had run away from me like the cowardly child he was, and now he had the nerve to stare daggers at me. When I took the chance to glance his way, the intensity in his gaze sent a cold shiver down my spine.
Ten years. No, eleven. Where had he been?
“My friend Spencer is in the middle of patenting a new piece of technology, in fact.” Lex gestured toward Spencer with his drink, unaware of the icy tension that hung between us. “Before long, his company will be the new Apple.”
“Please, nobody quote me as saying that,” Spencer quipped. Penny giggled and— fuck me —fluttered her eyelashes at him. My nails dug into my palm as I fought the urge to drag her from the ballroom by her hair. He had already destroyed my dreams. I’d be damned if I let him do it to her.
“Lex?” Alexander Landry, Sr. waved his son over from halfway across the room, motioning toward a handful of photographers.
Lex let out another charming little chuckle while shrugging. “Duty calls. Penny, want me to introduce you? I’m sure he’d be happy to meet an up-and-coming star like you.”
Penny nodded and only blurted out a tiny giggle, her wide eyes meeting mine. I gave her a slight nod of encouragement and watched her fall in step beside the studio executive who’d left me standing alone with Spencer.
“Rowan.” He stepped up closer, almost overwhelming me with his presence. There was so much of him. He was too tall, too commanding, too intense. It was still an intoxicating combination. “I need to speak with you about something very important. Crucial.”
“After all this time?” I asked, faking the insolence I wished was real. “I can’t imagine what it might be.”
“Give me thirty minutes over drinks tonight,” he insisted. His nerve made my head snap back, but he ignored it. He was good at ignoring what was inconvenient. “I promise it’ll be worth the time. And if you don’t think I’ll have Lex look up your number for me?—”
I’d heard enough. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I whispered, “Fine, fine.” I would hate myself for this. I was sure of it. He didn’t deserve a minute of my time after forcing me into signing that stupid contract I was too na?ve and immature to understand.
But that contract, along with the pain that had come before it, placed my feet on the path I now walked. I couldn’t pretend it was all bad.
The things we tell ourselves when we need an excuse to see a man one more time.
His jaw tightened as he nodded, looking me up and down one more time, grunting out, “Bar Nineteen12. Eight o’clock.”
And then he was gone, cutting through the crowd like a hot knife through soft butter. I reached out blindly, grabbing for the back of the closest chair to support myself now that the adrenaline that had kept me upright drained from my system. His broad back retreated, the crowd swallowing him, but I continued staring in that direction for what felt like forever.
The bastard wanted to see me tonight and according to him, it was crucial.
Had he waited more than ten years to apologize for almost killing me? Or did he want to apologize for buying my silence like the spoiled coward he was?
One thing was for sure. I wouldn’t miss this appointment for the world.