Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
“Ange, good, I’m glad you’re in here.” Florence shut the door to the small room where Ansel was set up for hair and makeup.
Angelica pursed her lips as she sipped the coffee that Ansel had brought her when she’d shown up to begin her day.
She’d barely slept a wink last night. The thought of all those people outside caused what little sleep she did get to be disturbed.
Angelica said nothing as she tensed and took another sip.
“I need to talk to you, and Hope, but honestly getting the two of you in the same room is difficult.” Florence slid into the chair that Hope would normally occupy.
But again, Angelica said nothing. She didn’t comment on the fact that hair and makeup with Ansel was one of the few times that she and Hope actually had together, especially when Hope had Eva for the week, like this week.
Or the fact that the nature of their work and the design of the show naturally kept them separate.
Angelica paused at that thought. Had Josef designed it that way on purpose, in order to keep Angelica out of trouble? God, he would do something as insane and specific as that. Pressing her lips together hard, Angelica nodded at Ansel as he started to curl her hair with the iron.
“We need to talk about what Josef is doing.” Florence pushed her palms against her thighs and didn’t look up at Angelica.
“He’s being himself, finally, I think.” Angelica’s voice was hoarse from the lack of sleep. She’d have to warm that up before filming actually started.
Florence hummed. “The problem is that he’s not pointing out an untruth, is he?”
Angelica tensed sharply. She flicked her gaze into the small mirror in front of her to see what Ansel’s reaction was before she focused down on the coffee in her hand. “Josef’s lies and stands are always exaggerated.”
“I don’t think so about this. Because if they were, you and Hope would be mad instead of circling the wagons to protect each other.”
Angelica sighed heavily and looked directly at Florence. “What exactly did you want to discuss concerning Josef?”
“I think we need to get ahead of the story before he breaks it. Use it to our advantage to spin PR for the show, and it steals his thunder.” Florence folded her hands together, looking toward Ansel before focusing back on Angelica. “Avoiding it isn’t going to bring the desired results.”
“And what are the desired results?”
“Privacy.” Florence’s eyes widened slightly.
Angelica could agree with her there. Josef was going to take this as far as possible in order to ruin her life.
She suspected it was a tit-for-tat situation for him, and because she’d been the one to boot him from the show through the reports she’d filed, then she was the primary one to blame.
At least, that was probably how he saw it.
Sighing, Angelica took another sip of her coffee. “Josef isn’t easily intimidated.”
“I’m not trying to intimidate him—or you for that matter.” Florence’s tone softened. “I’m trying to find a way to make this useful for us.”
“For the show, you mean.” Angelica’s heart dropped.
It was the exact thing that she would do in this situation if she weren’t so intimately involved in it.
She would push to find the best possible scenarios.
But this wasn’t about marketing and promotion.
It was her life. It was her relationship with Hope.
And until she had more answers, she didn’t want to make any moves.
“Yes, for the show.” Florence’s thin lips parted as if she was preparing for the rebuttal that Angelica was already giving her.
Angelica stayed still while Ansel finished with her hair and pointed out her outfit for the day. She nodded that she understood and finished the coffee swiftly. “Do you have the script for today?”
“Ange—”
Standing up, Angelica moved toward the small dressing area that Ansel had made up. She disappeared behind it and closed her eyes to center herself. Why was this becoming harder by the day? It shouldn’t be this difficult to just do her damn job.
“I’d really like to talk about this!” Florence called, still obviously in the room.
Angelica swallowed hard, sliding out of the clothes she currently wore to put on the ones that were chosen for her. Maybe if she stayed back here long enough, Florence would be gone when she walked out. So she took her time.
When she stepped out from behind the screen, Florence was still sitting in the chair Hope usually occupied. Angelica tightened her entire body and walked toward her chair to grab her iPad. “Have you sent over the script yet?”
“No. Ange—”
“Then I guess we’ll just wing it today.” Angelica stepped to the side with her iPad in hand and walked out of the room, leaving a flabbergasted Florence behind her.
Rex was already set up for her, and Hope was standing with him, arms crossed and an unhappy look on her face.
Angelica was about to say something when Hope nodded at her and walked away.
Perhaps the question of their relationship was becoming too much for Hope, or it could be something else entirely.
She wasn’t sure, and she didn’t have the time right now to figure it out.
“Elsie is working with Hope in the kitchen. They already started filming,” Rex said.
“Okay.” Angelica didn’t need an explanation from him, but it did help ease her nerves about that entire interaction slightly. “Florence hasn’t emailed the script today.”
Rex grunted and raised his bushy eyebrows. “She’s stressed.”
“We all are.” Angelica peered over Rex’s shoulders to the blacked-out windows. “They’re still out there?”
“They are.” Rex sighed heavily. “And they’re making problems, unfortunately.”
“Perfect.” Angelica flicked through her iPad to find her notes on the hotel so she could at least prepare herself. “Where do you want me to talk to Ronan?”
“In the office, I think. He’s upstairs cleaning a room right now for a guest tonight.”
Angelica jerked her head up at that. “Ronan is cleaning a room.”
“Yeah.” Rex mimicked her look of disbelief.
“Why don’t we go meet him there?” Angelica lifted her chin to meet Rex’s eyes. “I think I have a few more questions to ask him.”
Rex’s lips pulled upward into a knowing smile. “Sounds like a good idea. I’ll snag Sy.”
When Angelica walked into the guest room, Ronan was sitting in the chair with his head in his hands, the cleaning supplies he’d brought abandoned near the door. His eyes were glazed over, a pained expression on his face, and he didn’t even seem to notice that she was there.
“Ronan?” Angelica asked, using a softer tone than she normally would. Something about this moment called for it.
He jerked slightly, looking up at her and shaking his head. “You know my biggest fear about everything is that I’ve ruined all of this.”
Angelica glanced to Sy and Rex, hoping that they at least had the cameras on for it.
“What do you mean?” She asked, stepping deeper into the room and sitting on the edge of the unmade bed to be close to him but still give him space.
“My mom dumped all her extra money into this hotel to try and save it so that I’d have something to do with my life after…” He trailed off, his voice thick with emotion. “And I can’t do it. No one will come and stay here, no one will help, nothing I do makes a difference.”
Angelica slid her hand along her thigh, realizing far too late that it was clammy. Hope would be much better at this conversation than she was, but she wasn’t incapable of it.
“What am I supposed to do when she dies? She’s not going to live forever, and she’s already struggling with her health, and working here a hundred hours a week at her age isn’t healthy for her, and I—”
“Ronan.” Angelica interrupted him, because she was definitely missing some kind of context. While she agreed with everything he’d said so far, she still needed to know what the instigating problem he was struggling with was. “You’re going to have to fill in the blanks for me.”
Ronan drew in a deep breath, sighing it out, along with whatever was left of his stoicism. She could see it in the way his face was drawn, the acceptance that he needed to just come out with it.
“We’re a small town.” Ronan ran his fingers through his thinning hair.
“And we have a lot of tourism which keeps everything going, and that’s probably what’s saved us because they don’t know, but no one will recommend us.
In fact, they try to steer tourists away from Mom’s restaurant even.
” He sighed again. “And it’s all my fault. ”
“Take me back to when it happened.” Angelica tensed her shoulders, realizing she was getting far too deep into this conversation, but they also weren’t going to get any work done on the hotel until Ronan admitted what the problem was and they could start to work on it.
“I had an affair.” Ronan’s lips thinned and he looked up at Angelica.
“And it was with the wrong person, and yes, I know I was wrong to have an affair, but I’ve been made out to be the enemy ever since.
I lost my job. I lost all of my friends and family.
I have nothing left except the rotting boards in this hotel, and my mom, who for some reason can’t just walk away. ”
Angelica’s stomach tightened hard. This was exactly what she was trying to avoid in her own life, being made the outcast, not because she regretted decisions but because it was so much easier to make her be the enemy than to understand the complications in the situation.
“I used to be the sheriff, you know.” He sent her a quick smirk, and she could see underneath it the confident man that he used to be. “And now I’m cleaning toilets full of shit because I can’t get anyone to work for me.”
Clocking a different sort of problem that he hadn’t expressed so far when it came to the business, Angelica made note of it but kept it to herself. Now wasn’t the time to problem solve that.
“You said the woman was the wrong person, what do you mean by that?” Angelica clasped her hands tightly.
Ronan’s cheeks rushed with red. “She was someone with power, and she turned that power against me. She told her husband that I coerced her into it, so I was immediately put on leave because he runs this city, and then they filed charges against me, and civil suits. I lost everything.”
“Runs this city?” Angelica asked for clarification.
Ronan nodded. “She’s the mayor’s wife.”
Angelica’s heart broke. This man was suffering, that was clear.
She looked around the room and started to put everything in her head in order.
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do, you’re going to take a minute to set yourself right—go outside and get some fresh air—then you’re going to come back inside and we’re going to start with some damage control and to rebuild your reputation. ”
“It’s impossible.”
“It might be,” Angelica said. “I won’t lie to you about that. You might never have the reputation you did before, in fact, you probably won’t. But that doesn’t mean people can’t start to trust you again or that your business has to fail because of it. All right?”
He looked skeptical.
“Just try it with me. What else do you have to lose?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he answered.
“Okay. Then go get yourself together, and we’ll talk in the office in a minute.”
Ronan took his time, but he did walk out of the hotel room. She watched him drag his feet away from the room. She wasn’t a therapist, but Ronan definitely needed one of those. Angelica stayed seated for another minute before she stood up and faced Rex, a hard look in her gaze.
As she walked out of the room, he snagged her arm and pulled her back. “Sy, will you give us a second.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Sy shut the door, a click loud and damning. Rex bent his head, turning to look directly into Angelica’s eyes. “Don’t you dare start thinking that when all this comes out about you and Hope that you’re going to be in the same boat as Ronan.”
Angelica stiffened. “I’m not the one who cheated.”
Rex’s lips thinned in a tight line. “Technically, and I do believe this, Ange, Hope didn’t cheat either. We had an open relationship, and it just didn’t work out.”
“That is what you’d like to believe, isn’t it?” Angelica stepped in slightly, closing a bit of the gap between them. “But the fact is, she was married to you at the time, and I was her boss. Power and coercion aren’t that far off the table.”
“Except she loves you.” Rex had an echo of Ronan’s pained look in his gaze. “She does.”
“Love doesn’t solve the problem of facts. And it doesn’t mean that the world is going to be accepting of it.” Angelica bit the inside of her cheek. “Where this concerns Ronan, I’m not sure we can restore his reputation. All we can do is give him some tips and tricks of how to mend it.”
Rex raised an eyebrow at her. “And are you using those tips and tricks yourself?”
Angelica tensed. Her lips parted slightly in surprise. “My problems are complicated by Josef.”
“They are,” Rex agreed. “But Josef isn’t exactly well-liked—or even a little liked—by the majority of this crew. Unlike Ronan, you have way more backing and support.”
Breathing slowly, Angelica held her ground for another second. Then she stepped back, broke Rex’s grasp on her arm, and walked away. She couldn’t do this. Not right now. Not when everything was so close to the surface.