FOURTEEN
DINNER. With Roman. Life didn’t get much worse. Mieux broke the news later in the afternoon, not that she could make it seem like a surprise or a negative. Yay, she was eating with her fiancé, woo hoo! Big sigh.
Didn’t help that Chic, the stylist who’d led her makeover, was waiting at home to talk her through that week’s designated outfits. Yes, that’s right, the week of designated outfits. For both during the day and in the evening. It wasn’t enough they’d filled the closet. No, obviously she couldn’t be trusted to dress herself. Everything down to the underwear and the earrings were picked out ready to go. She and Roman hadn’t crossed paths on the Undercover Ops set, but she was sure he was responsible for the strict instruction all the same.
Didn’t make much difference to her what she wore, so she went along, doing as told, because what difference did it make?
She put on the dress, the shoes, curled her hair as instructed, and spritzed on the perfume left by accessories in her closet.
Outside in the driveway, she got into the car expecting an impatient Roman, except the backseat was empty. Huh, well, that gave her a chance to check out the fridge. There should be champagne or whiskey… Anything alcoholic would—nothing but club soda. How exciting.
With Roman being an addict, curbing temptation must be a rule. Did that mean no alcohol in the house? No, there’d been wine with dinner the previous night. Wine. Good start. She shifted along the seat intending to run in for a quick shot of something, but didn’t get further than the middle.
Roman got in and slammed the door. “Where have you been?” he demanded. “What was the delay?”
Uh, attitude? Oh, wait, this wasn’t the reasonable Lowe. This was the unreasonable one.
“I’m here,” she said, sliding along the seat to get as far away from him as possible. “Before you.”
“I was waiting in the foyer for an hour. I don’t wait around for anyone.”
Definitely an exaggeration. Petulant actually, like a three-year-old. Wow. What a champ.
Gravel crunched beneath the tires. Good. Go Faster. Every second that passed was one closer to being away from him. That was what to focus on. They’d drive wherever they were driving. Eat. It was dinner. She didn’t need dessert or coffee or an appetizer, entree and home.
The point was to be seen, you know, happy, pleased to be with the man she loved. No scandal. No headlines.
Maybe she should have asked for acting lessons.
No, her attitude was all wrong. Everything she knew of Roman was skewed by her first impression of him the morning they met. That was an intense time, high pressure, maybe he wasn’t as bad as she thought. Sure, Struan and Mieux and everyone she’d met seemed to agree he was high maintenance. Still, if this was going to be her life, she had to make the most of it.
A good motivator? This man meant something to Struan who meant a lot to her.
“How did you get into acting?” she asked, setting her purse on her lap, determined to find some common ground.
“Have you never heard of the internet? Anything you want to know is—”
“I don’t know how long this will last. How long we’ll have to see each other, live with each other, but it’s going to be more than just tonight. Unless you have some secret plan I know nothing about?” No response. “So we should find something, don’t you think? Something we can talk about.”
If nothing else, by all accounts, he loved to talk about himself.
Tension in his body pulsed, as though it was his instinct to argue; it quickly deflated again.
“We did it at school,” he muttered. “And there was a drama club thing my father took us to. Struan wanted to know how everything worked, the lights, the camera, how actors prepared. I loved being on stage, even in rehearsal, being up there commanding a room felt right.”
His typical scowl loosened. She could almost see a glimmer of Struan in him, which was the first time she’d seen either of them in the other. Just because they looked alike didn’t mean their souls were the same.
“Is there anything I should know? We’re going to dinner together and shouldn’t embarrass each other. I know not to order alcohol—”
“I’ll order the wine,” he snapped. “I’m no drunk.” There was that line between his brows again. “You don’t have to do anything. Don’t say anything. This is an important guy. Ricardo Whey owns half this town.”
And CollCom the other half, from how she heard it.
“He’s in charge of Undercover Ops ?”
“His company is. He sits in his office and makes decisions. He’s important, very important. Don’t be surprised if he doesn’t ask your name or remember it. He’s not there to see you.”
That got her thinking. If Ricardo Whey was so important, why would he take a meeting with Roman Lowe? Given a choice, she wouldn’t meet Roman in private. And if she was managing his career, she wouldn’t want anyone else to meet him in private either. In private it was too easy to reach for the decanter, to accept one drink and another, increasing the chance he’d embarrass himself.
Putting him in a restaurant surrounded by other people gave them a time limit. Didn’t it? Once the food was eaten, they could sit at the table, but would they stick around all night? Surely not.
“How long will it take to get there?”
“What the fuck do I know?” he snarked. “I don’t care.”
“Do you have allergies? Likes? Dislikes? What kind of place is it? What food do they serve?”
Asking other people questions about the man who’d apparently stolen her heart embarrassed her, embarrassed them, and she didn’t want a repeat of that. This guy was supposed to be her boyfriend, her fiancé, shouldn’t they know something about each other? He didn’t seem bothered about walking in blind.
Was it really a surprise? Was Roman Lowe the type of man to know everything about a girlfriend? A serious, like forever, girlfriend? Maybe his heart was broken. It wasn’t with her, she didn’t want it, but maybe she should learn something about where it truly lay.
“Tell me about Sway.”
That jerked his chin higher. “She’s the goddamn love of my life. My woman, my soulmate.” She’d never seen him so sure about anything, and with a guy as cocky as him, that was saying something. “We’re destined to be together.” He wouldn’t be so brusque if she truly was a potential love interest, would he? Knowing what she did of Roman, it was possible. “So don’t get any ideas.”
Ha! He wished. Breathe. Just breathe through it. Laughing in his face wouldn’t set the right tone for the night ahead.
“Why did you break up?” she asked, deserving an Oscar for her calm.
“It’s none of your business. No tell-all book for you.”
Yeah, like that was her goal. Knowing more about the type of woman he could love would help her enact her current role.
“Where is she now?”
“In town somewhere. People in her life are keeping us apart.”
That sounded serious. People who meant her harm? Who meant him harm? Surely, if that was the case, he’d be more adamant about catching up to her, about finding her, saving her.
This was the Land of Happily Ever After. Also the Land of Death and Tragedy, Drama, Crime, Sex, and Politics. Hollywood was everything good, and nothing bad, under the perfect sheen of stage lights and heavy makeup. There, everything was translated into sound bites from contrived scripts and pumped out to the masses across the globe.
“Is anything in this town real? How do you have a relationship with someone when there’s so much theater?”
“Sway and I are real. We’ll always be real.”
“Did you talk to her about us?”
“Stop asking questions. We’ve got this dinner, you’ll smile nice, and then we’ll be back at my place. This doesn’t mean anything; you’re not my girlfriend. I know it’s a big deal to be seen with me, to be out with me, but if you think I’m going to jumpstart your career…”
Sour, she smiled. “You can’t jumpstart your own, buddy. Everyone around you is working overtime to improve your image, and I’m a part of that effort. So yeah, this isn’t real, and boy am I glad about that. I couldn’t care less about you. Don’t forget you’re not the only one with power.”
“If you even think about—”
“Acting out? Walking away? Telling the truth? Depends on you, I won’t take anything off the table. You don’t have the most stellar reputation when it comes to treating people well, but I’m your fiancée. You keep looking at me like that in public, you, the great actor who knows and loves his craft so well? You’ll give the truth away. Everyone will know our relationship is a sham and they’ll ask why.”
“Struan. That’s why. He fucked up. He caused this. My damn brother—”
“This is not his fault. Yes, Struan and I got close in private. We didn’t know about the camera, and we didn’t mean to hurt anyone. But if your reputation hadn’t been in tatters in the first place, if you’d been a better man, capable of treating people well, none of this would be needed. I could have been passed off as a one-time encounter, a rebound, a moment of comfort in an intense circumstance. The press wouldn’t have cared who you snuggled up with. They only care because you’ve burned so many bridges, and I get it now, because you’re like this. That’s why this is necessary, because you’re so spiteful, you walk around with this undeserved hubris… I wouldn’t be surprised if the press, and half of the production companies in this town, weren’t gunning for you, waiting for you to fall on your face. I can’t tell for sure right now, but it seems to me like it might be deserved.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Look at the way you treat people, the way you treat me, your brother, Magnus, everybody. If you root for people, they root for you. You don’t do that, you judge and sneer and snap, like you have some automatic entitlement. You look at people with disgust and disdain; I wouldn’t spend any time with you by choice.”
“Don’t let the door hit you.”
She smiled. “I made an agreement, and I’ll do my part. In fact, I’m curious. Why would Ricardo Whey let his people take a chance on you?”
Whey probably didn’t make a lot of day-to-day casting decisions. There had to be a thousand ongoing projects under various WMC umbrellas. Something was different about this leading man, or Whey’s relationship with him.
That this dinner was taking place at all suggested one of two things: either Roman Lowe had dirt on Ricardo Whey and he blackmailed his way into the role, or there was some affection between them. Maybe the why would become clear after eating a meal with them. Something had to come of it. If Roman wasn’t going to talk about himself, she’d just have to ride the rapids. Probably for the best, could she ever trust Roman to be honest anyway?